Disputatio XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis

On the Confrontation of Languages: Theology and the Secular Word

Argumentum

Agitur hic de conflictu inter linguam theologicam, quae in Verbo et Spiritu fundatur, et sermones saeculares, qui suam autonomiam vindicant. Quaeritur utrum theologia possit adhuc praedicare veritatem in mundo, ubi scientia, ars, et cultura locum veritatis sibi usurparunt.

This disputation treats the confrontation between theological language, grounded in the Word and the Spirit, and the secular discourses that claim autonomous reason. It asks whether theology can still speak truth in a world where science, art, and culture have each assumed the role of truth-makers.

Thesis

The theological word, because it participates in divine truth, does not compete with secular reason but interprets its conditions. The Spirit who makes theology possible also animates all authentic acts of meaning. Hence, theology’s speech does not withdraw from modern languages but judges and fulfills them: it discloses that every search for truth is already a response to divine communication.

Locus classicus

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:4–5

The verse identifies the universality of divine illumination: every act of understanding presupposes the light of the Logos. Secular discourse, even in its apparent autonomy, speaks within that light and cannot escape it. The confrontation between theology and modernity is therefore not external opposition but internal forgetfulness.

Explicatio

After the Disputationes on Word and Spirit, theology now faces its cultural horizon. Modernity has multiplied languages of truth—scientific, aesthetic, political, technological—each claiming autonomy. Yet all presuppose intelligibility, value, and communicability—conditions that theology interprets as participation in the Logos.

Theological discourse (L_t) encounters secular discourse (L_s) not as rival systems but as divergent appropriations of a shared intelligible order. Formally, we may express this as two distinct interpretive relations to the same divine ground (L_∞):

$$L_t<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\pi </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}, L_s<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\delta </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}$$

Lt​Rπ​L∞​, Ls​Rδ​L∞, ​where R_π denotes participation through grace (Spirit-mediated correspondence) and R_δ denotes derivative dependence (natural reason’s participation in the Logos).

The difference is not in the object (the divine ground of meaning) but in the mode of participation.

Theology thus does not flee from modernity’s languages; it uncovers their hidden metaphysics, their reliance upon borrowed light. Where secular language treats meaning as construct, theology confesses meaning as gift.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Scientific Naturalists like Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins claim that science explains the world without recourse to divine speech. Theology’s claim to interpret meaning is obsolete; language about God adds nothing to predictive or explanatory power. The “light of the Logos” is a poetic metaphor for natural intelligibility, not its cause.

Obiectio II. Philosophical Postmodernists like Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty hold that all claims to meta-language or transcendence are expressions of power. Theology’s assertion that secular reason “borrows light” masks its own will to authority. There is no divine ground of meaning—only historical formations of discourse. The Logos is another name for the dominant narrative of Western metaphysics.

Obiectio III. Voices like Paul Tillich and Don Cupitt argue that to preserve credibility, theology must translate its symbols into existential or cultural meanings. The language of revelation should yield to human experience and creativity. To claim that secular reason still depends on divine light is nostalgic; theology must learn from, not correct, secular wisdom.

Obiectio IV. John Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy claim that secular reason is not merely derivative but inherently nihilistic and must therefore be rejected, not engaged. The Church should withdraw into its own grammar, its own nova lingua, abandoning dialogue with modernity. Engagement risks corruption of the sacred by the profane.

Responsiones

Ad I. Scientific explanation presupposes an ordered reality and a rational subject capable of truth, conditions that science cannot itself generate. Theology does not compete with explanation but discloses its ground: intelligibility itself as participation in the Logos. The Spirit’s presence in the act of reason makes knowledge possible; to call this “poetic” is to confuse causality with metaphor. The light of the Logos is the ontological precondition for all epistemic light.

Ad II. Postmodern suspicion rightly unmasks language’s entanglement with power, but theology interprets this entanglement as the distortion of participation. The Spirit, not the will to power, is the true condition of meaning. Deconstruction reveals the instability of all autonomous discourse; theology explains it: when speech forgets its source, it fragments. The Logos is not a regime of power but the gift of communicability that enables critique itself.

Ad III. Liberal translation preserves relevance at the cost of reality. Symbols derive their power from the truths they signify, not from subjective resonance. The nova lingua theologiae is indeed open to culture, but as illumination, not adaptation. The Spirit interprets human experience by orienting it toward divine meaning; theology learns from culture only by discerning in it the traces of grace.

