Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino

On the Meta-Language of Theology and the Divine Word

Meta-lingua theologiae non est sermo humanus superior aliis, sed ipse Verbum divinum, in quo et per quem omnis lingua creata interpretatur. Deus non habet aliud verbum de se quam se ipsum: Logos est meta-lingua qua universa loquela humana in veritatem redigitur.

The meta-language of theology is not a human discourse standing above other discourses but the divine Word Himself, in whom and through whom all created language is interpreted. God possesses no other word about Himself than Himself: the Logos is the meta-language by which all human speech is gathered into truth.

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Thesis

The only true meta-language of theology is the eternal Word. All human theological languages—old, new, symbolic, propositional—exist as finite object-languages within the field of divine communication. The Logos is both their ground and their interpreter, the infinite discourse in which their partial meanings are united and fulfilled.

Locus classicus

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1

This verse establishes the primacy of divine speech: before there were languages, there was the Word; before there were signs, there was meaning itself. The divine Logos precedes, grounds, and interprets every act of human speaking.

Explicatio

The notion of meta-language in logic and model theory designates a higher-level language used to describe the rules, syntax, or semantics of another. In theology, such a separation is impossible: no language can stand outside the Word of God to describe it. All human discourse remains within the domain of divine utterance, because the Word is both the Creator of speech and its ultimate hearer.

Thus, when theology speaks about God, it does so within God’s own communicative act. The Logos is not an external commentary on the world but the internal ratio by which it exists and becomes intelligible. Every language, whether philosophical, poetic, or dogmatic, participates as an object-language within the comprehensive “meta-language” that is God’s eternal self-utterance.

This means that the relation between divine Word and human language is not hierarchical but participatory. Let us represent this formally (and then explain it):

• Let L₁, L₂, L₃ … denote the many object languages of creation—ordinary speech, philosophical reasoning, scriptural idiom, the nova lingua of faith.

• Let L∞ denote the divine Logos, the Word that encompasses and grounds all finite discourse.

Then for every Lₙ, the relation Lₙ ⊂ L∞ holds analogically: each finite language is contained within, and intelligible through, the divine Word. This containment is not linguistic hierarchy but ontological participation.

Hence, divine meta-language is not an external code but the infinite horizon of interpretation within which all meaning subsists. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the divine Word into the polyphonic tongues of creation and translating creation’s words back into praise.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the later linguistic turn argue that language games possess internal criteria of meaning; there is no “meta-language” beyond them. To claim that the Logos functions as a meta-language imposes a totalizing framework that violates the autonomy of forms of life.

Obiectio II. Karl Barth maintains that revelation is wholly event and never a stable linguistic form; thus, there can be no divine “meta-language,” for God’s Word encounters us only as momentary address, never as standing structure of meaning.

Obiectio III. Jacques Derrida and his heirs hold that all language is differential play, without final referent or transcendental signified. The claim that the Logos interprets all language reintroduces the metaphysics of presence which deconstruction has exposed as illusion.

Responsiones

Ad I. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning arises within language-games is valid at the level of human usage, but theology concerns the ground of linguistic possibility itself. The Logos is not a competing game but the condition for all games—the ratio loquendi that makes signification possible. Without the divine Word as ontological ground, even internal coherence loses intelligibility.

Ad II. Barth rightly emphasizes the event-character of revelation, but the event itself presupposes the eternal Word. The Logos is not a static structure but the living continuity of divine speech. Revelation as event is the historical manifestation of that eternal discourse. Thus, divine meta-language is not static text but the ongoing act of self-communication through the Spirit.

Ad III. Deconstruction’s critique of presence inadvertently confirms the theological claim: no finite language can secure its own meaning. The Logos, however, is not an available presence within language but the transcendent act that bestows meaning upon the play of difference. The Spirit does not close différance but transfigures it into relation.

Nota

To speak of the divine Word as theology’s meta-language is to confess that all truth is linguistic because all being is spoken. The cosmos itself is a sentence within the discourse of the Logos. In this sense, theology’s many models and expressions (as seen in Disputationes XVII–XVIII) are not rival statements but varied declensions of a single Word.

This view transforms the philosophy of language into theology of communion. Meaning no longer rests upon formal conventions or social contracts but upon participation in the divine speech-act that sustains creation. Hence, all interpretation is ultimately Christological: every word finds its coherence only in the Word made flesh.

