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 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 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. 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

Objiectio 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.

Objiectio II. Martin argued in 2008 that disputations 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.

Objiectio 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.

Objiectio 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.

Objiectio 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.

Prooemium ad Partem II: De Lingua et Modeling Theologico; Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate

Prooemium ad Partem II: De Lingua et Modeling Theologico

I. The Turn from Ontology to Language

The first part of these disputations concluded that all created intelligibility depends upon participation in the divine Logos. Yet theology itself, being a rational and linguistic enterprise, must now examine how this participation is mediated through language and logic. For the theologian not only contemplates being, but also must speak it. Thus the question arises: how can finite discourse bear infinite truth?

This question marks a decisive shift from the metaphysical participation of things to the semantic participation of words. As ontology described the creature’s being-in-relation to God, semantics must describe the word’s being-in-relation to the Word. The grammar of theology becomes, in this light, a site of participation: human language, drawn into the Logos, utters more than it contains.

II. From Syntax to Semantics

Every formal language, whether mathematical or theological, possesses two dimensions.  Syntax concerns the internal relations of signs, their form and structure, and their combinations and rules of well-formedness.  Semantics pertains to the relation of those signs to what they signify, their truth or reference (meaning).

In theology, these correspond to two moments of the Spirit’s work: (1) to the syntactic or felicitous moment, wherein speech is rightly ordered and confessio consonant with Scripture, and (2) to the semantic or truth-bearing moment, wherein such speech is united to divine reality itself. While felicitous language is internally coherent, true language is ontologically participant. The Spirit unites these moments, so that the felicity of confession may become the veracity of participation.

III. The Model-Theoretic Analogy

Model theory, in logic and mathematics, formalizes precisely this distinction. A theory is a set of sentences closed under logical consequence, and a model is a structure in which those sentences are true. The relation between theory and model parallels that between theological confession and divine reality. For just as a theory may be consistent yet unrealized, so too theological discourse may be felicitous yet untrue unless it participates in the divine model, in the Verbum incarnatum in whom all truth is fulfilled. The Löwenheim–Skolem results show that no single model can exhaust a theory. Analogously, no finite theology can exhaust the truth of God. Yet the divine reality provides, so to speak, the intended model of all theological language.

IV. Theological Modeling

To “model” in theology is therefore not to invent but to interpret: to construct structures of discourse that may participate analogically in divine truth. The theologian, like the logician, proposes forms; but unlike the logician, he prays that the Spirit make those forms real. The faith that justifies is itself the condition of modeling, for it opens the finite intellect to participation in the infinite referent.

Thus the enterprise of this part is to trace the grammar of such modeling: how the Word authorizes the word, how felicity becomes truth, and how theology may be at once formal, rational, and yet wholly dependent upon divine causality.

The following disputations, therefore, proceed from language and intentionality (XVI–XVIII) to modeling and meta-language (XIX–XX), and finally to truth and participation (XXI–XXVII). Together they seek to exhibit theology as the living analog of divine speech—a discourse whose truth lies not in itself but in the Word to whom it is joined.

“Verbum Dei non est vox, sed virtus; non sonus aurium, sed opus in cordibus.”
— Martinus Lutherus, WA 10/3.11

The Word of God is not a sound, but a power; not a voice in the ears, but a work in the heart.

Praefatio ad Partem II: De Lingua et Modeling Theologico

Verbum dicitur, et fit intellectus

(The Word is spoken, and understanding comes to be)

In hac secunda parte Disputationum, theologia in seipsam reflectitur: ab ontologia transit ad linguam, a participatione essendi ad participationem significandi. Quod prius in creatione apparuit ut lux essendi, nunc in loquendo manifestatur ut lux intelligendi. Nam sicut omnia per Verbum facta sunt, ita etiam omnis intellectus per Verbum illuminatur.

Lingua theologica non est instrumentum extrinsecum veritatis, sed locus in quo ipsa veritas habitat. Ibi Verbum aeternum inter verba humana seipsum insinuat et manifestat. Theologus, dum loquitur de Deo, non agit ut artifex signorum, sed ut minister Verbi: per ipsum loquendi actum participat in lumine quod ultra verba manet.

Haec pars igitur quaerit quomodo veritas divina fiat intelligibilis in sermone humano; quomodo Spiritus, auctor verbi, ordinet grammaticam fidei ad res divinas; et quomodo structura sermonis ipsam Trinitatis logicam revelet, in qua esse, intelligere, et dicere unum sunt. Dum theologia linguam suam contemplatur, ipsa incarnationem Verbi in humanitate linguae percipit.

