Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Quaeritur

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.

Thesis

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

Locus classicus

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

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

Explicatio

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

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

To express this symbolically (and then immediately explain):

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

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

Transitus ad Disputationem XII

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

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

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

Disputatio X: De Revelatione et Cognitione Dei

On Revelation and Knowledge of God

Quaeritur

Revelatio est actus ipsius Dei se manifestantis, non per deductionem rationis sed per communicationem Spiritus. Cognitio Dei non oritur ex speculatione humana, sed ex participatione in Verbo revelato. Hic actus cognoscendi est simul passio et donum: Deus cognoscitur in ipso actu quo se revelat.

Revelation is God’s own act of self-manifestation—not the result of human deduction but the gift of the Spirit’s communication. Knowledge of God does not arise from human speculation but from participation in the revealed Word. This act of knowing is at once reception and grace: God is known in the very act by which He reveals Himself.

Thesis

True knowledge of God (cognitio Dei) occurs only within revelation. Revelation is not the transmission of information about God but the divine act in which God gives Himself to be known. Hence, theology is not reflection upon an object but participation in a subject—the divine Word who both reveals and knows Himself.

Locus classicus

“No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” — Matthew 11:27

Here the Lord Himself locates all knowledge of God within His own life: revelation is reciprocal communion between Father, Son, and those brought into that communion by the Spirit. To know God is to share in God’s own knowing.

Explicatio

Revelation and cognition in theology are not parallel processes but one act viewed from two sides. When God reveals, He does not merely disclose propositions; He grants participation in His own self-understanding.

In the natural order of knowing, the subject apprehends an object. In revelation, the human knower is taken up into the act of divine self-knowledge. This is why revelation cannot be grasped through detached speculation. To know God is to be drawn into God’s own interpretive act—the Son’s eternal vision of the Father made present by the Spirit.

We may express this structurally (and then explain it):

• Let R represent revelation, the act of divine self-disclosure.

• Let K_h represent human knowledge of God, and K_d divine self-knowledge.
  The theological relation K_h ← R → K_d means: human knowing of God arises from and participates in divine knowing through revelation. The arrows indicate that revelation is the mediating act linking the two, not a neutral transmission.

Thus, the nova lingua theologiae (developed in Disputatio IX) is the very medium of revelation’s occurrence. God speaks in human words, and in those words He both gives Himself and illumines human understanding. This is why theology’s language must be both faithful to its divine source and humble in its human form—it carries the mystery of divine cognition within finite utterance.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to an empiricist epistemology, knowing God by revelation is impossible, because genuine knowledge requires sensory data or empirical verification. Since God is invisible and transcendent, a claim to divine revelation or cognition cannot meet the criteria of knowledge. Hence theology’s claim to knowledge of God is at best symbolic or metaphorical, not genuine cognition.

Obiectio II. If God is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly loving, then one would expect full clarity in divine revelation, so that human beings would know God unmistakably. Yet human experience is marked by ambiguity, dispute over revelation, and even ignorance of God’s being. Therefore the claim that God reveals Himself such that human cognition genuinely knows Him is doubtful.

Obiectio III. On the model of Karl Barth, revelation is not an object-of-knowledge but a divine event that confronts the human subject. One cannot therefore speak of “cognition of God” in the standard sense (as knowing a thing) when it comes to God. Theology must witness this event, not claim propositional knowledge. Thus the doctrine of cognition of God seems to import human epistemic categories into theology illegitimately.

Obiectio IV. Drawing on the apophatic tradition, one holds that God’s essence is utterly transcendent and beyond human concepts. Any attempt to speak of cognition of God risks projecting finite categories onto the infinite. Revelation may indicate God’s presence, but cognition of God qua God remains impossible. Theology must affirm unknowing rather than knowing.

Obiectio V. According to post-modern constructivist theology, our concepts of God are culturally, linguistically and historically conditioned. “Revelation” and “knowledge of God” are thus human constructions, not transcendent disclosures. To speak of cognition of God presumes universality of epistemic access which overlooks the diversity of human situatedness.

