Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

On the Relation between Theological Truth and Felicity

Quaeritur

Utrum inter veritatem et felicitatem theologicam talis sit distinctio ut neque confundantur neque separentur; cum felicitas sit forma a Spiritu data qua sermo idoneus fit ad dicendum de Deo, veritas autem sit effectus ontologicus eiusdem Spiritus quo quod dicitur vere est; ita tamen ut utrumque sit opus unius Spiritus operantis in duobus ordinibus, verbi et entis.

Whether between theological truth and felicity there exists such a distinction that they are neither confused nor separated; since felicity is the form given by the Spirit whereby speech becomes rightly ordered toward God, and truth is the ontological effect of that same Spirit by which what is spoken truly is; both being the work of one Spirit operating within the two orders of word and of being.

Thesis

Felicity and truth are two inseparable dimensions of theology’s participation in divine speech. Felicity concerns the Spirit-given rightness of theological language within T, the language of faith. Truth concerns the fulfillment of that language within divine reality. They differ as form and effect: felicity renders theological speech speakable, truth renders it real.

Locus Classicus

1. Isaiah 55:11 (MT)
לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי
“My word shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.”

Divine speech is performative: it is felicitous because it may be uttered by God, and true because it accomplishes the reality it names.

2. Hebrews 4:12 (NA28)
Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργής
“For the word of God is living and active.”
The Word’s life is its power to actualize what it declares.

3. Origen, Homiliae in Ieremiam I.7
Ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγος ζῶν ἐστι καὶ ἐνεργής
“The Word of God is living and operative.”
Origen locates truth not in static correspondence but in divine operation.

4. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 58.1
Verbum Dei non sonat tantum sed facit.
“The Word of God does not only sound but acts.”
Speech and effect in God are one act.

5. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, §4
Das Wort Gottes geschieht, indem Gott selbst handelt und redet.
“The Word of God happens as God Himself acts and speaks.”

Across these witnesses the same confession is given: in God, felicity and truth coincide. He speaks rightly because He is Truth; His Word is true because it performs what it speaks.

Explicatio

Disputationes III and IV taught that theology is governed internally by felicity and externally by truth. Felicity marks the Spirit’s authorization of speech within T. Truth names the external adequation of that authorized speech within the divine reality.  To express this relation, we use the symbolic shorthand:

FT + Modeling = TC.

FT designates the felicity conditions of T, the Spirit’s gift of coherence and authorization. “Modeling” designates the interpretation of this speech within being, the structured account of the ontological order in which God’s Word is fulfilled. TC designates the truth conditions of theology, the divine states of affairs in which what theology declares is realized.

This relation does not fragment theology. Felicity is the inward form of truth’s possibility; truth is the outward realization of what felicity initiates. To speak felicitously is to speak in a manner destined for fulfillment; to speak truly is to behold that fulfillment realized. Thus, felicity is the inception of truth’s journey into language; truth is felicity’s completion in being.

Objectiones

Ob I. Classical correspondence realism claims that felicity adds nothing to truth. A statement is felicitous precisely because it is true. To distinguish them introduces redundancy and obscures the unity of adaequatio.

Ob II. Speech-act pragmatics holds that felicity conditions pertain to the success of an utterance, not to its truth-value. To unite felicity and truth conflates pragmatic efficacy with ontological correspondence.

Ob III. Kant maintains that “truth” pertains to theoretical reason, while “felicity” concerns practical harmony with moral law. Theology may not merge these domains without overstepping transcendental limits.

Ob IV. Post-liberal theology locates truth within communal grammar. Felicity is simply correct performance within that grammar. To posit a distinction is to introduce an external realism foreign to intratextual coherence.

Responsiones

Ad I. Truth and felicity coincide in God but diverge in theology. Truth concerns the ontological adequation of word and being; felicity concerns the pneumatic authorization of the word to bear this adequation. Theology requires both because human speech is finite. Felicity is not redundant; it is the Spirit’s gift that makes truth bearable in language.

Ad II. Speech-act theory sees only the human dimension of felicity. Theology sees its divine ground. Felicity is not merely pragmatic success but the Spirit’s act of rendering a finite utterance proportionate to divine truth. It includes pragmatic order while surpassing it in participation.

