Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

On the Relation between Theological Truth and Felicity

Utrum inter veritatem et felicitatem theologicam sit talis distinctio, ut neque confundantur neque separentur; cum felicitas sit forma a Spiritu data, qua sermo fit idoneus ad dicendum de Deo, et veritas 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 two orders, the order of word and the order of being.

Thesis

Felicity and truth are two inseparable dimensions of theology’s participation in divine speech.

• Felicity (felicitas) concerns the authorization and rightness of theological language so that it may be spoken in Spiritu Sancto.

• Truth (veritas) concerns the fulfillment and correspondence of that language in the divine reality.

• They differ as form and effect: felicity makes theology speakable, truth makes it real.

Locus Classicus

כִּי לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי וְהִצְלִיחַ אֲשֶׁר שְׁלַחְתִּיו׃

“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” — Isaiah 55:11

In the prophet’s vision, divine language is performative: the Word’s truth is identical with its power to accomplish.

Ὁ γὰρ τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγος ζῶν ἐστι καὶ ἐνεργής· ἀκατάπαυστος ἐστὶν ἡ ἐνέργεια τοῦ Λόγου.

“For the Word of God is living and active; the operation of the Logos is without ceasing.” — Origenes, Homiliae in Ieremiam, I.7

For Origen, the divine Word is not a static utterance but an ongoing act—the living principle through which all being is interpreted and renewed.

“Das Wort Gottes geschieht, indem Gott selbst handelt und redet.”

“The Word of God happens as God Himself acts and speaks.” — Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, §4

In Barth’s retrieval of the Reformation’s insight, the Word is not merely an event in language but the act of God Himself, whose speaking is His doing.

Together these witnesses—prophet, father, and modern theologian—converge in one confession: the Word of God is not inert description but living act. It is felicitous because it may rightly be spoken by God, and true because in being spoken it brings to pass the very reality it names.

Explicatio

In Disputatio III, we learned that the Holy Spirit determines which expressions belong within the language of faith T, through the conditions of felicity, the marks that identify speech as rightly spoken in the Spirit. In Disputatio IV, we saw that theology possesses twofold truth: internal, pertaining to felicity, and external, corresponding to reality. Here we bring these together.

When theologians write FT + Modeling = TC, they do not mean a mathematical formula but a theological relation. FT denotes the felicity conditions of T: the Spirit’s gift of coherence, authorization, and spiritual rightness in speech. “Modeling” denotes the interpretation of that language within being, as we explored earlier. TC stands for the truth conditions of theology, and thus concern the reality in which theological expressions are fulfilled.

This expression can be read in plain words as:

“When the language of faith is authorized by the Spirit and interpreted within reality, it becomes true.”

Thus, felicity is not preliminary to truth as a mere stepping stone; it is the inner form of truth’s possibility. The felicity of divine speech is the manner in which truth enters language.

Inversely, truth is the ontological consummation of felicity, the outward completion of what felicity initiates. To speak felicitously in the Spirit is to speak words that are destined to become true in God’s creative act.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to classical correspondence realism, felicity and truth are identical, for truth is the adequation of intellect and thing, and felicity in theology would simply be the success of this adequation. To distinguish felicity from truth introduces redundancy: a statement is felicitous precisely because it is true, and to say otherwise is to obscure the classical notion of correspondence.

Ob II. According to J. L. Austin and later linguistic philosophers' speech-act pragmaticsm, felicity concerns the proper performance of a speech act, not its truth-value. To conflate felicity with truth is to mistake pragmatic success for propositional correctness. Theological felicity, like any performative, depends on convention and authority, not on any metaphysical reality beyond the act of saying.

Ob III. Kant would argue that theological “truth” concerns moral faith, while felicity pertains to the good will’s harmony with moral law. The two belong to distinct domains—truth to theoretical reason, felicity to practical. Theology therefore cannot unite them without overstepping the limits of human cognition. The idea of their relation is only regulative, never constitutive.