Ad IV. Radical Orthodoxy rightly insists that theology is not founded upon secular reason, but withdrawal denies providence. The same Spirit who consecrates the Church animates the world’s search for truth. The task is not isolation but interpretation—to read secular languages as estranged offspring of the divine Word. The nova lingua must not retreat but translate, not by compromise but by conversion: making alien speech once more transparent to grace.

Nota

The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is not warfare but translation. Every language of modernity—scientific, political, artistic—bears within it a theological remainder, a hunger for meaning that cannot be satisfied within its own syntax.The nova lingua theologiae speaks into this multiplicity not as rival ideology but as the meta-language of communion, interpreting all speech as longing for the Word.

The Spirit’s illumination is thus catholic: it extends beyond the Church’s grammar to all truthful speech, wherever reason still remembers the light.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is internal to meaning itself; secular reason unknowingly depends upon the divine Logos for its intelligibility.

2. Theology’s new language does not abolish secular languages but reveals their participatory structure and reorders them toward truth.

3. Scientific and cultural autonomy describe functional independence, not ontological self-sufficiency; their intelligibility remains Spirit-given.

4. Postmodern critique and liberal accommodation each err: the first by forgetting transcendence, the second by dissolving it.

5. Theology’s task in the contemporary horizon is interpretive and missionary—to translate the world’s fragmented languages back into participation in the eternal Word.

Thus the nova lingua theologiae stands not beside but within the world’s discourse, interpreting it to itself, until every language confesses once more that “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate

On Language and Intentionality

Lingua humana non est systema signorum ex se ortum, sed instrumentum Spiritus, per quod intentio divina in mundum intrat. Intentionalitas in loquela est participatio in actu verbi divini, quo Deus seipsum communicat et creaturam ad se convertit.

Human language is not a self-originating system of signs but an instrument of the Spirit through which divine intention enters the world. Intentionality in speech is participation in the act of the divine Word, by which God communicates Himself and turns the creature toward Himself.

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Thesis

Language is the created mirror of divine intentionality. Every act of speaking presupposes orientation (intentio) toward meaning and toward another. In theological speech, this orientation participates in God’s own act of self-expression—the divine Word speaking through the Spirit. Human language, therefore, is not merely conventional but ontological: it is the created form of divine communicability.

Locus classicus

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” — Matthew 12:34

Speech arises from inner intention. Yet in theological terms, the human heart is itself a site of divine indwelling: the Spirit who dwells within directs language toward truth. Thus, speech is the outward expression of inward intentionality, and when sanctified by the Spirit, it becomes the medium of divine communication.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XV, we saw that divine knowing is intentional self-expression—God’s knowledge is His act of being. Here we turn to human language as the finite reflection of that act: a medium through which intention becomes communication.

Intentionality (intentionalitas) in theology does not mean psychological aim but ontological directedness—the structure by which word and meaning, subject and object, stand in relation.
Every genuine act of language includes three relations:

1. the speaker’s intention toward meaning (intentio ad significationem),

2. the word’s intension toward what it signifies (intensio ad rem), and

3. the listener’s reception within shared understanding (communicatio in Spiritu).

This triadic structure mirrors the Trinitarian pattern of divine communication:

• the Father as speaker and origin of meaning,

• the Son as the Word in which meaning is expressed,

• the Spirit as the bond who makes that meaning present and understood.

Hence, human language is intrinsically theological. It is possible only because the Creator has already established communication within Himself.

To formalize this (and then immediately explain it):

• Let L denote the total system of human language.

• Let I_d represent divine intentionality, and I_h human intentionality.

• The relation I_h ⊂ I_d signifies that human intentionality is contained within and derives from divine intentionality—not by necessity but by participation.

• This inclusion is not spatial but ontological: the capacity to mean at all is a gift of divine self-communication.

Thus, whenever we speak, we enact—however faintly—the structure of God’s own Word. When speech becomes theological, the relation deepens: the Spirit unites human intention with divine intention, transforming language into communion.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to contemporary analytic epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga or William Alston, if human language were to participate in divine intentionality, then all speech would be divinely inspired, including lies and nonsense. But we experience constant error, ambiguity, and falsehood. To attribute divine participation to every utterance erases the distinction between revelation and distortion. Language must remain a human phenomenon, fallible and natural, not an extension of divine intentionality.