Ad III. Kant’s dualism dissolves within revelation. The Spirit unites cognition and moral participation in a single divine act. Felicity is not moral sentiment but the Spirit’s presence in knowledge. Truth becomes event rather than ideal, and felicity becomes the condition of truth’s event.

Ad IV. Post-liberal coherence safeguards grammar but neglects ontology. Felicity is not reducible to communal performance; it is the Spirit’s life within that grammar. Truth arises when this felicitous grammar is interpreted within divine being. Grammar participates in reality rather than replacing it.

Nota

Imagine felicity and truth as the two movements of a single divine circuit. Felicity is the descent of the Spirit into speech. Truth is the return of that speech into being. The Word proceeds felicitously and returns truthfully.

To seek truth without felicity is presumption: attempting to name God without the Spirit. To seek felicity without truth is solipsism: words that comfort but do not correspond. Only when the two converge does theology become the viva vox of the gospel.

The relation is therefore circular. What begins in the Spirit’s authorization ends in the Spirit’s fulfillment. The same divine act that renders theology speakable renders it true.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Felicity and truth are distinct yet inseparable moments of theology’s participation in divine communication.

2. Felicity concerns the rightness of speech within T; truth concerns its realization within divine being.

3. The same Spirit who authorizes speech also fulfills it.

4. Felicity anticipates truth; truth consummates felicity.

5. Theology’s discourse is thus a participation in the causal communication of God, in whom word and reality coincide.

Transitus ad Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

In the fifth disputation, felicity and truth were shown to be two movements of one divine act: felicity as the Spirit’s descent into language, truth as the Spirit’s fulfillment of that language in being. Theology thus speaks truly only where it speaks felicitously, for the Spirit binds word and reality within a single motion.

Yet this unity presupposes a deeper source. The Spirit who authorizes and fulfills is the Spirit of the Father, whose causal act gives being, meaning, and intelligibility. If theology is to understand its own possibility, it must inquire into the divine causality that grounds both the world to be spoken and the speech that speaks it.

We therefore advance to Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica, wherein it will be asked how divine causality constitutes the possibility of theological discourse, how divine and human agency join in the act of saying, and how the verbum hominis becomes instrument of the Verbum Dei without confusion or division.

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 IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex

On the Twofold Truth of Theology

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae duplicem habeat formam: internam, quae consistit in felicitate Spiritu data intra linguam fidei T, et externam, quae consistit in adaequatione huius linguae ad esse divinitus constitutum; et utrum hae duae veritates, distinctae sed ordinatae, in Christo, qui est simul Verbum et Res, suam unitatem reperiant.

Whether the truth of theology possesses a twofold form: an internal truth, consisting in Spirit-given felicity within the language of faith T, and an external truth, consisting in the adequation of that language to the reality constituted by God; and whether these two forms of truth, distinct yet ordered, find their unity in Christ, who is both Word and Reality.

Thesis

Theology bears a double truth—internal, arising from the Spirit-authorized felicity of its language, and external, arising from the correspondence of that language to divine reality—yet these two modes of truth converge without confusion in Christ, the unity of Word and being.

Locus classicus

1. John 14:6

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή.

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

Christ does not possess truth but is truth; in Him the form of saying and the form of being coincide.

2. 1 Corinthians 11:23

Ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐλάβον παρὰ Κυρίου ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν.

"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you."

The pattern of theological speech is reception and handing-on; its internal form mirrors divine giving.

3. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V.14

Λόγος ἐστιν ἐνδιάθετος καὶ προφορικός.

"The Word exists inwardly and outwardly."

The distinction between conceived and uttered word anticipates theology’s twofold truth.

4. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.11

Forma sermonis, sicut et forma rerum, a Verbo Dei derivatur.

"The form of speech, like the form of things, derives from the Word of God."

Truth in language and truth in being share a single archetype.

5. Thomas Aquinas, Super Ioannem 1.1

Per Verbum Dei fit omnis creatura.

"By the Word of God every creature comes to be."

The Word who orders speech also orders being; the twofold truth flows from one act.

Explicatio

The previous disputations distinguished theology as a language T, authorized by the Spirit (veritas interna), and interpreted within models that relate its expressions to being (veritas externa). Yet theology’s full truth requires seeing how these two dimensions mutually inform one another.

Internal truth is the truth of felicity: speech consonant with Scripture, confession, and Spirit-guided practice. Symbolically this is FT, the felicity conditions of T. These guarantee that theology speaks rightly, though not yet that what it says obtains.

