Disputatio LXI: De Providentia Speciali et Revelatione in Eventibus Particularibus

 On Special Providence and Revelation in Particular Events

Quaeritur

Utrum providentia specialis designet modum quo voluntas divina manifestatur in eventibus particularibus, ita ut eventus isti non sint merae contingentiae temporales sed loci in quibus Logos intentionaliter agit; et quomodo haec particularis manifestatio non confundat causam divinam et creatam nec redigat revelationem ad interpretationem humanam.

Whether special providence designates the mode by which the divine will manifests itself in particular events, such that these events are not mere temporal contingencies but loci where the Logos intentionally acts; and how such particular manifestation neither confuses divine and creaturely causality nor reduces revelation to human interpretation.

Thesis

Special providence is the enactment of divine intention within determinate historical events. It is not an intrusion upon natural processes nor an alternative causal chain. It is the Logos’ intentional ordering of specific occurrences so that they bear the form of divine act. Such events become revelatory when the Spirit illumines them as manifestations of divine purpose.

Special providence does not violate creaturely freedom, for it operates at the level of constitutive intelligibility, not at the level of coercive determination. Nor does it collapse into general providence, for it concerns the particular specification of divine agency within concrete history. Thus special providence is the personal articulation of divine intention within the temporal order.

Locus Classicus

Genesis 50:20
Vos cogitastis de me malum, Deus autem cogitavit in bonum.
“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

A single event bears two intentions without competition.

Acts 17:26–27
ἐποίησέν τε ἐξ ἑνὸς πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων κατοικεῖν ἐπὶ παντὸς προσώπου τῆς γῆς,
ὁρίσας προστεταγμένους καιροὺς καὶ τὰς ὁροθεσίας τῆς κατοικίας αὐτῶν,
ζητεῖν τὸν Θεόν, εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὕροιεν,
καί γε οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα. 

"He made from one every nation of humankind to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God."

Luther, WA 10 III, 35
Deus gubernat omnia non solum in universali, sed in particulari.
“God governs all things not only in general but in particular.”

Explicatio

1. Special providence is not a narrower form of general providence

General providence concerns the constitutive order of all things: the intelligibility of history and the sustaining power of the Logos. Special providence concerns the specific articulation of divine intention within determinate events. To use an image: general providence is the grammar of history; special providence is the sentence God speaks within it. Thus, special providence is not a separate kind of causation but a more determinate mode of divine intentionality operating within the field general providence provides.

2. A particular event becomes revelatory when illumined

Every event possesses its own creaturely causal history. Special providence does not abolish this but brings it into relation with divine intentionality. An event becomes revelatory not because a different kind of cause appears but because the Spirit grants the event to be perceived according to its deeper meaning in the Logos. Thus revelation is not a doubling of events but an unveiling of the intention that grounds them. Accordingly, the Red Sea crossing, the call of Abraham, the Damascus road encounter: each is a historical occurrence whose revelatory character derives from divine intentionality perceived under illumination.

3. Special providence does not negate creaturely agency

A single event can bear both divine and creaturely intentions without contradiction because:

• divine intention grounds the event’s being and meaning,

• creaturely intention grounds its moral and temporal content.

Joseph’s brothers intend evil. God intends good. These intentions coexist because divine intentionality does not operate on the same causal register as creaturely intention. God does not coerce their act; he situates its meaning within the broader narrative of salvation.This is neither compatibilism nor libertarianism, but enjoins a participatory causality.

4. Special providence is intelligible only within a participatory ontology

If divine and creaturely causes occupy the same plane, special providence becomes indistinguishable from determinism or interventionism. But when the Logos is understood as the intelligible ground of all finite processes, special providence becomes the specification of divine intention within a concrete finite form. Thus natural and divine causes do not compete. Divine action sustains natural causality even as it uses it. Luther’s language of God working “in and under” events reflects this metaphysical layering.

5. Revelation arises from divine act, not human interpretation

Special providence does not depend on human judgment. An event is revelatory because God acts, not because humans discern divine action. Illumination grants recognition but does not constitute the divine act. Thus the subjectivism of purely hermeneutical or postliberal models is avoided. What God does is real even before it is recognized. Interpretation follows illumination; illumination follows divine intention; and divine intention grounds the event.

Objectiones

Ob I. If special providence identifies divine intention in particular events, how can one distinguish revelation from coincidence?

Ob II. If God intends specific events, does this not collapse creaturely freedom?

Ob III. If revelation arises from illumination, is it not subjective

Ob IV. If God orders particular events, is God then responsible for evil?

Ob V. Special providence seems indistinguishable from miracle. Are they the same?

Responsiones

Ad I. Coincidence is a name for events lacking perceived intelligibility. Special providence is the intentional grounding of events by the Logos. Recognition requires illumination, but the reality does not depend on recognition.

Ad II. Divine intention provides the possibility and meaning of the event, not the moral content of the creaturely act. Freedom determines intention; providence establishes context. One does not negate the other.

Ad III. Illumination grants the truth of revelation to be known. It does not create the truth. Revelation is objective in divine act and participatory in creaturely apprehension.

