Disputatio LIX: De Historia Ut Loco Revelationis

 On History as the Locus of Revelation

Quaeritur

Utrum historia ipsa possit esse locus revelationis divinae, ita ut eventus historici non solum referant ad voluntatem Dei sed manifestent ipsam actionem eius; et quomodo haec revelatio historica non redigatur ad immanentem causalitatem neque confundatur cum nudis factis temporalibus.

Whether history itself can be a locus of divine revelation, such that historical events do not merely refer to the will of God but manifest the divine act itself; and how such historical revelation neither collapses divine action into immanence nor becomes indistinguishable from ordinary temporal events.

Thesis

History becomes a locus of revelation because the Logos, who is the intelligible articulation of divine act, shapes the order of created temporality as the field in which divine action is enacted. History is therefore not a neutral sequence of temporal occurrences. It is the sphere in which divine intelligibility enters time under forms suitable for human encounter.

The Spirit illumines historical events so that their Logos-shaped form becomes perceptible to the creature. Illumination does not alter history, but renders history transparent to divine intention.

Thus historical revelation is not merely a symbolic interpretation of past occurrences, but is rather the manifestation of divine action within the temporal order, an action grasped through the form constituted by the Logos and opened by the Spirit.

Locus Classicus

Galatians 4:4
ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου…
“When the fullness of time had come…”

Time is not homogeneous. It receives fullness when divine act enters it.

Acts 2:11
ἀκούομεν λαλούντων… τὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ Θεοῦ.
“We hear them declaring the mighty acts of God.”

The apostles interpret concrete historical events as divine acts, not merely as human occurrences.

Luther, WA 40 II, 90
Opera Dei sunt historiae.
“The works of God are histories.”

The divine act becomes narrative because it enters temporality.

Explicatio

History is not autonomous from divine intention. Modern historiography treats history as a closed temporal sequence governed by immanent causation. But revelation becomes, on this view, either a theological overlay or an interpretive projection. Accordingly, this view presupposes that history is self-sufficient and that divine action must be added to it from without. On the contrary, theological truth requires a different premise. History is the created field ordered by the Logos as the arena in which divine acts may occur. It is therefore intrinsically open to revelation.

Divine action in history is not an intrusion but fulfillment. To say that God acts in history is not to say that divine agency violates the temporal order. Rather, it is to say that the temporal order is constituted for participation in divine action. The incarnation shows this with the greatest clarity. Time does not resist the Logos but receives him. Similarly, redemption is not an exception to history but its completion. Thus, divine acts are not supernatural intrusions into an otherwise closed system. They are the realization of history’s deepest intelligibility.

Illumination makes historical acts revelatory.  History becomes revelation when the Spirit grants creatures to perceive its Logos-shaped form. Without this illumination, history is only asequence of events that bears no apparent reference to divine intention. However, with illumination, the same events manifest the structure of divine agency. This is not an interpretation imposed from without, but a recognition of the form given from within. Thus, revelation is not epistemic projection but an ontological disclosure.

There is a distinction between the event and revelation. A historical event may be the medium of divine action without yet being revelation for a creature. Revelation requires that the event be seen as the act it is. Although this seeing does not alter the event itself, it does alter the creature’s participation in its intelligibility. Therefore, revelation is not a second act added to history but the same act perceived in its divine depth through illumination.

We must thus reject reductive historicism.  While some theologies identify revelation wholly with historical process, divine action is not exhausted by such historical causation. Revelation is present in history because divine agency shapes history, not because divine agency is reducible to historical movement. While historicism collapses transcendence, theological realism insists that history becomes revelatory because God acts in it, not because history itself is divine.

Objectiones

Ob I. If history is a locus of revelation, does this not subject divine action to temporal limitation?

Ob II. If revelation requires illumination, how can historical events be objectively revelatory?

Ob III. If God acts in history, is this not indistinguishable from special providence?

Ob IV. If revelation depends on the Logos-shaped form of events, does this merely reduce history to a symbolic structure?

Ob V. If the Spirit grants perception of revelation, does this not make revelation dependent on subjective experience?

