Disputatio XXXII: De Ratione Quaerente et Spiritu Intelligentiae

On the Questioning Reason and the Spirit of Understanding

Quaeritur

Utrum ratio humana, in eo quod naturaliter quaerit sufficientem causam et universale intellectum, agat ex se ipsā, an vero haec inquisitio sit signum participationis Spiritus Intelligentiae, qui est ipsa actio intelligibilitatis divinae in creatura.

It is asked whether human reason, in its natural drive toward sufficient reason and universal intelligibility, acts from itself, or whether this very questioning is the sign of participation in the Spirit of Understanding—the divine act of intelligibility present within the creature.

Thesis

The finite intellect does not generate its own light but participates in the divine Light that enables understanding. Reason’s perpetual inquiry into causes and grounds, its ratio quaerens, is not autonomous curiosity, but it is instead the trace of the Spirit’s presence in the intellect. The desire for sufficient reason is itself evidence of participation in infinite reason (ratio infinita). Thus, Spiritus Intelligentiae is both the condition and the telos of all rational inquiry: every genuine question already presupposes the divine horizon that alone can answer it.

Locus Classicus

“In lumine tuo videbimus lumen.” — Psalm 36:9
(“In thy light shall we see light.”)

Augustine interprets this as meaning that all human understanding occurs within the illumination of divine intellect: “Quod intelligimus, in ipsa luce intelligimus quae est Deus.” (De Trinitate XII.15).  Aquinas further develops this insight:“Lux intellectualis quae in nobis est nihil aliud est quam participatio lucis divinae.” (ST I.79.4). Hence, reason’s light is participatory, not self-originating; the Spirit of understanding is the act whereby finite intellect becomes luminous to itself and to the world.

Explicatio

The human mind is naturally a ratio quaerens; it is a being drawn toward the intelligible. It seeks not only facts but their sufficient reasons, not only order but the ground of order. Leibniz gave this drive formal expression in the principium rationis sufficientis: nothing exists without a reason why it is so and not otherwise.

Yet the principle, when pursued consistently, transcends the finite. This is so because every finite reason refers to another, and the chain cannot complete itself except in a necessary and infinite act of reason. Thus, the principle of sufficient reason functions as an analogia mentis: the finite intellect mirrors within itself the structure of the infinite intellect in which all reasons are one.

Kant sought to delimit this movement within the bounds of possible experience, identifying the desire for total explanation with the transcendental illusion of reason. But theology reinterprets this “illusion” as the trace of the Spirit, the sign that finite reason is oriented by nature toward the infinite. Gödel showed that no consistent system can prove its own completeness. So it is also true that the finite intellect cannot rest in its own light but must open itself to the greater light in which all truths cohere.

Therefore, the unending search of reason is not futility but vocation; it is a created participation in the Spirit of understanding. The Spirit is the lumen superius that draws thought beyond itself toward the fullness of intelligibility: the Infinite in which the true and the real coincide.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Empiricism claims that reason’s questions arise from sensory experience; they are inductive extensions of perception, not signs of divine participation. Inquiry proceeds from curiosity, not grace.

Obj. II. Kantians argue that the drive toward sufficient reason is a regulative principle, useful for coherence but not constitutive of reality. It expresses the form of human reason, not any participation in a transcendent intellect.

Obj. III. Naturalism supposes that intellectual curiosity is an evolutionary advantage; the search for explanation enhances survival. Thus, no divine Spirit need be invoked to explain it.

Obj. IV. Existentialism asserts that the questioning drive signifies the absence of meaning, not its presence. It testifies to human finitude and anxiety, not to participation in divine reason.

Obj. V. Mysticism holds that to ascribe reason’s restlessness to the Spirit is to confuse knowledge with faith. The Spirit speaks in silence, not in reasoning; rational inquiry distracts from contemplation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Empiricism mistakes the occasion for the cause. While inquiry begins with experience, its form transcends experience; the very demand for universal explanation cannot be derived from particular sensations. It testifies to a light within the intellect that orders appearances toward being.