In this second part of the Disputationes, theology turns inward upon itself: it moves from ontology to language, from participation in being to participation in meaning. What appeared in creation as the light of being now appears in speech as the light of understanding. For as all things were made through the Word, so also every act of understanding is illumined by the Word.

Theological language is not an external instrument of truth but the very dwelling place of truth itself. There, among human words, the eternal Word insinuates and manifests itself. The theologian, in speaking of God, acts not as an artisan of signs but as a minister of the Word: through the very act of speech, he participates in the light that transcends all speech.

This part therefore seeks to understand how divine truth becomes intelligible within human discourse; how the Spirit, author of speech, orders the grammar of faith toward divine realities; and how the structure of discourse reveals the logic of the Trinity, in which being, understanding, and speaking are one. In contemplating its own language, theology perceives the Incarnation of the Word within the humanity of speech itself.

On Language and Intentionality

Quaeritur

Utrum lingua humana non sit systema signorum ex se ortum, sed instrumentum Spiritus, per quod intentio divina in mundum intrat; et utrum ipsa intentionalitas in loquela sit participatio in actu Verbi divini, quo Deus seipsum communicat et creaturam ad se convertit.

Whether human language is not a self-originating system of signs but an instrument of the Spirit through which divine intention enters the world; and whether intentionality within speech is a participation in the act of the divine Word, by which God communicates Himself and turns the creature toward Himself.

Thesis

Language is the created mirror of divine intentionality. Every act of speaking presupposes orientation (intentio) toward meaning and toward another. In theological speech, this orientation participates in God’s own act of self-expression—the divine Word speaking through the Spirit. Human language, therefore, is not merely conventional but ontological: it is the created form of divine communicability.

Locus classicus

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” — Matthew 12:34

Speech arises from inner intention. Yet in theological terms, the human heart is itself a site of divine indwelling: the Spirit who dwells within directs language toward truth. Thus, speech is the outward expression of inward intentionality, and when sanctified by the Spirit, it becomes the medium of divine communication.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XV, we saw that divine knowing is intentional self-expression—God’s knowledge is His act of being. Here we turn to human language as the finite reflection of that act: a medium through which intention becomes communication.

Intentionality (intentionalitas) in theology does not mean psychological aim but ontological directedness—the structure by which word and meaning, subject and object, stand in relation.
Every genuine act of language includes three relations:

1. the speaker’s intention toward meaning (intentio ad significationem),

2. the word’s intension toward what it signifies (intensio ad rem), and

3. the listener’s reception within shared understanding (communicatio in Spiritu).

This triadic structure mirrors the Trinitarian pattern of divine communication:

• the Father as speaker and origin of meaning,

• the Son as the Word in which meaning is expressed,

• the Spirit as the bond who makes that meaning present and understood.

Hence, human language is intrinsically theological. It is possible only because the Creator has already established communication within Himself.

To formalize this (and then immediately explain it):

• Let L denote the total system of human language.

• Let I_d represent divine intentionality, and I_h human intentionality.

• The relation I_h ⊂ I_d signifies that human intentionality is contained within and derives from divine intentionality—not by necessity but by participation.

• This inclusion is not spatial but ontological: the capacity to mean at all is a gift of divine self-communication.

Thus, whenever we speak, we enact—however faintly—the structure of God’s own Word. When speech becomes theological, the relation deepens: the Spirit unites human intention with divine intention, transforming language into communion.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to contemporary analytic epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga or William Alston, if human language were to participate in divine intentionality, then all speech would be divinely inspired, including lies and nonsense. But we experience constant error, ambiguity, and falsehood. To attribute divine participation to every utterance erases the distinction between revelation and distortion. Language must remain a human phenomenon, fallible and natural, not an extension of divine intentionality.

Obiectio II. For figures like Saussure, Wittgenstein, John Searle, 
to give language ontological weight confuses sign and being. Words are social conventions—arbitrary symbols whose meaning derives from communal use, not metaphysical grounding. Modern linguistics and speech-act theory show that language functions pragmatically; to posit an ontological Logos beneath it is to re-mythologize semantics and import metaphysics into empirical linguistics.

