Disputatio XXI: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae: De Communicatione Verbi et Spiritus

On the Meta-Language of Theology: On the Communication of Word and Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum nova lingua theologiae sit ille modus loquendi, in quo sermo humanus, assumptus a Verbo et animatus a Spiritu, fit instrumentum divinae communicationis; et utrum haec lingua non substituat linguas humanas, sed eas transformet, ut participent in ipsa veritate quae loquitur—ita ut in ea infinitum non tantum se revelet sed loquatur, et finitum non tantum audiat sed respondeat.

Whether the new language of theology is that mode of speech in which human words, assumed by the Word and animated by the Spirit, become instruments of divine self-communication; and whether this language does not replace human languages but transforms them, so that they participate in the very truth that speaks—in which the infinite not only reveals itself but speaks, and the finite not only hears but answers.

Thesis

The nova lingua theologiae arises where divine Word and human speech coincide under the causality of the Spirit. It is new because its being and meaning are renewed from within by divine presence. Theology thus speaks truly only as it becomes the language of divine communication itself: the eternal Word articulated in finite discourse, the infinite made audible in the finite.

Locus classicus

“We speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” — 1 Corinthians 2:13

Here Paul identifies a linguistic transfiguration: words remain human, yet their origin and order are divine. The Spirit teaches, and through this teaching, human speech becomes the medium of divine wisdom: a new language of theology.

Explicatio

The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic form of participation.
In philosophy, language is typically conceived as a human system of symbols; in theology, language is the place where divine and human communicability meet. The Word (Logos) is not only the content of revelation but its grammar; the Spirit is the causality that makes human utterance bear truth.

Thus, theological language is double in form but single in act:

• Human as finite sign and historical utterance.

• Divine as bearer of infinite meaning.

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. Finally, let Auth(Lₜ) denote the authorization of Lₜ by the Spirit.

Then:

Theological truth obtains only if Auth(Lₜ) → (Lₜ participat L∞ per Spiritum); that is, finite discourse is true not by inclusion within the divine Word but by real participation in it, as the Spirit makes human language proportionate to divine meaning.

The nova lingua is therefore neither an abstract meta-language nor a private religious dialect. It is the site where human speech becomes transparent to divine reality, where felicity (Spirit-given authorization) and truth (correspondence with divine being) coincide.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Kantian Transcendentalism claims that human cognition is confined to phenomena structured by the categories of understanding. Accordingly, theology can express moral faith but not divine causation in thought or speech. To claim that language participates in divine Word and Spirit mistakes moral symbolism for metaphysical participation, violating the autonomy of reason and the limits of possible experience.

Obiectio II. Barth and Brunner held that revelation is the wholly other act of God, not a linguistic system accessible to humanity. Theology may bear witness to revelation but is not itself revelation’s continuation. To speak of a new language of theology that shares in divine communication is to blur the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creature, turning revelation into religious expression.

Obiectio III. Wittgenstein claims that meaning arises from the use of language within a form of life (Lebensform). The felicity of theological discourse is determined by ecclesial grammar, not metaphysical causation. To posit the Spirit as the cause of meaning introduces a category mistake: causation belongs to nature, not to language. The Spirit’s “authorization” adds nothing beyond communal propriety.

Obiectio IV. Hegelian Idealism claims that the Spirit realizes itself in the dialectical unfolding of human consciousness. Accordingly, theology is not a distinct divine act but the self-expression of the Absolute within finite reason. The nova lingua theologiae is thus unnecessary because human discourse already manifests divine Spirit in its self-development. To posit transcendent causality in theology regresses to pre-critical metaphysics.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck and Kathryn Tanner both hold that theology’s truth is intralinguistic, that it is a coherent discourse within the Church’s rule of faith. Divine causation is thus a superfluous hypothesis. To claim that the Spirit determines what counts as true speech reintroduces metaphysical realism under the guise of pneumatology. The “new language” of theology should be understood as communal practice, not ontological participation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s limits define the autonomy of reason, not the transcendence of God. Revelation does not violate the categories of thought but constitutes their ground. The Spirit does not add a second cause to cognition but founds its capacity for meaning. Thus, the nova lingua arises precisely where reason is fulfilled by grace; the Spirit elevates the finite intellect to participation without abolishing its structure. Theological discourse thus becomes rational in a higher sense. a rationality transfigured by participation.

