Disputatio XLVI: De Possibilitate ut Medio inter Necessarium et Contingens

On Possibility as the Mean between Necessity and Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum possibilitas sit medium reale et transcendens inter necessitatem et contingentiam, ita ut in ipsa mediantis potentiae ratione contingens ordinetur ad Deum ut ad suum necessarium fundamentum.

Whether possibility constitutes a real and transcendent mean between necessity and contingency, such that in the mediating potency of possibility the contingent is ordered toward God as its necessary foundation.

Thesis

Possibility is not a mere logical form but a real participation in the divine potentiality-to-communicate-being. It stands as the middle term between necessity and contingency: necessity expresses being as complete act, contingency expresses being as dependent act, and possibility expresses being as communicable act. In God, possibility and necessity coincide; in creatures, possibility mediates the gift of participation from the divine necessity to the finite contingency.

Locus Classicus

"Quia apud Deum omnia possibilia sunt." — Matthaeus 19:26
“For with God all things are possible.”

Δύναμις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς ἐν ἄλλῳ ἢ καθ᾽ ἕτερον. — Aristoteles, Metaphysica Θ, 1046a10
“Power (potentiality) is the principle of change in another thing, or in the same thing qua other.”

Omne possibile habet veritatem in Deo sicut in primo possibili. — Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.14, a.9 ad 3
“Every possible has its truth in God as in the first possibility.”

Explicatio

In the metaphysical hierarchy of being, necessity (necessarium) designates that which cannot be otherwise while contingency (contingens) designates that which can be otherwise. Yet between these two lies the order of possibility (possibile), which alone renders either intelligible. For the necessary, without the possible, would be sterile; the contingent, without the possible, unintelligible.

Possibility functions as the ontological bridge between the divine plenitude of act and the creaturely finitude of reception. In modal logic (system S5), if something is possibly necessary, it is necessary. Yet within the created order, possibility precedes realization and grounds contingency. Thus, the creature’s being is possible ex parte Dei—as a divine idea and potency to communicate being—but contingent ex parte sui: as dependent upon actual divine willing.

Theologically, possibility names the divine generosity that renders creation conceivable before it is actual. It is the metaphysical womb in which all contingent beings are pre-contained as possible participations of divine being. Possibility thus mediates between the absolute necessity of God’s being and the fragile contingency of the creature’s existence.

In Christ, the logic of possibility becomes incarnate: the impossible union of divine and human natures becomes the supreme actuality of divine possibility—Deus possibilis in carne.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Kant claims thatt possibility pertains only to the forms of cognition, not to reality itself. For Kant, “possibility” is merely the agreement of a concept with the conditions of experience; it cannot function as a bridge between necessity and contingency, since such mediation exceeds the bounds of reason.

Ob. II. Spinoza holds that necessity swallows all contingency: everything follows from the divine nature with absolute necessity (ex necessitate divinae naturae). Hence possibility is a mere deficiency of human knowledge, not a real mode of being.

Ob. III.  Existentialism supposes that Heidegger and Sartre invert the order: possibility is prior to being and defines existence itself. The creature does not receive possibility from God but projects it as its own freedom. The possible is thus grounded in human transcendence, not divine potency.

Ob IV.  In modal realism (à la David Lewis), all possible worlds are equally real; possibility no longer mediates between necessity and contingency but expresses a plurality of self-contained realities, thereby dissolving the very notion of participation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Possibility cannot be reduced to epistemic coherence without undermining the ontological dependence of experience. The conditions of experience themselves presuppose a real order of possibility—an ordo essendi—that makes appearances possible at all. Transcendental possibility depends on ontological possibility.

Ad II. Spinoza confuses the divine necessity of being with the necessity of modes. But divine necessity is communicative, not coercive: God’s necessary being grounds the possibilitas communicandi esse, not the fatality of all things. To deny possibility is to deny creation.

Ad III. Human possibility, though genuine, is derivative. The freedom that projects possibilities presupposes the ontological horizon opened by divine giving. Existential possibility is participatory, not autonomous; it reflects the divine freedom from which it proceeds.