External truth arises when these authorized expressions are interpreted within being M, producing TC, the truth conditions through which God’s Word is fulfilled in reality.

Neither dimension alone suffices. Internal truth without external fulfillment is coherence without ontology; external truth without internal authorization is speculation without confession. Theology is true when FT and TC converge—when the Spirit who authorizes speech also mediates its correspondence to divine reality.

This duplex truth is not two truths but one truth in two modes, unified in Christ, the Logos who is both Order of speech and Fulfillment of being.

Objectiones

Ob I. Aquinas defines truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei; theology must therefore have a single truth grounded in God, not a duplex truth divided into internal and external.

Ob II. Nominalism holds that theological truth is the expression of divine will in language; there is no ontological adequation beyond God’s decree. A second truth adds unnecessary metaphysics.

Ob III. Kant restricts truth to the conditions of possible experience. Theology may speak morally but cannot claim objective correspondence to divine being; the distinction between internal and external truth confuses the bounds of cognition.

Ob IV. Lindbeck and cultural-linguistic theology insist that truth is intralinguistic coherence within a community’s grammar; any appeal to ontological truth reintroduces representationalism.

Ob V. Constructivist views claim that truth is a linguistic production. To posit a duplex truth merely multiplies fictions and masks theology’s constructed nature.

Responsiones

Ad I. Aquinas’s realism is upheld, not denied. Internal truth concerns the ordered form of theological knowing; external truth concerns its ordered relation to being. The Spirit unites these: He renders theology’s intellect true in form and true in conformity.

Ad II. Nominalism preserves divine freedom but dissolves divine intelligibility. The duplex truth expresses two modes of one divine will: will communicated in speech and will enacted in being. The Spirit bridges both without compromising God’s sovereignty.

Ad III. Kant’s limits pertain to speculative cognition, yet revelation exceeds speculation by divine initiative. The duplex truth preserves the integrity of human cognition (internal) while affirming the Spirit’s capacity to join language to reality (external) without collapsing phenomena and noumena.

Ad IV. Post-liberal grammar is necessary but insufficient. Theology is indeed a rule-governed language, but a sacramental one: its grammar mediates what it signifies. The duplex truth formalizes this sacramentality.

Ad V. Constructivism rightly notes the historicity of speech but errs in denying the priority of divine speech. The duplex truth affirms that theology is indeed constructed (internal) but constructed in participation with a reality not of its own making (external).

Nota

The twofold truth may be pictured as a circuit rather than a division.

• Internal truth (FT): the Spirit orders language so that it may be spoken in faith.

• External truth (TC): the Spirit orders reality so that what is spoken in faith corresponds to what God has done.

Theological statements are therefore true twice: in the Spirit’s ordering of speech, and in the Spirit’s ordering of being. Christ unites both by being simultaneously Verbum and Res: the eternal Word and the fulfillment of what the Word says.

Determinatio

1. Theology has an internal truth grounded in Spirit-given felicity.

2. Theology has an external truth grounded in correspondence to divine reality.

3. These two truths are ordered modes of one truth, not two competing truths.

4. Christ, the Logos, is the unity of verbum and res.

5. The Spirit mediates the conjunction of internal and external truth, ensuring both form and fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

Having established the duplex nature of theological truth, we now face the deeper question of their relation. For if internal truth arises in the Spirit’s felicity and external truth in the adequation of language to divine reality, then truth and blessedness cannot be separated. The same Spirit who renders speech felicitous also grants joy in truth, and the believer’s delight becomes the living confirmation of what theology teaches.

Yet dangers remain. A theology concerned only with external correspondence risks aridity; one concerned only with internal felicity risks collapsing truth into experience. Only where veracity and beatitude meet does theology attain its proper fullness: a truth that is confessed, enacted, and enjoyed.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam, wherein we inquire how truth and felicity stand as form and act, how blessedness perfects truth, and how the Spirit unites the clarity of doctrine with the joy of divine participation.

Disputatio III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis

On the Holy Spirit and the Boundary of Felicity

Quaeritur

Utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit ille divinus actus qui verbum et esse in vita credentis coniungit, ita ut veritas theologica, quae in Disputatione II ut correspondentia constituta est, perficiatur per participationem et communionem, et sic ipsa finita intelligentia fiat locus felicitatis divinae.

