On Intelligibility, Determinability, and the Logos Who Makes Meaning Possible

For many years I have been puzzled by a question that refuses to dissolve: how are transcendental arguments possible at all? How can one speak meaningfully about the conditions for the possibility of experience, knowledge, or formalization without already presupposing what one claims to ground?

Logic and mathematics have sharpened this question rather than resolved it. Formal systems are extraordinarily powerful. They model relations, generate derivations, and articulate vast domains of structure. Yet the more rigorous they become, the more clearly they reveal something they cannot contain: the space in which they are intelligible as systems in the first place.

Gödel made this unavoidable. A sufficiently expressive system can represent its own syntax, yet it cannot secure from within the distinction between truth and provability. Even when meta statements are themselves formalized, the recognition that the formalization is adequate occurs at a higher level still. The meta recedes as it is captured. What is gained in rigor is accompanied by a renewed excess.

This excess is not merely epistemic. It is not simply a limitation of human cognition or a gap in symbolic technique. It belongs to intelligibility itself. Formal systems presuppose a horizon in which interpretation, relevance, adequacy, and meaning are possible at all. That horizon is not a theorem. It is the condition under which theorems can appear as meaningful.

Here a structural parallel becomes visible. The transcendental I cannot be thought as an object without ceasing to be transcendental. An I that is thought is already a higher order self, something represented rather than that by virtue of which representation occurs. The condition of objectivity cannot itself be an object in the same register without contradiction. This is not a contingent limitation. It is structural.

Something analogous occurs with intelligibility itself. Once a teleological space of meaning is determined, named, or even ontologically affirmed, that determination presupposes another horizon within which it is intelligible as a determination. The sine qua non of the determined as determined is not a further determination, but an indeterminate field that allows for determinability. The indeterminate does not issue in form. It makes form possible.

This is the insight Kant reached most clearly in the Third Critique. Determining judgment subsumes particulars under given rules. Reflecting judgment seeks the rule under which particulars may be unified without possessing that rule in advance. Reflecting judgment operates within a teleological space, oriented toward coherence and purposiveness without algorithmic closure. This space is not subjective whim. It is the condition under which object languages can be coordinated at all.

Seen in this light, intelligibility is teleological not because it aims at a humanly imposed end, but because it orients formal structures toward meaning without compelling their form. Formal systems are not self originating. They are drawn into being by the possibility of meaning that precedes them. This possibility is real, but it is not itself formal. It orders without determining. It attracts without necessity.

This is why attempts to algorithmize theory change inevitably fail. To formalize the rules of revision presupposes prior judgments of relevance, adequacy, and success that exceed the system being revised. The ladder by which a system ascends cannot be retained within the system without contradiction. The indeterminate that allows for determinability cannot be collapsed into determination without loss.

Here the question of Logos re emerges with new clarity. Logos is not first a word spoken, nor an idea grasped, nor a system constructed. Logos names that by virtue of which meaning is possible at all. It is the order that permits articulation without exhausting itself in articulation. It is the ground that calls without coercing, that grants intelligibility without dictating form.

“In the beginning was the Logos” is therefore not a temporal claim but an ontological one. In the beginning was that by virtue of which anything could be said, meant, or understood. Formal systems, scientific theories, languages, and even our most advanced machines live within this space. They do not create it. They respond to it.

To remember this is not to retreat from rigor but to fulfill it. Logic itself teaches that intelligibility cannot be fully objectified without remainder. That remainder is not a defect. It is the sign that meaning is grounded more deeply than any system can contain.

On Christmas, it is fitting to recall that the Logos who grounds intelligibility did not abolish finitude, form, or history, but entered them. The Word became flesh. Meaning did not collapse into mechanism, nor did transcendence remain aloof. The determinate was upheld by the indeterminate, and the finite was made capable of bearing what it could not generate on its own.

This is not sentiment. It is metaphysics. And it is, perhaps, the deepest reason theology and philosophy still find themselves speaking about the same thing—if only we are patient enough to listen.

Disputatio XXIIIa: De Sermone Meta-Theoretico et Intelligibilitate Formali

 On Meta-Theoretical Discourse and Formal Intelligibility

Why an Intermezzo?

This disputation is designated an Intermezzo because it does not advance a new doctrinal locus but clarifies the conditions under which all doctrinal discourse is intelligible. It marks a structural pause in the argument, making explicit what has thus far been presupposed: the irreducible horizon of intelligibility within which formal, scientific, philosophical, and theological speech can occur. By naming this horizon, the Intermezzo secures the transition from questions of meaning and participation to questions of order and law.