Ad II. Barth rightly insists on divine freedom, yet divine freedom includes the liberty to dwell within human language. The nova lingua does not erase the Creator–creature distinction but actualizes it: God’s Word remains transcendent even while speaking immanently. The Spirit’s presence ensures that theology is not revelation itself but its living continuation, for the Word still speaks in the Church’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning arises from use is incomplete. The ecclesial Lebensform exists because the Spirit sustains it. The grammar of faith is not self-originating; it is founded in divine authorization. The Spirit’s causality is not physical but constitutive; it makes the correspondence between sign and referent possible. Without the Spirit, theology reduces to linguistic anthropology; with the Spirit, grammar becomes sacrament: the finite sign that mediates infinite truth.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic rightly perceives the relation between thought and being but confuses participation with identity. The divine Word does not evolve into human consciousness; it speaks through it. The Spirit is not the world’s self-realization but God’s personal presence within the finite. The nova lingua therefore represents not the self-consciousness of reason but the descent of divine communication. Communion arises not by dialectical necessity but by grace.

Ad V. Post-liberal theology correctly locates truth within the Church’s language but cannot explain why that language bears truth at all. Felicity requires truth conditions that obtain beyond grammar, and this occurs through the Spirit’s causality. While the Word guarantees referential content, the Spirit vouchsafes participation. Thus, theology’s “new language” is not another dialect but the transformation of language itself into the site of divine truth.

Nota

To speak of the nova lingua theologiae 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 = Veritas Theologica, 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. The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic manifestation of the act of Word and Spirit: the infinite Word speaking through finite words.

2. The Spirit’s causality is non-competitive and constitutive; it authorizes human speech 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. Theological truth arises when felicity (Spirit-given authorization) is linked to truth through modeling.

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

In this union, theology ceases to be speech about God and becomes God’s own speech through the creature, language redeemed into truth, and truth made audible as the living Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXII

The preceding disputation disclosed that the meta-language of theology is not a neutral system above divine speech, but the living communicatio between the Word and the Spirit, the eternal dialogue through which divine truth both descends into and gathers up finite discourse. Within this communication, the human theologian speaks only insofar as the Spirit appropriates human language into the self-expression of the divine Word. Theology is thus dialogical in its very essence: it exists as participation in an ongoing conversation between God and the world.

Yet every divine conversation meets a worldly reply. The Word that enters human speech inevitably encounters other languages—philosophical, scientific, political, and poetic—each claiming its own authority over meaning. How does theology, as the speech of the Spirit, engage these rival discourses without losing its distinctive mode of truth? Can the language of faith coexist, translate, or contend with the languages of secularity, or must it reclaim a logic of its own, irreducible to the grammar of the age?

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis, wherein it shall be examined how the sacred and secular orders of speech meet and resist one another, how theology maintains its truth within the pluralism of tongues, and how the Spirit sustains the integrity of divine discourse amid the babel of the world.

Disputatio XX: De Theologia ut Actu Verbi et Spiritus

On Theology as the Act of the Word and the Spirit

Quaeritur

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

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

Thesis

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

Locus classicus

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theological meaning is therefore realist because it is caused.

Nota

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XXI

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

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

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

Prooemium ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine; XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis

Prooemium ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

Why Theology Must Confront the Limits of Reason

The theological movement now turns from the analysis of language to the discipline of logic. Having examined how divine truth becomes expressible in human speech, we must now inquire as to how that same truth becomes demonstrable, and as to where demonstration itself must yield to transcendence. For theology cannot rest content with felicity of utterance or coherence of confession. It must also test the form of reason through which it seeks understanding. To believe that theology can think truly is to believe that truth can be formalized without being confined.

Logic thus stands at theology’s threshold. It promises order and necessity, yet every attempt to formalize truth also exposes its incompleteness. The human intellect, in seeking to systematize divine intelligibility, discovers that any consistent system of finite propositions is necessarily open: what it cannot express may still be true. This discovery, made explicit in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, is not a defeat of reason but its purification. It reveals that reason’s strength lies precisely in its capacity to witness beyond itself.

Throughout the history of thought, the dream of a total logic has haunted philosophy. Aristotle sought closure through the syllogism; the medievals through the scientia demonstrativa; Descartes through clarity and distinctness; Leibniz through the characteristica universalis; the positivists through symbolic formalization. Yet each attempt, by pushing logic toward completeness, has uncovered its inner paradox: that the more consistent the system, the less it can account for its own truth. Theological reason receives this paradox as revelation—finite intellect as mirror of infinite Logos.

