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.

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 gubernat; et utrum haec causalitas non sit actio extrinseca sed praesentia interna, qua Spiritus Sanctus perpetuo coniungit Verbum creatum et Creatorem, ut universum manere possit simul intelligibile et bonum.

Whether divine providence is the continuous causality by which God not only created the world from nothing but also sustains and governs it in being; and whether this causality is not an external intervention but an inner presence, whereby the Holy Spirit perpetually unites the created word and the Creator, so that the universe may remain both intelligible and good.

Thesis

Providence (providentia) is the ongoing act of divine causality by which the world persists and moves toward its end in God. Creation is not a completed event but a continuous relation; the same Word that brought all things into being sustains them in being. The Spirit mediates this continuity, causing creatures to act freely while remaining within the scope of divine purpose.

Locus classicus

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17

Here Paul speaks not of a distant deity but of the Logos as the ongoing bond of being. Creation’s coherence is not self-sustaining; it abides in Christ’s continuous causality. Providence, therefore, is the persistence of creation’s dependence upon divine Word and Spirit.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XI, we affirmed that the world’s intelligibility arises from its creation by the Word. We now consider how that intelligibility endures. If creation were a single, past act, the world would dissolve into nothingness the moment divine attention ceased. Providence is therefore creation continued—the abiding act of God’s causality by which the creature’s being remains actual.

To clarify this theologically:

• Let C(x) denote that x is a creature, and E(x) that x exists.

• The relation ∀x (C(x) → E(x) because D(x)) means: for every creature x, its existence is caused and sustained by divine causality D(x).

• This symbol does not refer to an occasional miracle but to the metaphysical structure of existence itself: creatures exist because God continuously wills and causes them to exist.

Providence therefore implies not intervention but continuation. God’s causal activity is in esse, not merely in fieri: He does not push the world forward and then withdraw; He is the cause of its very being at every moment.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus) mediates this ongoing causality by joining divine intention to creaturely action. Through the Spirit, the will of God becomes the vitality of creation. Hence, the world’s ongoing order—its stability, intelligibility, and teleology—is nothing less than the temporal manifestation of providence.

Divine causality in providence operates in three modes:

1. Conservatio – preservation of being (keeping creatures in existence).

2. Concursus – cooperation with secondary causes (working through creaturely action).

3. Gubernatio – direction of all things to their end (ordering the whole to divine goodness).

These three are distinct in concept but one in divine act.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to deistic naturalism, if divine causality is continuous and all-encompassing, every event and choice is predetermined by God’s will. The doctrine of providence, so conceived, annihilates contingency and renders creaturely freedom illusory. What appears as secondary causation is but divine efficiency extended through nature, leaving no genuine autonomy to creatures.

Obiectio II. Conversely, deistic autonomy holds that if God truly endowed the world with natural laws and rational freedom, continuous divine causality is unnecessary. To say that God must sustain creation at every instant implies a defect in the creative act. A perfect Creator would make a world capable of independent persistence—self-sufficient once brought into being.

Obiectio III. With regard to the problem of evil, if providence extends to all things, then evil too must fall within divine causality. Either God causes evil directly—contradicting His goodness—or He merely permits it—contradicting His omnipotence. The notion of providence as continuous divine causation thus seems incompatible with both divine holiness and power.

Obiectio IV.  Epicurean or Existential Indifference opines that the world exhibits randomness, suffering, and moral ambiguity. If divine providence truly governs all things, its presence should be evident. The apparent absence of order suggests either that providence is a projection of human meaning or that divine causality, if real, is indistinguishable from blind natural process.

Obiectio V.  Modern process and evolutionary theology maintains that divine causality evolves with the world. God persuades rather than determines, luring creation toward novelty. To call providence a continuous causality of preservation is to freeze the dynamism of divine–world interaction into static ontology. True providence must be relational and temporal, not immutable and timeless.

Responsiones

Ad I. Determinism confuses divine causality with mechanical compulsion. God’s causality is not competitive with creaturely causality but constitutive of it. The Spirit enables the creature to be a genuine cause. Divine providence grounds contingency rather than abolishes it: because God continuously gives being, the creature’s free act truly is its own. Were God not present in every act, freedom would dissolve into chaos or nothingness. Continuous causality, far from destroying freedom, makes it possible.

