Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate

On Language and Intentionality

Lingua humana non est systema signorum ex se ortum, sed instrumentum Spiritus, per quod intentio divina in mundum intrat. Intentionalitas in loquela est participatio in actu verbi divini, quo Deus seipsum communicat et creaturam ad se convertit.

Human language is not a self-originating system of signs but an instrument of the Spirit through which divine intention enters the world. Intentionality in speech is participation in the act of the divine Word, by which God communicates Himself and turns the creature toward Himself.

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Thesis

Language is the created mirror of divine intentionality. Every act of speaking presupposes orientation (intentio) toward meaning and toward another. In theological speech, this orientation participates in God’s own act of self-expression—the divine Word speaking through the Spirit. Human language, therefore, is not merely conventional but ontological: it is the created form of divine communicability.

Locus classicus

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” — Matthew 12:34

Speech arises from inner intention. Yet in theological terms, the human heart is itself a site of divine indwelling: the Spirit who dwells within directs language toward truth. Thus, speech is the outward expression of inward intentionality, and when sanctified by the Spirit, it becomes the medium of divine communication.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XV, we saw that divine knowing is intentional self-expression—God’s knowledge is His act of being. Here we turn to human language as the finite reflection of that act: a medium through which intention becomes communication.

Intentionality (intentionalitas) in theology does not mean psychological aim but ontological directedness—the structure by which word and meaning, subject and object, stand in relation.
Every genuine act of language includes three relations:

1. the speaker’s intention toward meaning (intentio ad significationem),

2. the word’s intension toward what it signifies (intensio ad rem), and

3. the listener’s reception within shared understanding (communicatio in Spiritu).

This triadic structure mirrors the Trinitarian pattern of divine communication:

• the Father as speaker and origin of meaning,

• the Son as the Word in which meaning is expressed,

• the Spirit as the bond who makes that meaning present and understood.

Hence, human language is intrinsically theological. It is possible only because the Creator has already established communication within Himself.

To formalize this (and then immediately explain it):

• Let L denote the total system of human language.

• Let I_d represent divine intentionality, and I_h human intentionality.

• The relation I_h ⊂ I_d signifies that human intentionality is contained within and derives from divine intentionality—not by necessity but by participation.

• This inclusion is not spatial but ontological: the capacity to mean at all is a gift of divine self-communication.

Thus, whenever we speak, we enact—however faintly—the structure of God’s own Word. When speech becomes theological, the relation deepens: the Spirit unites human intention with divine intention, transforming language into communion.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to contemporary analytic epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga or William Alston, if human language were to participate in divine intentionality, then all speech would be divinely inspired, including lies and nonsense. But we experience constant error, ambiguity, and falsehood. To attribute divine participation to every utterance erases the distinction between revelation and distortion. Language must remain a human phenomenon, fallible and natural, not an extension of divine intentionality.

Obiectio II. For figures like Saussure, Wittgenstein, John Searle, 
to give language ontological weight confuses sign and being. Words are social conventions—arbitrary symbols whose meaning derives from communal use, not metaphysical grounding. Modern linguistics and speech-act theory show that language functions pragmatically; to posit an ontological Logos beneath it is to re-mythologize semantics and import metaphysics into empirical linguistics.

Obiectio III. Gordon Kaufman and Catherine Keller would argue that the claim that language mirrors the Trinity introduces an unnecessary metaphysical speculation. The triadic analogy of speaker, word, and listener reflects a bygone metaphysical framework. Contemporary theology should emphasize symbol and narrative, not Trinitarian ontology. The human structure of communication tells us nothing reliable about God, only about our religious imagination.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation is not identity. All speech derives its capacity for meaning from divine intentionality, but not all speech conforms to it.
Falsehood arises not from divine presence but from human resistance to it—the distortion of participation through disordered will.The Spirit is the measure of felicity: speech becomes inspired not by mere utterance but by alignment of intention with truth. Hence, linguistic participation is universal in capacity but selective in realization. The possibility of falsehood confirms, rather than contradicts, divine grounding—only what derives from truth can be falsified.

