Disputatio LVI: De Formā Logi ut Principio Intelligibilitatis

 On the Form of the Logos as the Principle of Intelligibility

Quaeritur

Utrum forma Logi sit principium intelligibilitatis omnium divinorum actuum, ita ut omnis divina operatio sit cognoscibilis solum quia informatur a Logō; et quomodo haec informatio non solvat simplicitatem divinam neque introducat abstractionem supra vitam Trinitatis.

Whether the form of the Logos constitutes the principle of intelligibility for all divine acts, such that every divine operation is knowable only because it has its determinate form in the Logos; and how this does not compromise divine simplicity nor introduce an abstraction standing above the life of the Trinity.

Thesis

The Logos is not merely the interpreter of divine action nor a medium through which intelligibility flows. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility itself. Every divine act is intelligible because its act-form subsists in the Logos. There is no higher principle of order, no abstract structure, no metaphysical category that conditions God’s intelligibility from without.

The form of the Logos is therefore both metaphysically constitutive and epistemically foundational: constitutive because all divine action is structurally what it is in and as the Logos; foundational because creatures know divine action only by participation in this Logos-formed intelligibility.

Thus intelligibility is neither imposed upon God nor constructed by creatures. It is the radiance of the divine act as it subsists in the eternal Word.

Locus Classicus

John 1:18
ὁ μονογενὴς Θεὸς… ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο.
“The only-begotten God… He has made Him known.”

The Logos is the exegesis of God, not by reporting but by being the intelligible form of divine life.

Colossians 1:16–17
τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται… καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε.
“All things were created through Him and for Him… and in Him all things hold together.”

Creation’s intelligibility depends on the Logos’ inner structural sufficiency.

Athanasius, Contra Arianos II.22
ὁ Λόγος μορφὴ τοῦ Πατρός ἐστιν.
“The Word is the form of the Father.”

Luther, WA 40 III, 64
Christus est ratio et forma omnium promissionum.
“Christ is the reason and form of all promises.”

Divine intelligibility is Christologically concentrated.

Explicatio

1. Intelligibility cannot arise from creaturely or abstract conditions

Theological modernity has sometimes treated intelligibility as a category external to God—a structure into which God must “fit” to be known. This misconstrues both metaphysics and revelation. Intelligibility is not a transcendental horizon that precedes God; neither is it a human conceptual framework imposed upon divine action.

To posit intelligibility as an abstract form above God would be to posit a metaphysical genus under which God falls. This violates the categorical dualism of Creator and creature and implicitly denies divine simplicity.

Therefore: whatever intelligibility divine acts possess must arise from within the divine life itself.

2. The Logos as the constitutive form of divine intelligibility

Following Disputatio LV, where divine intention and divine act were shown to be one in the Logos, we now articulate the deeper structure: Every divine act is intelligible because its form subsists in the Logos as its constitutive intelligibility.

This means:

• The Logos is not the representation of divine operations.

• The Logos is their formal principle, their internal determination.

• The Logos is not a cognitive filter applied by creatures but the intrinsic ground by which divine actions can be known at all.

Intelligibility is therefore ontological before it is epistemological. In classical terms: the forma logica of divine action is simply the Logos Himself, the eternal articulation of the Father’s being.

3. Intelligibility and divine simplicity

This view preserves simplicity rather than threatens it. For if God were intelligible by a form other than the Logos, God would be composite: essence + form, act + structure. But Scripture and tradition affirm that the Word is eternally “with God” and “is God.” Therefore the form that makes God’s act intelligible is not added to God but is God.

The Logos is the divine act in its intelligible articulation. This articulation is one with the being of God, not an abstraction above it.

4. Creaturely knowledge as participation in Logos-formed intelligibility

Creaturely knowledge of God, then, is not a climb toward divine essence nor a projection of human concepts onto divinity. It is the Spirit-enabled participation in the intelligibility that already inheres in the Logos.

The Spirit does not produce intelligibility; the Spirit grants access to intelligibility already constituted in the Logos. Thus every act of divine revelation—Scripture, sacrament, promise—is not merely information but participation in the Logos’ intelligible form.

What creatures perceive as “revelation” is nothing other than the Logos donating His own act-form to them.

5. Rejection of merely linguistic or postliberal construals

Some modern theologies, especially postliberal ones, treat intelligibility as a function of the ecclesial grammar that governs Christian discourse. But grammar without metaphysical anchor cannot disclose divine act. It only regulates human speech.