Obiectio III. Gordon Kaufman and Catherine Keller would argue that the claim that language mirrors the Trinity introduces an unnecessary metaphysical speculation. The triadic analogy of speaker, word, and listener reflects a bygone metaphysical framework. Contemporary theology should emphasize symbol and narrative, not Trinitarian ontology. The human structure of communication tells us nothing reliable about God, only about our religious imagination.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation is not identity. All speech derives its capacity for meaning from divine intentionality, but not all speech conforms to it.
Falsehood arises not from divine presence but from human resistance to it—the distortion of participation through disordered will.The Spirit is the measure of felicity: speech becomes inspired not by mere utterance but by alignment of intention with truth. Hence, linguistic participation is universal in capacity but selective in realization. The possibility of falsehood confirms, rather than contradicts, divine grounding—only what derives from truth can be falsified.

Ad II. Modern linguistics rightly observes that words are conventional in form, yet convention presupposes an ontological ground of communicability. For meaning to be shared, there must exist an order in which being and understanding are mutually convertible: verum et ens convertuntur. This metaphysical foundation is the Logos, the eternal ratio that makes semantic convention possible. The Spirit mediates between sign and being, ensuring that human language, though arbitrary in sign, is real in significance. Language thus participates ontologically not in its sounds or syntax but in its capacity to make being present through meaning.

Ad III. The analogy between Trinitarian communication and human language is not speculative but structural. Every act of communication involves (1) a speaker, (2) a word uttered, and (3) a hearer in whom that word is received. This triadic form is not an invention of theology but an imprint of the Creator’s image upon creation. Modern theologians who reduce Trinitarian speech to symbol overlook the metaphysical unity of meaning and relation: communication exists because God is communicative being. To speak is to participate in divine communion; the Spirit is the living bond between speaker and hearer, word and understanding. Thus, Trinitarian analogy is not an optional metaphor but the ontological grammar of all meaning.

Nota

The relationship between language and intentionality reveals the deepest unity of theology’s two realms: speech and being.
Just as divine intentionality (intentionalitas divina) grounds all knowing, so it also grounds all saying. Language exists because God is communicative; its very structure presupposes a world created by speech and ordered toward meaning.

The Spirit is the living link between divine intention and human language. He causes meaning to be intended rightly—that is, to be directed toward truth and love rather than self-expression or domination. Thus, theological speech is not merely propositional but relational: it restores language to its true vocation as communio.

This insight also explains the possibility of revelation as language.
Because language participates in divine intentionality, it can serve as the medium of God’s self-disclosure without distortion. The Word of God does not bypass human speech; it fulfills it. In this sense, all language is sacramental in origin—it signifies because God first signified the world into being.

Symbolically (and then explained), we can express this as:

D → L → R,

where D is divine intention, L is language, and R is revelation.
This sequence means: divine intentionality flows into language as its form, and through language revelation becomes possible. Thus, language is the mediating bond between divine self-communication and human reception.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Language is grounded in divine intentionality; its power to mean derives from the communicative nature of the Creator.

2. Human speech, though finite and conventional, participates in the structure of divine Word—speaker, word, and listener forming an analogical trinity.

3. The Spirit mediates between divine and human intention, aligning finite language with infinite meaning and making revelation possible.

4. Error and falsehood arise when human intentionality turns away from this divine orientation, severing communication from its source.

5. Theology, as scientia loquens Dei, thus culminates in the recognition that language itself is a site of grace: the place where divine intentionality becomes audible in the world.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVII

Language has revealed itself to be the outward form of intentionality,
the finite manifestation of the soul’s directedness toward truth. In theology, however, speech aspires beyond communication, for it seeks to express the divine reality itself. But such expression cannot be immediate; it occurs through models, analogies, and ordered likenesses that mediate between the uncreated and the created. Theology therefore stands between silence and assertion, crafting conceptual structures whose purpose is not containment but participation.

Yet this raises a decisive question. If theology speaks by modeling, what is the nature of truth in such models? Do they depict or disclose, represent or reveal? Is their adequacy measured by correspondence to divine reality, or by their capacity to let that reality speak through them? In short, what constitutes veritas theologica, truth as spoken by and within faith?

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica, wherein we examine how theological models mediate between human understanding and divine mystery, whether truth in theology is formal correspondence, participatory presence, or performative disclosure, and how every true model, by grace, becomes a transparent window into the eternal Word it seeks to name.

Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

On Participation and the Ontology of Theosis

Quaeritur

Utrum participatio sit ille nexus ontologicus inter creaturam et Deum, per quem homo fit particeps naturae divinae non per essentiae confusionem sed per gratiam communicationis; et quomodo ontologia theoseos describat modum huius participationis, qua Spiritus Sanctus causat realem communionem inter divinum et humanum.