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine action is not limited by time because the Logos shapes time. The temporal manifestation of divine act does not restrict its eternal identity.

Ad II. Objective revelatory status arises from divine action, not from human perception. Illumination grants awareness of what is already true. Revelation is objective in its occurrence and subjective in its reception.

Ad III. Special providence describes divine governance of events. Revelation describes divine manifestation within events. These are distinct modes of divine relation to history, not identical functions.

Ad IV. Historical events are not symbols. They are the real media of divine action. Their form is intelligible because the Logos constitutes their order, not because they are figurative constructs.

Ad V. Revelation is not dependent on experience. It is dependent on divine agency. Experience becomes awareness of revelation only when illumined by the Spirit.

Nota

History is not merely the record of human deeds. It is the temporal field ordered by the Logos as the site of divine self-manifestation. The Spirit grants creatures to perceive this manifestation as revelation rather than as mere occurrence.

Thus revelation is neither outside history nor reducible to history. It is divine action in history, apprehended through illumination.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. History becomes a locus of revelation because it is shaped by the Logos as the arena of divine action.
2. Divine acts in history are not interruptions but fulfillments of temporal order.
3. Illumination grants creatures to perceive historical events in their divine intelligibility.
4. Revelation is objective in occurrence and participatory in reception.
5. Historical revelation requires theological realism, for only if divine action is real can history mediate it.

Time thus becomes the sphere in which creatures encounter the intelligible form of God’s act.

Transitus ad Disputationem LX

Having established history as the locus of revelation, we now turn to the question of divine providence and human freedom. For if history becomes revelatory through divine action, one must ask how creaturely agency participates in or resists this action. 

We proceed therefore to Disputatio LX: De Providentia et Libertate, where we examine how divine intention orders history without dissolving the freedom and responsibility of human agents.

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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.

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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 LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente: Utrum Praesentia Logi Sit Conditio Omnis Veritatis Revelatae

 On the Real Presence of the Word: Whether the Presence of the Logos is the Condition of All Revealed Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum praesentia realis Logi—tam in revelatione quam in sacramento et praedicatione ecclesiae—sit conditio sine qua non omnis veritatis revelatae; et utrum veritas theologiae consistat non tantum in actu constitutivo Logi (XL) sed etiam in eius praesentiali actualitate qua Logos adest ut verum manifestetur.

Whether the real presence of the Logos—in revelation, sacrament, and ecclesial proclamation—is the indispensable condition of all revealed truth; and whether theological truth consists not only in the constitutive act of the Logos (L) but also in His presential actuality by which the truth is disclosed.

Thesis

The Logos not only constitutes truth by making being (Disputatio L), but makes truth knowable by being present. Without the real presence of the Logos, revelation would be opaque, sacrament would be sign without reality, and proclamation would be sound without truth. Thus, the real presence of the Word is the condition of the possibility of revealed truth. Accordingly: Truth = Constitutive Act + Real Presence + Spirit-Authorized Reception. The Spirit unites these three by making the constituting Word present to the believing subject.

Locus Classicus

1. John 1:14 — Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Incarnation is the primal instance of Logos constituting truth through real presence: veritas visibilis. Truth is not merely spoken; Truth comes.

2. Luke 24:32 — Ἐνῆπτεν ἡμῶν τὰς καρδίας

“Did not our hearts burn within us while He was with us and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Here Christ’s presence interprets Scripture: revealed truth requires the Revealer present.

3. Matthew 28:20 — ἐγὼ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι

“Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Mission and proclamation contain revealed truth because Christ is with the Church. Presence grounds truth.

4. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses I.7

“Μὴ νομίσῃς τὸν ἄρτον εἶναι· σῶμα Χριστοῦ ἐστιν.”
“Do not think this is bread; it is the Body of Christ.”

Sacramental truth is real presence, not an interpretive projection.

5. Luther, WA 26, 444 — “Das Wort ist der Träger der Gegenwart Christi.”

“The Word is the bearer of Christ’s presence.”

In preaching, the Logos is really present to accomplish what He says. Truth occurs because the Speaker is present in the speech.