Ob IV. The post-liberal conventionalism of George Lindbeck and the cultural-linguistic school holds that truth in theology is intralinguistic: it designates coherence within a communal grammar. Felicity, then, is simply the successful enactment of that grammar in liturgical or doctrinal form. To distinguish felicity from truth implies an external referent that transcends the community’s language—an illegitimate return to metaphysical realism.

Responsiones

Ad I. Truth and felicity coincide in God but are distinct in theology. Truth concerns the ontological adequation of word and being; felicity concerns the pneumatic authorization of that word to bear divine truth. A theological statement may be formally true yet not felicitous—true in content but spoken outside the Spirit’s act. Conversely, felicity without truth would be enthusiasm—speech energized but empty. Their distinction is not redundancy but order: truth is the terminus of reference, felicity the condition of participation.

Ad II. Speech-act theory rightly observes that meaning depends on the conditions of performance, but theology deepens this insight by positing the Holy Spirit as the ultimate condition of felicity. The act of theological speaking is not merely conventional but pneumatic. Felicity in theology is the Spirit’s act of rendering a finite utterance proportionate to divine truth. It thus includes but surpasses pragmatic success, uniting linguistic performance with ontological participation.

Ad III. Kant’s dualism of theoretical and practical reason cannot finally contain theology, for revelation unites truth and goodness in a single divine act. In the Spirit, what is true becomes life-giving, and what is felicitous participates in truth. Theological felicity is not a moral sentiment but the Spirit’s presence in the act of knowing. The relation between felicity and truth is constitutive: the Spirit makes truth an event within finitude rather than an ideal beyond it.

Ad IV. Post-liberal coherence rightly guards against subjectivism but errs in denying theology’s referential claim. Felicity does not arise solely from communal performance but from the Spirit who constitutes that community as witness to divine reality. Truth in theology is not reducible to grammar; it is what grammar participates in when animated by the Spirit. Felicity names that animation itself—the act by which linguistic coherence becomes ontological communion.

Nota

We may picture felicity and truth as two poles of a single divine circuit. Felicity is the descent of the Spirit into speech; truth is the return of that speech into being. The Word goes forth felicitously, returns truthfully.

To say that the Spirit causes both is to affirm that God’s communication is never idle. Felicity is the Spirit’s formal causality; it is the ordering of language so it may bear meaning. Truth is the Spirit’s final and efficient causality; it is the making real of what language, so ordered, declares.

Theological language that seeks truth without felicity becomes presumptuous, attempting to name God without the Spirit’s authorization. Conversely, felicity without truth becomes pietistic solipsism, where words comfort but do not correspond. Only when the two coincide does theology become the living voice (viva vox) of the gospel.

Thus, the relation between felicity and truth is neither sequential nor competitive but circular, for the Spirit who authorizes speech also fulfills it. The Word that begins in divine grace terminates in divine reality.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

2. Felicity concerns the rightness of speech within T (the internal authorization of the Word), while truth concerns the realization of that speech within being (the external fulfillment of the Word).

3. The same Spirit who gives felicity as form of divine discourse causes truth as fulfillment of divine action.

4. Felicity anticipates truth eschatologically: what is rightly spoken in faith will be shown true in glory.

5. Therefore, theology’s speech is a participation in God’s own causal communication—words that live because the Spirit makes them both felicitous and true.

Transitus ad Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

In the fifth disputation, the relation between theological truth and felicity was explored as the union of cognition and participation, the meeting of intellect and joy in the act of knowing God. There it became clear that theology attains its perfection only when truth is not merely contemplated but lived, when the intellect’s conformity to the divine Word issues in the soul’s delight in the divine life.

Yet this very relation of truth and joy presupposes a deeper unity: that both the adequation of intellect and the beatitude of participation depend upon the causal act of God Himself. If the Word is true and the Spirit gives felicity, both presuppose the Father as the source of all causality, the One whose creative and sustaining act makes possible both the world to be known and the speech that knows it.