Responsiones

Ad I. While it is true that empirical knowledge depends on sensory input and verification, knowledge of God by revelation belongs to a different epistemic order, that of divine self-communication. God does not become an object among others but enters human cognition through the act of the Spirit. Thus revelation is not mere metaphor but the grounding of the cognitive relation: God authorises the knowing by revealing Himself. Human cognition remains finite and mediated, yet genuinely knows God insofar as it participates in the divine self-communication.

Ad II. The hiddenness of God and the ambiguity of human reception are real. Yet they do not negate that God reveals Himself; rather they indicate the finitude of human cognition and the mystery of divine freedom. Revelation is genuine, but its reception always occurs within historical, cultural, and existential constraints. Theology acknowledges the partiality of our knowledge (cf. “we see in a mirror dimly”) while affirming that cognition of God is possible because God discloses Himself. The fact that human cognition is limited does not show that cognition is impossible—instead it shows that the mode of cognition is participatory and mediated, not autonomous.

Ad III. Barth rightly emphasises revelation as event rather than object; theology is witness. Yet recognising revelation as event does not preclude cognition of God. The divine event triggers the cognitive relation: God speaks, human hearing occurs, understanding responds. Theology’s cognition of God is therefore event-grounded and relational rather than purely conceptual. The “object” known is not a thing outside but the living God who reveals. Thus knowledge of God remains propositional in one sense (we can speak truly of God) but always contextualised in the revelatory act.

Ad IV. The apophatic tradition protects the transcendence of God, but must be balanced with the cataphatic: God reveals Himself in ways we can know. The doctrine of cognition of God must affirm that while God’s essence remains ineffable, He reveals Himself truly in His acts and Word. Revelation does not exhaust God’s being but gives genuine knowledge of Him as He wills to be known. Theology holds that human cognition knows God analogically: we do not fully capture His essence, yet we know Him truly given His self-disclosure.

Ad V. Constructivism draws attention to the mediation of language and culture in theology—but revelation critiques and transcends those mediations. Knowing God by revelation means that human frameworks are not the origin of theology’s truth but the occasion for divine self-communication. Theology remains culturally embodied, yet its claim to knowledge is not simply human-constructed—it rests on God’s act of revealing. Therefore cognition of God is not eliminated by cultural mediation; instead it is enabled by the Spirit working within human contexts.

Nota

Revelation (revelatio) and knowledge (cognitio) form a single circle of divine communication. God reveals in order to be known, and He is known only in the revealing. This mutuality is the structure of the Trinitarian economy: the Father reveals through the Son; the Spirit causes that revelation to be received as knowledge within believers.

In the economy of faith, the Word that reveals becomes also the form of human knowing. Hence the ancient formula, fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”), describes not curiosity but participation: faith already contains understanding implicitly because it shares in the divine act of self-knowing.

If we recall earlier symbolic language, Tₙ, the “new language of theology,” is the linguistic body of revelation. Within this language, every true statement about God is a double movement:

• from God to man (revelation, grace descending), and

• from man to God (understanding, faith ascending).
  These two movements coincide in the Spirit, the living bridge of knowledge.

Thus, theology is not about God as distant object but about God in actu loquendi et cognoscendi—in the very act of speaking and knowing Himself within us.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Revelation is God’s own self-disclosure, not information about God but the communication of God Himself.

2. Knowledge of God (cognitio Dei) arises within this act of revelation as participation in divine self-knowing.

3. The Spirit mediates this communion, enabling the human mind to know God by sharing analogically in God’s own knowledge of Himself.

4. The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic form of revelation—finite words rendered luminous by divine presence.

5. Therefore, theology’s cognitive act is not speculative but participatory: to know God is to dwell within the Word that both reveals and knows.

Transitus ad Disputationem XI

Revelation grants true knowledge of God, but knowledge of God always implies knowledge of the world He creates. For the act of revealing and the act of creating are one: in both, the divine Word brings the intelligible into being. If God is known because He speaks, then the world itself is the first language of that speech—the ordered manifestation of divine wisdom in visible and intelligible form.

