Law and Gospel Before Us: Why Reality is Not about Being Human

One of the quiet assumptions of modern theology is that Law and Gospel are fundamentally about us. They are taken to be modes of address, structures of conscience, or existential postures toward God. The Law accuses; the Gospel comforts. The distinction lives in preaching, psychology, and experience.

There is truth here. But it is not the whole truth.

What if Law and Gospel are not first about how we experience God, but about how reality itself is structured? What if they belong not merely to theology’s grammar, but to the very intelligibility of what is?

That is the wager of the recent disputations I have been writing, and it is a wager worth making.

Law and Gospel Are Older Than We Are

The claim is simple to state, though difficult to absorb: Law and Gospel are ontological before they are experiential. They are not created by human awareness, nor do they arise from moral reflection or religious language. Rather, they name two real ways in which intelligibility itself is given.

Law names intelligibility grounded in itself. It is the structure by which what is stands under necessity, coherence, and closure. In Law, reality is intelligible as that which must be so. This is not moralism. It is metaphysics.

Gospel names intelligibility grounded in another. It is the structure by which what is stands as gift, donation, and reception. In Gospel, reality is intelligible as received. This too is not sentiment. It is ontology.

These are not two interpretations of one neutral world. They are two real modes in which reality is intelligible at all. Human beings do not invent them. We inhabit them.

Why Speak of Intelligibility at All?

At this point a fair question presses itself upon the reader: Why talk about intelligibility at all? Why not remain with Scripture, proclamation, experience, or practice? Why introduce a term that sounds abstract, philosophical, even remote from the concrete realities of faith?

The answer is straightforward and unavoidable. Theology already presupposes intelligibility. The only question is whether it will acknowledge this presupposition or allow it to remain hidden and unexamined.

To speak of God, to confess Christ, to distinguish Law and Gospel, to proclaim grace, to judge between truth and falsehood—all of this already assumes that reality is intelligible, that it is not sheer chaos, brute facticity, or meaningless flux. Theology does not create intelligibility. It depends upon it. The task, then, is not to invent intelligibility, but to ask what must be true of reality for theology itself to be possible.

Here the boldness of the move must be named clearly. Modern thought has trained us to assume that intelligibility is supplied by the human subject: by cognition, language, conceptual schemes, or social practices. When intelligibility becomes difficult to ground, the temptation is either to psychologize it (meaning as experience), linguisticize it (meaning as use), or proceduralize it (meaning as rule-following).

All of these moves share a common feature. They make intelligibility derivative of human activity.

The present argument proceeds in the opposite direction. It claims that intelligibility is ontologically prior to perception, judgment, language, and agency. Human understanding does not generate intelligibility; it participates in it. We do not first think and then find the world meaningful. We find ourselves already within a world that can be understood.

This is why intelligibility must be discussed as such. If it is not, it will quietly be replaced by something else: consciousness, discourse, power, or will. And when that happens, theology is forced to speak about God within a framework that God did not give.

Once intelligibility is acknowledged as real and prior, several things follow immediately.

First, Law and Gospel can no longer be reduced to human responses. They are no longer merely how the subject experiences God, but how reality itself is ordered before God. Law names intelligibility closed upon itself, grounded in necessity. Gospel names intelligibility opened as gift, grounded in another. These are not inventions of preaching; they are the conditions under which preaching can be true.

Second, grace can be understood without arbitrariness. Grace does not interrupt an otherwise closed system. It realizes what reality was always open to receive. What metaphysics names possibility, theology encounters as the work of the Spirit.

Third, truth itself is re-situated. Truth is no longer merely the alignment of words with facts, but participation in the Logos through whom facts and meaning come to be together. To ask about intelligibility is therefore to ask about the deepest grammar of truth.

Seen in this light, speaking of intelligibility is not a speculative luxury. It is an act of theological responsibility. It is the refusal to let theology borrow its most basic assumptions from accounts of the world that cannot finally sustain them.

The move is bold precisely because it reverses a long habit. Instead of asking how human beings make sense of God, it asks how God makes sense of anything at all.

Once intelligibility itself is recovered as a real feature of creation, the familiar Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel is no longer confined to psychology or proclamation alone. It is revealed as something far more radical: a differentiation written into the fabric of reality itself.

