Disputation XXX: De Veritate Interna et Externa Theologiae

On Internal and External Truth in Theology

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae sit tantum interna in suo sermone, an etiam externa in relatione ad ipsum Deum, ita ut sermo theologicus non solum sit fidelis in se, sed etiam verus de eo quod est.

It is asked whether the truth of theology is only internal to its own discourse, or also external in its relation to God himself, so that theological language is not only faithful in itself but also true of what is.

Thesis

Theology possesses a twofold truth: internal and external. Veritas interna is the felicity of discourse authorized by the Holy Spirit within the community of faith; it is the truth of theology intra systema fidei. Veritas externa is the adequation of this discourse to divine reality: the truth of theology de Deo ipso.

The former concerns the integrity of theological grammar; the latter, the participation of that grammar in the infinite Word. The two are not opposed but ordered: the Spirit authorizes language internally so that it may participate externally in the Logos.

Formally expressed:

$$\text{<i>Auth</i>}<i>(</i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>t</i>}}<i>)</i><i>\Rightarrow </i>\mathrm{<i>\exists </i>}\mathrm{<i>I</i>}<i>:</i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>t</i>}}<i>\hookrightarrow </i>{\mathrm{<i>L</i>}}_{\mathrm{<i>\infty </i>}}$$

This states that theological truth obtains only if the Spirit establishes an interpretive inclusion of the finite theological language $L_t$ into the infinite divine discourse $L_{\mathrm{\infty }}$. This symbol (↪) indicates participatory inclusion, not the formal subset relation. It is the Spirit’s act by which finite discourse is gathered into infinite meaning.

Locus Classicus

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

In this declaration, Christ identifies truth not as correspondence or coherence, but as personal participation in the divine Logos. Augustine reads this as meaning that “veritas non est aliquid extra Deum, sed ipse Deus veritas est” (De TrinitateVIII.4). Aquinas echoes: “Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei; in Deo autem idem est intellectus et res” (ST I.16.5). Therefore, for theology, truth cannot be merely formal, but it must be participatory. The finite intellect is true only insofar as it shares in the divine act of knowing.

Explicatio

In the history of thought, the distinction between truth within a system and truth about a system first appears formally in model theory. A sentence φ is true in a structure M if it is satisfied by the interpretation within that model. However, the claim that M is a true description of reality belongs to a meta-level statement.

Analogously, theology’s internal truth corresponds to felicity within its Spirit-constituted framework. While the Church’s speech is true in fide, when it coheres with the rule of faith and manifests the Spirit’s authorization, its external truth pertains to whether this discourse participates in divine reality, whether it corresponds to what God is.

Modern theology, following Kant and linguistic turns, has often reduced truth to the internal. For example, Barth restricted it to divine self-revelation, Lindbeck to communal grammar, and postmodern theology to local language-games. Yet each of these, by refusing externality, confines truth to the system and renders theology self-referential.

Against this, classical realism affirmed that the Word of God not only structures faith internally but also grounds reality externally. The Word that words is the same Word through whom the world worlds. Hence theology’s truth is not self-enclosed but world-constituting; it participates in the divine Logos that both gathers thought and gives being.

While the Spirit grants felicity—right utterance, coherence, confession—the Son grants truth—ontological adequation. The Incarnation unites both: the Word made flesh is veritas interna (Spirit-born confession) and veritas externa (divine reality) made one.

Thus, just as in logic the meta-system grounds the internal system’s truth, so in theology the infinite Word grounds the discourse of the finite. The Spirit mediates this inclusion, making the finite participate in the infinite, so that theology may speak truly both in and of God.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Empiricism claims that all truth must be verifiable by observation. Theological claims are unverifiable and thus have no external truth. There is only the internal coherence of theological discourse for believers using it. 

Obj. II. From the cultural-linguistic standpoint, theology’s meaning arises only within the communal grammar of faith. Thus, to speak of “external truth” misunderstands language as representational rather than formative. Theology is true insofar as it performs its grammar.

Obj. III. Post-modernity assumes that every discourse is self-referential such that “outside” a language game there is nothing. Hence “external truth” is a non-starter. All truth is internal to interpretation.

Obj. IV. Barthians held that God’s revelation is self-grounded and free, and that appeal to participation or adequation cannot verify it. Truth exists only in the event of revelation, it is not tied to ontology.

Obj. V. Contemporary analytic thinking holds that model-theoretic analogies fail for theology. There is no definable model of God; hence talk of inclusion Lt​↪L∞​ is metaphorical and lacks formal content.

Responsiones

Ad I. Verificationism mistakes the order of reality for the order of appearance. Theology is not an empirical but a participatory science: it knows by union, not by observation. External truth in theology is not sensory correspondence but ontological inclusion in the act of God.

Ad II. The Church’s grammar is indeed formative, yet its form is the Spirit’s work, not a human construct. The Spirit’s authorship makes the grammar porous to transcendence; hence, its truth cannot be merely communal but is grounded in the divine speech that precedes the Church.

Ad III. Postmodern closure presupposes the very transcendence it denies. The internal system’s finitude points beyond itself to the infinite that constitutes it, just as, by the Löwenheim–Skolem principle, any consistent system admits higher interpretations. The finite theological discourse testifies by its very limitation to the necessity of the divine meta-language.

