Disputatio LV: De Intentione Divina et Identitate Actuum in Deo

On Divine Intention and the Identity of God’s Acts

Quaeritur

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

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

Thesis

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

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

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

Locus Classicus

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explicatio

1. Why created intention does not illuminate divine intention

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

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

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

2. Intention as formal act in the Logos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. The Trinity and the identity of intentions

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

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

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem LVI

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

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

__________

Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem

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

Responsio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Responsio.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nota Finalis

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

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Quaeritur

Utrum intentionalitas divina sit ipse actus quo Deus seipsum cognoscit et in hoc seipso cognoscendo omnia cognoscit; cum cognitio Dei non sit receptio specierum ab extra sed expressio sui ab intra, ita ut hic actus intentionalis sit simul causa et exemplar omnis cognitionis creatae, quae participatione in eo subsistit.

Whether divine intentionality is the very act by which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things; since God’s knowledge is not the reception of external forms but the inward expression of Himself, such that this act of divine intentionality is both the cause and the exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

Thesis

All true knowledge, whether divine or human, is intentional—ordered toward what is known. But in God, this intentionality is identical with His being: God’s act of knowing is His act of being. Divine intentionality is therefore the archetype of all meaning and the ground of theology’s possibility, for to know anything is to share, analogically, in God’s self-knowing Word.

Locus classicus

“In your light we see light.” — Psalm 36:9

The Psalmist confesses that all seeing and knowing derive from God’s own luminosity. Knowledge is not an independent human capacity but a participation in divine self-manifestation. To see truth is to see by the light of God’s intentional act.

Explicatio

Intentionality (intentionalitas) refers to the directedness of consciousness or intellect toward something—every act of knowing is “about” or “toward” an object. In finite creatures, this relation presupposes distance: the knower reaches toward what is other.

In God, however, no such distance exists. God’s knowing is not a movement toward the other but the eternal act by which the divine essence expresses itself perfectly. The Father knows Himself in the Son—the eternal Word—and this knowing is not representation but generation. The Son is the divine cognition, the expressed image of the Father’s being.

Thus, divine intentionality is both intra-divine and creative:

• Intra-divine, because the Word is the Father’s perfect knowing of Himself.

• Creative, because in knowing Himself as the source of all possibles, God simultaneously knows all things that can participate in Him.

We may represent this (and then explain it):

• Let K_d(G, x) mean “God knows x in Himself.”

• Then ∀x K_d(G, x) is true not by enumeration but by identity: God’s self-knowledge includes all things insofar as they are possible reflections of His own essence.

• Thus, God does not look outward to know the world; rather, creatures are known inwardly as ideas within the divine self-understanding.

From this it follows that divine knowing is the ground of all creaturely intelligibility. Because the Logos is the eternal intentional act of divine cognition, all created acts of knowledge are participations in that single eternal knowing.

Human intentionality, described in Disputationes XIII–XIV, is therefore analogical: our knowing is a finite echo of God’s own self-directed awareness. When we know truth, we share—through the Spirit—in the eternal act of divine knowing.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If God’s knowledge is identical with His being, then the act of divine knowing must imply at least a distinction between knower and known, subject and object. But every such distinction entails composition. To say that God knows Himself therefore introduces multiplicity into the divine essence, violating the doctrine of simplicity. A self-reflexive intellect presupposes relational structure incompatible with pure unity.

Obiectio II. If God knows all things only in knowing Himself, then creatures have no independent intelligibility before Him. Divine omniscience would consist solely in self-knowledge, leaving the world unknown except as a moment within the divine idea. This collapses creation into God’s self-contemplation and destroys the reality of the world’s distinct existence.

Obiectio III. If human knowing participates in divine knowing, then human intellect would seem infallible and divine in nature. Yet experience shows human knowledge to be fragmentary, fallible, and historically conditioned. To attribute participation in divine intellect to human understanding risks either exaggeration (making humanity semi-divine) or contradiction (since finite minds err).

Obiectio IV. Modern epistemic autonomy grounds knowledge in human cognitive structures: intuition, perception, and conceptual synthesis. To claim that knowing depends on divine participation undermines epistemic autonomy and reintroduces theological dependence where rational explanation suffices. Human reason should not require ontological participation in God to explain its cognitive powers.

