Disputatio II: De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum

On Theology as a System of Models

Theologia, ut veritatem habeat, interpretanda est intra systema modelorum, quibus expressiones syntacticae linguae fidei referuntur ad statum rerum a Deo constitutum. Sic veritas theologica est consonantia inter linguam divinitus datam et esse ab eodem Deo productum.

For theology to bear truth, it must be interpreted within a system of models, through which the syntactical expressions of faith’s language are related to states of affairs constituted by God. Theological truth is thus the harmony between divinely given language and divinely created being.

Locus classicus

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

In this verse, divine speech and divine creation coincide. The Word that speaks is the same power that brings everything into being. In theological modeling, we rediscover this coincidence: truth arises when language and reality meet in the act of God.

Thesis

Theology, once established as a formally consistent language T, becomes truth-bearing only when its expressions are interpreted within models, within structured descriptions of reality that specify what exists and how what exists relates to God. Accordingly, modeling connects theology’s syntactical order to ontological reference, showing how speech about God corresponds to being as given by God.

Explicatio

If Disputatio I taught that theology must first be syntactically consistent and coherent, Disputatio II teaches that coherence alone does not suffice for truth. A language of faith, no matter how precise, remains incomplete until it is interpreted, until it is “modeled” within an ontological environment. 

In the language of logic, a model is a way of assigning meaning to expressions so that sentences can be true or false. In theology, a model serves a similar role but in a more profound sense: it is a structured account of the world as it stands before God. To say that theology requires modeling is to say that the words of faith must point beyond grammar to existence.

Let T again represent the language of faith: its prayers, confessions, and doctrines. Let M stand for a model, a depiction of the real order of creation, redemption, and consummation. To “interpret T in M” means that theological expressions are linked to the realities specified in M.  For example, the statement “Christ is risen” in T is modeled in M by the ontological claim that the crucified Jesus truly lives, an event and state of affairs that obtains within God’s causally ordered creation.

Theological modeling, then, is not speculation added to faith but the faithful translation of what God has done into the structures of thought and being. It allows the Church’s language to be both confessional and truthful, to say not merely what is believed but what is.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Immanuel Kant maintains that theoretical knowledge is limited to phenomena structured by the categories of human understanding. Theology, if it is to remain rational, must confine itself to moral postulates and practical reason. To speak of “models” relating faith’s language to divine reality exceeds the bounds of possible knowledge and reintroduces metaphysics.

Obiectio II. Following Martin Heidegger, phenomenology exposes ontology itself as the history of metaphysical forgetfulness. To “model” God within any structure of being risks reducing the divine to a presence among beings, an onto-theological idol. Authentic theology should remain apophatic, letting Being speak rather than constructing models.

Obiectio III. Logical empiricism and early analytic philosophy (e.g., A.J. Ayer, the early Carnap) hold that statements are meaningful only if empirically verifiable or tautological. Theological models cannot be tested or falsified; they are, therefore, pseudo-propositions disguised as metaphors.

Obiectio IV. Cultural-linguistic theology (e.g., George Lindbeck) argues that religious language functions like grammar within a community’s form of life. To “model” theology implies an external reference to a shared reality, contrary to the communal coherence that actually gives theology meaning. Theology should interpret its grammar, not seek models beyond it.

Obiectio V. In Whitehead and Hartshorne’s process thought, God and world form a single dynamic continuum. To construct fixed “models” is to freeze divine becoming into static metaphysical forms. A truly relational theology must renounce models in favor of open-ended process description.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant rightly insists upon the limits of speculative reason, but theology operates within a different horizon. The limits Kant identifies are epistemic, not ontological. Revelation transcends those limits by grounding knowledge in divine communication rather than human intuition. Modeling theology does not transgress the Critique but extends it analogically: it interprets faith’s language within the structure of being already constituted by the divine Word. The Spirit mediates between language and ontology where pure reason cannot.

Ad II. Heidegger’s concern to avoid onto-theology guards a genuine danger, yet his alternative leaves God silent within the withdrawal of Being. Christian theology confesses not an abstract presence but a personal act—the Word made flesh. Modeling theology does not capture God within being but describes being as participation in God’s speaking. The model functions not as enclosure but as vessel, transparent to the mystery it bears.

Ad III. Empiricist verification collapses under its own criterion: its principle is itself unverifiable. Theological models, by contrast, are verifiable within the domain of faith’s ontology—through coherence with revelation, consistency with confession, and transformative efficacy in the believer. Their truth is pneumatic, not laboratory truth. Theology’s models are judged by whether the Spirit bears witness within them.