Ad IV. Revelation is not opposed to participation but presupposes it. God’s free act of self-disclosure is the mode in which creatures participate in divine truth. To say revelation alone grounds truth is already to affirm that truth has external reality in Deo ipso.

Ad V. While theology cannot construct a formal model of God, the analogy holds analogically: God is the modelus sui sermonis, the reality to which divine discourse is perfectly adequate. Finite theology participates in that adequation by the Spirit. Thus, the inclusion ${\mathrm{<br>}}_{}$ is not formal but real: it signifies the Spirit’s act of joining human speech to the eternal Word.

Nota 

The distinction between internal and external truth in theology mirrors the structure of revelation itself. Veritas interna designates the truth of faith—the Spirit’s authorization of discourse within the divine economy of speech, and veritas externa names the correspondence of that discourse to divine reality as such. These are not two truths, but two perspectives upon one act. The internal truth is the participation of the believer in the Word, while the external truth is the participation of the Word in the world.

Within the sphere of veritas interna, felicity and faith coincide: the statement “Jesus is Lord” is true because it is spoken in the Spirit. Within veritas externa, that same statement is true because the incarnate Word is objectively Lord of all. The Spirit assures, the Word grounds, and the Father unites these two horizons in the single act of truth.

Thus, theology’s truth is not reducible to logic nor to experience; it is a relation of participation. Language, illumined by the Spirit, shares in the ontological act of the Word and so becomes both performative and correspondent. The finite utterance is true when it is gathered into the divine discourse that both causes and completes its meaning.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Veritas interna is the pneumatological authorization of theological discourse, its faithfulness, coherence, and integrity within the Spirit’s grammar.

2. Veritas externa is the Christological participation of that discourse in the divine Logos, the ontological adequation by which the Word that words also constitutes what is.

3. The two are ordered: the Spirit perfects language internally so that it may correspond externally to the Word.

4. Finite discourse, like a logical system, cannot ground its own truth; it requires inclusion in the infinite speech of God.

5. Therefore, theological truth is neither merely communal nor purely propositional but participatory, It is rather the inclusion of finite utterance in infinite meaning.

Hence we conclude: Veritas interna sine externa est infidelis; veritas externa sine interna est muta. Only when the Spirit authorizes and the Logos fulfills does theology speak the truth.

Postscriptum Modernum

Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and the Löwenheim–Skolem results together illuminate the formal necessity of theological participation.
Gödel showed that any sufficiently rich, consistent formal system contains truths that cannot be proven within it; there are statements true in the system but not demonstrable by it. The Löwenheim–Skolem theorems, conversely, reveal that no formal language uniquely determines its own model, foeeven first-order theories with infinite models admit both smaller and larger interpretations.

Taken together, these findings expose a deep structural fact: no finite system can secure its own truth. Consistency does not entail completeness and satisfaction within does not entail adequation without. Hence, every coherent finite language gestures beyond itself toward a meta-language or an infinite frame in which its truth is grounded.

Theology mirrors this logic. The finite L_t of human discourse may be internally consistent—Spiritually felicitous—but its truth as about God depends upon participation in the infinite L_∞ of the divine Logos. The incompleteness of reason is not its defect but its vocation: it is the mark of the finite’s openness to the Infinite.

Thus, what logic demonstrates negatively—that no system can prove itself complete—theology confesses positively: Finite speech becomes true only when the Word that words gathers it into the world that worlds. In this gathering, internal felicity becomes external truth; the Spirit’s authorization becomes the Logos’s fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXI

If the Spirit authorizes theology’s internal felicity and the Logos grounds its external truth, what is the nature of the concept that mediates between them? The next disputation investigates the structure of human conceptuality itself: its finitude, its schematism, and its completion in the real Word. 

We proceed to Disputatio XXXI: De Conceptuali Schematismo et Verbo Reali, and ask how human concepts, limited by finitude, become vessels of infinite meaning, and how the Real Word transforms thought itself into a mode of divine speech.

Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Quaeritur

Omne modelum theologicum est verum participative, sed finitum formaliter. Finis modeling theologici non est defectus sed indicium transcendenciae veritatis divinae, quae non comprehenditur sed communicatur. Spiritus Sanctus servat hunc ordinem, ut finitum maneat capax infiniti sine confusione.

Every theological model is true by participation but finite in form. The limit of theological modeling is not a defect but the sign of divine transcendence—the truth of God that cannot be comprehended yet can be communicated. The Holy Spirit preserves this order, ensuring that the finite remains capable of the infinite without confusion.

Thesis

Theological models are necessarily bounded expressions of divine truth. Their formal incompleteness is not failure but fidelity: each model bears witness to a truth that exceeds it. The transcendence of truth is thus the very condition of theology’s realism—the sign that its words refer beyond themselves to the living God whom no concept can contain.

Locus classicus

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” — Romans 11:33

The Apostle’s exclamation affirms that divine truth is both knowable and unsearchable. Theology does not abolish mystery; it articulates it. The depth of divine knowledge marks the horizon of all theological modeling.

