Reality Does More than Resist; It Corrects

This essay continues an ongoing series in philosophical theology from the Department of Philosophical Theology at Christ School of Theology. The series asks a few basic but demanding questions: What makes reality intelligible? How does theological language work? What philosophical assumptions support Christian belief? Behind it stands a simple conviction: theology exists because these questions exist, and its first task is to make Christian doctrine intelligible without reducing, replacing, or explaining away the reality to which that doctrine points.

The previous essay argued that reality has the first word. Inquiry does not begin because an isolated subject decides to direct its attention toward an otherwise indifferent world. It begins because something has already presented itself, interrupted our expectations, resisted our descriptions, or called our understanding into question. Before we formulate a hypothesis, devise an experiment, or construct a theory, something has already occasioned the inquiry.

That claim reverses an order of explanation deeply embedded in modern thought, which imagines us first as active knowers who subsequently turn toward reality as an object of intellectual activity. The actual experience of inquiry suggests otherwise. Reality does not enter the process only after we have begun asking questions; the questions arise because reality has already refused to remain unnoticed.

From resistance to correction

Resistance alone, however, does not explain inquiry. A locked door resists the body. A steep hill resists the traveler. A malfunctioning machine resists its operator's intentions. Such resistance may frustrate us, delay us, or force a change of behavior, but it does not yet constitute correction.

Intellectual inquiry requires something more: reality must be capable not merely of impeding our purposes but of showing that an account of it is inadequate. A scientist whose prediction fails does not conclude that nature has simply been uncooperative; she asks whether the theory, the measurement, or the experimental design was mistaken. A historian who discovers a document inconsistent with a familiar narrative does not treat it as an obstacle to a preferred interpretation; he asks whether the narrative must be revised. A philosopher who finds a contradiction within an argument does not treat it as an unfortunate collision of equally acceptable possibilities; she recognizes that something has gone wrong. In each case, reality does more than resist. It corrects.

To be corrected is not merely to be pushed in a different direction. It is to discover that one ought to think differently because one's previous account has failed to do justice to its object. This "ought" is already present in every serious inquiry. We do not prefer a revised theory merely because it is newer; we judge it more adequate. We do not abandon a historical interpretation because another has become fashionable; we abandon it because the evidence no longer supports it. We do not reject an argument because it is rhetorically inconvenient; we reject it because its conclusion does not follow or its premises cannot be sustained.

Inquiry is therefore normative from the beginning, for it distinguishes better from worse descriptions, more and less adequate explanations, responsible from irresponsible judgments. Without such distinctions there may still be curiosity, experimentation, or invention, but there is no disciplined search for understanding.

The limits of construction

This is where many contemporary accounts of knowledge become unstable. They rightly emphasize that human knowing is historically situated, linguistically mediated, socially conditioned, and conceptually structured. No one encounters reality from nowhere; every observation occurs within practices of interpretation, and every judgment employs concepts inherited from particular traditions. Yet none of this explains how those practices, concepts, and traditions can themselves be corrected. A community may share an interpretation and still be mistaken. An inherited narrative may organize experience powerfully while concealing what actually occurred. A conceptual scheme may be internally coherent while systematically misdescribing its object. Even a theory of knowledge that insists all knowledge is socially constituted must distinguish a more adequate account of that constitution from a less adequate one.

The language of construction, then, cannot be the final word. Human beings undoubtedly construct theories, models, narratives, and conceptual frameworks. The planetary model, the economic model, the historical narrative, and the theological system all result from acts of selection, abstraction, and representation; no model reproduces its object without mediation. Construction is therefore not the enemy of realism—it is one of the conditions under which finite beings become capable of understanding anything at all. The relevant question is not whether our models are constructed, but whether they remain answerable to what they seek to understand.

The difficulty arises when the constructed character of a model is taken to mean that it owes nothing beyond itself. At that point coherence replaces adequacy, usefulness replaces truth, and a model's capacity to organize discourse matters more than its capacity to disclose its object. A model may be coherent and still false. It may be useful and still distort what it represents. It may secure agreement among those who employ it while excluding every consideration that would expose its inadequacy. That a model works for some purpose does not establish that it has understood the reality with which it deals.

This becomes especially clear when models meet anomalies. An anomaly is not simply something unexpected; it is something that ought not to have occurred if the model were adequate. Its significance lies in the tension between what the model permits us to expect and what reality actually presents. Yet even anomalies do not automatically correct us—human beings are remarkably skilled at protecting favored explanations from inconvenient evidence, whether by dismissing exceptions, redefining terms, altering standards of evidence, questioning a critic's motives, or introducing auxiliary explanations whose real function is to prevent the original account from being tested. A model becomes intellectually responsible only when it permits reality to count against it.