Ad IV. God sustains the event as event but does not intend the creature’s evil. Providence orders evil toward good without causing the evil itself. The defect arises from the creature; the ordering arises from God.

Ad V. Miracle suspends ordinary natural processes. Special providence works through them. Both reveal God; they differ in mode, not in reality of divine action.

Nota

Special providence is the concrete specification of divine intentionality in history. It is not occasionalism, for it preserves creaturely agency; nor is it deism, for it recognizes divine presence in every event. It reveals God as the one whose eternal will becomes manifest in time without violence to freedom or nature.

This is theological realism: God acts, and events bear the form of that act.

Determinatio

We determine:

Special providence is the particular manifestation of divine intention in concrete historical events.
It does not abolish creaturely causality but situates it within divine purpose. Revelation in specific events arises from the Logos’ ordering and the Spirit’s illumination. Thus special providence is neither determinism nor hermeneutic projection. It is divine action in the concrete.

Transitus ad Disputationem LXII

Having shown that divine intention becomes manifest in particular events, we now turn to the event in which divine intention and creaturely nature are united in the most intimate form: the incarnation. For Christ is not merely a revelatory event but the ontological union of God and man.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio LXII: De Communicatione Idiomatum et Ontologia Participationis.

Disputatio LV: De Intentione Divina et Identitate Actuum in Deo

On Divine Intention and the Identity of God’s Acts

Quaeritur

Utrum intentiones divinae sint ipsi actus divini secundum rationem essendi, an potius principia actuum; et quomodo unitas intentionis et actus in ipso Logō constituatur sine confusione personarum vel collapsu distinctionum operum.

Whether divine intentions are themselves divine acts in their ground of being, or whether they should be understood as principles preceding divine acts; and how the unity of intention and act is constituted in the Logos without confusing the persons or collapsing the distinctions among divine operations.

Thesis

Divine intention is not a condition that precedes action, nor a preparatory state within God. Intention in God is itself a divine act. To distinguish the two, even conceptually, would introduce sequence or internal differentiation into the divine life and thereby undermine divine simplicity.

Divine intention and divine act are therefore identical in being but distinguished in their formal orientation: one names God’s act as it is understood in relation to God’s inner life, the other names that same act as it is directed toward creatures. This unity is constituted in the Logos, in whom all divine action is intelligible, and it is donated to creatures by the Spirit, who grants participation in the concrete act that God is performing.

Thus, the identity of intention and act is neither a collapse into unipersonalism nor a fragmentation of God’s work. It is the form of divine agency itself.

Locus Classicus

1. Isaiah 55:11
   לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם
   “My word shall not return to me empty.”

Here intention (my word) and act (it accomplishes) are indivisible. The divine Word is the performing.

2. John 1:3
   καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν
   “Without Him nothing came to be.”

The Logos is not merely the instrument of intention but its operative identity.

3. Maximus Confessor, Ambigua 7
   ἡ θεία πρόθεσις ἔργον ἐστίν.
   “The divine intention is an act.”

Maximus explicitly identifies intention and act, distinguishing them only by their tropos of manifestation.

4. Luther, WA 40 I, 360
   Deus operatur, dum loquitur.
   “God acts in speaking.”

In God, intention (speaking) and operation (acting) are metaphysically identical.

Explicatio

1. Why created intention does not illuminate divine intention

In creaturely agency, intention precedes action. A human being entertains possibilities, evaluates alternatives, forms a plan, and then carries it out. Intention and action are therefore distinguishable stages within a temporal process, and each stage has psychological and deliberative elements appropriate to finite agents.

None of this applies to God. To speak of a divine “intention” that is not already identical with divine action introduces a conceptual gap into God’s life. Such a gap implies sequence, potentiality, or unrealized form—all of which are incompatible with divine simplicity. Any model that treats intention as a prior state that makes action possible inadvertently imposes creaturely categories on God. It mistakes the internal life of the Trinity for a process analogous to human deliberation. This obscures the nature of divine action rather than clarifying it.

Thus, in theology we must reject accounts of intention that retain even a faint shadow of psychological or modal priority. They cannot describe a God who is pure act.

2. Intention as formal act in the Logos

If intention cannot stand before action, the alternative is not to remove the concept but to understand it correctly. Divine intention is the act-form of God’s own acting. When we speak of God’s intending, we speak of the internal form of an act as it exists in the Logos.

Because the Logos is the constitutive ground of divine intelligibility, every divine act has its determinate form in the Logos. That form is not something separate from the act itself; it is the act in its intelligible structure. Thus “intention” names the act as it exists in the Logos, and “action” names that same form as it is directed toward creatures. These are two relational orientations of the same divine reality, not two stages or components.

This distinction is not an embellishment but a necessity: it allows us to explain how divine acts are both one in God and manifold toward creatures without collapsing either level into the other.

3. How the Spirit donates the unity of intention and act

The Spirit’s work makes this unity available to creatures. The Spirit does not donate a general divine favor or a generic presence. Rather, the Spirit donates the specific act that God is performing—God’s forgiving, consoling, sanctifying, or indwelling here and now.