Ad II. Deism misconstrues perfection as detachment. Dependence is not imperfection but participation. A self-sustaining world would be a second god, not a creation. The Spirit’s conserving causality does not repair a defect but expresses the fullness of divine generosity—the ever-renewed “Let there be.” Providence means that creation never stands apart from its source; it is God’s ongoing communication of being. The world’s endurance is not independence but grace prolonged.

Ad III. Providence encompasses evil without authoring it. God’s causality provides the being of every act, but the privation of good within those acts arises from finite freedom. The Spirit does not cause the defect but permits it for a greater teleological order in which love overcomes disorder. Evil’s inclusion within providence does not indict God but magnifies His redemptive wisdom: the same continuous causality that sustains freedom redeems its misuse.

Ad IV. The apparent randomness of nature reveals not the absence but the subtlety of providence. Divine causality is not always manifest as intervention but as intelligibility itself—the order by which events cohere. The Spirit’s presence is discerned not in spectacle but in the persistence of meaning, beauty, and moral orientation amid flux. Providence is not an empirical hypothesis but a metaphysical condition: without it, the world’s very intelligibility would collapse into noise.

Ad V. Process thought rightly emphasizes dynamism but mistakes temporality for becoming in God. Divine causality is eternally active yet temporally manifest. The Spirit’s governance is not static but vivifying: God’s constancy is the ground of change. Providence is not a closed determinism but an open teleology—an eternal act that gives time its direction. The world evolves precisely because divine causality continuously bestows being and novelty in one act of faithful presence.

Nota

Providence (providentia) and creation (creatio) are two aspects of one divine motion: creatio continua. The divine Word, who once spoke being into existence, continues to speak it every moment. This uninterrupted act is not temporal repetition but eternal presence. God’s causality, though immanent, remains transcendent; it permeates all finite operations without becoming one among them.

From a model-theoretic viewpoint, we can describe the relation between divine and creaturely causation as cross-sorted dependency. In formal terms (and then explained):

• Let the domain of divine properties be Dᴳ, and that of creaturely states be Dᶜ.

• A function f: Dᴳ → Dᶜ indicates that each creaturely act derives its being from participation in a divine causal correlate.

• This is not an efficient sequence but an ontological dependency: divine causality constitutes finite efficacy without displacing it.

Thus, providence is the metaphysical condition under which creation remains intelligible and free simultaneously. Without it, the world would be a self-enclosed mechanism; with it, the world is a living communication.

The Spirit’s presence within providence ensures that divine causality is not mechanical necessity but personal faithfulness. God does not merely sustain the cosmos as a machine; He accompanies it as a promise. Every moment of being is a continuation of the creative “Let there be,” renewed through the Spirit’s fiat.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Providence is the continuous act of divine causality (creatio continua) by which all things are preserved, governed, and perfected in God.

2. The Spirit mediates this causality, joining divine intention to creaturely action without competition or coercion.

3. Continuous causality affirms that dependence upon God is not a limitation but the very structure of creaturely freedom.

4. Evil and disorder do not originate in divine causality but are permitted within its teleological order for the sake of greater good.

5. The doctrine of providence completes the theology of creation: the world’s existence and intelligibility are not static products but living effects of God’s eternal act.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

Divine providence has been seen to extend creation’s act into every moment of its existence. God’s causality is not a distant impulse but the continuous interior act by which all things are sustained and ordered. Yet if this act is at once transcendent and immanent, then theology must ask how such causality can be signified in human speech.

For providence, being invisible, is known only as it is spoken; and the speech of faith seeks to mirror what it names. To confess divine causality is to construct a model within language: a finite structure that must somehow point beyond itself to the infinite act it describes. But how can the finite system of signs retain truth when its referent exceeds all representation? What is the relation between the intension of theological terms (their conceptual content) and the transcendent reality to which they refer?

Thus we proceed to Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae, wherein we examine how theological language models divine reality, whether its meaning arises from internal conceptual structures or from participation in the act of God’s own self-expression, and how the limits of signification become the very place where theology most truly speaks.

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 in the world remains living and knowable.

Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order of reason in the world reflects the eternal Logos by which it was created and in which it is sustained. The Spirit preserves this intelligibility as the ongoing mediation between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

Locus classicus

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” — Psalm 33:6

This verse reveals that creation is not a brute event but an act of speech: God’s Word gives being; His Spirit gives life and understanding. The world, therefore, bears a rational and linguistic structure because it originates in divine utterance.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, revelation and knowledge were shown to occur as acts of divine self-communication. Creation is the cosmic expression of that same principle. To create “by the Word” is to bring forth being through meaning.

The intelligibility of the world (intelligibilitas mundi) is not an afterthought but the imprint of divine reason (ratio divina) within creation itself. The divine Logos does not merely impose order externally; He is the internal ground of all order. Hence, the world is not a mute mechanism but a spoke reality—a creation articulated in the very act of divine utterance.

To express this symbolically (and then immediately explain):

• Let C(x) mean “x is a creature,” and L(x) mean “x participates in the Logos.”

• The theological claim ∀x (C(x) → L(x)) can be read: “For every creature x, to be created is to participate in the Logos.”

• This does not mean that creatures possess divinity, but that their very structure reflects divine rationality.

• The world’s coherence, its capacity to be known, is therefore the sign of its origin in divine speech.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus), proceeding from the Father through the Word, maintains this participation dynamically.
The Spirit is not merely a past cause of order but the ongoing agent of intelligibility: He makes the world not only ordered but understandable. Thus, creation’s rational form is continually animated by pneumatological presence.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Autonomous Rationalism holds that if the world’s intelligibility depends upon divine participation, then human reason is heteronomous. Science and philosophy must be autonomous to retain credibility. To posit that intelligibility is “borrowed” from divine Logos is to undermine the independence of human knowledge and reduce rational inquiry to theology.

Obiectio II. To claim that the Logos is the inner rationality of creation risks a pantheistic collapse of the Creator and creature into one order of being. If all order, ratio, and structure in the world are divine, then the world itself becomes divine in substance. The distinction between participation and identity vanishes, and theology slides toward pantheism.

Obiectio III. The natural world exhibits randomness, entropy, and moral indifference (empirical chaos). Disease, suffering, and death pervade the biological order. If creation truly participates in the divine Logos, these features appear inexplicable or scandalous. The presence of irrationality and evil in nature seems to contradict the claim that the world is inherently intelligible.

Obiectio IV. According to scientific naturalism, science explains intelligibility through natural law and mathematical regularity without invoking divine speech. The assumption of an underlying Logos is unnecessary. Order arises from self-organizing processes, symmetry breaking, and evolution. To ascribe intelligibility to divine participation is to import metaphysics where empirical explanation suffices.

Obiectio V. Postmodern hermeneutic skepticism claims that language and reason are historically contingent human constructs. To say that the world itself is “linguistic” or “spoken” is a metaphor, not an ontology. Meaning is produced by interpreters, not embedded in being. The idea of the cosmos as divine utterance confuses human interpretation with the structure of reality itself.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy in reason does not mean isolation from its source. Human rationality is genuine precisely because it participates in the divine Logos. The dependence of intelligibility on God is not servitude but vocation: reason becomes most itself when illumined by its origin. The sciences retain autonomy in their proper domain, but their very capacity for intelligibility is derivative—a finite echo of the Word through whom all things were made. Participation in the Logos grounds freedom, it does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation does not imply identity but communion across an ontological distinction. The Logos is present in creation as cause, not as substance. The world’s order reflects divine wisdom without exhausting or containing it. To speak of creation as “worded” does not mean that it is the Word, but that its being bears the trace of the Word’s utterance. The infinite remains transcendent even while immanent in the finite. Thus, the doctrine of participation preserves both dependence and distinction.

Ad III. Chaos and disorder mark creation’s finitude, not its absence of divine order. The Logos grants intelligibility even to imperfection: finitude includes the potential for failure, limitation, and conflict. Yet these apparent irrationalities become meaningful within the teleological horizon of providence. The cross remains the archetype: what appears as negation of order is, in divine wisdom, the means of a higher reconciliation. Creation’s intelligibility, therefore, is not the denial of mystery but the assurance that mystery itself is ordered to meaning.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes the intelligibility it cannot generate. The discovery of order through empirical method already assumes that the world is rationally structured and consistent—a condition theology explains as participation in the divine Logos. Natural law, symmetry, and mathematics are not self-originating; they are the formal vestiges of divine reason. Theology does not compete with science but interprets the precondition of its success. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility that science explores but cannot explain.

