Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Mundus est creatus per Verbum Dei, et propterea in ipso est ratio et ordo intelligibilis. Intellegibilitas mundi non est proprietas naturalis aut autonomus logos, sed participatio in ipsa ratione divina, per quam omnia facta sunt. Spiritus Sanctus est causa per quam haec participatio manet viva et cognoscibilis.

The world was created by the Word of God, and therefore within it lies reason and intelligible order. The intelligibility of the world is not a natural property or autonomous logic but participation in the divine reason through which all things were made. The Holy Spirit is the cause by which this participation remains living and knowable.

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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. If the world’s intelligibility depends on divine participation, then human reason is not autonomous; science and philosophy lose independence.

Obiectio II. To identify the world’s order with divine Logos risks divinizing creation and collapsing the distinction between Creator and creature.

Obiectio III. The presence of chaos, irrationality, and evil in nature seems to contradict the claim that creation is inherently intelligible.

Responsiones

Ad I. Human reason is indeed finite but not servile. To acknowledge its dependence upon the Logos does not abolish autonomy but situates it within a higher participation. True reason is not self-originating; it is illuminated reason (ratio participata), echoing the divine.

Ad II. Participation never implies identity. The world’s intelligibility is derivative, not essential. The Logos is present as cause, not as substance. To speak of creation’s participation in the Logos is to affirm both communion and distinction: all things exist through the Word but are not the Word.

Ad III. The world’s apparent chaos is the shadow of finitude, not the absence of Logos. Disorder marks the distance of creation from its source, yet even chaos remains ordered to meaning in God’s providence. The cross itself—the seeming negation of divine order—reveals that disorder can serve revelation.

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.

Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

On Divine Causality and Theological Speech

Causalitas divina non est externa actio super mundum, sed interna ratio essendi et loquendi. Spiritus Sanctus, qui est amor subsistens, causat non solum esse rerum sed etiam recte loqui de Deo. Sic omnis loquela theologica est participatio in causatione divina.

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

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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

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

Here Paul affirms that divine causality penetrates human willing and acting. The same holds for speech: God works in us not only to do but to say according to 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

Obiectio I. If divine causality extends to speech, human freedom and responsibility in theology seem abolished; the theologian becomes merely an instrument.

Obiectio II. Causality belongs to the order of nature, not of language. To attribute causation to words risks confusion of categories.

Obiectio III. If every true theological word is divinely caused, then false or heretical words must also be caused by God, undermining divine goodness.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine causality does not negate human agency but grounds it. The Spirit’s causation is not coercive but constitutive: it makes human speech truly free by giving it its form and direction. As Augustine says, “Deus est interior intimo meo” — God is more inward to me than I am to myself. To speak theologically is to act freely in the energy of divine grace.

Ad II. The distinction between nature and language holds only where God is absent. In theology, language is not a separate domain but part of creation’s responsive order. Just as God’s word causes being, so being answers in words. The causality proper to speech is analogical to the causality proper to being, both proceeding from the same divine act.

Ad III. The Spirit’s causality operates in and through freedom, not determinism. While God sustains all speech ontologically, only those utterances formed in Spiritu Sancto participate felicitously in His communicative causality. Erroneous or heretical speech subsists by divine permission but lacks authorization; it has being but not grace.

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.

isputatio I: De Expressionibus Theologicis ut Syntacticis, cum Proemio et Praefatione

Proemium 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 itself—thesis followed by counter-statement and reconciliation—mirrors the polarity of revelation: 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; 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; it was 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 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 and performative discourse, the disputatio restores theology’s proper seriousness: its commitment to clarity, coherence, and communion.

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 within being),

3. to truth (participation in divine reality).

The scholastic method thus becomes a theological necessity: 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, from faith to vision.

Conclusion

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

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

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Praefatio

Deus loquitur, et fit veritas
(God speaks, and truth comes to be)

These eight disputationes explore how theology, understood as Spirit-formed discourse, bears truth. They trace the inner order of theological reason from its linguistic beginnings to its ontological and eschatological fulfillment. Each disputatio isolates one dimension of that order. Together they constitute a continuous movement—an ordo theologiae—in which language, being, and grace converge.