Quaeritur

Utrum intelligibilitas formalis systematum logicorum et mathematicorum praesupponat discursum metalinguisticum irreducibilem ad linguam obiectivam; et utrum hic excessus non solum epistemicus sed ontologicus sit, ita ut ipsa possibilitas significationis in rebus fundetur; et utrum hic fundus intelligibilitatis recte intelligatur ut spatium teleologicum, quod systemata formalia non efficiunt sed quod ipsa attrahit et constituit.

Whether the formal intelligibility of logical and mathematical systems presupposes a metalinguistic discourse irreducible to object language; and whether this excess is not merely epistemic but ontological, such that the very possibility of signification is grounded in things themselves; and whether this ground of intelligibility is rightly understood as a teleological space which formal systems do not produce but which draws them forth and constitutes them.

Thesis

Formal systems do not generate intelligibility. They presuppose it. Every object language capable of truth conditions relies upon a meta-discourse that cannot be fully internalized without loss of the very properties that render the system intelligible. This excess is not merely epistemic but ontological. The possibility of meaning precedes formalization and belongs to the structure of reality itself.

This irreducible space of intelligibility may be described as teleological: not as an imposed purpose or subjective projection, but as the permanent possibility of meaningful determination that draws formal systems into being and coordinates their interpretation. Metalanguage thus testifies to an order of meaning that no formal system can exhaust, yet without which no formal system can be what it is.

Locus classicus

Gödel, Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze (1931)
“Es gibt innerhalb eines jeden hinreichend mächtigen formalen Systems wahre Sätze, die innerhalb dieses Systems nicht beweisbar sind.”

“There are, within every sufficiently powerful formal system, true propositions that cannot be proven within that system.”

Gödel’s result is not merely technical. It reveals that truth outruns formal derivability and that the conditions for recognizing truth are not fully capturable by the system whose truths are in question.

Peirce, Collected Papers 5.121
“Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and a first into relation.”

Peirce’s category of Thirdness names mediation, lawfulness, and intelligible continuity. It points beyond dyadic relations to the conditions under which relations can be meaningful at all.

Aristotle, Metaphysics Γ.4 (1006a)
τὸ αὐτὸ ἅμα ὑπάρχειν τε καὶ μὴ ὑπάρχειν ἀδύνατον

“It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not belong to the same thing at the same time.”

The principle of non-contradiction is not derived from a system; it governs the possibility of systemhood itself.

Explicatio

The inquiry into metalanguage arises not from philosophical curiosity but from the internal limits of formalization itself. Whenever a formal system is sufficiently expressive to represent arithmetic, syntax, or inference, it becomes possible to ask questions about the system as a system: about its consistency, its completeness, its interpretability, and its truth conditions. These questions are not posed within the object language alone but from a vantage that speaks about the system. This vantage is meta-discourse.

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems make this structural distinction unavoidable. The encoding of syntactic relations by Gödel numbering allows statements about provability to be represented within arithmetic. Yet the recognition of undecidable truths still requires a standpoint that distinguishes truth from provability. That distinction is not eliminable. Even when meta-statements are formalized, the act of recognizing the adequacy of that formalization occurs at a higher level still. The meta recedes as it is formalized. What is gained in rigor is offset by a renewed excess.

This phenomenon is not accidental. It reveals something essential about intelligibility itself. Formal systems can model relations, generate derivations, and define extensions. What they cannot do is generate the conditions under which their own operations are meaningful. The possibility of interpretation is not a theorem of the system; it is the horizon within which the system can appear as intelligible at all.

This horizon is not merely epistemic. It is not simply a limitation of human cognition or a defect in symbolic manipulation. It belongs to the nature of formal structures themselves. A system that could exhaustively account for its own intelligibility would collapse the distinction between object language and metalanguage, thereby eliminating the very conditions that make interpretation possible. Meaning would be flattened into mechanism, and truth into derivability.

To say this is not to disparage formal rigor. On the contrary, it is formal rigor that reveals the necessity of this distinction. Logic itself teaches that intelligibility cannot be fully objectified without remainder. The meta is not an embarrassment to formalism; it is its condition.

This irreducible excess may be clarified by reconstructing Peirce’s notion of Thirdness. Thirdness is not merely a category of mediation within thought. It names the lawful continuity that makes relations intelligible. It is that by virtue of which signs signify, laws govern, and inference is possible. In this sense Thirdness is not added to dyadic relations; it is what allows relations to be relations rather than brute collisions.

What Peirce names phenomenologically, we may here name ontologically. The intelligibility that coordinates formal systems is not imposed from outside but belongs to the structure of reality. Formal systems are not self-originating. They are drawn into being by the possibility of meaning that precedes them. This possibility is not itself formal, yet it is not indeterminate. It orders, constrains, and directs formalization without being reducible to it.

Whitehead’s notion of prehension may serve as an analogy. Prehensions are not actual entities but the permanent possibilities of actualization. They are not events but the conditions under which events can occur meaningfully. In an analogous way, intelligibility is not itself a formal structure but the permanent possibility of formal meaning. It is that by which formal systems can be interpreted, related, and evaluated.