Ad V. Postmodern skepticism rightly observes that human language mediates all understanding, but it errs in treating meaning as purely subjective. The world is intelligible because it is spoken—not by humans first, but by the divine Word. The analogy between creation and language is not metaphorical but metaphysical: both are acts of signification. The Spirit mediates this relation by translating divine speech into created order and human comprehension. Thus, while interpretation is human, meaning is divine. The cosmos is not a text we invent but a text we inhabit.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a profound theological epistemology. The human capacity to know the world is itself a participation in the divine act of speech. To understand is to retrace, in thought, the creative grammar by which God called things into being.

Thus, the sciences—when rightly ordered—are not profane but theological activities: they read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. This is why the world is intelligible at all: its being is linguistic before it is material. Every true discovery is a translation of the Word’s creative logic into human comprehension.

The Spirit’s role is central. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would decay into abstraction. The Spirit causes the correspondence between human reason and divine reason—the very possibility that meaning in the world can meet meaning in the mind. We might say that the Spirit is the hermeneutical bond of creation: the one who makes the world readable and reason receptive.

Therefore, creation’s intelligibility is neither self-explanatory nor imposed from outside.It is an ongoing relation of divine communication: the Logos speaks, the Spirit interprets, the creature understands.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Creation is not a silent fact but a spoken act: esse arises from dicere.

2. The intelligibility of the world derives from its participation in the divine Logos, not from autonomous rational structure.

3. The Spirit preserves and animates this intelligibility, making the world perpetually communicative to human reason.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself participatory—an act of re-speaking what God has already said in being.

5. The doctrine of creation and intelligibility thus completes the movement begun in revelation: the world is revelation extended into matter, speech made visible, and intelligibility the trace of God’s continuing Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

Creation has shown itself to be the first intelligible: the world is ordered because it issues from the divine Wisdom who is the Word.
Yet the intelligibility of origin demands the constancy of continuance.
For if God’s creative act were only initial, the coherence of beings would lapse the moment they came to be. To create intelligibly is also to preserve, for the Word who calls things forth must likewise hold them in being.

Hence the question now arises: How does the divine act continue within creation without dividing itself from transcendence? Is providence but foresight, or the very presence of causality itself in all that acts? Does the creature persist by its own power, or by the ceaseless motion of the divine will that works in all things?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae, and ask 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 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 inner reason both of being and of speaking; since the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the right speaking of them, such that every theological utterance is itself a participation in divine causality.

Thesis

The Spirit’s causality extends from being to language. The God who causes creatures to exist also causes them to be spoken truly. Hence theological discourse is not a human representation of divine acts but a divinely grounded participation in those acts.

Locus Classicus

1. Philippians 2:13 (NA28)
ὁ θεὸς ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν
“For it is God who works in you both to will and to act.”

Divine agency is interior, not extrinsic; God is the cause of both the act and the willing of the act.

2. Augustine, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio 17.33
Non enim per solam gratiam fit ut faciamus, sed etiam ut velimus.
“It is by grace that we are enabled not only to act but even to will.”

Grace is the inner principle of creaturely freedom.

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

The divine act is the stable ground of every creaturely operation.

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.”

The Spirit is the cause both of existence and of the words that manifest it.

Across these witnesses a single confession emerges: Divine causality does not stand outside creaturely action, but grounds its very possibility. The Spirit is the inward cause of willing, acting, and speaking. Theology therefore speaks truly only where it participates in this causal order.

Explicatio

The preceding disputations established that theological language T possesses: 1) syntactic order (a logic of predication), 2) pneumatic felicity (authorization by the Spirit), and 3) external correspondence (modeling within divine reality). Yet such correspondence itself presupposes a deeper ground:

• The realities to which theology refers exist only because God causes them to exist.

• The speech that refers to them exists only because God causes it to be spoken.

Thus divine causality operates in two inseparable modes:  the causalitas essendi where God gives being to creatures and the causalitas loquendi where God gives utterance to theological truth. Both belong to the Spirit as causa principalissima—the inner cause through whom secondary causes act according to their natures.

