Disputatio LVIII: De Signo Theologico et de Forma Illuminationis

 On the Theological Sign and the Form of Illumination

Quaeritur

Utrum signum theologicum sit locus in quo intelligibilitas Logi efficitur praesens creaturis sub forma signi, ita ut revelatio non sit mera significatio sed manifestatio; et quomodo Spiritus efficit ut ista manifestatio fiat participabilis sine reductione signi ad nudam immanentiam.

Whether the theological sign is the locus in which the intelligibility of the Logos becomes present to creatures under the form of a sign, such that revelation is not mere signification but manifestation; and how the Spirit ensures that this manifestation is participable without reducing the sign to a merely immanent function.

Thesis

A theological sign is not a symbol that points beyond itself to a distant referent. It is a created form through which the Logos-constituted intelligibility of divine action becomes manifest in the finite. The sign is therefore not extrinsic to revelation but intrinsic to its economy.

The Spirit illumines the sign so that it becomes transparent to the divine act it mediates. Without the Spirit, the sign remains opaque, but with the Spirit, the sign becomes the medium of participation in the Logos’ intelligible presence.

Thus, theological signs do not merely convey information. They are the formal structures by which divine act becomes encounterable within creaturely horizons.

Locus Classicus

John 1:14
ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο.
“The Word became flesh.”

The incarnation is the archetype of all theological signs whereby a finite form makes the locus of divine manifestation.

Romans 10:17
ἡ πίστις ἐξ ἀκοῆς.
“Faith comes from hearing.”

The word heard is not a bare sound but a Spirit-illumined sign that mediates divine action.

Luther, WA 30 II, 552
Verbum Dei est signum et donum simul.
“The Word of God is both sign and gift.”

Theological signs participate in and deliver the reality they signify.

Explicatio

There is an insufficiency of semiotic models when detached from ontology. Modern accounts of signs often conceive signification as a relation between finite items: a signifier and a signified linked through convention or structure. While such accounts illuminate language, they cannot account for revelation. They lack a metaphysics of divine act and therefore reduce theological signs to linguistic functions. But revelation requires more than reference. It requires manifestation: the presence of divine intelligibility in a created medium. Thus the theological sign is not a semiotic function but a metaphysical participation.

The Logos is the form of every theological sign. Every divine act is intelligible because its form subsists in the Logos. Therefore every sign that mediates divine action must be a form shaped by the Logos. The sign does not merely refer to divine act but bears its intelligibility. Accordingly, the sign’s structure reflects the Logos’ form. Its content is not autonomous from divine initiative and its intelligibility is never self-standing but derivative upon the divine act. The incarnation is the paradigmatic case of this. But Scripture, sacrament, and promise share the same logic: each is a finite form bearing the intelligible presence of the Logos.

Illumination makes the sign participable. Without illumination, the sign remains closed. It does not disclose God, but merely displays creaturely form. Illumination opens the sign to become the medium of divine manifestation. This opening is not an epistemic alteration but an ontological donation. The Spirit grants creatures to encounter the divine act in and through the sign’s form. Knowledge arises because the sign becomes transparent to the Logos. Thus, illumination does not add meaning to the sign. It grants participation in the meaning the sign already bears.

The sign is an event rather than a static object. Theological signs are not static entities awaiting interpretation, but are rather events in which divine action becomes present. A sacrament is not an object but an enacted sign; Scripture is not merely text but living word; proclamation is not a speech-act alone but a site of divine address. The sign is therefore not exhausted by its linguistic or material properties. It is a finite locus of manifestation, rendered such by the Spirit who actualizes the Logos’ intelligibility within it.

The we must reject purely linguistic or immanent models. Postliberal theology sometimes construes revelation as emerging from within the grammar of the community. But the sign’s power does not lie in communal usage. It lies rather in divine action. The sign becomes revelation not when it is interpreted but when it is illumined. In this way, grammar orders discourse, while illumination grants reality. Thus, theological signs are not cultural artifacts whose meaning is negotiated, but are divine gifts that disclose.

Objectiones

Ob I. If signs mediate divine action, do we not reintroduce a created intermediary between God and creatures?

Ob II. If the Logos is the form of the sign and the Spirit the illuminator, is revelation split between form and access?

Ob III. If signs manifest divine act, does this collapse transcendence into immanence?

Ob IV. If illumination is necessary, how can signs retain objective meaning independent of subjective experience?