Hence we turn to Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Mundo Intelligibili, and ask how the created world reflects the intelligibility of its Creator, and whether the very structure of nature and reason discloses participation in the eternal Word through whom all things were made.

Disputatio IX: De Nova Lingua Theologiae

On the New Language of Theology

Nova lingua theologiae orta est ex ipsa Incarnatione Verbi, qua Deus intravit humanam loquelam et eam in se assumpsit. Haec lingua, Spiritu Sancto sustentata, est finita forma veritatis infinitae, in qua sermo humanus efficitur instrumentum divinae communicationis.

The new language of theology arises from the Incarnation itself, in which God entered human speech and assumed it into Himself. Sustained by the Holy Spirit, this language is the finite form of infinite truth in which human words become the instrument of divine communication.

Thesis

Theology speaks in a nova lingua, a new language born from the Incarnation and animated by the Holy Spirit. This language is finite in form yet infinite in meaning, because divine truth now dwells within human words. The nova lingua is therefore the linguistic expression of the Incarnation itself: the Word made flesh becomes the Word made speech.

Locus classicus

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” — John 1:14

The Incarnation is simultaneously an event of being and of language. The eternal Word does not merely assume human nature, but also assumes human speech. Through this act, the structure of human language is transfigured into a medium capable of bearing divine truth.

Explicatio

Theology’s language is not simply inherited from the old world but is reborn through the Word made flesh. In the old grammar of reason, contradiction signified error; in the new grammar of faith, contradiction becomes revelation. The nova lingua is thus a theological grammar where God is known sub contrario, under the sign of what appears its opposite.

Luther called this transformation a “new grammar” (nova grammatica), for one must learn to say that God is hidden in weakness, that death is life, that the cross is glory. This is not mere rhetoric but a new logic of being. In the nova lingua, the syntax of heaven passes into the phonemes of earth.

Formally, we can describe the change in this way: Let Tₒ denote the old language (the grammar of nature and reason) and Tₙ the new language (the grammar of faith). The transition Tₒ → Tₙ represents the Spirit’s act of translating finite speech into a vessel of divine meaning. This arrow does not mark replacement but transfiguration: what was merely human becomes theophanic through grace.

The nova lingua therefore bears within itself an inherent tension; it is simultaneously grammatical and miraculous. It possesses rules of form and order (syntax) yet overflows them through divine content (semantics). New wineskin is needed to hold new wine. To speak theologically is to live within this paradox of incarnation: finite speech filled with infinite truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If theology requires a nova lingua, it implies that ordinary human language is inadequate to speak of God, making revelation unintelligible to natural reason.

Obiectio II. A “new grammar” seems to introduce irrationality into theology, reducing faith to paradox and contradiction.

Obiectio III. If God assumes human language, divine truth becomes bound to history and culture, losing universality.

Responsiones

Ad I. Ordinary language is not destroyed but assumed. The nova lingua transforms the old. The Incarnation does not render reason obsolete; it fulfills it, giving speech a deeper telos. The words of faith remain human, but their authorization comes from the Spirit, not from philosophical sufficiency.

Ad II. The new grammar is not irrational but hyper-rational. It is an order of meaning higher than human logic can generate. Paradox is not nonsense; it is sanctified tension, revealing the finite’s openness to the infinite. The “contradictions” of faith are signs that reason has touched mystery.

Ad III. The Word’s entry into history does not limit truth but universalizes it. By assuming particular speech, God redeems all speech. The universality of the gospel is secured precisely in its historical concreteness: the eternal speaks within the temporal.

Nota

The nova lingua of theology is not merely new vocabulary but new being-in-speech. It marks the union of divine causality and human language. To speak in this language is already to participate in God’s self-communication.

Its structure mirrors the Incarnation:

• Finite form: human grammar, word order, syntax.

• Infinite content: divine meaning, given by the Spirit.

• Mediating act: the Spirit’s authorization (felicity) that makes the finite capable of bearing the infinite.

Thus, each true theological statement is a microcosm of the Word made flesh. The finite (word) does not contain the infinite (God), yet it truly conveys it, because the Spirit joins them without confusion or separation.