Explicatio

While Disputation XL established that the Logos constitutes truth by creating the order of being, Disputation XLIX showed that theological truths require divine truthmakers, and Disputation L demonstrated that the Logos constitutes truth because He makes being, Disputatio LI advances the argument that truth must also be present to the recipient. Accordingly, revelation is not true because the world is shaped by the Logos alone, but it is true because the Logos is present in revelation.

1. Revelation: Presence as the Condition of Disclosure

Revelation is not information but manifestation. Truth is disclosed because the One who is Truth is present in the theophany in the Old Testament, the incarnation in the New Testament, and the indwelling of the Spirit.

2. Sacrament: Presence as the Condition of Efficacy

The truth of “This is my body” is contra Zwingli not symbolic, contra Lindbeck not merely intepretive, and contra Schleiermacher not merely communal. Rather, it is true because Christ is present constitutively and sacramentally.

3. Preaching: Presence as the Condition of Communication

Proclamation is not the recounting of absent truths, but is rather the mode of the Logos’ real presence through the Spirit. Thus, revelation is presence makes truth visible, the sacrament is presence makes truth tangible, and preaching is presence making truth audible. Accordingly, truth becomes truth-for-us by the real presence of the Word.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to Enlightenment rationalism, truth consists in clear propositions corresponding to empirical or conceptual content. Presence—divine, sacramental, or ecclesial—is epistemically irrelevant. Propositions can be true without the Logos being present; thus revealed truth does not require presence.

Ob II: According to Zwinglian and Memorialist Sacramental Theology, the sacrament need not involve the real presence of the Logos. Christ is absent bodily and present only in memory and faith. Sacramental truth is commemorative, not ontological. Therefore, real presence is not necessary for the truth of sacramental claims.

Ob III: On the reading of Postliberal Linguistic Theology, truth is intratextual coherence within the Church’s language-game. “Presence” introduces metaphysical commitments foreign to grammar-based theology. Meaning is generated by communal rules, not divine presence. Therefore, revealed truth does not require ontological presence.

Ob IV: Kantian Critical Philosophy claims that the divine, as noumenal, cannot be present in the phenomenal order. Revelation cannot involve real presence but must be symbolic or moral. Thus theological truth cannot depend on the Logos being present to human cognition.

Ob V: Secular Hermeneutics regards “presence” as a mythic remnant of pre-critical consciousness. Meaning is constructed, not given and nothing “comes” from outside interpretive structures. Therefore, the real presence of the Logos is neither possible nor necessary for truth.

Responsiones

Ad I: Propositions presuppose an intelligible world; intelligibility presupposes the Logos as arche and light. Rationalism mistakes derivative clarity for primordial illumination. Without presence, truth becomes abstraction without ontological ground. Presence grounds intelligibility itself.

Ad II: Divine speech is performative: God’s words accomplish what they signify. Christ’s “This is my body” is an ontological act, not a mnemonic suggestion. Sacramental truth is grounded in the Logos present as gift, not in subjective recollection. Without presence, sacrament has no truthmaker.

Ad III: Grammar accounts for internal felicity, not external truth. Without a real God present in Word and sacrament, theology becomes a self-referential linguistic practice. Presence supplies the external anchor postliberalism cannot provide.

Ad IV: Incarnation is the decisive negation of Kant’s phenomenal/noumenal divide. The Logos becomes flesh, rendering divine presence phenomenally given without ceasing to be infinite. Revelation presupposes a metaphysics larger than Kant’s categories permit.

Ad V:  Interpretation does not entail construction. That humans interpret does not imply that nothing is given. Presence is the metaphysical form of divine givenness—the condition under which revelation transcends mere projection. Meaning is received, not fabricated.

Nota

Presence is the ontological mode by which constitutive truth (L) becomes accessible as revealed truth.

