Disputatio IX: De Nova Lingua Theologiae

On the New Language of Theology

Quaeritur

Utrum nova lingua theologiae orta sit ex ipsa Incarnatione Verbi, qua Deus intravit humanam loquelam et eam in se assumpsit; et utrum haec lingua, Spiritu Sancto sustentata, sit finita forma veritatis infinitae, in qua sermo humanus efficitur instrumentum divinae communicationis.

Whether the new language of theology arises from the Incarnation of the Word itself, in which God entered human speech and assumed it into Himself; and whether this language, sustained by the Holy Spirit, is the finite form of infinite truth in which human discourse becomes the instrument of divine communication.

Thesis

Theology speaks in a nova lingua, a new language born from the Incarnation and animated by the Holy Spirit. This language is finite in form yet infinite in meaning, because divine truth now dwells within human words. The nova lingua is therefore the linguistic expression of the Incarnation itself: the Word made flesh becomes the Word made speech.

Locus Classicus

 

Καὶ ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ Πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” — John 1:14

 The Evangelist here unites ontology and logos in a single mystery: the Logos that was “in the beginning with God” becomes flesh, entering the order of signification itself. The Incarnation is not only the assumption of human substance but of human speech: divine meaning takes up finite grammar. Through this descent, language is consecrated as the very site where God’s truth may dwell—fleshly words becoming the transparent vehicles of eternal grace.

“Quod non est assumptum, non est sanatum; quod autem unitum est Deo, salvetur.”

“What is not assumed is not healed; but whatever is united to God is saved.” — Gregorius Nazianzenus, Epistula 101, ad Cledonium

Gregory’s principle, though uttered in Christological controversy, extends naturally to language: if the Word truly assumes human nature, He also assumes the full expressive capacity of that nature—its speech, its reasoning, its communicative power. The healing of humanity includes the healing of its words. Language, once fractured by sin into dispersion and ambiguity, is gathered anew in the unity of the Incarnate Logos.

 

“Le Verbe incarné est la Parole humaine par excellence; il rétablit le sens là où le langage s’était vidé de vérité.”

“The Incarnate Word is the supreme human word; He restores meaning where language had been emptied of truth.” — Jean-Louis Chrétien, L’arche de la parole (1998)

Chrétien, speaking as a phenomenologist of revelation, sees in the Word made flesh the renewal of speech itself. The divine Logos does not abolish human discourse but redeems it from interior decay, giving words once again the power to reveal rather than conceal being. Every genuinely theological utterance participates in this restoration—it is a fragment of redeemed language, resonant with the Word that speaks in and through it.

From John through Gregory to Chrétien, a single theological trajectory unfolds: the Incarnation is an event of language. The eternal Word enters not only the history of flesh but the history of words, sanctifying human discourse as a vessel of divine presence. In Christ, being and meaning coincide—the reality of God is spoken into the syntax of creation. Thus the nova lingua theologiae, the new language of theology, is not a human invention but a participation in the Incarnate Logos Himself: language reborn through grace to bear the truth of God in the grammar of the world.

Explicatio

Theology’s language is not simply inherited from the old world but is reborn through the Word made flesh. In the old grammar of reason, contradiction signified error; in the new grammar of faith, contradiction becomes revelation. The nova lingua is thus a theological grammar where God is known sub contrario, under the sign of what appears its opposite.

Luther called this transformation a “new grammar” (nova grammatica), for one must learn to say that God is hidden in weakness, that death is life, that the cross is glory. This is not mere rhetoric but a new logic of being. In the nova lingua, the syntax of heaven passes into the phonemes of earth.

Formally, we can describe the change in this way: Let Tₒ denote the old language (the grammar of nature and reason) and Tₙ the new language (the grammar of faith). The transition Tₒ → Tₙ represents the Spirit’s act of translating finite speech into a vessel of divine meaning. This arrow does not mark replacement but transfiguration: what was merely human becomes theophanic through grace.