That sentence sounds obvious, but much depends on it. Inquiry requires more than the availability of evidence; it requires a willingness to let evidence exercise normative force. Reality must be granted the authority to expose not only that our expectations have failed, but that our descriptions must change.

The third partner

This is why inquiry always includes what might be called a third partner. There is the knowing subject, with a history, language, community, and set of intellectual practices. There is the theory, model, or interpretation through which the subject seeks understanding. And there is the reality the model intends to disclose.

This third partner cannot be absorbed into either of the others. It is not merely a projection of the knowing subject, because it continually resists what the subject would prefer to find. Nor is it identical with the model, since competing models may address the same reality, and every model remains open to correction by what it fails to preserve.

Once this third partner disappears, inquiry changes character. Disagreement becomes a contest between perspectives rather than a shared attempt to understand something that exceeds them both. Theories are assessed by the identities they sustain, the interests they serve, or the effects they produce, and questions of truth are gradually redescribed as questions of power, coherence, usefulness, or social location. These considerations are not illegitimate—intellectual practices do involve power, interpretations do arise from particular social locations, theories do have consequences—but none of them explains why an account of power, location, or consequence should itself be accepted as more adequate than its alternatives. Even the critique of truth must present itself as a truthful critique.

This inescapability suggests that correction belongs more deeply to inquiry than any particular theory of knowledge does. Before we decide whether we are realists, idealists, pragmatists, or constructivists, we have already distinguished claims that illuminate reality from claims that obscure it, and assumed that inquiry can disclose why one judgment should replace another. The phenomenon is familiar enough that we scarcely notice it: a physician changes a diagnosis because the patient's condition does not fit the original account; a mechanic abandons one explanation of an engine failure because the parts do not behave as predicted; a child revises an assumption about another person because that person's actions keep contradicting it. In each case, understanding advances when the object is permitted to instruct the one seeking to understand it.

This instruction need not arrive as a complete answer. Reality seldom interprets itself in finished form; it confronts us through anomalies, contradictions, absences, patterns, and unexpected relations. We must still reason, imagine, compare, and construct. Correction does not eliminate the active work of the knower—it places that work under judgment.

Creativity and humility

Genuine inquiry therefore requires both creativity and humility. Creativity, because reality does not hand us ready-made conceptual schemes; we must devise models capable of rendering its order intelligible. Humility, because no model can claim immunity from the reality it seeks to understand. The deepest intellectual failure occurs when creativity is preserved but humility is lost—when inquiry becomes the art of producing ever more sophisticated constructions without allowing anything outside those constructions to judge them. The result may be ingenious, influential, even institutionally successful. It will not be understanding.

What correction requires of reality

The claim that reality corrects us goes beyond asserting that a world exists independently of human thought. A merely independent reality could remain mute, chaotic, or wholly unintelligible; it might resist our actions without providing any basis for distinguishing a better description from a worse one. Correction requires more than independence. It requires order.

Reality must possess determinate features and relations that our descriptions can preserve or distort. It must be stable enough that inquiry can discover patterns, rich enough that our first descriptions remain incomplete, and intelligible enough that failure can become the occasion for improved understanding. The normativity of inquiry is not imposed on reality from outside; it arises within the encounter between finite understanding and an order that exceeds it. We discover that we ought to revise our judgments because reality has shown them to be inadequate.

None of this makes correction final. Later inquiry may expose weaknesses in what presently appears to be the better account, and reality does not speak unambiguously—evidence must be interpreted, and reasonable people may disagree about what a given anomaly requires. But fallibility does not abolish correction; it makes correction necessary. The possibility of error presupposes a difference between what we believe and what is the case. The possibility of learning presupposes that this difference need not remain permanent. Inquiry inhabits the space between them—the space in which reality can unsettle our judgments and call forth more adequate ones.

Toward the next question

We can now state the advance beyond the previous essay. Reality has the first word because inquiry begins in response to what confronts us. But that first word is not merely the brute announcement of presence—it is also a claim upon our understanding. Reality does not merely say, "I am here." It says, "You have not yet understood me."

That claim gives inquiry its peculiar dignity. Human beings do not merely adjust themselves to their environments; they seek to become answerable to what is real. They recognize, however imperfectly, that an inadequate description ought to be revised, and that understanding bears responsibilities not exhausted by usefulness or success.

The question that now emerges is deeper still. Norms such as truth, adequacy, and explanatory superiority are not objects situated alongside other objects. We do not observe adequacy as we observe a tree, a molecule, or a distant planet. Yet without such norms, no observation becomes evidence and no theory becomes corrigible. What kind of reality can call forth not merely causal reactions but responsible judgments? What must the world be like if it not only resists our constructions but teaches us how those constructions have failed?