Ad IV. Equating all possibilities with actuality erases the modal structure that distinguishes God from creatures. Theologically, only God actualizes possibilities; their reality is analogical, existing as divine ideas, not as parallel universes. Participation, not plurality, grounds modality.

Nota

Possibility (potentia possibilis) is the metaphysical expression of grace before grace: it is the generosity of being that allows otherness to arise. In classical logic, possibility belongs to the modal square between necessity and impossibility; in theology, it corresponds to the eternal divine willingness that creation should be.

Thus, possibility is the mode of divine patience. It is the eternal “perhaps” of God that waits to say “let there be.” To confess that “with God all things are possible” is not to affirm capricious power but to adore the inexhaustible fecundity of divine act.

Determinatio

1. Possibility is a real and ontological participation in divine potency, mediating necessity and contingency.

2. Necessity in God includes possibility eminently; in creatures, necessity excludes it formally.

3. Contingency presupposes possibility as its condition of intelligibility.

4. Therefore, possibility is the metaphysical medium participationis through which the necessary communicates being to the contingent.

5. Theologically, possibility corresponds to the Logos as mediating ratio: all things were possible in Him before they were made through Him.

6. In Christ, possibility and actuality coincide—the possible becomes the actual without ceasing to be the possible ground of all actuality.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae

Possibility, as the middle term between necessity and contingency, reveals the hidden generosity of being. In it, act and potency meet in a relation neither static nor symmetrical: necessity pours itself forth as communicability, and contingency receives itself as being-given. Thus possibility discloses the openness of being to donation, the interval wherein the divine plenitude bends toward the finite.

Yet every possibility longs for fulfillment. It is the restless potency of love awaiting its act. What metaphysics calls possibilitas essendi, theology recognizes as voluntas donandi. The divine necessity of goodness does not rest in self-identity but overflows into self-communication. In this outpouring, possibility passes into grace: the metaphysical structure of participation becomes the historical drama of salvation.

But here a new tension arises. For if grace flows from the necessary love of God, how can it appear as free, undeserved, and contingent? Does divine necessity compel the gift, or does divine freedom transcend even its own necessity? Between these poles—necessity as the essence of love and contingency as the form of its manifestation—grace unfolds as the living synthesis of both.

Thus what reason discerned in ontology as the mediating power of possibility, faith encounters in the economy as the contingent bestowal of mercy. The possible becomes the gracious; the modal relation of being becomes the personal relation of giver and recipient.

We proceed, then, to Disputationem XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae, in which it will be asked whether grace, though rooted in the necessity of divine love, manifests itself as the contingent gift by which the finite is drawn into the infinite—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.

Disputatio XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

On the Necessary Ground of Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum contingentia creaturarum fundetur non in carentia rationis aut necessitatis, sed in participatione ipsius necessarii; ita ut libertas et contingens non sint privationes intelligibilitatis, sed modi amoris divini in ordine creato.

Whether the contingency of creatures is grounded not in the absence of reason or necessity, but in participation in the necessary itself; such that freedom and contingency are not privations of intelligibility, but modes of divine love in the created order.

Thesis

Contingency does not stand opposed to necessity but proceeds from it as participation. The divine necessity, identical with the fullness of reason and goodness, freely communicates itself in finite forms. Thus, contingency arises not from the lack of sufficient reason, but from the plenitude of it: creation is the contingent manifestation of necessary wisdom. The Spirit of Understanding sustains this relation, making the finite capable of the infinite without collapse so that necessity remains divine, and intelligibly grounded contingency, becomes the mark of love’s generosity.

Locus Classicus

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.19, a.3:

“Deus necessario vult se, sed non necessario vult alia a se.”
(“God necessarily wills Himself, but not necessarily the things other than Himself.”)