The nova lingua does not function as a metalanguage standing above the old order of speech but as a new object language born within it. Through the Spirit, the old grammar of reason is inverted into the new grammar of faith. What was formerly sign of absence becomes sign of presence; what once denoted defeat now names victory. The nova lingua thus transforms rather than transcends the old: it is human speech re-created in the form of divine contradiction.

This linguistic participation is not accidental to theology; it is its very essence. Theology exists only because divine communication has entered human speech.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The nova lingua of theology arises from the Incarnation, where divine meaning assumes human form.

2. This new language is finite in grammar yet infinite in signification, sustained by the Spirit’s act of authorization.

3. The grammar of faith (Tₙ) both fulfills and transfigures the grammar of reason (Tₒ), producing a linguistic structure in which opposites become sites of revelation.

4. The Spirit functions as the mediating cause of this transformation, making theological language both truthful and efficacious.

5. Theology’s nova lingua is thus the ongoing miracle of Pentecost—the continual creation of meaning whereby human words, caught up in grace, speak the infinite Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem X

The new language of theology has shown that divine speech does not merely signify but brings forth what it declares. Yet if the Word truly acts through language, it must also illumine the mind that receives it. The utterance that creates understanding becomes revelation, and revelation becomes knowledge of God. Thus, theology must now ask how the human intellect, addressed by the divine Word, comes truly to know the One who speaks.

We therefore advance to Disputatio X: De Revelatione et Cognitione Dei, and ask whether revelation imparts knowledge by external testimony or by internal participation, and how divine self-disclosure becomes intelligible within the finite mind.

Disputatio VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis et Summarium

On the Eschatological Manifestation of Truth

Veritas theologica in hoc saeculo est participata et sub signo fidei, sed in consummatione saeculorum manifestabitur in gloria. Manifestatio eschatologica veritatis est revelatio plena illius quod nunc in Spiritu dicitur et creditur, ubi verbum et res, fides et visio, felicitas et veritas perfecte coincident.

Theological truth in this age is participatory and veiled under the sign of faith, but in the consummation of the ages it will be revealed in glory. The eschatological manifestation of truth is the full unveiling of what is now spoken and believed in the Spirit—when word and reality, faith and vision, felicity and truth coincide perfectly.

Thesis

Theology’s present truth is partial and anticipatory, grounded in faith’s participation in divine speech. Its consummation will occur eschatologically, when what is now felicitous and true in faith becomes manifest in glory. The eschaton is not the abolition of theology but its fulfillment, the moment when the grammar of faith becomes the language of sight.

Locus classicus

“Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” — 1 Corinthians 13:12

Here the Apostle distinguishes two modalities of knowing: faith’s partial vision and glory’s full manifestation. The eschatological transformation is not a change in truth but its completion—when what was once known through participation is seen in presence.

Explicatio

Every theological statement in this life belongs to the order of faith. It is true, but its truth is mediated through language, symbol, and participation. The felicity of theological utterance (FT) secures right speaking; modeling links it to reality (TC); participation extends it into being. Yet all these remain partial reflections of the divine Word, awaiting fulfillment.

To put it in the language we have developed:

In the present, FT + Modeling = TC, but in the eschaton, FT = TC, for the act of speaking and the reality spoken will be one.

In the age of faith, truth requires mediation in language, symbols, sacraments. In the age of glory, mediation is not abolished but transfigured: it becomes immediate transparency to divine life. The “truth conditions” of theology (what must be real for theology’s words to be true) are themselves finally realized in unveiled communion.

Thus the eschatological manifestation of truth is not a new truth but the manifestation of what faith has always confessed. The finite will not become infinite, but will participate in infinite clarity.

In this sense, theologia eschatologica is not speculation about the end but the horizon toward which all theology tends: the point where the felicity of speech becomes the felicity of being.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If truth will one day be seen rather than believed, theology will cease; there will be no more faith or discourse.

Obiectio II. If the eschaton reveals all, then current theological statements are provisional and unreliable.

