The Grammar of Relation in Theology

§1. Why Relations Matter in Theology

Theology speaks incessantly of relations. God creates the world, Christ is present in the believer, the Spirit proceeds, faith justifies, the Word reveals, the creature depends upon God. None of these claims is primarily a claim about things taken in isolation. They are claims about how realities stand to one another. Yet theology has often treated such relations as if they were rhetorically obvious or metaphysically harmless, requiring no explicit clarification.

This has proven costly, for much contemporary theological disagreement does not arise from conflicting doctrines so much as from unexamined relational assumptions. One theologian assumes that causation must be symmetric, another that participation implies identity, a third that dependence must be transitive, a fourth that identity licenses substitution in all contexts. Arguments then proceed as if these assumptions were self-evident, when in fact they differ at the level of grammatical form rather than doctrinal content. Lamentably, when that happens, disagreement becomes opaque. Theology begins to speak past itself.

The purpose of this essay is not to advance a new doctrine, nor to resolve disputed loci. It is more modest and more foundational. Its aim is to make explicit the relational grammar that theology already presupposes whenever it speaks clearly. Relations here are not metaphors, nor heuristic conveniences. They are formal structures that govern intelligibility itself. To ignore them is not to remain neutral; it is to operate blindly.

This concern is not alien to the theological tradition. Luther’s insistence upon a nova lingua was never a call for linguistic novelty as such. It was a recognition that theological language obeys a grammar determined by its object. To speak rightly of God requires more than pious intention; it requires disciplined attention to the forms of predication, causation, and dependence appropriate to divine–creature relations.

What follows, then, is an exercise in grammatical clarification. We will distinguish kinds of relations, note their formal properties, and indicate—without yet arguing doctrinal conclusions—why theology cannot dispense with these distinctions. The aim is not formalism for its own sake, but clarity: clarity about what theology is already doing when it speaks meaningfully at all.

§2. Relations as Grammar, Not Theory

When theology speaks of relations, it is tempting to hear these as theories—claims added to an otherwise complete ontology. One might think, for example, that to say the believer is “related” to Christ is to introduce an explanatory hypothesis alongside others: causal, psychological, symbolic, or social. Under that assumption, relations appear optional or revisable, depending on one’s broader metaphysical commitments. But this assumption is mistaken.

Relations function in theology not primarily as theories but as grammar. They determine how claims may be made before determining which claims are true. To confuse grammar with theory is to treat the conditions of intelligibility as if they were empirical hypotheses. But grammar is not proposed; it is presupposed. It governs what counts as a coherent assertion in the first place.

This is already familiar in ordinary language. The difference between “x causes y,” “x resembles y,” and “x is identical with y” is not a difference in empirical content alone. It is a difference in grammatical form. Each licenses different inferences and forbids others. To mistake one for another is not to adopt an alternative theory; it is to speak incoherently.

The same is true—a fortiori—in theology, because when theology asserts that God creates the world, it is not free to treat creation as symmetric, reversible, or reflexive. When it speaks of participation, it must avoid identity without reducing participation to metaphor. When it speaks of revelation, it must distinguish dependence from grounding, mediation from causation, presence from locality. These distinctions are not optional refinements. They are grammatical constraints imposed by the subject matter itself.

Luther’s insistence that theology has its own lingua is best understood in precisely this way. The nova lingua is not a poetic overlay on ordinary speech, nor a pious distortion of philosophical language. It is the recognition that the object of theology—the living God—determines the grammar under which speech about God is possible. Where that grammar is ignored, theological language does not become freer; it becomes confused.

For this reason, making relational grammar explicit is not an act of formal domination over theology. It is an act of obedience to theology’s own internal demands. Formalization, when it comes, does not replace judgment or confession. It disciplines them. It makes visible the distinctions theology already relies upon whenever it avoids triviality or contradiction.

In the next section, we move from description to formal grammar. The aim is not to impose alien machinery upon theology, but to state precisely the relational forms theology cannot avoid using if it is to speak at all.

§3. The Formal Grammar of Relation

We now state explicitly the relational grammar presupposed in the preceding discussion. The purpose of formalization here is not reduction but clarification. What follows does not introduce new theological claims; it renders explicit the logical forms already operative whenever theology speaks coherently of causation, presence, participation, revelation, or justification.

Let $\mathrm{<br>}{\mathrm{D1\; \&\; D2\; be\; domains\; and\; let <br>}}_{}$$R\subseteq {\mathrm{<span\; style="text-transform:\; math-auto;">D1\; x\; D2\; be\; a\; binary\; relation.</span>}}_{}$

3.1. Reflexivity and Its Variants

A relation $R \subseteq D \times D$ is:

• Reflexive iff (∀x ∈ D)Rxx

• Non-reflexive iff ~(∀x ∈ D)Rxx

• Irreflexive iff (∀x ∈ D )~Rxx

Grammatical note.
Theological causation is never reflexive; divine aseity is not self-causation. Failure to distinguish non-reflexivity from irreflexivity routinely generates pseudo-problems.