Ad IV. Post-liberal theology rightly recovers the communal and grammatical dimensions of faith, yet it risks self-enclosure. Modeling does not impose external realism upon the Church’s grammar but explicates its inherent referential capacity. Scripture and creed speak not merely about communal practice but about divine reality. Theological models make explicit the ontological assumptions that faith already lives by implicitly.

Ad V. Process thought perceives the dynamic relation between God and world but mistakes relationality for mutability. The theological model can express relation without surrendering divine immutability: it portrays creation’s participation in God’s eternal act. Models are not static mechanisms but formal patterns of dependence—diagrams of divine causality.

Nota

To model theology is to seek understanding within faith. It is to recognize that divine revelation, though sovereign and gracious, speaks into a world structured by God’s own rational order. Modeling translates theological language from the level of grammar into the level of ontology, from how we may speak to what there is to be spoken of.

Thus, if T represents the syntactical system of theology and FT its felicity conditions (the rules that make its speech rightly ordered), modeling is the process by which these expressions are joined to TC, their truth conditions. In short:

FT + Modeling = TC. In words: the Spirit’s authorization of language (felicity) combined with its right interpretation within reality (modeling) produces theological truth.

A model is not a cage for divine mystery but the space where divine truth becomes shareable. It lets theology speak with both rigor and reverence, preserving the realism of faith without collapsing it into mere symbol or sentiment.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological language T, though divinely authorized, remains incomplete without ontological modeling.

2. Modeling interprets the syntax of faith in light of divine reality, ensuring that theology’s words correspond to what God has made and done.

3. The Holy Spirit is both the author of T and the mediator of its interpretation, guaranteeing that modeling remains participatory, not autonomous.

4. The plurality of models signifies the richness of divine truth as refracted through creation, not its fragmentation.

5. Theology’s formal coherence and ontological adequacy converge in modeling, where speech about God is joined to being before God.

Transitus ad Disputationem III

Having discerned that theology stands above philosophy not by exclusion but by elevation, that is that it perfects reason by participation in divine light, there remains the question of how such light becomes articulate within human discourse. For if wisdom descends from God, it must take form as word, and yet the word, being human, seems too finite to bear the infinite.

Thus we pass to the next disputation, Disputatio III: De Verbo Theologico et Mediatione Linguæ, where it is asked how divine revelation becomes language, and how speech, remaining human, may yet convey the truth of God without dissolution or idolatry.

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 of thesis followed by counter-statement and reconciliation mirrors the polarity of revelation, of 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; and 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 but 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 or she 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 in which there is a pervasive assumption that theology is more about us than it is about God, the disputatio restores a seriousness to theology, a commitment to clarity, coherence, and truth. 

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 that grammar within being),

3. to truth (participation in divine reality).

The scholastic method thus becomes a theological necessity; it is 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, and from faith to vision.

Conclusion

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

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

__________

Praefatio

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

These first nine 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, to 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 participationally.

The final two disputations (VIII-IX) carry 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. Accordingly, theology’s truth is both realized and awaited, present as participation in anticipating future manifestation. The last disputatio (IX) 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 nine disputationes together propose a theological epistemology of participation. Theology is neither an empirical or metaphysical description nor is it 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 participation, 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.

_____________

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.

Thesis

Theological expressions, denoted as T -- 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, understood in relation to what there is, 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, both “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. Rather 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, e.g., by detaching the statement from the Eucharistic context or from Christ’s promise, is to lose what might be  called 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 of modeling, to an investigation of how its expressions are related to being, to how the language acquires 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, to a structured account of what is real, do we obtain TC, its truth conditions. In symbolic shorthand, FT + Modeling = TC. This means that 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.

Transitus ad Disputationem II

The first disputation has shown that theology speaks truly only insofar as the divine Word and Spirit make human speech their own act. Yet if theology is thus a participation in divine discourse, the question arises: how can the intellect, trained in philosophy, know and reason within this participation? Does the light of nature cooperate with, or stand opposed to, the light of grace? 

Accordingly we must turn to the next inquiry: Disputatio II: De Ordine Sapientiae et Subalternatione Theologiae, in which it is asked whether theology stands as a science above or beneath philosophy, and how divine illumination orders all other forms of knowing.

Why ATS Accreditation?

