On the Form of the Logos as the Principle of Intelligibility
Quaeritur
Utrum forma Logi sit principium intelligibilitatis omnium divinorum actuum, ita ut omnis divina operatio sit cognoscibilis solum quia informatur a Logō; et quomodo haec informatio non solvat simplicitatem divinam neque introducat abstractionem supra vitam Trinitatis.
Whether the form of the Logos constitutes the principle of intelligibility for all divine acts, such that every divine operation is knowable only because it has its determinate form in the Logos; and how this does not compromise divine simplicity nor introduce an abstraction standing above the life of the Trinity.
Thesis
The Logos is not merely the interpreter of divine action nor a medium through which intelligibility flows. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility itself. Every divine act is intelligible because its act-form subsists in the Logos. There is no higher principle of order, no abstract structure, no metaphysical category that conditions God’s intelligibility from without.
The form of the Logos is therefore both metaphysically constitutive and epistemically foundational: constitutive because all divine action is structurally what it is in and as the Logos; foundational because creatures know divine action only by participation in this Logos-formed intelligibility.
Thus intelligibility is neither imposed upon God nor constructed by creatures. It is the radiance of the divine act as it subsists in the eternal Word.
Locus Classicus
John 1:18
ὁ μονογενὴς Θεὸς… ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.
“The only-begotten God… He has made Him known.”
The Logos is the exegesis of God, not by reporting but by being the intelligible form of divine life.
Colossians 1:16–17
τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται… καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε.
“All things were created through Him and for Him… and in Him all things hold together.”
Creation’s intelligibility depends on the Logos’ inner structural sufficiency.
Athanasius, Contra Arianos II.22
ὁ Λόγος μορφὴ τοῦ Πατρός ἐστιν.
“The Word is the form of the Father.”
Luther, WA 40 III, 64
Christus est ratio et forma omnium promissionum.
“Christ is the reason and form of all promises.”
Divine intelligibility is Christologically concentrated.
Explicatio
1. Intelligibility cannot arise from creaturely or abstract conditions
Theological modernity has sometimes treated intelligibility as a category external to God—a structure into which God must “fit” to be known. This misconstrues both metaphysics and revelation. Intelligibility is not a transcendental horizon that precedes God; neither is it a human conceptual framework imposed upon divine action.
To posit intelligibility as an abstract form above God would be to posit a metaphysical genus under which God falls. This violates the categorical dualism of Creator and creature and implicitly denies divine simplicity.
Therefore: whatever intelligibility divine acts possess must arise from within the divine life itself.
2. The Logos as the constitutive form of divine intelligibility
Following Disputatio LV, where divine intention and divine act were shown to be one in the Logos, we now articulate the deeper structure: Every divine act is intelligible because its form subsists in the Logos as its constitutive intelligibility.
This means:
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The Logos is not the representation of divine operations.
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The Logos is their formal principle, their internal determination.
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The Logos is not a cognitive filter applied by creatures but the intrinsic ground by which divine actions can be known at all.
Intelligibility is therefore ontological before it is epistemological. In classical terms: the forma logica of divine action is simply the Logos Himself, the eternal articulation of the Father’s being.
3. Intelligibility and divine simplicity
This view preserves simplicity rather than threatens it. For if God were intelligible by a form other than the Logos, God would be composite: essence + form, act + structure. But Scripture and tradition affirm that the Word is eternally “with God” and “is God.” Therefore the form that makes God’s act intelligible is not added to God but is God.
The Logos is the divine act in its intelligible articulation. This articulation is one with the being of God, not an abstraction above it.
4. Creaturely knowledge as participation in Logos-formed intelligibility
Creaturely knowledge of God, then, is not a climb toward divine essence nor a projection of human concepts onto divinity. It is the Spirit-enabled participation in the intelligibility that already inheres in the Logos.
The Spirit does not produce intelligibility; the Spirit grants access to intelligibility already constituted in the Logos. Thus every act of divine revelation—Scripture, sacrament, promise—is not merely information but participation in the Logos’ intelligible form.
What creatures perceive as “revelation” is nothing other than the Logos donating His own act-form to them.
5. Rejection of merely linguistic or postliberal construals
Some modern theologies, especially postliberal ones, treat intelligibility as a function of the ecclesial grammar that governs Christian discourse. But grammar without metaphysical anchor cannot disclose divine act. It only regulates human speech.
The intelligibility of theology must be anchored in the Logos or it becomes circular, self-referential, and finally empty. Revelation is not the community’s speech about God; it is God’s act made knowable because the Logos is its form.
Objectiones
Ob I. If intelligibility is located in the Logos, we introduce a second-level structure in God, undermining simplicity.
Ob II. If all intelligibility is in the Logos, the Father and Spirit become unintelligible except through the Son—an implicit subordinationism.
Ob III. Intelligibility is a creaturely category; to attribute it to God is anthropomorphism.
Ob IV. Intelligibility in the Logos suggests determination of divine acts, jeopardizing divine freedom.
Ob V. Postliberal theology denies that intelligibility is metaphysical; it is purely linguistic.
Responsiones
Ad I. No second-level structure is introduced. The Logos is God; therefore no composition arises. Intelligibility is not an attribute added to God but the radiance of divine act.