3.2. Symmetry, Asymmetry, and Antisymmetry

A relation $R \subseteq D \times D$ is:

• Symmetric iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D) (Rxy → Ryx)

• Non-symmetric iff ~(∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)(Rxy → Ryx)

• Asymmetric iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)(Rxy → ~Ryx)

• Antisymmetric iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)[ (Rxy ∧ Ryx) → x = y]

Grammatical note.
Antisymmetry is the formal safeguard against ontological collapse. Participation without identity is unintelligible without it.

3.3. Transitivity and Its Limits

A relation $R \subseteq D \times D$ is:

• Transitive iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)(∀z ∈ D)[(Rxy ∧ Ryz) → Rxz]

• Non-transitive iff ~(∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)(∀z ∈ D)[(Rxy ∧ Ryz) → Rxz]

• Intransitive iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)(∀z ∈ D)[(Rxy ∧ Ryz) → ~Rxz]

Grammatical note.
Illicit theological arguments often assume transitivity where only mediated dependence is licensed.

3.4. Connectivity (Connexity)

A relation $R \subseteq D \times D$ is connected iff (∀x ∈ D)(∀y ∈ D)[x ≠ y ∧ (Rxy ∨ Ryx]

Connectivity distinguishes total from partial orders and becomes decisive in teleological and eschatological contexts.

3.5. Composite Relational Structures

The following complexes are presupposed:

• Equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetric, transitive

• Strict partial order: irreflexive, transitive

• Partial order (poset): reflexive, antisymmetric, transitive

• Total (linear) order: partial order plus connectivity

• Tolerance relation: reflexive, symmetric, non-transitive

These structures are grammatical resources, not metaphysical theses.

3.6. Typed Relations

Relations are not assumed to range over a single homogeneous domain.

Formally: R : D1 × D2​

Typed relations govern divine–creature discourse, Logos–world relations, Spirit–language relations, and cause–effect structures. Ill-typed relations are excluded prior to argument.

3.7. Dependence and Grounding

Two distinct relational notions are presupposed:

• Dependence: a structural priority relation

• Grounding: a constitutive relation determining what something is

Grounding is not reducible to efficient causation, and dependence does not entail grounding.

3.8. Hyperintensional Non-Substitutivity

Relational contexts are not assumed to be extensional.

Even where x = y it does not follow that Rxz ↔ Ryz

Grammatical note. Theological predication, Christological communication, and participatory ontology all require such contexts. Extensional substitution here produces category mistakes, not clarity.

This formal grammar does not replace theological judgment. It makes judgment possible. In the next section, we will indicate why theology cannot be extensional and what this grammar clarifies—without yet drawing doctrinal conclusions.

§4. Typed Relations, Dependence, and Grounding

The formal grammar introduced in the previous section would remain abstract were it not applied to a central theological problem: how realities of fundamentally different kinds may be related without confusion or collapse. Theology cannot avoid this problem, because its subject matter is constituted by asymmetric relations between non-homogeneous domains—God and creature, Word and world, Spirit and language.

4.1. Why Relations Must Be Typed

In much modern discourse, relations are tacitly assumed to range over a single undifferentiated domain. This assumption works tolerably well in restricted contexts—social relations, numerical orderings, empirical causation—but it becomes destructive when imported into theology.

Theological relations are almost always typed. They relate terms drawn from different ontological orders. Creation does not relate one creature to another; it relates the Creator to what is not God. Revelation does not relate one proposition to another; it relates the living Word to finite language. Justification does not relate two moral agents symmetrically; it relates God’s act to the sinner.

Formally, such relations take the shape: R : D1 × D2 where D1 ≠ D2.

Once this is acknowledged, entire classes of pseudo-questions disappear. One need not argue that the creature cannot ground God, or that faith cannot justify Christ. These proposals are not false; they are ill-typed. They violate the grammar of theological discourse before they reach the level of doctrine.

4.2. Dependence as Structural Priority

Within typed relations, theology frequently speaks of dependence. Creatures depend upon God; faith depends upon the Word; theology depends upon revelation. Dependence names a relation of priority or reliance, but it does not yet specify what confers being or intelligibility.

Formally, dependence is a structural ordering relation. It may be asymmetric and often transitive, but it remains compatible with mediation, contingency, and plurality of levels. To say that x depends on y is not yet to say how y makes x what it is.

Confusion arises when dependence is either inflated into efficient causation or reduced to epistemic access. In theology, dependence frequently names an order of reception rather than a mechanism of production.