Obiectio II. For figures like Saussure, Wittgenstein, John Searle, 
to give language ontological weight confuses sign and being. Words are social conventions—arbitrary symbols whose meaning derives from communal use, not metaphysical grounding. Modern linguistics and speech-act theory show that language functions pragmatically; to posit an ontological Logos beneath it is to re-mythologize semantics and import metaphysics into empirical linguistics.

Obiectio III. Gordon Kaufman and Catherine Keller would argue that the claim that language mirrors the Trinity introduces an unnecessary metaphysical speculation. The triadic analogy of speaker, word, and listener reflects a bygone metaphysical framework. Contemporary theology should emphasize symbol and narrative, not Trinitarian ontology. The human structure of communication tells us nothing reliable about God, only about our religious imagination.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation is not identity. All speech derives its capacity for meaning from divine intentionality, but not all speech conforms to it.
Falsehood arises not from divine presence but from human resistance to it—the distortion of participation through disordered will.The Spirit is the measure of felicity: speech becomes inspired not by mere utterance but by alignment of intention with truth. Hence, linguistic participation is universal in capacity but selective in realization. The possibility of falsehood confirms, rather than contradicts, divine grounding—only what derives from truth can be falsified.

Ad II. Modern linguistics rightly observes that words are conventional in form, yet convention presupposes an ontological ground of communicability. For meaning to be shared, there must exist an order in which being and understanding are mutually convertible: verum et ens convertuntur. This metaphysical foundation is the Logos, the eternal ratio that makes semantic convention possible. The Spirit mediates between sign and being, ensuring that human language, though arbitrary in sign, is real in significance. Language thus participates ontologically not in its sounds or syntax but in its capacity to make being present through meaning.

Ad III. The analogy between Trinitarian communication and human language is not speculative but structural. Every act of communication involves (1) a speaker, (2) a word uttered, and (3) a hearer in whom that word is received. This triadic form is not an invention of theology but an imprint of the Creator’s image upon creation. Modern theologians who reduce Trinitarian speech to symbol overlook the metaphysical unity of meaning and relation: communication exists because God is communicative being. To speak is to participate in divine communion; the Spirit is the living bond between speaker and hearer, word and understanding. Thus, Trinitarian analogy is not an optional metaphor but the ontological grammar of all meaning.

Nota

The relationship between language and intentionality reveals the deepest unity of theology’s two realms: speech and being.
Just as divine intentionality (intentionalitas divina) grounds all knowing, so it also grounds all saying. Language exists because God is communicative; its very structure presupposes a world created by speech and ordered toward meaning.

The Spirit is the living link between divine intention and human language. He causes meaning to be intended rightly—that is, to be directed toward truth and love rather than self-expression or domination. Thus, theological speech is not merely propositional but relational: it restores language to its true vocation as communio.

This insight also explains the possibility of revelation as language.
Because language participates in divine intentionality, it can serve as the medium of God’s self-disclosure without distortion. The Word of God does not bypass human speech; it fulfills it. In this sense, all language is sacramental in origin—it signifies because God first signified the world into being.

Symbolically (and then explained), we can express this as:

D → L → R,
where D is divine intention, L is language, and R is revelation.
This sequence means: divine intentionality flows into language as its form, and through language revelation becomes possible. Thus, language is the mediating bond between divine self-communication and human reception.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Language is grounded in divine intentionality; its power to mean derives from the communicative nature of the Creator.

2. Human speech, though finite and conventional, participates in the structure of divine Word—speaker, word, and listener forming an analogical trinity.

3. The Spirit mediates between divine and human intention, aligning finite language with infinite meaning and making revelation possible.

4. Error and falsehood arise when human intentionality turns away from this divine orientation, severing communication from its source.

5. Theology, as scientia loquens Dei, thus culminates in the recognition that language itself is a site of grace: the place where divine intentionality becomes audible in the world.

Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico

On Intension and Intention in Theological Discourse

In theologia, intensio designat participationem sermonis in veritate quam significat; intentio autem exprimit motum Spiritus quo sermo et cognoscens ordinantur ad Deum. Utraque, intensio et intentio, constituunt duplicem structuram loquelae theologicae: formam significationis et actum directionis.

