Why Theosis is Nothing to Fear: A Patient Lesson in Logic, Participation, and Peace of Mind

From the earliest centuries of Christian theology, believers have spoken with remarkable boldness about salvation. Few statements are bolder than the one found in Irenaeus of Lyons and later given its most famous expression by Athanasius of Alexandria:

αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν

"He became human, so that we might be made godlike."

From the beginning, however, this claim was never intended as a denial of the Creator–creature distinction. It was a disciplined way of speaking about the depth of salvation rather than its confusion.

For many modern readers—especially within Protestant traditions—the sentence can nevertheless trigger immediate alarm. It sounds as though something essential has been crossed. Are we saying that human beings become divine? Does the line between Creator and creature dissolve? Has Christian theology slipped into myth, mysticism, or, some fear, even blasphemy?

Historically, such reactions have been intense. In the late nineteenth century, Adolf von Harnack recoiled from the language of deification, convinced that it represented a corruption of Christianity by Greek metaphysics or mystery religions. Much later, similar anxiety resurfaced in German reactions to the Finnish Luther research associated with Tuomo Mannermaa. The response was often emotional, even fearful. Something, it was thought, was about to collapse.

That fear is understandable. We can make no progress in understanding God’s grace and the justification of the sinner if we lose what Luther presupposed: the infinite qualitative distinction between the divine and the human. If that distinction collapses, grace ceases to be grace.

But the fear ultimately rests on a confusion—one that can be removed once we slow down and attend carefully to what is actually being claimed.

The Christian tradition never meant the crude slogan, “God became human so that humans might stop being human.” What it consistently meant was something far more careful, and far more faithful:

God became human while remaining God, so that the human might become godlike while remaining human.

The question, then, is not whether the claims of theosis are dangerous. Claims that salvation involves human beings becoming, in some sense, godlike are not in themselves dangerous. The real question is whether we understand the logic of the relations involved—and therefore why these claims do not threaten the faith.

To see why these fears arise, and why they are unnecessary, we need to pause and learn a few very simple but powerful logical distinctions.

Step One: What Is a Relation?

A relation tells us how things are connected. “Is taller than,” “is the parent of,” “is identical with,” and “depends upon” are all relations. Theology uses relations constantly, often without noticing that it is doing so.

What matters is that different relations behave differently. Once we fail to notice how a relation behaves, we begin drawing conclusions that do not actually follow.

Step Two: Four Basic Logical Features

A relation is reflexive if everything in a domain is related to itself. Identity is reflexive: I am identical to myself. Participation is not reflexive. Nothing participates in itself.

A relation is symmetric if it runs both directions. “Is married to” is symmetric. If A is married to B, then B is married to A. Participation is not symmetric. If a creature participates in God, God does not participate in the creature.

A relation is transitive if it carries across chains. “Is taller than” is transitive. Some relations behave this way; others do not.

A relation is connected if everything can be compared with everything else. A total ranking—such as the natural numbers—is connected. Many relations are not. Some things are simply incomparable. Consider the British constitution, the feeling of remorse, and the number 1729 with respect to the relation “higher than.” Nothing follows.

These features determine what follows from what. Most theological anxiety arises when one of them is silently assumed where it does not belong.

In particular, trouble arises when reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity are combined into what logicians call an equivalence relation. Equivalence relations divide reality into mutually exclusive regions. Identity is the clearest example.

What critics of theosis often fear is precisely this: that the divine and the human are being identified—placed in the same ontological region. This is what is meant by ontological collapse, and conscientious theologians are right to reject it.

Step Three: Why Theosis Has Frightened People

Historically, fear surrounding theosis has taken four recurring forms:

• If creatures participate in God, then creatures must become divine.

• If divine attributes relate to one another, they must collapse into one another.

• If union with Christ is real, it must be an emanation of divine being.

• If justification is participatory, it must become hierarchical.

Each of these outcomes would indeed be disastrous.

But each rests on the same mistake: smuggling into the relation logical features that it does not, in fact, possess.

Step Four: Three Distinct Senses of Participation

Here is the crucial point. Participation does not name a single relation. At least three distinct senses are at work in the tradition.

Platonic participation describes the relation between a particular and what gives it form. A table participates in tableness. This relation is not reflexive, not symmetric, and not transitive. It does not rank beings or place them on a ladder. Nothing here threatens the Creator–creature distinction.

Neoplatonic participation introduces hierarchy. Higher realities flow into lower ones. This relation is transitive and often treated as connected. Everything lines up on a single scale. This is the metaphysical background of the “great chain of being.” If this were the logic of theosis, fear would be justified.