Ad II. Kant rightly names the demand for totality “regulative,” yet this very regulation presupposes an orientation toward the unconditioned. Theological reason reads this not as illusion but as vocation: the Spirit inclines the intellect toward its true completion in divine understanding.

Ad III. Natural explanation may describe the mechanism by which curiosity functions, but not why the cosmos is intelligible at all. The explanatory success of science itself presupposes that reality is structured according to reason, a structure theology identifies with the spiritus intelligentiae.

Ad IV. Existential anxiety is indeed the shadow of transcendence. The question persists because the answer is real. The void that drives thought forward is the echo of the infinite within the finite; it is the Spirit’s hidden prompting toward the ground of being.

Ad V. Contemplation and reason are not opposites but stages of the same participation. The Spirit who grants silence also animates inquiry; the one light illumines both mind and heart. Rational questioning, rightly ordered, is a form of praise.

Nota

The restlessness of reason is not an imperfection of intellect but its created likeness to the infinite intelligibility of God. Accordingly, the principle of sufficient reason is not a human invention but a vestige of the Spirit’s own act of understanding within the finite mind. Reason asks because it has already been addressed. Every question presupposes the divine Word that calls it into thought.

Hence, the structure of inquiry is itself participatory. The ratio quaerens is the Spirit reflecting upon itself within the creature. To reason is already to echo the divine dialogue in which knowing and being coincide. The mind’s drive toward completion—what Kant called "the transcendental subreption" and what Gödel formalized as incompleteness—is, theologically, the trace of the Spirit’s self-communication. In every genuine act of understanding, the finite intellect becomes translucent to the Infinite Light that grounds it.

Thus, questioning is not the negation of faith but its rational form; the open system of inquiry mirrors the openness of creation to its Creator. Reason’s incompleteness is grace made epistemic. This incompleteness is a formal sign that the Spirit of Understanding continues to speak within the human mind, drawing thought beyond itself toward the Truth that both conceives and fulfills it.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Human reason, as ratio quaerens, bears within itself an impulse toward sufficient explanation that cannot be satisfied within finitude.

2. This impulse is not self-generated but arises from the participation of the intellect in the divine light, in the Spiritus Intelligentiae who is both source and goal of all understanding.

3. The principle of sufficient reason is therefore a formal echo of the Spirit’s creative intelligibility: every reason points beyond itself to the infinite Reason that grounds all.

4. Finite systems, like finite intellects, remain incomplete; their very openness to completion reveals their participation in the infinite.

5. The restlessness of reason is thus not a defect but a sign of grace. It is the intellectus in via seeking its home in Intellectus aeternus.

Hence we conclude: Ratio quaerens est Spiritus seipsum desiderans.
The questioning reason is the Spirit desiring itself.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXIII

Having seen that every inquiry of reason presupposes the infinite act of understanding that grounds it, we turn now to the formal structure of that dependence. If every finite order is incomplete, what is the nature of the infinite truthmaker in which it finds completion? This question leads directly to the next disputation: XXXIII: De Systemate Incompleto et Veritatis Factore Infinito. Here the logical insight of Gödel becomes a theological axiom. The finite requires the infinite not only to be known, but to be true.

Disputatio XX: De Theologia ut Actu Verbi et Spiritus

On Theology as the Act of the Word and the Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum theologia non sit sermo humanus aliis superior, sed ipsa actio Verbi et Spiritus, in qua et per quam omnis loquela theologica habet esse suum—ita ut verbum fidei non solum de Deo loquatur, sed in ipso Dei loquendo subsistat.

Whether theology is not a human discourse standing above others but the living act of the Word and the Spirit, within and through which all theological speech receives its being—such that the word of faith does not merely speak about God, but subsists within God’s own act of speaking.

Thesis

Theology is the continuing act of divine self-communication in language. The Word is its content and the Spirit its cause. Human discourse participates in this act finitely, not by nature but by grace. Thus, theology speaks truly only as it becomes the act of the Word through the causality of the Spirit, the infinite in the finite.