Obiectio III. To speak of “manifestation” suggests a temporal unfolding; but God’s truth is eternal and unchanging.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theology will not cease but be transformed. The form of faith (trust in the unseen) will give way to the form of vision (love’s direct knowledge), yet the content of theology will be consummated, not abolished. The language of faith becomes praise; its discourse becomes doxology. Theology’s end is liturgical, not silent.

Ad II. Present theology is reliable because it is already true in participation. What changes is not its truth but its mode of access. The eschaton adds nothing new in content, only the perfection of immediacy. The mirror is replaced by face-to-face vision, not by contradiction.

Ad III. God’s truth is eternal; what changes is our reception of it. Manifestation belongs to creatures, not to God. In the eschaton, the eternal truth will shine without obscurity within the redeemed order. Time is not destroyed but gathered into divine light.

Nota

The eschatological manifestation of truth fulfills the entire logic of theology’s movement.

• In T, we speak under grace.

• In modeling, we interpret language within being.

• In participation, we live that being in God.

• In the eschaton, we see what we have lived and spoken.

Thus, theology’s formal order—grammar, felicity, truth, causality, participation—finds its telos in manifestation (manifestatio).

This manifestation is not the dissolution of mediation but its perfection. The sacraments will no longer signify but will be what they signified. The church’s language will no longer interpret but will be identical with praise. The believer will no longer speak about God but in God.

If we wish to describe this symbolically (and then explain it immediately), we could say:

Tₑ → V, where Tₑ represents theology in the age of faith and V represents the vision of God in glory. The arrow “→” marks not replacement but transfiguration: the Spirit’s act of transforming mediated participation into direct presence.

Hence, theology’s end is not silence but song; not knowledge replaced, but knowledge perfected in communion.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological truth in the present age is real yet participatory, grounded in faith’s participation in divine speech.

2. The eschatological manifestation of truth is the unveiling of that same truth in glory, when mediation gives way to immediacy.

3. The felicity of theological speech and the truth of divine being converge perfectly in the eschaton; faith becomes sight, confession becomes communion.

4. The Spirit, who now mediates participation through grace, will then reveal it in glory; the same divine causality remains, but its mode changes from hidden to manifest.

5. Theology’s telos is doxological: in the eschatological manifestation of truth, theology becomes the eternal praise of God, the verbum that has finally become vision.

Transitus ad Disputationem IX

The eschatological disclosure of truth fulfills what revelation and faith begin. Yet before that end, the Church must still speak; its words bear witness to the truth that will one day appear. But how does theology speak of what it cannot yet see?

This leads us to Disputatio IX: De Nova Lingua Theologiae, where it is asked how the infinite Word gives rise to a new grammar within the finite, and how theological language performs rather than merely describes divine reality.

__________

Summarium Ordinis Theologiae

Ordo theologiae est ascensus Spiritus a verbo ad esse, a fide ad visionem. Sicut Deus in Verbo suo mundum creavit et in Spiritu vivificavit, ita in eodem Spiritu sermo fidelis formatur, veritas constituitur, et gloria manifestatur.

The order of theology is the ascent of the Spirit from word to being, from faith to vision. As God created the world by His Word and enlivened it by His Spirit, so in that same Spirit faithful speech is formed, truth established, and glory revealed.

1. The Grammar of Faith (Disputatio I)

Theology begins as a language (T), a Spirit-given grammar that orders Christian confession. Before theology can be true, it must be speakable rightly. The Spirit grants the Church a rule-governed discourse whose coherence—its felicity—is the precondition of meaning. Here theology learns to speak bene dicere before it dares to prove.

2. The Modeling of Faith (Disputatio II)

What is rightly spoken must then be interpreted within the order of being. To model T is to relate its expressions to divine reality. Thus, the language of faith becomes truth-bearing when it is inserted into a model of what exists under God’s causality.Theology moves from grammar to ontology: the Word that orders speech also orders being.

3. The Spirit and the Boundary of Speech (Disputatio III)

The Holy Spirit defines the frontier between what may and may not be said. He is both the form and the breath of theological discourse, distinguishing felicitous speech (T_in) from unfit speech (T_out). This boundary of felicity is grace itself: the mark that language, though finite, lives by divine authorization.