I am sometimes asked, "Why did you seek Association of Theological Schools (ATS) accreditation for ILT's Christ School of Theology? You already had Association of Biblical Higher Education (ABHE) accreditation. Why wasn't that enough? 

While I have many friends at ABHE, gaining ATS accreditation was a very important step for us at the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT). According to the ABHE website, the following ABHE schools offer some type of doctorate: 

• American Evangelical University
• Beulah Heights University
• Bridges Christian College and Seminary 
• California Prestige University 
• Calvary University 
• Carolina Christian College 
• Columbia International University 
• Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary 
• Family of Faith Christian University 
• Georgia Central University 
• Henry Appenzeller University 
• Huntsville Bible College 
• International Reformed University and Seminary 
• Lancaster Bible College 
• Luther Rice College and Seminary 
• Mid-South Christian College 
• Midwest University 
• Northwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
• Moody Bible Institute 
• Olivet University
• South Florida Bible College and Theological Seminary 
• Texas Baptist Institute and Seminary 
• Universidad Pentacostal Mizpa 
• Veritas College International Graduate School 
• Wesley Bible Seminary 
• World Mission University 

Outside of Moody Bible Institute and perhaps Lancaster Bible College, it is unlikely that most reading this, particularly most Lutherans, have heard of many of the other schools above. Although there are no doubt wonderful faculty and students at these institutions, they have not in general gained academic notoriety.  Part of this is due to the credentialing of their faculty. Of schools approximately our size, about 47% of regular and adjunct faculty at ABHE schools have terminal degrees.  

Now consider the following truncated list of ATS schools that are approved to offer a PhD. 

• Boston University
• Brite Divinity
• Calvin Theological Seminary 
• Catholic University of America
• Chicago Theological Seminary 
• Columbia Bible Seminary 
• Concordia Seminary, St. Louis
• Dallas Theological Seminary
• Drew University Theological Seminary 
• Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary 
• Graduate Theological Union
• Iliff School of Theology
• Kairos University 
• Knox College 
• Luther Seminary 
• Lutheran School of Theology Chicago
• McMaster Divinity School 
• Princeton Theological Seminary 
• Trinity College Faculty of Divinity
• Union Theological Seminary
• United Lutheran Seminary 
• University of Chicago Divinity School 
• University of Notre Dame Department of Theology 
• Villanova University Department of Theology 
• Westminster Theological Seminary 
• Wycliffe College 

Most people reading this has no doubt heard of the majority of these schools, five of which are Lutheran (including are Christ School of Theology). Almost all faculty in ATS institutions have terminal degrees.  

So, to which list ought ILT's Christ School of Theology be compared? 

We are Lutheran and 93% of our regular, adjunct and visiting faculty have PhDs. (When checking us out on the ATS website, always search 'Christ School of Theology at ILT'. We have been ATS-accredited for over a year. Find us here at the ATS site.)  Clearly, our faculty credentialing points to a deeper affinity with ATS than ABHE. 

In addition, Lutherans are accustomed to having their theological schools accredited by ATS who accredits 228 institutions in the USA and 263 total in North American.  (ABHE, by comparison, lists 117 accredited schools.)  A majority of the faculty at Lutheran seminaries in North America have been trained at ATS-accredited institutions, while very few if any hold PhDs from ABHE institutions. (Realize that both Harvard and Yale Divinity schools belong to ATS, but while both institutions offer PhDs, they do not do so through their divinity schools so are hence not on the PhD list.) 

The Institute of Lutheran Theology mission is to "preserve, promote and propagate the classical Christian tradition from a Lutheran perspective." To accomplish this, it must train not only pastors, but teachers of those pastors. This can be done only by providing the type of theological education found in our nation's best theological schools. While we could be credible perhaps training pastors in the Lutheran tradition without ATS accreditation, we cannot be credible training the teachers of those pastors. If we want to preserve and promote the Christian tradition, we must know it deeply, and this demands that the competitive set to ILT's theological programming be those schools offering ATS-accredited programming. 

It takes a very long time to build reputation in the accreditation world. ABHE is a very good accrediting agency, but it does not yet enjoy the reputation of ATS. While one might argue that the schools of ATS are more faithful to Scripture than the schools of ATS, this assertion would engender much opposition among ATS members whom I know. So what does ATS' reputation add for ILT? 