Constitutive participation is the relation that actually matters for theology. One reality grounds another without absorbing it. A foundation supports a house without becoming the house. A promise establishes a relationship without erasing the persons involved.

Logically, this relation is not reflexive, not symmetric, is transitive, and—crucially—not connected. There is direction without hierarchy. Dependence without ranking.

This is the logical space in which strong theological claims can be made without ontological collapse.

Step Five: Hearing Theosis Calmly

Once these distinctions are in place, the classic affirmations of theosis no longer sound reckless. They sound precise.

• Creatures participate in God without becoming divine, because participation is not identity.

• Divine attributes determine one another without collapsing into one another, because determination is not equivalence.

• Union with Christ is real without being emanative, because grounding is not a flow of substance.

• Justification is decisive without being hierarchical, because not all relations form ladders.

The fear that has haunted theosis has always been the fear of collapse. That fear dissolves when our logic is disciplined.

Properly understood, theosis is not speculative excess. It is a careful confession of grace. And grace—when spoken carefully—never abolishes what God has made.

Disputatio XLII: De Principio Sufficientis Rationis et Participatione Intellectus

On the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Participation of Intellect

Quaeritur

Utrum principium sufficientis rationis sit lex logica universalis tantum, an etiam signum participationis intellectus creati in ratione divina; et utrum negatio huius principii, ut apud van Inwagen et metaphysicos analyticos recentiores, tollat ipsam intelligibilitatem creationis.

Whether the Principle of Sufficient Reason is merely a universal logical law, or also a sign of the created intellect’s participation in divine reason; and whether the denial of this principle, as in Van Inwagen and other contemporary analytic metaphysicians, abolishes the intelligibility of creation itself.

Thesis

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is not a mere regulative maxim of thought but a metaphysical expression of the intellect’s participation in divine intelligibility. In its strong sense, it is the formal imprint of the divine Logos within reason itself for it claims that nothing exists without a reason in God’s wisdom. To deny the PSR is not to defend freedom, but to sunder the bond between intellect and being. The Spirit of Understanding (Spiritus Intelligentiae) is the living mediation through which the created mind, in seeking reasons, reflects the inexhaustible rational plenitude of its Creator.

Locus Classicus

G. W. Leibniz, Monadologie, §§31–32 (1714):

Aucun fait ne saurait être vrai ou existant, aucune énonciation véritable, sans qu’il y ait une raison suffisante pourquoi il en soit ainsi et non pas autrement.
“No fact can be real or existing, no statement true, unless there is a sufficient reason why it should be so and not otherwise.”

Spinoza, Ethica, I, prop. 11, schol.:

Deus sive Natura ex sola necessitate suae naturae existit et agit.
“God, or Nature, exists and acts solely from the necessity of His own nature.”)

Peter van Inwagen, “The Place of Chance in a World Sustained by God” (1988):

Not every truth has an explanation. Some things just are, and that is the end of the matter.

Explicatio

The principium sufficientis rationis has traversed the entire history of metaphysics as both a law of thought and as an ontological postulate. In its strong form (Leibnizian–Spinozist), it affirms that for every fact or existent, there must be a reason why it is so and not otherwise, a reason ultimately grounded in divine necessity. In its weak form (Empiricist–Kantian), it is restricted to the domain of possible experience and accordingly becomes a principle of explanation, not of being. In its moderate form (Aquinas, Wolff, contemporary metaphysical realism), it expresses the participation of created reason in the divine Logos, without collapsing contingency into necessity.

The denial of the PSR, exemplified by van Inwagen’s defense of “brute facts,” aims to preserve freedom and divine sovereignty by positing the inexplicable as metaphysically possible. Yet such denial undermines the very conditions of intelligibility, for if something is without reason, thought itself loses its foundation. A world containing “brute facts” is one in which the Logos is silent.

Theologically, the PSR expresses the Spirit’s inner witness to divine intelligibility in the act of understanding. The finite mind, in seeking sufficient reasons, manifests its participatio in ratione divina. To reason at all is already to echo the divine act of creation, in which being and meaning coincide.

Thus, the PSR is not merely a formal rule of inference but a metaphysical participation in God’s own self-understanding. Its strength is not coercive but luminous because the created intellect cannot but seek the reason of things, being formed as it is in the image of divine understanding.

Objectiones

Ob. I. The modern empiricism of David Hume and the contemporary naturalists argue that the PSR exceeds empirical warrant. Regularities can be observed, but “reason why” is an anthropomorphic projection; causality is habit, not necessity.