Because the Spirit’s donation is always of a concrete and particular act, the divine intention behind that act must itself be concretely and particularly formed. The Spirit cannot give what is not already determinate in God. This specificity presupposes a hyperintensional divine life in which acts are distinguishable by their internal form, even when their effects coincide.

Thus, divine intention and divine act remain united in God but are given to creatures according to the Spirit’s donation of the act-form appropriate to them in that moment.

4. The Trinity and the identity of intentions

It may seem that identifying intention with act risks eliminating Trinitarian distinctions. But the opposite is the case: it protects them. If we treat intention as a pre-act located in the Father, action as the execution of the Son, and application as the work of the Spirit, we create a sequence of roles that mirrors creaturely agency. Classical theology rejects this.

What we must say is this: the same divine act-form exists in the one God, but it is known and given according to the personal modes of Father, Son, and Spirit. The Father’s willing is the Son’s acting is the Spirit’s donating—one act, fully divine, yet personally differentiated.

Thus, the unity of intention and act is theologically indispensable. Without it, the divine life becomes a chain of tasks distributed among persons; with it, we preserve both unity of being and distinction of persons.

Objectiones

Ob I. If intention and act are identical, then distinctions of divine willing become unintelligible.
Ob II. If intention is act, the Trinity collapses into a single operational subject.
Ob III. Classical Thomism teaches that God’s will is simple; therefore all intentions are one, and their individuation is a creaturely projection.
Ob IV. If intention is hyperintensional, this is merely linguistic, not metaphysical.
Ob V. Postliberal theology denies that divine intention bears metaphysical significance beyond ecclesial grammar.

Responsiones

Ad I. Distinctions remain at the level of the rationes formales of act—hyperintensional forms in the Logos—not at the level of temporal sequencing.

Ad II. The act-form is one, but the personal modes of intending/acting/donating remain irreducibly distinct. Unity does not imply unipersonality.

Ad III. Simplicity entails non-composition, not indistinction. The Fathers (Athanasius, Basil, Gregory) maintained simplicity while affirming real distinctions of operation.

Ad IV. Hyperintensionality is a metaphysical precision: it describes the identity of divine action, not the finesse of creaturely language.

Ad V. Grammar without metaphysical anchor collapses into self-reference. Divine intention grounds the community’s speech, not vice versa.

Nota

The theological implications follow directly. A God whose intentions are not identical with His acts would be a God who deliberates, evaluates, and chooses between unrealized options. This would make God’s inner life resemble that of creatures rather than the self-sufficient life of Father, Son, and Spirit.

By identifying intention and act, we preserve the immediacy of divine agency and the personal character of God’s deeds toward creatures. It is also what allows the Spirit to donate not abstractions but living realities: forgiveness, consolation, new life, and the presence of Christ.

The unity of intention and act is therefore not a speculative refinement. It is the metaphysical condition for understanding God as the one who acts personally and decisively for us.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. Divine intention is not a precursor to action but the act itself in its intelligible form.

2. This act-form is constituted in the Logos, who is the principle of divine intelligibility.

3. The Spirit donates this act-form concretely, making it present to creatures.

4. The unity of intention and act preserves divine simplicity while allowing real distinctions of divine operation.

5. Theological truth depends on this unity, for Λ ⊨* Tₜ presupposes a determinate divine act that grounds a determinate theological statement.

Transitus ad Disputationem LVI

Having established that divine intention is itself a divine act and that its unity with action is constituted in the Logos and donated by the Spirit, we now turn to the deeper question of intelligibility itself. If every divine act is intelligible because it has its form in the Logos, then the Logos is not merely the site of intelligibility but its very condition.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio LVI: De Formā Logi Ut Principio Intelligibilitatis, where we consider how the Logos grounds the possibility of knowing anything of God’s action at all.

__________

Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem

Q1. You often speak of a difference in ratio while the essendi remains constant. But this immediately reminds many readers of the Scotist distinctio formalis, which has a long and uneven history, and which many analytic philosophers regard as incoherent. Some even collapse it into a mere distinction of ratio and essendi. What do you say to those of us who find the formal distinction itself problematic?

Responsio.

The concern is understandable, because whenever one distinguishes ratio from essendi there is a temptation to hear Scotus in the background, as if I were claiming that one and the same entity contains quasi-formal “aspects” that are neither purely conceptual nor fully real. That is not what I am doing. My position requires something far more modest, something that belongs firmly within the broader scholastic tradition and that does not depend on the apparatus of Scotist formalities.

The distinctio formalis of Scotus is a bold metaphysical thesis. It asserts a mode of distinction that is intrinsic to the thing itself yet short of a real distinction. This “middle category” has always been difficult to defend. Many philosophers suspect that it introduces an ontological complexity that cannot be stably articulated.

My usage does not require this. What I need is simply the claim that one and the same entity can be intelligible under more than one valid conceptual ratio without thereby being divided in its being. This is the classical distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re. It allows the intellect to approach the same reality in different conceptual postures without implying multiple formal components in the object.

Thus when I distinguish two rationes in relation to a single essendi, I am not claiming that God or creature possesses internal formal partitions. I am claiming that the intellect legitimately encounters the same reality under different questions of understanding. These distinct conceptual angles track genuine features of the real, yet they do not require positing any intrinsic multiplicity in the thing considered.