4. The Twofold Truth of Theology (Disputatio IV)

Theology’s truth is double in aspect:

• internal truth — the coherence of speech in the Spirit (felicitas),

• external truth — the adequacy of that speech in being (veritas).
  

• These are not two truths but two dimensions of the same divine act: the Word that speaks and the Word that is. Their unity is Christ, who is both meaning and reality.

5. The Relation of Felicity and Truth (Disputatio V)

Felicity and truth are thus distinct but inseparable. Felicity is the Spirit’s formal causality in language; truth is the same Spirit’s fulfillment in being. The felicitous word awaits its eschatological verification: what is spoken rightly in faith will be made fully true in glory. Hence, theology’s discourse is a living anticipation of divine causality.

6. Divine Causality and Theological Speech (Disputatio VI)

The Spirit who authorizes theology’s language also causes it. Divine causality is not merely efficient but communicative: the God who causes being also causes speech. Every true theological utterance participates in the same causality by which God creates. Theology therefore becomes theophysical language—an act of participation in God’s self-speaking.

7. Participation and the Ontology of Theosis (Disputatio VII)

In theosis, divine causality attains its ontological depth. The creature does not merely imitate God but participates in His perfections by grace. Each divine property (D_G) has its participated correlate (D) in the believer; this relation, mediated by the Spirit, constitutes the new being of the redeemed. Participation thus unites linguistic felicity and ontological transformation in one movement of grace.

8. The Eschatological Manifestation of Truth (Disputatio VIII)

The final perfection of theology occurs when faith becomes sight. The felicity of speech (FT) and the truth of being (TC) converge in eschatological manifestation. Theology’s mediation gives way to immediacy; its confession becomes communion. In the end, theology is not abolished but transfigured—the Word that once spoke of God becomes the song of those who see Him.

Nota

The eight disputationes together trace theology’s full formal movement:

Aspect	Mode	Principal Agent	Fulfillment
Grammar	Language formed in the Spirit	Spirit as giver of form	Right speech (felicity)
Semantics	Interpretation within being	Spirit as mediator	Truth-bearing modeling
Authorization	Boundary of discourse	Spirit as discerner	Inclusion within T_in
Truth	Internal and external adequacy	Spirit as unifier	Unity of word and being
Causality	Divine communication	Spirit as cause	Speech made efficacious
Participation	Ontological sharing	Spirit as transformer	Theosis
Manifestation	Eschatological unveiling	Spirit as revealer	Vision of God (visio Dei)

Through these stages, theology passes from the syntax of faith to the ontology of glory. It begins as the grammar of divine discourse and ends as the manifestation of divine life.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theology, as scientia Spiritus, proceeds in ordered stages from speech to being, from felicity to truth, from faith to glory.

2. This order is not temporal but logical and participatory: each stage presupposes and deepens the last.

3. The Spirit is the single causal agent across the entire ordo—the one who gives language, grounds truth, causes participation, and manifests glory.

4. Theological reason is therefore doxological: its beginning, progress, and end are all in the praise of God.

5. In the eschatological manifestation of truth, theology reaches its own perfection: the Word spoken truly in faith becomes the Word beheld eternally in light.

Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

On Participation and the Ontology of Theosis

Participatio est nexus ontologicus inter creaturam et Deum, per quem homo fit particeps naturae divinae non per essentiae confusionem sed per gratiam communicationis. Ontologia theoseos describit modum huius participationis, qua Spiritus Sanctus causat realem communionem inter divinum et humanum.

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

Thesis

Theosis, or deification, is not simply a metaphorical elevation but a real participation in divine being. This participation occurs through the Holy Spirit, who causally unites the finite and infinite without mixture of essences. Ontologically, participation (participatio) is a relation of dependence and transformation in that the creature truly shares in divine perfections while remaining creaturely.

Locus classicus

“He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature.” — 2 Peter 1:4

Here Scripture itself uses the language of participation (koinōnoi theias physeōs). Theosis is not a pious metaphor but a scriptural assertion: believers truly partake of divine life, though not of divine essence.