The nova lingua therefore bears within itself an inherent tension; it is simultaneously grammatical and miraculous. It possesses rules of form and order (syntax) yet overflows them through divine content (semantics). New wineskin is needed to hold new wine. To speak theologically is to live within this paradox of incarnation: finite speech filled with infinite truth.

Objectiones

Ob I. If theology requires a nova lingua, it implies that ordinary human language is inadequate to speak of God, making revelation unintelligible to natural reason.

Ob II. A “new grammar” seems to introduce irrationality into theology, reducing faith to paradox and contradiction.

Ob III. If God assumes human language, divine truth becomes bound to history and culture, losing universality.

Responsiones

Ad I. Ordinary language is not destroyed but assumed. The nova lingua transforms the old. The Incarnation does not render reason obsolete; it fulfills it, giving speech a deeper telos. The words of faith remain human, but their authorization comes from the Spirit, not from philosophical sufficiency.

Ad II. The new grammar is not irrational but hyper-rational. It is an order of meaning higher than human logic can generate. Paradox is not nonsense; it is sanctified tension, revealing the finite’s openness to the infinite. The “contradictions” of faith are signs that reason has touched mystery.

Ad III. The Word’s entry into history does not limit truth but universalizes it. By assuming particular speech, God redeems all speech. The universality of the gospel is secured precisely in its historical concreteness: the eternal speaks within the temporal.

Nota

The nova lingua of theology is not merely new vocabulary but new being-in-speech. It marks the union of divine causality and human language. To speak in this language is already to participate in God’s self-communication.

Its structure mirrors the Incarnation:

• Finite form: human grammar, word order, syntax.

• Infinite content: divine meaning, given by the Spirit.

• Mediating act: the Spirit’s authorization (felicity) that makes the finite capable of bearing the infinite.

Thus, each true theological statement is a microcosm of the Word made flesh. The finite (word) does not contain the infinite (God), yet it truly conveys it, because the Spirit joins them without confusion or separation.

The nova lingua does not function as a metalanguage standing above the old order of speech but as a new object language born within it. Through the Spirit, the old grammar of reason is inverted into the new grammar of faith. What was formerly sign of absence becomes sign of presence; what once denoted defeat now names victory. The nova lingua thus transforms rather than transcends the old: it is human speech re-created in the form of divine contradiction.

This linguistic participation is not accidental to theology; it is its very essence. Theology exists only because divine communication has entered human speech.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The nova lingua of theology arises from the Incarnation, where divine meaning assumes human form.

2. This new language is finite in grammar yet infinite in signification, sustained by the Spirit’s act of authorization.

3. The grammar of faith (Tₙ) both fulfills and transfigures the grammar of reason (Tₒ), producing a linguistic structure in which opposites become sites of revelation.

4. The Spirit functions as the mediating cause of this transformation, making theological language both truthful and efficacious.

5. Theology’s nova lingua is thus the ongoing miracle of Pentecost—the continual creation of meaning whereby human words, caught up in grace, speak the infinite Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem X: De Revelatione et Cognitione Dei

The new language of theology has shown that divine speech does not merely signify but brings forth what it declares. In it, words are not passive instruments of representation but active vehicles of communication; they are the finite forms through which infinite meaning becomes manifest. The verbum theologicum thus participates in the performative power of the Verbum divinum: it both reveals and effects, both declares and gives.

Yet this new mode of divine speech raises a deeper question concerning its reception. If the Word speaks through human language, how does the human intellect hear? If divine utterance is creative and efficacious, how does it become understanding in the one to whom it is spoken? The problem of theological language thus opens into the mystery of revelation and knowledge. The act that communicates truth must also illumine the mind that receives it, for revelation without cognition would be a light shining in darkness without being apprehended.