The distinction is therefore epistemic in function, though not arbitrary. It is grounded in the richness of the object’s intelligibility, not in any internal composition. One can investigate divine transcendence and divine immanence as distinct rationes without thereby asserting two formalities within God. The distinction belongs to the mode of our apprehension, not to the internal structure of the divine being.

In brief: I do not employ the Scotist distinctio formalis. I employ the more modest and broadly accepted distinction of ratio with a single essendi, understood as a conceptual distinction that has grounding in reality but does not posit ontological division. This is sufficient to sustain the metaphysical and theological work of the disputation without incurring the liabilities of Scotist formalism.

Q2. If the distinction you use is only a distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re, how does this avoid collapsing into a purely conceptual distinction? In other words, what secures the ‘fundamentum in re’ so that the distinction of ratio tracks something real and is not merely a projection of the intellect?

Responsio.

The question is important because the distinction of ratio can become fragile if it lacks a real anchor. A purely conceptual distinction would indeed be insufficient for theological work, since it would reduce our differentiations to categories imposed by the mind rather than disclosures of something in the object.

The key point is that a distinctio rationis cum fundamento in re requires two elements.  First, the intellect must adopt different conceptual postures toward the same being. Second, the being must be such that these conceptual postures correspond to real modes of intelligibility latent in the object itself.

This means that the distinction has an epistemic form but an ontological grounding. We do not posit internal parts or formal components within the entity. We say instead that the entity lends itself to more than one valid conceptual entry point. The richness is in the object, not in our mental constructions. The different rationes arise because the reality under consideration is capable of being understood under diverse questions.

A simple example from classical theology illustrates the point. When we consider God under the ratio of simplicity, the intellect is attending to God’s unity. When we consider God under the ratio of goodness, the intellect is attending to God’s communicative plenitude. These are distinct conceptual approaches, but they correspond to actual features of the divine being. They do not fracture the divine essence; they articulate the multiple lines along which that essence is intelligible.

Thus, the distinction of ratio is neither arbitrary nor merely verbal. It is constrained by what the object is. The fundamentum in re is the object’s intelligible plenitude. The intellect does not impose distinctions. It recognizes those aspects of intelligibility that belong naturally to the object.

In this way, the distinction functions as a disciplined conceptual tool anchored in being, not a free floating mental projection.

Nota Finalis

The two analytic questions taken together protect the metaphysical grammar of this disputation from misunderstanding. They show that the distinction I employ neither falls into Scotist formalism nor collapses into mere conceptualism. It is a distinction of ratio grounded in the object, allowing one being to be the subject of multiple lines of intelligible approach without implying internal composition. This is the structure upon which the later disputationes rely when treating divine action, participation, and the intelligibility of God’s self revelation.

Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

On Providence and the Continuity of Divine Causality

Quaeritur

Utrum providentia Dei sit continua causalitas, qua Deus non solum mundum ex nihilo creavit sed etiam ipsum in esse conservat et ad finem dirigit; et utrum haec causalitas non sit actio extrinseca vel occasionalis, sed praesentia interna, qua Deus per Verbum et Spiritum Sanctum causat esse, agere, et ordinari creaturas, ita ut simul conserventur contingentia, libertas, et bonum creationis.

Whether divine providence is a continuous causality by which God not only created the world from nothing but also preserves it in being and directs it to its end; and whether this causality is not an external or occasional action, but an inner presence, by which God through the Word and the Holy Spirit causes creatures to be, to act, and to be ordered, in such a way that contingency, freedom, and the goodness of creation are preserved.

Thesis

Locus classicus

Colossians 1:17
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων
καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν

He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.

Acts 17:28
ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν

For in him we live and move and have our being.

These texts confess not a distant Creator but a present causality. The Logos is not merely the origin of the world but its abiding coherence. Providence is the ontological holding together of all that exists.

Explicatio

If creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word, then its intelligibility must endure only if that Word remains causally present. A creation that depended upon God only at its origin would not persist. It would lapse into nothingness the moment divine causality ceased. Providence therefore names not a secondary doctrine appended to creation but the inner truth of creation itself.

Creation is not a completed past event. It is an ongoing relation of dependence. To exist as a creature is to receive being continuously. The world does not possess existence as a stored property. It exists only as given, moment by moment, by divine causality.

This causality must be understood properly. Divine causation is not mechanical impulse, nor episodic intervention, nor competition with finite causes. God does not act alongside creatures as one cause among others. Rather, God causes creatures to be causes. Creaturely agency is real because it is grounded in divine causality, not despite it.

Here the traditional language of conservatio, concursus, and gubernatio names three aspects of a single act.

Conservatio names the preservation of being. Creatures continue to exist because God continuously wills and causes their existence.

Concursus names cooperation. God works in and through creaturely causes so that their actions are genuinely theirs, while still dependent upon divine causality.

Gubernatio names ordering. God directs all things toward their end without overriding the integrity of finite processes.

These are not successive acts. They are conceptual distinctions within one indivisible divine activity.