Three clarifications follow:

1. Presence Makes Constitutive Truth Manifest. The Logos’ constitutive act grounds truth-in-itself; His presence grounds truth-for-us. Revelation requires not only that the Logos has acted but that He is present to the recipient.
2. Presence Is the Form of Theological Knowing. Theology is not cognition of absent propositions but participation in the Truth who comes. Knowledge of God is fundamentally encounter, not inference. Presence is the epistemic bridge uniting creaturely consciousness with divine act.
3. Presence Is the Sacramental Form of Divine Self-Giving. Revelation (light), proclamation (voice), and sacrament (gift) share one structure: the Logos present through the Spirit for the sake of truth. Without presence, revelation becomes history, sacrament symbol, and proclamation mere exhortation.

Thus: Veritas revelata = Verbum praesens. Revealed truth is nothing other than the Word present in His own disclosure. 

Determinatio

We determine:

1. The real presence of the Logos is necessary for all revealed truth, for without His presence revelation would not be self-disclosure.

2. Sacramental truth is grounded in real presence, not symbolic representation.

3. Preaching is a mode of presence, not a mere report of past acts.

4. Truth becomes truth-for-us through presence, as the Spirit unites creaturely knowing to divine manifestation.

5. Christ is both constitutive and presential truth: He makes truth and He is present as truth.

Thus theological truth is not merely metaphysical (L) nor merely linguistic (XLVIII), but presential:
the Truth who made all things is the Truth who comes to us.

Transitus ad Disputationem LII: De Donatione Referentiae per Spiritum

Having established that truth requires the real presence of the Logos, we next consider: How does the Spirit make this presence intelligible? Presence alone is not yet understanding.

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio LII: On the Donation of Reference by the Spirit wherein it will be asked how the Spirit gives the res of theological language—whether all theological understanding rests upon the Spirit’s act of donating the referent by interpreting the presence of the Logos to the creature.

Disputation XXX: De Veritate Interna et Externa Theologiae

On Internal and External Truth in Theology

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae sit tantum interna in suo sermone, an etiam externa in relatione ad ipsum Deum, ita ut sermo theologicus non solum sit fidelis in se, sed etiam verus de eo quod est.

It is asked whether the truth of theology is only internal to its own discourse, or also external in its relation to God himself, so that theological language is not only faithful in itself but also true of what is.

Thesis

Theology possesses a twofold truth: internal and external. Veritas interna is the felicity of discourse authorized by the Holy Spirit within the community of faith; it is the truth of theology intra systema fidei. Veritas externa is the adequation of this discourse to divine reality: the truth of theology de Deo ipso.

The former concerns the integrity of theological grammar; the latter, the participation of that grammar in the infinite Word. The two are not opposed but ordered: the Spirit authorizes language internally so that it may participate externally in the Logos.

Formally expressed:

$$\text{<i>Auth</i>}<i>(</i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>t</i>}}<i>)</i><i>\Rightarrow </i>\mathrm{<i>\exists </i>}\mathrm{<i>I</i>}<i>:</i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>t</i>}}<i>\hookrightarrow </i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>\infty </i>}}$$

This states that theological truth obtains only if the Spirit establishes an interpretive inclusion of the finite theological language $L_t$ into the infinite divine discourse $L_{\mathrm{\infty }}$. This symbol (↪) indicates participatory inclusion, not the formal subset relation. It is the Spirit’s act by which finite discourse is gathered into infinite meaning.

Locus Classicus

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” — John 14:6

In this declaration, Christ identifies truth not as correspondence or coherence, but as personal participation in the divine Logos. Augustine reads this as meaning that “veritas non est aliquid extra Deum, sed ipse Deus veritas est” (De TrinitateVIII.4). Aquinas echoes: “Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei; in Deo autem idem est intellectus et res” (ST I.16.5). Therefore, for theology, truth cannot be merely formal, but it must be participatory. The finite intellect is true only insofar as it shares in the divine act of knowing.

Explicatio

On the Transcendental Nature of Truth

The transcendentals—ens, unum, verum, bonum—are convertible: whatever is, is one, true, and good.

1.  Ens signifies being under the aspect of actuality.
2. Verum signifies being under the aspect of intelligibility, that is being as capable of being known
3. Thus, truth is not something added to being; it is the luminosity of being itself.
4. Wherever there is being, there is an implicit veritas, because to be is to be capable of being understood
5. Hence, truth is a transcendental property of being.

