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.

On the Logical Priority of Logos

Theology's function is to interpret the kerygma into the context.   This much has always been clear to me.   But what are the limits of this interpretation?  What norms sort theological attempts between success and failure?   And what are the proper words to use here?   Ought we to speak of true theological statements over and against false ones?    Are theological claims made in this interpretation better thought to be felicitous or infelicitous?   Are some more fecund than others, and, if so, what are the marks of this fecundity?

Over three decades ago I decided that I wanted to do theology seriously.  But over the decades I have been paralyzed by the Herculean effort seemingly needed to make any true theological advance in our time.   I knew that I could not simply parrot putative truths of another time as if they were truths of our time, yet I did not want to say that the truth-values of theological statements were simply and facilely indexed to time.  I have watched contemporary theology (and theologians) come and go and I have marveled at how little their passage on the theological stage seemingly depends upon the strength of their arguments.  I have always assumed that the acceptance of theological positions ought not be like that of political ones.   Theology, the grand discipline of the west, could not be simply a matter of fad, whim, and immediate political, economic and social cash value.   It simply has to be something more, I have hoped.

The proclamation of the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ has to be the starting point of theology.  The source of theology must be the Cross.  Of this, I have never had doubt.   An analysis of the cultural and intellectual horizon is necessary to the task of theology and, in some way, this horizon is itself a source of theological reflection.   However, this source is not of the same type as the other source.  While one has particular insight into the horizon, and while the horizon is something we "bump up against" in all experience, the horizon is not revealed.   The kerygma is revealed and the horizon is not.

Yet the two are given in a different way than our interpretative activity of unpacking the poles of kerygma and horizon, and carefully and patiently laying out, uncovering, or constructively articulating the relationships holding between those poles.  Our language, culture, philosophical assumptions, conceptual schemes, and own existences (including the socio-political) are the media by which the poles are refracted.  The hard task of locating the poles with respect to each other by specifying their connections is, of course, what the method of correlation is all about.   This creative, interpretive act of correlation is built upon previous acts of interpretation.   There is a hermeneutic of kerygma, a hermeneutic of horizon, and a hermeneutic correlating the deliverances of the first two hermeneutics.   Since the hermeneutical act is historically, culturally, conceptually influenced - - the product of the hermeneutic seems destined to be a here today, gone tomorrow, Johnny one-hit phenomenon.  Or so it seems on first reflection.

But perhaps we theologians spend too much creative energy wallowing in the quagmire of the seeming relativism based upon historical, cultural, and conceptual dynamism.  After all, it is not that the hermeneutical task - - and the hermeneutical circle and its effects - - infect what we do alone.   All intellectual activity proceeds by interpreting one thing, then interpreting another thing, and finally interpreting how those things fit, or don't fit, together.  It is what human beings do, and it is what we have always done.   Yet, there was once a time - - and there is in many other disciplines still a time - - when truth claims were/are vigorously asserted, supported, denied and repudiated on the basis of criteria that are abiding even within the flux of history, language, and culture.  It is not that everything is a Heraclitian flux only.  There is, after all, logos in the flux; there is order and reason.  We theologians have tended to concentrate so much upon the flux that we miss the order.   We tend to forget that the very categories we use in thinking and communicating the historical flux of thought are, in some sense stable categories.   In fact, the necessary condition for communicating flux is an ordered, coherent structure of thinking and being.  One cannot state change without perdurance.   This very old thought is either true or false, and I believe there are very good reasons to think it true - - Gorgias aside.  

What we theologians need again is a healthy dose of the reality of logos.  Our task is not dissimilar to Descartes'.   We must assume the worse-case scenario for theological knowledge, and try to uncover those stable structures presupposed by that worse case.  We must again learn to employ principle of contradiction:  If a theological position, or a hermeneutical interpretation of the hermeneutical situation ramifies a contradiction, then we must learn again to state clearly that the denial of that position is at least possible.  Moreover, we must learn again to think deeply enough theologically to spot the ways in which theological discourse is not generally a discourse of the contingent, and be able to conclude appropriately from this how the possible thus relates to the actual.  This is not easy work, but it is the work before us.

Just as flux presupposes logos, so does the historicity of the hermeneutical situation presuppose a metaphysics, that ontological correlate to the stable structural categories necessary even to state a non-completable hermeneutical dynamism.  It is precisely this metaphysics that theology has forgotten about, and it is precisely this that must be investigated again.   My hope is to begin this investigation soon.