Explicatio

Every theological model seeks to interpret the language of faith (T) within an ontological structure that makes its truth intelligible. Yet by its very nature, this interpretation is bounded. Finite language cannot capture infinite reality, but it can participate in it.

Modeling’s limit is therefore intrinsic and theological. To express it formally (and then explain):

• Let M denote a theological model, and V the divine truth it seeks to express.

• The relation M ⊂ V means that the model is contained within the divine truth, not the reverse.

• The inclusion is analogical, not spatial: theological truth exceeds every formalization because it is grounded in divine self-being (ipsum esse subsistens).

This limit does not undermine theology’s validity; it guarantees it.
If theology could exhaust divine truth, God would be reduced to a logical totality. Instead, the Spirit maintains an open horizon—a structured incompleteness analogous to Gödel’s insight that every consistent system points beyond itself.

Thus, the incompleteness of theology is not an epistemic failure but a mark of its realism. To speak truly of God is to acknowledge that one’s words refer beyond themselves to the inexhaustible fullness of divine meaning.

In theological modeling, then, there are two horizons of truth:

1. Formal completeness (perfectio formalis) — the coherence and internal truth of the model itself.

2. Transcendent adequacy (adequatio transcendens) — the degree to which the model participates in divine reality beyond all system.

The Spirit bridges these horizons, ensuring that theology’s finite models remain ordered toward the infinite without dissolution or despair.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If every theological model is limited, theology can never yield certainty; all statements about God remain provisional.

Obiectio II. To speak of limits implies that divine truth is in principle unknowable, collapsing theology into apophatic silence.

Obiectio III. The analogy to Gödelian incompleteness introduces a mathematical formalism alien to the nature of revelation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theological certainty differs from mathematical completeness. It rests not on exhaustive comprehension but on participatory adequacy. The believer’s assurance (certitudo fidei) arises from communion, not closure. Certainty in theology is relational — it depends on the faithfulness of the Revealer, not the fullness of our models.

Ad II. Limits do not negate knowledge but define its sanctity. To know God truly is to know Him as inexhaustible. The more theology apprehends, the more it perceives the excess of what remains. The apophatic and the cataphatic are not opposites but concentric movements around divine mystery.

Ad III. The Gödelian analogy is illustrative, not foundational. It serves to illuminate the principle that truth transcends formal systems. As logic points beyond itself to meaning, so theology points beyond itself to the living God. The analogy expresses theological humility, not technical equivalence.

Nota

The finitude of theological models discloses their vocation. They are not idols but icons: transparent forms through which divine light passes. An idol contains what it names; an icon reveals what exceeds it. To model truly is to construct such icons—finite forms ordered toward infinite reality.

In this light, theology’s incompleteness becomes a virtue. A perfect model would contradict its own subject, for God cannot be reduced to formula or schema. The Spirit’s presence ensures that each model remains porous, open to transcendence, capable of bearing infinite significance within finite form.

We might symbolize this relation (and then immediately explain it):

T + M → V* where T is the language of faith, M the model interpreting it, and V** (“V-star”) the transcendent truth that grounds both. This notation reminds us that truth (V**) always exceeds its modeled representations (V), even as it grants them participation.

Hence, theology’s structure is eschatological: every true model anticipates its fulfillment in glory, when formal adequacy and divine presence will finally coincide (FT = TC = V**).

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological modeling is necessarily finite; its limit is the sign of divine transcendence, not the mark of error.

2. Truth in theology is participatory: each model communicates a real share in divine reality without exhausting it.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, sustaining both coherence (formal felicity) and openness (transcendent adequacy).

4. The incompleteness of theology secures its realism: it acknowledges the otherness of God while truly speaking of Him.

5. Therefore, theology’s task is not to eliminate its limits but to sanctify them — to make every model an icon of mystery, transparent to the infinite truth that alone fulfills it.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIX

The boundaries of modeling have revealed that no finite language can contain divine truth. Theology therefore finds itself suspended between two orders of speech: the human, which signifies by mediation, and the divine, which signifies by being. Every theological statement, if true, participates in both. It speaks of God while being spoken by God, for the same Word who is the content of theology is also its condition.

Yet this double belonging calls for further clarification. If theology’s words are grounded in divine speech, then what is the nature of that grounding? Does theology possess a meta-lingua—a higher language of the Spirit—within which its finite utterances receive authorization and coherence? And how does this meta-language relate to the eternal Verbum divinum, the Logos in whom all truths are articulated and made real?

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino, in which it is asked whether theology speaks about God or within the speech of God, how the divine Word functions as the metalanguage of all theological discourse, and how human language, assumed into that Word, becomes both instrument and revelation of divine truth.

Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica

On Modeling and Theological Truth

Quaeritur

Modeling theologicum est actus interpretationis, quo lingua fidei (T) inseritur in ordinem entis per Spiritum, ut veritas divina in forma creata repraesentetur. Veritas theologica non est solum correspondentia, sed participatio: modelum est locus in quo significatio finita communicat cum veritate infinita.

Theological modeling is the act of interpretation by which the language of faith T is inserted into the order of being through the Spirit, so that divine truth is represented in created form. Theological truth is not mere correspondence but participation: the model is the site where finite meaning communicates with infinite truth.