Locus classicus

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.”
— John 16:13

This verse establishes the pneumatological condition of all theological truth. The Spirit’s speech is not autonomous but participatory. The Spirit speaks what it hears from the Word, mediating the eternal discourse of the Son within the languages of history. Theology thus lives as the finite echo of an infinite conversation between Word and Spirit.

Explicatio

In human sciences, language and meaning are related externally: propositions describe or directly denote states of affairs. In theology, language and being coincide in the divine act. The Word is the ratio essendi of both creation and signification. The Spirit, as the divine causal medium, renders finite discourse proportionate to infinite meaning, linking felicity (authorized saying) with truth (ontological correspondence).

Let us formalize the relation as an analogy between divine and human discourse:

• Let L∞ denote the eternal Word, the infinite language of divine self-communication.

• Let Lₜ denote finite theological discourse, the language of faith and confession.

• Let Auth(Lₜ) denote the authorization of Lₜ by the Spirit.

• Then, theological truth obtains only if Auth(Lₜ) → (Lₜ ⊂ L∞); that is, finite discourse is true insofar as the Spirit causes its participation in the divine Word.

This causality is non-competitive. Human language remains finite and historical, yet within it the Spirit effects ontological reference. The Word speaks through words. Accordingly, the infinite inhabits the finite without destroying it. Theology is precisely this indwelling speech; it is an act in which divine causality and human signification coincide.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Kantian Transcendentalism limits cognition to phenomena structured by the categories of understanding. Theology, as human reflection, can express moral faith but not divine causation within thought or speech. To say that theology is an act of Word and Spirit is to mistake moral symbolism for metaphysical participation, violating the autonomy of reason and the bounds of possible experience.

Obiectio II. Barthian Revelationism insists that revelation is the wholly other act of God, never a human process. Theology may witness to the Word but is not itself the Word’s act. To identify theology with the act of Word and Spirit is to blur the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creature, turning divine revelation into a form of human religiosity.

Obiectio III. Wittgensteinian linguistic conventionalism teaches that meaning arises from the use of language within forms of life (Lebensform). Theological felicity, then, is determined by ecclesial grammar, not metaphysical causation. To posit the Spirit as the cause of meaning introduces a category mistake,for causes belong to physics, not to language. The Spirit’s “authorization” adds nothing to grammatical propriety.

Obiectio IV. In Hegelian idealism, Spirit realizes itself through human consciousness and divine speech is the dialectical unfolding of Absolute knowing. Theology, therefore, is not a separate act of Word and Spirit but the self-comprehension of Spirit in finite reason. To posit transcendent divine causality within theology is to regress to pre-critical representationalism.

Obiectio V. Within post-liberal theology, theology’s truth is intralinguistic: it is coherence within the Church’s rule of faith. Divine causation is a superfluous hypothesis. Any claim that the Spirit determines what is in or out of T, or that the Word speaks through language, replaces theological humility with metaphysical presumption.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s boundaries define reason’s autonomy, not God’s. Revelation does not transgress the categories of understanding but fulfills them by constituting their very possibility. The Spirit does not add a second cause to human thought but founds its capacity to signify God. Theological cognition is thus not heteronomous but participatory: reason becomes itself when moved by the Spirit to speak truthfully of the Word.

Ad II. Barth’s distinction between revelation and theology guards divine freedom but misconceives the Spirit’s immanence. Theology is not revelation itself but its continuation within the economy of language. The Word once spoken in Christ continues to act in the Church through the Spirit. The Spirit’s causality ensures that theology’s human speech remains the site of divine self-communication, not its substitute.

Ad III. Wittgenstein is right that meaning depends on use, but theological use presupposes a deeper authorization. The Church’s grammar exists because the Spirit constitutes it. Felicity, in theology, is not mere conformity to rules but participation in divine life. The Spirit’s causality is not empirical but constitutive. He makes possible the very relation between finite sign and infinite referent.

Without the Spirit, theological grammar collapses into tautology; with the Spirit, it becomes the living speech of God.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic recognizes the unity of thought and being but confuses participation with identity. The Spirit in theology is not the world’s consciousness of itself but God’s causal presence within finite language. The divine Word does not evolve into human understanding; it speaks through it. Theology is not Spirit’s self-mediation but Spirit’s indwelling of the finite as grace.

