Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

On Intension and the Modeling of Theological Language

Quaeritur

Utrum intensio in theologia non sit mera conceptio mentis, sed forma participationis, qua sermo fidelis participat in ipsa re de qua loquitur; et utrum modeling theologicum sit interpretatio huius intensionalis structurae intra ordinem entis, per quam verbum fidei inseritur in veritatem ontologicam a Spiritu causatam.

Whether intension in theology is not merely a mental conception but a mode of participation by which faithful speech shares in the very reality it names; and whether theological modeling is the interpretation of this intensional structure within the order of being, through which the word of faith is inserted into the ontological truth caused by the Spirit.

Thesis

The intension of theological language expresses the way in which meaning and being coinhere through participation. Modeling is the act by which these intensional forms are interpreted within ontological structures, so that theology’s speech corresponds to divine reality. Thus, intensionality grounds the realism of theology’s models: words mean what they mean because they share, analogically, in what they signify.

Locus classicus

“My word that goes out from my mouth shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.” — Isaiah 55:11

Here the Word of God is not a sign that points to something absent, but a living act that accomplishes what it names. The divine Word is intensional in the highest sense: its meaning and its effect coincide. Theology’s task is to reflect this coincidence within the limits of human language.

Explicatio

In ordinary logic, intension refers to the content or concept of a term—what it signifies internally—while extension refers to the set of things to which it applies. In theology, however, intension cannot be reduced to mere conceptual content, for the meaning of divine terms arises from participation in the realities they signify.

When theology says “Deus est bonus” (“God is good”), the term bonus has an intension that differs fundamentally from its use in secular discourse. Its meaning is not abstracted from experience but given through participation in divine goodness itself. The Spirit mediates this participation, so that human predicates acquire analogical depth.

Let us represent this symbolically (and immediately explain):

• Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p—its interior content as informed by participation in divine reality.

• Let M(p) denote the modeling of that predicate—the interpretation of p within an ontological framework of being. The relation I(p) → M(p) expresses that theological modeling extends the meaning (intension) of language into ontology; what faith means, ontology makes real.

Hence, modeling theology is not constructing analogies externally but recognizing that the intensional life of faith’s language already participates in the realities to which it refers.

Theological predicates are therefore intensional in a deeper sense than philosophical ones: their meanings are not closed concepts but open participations. Each name of God carries within it a structural reference to divine causality. To speak truly of God is to allow the intension of language to become a site of encounter, where meaning and being converge.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Aristotle and his scholastic heirs maintain the position of Aristotelian realism, the view that the meaning of predicates is exhausted by their extension to real things. Intension adds nothing to ontology. To analyze theological predicates intensionally—as if their sense exceeded their reference—is to introduce needless abstraction. The meaning of “God is good” is simply that God instantiates goodness; no intensional layer is needed.

Obiectio II. From the standpoint of empiricist verificationalism, all meaningful statements are either empirically verifiable or analytically true. Theological predicates refer to no empirically testable properties and therefore lack cognitive meaning. Model-theoretic “interpretation” of such terms merely disguises their non-referential status under formal symbols. To construct intensional models for theology is to rationalize what is semantically empty.

Obiectio III. Following later Wittgenstein, meaning arises from use within a linguistic form of life (Lebensform). To model theological language formally or intensionally is to misunderstand its grammar. The meaning of “grace,” “sin,” or “Spirit” lies in their practical employment within worship and life, not in their reference to divine properties or in hypothetical models. Modeling theology as if it described an external reality mistakes liturgical use for scientific representation.

Obiectio IV. Contemporary analytic semantics often treats meaning extensionally, defining reference via truth conditions over possible worlds. Since divine reality is not empirically accessible or multiply realizable across worlds, theological language cannot admit of model-theoretic interpretation without violating the principle of extensional adequacy. Theology should confine itself to moral or metaphorical discourse rather than claim intensional reference to the divine.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck’s cultural-linguistic model asserts that theological statements are true insofar as they cohere with the community’s grammar. There is no external domain into which they must be modeled. To introduce an intensional semantics for theology is to reintroduce representational realism and to confuse the performative, intra-ecclesial truth of faith with philosophical speculation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Aristotelian realism rightly grounds meaning in real being but overlooks the form of participation by which finite predicates relate to divine reality. In theology, predication is not univocal: “God is good” does not signify an extensionally shared property but an analogical relation between divine perfection and finite concept. Intensional analysis captures this formal relation—it models the way predicates point beyond their finite instantiations toward infinite fulfillment. Thus, intensional semantics safeguards the analogia fidei: a structure of participation rather than mere attribution.

