Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Quaeritur

Utrum mundus, qui per Verbum Dei creatus est, in se contineat rationem et ordinem intelligibilem non ut proprietatem naturalem aut autonomum logon, sed ut participationem ipsius rationis divinae per quam omnia facta sunt; et utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit causa per quam haec participatio in mundo manet viva et cognoscibilis.

Whether the world, created through the Word of God, contains within itself reason and intelligible order not as a natural property or autonomous logos, but as participation in the very divine reason through which all things were made; and whether the Holy Spirit is the cause by which this participation in the world remains living and knowable.

Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order of reason in the world reflects the eternal Logos by which it was created and in which it is sustained. The Spirit preserves this intelligibility as the ongoing mediation between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

Locus classicus

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” — Psalm 33:6

This verse reveals that creation is not a brute event but an act of speech: God’s Word gives being; His Spirit gives life and understanding. The world, therefore, bears a rational and linguistic structure because it originates in divine utterance.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, revelation and knowledge were shown to occur as acts of divine self-communication. Creation is the cosmic expression of that same principle. To create “by the Word” is to bring forth being through meaning.

The intelligibility of the world (intelligibilitas mundi) is not an afterthought but the imprint of divine reason (ratio divina) within creation itself. The divine Logos does not merely impose order externally; He is the internal ground of all order. Hence, the world is not a mute mechanism but a spoke reality—a creation articulated in the very act of divine utterance.

To express this symbolically (and then immediately explain):

• Let C(x) mean “x is a creature,” and L(x) mean “x participates in the Logos.”

• The theological claim ∀x (C(x) → L(x)) can be read: “For every creature x, to be created is to participate in the Logos.”

• This does not mean that creatures possess divinity, but that their very structure reflects divine rationality.

• The world’s coherence, its capacity to be known, is therefore the sign of its origin in divine speech.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus), proceeding from the Father through the Word, maintains this participation dynamically.
The Spirit is not merely a past cause of order but the ongoing agent of intelligibility: He makes the world not only ordered but understandable. Thus, creation’s rational form is continually animated by pneumatological presence.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Autonomous Rationalism holds that if the world’s intelligibility depends upon divine participation, then human reason is heteronomous. Science and philosophy must be autonomous to retain credibility. To posit that intelligibility is “borrowed” from divine Logos is to undermine the independence of human knowledge and reduce rational inquiry to theology.

Obiectio II. To claim that the Logos is the inner rationality of creation risks a pantheistic collapse of the Creator and creature into one order of being. If all order, ratio, and structure in the world are divine, then the world itself becomes divine in substance. The distinction between participation and identity vanishes, and theology slides toward pantheism.

Obiectio III. The natural world exhibits randomness, entropy, and moral indifference (empirical chaos). Disease, suffering, and death pervade the biological order. If creation truly participates in the divine Logos, these features appear inexplicable or scandalous. The presence of irrationality and evil in nature seems to contradict the claim that the world is inherently intelligible.

Obiectio IV. According to scientific naturalism, science explains intelligibility through natural law and mathematical regularity without invoking divine speech. The assumption of an underlying Logos is unnecessary. Order arises from self-organizing processes, symmetry breaking, and evolution. To ascribe intelligibility to divine participation is to import metaphysics where empirical explanation suffices.

Obiectio V. Postmodern hermeneutic skepticism claims that language and reason are historically contingent human constructs. To say that the world itself is “linguistic” or “spoken” is a metaphor, not an ontology. Meaning is produced by interpreters, not embedded in being. The idea of the cosmos as divine utterance confuses human interpretation with the structure of reality itself.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy in reason does not mean isolation from its source. Human rationality is genuine precisely because it participates in the divine Logos. The dependence of intelligibility on God is not servitude but vocation: reason becomes most itself when illumined by its origin. The sciences retain autonomy in their proper domain, but their very capacity for intelligibility is derivative—a finite echo of the Word through whom all things were made. Participation in the Logos grounds freedom, it does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation does not imply identity but communion across an ontological distinction. The Logos is present in creation as cause, not as substance. The world’s order reflects divine wisdom without exhausting or containing it. To speak of creation as “worded” does not mean that it is the Word, but that its being bears the trace of the Word’s utterance. The infinite remains transcendent even while immanent in the finite. Thus, the doctrine of participation preserves both dependence and distinction.

Ad III. Chaos and disorder mark creation’s finitude, not its absence of divine order. The Logos grants intelligibility even to imperfection: finitude includes the potential for failure, limitation, and conflict. Yet these apparent irrationalities become meaningful within the teleological horizon of providence. The cross remains the archetype: what appears as negation of order is, in divine wisdom, the means of a higher reconciliation. Creation’s intelligibility, therefore, is not the denial of mystery but the assurance that mystery itself is ordered to meaning.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes the intelligibility it cannot generate. The discovery of order through empirical method already assumes that the world is rationally structured and consistent—a condition theology explains as participation in the divine Logos. Natural law, symmetry, and mathematics are not self-originating; they are the formal vestiges of divine reason. Theology does not compete with science but interprets the precondition of its success. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility that science explores but cannot explain.