Why the Modern Turn Went Wrong

Much modern thought assumed that if intelligibility exists, it must be grounded in the subject. Kant’s famous “Copernican Revolution” is the clearest expression of this move. The empirical subject was transmogrified into the transcendental subject and tasked with supplying the conditions under which anything could appear as meaningful.

This was an impressive detour. It taught us a great deal about cognition, judgment, and freedom. But it came at a cost.

Necessity was relocated to the algorithm of experience. Contingency was assigned to practical reason. Teleology became merely “purposiveness without purpose.” Nature lost its end. Intelligibility became heuristic rather than real.

The result was not atheism, but anthropocentrism. Reality slowly became a function of being human.

Theological reflection then followed suit. Law and Gospel were increasingly understood as functions of conscience, existential need, or linguistic practice. The deeper question—what must reality be like for Law and Gospel to be true at all—was quietly abandoned.

Luther Did Not Make That Move

Luther stands on the other side of this modern reversal.

For him, the human being is not an origin but a site. The spirit is not sovereign but inhabited. His famous image is intentionally unsettling: the human being is like a beast that is ridden—either by God or by the devil.

This is not psychology. It is ontology.

To live curvatus in se ipsum is not merely to feel anxious or guilty. It is to exist under a false grounding, to live as though intelligibility could be grounded in the self. Law exposes this condition. It kills because it tells the truth.

To live by the Gospel is not to adopt a new attitude. It is to be re-grounded in reality itself, to exist as gift rather than as self-justifying necessity. Gospel does not negate Law. It re-locates intelligibility.

Possibility, Grace, and the Spirit

Earlier disputations asked a prior question: how can necessity and contingency both be real without collapsing into determinism or arbitrariness? The answer was possibility, not as unrealized potential, but as the ontological openness of intelligibility itself.

What metaphysics names possibility, theology encounters as grace.

Grace arises necessarily from God, who is love. But it is received contingently by creatures. This contingency is not a defect. It is the very form divine love takes in time. The Holy Spirit is not a supplement to this structure, but its personal enactment—the divine act by which eternal necessity becomes temporal gift.

Grace is not God responding to us. It is God giving reality itself anew.

Truth Is Not Just About Propositions

This same structure reaches all the way into truth itself. Theology cannot be content with saying that propositions correspond to the world. That assumes the world is already there, already intelligible, already ordered.

Christian theology claims something deeper: the Logos gives both being and meaning together. Truth is not merely correspondence but participation. We do not simply describe reality. We are invited into the act by which reality is made intelligible at all.

Law, Gospel, grace, truth—these are not late arrivals in human history. They are woven into the fabric of creation.

Turning the Page

This is not a rejection of modern philosophy, nor a retreat into nostalgia. Kant’s detour was instructive. Existentialism named real anxieties. Linguistic theology taught us to attend to speech.

But it is time to return to serious work.

Reality is not about being human. Human beings are about reality.

Law and Gospel do not originate in us. They name how the world itself stands before God. And only because this is so can preaching still kill and make alive, grace still surprise, and truth still be more than our own reflection.

That is not a bomb for the playgrounds of modern Europe.

It is an invitation to leave the playground altogether.

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 relational and derivative: he speaks what he hears from the Word. The Spirit thus mediates the eternal discourse of the Son within the languages of history. Theology lives as the finite echo of an infinite conversation between Word and Spirit. It is not merely reception of information but participation in an act of divine speaking.

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

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Theological meaning is therefore realist because it is caused.

Nota

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XXI

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

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

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

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

Prooemium ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

Why Theology Must Confront the Limits of Reason

The theological inquiry now turns from language to logic, from signification to formal necessity. Having examined how divine truth becomes speakable in human discourse, theology must now ask how that same truth encounters the structures of reason itself, and where reason, in fidelity to its own vocation, must acknowledge what exceeds it.

Logic stands at theology’s threshold. It promises rigor, necessity, and demonstrative clarity. Yet every attempt to formalize truth also exposes the limits of formalization. The human intellect, in seeking to order intelligibility into complete systems, discovers that any consistent system of finite propositions is necessarily open: truths arise that cannot be derived within the system that recognizes them. This discovery, rendered precise in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, is not a defeat of reason but its purification. It reveals that reason’s strength lies not in closure but in its capacity to witness beyond itself.