The model-theoretic vision of these Disputationes interprets logical incompleteness as a formal analogue of the creature’s dependence on God. Just as every theory requires a model in which its sentences are true, so every act of reason requires a reality that transcends its formulations. The “incompleteness” of the logical system corresponds to the creature’s incapacity to ground itself. Truth always exceeds provability; the Infinite is the necessary truth-maker of the finite. Thus theology finds in logic not an alien science but a parable of grace: the law of thought itself bears witness to the Logos who is both Reason and Revelation.

The disputationes that follow therefore explore the boundary where reason becomes contemplative. They trace the movement from formal system to divine truth, from provability to participation, from finite syntax to infinite semantics. For logic, when purified by theology, becomes a confession: that thought can know itself as incomplete only because it already participates in the infinite fullness of truth.

Praefatio ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

Ratio concludit, et revelatur infinitum

In hac tertia parte Disputationum, theologia transit a lingua ad logicam, ab significatione ad formam. Hic ratio humana, quae per linguam veritatem significavit, conatur eamdem veritatem demonstrare; sed in ipso actu demonstrationis invenit suam limitatam naturam. Nam omnis systema finitum est incompletum, et nulla regula finita potest comprehendere plenitudinem veritatis divinae.

Logica, quae videtur instrumentum certitudinis, fit speculum humilitatis: ostendit quod vera necessitas non est clausura sed apertio ad infinitum. Theologia logicae non adversatur, sed eam purificat; docet quod omnis consequentia recta terminatur in mysterio, et quod ratio vera est ratio adorans.

Haec pars igitur examinat terminos intelligibilitatis ipsius. Investigat modum quo veritas, dum formam logicam recipit, excedit eam. In theorematibus mathematicis, in structuris linguisticis, in systematibus scientiae, ratio semper se ostendit ordinatam sed non sufficientem. Incompletudo logicae est signum transcendens, indicans quod omnis ratio finita testatur de ratione infinita. Hinc sequitur quod intelligere finitum est semper participare infinitum in modo negationis.

In this third part of the Disputationes, theology moves from language to logic, from signification to form. Here the human mind, which has expressed truth through language, seeks to demonstrate that same truth; yet in the very act of demonstration it discovers its limitation. For every finite system is incomplete, and no finite rule can encompass the fullness of divine truth.

Logic, which seems the instrument of certainty, becomes the mirror of humility: it reveals that true necessity is not closure but openness to the infinite. Theology does not oppose logic; it purifies it, teaching that every valid inference ends in mystery, and that true reason is reason adoring.

This part therefore examines the boundaries of intelligibility itself. It inquires how truth, while receiving logical form, at the same time surpasses it. In mathematical theorems, linguistic structures, and scientific systems alike, reason shows itself ordered yet insufficient. The incompleteness of logic is a transcendent sign, indicating that all finite reason bears witness to infinite reason. To understand finitely is always to participate in the infinite under the mode of limitation.

________

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum omne modelum theologicum sit verum participative sed finitum formaliter; et utrum hic finis non sit defectus sed indicium transcendenciae veritatis divinae, quae non comprehenditur sed communicatur; ac demum utrum Spiritus Sanctus hunc ordinem servet, ut finitum maneat capax infiniti sine confusione.

Whether every theological model is true by participation but finite in form; and whether this limit is not a defect but a sign of divine transcendence—the truth of God which cannot be comprehended yet can be communicated; and finally, whether the Holy Spirit preserves this order so that the finite remains capable of the infinite without confusion.

Thesis

Theological models are necessarily bounded expressions of divine truth. Their formal incompleteness is not failure but fidelity: each model bears witness to a truth that exceeds it. The transcendence of truth is thus the very condition of theology’s realism—the sign that its words refer beyond themselves to the living God whom no concept can contain.

Locus classicus

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” — Romans 11:33

The Apostle’s exclamation affirms that divine truth is both knowable and unsearchable. Theology does not abolish mystery; it articulates it. The depth of divine knowledge marks the horizon of all theological modeling.

Explicatio

Every theological model seeks to interpret the language of faith (T) within an ontological structure that makes its truth intelligible. Yet by its very nature, this interpretation is bounded. Finite language cannot capture infinite reality, but it can participate in it.

Modeling’s limit is therefore intrinsic and theological. To express it formally (and then explain):

• Let M denote a theological model, and V the divine truth it seeks to express.

• The relation M ⊂ V means that the model is contained within the divine truth, not the reverse.