This is why attempts to algorithmize theory change inevitably fail. To formalize the rules by which theories are revised presupposes a prior understanding of relevance, adequacy, and success—concepts that themselves resist algorithmic capture. The criteria of revision always exceed the system being revised. The ladder by which the system ascends cannot be retained within the system without contradiction.

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus gestures toward this limit. What cannot be said must be shown. Yet showing is not mute. It is a mode of intelligibility that precedes explicit articulation. There is no seeing that could not, in principle, be spoken—but the speaking presupposes the very space it attempts to articulate. The ladder cannot be climbed unless it already stands.

Kant’s distinction between determining and reflecting judgment clarifies this further. Determining judgment subsumes particulars under given rules. Reflecting judgment seeks the rule under which particulars may be unified. The former may be formalized. The latter resists algorithmic closure. Reflecting judgment operates within a teleological space: it seeks coherence, purposiveness, and meaning without presupposing a determinate schema. This space is not subjective whim. It is the condition under which object languages can be coordinated at all.

Thus intelligibility is teleological not because it aims at a humanly imposed end, but because it orients formal structures toward meaning. Formal systems are “pulled into being” by this space. They do not emerge ex nihilo. They are responses to a prior call of intelligibility that is written into the structure of reality itself.

Objectiones

Ob I. If intelligibility exceeds formal systems, then rigor is compromised and mathematics collapses into metaphysics.

Ob II. Metalanguage reflects only human cognitive limitation, not any ontological feature of reality.

Ob III. Teleology introduces purpose into domains governed solely by efficient causality.

Ob IV. If intelligibility cannot be formalized, then it cannot be known or discussed without contradiction.

Responsiones

Ad I. Rigor is not compromised but clarified. Formal precision reveals the limits of formalization. To acknowledge these limits is not to abandon rigor but to respect its conditions.

Ad II. The recurrence of metalanguage is not contingent upon human psychology. It arises from the structure of formal systems themselves. Any intelligence capable of truth would confront the same distinction.

Ad III. Teleology here names orientation toward meaning, not extrinsic purpose. It does not replace efficient causality but grounds the intelligibility of causal explanation.

Ad IV. Intelligibility can be discussed analogically and architectonically without being reduced to an object language. Such discourse does not eliminate the meta; it inhabits it knowingly.

Nota

This disputation functions as an intermezzo within the Disputationes Theologicae. It neither advances a new doctrinal locus nor resolves a previously posed theological question. Rather, it renders explicit the conditions of intelligibility presupposed by everything that precedes and everything that follows.

Up to this point, the inquiry has examined language, truth, relation, participation, causality, and manifestation within the horizon of theological discourse. What has remained implicit, however, is the space within which such discourse can appear as intelligible at all. Here that space is named. The question is no longer what theology says, but what must already be the case for saying anything meaningfully.

The significance of Kurt Gödel is therefore not merely technical. His results disclose a structural excess that no formal system can eliminate: truth outruns derivability, and intelligibility cannot be fully internalized without remainder. Logic thus bears witness to a distinction it cannot overcome. Far from displacing metaphysics, formal rigor summons it by revealing the conditions it cannot itself supply.

The appeal to Charles Sanders Peirce clarifies the ontological character of this excess. Thirdness is not invoked here as a semiotic category but as the mode of being through which relations are intelligible rather than merely given. It names lawful continuity, mediation, and normativity as features of reality itself. Formal systems do not generate these features. They presuppose them.

Likewise, the principle articulated by Aristotle does not arise from within a system but governs the very possibility of systemhood. Non-contradiction is not an axiom among others. It is the condition under which axioms can function at all. In this sense, logic testifies to an order it inhabits but does not constitute.

What emerges is an account of intelligibility as teleological. This does not introduce purpose as an extrinsic aim or subjective projection. It names the orientation of reality toward meaning, coherence, and determination. Formal systems are drawn into articulation by this orientation. They are responses to intelligibility, not its source.

This recognition decisively blocks both reductionism and voluntarism. Meaning is neither manufactured by minds nor imposed by decree. It is discovered as a feature of reality that precedes formalization and renders it possible. The humanities and the formal sciences converge here, not in method but in vocation: both seek the conditions under which truth can appear as truth.

The theological implications are now unavoidable, though they remain deliberately unasserted. If intelligibility belongs to the structure of reality, then meaning is not accidental. If meaning is not accidental, then the question of Logos presses forward, not as a speculative hypothesis, but as the name for the ground of intelligibility itself. The inquiry is thus poised to move from the conditions of meaning to the structures of order through which meaning abides.