Ad V. Postmodern skepticism rightly observes that human language mediates all understanding, but it errs in treating meaning as purely subjective. The world is intelligible because it is spoken—not by humans first, but by the divine Word. The analogy between creation and language is not metaphorical but metaphysical: both are acts of signification. The Spirit mediates this relation by translating divine speech into created order and human comprehension. Thus, while interpretation is human, meaning is divine. The cosmos is not a text we invent but a text we inhabit.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a profound theological epistemology. The human capacity to know the world is itself a participation in the divine act of speech. To understand is to retrace, in thought, the creative grammar by which God called things into being.

Thus, the sciences—when rightly ordered—are not profane but theological activities: they read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. This is why the world is intelligible at all: its being is linguistic before it is material. Every true discovery is a translation of the Word’s creative logic into human comprehension.

The Spirit’s role is central. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would decay into abstraction. The Spirit causes the correspondence between human reason and divine reason—the very possibility that meaning in the world can meet meaning in the mind. We might say that the Spirit is the hermeneutical bond of creation: the one who makes the world readable and reason receptive.

Therefore, creation’s intelligibility is neither self-explanatory nor imposed from outside.It is an ongoing relation of divine communication: the Logos speaks, the Spirit interprets, the creature understands.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Creation is not a silent fact but a spoken act: esse arises from dicere.

2. The intelligibility of the world derives from its participation in the divine Logos, not from autonomous rational structure.

3. The Spirit preserves and animates this intelligibility, making the world perpetually communicative to human reason.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself participatory—an act of re-speaking what God has already said in being.

5. The doctrine of creation and intelligibility thus completes the movement begun in revelation: the world is revelation extended into matter, speech made visible, and intelligibility the trace of God’s continuing Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

Creation has shown itself to be the first intelligible: the world is ordered because it issues from the divine Wisdom who is the Word.
Yet the intelligibility of origin demands the constancy of continuance.
For if God’s creative act were only initial, the coherence of beings would lapse the moment they came to be. To create intelligibly is also to preserve, for the Word who calls things forth must likewise hold them in being.

Hence the question now arises: How does the divine act continue within creation without dividing itself from transcendence? Is providence but foresight, or the very presence of causality itself in all that acts? Does the creature persist by its own power, or by the ceaseless motion of the divine will that works in all things?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae, and ask how the same Word who spoke creation into being also sustains it through every moment of its existence, and how divine causality operates within the order of secondary causes without abolishing their reality or freedom.

Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

On Divine Causality and Theological Speech

Quaeritur

Utrum causalitas divina non sit externa actio super mundum, sed interna ratio tam essendi quam loquendi; cum Spiritus Sanctus, qui est amor subsistens, causet non solum esse rerum sed etiam recte loqui de Deo, ita ut omnis loquela theologica sit ipsa participatio in causatione divina.

Whether divine causality is not an external action imposed upon the world but the inner reason both for being and for speaking; since the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the right speaking of them, such that every theological utterance is itself a participation in divine causality.

Thesis

The Spirit’s causality extends from being to language. The God who causes things to exist also causes them to be spoken truly. Hence, theological language is not merely a human representation of divine acts but itself a divinely caused act of participation in those same realities.

Locus Classicus

ὁ θεὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοκίας.

“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” — Philippians 2:13

Paul here reveals the deepest structure of divine causality: God does not merely command from without, but operates within the interior act of willing itself. Human volition and action are not autonomous productions but participations in the divine operation, through which freedom is fulfilled rather than diminished. The same principle governs theological speech: the Word that we utter in faith is itself moved and sustained by the Word that speaks within us.

“Non enim per solam gratiam fit ut faciamus, sed etiam ut velimus.”

“For it is not by grace alone that we are enabled to act, but even to will.” — Augustinus, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 17.33

Augustine thus interprets Paul’s claim as a metaphysical union of divine and human agency: grace is not external assistance but interior transformation. The divine will does not replace ours; it quickens it, bringing to actuality the very freedom it grounds.

“La grâce ne supprime pas la liberté, elle la fonde.”

“Grace does not suppress freedom; it grounds it.” — Henri de Lubac, Le mystère du surnaturel (1946)

In the modern renewal of participatory theology, de Lubac recovers the insight that grace is not superadded to nature as a second cause, but is the sustaining depth of creaturely being itself—the divine communication that makes human freedom truly possible.

From Paul through Augustine to de Lubac, a single line of testimony unfolds: God’s causality is not competitive with human activity but constitutive of it. The divine act does not constrain the creature; it gives rise to the creature’s own act from within. Thus in every willing, doing, and speaking that accords with grace, the Spirit is the inward agent. God works in us et velle et operari—to will, to act, and indeed to speak—for His good pleasure.