The intelligibility of theology must be anchored in the Logos or it becomes circular, self-referential, and finally empty. Revelation is not the community’s speech about God; it is God’s act made knowable because the Logos is its form.

Objectiones

Ob I. If intelligibility is located in the Logos, we introduce a second-level structure in God, undermining simplicity.

Ob II. If all intelligibility is in the Logos, the Father and Spirit become unintelligible except through the Son—an implicit subordinationism.

Ob III. Intelligibility is a creaturely category; to attribute it to God is anthropomorphism.

Ob IV. Intelligibility in the Logos suggests determination of divine acts, jeopardizing divine freedom.

Ob V. Postliberal theology denies that intelligibility is metaphysical; it is purely linguistic.

Responsiones

Ad I. No second-level structure is introduced. The Logos is God; therefore no composition arises. Intelligibility is not an attribute added to God but the radiance of divine act.

Ad II. The knowledge of God is indeed through the Son, but this is not subordination. It is Johannine metaphysics. The Son is the exegesis of the Father, and the Spirit grants participation. Each person is known personally in the one divine act.

Ad III. Creaturely intelligibility is a participation in divine intelligibility, not its source. Anthropomorphism arises only when creatures impose structures on God; we instead receive intelligibility from God.

Ad IV. Determination in the Logos is not constraint. It is the fullness of divine act in its eternal articulation. Freedom is the plentitude of act, not the absence of form.

Ad V. Grammar without ontology cannot speak of God. The Logos grounds all theological grammar by grounding the very acts theology names.

Nota

To say that the Logos is the principle of intelligibility is to say that divine truth is not a construction, approximation, or regulative ideal. It is the self-articulation of God’s own life. Theology’s intelligibility, then, is not a human achievement but a gift: the Spirit draws creatures into the Logos’ articulation of divine being.

This is why theology cannot begin with epistemology. It must begin with Christology. Knowledge of God is grounded not in the capacities of the knower but in the intelligible form of the One who acts and gives Himself to be known.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. Intelligibility is not an external condition to which God conforms but an internal articulation of God’s act in the Logos.

2. The Logos is the constitutive form of all divine action; nothing God does is without this form.

3. Creaturely knowledge of God is participation in the Logos by the Spirit’s donation.

4. This view preserves divine simplicity, avoids abstraction, and grounds theological realism.

5. No theological statement (Tₜ) can be true unless grounded in the Logos-constituted act that Λ ⊨* Tₜ specifies.

Transitus ad Disputationem LVII

Having established that the Logos is the condition of intelligibility for all divine action, we now consider how this intelligibility becomes efficacious in creaturely life. If intelligibility is constituted in the Logos, it is communicated through the Spirit’s act of illumination.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio LVII: De Spiritu Ut Luminatore Intelligibilitatis, where we examine how the Spirit grants creatures access to the intelligible structure of divine act without reducing revelation to cognition or collapsing knowledge into mere conceptuality.

____________________

Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem

Q1. You say that the Logos is the constitutive form of all divine action. Yet the term ‘form’ can be elusive. What exactly is meant here?

Responsio

The term form is not employed in its Aristotelian sense as an intrinsic constituent of a composed substance, nor in the Kantian sense of a subjective structuring condition. Rather, by form I mean the intelligible principle that makes an act the act it is. Every act must possess an internal principle of specification if it is to be identified as a distinct act. Divine action requires the same.

The Logos is the subsisting intelligibility of God. It is through the Son that divine agency is articulate rather than opaque, intelligible rather than merely asserted. To call the Logos the constitutive form of divine action is to say that divine acts have their identity through the one who makes God’s intentionality expressible. Without this, the category of divine action loses its internal criterion. It becomes a projection rather than an intelligible feature of God’s life.

Q2. Should this be understood as a grounding claim, a truthmaker claim, or something else?

Responsio.

It is best understood as a hyperintensional individuation thesis. Grounding and truthmaking presuppose that the relata already possess stable identity. My concern here precedes both. Before one can ask what grounds a divine act or what makes a proposition about divine action true, one must know what makes a divine act identifiable.

The Logos supplies this. It is the principle that secures the fine grained identity conditions of divine action. Once divine acts are intelligibly individuated, questions of grounding or truthmaking can arise. But the individuation of divine agency is logically prior, and that is what the claim addresses.