1) ATS-accreditation gives ILT's Christ School of Theology the opportunity to receive major grants from theological grant agencies, most of which do not provide grants to non-ATS school. ILT's Christ School of Theology has in the 2024-25 academic year been so far awarded an ATS Lead forward grant for $25,000 and a $50,000 Phase I Pathways grant from Lilly, and has other significant grant applications pending.   

2) ATS-accreditation allows us to build strategic partnerships that likely otherwise would not happen. We have made two new strategic partnerships in 2024-25, one with Global Methodists issuing in the Center for Wesleyan Studies, and one with members of the LCMS eventuating in the Center for Missional and Pastoral Leadership.  Stay tuned for updates on this front! 

3) ATS-accreditation allows us to attract a cadre of very accomplished faculty who might otherwise not associate with us. It is not unusual now to encounter faculty hoping to connect with us with PhDs from Chicago, Princeton, and Harvard, and with very significant publication records. 

4) ATS-accreditation allows us to pursue corporate and institutional gifts not otherwise available to us, and to fundraise in other areas of the world. ATS-accreditation is recognized around the world, and so it grants us more credibility with foreign donors.  

5) ATS-accreditation allows ILT and its Christ School of Theology to carry out global aims through possible reciprocity agreements with non-North American accreditation agencies which would allow ILT operations in regions of the world that might otherwise be closed to us. 

6) Finally, some students will only embark on study with us if we are ATS-accredited. I personally had discussions with four whom ultimately opted to study at ILT who nonetheless claim that the would not nave considered study here were we only ABHE-accredited. 

It is indeed a new day at ILT's Christ School of Theology. We are hoping to increase student enrollment by 25% from fall 2024 to fall 2025.  Browse our programming as well at our new Center for the Word and Christ College!  

What will the Institute of Lutheran Theology Become?

Some of you ask about the future of the Institute of Lutheran Theology and what we are doing now to actualize that future.

The Institute of Lutheran Theology began in humility. We were without adequate funding, had no faculty, and very definitely unaccredited. We had decided to do education online, but online programs were often dismissed by the academy as not sufficiently rigorous. At best, we were thought about as a well-intentioned group dedicated to "training a few Lutheran pastors."

Slowly we have been changing people's perceptions of us. While we had acquired a very good faculty by the end of 2011, we still were "unaccredited." After getting ABHE accreditation, we were disparaged as being "online" and only accredited by an "undergraduate accrediting agency." After theological education moved towards online education after Covid and ABHE became recognized by the USDE for its graduate programs, we still were charged for not having "ATS accreditation -- the gold standard for theology."

After receiving ATS accreditation last March, successfully bringing new partners to the table, and further developing our PhD program, we are sometimes now charged with "creating scholars, not pastors." While our "Center for Congregational Revitalization" initiative clearly counts against this, people continue to wonder about us, and what we want to accomplish.

Here is what we want to accomplish:

• Working through the creation of strategic partnerships, we shall grow the Christ School of Theology five-fold in the next decade, making us one of the largest (or largest) Lutheran seminary in the English-speaking world.

• Grow our current PhD program of 35 students to 125 excellent PhD candidates by 2034, making the Christ School of Theology the de facto center of Reformation-based theological education in the English-speaking world.

• Grow our undergraduate Christ College in ways of excellence so that the conferral of a degree from Christ College is highly-valued in the academic world. We shall grow Christ College in ways consonant with the overall developmental trajectory of the Christ School of Theology.

• Develop ILT's Center for the Word by developing its "centers," e.g., the Center for Congregational Revitalization, a Center for Wesleyan Studies, a Center for Pastoral Leadership and Mission, a Center for Forde Studies, etc. Being Lutheran means connecting with others taking seriously the classical Christian tradition.

• Establish a true "Institute of Lutheran Theology" at our Center for the Word, an Institute that shall connect important Lutheran theological emphases to the three audiences of which Edward Farley spoke: The Church, the Public, and the Academy. Through the Institute we shall perform the research necessary to engage deeply the contemporary intellectual and cultural horizon, seeking to disseminate the results of our research through journals, monographs, and podcasts.

We shall not ask our wonderful individual and congregational donors to bear all of the costs of this developmental trajectory. Instead, we shall apply for and procure appropriate grants to help make this possible. We just received one from ATS, and finished another grant application with Lilly that we believe shall be funded as part of the effort to apply for a major Lilly grant in late spring. We will be applying for InTrust and Templeton grants within the next couple of months as well.

We ask for your prayers along the way. God called ILT into being, and I think He has rather big plans for us. We have the right technology for our time and scholars who are now with us, or who soon will be with us, to make this possible.