Whether participation is that ontological bond between creature and Creator through which the human being becomes a partaker of the divine nature—not by confusion of essence but by the grace of communication—and how the ontology of theosis describes the mode of this participation, whereby the Holy Spirit causes a real communion between the divine and the human.

Thesis

Theosis is a real participation in divine life, constituted by the Holy Spirit. This participation is not metaphoric elevation nor essential fusion, but the Spirit’s causal communication of divine perfections in a creaturely mode. Thus participatio is the ontological relation in which the creature truly shares in God while remaining finite.

Locus Classicus

1. 2 Peter 1:4
κοινωνοὶ θείας φύσεως
“Partakers of the divine nature.”

Scripture itself dares the language of theosis. Participation is not mystical embellishment but the revealed grammar of salvation: divine life given, not divine essence seized.

2. Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54.3
Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν.
“He became man that we might be made god.”

Participation has its ground in the Incarnation. The divine descends so that the creature may ascend—not by nature, but by grace.

3. Maximus Confessor, Ambigua 7
Ἡ θεοποίησις ἐστὶν ἡ τῆς μετουσίας πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν ἐνέργεια.
“Deification is the energy of communion with God.”

Participation occurs through divine energeia—a real operation binding God and creature without erasing distinction.

4. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.26
Deus fit omnia in omnibus, non natura sed gratia.
“God becomes all in all, not by nature, but by grace.”

What God is by essence, the creature becomes by participation; the distinction remains, yet communion is real.

Across these witnesses—from Peter to Athanasius to Maximus to Augustine—the same truth resounds: participation is the mode of salvation; the Spirit is its cause.

Explicatio

In Disputatio VI we saw that divine causality extends not only to creaturely being but also to creaturely speech. Here we advance a step further: the Spirit who causes words to be true also causes persons to be new.

This requires precision. The tradition speaks of participation in various ways—formal, exemplar, efficient, energetic, existential—but none of these, by itself, fits what is required.  What is needed is a participatio constitutiva. 

Let us formalize the structure. 

1. Two-Sorted Ontological Relation 

Assume a two-sorted ontological relation and let D_G denote a divine property (e.g., righteousness, life, wisdom), while D denotea the creature’s participated analogue. Then the relation: D_G → D expresses the Spirit’s causal act of communication. The arrow is not metaphor, imitation, or moral effort, but signifies an ontological procession: 1) divine life communicated, 2) not as essence, 3) but as gift. Thus, righteousness in God D_G becomes created righteousness D in the believer—finite, receptive, dependent, yet real.

2. Asymmetry Without Separation

Participation is one-directional for God communicates and the creature receives. God does not participate in the creature; the creature participates in God.

3. Pneumatic Mediation

Participation is not an abstract relation but a Spirit-caused communion. He is 1) the mediator, 2) the causal bridge, and 3) the giver of both being and union.

4. Transformation Without Confusion

The creature remains creaturely—finite essence, finite mode—yet becomes radiant with divine life. What is changed is not essence but participation.

5. Ontological Depth of Theosis

Theosis thus does not mean 1) moral imitation, or 2) conceptual analogy, or 3) symbolic representation. Instead it is the constitutive reception of divine life. Accordingly, the Spirit constitutes new being in the creature as the very form of salvation.

Explicatio Analytica: De Participatione Constitutiva

In analytic metaphysics, participation raises two problems:

1. How can the finite share in the infinite without contradiction?

2. How can divine properties be communicated without multiplying them?

The notion of a participatio constitutiva addresses both.

1. A Hyperintensional Distinction

Following Fine and Zalta, divine properties may be identical extensionally yet still distinct hyperintensionally. Thus: D_G (uncreated justice) and D (created justice) are not two justice-properties but two modes of the same attribute grounded in differing causal ontologies.

2. Constitutive Causality

Participation is explained not by efficient causation but by constitutive causality, the Spirit’s ongoing act that 1) grounds the creature’s being, 2) grounds its new disposition, and 3) grounds its ability to bear divine predicates.

Thus, participatory ontology fits cleanly within contemporary theories of: grounding (Fine, Schaffer), dependency (Rosen), hyperintensionality (Cresswell, Jago), and metaphysical explanation (Audi, Bennett). Participation becomes a constitutive grounding, not a property-transfer.