Q3. Does positing an eternal form for divine action entail modal collapse or eternalism?

Responsio.

No. An identity condition does not entail necessity. The fact that the Logos eternally provides the intelligible form of divine action does not imply that God must actualize any particular action. It means only that whenever God does act, the identity of that act will be articulated through the Son.

Thus the world’s history remains contingent and freely willed. Its intelligibility is eternal, because God is eternal, but its actuality belongs entirely to divine freedom. No eternalist picture is required. There is an eternal form of divine agency because God is eternally intelligible. But the exercise of divine agency takes place freely within the temporal economy.

Q4. Does this risk collapsing divine action into divine conceptualism, reducing divine acts to internal mental events?

Responsio.

No. Conceptualism arises only if one regards the Logos as a divine idea. But the Logos is not a concept. The Logos is a person. As the personal intelligibility of God, the Son is the one through whom God acts in creation. Thus the form of divine action is not conceptual but personal and causal.

Divine action is individuated in God but enacted in the world. The intelligibility that specifies divine action and the causality that accomplishes divine action coincide in the Logos. This unity prevents conceptualism. Divine actions are not mental episodes within God but the personal acts of God who reveals himself through the very structure that makes his acts knowable.

Nota Finalis

In this disputation we have asked how divine action can be intelligible without reducing God to a creaturely agent or dissolving divine agency into mere effects. The analytic questions press precisely on the point where intelligibility and transcendence meet. They reveal that the specification of divine action must lie within God and yet cannot remain a purely inward matter. The Logos answers this requirement. The Son is the one in whom divine agency is articulate for us and the one through whom divine agency is enacted toward us. These questions therefore serve not to complicate the Determinatio but to show its inner coherence: divine action is intelligible because God is intelligible, and God is intelligible because the Logos is God’s own self articulation.

Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Actus Divinus Ipsum Verum Efficiat

 On Constitutive Causation: Whether the Divine Act Makes Truth Itself

Quaeritur

Utrum divina actio non solum efficiat res esse, sed etiam efficiat verum esse; et utrum veritas theologiae consistat formaliter in actu Logos constituente ipsum ordinem entis, ita ut “truth through the Logos” sit constitutiva veritas, non tantum correspondentia.

Whether the divine act not only brings things into being but also brings truths into being, and whether theological truth formally consists in the Logos’ constitutive act that establishes the very order of being—so that “truth through the Logos” is constitutive truth, not mere correspondence.

Thesis 

Divine action is constitutive of theological truth. The Logos does not merely correspond to an independently existing world, but He makes the world, and thereby makes the truth about the world. Thus, theological truth is not simply descriptive adequation but constitutive adequation: truth obtains because the Logos acts. The Holy Spirit effects the union between statement and reality, such that the felicity of theological language and the ontological grounding of its truth coincide.

Therefore, Truth = Divine Constitutive Act + Spirit-Authorized Assertion. Metaphysically, God makes truth by making being, and the Spirit binds word to being.

Locus Classicus

1. John 1:3 — πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο

πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν.
“All things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be.”

Creation is not merely production of being but production of the order of being. Thus the Logos is not a truth-teller but a truth-maker: all truths about creatures depend on the act that constitutes them.

2. Hebrews 1:3 — φέρων τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως

“He upholds all things by the word of His power.”

The ongoing reality and truth of all things is constituted by the Logos’ sustaining act. Verum is continually performed by the divine act.

3. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.2

“Veritas est ipse Deus in quo nihil mutabile, nihil mendax.”
“Truth is God Himself, in whom there is nothing changeable or false.”

Truth is identical with God’s actus essendi. Thus, creaturely truths are true by participation in divine truth.

4. Athanasius, Contra Gentes 41

ὁ Λόγος τὸ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσι δίδωσιν.
“The Word gives being to the things that are.”

To give being is to give truth conditions. The Logos constitutes essence and therefore constitutes truth.

5. Martin Luther, WA 40/III, 342

“Deus dicendo facit.”
“God, by speaking, makes.”

Luther’s ontology of the Word grounds a strong truthmaker principle and thus divine speech is not annotation but creation.

Explicatio

While in XLVIII we distinguished internal and external truth, in XLIX we argued that external truth requires truthmakers, which are hyperintensional divine acts. Now we articulate the deeper principle: The truthmaker for any theological proposition is the Logos’ constitutive causation.