• The inclusion is analogical, not spatial: theological truth exceeds every formalization because it is grounded in divine self-being (ipsum esse subsistens).

This limit does not undermine theology’s validity; it guarantees it.
If theology could exhaust divine truth, God would be reduced to a logical totality. Instead, the Spirit maintains an open horizon—a structured incompleteness analogous to Gödel’s insight that every consistent system points beyond itself.

Thus, the incompleteness of theology is not an epistemic failure but a mark of its realism. To speak truly of God is to acknowledge that one’s words refer beyond themselves to the inexhaustible fullness of divine meaning.

In theological modeling, then, there are two horizons of truth:

1. Formal completeness (perfectio formalis) — the coherence and internal truth of the model itself.

2. Transcendent adequacy (adequatio transcendens) — the degree to which the model participates in divine reality beyond all system.

The Spirit bridges these horizons, ensuring that theology’s finite models remain ordered toward the infinite without dissolution or despair.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If every theological model is limited, theology can never yield certainty; all statements about God remain provisional.

Obiectio II. To speak of limits implies that divine truth is in principle unknowable, collapsing theology into apophatic silence.

Obiectio III. The analogy to Gödelian incompleteness introduces a mathematical formalism alien to the nature of revelation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theological certainty differs from mathematical completeness. It rests not on exhaustive comprehension but on participatory adequacy. The believer’s assurance (certitudo fidei) arises from communion, not closure. Certainty in theology is relational — it depends on the faithfulness of the Revealer, not the fullness of our models.

Ad II. Limits do not negate knowledge but define its sanctity. To know God truly is to know Him as inexhaustible. The more theology apprehends, the more it perceives the excess of what remains. The apophatic and the cataphatic are not opposites but concentric movements around divine mystery.

Ad III. The Gödelian analogy is illustrative, not foundational. It serves to illuminate the principle that truth transcends formal systems. As logic points beyond itself to meaning, so theology points beyond itself to the living God. The analogy expresses theological humility, not technical equivalence.

Nota

The finitude of theological models discloses their vocation. They are not idols but icons: transparent forms through which divine light passes. An idol contains what it names; an icon reveals what exceeds it. To model truly is to construct such icons—finite forms ordered toward infinite reality.

In this light, theology’s incompleteness becomes a virtue. A perfect model would contradict its own subject, for God cannot be reduced to formula or schema. The Spirit’s presence ensures that each model remains porous, open to transcendence, capable of bearing infinite significance within finite form.

We might symbolize this relation (and then immediately explain it):

T + M → V* where T is the language of faith, M the model interpreting it, and V** (“V-star”) the transcendent truth that grounds both. This notation reminds us that truth (V**) always exceeds its modeled representations (V), even as it grants them participation.

Hence, theology’s structure is eschatological: every true model anticipates its fulfillment in glory, when formal adequacy and divine presence will finally coincide (FT = TC = V**).

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological modeling is necessarily finite; its limit is the sign of divine transcendence, not the mark of error.

2. Truth in theology is participatory: each model communicates a real share in divine reality without exhausting it.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, sustaining both coherence (formal felicity) and openness (transcendent adequacy).

4. The incompleteness of theology secures its realism: it acknowledges the otherness of God while truly speaking of Him.

5. Therefore, theology’s task is not to eliminate its limits but to sanctify them — to make every model an icon of mystery, transparent to the infinite truth that alone fulfills it.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIX

The boundaries of modeling have revealed that no finite language can contain divine truth. Theology therefore finds itself suspended between two orders of speech: the human, which signifies by mediation, and the divine, which signifies by being. Every theological statement, if true, participates in both. It speaks of God while being spoken by God, for the same Word who is the content of theology is also its condition.

Yet this double belonging calls for further clarification. If theology’s words are grounded in divine speech, then what is the nature of that grounding? Does theology possess a meta-lingua—a higher language of the Spirit—within which its finite utterances receive authorization and coherence? And how does this meta-language relate to the eternal Verbum divinum, the Logos in whom all truths are articulated and made real?

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino, in which it is asked whether theology speaks about God or within the speech of God, how the divine Word functions as the metalanguage of all theological discourse, and how human language, assumed into that Word, becomes both instrument and revelation of divine truth.

Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

On the Relation between Theological Truth and Felicity

Utrum inter veritatem et felicitatem theologicam sit talis distinctio, ut neque confundantur neque separentur; cum felicitas sit forma a Spiritu data, qua sermo fit idoneus ad dicendum de Deo, et veritas sit effectus ontologicus eiusdem Spiritus, quo quod dicitur vere est—ita tamen ut utrumque sit opus unius Spiritus operantis in duobus ordinibus, verbi et entis.

Whether between theological truth and felicity there exists such a distinction that they are neither confused nor separated; since felicity is the form given by the Spirit whereby speech becomes rightly ordered toward God, and truth is the ontological effect of that same Spirit by which what is spoken truly is—both being the work of one Spirit operating within two orders, the order of word and the order of being.

Thesis

Felicity and truth are two inseparable dimensions of theology’s participation in divine speech.

• Felicity (felicitas) concerns the authorization and rightness of theological language so that it may be spoken in Spiritu Sancto.

• Truth (veritas) concerns the fulfillment and correspondence of that language in the divine reality.

• They differ as form and effect: felicity makes theology speakable, truth makes it real.

Locus Classicus

כִּי לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי וְהִצְלִיחַ אֲשֶׁר שְׁלַחְתִּיו׃

“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” — Isaiah 55:11

In the prophet’s vision, divine language is performative: the Word’s truth is identical with its power to accomplish.

Ὁ γὰρ τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγος ζῶν ἐστι καὶ ἐνεργής· ἀκατάπαυστος ἐστὶν ἡ ἐνέργεια τοῦ Λόγου.

“For the Word of God is living and active; the operation of the Logos is without ceasing.” — Origenes, Homiliae in Ieremiam, I.7

For Origen, the divine Word is not a static utterance but an ongoing act—the living principle through which all being is interpreted and renewed.

“Das Wort Gottes geschieht, indem Gott selbst handelt und redet.”

“The Word of God happens as God Himself acts and speaks.” — Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, §4

In Barth’s retrieval of the Reformation’s insight, the Word is not merely an event in language but the act of God Himself, whose speaking is His doing.

Together these witnesses—prophet, father, and modern theologian—converge in one confession: the Word of God is not inert description but living act. It is felicitous because it may rightly be spoken by God, and true because in being spoken it brings to pass the very reality it names.

Explicatio

In Disputatio III, we learned that the Holy Spirit determines which expressions belong within the language of faith T, through the conditions of felicity, the marks that identify speech as rightly spoken in the Spirit. In Disputatio IV, we saw that theology possesses twofold truth: internal, pertaining to felicity, and external, corresponding to reality. Here we bring these together.

When theologians write FT + Modeling = TC, they do not mean a mathematical formula but a theological relation. FT denotes the felicity conditions of T: the Spirit’s gift of coherence, authorization, and spiritual rightness in speech. “Modeling” denotes the interpretation of that language within being, as we explored earlier. TC stands for the truth conditions of theology, and thus concern the reality in which theological expressions are fulfilled.

This expression can be read in plain words as:

“When the language of faith is authorized by the Spirit and interpreted within reality, it becomes true.”

Thus, felicity is not preliminary to truth as a mere stepping stone; it is the inner form of truth’s possibility. The felicity of divine speech is the manner in which truth enters language.

Inversely, truth is the ontological consummation of felicity, the outward completion of what felicity initiates. To speak felicitously in the Spirit is to speak words that are destined to become true in God’s creative act.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to classical correspondence realism, felicity and truth are identical, for truth is the adequation of intellect and thing, and felicity in theology would simply be the success of this adequation. To distinguish felicity from truth introduces redundancy: a statement is felicitous precisely because it is true, and to say otherwise is to obscure the classical notion of correspondence.

Ob II. According to J. L. Austin and later linguistic philosophers' speech-act pragmaticsm, felicity concerns the proper performance of a speech act, not its truth-value. To conflate felicity with truth is to mistake pragmatic success for propositional correctness. Theological felicity, like any performative, depends on convention and authority, not on any metaphysical reality beyond the act of saying.

Ob III. Kant would argue that theological “truth” concerns moral faith, while felicity pertains to the good will’s harmony with moral law. The two belong to distinct domains—truth to theoretical reason, felicity to practical. Theology therefore cannot unite them without overstepping the limits of human cognition. The idea of their relation is only regulative, never constitutive.

Ob IV. The post-liberal conventionalism of George Lindbeck and the cultural-linguistic school holds that truth in theology is intralinguistic: it designates coherence within a communal grammar. Felicity, then, is simply the successful enactment of that grammar in liturgical or doctrinal form. To distinguish felicity from truth implies an external referent that transcends the community’s language—an illegitimate return to metaphysical realism.

Responsiones

Ad I. Truth and felicity coincide in God but are distinct in theology. Truth concerns the ontological adequation of word and being; felicity concerns the pneumatic authorization of that word to bear divine truth. A theological statement may be formally true yet not felicitous—true in content but spoken outside the Spirit’s act. Conversely, felicity without truth would be enthusiasm—speech energized but empty. Their distinction is not redundancy but order: truth is the terminus of reference, felicity the condition of participation.

Ad II. Speech-act theory rightly observes that meaning depends on the conditions of performance, but theology deepens this insight by positing the Holy Spirit as the ultimate condition of felicity. The act of theological speaking is not merely conventional but pneumatic. Felicity in theology is the Spirit’s act of rendering a finite utterance proportionate to divine truth. It thus includes but surpasses pragmatic success, uniting linguistic performance with ontological participation.

Ad III. Kant’s dualism of theoretical and practical reason cannot finally contain theology, for revelation unites truth and goodness in a single divine act. In the Spirit, what is true becomes life-giving, and what is felicitous participates in truth. Theological felicity is not a moral sentiment but the Spirit’s presence in the act of knowing. The relation between felicity and truth is constitutive: the Spirit makes truth an event within finitude rather than an ideal beyond it.

Ad IV. Post-liberal coherence rightly guards against subjectivism but errs in denying theology’s referential claim. Felicity does not arise solely from communal performance but from the Spirit who constitutes that community as witness to divine reality. Truth in theology is not reducible to grammar; it is what grammar participates in when animated by the Spirit. Felicity names that animation itself—the act by which linguistic coherence becomes ontological communion.

Nota

We may picture felicity and truth as two poles of a single divine circuit. Felicity is the descent of the Spirit into speech; truth is the return of that speech into being. The Word goes forth felicitously, returns truthfully.

To say that the Spirit causes both is to affirm that God’s communication is never idle. Felicity is the Spirit’s formal causality; it is the ordering of language so it may bear meaning. Truth is the Spirit’s final and efficient causality; it is the making real of what language, so ordered, declares.

Theological language that seeks truth without felicity becomes presumptuous, attempting to name God without the Spirit’s authorization. Conversely, felicity without truth becomes pietistic solipsism, where words comfort but do not correspond. Only when the two coincide does theology become the living voice (viva vox) of the gospel.

Thus, the relation between felicity and truth is neither sequential nor competitive but circular, for the Spirit who authorizes speech also fulfills it. The Word that begins in divine grace terminates in divine reality.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Felicity and truth are distinct yet inseparable moments of theology’s participation in the Spirit’s act of communication.

2. Felicity concerns the rightness of speech within T (the internal authorization of the Word), while truth concerns the realization of that speech within being (the external fulfillment of the Word).

3. The same Spirit who gives felicity as form of divine discourse causes truth as fulfillment of divine action.

4. Felicity anticipates truth eschatologically: what is rightly spoken in faith will be shown true in glory.

5. Therefore, theology’s speech is a participation in God’s own causal communication—words that live because the Spirit makes them both felicitous and true.

Transitus ad Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

In the fifth disputation, the relation between theological truth and felicity was explored as the union of cognition and participation, the meeting of intellect and joy in the act of knowing God. There it became clear that theology attains its perfection only when truth is not merely contemplated but lived, when the intellect’s conformity to the divine Word issues in the soul’s delight in the divine life.

Yet this very relation of truth and joy presupposes a deeper unity: that both the adequation of intellect and the beatitude of participation depend upon the causal act of God Himself. If the Word is true and the Spirit gives felicity, both presuppose the Father as the source of all causality, the One whose creative and sustaining act makes possible both the world to be known and the speech that knows it.

Thus the question now arises: how does divine causality stand to theological language? If God is the first cause not only of being but of meaning, then theology itself must be a mode of divine operation, a loquela Dei through human words. Theologians speak truly only insofar as God speaks in them; their discourse participates in that creative causality through which all things, including words, come to be.

We therefore advance to Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica, in which it will be asked how the causal action of God grounds the possibility of theological speech, how divine and human agency coexist in the act of saying, and how the verbum hominis becomes the instrument of the Verbum Dei without confusion or division.

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Quaeritur

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

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

Thesis

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

Locus classicus

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

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

We may represent this (and then explain it):

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

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

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

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

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

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

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