While the method employed is scholastic in form, it is clearly model-theoretic in aim. Following the medieval structure of thesis, objectiones, responsiones, nota, and determinatio, the disputationes develop theology’s formal and ontological logic without appeal to system or school. In what follows, I do not try to defend inherited conclusions, but rather attempt to display the structure of theological intelligibility itself: how divine speech becomes human language and how human language, by grace, becomes true.

The first three disputationes concern the formal conditions of theological discourse, theology's syntax, its modeling, and its felicity. Theology begins as a rule-governed language T, whose sentences become meaningful only when interpreted within ontological models specifying the reality to which they refer. These models are not arbitrary constructions but confessional interpretations of revelation’s given world. Within this world, speech is governed by the Spirit’s authorization, which defines theology’s felicity conditions and determines what can be said in Spiritu Sancto.

The middle disputationes (IV–VII) investigate the ontological and causal ground of theology’s truth. Truth appears in two forms: internal, as the Spirit’s realization of felicity and external, as the adequacy of theological expression to divine being. This double structure is secured by the Spirit’s causal act, through which human language participates in the being of divine truth. The Spirit’s causality is constitutive; it makes theological language to be what it is. By this act of causation, human speech becomes an instrument of divine communication, and the believer’s being is reconstituted in the form of participation, or theosis.

The final disputation VIII) carries this argument to its eschatological and linguistic horizon. The full coincidence of internal felicity and external adequacy is eschatological, for the Spirit’s authorization of language and the reality it names will one day coincide without remainder. Theology’s truth is therefore both realized and awaited, present as participation by awaiting future manifestation. The last disputatio considers the nova lingua of theology, the “strange language” that arises from the Incarnation. Drawing on Luther’s insight that faith requires a new grammar in which God speaks under opposites, this disputatio shows that theology’s form is necessarily incomplete while its logic is cruciform. The Word’s embodiment inaugurates a language that is finite in form yet infinite in meaning, a language that points beyond itself to the divine Logos who alone is Truth.

These eight disputationes together propose a theological epistemology of participation. Theology is neither empirical or metaphysical description nor pure symbol; it is rather the Spirit’s own discourse rendered through human words. Its language is formal because it is given structure by grace; its truth is real because it shares in the being it confesses. From syntax to theosis, from felicity to truth, from grammar to glory, the disputationes seek to make intelligible the single mystery of revelation: God’s Word, having entered human speech, makes human speech an instrument of divine knowledge.

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On Theological Expressions as Syntactical

Theologia primum tractatur sub ratione syntactica, qua structura locutionis ipsam formam veritatis interius constituit et praebet fundamentum posterioris interpretationis.

Theology is first treated under its syntactical aspect, wherein the structure of utterance itself constitutes the inner form of truth and provides the foundation for later interpretation.

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Thesis

Theological expressions—here denoted T, meaning 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, placed in relation to what exists—do meaning and truth properly emerge.

Locus classicus

“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.” — Hebrews 4:12

Divine speech, according to the Apostle, is living—yet its life is not chaotic but articulated, “piercing” and discerning. The Word’s vitality is inseparable from its intelligible form.

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; 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—say, by detaching the statement from the Eucharistic context or from Christ’s promise—is to lose what Luther calls 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—modeling—where its expressions are related to being and thus acquire truth-conditions.

Objectiones

Objectio I. Theology cannot be merely formal, for the truth of the gospel precedes all linguistic rules. To treat theology syntactically seems to subordinate revelation to human logic.

Objectio II. Theological language is analogical and poetic. Excessive syntactical discipline risks imprisoning the living Word within human artifice.

Objectio III. Faith speaks to the heart rather than to the structure of propositions. To formalize confession is to destroy its immediacy and existential power.

Responsiones

Ad I. Syntax does not dominate revelation but serves it. The Word of God enters human speech and therefore enters grammar. To attend to the form of T is to protect revelation’s intelligibility, not to restrict its authority.