Determinatio

1. Formal systems presuppose intelligibility and do not generate it.

2. No sufficiently expressive system can internalize the conditions of its own truth.

3. The distinction between object language and metalanguage is irreducible.

4. This irreducibility is ontological, not merely epistemic.

5. Intelligibility constitutes a teleological space of meaning.

6. Formal systems are drawn into being by this space rather than constituting it.

Transitus 

If the intelligibility of formal systems presupposes an irreducible metadiscursive horizon, and if this horizon belongs not merely to cognition but to the being of things themselves, then intelligibility cannot be treated as an incidental feature of formalization. It must instead be understood as a stable orientation of reality toward meaning.

Yet intelligibility that remains merely excess would be indeterminate. If meaning is to be communicable, repeatable, and answerable to truth, then it must assume a form capable of persistence without exhaustion. The question therefore presses beyond the conditions of meaning toward the mode by which meaning abides.

What is now required is an account of order that neither collapses into mechanism nor dissolves into abstraction. Such order cannot arise from formal systems alone, nor can it be reduced to patterns of occurrence. It must instead name the way intelligibility attains stability within reality itself.

We are therefore compelled to consider law. Not law as a descriptive regularity, nor as an axiom internal to a formal system, but as a mode of being through which intelligibility is sustained, communicated, and made normative.

Accordingly, the inquiry now turns to the nature of law and regularity, and to the question whether the order they express belongs merely to phenomena or to the ontological ground of intelligibility itself.

Disputatio XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis

On the Confrontation of Languages: Theology and the Secular Word

Quaeritur

Utrum inter linguam theologicam, quae in Verbo et Spiritu fundatur, et sermones saeculares, qui autonomiam suam vindicant, oriatur verus conflictus; et utrum theologia possit adhuc praedicare veritatem in mundo, ubi scientia, ars, et cultura sibi munus veritatis usurpaverunt.

Whether there arises a genuine conflict between theological language, grounded in the Word and the Spirit, and the secular discourses that claim their own autonomy; and whether theology can still proclaim truth in a world where science, art, and culture have each usurped for themselves the office of truth.

Thesis

The theological word, because it participates in divine truth, does not compete with secular reason but interprets its conditions. The Spirit who makes theology possible also animates all authentic acts of meaning without thereby rendering them theological. Hence, theology’s speech does not withdraw from modern languages but judges and fulfills them: it discloses that every search for truth is already a response to divine communication.

Locus classicus

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:4–5

The verse identifies the universality of divine illumination: every act of understanding presupposes the light of the Logos. Secular discourse, even in its apparent autonomy, speaks within that light and cannot escape it. The confrontation between theology and modernity is therefore not external opposition but internal forgetfulness.

Explicatio

After the Disputationes on Word and Spirit, theology now faces its cultural horizon. Modernity has multiplied languages of truth—scientific, aesthetic, political, technological—each claiming autonomy. Yet all presuppose intelligibility, value, and communicability—conditions that theology interprets as participation in the Logos.

Theological discourse (L_t) encounters secular discourse (L_s) not as rival systems but as divergent appropriations of a shared intelligible order. Formally, we may express this as two distinct interpretive relations to the same divine ground (L_∞):

$$L_t<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\pi </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}, L_s<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\delta </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}$$

Lt​Rπ​L∞​, Ls​Rδ​L∞, ​where R_π denotes participation through grace (Spirit-mediated correspondence) and R_δ denotes derivative dependence (natural reason’s participation in the Logos).

The difference is not in the object (the divine ground of meaning) but in the mode of participation.

Theology thus does not flee from modernity’s languages; it uncovers their hidden metaphysics, their reliance upon borrowed light. Where secular language treats meaning as construct, theology confesses meaning as gift.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Scientific Naturalists like Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins claim that science explains the world without recourse to divine speech. Theology’s claim to interpret meaning is obsolete; language about God adds nothing to predictive or explanatory power. The “light of the Logos” is a poetic metaphor for natural intelligibility, not its cause.

Obiectio II. Philosophical Postmodernists like Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty hold that all claims to meta-language or transcendence are expressions of power. Theology’s assertion that secular reason “borrows light” masks its own will to authority. There is no divine ground of meaning—only historical formations of discourse. The Logos is another name for the dominant narrative of Western metaphysics.

Obiectio III. Voices like Paul Tillich and Don Cupitt argue that to preserve credibility, theology must translate its symbols into existential or cultural meanings. The language of revelation should yield to human experience and creativity. To claim that secular reason still depends on divine light is nostalgic; theology must learn from, not correct, secular wisdom.

Obiectio IV. John Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy claim that secular reason is not merely derivative but inherently nihilistic and must therefore be rejected, not engaged. The Church should withdraw into its own grammar, its own nova lingua, abandoning dialogue with modernity. Engagement risks corruption of the sacred by the profane.