Explicatio

If in Disputatio VI we saw that divine causality extends into speech, here we see that it extends into being. The Spirit who authorizes theology’s words also constitutes theology’s subjects.
To be Christian is to live in participatione Dei—to exist by sharing in what belongs properly to God.

Let us recall our earlier notation and make it fully clear.

• D_G designates a divine property as it exists in God (for example, righteousness, wisdom, or love).

• D designates the participated correlate of that divine property as it exists in the believer by grace. Thus, when we say D_G → D, we mean that God’s own property (say, divine righteousness) communicates itself to the creature as participated righteousness.
  This arrow “→” is not a mechanical transmission but symbolizes the Spirit’s causal act of mediation—the gift by which divine life becomes creaturely without ceasing to be divine.

Participation, therefore, is neither an abstract analogy nor a pantheistic fusion. It is an ontological relation in which divine causality constitutes new being in the creature.
The believer does not merely imitate God; he is made new by receiving within himself a correlate of God’s own perfection. This is the real ontology of deification.

In formal theological terms, we might say:

• The relation of participation is two-sorted: it joins distinct orders of being, the divine and the creaturely.

• It is asymmetrical: the creature participates in God, never God in the creature.

• It is personal and pneumatic—mediated by the Spirit, who unites without confusion.

Theosis thus represents the ontological depth of salvation: the Spirit’s causality does not merely declare righteousness but constitutes it.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Participation implies that the creature shares in the divine essence, which contradicts the Creator–creature distinction.

Obiectio II. If divine properties are communicated, they seem multiplied; there would then be many instances of God’s attributes, violating divine simplicity.

Obiectio III. Theosis makes salvation a metaphysical transformation rather than an act of grace received by faith alone.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation does not entail identity of essence but communion of life. The creature remains distinct, but receives existence and renewal from the divine act. As Luther said, “Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united to her bridegroom.” The union is real but not essential.

Ad II. Divine attributes are not multiplied but refracted. The same divine righteousness that exists uncreated in God exists createdly in the believer. The distinction is not between two righteousnesses, but between two modes of the same causal source—one infinite, one finite.

Ad III. Faith is the mode by which participation occurs, not its substitute. To believe is to receive, and what faith receives is nothing less than divine life. Theosis therefore fulfills sola fide: faith justifies because it unites the believer to Christ, and that union is participation itself.

Nota

The ontology of theosis clarifies how theological realism must be understood. To say that salvation is participation is to assert that grace is ontological causation, not merely external favor. When God declares the sinner righteous, He causes righteousness to exist in that person as participation in His own righteousness.

This participatory realism avoids both the extremes of nominalism and pantheism. Against nominalism, it maintains that grace effects real transformation; against pantheism, it preserves the Creator–creature distinction. The medium of this relation is the Spirit, who is both divine presence and causal agent.

The structure of participation may thus be expressed symbolically (and then immediately explained):

S participates in D, where S is the human subject and D the participated property derived from God’s own D_G. This means: the believer’s new dispositions (faith, hope, love) are not self-generated moral habits but gifts of divine life.

The ontological grammar of theosis therefore complements the syntactical grammar of theology. Just as words become true when authorized by the Spirit, persons become real when constituted by that same Spirit’s causality. The Spirit is the bridge across both language and being.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theosis is the ontological form of salvation: the creature’s participation in divine life through the Spirit.

2. Participation (participatio) expresses an asymmetrical relation—God communicates, the creature receives.

3. The Holy Spirit is the causal mediator of this participation, uniting Creator and creature without confusion or separation.

4. Divine properties (D_G) are communicated not as multiplied essences but as participated correlates (D) in the believer.

5. The ontology of theosis thus completes the logic of divine communication: the Word spoken truly becomes the life lived divinely.

Transitus ad Disputationem VIII

Faith, as participatory knowledge, binds intellect and will to the truth of the Word. Yet theological knowledge also claims universality and coherence; it seeks not only to believe but to understand. How, then, is theology related to reason as science?

This question leads to Disputatio VIII: De Theologia ut Scientia Subalternata, where we examine whether theology possesses a demonstrative structure, and in what sense divine illumination subordinates or perfects reason.