Leibniz, Théodicée, §173:

“La liberté divine consiste dans le choix du meilleur, déterminé par la raison même de son excellence.”
(“Divine freedom consists in the choice of the best, determined by the reason of its own excellence.”)

Spinoza, Ethica I, prop. 33:

“Res nulla contingens est.”
(“Nothing is contingent.”)

Peter van Inwagen, Metaphysics (2009):

“God could have created differently, or not at all; there is no reason why He did one rather than another.”

Explicatio

The metaphysical relation between necessity and contingency defines the very structure of creation.  For Aquinas, God is necessary per essentiam—His existence and goodness are identical—but His creative act is free, for it is not a product of external compulsion, but of the internal sufficiency of love.  For Leibniz, divine freedom is rational: God wills what is best because His intellect and will are one.  For Spinoza, however, necessity consumes contingency: whatever exists follows from the nature of God as a geometrical consequence.

Modernity inherited this trilemma: either determinism without freedom (Spinoza), freedom without reason (voluntarism, van Inwagen), or a reconciliation through participation (Aquinas, Leibniz at his best, and theological realism).

True contingency presupposes a necessary foundation, a will whose necessity is that of wisdom and goodness, not of constraint. To be contingent is to exist from another as from reason and cause, yet without coercion. The creature’s being is thus dependent but not necessitated; it is finite but intelligible.

This insight preserves both divine aseity and created freedom. The world’s contingency expresses not divine arbitrariness but divine generosity; it expresses the self-diffusion of the necessary Good into what might not have been, but which now participates in being and intelligibility through love.

Theologically, the Spiritus Intelligentiae mediates this relation. The Spirit holds together necessity and contingency, preserving intelligibility without determinism, and freedom without absurdity. Thus, what philosophy sought to separate, theology reunites in pneumatological causality: the freedom of God as the overflowing of His necessity.

 Objectiones

Ob. I. Spinoza holds that whatever exists follows necessarily from the divine nature. To posit contingency in God’s act is to posit imperfection. A truly infinite being cannot do otherwise than He does.

Ob. II. We learn from Inwagen that if every act of creation has a sufficient reason, then God could not have refrained from creating that world. The only way to preserve freedom is to allow that God’s creative decision has no determining reason.

Ob. III. Hume argues that contingency and necessity are subjective projections. The claim that the world must have a reason for its structure is a habit of thought, not a feature of being.

Ob. IV. Modern existentialism claims that to ground contingency in necessity is to destroy human freedom. Existence precedes essence. Thus, human contingency is absolute, not participatory.

Ob. V. Theological voluntarism holds that if God must act according to reason, then divine will is not free but constrained by intellect. Freedom must be pure voluntas indifferentiae.

Responsiones

Ad I. Spinoza confuses divine necessity with logical necessity. God’s essence is necessary, but His creative act is free precisely because His necessity is personal and rational, not mechanical. The necessity of the Good overflows without coercion, as light diffuses from its source.

Ad II. Freedom does not require absence of reason but coincidence of reason and will. God’s will is not an arbitrary event but the act of infinite intelligibility. To say God acts without reason is to reduce divine action to caprice.

Ad III. Hume’s empiricism dissolves ontology into psychology. Contingency is not a mere epistemic condition but a mode of being dependent on divine act. The regularity of the world reveals rational foundation, not habitual illusion.

Ad IV. Existentialism mistakes dependence for oppression. To exist contingently from God is not to be determined externally but to be upheld by love. The creature’s freedom is participation in divine rational vitality, not its negation.

Ad V. Voluntarism severs freedom from truth and thereby destroys both. The divine will is not arbitrary because it is identical with divine reason. The highest freedom is not indifference but the unhindered expression of perfect wisdom.

Nota

The paradox of contingency and necessity dissolves only when necessity is conceived not as constraint but as plenitude. The divine will is not forced to create; it creates because it is perfect. Contingency thus becomes the temporal image of divine superabundance: a world that might not have been, yet whose existence reflects eternal reason.