The Incarnate Word, who assumes human speech, also assumes the conditions of human knowing. Revelation, therefore, is not an external testimony appended to reason but the transformation of reason itself through participation in divine light. The same Spirit who causes right speech about God now causes right knowledge of God: the one who animates the tongue also illumines the intellect. In revelation, the utterance that creates understanding becomes the very act of divine self-communication, and knowledge becomes the creature’s participation in that self-manifesting act.

We therefore advance to Disputationem X: De Revelatione et Cognitione Dei, wherein it will be asked whether revelation imparts knowledge by external testimony or by internal participation; how the finite intellect, addressed by the infinite Word, can truly know the One who speaks; and whether divine self-disclosure is received as a message among others or as the very event by which human understanding is gathered into the eternal knowing of God.

Disputatio VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis et Summarium

On the Eschatological Manifestation of Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologica in hoc saeculo sit tantum participata et sub signo fidei, sed in consummatione saeculorum manifestetur in gloria; atque utrum haec manifestatio sit plena revelatio eius quod nunc in Spiritu dicitur et creditur, ubi verbum et res, fides et visio, felicitas et veritas perfecte coincident.

Whether theological truth in this age is only participatory and veiled under the sign of faith, but in the consummation of the ages will be revealed in glory; and whether this eschatological manifestation is the full unveiling of what is now spoken and believed in the Spirit, wherein word and reality, faith and vision, felicity and truth perfectly coincide.

Thesis

The truth of theology in the present age is real yet mediated—participated through faith in divine speech. Its perfection will occur eschatologically, when what is now felicitously and truly spoken in the Spirit will be manifested in glory. The eschaton is not the abolition of theology but its fulfillment: the moment when the grammar of faith becomes the language of sight.

Locus Classicus

1. 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NA28)
   ἄρτι βλέπομεν δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον.
   “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.”

   Paul articulates the difference between mediated and immediate knowing: truth under the form of faith, and truth under the form of glory. The object remains the same; the manner of apprehension is transfigured.

2. Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II, q.3, a.8
   Ultima et perfecta beatitudo non potest esse nisi in visione divinae essentiae.
   “Ultimate and perfect beatitude can consist only in the vision of the divine essence.”

   For Aquinas, the visio Dei is the terminus of all intellectual desire. Participation is not replaced but perfected when God sustains the finite intellect to see God in God’s own light.

3. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik III
   Die Schau Gottes ist die Erfüllung der Theologie, die endgültige Selbsttransparenz des Glaubens.
   “The vision of God is the fulfillment of theology—the final self-transparency of faith.”

   Balthasar emphasizes that faith already carries the form of glory within itself; eschatological vision is the unveiling of what faith has long borne in mystery.

From Paul through Aquinas to Balthasar, the same line is traced: faith and vision are not two different truths but two modes of one participation—first veiled, then manifest.

Explicatio

Every theological statement in this life belongs to the ordo fidei. Its truth is real, yet mediated through the grammar of faith T,  its interpretation within being (modeling, TC), and its participatio constitutiva in the Spirit. Thus, as our symbolic idiom has expressed:

• In statu viae: FT + Modeling = TC. Felicity plus interpretation yields truth conditions.

• In statu gloriae: FT = TC. The felicity of speech and the truth of being coincide, for the act of speaking and the reality spoken are unified in vision.

Mediation is not negated but transfigured. Signs do not vanish but become transparent to what they signify. Sacraments do not cease as mere objects; they are fulfilled as modes of presence. Finally, participation does not end; it reaches consummation.

In this sense, theologia eschatologica is not a speculative addendum but the formal horizon of the entire ordo theologiae: grammar → modeling → felicity → truth → causality → participation → manifestation.

The finite intellect does not become infinite; it becomes fully clarified, upheld by God to know God in God’s own light. The same Spirit who now mediates truth through participation will then manifest it without remainder.

Objectiones

Ob I. If one day truth will be seen rather than believed, theology ceases; discourse gives way to silence.

Ob II. If the eschaton reveals all, present theology is merely provisional and therefore unstable.