Ob. II. Kant held that the PSR is a principle of the Verstand, valid only within the realm of possible experience. Applied beyond phenomena, it yields antinomies. Hence, it is regulative, not constitutive.

Ob. III. Van Inwagen and other analytic metaphysicians contend that not every truth has an explanation. Some facts are “brute,” including free choices and the existence of God. Requiring a reason for everything annihilates freedom and reduces reality to mechanism.

Ob. IV. Sartre and Camus view the absence of sufficient reason as the condition of human freedom. The world is absurd, and meaning is not discovered but created by the self.

Ob. V. Certain theological voluntarists hold that God’s will is ultimate reason. To require a reason for the divine will is to subordinate God to rational necessity. Divine freedom transcends reason.

Responsiones

Ad I. Empiricism confuses the order of discovery with the order of being. That some reasons are hidden does not imply that none exist. The PSR concerns the intelligible ground of reality, not the limits of observation. Hume’s skepticism dissolves not causality but confidence in reason itself.

Ad II. Kant rightly confines the PSR within the phenomenal for critical purposes, but his very act of limitation presupposes its universality. To deny constitutive status to the PSR is already to presuppose that reality conforms to rational form, and this is an implicit metaphysical affirmation.

Ad III. The appeal to “brute facts” is a confession of explanatory despair, not a defense of freedom. Freedom is intelligible only as participation in the divine act of rational self-determination. A choice without reason is not free but arbitrary, and arbitrariness is impotence, not liberty.

Ad IV. Existentialist revolt against reason mistakes alienation for authenticity. The absurd arises not from being but from the will’s refusal to inhabit intelligibility. To assert meaning against the void is still to affirm the PSR implicitly; it is to claim the will to reason in spite of chaos.

Ad V. Divine will is not irrational but supremely rational, identical with divine wisdom. To require no reason beyond God is not to deny the PSR but to fulfill it: Deus est ratio sui. The PSR terminates not in logical deduction but in the subsistent Reason that is God Himself.

Nota

The principium sufficientis rationis stands at the heart of metaphysical realism. In its deepest sense, it is not a law imposed upon being but the trace of divine rationality within it. As the mind seeks sufficient reasons, it participates in the infinite coherence of the Logos. The PSR thus binds ontology and epistemology within the act of the Spirit: it is the metaphysical form of the intellect’s communion with God.

Modern denials of the PSR -- whether they be empiricist, analytic, or existentialist -- arise from the fragmentation of reason’s participation in the divine. The task of theology is therefore not to reconstruct the PSR as an abstract axiom, but to recognize it as a participation in the eternal Reason by which all things are and are known.

Determinatio

1. The PSR may be distinguished in three senses:

   • Strong (Leibnizian–Spinozist): Every fact has a sufficient reason, grounded in divine necessity.

   • Moderate (Thomistic–Classical Realist): Every contingent being has a reason for its existence in God, but not all reasons are necessitating.

   • Weak (Kantian–Empiricist): The PSR is only a principle of empirical order, regulative for experience.

2. Theology adopts the moderate form: participation without collapse. Contingency is thus preserved, but reason remains grounded in divine wisdom.

3. The PSR is therefore not merely a rule of logic (ratio cognoscendi), but an ontological participation (ratio essendi) in the divine act of understanding.

4. To deny the PSR is to deny that being is intelligible; and to deny intelligibility is to deny the Logos.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

The preceding disputation has established that the Principium Sufficientis Rationis is not a mere law of inference but a participation of finite reason in the divine Logos. It thus binds the act of thinking to the act of being and reveals in the search for “why” the trace of eternal Wisdom itself.

Yet the moment the PSR is affirmed ontologically, a tension arises:
If every being has a sufficient reason, is there room for contingency? Must all that is be necessary, as Spinoza contended, or can the contingent subsist within the sphere of intelligibility without dissolving into determinism?

The theological task is to interpret contingency not as absence of reason but as mode of reason, as a form of divine intelligibility expressed as finite freedom. For in creation, necessity does not abolish contingency but gives it foundation; and the contingent, rightly understood, is not the irrational remainder of the divine but the radiant overflow of divine plenitude.

We therefore advance to Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae, in which it will be asked whether contingency is grounded not in the negation of necessity but in its participation, so that the freedom of creatures is the temporal and finite reflection of divine rational love.

Disputatio XXVII De Essentiis Dispositionalibus

On Dispositional Essences

Quaeritur

Quaeritur utrum necessitas legum naturae possit sufficienter explicari per essentias dispositionales ipsarum rerum, an vero talis explicatio tandem recidat in naturalem essentialismum sine fundamento ontologico, qui rursus ad participationem infiniti redigitur.