Ob V. If signs are events, does this undermine their stability or repeatability?

Responsiones

Ad I. Signs are not intermediaries but media. They do not stand between God and creatures but are the places where God acts. Their existence does not obscure God but reveal him.

Ad II. Revelation is not divided but ordered. The Logos shapes the sign’s intelligibility; the Spirit grants communion with this intelligibility. This expresses personal distinction, not division.

Ad III. Manifestation is not collapse. The finite does not contain the infinite. It is the locus where the infinite acts. Signs render God present without confining him.

Ad IV. Objective meaning arises from divine action, not from human consciousness. Illumination concerns reception, not constitution. The sign’s meaning is objective because its form is Logos-shaped.

Ad V. The sign’s repeatability arises from the constancy of divine intention. Its event-character does not eliminate stability but secures it: the same divine agent acts in each instantiation.

Nota

The theological sign is the place where divine intelligibility enters the finite economy under a form appropriate to creaturely reception. Its meaning lies neither in human interpretation nor in semiotic structures but in the Logos-shaped intelligibility that the Spirit illumines.

Thus theological signs cannot be reduced to texts, symbols, or practices. They are the finite forms through which God gives himself to be known.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. Theological signs are finite forms made the loci of divine manifestation.
2. Their intelligibility is constituted in the Logos.
3. Their participability is granted by the Spirit.
4. Illumination does not alter the sign but opens it.
5. The sign mediates divine action not as representation but as presence.

Revelation is thus the event in which God’s intelligible act becomes manifest through a sign illumined by the Spirit.

Transitus ad Disputationem LIX

Having shown that theological signs mediate divine intelligibility through Spirit-illumined manifestation, we now turn to the economy of divine presence as it unfolds in history. For signs do not appear in abstraction but in a temporal order shaped by divine intention.

We proceed therefore to Disputatio LIX: De Historia Ut Loco Revelationis, where we consider how historical events become theological loci when illumined by the Spirit and formed by the Logos.

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Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem II

Q1. If a theological sign is a locus of manifestation rather than a semiotic relation, how does this relate to classical truth-conditional semantics?

Responsio

Truth-conditional semantics presumes propositional form. But theological signs precede propositional articulation. They provide the ontological ground upon which propositions can later be formed. The sign is not true or false; it is the site where divine action becomes manifest. Propositions about the sign acquire truth conditions only by referencing this manifestation.

Q2. Can theological signs be modeled within a hyperintensional semantics?

Responsio

Only analogically. Hyperintensionality captures distinctions finer than necessary equivalence, which is appropriate for theological signs whose meaning depends on participation, not extension. Yet signs exceed hyperintensional analysis because their identity lies not in conceptual structure but in divine act. Hyperintensional models can represent distinctions between interpretations but cannot constitute the reality they signify.

Q3. How does illumination relate to felicity conditions in theological discourse?

Responsio

Felicity pertains to the internal grammar of theological assertion. Illumination pertains to the external truth of what is asserted. A statement is felicitous when it accords with the grammar of faith; it is true when it corresponds to the Logos-constituted reality that the sign manifests. Illumination bridges the two by granting access to the reality that grounds felicity.

Q4. Do sacramental signs require a unique model-theoretic treatment?

Responsio

Yes. Sacramental signs are not merely designators but enactments. They cannot be captured by classical satisfaction (M ⊨ T). They require constitutive satisfaction (Λ ⊨* Tₜ), in which the divine act grounds both the sign and its efficacy. The model is not interpretive only; it is participatory.

Q5. If signs are events, does this eliminate the possibility of stable theological models?

Responsio

No. Events are stable insofar as the agent who performs them is stable. The constancy of divine intention grounds the repeatability of sacramental and scriptural signs. Stability in theology arises not from static forms but from the fidelity of the acting God.

Nota Finalis

This analytic section clarifies that theological signs occupy a space where ontology, semiotics, and logic converge. They resist reduction to any one of these domains. Their meaning is grounded in divine action, their form in the Logos, and their reception in the Spirit. This provides the conceptual foundation for the next disputation, where historical events become loci of revelation.

Disputatio LVII: De Spiritu Ut Luminatore Intelligibilitatis

On the Spirit as the Illuminator of Intelligibility

Quaeritur

Utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit ille qui creaturis dat participationem in intelligibilitate Logi, ita ut divina revelatio non sit mera cognitio sed ingressus in formam intelligibilem actus divini; et quomodo haec illuminatio neque confundat Logos cum Spiritu neque revelationem redigat ad nudam conceptualitatem.