1. Constitutive vs. Efficient Causation

While classical efficient causation claims that A causes B, theological constitutive causation declares that A is the very ground of B’s existence, identity, order, and truth.

Since the Logos constitutes 1) the being of things, 2) the structure of their relations, 3) the intelligibility through which truths are possible, and 4) the order that statements answer to, divine causation is thus truth-making, not merely world-making.

2. Why Theology Requires Constitutive Causation

1. Theology’s claims depend on the identity of God’s actions, not merely on worldly states of affairs.

2. Only constitutive causation can explain why distinct divine acts yield distinct truths.

3. The Spirit’s role in felicity (XLVIII) requires grounding in ontological acts, not merely representation.

4. The incarnation shows that God’s act is the truthmaker of salvation (John 1:14).

3. Constitutive Truth vs. Correspondence

Correspondence is derivative while constitutive causation is primary. This entails both that statement S is true because God has acted such that the world corresponds to S, and that the “correspondence” is a manifestation of constitutive causation, not its origin. Hence theology’s fundamental truth relation is:

Λ ⊨** T

The Logos constitutively satisfies T.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to Thomistic epistemical realism -- "Truth is adequation alone” - truth resides in the intellect, and adequation requires only that statements match being, not that being be caused by God for that purpose.

Ob II:  Classical Analytic Metaphysics claims that truths supervene on the distribution of properties across the world. Thus, no hyperintensional divine acts are needed.

Ob III: Neo-Barthian theology declares that God reveals truth in Christ but does not ontologically ground all truths through constitutive act.

Ob IV: Process theology argues that divine causation is only persuasive and thus not constitutive.  Accordingly, truths arise cooperatively through divine-creaturely synergy.

Ob V: Postliberal Linguistic Theology tells us that theological truth is intra-textual, and thus it concerns the shape of Christian discourse, not metaphysical grounding.

Responsiones

Ad I:  Adequation requires a ground of being. Since God constitutes being, He constitutes the order in which adequation is possible. Thus constitutive causation underwrites, not replaces, adequation.

Ad II: Supervenience explains dependence but not grounding. Truth requires a because—a reason for being thus. Divine constitutive act supplies this grounding, not merely the extensional pattern.

Ad III: Revelation is not separable from ontology because to reveal the Father, the Son must be eternally begotten, and thus He must be the primal constitutive act. Revelation presupposes ontology, not vice versa.

Ad IV: Persuasion cannot alone constitute truth. Theology requires more. Indeed, the object of faith must be ontologically able to make truths true. Constitutive causation is required for realism.

Ad V: Grammar governs internal truth (felicity), but external truth requires a real God who grounds the being spoken of. Without constitutive causation, theology collapses into performance without ontology.

Nota

Constitutive causation solves the problem raised in XLVIII–XLIX. Accordingly, internal truth as Spirit-authorized assertion and External truth as Logos-constituted reality coincide because the Spirit unites the word to the act by which the Logos grounds truth.

Thus theological truth is neither sheer correspondence, sheer grammar, nor sheer experience, but it is rather participation in the constitutive act of the Logos.

Determinatio

We determine:

1. Truth in theology is grounded in the Logos’ constitutive act, which gives being, order, and intelligibility.

2. Constitutive causation is hyperintensional, because divine acts differ in internal form, not merely in effect.

3. Correspondence is a derivative effect of constitutive causation, not its replacement.

4. The Spirit is the mediating principle, uniting linguistic felicity with ontological grounding.

5. Christ is the paradigm of constitutive truth, for in Him the truthmaker and truth coincide.

Thus: Theology speaks truly because God makes truth, and God makes truth because He is the One who makes being.

Transitus ad Disputationem LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente

Having established that the Logos constitutes truth through constitutive causation, we now proceed to the next question: How does the constitutive act of the Logos relate to the real presence of the Word in revelation, sacrament, and ecclesial proclamation? For if truth is constituted by divine act, then the presence of the Logos is the mode by which truth becomes accessible to creatures.

Thus we move to: Disputatio LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente: Utrum Praesentia Logi Sit Conditio Omnis Veritatis Revelatae where we shall examine how constitutive causation becomes manifest presence, binding ontology to revelation.