Ad II. Modern linguistics rightly observes that words are conventional in form, yet convention presupposes an ontological ground of communicability. For meaning to be shared, there must exist an order in which being and understanding are mutually convertible: verum et ens convertuntur. This metaphysical foundation is the Logos, the eternal ratio that makes semantic convention possible. The Spirit mediates between sign and being, ensuring that human language, though arbitrary in sign, is real in significance. Language thus participates ontologically not in its sounds or syntax but in its capacity to make being present through meaning.

Ad III. The analogy between Trinitarian communication and human language is not speculative but structural. Every act of communication involves (1) a speaker, (2) a word uttered, and (3) a hearer in whom that word is received. This triadic form is not an invention of theology but an imprint of the Creator’s image upon creation. Modern theologians who reduce Trinitarian speech to symbol overlook the metaphysical unity of meaning and relation: communication exists because God is communicative being. To speak is to participate in divine communion; the Spirit is the living bond between speaker and hearer, word and understanding. Thus, Trinitarian analogy is not an optional metaphor but the ontological grammar of all meaning.

Nota

The relationship between language and intentionality reveals the deepest unity of theology’s two realms: speech and being.
Just as divine intentionality (intentionalitas divina) grounds all knowing, so it also grounds all saying. Language exists because God is communicative; its very structure presupposes a world created by speech and ordered toward meaning.

The Spirit is the living link between divine intention and human language. He causes meaning to be intended rightly—that is, to be directed toward truth and love rather than self-expression or domination. Thus, theological speech is not merely propositional but relational: it restores language to its true vocation as communio.

This insight also explains the possibility of revelation as language.
Because language participates in divine intentionality, it can serve as the medium of God’s self-disclosure without distortion. The Word of God does not bypass human speech; it fulfills it. In this sense, all language is sacramental in origin—it signifies because God first signified the world into being.

Symbolically (and then explained), we can express this as:

D → L → R,
where D is divine intention, L is language, and R is revelation.
This sequence means: divine intentionality flows into language as its form, and through language revelation becomes possible. Thus, language is the mediating bond between divine self-communication and human reception.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Language is grounded in divine intentionality; its power to mean derives from the communicative nature of the Creator.

2. Human speech, though finite and conventional, participates in the structure of divine Word—speaker, word, and listener forming an analogical trinity.

3. The Spirit mediates between divine and human intention, aligning finite language with infinite meaning and making revelation possible.

4. Error and falsehood arise when human intentionality turns away from this divine orientation, severing communication from its source.

5. Theology, as scientia loquens Dei, thus culminates in the recognition that language itself is a site of grace: the place where divine intentionality becomes audible in the world.

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Intentionalitas divina est ipse actus in quo Deus seipsum cognoscit et omnia in se cognoscit. Cognitio Dei non est receptio specierum ab extra, sed expressio sui ab intra. Hic actus intentionalis est causa et exemplar omnis cognitionis creatae, quae participatione in eo subsistit.

Divine intentionality is the very act in which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things. God’s knowledge is not reception of external forms but inward self-expression. This act of divine intentionality is both the cause and exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

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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.

Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico

On Intension and Intention in Theological Discourse

In theologia, intensio designat participationem sermonis in veritate quam significat; intentio autem exprimit motum Spiritus quo sermo et cognoscens ordinantur ad Deum. Utraque, intensio et intentio, constituunt duplicem structuram loquelae theologicae: formam significationis et actum directionis.

In theology, intension designates the participation of speech in the truth it signifies, while intention expresses the motion of the Spirit by which speech and knower are directed toward God. Together, intension and intention constitute the dual structure of theological discourse: the form of meaning and the act of orientation.

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Thesis

Theological discourse is doubly ordered: by intension, which expresses the participation of language in divine meaning, and by intention, which expresses the Spirit’s orientation of that language toward its divine referent. The integrity of theology depends on the harmony of these two—form and direction—so that what theology says and why it says it coincide in one act of faith.

Locus classicus

“We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16

The Apostle here unites cognition and orientation. To have the “mind of Christ” is not merely to possess concepts but to be inwardly directed by the Spirit toward God’s will. Theology’s truth lies not only in the content of its assertions but in the intention that animates them.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XIII, we described intension as the participatory depth of theological meaning—language sharing in what it signifies. Here we extend that insight to the act of speaking and knowing. For theology, meaning without intention is incomplete: truth must be not only known but loved.