Responsiones

Ad I. Scientific explanation presupposes an ordered reality and a rational subject capable of truth, conditions that science cannot itself generate. Theology does not compete with explanation but discloses its ground: intelligibility itself as participation in the Logos. The Spirit’s presence in the act of reason makes knowledge possible; to call this “poetic” is to confuse causality with metaphor. The light of the Logos is the ontological precondition for all epistemic light.

Ad II. Postmodern suspicion rightly unmasks language’s entanglement with power, but theology interprets this entanglement as the distortion of participation. The Spirit, not the will to power, is the true condition of meaning. Deconstruction reveals the instability of all autonomous discourse; theology explains it: when speech forgets its source, it fragments. The Logos is not a regime of power but the gift of communicability that enables critique itself.

Ad III. Liberal translation preserves relevance at the cost of reality. Symbols derive their power from the truths they signify, not from subjective resonance. The nova lingua theologiae is indeed open to culture, but as illumination, not adaptation. The Spirit interprets human experience by orienting it toward divine meaning; theology learns from culture only by discerning in it the traces of grace.

Ad IV. Radical Orthodoxy rightly insists that theology is not founded upon secular reason, but withdrawal denies providence. The same Spirit who consecrates the Church animates the world’s search for truth. The task is not isolation but interpretation—to read secular languages as estranged offspring of the divine Word. The nova lingua must not retreat but translate, not by compromise but by conversion: making alien speech once more transparent to grace.

Nota

The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is not warfare but translation. Every language of modernity—scientific, political, artistic—bears within it a theological remainder: a hunger for meaning. The nova lingua theologiae speaks into this multiplicity not as rival ideology but as the meta-language of communion, interpreting all speech as longing for the Word.

The Spirit’s illumination is thus catholic: it extends beyond the Church’s grammar to all truthful speech, wherever reason still remembers the light.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is internal to meaning itself; secular reason unknowingly depends upon the divine Logos for its intelligibility.

2. Theology’s new language does not abolish secular languages but reveals their participatory structure and reorders them toward truth.

3. Scientific and cultural autonomy describe functional independence, not ontological self-sufficiency; their intelligibility remains Spirit-given.

4. Postmodern critique and liberal accommodation each err: the first by forgetting transcendence, the second by dissolving it.

5. Theology’s task in the contemporary horizon is interpretive and missionary—to translate the world’s fragmented languages back into participation in the eternal Word.

Thus the nova lingua theologiae stands not beside but within the world’s discourse, interpreting it to itself, until every language confesses once more that “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Transitus ad Disputationem XXIII

In the preceding disputation it was considered how the language of theology stands amid the many tongues of the age—philosophical, scientific, and political—and how, within that contest of discourses, it preserves its own mode of truth. We found that theology cannot simply translate itself into the idioms of secularity without losing its substance; yet neither can it ignore those idioms, for they articulate the world into which the divine Word has entered. Theological speech must therefore discern, within the multiplicity of languages, those structures of intelligibility through which creation itself remains open to divine address.

This discernment now presses a new question. If theology speaks within a world already patterned by scientific and rational forms of understanding, what is the foundation of those forms themselves? Are the so-called “laws of nature” merely human generalizations abstracted from experience, or do they possess a deeper ontological ground that makes the cosmos intelligible to both science and theology alike? And if such a foundation exists, does it derive from the same Logos who orders all things and sustains them in being?

Therefore we advance to Disputationem XXIII: De Fundamento Legum Naturae, in which it shall be examined whether the laws of nature arise from contingent regularity or from the divine reason imprinted in creation, and how this grounding of law reveals the world as both intelligible to reason and transparent to the creative Word.

Disputatio XXI: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae: De Communicatione Verbi et Spiritus

On the Meta-Language of Theology: On the Communication of Word and Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum nova lingua theologiae sit ille modus loquendi, in quo sermo humanus, assumptus a Verbo et animatus a Spiritu, fit instrumentum divinae communicationis; et utrum haec lingua non substituat linguas humanas, sed eas transformet, ut participent in ipsa veritate quae loquitur—ita ut in ea infinitum non tantum se revelet sed loquatur, et finitum non tantum audiat sed respondeat.

Whether the new language of theology is that mode of speech in which human words, assumed by the Word and animated by the Spirit, become instruments of divine self-communication; and whether this language does not replace human languages but transforms them, so that they participate in the very truth that speaks—in which the infinite not only reveals itself but speaks, and the finite not only hears but answers.

Thesis

The nova lingua theologiae arises where divine Word and human speech coincide under the causality of the Spirit. It is new because its being and meaning are renewed from within by divine presence. Theology thus speaks truly only as it becomes the language of divine communication itself: the eternal Word articulated in finite discourse, the infinite made audible in the finite.

Locus classicus

“We speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” — 1 Corinthians 2:13

Here Paul identifies a linguistic transfiguration: words remain human, yet their origin and order are divine. The Spirit teaches, and through this teaching, human speech becomes the medium of divine wisdom: a new language of theology.