Disputatio XLIX De Veritate Facienda: De Truthmakeribus et Hyperintensionalitate Theologica

 On the Making of Truth: Truthmakers and Theological Hyperintensionality

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae requirat veritatem facientia (truthmakers) quae non tantum determinent extensionem enuntiationum sed ipsam rationem, modum, et causam secundum quam enuntiationes theologicae verae sunt; et utrum haec veritatem facientia sint hyperintensionalia, id est, finioris resolutionis quam illa quae per modum possibilitatis vel extensionis explicari possunt.

Whether the truth of theology requires truthmakers that determine not only the extension of theological claims but the very reason, manner, and cause by which such claims are true; and whether these truthmakers must be hyperintensional, that is, finer-grained than any account reducible to modal or extensional equivalence.

Thesis

In theological discourse, two claims may share an extension yet differ in truth because Spiritus Sanctus determines felicity and actus Dei determines truth. Thus truthmakers in theology must be more fine-grained than possible-world semantics or classical extensional identities.

Locus Classicus

1. “Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο” — John 1:14

Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

This is a paradigmatic case of truthmaking: the claim “God is with us” is true because God has acted, not because of a description of the world’s extension. No possible world analysis captures the ontological fact that God has joined Himself to flesh. The truthmaker is the very event of incarnation, not a set of worldly facts.

2. “Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.” — Genesis 1:3

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר‎
“God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Here divine speaking is truthmaking: verbum is res. The statement “light exists” is true because of a specific divine act. Not all causes producing the same extension could be the truthmaker of this theological claim.

3. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate 1.1

“Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.”

But in theology, the adequation is not passive comparison; it is acheived through divine causation: adaequatio fit per actum Dei constituens ipsum esse rei.

4. Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannis 1.9

Ὁ λόγος ἀληθεύει τὰ ῥητὰ ποιῶν.
“The Word makes true what is spoken.”

A direct witness to theological truthmaking.

Explicatio

While XLVIII distinguished internal truth (felicity of faith’s language) and external truth (adequation to divine reality), XLIX specifies the metaphysical principle by which external truth occurs, that is, that truth is made true by divine acts.

Why Theological Truth Requires Truthmakers

In theology:

1. A proposition’s extension does not fix its truth.

   • “God forgives” and “God elects” may apply to the same set of saved persons yet differ profoundly in reality.

2. The causal grounding matters:

   • Forgiveness is a specific act of mercy, not merely an outcome.

3. The mode of divine presence matters:

   • Christ’s Eucharistic presence is not interchangeable with omnipresence, though extensionally both may involve presence.

4. The source of felicity matters:

   • Statements authorized by the Spirit differ even if extensionally identical with statements not authorized.

This yields a hyperintensional truth-structure.

Hyperintensionality Explained

A context is hyperintensional when:

• substitution of co-referential terms changes truth,

• substitution of necessarily equivalent propositions changes truth,

• grounding, not just extension, determines truth.

Theology is hyperintensional because:

1. Divine acts differ in their inner form, not only in outcome.

2. Participation is specific and non-interchangeable 

3. Felicity (Spirit-authorization) cannot be replaced by mere semantic equivalence.

4. Truth is identical with being only in God, not creatures.

5. Revelation determines the mode of truth, not merely the result.

Thus theology inevitably operates at a finer semantic grain than any modal logic.

Objectiones

Ob I. Truthmaking violates divine simplicity by treating divine acts as distinct truthmakers.

Ob II. Hyperintensionality undermines classical semantics and threatens coherence. Truth should depend only on the world, not on modes of presentation.

Ob III. Scripture itself often speaks extensionally: “Your faith has saved you.” Why therefore introduce metaphysical machinery alien to the biblical text?

Ob IV. If truth requires divine acts as truthmakers, we risk collapsing into occasionalism or voluntarism.

Ob V. Truthmaking presumes metaphysical realism incompatible with postliberal grammar models of theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine simplicity is not violated, for the truthmaker is God as acting, not “a part” of God. The distinction is one of formal expression, not ontological composition.

Ad II. Hyperintensionality does not threaten coherence, but rather it protects the specificity of divine revelation. Theology cannot collapse distinct divine acts into one extension without losing referential integrity.

Ad III. Scripture’s economy of language does not negate metaphysics. The biblical claim is hyperintensional in that faith saves because it unites one to Christ, not because of abstract extension.