4.3. Grounding as Constitutive Relation

Grounding is stronger. To say that y grounds x is to say that y is constitutive of x—that x is what it is in virtue of y. Grounding answers a different question than dependence. It concerns not priority in sequence or explanation, but intelligibility in being.

This distinction is indispensable for theology. Faith may depend upon preaching in time, but it is grounded in the Spirit’s act. Theological language may depend upon historical usage, but it is grounded—if it is theology at all—in divine self-giving. Justification may depend upon proclamation, but it is grounded in Christ’s righteousness.

Failure to distinguish dependence from grounding produces either voluntarism (everything depends on divine choice alone) or reductionism (everything reduces to finite processes). Theology requires neither.

4.4. Grounding Without Mechanism

It is important to note what grounding is not. It is not a causal mechanism, nor a hidden process operating behind appearances. Grounding does not compete with finite causes, nor does it displace them. It names a relation of ontological constitution, not temporal production.

This point bears directly on theological realism. To say that divine action grounds finite reality is not to introduce an extra item into the causal inventory of the world. It is to say that the world is intelligible only because it stands in a constitutive relation to God.

Here again, grammar precedes doctrine. Without a notion of grounding distinct from dependence and causation, theology oscillates between collapse into metaphysics or retreat into metaphor.

4.5. Why These Distinctions Matter

Typed relations, dependence, and grounding together secure a space in which theology can speak ontologically without confusion. They allow theology to affirm real relations between God and the world while preserving asymmetry, avoiding identity, and resisting reduction.

They also prepare the way for a final clarification: why theological discourse cannot be extensional, and why substitution—even under identity—fails in precisely the contexts theology inhabits. That clarification is the task of the next section.

§5. Why Theology Is Not Extensional

Much modern philosophy of language proceeds under an extensional ideal: if two terms refer to the same object, they may be substituted salva veritate in all contexts. Within restricted domains—arithmetical identity, empirical description, purely extensional predicates—this assumption is often harmless. In theology, it is not merely inadequate; it is destructive.

The reason is now clear. Theological discourse is governed by relations that are typed, asymmetric, often grounding rather than merely dependent, and irreducible to causal or descriptive mechanisms. Such relations generate hyperintensional contexts, in which identity does not license unrestricted substitution.

Formally, even where x = y, it does not follow that Rxz ↔ Ryz. This is not a technical anomaly. It is the normal condition of theological predication.

5.1. Predication Under Relation

Theology rarely predicates properties of isolated subjects. It predicates under relations: Christ as incarnate, God as creator, the believer as justified, the Word as proclaimed. These relational contexts are constitutive of meaning. Remove them, and the predicate either collapses into triviality or shifts into a different register altogether.

For this reason, theological identity claims do not function like numerical identities. To say that Christ is God is not to say that every predicate applying to “God” may be substituted unmodified into every predicate applying to “Christ.” The communicatio idiomatum itself presupposes controlled non-substitutivity. Without it, Christology oscillates between Nestorian separation and monophysite collapse.

5.2. Participation Without Collapse

The same is true of participatory language. When theology says that the believer participates in divine righteousness, it does not assert identity of essence. Antisymmetry and non-substitutivity together make this intelligible. The believer is really related to divine righteousness without becoming identical with God. Extensional substitution would force precisely the conclusion theology must deny.

Participation, therefore, is not a metaphor masking identity, nor a resemblance disguising distance. It is a real relation whose grammar forbids collapse.

5.3. Grounding and Theological Reference

Non-extensionality is equally decisive for theological reference. If divine grounding is constitutive of finite being and meaning, then reference to God is not secured by descriptive equivalence alone. Theological language functions in contexts where what grounds reference matters, not merely what satisfies a description.

This is why theological terms cannot be replaced indiscriminately by functional or phenomenological equivalents without remainder. Even if two descriptions converge extensionally, they may diverge grammatically. Theology must attend to that divergence or abandon its claim to speak of God rather than merely about human experience.

5.4. The Cost of Extensionalism

Where extensional assumptions are imposed upon theology, the result is not increased rigor but systematic distortion. Christology becomes incoherent, sacramental presence collapses into symbolism, justification is reduced to moral status, and revelation is re-described as religious awareness. Each move appears modest in isolation; together they evacuate theology of its subject matter.

These are not errors of inference. They are errors of grammar.

5.5. Grammar as Theological Discipline

To say that theology is not extensional is not to deny clarity or truth. It is to insist that clarity requires discipline appropriate to the object spoken of. Grammar here functions as a form of theological restraint. It prevents theology from saying more—or less—than it is entitled to say.

The point may be stated simply. Theology does not become confused because it lacks information. It becomes confused when it forgets the relational grammar that makes its speech possible at all.