The Holy Spirit is the mode of this presence. The Spirit is not merely the giver of life in an initial sense but the living mediation of divine causality within the world. Through the Spirit, divine intention becomes the interior vitality of creation. The Spirit is the cause of continuity. He joins the Word’s creative causality to the temporal unfolding of creaturely existence.

This pneumatological mediation safeguards contingency and freedom. If divine causality were external, creaturely action would be either overridden or rendered illusory. If divine causality were absent, creaturely action would dissolve into randomness. The Spirit’s presence preserves the middle path. Creatures act freely because they are continuously enabled to act. Dependence upon God is not the negation of freedom but its condition.

Providence must therefore be distinguished from determinism. Determinism treats causality as compulsion. Divine causality is not compulsion but donation. God gives being and action without dictating the finite mode of their exercise. Because divine causality is deeper than finite causality, it does not displace it.

The problem of evil must be addressed within this framework. Providence encompasses all that exists insofar as it exists. Evil, however, is not a positive being but a privation. God causes the being of acts. He does not cause the defect within them. Finite freedom entails the possibility of failure. Providence does not eliminate this risk but orders it toward redemption. The cross stands as the decisive form of this ordering. What appears as negation becomes the place where divine faithfulness is most fully revealed.

Providence is therefore not an empirical hypothesis competing with natural explanation. It is a metaphysical confession concerning the ground of existence itself. Without providence, the world would not merely lack guidance. It would lack being.

Objectiones

Ob I. If divine causality is continuous and universal, then all events are determined by God and creaturely freedom is illusory.

Ob II. If God must continuously sustain creation, then creation is defective. A perfect creation would persist independently.

Ob III. If providence governs all things, then evil must be caused or willed by God.

Ob IV. The apparent randomness and suffering of the world contradict the claim that it is governed by providence.

Ob V. Modern relational and process theologies argue that divine causality must evolve with the world. Continuous causality appears static and incompatible with genuine novelty.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine causality is not competitive with finite causality. It is constitutive. Freedom is preserved precisely because God causes the creature to act as a true cause.

Ad II. Dependence is not imperfection. Independence would negate creation itself. Continuous dependence is the form of creaturely existence.

Ad III. God causes being, not privation. Evil arises from finite freedom and limitation. Providence orders even failure toward redemption without authoring it.

Ad IV. Providence is discerned not in constant intervention but in intelligibility, persistence, and ordered meaning amid change.

Ad V. Divine causality is eternally active yet temporally manifest. God’s constancy grounds novelty rather than suppressing it.

Nota

Providence is best understood as creatio continua. The Word who speaks being into existence does not cease to speak. Every moment of being is the renewal of the creative fiat. This is not repetition in time but eternal presence.

The Spirit ensures that this causality is not mechanical necessity but personal faithfulness. Providence is promise enacted as ontology. The world endures not because it is self sufficient but because it is addressed continuously by God.

Thus the doctrine of providence secures three things simultaneously: the reality of divine sovereignty, the integrity of creaturely freedom, and the intelligibility of the world.

Determinatio

1. Providence is the continuous act of divine causality by which creation is preserved and ordered.

2. Divine causality is interior and constitutive, not external or competitive.

3. The Holy Spirit mediates this causality within creaturely action.

4. Creaturely freedom and contingency are grounded, not negated, by providence.

5. Evil is permitted within providence but not caused by God.

6. Providence completes the doctrine of creation as an ongoing relation of dependence.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIII

If divine causality is continuous, interior, and non competitive, then theology must ask how such causality can be spoken without distortion. Providence is not directly visible. It is confessed. It is named through finite language that must point beyond itself to an infinite act.

We therefore turn to the question of theological modeling and intensional meaning. How can language signify a causality that exceeds representation without collapsing into metaphor or mechanism? What is the relation between the conceptual content of theological terms and the reality they intend?

Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Quaeritur

Utrum mundus, qui per Verbum Dei creatus est, in se contineat rationem et ordinem intelligibilem non ut proprietatem naturalem aut autonomum logon, sed ut participationem ipsius rationis divinae per quam omnia facta sunt; et utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit causa per quam haec participatio in mundo manet viva et cognoscibilis.

Whether the world, created through the Word of God, contains within itself reason and intelligible order not as a natural property or autonomous logos, but as participation in the very divine reason through which all things were made; and whether the Holy Spirit is the cause by which this participation remains living and knowable within creation.

Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order present in the world is not an autonomous rational structure nor a self sufficient logos, but a participation in the eternal Logos through whom all things were made. The Holy Spirit preserves this participation as a living relation, sustaining the correspondence between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

Locus classicus

Psalm 33:6
בִּדְבַר־יְהוָה שָׁמַיִם נַעֲשׂוּ
וּבְרוּחַ פִּיו כָּל־צְבָאָם

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

John 1:3
πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο
καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν

All things came to be through him,
and without him not one thing came to be that has come to be.

These texts testify that creation is not merely effected by divine power but articulated by divine reason. Being itself is given through Logos, and life and coherence are sustained through Spirit.

Explicatio

The question of the world’s intelligibility is not secondary to theology but intrinsic to the doctrine of creation itself. To confess that the world is created through the Word is already to confess that it is ordered toward meaning. Creation is not the production of brute material later subjected to rational description. It is the emergence of being through divine intelligibility.