Whether the Holy Spirit is that divine act which unites word and being within the life of the believer, such that theological truth, constituted in Disputation II as correspondence, is brought to completion through participation and communion, and finite understanding thereby becomes the site of divine blessedness.

Thesis

The Holy Spirit is both the formal and causal condition of theological felicity. He is the divine source by which expressions are included or excluded from the language of faith T. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse. He authorizes what may be spoken rightly and, by the same act, defines what cannot.

Locus classicus

1. Psalm 115(116):11 LXX

Ὁ Θεὸς ἀληθής ἐστιν· πᾶν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης.
"God is true, but every human being a liar."

Truth is predicated first of God Himself. Human speech attains truth only by participation in the divine reality.

2. John 14:6

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life."

Truth is not a property Christ possesses but His very identity. In Him the correspondence of mind and reality becomes personal and incarnate.

3. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium II

Ἀλήθεια Θεοῦ ἐστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς σοφίας αὐτοῦ.
"The truth of God is the energy of His wisdom."

Truth is the active self-manifestation of divine being, not static equivalence.

Across these witnesses, truth appears as theophany. What philosophy calls correspondence, theology understands as participation: finite knowing becomes true by being drawn into the life of the Logos.

Explicatio

The first disputation established theology as a coherent language T. The second argued that this language becomes truth-bearing only when interpreted within models that relate it to the order of being God has constituted. Yet grammar and reference do not suffice. A further condition is required, for theological speech must be not only coherent and correspondent but authorized.

Authorization is not merely ecclesial or rational. It is pneumatic. The Spirit is the living rule of theological speech, determining which expressions belong within T and which fall outside it. To speak felicitously is to speak in the Spirit, under His ordering and enlivening act. These felicity conditions, denoted FT, include logical coherence, scriptural consonance, and communal reception, yet their ultimate source is the Spirit who bestows life upon doctrine.

The Spirit thus functions as the boundary condition of theology. He grants form and sets limit. He makes theology possible and protects it from presumption. The finitude of felicity does not signify defect but the determinate mode in which the infinite communicates Himself to the finite. No utterance exhausts divine truth, yet the Spirit renders human speech capable of bearing truth without containing it.

Objectiones

Ob I. Barth holds that divine revelation is an undivided act of God. To speak of a finite felicity of the Spirit’s operation introduces limitation into the divine act and makes revelation dependent on creaturely measure.

Ob II. Kant argues that any claim of union with the divine exceeds the bounds of possible knowledge. Felicity, if it refers to participation in divine truth, cannot be known or described; it is at most a moral postulate.

Ob III. Wittgenstein maintains that felicity is simply the successful performance of language within a form of life. To appeal to the Spirit adds nothing beyond communal practice. Finitude and infinitude are grammatical, not metaphysical.

Ob IV. Hegel identifies Spirit (Geist) with infinite self-realization. If Spirit is infinite, He must overcome finitude rather than inhabit it. To speak of finitude of felicity arrests the dialectic and misunderstands Spirit’s nature.

Responsiones

Ad I. Revelation is indeed infinite in source, yet its reception occurs in creaturely form. The Spirit’s act is infinite in essence but finite in mode, for divine generosity adapts truth to the measure of the creature. Finitude here is not imposed upon God but granted by Him for our sake; it is the medium of grace.

Ad II. Kant’s limits pertain to speculative cognition. Theology seeks not theoretical knowledge but participation in divine communication. Felicity is an event of the Spirit, not a cognitive achievement. The limits of reason remain, yet within those limits the Spirit communicates divine truth in a manner proportionate to the creature.

Ad III. Wittgenstein discerns rightly the communal dimension of felicity but overlooks its ontological ground. The Church’s grammar is not self-originating. It is constituted by the Spirit, whose authorization exceeds communal convention. A sentence is felicitous because the Spirit speaks through it, not because a community employs it.

Ad IV. The Holy Spirit is not Geist realized through historical self-consciousness. He is the eternal Love who indwells the finite without dissolving it. The Spirit does not abolish finitude but sanctifies it. The finitude of felicity is not a failure of dialectic but the perfection proper to creaturely participation.