At the end of the day, we simply want to get the Good News of Jesus Christ proclaimed with passion and creativity in pulpits throughout the world. To do this means we shall have to disrupt the industry some, and that we will have to create a cadre of theological teachers and researchers recognizing the centrality of preaching "not cleverly devised fables," but the universal significance of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. Make no mistake: truth is at issue. We shall partner with any and all of those who are called to such preaching and for whom truth is at issue.

Announcing VERBA VITAE

Preamble to a Phenomenology of Congregational Life

Oftentimes we don't know what we have lost until we don't have it. 

The phenomenological movement attempted to uncover the fundamental meaning of the entities, properties, and relations in which we find ourselves, in which we dwell. The idea is simple enough. We are always already within a world of meaning prior to any explicit philosophical reflection upon this world. The man at work in his workshop knows how to get around in the shop; he knows what things he needs in order to make the things he wants to make. He "knows" these things pre-reflectively. He probably has not stopped to do an explicit ontological inventory of items in his shop and the properties each has that allow them to be related to each other.  Rather he just walks his shop and gets what he needs when he needs them. 

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Jean-Paul Sartre (1985-1980),  Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and a host of other thinkers were interested in getting to the immediate meaning of things, to their sense prior to explicit investigation. Husserl, in particular, was interested in what Frege (1848 - 1925) called Sinn, the mode of presentation of objects in the world, the that by virtue of which objects could be picked out in the world and referred to. Frege famously said that names had both sense and reference. Names refer when the sense of the name picks out an existing object.  Just because a name does not refer does not mean it has no meaning. After all, the name could have referred were there to be an object that satisfied the Sinn of the name. 

Frege's famous example was the Morning Star and Evening Star. Astronomers for centuries were able to identify the Morning Star as Morning Star and the Evening Star as Evening Star without knowing that the Morning Star is the Evening Star. The modes of presentation of Morning Star and Evening star differ, but there is identity in that to which they refer: Venus.  Accordingly, the name Morning Star refers to Venus as it presents itself as the Morning Star while the name Evening Star  refers to Venus as it presents itself as Evening Star.  Within a more comprehensive theory we identify the Morning Star and Evening Star.  So what is this world of sense by and through which we believe we have made reference to the world? 

Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989) spoke in terms of the manifest and scientific images of the world.  He espoused a scientific naturalism that nonetheless sought to save the appearances.  In Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man, Sellars characterizes the manifest image of the world as "the framework in terms of which man came to be aware of himself as man-in-the-world," it is the framework in and through which we ordinarily observe and explain our world.  (See Willem deVries, "Wilfrid Sellars," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.). Persons and the things meaningful to persons is what has center stage in the manifest image of the world.  

The scientific image of the world is deeper; it is that which we hold ultimately is the case despite how things appear. Sellars famously adjusted Protagoras' statement to "science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not" ("Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind).  The scientific image states what is the case, while the manifest image states what appears to be the case. Importantly, the manifest image is not merely an error.  It is a description of the place in which humans find themselves phenomenally prior to theory and experiment and the reality of how things stand in themselves.  

While Sellars held that what ultimately exists is that to which oue best scientific theories appeal in explanation and prediction, he understood that we do not and cannot live our lives merely within the conceptual categories of scientific naturalism. While neither Husserl nor Heidegger in anyway denigrate the activity of scientific theory-formation and confirmation, they really were interested in the world as it appears to and for consciousness.  (Heidegger despised the term consciousness for many reasons, but I will use it nonetheless in this context.). Husserl was so interested in what immediately appears to and for consciousness that he advocated a suspension of thinking in terms of our natural attitude of what there really is, and bid us to hold in abeyance questions of what there ultimately is apart from us and concentrate on that which is present to consciousness. His phenomenological reduction advocates that we again encounter the things themselves that give themselves to consciousness, before pressing on to the question of whether those things are real, whether they somehow track with that which ultimately is.  

Husserl believe that returning to die Sache Selbst of immediacy allow us to ground science even the more deeply. Heidegger wanted to examine the objects of our intentional acts within the meaningful context in which they dealt in order to get clarity about the nature of the world we immediately inhabit.  