The Logos does not merely precede the world as an efficient cause. He is the intelligible form by which the world is constituted as knowable. To exist as a creature is therefore to stand within a relation of participation. Being and intelligibility are not separable gifts. What comes to be through the Word comes to be as meaningful.

This must be stated with care. The intelligibility of the world is not an intrinsic possession of matter, nor is it an autonomous rational principle embedded within nature. There is no self sufficient logos of the world. The order we discover in nature is derivative. It is a finite participation in divine reason, not a parallel source of intelligibility alongside it.

We may express this formally for clarity, while immediately guarding against misinterpretation.

Let C(x) signify “x is created,” and L(x) signify “x participates in the Logos.”

The claim ∀x[C(x) → L(x)] states that to be created is already to stand within the sphere of divine intelligibility. This does not identify creaturely being with divine being. Participation is not identity. It names a relation of dependence that preserves distinction.

The world is therefore intelligible not because it is divine, but because it is spoken.

This intelligibility is not static. The Logos who brings creation into being does not withdraw once creation stands. If the world is to remain intelligible, the relation of participation must be preserved. Here the role of the Holy Spirit becomes decisive.

The Spirit is not merely the giver of life in a biological sense. He is the living bond by which the rational structure of creation remains ordered toward understanding. The Spirit maintains the correspondence between divine meaning and creaturely apprehension. Without this ongoing mediation, intelligibility would collapse either into abstraction or into opacity.

This pneumatological dimension guards theology from two errors. On the one hand, it resists rationalism, which treats intelligibility as self grounding. On the other hand, it resists voluntarism, which treats order as arbitrary imposition. The Spirit does not impose meaning from without, nor does He leave creation to explain itself. He preserves intelligibility as a living relation.

It is therefore no accident that scientific inquiry presupposes the intelligibility of nature. The success of the sciences depends upon the prior givenness of order, coherence, and lawfulness. These are not conclusions of science but its conditions. Theology does not compete with scientific explanation. It accounts for the possibility of explanation itself.

Nor does the presence of disorder, entropy, or suffering negate creation’s intelligibility. Finitude includes limitation, vulnerability, and decay. Yet even these are intelligible within a teleological horizon shaped by divine wisdom. The cross remains the decisive pattern. What appears as negation or breakdown of order becomes, within divine providence, the site where deeper meaning is disclosed.

Thus creation’s intelligibility is neither naive optimism nor denial of tragedy. It is the confession that nothing stands outside the horizon of meaning established by the Word and sustained by the Spirit.

Objectiones

Ob I. If the intelligibility of the world depends upon participation in the divine Logos, then human reason appears heteronomous. Genuine autonomy in science and philosophy would be undermined.

Ob II. To claim that all intelligibility derives from the Logos risks collapsing Creator and creature into a single ontological order, thereby tending toward pantheism.

Ob III. The presence of apparent randomness, disorder, and suffering in nature contradicts the claim that the world is rationally ordered.

Ob IV. Scientific naturalism explains order through natural laws and mathematical regularities without appeal to divine speech. Theological appeals to Logos are therefore unnecessary.

Ob V. Hermeneutical skepticism holds that meaning arises from interpretation rather than from being itself. To speak of the world as “spoken” is merely metaphorical.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy does not require self origination. Human reason is genuinely free precisely because it participates in divine reason rather than being isolated from it. Participation grounds freedom. It does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation preserves distinction. The Logos is present as cause, not as substance. The world reflects divine wisdom without becoming divine. Transcendence is not compromised by immanence rightly understood.

Ad III. Disorder belongs to finitude, not to meaninglessness. What appears chaotic within a limited horizon may still belong to a wider teleological order. The intelligibility of creation includes mystery, not its elimination.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes intelligibility it cannot itself generate. Theology does not replace science but accounts for the rational conditions under which science is possible.

Ad V. Meaning is not projected onto the world but received from it because the world is already articulated by divine speech. Interpretation is human, but intelligibility is given.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a theological epistemology. To know the world is to retrace, in finite understanding, the grammar by which God called it into being. Every act of genuine understanding is therefore participatory.

The sciences are not alien to theology. They are disciplined forms of listening. They read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. Their success testifies not to the self sufficiency of reason, but to its vocation.

The Spirit stands as the hermeneutical bond between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding. He is the one by whom the world remains readable and the intellect remains receptive. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would become either inert structure or arbitrary construction.

Creation is therefore not a completed fact but an ongoing act of divine communication. The Logos speaks. The Spirit interprets. The creature understands.

Determinatio

1. Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word.

2. The order of the world is participatory, not autonomous.

3. The Holy Spirit preserves intelligibility as a living relation.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself an act of participation.

5. The intelligibility of the world is the visible trace of divine speech.

Transitus ad Disputationem XII

Having established that divine causality is not a rival to creaturely agency but the very ground of its intelligibility, we must now consider how this causality persists beyond the originary act of creation. For if God is not only the one a quo all things proceed but also the one in quo they subsist, then creation cannot be understood as a completed event left to the autonomy of finite processes. Rather, it must be conceived as a continuous act, sustained at every moment by the same Word through whom all things were made.