Explicatio

In the preceding Disputationes, we established that theological speech T is syntactically ordered, Spirit-authorized, and rendered true through its correspondence with divine reality. Yet this correspondence itself presupposes a causal link: the reality that theology names exists only because God brings it into being, and the speech that names it exists only because God causes it to be spoken.

Divine causality therefore operates on two planes:

1. Ontological causality whereby God gives being to creatures.

2. Linguistic causality whereby God gives utterance to truth-bearing speech.

Both forms of causation are united in the Holy Spirit, the divine causa principalissima: the first and inner cause through whom all other causes act.

To express this relation in our earlier symbolism:

• Let D_G represent a property belonging properly to God (for example, divine wisdom).

• Let D represent the creature’s participated share in that property (human wisdom given by grace).

When theology speaks of “wisdom,” its words participate in the same causal current by which divine wisdom communicates itself to creatures. Thus, the correspondence D_G → D (read: “from God’s wisdom to creaturely wisdom”) does not indicate a metaphor but a causal transmission: the Spirit’s act of sharing divine properties across the Creator–creature divide.

Accordingly, theology’s language is not neutral description but theophysical communication—a speech that exists because God causes it to exist as part of His ongoing self-disclosure.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to Aristotelian naturalism, divine causality, operates only through the natural order as its first cause. Human speech, being a voluntary act of rational creatures, belongs to the realm of secondary causes. To make God the cause of theological language would collapse creaturely agency and render human discourse a mere divine puppet show.

Ob II. According to late medieval nominalist voluntarism, God’s will alone determines what is true, but human language cannot share in that causality. The words of theology are human signs that express obedience, not divine acts themselves. To attribute causal efficacy to them confuses sign with thing and diminishes God’s absolute freedom.

Ob III. If God directly causes every act as in occasionalism, then human beings contribute nothing real to theological speech. But if humans truly speak, then divine causality cannot determine their words without destroying their freedom. The doctrine of divine causation in theological discourse thus faces an insoluble dilemma: either language is divine and not human, or human and not divine.

Ob IV. Contemporary analytic philosophy of language regards meaning as determined by social-linguistic conventions and intentions, not metaphysical causes. “Causality” has no place in semantic explanation. To describe divine causality in theological speech is therefore a category mistake, a misuse of causal vocabulary in the domain of meaning.

Responsiones

Ad I. Aristotle’s distinction between primary and secondary causes provides the very structure theology must preserve. The Holy Spirit acts as the primary cause of theological language, not by replacing human agency but by enabling it. Just as God moves creatures to act according to their own natures, so the Spirit moves theologians to speak according to their own intellects and tongues. Divine causality grounds, rather than negates, the freedom of theological speech.

Ad II. Nominalism rightly guards divine sovereignty, yet by confining causality to decree it denies God’s intimate presence in creation. The Spirit’s causality in theological language is not competitive but participatory: divine agency establishes the very possibility that human words can signify God. Theological language is not deified but divinely grounded—the Spirit makes creaturely signs transparent to divine reality without abolishing their created nature.

Ad III. The dilemma between occasionalism and autonomy arises only when divine and human causality are conceived as rival forces within the same ontological plane. In theology, however, divine causality is in esse—it grounds the creature’s act without competing with it. The human theologian truly speaks, yet that speech is what it is by virtue of the Spirit’s enabling presence. Divine causality does not override secondary causes but constitutes their being and efficacy.

Ad IV. Analytic semantics rightly locates meaning within communal use, but this use itself presupposes a deeper ontological ground. In theology, the relation between word and referent is not purely conventional but pneumatic: the Spirit causes words to bear determinate reference to divine reality. Theological meaning therefore involves both human convention and divine causation—the Spirit as the transcendent condition of linguistic signification in the domain of revelation.

Nota

The connection between causality and language clarifies theology’s realism. If “to be is to have causal powers,” as philosophers often say, then to speak truly of God requires that theological terms participate in divine causal power. The Spirit ensures this participation by joining word and world in a single act of communication.

We might say that felicity is the form of divine causality in speech. When the Spirit authorizes an utterance within T, He does more than declare it permissible; He makes it effective as a bearer of divine power. The felicitous word, therefore, is not merely correct but causal—it accomplishes what it signifies because it lives in the Spirit’s energy.

This understanding also guards against theological irrealism. A theology that speaks of God without causal reference—without affirming that God’s acts truly bring about what is said—would empty divine predicates of power. The Spirit, as cause of both being and saying, guarantees that theological truth is not detached commentary but participation in divine action.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Divine causality operates not only in the order of being but also in the order of speaking.

2. The Holy Spirit is the principal cause of all felicitous and truthful theological utterance.

3. To speak truly of God is to participate causally in God’s own self-communication; theology is therefore a theophysical act.