In God, who is ipsum esse subsistens, being and intelligibility are identical; He is the verum primum, the archetype and measure of all other truths.

In creatures, truth is participatory: finite beings are true insofar as they share in divine intelligibility and correspond to the divine idea in which they are conceived.

On Internal and External Truth

a. Veritas interna refers to the integrity and coherence of a discourse or system—its syntactic and performative correctness, its internal felicity.

b. Veritas externa refers to the correspondence between what is said and what is—between sign and reality, intellect and being.

Theological language, like all human speech, can achieve felicity without necessarily achieving truth; yet without internal felicity, it could not even aim at truth.

Felicity, then, is the condition of possibility for truth, but not its ground. The ground of truth is the being of God, in whom every finite coherence finds its measure.

Theology, as language about God, must therefore transcend its own grammar: its truth lies not merely in saying well (bene dicere), but in saying what is (dicere esse). It is true when its internal felicity participates in divine external truth.

On the Participation of Theology in Divine Truth

Theology does not produce truth; it participates in it. When the theologian speaks truly of God, this occurs because divine being grants intelligibility to that speech—because the light of being shines through language. The Holy Spirit is the mediating act through which this participation occurs: the one who makes human words capable of bearing divine meaning.

3. Thus, every theological assertion is twofold:

   • Internally: it is grammatically felicitous, coherent, and consistent.

   • Externally: it is illuminated by the light of the One who is Truth itself.

   In this participation, truth and being are united without confusion.
   Theology is not the measure of God; God is the measure of theology.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Empiricism claims that all truth must be verifiable by observation. Theological claims are unverifiable and thus have no external truth. There is only the internal coherence of theological discourse for believers using it. 

Obj. II. From the cultural-linguistic standpoint, theology’s meaning arises only within the communal grammar of faith. Thus, to speak of “external truth” misunderstands language as representational rather than formative. Theology is true insofar as it performs its grammar.

Obj. III. Post-modernity assumes that every discourse is self-referential such that “outside” a language game there is nothing. Hence “external truth” is a non-starter. All truth is internal to interpretation.

Obj. IV. Barthians held that God’s revelation is self-grounded and free, and that appeal to participation or adequation cannot verify it. Truth exists only in the event of revelation, it is not tied to ontology.

Obj. V. Contemporary analytic thinking holds that model-theoretic analogies fail for theology. There is no definable model of God; hence talk of inclusion Lt​↪L∞​ is metaphorical and lacks formal content.

Responsiones

Ad I. Verificationism mistakes the order of reality for the order of appearance. Theology is not an empirical but a participatory science: it knows by union, not by observation. External truth in theology is not sensory correspondence but ontological inclusion in the act of God.

Ad II. The Church’s grammar is indeed formative, yet its form is the Spirit’s work, not a human construct. The Spirit’s authorship makes the grammar porous to transcendence; hence, its truth cannot be merely communal but is grounded in the divine speech that precedes the Church.

Ad III. Postmodern closure presupposes the very transcendence it denies. The internal system’s finitude points beyond itself to the infinite that constitutes it, just as, by the Löwenheim–Skolem principle, any consistent system admits higher interpretations. The finite theological discourse testifies by its very limitation to the necessity of the divine meta-language.

Ad IV. Revelation is not opposed to participation but presupposes it. God’s free act of self-disclosure is the mode in which creatures participate in divine truth. To say revelation alone grounds truth is already to affirm that truth has external reality in Deo ipso.

Ad V. While theology cannot construct a formal model of God, the analogy holds analogically: God is the modelus sui sermonis, the reality to which divine discourse is perfectly adequate. Finite theology participates in that adequation by the Spirit. Thus, the inclusion ${\mathrm{<br>}}_{}$ is not formal but real: it signifies the Spirit’s act of joining human speech to the eternal Word.