Thesis

Modeling in theology mediates between the formal structure of faith’s language and the reality of divine being. It is the Spirit’s interpretive act by which finite expressions are rendered adequate to divine truth. Thus, theological truth arises when the language of faith is modeled within ontological participation—when speech and being converge under the causality of the Spirit.

Locus classicus

“Your word is truth.” — John 17:17

Christ’s prayer identifies divine Word and truth as one. The Word does not describe truth; it is truth. Theological modeling, therefore, is the interpretive participation of human language in this divine Word — the act by which theology’s finite words are aligned to the infinite truth they confess.

Explicatio

The term modeling in theology designates the act of relating T, the formal language of faith, to its referent in divine reality.
Earlier disputationes established that:

• T (Disputationes I–V) is syntactical and governed by felicity,

• divine causality (VI–VII) ensures the real participation of creaturely being in God, and

• divine intentionality (X–XVI) grounds meaning and language in God’s own communicative act.

Modeling now unites these strands. It is the Spirit’s work of translation from grammar to ontology, from faith’s finite speech to divine being.

To model theology is not to construct analogies from below but to interpret forms given from above. Every theological model is a finite schema through which divine truth is made intelligible without being exhausted.

Formally (and then explained):

• Let T = the language of faith.

• Let M = the ontological model interpreting T.

• Let FT = the felicity conditions under which speech is rightly ordered.

• Let TC = the truth conditions under which that speech corresponds to being.

The structural relation:

FT + M → TC means that when faith’s language is interpreted within a Spirit-formed ontological model, its felicity becomes truth. In simpler terms: theological modeling is the Spirit’s way of making language true.

This makes theology’s truth participatory rather than merely propositional. A model does not “mirror” God as a copy but “shares” in God as a participation. Its adequacy is analogical: it communicates divine truth in finite mode.

Thus, the veritas theologica is always twofold — immanent within the model and transcendent beyond it. No model contains God, yet each true model signifies and participates in God’s truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According the the logical positivist tradition of Ayer and Carnap, theological models cannot, by definition, be verified or falsified by experience. They are neither analytic nor synthetic propositions but expressions of emotion or moral attitude. Modeling such language formally only disguises its non-cognitive nature. To call theological models “true” is to misuse the word “truth.”

Obiectio II. According to George Lindbeck and post-liberal theology, 
religious language functions like grammar within a community of faith. Modeling theology in reference to divine reality reintroduces an outdated representationalism. Theological statements are true when they coherently express the community’s faith, not when they correspond to an external metaphysical domain. Truth is intra-linguistic, not ontological.

Obiectio III. The analytic realism of Alston or Swineburn would likely argue that model-theoretic semantics, by abstracting theological assertions into formal systems, actually removes them from their epistemic grounding in revelation and evidence. Theology must rest on propositional revelation and rational inference, not on semantic or metaphysical models. Modeling may aid clarity but cannot determine truth.

Obiectio IV. The process and open theism of Hartshorne might object that modeling presupposes static ontology and determinate truth conditions, but God and creation exist in dynamic relation. If the divine reality itself is temporal and evolving, theological models that aim for determinate truth are conceptually obsolete. Truth in theology should be relational and open-ended, not formalized and fixed.

Obiectio V. Postmodern constructivism, e.g., Jean-François Lyotard and Mark C. Taylor argues that all models are human constructs reflecting power, history, and language. Theological “models” therefore reveal only the imagination of believers, not divine reality. There is no metalanguage of truth, only competing narratives. To speak of Spirit-grounded modeling is to mask human construction in theological authority.

Responsiones

Ad I. Logical positivism’s verification principle undermines itself, being neither analytic nor empirically verifiable. Theological models, by contrast, are truth-apt within the ontological domain established by revelation. They are not empirical hypotheses but formal articulations of divine causality and participation. Truth here is not observational but metaphysical—an adequation between language and the divine act of being. The Spirit secures this adequation by constituting reference: the link between the finite symbol and the infinite reality it signifies.

Ad II. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but not its referential depth. The Church’s grammar is Spirit-constituted, not self-enclosed. Modeling theology does not abandon grammar; it explicates how grammatical felicity opens onto truth.
Theological statements are true not merely because the community authorizes them but because the Spirit interprets them into ontological reality. Modeling thus bridges communal coherence (felicity) and divine correspondence (truth).

Ad III. Analytic realism is correct in affirming propositional truth, but theological propositions derive their meaning from participation, not mere correspondence. Model-theoretic structure preserves formal rigor while accommodating the transcendence of its referent.
Revelation supplies the data; modeling orders it logically and ontologically. Truth in theology is not confined to human inference but extends to divine causation: the Spirit ensures that models do not merely describe revelation but participate in its act.

Ad IV. Process theology rightly emphasizes relationality, but divine relationality is not temporal becoming; it is the eternal act of self-communication. The Spirit’s causality is continuous, not evolutionary.
Theological models do not freeze divine life into static concepts; they describe stable relations of participation within the dynamic plenitude of God. Truth in theology remains determinate because God’s being is faithful—unchanging in love though living in relation.