4. Felicity represents the formal aspect of divine causality in language, while truth represents its ontological fulfillment.

5. The Spirit thus binds ontology and discourse in a single causal order: the God who causes being to exist also causes His praise to be spoken.

Transitus ad Disputationem VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

In the sixth disputation, divine causality was considered not as an external intervention upon the world but as the inner reason both for being and for speaking. There it was shown that the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the rightness of theological utterance, so that human speech itself becomes participation in divine causality.

Yet if divine causality is the very act in which being and meaning are continuously given, it follows that creation itself lives by participation in that act. To speak truly of God is already to exist within the radiance of His being; and to be is itself to be spoken by God. The causal act of the Spirit thus opens into the participatory ontology of theosis, wherein the creature’s being is not autonomous but communicative: the reflection of divine act in finite form.

The next step, therefore, is to inquire into the mode and measure of this participation. How does the creature share in divine life without confusion of essences? How does the Spirit, who causes both being and speaking, sustain the real communion of the human and the divine?

Hence we advance to Disputationem VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos, in which it will be asked how the creature’s existence is constituted by participation in the divine, and how the Holy Spirit effects the real, ontological union between God and humanity without dissolving either into the other.

Prooemium ad Partem I: De Intelligibilitate et Participatione; Disputatio I: De Expressionibus Theologicis ut Syntacticis

Prooemium ad Disputationes Theologicas

Why the Scholastic Form Is Employed

The scholastic form—thesis, locus classicus, explicatio, objectiones, responsiones, nota, determinatio—is not revived here as academic archaism, nor as nostalgic homage to a vanished intellectual culture. It is recovered because it uniquely embodies a logic of theological clarity and order. When rightly understood, the scholastic disputation is not the triumph of dialectic over faith but the grammar of faith’s own rational articulation.

The disputatio theologica begins in humility. It assumes that theological truth, being divine, cannot be possessed in a single act of assertion. Truth must instead be approached through the ordered interplay of affirmation, objection, and resolution. The structure of thesis followed by counter-statement and reconciliation mirrors the polarity of revelation, of Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus. The form of disputation therefore becomes a formal analogue of the cross, where contradiction is not suppressed but redeemed in higher unity.

Moreover, the scholastic method corresponds to the ontology of truth presupposed throughout these writings. Truth is not a mere property of propositions but participation in divine self-communication. For that reason, theology cannot be purely descriptive or expressive; it must be formally structured. The disputational form enacts that structure. It forces theology to move from surface assertion to internal coherence, from confession to understanding.

This method also allows theology to remain both rigorous and contemplative.

• Rigorous, because every claim must withstand formal objection and be expressed in a grammar of precision.

• Contemplative, because every resolution finally returns to the mystery of God who exceeds dialectic.

In this way, the scholastic disputatio becomes the proper vehicle for what these writings call model-theoretic theology, a discipline that seeks to relate the formal language of faith T to the ontology of divine being. Each disputation, while logically disciplined, remains theological in motive and eschatological in horizon. The thesis states what can be confessed; the objectiones test its intelligibility; the responsiones disclose its inner coherence; the nota unfolds its broader theological meaning; and the determinatio seals the act of understanding in doxology.

Historical Continuity

The use of the disputatio situates these essays consciously within the intellectual lineage of the Church. Luther, Melanchthon, and their students at Wittenberg employed the disputationes not as scholastic mimicry but as instruments of evangelical clarity. The form was not opposed to Reformation insight but its chosen discipline. The Disputationes Heidelbergae (1518), Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, and the later Lutheran scholastic systems of Gerhard, Calov, and Quenstedt all employed structured reasoning to preserve the unity of truth and faith.

By retrieving this form, the Disputationes Theologicae affirm that theology’s rational vocation remains valid. The contemporary theologian, no less than the medieval master or the Reformation doctor, must think within ordered form if he or she is to think at all. The scholastic discipline reminds theology that truth is not spontaneous expression but participation in divine Logos. In an age of intellectual fragmentation in which there is a pervasive assumption that theology is more about us than it is about God, the disputatio restores a seriousness to theology, a commitment to clarity, coherence, and truth. 

A Theological Rationale

This recovery of form also serves a deeper purpose. The model-theoretic vision that animates these disputations holds that theology’s task is to interpret faith’s formal language within the ontological reality of divine being. That interpretive process requires structure.
The disputatio provides that structure by mapping theology’s logical, semantic, and ontological movements:

1. from syntax (faith’s given grammar),

2. through semantics (modeling that grammar within being),

3. to truth (participation in divine reality).

The scholastic method thus becomes a theological necessity; it is the visible form of theology’s internal logic. Its ordered movement from assertion to resolution mirrors theology’s own participatory logic from Word to understanding, and from faith to vision.