Formally we might write (and then explain):

∀w ∈ Lₙ, Meaning(w) = Participation(w, L∞).  That is, every finite word w acquires meaning insofar as it participates in the divine Word. This formula signifies that semantic realism—the conviction that words truly refer—is the linguistic echo of creation’s metaphysical realism.

The Church, as communio verbi, is the living medium of this divine meta-language in history. Its confession, liturgy, and doctrine are not human projections upon silence but articulations of the eternal discourse of the Word and Spirit. In the Church’s speech, divine meta-language enters temporal form without losing transcendence.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The divine Logos is the only true meta-language of theology: the eternal act of meaning in which all created languages participate.

2. All human theological discourse (Lₙ) functions as finite object-language within this horizon; its truth lies in participation, not autonomy.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the eternal Word into temporal speech and returning human language into praise.

4. Philosophical denials of meta-language (Wittgensteinian, Barthian, Derridean) rightly expose the limits of human systems but fail to see that divine discourse is not a system but the very act of meaning itself.

5. Therefore, theology’s meta-language is not analytical but incarnational: the Word made flesh is the hermeneutical center in which all human words are gathered and made true.

Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Omne modelum theologicum est verum participative, sed finitum formaliter. Finis modeling theologici non est defectus sed indicium transcendenciae veritatis divinae, quae non comprehenditur sed communicatur. Spiritus Sanctus servat hunc ordinem, ut finitum maneat capax infiniti sine confusione.

Every theological model is true by participation but finite in form. The limit of theological modeling is not a defect but the sign of divine transcendence—the truth of God that cannot be comprehended yet can be communicated. The Holy Spirit preserves this order, ensuring that the finite remains capable of the infinite without confusion.

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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.

Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica

On Modeling and Theological Truth

Modeling theologicum est actus interpretationis, quo lingua fidei (T) inseritur in ordinem entis per Spiritum, ut veritas divina in forma creata repraesentetur. Veritas theologica non est solum correspondentia, sed participatio: modelum est locus in quo significatio finita communicat cum veritate infinita.

Theological modeling is the act of interpretation by which the language of faith T is inserted into the order of being through the Spirit, so that divine truth is represented in created form. Theological truth is not mere correspondence but participation: the model is the site where finite meaning communicates with infinite truth.

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Thesis

Modeling in theology mediates between the formal structure of faith’s language and the reality of divine being. It is the Spirit’s interpretive act by which finite expressions are rendered adequate to divine truth. Thus, theological truth arises when the language of faith is modeled within ontological participation—when speech and being converge under the causality of the Spirit.

Locus classicus

“Your word is truth.” — John 17:17

Christ’s prayer identifies divine Word and truth as one. The Word does not describe truth; it is truth. Theological modeling, therefore, is the interpretive participation of human language in this divine Word — the act by which theology’s finite words are aligned to the infinite truth they confess.

Explicatio

The term modeling in theology designates the act of relating T, the formal language of faith, to its referent in divine reality.
Earlier disputationes established that:

• T (Disputationes I–V) is syntactical and governed by felicity,

• divine causality (VI–VII) ensures the real participation of creaturely being in God, and

• divine intentionality (X–XVI) grounds meaning and language in God’s own communicative act.

Modeling now unites these strands. It is the Spirit’s work of translation from grammar to ontology, from faith’s finite speech to divine being.

To model theology is not to construct analogies from below but to interpret forms given from above. Every theological model is a finite schema through which divine truth is made intelligible without being exhausted.

Formally (and then explained):

• Let T = the language of faith.

• Let M = the ontological model interpreting T.

• Let FT = the felicity conditions under which speech is rightly ordered.

• Let TC = the truth conditions under which that speech corresponds to being.

The structural relation:

FT + M → TC means that when faith’s language is interpreted within a Spirit-formed ontological model, its felicity becomes truth. In simpler terms: theological modeling is the Spirit’s way of making language true.

This makes theology’s truth participatory rather than merely propositional. A model does not “mirror” God as a copy but “shares” in God as a participation. Its adequacy is analogical: it communicates divine truth in finite mode.

Thus, the veritas theologica is always twofold — immanent within the model and transcendent beyond it. No model contains God, yet each true model signifies and participates in God’s truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According the the logical positivist tradition of Ayer and Carnap, theological models cannot, by definition, be verified or falsified by experience. They are neither analytic nor synthetic propositions but expressions of emotion or moral attitude. Modeling such language formally only disguises its non-cognitive nature. To call theological models “true” is to misuse the word “truth.”