Whether the Holy Spirit is the one who grants creatures participation in the intelligibility of the Logos, such that divine revelation is not mere cognition but entry into the intelligible form of divine act; and how this illumination neither confounds Logos and Spirit nor reduces revelation to conceptuality.

Thesis

As the Logos is the constitutive form of divine intelligibility, so the Spirit is the personal agent who grants creatures access to this intelligibility. The Spirit does not generate intelligibility. The Spirit illumines the intelligibility eternally constituted in the Logos and draws creatures into participation with it.

Thus the Spirit is not an epistemic supplement, nor a secondary condition added to divine self-disclosure. The Spirit is the very possibility of reception, the act whereby divine intelligibility becomes creaturely light. Revelation is therefore not a transmission of concepts but a participation in the intelligible articulation of divine life.

Locus Classicus

John 16:13
ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν ἀλήθειαν.
“He will guide you into all truth.”

The Spirit leads not by external instruction but by granting entry into the truth already articulated in the Logos.

1 Corinthians 2:10–12
τὸ γὰρ Πνεῦμα πάντα ἐρευνᾷ… ἵνα εἰδῶμεν τὰ ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ χαρισθέντα ἡμῖν.
“The Spirit searches all things… that we might know the things freely given to us by God.”

Knowledge is the fruit of participatory illumination, not conceptual deduction.

Athanasius, Ep. Serap. I.20
οὐ χωρὶς τοῦ Πνεύματος θεογνωσία.
“There is no knowledge of God apart from the Spirit.”

Luther, WA 40 I, 226
Spiritus Sanctus est qui facit verbum intelligi et corda accendit.
“The Holy Spirit is the one who makes the Word understood and kindles the heart.”

Explicatio

The Spirit does not create intelligibility but opens it. The intelligibility of divine action is eternally constituted in the Logos. The Spirit neither adds to nor completes this intelligibility. Rather, the Spirit grants creatures participation in what the Logos eternally is. Illumination is therefore not a form of epistemic enhancement. It is the metaphysical condition under which divine intelligibility becomes available to those whose being is not divine. Without the Spirit there can be divine intelligibility but no creaturely apprehension of it.

Illumination as participation, not perception. Creaturely knowledge often assumes a model of perception: the object is intelligible; the subject observes. But revelation does not follow this pattern. For divine acts cannot be perceived as objects that stand before a viewer. Rather, one must participated in them. The Spirit is the one who effects this participation. To know God is to stand within the intelligible form of God’s act, and this standing-within is the Spirit’s gift. Thus, theology is grounded not in the capacities of the knower but in the indwelling of the Spirit who grants access to the Logos.

The Spirit and the Logos remain distinct in their missions. The divine missions reflect eternal relations. The Son manifests the Father; the Spirit grants communion with the Son. Illumination is therefore not reducible to articulation. The Logos articulates divine intelligibility; the Spirit incorporates creatures into this articulation.

There is no confusion of persons. The Spirit does not become the Logos nor supply what the Logos lacks. The Spirit brings creatures into the Logos without dissolving the personal distinction that grounds the economy. Revelation is intelligible life rather than conceptual content, for if revelation were merely conceptual, illumination would be superfluous. Human reason could grasp divine propositions as it grasps mathematical ones. But revelation is participation in divine life. Concepts may accompany this participation, but they are never its essence. The Spirit draws creatures into the Logos-shaped intelligibility of divine action. The mind is illuminated because the heart is converted. The intellect receives light because the whole person is brought under the form of divine act.

Thus, revelation is not information but transformation.There is an insufficiency of linguistic or communal models to grasp this. Some modern theologies treat illumination as the communal regulation of meaning. But linguistic formation alone does not yield divine knowledge. It orders speech, not reality. Grammar can describe how the church speaks of God, but the Spirit alone grants participation in God. To collapse illumination into communal formation is to reduce revelation to anthropology. It confuses theological intelligibility with linguistic coherence. The Spirit is not the curator of ecclesial grammar, but is rather the giver of divine light.

Objectiones

Ob I. If illumination is participation, however, knowledge becomes mystical rather than intelligible.

Ob II. If intelligibility is in the Logos and illumination in the Spirit, it seems that revelation is divided, for form is given by one person, and access by another.

Ob III. Illumination introduces contingency into revelation and access seems dependent on subjective conditions.