Ad IV. Truthmaking is not voluntarism. It is the grounding of truth in divine being. While voluntarism posits an arbitrary divine decree,  truthmaking anchors truth in God’s eternal act.

Ad V. Grammar models (Lindbeck) explain internal felicity but not external reality. Truthmakers bridge that gap without collapsing theology into metaphysics or vice versa.

Nota

Truth in theology cannot be reduced to any of these:

• correspondence

• coherence

• pragmatic usefulness

• communal grammar

• modal possibility

This is the case because none of these capture the specificity of divine causation. Thus, Truth = Felicity + Divine Fact-making. The Spirit authorizes what the Father and Son accomplish. This, however, requires a semantics richer than extension or modality; it requires a hyperintensional semantics grounded in ontological participation.

Determinatio

We determine that:

1. Theological propositions require truthmakers in the form of divine acts, not merely worldly facts.

2. Truthmakers in theology are hyperintensional, because divine actions differ not only in effect but in internal form.

3. The Spirit mediates truth, ensuring that felicity (internal truth) and divine causation (external truth) coincide.

4. Theology requires a semantics beyond the modal, for God cannot be captured extensionally.

5. Christ Himself is the supreme truthmaker, for in Him every divine act is both form and fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem L: De Causatione Constitutiva

Having shown that divine acts are truthmakers and that theology is hyperintensional, we now ask how such truthmaking occurs in actu, such that a theological statement becomes true through God.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Divina Actio Ipsum Verum Efficiat where we inquire as to whether the Logos not only makes truths true but constitutes the very ontology in which theological truth obtains.

Disputatio XLVIII: De Veritate per Logon

On Truth Through the Logos

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologica consistat in relatione satisfactionis inter propositionem et mundum, an potius in actu interpretativo Logi, per quem mundus et significatio simul constituuntur.

Whether theological truth consists in a relation of satisfaction between proposition and world, or rather in the interpretive act of the Logos, through which both world and meaning are jointly constituted.

Thesis

Truth in theology is not exhausted by the model-theoretic relation M ⊨ T, but is grounded in the constitutive act of the divine Word, denoted Λ ⊨* Tₜ, by which the Logos brings being and meaning into coincidence. Theological truth is thus truth through the Logos.*

Locus Classicus

“Πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν.”
“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” — Ioannes 1:3

“ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ... τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται· καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων, καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν.”
“For in him all things were created ... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossenses 1:16–17

“Verbum quod loquitur Pater, non sonus est caducus, sed ipsa Veritas gignens intellegentiam.” — Augustinus, De Trinitate XV.11.20
“The Word which the Father speaks is not a transient sound, but the very Truth begetting understanding.”

Explicatio

1. Formal Background. In classical model theory, M ⊨ T states that the formula T holds in the model M = ⟨D, I⟩, where D is a domain of discourse and I an interpretation function. The structure of meaning is therefore parasitic upon a prior ontology. The world-as-model is presupposed.

2. Theological Critique. Theological assertions, however, subvert this presupposition. They claim that the world itself—the domain D and its intelligible structure I—arises from the Logos. Theology cannot therefore merely use a model, but it must rather account for the ontological act by which any model becomes possible. The satisfaction relation becomes reflexive: truth depends on the act that grants both being and meaning.

3. Constitutive Satisfaction. To mark this difference, we introduce a higher-order satisfaction relation:

   $$\mathrm{<b><br></b>}$$

   where Λ (the Logos) is not a model but a principium interpretationis. The truth of Tₜ lies not in correspondence with a world but in participation in the act through which the world and its intelligibility are conjoined. Accordingly, the Logos does not describe reality, but rather donates it.

4. Ontological Implication. Theological truth is thus a communion of act and meaning: adaequatio per donationem, not per representationem. The created intellect is invited into this divine self-interpretation, so that knowing becomes a form of being-known. Here the traditional formula veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei unfolds into its deeper ground: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et Verbi.

Objectiones

Obj. 1 If truth depends upon divine interpretation, theology collapses into voluntarism or fideism: what is true becomes true only by divine decree.

Obj. II. To say “the Logos makes propositions true” seems circular, since the truth of “Logos” itself depends upon the very act being defined.

Obj. III.  Classical model theory already includes interpretation functions; why invoke an additional divine interpreter?