Ob III. “Manifestation” implies temporal unfolding and change, whereas divine truth is eternal and immutable.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theology does not cease but is transformed. The discursive form of faith yields to doxology. Faith becomes sight; doctrinal speech becomes praise. Theologia finds its end not in muteness but in worship.

Ad II. Present theology is reliable because it is already true in participation. The eschaton alters not the content but the mode of access. What was truthful under the sign of faith becomes transparent under the light of glory. The mirror is replaced by face-to-face vision, not by contradiction.

Ad III. God’s truth is indeed eternal and unchanging. Manifestation, however, pertains to the creature’s reception. In the eschaton, the same eternal truth shines without obscurity in the redeemed order. Time is not annihilated but gathered into divine clarity.

Nota

The eschatological manifestation of truth brings the movement of the first octad to its formal closure. In T, theology learns to speak under grace. In modeling, it interprets speech within being. In felicity, it discerns Spirit-given rightness. In truth, it articulates internal and external adequation. In causality, it acknowledges God as the ground of both being and saying. In participation, it receives divine life as constitutive being. Finally, in manifestation, it beholds what it has spoken and become.

A symbolic shorthand may again serve:  Tₑ → V, where Tₑ designates theology in the age of faith, and V the visio Dei in glory. The arrow does not mark replacement but transfiguration: the Spirit’s act of transforming mediated participation into direct presence.

Theology’s end is not the negation of knowledge but the perfection of knowledge in communion. Its final form is song.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological truth in the present age is real yet participatory, grounded in faith’s share in divine speech.

2. The eschatological manifestation of truth is the unveiling of that same truth in glory, when mediation becomes luminous transparency.

3. The felicity of theological language and the truth of divine being converge perfectly in the eschaton; faith becomes sight, confession becomes communion.

4. The Holy Spirit, who now mediates truth through grace, will then reveal it without veil; the same causality persists, but its mode shifts from hidden to manifest.

5. Theology’s telos is doxological: in the eschatological manifestation of truth, the verbum fidei becomes the visio Dei.

Transitus ad Disputationem IX: De Nova Lingua Theologiae

In the eighth disputation, theological truth reached its eschatological horizon: what is now spoken and believed in the Spirit will be revealed in glory, so that word and reality, faith and vision, felicity and truth perfectly coincide. There, the ordo theologiae appeared in its full arc—from grammar to manifestation, from the syntax of faith to the clarity of glory.

Yet this eschatological consummation does not lie only at the end of time; it has already entered history. The same Truth that will one day be seen facie ad faciem has already taken flesh and speech. The verbum incarnatum has inaugurated a new possibility for language itself: human words, assumed into the Word and breathed upon by the Spirit, become instruments of divine self-communication.

Thus theology is stretched between two advents of the same Logos:

• proleptically, toward the visio Dei in glory,

• historically, back toward the Incarnation in which divine truth has already entered human discourse.

In this tension, a nova lingua theologiae emerges. Theologians do not merely use inherited philosophical grammar; they speak under a language transfigured by Christ’s coming. Human words, called and claimed by the Logos, become more than signs: they become participations in God’s own eternal speaking.

We therefore advance to Disputationem IX: De Nova Lingua Theologiae, wherein it will be asked how the Incarnation of the Word gives rise to a new theological language, by what logic divine truth inhabits finite words, and how this nova lingua stands in grateful yet irreducible relation to the older grammars of philosophy and culture.

Breve Summarium Primi Octavi

The first eight disputationes constitute a single formal unit: an ordered ascent from language to glory.

1. Disputatio I – De Expressionibus Theologicis ut Syntacticis. Theology begins as language (T): a Spirit-given grammar that orders Christian confession. Before theology can be true, it must be speakable rightly; felicity is its first condition.

1. Disputatio II – De Theologia ut Systemate Modelorum. Rightly ordered speech must be interpreted within models of reality. Theology moves from grammar to ontology as T is inserted into the world created and ordered by God.