Obiectio II. According to George Lindbeck and post-liberal theology, 
religious language functions like grammar within a community of faith. Modeling theology in reference to divine reality reintroduces an outdated representationalism. Theological statements are true when they coherently express the community’s faith, not when they correspond to an external metaphysical domain. Truth is intra-linguistic, not ontological.

Obiectio III. The analytic realism of Alston or Swineburn would likely argue that model-theoretic semantics, by abstracting theological assertions into formal systems, actually removes them from their epistemic grounding in revelation and evidence. Theology must rest on propositional revelation and rational inference, not on semantic or metaphysical models. Modeling may aid clarity but cannot determine truth.

Obiectio IV. The process and open theism of Hartshorne might object that modeling presupposes static ontology and determinate truth conditions, but God and creation exist in dynamic relation. If the divine reality itself is temporal and evolving, theological models that aim for determinate truth are conceptually obsolete. Truth in theology should be relational and open-ended, not formalized and fixed.

Obiectio V. Postmodern constructivism, e.g., Jean-François Lyotard and Mark C. Taylor argues that all models are human constructs reflecting power, history, and language. Theological “models” therefore reveal only the imagination of believers, not divine reality. There is no metalanguage of truth, only competing narratives. To speak of Spirit-grounded modeling is to mask human construction in theological authority.

Responsiones

Ad I. Logical positivism’s verification principle undermines itself, being neither analytic nor empirically verifiable. Theological models, by contrast, are truth-apt within the ontological domain established by revelation. They are not empirical hypotheses but formal articulations of divine causality and participation. Truth here is not observational but metaphysical—an adequation between language and the divine act of being. The Spirit secures this adequation by constituting reference: the link between the finite symbol and the infinite reality it signifies.

Ad II. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but not its referential depth. The Church’s grammar is Spirit-constituted, not self-enclosed. Modeling theology does not abandon grammar; it explicates how grammatical felicity opens onto truth.
Theological statements are true not merely because the community authorizes them but because the Spirit interprets them into ontological reality. Modeling thus bridges communal coherence (felicity) and divine correspondence (truth).

Ad III. Analytic realism is correct in affirming propositional truth, but theological propositions derive their meaning from participation, not mere correspondence. Model-theoretic structure preserves formal rigor while accommodating the transcendence of its referent.
Revelation supplies the data; modeling orders it logically and ontologically. Truth in theology is not confined to human inference but extends to divine causation: the Spirit ensures that models do not merely describe revelation but participate in its act.

Ad IV. Process theology rightly emphasizes relationality, but divine relationality is not temporal becoming; it is the eternal act of self-communication. The Spirit’s causality is continuous, not evolutionary.
Theological models do not freeze divine life into static concepts; they describe stable relations of participation within the dynamic plenitude of God. Truth in theology remains determinate because God’s being is faithful—unchanging in love though living in relation.

Ad V. Postmodern constructivism exposes the finitude of all discourse, but theology interprets this finitude as the very site of divine communication. The Spirit’s presence does not negate historical contingency but transfigures it.Theological models are indeed human in form, yet divine in authorization. Their truth is pneumatic: God speaks in and through finite structures of meaning.To deny all meta-language is itself a meta-linguistic claim; theological realism acknowledges limitation without surrendering truth. The Spirit makes human language capable of transcendence.

Nota

Modeling theology is the grammar of divine realism. It allows theology to speak truthfully of God without collapsing into empiricism or fideism. Each formal model M interprets the language of faith within an ontological environment of participation, where the believer’s predicates correspond to divine correlates:

D_G → D, where D_G denotes a divine property (e.g., goodness in God) and D its participated correlate in the believer.

This relation, mediated by the Spirit, ensures that theology’s language does not float above reality but is anchored in divine causation. Hence, modeling is not speculative construction but a mode of communion: the structured correspondence of word and being within divine speech itself.

The Church, as communitas interpretans, lives within this modeling process. Its doctrine, liturgy, and confession are the Spirit’s ongoing interpretation of divine truth into the finite forms of history.
Theology’s models thus evolve not by invention but by the Spirit’s continual translation of the one Word into ever-new horizons of intelligibility.

In this sense, the entire economy of revelation can be described as a divine modeling of truth in time — the Word becoming flesh, history, and sacrament.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Modeling in theology is the Spirit’s act of relating faith’s language T to divine being, rendering it true through participation.