Thus the question now arises: how does divine causality stand to theological language? If God is the first cause not only of being but of meaning, then theology itself must be a mode of divine operation, a loquela Dei through human words. Theologians speak truly only insofar as God speaks in them; their discourse participates in that creative causality through which all things, including words, come to be.

We therefore advance to Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica, in which it will be asked how the causal action of God grounds the possibility of theological speech, how divine and human agency coexist in the act of saying, and how the verbum hominis becomes the 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 possesses both an internal and an external truth.

• Internal truth (veritas interna) refers to the coherence and felicity of theological speech as governed by the Spirit within the community of faith.

• External truth (veritas externa) pertains to the correspondence or adequacy of that speech when interpreted within being, its fulfillment in the order of reality that God creates and sustains.
  Together they form a single movement from faith’s language to God’s reality and back again.

Locus Classicus

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή· οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ.

— Ἰωάννης 14:6

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

In this saying, Christ names Himself not as one who possesses truth but as Truth itself. The ego eimi identifies the divine speaker with the structure of intelligibility itself: the way (ὁδός) that orders, the truth (ἀλήθεια) that discloses, and the life (ζωή) that enacts. The Word thus contains in Himself the threefold form of logic—ordo, veritas, actus. Every theological proposition, insofar as it participates in Him, carries this trinitarian imprint: it orders, reveals, and vivifies.

“Ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐλάβον παρὰ Κυρίου ὃ καὶ παρέδωκα ὑμῖν.”

— 1 Κορινθίους 11:23

“For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.” — 1 Corinthians 11:23

Paul here reveals the divine pattern of transmission: the word of faith is not self-generated but received and handed on. Theological language thus possesses a forma tradita—a logical form not invented by reason but bestowed in revelation. The structure of saying corresponds to the structure of giving: every verbum fidei is a participation in the Logos who both speaks and gives Himself.

Λόγος ἐστιν ἐνδιάθετος καὶ προφορικός· ὁ μὲν ἐνδιάθετος ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, ὁ δὲ προφορικός ἐν φωνῇ.

— Κλήμης Ἀλεξανδρεύς, Στρωματεῖς V.14

“The Word exists both inwardly and outwardly: the inward Word in the soul, the uttered Word in speech.” — Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V.14

Clement distinguishes between the logos endiathetos (the word conceived) and the logos prophorikos (the word spoken), a distinction later adopted into Trinitarian theology. The Logos of God, eternally endiathetos in the Father, becomes prophorikos in creation and incarnation. The structure of human discourse mirrors this divine procession: thought proceeds to word, interior reason to exterior form, without ceasing to be one. Logic, therefore, is not alien to theology but the vestige of divine procession within language.

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

— Augustinus, De Trinitate XV.11

“The form of speech, like the form of things, is derived from the Word of God.” — Augustine, On the TrinityXV.11

For Augustine, both linguistic and ontological form flow from the same source—the divine Word through whom all things are shaped. Grammar and creation share a common archetype. The ordo signorum (order of signs) reflects the ordo rerum(order of things), because both proceed from the ordo Verbi. Hence, the logical form of a true theological statement is not a human imposition upon revelation but a participation in the rationality that created it.

“Et sicut per artem fit opus artificis, ita per Verbum Dei fit omnis creatura.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Super Ioannem 1.1

“And just as by his art the craftsman produces his work, so by the Word of God every creature comes to be.”— Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on John 1.1

Aquinas here extends the analogy of form to divine action: as art gives form to matter, so the divine Word gives form to being. The logical structure of theology—its subject, predicate, and copula—thus mirrors the metaphysical structure of creation—ens, forma, actus. To speak rightly of God is to let the form of divine wisdom shape the syntax of human thought.