Conclusion

The scholastic method, then, is not a relic but is finally realistic; it is a structure adequate to a world in which language, thought, and being are ordered by the same divine Logos. The Disputationes Theologicae employ this method to demonstrate that theology, even in an age of disintegration, can still think truthfully since the Spirit, who once breathed through the schools, continues to speak through the Church’s ordered speech.

To think theologically in this form is thus itself a confession, a confession that divine truth, though transcendent, has chosen to dwell in the grammar of human words.

Praefatio ad Partem I: De Intelligibilitate et Participatione

Deus loquitur, et fit veritas 

Theologia ab ipsa voce Dei incipit. Dum Deus loquitur, mundus fit intelligibilis et homo vocatur ad intellectum. In hac prima parte quaeritur quomodo ipsa ratio creaturarum participet lucem Verbi, et quomodo intelligibilitas mundi sit primum testimonium divinae praesentiae. Non est hic sermo de analogia inter cogitationem humanam et ideam divinam, sed de ipsa communicatione lucis: lumen quod in tenebris lucet et sine quo nulla scientia nec fides subsistere possunt. Haec pars igitur ponit fundamenta totius operis. Ostendit quod theologia, antequam loquatur de Deo, debet intellegere quomodo mundus et mens ad Dei loquelam ordinantur. Sine hac ontologica participatione, nec verbum hominis nec veritas eius possunt stare coram Deo.

Theology begins with the very voice of God. When God speaks, the world becomes intelligible and the human being is summoned to understanding. This first part asks how the rational order of creatures participates in the light of the Word and how the intelligibility of the world is the primordial witness of divine presence. The issue is not a mere analogy between human thought and the divine idea, but the communication of light itself—the light that shines in the darkness and without which neither knowledge nor faith can endure. This part therefore lays the foundation for all that follows. It shows that theology, before speaking about God, must first understand how world and mind are ordered to the divine utterance. Without this ontological participation, neither human speech nor human truth can stand before God.

_______________

On Theological Expressions as Syntactical

Quaeritur

Utrum theologia, sub ratione syntactica considerata, in ipsa structura locutionis veritatem suam formet, ita ut ordo et nexus sermonis non solum instrumenta cognitionis sint, sed etiam ipsa forma interna veritatis quae posteriorem interpretationem fundat.

Whether theology, considered under its syntactical aspect, forms its own truth within the very structure of utterance, such that the order and connection of discourse are not merely instruments of knowledge but the inner form of truth itself, providing the foundation for later interpretation.

Thesis

Theological expressions, denoted as T, the total language of faith as it is spoken, written, and confessed, must first be regarded as syntactical, governed by formation and inference rules that secure coherence before questions of meaning or truth arise. Only when this system of expressions is interpreted within a model, that is, understood in relation to what there is, do meaning and truth properly emerge.

Locus classicus

Scriptura Sacra — Ad Hebraeos 4:12 (NA28):

Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργὴς καὶ τομώτερος ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν μάχαιραν δίστομον, καὶ διϊκνούμενος ἄχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος, ἁρμῶν τε καὶ μυελῶν, καὶ κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Traditio Patrum — Augustinus, Confessiones XIII.12.13:

Loquitur Verbum tuum nobis in libro tuo, qui est firmamentum super nos: et ibi audiunt omnes, sed non uno modo. 

Thy Word speaks to us in Thy Book, which is the firmament above us: all hear it, but not all in the same way.

Divine speech, according to both the Apostle and Augustine, is living and intelligible; it is piercing yet articulate, personal yet ordered. The Word’s vitality is not the energy of chaos but of form: it divides to discern, it speaks to create understanding. Hence theology begins not in silence but in structured hearing, where the life of God becomes intelligible speech within the heart.

Explicatio

Before theology can claim truth, it must possess disciplined language. Every theological expression belongs to a larger body of speech, the lingua fidei or language of faith, symbolized by T. This T is like a formal system in logic; its sentences must be well-formed, consistent, and properly related to one another before they can be said to express truth.

In logic, syntax refers to the internal structure of a language—how sentences are put together—while semantics refers to their meaning in relation to a world. Similarly, theology’s syntax orders the words of revelation before interpretation. Within this syntactical horizon, what matters is not whether a proposition is true or false but whether it can be rightly spoken, whether it fits the grammar of faith authorized by the Spirit.

For example, the statement “Christ is truly present in the Eucharist” is not yet about metaphysical presence when viewed syntactically. Rather it expresses a well-formed confession that belongs to a network of statements derived from Scripture, creed, and liturgy. To violate that network’s grammatical order, e.g., by detaching the statement from the Eucharistic context or from Christ’s promise, is to lose what might be  called felicity, the Spirit-given rightness or legitimacy of speech (bene dicere in Spiritu Sancto).