2. Disputatio III – De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis. The Holy Spirit is the boundary of discourse, distinguishing T_in from T_out. Finitude of felicity marks speech as truly authorized yet never exhaustive.

3. Disputatio IV – De Veritate Theologiae Duplex. Theology’s truth is twofold: the veritas interna (felicity within T), and the veritas externa (adequation to being). Their unity is Christ, who is both Word and Reality.

4. Disputatio V – De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam. Felicity and truth are distinct yet inseparable—form and fulfillment of the same pneumatological act. The felicitous word is ordered toward its eventual verification.

5. Disputatio VI – De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica. Divine causality grounds both being and speaking. The Spirit is causa principalissima of theological utterance; theology becomes a theophysical event rather than mere representation.

6. Disputatio VII – De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos. Participation is defined as constitutive dependence: divine perfections D_G are communicated as participated correlates D. Theosis is the ontological depth of salvation—real sharing in divine life without confusion of essences.

7. Disputatio VIII – De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis. The entire ordo culminates in manifestation: what is now true in participation will be revealed in glory. Theologia is perfected as doxologia; the word of faith becomes the vision of God.

Taken together, the first octad shows that:

• Theology is scientia Spiritus: the Spirit gives its language, orders its truth, grounds its causality, enables its participation, and manifests its end.

• The movement from T → M → FT → TC → participatio → manifestatio is not a sequence of separate domains but one continuous act of divine communication embraced at different logical levels.

• The final form of theology is praise: the intellect’s assent and the soul’s joy coincide where truth and felicity are one in the sight of God.

Disputatio VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos

On Participation and the Ontology of Theosis

Quaeritur

Utrum participatio sit ille nexus ontologicus inter creaturam et Deum, per quem homo fit particeps naturae divinae non per essentiae confusionem sed per gratiam communicationis; et quomodo ontologia theoseos describat modum huius participationis, qua Spiritus Sanctus causat realem communionem inter divinum et humanum.

Whether participation is that ontological bond between creature and Creator through which the human being becomes a partaker of the divine nature—not by confusion of essence but by the grace of communication—and how the ontology of theosis describes the mode of this participation, whereby the Holy Spirit causes a real communion between the divine and the human.

Thesis

Theosis is a real participation in divine life, constituted by the Holy Spirit. This participation is not metaphoric elevation nor essential fusion, but the Spirit’s causal communication of divine perfections in a creaturely mode. Thus participatio is the ontological relation in which the creature truly shares in God while remaining finite.

Locus Classicus

1. 2 Peter 1:4
κοινωνοὶ θείας φύσεως
“Partakers of the divine nature.”

Scripture itself dares the language of theosis. Participation is not mystical embellishment but the revealed grammar of salvation: divine life given, not divine essence seized.

2. Athanasius, De Incarnatione 54.3
Αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐνηνθρώπησεν, ἵνα ἡμεῖς θεοποιηθῶμεν.
“He became man that we might be made god.”

Participation has its ground in the Incarnation. The divine descends so that the creature may ascend—not by nature, but by grace.

3. Maximus Confessor, Ambigua 7
Ἡ θεοποίησις ἐστὶν ἡ τῆς μετουσίας πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν ἐνέργεια.
“Deification is the energy of communion with God.”

Participation occurs through divine energeia—a real operation binding God and creature without erasing distinction.

4. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.26
Deus fit omnia in omnibus, non natura sed gratia.
“God becomes all in all, not by nature, but by grace.”

What God is by essence, the creature becomes by participation; the distinction remains, yet communion is real.

Across these witnesses—from Peter to Athanasius to Maximus to Augustine—the same truth resounds: participation is the mode of salvation; the Spirit is its cause.

Explicatio

In Disputatio VI we saw that divine causality extends not only to creaturely being but also to creaturely speech. Here we advance a step further: the Spirit who causes words to be true also causes persons to be new.