Ad II. Analogy and poetry are indeed intrinsic to theology, yet even poetry presupposes grammar. Without syntactical order, theology would lose the ability to distinguish genuine mystery from contradiction. Form is not the enemy of Spirit but its vessel; the Spirit inhabits order as much as ecstasy.

Ad III. Faith engages the heart, but confessio—the act of believing speech—is inherently linguistic. The grammar of Tbinds personal conviction to the Church’s shared confession, ensuring that faith remains communicable and accountable. Syntax is therefore the bridge between individual experience and communal proclamation, not a barrier to spiritual life.

Thus, theology’s syntactical order does not imprison the Word; it is the very threshold through which the Word enters the world intelligibly.

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—a structured account of what is real—do we obtain TC, its truth conditions. In symbolic shorthand, FT + Modeling = TC,
   which means: 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.

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.

Bayer on What Makes the Bible become Holy Scripture

Bayer believes that Luther's foundational thesis, Sacra scriptura "sui ipsius interpres," is not primarily a claim of the hermeneutical circle: the parts interpret the whole, and the whole interprets the parts. It is instead a statement of the effect the text has on one reading, hearing and interpreting it. Bayer, in fact, the text is best translated as, "the text itself causes one to pay attention" (Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Introduction, p. 68). Bayer writes:

"The authority of Scripture is not formal but is highly material and is content driven. It is the voice of its author, who gives; who allows for astonishment, lament, and praise; who demands and fulfills. Scripture can in no wise be confirmed as having formal authority in advance, so that the content becomes important only as a second stage of the process. The text in its many different forms - - particularly in the law's demand and the gospel's promises - - uses this material way of doing business to validate its authority" (69).

This statement accords well, of course, with Bayer's claim that the Word is what it does. Bayer is stating that which to many contemporary theologians is obvious: There are no properties of the text that establish its reliability outside of the meaning of the text. That is to say, there are not syntactical or causal facts about the text considered apart from its meaning, that would properly dispose one to believe that what the text announces is true.

Bayer labors, of course, to defend the text's autonomy. The meaning of the text is not established or constituted in the act of interpreting it. The external meaning of the text confronts the reader and transforms her. The Bible is the Holy Scripture because of the power the Bible has to, as Luther says, "draw the individual into itself, and into its own power" (71).

Bayer thus makes the following claims:

1. The authority of the text is wholly constituted in the meaning the text has with respect to my life.
2. The meaning of the text is objective; it exists apart from my act of interpretation.
3. The Spirit is involved in the delivery of the meaning of the text to me.

Notger Slenczka sums it up very well when talking about the normativity of the text: "The normative function of Scripture demonstrates its claim to be normative by basing it on the way it is existentially verified when it interprets itself, in the way Scripture conveys its own intended meanings" (quoted in Bayer, 77).

Generally, I am sympathetic with what Bayer, Slenzka, and many contemporary theologians suppose: The authority of the text is established by its effect on its reader. I am sympathetic because I know the problems of trying to argue for an artificer/artifact causal relationship between God and the text. However, if one could trace some kind of causal chain back from the text to God, as was done in former years, then some type of authority would be established such that the text's claims might be deemed reliable. When I say 'reliable' I am not claiming that each and every proposition of Scripture is timelessly true - - however, we might want to unpack that - - but simply that there is some epistemic warrant for regarding the text as saying what is generally the case with respect to the divine and God's relationship to human beings. My reflections often take me in this direction:

Imagine two texts s and p. (We shall allow s to be the bible and p to be some other text.) Now imagine cultural context c, such that s in c is part of a sufficient condition for bringing about existential meaning m, meaning that is of a life and death matter to me. (We can surely admit that the Holy Spirit does most of the causal lifting in this.) Now imagine p in c*. Clearly, there is no reason that p should not form part of a sufficient condition for m apart from the de facto non-operation of the Holy Spirit. It seems, thus, that Bayer's position, and that of all who suppose this way of moving forward, presupposes that as a matter of fact, the Holy Spirit will not provide casual input for p, even if He does so for s. The reason that the Bible is the Holy Scriptures, instead of some other book, is that the Holy Spirit is effective in it for realizing m, but not for the other book.