The difference between divine and human remains, yet it is precisely in this difference that communion occurs.

Ad V. Post-liberal coherence explains theology’s internal structure but cannot account for its truth. Felicity within the community (FT) requires linkage to truth-conditions (TC) that obtain in divine reality. That link is the Spirit’s causality. The Word guarantees referential content; the Spirit guarantees participation. Thus, theology is neither self-referential grammar nor speculative metaphysics but a dual act: the Word speaking, the Spirit authorizing.

Theological meaning is therefore realist because it is caused.

Nota

To speak of theology as the act of Word and Spirit is to confess that all true theology is God’s own discourse in the mode of the finite.
The Holy Spirit determines inclusion within T (the formal language of theology) and mediates the causal link between felicity and truth.
The Word provides the ontological content of that truth; the Spirit provides its efficacious form.

Hence: FT + TC = Truth of Theological Speech where FT (felicity conditions) ensure internal coherence and authorization, and TC (truth conditions) denote the real divine states of affairs modeled ontologically by T. The Spirit, as both formal and causal principle, unites these two in a single act of divine communication.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theology is not autonomous discourse but the continuing act of the divine Word communicated through the Spirit.

2. The Spirit’s causality is non-competitive and constitutive: it authorizes human language to bear divine truth.

3. The Word’s eternity is the meta-language within which all finite theological languages (Lₙ) are interpreted and fulfilled.

4. Truth in theology arises when the felicity of human speech (authorization within T) is linked, by the Spirit, to real states of divine being modeled in ontology.

5. The nova lingua theologiae is therefore incarnational: the infinite speaks within the finite, and the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

In this union, theology ceases to be mere talk about God and becomes God’s own speaking through the creature. Theology is thus the act of Word and Spirit, an event of truth in which language itself becomes participation in divine life.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXI

In the foregoing disputation it was affirmed that theology is not merely a reflective discourse about divine realities but the very event of divine speech, the actus Verbi et Spiritus in which God addresses the world through human language. The theologian, in speaking truly, does not stand before the Word as observer but is caught up within the living exchange between Word and Spirit. Theology thus appeared as participation in a trinitarian act rather than the exercise of a solitary intellect.

Yet this very insight now summons a further inquiry. If theology is the act of Word and Spirit, by what means are these two united and distinguished within the one speaking of God? How does the communicatio between Verbum and Spiritus ground the possibility of theological meaning, such that divine truth may be both given and received? And what does this communication imply for the structure of theological language itself, for its authority, its coherence, and its power to signify beyond itself?

Therefore we pass to Disputationem XXI: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae: De Communicatione Verbi et Spiritus, in which it will be examined how the divine Word and the Holy Spirit together constitute the meta-linguistic horizon of theology, the inner dialogue by which the infinite speaks itself into the finite and gathers finite speech into the eternal conversation of God.

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Quaeritur

Utrum intentionalitas divina sit ipse actus quo Deus seipsum cognoscit et in hoc seipso cognoscendo omnia cognoscit; cum cognitio Dei non sit receptio specierum ab extra sed expressio sui ab intra, ita ut hic actus intentionalis sit simul causa et exemplar omnis cognitionis creatae, quae participatione in eo subsistit.

Whether divine intentionality is the very act by which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things; since God’s knowledge is not the reception of external forms but the inward expression of Himself, such that this act of divine intentionality is both the cause and the exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

Thesis

All true knowledge, whether divine or human, is intentional—ordered toward what is known. But in God, this intentionality is identical with His being: God’s act of knowing is His act of being. Divine intentionality is therefore the archetype of all meaning and the ground of theology’s possibility, for to know anything is to share, analogically, in God’s self-knowing Word.

Locus classicus

“In your light we see light.” — Psalm 36:9

The Psalmist confesses that all seeing and knowing derive from God’s own luminosity. Knowledge is not an independent human capacity but a participation in divine self-manifestation. To see truth is to see by the light of God’s intentional act.