Thus, theology’s first task is grammatical. It secures the coherence of divine speech once it has entered human words. Only after this grammatical integrity is achieved can theology responsibly advance to the next level of modeling, to an investigation of how its expressions are related to being, to how the language acquires truth-conditions.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Karl Barth and the dialectical theologians contend that theology begins with divine self-revelation, not with the formal analysis of language. To start with syntax is to subordinate the immediacy of God’s address to human categories of logic and grammar. If God speaks, the structure of that speech must be received, not constructed.

Obiectio II. According to the later Wittgenstein, meaning is determined by use within a “form of life.” Theological expressions, therefore, have sense only within the lived practice of the Church. To formalize them syntactically is to abstract them from their communal context and distort their function. Theology should describe language-games, not engineer systems.

Obiectio III. Jacques Derrida and postmodern theorists insist that language is characterized by indeterminacy and différance: every sign refers to another sign, never to stable presence. A divinely ordered syntax would reinstate the metaphysics of presence. Theology should dwell within the play of meaning, not claim a fixed grammar of divine speech.

Obiectio IV. Friedrich Schleiermacher and the liberal theological tradition maintain that theology arises from the inward feeling of absolute dependence. Faith expresses itself symbolically but resists propositional form. To impose syntactical order upon religion is to betray its essence as life and feeling.

Obiectio V. Analytic and empiricist philosophers of religion argue that theological statements, lacking empirical verification, are not propositions in any meaningful sense. To speak of a “syntax” of faith’s language is to confer logical structure upon utterances that are neither factual nor falsifiable.

Responsiones

Ad I. The dialectical theologian rightly insists that revelation precedes all theological discourse, yet revelation comes clothed in human words. Syntax, in this sense, is not construction but preservation. The Spirit who gives the Word also gives the grammar by which the Church may speak it intelligibly. To attend to syntax is to attend to the order of revelation’s communicability, not to impose alien form upon it.

Ad II. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning is rule-governed and communal remains invaluable; nevertheless, theology’s “form of life” differs from empirical practice in that its rules are Spirit-given, not conventionally negotiated. Formal analysis of theological syntax does not abstract language from life but clarifies the divine order that sustains it across times and cultures. The lingua fidei is a living grammar, not a sociological dialect.

Ad III. Deconstruction rightly unmasks the instability of autonomous sign systems, yet theology never claimed autonomy for language. Its signs refer not because they are self-grounding but because they are Spirit-grounded. Theological syntax confesses the presence of the Logos who anchors signification within grace. The Spirit’s rule of speech secures openness to mystery without collapsing into chaos.

Ad IV. The liberal tradition’s appeal to inner experience perceives an essential dimension of faith, but experience without grammar quickly dissolves into solipsism. The Spirit who kindles faith also orders confession. Syntax renders faith communicable; it enables the Church to speak one faith with many tongues. Grammar, in theology, is the sacramental form of life’s interior truth.

Ad V. Empiricism confuses the scope of verification with the scope of meaning. Theological sentences are not empirical hypotheses but covenantal assertions within a distinct order of reference. Their syntax marks that order. The absence of empirical reducibility does not entail meaninglessness; it reveals participation in a different ontology—one defined by God’s speech, not by sensory data.

Nota

The study of theology as syntactical is not an idle formalism. At the Institute of Lutheran Theology and beyond, this concern for grammar defines how the Church, the academy, and public reason preserve the intelligibility of faith. Where Christian discourse forgets its grammar—whether in preaching, scholarship, or popular devotion—confession decays into sentiment and doctrine into opinion.

The renewal of theological language therefore depends upon communities capable of grammatical fidelity:

• schools that teach precision in the use of sacred terms,

• churches that guard the patterns of sound words handed down, and

• scholars who render the faith publicly intelligible without diluting its form.

Every age must recover its grammar of belief, lest the gospel be spoken in tongues no longer understood.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Like all object languages, theological discourse T is syntactical before it is semantical; its form precedes its reference.

2. The Spirit grants the Church a rule-governed language whose coherence must be secured prior to interpretation.

3. What we call FT, the felicity conditions of T, are the marks of Spirit-given coherence (consistency, entailment, and authorization).

4. Only when T is joined to an ontological model, to a structured account of what is real, do we obtain TC, its truth conditions. In symbolic shorthand, FT + Modeling = TC. This means that the Spirit’s authorization of speech, combined with its proper relation to being, yields theological truth.

5. This syntactical priority ensures both theology’s autonomy from empirical reduction and its dependence upon divine address.

To speak theologically, therefore, is to inhabit a grammar already constituted by God’s self-communication and to let that grammar shape every truthful word about God.

Transitus ad Disputationem II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum

In the first disputation, theology was considered under its syntactical aspect, where the very structure of discourse was shown to form the inner configuration of truth. Yet if theology possesses this formal integrity within its own language, the question now arises: how does this form relate to the order of reality itself? It is not enough to discern the grammar of divine speech; one must also discern its reference.