We may formalize this through our earlier notation: Let D_G denote a divine property (e.g., wisdom). Let D denote its participated creaturely share. Then: D_G → D signifies not metaphor but causal procession: the Spirit communicates divine perfections analogically to creatures, grounding both their being and their capacity to declare divine reality.

Thus theological discourse is a theophysical participation: human words become instruments of divine causality, bearing the reality they signify.

Explicatio Analytica: De Causalitate Constitutiva in Horizonte Analytico

Modern analytic philosophy seeks to clarify causation through precise criteria—counterfactual dependence (Lewis), event-causation (Davidson), grounding (Fine, Schaffer), and truthmaker adequacy (Armstrong). These analyses collectively illuminate what causation must accomplish to count as explanatory. Constitutive causality, as articulated in the doctrine of constitutive satisfaction, not only satisfies these criteria but reveals their deeper presuppositions.

1. Counterfactual Dependence (Lewis)

If the divine constitutive act had not obtained, no creaturely being, power, or predicate—including theological speech—would obtain. Thus constitutive causality grounds the modal space in which counterfactuals are meaningful.

2. Event-Causation (Davidson)

Davidson treats causes as events related by explanatory necessity. The Spirit’s actus essendi is precisely an event-like, continuous operation sustaining all secondary causes—more fundamental than any efficient event.

3. Grounding (Fine, Schaffer)

Grounding presupposes ontological facts. Constitutive causality supplies those facts; it is not one ground among others but the ground of all grounding, the reality in virtue of which grounding relations obtain.

4. Truthmaker Theory (Armstrong)

Truthmaker adequacy requires entities of ontological “heft.” Constitutive causality provides the robust reality that makes theological propositions true, constituting both the res and the verbum in a single causal act.

Thus constitutive causality fulfills analytic criteria, grounds their intelligibility, and aligns perfectly with patristic and scholastic insights. It is the transcendental condition for causation, meaning, and truth.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to Aristotelian naturalism, human speech belongs to the domain of secondary causes.
If God is its cause, human agency collapses.

Ob II. Nominalist voluntarism claims that theological language expresses obedience to divine decree but cannot share in divine causality.

Ob III. If God directly causes every act (occasionalism), humans contribute nothing. If humans contribute, divine causality must recede. The view is contradictory.

Ob IV. Analytic philosophy of language locates meaning in convention and intention, not metaphysical causality. Divine causality is irrelevant to semantics.

Responsiones

Ad I. Primary and secondary causes do not compete. The Spirit acts as primary cause precisely by enabling secondary causes to act freely and fully. The theologian truly speaks, yet speaks only by the Spirit’s inward act.

Ad II. Nominalism preserves 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 interior enabling.

Ad III. The dilemma arises only if divine and human causality inhabit the same plane. In theology, divine causality is in esse: it grants being and efficacy to secondary causes without replacing them. God causes the act to be the creature’s act.

Ad IV. Analytic semantics describes proximate structures of meaning but cannot ground them. The Spirit is the transcendental condition of theological reference: He makes divine predicates possible, determinate, and true. Meaning is conventional; theological adequacy is causal.

Nota

Relating causality and language secures theology’s realism. If to be is to act, then truthful speech must participate in divine action. Felicity is the form of divine causality in language. When the Spirit renders an utterance felicitous, He does more than permit it: He empowers it.

The felicitous word is causal because it breathes with the Spirit’s energy. It accomplishes what it signifies because God speaks through it. Without causal participation, divine predicates become empty abstractions. With causal participation, they become acts of communion—finite words bearing infinite life.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Divine causality operates in the order of being and in the order of speaking.

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

3. Theology speaks truly only insofar as it participates in divine causality.

4. Felicity is the formal manifestation of this causality within language; 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

In the sixth disputation, divine causality was shown to be the inner act by which the Spirit grants both being and discourse. Theological utterance is thus not an autonomous human construction but participation in the causal energy by which God constitutes reality.

Yet causality that gives both being and speech points toward a deeper unity: to be is already to participate in God; to speak truly is to participate knowingly. Creation, therefore, is not merely an effect but a participation in the divine life. The Spirit who causes speech to be true is the same Spirit who causes being to be radiant with God.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos, where it will be asked how creaturely existence is constituted as participation in the divine, how the Spirit effects real union without confusion of essences, and how this participatory ontology grounds the Lutheran doctrine of theosis.