In scholastic logic, intensio and intentio are etymologically linked: both derive from intendere, “to stretch toward.” Yet they differ by aspect. Intensio describes the form or structure of meaning—the way predicates are “stretched” around their content. Intentio describes the movement of the mind and will toward the object known.

In theology, these two are inseparable because language itself is pneumatic—it exists as motion toward God. The Spirit not only grants meaning but directs that meaning toward its divine end.

Formally, we may represent this (and then explain it):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p, its form of meaning through participation in divine reality.

• Let T(p) denote the intention of that same predicate, its pneumatic direction toward God as ultimate referent.

• The relation I(p) → T(p) means: the Spirit completes meaning by drawing it toward God; the truth of theology depends not only on what a term means but on the divine orientation of its use.

Thus, theological language is teleological: it moves from signification to communion, from word to worship. To speak theologically is to let the Spirit align one’s words and will toward the divine horizon.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. In Cartesian mentalism, meaning and intention are properties of individual minds. Intension is the concept contained within thought; intention is the mind’s act of directing that concept to an object. To introduce the Holy Spirit as the cause of either collapses epistemic autonomy. Theological intention should be understood psychologically, not metaphysically.

Obiectio II. According to empiricist semantics, language functions through public usage, not inner intention. Meaning is determined by observable linguistic conventions, not by subjective acts. Theological appeals to “Spirit-inspired intention” introduce unverifiable metaphysical claims that add nothing to semantic explanation.

Obiectio III. According to Wittgensteinian use theory, within the community of faith, intention is simply conformity to use: the believer “means” what the Church means. Talk of divine authorization or participation misrepresents grammar as metaphysics. Theological statements gain their sense from practice, not from invisible intentions.

Obiectio IV. Kantian moral theology holds that intention belongs to the moral will, not to cognition. Theology confuses ethical intention—obedience to the moral law—with epistemic intention, directedness of thought. Revelation does not supply new cognitive content but moral motivation. Therefore, intention in theology should be understood ethically, not cognitively or ontologically.

Obiectio V. In postmodern deconstruction every act of meaning is contaminated by différance; intention never coincides with expression. To claim that in theology, intention and intension converge through the Spirit, is to reassert the metaphysics of presence. Divine authorization cannot close the gap between saying and meaning without abolishing the play of signification that makes language possible.

Responsiones

Ad I. Cartesian mentalism confines meaning to private consciousness, but theology begins not with the isolated mind but with the communicative act of God. The Spirit does not override cognition but grounds it: divine causality constitutes the possibility of theological intention. The human mind does not direct itself toward God; it is drawn. The Spirit is not a competitor to thought but the condition under which finite intentionality becomes genuinely God-directed.

Ad II. Empiricism rightly demands public criteria for meaning, yet the Church’s public language is itself the manifestation of divine causality. The Spirit’s work is not a hidden supplement to convention but the ontological ground of convention’s truth. Without the Spirit, the same words remain grammatically correct but theologically empty. Pneumatological intention is therefore the difference between talking about God and being addressed by God in one’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight—that the grammar of faith determines the sense of theological language—is essential, but the Church’s grammar is not self-sustaining. The Spirit animates its use, converting communal form into divine act. Intention in theology is not reducible to usage; it is the Spirit’s actualization of use as confession. Grammar defines possibility; the Spirit realizes actuality.

Ad IV. Kant separates moral from cognitive intention, but in revelation the two are one: to know God is to will the good, and to will the good is to participate in God’s knowing. The Spirit unites intellect and will in a single movement of faith. Theological intention is thus both moral and epistemic—a mode of participation in divine self-knowledge.

Ad V. Deconstruction rightly reveals the instability of finite language, but theology interprets this not as nihilism but as sign of creaturely dependence. The Spirit does not erase différance but sanctifies it, making difference the very medium of communion. The Word becomes flesh not by annihilating finitude but by filling it. In theological discourse, intention and intension coincide not by closure but by grace: finite language becomes true without ceasing to be finite.

Nota

The dual structure of theological discourse mirrors the Incarnation itself. Just as the Word assumes human nature without destroying it, so divine meaning assumes human intention without abolishing freedom.

The intensio of theology ensures formal integrity: its words participate truly in divine realities. The intentio ensures final orientation: those same words are directed toward praise and communion.

We can imagine this schematically:

Intensio → Intentio → Gloria
meaning leads to direction, direction to glorification.