Nota 

The distinction between internal and external truth in theology mirrors the structure of revelation itself. Veritas interna designates the truth of faith—the Spirit’s authorization of discourse within the divine economy of speech, and veritas externa names the correspondence of that discourse to divine reality as such. These are not two truths, but two perspectives upon one act. The internal truth is the participation of the believer in the Word, while the external truth is the participation of the Word in the world.

Within the sphere of veritas interna, felicity and faith coincide: the statement “Jesus is Lord” is true because it is spoken in the Spirit. Within veritas externa, that same statement is true because the incarnate Word is objectively Lord of all. The Spirit assures, the Word grounds, and the Father unites these two horizons in the single act of truth.

Thus, theology’s truth is not reducible to logic nor to experience; it is a relation of participation. Language, illumined by the Spirit, shares in the ontological act of the Word and so becomes both performative and correspondent. The finite utterance is true when it is gathered into the divine discourse that both causes and completes its meaning.

Determinatio

1. Truth is a transcendental property of being: verum est ens in quantum cognoscibile.

2. Being and intelligibility are coextensive; full being entails full intelligibility.

3. In God, being and knowing are one: esse et intelligere sunt idem.

4. Every finite act of truth is participatory, grounded in the infinite act of self-identical being.

5. Theology’s internal coherence (felicity) depends upon its participation in external divine truth.

6. Therefore, theology is true because it shares in the self-identical fullness of being, in whom to be and to be known are one.

7. Veritas interna is the pneumatological authorization of theological discourse, its faithfulness, coherence, and integrity within the Spirit’s grammar.

8. Veritas externa is the Christological participation of that discourse in the divine Logos, the ontological adequation by which the Word that words also constitutes what is.

9. The two are ordered: the Spirit perfects language internally so that it may correspond externally to the Word.

10. Finite discourse, like a logical system, cannot ground its own truth; it requires inclusion in the infinite speech of God.

11. Therefore, theological truth is neither merely communal nor purely propositional but participatory, It is rather the inclusion of finite utterance in infinite meaning.

Hence we conclude: Veritas interna sine externa est infidelis; veritas externa sine interna est muta. Only when the Spirit authorizes and the Logos fulfills does theology speak the truth.

Postscriptum Modernum

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and the Löwenheim–Skolem results together illuminate the formal necessity of theological participation.
Gödel showed that any sufficiently rich, consistent formal system contains truths that cannot be proven within it; there are statements true in the system but not demonstrable by it. The Löwenheim–Skolem theorems, conversely, reveal that no formal language uniquely determines its own model, foeeven first-order theories with infinite models admit both smaller and larger interpretations.

Taken together, these findings expose a deep structural fact: no finite system can secure its own truth. Consistency does not entail completeness and satisfaction within does not entail adequation without. Hence, every coherent finite language gestures beyond itself toward a meta-language or an infinite frame in which its truth is grounded.

Theology mirrors this logic. The finite L_t of human discourse may be internally consistent—Spiritually felicitous—but its truth as about God depends upon participation in the infinite L_∞ of the divine Logos. The incompleteness of reason is not its defect but its vocation: it is the mark of the finite’s openness to the Infinite.

Thus, what logic demonstrates negatively—that no system can prove itself complete—theology confesses positively: Finite speech becomes true only when the Word that words gathers it into the world that worlds. In this gathering, internal felicity becomes external truth; the Spirit’s authorization becomes the Logos’s fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXI

If the Spirit authorizes theology’s internal felicity and the Logos grounds its external truth, what is the nature of the concept that mediates between them? The next disputation investigates the structure of human conceptuality itself: its finitude, its schematism, and its completion in the real Word. 

We proceed to Disputatio XXXI: De Conceptuali Schematismo et Verbo Reali, and ask how human concepts, limited by finitude, become vessels of infinite meaning, and how the Real Word transforms thought itself into a mode of divine speech.

Curb, Mirror and Light

I

Lutheran theology has always been interested in the usus legis ("uses of the law"), and has argued passionately as to whether there are two usus legis or three.  

Luther oftentimes limits the law to two uses, its civil use in curbing sin, and its theological use in showing one's sinfulness and driving one to Christ.  In later Lutheran theology a third use was highlighted, a use consonant with some of what Luther sometimes said about the law.  In the second edition (1535) of his Loci, Melanchthon explicitly suggests a third use, one that functions as norming the contour of the believer's sanctified life.  