In the final section, we will indicate what this grammar clarifies, and why making it explicit does not constrain theology but frees it for disciplined disagreement and genuine advance.

§6. What This Clarifies—and Why It Matters

The purpose of this essay has been neither to construct a theological system nor to adjudicate disputed doctrines. Its aim has been more elementary and more enduring: to make explicit the grammar of relation that theology already presupposes whenever it speaks coherently of God, the world, and their communion.

By distinguishing kinds of relations—reflexive and irreflexive, symmetric and asymmetric, transitive and intransitive—and by attending to typed relations, dependence, grounding, and non-extensional contexts, we have not added content to theology. We have clarified the conditions under which theological content can be meaningfully articulated at all. Where these distinctions are ignored, theology does not become simpler; it becomes unstable.

Several persistent confusions are thereby brought into focus. Apparent disputes about causation often turn out to be disagreements about transitivity. Debates over participation frequently mask unresolved tensions between antisymmetry and identity. Conflicts over revelation and reference regularly presuppose incompatible assumptions about extensional substitution. In each case, what appears to be a doctrinal impasse is often a grammatical failure.

Making this grammar explicit serves a constructive purpose. It allows theology to affirm real divine–creature relations without collapse, to speak ontologically without mechanizing divine action, and to maintain the integrity of theological language without retreating into metaphor or subjectivism. It also permits disagreement to become precise. When the grammar is shared, disagreement can be located where it belongs—at the level of ontological commitment or theological judgment—rather than being diffused into ambiguity.

This clarification also situates formalization rightly within theology. Formal grammar does not govern theology from without; it serves theology from within. It renders explicit the distinctions theology already enacts in its best moments. To formalize is not to dominate but to attend—to the object that commands theological speech and to the discipline required to speak truthfully of it.

Finally, this essay marks a boundary. It explains why certain matters have been treated only implicitly elsewhere and why fuller formal exposition belongs to particular genres of theological work. Not every text must carry its grammar on its sleeve. But theology cannot dispense with grammar altogether without forfeiting intelligibility.

If this essay succeeds, it will have done something modest but necessary. It will have shown that before theology can argue, it must first know how it is speaking—and that such knowledge is not ancillary to theology, but part of its fidelity.

Disputatio LIV: De Hyperintensionalitate Divinae Operationis:

 

On the Hyperintensionality of Divine Action

Quaeritur

Utrum actus divini, quoad identitatem, formam, et rationem essendi, non possint explicari per extensionalem aequivalentiam, modalem necessitationem, vel possibilia mundorum, sed sint essentialiter hyperintensionales; et utrum veritas theologica requirat talem hyperintensionalitatem ut Deus cognoscatur secundum actum, non secundum eventum.

Whether the identity and form of divine acts can be explained by extensional equivalence, modal necessity, or possible-world semantics, or whether they are essentially hyperintensional; and whether theological truth requires such hyperintensionality so that God is known according to the act God performs, not merely according to an outcome.

Thesis

Divine acts are hyperintensional. By this we mean that the identity of a divine act cannot be captured by any framework in which acts are considered the same whenever they yield the same outcomes, share the same extension, or hold necessarily across all possible worlds. A divine act is not defined by its effects, nor by the set of circumstances under which it occurs, nor by its modal profile. Instead, a divine act is individuated by its formal identity within the Logos, by the specific constitutive act through which the Logos brings a res into being or presence, and by the Spirit’s concrete donation of that act to creatures.

Thus, extension does not capture divine identity,modal equivalence does not capture divine identity, and possible-world semantics is too coarse-grained to describe divine agency. A hyperintensional account alone preserves the theological conviction that God’s acts are personal, irreducible, and internally differentiated modes of the one divine life.

Locus Classicus

1. Exodus 3:14 — אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה

“I AM WHO I AM.”

This is not a definition, but an identity of act. Being itself is hyperintensional, for it names a unique form of divine acting, not a property instantiated across possible worlds.

2. John 5:19 — ἃ ἂν ἐκεῖνος ποιῇ, ταῦτα καὶ ὁ Υἱὸς ὁμοίως ποιεῖ

“Whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”

The divine act is not duplicated or numerically separable. Rather, its identity is internal to the Trinity, not extensionalized in effects.

3. Athanasius, Contra Arianos I.21

ὁμοούσιος οὐ κατὰ θέλησιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ φύσιν.
“Of one being not by will but by nature.”

The divine act is identical with divine being; it is an identity finer than any modal equivalence.

4. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium

Οὐ τὰ γινόμενα, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ τρόπος τῆς ἐνεργείας τὴν διαφοράν ποιεῖ.
“It is not the outcomes, but the manner of operation that makes the distinction.”

This is a classical statement of hyperintensionality clearly stating that the manner by which something obtains profoundly matters.