Ad V. Postmodern constructivism exposes the finitude of all discourse, but theology interprets this finitude as the very site of divine communication. The Spirit’s presence does not negate historical contingency but transfigures it.Theological models are indeed human in form, yet divine in authorization. Their truth is pneumatic: God speaks in and through finite structures of meaning.To deny all meta-language is itself a meta-linguistic claim; theological realism acknowledges limitation without surrendering truth. The Spirit makes human language capable of transcendence.

Nota

Modeling theology is the grammar of divine realism. It allows theology to speak truthfully of God without collapsing into empiricism or fideism. Each formal model M interprets the language of faith within an ontological environment of participation, where the believer’s predicates correspond to divine correlates:

D_G → D, where D_G denotes a divine property (e.g., goodness in God) and D its participated correlate in the believer.

This relation, mediated by the Spirit, ensures that theology’s language does not float above reality but is anchored in divine causation. Hence, modeling is not speculative construction but a mode of communion: the structured correspondence of word and being within divine speech itself.

The Church, as communitas interpretans, lives within this modeling process. Its doctrine, liturgy, and confession are the Spirit’s ongoing interpretation of divine truth into the finite forms of history.
Theology’s models thus evolve not by invention but by the Spirit’s continual translation of the one Word into ever-new horizons of intelligibility.

In this sense, the entire economy of revelation can be described as a divine modeling of truth in time — the Word becoming flesh, history, and sacrament.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Modeling in theology is the Spirit’s act of relating faith’s language T to divine being, rendering it true through participation.

2. Theological truth is participatory, not merely representational: the model is a locus of communion between finite meaning and infinite reality.

3. The multiplicity of models reflects the analogical fullness of divine truth, not its relativism.

4. The Spirit mediates all modeling, ensuring coherence between felicity (right speaking) and truth (real being).

5. Theology thus achieves realism without idolatry: its words do not replace God but share in His communication.

Transitus ad Disputationen XVIII

Theology has discerned that its language of modeling is not a mere imitation of scientific representation, but a mode of participation in divine revelation. Through analogy and symbol, models open a window into the reality they cannot contain.Yet every model discloses its own insufficiency. To signify the infinite is always to fall short of the infinite. Therefore, the more faithfully theology speaks, the more deeply it senses the silence that surrounds its words.

Hence, modeling truth leads inevitably to the recognition of transcendence. If divine reality is the act by which all meaning is given, then no finite structure can encompass it without distortion. The limits of modeling are therefore not obstacles to truth but its boundary markers, the signs where creaturely thought acknowledges its dependence on the uncreated Light.

Thus we advance to Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis, in which we ask whether theological models can ever be adequate to divine reality, how truth manifests itself beyond conceptual form, and how the transcendent Word gathers even the failure of language into the fullness of His self-disclosure.

Disputatio III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis

On the Holy Spirit and the Boundary of Felicity

Quaeritur

Spiritus Sanctus est ille qui determinat fines sermonis theologicis, discernens inter locutiones quae intra linguam fidei (T) feliciter cadunt et eas quae extra eam iacent. Finis felicitas non est defectus, sed confessio quod sermo de Deo manet in gratia eius dependens.

The Holy Spirit determines the boundaries of theological speech, discerning between utterances that fall felicitously within the language of faith T and those that lie beyond it. This boundary of felicity is not a defect but a confession that all speech about God remains dependent upon grace.

Thesis

The Holy Spirit is both the formal and causal condition for theological felicity; it is the divine source by which expressions are included or excluded from the language of faith. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse: it authorizes what can be said rightly, and by that very act, defines what cannot.

Locus classicus

“No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” — 1 Corinthians 12:3

Saint Paul reminds us that even the simplest confession of faith is not a human achievement but a divine act. True speech about God depends upon the Spirit who enables it; theology’s grammar is itself pneumatological.

Thesis

The Holy Spirit is the formal and causal condition for theological felicity; it is the divine source by which expressions are included within or excluded from the language of faith. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse: it authorizes what can be said rightly, and by that very act, defines what cannot.

Explicatio

In the previous Disputationes, theology was described first as a language T and then as interpreted through models that connect it to being. But not only does every language require grammar and meaning, it requires authorization as well. Someone must say when speech is fit to be uttered.

In theology, that authorizing agent is not the Church alone, nor is it human reason. It is the Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit, who determines which expressions belong within T, the Church’s living language of faith.

When we speak of felicity, we mean the condition under which a statement can be rightly spoken in the Spirit. In formal terms, we call these the felicity conditions of T, written FT. These include internal order (logical consistency, coherence, and entailment) and external authorization (the Spirit’s activity discerned through Scripture, confession, and ecclesial life).

The Spirit thus functions as the boundary condition of theology. Like a grammatical rule that both permits and prohibits, the Spirit allows speech that participates in divine life and excludes speech that contradicts it.

To say that theology has a finitude of felicity is to acknowledge that its authorized speech, though real and truthful, nonetheless remains partial. No expression in T exhausts divine truth, for the Spirit never ceases to exceed the words He inspires.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Karl Barth and other revelation theologians maintain that the act of divine self-disclosure is infinite in origin and scope. To speak of a finite felicity of the Spirit’s operation is to divide the one act of revelation into infinite and finite parts, reducing divine grace to creaturely measure. If the Spirit is truly God, then His activity cannot be characterized as finite without denying His divinity.