Explicatio

Intentionality (intentionalitas) refers to the directedness of consciousness or intellect toward something—every act of knowing is “about” or “toward” an object. In finite creatures, this relation presupposes distance: the knower reaches toward what is other.

In God, however, no such distance exists. God’s knowing is not a movement toward the other but the eternal act by which the divine essence expresses itself perfectly. The Father knows Himself in the Son—the eternal Word—and this knowing is not representation but generation. The Son is the divine cognition, the expressed image of the Father’s being.

Thus, divine intentionality is both intra-divine and creative:

• Intra-divine, because the Word is the Father’s perfect knowing of Himself.

• Creative, because in knowing Himself as the source of all possibles, God simultaneously knows all things that can participate in Him.

We may represent this (and then explain it):

• Let K_d(G, x) mean “God knows x in Himself.”

• Then ∀x K_d(G, x) is true not by enumeration but by identity: God’s self-knowledge includes all things insofar as they are possible reflections of His own essence.

• Thus, God does not look outward to know the world; rather, creatures are known inwardly as ideas within the divine self-understanding.

From this it follows that divine knowing is the ground of all creaturely intelligibility. Because the Logos is the eternal intentional act of divine cognition, all created acts of knowledge are participations in that single eternal knowing.

Human intentionality, described in Disputationes XIII–XIV, is therefore analogical: our knowing is a finite echo of God’s own self-directed awareness. When we know truth, we share—through the Spirit—in the eternal act of divine knowing.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If God’s knowledge is identical with His being, then the act of divine knowing must imply at least a distinction between knower and known, subject and object. But every such distinction entails composition. To say that God knows Himself therefore introduces multiplicity into the divine essence, violating the doctrine of simplicity. A self-reflexive intellect presupposes relational structure incompatible with pure unity.

Obiectio II. If God knows all things only in knowing Himself, then creatures have no independent intelligibility before Him. Divine omniscience would consist solely in self-knowledge, leaving the world unknown except as a moment within the divine idea. This collapses creation into God’s self-contemplation and destroys the reality of the world’s distinct existence.

Obiectio III. If human knowing participates in divine knowing, then human intellect would seem infallible and divine in nature. Yet experience shows human knowledge to be fragmentary, fallible, and historically conditioned. To attribute participation in divine intellect to human understanding risks either exaggeration (making humanity semi-divine) or contradiction (since finite minds err).

Obiectio IV. Modern epistemic autonomy grounds knowledge in human cognitive structures: intuition, perception, and conceptual synthesis. To claim that knowing depends on divine participation undermines epistemic autonomy and reintroduces theological dependence where rational explanation suffices. Human reason should not require ontological participation in God to explain its cognitive powers.

Obiectio V. According to Kant, knowledge is restricted to phenomena structured by the mind’s categories; the noumenal (including God) remains inaccessible. To speak of participation in divine knowing is to assert immediate cognition of the noumenal, a claim both irrational and impossible within the bounds of reason. Theology, if it is to remain credible, must confine itself to moral faith, not speculative participation in divine intellect.

Responsiones

Ad I. The distinction between knower and known in God is not ontological but relational. The divine act of knowing is identical with divine being; its internal differentiation occurs as personal relation, not composition. The Father knows Himself perfectly in the Son—the eternal Word—while the Spirit proceeds as the mutual love of that knowing and being. Divine simplicity is not barren homogeneity but plenitude: a unity so absolute that relation itself subsists without division.

Hence, divine knowledge implies no multiplicity of essence but the fullness of personal self-relation within the one divine act. God’s knowing is identical with His being because His being is inherently self-communicative.

Ad II. God knows creatures in Himself precisely as their cause. To be known “in God” is not to be confused with God but to be eternally comprehended within His creative intellect as possible and actual participations in the divine essence. Divine knowledge, therefore, is neither abstract speculation nor passive observation; it is constitutive causality. God knows all things by knowing His own power to communicate being. The distinctness of creatures is not diminished by being known in God; rather, it is guaranteed. For a creature to be known by God is for it to have a determinate essence within the divine will—an intelligible possibility grounded in infinite reason.