5. Luther, WA 40/III, 343

“Deus non est causa sicut causae creatae.”
“God is not a cause as created causes are causes.”

Thus God cannot be modeled extensionally.

Explicatio

1. Why extensional identity is inadequate

Extensional identity holds when two expressions apply to precisely the same set of objects. If two predicates pick out exactly the same individuals, classical extensional logic treats them as equivalent. For example, if every creature that is forgiven is also elected, and every creature that is elected is also justified, then these predicates are extensionally equivalent: they have the same extension.

Formally, if for all x, x is forgiven ↔ x is elected and x is elected ↔ x is justified, then the predicates forgiven, elected, and justified are coextensive.

Similarly, in the Spirit’s work, if for all x, x speaks in the Spirit ↔ x has been given the Spirit, and x has been given the Spirit ↔ the Spirit dwells in x, then Spirit-speaking, Spirit-giving, and Spirit-indwelling are extensionally equivalent expressions.

But extensional equivalence tells us nothing about what distinguishes these divine actions in God Himself. Forgiving is not the same divine act as electing, nor is electing the same divine act as justifying. Likewise, the Spirit’s giving, indwelling, and speaking are not identical divine operations simply because they coincide in the believer. Extensional identity collapses formally distinct divine works into a single undifferentiated outcome and therefore cannot serve as the framework for a theology that seeks to speak truthfully of God’s own acting.

2. Why modal equivalence is insufficient

A second temptation is to appeal to modal identity. Accordingly, if two acts occur in every possible world in which God acts toward creatures, or if one cannot conceive God performing one without the other, then they are treated as identical.

Creation and preservation offer a clear example. Classical theology holds that God’s preserving of the creature is nothing other than the continued giving of being. Because no creature could exist for a moment apart from God’s sustaining act, creation and preservation are necessarily coextensive: wherever one occurs, the other is already taking place.

So too with incarnation and redemption. In the Christian confession, the Son becomes incarnate for our salvation, and His incarnate life is unintelligible apart from His redeeming work. One cannot separate them modally, for in every possible description of God’s salvific activity, incarnation and redemption occur together.

Yet modal inseparability does not entail formal identity. Creation and preservation differ in their reason, because one brings being into existence, while the other maintains that being in existence. Incarnation and redemption differ likewise, for one is the assumption of human nature, the other is the reconciling act performed in that nature. Modal equivalence cannot register these distinctions because it treats any necessarily co-occurring acts as identical, thereby losing the finer structure of God’s activity that theology must retain.

3. Why divine acts require hyperintensional individuation

If theology is to speak truthfully, it must be able to say why this particular divine act grounds this theological statement. In our broader account, a theological utterance is true because the Logos performs a determinate act—Λ ⊨* Tₜ. But determinate truth requires determinate action. If divine acts could not be distinguished except by their extensions or modal profiles, then the truthmaker for any theological statement would be some undifferentiated divine activity, and doctrinal distinctions would lose their ontological grounding.

By hyperintensional identity I mean that divine acts differ not by their outcomes or by their modal placement but by their internal form in the Logos—the determinate way God is acting here and not otherwise. This internal form cannot be captured by appeal to effects, extensions, or modal profiles; it belongs to the act as God performs it. Forgiving is formally distinct from electing because each expresses a different aspect of the divine life, even when the same creature receives both. The Spirit’s indwelling is formally distinct from the Spirit’s giving because each arises from a different manner of divine self-communication. Hyperintensionality preserves the integrity of these differences.

4. The Spirit’s donation is hyperintensional

The Spirit does not donate to creatures a general divine presence or a generic divine favor. Instead, the Spirit donates the specific act that God is performing toward the believer. In one moment, this may be forgiveness; in another, consolation; in another, empowerment. The specificity of the Spirit’s donation presupposes a finely articulated structure of divine action in God Himself. Without this specificity, divine presence would become conceptual rather than real, and theology would lose the concreteness of God’s address.

5. Felicity is indexed to particular divine acts

A theological assertion is felicitous only if it corresponds to the act God is performing here and now—an act that is already individuated in God with a hyperintensional precision. The Spirit authorizes not theological grammar in general but this particular word because this particular divine act is being given. Thus the intelligibility of theology depends on a hyperintensional account of divine acting.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to classical extensionalism if two divine acts produce the same effects, they are the same act. If this is so, there is o need for hyperintensional identity.

Ob II: Modal realism holds that if God necessarily performs A and B, then He performs A and B in all possible worlds, and thus A = B. Therefore, modal equivalence suffices in individuation.

Ob III: Thomism claims that since God is simple, all divine actions are identical and distinctions collapse.

Ob IV: Deflationism asserts that hyperintensionality describes linguistic distinction, not metaphysical difference.

Ob V: Postliberalism holds that since all distinctions arise from use within the community, divine action adds nothing.