Responsiones

Ad I. The theological claim is not that propositions are true because God declares them, but that there could be propositions and truth at all only because God gives being and meaning together. This is not fideism but metaphysical realism intensified: divine act is the ontological root of correspondence itself.

Ad II. The circularity is transcendental, not vicious. Every finite act of understanding presupposes the light by which it sees. To name the Logos as source of intelligibility is not to argue in a circle but to acknowledge the ontological reflexivity of reason: in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum (John 1:4).

Ad III. Model theory presupposes a stable domain and interpretive mapping; it does not explain their being. The theological turn to Λ names the meta-ontological ground of this stability. The Logos is not an extra semantic function but the act that makes semantics possible.

Nota

The movement from M ⊨ T to Λ ⊨* Tₜ marks theology’s crossing from formal logic to metaphysical participation. While in logical satisfaction the world precedes the word, in constitutive satisfaction the Word precedes the world. Herein lies the theological reversal: esse is the effect of dicere, being is the echo of divine speech.

Determinatio

1. The Logos as Transcendental Interpreter. All truth presupposes the Logos as the ontological condition of intelligibility.

2. From Correspondence to Communion. Theological truth is not mere adequation but participation in the act of divine signification.

3. Model Theory as Theological Grammar. Formal semantics retains analytic utility only when transposed into this participatory horizon.

4. Truth Through the Logos. The theological analogue of model-theoretic satisfaction is the creative utterance by which being and meaning are given together.

Transitus ad Disputatio XLVIII: De Spiritu Veritatis et Participatione Intellectus Finite.

At this point theology stands at the threshold where intelligibility itself seeks its realization within finite mind. For if the Logos is the divine principle that constitutes truth, there remains the question: How does this constitutive act become present to the creature who understands?

The answer lies in the Spiritus Veritatis, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father through the Son (John 15:26) and actualizes the divine intelligibility within created consciousness. The Logos founds the structure of meaning; the Spirit renders it participable. What the Logos constitutes universally, the Spirit appropriates personally. The gift of understanding (donum intellectus) is thus the creaturely participation in constitutive truth itself.

Hence theology must turn from the transcendental semantics of the Logos to the pneumatological participation of the intellect, from truth as ontological donation to truth as indwelling illumination. We turn now to the Disputatio: De Spiritu Veritatis et Participatione Intellectus Finite.

Disputatio XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

On the Necessary Ground of Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum contingentia creaturarum fundetur non in carentia rationis aut necessitatis, sed in participatione ipsius necessarii; ita ut libertas et contingens non sint privationes intelligibilitatis, sed modi amoris divini in ordine creato.

Whether the contingency of creatures is grounded not in the absence of reason or necessity, but in participation in the necessary itself; such that freedom and contingency are not privations of intelligibility, but modes of divine love in the created order.

Thesis

Contingency does not stand opposed to necessity but proceeds from it as participation. The divine necessity, identical with the fullness of reason and goodness, freely communicates itself in finite forms. Thus, contingency arises not from the lack of sufficient reason, but from the plenitude of it: creation is the contingent manifestation of necessary wisdom. The Spirit of Understanding sustains this relation, making the finite capable of the infinite without collapse so that necessity remains divine, and intelligibly grounded contingency, becomes the mark of love’s generosity.

Locus Classicus

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.19, a.3:

“Deus necessario vult se, sed non necessario vult alia a se.”
(“God necessarily wills Himself, but not necessarily the things other than Himself.”)

Leibniz, Théodicée, §173:

“La liberté divine consiste dans le choix du meilleur, déterminé par la raison même de son excellence.”
(“Divine freedom consists in the choice of the best, determined by the reason of its own excellence.”)

Spinoza, Ethica I, prop. 33:

“Res nulla contingens est.”
(“Nothing is contingent.”)

Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (2009):

“God could have created differently, or not at all; there is no reason why He did one rather than another.”

Explicatio

The metaphysical relation between necessity and contingency defines the very structure of creation.  For Aquinas, God is necessary per essentiam—His existence and goodness are identical—but His creative act is free, for it is not a product of external compulsion, but of the internal sufficiency of love.  For Leibniz, divine freedom is rational: God wills what is best because His intellect and will are one.  For Spinoza, however, necessity consumes contingency: whatever exists follows from the nature of God as a geometrical consequence.