Ad III. Human knowing participates in divine knowing analogically, not univocally. The likeness is formal, not quantitative. Our intellect mirrors the structure of divine cognition—intentionality, unity of form and act, and the orientation toward truth—but only within the conditions of finitude. The Spirit mediates this participation, illuminating reason without abolishing its limits.

Human knowledge is thus genuinely participatory yet remains fallible. It bears the image of divine knowing as the mirror bears light: truly, yet not completely. Illumination does not equal infallibility; it grants proportion between finite intellect and the truth that transcends it.

Ad IV. Epistemic autonomy describes the operational independence of human reason, not its ontological ground. Theology does not deny the integrity of natural cognition but interprets its source. The mind’s capacity for universality, abstraction, and truth cannot be self-generated; it presupposes participation in the divine intellect, the lumen intellectus agentis that grounds intelligibility itself. Divine participation does not replace cognitive faculties but enables them to be what they are. Without such participation, autonomy collapses into self-enclosure and skepticism.

Ad V. Kant’s restriction of knowledge to phenomena is a valid description of unaided reason, but revelation introduces another mode: participation in the divine act of knowing through the Spirit. This is not an empirical extension of cognition into the noumenal but a transformation of the knowing subject. The believer knows God not as object but as communion—cognitio Dei per participationem. This participatory knowing transcends the subject–object relation and manifests the restoration of intellect in grace.

Thus, theology does not violate the limits of reason but transfigures them. The Spirit does not abolish critical reason; He fulfills it by grounding it in divine light.

Nota

To understand divine intentionality is to see that truth is not a property of propositions but an act of God. Truth exists because God’s self-knowing is perfect; all finite truths are echoes of that primal intelligibility.

Theology therefore begins and ends in divine cognition. The nova lingua (Disputatio IX) is intelligible because God Himself speaks intelligibly. Revelation (Disputatio X) is participation in the act of divine knowing. Creation’s intelligibility (Disputatio XI) is the imprint of divine intentionality upon being. Providence (Disputatio XII) is the continual expression of divine knowing in time. Intension and intention (Disputationes XIII–XIV) reflect within language and spirit the very structure of this divine self-knowledge.

In this light, the Son as Logos may be called intentio Patris perfecta—the perfect intention of the Father. All finite acts of cognition, all human search for truth, exist within the horizon of this eternal act.

We might express the relation symbolically (and then immediately explain it):

K_h ⊂ K_d, meaning: human knowledge (K_h) is contained within divine knowledge (K_d) as participation within plenitude. This is not spatial inclusion but ontological dependence: to know truth at all is to share, however finitely, in God’s own act of knowing.

Thus, divine intentionality is both the metaphysical cause of all knowledge and the theological horizon that gives it meaning.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Divine intentionality is identical with God’s being; God knows Himself and all things in the single eternal act of the Word.

2. The Son, as Logos, is the perfect expression of this divine knowing—the intentional act in which all intelligibility subsists.

3. All creaturely knowledge is participatory, sharing analogically in the form of God’s own cognition through the illumination of the Spirit.

4. Truth is not independent of God but the temporal reflection of His eternal self-understanding.

5. Hence, theology as scientia Dei in nobis is grounded in divine intentionality: to know truthfully is to think within the light by which God knows Himself.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

Having seen that divine cognition is not representational but creative, and that God knows all things by causing them to be, we must now inquire how this primal intentionality becomes communicable within human speech. For if every finite act of knowing is participation in divine knowing, then every act of speaking is a participation in the Word through whom all knowledge is expressed.

Language is the exterior form of intentionality, the unfolding of inward reference into the shared medium of signs. Yet theological speech differs from ordinary discourse. It does not merely point from one finite thing to another, but it strives to signify the infinite itself, whose act grounds every reference. Hence, the relation between language and intentionality in theology must be reexamined. How can finite signs bear the weight of divine meaning? Does speech itself participate in the same creative act that it names?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate, and inquire as to how language mediates an intentional relation between the finite intellect and the divine reality, and whether words, when taken up into the economy of revelation, cease to be mere symbols and become vessels of participation in the speaking God.