When one thinks somewhat carefully about these matters, one must thus distinguish between the descriptive observation that the Bible, and many other books, can strike readers with existential truth, and the prescriptive claim that the Bible ought so to strike one as having existential truth. Until we can give an analysis of why the Bible ought so to strike one as donating being and the meaning of one's being, we have not engaged the issue of what the claim to formal authority was trying to answer.

I can well imagine a time where the Bible does not strike many people as giving existential truth. This time has indeed happened in much of the first world. In what position is then the theologian left who has rejected all claims to establish the text's normative status solely in its effects upon people? Theologically, one must then say that the Bible is not the Holy Scriptures any longer, that it no longer has a normative claim upon us. One must wait then for new books that can engage the salvific situation of humankind. Those books, like those before, will be evaluated by their effects upon us, and thus new truths - - whatever we might now mean - - will be laid before us.

It is a tough time to be a theologian. It is important that we always realize how much is lost when we move forward in ways meant to avoid the problematics of Modernity.

"Signum Philosophicum est Nota Absentis Rei, Signum Theologicum est Nota Praesentis Rei."

The words mean "the philosophical sign is a mark of an absent thing; the theological sign is a mark of a present thing." The proposition is recorded in the Tischreden of Luther (WATR 4.6666.8f), and it is used by Oswald Bayer (Martin Luther's Theology: A Contemporary Introduction to state a general principle in Luther's semantics: "The signum itself is already the res; the linguistic sign is already the matter itself (52). For Bayer, the promissio that is the center of Luther's theology is unpacked by equating the word in language with the reality itself. In promises, words are not given either extensional (or even intensional) interpretations, but themselves are their own reality. This view of things - - which I have elsewhere termed the donational view of language - - is thought by Bayer to be the deepest presupposition of Luther's theological semantics, a view which Bayer claims is akin to the view countenanced by Austin in his 1955 Harvard lectures later published as How to Do Things with Words: the notion of performative language. Bayer writes:

"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).

In evaluating this we must remember, of course, that it has proven difficult in practice actually to distinguish clearly performative and constative assertions. Bayer's position, however, supposes they can be compartmentalized. He goes on to say, in fact, that the performative sentences of promissio, for Luther, must be sharply distinguished either from the descriptive or the imperative. Quoting again:

" . . . 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 concluded; more accurately, where it was constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . . and the one who hears. . . . If it is correct that the one individual is in the position of hearer in the relationship that is constituted by this promise, and if that is verified, it excludes the possibility that he himself can verify the promise. . . . To seek to verify this oneself would be atheism; it would be no different than for me to try to verify myself in my own subjective piety or if I would seek to verify myself by means of a defined atheism. In such situations a human being wants to speak his own truth about himself, but he makes God into a liar in the process" (54-55).

There are a number of claims made here that must carefully be distinguished and examined. That there are such statements as "I promise to pay you $1000" is, of course, true. That such statements cannot be fully analyzed into a set of descriptive statements is true as well. Reporting is a different linguistic activity than promising. And that such statements are not themselves reductively analyzable into a set of imperative statements is true also. However, one must distinguish between a reduction of the performative to the descriptive and the imperative, and an unpacking of the palpable presuppositions that the performative has, presuppositions that are statable in terms of the descriptive and imperative.

In "I promise to pay $1000", the following statements are putatively presupposed: "I exist," "you exist," "$1000 exists," "I ought to pay you $1000." The first three sentences are descriptive, and the fourth imperative. Now notice that here the verba of the sentence do not themselves constitute the rem, but presuppose definite res: the existence of two agents, and the taking on of an obligation. This is not to say that 'x promises z to y' can be reduced to the existence of x, y and z, and a set of imperative statements concerning the three. There is more to promising than the taking on of an obligation. However, an obligation is nonetheless presupposed in the promising.