Explicatio

The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic form of participation.
In philosophy, language is typically conceived as a human system of symbols; in theology, language is the place where divine and human communicability meet. The Word (Logos) is not only the content of revelation but its grammar; the Spirit is the causality that makes human utterance bear truth.

Thus, theological language is double in form but single in act:

• Human as finite sign and historical utterance.

• Divine as bearer of infinite meaning.

Let L∞ denote the eternal Word, the infinite language of divine self-communication. Let Lₜ denote finite theological discourse, the language of faith and confession. Finally, let Auth(Lₜ) denote the authorization of Lₜ by the Spirit.

Then:

Theological truth obtains only if Auth(Lₜ) → (Lₜ participat L∞ per Spiritum); that is, finite discourse is true not by inclusion within the divine Word but by real participation in it, as the Spirit makes human language proportionate to divine meaning.

The nova lingua is therefore neither an abstract meta-language nor a private religious dialect. It is the site where human speech becomes transparent to divine reality, where felicity (Spirit-given authorization) and truth (correspondence with divine being) coincide.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Kantian Transcendentalism claims that human cognition is confined to phenomena structured by the categories of understanding. Accordingly, theology can express moral faith but not divine causation in thought or speech. To claim that language participates in divine Word and Spirit mistakes moral symbolism for metaphysical participation, violating the autonomy of reason and the limits of possible experience.

Obiectio II. Barth and Brunner held that revelation is the wholly other act of God, not a linguistic system accessible to humanity. Theology may bear witness to revelation but is not itself revelation’s continuation. To speak of a new language of theology that shares in divine communication is to blur the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creature, turning revelation into religious expression.

Obiectio III. Wittgenstein claims that meaning arises from the use of language within a form of life (Lebensform). The felicity of theological discourse is determined by ecclesial grammar, not metaphysical causation. To posit the Spirit as the cause of meaning introduces a category mistake: causation belongs to nature, not to language. The Spirit’s “authorization” adds nothing beyond communal propriety.

Obiectio IV. Hegelian Idealism claims that the Spirit realizes itself in the dialectical unfolding of human consciousness. Accordingly, theology is not a distinct divine act but the self-expression of the Absolute within finite reason. The nova lingua theologiae is thus unnecessary because human discourse already manifests divine Spirit in its self-development. To posit transcendent causality in theology regresses to pre-critical metaphysics.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck and Kathryn Tanner both hold that theology’s truth is intralinguistic, that it is a coherent discourse within the Church’s rule of faith. Divine causation is thus a superfluous hypothesis. To claim that the Spirit determines what counts as true speech reintroduces metaphysical realism under the guise of pneumatology. The “new language” of theology should be understood as communal practice, not ontological participation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s limits define the autonomy of reason, not the transcendence of God. Revelation does not violate the categories of thought but constitutes their ground. The Spirit does not add a second cause to cognition but founds its capacity for meaning. Thus, the nova lingua arises precisely where reason is fulfilled by grace; the Spirit elevates the finite intellect to participation without abolishing its structure. Theological discourse thus becomes rational in a higher sense. a rationality transfigured by participation.

Ad II. Barth rightly insists on divine freedom, yet divine freedom includes the liberty to dwell within human language. The nova lingua does not erase the Creator–creature distinction but actualizes it: God’s Word remains transcendent even while speaking immanently. The Spirit’s presence ensures that theology is not revelation itself but its living continuation, for the Word still speaks in the Church’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning arises from use is incomplete. The ecclesial Lebensform exists because the Spirit sustains it. The grammar of faith is not self-originating; it is founded in divine authorization. The Spirit’s causality is not physical but constitutive; it makes the correspondence between sign and referent possible. Without the Spirit, theology reduces to linguistic anthropology; with the Spirit, grammar becomes sacrament: the finite sign that mediates infinite truth.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic rightly perceives the relation between thought and being but confuses participation with identity. The divine Word does not evolve into human consciousness; it speaks through it. The Spirit is not the world’s self-realization but God’s personal presence within the finite. The nova lingua therefore represents not the self-consciousness of reason but the descent of divine communication. Communion arises not by dialectical necessity but by grace.

Ad V. Post-liberal theology correctly locates truth within the Church’s language but cannot explain why that language bears truth at all. Felicity requires truth conditions that obtain beyond grammar, and this occurs through the Spirit’s causality. While the Word guarantees referential content, the Spirit vouchsafes participation. Thus, theology’s “new language” is not another dialect but the transformation of language itself into the site of divine truth.

Nota

To speak of the nova lingua theologiae is to confess that all true theology is God’s own discourse in the mode of the finite. The Holy Spirit determines inclusion within T (the formal language of theology) and mediates the causal link between felicity and truth. The Word provides the ontological content of that truth; the Spirit provides its efficacious form.