2. Theological truth is participatory, not merely representational: the model is a locus of communion between finite meaning and infinite reality.

3. The multiplicity of models reflects the analogical fullness of divine truth, not its relativism.

4. The Spirit mediates all modeling, ensuring coherence between felicity (right speaking) and truth (real being).

5. Theology thus achieves realism without idolatry: its words do not replace God but share in His communication.

Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

On the Relation between Theological Truth and Felicity

Inter veritatem et felicitatem theologica non est confusio neque separatio. Felicitas est forma Spiritus qua sermo fit idoneus ad dicendum de Deo; veritas est effectus ontologicus eiusdem Spiritus, quo quod dicitur vere est. Utrumque est opus unius Spiritus in duobus ordinibus: verbi et entis.

Between theological truth and felicity there is neither confusion nor separation. Felicity is the form given by the Spirit whereby speech becomes rightly ordered toward God; truth is the ontological effect of that same Spirit, by which what is spoken truly is. Both are the work of one Spirit operating in two orders: the order of word and the order of being.

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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

“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.” — Isaiah 55:11

Here Scripture joins felicity and truth in a single divine act. God’s word is felicitous because it can rightly be spoken by Him; it is true because it brings into being 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, corresponding 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 — 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

Obiectio 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.

Obiectio 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.

Obiectio 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.

Obiectio 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.

Disputatio III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis

On the Holy Spirit and the Boundary of Felicity

Spiritus Sanctus est ille qui determinat fines sermonis theologicis, discernens inter locutiones quae intra linguam fidei (T) feliciter cadunt et eas quae extra eam iacent. Finis felicitas non est defectus, sed confessio quod sermo de Deo manet in gratia eius dependens.

The Holy Spirit determines the boundaries of theological speech, discerning between utterances that fall felicitously within the language of faith T and those that lie beyond it. This boundary of felicity is not a defect but a confession that all speech about God remains dependent upon grace.

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Thesis

The Holy Spirit is the formal and causal condition for theological felicity; it is the divine source by which expressions are included within or excluded from the language of faith. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse: it authorizes what can be said rightly, and by that very act, defines what cannot.

Locus classicus

“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” — 1 Corinthians 12:3

Saint Paul reminds us that even the simplest confession of faith is not a human achievement but a divine act. True speech about God depends upon the Spirit who enables it; theology’s grammar is itself pneumatological.

Thesis

The Holy Spirit is the formal and causal condition for theological felicity; it is the divine source by which expressions are included within or excluded from the language of faith. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse: it authorizes what can be said rightly, and by that very act, defines what cannot.

Explicatio

In the previous Disputationes, theology was described first as a language T and then as interpreted through models that connect it to being. But not only does every language require grammar and meaning, it requires authorization as well. Someone must say when speech is fit to be uttered.

In theology, that authorizing agent is not the Church alone, nor is it human reason. It is the Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit, who determines which expressions belong within T, the Church’s living language of faith.

When we speak of felicity, we mean the condition under which a statement can be rightly spoken in the Spirit. In formal terms, we call these the felicity conditions of T, written FT. These include internal order (logical consistency, coherence, and entailment) and external authorization (the Spirit’s activity discerned through Scripture, confession, and ecclesial life).

The Spirit thus functions as the boundary condition of theology. Like a grammatical rule that both permits and prohibits, the Spirit allows speech that participates in divine life and excludes speech that contradicts it.

To say that theology has a finitude of felicity is to acknowledge that its authorized speech, though real and truthful, nonetheless remains partial. No expression in T exhausts divine truth, for the Spirit never ceases to exceed the words He inspires.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Karl Barth and other revelation theologians maintain that the act of divine self-disclosure is infinite in origin and scope. To speak of a finite felicity of the Spirit’s operation is to divide the one act of revelation into infinite and finite parts, reducing divine grace to creaturely measure. If the Spirit is truly God, then His activity cannot be characterized as finite without denying His divinity.

Obiectio II. Immanuel Kant would argue that felicity, insofar as it implies union with the divine, cannot be an object of theoretical knowledge. Human reason is bounded by phenomena; divine reality remains noumenal and inaccessible. “Theological felicity” can therefore be at most a moral or regulative idea, guiding action but not describing an ontological state wrought by the Spirit.