Obiectio II. Immanuel Kant would argue that felicity, insofar as it implies union with the divine, cannot be an object of theoretical knowledge. Human reason is bounded by phenomena; divine reality remains noumenal and inaccessible. “Theological felicity” can therefore be at most a moral or regulative idea, guiding action but not describing an ontological state wrought by the Spirit.

Obiectio III. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein, felicity pertains to the successful performance of language within a given form of life. To call a theological utterance “felicitous” means that it fits the grammar of the believing community. Finitude and infinitude are grammatical categories, not metaphysical ones. The Spirit adds nothing beyond the community’s own rule-governed practices of meaning.

Obiectio IV. From a Hegelian standpoint, Spirit (Geist) is infinite self-consciousness realizing itself through the overcoming of finitude. If the Holy Spirit is truly Spirit, then its work in human life must sublate finitude rather than affirm it. To insist on the “finitude of felicity” is to arrest the dialectical movement of Spirit toward the Absolute, leaving theology mired in limitation and incompleteness.

Responsiones

Ad I. The Spirit’s operation is infinite in essence but finite in mode. The same act that is infinite in God becomes finite in the creature through the very generosity of divine condescension. Finitude here does not denote defect but form—the determinate condition under which the infinite communicates itself. The Spirit’s work is not measured by human limits but expressed through them. The finitude of felicity is the medium by which divine reality becomes communicable and effective within history.

Ad II. Kant’s critique of speculative reason rightly identifies the limits of human cognition, yet theology does not seek theoretical knowledge of God but participation in divine communication. Felicity is not a concept but an event: the Spirit’s act of rendering finite speech and understanding proportionate to divine truth. Within this act, finitude becomes the very space of grace. The theological subject remains bounded, but those bounds are filled with divine presence; the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

Ad III. Wittgenstein correctly locates felicity within the use of language, but he omits its ontological ground. The Church’s grammar is not self-originating; it is constituted and sustained by the Spirit’s act. The felicity of theological language is thus not merely communal correctness but pneumatological authorization. A sentence is felicitous not because the Church says so but because the Spirit speaks through it. Finitude here names not the limit of meaning but the site where divine meaning takes flesh in human words.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic perceives rightly that Spirit and finitude are related, but wrongly that their relation can be expressed as sublation. The Holy Spirit does not abolish finitude but indwells it. The infinite does not return into itself through the finite; it abides with the finite as love. The finitude of felicity thus expresses the perfection proper to creaturely participation—the creature remains itself yet becomes radiant with divine life. Spirit’s infinity is shown not by transcending finitude but by transforming it into communion.

Nota

The distinction between inclusion and exclusion in T may be described symbolically as T_in and T_out.

• T_in designates those expressions that the Spirit renders felicitous, language consistent with Scripture, creed, and the ongoing life of the Church.

• T_out refers to expressions that fail these tests, either through contradiction, incoherence, or lack of spiritual authorization.

This symbolic division simply formalizes what theologians have always practiced in discernment. The Spirit is both the “grammar” and the “breath” of theology: grammar, because He gives order; breath, because He gives life.

To put it differently, the Spirit is the condition of theological intelligibility. Without Him, theology would become a dead syntax,  correct perhaps in structure but devoid of life. With Him, speech about God becomes participation in the very life it names.

Thus, the finitude of felicity marks theology’s humility. It confesses that human language, even when sanctified, cannot contain the infinite. The Spirit authorizes theology’s words and simultaneously guards them from presumption.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The Holy Spirit is the divine ground of theological felicity; He is the One who renders certain expressions speakable within faith.

2. The Spirit’s authorization has both internal criteria (coherence, consistency, right entailment) and external criteria (Scriptural consonance, ecclesial reception, discernible fruits).

3. The boundary of felicity is not a limitation imposed from without but the inner grace by which human speech remains ordered to God.

4. To say that theology is finite in felicity is to acknowledge that its language, though true, is never exhaustive of divine mystery.

5. The Spirit’s dual act of including and excluding establishes theology’s form as a living language: finite in utterance, infinite in source.

Transitus ad Disputationem IV

From the preceding inquiry it is evident that divine truth enters the sphere of human words without themselves ceasing to be divine. Yet if God truly speaks, what is the nature of this truth within language? Does the meaning of theological speech arise from convention, or from participation in the reality it names?

To resolve this, we turn to Disputatio IV: De Veritate Significationis Theologicae, where we shall inquire whether theological predication is merely analogical expression or the very act of the divine Word signifying itself within finite language.

Indeterminate Realism versus Phenomenological Ontology

We received word late yesterday (November 15, 2018) from our accrediting agency that we could begin offering our Ph.D. at the Institute of Lutheran theology in the fall of 2019.  As the founding President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT), and having taken it from its early very tenuous years through accreditation, and now to this milestone, I wish to express my sincere thanks to all who have worked so diligently on this project.  We have always done what we do to the glory of God, because the search for truth is its own reward.

