Disputatio LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente: Utrum Praesentia Logi Sit Conditio Omnis Veritatis Revelatae

 On the Real Presence of the Word: Whether the Presence of the Logos is the Condition of All Revealed Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum praesentia realis Logi—tam in revelatione quam in sacramento et praedicatione ecclesiae—sit conditio sine qua non omnis veritatis revelatae; et utrum veritas theologiae consistat non tantum in actu constitutivo Logi (XL) sed etiam in eius praesentiali actualitate qua Logos adest ut verum manifestetur.

Whether the real presence of the Logos—in revelation, sacrament, and ecclesial proclamation—is the indispensable condition of all revealed truth; and whether theological truth consists not only in the constitutive act of the Logos (L) but also in His presential actuality by which the truth is disclosed.

Thesis

The Logos not only constitutes truth by making being (Disputatio L), but makes truth knowable by being present. Without the real presence of the Logos, revelation would be opaque, sacrament would be sign without reality, and proclamation would be sound without truth. Thus, the real presence of the Word is the condition of the possibility of revealed truth. Accordingly: Truth = Constitutive Act + Real Presence + Spirit-Authorized Reception. The Spirit unites these three by making the constituting Word present to the believing subject.

Locus Classicus

1. John 1:14 — Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Incarnation is the primal instance of Logos constituting truth through real presence: veritas visibilis. Truth is not merely spoken; Truth comes.

2. Luke 24:32 — Ἐνῆπτεν ἡμῶν τὰς καρδίας

“Did not our hearts burn within us while He was with us and opened the Scriptures to us?”

Here Christ’s presence interprets Scripture: revealed truth requires the Revealer present.

3. Matthew 28:20 — ἐγὼ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι

“Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Mission and proclamation contain revealed truth because Christ is with the Church. Presence grounds truth.

4. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses I.7

“Μὴ νομίσῃς τὸν ἄρτον εἶναι· σῶμα Χριστοῦ ἐστιν.”
“Do not think this is bread; it is the Body of Christ.”

Sacramental truth is real presence, not an interpretive projection.

5. Luther, WA 26, 444 — “Das Wort ist der Träger der Gegenwart Christi.”

“The Word is the bearer of Christ’s presence.”

In preaching, the Logos is really present to accomplish what He says. Truth occurs because the Speaker is present in the speech.

Explicatio

While Disputation XL established that the Logos constitutes truth by creating the order of being, Disputation XLIX showed that theological truths require divine truthmakers, and Disputation L demonstrated that the Logos constitutes truth because He makes being, Disputatio LI advances the argument that truth must also be present to the recipient. Accordingly, revelation is not true because the world is shaped by the Logos alone, but it is true because the Logos is present in revelation.

1. Revelation: Presence as the Condition of Disclosure

Revelation is not information but manifestation. Truth is disclosed because the One who is Truth is present in the theophany in the Old Testament, the incarnation in the New Testament, and the indwelling of the Spirit.

2. Sacrament: Presence as the Condition of Efficacy

The truth of “This is my body” is contra Zwingli not symbolic, contra Lindbeck not merely intepretive, and contra Schleiermacher not merely communal. Rather, it is true because Christ is present constitutively and sacramentally.

3. Preaching: Presence as the Condition of Communication

Proclamation is not the recounting of absent truths, but is rather the mode of the Logos’ real presence through the Spirit. Thus, revelation is presence makes truth visible, the sacrament is presence makes truth tangible, and preaching is presence making truth audible. Accordingly, truth becomes truth-for-us by the real presence of the Word.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to Enlightenment rationalism, truth consists in clear propositions corresponding to empirical or conceptual content. Presence—divine, sacramental, or ecclesial—is epistemically irrelevant. Propositions can be true without the Logos being present; thus revealed truth does not require presence.

Ob II: According to Zwinglian and Memorialist Sacramental Theology, the sacrament need not involve the real presence of the Logos. Christ is absent bodily and present only in memory and faith. Sacramental truth is commemorative, not ontological. Therefore, real presence is not necessary for the truth of sacramental claims.