Obiectio V. According to Kant, knowledge is restricted to phenomena structured by the mind’s categories; the noumenal (including God) remains inaccessible. To speak of participation in divine knowing is to assert immediate cognition of the noumenal, a claim both irrational and impossible within the bounds of reason. Theology, if it is to remain credible, must confine itself to moral faith, not speculative participation in divine intellect.

Responsiones

Ad I. The distinction between knower and known in God is not ontological but relational. The divine act of knowing is identical with divine being; its internal differentiation occurs as personal relation, not composition. The Father knows Himself perfectly in the Son—the eternal Word—while the Spirit proceeds as the mutual love of that knowing and being. Divine simplicity is not barren homogeneity but plenitude: a unity so absolute that relation itself subsists without division.

Hence, divine knowledge implies no multiplicity of essence but the fullness of personal self-relation within the one divine act. God’s knowing is identical with His being because His being is inherently self-communicative.

Ad II. God knows creatures in Himself precisely as their cause. To be known “in God” is not to be confused with God but to be eternally comprehended within His creative intellect as possible and actual participations in the divine essence. Divine knowledge, therefore, is neither abstract speculation nor passive observation; it is constitutive causality. God knows all things by knowing His own power to communicate being. The distinctness of creatures is not diminished by being known in God; rather, it is guaranteed. For a creature to be known by God is for it to have a determinate essence within the divine will—an intelligible possibility grounded in infinite reason.

Ad III. Human knowing participates in divine knowing analogically, not univocally. The likeness is formal, not quantitative. Our intellect mirrors the structure of divine cognition—intentionality, unity of form and act, and the orientation toward truth—but only within the conditions of finitude. The Spirit mediates this participation, illuminating reason without abolishing its limits.

Human knowledge is thus genuinely participatory yet remains fallible. It bears the image of divine knowing as the mirror bears light: truly, yet not completely. Illumination does not equal infallibility; it grants proportion between finite intellect and the truth that transcends it.

Ad IV. Epistemic autonomy describes the operational independence of human reason, not its ontological ground. Theology does not deny the integrity of natural cognition but interprets its source. The mind’s capacity for universality, abstraction, and truth cannot be self-generated; it presupposes participation in the divine intellect, the lumen intellectus agentis that grounds intelligibility itself. Divine participation does not replace cognitive faculties but enables them to be what they are. Without such participation, autonomy collapses into self-enclosure and skepticism.

Ad V. Kant’s restriction of knowledge to phenomena is a valid description of unaided reason, but revelation introduces another mode: participation in the divine act of knowing through the Spirit. This is not an empirical extension of cognition into the noumenal but a transformation of the knowing subject. The believer knows God not as object but as communion—cognitio Dei per participationem. This participatory knowing transcends the subject–object relation and manifests the restoration of intellect in grace.

Thus, theology does not violate the limits of reason but transfigures them. The Spirit does not abolish critical reason; He fulfills it by grounding it in divine light.

Nota

To understand divine intentionality is to see that truth is not a property of propositions but an act of God. Truth exists because God’s self-knowing is perfect; all finite truths are echoes of that primal intelligibility.

Theology therefore begins and ends in divine cognition. The nova lingua (Disputatio IX) is intelligible because God Himself speaks intelligibly. Revelation (Disputatio X) is participation in the act of divine knowing. Creation’s intelligibility (Disputatio XI) is the imprint of divine intentionality upon being. Providence (Disputatio XII) is the continual expression of divine knowing in time. Intension and intention (Disputationes XIII–XIV) reflect within language and spirit the very structure of this divine self-knowledge.

In this light, the Son as Logos may be called intentio Patris perfecta—the perfect intention of the Father. All finite acts of cognition, all human search for truth, exist within the horizon of this eternal act.

We might express the relation symbolically (and then immediately explain it):

K_h ⊂ K_d, meaning: human knowledge (K_h) is contained within divine knowledge (K_d) as participation within plenitude. This is not spatial inclusion but ontological dependence: to know truth at all is to share, however finitely, in God’s own act of knowing.

Thus, divine intentionality is both the metaphysical cause of all knowledge and the theological horizon that gives it meaning.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Divine intentionality is identical with God’s being; God knows Himself and all things in the single eternal act of the Word.

2. The Son, as Logos, is the perfect expression of this divine knowing—the intentional act in which all intelligibility subsists.

3. All creaturely knowledge is participatory, sharing analogically in the form of God’s own cognition through the illumination of the Spirit.