While both he and Husserl were interested in the Umwelt in which we find ourselves, Husserl could never find a way ultimately out of his own transcendental image of things.  For Husserl, the transcendental ego exists as that which reaches out through its intentional "ego rays" to objects in meaningfully encounters.  Heidegger, however, had no time for such metaphysics.  What is given to consciousness is being-in-the-world.  Instead of an isolated ego related to its world of intentional objects, there is already the unitary phenomenon of hat which is phenomenologically prior to an ego and that which the ego intends. Husserl's transcendental ego becomes Heidegger's Dasein, the unitary being-in-the-world phenomenon that is clearly present in ways that a transcendental ego cannot be. 

Heidegger's emphasis was on the immediacy of that which shows itself as itself in the Lichtung (lighting up) of Dasein itself. Dasein is the "there-being" that in its being is always interested in being.  While Husserl's project was epistemological, Heidegger's became ontological. What are all those things that are, that in relating themselves to us, make us the kind of beings that have worlds?  

We are always already in a world and what it is to be me is to have a world of a definite contour. The manifest image of things, according to Heidegger, has been passed over in the history of philosophy.  It has not been deeply explored because our attention has always been drawn away from the immediacy of our life in the world to the question of what lies "present-at-hand" to us beyond that image.  We have been traditionally interested in the world of the Vorhandsein, the world of beings that are. But in concentrating on this, we have lost what is before our eyes. We have lost the very meaningful context in which we already live in all of our inquiry.  

Sellars understand that we cannot do without the manifest image of things, but he believes what ultimately is cannot be given by what phenomenally stands close by. We need to move to the deeper structural explanation of that surface the manifest image reveals.  Heidegger, however, wants us to follow Husserl and attend deeply and passionately to that which displays itself to us in all we think and do. Heidegger's interest in the immediacy of the world and the universal structures of immediacy that ground that world gives him quite a different orientation from Sellars. They latter was interested in science, but the former in religion. 

Heidegger's work at Marburg was filled with religious interest. Accordingly, Husserl had designated Heidegger to be his student that could apply the phenomenological method to religious experience and religion as such. What is the world of religion, and what are the deeper structures of religious experience and meaning as such that make possible any religious world?  Heidegger is accordingly interested in the facticity of religious life, the meaningful structures within which religious people operate and find themselves. Heidegger famously tried to understand the experience of the early Christian as being-to-the-parousia, an idea he later adjusted to Sein zum Tode, being-unto-death.  

All of this is is preamble for the topic to which I allude in the title: A phenomenology of congregational living. What is it to live congregationally?  In our penchant to treat congregational life using the tools of the social sciences we may shortchange what it is to be congregationally. Clearly, we could seek to understand congregational growth and decline by appealing to general sociological principles indexed for our particular historical-cultural standpoint. This can be extremely enlightening, of course.  But in the effort to explain and predict congregational processes, we may lose what shows itself as itself.  Were we to attend to the be-ing of congregational life we might find in the manifest image the world itself in which religions lives and moves, the world in which we finally find meaning, a salvific meaning allowing us to live unto the future.  What I am suggesting here, inter alia, that it is in the manifest image of things that we find meaning, purpose and ultimately hope.  

While the body dies and scientific naturalism finds no basis upon which survival of death is possible -- or maybe even conceivable -- within the manifest image, God is close at hand. Christ saves us and brings us into his house of many rooms. Our fundamental experience of being-in-the-world is not one where meaning is absent and must be constructed.  Our fundamental experience is filled with meaning for we are beings who in our be-ing find the question of be-ing at issue for us. As Heidegger says, the ontic superiority of Dasein is found in its ontological constitution.  As Augustine said, "our heart is not at rest until it finds its rest in you, O Lord." A thick description of the facticity of Christian being-in-the-world reveals what that life is like, and holds open the possibility that that life which is ontologically possible can be my life or your life. 

As the embers of western Christianity begin to smolder, it is important for us to know what it was for men and women to have lived this extraordinary life.  For many of us, the living of Christian life is always a living of that life within the Christian congregation.  We can perhaps remember what it was and how it was decades ago, and we can compare that living to living today.  Where was the axes of meaning then and now? What has changed? How was it that we could once recoil at the thought of touching the sky while now such touching is simply business as usual?   

In the next post I will try my hand at examining the facticity of congregational living. Perhaps we will be granted ontological insight into the preciousness of being-as-communion in Lutheran congregational life. 

Cross-Pressuring within the Congregation

Something extraordinary still happens our time, a time characterized by an intellectual and cultural horizon that seems inimical to its occurrence. All throughout North America, people still draw together into communities to worship a god who putatively creates and sustains the entire universe. This gathering together does not happen in the numbers it did in the 1950s and 1960s, but it still does occur. On any given Sunday morning millions of people are in worship.  