Ob III: On the reading of Postliberal Linguistic Theology, truth is intratextual coherence within the Church’s language-game. “Presence” introduces metaphysical commitments foreign to grammar-based theology. Meaning is generated by communal rules, not divine presence. Therefore, revealed truth does not require ontological presence.

Ob IV: Kantian Critical Philosophy claims that the divine, as noumenal, cannot be present in the phenomenal order. Revelation cannot involve real presence but must be symbolic or moral. Thus theological truth cannot depend on the Logos being present to human cognition.

Ob V: Secular Hermeneutics regards “presence” as a mythic remnant of pre-critical consciousness. Meaning is constructed, not given and nothing “comes” from outside interpretive structures. Therefore, the real presence of the Logos is neither possible nor necessary for truth.

Responsiones

Ad I: Propositions presuppose an intelligible world; intelligibility presupposes the Logos as arche and light. Rationalism mistakes derivative clarity for primordial illumination. Without presence, truth becomes abstraction without ontological ground. Presence grounds intelligibility itself.

Ad II: Divine speech is performative: God’s words accomplish what they signify. Christ’s “This is my body” is an ontological act, not a mnemonic suggestion. Sacramental truth is grounded in the Logos present as gift, not in subjective recollection. Without presence, sacrament has no truthmaker.

Ad III: Grammar accounts for internal felicity, not external truth. Without a real God present in Word and sacrament, theology becomes a self-referential linguistic practice. Presence supplies the external anchor postliberalism cannot provide.

Ad IV: Incarnation is the decisive negation of Kant’s phenomenal/noumenal divide. The Logos becomes flesh, rendering divine presence phenomenally given without ceasing to be infinite. Revelation presupposes a metaphysics larger than Kant’s categories permit.

Ad V:  Interpretation does not entail construction. That humans interpret does not imply that nothing is given. Presence is the metaphysical form of divine givenness—the condition under which revelation transcends mere projection. Meaning is received, not fabricated.

Nota

Presence is the ontological mode by which constitutive truth (L) becomes accessible as revealed truth.

Three clarifications follow:

1. Presence Makes Constitutive Truth Manifest. The Logos’ constitutive act grounds truth-in-itself; His presence grounds truth-for-us. Revelation requires not only that the Logos has acted but that He is present to the recipient.
2. Presence Is the Form of Theological Knowing. Theology is not cognition of absent propositions but participation in the Truth who comes. Knowledge of God is fundamentally encounter, not inference. Presence is the epistemic bridge uniting creaturely consciousness with divine act.
3. Presence Is the Sacramental Form of Divine Self-Giving. Revelation (light), proclamation (voice), and sacrament (gift) share one structure: the Logos present through the Spirit for the sake of truth. Without presence, revelation becomes history, sacrament symbol, and proclamation mere exhortation.

Thus: Veritas revelata = Verbum praesens. Revealed truth is nothing other than the Word present in His own disclosure. 

Determinatio

We determine:

1. The real presence of the Logos is necessary for all revealed truth, for without His presence revelation would not be self-disclosure.

2. Sacramental truth is grounded in real presence, not symbolic representation.

3. Preaching is a mode of presence, not a mere report of past acts.

4. Truth becomes truth-for-us through presence, as the Spirit unites creaturely knowing to divine manifestation.

5. Christ is both constitutive and presential truth: He makes truth and He is present as truth.

Thus theological truth is not merely metaphysical (L) nor merely linguistic (XLVIII), but presential:
the Truth who made all things is the Truth who comes to us.

Transitus ad Disputationem LII: De Donatione Referentiae per Spiritum

Having established that truth requires the real presence of the Logos, we next consider: How does the Spirit make this presence intelligible? Presence alone is not yet understanding.

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio LII: On the Donation of Reference by the Spirit wherein it will be asked how the Spirit gives the res of theological language—whether all theological understanding rests upon the Spirit’s act of donating the referent by interpreting the presence of the Logos to the creature.

Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Actus Divinus Ipsum Verum Efficiat

 On Constitutive Causation: Whether the Divine Act Makes Truth Itself

Quaeritur

Utrum divina actio non solum efficiat res esse, sed etiam efficiat verum esse; et utrum veritas theologiae consistat formaliter in actu Logos constituente ipsum ordinem entis, ita ut “truth through the Logos” sit constitutiva veritas, non tantum correspondentia.