It is asked whether the necessity of natural laws can be adequately explained by the dispositional essences of things themselves, or whether such an explanation ultimately collapses into an unfounded natural essentialism that once again requires participation in the Infinite.

Thesis

Dispositional essentialism seeks to ground the laws of nature in the intrinsic powers of entities. Accordingly, each thing, by virtue of what it is, behaves as it does. Laws are thus expressions of essence, not external constraints. Yet finite essence itself requires grounding for its actuality and coordination. Therefore, the appeal to dispositional essences displaces but does not resolve the need for an infinite ground of law.

Locus Classicus

“In him we live and move and have our being.” — Acts 17:28

The early Fathers, having read Paul in light of Hellenic metaphysics, interpreted this as a declaration that all powers and movements within creation presuppose divine causality. For example, Basil of Caesarea (Hexaemeron I.5) taught that “every natural power is the gift of divine energy,” and Aquinas affirmed that “omnis operatio naturae est actus Dei in natura” (ST I.105.5). Thus, even when power is intrinsic to a creature, its being and operation participate in the act of the Creator.

Explicatio

Dispositional essentialism emerged in late twentieth-century metaphysics as a reaction against both Humean regularity and Armstrong’s relational realism. This view aims to secure necessity without appeal to external laws or transcendent governance. Philosophers such as Brian Ellis, C. B. Martin, and Stephen Mumford argued that laws do not govern things from without but that the flow from within from the very essences or natures of entities. Accordingly, an electron repels another not because a law commands it, but because repulsion belongs to its nature. The behavior is thus essential and not contingent.

In this view, every natural property is dispositional; it is defined by its powers and tendencies. To possess a charge, mass, or spin just is to manifest appropriate dispositions under suitable conditions. Laws of nature are thus derivative descriptions of the necessary behaviors of these dispositional essences. Therefore, there are no separate laws or external principles, but only powers whose exercise constitutes the order of nature.

This approach elegantly restores necessity to the finite without invoking extrinsic governance. But the question remains: Whence the unity of this system of powers? If every essence carries its own necessity, what guarantees the coherence of those necessities across the totality of the world? Why do distinct powers not conflict or dissolve into chaos? While the finite essence, to be actual, must exist and operate within a coherent totality of being, that totality cannot itself be one of the powers. Rather, it must be the condition of their coexistence and harmony.

Hence, while dispositional essentialism succeeds in moving the locus of necessity inward—from external law to internal essence—it fails to remove the need for ontological participation. While essence, in so far as it is essence, is an intelligible structure of being, powers, however intrinsic, can only be participatory modes of a deeper enabling act.

Obiectiones

Ob I. According to Ellis in 2001, the essence of each natural kind explains its behavior. Thus, no further metaphysical foundation is required, and to demand more is to mistake explanation for regression.

Ob II. Martin argued in 2008 that dispositions constitute causal grounds for their manifestations. Since power is primitive and self-explanatory, the world’s order is the network of powers acting according to their natures.

Ob III. Mumford in 2004 argued that laws are supervenient on dispositional essences, and hence add nothing ontologically to them. Thus, the finite order is self-sufficient so long as it consists of stable powers and their mutual tendencies.

Ob IV. Naturalistic Metaphysics claims that to appeal to an Infinite act is unnecessary duplication. If dispositions suffice for explanation, positing divine participation is a metaphysical surplus.

Ob V. Sometimes the theological tradition assumed that grounding the powers of things directly in the infinite may risk erasing natural causality. But the integrity of secondary causes requires that creatures possess genuine powers of their own.

Responsiones

Ad I. While essence may explain behavior, it does not explain existence. To say “the electron repels because it is its nature to repel” still leaves unasked why such a nature exists at all. Essence is formal cause and being is act. The latter cannot be derived from the former without reference to a self-sufficient act of existence.

Ad II. Power cannot be self-explanatory, for power is always power to act.The actuality of its exercise depends on a larger order within which it operates. Without a unifying act of being, powers remain mere potentialities without coherence.

Ad III. Supervenience explains correspondence but not causation. That laws supervene on essences tells us that essence and law covary, not why such correlation obtains. The dependence relation itself requires grounding.

Ad IV. Appealing to the infinite is not an additional move but a natural completion in the order of explanation.The Infinite is not another entity among the powers but the act in which all finite essences receive their actuality and unity. Without such an act, the multiplicity of powers lacks ontological coherence.

Ad V. Participation does not abolish finite agency but founds it. Creatures possess true powers because the infinite communicates actuality to them. Their independence as secondary causes is secured by the divine act that continuously sustains them in being.