Ob IV. If the Spirit grants participation, human cognition seems bypassed, thus undermining the rational character of theology.

Ob V. Postliberal theology claims the community already possesses intelligibility through its practices, and thus the Spirit’s role becomes redundant.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation is not obscurity. The Logos is form; the Spirit is light. To participate in form is to know truly, not to dissolve into the inarticulate. Mysticism is avoided because participation is in the Logos, whose intelligibility is determinate.

Ad II. Revelation is not divided but ordered. The Son is intelligibility; the Spirit is communion. These are not separable acts but one divine motion under distinct personal relations.

Ad III. Illumination is contingent for creatures, not for God. Divine intelligibility is eternally complete, yet creatures receive it according to their created and redeemed condition. This does not relativize revelation but confirms its gift-character.

Ad IV. Cognition is not bypassed but elevated. The Spirit does not cancel reason but enables it to apprehend what exceeds its natural horizon. Reason becomes capable of divine things because it is drawn into their form.

Ad V. Grammar regulates theological speech but does not confer divine knowledge. The Spirit is not redundant because the community cannot generate participation in God. While practices can shape discourse, only the Spirit grants knowledge.

Nota

The Spirit’s illumination is the metaphysical bridge between divine intelligibility and creaturely knowledge. It is neither enthusiasm nor epistemic supplementation. It is the act whereby God’s own intelligibility becomes creaturely light. Theology therefore depends neither on external demonstration nor on internal intuition. It depends on participation in the Logos through the Spirit.

This is why theology is always doxological, for the knower’s act is a response to divine illumination, not an autonomous achievement of reason.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. The intelligibility of divine action is constituted in the Logos.
2. The illumination of this intelligibility for creatures is the work of the Spirit.
3. Revelation is participation in divine life, not merely conceptual apprehension.
4. The Spirit’s illumination preserves both divine transcendence and authentic theological knowledge.
5. Theological truth (Tₜ) is received only insofar as Λ ⊨* Tₜ becomes luminous to the creature through the Spirit’s act.

Transitus ad Disputationem LVIII

Having shown that the Spirit grants access to the intelligibility constituted in the Logos, we turn to the question of how this illumination takes shape in the order of signs. For revelation comes to creatures through words, sacraments, and histories.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio LVIII: De Signo Theologico et de Forma Illuminationis, where we examine how the Spirit-illumined Logos shapes the signs through which divine action becomes manifest in the created order.

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Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem

Q1. You describe illumination as participation. How does this differ from epistemic justification?

Responsio

Justification concerns the adequacy of reasons for belief. Participation concerns the transformation of the knower’s being. Illumination precedes justification because it grants the very possibility of apprehending divine intelligibility. Justification operates within a horizon and illumination grants that horizon.

Q2. Does illumination imply a noetic regeneration analogous to moral regeneration?

Responsio

Yes, but not by analogy of degree. Noetic regeneration arises because divine intelligibility cannot be apprehended from the standpoint of fallen reason. Illumination does not destroy reason but reorders its orientation, giving it a share in the Logos’ form. This is not psychological improvement but ontological redirection.

Q3. If illumination is necessary for knowledge of God, does this undermine the possibility of natural theology?

Responsio

Not entirely. Natural theology may recognize that creation bears intelligible marks of divine goodness. But knowledge of God as God requires participation in divine intelligibility, which only the Spirit grants. Natural theology yields analogical apprehension; illumination yields participatory knowledge.

Q4. Could illumination be interpreted as a kind of divine testimony?

Responsio

Testimony is too weak a category. It presumes a propositional content relayed by a speaker. Illumination is not a report but a sharing. It grants the creature a share in the intelligibility of divine act rather than asserting propositions about it.

Nota Finalis

This disputation advances the theological logic established in LV and LVI by showing that intelligibility and its apprehension are not parallel operations but one divine motion received under two aspects: the Son articulates; the Spirit illumines. These analytic questions demonstrate that theological knowledge is neither constructed nor inferred but given as participation. They reveal that to know God is to stand in the light of the Logos by the Spirit who grants sight.

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. Accordingly, by Spiritus Intelligentiae we mean not a psychological impulse nor an abstract principle, but the Holy Spirit as appropriated to intelligibility—the personal act by which divine understanding is participated in the finite intellect.