Reality has the first word. We must now ask how that word becomes intelligible as correction.

Prolegomena to Disputationes Theologicae III: Reference Before Proclamation

“Theological language cannot proclaim what it has first failed to name.”

This essay forms part of Prolegomena to Disputationes Theologicae, a series in philosophical theology produced through the Department of Philosophical Theology at Christ School of Theology. Together these essays articulate the methodological foundations of the larger Disputationes Theologicae project by recovering the proper order of theological inquiry. The series proceeds from the conviction that theology exists because these questions exist and that theology's first responsibility is to render Christian doctrine intelligible without diminishing, translating away, or replacing the reality to which it refers. Having argued that theology must first render its judgments intelligible, the present essay asks the next necessary question: How does theological language genuinely refer to God? Only language that truly refers can be truthfully proclaimed.

This essay is the third of six Prolegomena to Disputationes Theologicae, a series in philosophical theology produced through the Department of Philosophical Theology at Christ School of Theology. Together, these essays articulate the methodological foundations of the larger Disputationes Theologicae project by recovering the proper order of theological inquiry. They proceed from the conviction that theology exists because these questions exist and that theology’s first responsibility is to render Christian doctrine intelligible without diminishing, translating away, or replacing the reality to which it refers.

The preceding essay argued that intelligibility is not the source of theological truth but a condition under which theological claims may be responsibly affirmed or denied. Theology therefore seeks conceptual clarity before it renders judgment. Yet intelligibility alone cannot complete theology’s task. One may understand perfectly well what a sentence means while remaining uncertain whether it is about anything at all.

The next question therefore arises necessarily:

How does theological language become genuinely about God?

This question is prior to proclamation. The priority at issue is not necessarily temporal. The preacher need not first complete a philosophical theory of reference before proclaiming the gospel. The priority is logical and theological. Proclamation cannot create its own referent. It cannot make itself speech about God merely through rhetorical power, ecclesial authorization, existential effect, or the sincerity of the one who speaks.

One cannot proclaim what one’s language has failed to identify.

A sermon may be rhetorically compelling, existentially arresting, ecclesially sanctioned, and even morally transformative while remaining uncertain in its reference. Before theology asks whether proclamation is faithful, effective, or life-giving, it must ask whether the language of proclamation continues to name the reality of which prophetic and apostolic testimony speaks.

Theological language therefore requires more than intelligibility.

It requires reference.

Reference is among the most neglected questions in modern theology. Enormous attention has been given to meaning, interpretation, narrative, language games, performative utterance, communal practice, existential appropriation, and rhetorical effect. These inquiries have often been illuminating. Language does form communities, shape perception, order practices, and open possibilities of existence. The question, however, is whether the reality about which theology speaks is constituted by these linguistic and communal activities or whether those activities remain answerable to a reality they did not create.

The decisive question is simple:

What makes theological discourse about God rather than merely about religion?

Theology does not merely analyze religious consciousness. It does not merely describe ecclesial practices, preserve inherited vocabularies, narrate communal identities, or interpret human experiences of ultimacy. It claims to speak about God: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the Father of Jesus Christ; the God who creates, judges, reconciles, raises the dead, and promises the consummation of creation.

Unless these claims genuinely refer beyond the linguistic practices in which they are expressed, theology has exchanged its subject matter for its own discourse. It may continue to use the word ‘God,’ but the word may now designate only a moral ideal, a communal self-understanding, an existential possibility, a cultural memory, or the symbolic horizon of human meaning. The vocabulary remains, while the subject has quietly changed.

Reference must therefore be distinguished from several closely related notions.

Reference is not meaning. A sentence may be intelligible even when its principal terms fail to identify anything real.

Reference is not truth. A statement may successfully identify its subject while predicating something false of it. Reference makes truth and falsity possible; it does not by itself determine which obtains.

Reference is not warrant. A person may possess reasons for believing a claim even though the terms employed in that claim do not refer as the speaker assumes.

Reference is not exhaustive understanding. Speakers frequently refer successfully while possessing incomplete, confused, or partially mistaken conceptions of that to which they refer. Referential success does not require conceptual mastery.

Nor is reference identical with existential appropriation, ecclesial participation, or performative effect. These may accompany successful reference, and proclamation may indeed become a means through which God addresses the hearer. Yet neither personal transformation nor communal use can by itself guarantee that the language employed remains about the God whom Christian witness claims to name.

Theology therefore requires a distinct account of reference.