Responsiones

Ad I: Effects underdetermine cause. Divine acts differ in their formal ratio, not merely in outcome (Gregory of Nyssa). Thus, extension collapses personal identity.

Ad II: Possible-world semantics assumes shared structure with creaturely action. But divine acts exist outside modal ontology; they ground modality rather than inhabit it. God is not a node in a modal structure but its creator.

Ad III: While implicity entails no composition in God, it does not follow that divine acts lack distinct formal identities. The Fathers held simplicity alongside real distinctions of operation.

Ad IV: Hyperintensionality is not linguistic fineness but metaphysical precision. Divine act identity is not a function of language but of participation in the Logos.

Ad V: While usage explains how we talk, it does not identify what God does. Without hyperintensional divine action, grammar loses its anchor in reality.

Nota

Hyperintensionality is the ontological form of God’s personal action. We have seen that constitutive causation (L) requires fine-grained identity; that real presence (LI) is specific, not generic; that donation (LII) concerns a particular res, and that felicity (LIII) authorizes a particular act of creaturely speech. If theological semantics were simply extensional or modal, the Trinity collapses into one role, the sacrament collapses into symbol, revelation collapses into a proposition, grace collapses into an effect, and Christology collapses into monism.

Regarding the Trinity, hyperintensionality preserves the distinction of the trinitarian persons, Christ’s unique acts, sacramental specificity, and the performative depth of divine truth. Simply put, hyperintensionality is not an analytic embellishment but a theological necessity. Without it, we could not preserve the conviction that God acts personally and decisively for the creature, nor could we maintain the integrity of the Gospel’s claim that God’s work is addressed to us in its fullness and specificity.

Determinatio

We have determined that:

1. Divine acts are intrinsically hyperintensional, distinct in their internal form even when extensionally identical.

2. Neither extensional equivalence nor modal necessity suffices to individuate divine action.

3. Hyperintensional identity flows from the Logos’ constitutive act (L) and is made present (LI), donated (LII), and authorized (LIII).

4. Theological truth (Λ ⊨* Tₜ) requires such hyperintensional grounding.

5. Therefore, theology must employ a hyperintensional semantics to speak truly of God.

Transitus ad Disputationem LV: De Intentione Divina et Identitate Actuum in Deo

Having established hyperintensionality in divine action, we proceed to the related question as to how divine intentions are related to divine acts, and how the Logos unifies them without collapsing distinctions. 

Thus, we turn to Disputatio LV: De Intentione Divina: Utrum Intentiones Dei Sint Actus et Quomodo Unitas in Logō Constituitur, where we shall inquire as to whether God’s intentions are identical with His acts, and how the Logos grounds their unity and distinction.

Extensionality, Description and the Question of Good Works: Towards An Anomalous Monergism?

 The great American philosopher Donald Davidson (1917-2003) wrote the following about causality:

The salient point that emerges so far is that we must distinguish firmly between causes and the features we hit upon for describing them, and hence between the question whether a statement says truly that one event caused another and the further question of whether the events are characterized in such a way that we can deduce, or otherwise infer, from laws or other causal lore, that the relation was causal ("Causal Relations," The Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1967), 691-703).  

Davidson's point in this famous article is that causality has an extensional nature.  If a causes b, it is, in fact, the event a that causes b to obtain, and this is a causal relation that obtains apart from however a and b might be described.   

Compare the following: 

1. Jack fell down and broke his crown.
2. That Jack fell down explains the fact that Jack broke his crown. 

Clearly, (1) bespeaks extensionality and (2) intensionality.  Very simply put, extensionality concerns what there is, while intensionality deals with how we might pick out or refer to what there is.  For example, in f(x) = y +2 for natural numbers N where 1< y < 5, the intension is the rule 'y +2' applied to either 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, while the proposition's extension is {<1, 3>, <2, 4>, <3, 5>, <4, 6>, <5, 7>}. 

What is there a difference between (1) and (2) above?  (2) is concerned with the relation between two descriptions, 'Jack fell down' and 'Jack broke his crown'. These two sentences are related by the operation of causally explaining.  Notice, however, that (1) does not connect to descriptions at all, for the 'and' in (1) is concerned with the actual events of Jack falling down and Jack breaking his crown.  

Assume that d is the event of Jack falling down and c is the event of Jack breaking his crown. Notice that event d  may cause event c without any recourse to modal terms.  Clearly, the singular event d and the singular event c, both denizens of the extensional, cannot be connected by a modal operator, for modality applies to events only in so far as they are properly described.  Modality is de dicto and not de re.  In Humean terms, it concerns the relations of ideas, not the matters of fact.  