Obiectio III. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein, felicity pertains to the successful performance of language within a given form of life. To call a theological utterance “felicitous” means that it fits the grammar of the believing community. Finitude and infinitude are grammatical categories, not metaphysical ones. The Spirit adds nothing beyond the community’s own rule-governed practices of meaning.

Obiectio IV. From a Hegelian standpoint, Spirit (Geist) is infinite self-consciousness realizing itself through the overcoming of finitude. If the Holy Spirit is truly Spirit, then its work in human life must sublate finitude rather than affirm it. To insist on the “finitude of felicity” is to arrest the dialectical movement of Spirit toward the Absolute, leaving theology mired in limitation and incompleteness.

Responsiones

Ad I. The Spirit’s operation is infinite in essence but finite in mode. The same act that is infinite in God becomes finite in the creature through the very generosity of divine condescension. Finitude here does not denote defect but form—the determinate condition under which the infinite communicates itself. The Spirit’s work is not measured by human limits but expressed through them. The finitude of felicity is the medium by which divine reality becomes communicable and effective within history.

Ad II. Kant’s critique of speculative reason rightly identifies the limits of human cognition, yet theology does not seek theoretical knowledge of God but participation in divine communication. Felicity is not a concept but an event: the Spirit’s act of rendering finite speech and understanding proportionate to divine truth. Within this act, finitude becomes the very space of grace. The theological subject remains bounded, but those bounds are filled with divine presence; the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

Ad III. Wittgenstein correctly locates felicity within the use of language, but he omits its ontological ground. The Church’s grammar is not self-originating; it is constituted and sustained by the Spirit’s act. The felicity of theological language is thus not merely communal correctness but pneumatological authorization. A sentence is felicitous not because the Church says so but because the Spirit speaks through it. Finitude here names not the limit of meaning but the site where divine meaning takes flesh in human words.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic perceives rightly that Spirit and finitude are related, but wrongly that their relation can be expressed as sublation. The Holy Spirit does not abolish finitude but indwells it. The infinite does not return into itself through the finite; it abides with the finite as love. The finitude of felicity thus expresses the perfection proper to creaturely participation—the creature remains itself yet becomes radiant with divine life. Spirit’s infinity is shown not by transcending finitude but by transforming it into communion.

Nota

The distinction between inclusion and exclusion in T may be described symbolically as T_in and T_out.

• T_in designates those expressions that the Spirit renders felicitous, language consistent with Scripture, creed, and the ongoing life of the Church.

• T_out refers to expressions that fail these tests, either through contradiction, incoherence, or lack of spiritual authorization.

This symbolic division simply formalizes what theologians have always practiced in discernment. The Spirit is both the “grammar” and the “breath” of theology: grammar, because He gives order; breath, because He gives life.

To put it differently, the Spirit is the condition of theological intelligibility. Without Him, theology would become a dead syntax,  correct perhaps in structure but devoid of life. With Him, speech about God becomes participation in the very life it names.

Thus, the finitude of felicity marks theology’s humility. It confesses that human language, even when sanctified, cannot contain the infinite. The Spirit authorizes theology’s words and simultaneously guards them from presumption.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The Holy Spirit is the divine ground of theological felicity; He is the One who renders certain expressions speakable within faith.

2. The Spirit’s authorization has both internal criteria (coherence, consistency, right entailment) and external criteria (Scriptural consonance, ecclesial reception, discernible fruits).

3. The boundary of felicity is not a limitation imposed from without but the inner grace by which human speech remains ordered to God.

4. To say that theology is finite in felicity is to acknowledge that its language, though true, is never exhaustive of divine mystery.

5. The Spirit’s dual act of including and excluding establishes theology’s form as a living language: finite in utterance, infinite in source.

Tolerance, Commitment and the Lutheran Ethos

Forty years ago when I was farming in northwest Iowa, a farmer friend announced that the famous University of Chicago religion scholar Martin Marty was going to be speaking seventy miles away in Orange City, and he wondered if we might not want to go and hear him.  Although I had not heard of Martin Marty back then, I could not pass up the opportunity to go to Orange City.  As I recall, Marty was speaking on the general theme of tolerance and commitment, and telling us that mature faith possesses both.   My friend Doug challenged professor Marty after the lecture:  "Dr. Marty, I found your presentation very stimulating, but remain unconvinced.  My own observations suggest that the more committed people are religiously the less tolerant they are, and the more tolerant they are, the less committed they are."