The PSR therefore remains valid within contingency, though in a transposed register. Every contingent effect has its reason, not because it is logically deduced, but because it participates in the intelligibility of divine love. The Spirit holds these together: the necessary as the truth of being, the contingent as its radiance.

Determinatio

1. Necessity and contingency are not opposites but correlative modes: the latter presupposes the former as its ground.

2. Divine necessity is identical with goodness and wisdom; it does not compel but overflows.

3. Created contingency arises from divine necessity as gift, not as exception.

4. Freedom is not irrational spontaneity but participation in rational self-giving.

5. The Spirit mediates necessity and contingency, rendering creation intelligible yet free.

6. Thus, the true ratio sufficientis contingentiae is ordo amoris: the love that necessarily gives and contingently adorns.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino

If contingency rests upon necessary wisdom, then divine freedom must be conceived not as arbitrary choice but as the rational plenitude of love. God’s liberty is neither mechanical nor indifferent but the infinite self-expression of the good.

We must therefore examine how divine necessity and divine freedom coexist without contradiction, how it is that God, who necessarily wills Himself, freely wills creation, and how this act preserves both intelligibility and grace.

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputationem XLIV: De Contingentia Creationis et Libero Arbitrio Divino, in which it will be asked whether divine freedom is grounded in rational plenitude rather than in indeterminate will, and whether creation itself, in all its contingency, is the manifestation of wisdom that cannot but love.

Disputatio XLII: De Principio Sufficientis Rationis et Participatione Intellectus

On the Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Participation of Intellect

Quaeritur

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

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

Thesis

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

Locus Classicus

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

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

Spinoza, Ethica, I, prop. 11, schol.:

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

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

Determinatio

1. The PSR may be distinguished in three senses:

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

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

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

2. Theology adopts the moderate form: participation without collapse.

   • Contingency is preserved, but reason remains grounded in divine wisdom.

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XLIII: De Necessario Fundamento Contingentiae

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

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

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

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

Disputatio XXXII: De Ratione Quaerente et Spiritu Intelligentiae

On the Questioning Reason and the Spirit of Understanding

Quaeritur

Utrum ratio humana, in eo quod naturaliter quaerit sufficientem causam et universale intellectum, agat ex se ipsā, an vero haec inquisitio sit signum participationis Spiritus Intelligentiae, qui est ipsa actio intelligibilitatis divinae in creatura.

It is asked whether human reason, in its natural drive toward sufficient reason and universal intelligibility, acts from itself, or whether this very questioning is the sign of participation in the Spirit of Understanding—the divine act of intelligibility present within the creature.

Thesis

The finite intellect does not generate its own light but participates in the divine Light that enables understanding. Reason’s perpetual inquiry into causes and grounds, its ratio quaerens, is not autonomous curiosity, but it is instead the trace of the Spirit’s presence in the intellect. The desire for sufficient reason is itself evidence of participation in infinite reason (ratio infinita). Thus, Spiritus Intelligentiae is both the condition and the telos of all rational inquiry: every genuine question already presupposes the divine horizon that alone can answer it.

Locus Classicus

“In lumine tuo videbimus lumen.” — Psalm 36:9
(“In thy light shall we see light.”)

Augustine interprets this as meaning that all human understanding occurs within the illumination of divine intellect: “Quod intelligimus, in ipsa luce intelligimus quae est Deus.” (De Trinitate XII.15).  Aquinas further develops this insight:“Lux intellectualis quae in nobis est nihil aliud est quam participatio lucis divinae.” (ST I.79.4). Hence, reason’s light is participatory, not self-originating; the Spirit of understanding is the act whereby finite intellect becomes luminous to itself and to the world.

Explicatio

The human mind is naturally a ratio quaerens; it is a being drawn toward the intelligible. It seeks not only facts but their sufficient reasons, not only order but the ground of order. Leibniz gave this drive formal expression in the principium rationis sufficientis: nothing exists without a reason why it is so and not otherwise.