This raises a further and more delicate question. How does divine causality operate in the ongoing order of the world without dissolving the reality of secondary causes or rendering creaturely action illusory? If God sustains all things immediately, does this leave any genuine causal efficacy to creatures? And if creatures truly act, how is their action ordered to God without collapsing into either occasionalism or a competitive dualism of causes?

The doctrine of providence thus emerges not as an appendix to creation but as its necessary explication. It concerns the continuation of divine causality through time, the mode by which God preserves, concurs with, and orders finite causes toward their ends, and the manner in which freedom and contingency are upheld within a world wholly dependent upon God. Providence names the grammar by which creation remains creation—neither autonomous nor annihilated, neither divinized nor abandoned.

Accordingly, we advance to Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae, where we inquire how the same Word who spoke creation into being also sustains it through every moment of its existence, and how divine causality operates within the order of secondary causes without abolishing their reality, integrity, or freedom.

Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

On Divine Causality and Theological Speech

Quaeritur

Utrum causalitas divina non sit externa actio super mundum, sed interna ratio tam essendi quam loquendi; cum Spiritus Sanctus, qui est amor subsistens, causet non solum esse rerum sed etiam recte loqui de Deo, ita ut omnis loquela theologica sit ipsa participatio in causatione divina.

Whether divine causality is not an external action upon the world but the interior ground both of being and of speaking; since the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of creatures but also the right speaking of God, such that every theological utterance is itself a participation in divine causality.

Thesis

The causality of the Spirit encompasses both the order of being and the order of speech. The God who causes creatures to exist also causes them to be spoken truly. Theology therefore does not merely represent divine acts; it participates in them through the Spirit, who is at once the cause of creaturely being and the cause of felicitous theological utterance.

Locus classicus

1. Philippians 2:13
   ὁ θεὸς ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν
   “It is God who works in you both to will and to act.”

2. Augustine, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio 17.33
   Non enim per solam gratiam fit ut faciamus, sed etiam ut velimus.
   Grace alone happens gives not only action but willing.

3. Gregory of Nyssa, In Canticum Canticorum II
   Ἡ θεία ἐνέργεια πάντα κινεῖ ἀκινήτως
   “The divine energy moves all things while itself unmoved.”

4. John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa II.12
   Ἡ τοῦ Πνεύματος ἐνέργεια διδοῖ τὸ εἶναι καὶ τὸ λέγειν
   “The energy of the Spirit bestows both being and speech.”

These witnesses confess a single truth: divine causality grounds both existence and utterance. Theology speaks truly only where it moves within this causal order.

Explicatio

The preceding disputationes have shown that the language of faith T possesses syntactical coherence, pneumatological felicity, external reference, and a duplex truth fulfilled in Christ. Yet each of these presupposes a deeper act: the divine causality by which creatures exist, by which discourse becomes meaningful, and by which theological predication is rendered capable of bearing truth. The Spirit therefore stands not merely at the terminus of theological speech—as the one who authorizes its felicity—but at its origin, as the giver of being, intelligibility, and communicability.

This causality must be distinguished in its two modes. The causalitas essendi bestows upon creatures their existence, structure, and intelligible form. Finite beings possess agency, powers, and determinate natures only because the Spirit continuously sustains them in being. Without this underlying act, there would be no world for theology to describe and no agents capable of entering into divine address.

The causalitas loquendi, however, concerns the possibility of theological discourse. It is the Spirit who grants the form and coherence of theological grammar, who opens human speech to divine reference, and who renders predicates proportionate to the perfections they name. Human words are not naturally fitted to signify the living God. They become fitted only as the Spirit draws them into the expressive act of the Word. Thus theological language is not an autonomous human construction but a finite participation in the divine act that grants both being and meaning. Theological predication arises from this double causality: creatures exist through the Spirit, and speech signifies through the Spirit.

Let D_G denote a divine perfection and D_c its creaturely participation. The relation

$$D_G \Rightarrow D_c$$

does not express metaphor or analogy derived from below but a real ontological procession: the divine perfection constitutes the creaturely participation. Likewise, when we write D_c(x), we signify that the creature x participates in that perfection according to its finite mode. The predicate is possible because the Spirit mediately communicates the divine perfection into the created order and simultaneously authorizes the linguistic act by which that perfection is spoken.

This dual procession—into being and into speech—grounds what may be called theophysical predication: finite words moved by the same divine act that grants creatures their form and intelligibility. Theological assertions therefore are not merely descriptive; they participate in the ontological generosity by which God renders Himself speakable. Every predicate is suspended from this causality: the reality signified is given by the Spirit, and the capacity to signify is granted by the same Spirit. Thus theological discourse is neither an epistemic construction nor a linguistic projection but a mode of participation in the divine causality that constitutes beings and makes truth-intelligibility possible.