For if theological utterance does not merely reverberate within the mind but reaches outward toward a reality constituted by God, then nlike every truth-bearing language, theology requires a system of models through which its expressions correspond to a divinely ordered state of affairs. Theological truth, therefore, lies not only in the coherence of language but in the consonance between the verbum Dei that speaks and the esse creatum that answers it.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum, in which it will be asked whether, and in what manner, the language of faith attains truth through correspondence to the reality established by God, and how this relation between divine language and created being grounds the metaphysical intelligibility of theology itself.

Performatives, Illocutions and Felicity Conditions for Preaching

Many point out that preaching is a performative act.  Instead of a mere conveyance of said information, good preaching is a doing.  In the sermon, Jesus Christ Himself is handed over to the hearers of the Word. 

The Tuebingen systematician Owald Bayer (b. 1939) uses the notion of a performative utterance, connects it with the promissio, and contrasts it with a mere constative.  Accordingly, Bayer quotes a statement from Luther’s Tishreden as stating a general principle in Luther’s semantics: "Signum philosophicum est nota absentis rei, signum theologicum est nota praesentis rei"  (“The philosophical sign is a mark of an absent thing; the theological sign is a mark of a present thing"), and “the signum itself is already the res; the linguistic sign is already the matter itself" (Martin Luther’s Theology, 52).

The promissio Bayer locates at the center of Luther's theology is unpacked by equating the word in language with the reality itself. Bayer suggests that in promises, words are not to be interpreted extensionally or intensionally, but are themselves their own reality.  (I have elsewhere called this the "donational model.")  Bayer regards this to be the deepest presupposition of Luther's theological semantics, a position he claims is akin to the views on performative language advanced by Austin. 

Over and against the constative, Bayer regards the promissio as a performative utterance: "In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" (53).  Bayer has many more things to say about promise-talk:  

•  " . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement.” 
• “Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . .” 
•  "The truth of the promise . . . is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was . . . constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . and the one who hears. . . .”

Unfortunately, regardless of his authorial intent, Bayer’s formulations suggest a possible confusion.  One might hold that the sermon is a set of performative utterances - - promises being one type of performative - - that do something rather than say something, and then go on to claim that since performative utterances are not true or false, preaching expressions have no truth-conditions.  While this might seem a very bad thing, it is actually has some theological advantages.   How is this view possibly fruitful?  

Since the time of Kant there has been a tendency to claim that religious and theological language do not talk about the same reality as that talked about by historical, scientific, and even philosophical language.  This happened because the Kantian criticisms of natural theology succeeded in adding to the previous Enlightenment distrust that theological statements could be straightforwardly true.  If they weren't true, but still useful, then what were they?  The view that whatever religion and theology talk about, they don't talk about the same reality as discussed in the other disciplines is called the independence thesis in the theology and science discussion.  The question is then to locate the domain of theology with respect to other domains.  What domain is theology about?   

Here is where performative utterance-talk can come to the rescue.   The promise of performative utterances is that Lutheran theology can thus avoid metaphysical statements about God, God’s causal relationship with the universe, and God’s relationship to the realm of being generally. Instead one merely says that theology is all about doing, and doing cannot conflict with what is, with the saying of  metaphysics!   One can thus both be an academic, post-Kantian and a Lutheran theologian all at the same time!  
    
Accordingly, proclamations become first-order doing expressions without truth conditions, and they produce what they say.  Preaching is constituted by performative utterances declaring one’s freedom from sin, death, and devil through Christ.   Explicitly theological formulations then become second-order saying expressions which are merely regulative in that they order the performative utterances, and govern the occasions and context of their use.  One detects a fleeting ghost of Schleiermacher who held:  

• First-order religious language is expressive and poetic;
• First-order rhetorical language is rhetorical and persuasive;
• Second-order theological language is didatic and dogmatic.  

Clearly, a great deal of weight must be carried by the notion of a performative utterance, if it is to ground the very questionable discipline of theology in our time.  Unfortunately, many theologians do not realize that the status of a performative utterance is itself a matter of considerable philosophical controversy, and that Austin was already attacking his own performative-constative distinction almost 60 years ago.  

In sections IV and VII of How to Do Things with Words, Austin accumulates a number of doubts about the performative-constative distinction.   It seems that certain "felicity conditions" must be met in order for a declaration or promise to occur, and that these conditions rest both on social convention and speaker intentionality.  A performative is null and void if issued by a person not in position to perform the act, e.g., the pastor can marry the couple only in the appropriate social context, not by himself in the shower.  An unelected plumber cannot declare war on behalf of the United States.   One cannot promise with the intention to break it or without any means to fulfill the promise.   It seems that, for Austin, there is an element of the constative in each performative, and an element of the performative in the constative.   For these reasons Austin abandons the performative-constative distinction and formulates instead a distinction among locutions, various illocutionary acts, and the different perlocutions accomplished through these illocutions.   