This requires precision. The tradition speaks of participation in various ways—formal, exemplar, efficient, energetic, existential—but none of these, by itself, fits what is required.  What is needed is a participatio constitutiva. 

Let us formalize the structure. 

1. Two-Sorted Ontological Relation 

Assume a two-sorted ontological relation and let D_G denote a divine property (e.g., righteousness, life, wisdom), while D denotea the creature’s participated analogue. Then the relation: D_G → D expresses the Spirit’s causal act of communication. The arrow is not metaphor, imitation, or moral effort, but signifies an ontological procession: 1) divine life communicated, 2) not as essence, 3) but as gift. Thus, righteousness in God D_G becomes created righteousness D in the believer—finite, receptive, dependent, yet real.

2. Asymmetry Without Separation

Participation is one-directional for God communicates and the creature receives. God does not participate in the creature; the creature participates in God.

3. Pneumatic Mediation

Participation is not an abstract relation but a Spirit-caused communion. He is 1) the mediator, 2) the causal bridge, and 3) the giver of both being and union.

4. Transformation Without Confusion

The creature remains creaturely—finite essence, finite mode—yet becomes radiant with divine life. What is changed is not essence but participation.

5. Ontological Depth of Theosis

Theosis thus does not mean 1) moral imitation, or 2) conceptual analogy, or 3) symbolic representation. Instead it is the constitutive reception of divine life. Accordingly, the Spirit constitutes new being in the creature as the very form of salvation.

Explicatio Analytica: De Participatione Constitutiva

In analytic metaphysics, participation raises two problems:

1. How can the finite share in the infinite without contradiction?

2. How can divine properties be communicated without multiplying them?

The notion of a participatio constitutiva addresses both.

1. A Hyperintensional Distinction

Following Fine and Zalta, divine properties may be identical extensionally yet still distinct hyperintensionally. Thus: D_G (uncreated justice) and D (created justice) are not two justice-properties but two modes of the same attribute grounded in differing causal ontologies.

2. Constitutive Causality

Participation is explained not by efficient causation but by constitutive causality, the Spirit’s ongoing act that 1) grounds the creature’s being, 2) grounds its new disposition, and 3) grounds its ability to bear divine predicates.

Thus, participatory ontology fits cleanly within contemporary theories of: grounding (Fine, Schaffer), dependency (Rosen), hyperintensionality (Cresswell, Jago), and metaphysical explanation (Audi, Bennett). Participation becomes a constitutive grounding, not a property-transfer.

3. Avoiding Identity-Theory Pitfalls

Because divine and created modes are hyperintensionally distinct, participation avoids essential identity (pantheism), property multiplication (anti-simplicity), and nominalist reduction (anti-realism). Participation is the Spirit’s causal grounding of creaturely life in divine life, not an ontological blending. This analytic clarification is essential for making theosis intelligible in the contemporary intellectual horizon.

Objectiones

Ob I. Participation implies sharing in divine essence, violating the Creator–creature distinction.

Ob II. If divine attributes are communicated, they appear multiplied, threatening divine simplicity.

Ob III. Theosis replaces justification by faith with metaphysical transformation.

Ob IV. Participation language risks collapsing into Eastern Palamism, contrary to Lutheran theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Participation concerns gifts, not essence. The creature receives divine life as communicated perfection, not as a shared essence. The distinction of essences remains absolute.

Ad II. Attributes are not multiplied; they are refracted. The same divine righteousness that exists uncreated in God exists createdly in the believer. There are two modes but one source.

Ad III. Faith is the mode of participation, not its competitor. Faith unites the believer to Christ; that union is precisely the participation by which righteousness is received.

Ad IV. Lutheran theosis follows from Christology, not from an essence–energies distinction. Participation is grounded in union with Christ and mediated by the Spirit, not in any metaphysical strata. It is fundamentally sacramental and pneumatic, not neo-Palamite.