One could, I suppose, have a general law claiming that for all x, if x falls down then x breaks x's crown.  Such an occurrence may be so regular that one might, I suppose, claim that it is necessarily the case, that for all x, if x falls down then x breaks x's crown. But this modal operator which concerns relations between ideas (or language) might be replaced by a far more modest operator in intensional contexts, the causal explanation operator.  We have our stories about the world and the behavior of objects within it.  We know that there are features instanced in Jack's falling down and Jack's breaking his crown, such that the features of the first causally explains the features of the second.  Thus, it is true that Jack's falling down causally explains the breaking of Jack's crown.  

But Jack is the man most to be pitied on Beecher Street, and while his falling down is the most unfortunate event of his lifetime,  his breaking of his crown is that that issued in his wife leaving him. Does causal explanation still work as we substitute descriptions for singular events salve veritate?

3. That the man most to be pitied on Beecher Street suffered the most unfortunate event of his lifetime causally explains the fact that his wife left him. 

Clearly, any law connecting fallings and breakings is now no longer at issue. Here the connection is between unfortunate events happening to guys on Beecher Street and their wives abandoning them.  While one might think the causal explanation operator in (2) is apt, its use in (3) seems much more problematic.  But how can causal relations depend upon the descriptions of d and c?  Is it not simply about the relations between these two events however they might be described? 

Davidson developed a theory of token identity in the philosophy of mind that exploits the difference between causal relations and causal explanation.  Imagine that there is some event e such that it can be given both a neuro-physical and psychological description.  The neural event that e is is presumably related to other neural events, but the mental description of that event -- perhaps a particular thinking of one's particular mother when she was 36 -- cannot seemingly be relatable to other mental events causally in the same way.  After all, neural events do not swim in the waters of the normative.  My thinking of my mother when she was 36 might be followed by a particular thought of the appropriateness of my love for her, and this is clearly a matter of normativity.  One ought to love one's mother, after all; it is right to do so.  

One might generalize from these reflections into the philosophy of action.  What is the best explanation why Bob gets in his vehicle and drives the 25 miles to the airport at 4:50 p.m. on April 23?  It is that Bob believes that his wife Jan is flying home on the 6:00 p.m. plane from Chicago, and that Bob has a desire to see her.  Causal explanations for why we do what we do our routinely cast in the language of beliefs and desires, and not in the language of neural states.  It would be odd, after all, to say that Bob is getting in his vehicle at 4:50 on April 23 because Bob's neurophysiological states coupled with appropriate external sensations caused it to be so. What kind of causal explanation for Bob's behavior refers simply to brain states and perceptual inputs?  How could knowing the neural events of Bob causally explain the purpose he had when entering his auto? 

Davidson's token identity theory of the mental and physical simply points out that our mental life with its complexities of purpose in beliefs in desires is physically realized, that is to say, that some set of neuro-events realizes our mental states.  Davidson is not a substance dualist, after all, claiming that there is an ontic realm of mental events, entities, properties, relations or functions that can exist on its own, and whose processes are simply coordinated with physical events, entities, properties, relations of functions in the brain, and that, in principle, one might be able to draw causal connections between the mental and the physical.  By claiming a token identity between mental states and some brain states or other realizing these mental states, Davidson believes he can protect the anomalousness of the mental while not acquiescing to dualism.  His position is appropriately called anomalous monism.  The point is that one event can have different descriptions, and that there is a certain irreducibility of the mental to the physical.  Accordingly, the complexities of our mental life cannot be either explained or predicted by pointing to the existence of strict scientific law -- if there actually is such -- at the neuro-level.  

Whether or not Davidson's position of anomalous monism is finally defensible is not my concern here.  I advert to this only because I want to show again the importance of description when it comes to events. Causal explanation is possible because of the descriptions we give to a particular event.  Causal explanation involves language, in our use of language to highlight features of events we want to explain.  Causal relations, however, are ultimately extensional, they are drawn between events however they might be described.  That event e causes event e', is a feature of the world, not a feature of our description of the world -- or so one might argue.   But what might any of this have to do with theology? 

In the Lutheran tradition there has been since the beginning profound controversy about the status of good works in salvation.  Classically, one might ask, "are good works necessary for salvation?"  An unreflective quick response is simply "no!"  "Good works do not save us before God, so good works are not necessary for salvation."  It is perhaps a response like this that underlies the suggestion by Amsdorf and others that good works might even be harmful for salvation. 

But reflecting on the logical form of the statement, 'Good works are necessary for salvation' does not mean 'if good works, then salvation'.  If 'if A then B' obtains, then A is sufficient for B, and B is necessary for A.  The proper translation of 'good works are necessary for salvation' is 'if salvation, then good works', that is, 'if not good works, then no salvation'. Those claiming that good works are necessary for salvation are clearly not claiming that by doing good works, one might be saved; they are not saying that good works are sufficient for salvation.  Good trees bear good fruit.  If God makes the tree good, then good fruit will follow.  Therefore, good works are necessary for salvation. 