Nota

Dispositional essentialism rightly perceives that the necessity of nature arises from within things themselves. It holds that each being acts according to what it is, and thus, its tendencies are not imposed from without but flow from its essence. The very intelligibility of this insight, however, betrays its limit, for the intrinsic power of a thing explains its manner of acting, not its capacity to act at all. Accordingly, the essence that disposes toward activity still requires an act that gives it existence and coherence.

Hence, the metaphysical question beneath dispositional essentialism is not why things act as they do, but why there are things capable of acting at all. To say that the stone falls because it has mass, or that the charge repels because it is charged, presupposes the ontological act by which stone and charge subsist. Clearly, while the essence disposes, only the act sustains.

The theological transformation of this view is participation. On this view, every finite power is a communicated potency; it receives from the Infinite Act not only its existence but its coordination with all others. The unity of law in the world, that is, the harmony among dispositions, is thus the reflection of the divine unity that gathers all powers into a single order of being. Nature’s lawfulness is the shadow of grace: finite essences cooperate because they share in one act of creation.

Dispositional essentialism, therefore, contains a veiled confession:
to affirm inner necessity is already to acknowledge the immanence of the divine act within creation. The Spirit is the bond that makes powers conspire toward intelligibility, and the Logos is the act through which each essence becomes dispositional at all. Necessity, properly understood, is participation in the divine constancy by which all things are held in being.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Dispositional essentialism internalizes necessity but does not abolish dependence. Thus, finite essences are intelligible structures whose actuality presupposes a unifying act of being.

2. The unity of natural order cannot arise from a plurality of isolated powers. Coordination among dispositions requires an ontological ground transcending them.

3. Essence without act is impotent. The existence and operation of every power presuppose an act that is not itself one power among others. They thus presuppose an infinite act of being.

4. The participation of finite essences in the Infinite corresponds to the metaphysical structure of creation. As Augustine said, “Omne bonum quod habet creatura, habet participando” (De Diversis Quaestionibus 83.46). Powers are real and finite, and their actuality is participatory.

5. Hence, dispositional essentialism, though the most promising finite account, nonetheless points beyond itself. Its truth lies not in rejecting participation but in clarifying the mode of it: each finite power is a share in the creative act that sustains and orders all powers.

Therefore, the necessity of natural law is neither imposed from without nor self-generated from within. It arises from the participation of dispositional essences in the infinite act of being, in the Word through whom all powers subsist and in the Spirit who continuously actualizes their operation.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXVIII

The unity of nature cannot be secured from within the multiplicity of powers. The next disputation therefore asks whether finite systems, even when internally coherent, can ever be complete in themselves. 

We proceed to Disputatio XXVIII: De Systemate Incompleto et Veritatis Factore Infinito, in which the Gödelian structure of dependence reveals that every finite necessity presupposes an infinite act of truth.

Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate et Prooemium ad Partem II

Prooemium ad Partem II

De Lingua et Modeling Theologico

In the first part of these Disputationes, the inquiry was directed toward being: toward participation, causality, and the ontological conditions under which creatures exist and are ordered toward God. That inquiry established that intelligibility is not accidental to reality, nor imposed upon it by cognition, but belongs to the structure of being itself as grounded in the Logos.

The present part turns not away from ontology, but toward its articulation. Theology does not merely contemplate what is; it must speak. Yet speech is not a secondary operation added to being. Language is itself a mode of participation. If reality is ordered toward intelligibility, then language is the creaturely form in which that intelligibility may be received, borne, and confessed.

This turn therefore concerns neither linguistics as a technical discipline nor language as a social artifact. It concerns the ontological conditions under which language can mean at all, the structure of intentionality by which speech is about something, and the way finite discourse may inhabit an intelligible order that precedes it.

Accordingly, this part proceeds in three movements. First, it examines language and intentionality as grounded in objective intelligibility rather than in consciousness or convention. Second, it considers theological modeling as the disciplined articulation of meaning within that intelligible order. Third, it reflects upon the limits of modeling, not as failures of language, but as disclosures of transcendence.

Throughout, language will be treated not as expressive projection but as responsive participation. Theology speaks truly not because it masters its object, but because it is drawn into alignment with an intelligibility that precedes and exceeds all speech.

Nota Methodologica Generalis: De Limitatione Phenomenologiae

In these Disputationes, a strict distinction is maintained between ontological intelligibility and phenomenological disclosure.