Nota

The ontology of theosis completes the logic of divine communication, for in Disputatio IV, truth was duplex: inner and outer.  In Disputatio V, felicity and truth formed a circle and in Disputatio VI, divine causality grounded both speech and being. Here, in Disputatio VII, we see that being itself is communicative.

Thus salvation is not an external favor but a constitutive transformation grounded in divine causality: 1) The Word speaks, 2) the Spirit causes, 3) the creature receives, and 4) the result is participation.

Participation thus expresses the deepest grammar of theological realism: God gives Himself without ceasing to be Himself; the creature receives God without ceasing to be creature.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theosis is the real participation of the creature in divine life.

2. Participation is constitutive, not merely moral or analogical.

3. The Holy Spirit is the causal mediator of this participation.

4. Divine attributes exist in two modes: uncreated D_G and participated D.

5. Participation preserves both divine transcendence and creaturely integrity.

6. The ontology of theosis is the completion of divine communication—speech becoming being, word becoming life.

Excursus: De Historia et Notionibus Participationis

On the History and Concepts of Participation

Participation (participatio) is one of the most enduring and yet least clarified notions in the philosophical and theological tradition. It is invoked whenever thinkers attempt to describe the relation between the finite and the infinite, the contingent and the necessary, the creature and the Creator. The term appears indispensable, yet its meaning has remained elusive. What exactly is the relation “by virtue of which” (δι’ ὃ) the creature shares in the divine? What sort of relation allows the creature truly to receive what properly belongs to God without collapsing the Creator–creature distinction?

The present disputationes have reached a point at which this question can no longer remain implicit. In Disputatio VI, we argued that the Holy Spirit is the causa principalissima not only of being but of speaking. In Disputatio VII, we advanced the thesis that the creature’s new being is constituted by a real participation in divine life. To proceed further—toward eschatological manifestation—we must clarify the very notion of participation on which these arguments depend. This Excursus offers a conceptual and historical map in order to situate the doctrine of participatio constitutiva, the pneumatological ontology that grounds the entire second movement of the Disputationes Theologicae.

I. Plato: Participation as the First Problem

Plato introduced methexis, participation, to explain how sensibles relate to the Forms. A beautiful thing is beautiful “by participating” in Beauty itself. Yet Plato never defines the relation. The “Third Man Argument” exposes the ambiguity: if the Form and the particular resemble one another by sharing a common property, then a further Form seems required ad infinitum. Participation was therefore necessary for Plato’s metaphysics but conceptually unstable, signaling the need for a deeper account of the “in virtue of which” by which the finite shares in the transcendent.

II. Aristotle: The Immanent Transmutation of Participation

Aristotle rejects Platonic participation in favor of immanent form. The relation between particular and universal becomes intrinsic: form inheres in matter rather than standing above it. Yet participation reappears indirectly in the act–potency schema. Potency receives act; act actualizes potency. Though Aristotle would not call this “participation,” the metaphysical structure is analogous: finite beings exist by receiving actuality from another. The immanentization clarifies metaphysics but does not yet explain how creatures might share divine life.

III. The Neoplatonists: Participation as Emanation

Neoplatonism reasserts participation through the doctrines of procession (proodos) and return (epistrophē). All beings emanate from the One and return toward it through a hierarchy of being. Participation becomes a metaphysics of ontological dependence. Yet the relation remains essentially metaphysical, not personal; it lacks a clear account of how the creature is actively constituted in communion with the divine. Moreover, participation is tied to ontological gradation rather than covenantal gift.

IV. The Patristic Reconfiguration: Participation and Grace

Christian theology reconfigured participation by rooting it in divine grace and the personal agency of the Spirit.

• For the Cappadocians, participation designates communion with the divine energies rather than the divine essence: a real sharing without confusion.

• For Augustine, participare Deo means to be drawn into the life of God by love: participation is affective, transformative, and pneumatic.