I wrote this reflection earlier this week, and offer it up now in the spirit of truth.  Clearly, blog writing is not meant to be scholarly writing with citations like one would find in a academic journal.  That being said, I do think all I say below can be supported by the appropriate texts.  As always, I am interested in any responses you might want to share on the blog.
________________________________________

I remember once having a rather protracted discussion with Langdon Gilkey (1919-2004) in a Des Moines church basement sometime around 1994.  At that time, he would have been 75 years old.  Like many, I had read Naming the Whirlwind in the early1970s, and had been impressed with the issues Langdon had raised on the future possibility of God-talk.  Gilkey had given a talk reflecting on his teacher Paul Tillich that night in the church basement, and I wanted to talk to him about how I was understanding Tillich in those days.

Paul Tillich (1885-1965) wrote a number of widely-read books in the 1950s, including two that I regularly taught undergraduates, The Dynamics of Faith (1956) and The Courage to Be (1952).  (I never had undergraduates read his Systematic Theology.)  In both of those texts, Tillich had employed the notion of the "Ground of Being" in tandem with the "Power of Being," and the "depth of Being," distinguishing them all in The Dynamics of Faith from the "Structure of Being."

The Ground of Being, for Tillich in the 1950s, was the source of existential empowerment in the face of the fundamental anxieties of existence, the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, and the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness.   In those days, I admit to thinking that Tillich was committed to a phenomenological ontology, and that the Ground of Being simply could not be any "thing" at all.  It was both Ground and Abyss, the Depth of Being whose function it was to be pointed to by religious symbols, and which somehow provided the "courage to be in spite of the fact of non-being," that is, that "negation of the negation of being" that provided being (through courage) existentially in the face of the non-being of existential anxiety.  Whereas a phenomenological ontology could describe the structure of being, it could only point to that indeterminate reservoir of empowerment potential transcending that structure.

I remember talking to Langdon about this, trying to gauge what, in fact, Tillich's view on the Ground of Being was. I thought that perhaps Tillich himself knew that his phenomenological ontology pointed to a Ground of Being that could only be in and for consciousness, that as the reservoir of empowerment, it could not in any way be what it is apart from consciousness.  In other words, I thought that Tillich would have to hold that if consciousness were not present, the Ground of Being could not exist either.  I remember Gilkey listening earnestly to me and saying, "I think Tillich would never think of the Ground of Being in that way.  After all, the Ground of Being for Paul was a real thing."  He then said to me, "if you want to understand what Paul was talking about, you have to read Schelling."  Since reading Schelling seriously was not then on my immediate to-do list, I admit to continuing to think that Tillich must finally be understood in the lineage of Martin Heidegger.  Surely, his thought was not somehow indebted to one of Schelling's Five Systems.  Was he not better understood as a thinker of his own age -- at least when he was thinking clearly like he was surely doing in the last 15 years of his life?

I have been talking about realism in theology these last years because I have thought profoundly important this claim:  A thing is real if and only if that thing exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Applied to God, this is the claim that God is not real unless God's existence is what it is apart from human existence, that is to say, if and only if the existence of human beings is logically independent of God's existence.  It thus seemed that one would have to adopt irrealism in theology if one were to ground one's theology in a phenomenological ontology.   Irrealism is the simple denial of realism, the assertion that "it is not the case that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language."

It had been clear to me for some time that that if theology was going to be about something important, i.e., about that which the tradition had assumed it was about, it would have to make causal claims about salvation, claims of the type that "X would not have been saved  -- however one construes this -- apart from the real existence and action of God."  If Bob's existential empowerment could have occurred even were it not the case that the Ground of Being existed apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then it could not rightly be claimed that this salvific empowerment was caused by God.  One might claim it was caused by some aspect of us, some depth of our own being with which we are not normally in contact.

It has also seemed to me for a very long time that God cannot be God if God were only a metaphysical absolute.  The God that is the God of Christianity is tied to action, I thought, to acting so as aid God's children, to, as Tillich might say, "negate the negations of being." 

This being said, ground of being theologies do have great metaphysical appeal.  Wesley Wildman rightly points to their fascination: "They deny that ultimate reality is a determinate entity, and they deny that the universe is ontologically self-explanatory" (See "Ground-of-Being Theologies," in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science).  My opinion is, however, that while the metaphysical absolute can be intellectually satisfying in myriad ways, if there is no salvific causal connection or metaphysical dependency relation that can be drawn from the Ground of Being to possible human transformation, then Ground of Being ontologies are not really helpful for the religious quest. 

As I was thinking about the development of post-Kantian options for theology in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, I became quite uneasy with many of the moves, because they seemed mostly to be consistent with theological irrealism.  What difference would it even make if there were a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language if empowerment in the face of the fundamental existential anxieties did not even involve God?  What difference would it make were there to exist a God that was soteriologically inert?  God could, after all, have abstract existence, perhaps like the set of all ordered pairs, but if God were not related to the universe or people in it such that if God had not existed the salvific options of people would not be different, then in what sense is it even important to say that God is?
 