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. What Leibniz articulates metaphysically, Kant restrains critically, and Gödel formalizes logically—but none abolish the intellect’s orientation toward the unconditioned; they merely show that it cannot be satisfied from within finitude.

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. Gödel does not reveal the infinite itself, of course, but he reveals the impossibility of closure within finitude. Theology names what logic can only leave open: 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 question persists not because meaning is absent, but because it is excessive: finitude cannot contain what addresses it. Anxiety is not the proof of nothingness but the affective form of transcendence resisted. 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, not by identity but by created participation, according to the measure of finite intellect.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 relational and derivative: he speaks what he hears from the Word. The Spirit thus mediates the eternal discourse of the Son within the languages of history. Theology lives as the finite echo of an infinite conversation between Word and Spirit. It is not merely reception of information but participation in an act of divine speaking.

“Qui idoneos nos fecit ministros novi testamenti, non litterae sed Spiritus; littera enim occidit, Spiritus autem vivificat.”
“He has made us competent ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
— Second Letter to the Corinthians 3:6

Here the Apostle locates theological truth not in the formal structure of language (littera) but in the vivifying act of the Spirit. The contrast is not between words and silence, nor between doctrine and experience, but between language severed from divine causality and language animated by the Spirit. Theology is thus not the possession of correct propositions as such, but the Spirit-effected act in which language becomes life-bearing. Where the Spirit acts, speech is no longer mere sign but event; not merely meaningful, but true.

Taken together, these witnesses establish that theology occurs only where the Word speaks through the Spirit and the Spirit authorizes finite language to bear divine life. Theology is therefore not a secondary discourse about revelation but the continuing act of revelation in linguistic form.

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 forms from without but the inward expression of Himself, such that this intentional act is both the cause and exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

Thesis

All true knowledge, whether divine or creaturely, is intentional, ordered toward what is known. In God, however, intentionality is not a relation added to being but is identical with being itself. God’s act of knowing is His act of being. Divine intentionality is therefore the archetype of intelligibility and the ground of theology’s possibility, for to know anything at all is to participate, analogically, in the self-knowing Word of God.

Locus Classicus

Psalm 36:9
Apud te est fons vitae,
et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen.
“For with you is the fountain of life,
and in your light we see light.”

John 1:1, 4
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος…
ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν,
καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
“In the beginning was the Logos…
in Him was life,
and the life was the light of human beings.”

Augustine, De Trinitate IX.10.15
Non sic cognoscit Deus creaturam quomodo creatura cognoscitur a creatura,
sed quomodo cognoscit seipsum Deus.
“God does not know the creature in the way a creature is known by a creature,
but in the way God knows Himself.”

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.14, a.5
Deus cognoscit omnia non in seipsis, sed in seipso.
“God knows all things not in themselves, but in Himself.”

These witnesses converge upon a single claim: divine knowing is not receptive but constitutive. God’s light is not an added condition for knowledge but the source in which all seeing occurs. The Logos is not merely the bearer of meaning but the act in which intelligibility itself subsists.

Explicatio

Intentionality names the directedness proper to every act of knowing. In finite intellects, this directedness presupposes a real distinction between knower and known. The intellect reaches beyond itself toward what it is not, receiving determination from an object that stands over against it. Knowledge thus unfolds as a movement across distance, mediated by forms, representations, or signs.

Nothing of this structure may be transferred uncritically to God. In God there is no distance, no reception, no transition from potency to act. Divine knowing is not a movement toward an object but the eternal act in which intelligibility subsists as reality itself. God does not become informed; He is the fullness of form. God does not acquire knowledge; He is knowledge.

The Father knows Himself in the Son. This knowing is not representational but generative. The Son is not an idea of God but the eternal Logos, the expressed intelligibility of the divine essence. Divine cognition is therefore not an act alongside being but the very form of divine life. The identity of knowing and being does not dissolve personal distinction but grounds it. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not divided by cognition but constituted in its fullness. Divine simplicity is not the absence of relation but the plenitude of intelligibility so complete that relation itself subsists without composition.

Within this single eternal act, all that is intelligible is comprehended. God knows creatures not by attending to them as external objects but by knowing Himself as communicable being. Creatures are known in God as finite participations in divine intelligibility. To be created is already to be intelligible, and to be intelligible is already to be comprehended within divine knowing. God’s knowledge of creatures is therefore not observational but causal. God knows all things by causing them to be what they are.