Throughout the history of thought, the aspiration toward a total logic has repeatedly reappeared. Aristotle sought closure through syllogistic necessity; the medievals through scientia demonstrativa; Descartes through clarity and distinctness; Leibniz through the characteristica universalis; the positivists through symbolic formalism. Yet each attempt, by pressing logic toward completeness, has uncovered the same structural paradox: the more consistent the system, the less it can account for its own truth. Theology receives this paradox not as contradiction but as confession: finite reason mirrors the infinite Logos precisely in its inability to ground itself.

Within the model-theoretic vision of these Disputationes, logical incompleteness is interpreted as the formal analogue of the creature’s dependence upon God. Just as every theory requires a model in which its sentences are true, so every act of reasoning presupposes a reality that transcends its formulations. Truth exceeds provability; intelligibility exceeds syntax. The Infinite is the necessary truth-ground of the finite. Thus logic is not alien to theology but already oriented toward it. The law of thought itself bears witness to the Logos who is both Reason and Revelation.

Praefatio ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Ratio concludit, et revelatur infinitum

Theology speaks because truth gives itself to be spoken. Yet what gives itself is never given exhaustively. Divine truth is not an object that can be captured within finite form, but the living intelligibility in which all forms participate without containment.

For this reason, theological models are always provisional, not because they are arbitrary, but because they are faithful. Their finitude is not a defect but a sign of transcendence. Where modeling reaches its boundary, theology does not fall silent from ignorance, but pauses in reverence.

This praefatio therefore frames the inquiry that follows. If truth is participatory and grounded in the Logos, then transcendence is not opposed to intelligibility. It is its depth. The limits of language do not negate truth; they testify to its excess.

The task of theology at this point is not to abandon speech, but to learn how speech fails well: how it gestures beyond itself, how it allows silence to speak, and how it confesses truth precisely where conceptual mastery ends.

Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis

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 yet finite in form; and whether this limit is not a defect but a sign of the transcendence of divine truth, which cannot be comprehended but 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, and this excess is the very condition of theological realism. Divine transcendence is not what theology fails to reach, but what it faithfully signifies precisely by not exhausting.

Locus Classicus

“O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei! Quam incomprehensibilia sunt iudicia eius, et investigabiles viae eius.”
Romans 11:33

The Apostle confesses not ignorance but excess. Divine truth is known truly yet never comprehensively. Theology does not abolish mystery; it articulates it.

Explicatio

Every theological model interprets the language of faith (T) within an ontological structure that renders its claims intelligible. Yet such interpretation is intrinsically finite. No model can coincide with divine truth, for divine truth is not a formal object but the living ground of all intelligibility.

This finitude is not accidental. It belongs to the structure of modeling itself. Theological models inhabit teleo-spaces of intelligibility grounded in the Logos. These spaces draw finite forms toward meaning without permitting enclosure. To model truly is therefore to articulate within an order that precedes the model and exceeds it.

Formally:

Let M denote a theological model.
Let V denote divine truth.

The relation

M ⊂ V

does not signify containment of truth within the model, but participation of the model within truth. The inclusion is analogical, not spatial. Divine truth exceeds every formal articulation because it is grounded in God’s self-being, not in conceptual determination.

This limit does not undermine theology. It secures it. If theology could exhaust divine truth, God would be reduced to a logical totality. Instead, the Spirit preserves an open horizon of intelligibility, a structured incompleteness analogous to the Gödelian insight that no consistent system can internalize the conditions of its own truth.

Thus, theological incompleteness is not epistemic failure but ontological honesty. To speak truly of God is to acknowledge that one’s speech refers beyond itself to an inexhaustible fullness of meaning.

Two horizons of truth therefore govern theological modeling:

• Perfectio formalis: the internal coherence and felicity of the model.

• Adequatio transcendens: the model’s participatory orientation toward divine reality beyond all system.

The Spirit mediates between these horizons, ensuring that finite models remain ordered toward the infinite without collapsing into silence or confusion.

Objectiones

Ob I. If every theological model is limited, theology can never yield certainty.

Ob II. Limits imply unknowability, collapsing theology into apophatic negation.