Musings on Causality, Divinity and Resurrection

It took a very long time before I could see things clearly.  

Growing up, I contemplated both God and science.   They always seemed in tension.  It did not help, of course, that my eighth grade confirmation pastor made me recite Luther's explanation to the First Article in from of the church with the prefix added, "In defiance of the theory of evolution, I believe that God has created me and all creatures . . . "

Although I did not know it at the time, I was already struggling with some pretty deep issues in the logic of explanation.   If one could explain why something was the case by pointing to laws and antecedent physical events and processes, what exactly was there left for God to do?  If I explained x both by divine intentionality D and some set of physical events E coupled with physical laws L, then in what sense is D, or perhaps E and L superfluous?  If x would not have happened without D, then surely E and L cannot form a complete explanation of x.   But E and L do form a complete explanation of x, therefore by modus tollens, x would have happened without D, and thus D is causally irrelevant.

The general problem is one of causal overdetermination, and confronts us as well in the philosophy of mind.  If mental event M1 explains M2, and M1 is physically realized by a set of brain events P1, and P1 causes a set of brain events P2, and P2 is the physical realization of M2, then in what sense is M1 qua M1 -- that is, M1 in so far as it is M1 -- causally efficacious in producing M2?  Does not the mental become merely epiphenomenal on neurophysiology, a "wheel idly turning" (Wittgenstein) as it were?  Is this not clearly a situation in which mental explanation fails to articulate the deepest causal map of the universe, and thus is in principle reducible to brain explanation or, better yet, can be eliminated in favor of the latter?

Consider the healing of Mary from stage four liver cancer.  This event -- let's call it m -- is supposedly effected by God's intentionality and power D.  If God healed Mary, then clearly D causally produces m.  But Mary's healing is physically realized as some set of micro-physical actualizations S.   While there was once a time -- e.g., in pre-physicalist ages -- when one might have said that D causally produces S without means, that option is not available to most people today.   Our time assumes the principle of the causal closure of the physical,  for each and every physical event p, there is some set of physical events E that causally produces p, and for each and every physical event p, p cannot and does not produce events that are not physical.  But if D does not produce m without means, then there is some set of physical events that is the physical realization of D such that these events cause m.  

It has been axiomatic in theology since the late Enlightenment to conceive God-talk non-causally.   What I mean by this, is that the giving of an interpretation to theological language such as 'God creates the universe' does not involve one in the drawing of a causal relation across the disparate ontological domains of supernature and nature.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America slogan, "God's work, our hands," nicely captures the situation:  Divine agency is physically realizable!   God's working of Y is realizable through the means of some set of individuals P acting in particular ways -- let's say that the set of individuals P instantiates a complex set of relations Q.   Thus, when P instantiates Q -- or perhaps when P acts Q-ly -- then Y obtains.   But the question is obvious: How is Y qua Y a divine act when it is physically realizable as P acting Q-ly?   More simply put, how is divine agency possible in means, when causal explanations in terms of the means is sufficient?   Do we not have a case of causal overdetermination here when allowing the divine explanation to track alongside the physical?  

The solution to all of this is to offer a model of theological language in which prima facie causal terms are given a non-causal analysis.  This worked very well in ages dominated by idealist pre-suppositions.  Accordingly, 'God creates' is a way of talking about some reality deeper than the causal.  Perhaps there is a reality of "Being-itself" that is deeper than the realm of particular beings, a realm that is somehow more profound than the causal, an ontological depth of being presupposed by the ontic structure of being in which beings are causally related to other beings.  Maybe although causal talk here is in some sense misapplied, the language of the causal somehow illuminates the depth dimension of the human such that the language is nonetheless theologically vindicated.  Thus, while God does not really cause the bringing about of Mary's healing, the saying of 'God healed Mary' does illuminate or make sense out of one's existential situation and the seeming mystery of grace, the getting of that which one is ultimately not earned or deserved.   Saying that 'God healed Mary' seems to say more than there is some set of physical events that occurred -- though they cannot be fully specified -- that when instantiated brought about some set of physical events in Mary such that the term 'healed' could be applied to her.