Ad II. Empiricist verificationism confuses empirical access with cognitive meaning. Theological terms are cognitively meaningful within the ontology of participation: they refer not by sense-data but by divine causality. Model-theoretic interpretation supplies the formal correlate of this claim. It shows that theological language can be given structured domains and interpretation functions consistent with its own rules of felicity. Intensional models do not disguise emptiness; they make explicit the structure of theological reference within divine reality.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning depends on use is valid at the pragmatic level but incomplete. Theological use is itself grounded in divine authorization. The Spirit makes the Church’s grammar not merely functional but truth-bearing. Modeling theology intensionally does not deny use; it articulates the inner logic by which use participates in divine meaning. The grammar of faith is a finite surface of an infinite semantics. Without such modeling, theology remains descriptively sociological rather than truth-apt.

Ad IV. Extensional semantics suffices for empirical domains but not for theological ones, where reference involves hyperintensional distinctions between formally equivalent but ontologically distinct predicates (e.g., “Creator” and “Redeemer”). Theology must operate at the intensional level because divine properties relate analogically, not extensionally. Model-theoretic analysis extends semantics beyond possible worlds to the domain of divine possibility, the space of God’s communicative acts. Hence, intensional modeling is not optional but necessary for theology’s realism.

Ad V. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but lacks the means to account for its truth. Theological language does not merely describe communal life; it claims participation in divine reality. Model-theoretic interpretation provides a way to express that claim rigorously. By mapping the formal language of theology (T) into an ontological domain structured by participation, it unites communal felicity (FT) with divine truth-conditions (TC). Intensionality here serves realism: it formalizes the link between faith’s grammar and God’s being.

Nota

Intensionality in theology reveals the deep correspondence between divine and human discourse. Just as the Word of God contains within itself both meaning and being—significatio et effectus—so theological speech, animated by the Spirit, partakes in that same structure.

In model-theoretic terms, theological language is not a static set of propositions but a living model in which predicates participate in the realities they denote. When theology says “Christ is Lord,” this is not a metaphor to be verified externally; it is a confession whose intension already shares in Christ’s lordship through the Spirit.

Modeling thus performs a theological epistemology of incarnation: finite words filled with infinite content, formal structure suffused with divine causality. In this sense, modeling does not invent theology’s truth but explicates it—it unfolds the internal participation already latent in theological meaning.

Hence, to study theology’s intension is to trace how language itself becomes sacramental: a sign whose signification and grace coincide.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Intension in theology signifies participation: the inward meaning of a theological term is its share in divine reality.

2. Modeling interprets these intensional forms within an ontological framework, revealing how language and being correspond through the Spirit.

3. The Spirit is the cause of this correspondence, uniting signification (intensio) and reality (veritas) without confusion.

4. Theological precision arises not from limiting meaning but from its right participation in the divine.

5. Therefore, the intension of theology’s language is itself a locus of revelation: the Word that makes meaning also makes being, and modeling is the act by which this unity is rendered intelligible.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIV: De intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico

In considering the intension of theological language, we discerned that the meaning of theological terms cannot be exhausted by conceptual modeling. Their adequacy arises not only from logical structure but from participation in divine self-disclosure. Yet meaning, to be fully theological, must not only signify rightly but also intend rightly, that is, it must move from formal content to living reference, from concept to act.

For theology is not an inventory of divine predicates but a directed discourse of faith. What it says and how it says are bound together in the intention of the believer speaking within the Spirit. To model the divine truth is one thing; to intend that truth in the act of confession is another. Here, the intellect and the will converge in a single movement of participation: understanding becomes invocation.

Hence we advance to Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico, where it is asked how the inner content (intensio) of theological concepts relates to the directedness (intentio) of theological speech, and whether true theology consists not in correct modeling alone but in that Spirit-led act in which language, will, and divine reality are gathered into one.

Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

On Providence and the Continuity of Divine Causality

Quaeritur

Utrum providentia Dei sit continua causalitas, qua Deus non solum mundum ex nihilo creavit sed etiam ipsum in esse conservat et gubernat; et utrum haec causalitas non sit actio extrinseca sed praesentia interna, qua Spiritus Sanctus perpetuo coniungit Verbum creatum et Creatorem, ut universum manere possit simul intelligibile et bonum.

Whether divine providence is the continuous causality by which God not only created the world from nothing but also sustains and governs it in being; and whether this causality is not an external intervention but an inner presence, whereby the Holy Spirit perpetually unites the created word and the Creator, so that the universe may remain both intelligible and good.

Thesis

Providence (providentia) is the ongoing act of divine causality by which the world persists and moves toward its end in God. Creation is not a completed event but a continuous relation; the same Word that brought all things into being sustains them in being. The Spirit mediates this continuity, causing creatures to act freely while remaining within the scope of divine purpose.

Locus classicus

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17

Here Paul speaks not of a distant deity but of the Logos as the ongoing bond of being. Creation’s coherence is not self-sustaining; it abides in Christ’s continuous causality. Providence, therefore, is the persistence of creation’s dependence upon divine Word and Spirit.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XI, we affirmed that the world’s intelligibility arises from its creation by the Word. We now consider how that intelligibility endures. If creation were a single, past act, the world would dissolve into nothingness the moment divine attention ceased. Providence is therefore creation continued—the abiding act of God’s causality by which the creature’s being remains actual.

To clarify this theologically:

• Let C(x) denote that x is a creature, and E(x) that x exists.

• The relation ∀x (C(x) → E(x) because D(x)) means: for every creature x, its existence is caused and sustained by divine causality D(x).

• This symbol does not refer to an occasional miracle but to the metaphysical structure of existence itself: creatures exist because God continuously wills and causes them to exist.

Providence therefore implies not intervention but continuation. God’s causal activity is in esse, not merely in fieri: He does not push the world forward and then withdraw; He is the cause of its very being at every moment.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus) mediates this ongoing causality by joining divine intention to creaturely action. Through the Spirit, the will of God becomes the vitality of creation. Hence, the world’s ongoing order—its stability, intelligibility, and teleology—is nothing less than the temporal manifestation of providence.

Divine causality in providence operates in three modes:

1. Conservatio – preservation of being (keeping creatures in existence).

2. Concursus – cooperation with secondary causes (working through creaturely action).

3. Gubernatio – direction of all things to their end (ordering the whole to divine goodness).

These three are distinct in concept but one in divine act.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to deistic naturalism, if divine causality is continuous and all-encompassing, every event and choice is predetermined by God’s will. The doctrine of providence, so conceived, annihilates contingency and renders creaturely freedom illusory. What appears as secondary causation is but divine efficiency extended through nature, leaving no genuine autonomy to creatures.

Obiectio II. Conversely, deistic autonomy holds that if God truly endowed the world with natural laws and rational freedom, continuous divine causality is unnecessary. To say that God must sustain creation at every instant implies a defect in the creative act. A perfect Creator would make a world capable of independent persistence—self-sufficient once brought into being.

Obiectio III. With regard to the problem of evil, if providence extends to all things, then evil too must fall within divine causality. Either God causes evil directly—contradicting His goodness—or He merely permits it—contradicting His omnipotence. The notion of providence as continuous divine causation thus seems incompatible with both divine holiness and power.

Obiectio IV.  Epicurean or Existential Indifference opines that the world exhibits randomness, suffering, and moral ambiguity. If divine providence truly governs all things, its presence should be evident. The apparent absence of order suggests either that providence is a projection of human meaning or that divine causality, if real, is indistinguishable from blind natural process.

Obiectio V.  Modern process and evolutionary theology maintains that divine causality evolves with the world. God persuades rather than determines, luring creation toward novelty. To call providence a continuous causality of preservation is to freeze the dynamism of divine–world interaction into static ontology. True providence must be relational and temporal, not immutable and timeless.