Thus, theology is not only a science of statements but a discipline of sanctified desire. Its language must mean truly and move rightly. Where intension is severed from intention, theology becomes formalism; where intention eclipses intension, it becomes enthusiasm. Only the Spirit holds the two in unity.

This unity also resolves the ancient tension between speculative and practical theology. The speculative intellect (intensio) contemplates truth; the practical will (intentio) seeks the good. In the Spirit, contemplation and love converge. To know God is to be oriented toward God; to be oriented toward God is already to know Him.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological discourse possesses a double structure: intensio, the participatory form of meaning, and intentio, the pneumatic orientation of that meaning toward God.

2. These are distinct yet inseparable: the Spirit who gives form to meaning also directs it to its divine end.

3. The truth of theology lies not merely in the correctness of propositions but in the sanctity of their direction—their being spoken toward God.

4. Human reason and will participate in this double causality: reason shares in divine truth, and will shares in divine charity.

5. Thus, theology is both contemplative and doxological: to understand God rightly is already to be drawn into the praise of God.

Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

On Intension and the Modeling of Theological Language

Intensio in theologia non est mera conceptio mentis, sed forma participationis, qua sermo fidelis participat in re ipsa de qua loquitur. Modeling theologicum est interpretatio huius intensionalis structurae intra ordinem entis, quo verbum fidei inseritur in veritatem ontologicam causatam a Spiritu.

Intension in theology is not merely a mental conception but a mode of participation by which faithful speech shares in the very reality it names. Theological modeling is the interpretation of this intensional structure within the order of being, through which the word of faith is inserted into the ontological truth caused by the Spirit.

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Thesis

The intension of theological language expresses the way in which meaning and being coinhere through participation. Modeling is the act by which these intensional forms are interpreted within ontological structures, so that theology’s speech corresponds to divine reality. Thus, intensionality grounds the realism of theology’s models: words mean what they mean because they share, analogically, in what they signify.

Locus classicus

“My word that goes out from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.” — Isaiah 55:11

Here the Word of God is not a sign that points to something absent, but a living act that accomplishes what it names. The divine Word is intensional in the highest sense: its meaning and its effect coincide. Theology’s task is to reflect this coincidence within the limits of human language.

Explicatio

In ordinary logic, intension refers to the content or concept of a term—what it signifies internally—while extension refers to the set of things to which it applies. In theology, however, intension cannot be reduced to mere conceptual content, for the meaning of divine terms arises from participation in the realities they signify.

When theology says “Deus est bonus” (“God is good”), the term bonus has an intension that differs fundamentally from its use in secular discourse. Its meaning is not abstracted from experience but given through participation in divine goodness itself. The Spirit mediates this participation, so that human predicates acquire analogical depth.

Let us represent this symbolically (and immediately explain):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p—its interior content as informed by participation in divine reality.

• Let M(p) denote the modeling of that predicate—the interpretation of p within an ontological framework of being. The relation I(p) → M(p) expresses that theological modeling extends the meaning (intension) of language into ontology; what faith means, ontology makes real.

Hence, modeling theology is not constructing analogies externally but recognizing that the intensional life of faith’s language already participates in the realities to which it refers.

Theological predicates are therefore intensional in a deeper sense than philosophical ones: their meanings are not closed concepts but open participations. Each name of God carries within it a structural reference to divine causality. To speak truly of God is to allow the intension of language to become a site of encounter, where meaning and being converge.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Aristotle and his scholastic heirs maintain the position of Aristotelian realism, the view that the meaning of predicates is exhausted by their extension to real things. Intension adds nothing to ontology. To analyze theological predicates intensionally—as if their sense exceeded their reference—is to introduce needless abstraction. The meaning of “God is good” is simply that God instantiates goodness; no intensional layer is needed.

Obiectio II. From the standpoint of empiricist verificationalism, all meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable or analytically true. Theological predicates refer to no empirically testable properties and therefore lack cognitive meaning. Model-theoretic “interpretation” of such terms merely disguises their non-referential status under formal symbols. To construct intensional models for theology is to rationalize what is semantically empty.