Whether the divine act not only brings things into being but also brings truths into being, and whether theological truth formally consists in the Logos’ constitutive act that establishes the very order of being—so that “truth through the Logos” is constitutive truth, not mere correspondence.

Thesis 

Divine action is constitutive of theological truth. The Logos does not merely correspond to an independently existing world, but He makes the world, and thereby makes the truth about the world. Thus, theological truth is not simply descriptive adequation but constitutive adequation: truth obtains because the Logos acts. The Holy Spirit effects the union between statement and reality, such that the felicity of theological language and the ontological grounding of its truth coincide.

Therefore, Truth = Divine Constitutive Act + Spirit-Authorized Assertion. Metaphysically, God makes truth by making being, and the Spirit binds word to being.

Locus Classicus

1. John 1:3 — πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο

πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν.
“All things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be.”

Creation is not merely production of being but production of the order of being. Thus the Logos is not a truth-teller but a truth-maker: all truths about creatures depend on the act that constitutes them.

2. Hebrews 1:3 — φέρων τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως

“He upholds all things by the word of His power.”

The ongoing reality and truth of all things is constituted by the Logos’ sustaining act. Verum is continually performed by the divine act.

3. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.2

“Veritas est ipse Deus in quo nihil mutabile, nihil mendax.”
“Truth is God Himself, in whom there is nothing changeable or false.”

Truth is identical with God’s actus essendi. Thus, creaturely truths are true by participation in divine truth.

4. Athanasius, Contra Gentes 41

ὁ Λόγος τὸ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσι δίδωσιν.
“The Word gives being to the things that are.”

To give being is to give truth conditions. The Logos constitutes essence and therefore constitutes truth.

5. Martin Luther, WA 40/III, 342

“Deus dicendo facit.”
“God, by speaking, makes.”

Luther’s ontology of the Word grounds a strong truthmaker principle and thus divine speech is not annotation but creation.

Explicatio

While in XLVIII we distinguished internal and external truth, in XLIX we argued that external truth requires truthmakers, which are hyperintensional divine acts. Now we articulate the deeper principle: The truthmaker for any theological proposition is the Logos’ constitutive causation.

1. Constitutive vs. Efficient Causation

While classical efficient causation claims that A causes B, theological constitutive causation declares that A is the very ground of B’s existence, identity, order, and truth.

Since the Logos constitutes 1) the being of things, 2) the structure of their relations, 3) the intelligibility through which truths are possible, and 4) the order that statements answer to, divine causation is thus truth-making, not merely world-making.

2. Why Theology Requires Constitutive Causation

1. Theology’s claims depend on the identity of God’s actions, not merely on worldly states of affairs.

2. Only constitutive causation can explain why distinct divine acts yield distinct truths.

3. The Spirit’s role in felicity (XLVIII) requires grounding in ontological acts, not merely representation.

4. The incarnation shows that God’s act is the truthmaker of salvation (John 1:14).

3. Constitutive Truth vs. Correspondence

Correspondence is derivative while constitutive causation is primary. This entails both that statement S is true because God has acted such that the world corresponds to S, and that the “correspondence” is a manifestation of constitutive causation, not its origin. Hence theology’s fundamental truth relation is:

Λ ⊨** T

The Logos constitutively satisfies T.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to Thomistic epistemical realism -- "Truth is adequation alone” - truth resides in the intellect, and adequation requires only that statements match being, not that being be caused by God for that purpose.

Ob II:  Classical Analytic Metaphysics claims that truths supervene on the distribution of properties across the world. Thus, no hyperintensional divine acts are needed.

Ob III: Neo-Barthian theology declares that God reveals truth in Christ but does not ontologically ground all truths through constitutive act.

Ob IV: Process theology argues that divine causation is only persuasive and thus not constitutive.  Accordingly, truths arise cooperatively through divine-creaturely synergy.

Ob V: Postliberal Linguistic Theology tells us that theological truth is intra-textual, and thus it concerns the shape of Christian discourse, not metaphysical grounding.