In theology, intension designates the participation of speech in the truth it signifies, while intention expresses the motion of the Spirit by which speech and knower are directed toward God. Together, intension and intention constitute the dual structure of theological discourse: the form of meaning and the act of orientation.

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Thesis

Theological discourse is doubly ordered: by intension, which expresses the participation of language in divine meaning, and by intention, which expresses the Spirit’s orientation of that language toward its divine referent. The integrity of theology depends on the harmony of these two—form and direction—so that what theology says and why it says it coincide in one act of faith.

Locus classicus

“We have the mind of Christ.” — 1 Corinthians 2:16

The Apostle here unites cognition and orientation. To have the “mind of Christ” is not merely to possess concepts but to be inwardly directed by the Spirit toward God’s will. Theology’s truth lies not only in the content of its assertions but in the intention that animates them.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XIII, we described intension as the participatory depth of theological meaning—language sharing in what it signifies. Here we extend that insight to the act of speaking and knowing. For theology, meaning without intention is incomplete: truth must be not only known but loved.

In scholastic logic, intensio and intentio are etymologically linked: both derive from intendere, “to stretch toward.” Yet they differ by aspect. Intensio describes the form or structure of meaning—the way predicates are “stretched” around their content. Intentio describes the movement of the mind and will toward the object known.

In theology, these two are inseparable because language itself is pneumatic—it exists as motion toward God. The Spirit not only grants meaning but directs that meaning toward its divine end.

Formally, we may represent this (and then explain it):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p, its form of meaning through participation in divine reality.

• Let T(p) denote the intention of that same predicate, its pneumatic direction toward God as ultimate referent.

• The relation I(p) → T(p) means: the Spirit completes meaning by drawing it toward God; the truth of theology depends not only on what a term means but on the divine orientation of its use.

Thus, theological language is teleological: it moves from signification to communion, from word to worship. To speak theologically is to let the Spirit align one’s words and will toward the divine horizon.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. In Cartesian mentalism, meaning and intention are properties of individual minds. Intension is the concept contained within thought; intention is the mind’s act of directing that concept to an object. To introduce the Holy Spirit as the cause of either collapses epistemic autonomy. Theological intention should be understood psychologically, not metaphysically.

Obiectio II. According to empiricist semantics, language functions through public usage, not inner intention. Meaning is determined by observable linguistic conventions, not by subjective acts. Theological appeals to “Spirit-inspired intention” introduce unverifiable metaphysical claims that add nothing to semantic explanation.

Obiectio III. According to Wittgensteinian use theory, within the community of faith, intention is simply conformity to use: the believer “means” what the Church means. Talk of divine authorization or participation misrepresents grammar as metaphysics. Theological statements gain their sense from practice, not from invisible intentions.

Obiectio IV. Kantian moral theology holds that intention belongs to the moral will, not to cognition. Theology confuses ethical intention—obedience to the moral law—with epistemic intention, directedness of thought. Revelation does not supply new cognitive content but moral motivation. Therefore, intention in theology should be understood ethically, not cognitively or ontologically.

Obiectio V. In postmodern deconstruction every act of meaning is contaminated by différance; intention never coincides with expression. To claim that in theology, intention and intension converge through the Spirit, is to reassert the metaphysics of presence. Divine authorization cannot close the gap between saying and meaning without abolishing the play of signification that makes language possible.

Responsiones

Ad I. Cartesian mentalism confines meaning to private consciousness, but theology begins not with the isolated mind but with the communicative act of God. The Spirit does not override cognition but grounds it: divine causality constitutes the possibility of theological intention. The human mind does not direct itself toward God; it is drawn. The Spirit is not a competitor to thought but the condition under which finite intentionality becomes genuinely God-directed.

Ad II. Empiricism rightly demands public criteria for meaning, yet the Church’s public language is itself the manifestation of divine causality. The Spirit’s work is not a hidden supplement to convention but the ontological ground of convention’s truth. Without the Spirit, the same words remain grammatically correct but theologically empty. Pneumatological intention is therefore the difference between talking about God and being addressed by God in one’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight—that the grammar of faith determines the sense of theological language—is essential, but the Church’s grammar is not self-sustaining. The Spirit animates its use, converting communal form into divine act. Intention in theology is not reducible to usage; it is the Spirit’s actualization of use as confession. Grammar defines possibility; the Spirit realizes actuality.

Ad IV. Kant separates moral from cognitive intention, but in revelation the two are one: to know God is to will the good, and to will the good is to participate in God’s knowing. The Spirit unites intellect and will in a single movement of faith. Theological intention is thus both moral and epistemic—a mode of participation in divine self-knowledge.

Ad V. Deconstruction rightly reveals the instability of finite language, but theology interprets this not as nihilism but as sign of creaturely dependence. The Spirit does not erase différance but sanctifies it, making difference the very medium of communion. The Word becomes flesh not by annihilating finitude but by filling it. In theological discourse, intention and intension coincide not by closure but by grace: finite language becomes true without ceasing to be finite.

Nota

The dual structure of theological discourse mirrors the Incarnation itself. Just as the Word assumes human nature without destroying it, so divine meaning assumes human intention without abolishing freedom.

The intensio of theology ensures formal integrity: its words participate truly in divine realities. The intentio ensures final orientation: those same words are directed toward praise and communion.

We can imagine this schematically:

Intensio → Intentio → Gloria
meaning leads to direction, direction to glorification.

Thus, theology is not only a science of statements but a discipline of sanctified desire. Its language must mean truly and move rightly. Where intension is severed from intention, theology becomes formalism; where intention eclipses intension, it becomes enthusiasm. Only the Spirit holds the two in unity.

This unity also resolves the ancient tension between speculative and practical theology. The speculative intellect (intensio) contemplates truth; the practical will (intentio) seeks the good. In the Spirit, contemplation and love converge. To know God is to be oriented toward God; to be oriented toward God is already to know Him.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological discourse possesses a double structure: intensio, the participatory form of meaning, and intentio, the pneumatic orientation of that meaning toward God.

2. These are distinct yet inseparable: the Spirit who gives form to meaning also directs it to its divine end.

3. The truth of theology lies not merely in the correctness of propositions but in the sanctity of their direction—their being spoken toward God.

4. Human reason and will participate in this double causality: reason shares in divine truth, and will shares in divine charity.

5. Thus, theology is both contemplative and doxological: to understand God rightly is already to be drawn into the praise of God.

Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

On Intension and the Modeling of Theological Language

Intensio in theologia non est mera conceptio mentis, sed forma participationis, qua sermo fidelis participat in re ipsa de qua loquitur. Modeling theologicum est interpretatio huius intensionalis structurae intra ordinem entis, quo verbum fidei inseritur in veritatem ontologicam causatam a Spiritu.

Intension in theology is not merely a mental conception but a mode of participation by which faithful speech shares in the very reality it names. Theological modeling is the interpretation of this intensional structure within the order of being, through which the word of faith is inserted into the ontological truth caused by the Spirit.

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Thesis

The intension of theological language expresses the way in which meaning and being coinhere through participation. Modeling is the act by which these intensional forms are interpreted within ontological structures, so that theology’s speech corresponds to divine reality. Thus, intensionality grounds the realism of theology’s models: words mean what they mean because they share, analogically, in what they signify.

Locus classicus

“My word that goes out from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.” — Isaiah 55:11

Here the Word of God is not a sign that points to something absent, but a living act that accomplishes what it names. The divine Word is intensional in the highest sense: its meaning and its effect coincide. Theology’s task is to reflect this coincidence within the limits of human language.

Explicatio

In ordinary logic, intension refers to the content or concept of a term—what it signifies internally—while extension refers to the set of things to which it applies. In theology, however, intension cannot be reduced to mere conceptual content, for the meaning of divine terms arises from participation in the realities they signify.

When theology says “Deus est bonus” (“God is good”), the term bonus has an intension that differs fundamentally from its use in secular discourse. Its meaning is not abstracted from experience but given through participation in divine goodness itself. The Spirit mediates this participation, so that human predicates acquire analogical depth.

Let us represent this symbolically (and immediately explain):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p—its interior content as informed by participation in divine reality.

• Let M(p) denote the modeling of that predicate—the interpretation of p within an ontological framework of being. The relation I(p) → M(p) expresses that theological modeling extends the meaning (intension) of language into ontology; what faith means, ontology makes real.

Hence, modeling theology is not constructing analogies externally but recognizing that the intensional life of faith’s language already participates in the realities to which it refers.

Theological predicates are therefore intensional in a deeper sense than philosophical ones: their meanings are not closed concepts but open participations. Each name of God carries within it a structural reference to divine causality. To speak truly of God is to allow the intension of language to become a site of encounter, where meaning and being converge.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Aristotle and his scholastic heirs maintain the position of Aristotelian realism, the view that the meaning of predicates is exhausted by their extension to real things. Intension adds nothing to ontology. To analyze theological predicates intensionally—as if their sense exceeded their reference—is to introduce needless abstraction. The meaning of “God is good” is simply that God instantiates goodness; no intensional layer is needed.

Obiectio II. From the standpoint of empiricist verificationalism, all meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable or analytically true. Theological predicates refer to no empirically testable properties and therefore lack cognitive meaning. Model-theoretic “interpretation” of such terms merely disguises their non-referential status under formal symbols. To construct intensional models for theology is to rationalize what is semantically empty.

Obiectio III. Following later Wittgenstein, meaning arises from use within a linguistic form of life (Lebensform). To model theological language formally or intensionally is to misunderstand its grammar. The meaning of “grace,” “sin,” or “Spirit” lies in their practical employment within worship and life, not in their reference to divine properties or in hypothetical models. Modeling theology as if it described an external reality mistakes liturgical use for scientific representation.

Obiectio IV. Contemporary analytic semantics often treats meaning extensionally, defining reference via truth conditions over possible worlds. Since divine reality is not empirically accessible or multiply realizable across worlds, theological language cannot admit of model-theoretic interpretation without violating the principle of extensional adequacy. Theology should confine itself to moral or metaphorical discourse rather than claim intensional reference to the divine.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic model asserts that theological statements are true insofar as they cohere with the community’s grammar. There is no external domain into which they must be modeled. To introduce an intensional semantics for theology is to reintroduce representational realism and to confuse the performative, intra-ecclesial truth of faith with philosophical speculation.

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Responsiones

Ad I. Aristotelian realism rightly grounds meaning in real being but overlooks the form of participation by which finite predicates relate to divine reality. In theology, predication is not univocal: “God is good” does not signify an extensionally shared property but an analogical relation between divine perfection and finite concept. Intensional analysis captures this formal relation—it models the way predicates point beyond their finite instantiations toward infinite fulfillment. Thus, intensional semantics safeguards the analogia fidei: a structure of participation rather than mere attribution.

Ad II. Empiricist verificationism confuses empirical access with cognitive meaning. Theological terms are cognitively meaningful within the ontology of participation: they refer not by sense-data but by divine causality. Model-theoretic interpretation supplies the formal correlate of this claim. It shows that theological language can be given structured domains and interpretation functions consistent with its own rules of felicity. Intensional models do not disguise emptiness; they make explicit the structure of theological reference within divine reality.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning depends on use is valid at the pragmatic level but incomplete. Theological use is itself grounded in divine authorization. The Spirit makes the Church’s grammar not merely functional but truth-bearing. Modeling theology intensionally does not deny use; it articulates the inner logic by which use participates in divine meaning. The grammar of faith is a finite surface of an infinite semantics. Without such modeling, theology remains descriptively sociological rather than truth-apt.

Ad IV. Extensional semantics suffices for empirical domains but not for theological ones, where reference involves hyperintensional distinctions between formally equivalent but ontologically distinct predicates (e.g., “Creator” and “Redeemer”). Theology must operate at the intensional level because divine properties relate analogically, not extensionally. Model-theoretic analysis extends semantics beyond possible worlds to the domain of divine possibility, the space of God’s communicative acts. Hence, intensional modeling is not optional but necessary for theology’s realism.

Ad V. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but lacks the means to account for its truth. Theological language does not merely describe communal life; it claims participation in divine reality. Model-theoretic interpretation provides a way to express that claim rigorously. By mapping the formal language of theology (T) into an ontological domain structured by participation, it unites communal felicity (FT) with divine truth-conditions (TC). Intensionality here serves realism: it formalizes the link between faith’s grammar and God’s being.

Nota

Intensionality in theology reveals the deep correspondence between divine and human discourse. Just as the Word of God contains within itself both meaning and being—significatio et effectus—so theological speech, animated by the Spirit, partakes in that same structure.

In model-theoretic terms, theological language is not a static set of propositions but a living model in which predicates participate in the realities they denote. When theology says “Christ is Lord,” this is not a metaphor to be verified externally; it is a confession whose intension already shares in Christ’s lordship through the Spirit.