Obiectio III. Following later Wittgenstein, meaning arises from use within a linguistic form of life (Lebensform). To model theological language formally or intensionally is to misunderstand its grammar. The meaning of “grace,” “sin,” or “Spirit” lies in their practical employment within worship and life, not in their reference to divine properties or in hypothetical models. Modeling theology as if it described an external reality mistakes liturgical use for scientific representation.

Obiectio IV. Contemporary analytic semantics often treats meaning extensionally, defining reference via truth conditions over possible worlds. Since divine reality is not empirically accessible or multiply realizable across worlds, theological language cannot admit of model-theoretic interpretation without violating the principle of extensional adequacy. Theology should confine itself to moral or metaphorical discourse rather than claim intensional reference to the divine.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic model asserts that theological statements are true insofar as they cohere with the community’s grammar. There is no external domain into which they must be modeled. To introduce an intensional semantics for theology is to reintroduce representational realism and to confuse the performative, intra-ecclesial truth of faith with philosophical speculation.

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Responsiones

Ad I. Aristotelian realism rightly grounds meaning in real being but overlooks the form of participation by which finite predicates relate to divine reality. In theology, predication is not univocal: “God is good” does not signify an extensionally shared property but an analogical relation between divine perfection and finite concept. Intensional analysis captures this formal relation—it models the way predicates point beyond their finite instantiations toward infinite fulfillment. Thus, intensional semantics safeguards the analogia fidei: a structure of participation rather than mere attribution.

Ad II. Empiricist verificationism confuses empirical access with cognitive meaning. Theological terms are cognitively meaningful within the ontology of participation: they refer not by sense-data but by divine causality. Model-theoretic interpretation supplies the formal correlate of this claim. It shows that theological language can be given structured domains and interpretation functions consistent with its own rules of felicity. Intensional models do not disguise emptiness; they make explicit the structure of theological reference within divine reality.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning depends on use is valid at the pragmatic level but incomplete. Theological use is itself grounded in divine authorization. The Spirit makes the Church’s grammar not merely functional but truth-bearing. Modeling theology intensionally does not deny use; it articulates the inner logic by which use participates in divine meaning. The grammar of faith is a finite surface of an infinite semantics. Without such modeling, theology remains descriptively sociological rather than truth-apt.

Ad IV. Extensional semantics suffices for empirical domains but not for theological ones, where reference involves hyperintensional distinctions between formally equivalent but ontologically distinct predicates (e.g., “Creator” and “Redeemer”). Theology must operate at the intensional level because divine properties relate analogically, not extensionally. Model-theoretic analysis extends semantics beyond possible worlds to the domain of divine possibility, the space of God’s communicative acts. Hence, intensional modeling is not optional but necessary for theology’s realism.

Ad V. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but lacks the means to account for its truth. Theological language does not merely describe communal life; it claims participation in divine reality. Model-theoretic interpretation provides a way to express that claim rigorously. By mapping the formal language of theology (T) into an ontological domain structured by participation, it unites communal felicity (FT) with divine truth-conditions (TC). Intensionality here serves realism: it formalizes the link between faith’s grammar and God’s being.

Nota

Intensionality in theology reveals the deep correspondence between divine and human discourse. Just as the Word of God contains within itself both meaning and being—significatio et effectus—so theological speech, animated by the Spirit, partakes in that same structure.

In model-theoretic terms, theological language is not a static set of propositions but a living model in which predicates participate in the realities they denote. When theology says “Christ is Lord,” this is not a metaphor to be verified externally; it is a confession whose intension already shares in Christ’s lordship through the Spirit.

Modeling thus performs a theological epistemology of incarnation: finite words filled with infinite content, formal structure suffused with divine causality. In this sense, modeling does not invent theology’s truth but explicates it—it unfolds the internal participation already latent in theological meaning.

Hence, to study theology’s intension is to trace how language itself becomes sacramental: a sign whose signification and grace coincide.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Intension in theology signifies participation: the inward meaning of a theological term is its share in divine reality.

2. Modeling interprets these intensional forms within an ontological framework, revealing how language and being correspond through the Spirit.

3. The Spirit is the cause of this correspondence, uniting signification (intensio) and reality (veritas) without confusion.

4. Theological precision arises not from limiting meaning but from its right participation in the divine.

5. Therefore, the intension of theology’s language is itself a locus of revelation: the Word that makes meaning also makes being, and modeling is the act by which this unity is rendered intelligible.

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.