One might, of course, complain that my concerns with 'God heals Mary' are somehow merely a problem for the philosopher.  While philosophers are concerned with semantics, the meaning of terms and the truth-values of the propositions comprised by them, semantics is not a problem for the believer reading the Bible.  Why allow the abstractions of fundamental theology (proto-theology), a theology that is most immediately relatable to First Article concerns, to transgress upon the hallowed domain of Christology and the proclamation of Christ's life giving death and resurrection?   Why not simply preach Christ and let semantics take care of itself?

Imagine listenting to preacher Pete proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead and that because of this the future has been conquered and that salvation is at hand.   One could, I suppose, simply listen to Pete and not think deeply about what his pronouncements mean and what the truth-conditions of the propositions he utters are.  (The truth-conditions of a proposition are those which must obtain in order for the proposition to be true.)  One might somehow be able to say, "OK, I don't know exactly what Pete's meaning when he talks of Christ's resurrection, but I will regard the resurrection to be true."  But this strategy does not work well when Molly asks what is meant by 'resurrection'.   At this point, one must either give some truth-condition for 'Christ is resurrected', or simply say that one does not know.  But if the latter, then Molly will say, "If you don't know what is meant by 'Christ is resurrected', then you don't know what it would mean for Christ not to be resurrected, and if you don't know that, then clearly to say "'Christ is resurrected' is true" is to say nothing at all."

To this, one simply has to change the subject.   While one might hope that one is meaning something even if one is not sure what one is meaning, there is no basis for the hope: Without knowing precisely what situation must obtain for 'Christ is resurrected' to be false, one knows not what 'Christ is resurrected' means.  Therefore, despite emotions to the contrary, to be told 'Christ is resurrected' is not to be told anything in particular -- and thus a fortiori not anything at all.  Sometimes for the sake of the Gospel one must say things as they are.  What is at stake is too important to do otherwise.

In the early days of Christianity, disciples knew that Christ's resurrection was tied to an empty tomb.  'Christ is resurrected' is false if the tomb is not empty.  The assertion had falsifiability conditions.   While the tomb being empty is not sufficient for Christ's resurrection, it is nonetheless necessary for it.  Christ's resurrection thus had a physical realization, and because that resurrection was tied to both the future and salvation, there was a physical dimension to both the future and salvation as well.   Just as Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead, so too will all who sleep in the Lord be physically resurrected as well.   The coherence of soteriology depended up the physical realization of salvation.  While death was real, Christ's resurrected life could conquer it.

What I am saying is something quite sensible: Christ's physical resurrection and God's causal action producing it was itself understood in the tradition as causally-productive of human salvation.   Human salvation was an effect of divine agency, a causal action drawn across disparate ontological domains.  After all, there is no physical realization of 'Molly is dead' that in itself can causally produce 'Molly is alive'.  While 'God's work' can be realized perhaps in the work of human hands, 'Molly is being raised from the dead' has no known physical realization.

Simply put, while 'God creates the heavens and the earth' can be given a non-causal analysis it is not clear that a similar non-causal strategy can be given for 'God resurrects Jesus'.  The latter connects with the notion of salvation in a very intimate way -- as long as salvation is thought to be physically realized.  Of course, we are living in a time in which people are increasingly thinking that death is not an enemy.  If 'death' and 'life' are taken as descriptions of how we live rather than the fact that we live, then there may come a time when 'Mary's salvation' in no way depends upon the fact that she will live.  That time, which is increasingly our time, does truly recall the time of the Gnostics and their heresies.  

The first step in seeking treatment is realizing that one is sick.  If we do not realize the importance of semantics in theology, we shall not grasp the important theological work that must now be done.  It is irrational to hope for something of which it can be said that one does not know if one has it.

Thinking about Causation

I have recently written a paper entitled 'Creatio ex Nihilo in Luther's Genesis Commentary and the Causal Question'.  The paper argues, inter alia, that the most straightforward way of reading Luther in the Genesis Commentary is to claim that he holds: 'God causally brought about the creation of matter from nothing'. 