Responsiones

Ad I:  Adequation requires a ground of being. Since God constitutes being, He constitutes the order in which adequation is possible. Thus constitutive causation underwrites, not replaces, adequation.

Ad II: Supervenience explains dependence but not grounding. Truth requires a because—a reason for being thus. Divine constitutive act supplies this grounding, not merely the extensional pattern.

Ad III: Revelation is not separable from ontology because to reveal the Father, the Son must be eternally begotten, and thus He must be the primal constitutive act. Revelation presupposes ontology, not vice versa.

Ad IV: Persuasion cannot alone constitute truth. Theology requires more. Indeed, the object of faith must be ontologically able to make truths true. Constitutive causation is required for realism.

Ad V: Grammar governs internal truth (felicity), but external truth requires a real God who grounds the being spoken of. Without constitutive causation, theology collapses into performance without ontology.

Nota

Constitutive causation solves the problem raised in XLVIII–XLIX. Accordingly, internal truth as Spirit-authorized assertion and External truth as Logos-constituted reality coincide because the Spirit unites the word to the act by which the Logos grounds truth.

Thus theological truth is neither sheer correspondence, sheer grammar, nor sheer experience, but it is rather participation in the constitutive act of the Logos.

Determinatio

We determine:

1. Truth in theology is grounded in the Logos’ constitutive act, which gives being, order, and intelligibility.

2. Constitutive causation is hyperintensional, because divine acts differ in internal form, not merely in effect.

3. Correspondence is a derivative effect of constitutive causation, not its replacement.

4. The Spirit is the mediating principle, uniting linguistic felicity with ontological grounding.

5. Christ is the paradigm of constitutive truth, for in Him the truthmaker and truth coincide.

Thus: Theology speaks truly because God makes truth, and God makes truth because He is the One who makes being.

Transitus ad Disputationem LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente

Having established that the Logos constitutes truth through constitutive causation, we now proceed to the next question: How does the constitutive act of the Logos relate to the real presence of the Word in revelation, sacrament, and ecclesial proclamation? For if truth is constituted by divine act, then the presence of the Logos is the mode by which truth becomes accessible to creatures.

Thus we move to: Disputatio LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente: Utrum Praesentia Logi Sit Conditio Omnis Veritatis Revelatae where we shall examine how constitutive causation becomes manifest presence, binding ontology to revelation.

Disputatio XLIX De Veritate Facienda: De Truthmakeribus et Hyperintensionalitate Theologica

 On the Making of Truth: Truthmakers and Theological Hyperintensionality

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae requirat veritatem facientia (truthmakers) quae non tantum determinent extensionem enuntiationum sed ipsam rationem, modum, et causam secundum quam enuntiationes theologicae verae sunt; et utrum haec veritatem facientia sint hyperintensionalia, id est, finioris resolutionis quam illa quae per modum possibilitatis vel extensionis explicari possunt.

Whether the truth of theology requires truthmakers that determine not only the extension of theological claims but the very reason, manner, and cause by which such claims are true; and whether these truthmakers must be hyperintensional, that is, finer-grained than any account reducible to modal or extensional equivalence.

Thesis

In theological discourse, two claims may share an extension yet differ in truth because Spiritus Sanctus determines felicity and actus Dei determines truth. Thus truthmakers in theology must be more fine-grained than possible-world semantics or classical extensional identities.

Locus Classicus

1. “Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο” — John 1:14

Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

This is a paradigmatic case of truthmaking: the claim “God is with us” is true because God has acted, not because of a description of the world’s extension. No possible world analysis captures the ontological fact that God has joined Himself to flesh. The truthmaker is the very event of incarnation, not a set of worldly facts.

2. “Fiat lux. Et facta est lux.” — Genesis 1:3

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר‎
“God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Here divine speaking is truthmaking: verbum is res. The statement “light exists” is true because of a specific divine act. Not all causes producing the same extension could be the truthmaker of this theological claim.

3. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate 1.1

“Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.”

But in theology, the adequation is not passive comparison; it is acheived through divine causation: adaequatio fit per actum Dei constituens ipsum esse rei.

4. Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannis 1.9

Ὁ λόγος ἀληθεύει τὰ ῥητὰ ποιῶν.
“The Word makes true what is spoken.”