4. Truth is not independent of God but the temporal reflection of His eternal self-understanding.

5. Hence, theology as scientia Dei in nobis is grounded in divine intentionality: to know truthfully is to think within the light by which God knows Himself.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

Having seen that divine cognition is not representational but creative, and that God knows all things by causing them to be, we must now inquire how this primal intentionality becomes communicable within human speech. For if every finite act of knowing is participation in divine knowing, then every act of speaking is a participation in the Word through whom all knowledge is expressed.

Language is the exterior form of intentionality, the unfolding of inward reference into the shared medium of signs. Yet theological speech differs from ordinary discourse. It does not merely point from one finite thing to another, but it strives to signify the infinite itself, whose act grounds every reference. Hence, the relation between language and intentionality in theology must be reexamined. How can finite signs bear the weight of divine meaning? Does speech itself participate in the same creative act that it names?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate, and inquire as to how language mediates an intentional relation between the finite intellect and the divine reality, and whether words, when taken up into the economy of revelation, cease to be mere symbols and become vessels of participation in the speaking God.

Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico

On Intension and Intention in Theological Discourse

Quaeritur

Utrum in theologia intensio designet participationem sermonis in veritate quam significat, intentio vero exprimat motum Spiritus quo sermo et cognoscens ordinantur ad Deum; atque utrum hae duae, intensio et intentio, constituant duplicem structuram loquelae theologicae—formam significationis et actum directionis.

Whether in theology intension designates the participation of speech in the truth it signifies, while intention expresses the motion of the Spirit by which both speech and the knower are directed toward God; and whether these two—intension and intention—together constitute the dual structure of theological discourse: the form of meaning and the act of orientation.

Thesis

Theological discourse is doubly ordered: by intension, which expresses the participation of language in divine meaning, and by intention, which expresses the Spirit’s orientation of that language toward its divine referent. The integrity of theology depends on the harmony of these two—form and direction—so that what theology says and why it says it coincide in one act of faith.

Locus classicus

“We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16

The Apostle here unites cognition and orientation. To have the “mind of Christ” is not merely to possess concepts but to be inwardly directed by the Spirit toward God’s will. Theology’s truth lies not only in the content of its assertions but in the intention that animates them.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XIII, we described intension as the participatory depth of theological meaning—language sharing in what it signifies. Here we extend that insight to the act of speaking and knowing. For theology, meaning without intention is incomplete: truth must be not only known but loved.

In scholastic logic, intensio and intentio are etymologically linked: both derive from intendere, “to stretch toward.” Yet they differ by aspect. Intensio describes the form or structure of meaning—the way predicates are “stretched” around their content. Intentio describes the movement of the mind and will toward the object known.

In theology, these two are inseparable because language itself is pneumatic—it exists as motion toward God. The Spirit not only grants meaning but directs that meaning toward its divine end.

Formally, we may represent this (and then explain it):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p, its form of meaning through participation in divine reality.

• Let T(p) denote the intention of that same predicate, its pneumatic direction toward God as ultimate referent.

• The relation I(p) → T(p) means: the Spirit completes meaning by drawing it toward God; the truth of theology depends not only on what a term means but on the divine orientation of its use.

Thus, theological language is teleological: it moves from signification to communion, from word to worship. To speak theologically is to let the Spirit align one’s words and will toward the divine horizon.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. In Cartesian mentalism, meaning and intention are properties of individual minds. Intension is the concept contained within thought; intention is the mind’s act of directing that concept to an object. To introduce the Holy Spirit as the cause of either collapses epistemic autonomy. Theological intention should be understood psychologically, not metaphysically.

Obiectio II. According to empiricist semantics, language functions through public usage, not inner intention. Meaning is determined by observable linguistic conventions, not by subjective acts. Theological appeals to “Spirit-inspired intention” introduce unverifiable metaphysical claims that add nothing to semantic explanation.

Obiectio III. According to Wittgensteinian use theory, within the community of faith, intention is simply conformity to use: the believer “means” what the Church means. Talk of divine authorization or participation misrepresents grammar as metaphysics. Theological statements gain their sense from practice, not from invisible intentions.

Obiectio IV. Kantian moral theology holds that intention belongs to the moral will, not to cognition. Theology confuses ethical intention—obedience to the moral law—with epistemic intention, directedness of thought. Revelation does not supply new cognitive content but moral motivation. Therefore, intention in theology should be understood ethically, not cognitively or ontologically.