I recall that Martin Marty looked at my friend rather sadly, as if Doug had showed up for card night without knowing how to play.  "That is not the way it works," he reiterated, "it is precisely in tolerance that one is most deeply committed."  He uttered many other wise things as well, but I don't recall how anything he said provided warrant for the widely-propagated view that religious tolerance and commitment are profoundly compatible.

Of course, being good Americans in the early twenty-first century, most of us naturally pay lip-service not only to the compatibility of tolerance and commitment, but also to their direct direct proportionality.  We Americans love our story.  After all, America was founded on religious freedom, a freedom from compulsion to a particular religion so that one had greater freedom to practice one's chosen religion. 

It was a great experiment, this founding of America.  Could a country endure that tolerated many different religions, that rejected the assumption of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia: cuius regio, eius religio ("whose realm, his religion")?  If Tillich is right and religion pertains to ultimate concern, then how is it possible for people with different -- sometimes radically different -- ultimate concerns to come together and agree to be governed?  Far better, it would seem, the traditional view where the ruler and the ruled share the same ultimate commitment.  But America not only survived, it thrived.  Apparently people with different ultimate concerns can live together without compromising those concerns!  So it is that we learn in America that it is precisely within the context of overarching tolerance that commitment is most deeply possible.

I remember thinking at the time, however, that Doug's question was a good one, and that the famed Dr. Marty had taken it rather too lightly.  (We often underestimate the strength of challenges to our assumptions.)  Perhaps Martin Marty was living so deeply in his religious tradition that he did not see the problem.  How exactly does one continue to assert the truth of one's own tradition, allow others to assert the truth of their own, and not run into fundamental conflict?  How does one do this if the truth about which one is concerned is ultimate? 

My days on the farm was a time in my life that I was very interested in the question of religious truth.  I puzzled a great deal over the question of how two or more religions might be true at the same time.  I was a pretty tolerant guy in those days, and it did not come naturally to me to think that my Lutheran truth-claims were mostly all true, and those of Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims almost all false.  Why would I be given the requisite epistemic priority to know the true, when those far more serious than I were not afforded the same? 

So assuming that contrary religious claims might be conjointly true, what would it be by virtue of which they could be conjointly true?  While I was thinking such thoughts in 1978, I admit I did not know anyone in my farming community except Doug who thought that supposed contrary statements about God's properties and relations could somehow be conjointly true.  Every Lutheran I knew thought that either God created the universe in six days or did not do so, that either Jesus was born of a virgin or was not so born, and that either Jesus the Christ was the only way to the Father or was not the only way. 

Later in my life I would ask undergraduate students this question: "If two people disagree on what is true, must one of them be wrong?"  In the middle 1980s when I started my college teaching career most students said "yes," but by 2010 when I was finishing my tenure of university teaching they were saying, "no."  Perhaps in the 1980s the few students saying "no" were thinking about philosophical or religious "truth."  (Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder in aesthetics, truth is in the mind of the conceiver in philosophy or theology.)  However, by 2010 students were assuming a much more expansive domain of putative truths, a domain that included the historical, scientific and even the mathematical.  Be that as it may, if my college students in the late 1980s could think that contrary religious claims might be conjointly true, perhaps it was possible in a northwest Iowa farming community a decade earlier. 

There are two ways, I believe, of conceiving the relationship between tolerance and commitment.  The first is one that the American founding fathers could embrace.  One must be tolerant of contrary claims in areas where one's epistemic limitations are the most pronounced.  Since one cannot know that 'x is true', one must be tolerant of those claiming, 'it is false that x is true'.  Such epistemic tolerance, however, is thoroughly compatible with the belief that 'x is true'.  One can be deeply committed to the truth of a claim without knowing that the belief is true.  Epistemic tolerance of x is clearly compatible with an existential commitment to ~x.  Accordingly, tolerance of another's claims of truth is the proper attitude to adopt when realizing one's epistemic limitations, but commitment to one's own beliefs is, however, proper, honorable and courageous.  After all, not to be committed to one's own beliefs is to live inauthentically, is to live in a way that does not own one's beliefs.  (I am thinking of Heidegger's Eigenlichtkeit or "ownmostness.")  