Hence:

FT + TC = Veritas Theologica, where FT (felicity conditions) ensure internal coherence and authorization, and TC (truth conditions) denote the real divine states of affairs modeled ontologically by T.

The Spirit, as both formal and causal principle, unites these two in a single act of divine communication.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic manifestation of the act of Word and Spirit: the infinite Word speaking through finite words.

2. The Spirit’s causality is non-competitive and constitutive; it authorizes human speech to bear divine truth.

3. The Word’s eternity is the meta-language within which all finite theological languages (Lₙ) are interpreted and fulfilled.

4. Theological truth arises when felicity (Spirit-given authorization) is linked to truth through modeling.

5. The nova lingua theologiae is incarnational: the infinite speaks within the finite, and the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

In this union, theology ceases to be speech about God and becomes God’s own speech through the creature, language redeemed into truth, and truth made audible as the living Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXII

The preceding disputation disclosed that the meta-language of theology is not a neutral system above divine speech, but the living communicatio between the Word and the Spirit, the eternal dialogue through which divine truth both descends into and gathers up finite discourse. Within this communication, the human theologian speaks only insofar as the Spirit appropriates human language into the self-expression of the divine Word. Theology is thus dialogical in its very essence: it exists as participation in an ongoing conversation between God and the world.

Yet every divine conversation meets a worldly reply. The Word that enters human speech inevitably encounters other languages—philosophical, scientific, political, and poetic—each claiming its own authority over meaning. How does theology, as the speech of the Spirit, engage these rival discourses without losing its distinctive mode of truth? Can the language of faith coexist, translate, or contend with the languages of secularity, or must it reclaim a logic of its own, irreducible to the grammar of the age?

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis, wherein it shall be examined how the sacred and secular orders of speech meet and resist one another, how theology maintains its truth within the pluralism of tongues, and how the Spirit sustains the integrity of divine discourse amid the babel of the world.

Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino

On the Meta-Language of Theology and the Divine Word

Quaeritur

Utrum meta-lingua theologiae non sit sermo humanus aliis superior, sed ipsum Verbum divinum, in quo et per quem omnis lingua creata interpretatur; et utrum Deus non habeat aliud verbum de se quam se ipsum, ita ut Logos sit meta-lingua analogice dicta, qua universa loquela humana in veritatem redigitur.

Whether the meta-language of theology is not a human discourse standing above others but the divine Word Himself, in whom and through whom all created language is interpreted; and whether God possesses no other word about Himself than Himself, such that the Logos is the meta-language, analogically so called, by which all human speech is gathered into truth.

Thesis

The only true meta-language of theology is the eternal Word. All human theological languages—old, new, symbolic, propositional—exist as finite object-languages within the field of divine communication. The Logos is both their ground and their interpreter, the infinite discourse in which their partial meanings are united and fulfilled.

Locus Classicus

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1

This verse establishes the primacy of divine speech: before there were languages, there was the Word; before there were signs, there was meaning itself. The divine Logos precedes, grounds, and interprets every act of human speaking. The Word is not one being among others but the intelligible act by which all that is becomes intelligible.

“Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo.”
“But You were more inward than my inmost self and higher than my highest.” — Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones III.6.11

Augustine here confesses that God is not encountered as an object within language or consciousness, nor as a voice external to the soul, but as the interior ground of intelligibility itself. God is nearer than thought and prior to every act of understanding. This inwardness is not subjectivity but ontological priority: the Logos as that by which both mind and meaning are possible.

Taken together, these witnesses establish that the Word of God is not merely spoken to creatures but spoken in them, not as a linguistic artifact but as the living source of sense and truth. The Logos is thus rightly confessed as theology’s true meta-language: not a discourse about God, but God’s own self-articulation in which all created speech finds its meaning and measure.

Explicatio

The notion of meta-language in logic and model theory designates a higher-level language used to describe the rules, syntax, or semantics of another. In theology, such a separation is impossible. No language can stand outside the Word of God in order to describe it, for all language already exists within the act of divine self-communication. All human discourse remains within the domain of divine utterance, because the Word is both the Creator of speech and its ultimate hearer. This meta-lingua is not transcendental consciousness nor a meta-subject interpreting meaning, but the very ratio intelligibilitatis of being and speech.

Thus, when theology speaks about God, it does so within God’s own communicative act. The Logos is not an external commentary on the world but the internal ratio by which it exists and becomes intelligible. Every language—whether philosophical, poetic, or dogmatic—functions as an object-language within the comprehensive “meta-language” that is God’s eternal self-utterance.

This means that the relation between divine Word and human language is not hierarchical but participatory, that is, a relation of constitutive causality in the order of signification. Let us represent this formally (and then explain it):

Let L₁, L₂, L₃ … denote the many object-languages of creation: ordinary speech, philosophical reasoning, scriptural idiom, the nova lingua of faith.