Yet the principle, when pursued consistently, transcends the finite. This is so because every finite reason refers to another, and the chain cannot complete itself except in a necessary and infinite act of reason. Thus, the principle of sufficient reason functions as an analogia mentis: the finite intellect mirrors within itself the structure of the infinite intellect in which all reasons are one.

Kant sought to delimit this movement within the bounds of possible experience, identifying the desire for total explanation with the transcendental illusion of reason. But theology reinterprets this “illusion” as the trace of the Spirit, the sign that finite reason is oriented by nature toward the infinite. Gödel showed that no consistent system can prove its own completeness. So it is also true that the finite intellect cannot rest in its own light but must open itself to the greater light in which all truths cohere.

Therefore, the unending search of reason is not futility but vocation; it is a created participation in the Spirit of understanding. The Spirit is the lumen superius that draws thought beyond itself toward the fullness of intelligibility: the Infinite in which the true and the real coincide.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Empiricism claims that reason’s questions arise from sensory experience; they are inductive extensions of perception, not signs of divine participation. Inquiry proceeds from curiosity, not grace.

Obj. II. Kantians argue that the drive toward sufficient reason is a regulative principle, useful for coherence but not constitutive of reality. It expresses the form of human reason, not any participation in a transcendent intellect.

Obj. III. Naturalism supposes that intellectual curiosity is an evolutionary advantage; the search for explanation enhances survival. Thus, no divine Spirit need be invoked to explain it.

Obj. IV. Existentialism asserts that the questioning drive signifies the absence of meaning, not its presence. It testifies to human finitude and anxiety, not to participation in divine reason.

Obj. V. Mysticism holds that to ascribe reason’s restlessness to the Spirit is to confuse knowledge with faith. The Spirit speaks in silence, not in reasoning; rational inquiry distracts from contemplation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Empiricism mistakes the occasion for the cause. While inquiry begins with experience, its form transcends experience; the very demand for universal explanation cannot be derived from particular sensations. It testifies to a light within the intellect that orders appearances toward being.

Ad II. Kant rightly names the demand for totality “regulative,” yet this very regulation presupposes an orientation toward the unconditioned. Theological reason reads this not as illusion but as vocation: the Spirit inclines the intellect toward its true completion in divine understanding.

Ad III. Natural explanation may describe the mechanism by which curiosity functions, but not why the cosmos is intelligible at all. The explanatory success of science itself presupposes that reality is structured according to reason, a structure theology identifies with the spiritus intelligentiae.

Ad IV. Existential anxiety is indeed the shadow of transcendence. The question persists because the answer is real. The void that drives thought forward is the echo of the infinite within the finite; it is the Spirit’s hidden prompting toward the ground of being.

Ad V. Contemplation and reason are not opposites but stages of the same participation. The Spirit who grants silence also animates inquiry; the one light illumines both mind and heart. Rational questioning, rightly ordered, is a form of praise.

Nota

The restlessness of reason is not an imperfection of intellect but its created likeness to the infinite intelligibility of God. Accordingly, the principle of sufficient reason is not a human invention but a vestige of the Spirit’s own act of understanding within the finite mind. Reason asks because it has already been addressed. Every question presupposes the divine Word that calls it into thought.

Hence, the structure of inquiry is itself participatory. The ratio quaerens is the Spirit reflecting upon itself within the creature. To reason is already to echo the divine dialogue in which knowing and being coincide. The mind’s drive toward completion—what Kant called "the transcendental subreption" and what Gödel formalized as incompleteness—is, theologically, the trace of the Spirit’s self-communication. In every genuine act of understanding, the finite intellect becomes translucent to the Infinite Light that grounds it.

Thus, questioning is not the negation of faith but its rational form; the open system of inquiry mirrors the openness of creation to its Creator. Reason’s incompleteness is grace made epistemic. This incompleteness is a formal sign that the Spirit of Understanding continues to speak within the human mind, drawing thought beyond itself toward the Truth that both conceives and fulfills it.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Human reason, as ratio quaerens, bears within itself an impulse toward sufficient explanation that cannot be satisfied within finitude.