Charles Taylor, in his magisterial A Secular Age, adroitly interprets the cultural and intellectual horizon of our time with its attendant social imaginaries. His major question in the book is this: How is it that in the sixteenth century not believing in God was generally unthinkable, while believing today is very difficult, even for those professing such belief? What has happened? 

His answer to this is actually quite complicated, and I won't summarize it here, except to say that Taylor is no fan of subtraction theories, a view that conceives humans as being largely able to know the world in which they live and how to act within that world. Subtraction theory claims that human beings have largely not achieved their potential as responsible epistemic and moral agents because they have inter alia lost themselves in religion and have, accordingly, not developed the potential that they have had all along. According to subtraction theory, secularization is a good thing because as religion wanes, human beings are increasingly fulfilling the dream of the Enlightenment: Aude sapere ("dare to know").  It is a captivating view: we humans can finally turn away from the superstitions of the past and attain genuine positive knowledge of things.  

Taylor claims that in the North Atlantic countries (North America and Europe), secularization tends to bring with it either a closed "take" or "spin" on the universe and our place within it. A spin or take is closed when it accepts a naturalism that excludes traditional views of the transcendent; when it holds that there is nothing that "goes beyond" the immanence of this world. He distinguishes a closed "spin" from a closed "take", pointing out that while people adopting a closed take hold that rejection of traditional transcendence might be reasonable, but that it is not wholly irrational to hold otherwise, those in a closed spin assert that holding to traditional transcendence is completely irrational, and thus one's rejection of a closed view is either due to the mendacity or the irrationality of the one doing the rejecting. 

Much of the intelligentsia, argues Taylor, simply assumes a closed spin on things. Scientific theory gives us the best causal map of the universe and such theory makes no appeal to supernatural forces of gods. In the cities, the young often understand their human sojourn in this way: 

• Human beings are the products of a long evolutionary process beginning with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago.  
• The universe came into being in an explosion from a infinitely dense point that had no magnitude. 
• The subsequent history of the universe is due to natural events and processes developing as they did out of earlier conditions of the universe. There is no supernatural agency involved in the origin and development of the universe. 
• Explanations why there was an infinitely dense point at the beginning that subsequently exploded are mostly not something that science can rightfully provide, although theories of quantum cosmology recently sketched suggest the prior existence of a multi-verse of which the particular development of our universe is one possible actualized trajectory. There is yet not a theory of why there was at the beginning a multi-verse. 
• Why deterministic processes propel the universe forward into concrete actualization, there are throughout these processes the presence of "far from equilibrium" situations that allow for the introduction of novelty. Thus, the history of the universe, while basically deterministic, has some elements of chance within it. 
• Since human life is a natural product of the natural life of the universe, it must be understood naturalistically. 
• Understanding human life naturalistically means that complicated features of human life, e.g., intentionality, reason, etc., must be understood in natural ways: What are the natural processes that drive forward the development of our species? 
• Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has wide acceptance as providing some explanation for why our species developed as it did: Genetic features are passed down from generation to generation, and the natural characteristics of the environment in which genetic mutation happens limits or excludes the development of some genetic variations while helping the development of other genetic variations.
• Accordingly, neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory makes no appeal to purpose or teleology, for the particular genetic variations that survive for later genetic variation are clearly caused by natural features of the environment. There is thus no pull (final causality) in neo-Darwinian genetic theory, only pushes (efficient causality). 
• Since human beings are natural products of natural processes, understanding them profoundly requires the casting of natural scientific theories, e.g., human characteristics like reason, love, empathy, etc., must be explained naturalistically.  
• To understand humans naturalistically, is to understand them in ways quite different from traditional great chain of being understandings. According to the great chain of being, human beings are created lower than the angels and higher than the beasts, and thus to understand what it is to be human is to look both above and below us: What are those features of human existence that clearly fall under the category of the imago dei, and what features are due to the fall into nature and flesh of those beings initially created in the imago dei?  
• Since human beings are fully natural beings developing as they have through natural processes since the beginning of the universe, the true key to understanding their existence is found by looking below ourselves and not above ourselves, e.g., what can the sexuality of orangutans teach us about our own sexuality? 
• Trying to look above ourselves for clues to our nature is the practice of idealism, and proceeding in this way is find putative answers in our own projections. While natural science can give us insight into our causal natures, traditional religion and philosophy obviates this causal nature by appeal to non-natural or supernatural processes and entities. In the words of Feuerbach, God did not create human beings, human beings created God. 
• Since we are natural beings, our sexuality should be understood along the lines of other natural beings, and our reason and communication should be understood in the way of other natural beings. Human beings do have a capacity to reason, communicate, and form sexual alliances, but these are not causa sui. Rather, it is a matter of degree, and not ultimate of kind, that separates our experience from that of the other higher primates. 
• The young living in vast urban areas who understand themselves naturalistically have, accordingly, very little motivation to either adopt religion or be open to it. Religious belief, they think rather confidently, does not track with our actual knowledge of the natural world in which we believe. It is thus a backward-looking movement motivated by wish and not knowledge. Religious people, they think, need a crutch to live in this naturalist world that is all around us. Thus, they think, religious people project views of the gods and pray their wishes to their gods. 
• The religious person is thus maladapted to the actual existing world. They don't have the courage to live in the actual world, and thus project upon the actual world a religious worldview that makes living easier. Religious people are thus more cowardly than those understanding themselves naturalistically, but also more dangerous, because in ignoring the causalities of the natural world and embracing superstition, those who could have been helped by the knowledge of natural processes are now not treated properly. Death that might have been avoided, now befalls the befuddled religious believer or those unlucky enough to take their advice and counsel. 
• Given that there is no God who cares or no ultimate metaphysics in which meaning and purpose are ingredient, human beings must simply create their own meaning in the limited days they have to live. 
• Since there are no objective structures corresponding to the good, the beautiful, and the true, human beings are free to develop in the ways that they might find pleasurable and useful. This does not mean that they act irrationally, but rather that they must assume the mantle of having to be their own law-givers. Reality does not come with moral structures. They must be sown and cultivated by human beings, and harvested only if the present situation is illuminated by them. 