This does not collapse creation into divine self-contemplation. On the contrary, it is precisely this mode of knowing that secures the reality and distinctness of creatures. A creature is finite because it is known as finite. To be known by God is not to be absorbed into God but to receive determinate being within the order of participation. Creaturely intelligibility is not autonomy from God but dependence upon divine reason. A world independent of divine knowing would not be more real but unintelligible.

From this follows the participatory character of all creaturely knowledge. Human knowing is not an autonomous orientation toward truth that later happens to correspond with reality. It is a finite participation in the divine act of intelligibility. When the human intellect knows truth, it does so because it already stands within the light by which God knows all things. This participation is analogical, not univocal. The finite intellect mirrors the structure of divine cognition without sharing its fullness. Illumination does not confer infallibility. It establishes proportion between finite intellect and intelligible being.

The Spirit mediates this participation not by supplying additional objects of knowledge but by conforming the intellect to intelligibility itself. Illumination is not the addition of content but the restoration of right orientation. To know truthfully is to be rightly situated within the light that precedes all cognition. Epistemic autonomy describes the operation of human faculties but not their ground. Theology does not deny the integrity of natural cognition. It explains why cognition is possible at all.

Critical philosophy rightly describes the limits of unaided reason. Theology does not dispute this analysis. It confesses a gift. Participation in divine knowing is not an extension of phenomenal cognition into the noumenal realm, nor an illicit metaphysical inference. It is the transformation of the knower through revelation. God is not known as an object placed before consciousness but as the ground within which consciousness is made possible. The limits of reason are not violated but fulfilled.

Divine intentionality thus names the ontological ground of intelligibility itself. Truth is not first a property of propositions but the temporal echo of an eternal act. Because God is intelligible in Himself, reality is intelligible. Because reality is intelligible, creatures can know. Theology alone renders explicit what every act of knowing already presupposes.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If God’s knowing is identical with His being, then knowing must imply a distinction between knower and known. Such distinction introduces composition and violates divine simplicity.

Obiectio II. If God knows creatures only in knowing Himself, then creatures lack independent intelligibility and collapse into divine self-contemplation.

Obiectio III. If human knowing participates in divine knowing, human intellect would appear divine or infallible, contrary to experience.

Obiectio IV. Modern epistemology grounds knowledge in human cognitive structures. Divine participation is unnecessary and undermines autonomy.

Obiectio V. Kant restricts knowledge to phenomena. Participation in divine knowing would entail illicit access to the noumenal.

Responsiones

Ad I. The distinction in God is relational, not compositional. Divine knowing is identical with divine being, internally differentiated as personal relation. Simplicity is not threatened but fulfilled.

Ad II. God knows creatures as their cause. Being known in God secures, rather than negates, creaturely distinctness.

Ad III. Participation is analogical. Human knowing is illuminated, not divinized. Finitude remains.

Ad IV. Autonomy describes operation, not origin. Participation grounds cognition without replacing it.

Ad V. Revelation does not extend reason into the noumenal but transforms the knower. God is known as ground, not as object.

Nota

Divine intentionality reveals that truth is not first a property of propositions but an act of God. All finite truth is an echo of divine self-knowing. The Logos is the intelligible act in which all meaning subsists. Creation, providence, language, and knowing all stand within this horizon.

Human knowledge does not stand beside divine knowledge but within it, as participation within plenitude. To know truthfully is already to think within the light by which God knows Himself.

Determinatio

1. Divine intentionality is identical with divine being; God’s act of knowing is His act of being.
2. God knows Himself eternally in the Logos, and in knowing Himself knows all things as possible and actual participations in His being.
3. Divine cognition is not representational or receptive but creative and constitutive of intelligibility.
4. Creaturely knowing is analogical participation in divine knowing, mediated by the illumination of the Spirit.
5. Human knowledge remains finite and fallible, yet genuinely participates in divine intelligibility.
6. Truth is not autonomous from God but the temporal reflection of God’s eternal self-knowing.
7. Theology is possible because intelligibility itself is grounded in divine intentionality.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

If divine knowing is creative and participatory, then language cannot be treated as a neutral instrument appended to cognition. Speech is the exterior articulation of intentionality, the manifestation of intelligibility in shared signs. Yet theological language bears a unique burden: it seeks to signify the divine act that grounds all signification. How finite words may bear infinite intelligibility now demands inquiry.

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate, where it is asked how language participates in divine knowing and whether speech, when taken up into revelation, becomes more than sign, namely a vessel of participation in the speaking God.