3. Avoiding Identity-Theory Pitfalls

Because divine and created modes are hyperintensionally distinct, participation avoids essential identity (pantheism), property multiplication (anti-simplicity), and nominalist reduction (anti-realism). Participation is the Spirit’s causal grounding of creaturely life in divine life, not an ontological blending. This analytic clarification is essential for making theosis intelligible in the contemporary intellectual horizon.

Objectiones

Ob I. Participation implies sharing in divine essence, violating the Creator–creature distinction.

Ob II. If divine attributes are communicated, they appear multiplied, threatening divine simplicity.

Ob III. Theosis replaces justification by faith with metaphysical transformation.

Ob IV. Participation language risks collapsing into Eastern Palamism, contrary to Lutheran theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation concerns gifts, not essence. The creature receives divine life as communicated perfection, not as a shared essence. The distinction of essences remains absolute.

Ad II. Attributes are not multiplied; they are refracted. The same divine righteousness that exists uncreated in God exists createdly in the believer. There are two modes but one source.

Ad III. Faith is the mode of participation, not its competitor. Faith unites the believer to Christ; that union is precisely the participation by which righteousness is received.

Ad IV. Lutheran theosis follows from Christology, not from an essence–energies distinction. Participation is grounded in union with Christ and mediated by the Spirit, not in any metaphysical strata. It is fundamentally sacramental and pneumatic, not neo-Palamite.

Nota

The ontology of theosis completes the logic of divine communication, for in Disputatio IV, truth was duplex: inner and outer.  In Disputatio V, felicity and truth formed a circle and in Disputatio VI, divine causality grounded both speech and being. Here, in Disputatio VII, we see that being itself is communicative.

Thus salvation is not an external favor but a constitutive transformation grounded in divine causality: 1) The Word speaks, 2) the Spirit causes, 3) the creature receives, and 4) the result is participation.

Participation thus expresses the deepest grammar of theological realism: God gives Himself without ceasing to be Himself; the creature receives God without ceasing to be creature.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theosis is the real participation of the creature in divine life.

2. Participation is constitutive, not merely moral or analogical.

3. The Holy Spirit is the causal mediator of this participation.

4. Divine attributes exist in two modes: uncreated D_G and participated D.

5. Participation preserves both divine transcendence and creaturely integrity.

6. The ontology of theosis is the completion of divine communication—speech becoming being, word becoming life.

Excursus: De Historia et Notionibus Participationis

On the History and Concepts of Participation

Participation (participatio) is one of the most enduring and yet least clarified notions in the philosophical and theological tradition. It is invoked whenever thinkers attempt to describe the relation between the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, the creature and the Creator. The term appears indispensable, yet its meaning has remained elusive. What exactly is the relation “by virtue of which” (δι’ ὃ) the creature shares in the divine? What sort of relation allows the creature truly to receive what properly belongs to God without collapsing the Creator–creature distinction?

The present disputationes have reached a point at which this question can no longer remain implicit. In Disputatio VI, we argued that the Holy Spirit is the causa principalissima not only of being but of speaking. In Disputatio VII, we advanced the thesis that the creature’s new being is constituted by a real participation in divine life. To proceed further—toward eschatological manifestation—we must clarify the very notion of participation on which these arguments depend. This Excursus offers a conceptual and historical map in order to situate the doctrine of participatio constitutiva, the pneumatological ontology that grounds the entire second movement of the Disputationes Theologicae.

I. Plato: Participation as the First Problem

Plato introduced methexis, participation, to explain how sensibles relate to the Forms. A beautiful thing is beautiful “by participating” in Beauty itself. Yet Plato never defines the relation. The “Third Man Argument” exposes the ambiguity: if the Form and the particular resemble one another by sharing a common property, then a further Form seems required ad infinitum. Participation was therefore necessary for Plato’s metaphysics but conceptually unstable, signaling the need for a deeper account of the “in virtue of which” by which the finite shares in the transcendent.

II. Aristotle: The Immanent Transmutation of Participation

Aristotle rejects Platonic participation in favor of immanent form. The relation between particular and universal becomes intrinsic: form inheres in matter rather than standing above it. Yet participation reappears indirectly in the act–potency schema. Potency receives act; act actualizes potency. Though Aristotle would not call this “participation,” the metaphysical structure is analogous: finite beings exist by receiving actuality from another. The immanentization clarifies metaphysics but does not yet explain how creatures might share divine life.