Ontological intelligibility denotes the objective order of meaning by which beings are what they are and by which truth is possible at all. This intelligibility is grounded in the Logos and exists apart from human awareness, perception, language, or historical horizon. It is not constituted by acts of consciousness, nor does it depend upon conditions of manifestation.

Phenomenological accounts of disclosure, horizon, appearing, or worldhood concern the manner in which beings are encountered or understood by finite subjects. Such analyses may illuminate the structure of experience, but they do not ground intelligibility itself. Accordingly, phenomenological categories are not employed here to explicate the ontological conditions of meaning.

For this reason, distinctions such as being and beings, horizon and appearance, disclosure and withdrawal, though significant within phenomenological inquiry, are not used analogically to describe teleo-spaces or the Logos-grounded order of intelligibility. To do so would risk conflating the conditions of experience with the conditions of being.

Phenomenology may therefore appear in these disputations only diagnostically or critically, never as a positive source of metaphysical grounding. The task of these disputations is not to describe how meaning appears, but to inquire into what must be the case for meaning to exist at all.

On Language and Intentionality

Quaeritur

Utrum lingua humana intelligibilis sit non ex conscientia vel conventione humana, sed ex participatione in Logos, qui est intelligibilitas obiectiva rerum; et utrum intentionalitas sermonis non sit motus psychologicus, sed directio ontologica intra spatium teleologicum, quo significatio ipsa possibilis est.

Whether human language is intelligible not from human awareness or convention, but from participation in the Logos, who is the objective intelligibility of things; and whether intentionality in speech is not a psychological movement, but an ontological directedness within a teleological space in which signification itself is possible.

Thesis

Language does not generate meaning. It presupposes intelligibility.

The intentionality of speech is not grounded in consciousness, perception, or linguistic practice, but in participation in the Logos as the objective order of meaning. Human language is intelligible because it inhabits teleo-spaces of significance that precede all acts of speaking, thinking, or hearing. Intentionality is thus ontological before it is linguistic, and linguistic before it is psychological.

Locus Classicus

“In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum.”
John 1:4

Life is not added to intelligibility, nor intelligibility to life. The Logos is both the light by which things are intelligible and the ground in which meaning abides. Language participates in this light only because it is already there.

Explicatio

The modern account of language commonly begins from the subject. Words are treated as expressions of mental states, intentions as acts of consciousness, and meaning as a function of use, convention, or pragmatic success. Such accounts may describe how language functions within a community, but they cannot explain why language can mean at all. The present disputation proceeds otherwise.

Language is intelligible only because reality is intelligible. Meaning does not arise when a subject intends an object; intention itself is possible only because being is already ordered toward intelligibility. This order is not linguistic. It is not psychological. It is ontological.

Intentionality, properly understood, is not an inner aim or mental direction. It is the structure by which something can be about something. Such aboutness cannot be manufactured by signs, nor imposed by convention. It presupposes a space of possible significance in which reference, truth, and understanding may occur. This space is what has been named a teleo-space.

Teleo-spaces are not purposes imposed upon language. They are fields of intelligibility that draw language into meaningful articulation. They do not determine what must be said, but they make saying possible. They are not products of linguistic practice, but conditions of it.

Human language, therefore, does not create meaning but responds to it. Words are formed within a prior order of significance that precedes speech and exceeds it. To speak is to inhabit that order, however imperfectly.

The Logos is the objective ground of this order. The Logos is not a word among words, nor a concept among concepts, but the intelligibility in virtue of which anything can be meaningful at all. Language participates in the Logos not by resemblance, but by dependence. It means because reality is already ordered toward meaning.

Intentionality in speech is thus not subjective projection but ontological alignment. When speech intends truth, it does not impose sense upon the world but conforms itself to an intelligibility that precedes it. Falsehood arises not from the absence of the Logos, but from resistance to it.

The Spirit’s role is not to inject meaning into language from without, but to align finite speech with the intelligible order already given. The Spirit authorizes speech by restoring it to its proper orientation toward truth. In this way, language becomes capable of theological meaning not by elevation beyond creatureliness, but by faithful inhabitation of the teleo-spaces of intelligibility grounded in the Logos.

Objectiones

Ob I. If intelligibility exists apart from human awareness and language, then language becomes superfluous. Meaning would exist whether or not anyone speaks.

Ob II. If intentionality is ontological rather than psychological, then human responsibility for meaning is undermined. Speech would merely echo a prior order.

Ob III. To ground language in the Logos collapses the distinction between theology and philosophy, making linguistic theory dependent upon theological claims.

Responsiones

Ad I. Language is not superfluous but responsive. Meaning precedes speech, but speech is the mode by which meaning becomes communicable. The prior existence of intelligibility does not negate language; it grounds it.