2. This impulse is not self-generated but arises from the participation of the intellect in the divine light, in the Spiritus Intelligentiae who is both source and goal of all understanding.

3. The principle of sufficient reason is therefore a formal echo of the Spirit’s creative intelligibility: every reason points beyond itself to the infinite Reason that grounds all.

4. Finite systems, like finite intellects, remain incomplete; their very openness to completion reveals their participation in the infinite.

5. The restlessness of reason is thus not a defect but a sign of grace. It is the intellectus in via seeking its home in Intellectus aeternus.

Hence we conclude: Ratio quaerens est Spiritus seipsum desiderans.
The questioning reason is the Spirit desiring itself.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXIII

Having seen that every inquiry of reason presupposes the infinite act of understanding that grounds it, we turn now to the formal structure of that dependence. If every finite order is incomplete, what is the nature of the infinite truthmaker in which it finds completion? This question leads directly to the next disputation: XXXIII: De Systemate Incompleto et Veritatis Factore Infinito. Here the logical insight of Gödel becomes a theological axiom. The finite requires the infinite not only to be known, but to be true.

Disputatio XXIII: De Fundamento Legum Naturae

On the Ground of the Laws of Nature

Quaeritur

Quaeritur utrum mundus finitus per se possit rationem reddere regularitatum quae in ipso obtinent, an vero requirat veritatis factorem infinitum qui earum necessitatem et convenientiam inter proprietates constituat.

It is asked whether the finite world can of itself give an account of the regularities that obtain within it, or whether it requires an infinite truthmaker that constitutes both their necessity and their coordination among properties.

Thesis

No finite reason can adequately explain the necessity of natural law without recourse to an unconditioned truthmaker. Every attempt to ground lawfulness within the finite order ends either in brute fact, in mere description, or in regress. The necessity and coordination of the finite therefore presuppose an infinite ground.

Locus Classicus

“He himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things… for in him we live and move and have our being.”
— Acts 17:25, 28

Patristic commentators from Athanasius (Contra Gentes 41) to Augustine (De Trinitate I.6) read Paul’s words as denying that creatures possess in themselves either being or order. Aquinas echoed this interpretation (ST I.105.5): “Since the being of a creature depends upon the Creator’s influx, so too does its operation and order.” Thus the tradition rejects any claim that the finite law of things is self-grounding.

Explicatio

Since the rise of modern science, the regularities of nature have been taken as the paradigm of intelligibility. The deductive–nomological model of explanation sought to show how particular happenings follow from general laws, much as the medieval astronomer derived eclipses from celestial mechanics. Yet this model silently presupposes the existence and stability of those laws; it uses them without explaining why they obtain.

Microphysical explanation was meant to improve upon this by tracing macro-level regularities to the behavior of elementary particles. But it soon became clear that the very behavior of these particles -- obeying field equations, conservation laws, and symmetry constraints -- rests again upon ultimate regularities that are themselves unexplained.

Accordingly, the philosophical task is to ask what truthmaker accounts for the existence and necessity of these basic laws. Must we accept them as primitive features of the finite, or do they point beyond the finite to an infinite ground making possible their order and coordination?

The following trilemma arises:

1. Primitivism holds that laws are ultimate facts of the finite world, self-standing and unexplained.

2. Descriptivism claims that laws are linguistic or mathematical summaries of what happens, containing no real necessity.

3. Those allowing an Infinite Ground argue that laws possess genuine necessity only if their order is constituted by an unconditioned truthmaker that grounds their coordination.

The first halts inquiry; the second dissolves necessity; only the third preserves both intelligibility and modality.

Objectiones

Objectio I: The empiricist claims that science does not seek metaphysical grounds but predictive success. To demand a truthmaker beyond empirical law is to mistake the limits of scientific explanation for a deficiency in reality itself.

Objectio II.  Primitivists like Maudlin declare that laws are fundamental ontological features. To ask “why these laws?” is a category mistake. Explanation ends rightly where necessity begins.