In these testimonies—Christ, Paul, Clement, Augustine, and Aquinas—the same mystery unfolds: forma logica arises from forma Verbi. The Word who is Truth orders both thought and being; He is at once the principle of intelligibility and the content of revelation. Theological language, therefore, is not a human system of representation but a sacramental participation in divine rationality.

Every true theological proposition is an echo of that eternal utterance by which God speaks Himself and all things into being. Its logical form—subject ordered to predicate through the copula—repeats, in miniature, the procession of Son from Father and the return of all things through the Spirit. To speak with logical clarity in theology is thus to enter the rhythm of Trinitarian speech itself: the Logos giving Himself form in human words.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, theology was described as a formal language T, authorized by the Spirit, and interpreted within models that link language to being. Here we consider what it means to say that such theological expressions are true.

In logic, truth is often defined by correspondence: a sentence is true when what it says obtains in the world. In theology, that notion must be qualified. Theology’s words do not first describe and then verify; they participate in divine speech.

To express this participation, we distinguish between two levels of truth:

1. Internal truth (veritas interna) occurs within the system of theological language itself. We might say that a tatement is internally true when it is felicitous, when it coheres with Scripture, doctrine, and Spirit-guided discourse. For instance, “Christ is Lord” is internally true because it is consonant with the grammar of faith T as the Spirit has given it.

   Symbolically, we may call the internal measure of this truth FT, the felicity conditions of T. These conditions ensure that theology speaks rightly, even before modeling connects it to being.

2. External truth (veritas externa) arises when the same expression is interpreted within a model of reality M, yielding what we earlier called TC, or truth conditions. These are the states of affairs, the real relations, events, or properties through which God’s Word is fulfilled in the world.

   In simple terms: FT + Modeling = TC. That is, when Spirit-given felicity joins ontological adequacy, the statement is true in both faith and fact.

This distinction does not divide truth into two different kinds but shows its two dimensions. Internal truth without external fulfillment is mere coherence; external truth without inner authorization is unfettered speculation. Only when the Spirit unites both does theology achieve full truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Thomas Aquinas maintains that truth is the adequation of intellect and thing (adaequatio intellectus et rei). Theology, insofar as it concerns divine things, must therefore have a single, objective truth grounded in God’s being. To posit a “double truth” in theology would divide divine reality from its cognition and collapse truth into mere human interpretation.

Obiectio II. Late medieval nominalism holds that theological statements possess truth only insofar as they express the divine will revealed in Scripture. There is no ontological correspondence beyond God’s voluntary decree. To speak of an “ontological truth” in addition to a “formal” or linguistic one is to reintroduce metaphysical realism against the simplicity of God’s sovereignty.

Obiectio III. For Kant, all human knowledge is conditioned by the forms of intuition and categories of the understanding. “Theology” may express moral faith but cannot claim objective correspondence to the divine. Any “double truth” distinguishing linguistic coherence from ontological reality confuses the distinction between phenomena and noumena. The only truth theology can have is practical, not ontological.

Obiectio IV. George Lindbeck and others argue that theological truth resides within the coherence of a community’s grammar. There is no “ontological truth” to be accessed beyond the language of faith. To posit a second, deeper truth is to reintroduce the very representationalism Lindbeck rejects. Theological truth is singular and intralinguistic; there is no duplex veritas.

Obiectio V. From a constructivist or deconstructive standpoint, all claims to “truth” are historically contingent linguistic performances. A “double truth” merely multiplies illusions. Theology’s so-called ontological truth is only a higher-order fiction meant to stabilize its discourse. Truth is produced, not revealed.

Responsiones

Ad I. Thomistic realism correctly grounds truth in the relation between intellect and being, yet theology’s intellect is not autonomous but pneumatic. Its formal truth, the coherence and intelligibility of theological language, is secured within the human domain. Its ontological truth, the correspondence of that language to divine reality, is effected by the Holy Spirit, who bridges word and being. These two aspects are not contradictory but correlative; the Spirit makes the formal act of saying coincide with the divine act of being.