Ob III. Gödelian incompleteness introduces an alien mathematical formalism into theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theological certainty is not exhaustive comprehension but participatory assurance. Certitudo fidei rests on communion with the faithful God, not on formal closure.

Ad II. Limits do not negate knowledge but sanctify it. Cataphatic and apophatic speech are concentric movements around the same truth. To know God truly is to know Him as inexhaustible.

Ad III. The Gödelian analogy is not foundational but illuminative. It  clarifies a structural truth: intelligibility exceeds formalization. Logic witnesses this excess; theology names its ground.

Nota

The finitude of theological models reveals their vocation. They are not idols but icons. An idol contains what it names. An icon reveals what exceeds it.

Theological models are icons of truth: finite forms rendered transparent to infinite meaning. The Spirit ensures their porosity, guarding them from closure while sustaining their coherence.

Hence theology’s structure is eschatological. Every true model anticipates fulfillment beyond itself, when formal adequacy and divine presence will finally coincide, not by exhaustion but by glorification.

Symbolically:

T + M → V*

where V* denotes transcendent truth as the ground of all participation. The notation reminds us that truth always exceeds its representations even as it grants them reality.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological modeling is necessarily finite.

2. Its limits signify divine transcendence, not error.

3. Truth in theology is participatory and inexhaustible.

4. The Spirit preserves both coherence and openness.

5. The incompleteness of theology secures its realism.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIX

The limits of modeling reveal that theology speaks within two orders at once: the human order of finite signification and the divine order of self-communicating truth. Every theological utterance, if true, participates in both. It speaks of God while being spoken by God.

This double belonging presses the inquiry forward. If theology’s words are grounded in divine intelligibility, then what is the nature of that grounding? Is there a meta-linguistic horizon in which theological discourse is authorized and unified? And how does this horizon relate to the eternal Logos in whom all meaning is already articulated?

We therefore proceed to Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino.

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Quaeritur

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

Whether divine intentionality is the very act by which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things; since God’s knowledge is not the reception of forms from without but the inward expression of Himself, such that this intentional act is both the cause and exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

Thesis

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

Locus Classicus

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

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

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

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

Determinatio

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

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

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

Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

On Intension and the Modeling of Theological Language

Quaeritur

Utrum intensio in theologia non sit mera conceptio mentis sed forma participationis, qua sermo fidei participat ipsam rem de qua loquitur; et utrum modeling theologicum sit interpretatio huius intensionalis structurae intra ordinem entis, per quam verbum confessionis inseritur in veritatem ontologicam a Spiritu causatam.

Whether intension in theology is not merely a mental conception but a mode of participation by which the speech of faith shares in the very reality it names; and whether theological modeling is the interpretation of this intensional structure within the order of being, through which the word of confession is inserted into ontological truth as caused by the Spirit.

Thesis

Theological intension is participatory. The meaning of theological language does not arise from abstraction over finite instances but from participation in divine reality mediated by the Spirit. Modeling is the act by which this intensional participation is rendered intelligible within an ontological framework. Thus, theological realism is grounded not in extension but in intension ordered toward being.

Locus Classicus

Isaiah 55:11
כֵּן יִהְיֶה דְבָרִי אֲשֶׁר יֵצֵא מִפִּי לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי
“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.”

Here the divine Word is not a sign pointing beyond itself but an efficacious act. Meaning and effect are inseparable. This unity is the archetype of all theological signification.

John 6:63
τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ λελάληκα ὑμῖν πνεῦμά ἐστιν καὶ ζωή ἐστιν.
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Theological language lives because it is Spirit-borne. Its intension is not neutral content but living participation.

Explicatio

In philosophical logic, intension is commonly defined as conceptual content, distinguished from extension, the set of entities to which a term applies. Such a distinction suffices for empirical and formal domains. It fails in theology. Theological language does not begin with finite concepts later projected toward God. It begins with divine self-communication received in faith.

Accordingly, the intension of a theological predicate is not an internally generated concept but a participatory form. When theology confesses Deus est bonus, the predicate bonus does not derive its meaning from created goodness and then ascend by analogy. Its meaning is given from above, through participation in divine goodness itself. The Spirit is the mediating cause of this participation. Meaning is not constructed but received.