Objectio III.  Humeans like David Lewis say that there are no governing laws over and above the mosaic of events. Laws merely describe the best systematization of what occurs. Necessity is a manner of speaking, not a metaphysical tie.

Objectio IV.  Immanent realists like David Armstrong argue that immanent universals and their relations of necessitation suffice. The finite already contains within itself the structures that make lawfulness intelligible. No appeal to an infinite ground is required.

Objectio V. Kant and transcendental philosophy generally hole that necessity belongs to the conditions of human cognition, not to things in themselves. To seek a truthmaker beyond the phenomenal order is to step outside the bounds of reason.

Responsiones

Ad 1. Predictive adequacy is not metaphysical sufficiency. Scientific method may stop at empirical laws, but reason does not. To confuse epistemic limits with ontological closure is to mistake what we cannot measure for what cannot be.

Ad 2. To call a law “primitive” is to give it the status of a brute fact, and this is an admission that it is unexplained. Primitivism therefore secures necessity only by halting explanation, treating the finite as self-grounding without warrant.

Ad 3. The best-system analysis reduces necessity to description. But description, however elegant, cannot make a law necessary. It says how the world behaves, not why it must. Humeanism thus exchanges being for grammar.

Ad 4. Relations among finite universals can explain why certain properties co-occur, but not why these universals and these relations exist. The “necessitation” relation itself either regresses or becomes primitive. The coordination of all such relations across the cosmos still calls for a higher unity.

Ad 5. Transcendental necessity explains how we must think the world, not how the world is. If the phenomenal order is intelligible only through the assumption of stable laws, then reason itself points beyond phenomena to that which makes stability possible.

Determinatio

The search for the ground of natural law thus faces a decisive choice.

If we remain within the finite, explanation ends either in brute fact (primitivism) or in empty description (Humeanism). If we turn inward to the structures of the finite (immanent realism), we face regress or unexplained selection. The explanatory trilemma of bruteness, vacuity, or transcendence is therefore unavoidable.

From this it follows that the finite cannot be complete unto itself. The very intelligibility of law points toward an unconditioned truthmaker—an Infinite ground that confers necessity and coordinates the manifold of the finite. The appeal to such an Infinite is not a theological excess but the only philosophically adequate completion of explanation.

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Every finite explanation of natural law fails by terminating in one of three defects:
     (a) brute necessity (primitivism),
     (b) vacuous description (Humean regularity), or
     (c) infinite regress (immanent relationalism).

2. The finite as finite is composite, coordinated, and contingent; it cannot be the source of its own necessity.

3. The unity of laws and their coherence across domains demand a ground that is simple, self-explanatory, and unconditioned — an Infinite truthmaker.

4. This conclusion is not a theological intrusion but a philosophical necessity. Reason itself, in seeking sufficient cause, transcends the finite and implicitly participates in the Infinite.

Therefore the order of nature is not self-grounding but participatory: its necessity and coordination are signs of dependence upon an Infinite act in which the finite both is and is held together.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXIV

In the preceding disputation it was argued that the laws of nature cannot be understood merely as empirical generalizations or statistical regularities. Their very intelligibility presupposes a Logos that orders being from within, a divine rationality that grounds the harmony between mind and world. The cosmos, thus conceived, is not a closed system of mechanism but a structured participation in the intelligible act of God.

Yet if the visible laws of nature manifest such divine order, they must themselves rest upon something more primordial. What is the origin of lawfulness as such? Do the regularities of the cosmos emerge from deeper ontological principles—legibus primitivis—that articulate the very possibility of order? And if so, are these primitive laws expressions of divine wisdom antecedent to physical manifestation, the traces of the eternal Logos within the ground of being itself?

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXIV: De Legibus Primitivis, in which we shall inquire into the foundational strata of law beneath empirical nature: the primordial conditions through which order, form, and causality first become possible, and by which the world stands as a coherent revelation of the Creator’s rational act.