Ad II. Nominalism preserves God’s freedom but severs divine willing from ontological intelligibility. The “double truth” of theology does not undermine divine sovereignty; it clarifies its modes of manifestation. God’s will becomes present formally in the human act of confession and ontologically in the reality the confession names. The Spirit unites both, ensuring that what is truly said in faith corresponds to how God truly is, and without collapsing divine causality into human speech.

Ad III. While Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena limits knowledge to the conditions of human sensibility, theological truth concerns divine communication. The Spirit renders finite intellects proportionate to divine truth without violating their transcendental structure. The duplex truth of theology honors both sides: the formal truth proper to human language and the ontological truth granted by divine participation. Revelation transforms the limits of reason into avenues of communion.

Ad IV. Post-liberal theology rightly emphasizes the communal and grammatical dimensions of faith, but its refusal of ontological reference renders theology self-enclosed. The double truth affirms that grammar and reality are distinct yet related: theological statements are formally true as expressions within a rule-governed practice, and ontologically true insofar as that practice participates in divine being through the Spirit. The grammar of faith is sacramental; it mediates what it signifies.

Ad V. Constructivism dissolves truth into performance, yet it inadvertently testifies to a real difference between the act of speaking and what the act seeks to convey. The duplex truth acknowledges that difference while grounding it in divine causality. The Spirit authorizes human constructions as instruments of revelation, preserving their historical finitude while ensuring participation in the eternal. Theological truth is neither illusion nor production but participation in a Word that precedes every word.

Nota

Picture the unity of these two truths as a circle rather than a line. Theological language begins with T, the grammar given by the Spirit. Within T, internal truth arises through faithful speech. This language is then modeled into reality M, producing external truth as divine being answers divine word. The resulting adequacy returns again to renew T, forming a continual exchange between language and being, grace and truth.

When theologians write FT + Modeling = TC, they are not composing an equation but naming a semantic reality: felicity (Spirit-authorized speech) joined to modeling (Spirit-interpreted being) yields theological truth. It is a symbolic shorthand for Luther’s claim that God’s Word is true because it does what it says.

Christ Himself is this coincidence of internal and external truth, the Word that is also the world’s fulfillment. To confess that “the Word became flesh” is to say that God’s internal Word (eternally spoken) has become externally real in history.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theology possesses both an internal truth (felicity within the Spirit-governed language of faith) and an external truth (adequacy to divine reality).

2. These two are ordered, not opposed: internal truth grounds theology’s faithfulness, external truth secures its realism.

3. Christ, as both Word and Reality, is the unity of these two modes of truth.

4. The Spirit mediates their conjunction, ensuring that the truth of faith is neither abstract nor speculative but living and enacted.

5. Hence, theology’s veracity is neither purely linguistic nor purely ontological; it is incarnational, the meeting of speech and being in the Spirit of Christ.

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

Having discerned that theological truth is twofold—internal in the felicity of the Spirit, external in the adequation of language to divine reality—it now becomes necessary to examine the relation between these two modes. For if theology is true both in actu Spiritus and in ratione verbi, then truth and blessedness cannot be opposed, but must interpenetrate within the life of faith.

The danger of division is constant: a theology concerned only with external correspondence lapses into formalism, while one absorbed in internal felicity risks dissolving truth into experience. Yet their separation betrays the nature of both, for truth without joy is barren, and joy without truth is vain. Theologia therefore finds its wholeness only where the intellect’s assent and the soul’s delight converge, where the knowledge of God becomes the joy of God known.

Hence we proceed to Disputationem V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam, wherein it will be asked how truth and felicity are related as form and act within theology; whether felicity is the perfection of truth or its manifestation; and how, in the life of the believer, the Spirit unites the veracity of the Word with the beatitude of 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 per systemata modelorum ut correspondentia constituitur, 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, which is constituted through systems of models as correspondence, is brought to completion through participation and communion, and finite understanding thereby becomes the very site of divine blessedness.