Responsiones

Ad I. Determinism confuses divine causality with mechanical compulsion. God’s causality is not competitive with creaturely causality but constitutive of it. The Spirit enables the creature to be a genuine cause. Divine providence grounds contingency rather than abolishes it: because God continuously gives being, the creature’s free act truly is its own. Were God not present in every act, freedom would dissolve into chaos or nothingness. Continuous causality, far from destroying freedom, makes it possible.

Ad II. Deism misconstrues perfection as detachment. Dependence is not imperfection but participation. A self-sustaining world would be a second god, not a creation. The Spirit’s conserving causality does not repair a defect but expresses the fullness of divine generosity—the ever-renewed “Let there be.” Providence means that creation never stands apart from its source; it is God’s ongoing communication of being. The world’s endurance is not independence but grace prolonged.

Ad III. Providence encompasses evil without authoring it. God’s causality provides the being of every act, but the privation of good within those acts arises from finite freedom. The Spirit does not cause the defect but permits it for a greater teleological order in which love overcomes disorder. Evil’s inclusion within providence does not indict God but magnifies His redemptive wisdom: the same continuous causality that sustains freedom redeems its misuse.

Ad IV. The apparent randomness of nature reveals not the absence but the subtlety of providence. Divine causality is not always manifest as intervention but as intelligibility itself—the order by which events cohere. The Spirit’s presence is discerned not in spectacle but in the persistence of meaning, beauty, and moral orientation amid flux. Providence is not an empirical hypothesis but a metaphysical condition: without it, the world’s very intelligibility would collapse into noise.

Ad V. Process thought rightly emphasizes dynamism but mistakes temporality for becoming in God. Divine causality is eternally active yet temporally manifest. The Spirit’s governance is not static but vivifying: God’s constancy is the ground of change. Providence is not a closed determinism but an open teleology—an eternal act that gives time its direction. The world evolves precisely because divine causality continuously bestows being and novelty in one act of faithful presence.

Nota

Providence (providentia) and creation (creatio) are two aspects of one divine motion: creatio continua. The divine Word, who once spoke being into existence, continues to speak it every moment. This uninterrupted act is not temporal repetition but eternal presence. God’s causality, though immanent, remains transcendent; it permeates all finite operations without becoming one among them.

From a model-theoretic viewpoint, we can describe the relation between divine and creaturely causation as cross-sorted dependency. In formal terms (and then explained):

• Let the domain of divine properties be Dᴳ, and that of creaturely states be Dᶜ.

• A function f: Dᴳ → Dᶜ indicates that each creaturely act derives its being from participation in a divine causal correlate.

• This is not an efficient sequence but an ontological dependency: divine causality constitutes finite efficacy without displacing it.

Thus, providence is the metaphysical condition under which creation remains intelligible and free simultaneously. Without it, the world would be a self-enclosed mechanism; with it, the world is a living communication.

The Spirit’s presence within providence ensures that divine causality is not mechanical necessity but personal faithfulness. God does not merely sustain the cosmos as a machine; He accompanies it as a promise. Every moment of being is a continuation of the creative “Let there be,” renewed through the Spirit’s fiat.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Providence is the continuous act of divine causality (creatio continua) by which all things are preserved, governed, and perfected in God.

2. The Spirit mediates this causality, joining divine intention to creaturely action without competition or coercion.

3. Continuous causality affirms that dependence upon God is not a limitation but the very structure of creaturely freedom.

4. Evil and disorder do not originate in divine causality but are permitted within its teleological order for the sake of greater good.

5. The doctrine of providence completes the theology of creation: the world’s existence and intelligibility are not static products but living effects of God’s eternal act.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae

Divine providence has been seen to extend creation’s act into every moment of its existence. God’s causality is not a distant impulse but the continuous interior act by which all things are sustained and ordered. Yet if this act is at once transcendent and immanent, then theology must ask how such causality can be signified in human speech.

For providence, being invisible, is known only as it is spoken; and the speech of faith seeks to mirror what it names. To confess divine causality is to construct a model within language: a finite structure that must somehow point beyond itself to the infinite act it describes. But how can the finite system of signs retain truth when its referent exceeds all representation? What is the relation between the intension of theological terms (their conceptual content) and the transcendent reality to which they refer?