As an instance of possible irrealism, consider how it is possible that one can preach Law and Gospel, and deliver Christ in the sermon so that the grace of God is delivered in the forgiveness of sins without assuming the existence of God at all.  If one presupposes a phenomenological ontology, the forgiveness proclaimed and received in the Word can be understood in terms of a change in the ontological linguisticallity of existence.  If what it is to be is to be in a world in which one dwells in relationship to beings and values, then a linguistic event like preaching really can change one's world.  One perhaps is donated a being-in-the-world which would not have happened apart from the event of preaching.  The effects on the reader of Scripture, the hearer of the sermon, and the recipient of the sacrament could clearly be interpreted as not involving the action of some divine being.  If language itself is performative and the linguistic event empowers, then why assert some other being, disconnected from the event whose action would vouchsafe for the success of the event's reception?

But what if Langdon Gilkey is right about Tillich, and that I really should have studied more deeply Schelling, or perhaps the later works of Kant whom Fichte and Schelling wholly devoured?  While I have spent quite a bit of time in both The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason, I have never spent sufficient time with The Critique of Judgment, Kant's last great work of 1790.   I have lately decided to read the work closely, and I now see how and why it was that both Fichte, Schelling, as well as a whole host of other philosophers, believed that Kant's greatest work was, in fact, the Critique of Judgment.  The Critique of Pure Reason is very important, of course, but the options for philosophical and theological development from that work in an age threatened by mechanism were understandably limited.  However, the Critique of Judgment with its emphasis on aesthetics and purpose seemed extremely relevant to the challenges of the early 19th century: How can one find unity, purpose and meaning in a natural universe in which everything that happens seems to be the result of some congeries or concatenation of events antecedently occurring?

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant attempts to find a linkage between the mechanism resulting from the understanding's theoretical cognition of nature and freedom resulting from practical cognition of the power of desire.  The problem is the apparent antinomy between the assertion that all natural events are necessarily determined by other natural events and the claim that there are some events which are natural that are nonetheless not wholly determined by other natural events.  After all, when confronted by the decision to either go to the party of stay home, Molly is immediately aware of her freedom not to go as the very presupposition for her thinking that she ought not to go party.  Molly is a being in the world who is caused to behave as she does by her antecedent conditioning, but who nonetheless has the freedom to do other that what she did do.  But how can all natural events have a cause in nature, when Molly is a natural being involved in natural events and she sometimes acts in ways seemingly determined by no natural events at all?  How is the freedom of a human being, whose being is embodied in nature, possible?

Kant attempts to solve this antinomy by arguing that nature deals only with appearances, and so the appearance of determinism is not in conflict with the underlying freedom encountered in practical reason's grasp of its own duty.  The freedom encountered by the reason in its moral life is not a freedom, however, solely resting in the subject.  It is a freedom determined by reason's grasp of the supersensible substrate that exists both inside and outside the subject, a supersensible substrate that is indeterminate in itself, but is determined in moral experience.  For Kant, however, there is a power of judgment which operates to make determinable the indeterminate supersensible subtrate, a determinability that is possible on the side of the object, that is, a determinability applicable to the entire supersensible substrate, not just that encountered by the subject.

In an important section of the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that the transcendental notion of purpose applied to nature is finally no mere thinking of purpose on the side of the subject when thinking nature, a thinking that would be the subject's imposition of purpose upon nature, but it is a thinking itself grounded in the indeterminate supersensible substrate, a real supersensible substrate which is what it is, and in the application of judgment to it, can allow the thinking of purpose in nature.

It is impossible, of course, to think what is indeterminate, however, Kant does laud Judgment's ability to think the world as if it were designed by God and as if this God had placed the human effort towards fulfillment of the moral law as the highest good of this creation.  While Kant knows that he cannot argue metaphysically for the real existence of this God without running into the antinomies, he does realize that human beings are allowed to think of the world of nature as if it is the result of objective purpose built into it by God, an objective purpose designed by God allowable on the basis or ground (Grund) of the supersensible substrate.  This substrate cannot be thought for there are no universals under which any supersensible intuitions might fall.  It is not able to be articulated by human beings, but it itself is that upon which analogies arise, analogies that allow human beings to think of nature as the field of moral activity without at the same time having to deny the results of the First Critique.

What does all of this mean?  Well maybe Ground of Being theologies yet hold some hope if we can connect them to a Kantian supersensible substrate.  If the Ground of Being underlying the Structure of Being is the supersensible substrate, an indeterminate noumenality that is the real reservoir of a power of being at the depth of being, a real reservoir of empowerment potential that can truly address the anxieties of fate and death, guilt and condemnation, and emptiness and meaninglessness, then perhaps we can read the entire tradition of theology based upon Kant a bit differently.  There would be, after all, a God, and that God would do stuff.  Its upon that God's basis that we could proclaim that God was indeed in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.  It is upon that Ground that the grace of Jesus Christ would be proclaimed and it is upon that really existing being that we could proclaim forgiveness and witness transformed lives.  It is upon that Ground that the Spirit would blow when and where it wills, and that the play of the Trinitarian persons could be entertained.  It is upon that Ground of divine simplicity that we could think the great thoughts of the Trinitarian tradition, a Ground deeper than substance but which is the true cause (Grund) of all that is. Maybe such an indeterminate realism is what the apophantic tradition was after all along.