A direct witness to theological truthmaking.

Explicatio

While XLVIII distinguished internal truth (felicity of faith’s language) and external truth (adequation to divine reality), XLIX specifies the metaphysical principle by which external truth occurs, that is, that truth is made true by divine acts.

Why Theological Truth Requires Truthmakers

In theology:

1. A proposition’s extension does not fix its truth.

   • “God forgives” and “God elects” may apply to the same set of saved persons yet differ profoundly in reality.

2. The causal grounding matters:

   • Forgiveness is a specific act of mercy, not merely an outcome.

3. The mode of divine presence matters:

   • Christ’s Eucharistic presence is not interchangeable with omnipresence, though extensionally both may involve presence.

4. The source of felicity matters:

   • Statements authorized by the Spirit differ even if extensionally identical with statements not authorized.

This yields a hyperintensional truth-structure.

Hyperintensionality Explained

A context is hyperintensional when:

• substitution of co-referential terms changes truth,

• substitution of necessarily equivalent propositions changes truth,

• grounding, not just extension, determines truth.

Theology is hyperintensional because:

1. Divine acts differ in their inner form, not only in outcome.

2. Participation is specific and non-interchangeable 

3. Felicity (Spirit-authorization) cannot be replaced by mere semantic equivalence.

4. Truth is identical with being only in God, not creatures.

5. Revelation determines the mode of truth, not merely the result.

Thus theology inevitably operates at a finer semantic grain than any modal logic.

Objectiones

Ob I. Truthmaking violates divine simplicity by treating divine acts as distinct truthmakers.

Ob II. Hyperintensionality undermines classical semantics and threatens coherence. Truth should depend only on the world, not on modes of presentation.

Ob III. Scripture itself often speaks extensionally: “Your faith has saved you.” Why therefore introduce metaphysical machinery alien to the biblical text?

Ob IV. If truth requires divine acts as truthmakers, we risk collapsing into occasionalism or voluntarism.

Ob V. Truthmaking presumes metaphysical realism incompatible with postliberal grammar models of theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine simplicity is not violated, for the truthmaker is God as acting, not “a part” of God. The distinction is one of formal expression, not ontological composition.

Ad II. Hyperintensionality does not threaten coherence, but rather it protects the specificity of divine revelation. Theology cannot collapse distinct divine acts into one extension without losing referential integrity.

Ad III. Scripture’s economy of language does not negate metaphysics. The biblical claim is hyperintensional in that faith saves because it unites one to Christ, not because of abstract extension.

Ad IV. Truthmaking is not voluntarism. It is the grounding of truth in divine being. While voluntarism posits an arbitrary divine decree,  truthmaking anchors truth in God’s eternal act.

Ad V. Grammar models (Lindbeck) explain internal felicity but not external reality. Truthmakers bridge that gap without collapsing theology into metaphysics or vice versa.

Nota

Truth in theology cannot be reduced to any of these:

• correspondence

• coherence

• pragmatic usefulness

• communal grammar

• modal possibility

This is the case because none of these capture the specificity of divine causation. Thus, Truth = Felicity + Divine Fact-making. The Spirit authorizes what the Father and Son accomplish. This, however, requires a semantics richer than extension or modality; it requires a hyperintensional semantics grounded in ontological participation.

Determinatio

We determine that:

1. Theological propositions require truthmakers in the form of divine acts, not merely worldly facts.

2. Truthmakers in theology are hyperintensional, because divine actions differ not only in effect but in internal form.

3. The Spirit mediates truth, ensuring that felicity (internal truth) and divine causation (external truth) coincide.

4. Theology requires a semantics beyond the modal, for God cannot be captured extensionally.

5. Christ Himself is the supreme truthmaker, for in Him every divine act is both form and fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem L: De Causatione Constitutiva

Having shown that divine acts are truthmakers and that theology is hyperintensional, we now ask how such truthmaking occurs in actu, such that a theological statement becomes true through God.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Divina Actio Ipsum Verum Efficiat where we inquire as to whether the Logos not only makes truths true but constitutes the very ontology in which theological truth obtains.