Doug and Dr. Marty would not, however, likely have affirmed this relatively traditional interpretation of the compatibility of tolerance and commitment.  Both were quite aware of the intellectual and cultural horizon of the 1970s, a horizon that increasingly understood religious assertions as statements of value and not of fact.  Accordingly, tolerance in things religious is assured because there is no way in principle for religious language to state what is the case apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, and thus there is no facile way for its claims to come into conflict.  Religious language (and most theological language) reports, expresses or recommends one's own psychological or existential states; it does not describe a divine realm existing on its own apart from us.  Since such language pertains to human experience, every attempt to state that another's religious affirmations are false is an act of prejudice. Who can rightly say that my religious affirmations, grounded as they are in my experience, are false?  If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so too must the truths of religion be only in the ears and eyes of its hearers and readers. 

Unfortunately, this view of things, though great for tolerance, presents deep problems for commitment.  If I know that my affirmation of x is a statement of value, and I know that your affirmation of ~x is a statement of value, then since values are neither true nor false, upon what grounds can one be rightly committed to to x rather than ~x?  Lamentably, the search for grounds for values succeeds only in uncovering other values.  (No matter how hard I have tried, I have never been able to derive an "ought" from an "is.")  Are not the deep values of the grounds simply another statement of commitment?  (I am committed to feeding the hungry because I value -- I am committed to -- feeding the hungry.) 

Simply put, if the warranted assertibility of religious utterances is ultimately subjective, then why be committed to the particularity of their assertion when times become difficult?  While one might die for truth, does one really die for value?  (I am not saying that one might not die for the truth of a value.)  Polycarp (69-155) was burned alive rather than renounce faith in Christ.  Clearly, the great man died because he was convinced of the truth of Christ, not the value Christ had for him.

Doug's question was sophisticated in the way of the medieval question of whether or not God could make a rock so heavy that He could not lift it.  Doug was asking this: If one is tolerant in one's religious assertions, then one is clandestinely understanding these assertions as not have truth-conditions.  But why be committed to the assertion of a particular body of statements or the doing of a set of actions if there are no truth-conditions grounding the assertion of the statements or the doing of the actions?  Alternately, if one is committed to a set of assertions or a class of actions, then one is presupposing their truth, but if this is so then why be deeply tolerant of unjustified views at odds with those that one has good reason to regard as true?  Just as the property of making a rock so heavy that God can't lift it cannot properly be applied to God, so to the property of being deeply tolerant of contrary religious claims while be profoundly committed to one's own cannot properly be applied to late twentieth-century Christian believers, those no longer believing as did the Founding Fathers that tolerance pertains to epistemic humility with regard to the domain of religious fact. 

Dominant strands of Lutheran theology over the past 200 years have tended to downplay the idea that there exists a realm of theological facts independent of human awareness, perception, conception and language.  Kantian assumptions within theology departments at German universities undercut notions of divine substantiality and causality.  As European Lutheran theology hit American shores (particularly after World War II), and comingled with American assumptions about the fact/value distinction, a Lutheran theological ethos emerged that was disdainful of Lutheran Orthodoxy, particularly it's penchant to regard confessional and doctrinal statements as affirmations of theological fact.  The result was heightened tensions among Lutherans, a tension pertaining to both semantics and ontology. 

While conservative traditions like the Missouri and Wisconsin Synods continued to assume that there was some objective fact of the matter about which confessional and doctrinal statements were speaking truly, the precursor church bodies which became the ELCA began leaning towards an understanding of such language that connected more to human experience.  While the former thus understood tolerance as grounded in epistemic limitation, the latter came to see it as an affirmation of the particularity of the believer's cultural existence itself.  Tensions ran high, and it did not help when spokesman of the former sometimes suggested that the tolerance of epistemic humility was due to a willful abandonment of the objectivity of revelation.   Nor were tensions abated when the latter seemed to think that confessional and doctrinal affirmations somehow denied the authenticity of the theologian or preacher's voice, and that such affirmations simply strangled the believer's authentic religious life and practice. 

The Institute of Lutheran Theology emerged, in part, because it became time for there to be an institution that was both deeply sympathetic to the starting points of the various Lutheran traditions, and that understood these starting points within the broader historical and philosophical context.  It is time now that Lutherans talk seriously to each other.  It is time we think together the dialectic of tolerance and commitment, time we ask together how an affirmation of both is possible.  In so asking, we shall undoubtedly learn a great deal more about ourselves.  Such learning is a very good thing, for it is time that we dialogue with each other in a spirit of tolerance and commitment, a spirit that shall take the truth claims of all partners seriously, while adjudicating conflicting truth claims within an ethos of epistemic humility.