Obiectio V. In postmodern deconstruction every act of meaning is contaminated by différance; intention never coincides with expression. To claim that in theology, intention and intension converge through the Spirit, is to reassert the metaphysics of presence. Divine authorization cannot close the gap between saying and meaning without abolishing the play of signification that makes language possible.

Responsiones

Ad I. Cartesian mentalism confines meaning to private consciousness, but theology begins not with the isolated mind but with the communicative act of God. The Spirit does not override cognition but grounds it: divine causality constitutes the possibility of theological intention. The human mind does not direct itself toward God; it is drawn. The Spirit is not a competitor to thought but the condition under which finite intentionality becomes genuinely God-directed.

Ad II. Empiricism rightly demands public criteria for meaning, yet the Church’s public language is itself the manifestation of divine causality. The Spirit’s work is not a hidden supplement to convention but the ontological ground of convention’s truth. Without the Spirit, the same words remain grammatically correct but theologically empty. Pneumatological intention is therefore the difference between talking about God and being addressed by God in one’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight—that the grammar of faith determines the sense of theological language—is essential, but the Church’s grammar is not self-sustaining. The Spirit animates its use, converting communal form into divine act. Intention in theology is not reducible to usage; it is the Spirit’s actualization of use as confession. Grammar defines possibility; the Spirit realizes actuality.

Ad IV. Kant separates moral from cognitive intention, but in revelation the two are one: to know God is to will the good, and to will the good is to participate in God’s knowing. The Spirit unites intellect and will in a single movement of faith. Theological intention is thus both moral and epistemic—a mode of participation in divine self-knowledge.

Ad V. Deconstruction rightly reveals the instability of finite language, but theology interprets this not as nihilism but as sign of creaturely dependence. The Spirit does not erase différance but sanctifies it, making difference the very medium of communion. The Word becomes flesh not by annihilating finitude but by filling it. In theological discourse, intention and intension coincide not by closure but by grace: finite language becomes true without ceasing to be finite.

Nota

The dual structure of theological discourse mirrors the Incarnation itself. Just as the Word assumes human nature without destroying it, so divine meaning assumes human intention without abolishing freedom.

The intensio of theology ensures formal integrity: its words participate truly in divine realities. The intentio ensures final orientation: those same words are directed toward praise and communion.

We can imagine this schematically:

Intensio → Intentio → Gloria
meaning leads to direction, direction to glorification.

Thus, theology is not only a science of statements but a discipline of sanctified desire. Its language must mean truly and move rightly. Where intension is severed from intention, theology becomes formalism; where intention eclipses intension, it becomes enthusiasm. Only the Spirit holds the two in unity.

This unity also resolves the ancient tension between speculative and practical theology. The speculative intellect (intensio) contemplates truth; the practical will (intentio) seeks the good. In the Spirit, contemplation and love converge. To know God is to be oriented toward God; to be oriented toward God is already to know Him.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological discourse possesses a double structure: intensio, the participatory form of meaning, and intentio, the pneumatic orientation of that meaning toward God.

2. These are distinct yet inseparable: the Spirit who gives form to meaning also directs it to its divine end.

3. The truth of theology lies not merely in the correctness of propositions but in the sanctity of their direction—their being spoken toward God.

4. Human reason and will participate in this double causality: reason shares in divine truth, and will shares in divine charity.

5. Thus, theology is both contemplative and doxological: to understand God rightly is already to be drawn into the praise of God.

Transitus ad Disputationem XV

Theological discourse has been shown to depend not merely upon conceptual content but upon right intention—the movement of the soul toward the reality it names. To speak truly is to will rightly; to intend God is already to be drawn into His light. Yet every human intention remains derivative, a participation in a greater act of knowing that precedes it. If the intellect of faith can intend divine truth, it must do so because divine cognition has already intended the creature.

Hence arises a deeper question: What is the nature of divine intentionality itself? Does God know creatures by representing them, or by causing them? Is the divine act of knowledge receptive, as in us, or creative, as identical with being itself? To understand our own intending, theology must first understand the primal act of divine knowing from which all finite cognition flows.

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina, wherein we examine how God’s knowledge relates to the being of creatures, whether divine cognition is analogically intentional or utterly simple, and how the human act of understanding participates in that eternal knowing by which all things are comprehended and sustained.