But while what I have thus far said sums up what many say about Luther and Melanchthon on the uses, neither theologian actually standardly employs the terminology of usus, preferring instead to use other phrases, e.g., Luther's use of officium legis in the 1537 Smalcald Articles connoting "office" or "function."  As a matter of fact, it was only in the wake of the Formula of Concord that usus legis became standard language in Lutheran theology.  Generations of theology students, both Reformed and Lutheran, have since learned the usus legis in this tripartite way: The one law functions in three ways: (1) to curb sin within civil society, (2) to mirror to us our sinfulness before God, and (3) to light our way in living out the sanctified life. 

Controversy about the putative "third use of the law" within Lutheran theology has centered on the issue of whether the law whose essence it is to accuse can remain law while yet being being properly employed as a guide. If the law as God's left hand always accuses, then how can it function in the grace of God's right hand to guide Christian living. One can freely adopt rules of thumb for Christian living consonant with Gospel proclamation, but these rules are not the law qua law.  

While the controversy between two or three uses of the law in Lutheran theology seemingly continues unabated, it is not my desire here to engage the historical issue further. I am rather interested in appropriating  the metaphors of curb, mirror and light spawned in the usus legis discussion for use in the context of establishing and justifying ethical standards and positions.  

II

Imagine a scenario in which Doctor Jack must make the decision as to whether to disconnect his patient Bob from life support.  Jack knows that Bob's recovery is unlikely, and realizes that as a rule of thumb, the hospital could likely not afford to keep patients like Bob on life support when the chances of recovery are so dismal.  Still Jack is reluctant to unhook Bob.  Why? 

When Fred later asked Jack why he did not unhook Bob, Jack grew pensive a moment and said the he was guided by the Hippocratic Oath and its admonition to do no harm to the patient. Since unhooking Bob seemed to Jack as an effecting of harm on Bob, Jack allowed Bob to remain connected.  He was surprised two days later to learn that, against all odds, Bob's condition had improved and he would likely survive. Dr. Jack was happy that he had not unhooked Bob, glad that he took the Hippocratic oath seriously, and relieved that Bob's condition did not simply worsen as anyone familiar with the relevant medical literature would have predicted.  Indeed, Jack felt like he had dodged a bullet, and the he himself was no less fortunate than Bob. 

III

The example illustrates the position that we often find ourselves within when reflecting about morality and ethics. In the concrete ethical situation we often find that we do start with some moral or ethical principles seemingly incumbent upon us even when we don't reflect upon them. These unthought principles do often strike us as something true to which we must conform. One might say that they strike us immediately as a curb upon are possible action.  

Jack unthinkingly affirmed keeping Bob hooked to life support, and only later in conversation with Fred tried to clarify why.  That which ought to be done simply confronted Jack, and Jack's actions were clearly curbed by that which stood over and against him.  While Doctor Jack is no philosopher, he experienced the principle of "do not harm the other" as something real, as something given to him and not constructed by him.  The principle not to harm came upon him in its otherness as law. Accordingly, one can imagine a code of such laws defining what is permissible, prohibited or obliged for a set of people in similar concrete ethical situations.  Moral and ethical codes do often successfully curb behavior. Social contexts in which they are present often appear better ordered and more efficient than when they are absent. 

But the immediacy of the encounter with this ethical other does not sustain itself over time. The curbing function of the code pushes in upon the self, exposing to the self that it has chosen the curb that curbs.  When this happens the curb becomes a mirror, a reflector of the self.    

In standing over and against the curb, the one curbed comes to know herself as part and parcel of establishing and sustaining the curb.  The curb for others becomes a mirror to the self; one recognizes one's own hand in the establishment of the curb and its perpetuation. After all, how could a curb be a curb if it is not permitted to be so? 