The Christian answer does not begin with the human capacity to reach God through description, inference, religious experience, or conceptual construction. It begins with God’s capacity to identify himself. God does not first become the referent of theological discourse when human beings devise a sufficiently adequate name. God gives himself to be named.

Israel does not invent the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Church does not construct the Father of Jesus Christ by adopting a distinctive religious vocabulary. God publicly identifies himself through acts and words: in the calling of Israel, the prophetic witness, the incarnation of the Word, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the apostolic testimony, and the scriptural form in which this testimony is normatively received.

Human language refers because human beings have first been addressed.

Reference is therefore receptive before it is expressive.

This ordering distinguishes Christian theology from theories that construe theological language primarily as the projection of religious consciousness, the grammar of ecclesial life, or the symbolic articulation of human existence. Theology speaks because it has first been spoken to. It names because God has first made himself identifiable.

Yet revelation does not eliminate philosophical questions concerning reference. It creates them. Once God has acted and spoken, theology must ask how names, predicates, narratives, metaphors, and doctrines continue to refer to the God who has revealed himself. It must ask how reference remains stable through historical distance, linguistic change, doctrinal development, cultural translation, and the inevitable partiality of human understanding.

Divine self-disclosure is therefore the ground of theological reference, but it is not a substitute for theological discipline.

The problem is not merely whether the Church has retained the same words. The same expression may be preserved while its referent is altered. Nor does referential continuity require that every generation possess precisely the same descriptions or conceptual schemes. Different descriptions may identify the same reality, while identical descriptions may be employed within fundamentally different ontologies.

Theology must therefore distinguish continuity of vocabulary from continuity of reference.

This is also why theological interpretation cannot terminate in textual analysis alone. Texts possess linguistic forms, historical settings, and authorial intentions. These are indispensable to interpretation. Yet prophetic and apostolic authors do not finally intend only their own acts of writing. They intend realities. They bear witness to what God has done, whom God has identified himself to be, and what God has promised.

Theological interpretation consequently asks not only what a text meant within its first historical context, but what reality the text identifies and whether contemporary theological speech remains answerable to that same reality.

The order is therefore theological before it is hermeneutical:

God acts and speaks.

Prophetic and apostolic witnesses identify the one who has acted.

Scripture normatively bears this witness.

The Church receives, interprets, and confesses Scripture.

Doctrine tests whether the Church’s speech preserves the identity of the one witnessed to.

Proclamation addresses the hearer in the name of this same God.

The legitimacy of proclamation depends upon preserving rather than replacing this referential order. Proclamation does not establish the identity of God by its own occurrence. It becomes genuine proclamation when the God who has identified himself in Israel and in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ remains the one about whom—and through whose agency—the proclamation speaks.

The claim that reference precedes proclamation therefore does not deny that God acts through proclamation. It identifies the condition under which such a claim is intelligible. God may address the hearer through the proclaimed Word because the proclaimed Word does not invent the one who speaks through it. Its authority is derivative. Its referent is antecedent. Its efficacy, when granted, is divine.

This also explains why philosophical theology remains indispensable. Philosophy does not discover or manufacture the referent of Christian theology independently of revelation. Revelation has already identified the one about whom theology speaks. Philosophical theology clarifies the logical, semantic, and ontological conditions under which theological language may continue to refer faithfully to this God.

It distinguishes naming from description, reference from predication, identity from attributed properties, and continuity of terminology from continuity of subject matter. It asks how speakers may successfully refer under conditions of partial understanding, how descriptions may change without changing the referent, and how apparently identical theological expressions may conceal incompatible accounts of reality.

These distinctions are not external constraints imposed upon theology. They are instruments of theological accountability. Without them, theology may preserve traditional vocabulary while replacing its subject with something conceptually more manageable.

Reference is therefore neither a merely linguistic achievement nor a merely historical inheritance. It is the continuing discipline of remaining answerable to the God whose self-disclosure first made theological language possible. It is the refusal to allow the Church’s words, practices, experiences, or conceptual systems to become substitutes for the reality to which they are ordered.

Theology may revise its descriptions.

It may refine its concepts.

It may correct its inherited models.

It may discover that some of its predicates were confused, inadequate, or false.

What it may not do is quietly change the subject while continuing to speak as though nothing decisive has happened.

Reference precedes proclamation because proclamation can proclaim as gospel only what it has first received as God’s self-identification. Where reference fails, proclamation becomes religious speech about the community’s own meanings. Where reference is preserved, proclamation may remain answerable to the God who acts, speaks, judges, reconciles, and promises.

Only once the referent has been identified does the question of predication properly arise. We may then ask not merely whether theological language is about God, but whether what it says about God is true.

The next question therefore follows necessarily:

Under what conditions can theological judgments be true?