Let L∞ denote the divine Logos, the Word that encompasses and grounds all finite discourse.

Then for every Lₙ, the relation Lₙ ⊂ L∞ holds analogically. This symbol of inclusion does not name a merely logical or set-theoretic relation, but signifies ontological dependence: each finite language exists and is intelligible only through the constitutive causality of the Word. This is not linguistic hierarchy but participation grounded in Logos.

Hence, divine meta-language is not an external code but the infinite ontological horizon of interpretation which precedes and grounds every act of understanding. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the divine Word into the polyphonic tongues of creation and returning creation’s words into praise.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the later linguistic turn argue that language-games possess internal criteria of meaning; there is no meta-language beyond them. To claim that the Logos functions as a meta-language imposes a totalizing framework that violates the autonomy of forms of life.

Obiectio II. Karl Barth maintains that revelation is wholly event and never a stable linguistic form; thus, there can be no divine meta-language, for God’s Word encounters us only as momentary address, never as standing structure of meaning.

Obiectio III. Jacques Derrida and his heirs hold that all language is differential play without final referent or transcendental signified. The claim that the Logos interprets all language reintroduces a metaphysics of presence which deconstruction has exposed as illusion.

Responsiones

Ad I. Wittgenstein rightly observes that meaning arises within language-games at the level of human use. Theology, however, concerns the ground of linguistic possibility itself. The Logos is not a competing game but the fundus of all grammars, the ratio loquendi that makes any signification possible. Without the Word as ontological ground, even internal coherence loses intelligibility.

Ad II. Barth rightly emphasizes the event-character of revelation, but the event itself presupposes the eternal Word. The Logos is not a static structure but the living continuity of divine speech. Revelation as event is the historical manifestation of that eternal discourse. Thus, divine meta-language is not a standing text but the ongoing act of self-communication through the Spirit.

Ad III. Deconstruction’s critique of presence inadvertently confirms the theological claim: no finite language can secure its own meaning. The Logos, however, is not an available presence within language but the transcendent act that bestows meaning upon the play of difference. The Spirit does not close différance but transfigures it into relation.

Nota

To speak of the divine Word as theology’s meta-language is to confess that all truth is linguistic because all being is spoken—not as linguistic construction, but as Logos-grounded intelligibility. The cosmos itself is a sentence within the discourse of the Logos. In this sense, theology’s many models and expressions, as examined in Disputationes XVII–XVIII, are not rival statements but varied declensions of a single Word.

This view transforms the philosophy of language into a theology of communion. Meaning no longer rests upon formal conventions or social contracts but upon participation in the divine speech-act that sustains creation. Hence, all interpretation is ultimately Christological: every word finds its coherence only in the Word made flesh.

Formally we may write (and then explain):

∀w ∈ Lₙ, Meaning(w) = Participation(w, L∞),

where this participation grounds both reference (Refₘ) and the donation of theological sense (Ref*ₗ). Semantic realism thus appears as the linguistic echo of creation’s metaphysical realism.

The Church, as communio verbi, is the living medium of this divine meta-language in history. Its confession, liturgy, and doctrine are not human projections upon silence but Spirit-authorized articulations of the eternal discourse of the Word and Spirit. In the Church’s speech, divine meta-language enters temporal form without loss of transcendence.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The divine Logos is the only true meta-language of theology: the eternal act of meaning in which all created languages participate.

2. All human theological discourse (Lₙ) functions as finite object-language within this horizon; its truth lies in participation, not autonomy.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the eternal Word into temporal speech and returning human language into praise.

4. Philosophical denials of meta-language rightly expose the limits of human systems but fail to see that divine discourse is not a system but the very act of meaning itself.

Therefore, theology’s meta-language is not analytical but incarnational: the Word made flesh is the hermeneutical center in which all human words are gathered and made true.

Transitus ad Disputationem XX

The preceding disputation has shown that theology cannot transcend itself by means of a higher, detached language. Its meta-lingua is not an external code but the reflexivity of the divine Word within finite speech: the Word illumining itself in the medium of human discourse. Theology thus appears not as commentary upon revelation but as revelation’s own self-interpretation, the finite word drawn into the infinite articulation of God’s Logos.

Yet this discovery opens a deeper question. If theology truly occurs within the self-speaking of the Word, what is its mode of actuality? How does the human act of theologizing participate in the divine act of speaking? What role belongs to the Spirit, through whom finite utterance is gathered into the living voice of God?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XX: De Theologia ut Actu Verbi et Spiritus, in which theology will be considered not as a superior human discourse about the divine, but as the very action of the Word and Spirit—an event wherein God, in speaking through human language, continues the eternal dialogue of truth within time.