Nota

Let T_in designate expressions included within the Spirit-ordered language of faith, and T_out those excluded. This symbolic division formalizes the discernment practiced throughout the Church’s history. T_in consists of expressions rendered felicitous through the Spirit’s ordering—coherent, scriptural, ecclesially received. T_out consists of expressions incoherent, contrary to revelation, or unfit for confession.

The Spirit is both grammar and breath: grammar, because He orders theological speech; breath, because He animates it. In His presence, theology becomes a living language. The finitude of felicity confesses that even Spirit-filled speech does not exhaust divine truth. The Spirit authorizes speech and guards it from overreach, ensuring that theology speaks truthfully yet humbly.

Determinatio

1. The Holy Spirit is the divine ground of theological felicity.

2. The Spirit authorizes expressions within T through both internal (coherence, entailment) and external (Scripture, confession, ecclesial life) criteria.

3. The boundary of felicity is grace, not limitation: the finite form in which divine truth becomes communicable.

4. Theology’s felicity is finite because its subject is infinite; yet within finitude, truth becomes living and participatory.

5. The Spirit renders theology a living language, finite in utterance, limitless in source.

Transitus ad Disputationem IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex

Disputatio III has shown that theological truth becomes complete only in the event of the Spirit, who unites word and being within the believer. The truth described by models must become truth lived, and the correspondence between language and reality must be transformed into communion. In the Spirit, truth ceases to be static adequation and becomes the participation of the finite in the infinite.

Yet such a pneumatic conception of truth raises a further question concerning its nature and distinction. For theology must speak not only of truth internalized in the believer but also of the outward truth of doctrine, publicly confessed and taught. The Spirit internalizes what the Word declares, yet the Church must articulate both the inward veracity of grace and the outward content of confession.

Thus theology must learn to speak of truth doubly without dividing it: as lived truth and as spoken truth, as inward participation and outward articulation. In the convergence of these two modes lies the unity of theological truth in the Logos, who is both reality and form.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex.

Disputatio II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum

On Theology as a System of Models

Quaeritur

Utrum theologia, ut veritatem habeat, interpretanda sit intra systema modelorum, quibus expressiones syntacticae linguae fidei referuntur ad statum rerum a Deo constitutum; ita ut veritas theologica non sit mera congruentia signorum, sed consonantia inter linguam divinitus datam et esse divinitus productum.

Whether theology, in order to bear truth, must be interpreted within a system of models through which the syntactical expressions of faith’s language are related to states of affairs constituted by God; such that theological truth is not mere congruence of signs but the harmony between divinely given language and divinely created being.

Thesis

Theology, once established as a coherent formal language T, becomes truth-bearing only when its expressions are interpreted within models—structured accounts of reality that specify what exists and how what exists stands in relation to God. Modeling joins theology’s syntactical order to ontological reference and shows how speech about God corresponds to being as given by God.

Locus classicus

1. Scriptura Sacra — Psalm 32(33):6 (LXX)

Ἐν λόγῳ Κυρίου οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἐστερεώθησαν,

καὶ τῷ πνεύματι τοῦ στόματος αὐτοῦ πᾶσα ἡ δύναμις αὐτῶν.

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

Here divine speech and divine constitution coincide. Creation is the world shaped by a speaking God.

2. Scriptura Sacra — John 1:1–3 (NA28)

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος… πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν.

"In the beginning was the Word… all things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be."

The Logos is not only divine speech but the personal ground of all existence.

3. Athanasius — Contra Gentes 40.2

Ἐκ τοῦ Λόγου καὶ τῆς Σοφίας ἡ σύστασις τῶν ὄντων ἐγένετο·

ὁ γὰρ Λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐποίησεν τὰ πάντα.

"From the Word and Wisdom came the constitution of beings; for it was the Word of God who made all things."

Athanasius insists that creation bears the rational imprint of the eternal Logos.

4. Augustine — De Trinitate VI.10.12

In Verbo Dei sunt rationes omnium creaturarum.

"In the Word of God are the reasons of all creatures."

Creation’s intelligibility derives from the inner intelligibility of the divine Word.

5. Thomas Aquinas — Summa contra Gentiles II.24

Quod in Deo est ratio omnium, hoc in rebus est veritas omnium.

"What in God is the reason of all things, that in creatures is the truth of all things."

Aquinas expresses the same principle: the world’s truth is participation in God’s inner reason.

These witnesses affirm a single truth: Verbum et esse unum sunt in Deo.