I could continue with a description of what seems plausible to the urban young. It is important to see all of this under the category of a closed spin. To many of our urban youth, what I have sketched above is simply settled. Just as it is true that the earth revolves around the sun, so is it true that human beings are natural beings who must develop their science, societies and families ultimately without appeal to heavenly beings. To give up on what I have articulated is, for them, to descend into irrationality. There simply is no other option for them not to believe this. There is a new social imaginary at work, a communal way of seeing that can imagine a fulfilling life without gods, prayers, divine laws, or even transcendence itself. While earlier generations hoped for life out beyond our physical deaths, this new way of imagining existence is one where death is not a problem. In fact, death is part of the circle of life, and this circle of life can be understood naturalistically. 

people participating in congregational life in the North Atlantic countries today are sons and daughters of their age. While they may be attending Christian congregations, their intellectual and cultural ethos is likely one wherein naturalism makes sense. They have learned from their teachers about the difference between facts and values, and they believe that natural science somehow is concerned with the facts, while perhaps their religion deals with the values of those whom are at some level aware of these facts. People in Christian congregations today in the North Atlantic countries are thus decidedly cross-pressured. They participate in Christian life, even though their deepest understanding of the world provides little rational justification for that participation. 

Preaching to men and women today must take into account the cross-pressuring felt by those in the pews. While their participation in congregational life probably points to them not holding a closed spin, such a participation is entirely congruent with them assuming a closed take. While it seems like materialism or physicalism is true, there are some features of our experience that does not fit a closed spin on the universe. Perhaps it is because of these features that certain people become congregational members. Maybe they sense that the naturalism that they ought to believe is inadequate to their experience in its totality. 

Most of the time we leading Christian congregations underestimate, I think, the cross-pressuring that our members are likely experiencing. Yes, clearly many are waiting to hear the saving Word proclaimed in the sermon and celebrated in the sacrament. But in their desire to hear that Word, they remain deeply conflicted. As twenty-first century men and women, they cannot easily affirm the views of their sixteenth century ancestors. The naturalism everywhere regnant today was not known to Luther and his contemporaries. Luther had the advantage of having a metaphysical view of things that was consonant with his theological accents and innovations. 

But this is not the case today. Contemporary Lutherans who wish to retain Luther's theology must now do so in a culture whose dominant social imaginaries reject the metaphysical underpinnings Luther simply presupposed. So how does Lutheran theology play now in congregations whose members have little understanding of how God could truly be possible and relevant? It is to this question that we shall turn in the next post.