Ad II. Ontological grounding does not eliminate responsibility. Participation is not compulsion. Human speech may conform to intelligibility or resist it. Responsibility arises precisely because meaning is given and not invented.

Ad III. The Logos is not introduced as a theological hypothesis but as the necessary name for objective intelligibility itself. Theology does not annex language theory; language theory, when pursued to its ground, opens onto theology.

Nota

This disputation corrects a fundamental error of modern linguistic thought: the assumption that meaning originates in the subject. Meaning originates in reality’s intelligible order.

Language is possible because the world is already ordered toward sense. Intentionality is possible because intelligibility precedes intention. The Logos is therefore not the conclusion of linguistic analysis but its presupposition.

Theological language does not differ from other language by possessing a special syntax or vocabulary, but by explicitly acknowledging the source of intelligibility in which all language already participates.

Determinatio

It is determined that:

1. Language presupposes intelligibility and does not generate it.
2. Intentionality is ontological before it is psychological.
3. Teleo-spaces of meaning precede linguistic practice.
4. The Logos is the objective ground of intelligibility.
5. The Spirit aligns finite speech with this ground without abolishing its finitude.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVII

If language does not originate meaning but responds to an intelligible order that precedes it, then theological discourse cannot be understood as mere description or representation. It must instead be understood as modeling: the disciplined construction of forms that allow intelligibility to appear without being exhausted.

This raises the decisive question of truth in theology. If language inhabits teleo-spaces rather than generating meaning, by what criterion are theological models true? Is truth correspondence, participation, manifestation, or something else?

We therefore proceed to Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica, in which the nature of theological truth is examined in light of the Logos as the ground of intelligibility and the Spirit as the author of faithful speech.

Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

On Participation and the Ontology of Theosis

Quaeritur

Utrum theosis non intelligatur ut ascensus creaturae in deitatem, sed ut participatio realis in actu divino quo Deus se communicat; et utrum haec participatio fundetur in causalitate constitutiva Spiritus Sancti, per quam creaturae fiunt capaces gloriae, ita ut theosis sit consummatio illius participationis in qua creatura suum esse, intelligibilitatem, et veritatem accipit.

Whether theosis should be understood not as the creature’s ascent into deity but as a real participation in the divine act by which God communicates Himself; and whether this participation is grounded in the constitutive causality of the Holy Spirit, by whom creatures become capable of glory, so that theosis is the consummation of the participation through which the creature receives its being, intelligibility, and truth.

Thesis

Theosis is not the divinization of the creature by nature but the perfection of creaturely participation in the divine life. The same Spirit who constitutes creatures in their being and renders their speech capable of divine truth also draws them into the life of God. Participation is therefore the ontological ground of theosis, and theosis is the eschatological fulfillment of participation. The creature remains creaturely, yet becomes fully luminous with the divine life it receives.

Locus classicus

2 Peter 1:4
ἵνα γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως.
“that you may become partakers of the divine nature.”
Participation (κοινωνία) is here the formal structure of salvation.

Psalm 36:9 (Vulgate)
Quoniam apud te est fons vitae, et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen.
“For with You is the fountain of life, and in Your light we shall see light.”
Knowledge, life, and glory are received, not possessed.

Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54
Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν.
“He became human that we might be made divine.”
Theosis is grounded in the Incarnation, not in creaturely ascent.

Explicatio

The doctrine of theosis arises wherever the Church confesses that salvation is not merely the correction of defect but the communication of divine life. Yet such communication requires a metaphysical ground: the creature must be capable of receiving divine life without losing its creatureliness. Participation provides this ground. For the creature receives its being, its intelligibility, and its orientation toward truth from the constitutive causality of the Holy Spirit. There is no creaturely actuality that is not first a divine gift. This dependence is not merely extrinsic; it is metaphysical, determining the very mode of creaturely existence. The creature is constituted as a participant in the divine generosity that grants being.

Participation in being is the first movement. The Spirit grants the creature its actus essendi, by which it subsists as a real nature with determinate capacities. Participation in intelligibility is the second movement. The Spirit grants the creature a share in the light by which it is knowable. Participation in verity is the third movement. The Spirit grants to the creature a relation to truth, both as an object of knowledge and as a bearer of meaning. These movements correspond to creation, illumination, and sanctification, and together they constitute the fundamental ontology of participation. Theosis emerges when these participations reach their eschatological fulfillment.