In itself this does not seem a particularly controversial claim.  However, when understood within the dominant theological paradigm since Kant, this statement seems highly suspect.   "Of course," the paradigm claims, "God created the heavens and the earth.  Everyone believes that.  It is just that God did not cause the earth to be.  To claim that would be a pernicious category mistake!"

But why should this be?  Why would it be problematical to claim that God causally brought about the universe from nothing?   Is this not straightforward?

It is only straightforward, it seems, if one does not think too deeply about the notion of causality.  Prior to the Enlightenement, it seems, philosophers often mistook reasons and causes.   Within and after the Enlightenment, philosophers have tended to understand causality empirically.  Physical things causally bring about other physical things.  This is the causal game properly played.   To say that the game itself was caused is to violate the rules of the game.  

Thinking about causality has tended to cluster around three views:  1)  Regular theories of causation, 2) Subjunctive and countracausal theories of causation, and 3) Intrinsic relational theories of causation. 

Accordingly, (1) claims 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'A precedes B', 'A-things are constantly conjoined to B-things' and some other conditions about which there is disagreement.  (2) holds that 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'if A were not to occur, B would not occur', or many other candidates.   Finally, (3) holds that there is some intrisic connection between A and B such B is directly produced from A.  (Let us not attend to the air of circularity at this point.) 

Clearly, if one were to want to claim that the universe was brought about by God, they could not hold a regularity theory of divine causation because the production of the universe is a singular event.  This leaves only option (2), (3) or some hybrid thereof.   Now the question arises as to what general tactic is better:  Is divine creatio ex nihilo best understood counterfactually or intrinsically?   My purpose in this blog is to explore a bit the notion of an intrinsic causal relation and ask whether it is possible for it to be utilized as the best analysis of divine causality creatio ex nihilo.  I will leave discussion of counterfactual divine causation to another time. 

The notion of an intrinsic causal relation takes aim at any Humean account of causation claiming that causality must be understood in terms of constant conjunction, temporal priority and spatio contiguity.   Accordingly, such an "externalist" account presupposes a widespread patterns of occurances.  In contravention to this, an intrinsic view of causality holds that cause is an intrinsic relation of power, energy or necessary connection.  I believe that the distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic relationality matter maps well to the distinction between singular causal statements versus "non-singularist" proposals.

According to a singularist approach the truthmaker for a single causal claim is a local relation holding between singular instances.   On this reading, the causal relation does not depend upon occurence of events in the neighborhood of the event in question; the causal relation is intrinsic to the relata and their connecting processes.  Instead of regularities as the truth makers of singular causal statements, local connections are.

The critical point in thinking about an intrinsic relation is this:  'A is intrinsically related to B' if and only if 'the relation is wholly determined by A and B'.   Over and against accounts that would unpack a relationship between A and B as determined by the regularities among a wide set of events and processes, the intrinsic connection of A and B supposes that there is something in A and something in B such that 'A causes B' cannot help but obtain.  

But now let us think about 'God causally brings about the existence of the universe'.   What properties of God and the universe obtain such that it is indeed necessary that 'God causally produces the universe'?

The obvious answer, of course, is that God has as God's very nature -- one might say His natural property -- a production of initial matter/energy and the subsequent formation thereof.  One might then say of the universe that is has its natural property of being produced by divine agency.   Accordingly, 'God creates the universe' is true because there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create, and a universe whose nature it is to be created.  To claim that 'God creates the universe ex nihilo' is simply to claim that there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create all things from absolute nothing, and a universe whose nature it is to be causally produced by the divine from absolute nothing. 

Now all this at one level might seem trivial.   Have we not simply performed some crude semantic joke?  Is it not the cause that we simply have moved the causal problem of divine/universe interaction from relations and placed it in entities having properties? 

At this point one must remember what the point is.   The point is to try to give an account of causality that is philosophically defensible.   Clearly if cause is an extrinsic relation, then we cannot give an account of the singular causal statement 'God creates the universe.'   What I have suggested is that this singular causal statement is captured by appeal to an intrinsic relation which itself is captured by the natural properties of the relata.  

The question whether or not their are any philosophical grounds for asserting the truth of the single causal statement is not one I wish to entertain here.   I take it that theology has always claimed that 'God creates the heavens and the earth'.  My point here is simply to show that it is conceptually coherent to think such divine/universe causality.   As it turns out, it is no category mistake.