This participatory structure gives theological language its realism. Words refer because they are authorized. Predicates signify because they are grounded in divine causality. Theological intension is therefore neither subjective nor merely conceptual. It is ontologically thick. Meaning is already oriented toward being.

Modeling enters at this point. The task of modeling is not to invent reference but to interpret it. Theology does not ask whether its language refers but how it refers. Modeling is the reflective act by which theology interprets the intensional participation of its language within a structured ontology.

Formally, and then explained:

Let p be a theological predicate, I(p) denote its intensional content as given through participation in divine reality, and M(p) denote the ontological interpretation of that predicate within a theological model.

The relation I(p) → M(p) does not move from concept to reality but from participation to intelligibility. Modeling unfolds what is already given in faith. Ontology follows intension, not the reverse.

This is why theological predicates are irreducibly intensional. Their meaning cannot be exhausted by truth conditions across possible worlds or by extensions within a domain. Distinct predicates may be extensionally equivalent yet intensively distinct, because they participate in divine reality under different aspects. Creator, Redeemer, and Lord do not divide God but articulate distinct participatory relations.

Theological language thus inhabits a space of hyperintensionality. Its precision lies not in narrowing meaning but in preserving distinction without separation. Modeling safeguards this precision by making explicit the structural relations among predicates without reducing them to univocal properties.

In this sense, modeling is a theological discipline before it is a formal one. It presupposes revelation, confession, and Spirit-given participation. Logic serves theology here by clarifying structure, not by dictating content.

Objectiones

Ob I. Meaning is exhausted by extension. Intension adds nothing real and is therefore irrelevant to ontology.

Ob II. Theological language lacks empirical reference and is therefore cognitively meaningless. Modeling merely disguises nonreferential discourse.

Ob III. Meaning arises solely from use within a form of life. Formal or intensional analysis misconstrues theological grammar.

Ob IV. Extensional semantics suffices for all truth claims. Intensional modeling violates semantic adequacy.

Ob V. The truth of theology is internal to ecclesial grammar. External modeling reintroduces metaphysical realism illegitimately.

Responsiones

Ad I. Extension presupposes intension. In theology, extension cannot ground meaning because divine reality is not one instance among others. Intension names the participatory relation by which predicates signify God analogically rather than univocally.

Ad II. Empirical verification is not the measure of cognitive meaning. Theological language refers by divine causality, not by observation. Modeling makes explicit the formal conditions under which such reference is coherent.

Ad III. Use presupposes authorization. The Church speaks meaningfully because the Spirit authorizes its speech. Modeling articulates the inner logic of this authorization without denying praxis.

Ad IV. Extensional semantics fails where predicates are intensively distinct despite extensional equivalence. Theology necessarily operates at the intensional level because its referent is infinite.

Ad V. Ecclesial coherence is necessary but not sufficient for truth. Theological language claims participation in divine reality. Modeling expresses this claim formally, uniting felicity and truth.

Nota

Theological language is not descriptive in the ordinary sense. It is confessional, participatory, and performative. Yet it is not therefore noncognitive. Its cognition is grounded in participation rather than observation.

In model-theoretic terms, theology is a living model whose satisfaction conditions are secured not by the world alone but by the Spirit’s causality. Theological intension is thus sacramental in structure: a finite sign bearing infinite content.

To speak truly of God is to speak within God’s own self-giving. Modeling does not add to this gift. It renders its form intelligible.

Determinatio

It is therefore determined that:

1. Intension in theology is participatory, not merely conceptual.

2. Theological meaning is given through divine causality mediated by the Spirit.

3. Modeling interprets this intensional participation within an ontological framework.

4. Theological realism is grounded in intension ordered toward being.

5. Precision in theology arises from faithful participation, not semantic reduction.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIV

The intension of theological language has been shown to be participatory and ontologically grounded. Yet meaning alone does not exhaust theology. Theological language is not only what is meant but what is intended. It is speech directed toward God, uttered in faith, shaped by will and confession.

Meaning and intention must therefore be distinguished without separation. Theological truth is not merely modeled correctly but intended rightly. Here the intellect and the will converge. Understanding becomes invocation.

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico, where it will be asked how intensional meaning relates to intentional speech, and whether theology reaches its truth not only in semantic adequacy but in the Spirit-led act of confession itself.