Explicatio analytica — De causalitate constitutiva

Modern analytic philosophy isolates different explanatory functions of causality: counterfactual dependence (Lewis), event-causation (Davidson), grounding (Fine, Schaffer), and truthmaking (Armstrong). These roles illuminate how one fact, event, or entity may depend upon another. Yet each framework presupposes a structured world in which modal space exists, events have efficacy, facts possess determinacy, and states of affairs sustain propositions. Divine causalitas constitutiva is not one cause within this framework but the condition for the framework itself. It is the causality that makes these explanatory roles possible at all.

1. Counterfactual dependence

Lewisian counterfactuals require a modal landscape: a space of possible worlds against which “had A not occurred, B would not have occurred” can be meaningfully evaluated. But the structure of the possible is not self-sustaining. Modal order presupposes the creative act by which the Spirit constitutes the actual world and its modal neighbors. Without this underlying act, counterfactual comparisons would lack metaphysical footing. Divine causality therefore underwrites the very intelligibility of counterfactual reasoning.

2. Event-causation

Davidson interprets causation as an extensional relation among events, while causal explanation belongs to the intensional domain of description. Yet for events to serve as genuine secondary causes, creatures must possess agency and powers. These cannot arise from within the created order alone. Agency presupposes the Spirit’s continuous bestowal of esse, which confers upon finite beings their efficacy. Finite events cause because the Spirit causes them to be capable of causing. Divine causality does not replace creaturely causality; it constitutes it.

3. Grounding.

Grounding concerns the relation by which one fact obtains in virtue of another. It is often regarded as more basic than efficient causation because it orders the metaphysical hierarchy of dependence. But grounding relations require a field of determinate facts in which they can operate. The Spirit’s actus essendi establishes this field. Divine causality is not a ground among grounds; it is the ground of grounding—the act by which creatures possess natures, properties, and relations susceptible to grounding analysis.

4. Truthmaking

Truthmaker theory holds that true propositions require robust ontological correlates that make them true. In theological terms, divine causality supplies both the res and the verbum: the reality that grounds the proposition and the linguistic capacity by which that reality is predicated. The same constitutive causality that grants existence to creatures also grants reference and semantic stability to theological speech. A proposition about God has a truthmaker because God grants both the state of affairs that makes it true and the linguistic participation that allows it to be truly said.

Taken together, these analytic models reveal that divine causality is not an instance of any of these relations but the transcendental condition for their intelligibility. The Spirit constitutes the world in which counterfactuals can be assessed, events can act, facts can ground, and states of affairs can make propositions true. This causality is not subsequent to the created order; it is the ontological generosity that gives the created order its very capacity to be causally intelligible.

Thus causalitas constitutiva is the deepest presupposition of theology, grounding both being and discourse. It is the Spirit’s act that makes creatures exist, makes them intelligible, and makes theological predication possible. Every true statement about God is therefore a finite participation in this causality: a word that signifies because the Spirit first gives the reality signified and then grants the capacity to signify it.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to Aristotelian naturalism, human speech belongs to the domain of secondary causes. To attribute it to divine causality dissolves human agency.

Ob II. Nominalist voluntarism holds that theological language is an act of obedience to divine decree, not a participation in divine causality.

Ob III. If God directly causes every act, occasionalism follows; if humans act, divine causality must withdraw. The position is internally inconsistent.

Ob IV. Analytic semantics grounds meaning in convention and intention, not metaphysical causality. Divine causality is irrelevant to linguistic content.

Responsiones

Ad I. Primary and secondary causes do not compete. Divine causality grants the creature its power to act. The theologian truly speaks, yet speaks by the Spirit who enables the act without supplanting it.

Ad II. Nominalism protects divine sovereignty but denies divine presence. The Spirit’s causality is participatory: human signs remain human yet become transparent to divine reality through the Spirit’s enabling.

Ad III. The dilemma assumes univocity between divine and creaturely causation. Divine causality is in esse: it grounds the being of secondary causes and their efficacy. God causes the act to be the creature’s act.

Ad IV. Semantic theories describe proximate mechanisms of meaning but cannot secure theological reference. The Spirit grounds the determinacy of divine predicates and authorizes their truth.

Nota

To relate causality and language is to secure theology’s realism. If to be is to act, then truthful speech must itself be an act grounded in God. Felicity thus appears as the linguistic form of divine causality, for the Spirit does not merely permit theological utterance, He empowers it. A felicitous word is causal because it proceeds from divine causality and tends toward its fulfillment in divine truth.

Without causal participation, theological predicates become abstractions. With participation, they become acts of communion—finite words bearing the life of God.

Determinatio

1. Divine causality operates both in the order of being and the order of speech.

2. The Holy Spirit is the principal cause of every felicitous theological utterance.

3. Theology speaks truly only where it is divinely caused.

4. Felicity is the linguistic manifestation of this causality and truth is its ontological fulfillment.

5. The Spirit binds ontology and discourse in a single causal order, causing both what is spoken and what is spoken of.

Transitus ad Disputationem VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

Divine causality has now been shown to ground creaturely existence and theological utterance alike. The Spirit who causes creatures to be and words to signify is the Spirit who renders creation capable of participating in God. To be is already to participate; to speak truly is to participate knowingly.

Thus the next question concerns the nature of this participation: how the Spirit constitutes real union without confusion, and how creaturely life is elevated into communion with the divine. We therefore proceed to Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos.