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

Proemium ad Disputationes Theologicas

Why the Scholastic Form Is Employed

The scholastic form—thesis, locus classicus, explicatio, objectiones, responsiones, nota, determinatio—is not revived here as academic archaism, nor as nostalgic homage to a vanished intellectual culture. It is recovered because it uniquely embodies a logic of theological clarity and order. When rightly understood, the scholastic disputation is not the triumph of dialectic over faith but the grammar of faith’s own rational articulation.

The disputatio theologica begins in humility. It assumes that theological truth, being divine, cannot be possessed in a single act of assertion. Truth must instead be approached through the ordered interplay of affirmation, objection, and resolution. The structure itself—thesis followed by counter-statement and reconciliation—mirrors the polarity of revelation: Deus absconditus and Deus revelatus. The form of disputation therefore becomes a formal analogue of the cross, where contradiction is not suppressed but redeemed in higher unity.

Moreover, the scholastic method corresponds to the ontology of truth presupposed throughout these writings. Truth is not a mere property of propositions but participation in divine self-communication. For that reason, theology cannot be purely descriptive or expressive; it must be formally structured. The disputational form enacts that structure. It forces theology to move from surface assertion to internal coherence, from confession to understanding.

This method also allows theology to remain both rigorous and contemplative.

• Rigorous, because every claim must withstand formal objection and be expressed in a grammar of precision.

• Contemplative, because every resolution finally returns to the mystery of God who exceeds dialectic.

In this way, the scholastic disputatio becomes the proper vehicle for what these writings call model-theoretic theology: a discipline that seeks to relate the formal language of faith (T) to the ontology of divine being. Each disputation, while logically disciplined, remains theological in motive and eschatological in horizon. The thesis states what can be confessed; the objectiones test its intelligibility; the responsiones disclose its inner coherence; the nota unfolds its broader theological meaning; the determinatio seals the act of understanding in doxology.

Historical Continuity

The use of the disputatio situates these essays consciously within the intellectual lineage of the Church. Luther, Melanchthon, and their students at Wittenberg employed the disputationes not as scholastic mimicry but as instruments of evangelical clarity. The form was not opposed to Reformation insight; it was its chosen discipline. The Disputationes Heidelbergae (1518), Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, and the later Lutheran scholastic systems of Gerhard, Calov, and Quenstedt all employed structured reasoning to preserve the unity of truth and faith.

By retrieving this form, the Disputationes Theologicae affirm that theology’s rational vocation remains valid. The contemporary theologian, no less than the medieval master or the Reformation doctor, must think within ordered form if he is to think at all. The scholastic discipline reminds theology that truth is not spontaneous expression but participation in divine Logos. In an age of intellectual fragmentation and performative discourse, the disputatio restores theology’s proper seriousness: its commitment to clarity, coherence, and communion.

A Theological Rationale

This recovery of form also serves a deeper purpose. The model-theoretic vision that animates these disputations holds that theology’s task is to interpret faith’s formal language within the ontological reality of divine being. That interpretive process requires structure.
The disputatio provides that structure by mapping theology’s logical, semantic, and ontological movements:

1. from syntax (faith’s given grammar),

2. through semantics (modeling within being),

3. to truth (participation in divine reality).

The scholastic method thus becomes a theological necessity: the visible form of theology’s internal logic. Its ordered movement from assertion to resolution mirrors theology’s own participatory logic — from Word to understanding, from faith to vision.

Conclusion

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

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

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Praefatio

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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On Theological Expressions as Syntactical

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

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

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Thesis

Theological expressions—here denoted T, meaning the total language of faith as it is spoken, written, and confessed—must first be regarded as syntactical: governed by formation and inference rules that secure coherence before questions of meaning or truth arise. Only when this system of expressions is interpreted within a model—that is, placed in relation to what exists—do meaning and truth properly emerge.

Locus classicus

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12

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

Explicatio

Before theology can claim truth, it must possess disciplined language. Every theological expression belongs to a larger body of speech, the lingua fidei or language of faith, symbolized by T. This T is like a formal system in logic: its sentences must be well-formed, consistent, and properly related to one another before they can be said to express truth.

In logic, syntax refers to the internal structure of a language—how sentences are put together—while semantics refers to their meaning in relation to a world. Similarly, theology’s syntax orders the words of revelation before interpretation. Within this syntactical horizon, what matters is not whether a proposition is true or false but whether it can be rightly spoken—whether it fits the grammar of faith authorized by the Spirit.

For example, the statement “Christ is truly present in the Eucharist” is not yet about metaphysical presence when viewed syntactically; it expresses a well-formed confession that belongs to a network of statements derived from Scripture, creed, and liturgy. To violate that network’s grammatical order—say, by detaching the statement from the Eucharistic context or from Christ’s promise—is to lose what Luther calls felicity, the Spirit-given rightness or legitimacy of speech (bene dicere in Spiritu Sancto).

Thus, theology’s first task is grammatical. It secures the coherence of divine speech once it has entered human words. Only after this grammatical integrity is achieved can theology responsibly advance to the next level—modeling—where its expressions are related to being and thus acquire truth-conditions.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Karl Barth and the dialectical theologians contend that theology begins with divine self-revelation, not with the formal analysis of language. To start with syntax is to subordinate the immediacy of God’s address to human categories of logic and grammar. If God speaks, the structure of that speech must be received, not constructed.

Obiectio II. According to the later Wittgenstein, meaning is determined by use within a “form of life.” Theological expressions, therefore, have sense only within the lived practice of the Church. To formalize them syntactically is to abstract them from their communal context and distort their function. Theology should describe language-games, not engineer systems.

Obiectio III. Jacques Derrida and postmodern theorists insist that language is characterized by indeterminacy and différance: every sign refers to another sign, never to stable presence. A divinely ordered syntax would reinstate the metaphysics of presence. Theology should dwell within the play of meaning, not claim a fixed grammar of divine speech.

Obiectio IV. Friedrich Schleiermacher and the liberal theological tradition maintain that theology arises from the inward feeling of absolute dependence. Faith expresses itself symbolically but resists propositional form. To impose syntactical order upon religion is to betray its essence as life and feeling.

Obiectio V. Analytic and empiricist philosophers of religion argue that theological statements, lacking empirical verification, are not propositions in any meaningful sense. To speak of a “syntax” of faith’s language is to confer logical structure upon utterances that are neither factual nor falsifiable.

Responsiones

Ad I. The dialectical theologian rightly insists that revelation precedes all theological discourse, yet revelation comes clothed in human words. Syntax, in this sense, is not construction but preservation. The Spirit who gives the Word also gives the grammar by which the Church may speak it intelligibly. To attend to syntax is to attend to the order of revelation’s communicability, not to impose alien form upon it.

Ad II. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning is rule-governed and communal remains invaluable; nevertheless, theology’s “form of life” differs from empirical practice in that its rules are Spirit-given, not conventionally negotiated. Formal analysis of theological syntax does not abstract language from life but clarifies the divine order that sustains it across times and cultures. The lingua fidei is a living grammar, not a sociological dialect.

Ad III. Deconstruction rightly unmasks the instability of autonomous sign systems, yet theology never claimed autonomy for language. Its signs refer not because they are self-grounding but because they are Spirit-grounded. Theological syntax confesses the presence of the Logos who anchors signification within grace. The Spirit’s rule of speech secures openness to mystery without collapsing into chaos.

Ad IV. The liberal tradition’s appeal to inner experience perceives an essential dimension of faith, but experience without grammar quickly dissolves into solipsism. The Spirit who kindles faith also orders confession. Syntax renders faith communicable; it enables the Church to speak one faith with many tongues. Grammar, in theology, is the sacramental form of life’s interior truth.

Ad V. Empiricism confuses the scope of verification with the scope of meaning. Theological sentences are not empirical hypotheses but covenantal assertions within a distinct order of reference. Their syntax marks that order. The absence of empirical reducibility does not entail meaninglessness; it reveals participation in a different ontology—one defined by God’s speech, not by sensory data.

Nota

The study of theology as syntactical is not an idle formalism. At the Institute of Lutheran Theology and beyond, this concern for grammar defines how the Church, the academy, and public reason preserve the intelligibility of faith. Where Christian discourse forgets its grammar—whether in preaching, scholarship, or popular devotion—confession decays into sentiment and doctrine into opinion.

The renewal of theological language therefore depends upon communities capable of grammatical fidelity:

• schools that teach precision in the use of sacred terms,

• churches that guard the patterns of sound words handed down, and

• scholars who render the faith publicly intelligible without diluting its form.

Every age must recover its grammar of belief, lest the gospel be spoken in tongues no longer understood.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Like all object languages, theological discourse T is syntactical before it is semantical; its form precedes its reference.

2. The Spirit grants the Church a rule-governed language whose coherence must be secured prior to interpretation.

3. What we call FT—the felicity conditions of T—are the marks of Spirit-given coherence (consistency, entailment, and authorization).

4. Only when T is joined to an ontological model—a structured account of what is real—do we obtain TC, its truth conditions. In symbolic shorthand, FT + Modeling = TC,
   which means: the Spirit’s authorization of speech, combined with its proper relation to being, yields theological truth.

5. This syntactical priority ensures both theology’s autonomy from empirical reduction and its dependence upon divine address.

To speak theologically, therefore, is to inhabit a grammar already constituted by God’s self-communication and to let that grammar shape every truthful word about God.

Performatives, Illocutions and Felicity Conditions for Preaching

Many point out that preaching is a performative act.  Instead of a mere conveyance of said information, good preaching is a doing.  In the sermon, Jesus Christ Himself is handed over to the hearers of the Word. 

The Tuebingen systematician Owald Bayer (b. 1939) uses the notion of a performative utterance, connects it with the promissio, and contrasts it with a mere constative.  Accordingly, Bayer quotes a statement from Luther’s Tishreden as stating a general principle in Luther’s semantics: "Signum philosophicum est nota absentis rei, signum theologicum est nota praesentis rei"  (“The philosophical sign is a mark of an absent thing; the theological sign is a mark of a present thing"), and “the signum itself is already the res; the linguistic sign is already the matter itself" (Martin Luther’s Theology, 52).

The promissio Bayer locates at the center of Luther's theology is unpacked by equating the word in language with the reality itself. Bayer suggests that in promises, words are not to be interpreted extensionally or intensionally, but are themselves their own reality.  (I have elsewhere called this the "donational model.")  Bayer regards this to be the deepest presupposition of Luther's theological semantics, a position he claims is akin to the views on performative language advanced by Austin. 

Over and against the constative, Bayer regards the promissio as a performative utterance: "In contrast to every metaphysical set of statements that teach about the deity, this assertion [e.g. "To you is born this day a Savior"] declares that God's truth and will are not abstract entities, but are directed verbally and publicly as a concrete promise to a particular hearer in a specific situation. 'God' is apprehended as the one who makes a promise to a human being in such a way that the person who hears it can have full confidence in it" (53).  Bayer has many more things to say about promise-talk:  

•  " . . . one cannot take the promise, which is not a descriptive statement, and transform it into a descriptive statement.” 
• “Secondly, one cannot take the promise, which is not in the form of a statement that shows how something ought to be done, and transform it into an imperative. . . .” 
•  "The truth of the promise . . . is to be determined only at the very place that the promise was . . . constituted. This means it is located within the relationship of the one who is speaking . . . and the one who hears. . . .”

Unfortunately, regardless of his authorial intent, Bayer’s formulations suggest a possible confusion.  One might hold that the sermon is a set of performative utterances - - promises being one type of performative - - that do something rather than say something, and then go on to claim that since performative utterances are not true or false, preaching expressions have no truth-conditions.  While this might seem a very bad thing, it is actually has some theological advantages.   How is this view possibly fruitful?  

Since the time of Kant there has been a tendency to claim that religious and theological language do not talk about the same reality as that talked about by historical, scientific, and even philosophical language.  This happened because the Kantian criticisms of natural theology succeeded in adding to the previous Enlightenment distrust that theological statements could be straightforwardly true.  If they weren't true, but still useful, then what were they?  The view that whatever religion and theology talk about, they don't talk about the same reality as discussed in the other disciplines is called the independence thesis in the theology and science discussion.  The question is then to locate the domain of theology with respect to other domains.  What domain is theology about?   

Here is where performative utterance-talk can come to the rescue.   The promise of performative utterances is that Lutheran theology can thus avoid metaphysical statements about God, God’s causal relationship with the universe, and God’s relationship to the realm of being generally. Instead one merely says that theology is all about doing, and doing cannot conflict with what is, with the saying of  metaphysics!   One can thus both be an academic, post-Kantian and a Lutheran theologian all at the same time!  
    
Accordingly, proclamations become first-order doing expressions without truth conditions, and they produce what they say.  Preaching is constituted by performative utterances declaring one’s freedom from sin, death, and devil through Christ.   Explicitly theological formulations then become second-order saying expressions which are merely regulative in that they order the performative utterances, and govern the occasions and context of their use.  One detects a fleeting ghost of Schleiermacher who held:  

• First-order religious language is expressive and poetic;
• First-order rhetorical language is rhetorical and persuasive;
• Second-order theological language is didatic and dogmatic.  

Clearly, a great deal of weight must be carried by the notion of a performative utterance, if it is to ground the very questionable discipline of theology in our time.  Unfortunately, many theologians do not realize that the status of a performative utterance is itself a matter of considerable philosophical controversy, and that Austin was already attacking his own performative-constative distinction almost 60 years ago.  

In sections IV and VII of How to Do Things with Words, Austin accumulates a number of doubts about the performative-constative distinction.   It seems that certain "felicity conditions" must be met in order for a declaration or promise to occur, and that these conditions rest both on social convention and speaker intentionality.  A performative is null and void if issued by a person not in position to perform the act, e.g., the pastor can marry the couple only in the appropriate social context, not by himself in the shower.  An unelected plumber cannot declare war on behalf of the United States.   One cannot promise with the intention to break it or without any means to fulfill the promise.   It seems that, for Austin, there is an element of the constative in each performative, and an element of the performative in the constative.   For these reasons Austin abandons the performative-constative distinction and formulates instead a distinction among locutions, various illocutionary acts, and the different perlocutions accomplished through these illocutions.   

The locution is the semantic content of an utterance; it is the act of saying something.   The illocutionary act is that which is accomplished in the saying.  It is the "extra meaning" beyond the literal meaning of the locution.  It and the perlocution constitute part of the speech act's force.   The perlocution is the intended effect produced in the hearer by the illocution.   This effect clearly depends upon social convention.   Austin's student, John Searle, revised the threefold schema of Austin into five categories:  

• Representatives state something in the doing.  Examples are "the cat is on the mat," and "David Hume died in 1776."  
• Directives tell others to do something, e.g., "Give me the hammer!", "Don't make a sound during church." 
• Commissives occur when promises are made, e.g., "I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us," "God sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall never die." 
•  Expressives merely display the speaker's attitudes and states.   Examples are, "I am really sorry about that," "Congratulations!!!"  
•   Declarations actually do something with words, e.g., "I name you John," "Class dismissed!"  

Searle regards directives, commissives and declarations to be general performatives where the world must now fit the words.  Alternately, representatives and expressives are general representatives where the words must fit the world.   (In an expressive, the word is supposed to fit the world of the speaker's attitudes and emotions.)  With all of these, however, there is an element of each in the other.   General performatives have locutionary semantic content; general representatives have a particular illocutionary force.  A single locution can sustain markedly different different illocutionary and perlocutionary force.

Take, for instance, the phrase, 'The dog is in the yard."   This could be a representative or an assertive merely stating what one thinks.  It might be used as a directive, telling others to stay away.   It might be a commissive that promises to all a safe yard.   Of course, it could be an expressive that does nothing more than display speaker fear.   The phrase, "I promise to be there tomorrow," can be a promise, but it might be a threat.  Saying 'the Day of the Lord is at hand' might be interpreted as a promise if God's presence is thought to be advantageous to the hearer, but it might be threat if divine presence is likely disadvantageous to the hearer.  (Notice how easy it is to explain now how the same locution of Scripture can both be Law and Gospel?)    

Given all of these distinctions, it becomes very hard to see how a performative utterance can somehow lead to Bayer's championed identity of a signum and res.  The signum does constitute the locutionary content of the expression.  The res, however, seems best associated with the perlocution, with what is brought about through the illocution.  Clearly, on this interpretation the perlocution cannot be a thing identifiable with the semantic content of the word itself.

We have found that the notion of a performative utterance has been employed in preaching to speak of the force of preaching and its effect, but that the notion of a performative as not having a truth value makes problematic this use.  We have also learned that Austin himself found his distinction between performatives and constatives problematic, and that newer views were subsequently devised to speak of illocutionary acts which utter locutions.  What Austin and Searle both discovered, however, is that in the analysis of speech act meaning, one simply cannot escape semantic content.    

We have previously concluded from this that there is nothing especially mysterious about using language to accomplish persuasive ends.   In good preaching, illocutions effect perlocutions.  Preachers thus exhort by demand and promise to move the hearts of their hearers.   This movements of the heart are the perlocutionary effects of these utterances.   Consequently, there is no simple identity between signum and res.  So far so good.   But there remains one really big problem for those finding an isolated doing in preaching performance that protects Lutheran's from an Enlightment-style critique of putative Lutheran saying.   

According to speech act theory, for a declaration to obtain certain felicity conditions must be in place.  For preaching to be interpreted as felicitiously performative, there can be no misfiring or abuse, and there must exist the proper preparatory conditions.  This means that while 'I absolve you' may have the sufficient felicity conditions in congregations whose attendees have appropriate presuppositions about the authority of the preacher to pronounce absolution and the sincerity of the preacher in pronouncing it, this is not the case in much of America now.   If preaching is a performative utterance, then any putative identity of signum and res can only occur as an “inside game” where the appropriate executive conditions --- are there appropriate background conditions? -- and essential  felicity conditions --is there proper fulfillment of the speech act? -- obtain.

I believe our time is like the time of the first century.   People to whom we preach must be convinced of the truth of what we are saying before they will join a community and adopt the appropriate felicity conditions making possible preaching declarations.   One can "hand over Christ" in preaching only if there are previous broad commitments about the existence and nature of a God causally efficacious in salvation.   The problem of our time is that only a few share the societal conventions that make possible the obtaining of the felicity conditions for proclamation.  The following likely hold:   

• We find the background conditions of belief necessary for the social conventions grounding the felicity conditions of preaching declaration are no longer present. 
• We find that few are moved by the illocutionary acts of preaching because the very possibility of perlocutionary response is tied to the question of truth. 
• We discover that more than a few pastors are simply insincere; they use language in ways that downplay propositional content in order to bring about a perlocutionary effect that in the tradition was always tied to that content.   

Performative utterances are not mysterious and cannot remove us from the truth game.   Accordingly, they cannot lead us around the critique of modernity.