The Word and being coincide in God, and theology models truth only by retracing this coincidence.

Explicatio

If Disputatio I showed that theology must first be grammatically coherent, Disputatio II shows that coherence alone does not yield truth. A language of faith, no matter how precisely ordered, remains incomplete until it is interpreted within an ontological environment. Syntax without reference is empty form.

In logic, a model assigns meanings to expressions so that sentences may be said to be true or false. In theology, a model is not merely a semantic device but a structured description of the world as it stands before God. Let T denote the language of faith and M the model that depicts the divine order of creation, redemption, and consummation. To interpret T in M is to connect theological expressions to the realities that God has constituted.

For example, the confession “Christ is risen” is modeled not by symbolic reformulation but by the ontological affirmation that the crucified Jesus truly lives, an event located within God’s causally ordered world. Modeling theology is therefore not speculation added to confession but the faithful translation of divine acts into the grammar of being. It enables theology to say not only what is believed but what is.

Objectiones

Ob I. Kant limits theoretical knowledge to phenomena shaped by human categories. To model theology in relation to divine reality exceeds possible knowledge and reinstates pre-critical metaphysics.

Ob II. Heidegger argues that ontological structures conceal Being and reduce God to a highest being. To model God within being risks onto-theology and suppresses divine mystery.

Ob III. Logical empiricism insists that only empirically verifiable claims or tautologies have meaning. Theological models are unverifiable and thus cognitively meaningless.

Ob IV. Post-liberal theology maintains that religious meaning arises solely from communal grammar. Modeling introduces an external reference foreign to theology’s intratextual logic.

Ob V. Process thinkers hold that divine–world relations are dynamic and evolving. Static models distort the relational becoming of God and world.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s boundary concerns epistemic access, not ontological structure. Revelation transcends these limits by grounding knowledge in divine communication. Modeling does not violate the Critique but extends it analogically: it interprets faith’s language within the world constituted by God’s Word. The Spirit mediates where pure reason cannot.

Ad II. Heidegger rightly warns against reducing God to a being among beings. Yet Christian confession does not speak of a highest entity but of the Word through whom all being is constituted. Modeling does not capture God within being but depicts being as participation in God’s creative utterance.

Ad III. Verificationism collapses under its own criterion, which is itself unverifiable. Theological models are verifiable within theology’s own domain, where truth is pneumatic rather than empirical. Their adequacy is tested by coherence with revelation and by the Spirit’s witness in the Church.

Ad IV. Post-liberal grammar rightly highlights communal practice but risks enclosure. Scripture and creed speak not only about communal life but about divine reality. Modeling makes explicit the ontological reference implicit in Christian confession.

Ad V. Process thought recognizes genuine relationality but mistakes relation for mutability. Theological models can articulate relation without surrendering divine immutability. They describe the world’s participation in God’s eternal act, not God’s evolution.

Nota

Modeling is the bridge between theology’s formal order and its truth. If FT denotes theology’s felicity conditions, then modeling furnishes its truth conditions, TC. The formula is simple:

FT + Modeling = TC.

The Spirit who authorizes theological language also mediates its rightful interpretation within reality. Modeling is not an imposition upon faith but a clarification of faith’s inherent realism. It permits theology to speak with intellectual rigor while preserving its confessional depth.

A theological model is not a cage for divine mystery but the intelligible space where divine truth becomes shareable. Through models the Church’s speech becomes not only meaningful but true.

Determinatio

1. Theological language T is incomplete until it is interpreted within models that reflect divine reality.

2. Modeling joins the syntax of faith to the ontology of creation, grounding reference in God’s act of speaking.

3. The Holy Spirit mediates both the felicity of T and the adequacy of its interpretation.

4. The plurality of models reflects the richness of divine truth refracted through creation.

5. Theology’s coherence and its truth converge where divine language meets divinely ordered being.

Thus theology becomes truth-bearing only where the Word that speaks is joined to the world that answers.

Transitus ad Disputationem III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis

The second disputation has shown that theological truth emerges where the grammar of faith meets the structure of reality. Yet correspondence, though necessary, is not sufficient for the fullness of truth. For truth in theology is never merely structural. It is participatory. It depends not only on language and ontology but on the divine act that unites them in the life of the creature.