Yet participation must be distinguished from identity. The creature does not become God; it receives from God. The divine perfections remain incommunicable in their mode. What is communicated is not the divine essence but a real share in the divine life. The causal vector is always from God to the creature:

Dg​⇒Dc​(x)

where D_G denotes a divine perfection and D_c(x) the creaturely participation of that perfection in the mode proper to x. Theosis is the maximal intensity of this causal relation. It is not a fusion of natures but the consummation of participation.

This participatory structure clarifies why theosis is Christological in origin and pneumatic in execution. In the Incarnation the divine Word assumes human nature, thereby joining divine life to creaturely existence without confusion or division. The humanity of Christ becomes the first and perfect site of theosis. Through the Spirit this communication extends to all who are united to Christ. Thus theosis is not a metaphysical privilege of a select few but the eschatological destiny of all who are incorporated into the body of Christ. Union with Christ is the formal cause of theosis; the Spirit is its efficient cause.

The nova lingua developed in Disputatio IX presupposes this participatory ontology. The reason theological predicates can bear divine truth is that language itself participates in the expressive act of the Word through the Spirit’s authorization. The Spirit who renders finite speech capable of infinite truth is the same Spirit who renders finite being capable of infinite life. The grammar of participation becomes the grammar of theosis.

Likewise, the knowledge of God described in Disputatio X presupposes the same metaphysical structure. The intellect knows God not by its own power but through illumination. Illumination is already a form of participation and anticipates the final theosis in which the intellect will know God in the unmediated light of glory. In statu viae revelation grants participation in truth; in statu gloriae participation becomes vision.

Thus theosis is not a theological addendum but the horizon that unifies the ordo theologiae. Grammar leads to modeling, modeling to felicity, felicity to truth, truth to causality, causality to participation, and participation to manifestation. Theosis is simply the name for the creature’s consummate participation in the divine life—the perfection toward which the entire theological system tends.

This consummation does not erase creaturely finitude. The creature remains finite, yet its finitude becomes wholly luminous, wholly actual, wholly alive with the divine presence. Finitude does not become infinitude; it becomes transparent. Participation does not destroy distinction; it perfects communion. Theosis is therefore the metaphysical realization of what has always been true: the creature is constituted by the divine generosity in which it eternally participates.

Objectiones

Ob I. Participation appears too weak a notion to account for the radical transformation implied by theosis. If the creature remains creaturely, how can it be said to share in divine life?

Ob II. If theosis is grounded in constitutive causality, then all creatures already participate maximally in God. Theosis becomes indistinguishable from ordinary creaturely being.

Ob III. If the Spirit communicates divine life, then the divine nature seems divisible or communicable, contrary to classical doctrine.

Ob IV. Participation seems to collapse into metaphor, lacking the metaphysical precision needed to distinguish real theosis from moral or symbolic likeness.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation is not a weak notion but the metaphysical means by which the creature receives divine life without ceasing to be creaturely. Theosis intensifies participation without transgressing the boundary between Creator and creature.

Ad II. Constitutive causality grants creatures their being, but theosis concerns the eschatological perfection of that being. All creatures participate in God as Creator, but only the redeemed participate in God as Life and Light unto glory.

Ad III. The divine nature is not communicated in its essence but according to a mode of participation proper to the creature. The Spirit communicates not God’s essence but a real share in divine life. There is no division of deity, only extension of divine generosity.

Ad IV. Participation is not metaphorical but real, grounded in the causal procession from divine perfection to creaturely participation. Theosis is therefore not likeness by imitation but likeness by communion.

Nota

Disputatio VII stands at the center of the theological system. Constitutive causality (VI) grounds participation; the nova lingua (IX) expresses participation; revelation (X) grants knowledge through participation; manifestation (VIII) fulfills participation. Theosis is therefore the metaphysical horizon of theology: the creature drawn into God without confusion, and God present in the creature without diminution.

Determinatio

1. Theosis is the eschatological fulfillment of creaturely participation in divine life.

2. Participation arises from the constitutive causality of the Spirit, who grants being and intelligibility.

3. Theosis does not efface creaturely finitude but perfects it.

4. Participation is real, causal, and metaphysical—not symbolic or merely moral.

5. The Incarnation grounds the possibility of theosis; the Spirit accomplishes it.

6. Theosis unifies the ordo theologiae by revealing its final horizon: communion with the living God.

Transitus ad Disputationem VIII

If theosis is the consummation of participation, then participation must have a mode of historical appearance. The divine life that perfects the creature must already be manifest within history, though under signs and veils. The question now concerns the nature of that manifestation. How does divine life become visible, tangible, sacramental, and efficacious within the order of faith?

We therefore advance to Disputationem VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis, where the word of faith is considered in its teleological orientation toward the vision of God.