Modeling thus performs a theological epistemology of incarnation: finite words filled with infinite content, formal structure suffused with divine causality. In this sense, modeling does not invent theology’s truth but explicates it—it unfolds the internal participation already latent in theological meaning.

Hence, to study theology’s intension is to trace how language itself becomes sacramental: a sign whose signification and grace coincide.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Intension in theology signifies participation: the inward meaning of a theological term is its share in divine reality.

2. Modeling interprets these intensional forms within an ontological framework, revealing how language and being correspond through the Spirit.

3. The Spirit is the cause of this correspondence, uniting signification (intensio) and reality (veritas) without confusion.

4. Theological precision arises not from limiting meaning but from its right participation in the divine.

5. Therefore, the intension of theology’s language is itself a locus of revelation: the Word that makes meaning also makes being, and modeling is the act by which this unity is rendered intelligible.

Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

On Divine Causality and Theological Speech

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

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

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Thesis

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

Locus classicus

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

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

Explicatio

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

Divine causality therefore operates on two planes:

1. Ontological causality, whereby God gives being to creatures.

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

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

To express this relation in our earlier symbolism:

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

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

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

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

Objectiones

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

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

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

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

Responsiones

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

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

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

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

Nota

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

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

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

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

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

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

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

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

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

Disputatio IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex

On the Twofold Truth of Theology

Veritas theologiae duplicem habet formam: internam, quae consistit in felicitate Spiritu data intra linguam fidei (T), et externam, quae consistit in adaequatione huius linguae ad esse divinitus constitutum. Hae duae veritates, distinctae sed ordinatae, in Christo, qui est Verbum et Res, uniuntur.

We might speak of the truth of theology as twofold: internal truth, which consists in Spirit-given felicity within the language of faith T, and external truth, which consists in the adequation of that language to the reality constituted by God. The two are distinct but ordered to one another, and they find their unity in Christ, who is both Word and Reality.

________

Thesis

Theology possesses both an internal and an external truth.

• Internal truth (veritas interna) refers to the coherence and felicity of theological speech as governed by the Spirit within the community of faith.

• External truth (veritas externa) pertains to the correspondence or adequacy of that speech when interpreted within being, its fulfillment in the order of reality that God creates and sustains.
  Together they form a single movement from faith’s language to God’s reality and back again.

Locus classicus

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” — John 14:6

In this saying, Christ names Himself not merely as speaker of truth but as Truth itself. The theological word thus possesses two dimensions: it is true in faith because it participates in Christ’s own utterance, and it is true in being because Christ Himself is what the Word declares.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, theology was described as a formal language T, authorized by the Spirit, and interpreted within models that link language to being. Here we consider what it means to say that such theological expressions are true.

In logic, truth is often defined by correspondence: a sentence is true when what it says obtains in the world. In theology, that notion must be qualified. Theology’s words do not first describe and then verify; they participate in divine speech.

To express this participation, we distinguish between two levels of truth:

1. Internal truth (veritas interna) occurs within the system of theological language itself. We might say that a tatement is internally true when it is felicitous, when it coheres with Scripture, doctrine, and Spirit-guided discourse. For instance, “Christ is Lord” is internally true because it is consonant with the grammar of faith T as the Spirit has given it.

   Symbolically, we may call the internal measure of this truth FT, the felicity conditions of T. These conditions ensure that theology speaks rightly, even before modeling connects it to being.

2. External truth (veritas externa) arises when the same expression is interpreted within a model of reality M, yielding what we earlier called TC, or truth conditions. These are the states of affairs, the real relations, events, or properties through which God’s Word is fulfilled in the world.

   In simple terms: FT + Modeling = TC. That is, when Spirit-given felicity joins ontological adequacy, the statement is true in both faith and fact.

This distinction does not divide truth into two different kinds but shows its two dimensions. Internal truth without external fulfillment is mere coherence; external truth without inner authorization is unfettered speculation. Only when the Spirit unites both does theology achieve full truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Thomas Aquinas maintains that truth is the adequation of intellect and thing (adaequatio intellectus et rei). Theology, insofar as it concerns divine things, must therefore have a single, objective truth grounded in God’s being. To posit a “double truth” in theology would divide divine reality from its cognition and collapse truth into mere human interpretation.