Theological models describe how the Word’s intelligibility is refracted into the order of creation, but they cannot themselves actualize the unity they depict. The bond between sign and reality must be effected by the Spirit, who brings coherence to completion through a living union. Without the Spirit, theological truth remains static; with the Spirit, it becomes event, communion, and joy.

Thus arises the next inquiry: how does the Holy Spirit mediate the correspondence between divine Word and created understanding? How does the Spirit transform finite cognition into participation in divine truth? These questions lead us to Disputatio III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis.

Prooemium ad Partem I: De Intelligibilitate et Participatione; Disputatio I: De Expressionibus Theologicis ut Syntacticis

Prooemium ad Disputationes Theologicas

Why the Scholastic Form Is Employed

The scholastic disputation is retrieved here not from nostalgia but from theological necessity. Its form—thesis, locus classicus, explicatio, objectiones, responsiones, nota, determinatio—exposes the ordered movement by which theology advances from confession to understanding. The disputation never replaces revelation. It receives revelation in the only manner proper to finite reason: through articulated structure. The form refuses both the spontaneity that mistakes immediacy for truth and the skepticism that dissolves language into indeterminacy.

The grammar of the disputation mirrors the polarity of revelation itself. Divine truth appears as verbum incarnatum, at once hidden and manifest, transcendent and given. The structure of assertion, challenge, and resolution reflects this pattern. Contradiction is not suppressed but taken up into higher clarity. The method resonates with the ontology presupposed throughout these disputations, namely that truth is participation in God’s own act of self-communication. Because divine truth gives form, theology must receive that form in an ordered manner.

The disputatio is therefore both rigorous and contemplative. It is rigorous because it holds every claim accountable to logic and coherence. It is contemplative because every resolution gestures beyond itself to the mystery that grounds understanding. Within a model-theoretic theology, where T denotes the language of faith and its ordered expressions, the disputation provides the visible structure of theology’s movement from syntactical integrity to semantic interpretation and finally to truth. Its parts guide the mind toward the intelligibility that revelation both grants and commands.

Praefatio ad Partem I: De Intelligibilitate et Participatione

Deus loquitur, et fit veritas

Theology begins with divine speech. When God speaks, the world becomes intelligible, and the human being is summoned into understanding. This first part investigates how the rational order of creatures participates in the light of the Word, and how the intelligibility of creation becomes the primordial witness to divine presence. This is not a matter of analogy between finite thought and divine ideas; it is the communication of light itself, the light that shines in the darkness and renders both knowledge and faith possible.

Accordingly, theology must first ask how mind and world are ordered to the divine utterance. Without this ontological participation, neither human discourse nor human truth can endure before God. Part I therefore lays the foundation for all that follows, showing that intelligibility itself is a gift of participation in the Word who speaks creation into being.

Concerning the Expressions of Theology as Syntactical

Quaeritur

Utrum theologia, secundum rationem syntacticam considerata, in ipsa structura locutionis veritatem suam formet, ita ut ordo sermonis sit forma interna veritatis quae posteriorem interpretationem fundat.

Whether theology, considered under its syntactical aspect, forms an inner structure of truth in its very mode of utterance, such that the order of discourse becomes the internal form upon which interpretation depends.

Thesis

Theological expressions, denoted T, the total language of faith as spoken, written, and confessed, must first be regarded as syntactical. They are governed by rules of formation and inference that secure coherence prior to questions of meaning or truth. Only when this linguistic system is interpreted within a model—related to what is real—do meaning and truth properly emerge.

Locus classicus

1. Scriptura Sacra — Hebrews 4:12 (NA28)
Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργὴς… κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας.
For the word of God is living and active… discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

2. Scriptura Sacra — Isaiah 55:11 (MT)
כֵּן יִהְיֶה דְבָרִי בַּאֲשֶׁר יֵצֵא מִפִּי… וְהִצְלִיחַ אֲשֶׁר שְׁלַחְתִּיו
So shall my Word be that goes forth from my mouth… it shall accomplish that which I purpose.

3. Augustinus — Confessiones XIII.12.13
Loquitur Verbum tuum nobis in libro tuo…
Thy Word speaks to us in Thy Book…

4. Luther — WA 39/I, 175.12–15
Das Wort Gottes ist nicht stumm, sondern lebendig und kräftig.
The Word of God is not mute, but living and mighty.