With regard to the promise of salvation "to me," it would seem that the same structure of presuppositions obtain: God exists, I exist, and some state of affairs to which 'salvation' properly applies exists (at least in a possible world) such that God is under obligation to bring about salvation to me. (This is rather jarring, of course, to think of God being under obligation, but it does seem like promising demands it. Maybe it is "analogical obligation" . . . . It seems that if God were to retain impassibility, promising could maybe not be attributed to God at all.)

But let us examine more close what Bayer has to say about truth and verification. He claims that the "truth of the promise is determined where it is constituted," in the one speaking and hearing. But what exactly, is this to mean? Clearly, Bayer here is not talking about a correspondence, coherence, or even pragmatic notion of truth. In fact, we are told, that the individual cannot verify the truth of the promise. To do so, moreover, would involve one in atheism. This claim demands analysis.

If 'Bob promises to pay me $1000 on April 1' and does not do so, he has broken his promise. This much is clear. Moreover, we would not normally say that his promise is true or false. It was, to use Austin's language, an "infelicitous' performative utterance, but it was not false. Truth or falsity does not append to promises qua promises. So it is not clear what the "truth of the promise" is supposed to mean. One could say that the promise was made, the promised being kept presupposed some state of affairs S, such that if S does not obtain then the promise is broken. Or alternately, one might say that the descriptively-stated presupposition for the keeping of the promise did not obtain such that that statement is not true. But this is not to say that the promise was false; it merely was not broken. One could then state whether it was true that the promise was broken. Such statements about promises have definite truth conditions; we can easily verify when they might be true or false. Bayer does not seem interested, however, in the truth-value of statements about felicitous performative promise statements, but rather about promises themselves.

Bayer's discussion of verification is quite an independent issue from putative presuppositions of promise-making. It might be atheism, I suppose, to claim that we can verify the truth of the descriptive statements that state of affairs S obtains such that S makes true the truth of the statement, 'God has kept promise P'. But I am not sure anything could finally count against the claim that God's promises are kept. One might, in fact, claim this as an analytical truth, or better, a rule by which we play the language-game of the Christian God. Clearly, there are a number of issues that Bayer needs to clarify.

Personally, I have always been chary of the move to an exclusive analysis of fundamental theological assertions in terms of performative utterances, a move that does not presuppose metaphysical and philosophical assertions like these:

• There is a God
• This God has intentionality towards His creation
• One attitude of divine intentionality is promising, and promising keeping
• Agents exist who are so constituted as to be cable of being promised to by God.
  
• The ontological and semantic situations are different than epistemological one: Truth is logically distinct from verification
  

I invite others to post comments on this issue. I want someone to give me an example of a performative utterance that presupposes neither descriptive nor imperative utterances. It seems like this is necessary before one gets too excited about an analysis Austin gave for certain kind of utterances in 1955.

What Luther was talking about in the Tischreden concerns the ontological situation, not the semantic one. Luther knows that the language of theology must always refer to that which is present because, God truly is ubiquitously present in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. Later in the text, Bayer makes clear, for Luther, that philosophy knows neither the efficient or final cause of this world. Perhaps Luther's statement quoted at the beginning of this post has more to do with this, than a general denial of extra-linguistic signification in the primary assertions of theology.

On the Performative, the Constative, and a Peculiar Move within Lutheran Theology

It has become commonplace within Lutheran theology to downplay the notion and use of descriptive true/false statements. While it is true that in natural languages we regularly assign both intensions and extensions to account for meaning and truth-conditions, there is a strong recent tradition in Lutheran theology that does not want to do this. Here we are told confidently that much of the language of Scripture is playing quite a different kind of game entirely, quite a different kind of game than uttering statements having truth-conditions. Citing How to do Things with Words, John Austin' text from over 60 years ago, some theologians find in performative utterances the key to unlock what it is that theology is doing when it is doing what it is doing most fundamentally.