Ad II. The knowledge of God is indeed through the Son, but this is not subordination. It is Johannine metaphysics. The Son is the exegesis of the Father, and the Spirit grants participation. Each person is known personally in the one divine act.
Ad III. Creaturely intelligibility is a participation in divine intelligibility, not its source. Anthropomorphism arises only when creatures impose structures on God; we instead receive intelligibility from God.
Ad IV. Determination in the Logos is not constraint. It is the fullness of divine act in its eternal articulation. Freedom is the plentitude of act, not the absence of form.
Ad V. Grammar without ontology cannot speak of God. The Logos grounds all theological grammar by grounding the very acts theology names.
Nota
To say that the Logos is the principle of intelligibility is to say that divine truth is not a construction, approximation, or regulative ideal. It is the self-articulation of God’s own life. Theology’s intelligibility, then, is not a human achievement but a gift: the Spirit draws creatures into the Logos’ articulation of divine being.
This is why theology cannot begin with epistemology. It must begin with Christology. Knowledge of God is grounded not in the capacities of the knower but in the intelligible form of the One who acts and gives Himself to be known.
Determinatio
We therefore determine:
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Intelligibility is not an external condition to which God conforms but an internal articulation of God’s act in the Logos.
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The Logos is the constitutive form of all divine action; nothing God does is without this form.
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Creaturely knowledge of God is participation in the Logos by the Spirit’s donation.
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This view preserves divine simplicity, avoids abstraction, and grounds theological realism.
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No theological statement (Tₜ) can be true unless grounded in the Logos-constituted act that Λ ⊨* Tₜ specifies.
Transitus ad Disputationem LVII
Having established that the Logos is the condition of intelligibility for all divine action, we now consider how this intelligibility becomes efficacious in creaturely life. If intelligibility is constituted in the Logos, it is communicated through the Spirit’s act of illumination.
Thus we proceed to Disputatio LVII: De Spiritu Ut Luminatore Intelligibilitatis, where we examine how the Spirit grants creatures access to the intelligible structure of divine act without reducing revelation to cognition or collapsing knowledge into mere conceptuality.
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Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem
Q1. You say that the Logos is the constitutive form of all divine action. Yet the term ‘form’ can be elusive. What exactly is meant here?
Responsio
The term form is not employed in its Aristotelian sense as an intrinsic constituent of a composed substance, nor in the Kantian sense of a subjective structuring condition. Rather, by form I mean the intelligible principle that makes an act the act it is. Every act must possess an internal principle of specification if it is to be identified as a distinct act. Divine action requires the same.
The Logos is the subsisting intelligibility of God. It is through the Son that divine agency is articulate rather than opaque, intelligible rather than merely asserted. To call the Logos the constitutive form of divine action is to say that divine acts have their identity through the one who makes God’s intentionality expressible. Without this, the category of divine action loses its internal criterion. It becomes a projection rather than an intelligible feature of God’s life.
Q2. Should this be understood as a grounding claim, a truthmaker claim, or something else?
Responsio.
It is best understood as a hyperintensional individuation thesis. Grounding and truthmaking presuppose that the relata already possess stable identity. My concern here precedes both. Before one can ask what grounds a divine act or what makes a proposition about divine action true, one must know what makes a divine act identifiable.
The Logos supplies this. It is the principle that secures the fine grained identity conditions of divine action. Once divine acts are intelligibly individuated, questions of grounding or truthmaking can arise. But the individuation of divine agency is logically prior, and that is what the claim addresses.
Q3. Does positing an eternal form for divine action entail modal collapse or eternalism?
Responsio.
No. An identity condition does not entail necessity. The fact that the Logos eternally provides the intelligible form of divine action does not imply that God must actualize any particular action. It means only that whenever God does act, the identity of that act will be articulated through the Son.
Thus the world’s history remains contingent and freely willed. Its intelligibility is eternal, because God is eternal, but its actuality belongs entirely to divine freedom. No eternalist picture is required. There is an eternal form of divine agency because God is eternally intelligible. But the exercise of divine agency takes place freely within the temporal economy.
Q4. Does this risk collapsing divine action into divine conceptualism, reducing divine acts to internal mental events?
Responsio.
No. Conceptualism arises only if one regards the Logos as a divine idea. But the Logos is not a concept. The Logos is a person. As the personal intelligibility of God, the Son is the one through whom God acts in creation. Thus the form of divine action is not conceptual but personal and causal.
Divine action is individuated in God but enacted in the world. The intelligibility that specifies divine action and the causality that accomplishes divine action coincide in the Logos. This unity prevents conceptualism. Divine actions are not mental episodes within God but the personal acts of God who reveals himself through the very structure that makes his acts knowable.
Nota Finalis
In this disputation we have asked how divine action can be intelligible without reducing God to a creaturely agent or dissolving divine agency into mere effects. The analytic questions press precisely on the point where intelligibility and transcendence meet. They reveal that the specification of divine action must lie within God and yet cannot remain a purely inward matter. The Logos answers this requirement. The Son is the one in whom divine agency is articulate for us and the one through whom divine agency is enacted toward us. These questions therefore serve not to complicate the Determinatio but to show its inner coherence: divine action is intelligible because God is intelligible, and God is intelligible because the Logos is God’s own self articulation.