The locution is the semantic content of an utterance; it is the act of saying something.   The illocutionary act is that which is accomplished in the saying.  It is the "extra meaning" beyond the literal meaning of the locution.  It and the perlocution constitute part of the speech act's force.   The perlocution is the intended effect produced in the hearer by the illocution.   This effect clearly depends upon social convention.   Austin's student, John Searle, revised the threefold schema of Austin into five categories:  

• Representatives state something in the doing.  Examples are "the cat is on the mat," and "David Hume died in 1776."  
• Directives tell others to do something, e.g., "Give me the hammer!", "Don't make a sound during church." 
• Commissives occur when promises are made, e.g., "I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us," "God sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall never die." 
•  Expressives merely display the speaker's attitudes and states.   Examples are, "I am really sorry about that," "Congratulations!!!"  
•   Declarations actually do something with words, e.g., "I name you John," "Class dismissed!"  

Searle regards directives, commissives and declarations to be general performatives where the world must now fit the words.  Alternately, representatives and expressives are general representatives where the words must fit the world.   (In an expressive, the word is supposed to fit the world of the speaker's attitudes and emotions.)  With all of these, however, there is an element of each in the other.   General performatives have locutionary semantic content; general representatives have a particular illocutionary force.  A single locution can sustain markedly different different illocutionary and perlocutionary force.

Take, for instance, the phrase, 'The dog is in the yard."   This could be a representative or an assertive merely stating what one thinks.  It might be used as a directive, telling others to stay away.   It might be a commissive that promises to all a safe yard.   Of course, it could be an expressive that does nothing more than display speaker fear.   The phrase, "I promise to be there tomorrow," can be a promise, but it might be a threat.  Saying 'the Day of the Lord is at hand' might be interpreted as a promise if God's presence is thought to be advantageous to the hearer, but it might be threat if divine presence is likely disadvantageous to the hearer.  (Notice how easy it is to explain now how the same locution of Scripture can both be Law and Gospel?)    

Given all of these distinctions, it becomes very hard to see how a performative utterance can somehow lead to Bayer's championed identity of a signum and res.  The signum does constitute the locutionary content of the expression.  The res, however, seems best associated with the perlocution, with what is brought about through the illocution.  Clearly, on this interpretation the perlocution cannot be a thing identifiable with the semantic content of the word itself.

We have found that the notion of a performative utterance has been employed in preaching to speak of the force of preaching and its effect, but that the notion of a performative as not having a truth value makes problematic this use.  We have also learned that Austin himself found his distinction between performatives and constatives problematic, and that newer views were subsequently devised to speak of illocutionary acts which utter locutions.  What Austin and Searle both discovered, however, is that in the analysis of speech act meaning, one simply cannot escape semantic content.    

We have previously concluded from this that there is nothing especially mysterious about using language to accomplish persuasive ends.   In good preaching, illocutions effect perlocutions.  Preachers thus exhort by demand and promise to move the hearts of their hearers.   This movements of the heart are the perlocutionary effects of these utterances.   Consequently, there is no simple identity between signum and res.  So far so good.   But there remains one really big problem for those finding an isolated doing in preaching performance that protects Lutheran's from an Enlightment-style critique of putative Lutheran saying.   

According to speech act theory, for a declaration to obtain certain felicity conditions must be in place.  For preaching to be interpreted as felicitiously performative, there can be no misfiring or abuse, and there must exist the proper preparatory conditions.  This means that while 'I absolve you' may have the sufficient felicity conditions in congregations whose attendees have appropriate presuppositions about the authority of the preacher to pronounce absolution and the sincerity of the preacher in pronouncing it, this is not the case in much of America now.   If preaching is a performative utterance, then any putative identity of signum and res can only occur as an “inside game” where the appropriate executive conditions --- are there appropriate background conditions? -- and essential  felicity conditions --is there proper fulfillment of the speech act? -- obtain.

I believe our time is like the time of the first century.   People to whom we preach must be convinced of the truth of what we are saying before they will join a community and adopt the appropriate felicity conditions making possible preaching declarations.   One can "hand over Christ" in preaching only if there are previous broad commitments about the existence and nature of a God causally efficacious in salvation.   The problem of our time is that only a few share the societal conventions that make possible the obtaining of the felicity conditions for proclamation.  The following likely hold:   

• We find the background conditions of belief necessary for the social conventions grounding the felicity conditions of preaching declaration are no longer present. 
• We find that few are moved by the illocutionary acts of preaching because the very possibility of perlocutionary response is tied to the question of truth. 
• We discover that more than a few pastors are simply insincere; they use language in ways that downplay propositional content in order to bring about a perlocutionary effect that in the tradition was always tied to that content.   

Performative utterances are not mysterious and cannot remove us from the truth game.   Accordingly, they cannot lead us around the critique of modernity.