• Participation becomes relational, covenantal, and trinitarian—yet the concept remains suggestive rather than analytically defined.

Participation is now identified not with emanation but with grace.

V. Scholastic Clarification and Its Limits

Aquinas provides the most systematic account in the premodern West.
Participation is:

1. Two-sorted (creature shares in what is proper to God)

2. Analogical (effect reflects cause proportionally)

3. Limited (finite being receives in a finite mode)

This clarifies the metaphysical grammar, but participation remains primarily a way of speaking about perfections received by creatures. It does not yet provide a pneumatological explanation of how such participation is effected or sustained.

VI. Lutheran Reconfigurations: Union Without Confusion

While the Lutheran tradition does not foreground “participation,” it provides conceptual foundations:

• Luther’s unio cum Christo describes a real communion grounded in promise and enacted by the Spirit.

• The communicatio idiomatum in Christology provides an ontological precedent for participation that is neither essentialist nor merely moral.

• Gerhard and the Lutheran scholastics articulate the believer’s renewal as participation in divine life, yet without a formal metaphysics of participation.

The Lutheran tradition thus offers rich material but lacks a conceptual account that unites grace, ontology, and Spirit.

VII. Modern Attempts and Persistent Ambiguities

In the modern period:

• Lossky, Zizioulas, and the neo-Palamite tradition recover participation through the language of divine energies and ecclesial personhood.

• Rahner’s “supernatural existential” redefines participation as the horizon of human transcendence.

• Barth and Bonhoeffer reframe participation christologically and ecclesially.

Yet in many modern accounts, participation becomes either:

• existential-symbolic and thus it loses its ontological bite, or

• metaphysically abstract where it loses its pneumatic specificity.

What is lacking is a doctrine that is at once metaphysically precise, trinitarian, and causally grounded.

VIII. Toward a Clarified Concept: Participatio Constitutiva

The foregoing traditions, though profound, leave unanswered the central question: In what does participation consist? The present disputationes propose the following definition of participatio constitutiva.  Participation is the Spirit’s constitutive causality whereby the creature receives—really and ontologically—a finite correlate D of a divine perfection D_G, such that the creature remains creaturely, God remains wholly transcendent, and yet the creature truly shares in what belongs properly to God. Thus, participation is not imitation, analogy, moral conformity, exemplarist reflection, or metaphysical proximity.

It is causal reception—the Spirit’s inward act that constitutes the creature’s new being. Participation is therefore:

1. Ontological, for it gives being.

2. Pneumatological, for its agent is the Spirit. 

3. Christological, because it is mediated through union with Christ. 

4. Asymmetrical, since God communicates and the creature receives. 

5. Constitutive, because what is communicated becomes the creature’s new reality. 

This clarifies why deification is not essence-sharing but grace-sharing: the creature becomes luminous with divine life not by becoming divine essentia but by receiving divine actus.

Participation, properly understood, contains within itself an eschatological orientation. What is now possessed in grace is destined for manifestation in glory.

Thus, while VII established participation as ontological transformation, VIII will show participation as eschatological manifestation. This Excursus has clarified the formal concept at the hinge point between ontology and eschatology. Participation is the grammar of deification; manifestation is its consummation.

Transitus ad Disputationem VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis

In the seventh disputation we beheld participation as the Spirit’s constitutive act, grounding both creaturely being and creaturely communion with God. Such participation is real yet incomplete; begun in time, it strains toward consummation. For every participation bears a teleology: what is received as grace seeks revelation as glory.

The hidden union of faith awaits its eschatological unveiling. The righteousness participated now will be manifested then. The divine life communicated secretly will be revealed openly. Thus, theology must now inquire how truth, which is presently mediated by word, Spirit, and participation, will appear in its eschatological fullness.

We therefore proceed to: Disputatio VIII: De Manifestatione Eschatologica Veritatis—on the unveiling of divine truth in glory, where participation becomes vision and the economy becomes consummation.