Clearly, one must afford recognition to the curb as Other in order for one to be curbed by it.  But in reflecting upon the putative alterity of the curb, one notices that the curb qua curb wears a human face.  Just as there are no self-identifying objects, properties, relations, events or states of affairs apart from human consciousness, neither are there self-identifying ethical norms governing our behavior without our cooperation and tacit agreement.  On closer reflection, the heternomony of the curb reveals itself as a posit of our own autonomy!  It is we after all who project curbs into nature. In staring at the face of this putative external curb, we come to recognize our face in the curb. Unfortunately, when we recognize the curb to be a projection of our own subjectivity, the power of the curb to curb is undercut. That which appeared to be objective has now become subjective, and with this we touch our own freedom. It is we who create the ethical world in which we live; it is we who are the rule makers.  The law in its externality has now become an expression of our own subjective desire, and the problem presses down upon us: How could that which we create come to judge the one who creates it?  

All of us implicitly realize that the efficiencies produced in codes that curb can last only as long as people grant the possibility that the curbing code is not merely an arbitrary and capricious projection of some arbitrary and capricious subject or subjects. 

IV

When the immediacy of the curb has been broken by the mediacy of the mirror, one is left with the question regnant in our time: How is it possible to use terms like 'good', 'evil', 'right', and 'wrong' without admitting that these appellations are deployed on the basis of my own desires, my own pleasure, and my own happiness?  How can saying 'John is bad' mean something more that I disapprove of John? 

It is here that the metaphor of light is necessary. Once one realizes that ethical properties are not baked into the universe in the same way that chemical interactions, one has a choice: Either admit that the subject devours any putative objectivity of ethics, or look for those deeper conditions that give rise to ethical predicates in the first place.  The metaphor of light points to the back-and-forth movement of reflection that is ultimately responsible both for the curbs and the mirroring that exposes such curbs as subjective.  The light of ethical reflection drives more deeply into the ultimate grounds for the law that binds.  It recognizes that the recognition of this law as driven by the subject is itself short-lived and ultimately irrational.  How indeed could it be that that ethical reality that seems so close to me, that reality that governs my behavior with respect to others, simply is a projection of me? 

After the heteronomy of the code is seen to rest in the autonomy of the subject, the subject realizes finally that there is no longer otherness, that the ought has been vanquished, and accordingly, that the deepest experience of human beings being confronted by what they ought to do -- and their not living up that ought -- is wholly counterfeit. What an irrational world the projecting self inhabits! The very experience of ought that seemingly separates human beings from the higher beasts is itself grounded upon nothing.  It tokens nothing deeper.  It is simply an unfortunate result of not taking mirroring seriously enough.  \While men and women can reason from what they want to how to get it, reason does not operate at all in establishing what they ought to want.

But here again the light shines forth. It is a light that takes up the immediate code and its negation into a higher synthesis.  It is a light that allows reason to operate not as a cipher of the self's desires, but as the logos speaking a divine order.  The light draws us more deeply into conversation.  It makes us ask how parts of the code fit together and for whom parts of the code are privileged. It asks us questions of moral theory and ethics. It distinguishes types of consequentialism and compares these types with deontological perspectives. The light seeks a comprehensive theory to stand behind the curb, a theory which points to the incapacity of the self to account ultimately for the experience of the curb. 

In the reflection of the light, we are drawn into the deeper questions of morality and ethics, questions that drive us to admit that we are not who we ought to be, and that we are not ultimately who we now are -- questions that cannot be entertained without entering deeply into the tragedy of our current situation of not being able to affirm deeply that Ground and Abyss that we cannot finally deny.  '

Human beings find themselves in fields of meaning, purpose and value that point to the Divine deeply hidden within the fissures of broken experience itself.  The light which lightens the curb and its mirror is a light whose reason is ultimately ontological, it pertains to the Being of the hidden God whose absence is present in a forgotten Cross on a lonely hill, a Cross in which time itself briefly nested.  And so it is that Curb and Mirror unite in that light that shows itself as Word.  The heteronomous and autonomous have both been cancelled yet preserved in a uneasy theonomy.  Ultimately, the Curb and Mirror must be understood from the standpoint of the Light, a light forever constituting itself as the divine in, under, around and beyond human life itself.