Thesis

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

Locus Classicus

Ὁ Θεὸς ἀληθής ἐστιν· πᾶν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης.

— Ψαλμοί 115(116):11, LXX

“God is true, but every man a liar.” — Psalm 116:11 (LXX/ESV)

Here truth is first predicated of God Himself. The divine truth is not propositional but ontological: God is truth because He is the self-identical fullness of being. All human speech and knowledge participate in this truth analogically, finding their measure not in linguistic coherence alone, but in the divine reality that grounds both intellect and world.

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή· οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ.

— Ἰωάννης 14:6

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

Christ here does not possess truth but is truth. In Him, the eternal correspondence between intellect and being is made personal and incarnate. The adaequation of mind and reality becomes the hypostatic union of the divine and human: truth, once abstract, is now flesh.

Ἀλήθεια γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ ὄντος ἔξοδος πρὸς γνῶσιν.

— Μέτα τα Φυσικά II.993b20, Ἀριστοτέλης

“For truth is the manifestation of being to knowledge.” — Aristotle, Metaphysics II.993b20

Aristotle’s definition already anticipates a participatory conception: truth occurs where being comes forth into knowability. To know truly is to let being show itself as it is; falsehood arises when intellect withholds or distorts this self-disclosure.

“Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate q.1, a.1

“Truth is the conformity of thing and intellect.” — Thomas Aquinas, On Truth 1.1

For Aquinas, this adaequation is not a symmetry of equals but a relation of participation: the created intellect is true when it conforms to the divine idea that constitutes the thing. In God alone are truth and being absolutely one—ipsa veritas subsistens.

“Ἀλήθεια Θεοῦ ἐστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς σοφίας αὐτοῦ.”

— Γρηγόριος Νύσσης, Contra Eunomium II.

“The truth of God is the operation of His wisdom.” — Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius II

Gregory deepens the metaphysical sense, for divine truth is not static identity but the active energy of wisdom whereby God makes Himself known. Truth is thus neither abstract nor inert, but the luminous self-communication of divine being.

Across these witnesses—a Psalm, the Gospel, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Gregory—the same insight reverberates: Veritas est theophania entis. Truth is the manifestation of being, and being itself is grounded in the eternal Word. What philosophy described as correspondence, theology discerns as participation: the human intellect mirrors divine intelligence precisely by being drawn into the Logos, in whom the adequation of being and knowing is perfect.

To speak truth, then, is not merely to describe reality but to dwell within it rightly; it is to let the Word who is Truth shape both thought and world. Theological modeling, when faithful, becomes the analogical repetition of that primal correspondence: the act wherein the divine intellect makes itself known through creaturely speech.

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

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

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

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex

In the third disputation, truth was considered as fulfilled in the act of the Spirit, who unites divine word and creaturely being within the life of the believer. There theology ceased to be merely structural or referential and became participatory: truth not only stated but lived, not merely modeled but enacted in communion.

Yet such a pneumatic conception of truth raises a deeper question concerning its nature and division. If the Spirit renders truth participatory, does theology thereby forfeit its claim to objective validity? Or must we now distinguish between two orders of truth: one interior and existential, the other exterior and propositional? The first pertains to the felicity of communion, truth in actu Spiritus; the second to the coherence of doctrine, truth in ratione verbi.

Theology must therefore learn to speak of truth doubly without dividing it: as inwardly possessed and outwardly confessed, as realized in participation and articulated in discourse. The Spirit internalizes what the Word declares, and the Church bears witness to both. Accordingly, there is both the inward veracity of grace and the outward truth of confession.

We thus proceed to Disputatio IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex, wherein it will be asked how theological truth can be both lived and spoken, internal and external, pneumatic and logical, and how these two modes of truth converge without confusion in the one Logos who is both the reality and the form of all theology.