III. The Neoplatonists: Participation as Emanation

Neoplatonism reasserts participation through the doctrines of procession (proodos) and return (epistrophē). All beings emanate from the One and return toward it through a hierarchy of being. Participation becomes a metaphysics of ontological dependence. Yet the relation remains essentially metaphysical, not personal; it lacks a clear account of how the creature is actively constituted in communion with the divine. Moreover, participation is tied to ontological gradation rather than covenantal gift.

IV. The Patristic Reconfiguration: Participation and Grace

Christian theology reconfigured participation by rooting it in divine grace and the personal agency of the Spirit.

• For the Cappadocians, participation designates communion with the divine energies rather than the divine essence: a real sharing without confusion.

• For Augustine, participare Deo means to be drawn into the life of God by love: participation is affective, transformative, and pneumatic.

• Participation becomes relational, covenantal, and trinitarian—yet the concept remains suggestive rather than analytically defined.

Participation is now identified not with emanation but with grace.

V. Scholastic Clarification and Its Limits

Aquinas provides the most systematic account in the premodern West.
Participation is:

1. Two-sorted (creature shares in what is proper to God)

2. Analogical (effect reflects cause proportionally)

3. Limited (finite being receives in a finite mode)

This clarifies the metaphysical grammar, but participation remains primarily a way of speaking about perfections received by creatures. It does not yet provide a pneumatological explanation of how such participation is effected or sustained.

VI. Lutheran Reconfigurations: Union Without Confusion

While the Lutheran tradition does not foreground “participation,” it provides conceptual foundations:

• Luther’s unio cum Christo describes a real communion grounded in promise and enacted by the Spirit.

• The communicatio idiomatum in Christology provides an ontological precedent for participation that is neither essentialist nor merely moral.

• Gerhard and the Lutheran scholastics articulate the believer’s renewal as participation in divine life, yet without a formal metaphysics of participation.

The Lutheran tradition thus offers rich material but lacks a conceptual account that unites grace, ontology, and Spirit.

VII. Modern Attempts and Persistent Ambiguities

In the modern period:

• Lossky, Zizioulas, and the neo-Palamite tradition recover participation through the language of divine energies and ecclesial personhood.

• Rahner’s “supernatural existential” redefines participation as the horizon of human transcendence.

• Barth and Bonhoeffer reframe participation christologically and ecclesially.

Yet in many modern accounts, participation becomes either:

• existential-symbolic and thus it loses its ontological bite, or

• metaphysically abstract where it loses its pneumatic specificity.

What is lacking is a doctrine that is at once metaphysically precise, trinitarian, and causally grounded.

VIII. Toward a Clarified Concept: Participatio Constitutiva

The foregoing traditions, though profound, leave unanswered the central question: In what does participation consist? The present disputationes propose the following definition of participatio constitutiva.  Participation is the Spirit’s constitutive causality whereby the creature receives—really and ontologically—a finite correlate D of a divine perfection D_G, such that the creature remains creaturely, God remains wholly transcendent, and yet the creature truly shares in what belongs properly to God. Thus, participation is not imitation, analogy, moral conformity, exemplarist reflection, or metaphysical proximity.

It is causal reception—the Spirit’s inward act that constitutes the creature’s new being. Participation is therefore:

1. Ontological, for it gives being.

2. Pneumatological, for its agent is the Spirit. 

3. Christological, because it is mediated through union with Christ. 

4. Asymmetrical, since God communicates and the creature receives. 

5. Constitutive, because what is communicated becomes the creature’s new reality. 

This clarifies why deification is not essence-sharing but grace-sharing: the creature becomes luminous with divine life not by becoming divine essentia but by receiving divine actus.

Participation, properly understood, contains within itself an eschatological orientation. What is now possessed in grace is destined for manifestation in glory.

Thus, while VII established participation as ontological transformation, VIII will show participation as eschatological manifestation. This Excursus has clarified the formal concept at the hinge point between ontology and eschatology. Participation is the grammar of deification; manifestation is its consummation.

Transitus ad Disputationem VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis

In the seventh disputation we beheld participation as the Spirit’s constitutive act, grounding both creaturely being and creaturely communion with God. Such participation is real yet incomplete; begun in time, it strains toward consummation. For every participation bears a teleology: what is received as grace seeks revelation as glory.

The hidden union of faith awaits its eschatological unveiling. The righteousness participated now will be manifested then. The divine life communicated secretly will be revealed openly. Thus, theology must now inquire how truth, which is presently mediated by word, Spirit, and participation, will appear in its eschatological fullness.

We therefore proceed to: Disputatio VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis—on the unveiling of divine truth in glory, where participation becomes vision and the economy becomes consummation.