But merely pointing to the logic, does not seemingly solve the controversy.  Those espousing monergism, that we are saved wholly by God apart from our own agency, want to protect divine autonomy.  They are deeply suspicious of language having to do with human working and doing, of language having to do with human discipling, for such language suggests human agency; the language itself suggests synergism.  Luther was profoundly critical of the category of created grace, the notion that God through his agency might create in human beings ontologically-extended dispositions to behave, and thus that there might be something in human beings on the basis of which the divine imputation of righteousness rests.  Luther accordingly rejects the notion that human beings have been made right, and on that basis, they are pronounced right; the Gerechtmachung grounds the Gerechtsprechung.  But if this were so, were we given such goods, then why and how could we who have benefitted so deeply utter as did Luther in his final hours, "Wir sind bettler, hoc est verum?"  

There are standard moves in this debate, a debate that is connected to the so-called "third use of the law." My purpose here is not to get into the debate and follow the lines of reasoning that have a certain plausibility no matter upon which side one finds oneself.  My purpose here is simply to propose something new that might move the conversation forward.  

What if we took seriously the distinction between the event of the person doing a good work and its description?  Let me be more clear, what if we took seriously the distinction between d, the event of a person behaving in a particular way, with its description as to what the person was doing in that event d?  After all, Paul's ingredience in d could be described as both the doing of a good deed through Paul's own agency or as a divinely-gifted doing where it is no longer I who live but He who lives in me.  The point is this, the same event d is multiply describable. It can be described on the basis of a human agent believing that he must do the act and desiring so to do it, or it can be described as a behavioristic input/output function, or it can be described as wholly caused by the Holy Spirit. Our background assumptions and theories deeply influence how the event might be described.  The same event can be given a description in terms of beliefs and desires and the intent by the person to "do what is within them."  It can be described, solely in monergistic terms; the event is that work that is worked by God in us propter Christum and by grace through faith; or the event could be described perhaps without averting to so-called "folk psychological ascriptions" at all.  If we were to give a neuro-description to the event, it would make no sense in giving a casual explanation to the event to speak of the Holy Spirit's causality or the desire to be saved and the belief that that a particular doing, a suitable description of d, motivates the doing.  

The language of discipleship -- what is it to be a fisherman that follows -- is clearly a different language than the language of apostolicity -- what heralds does God establish in His Wording of the world.  Both languages can be developed quite thickly, with language available to speak of all sorts of events, and both languages can provide causal explanations.  This being said, however, there still is some underlying events that are what they are because of causal relations they sustain with other events. The fact that no language can mime the contour of these causal relations does not tell against their presence.  The extensionality of causal relations of such d doings by Paul might not be able to be articulated in the languages by which events like d are described.  Here we are talking about propositional attitudes, about the believings of people doing d.  Here we are at the level of the intensional.  

Although I have not defended anamolous monism, in closing I want to open up the possibility of an anamolous monergism.  What if Davidson is right, and that there are simply causal relations at the neuro-level that support mental descriptions where causal explanation is possible?  What if one could be a nonreductive physicalist of such a kind?  Does this have relevance for the theological issue at hand? 

Imagine that the Holy Spirit has a causality such that some human events are caused by the Holy Spirit.  After all, maybe Luther is right in that we are either ridden by the devil or Christ.  If the Holy Spirit causes that event we might describe as a good work, then clearly no human agency is determinative in its doing.  Clearly, this is an embrace of monergism.  But what about our description, our own self-understanding of that event?   

Surely, we could causally explain that act in terms of beliefs and desires.  We could have an intent to do what God would have us do, and we could believe that that doing is meritorious somehow before God.  We live lives that are thus pleasing to God, and we try in all we do to keep God's commandments.  We learn more about God and we attempt to follow Christ in all we do.  All of this description of our life of faith, as thick or thin as we might want, could be seen as realizable within the underlying divine causality upon human events. Clearly, the language of belief, desire, intentionality, and following is not reducible to the language that describes the Holy Spirit's causality upon our behavior.  From the standpoint of the extensional, God authors are events, but from the standpoint of the intensional, are doings realized by those events can be explained in therms of the motivations of living the Christian life.  

What I am suggesting here is an anamolous monergism that neither undercuts the reality of monergism, nor does it downplay the complex experience of living out the Christian life. There are deep philosophical and theological objections to this view, of course, but I do think that the main point might be defendable: The penchant to good works is a way of talking or describing Christian lived existence, and this way of talking or describing does not have to contradict the reality that I cannot cause that event that might be described as a Christian following.  Similarly, third use of the law talk need not contradict the reality that there are only two proper uses.  But this topic must await a later treatment.