The idea is simple enough: Constative utterances say something and performative utterances do something. Theological utterances are uttered between the demand of the law and grace of the gospel in the concrete existential situation of the believer before God. Thus, instead of the language about God being about truth and falsity, it is at best "felicitous or infelicitous.' For Austin, the marks of felicitous performative utterances include:

• The existence of conventional procedure governing the utterance of certain words in certain situations;
• The situations being appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked;
• The procedure being executable by the participants correctly and completely;
• Where to inaugurate the procedure depends upon the person inaugurating it to have certain thoughts and feelings, the person so inaugurating it must have certain thoughts and feelings, and all the participants involved must have the appropriate thoughts and feelings;
  
• The participants conducting themselves accordingly.

If one or more of these conditions are not met. The performative utterance will be unhappy. Austin makes use of some examples:

• 'I do' - - as in the course of a marriage ceremony.
  
• 'I name the ship the Queen Elizabeth' - - as uttered when smashing the bottle against the hull.
  
• 'I give and bequeath my watch to my brother' - - as occurring in a will.
  
• 'I bet you a sixpence if it will rain tomorrow.'
  

For Austin, it is not merely the words themselves, but the words in the appropriate circumstances, with appropriate motivations, and appropriate conventions that bring about the happy performance. Presumably, the same is to obtain in theology as well - - though the conditions are not explicitly worked out.

Of course, Austin himself knew that the distinction between the constative and performative was difficult to maintain. Take for instance the claim, 'there is a dangerous animal here.' While it seems structured as a constative, in certain circumstances is it not elliptical for the putative performances: 'I bet there is a dangerous animal here'; 'I guarantee that there is a dangerous animal here'; or 'I warn you that there is a dangerous animal here'?

Because of this problem, Austin was working at his death upon clarifying the distinction between the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary as a substitute for the previous distinction. In stating what is by means of a locution, one is doing so with illocutionary force, that is, one is normally assuring, or warning, or ordering, or expressing an intention. The perlocutionary subsequently deals with the effects of the illocution in the feelings, thinkings, or actions of the audience, speaker, or other person.

We could at this point talk about how Searle revised his teacher's theory, but for our purposes what is important is to see that illuctionary acts make use of locutions in order to bring about a perlocution. That is to say - - using the early vocabulary - - a performative utterance has propositional content, an intensional or extensional meaning. Furthermore, the utterance presupposes facts and conventions, many of which can be explicated if one were to take the time. For instance, to say 'I bequeath my watch to my brother' with sincerity, presupposes that I have a watch, that I have a brother, that I intend a situation of my brother having a watch, and that there is a social convention whereby of bequeathing such that the state of affairs of my having my watch will give way to my brother legally possessing it.

Within some of these quarters of Lutheran theology an explication of religious and theological statements is given in terms of performative utterances in order, I believe, to escape the thorny question of truth. Thus, to say that "I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all of your sins in the name of Christ Jesus' is not thus to commit oneself to any specifiable ontological situation involving divine states of affairs, relations, properties, and events. It is rather a performance that, to use Austin's later terminology, has a perlocution. The hope is that the utterances can existentially empower without suggesting any "death-dealing metaphysics."

But a moment's reflection shows how wrong-headed it is to think that perlocutions are somehow psychologically independent of what is being asserted. If one has a social convention of bequeathal, it makes all the difference in the world to the perlocutions generated in the inheriting brother by this illocutionary act, whether he does have, in fact, a brother, and whether or not the brother has something to bequeath.

Analogously, having one's feeling and emotions affected by the declaration of forgiveness of sins has everything to do with whether one believes one has sins, and whether or not Christ is thought to be the kind of being that could in principle forgive them.

While Scripture is filled with what Austin would have at one time called performative utterances, this does not mean that one can escape the truth game. Truth pro me is still truth. I will be dealing with some concrete texts in coming posts. My purposes are entirely constructive. We must as theologians grasp the contemporary philosophical situation with respect to the philosophy of language, if we are going to be making moves in the philosophy of language that are to accomplish such heavy theological work.