Modernity inherited this trilemma: either determinism without freedom (Spinoza), freedom without reason (voluntarism, van Inwagen), or a reconciliation through participation (Aquinas, Leibniz at his best, and theological realism).

True contingency presupposes a necessary foundation, a will whose necessity is that of wisdom and goodness, not of constraint. To be contingent is to exist from another as from reason and cause, yet without coercion. The creature’s being is thus dependent but not necessitated; it is finite but intelligible.

This insight preserves both divine aseity and created freedom. The world’s contingency expresses not divine arbitrariness but divine generosity; it expresses the self-diffusion of the necessary Good into what might not have been, but which now participates in being and intelligibility through love.

Theologically, the Spiritus Intelligentiae mediates this relation. The Spirit holds together necessity and contingency, preserving intelligibility without determinism, and freedom without absurdity. Thus, what philosophy sought to separate, theology reunites in pneumatological causality: the freedom of God as the overflowing of His necessity.

 Objectiones

Ob. I. Spinoza holds that whatever exists follows necessarily from the divine nature. To posit contingency in God’s act is to posit imperfection. A truly infinite being cannot do otherwise than He does.

Ob. II. We learn from Inwagen that if every act of creation has a sufficient reason, then God could not have refrained from creating that world. The only way to preserve freedom is to allow that God’s creative decision has no determining reason.

Ob. III. Hume argues that contingency and necessity are subjective projections. The claim that the world must have a reason for its structure is a habit of thought, not a feature of being.

Ob. IV. Modern existentialism claims that to ground contingency in necessity is to destroy human freedom. Existence precedes essence. Thus, human contingency is absolute, not participatory.

Ob. V. Theological voluntarism holds that if God must act according to reason, then divine will is not free but constrained by intellect. Freedom must be pure voluntas indifferentiae.

Responsiones

Ad I. Spinoza confuses divine necessity with logical necessity. God’s essence is necessary, but His creative act is free precisely because His necessity is personal and rational, not mechanical. The necessity of the Good overflows without coercion, as light diffuses from its source.

Ad II. Freedom does not require absence of reason but coincidence of reason and will. God’s will is not an arbitrary event but the act of infinite intelligibility. To say God acts without reason is to reduce divine action to caprice.

Ad III. Hume’s empiricism dissolves ontology into psychology. Contingency is not a mere epistemic condition but a mode of being dependent on divine act. The regularity of the world reveals rational foundation, not habitual illusion.

Ad IV. Existentialism mistakes dependence for oppression. To exist contingently from God is not to be determined externally but to be upheld by love. The creature’s freedom is participation in divine rational vitality, not its negation.

Ad V. Voluntarism severs freedom from truth and thereby destroys both. The divine will is not arbitrary because it is identical with divine reason. The highest freedom is not indifference but the unhindered expression of perfect wisdom.

Nota

The paradox of contingency and necessity dissolves only when necessity is conceived not as constraint but as plenitude. The divine will is not forced to create; it creates because it is perfect. Contingency thus becomes the temporal image of divine superabundance: a world that might not have been, yet whose existence reflects eternal reason.

The PSR therefore remains valid within contingency, though in a transposed register. Every contingent effect has its reason, not because it is logically deduced, but because it participates in the intelligibility of divine love. The Spirit holds these together: the necessary as the truth of being, the contingent as its radiance.

Determinatio

1. Necessity and contingency are not opposites but correlative modes: the latter presupposes the former as its ground.

2. Divine necessity is identical with goodness and wisdom; it does not compel but overflows.

3. Created contingency arises from divine necessity as gift, not as exception.

4. Freedom is not irrational spontaneity but participation in rational self-giving.

5. The Spirit mediates necessity and contingency, rendering creation intelligible yet free.

6. Thus, the true ratio sufficientis contingentiae is ordo amoris: the love that necessarily gives and contingently adorns.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino

If contingency rests upon necessary wisdom, then divine freedom must be conceived not as arbitrary choice but as the rational plenitude of love. God’s liberty is neither mechanical nor indifferent but the infinite self-expression of the good.

We must therefore examine how divine necessity and divine freedom coexist without contradiction, how it is that God, who necessarily wills Himself, freely wills creation, and how this act preserves both intelligibility and grace.

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino, in which it will be asked whether divine freedom is grounded in rational plenitude rather than in indeterminate will, and whether creation itself, in all its contingency, is the manifestation of wisdom that cannot but love.