5. Thomas Aquinas — ST I, q. 34, a. 1 ad 3
Verbum importat ordinem ad id quod per ipsum manifestatur.
The Word implies an order toward that which is manifested through it.

Together these witnesses affirm that divine speech is ordered, intelligible, and life-giving. Theology begins not in silence but in structured hearing, where divine form enters human words.

Explicatio

Before theology may speak truthfully, it must speak coherently. Every theological utterance belongs to the larger body of discourse that constitutes the lingua fidei, designated T. As in logic, syntax concerns the structure of expressions, the rules by which sentences are formed, related, and inferred. Theological syntax orders the words of revelation prior to their interpretation. Within this initial horizon the question is not truth or falsity but whether a sentence may be rightly spoken at all.

To say “Christ is truly present in the Eucharist” is not yet to advance a metaphysical account of presence. It is to give voice to a confession that stands within a network of scriptural, creedal, and liturgical statements. Detached from that network, the assertion loses its felicity—its Spirit-given rightness or authorization. The first task of theology is therefore grammatical: to preserve the coherence of divine speech once it has entered human language. Only then may theology inquire into meaning, reference, and truth.

Objectiones

Ob I. Barth holds that revelation precedes all linguistic form; syntax makes divine address dependent on human categories.

Ob II. Wittgenstein argues that meaning is use within a communal practice; formal syntax abstracts theological speech from the Church’s form of life.

Ob III. Derrida contends that signs are marked by indeterminacy; a fixed divine grammar reinstates metaphysics of presence.

Ob IV. Schleiermacher claims that religion arises from inner feeling and precedes propositional articulation; grammatical form distorts this immediacy.

Ob V. Empiricists argue that theological statements lack empirical content; to ascribe logical syntax is to treat them as propositions when they are not.

Responsiones

Ad I. Revelation indeed precedes human form, yet it comes clothed in words. Syntax does not construct revelation; it receives the order in which revelation becomes communicable. The Spirit who grants the Word grants also the grammar by which the Church speaks it intelligibly.

Ad II. Theology agrees that language is rule-governed, but the rules of the lingua fidei are Spirit-given rather than conventionally negotiated. Formal clarification does not abstract from the Church’s life; it renders explicit the structures that sustain it across ages and cultures.

Ad III. Deconstruction uncovers the instability of self-grounded signs. Theology does not claim such autonomy. Its signs refer because the Logos grounds signification. Grammar here is not metaphysics of presence but participation in the divine act that makes meaning possible.

Ad IV. Experience without grammar dissolves into private intuition. The Spirit orders confession as well as ignites faith. Syntax renders the truth communicable and guards the unity of the Church’s speech.

Ad V. Verification is not the limit of meaning. Theological sentences belong to a different order of reference, one determined by divine address rather than sensory data. Syntax marks the structure of this order.

Nota

Attention to theological syntax is foundational for the renewal of Christian speech. Where grammar erodes, proclamation withers into sentiment and doctrine into opinion. Communities of faith therefore require institutions that teach precision in sacred terms, churches that guard the patterns of sound words, and scholars who articulate the faith without compromising its form. To forget the grammar of belief is to lose the idiom in which the gospel may be heard.

Determinatio

It is determined that:

1. Theological discourse T is syntactical before it is semantical.

2. The Spirit grants a rule-governed language whose coherence must be secured prior to interpretation.

3. The felicity of T, denoted FT, is the Spirit-given integrity of speech.

4. Truth conditions arise only when T is placed within a model of reality: TC = FT + Modeling.

5. Theology’s autonomy from empirical reduction is preserved, even as its dependence on divine address is affirmed.

To speak theologically is to inhabit a grammar constituted by God’s self-communication and to let that grammar guide every truthful word.

Transitus ad Disputationem II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum

In this first disputation theology has been examined in its syntactical aspect. The structure of discourse was shown to be the internal form by which divine speech becomes intelligible in human words. Yet syntax alone cannot yield truth. It orders expression but does not determine its relation to what is real. If theology is to speak truthfully about God and creation, its language must be joined to an ontology that gives the world its structure.

Hence the next question arises naturally: how does T, the language of faith, touch reality? If divine speech grounds both meaning and being, then theological discourse must be interpreted within a system of models that reflect the order God establishes. Theologia non est mera locutio; est interpretatio verbi ad mundum. We therefore proceed to Disputatio II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum, where the relation between divine language and created being will be examined.