Obiectio II. Late medieval nominalism holds that theological statements possess truth only insofar as they express the divine will revealed in Scripture. There is no ontological correspondence beyond God’s voluntary decree. To speak of an “ontological truth” in addition to a “formal” or linguistic one is to reintroduce metaphysical realism against the simplicity of God’s sovereignty.

Obiectio III. For Kant, all human knowledge is conditioned by the forms of intuition and categories of the understanding. “Theology” may express moral faith but cannot claim objective correspondence to the divine. Any “double truth” distinguishing linguistic coherence from ontological reality confuses the distinction between phenomena and noumena. The only truth theology can have is practical, not ontological.

Obiectio IV. George Lindbeck and others argue that theological truth resides within the coherence of a community’s grammar. There is no “ontological truth” to be accessed beyond the language of faith. To posit a second, deeper truth is to reintroduce the very representationalism Lindbeck rejects. Theological truth is singular and intralinguistic; there is no duplex veritas.

Obiectio V. From a constructivist or deconstructive standpoint, all claims to “truth” are historically contingent linguistic performances. A “double truth” merely multiplies illusions. Theology’s so-called ontological truth is only a higher-order fiction meant to stabilize its discourse. Truth is produced, not revealed.

Responsiones

Ad I. Thomistic realism correctly grounds truth in the relation between intellect and being, yet theology’s intellect is not autonomous but pneumatic. Its formal truth, the coherence and intelligibility of theological language, is secured within the human domain. Its ontological truth, the correspondence of that language to divine reality, is effected by the Holy Spirit, who bridges word and being. These two aspects are not contradictory but correlative; the Spirit makes the formal act of saying coincide with the divine act of being.

Ad II. Nominalism preserves God’s freedom but severs divine willing from ontological intelligibility. The “double truth” of theology does not undermine divine sovereignty; it clarifies its modes of manifestation. God’s will becomes present formally in the human act of confession and ontologically in the reality the confession names. The Spirit unites both, ensuring that what is truly said in faith corresponds to how God truly is, and without collapsing divine causality into human speech.

Ad III. While Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena limits knowledge to the conditions of human sensibility, theological truth concerns divine communication. The Spirit renders finite intellects proportionate to divine truth without violating their transcendental structure. The duplex truth of theology honors both sides: the formal truth proper to human language and the ontological truth granted by divine participation. Revelation transforms the limits of reason into avenues of communion.

Ad IV. Post-liberal theology rightly emphasizes the communal and grammatical dimensions of faith, but its refusal of ontological reference renders theology self-enclosed. The double truth affirms that grammar and reality are distinct yet related: theological statements are formally true as expressions within a rule-governed practice, and ontologically true insofar as that practice participates in divine being through the Spirit. The grammar of faith is sacramental; it mediates what it signifies.

Ad V. Constructivism dissolves truth into performance, yet it inadvertently testifies to a real difference between the act of speaking and what the act seeks to convey. The duplex truth acknowledges that difference while grounding it in divine causality. The Spirit authorizes human constructions as instruments of revelation, preserving their historical finitude while ensuring participation in the eternal. Theological truth is neither illusion nor production but participation in a Word that precedes every word.

Nota

Picture the unity of these two truths as a circle rather than a line. Theological language begins with T, the grammar given by the Spirit. Within T, internal truth arises through faithful speech. This language is then modeled into reality M, producing external truth as divine being answers divine word. The resulting adequacy returns again to renew T, forming a continual exchange between language and being, grace and truth.

When theologians write FT + Modeling = TC, they are not composing an equation but naming a semantic reality: felicity (Spirit-authorized speech) joined to modeling (Spirit-interpreted being) yields theological truth. It is a symbolic shorthand for Luther’s claim that God’s Word is true because it does what it says.

Christ Himself is this coincidence of internal and external truth, the Word that is also the world’s fulfillment. To confess that “the Word became flesh” is to say that God’s internal Word (eternally spoken) has become externally real in history.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theology possesses both an internal truth (felicity within the Spirit-governed language of faith) and an external truth (adequacy to divine reality).

2. These two are ordered, not opposed: internal truth grounds theology’s faithfulness, external truth secures its realism.

3. Christ, as both Word and Reality, is the unity of these two modes of truth.

4. The Spirit mediates their conjunction, ensuring that the truth of faith is neither abstract nor speculative but living and enacted.

5. Hence, theology’s veracity is neither purely linguistic nor purely ontological; it is incarnational, the meeting of speech and being in the Spirit of Christ.