Thus we proceed to Disputatio XIII: De Intensione et Modeling Linguae Theologicae, wherein we examine how theological language models divine reality, whether its meaning arises from internal conceptual structures or from participation in the act of God’s own self-expression, and how the limits of signification become the very place where theology most truly speaks.

Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Quaeritur

Utrum mundus, qui per Verbum Dei creatus est, in se contineat rationem et ordinem intelligibilem non ut proprietatem naturalem aut autonomum logon, sed ut participationem ipsius rationis divinae per quam omnia facta sunt; et utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit causa per quam haec participatio in mundo manet viva et cognoscibilis.

Whether the world, created through the Word of God, contains within itself reason and intelligible order not as a natural property or autonomous logos, but as participation in the very divine reason through which all things were made; and whether the Holy Spirit is the cause by which this participation in the world remains living and knowable.

Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order of reason in the world reflects the eternal Logos by which it was created and in which it is sustained. The Spirit preserves this intelligibility as the ongoing mediation between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

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

This verse reveals that creation is not a brute event but an act of speech: God’s Word gives being; His Spirit gives life and understanding. The world, therefore, bears a rational and linguistic structure because it originates in divine utterance.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, revelation and knowledge were shown to occur as acts of divine self-communication. Creation is the cosmic expression of that same principle. To create “by the Word” is to bring forth being through meaning.

The intelligibility of the world (intelligibilitas mundi) is not an afterthought but the imprint of divine reason (ratio divina) within creation itself. The divine Logos does not merely impose order externally; He is the internal ground of all order. Hence, the world is not a mute mechanism but a spoke reality—a creation articulated in the very act of divine utterance.

To express this symbolically (and then immediately explain):

• Let C(x) mean “x is a creature,” and L(x) mean “x participates in the Logos.”

• The theological claim ∀x (C(x) → L(x)) can be read: “For every creature x, to be created is to participate in the Logos.”

• This does not mean that creatures possess divinity, but that their very structure reflects divine rationality.

• The world’s coherence, its capacity to be known, is therefore the sign of its origin in divine speech.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus), proceeding from the Father through the Word, maintains this participation dynamically.
The Spirit is not merely a past cause of order but the ongoing agent of intelligibility: He makes the world not only ordered but understandable. Thus, creation’s rational form is continually animated by pneumatological presence.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Autonomous Rationalism holds that if the world’s intelligibility depends upon divine participation, then human reason is heteronomous. Science and philosophy must be autonomous to retain credibility. To posit that intelligibility is “borrowed” from divine Logos is to undermine the independence of human knowledge and reduce rational inquiry to theology.

Obiectio II. To claim that the Logos is the inner rationality of creation risks a pantheistic collapse of the Creator and creature into one order of being. If all order, ratio, and structure in the world are divine, then the world itself becomes divine in substance. The distinction between participation and identity vanishes, and theology slides toward pantheism.

Obiectio III. The natural world exhibits randomness, entropy, and moral indifference (empirical chaos). Disease, suffering, and death pervade the biological order. If creation truly participates in the divine Logos, these features appear inexplicable or scandalous. The presence of irrationality and evil in nature seems to contradict the claim that the world is inherently intelligible.

Obiectio IV. According to scientific naturalism, science explains intelligibility through natural law and mathematical regularity without invoking divine speech. The assumption of an underlying Logos is unnecessary. Order arises from self-organizing processes, symmetry breaking, and evolution. To ascribe intelligibility to divine participation is to import metaphysics where empirical explanation suffices.

Obiectio V. Postmodern hermeneutic skepticism claims that language and reason are historically contingent human constructs. To say that the world itself is “linguistic” or “spoken” is a metaphor, not an ontology. Meaning is produced by interpreters, not embedded in being. The idea of the cosmos as divine utterance confuses human interpretation with the structure of reality itself.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy in reason does not mean isolation from its source. Human rationality is genuine precisely because it participates in the divine Logos. The dependence of intelligibility on God is not servitude but vocation: reason becomes most itself when illumined by its origin. The sciences retain autonomy in their proper domain, but their very capacity for intelligibility is derivative—a finite echo of the Word through whom all things were made. Participation in the Logos grounds freedom, it does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation does not imply identity but communion across an ontological distinction. The Logos is present in creation as cause, not as substance. The world’s order reflects divine wisdom without exhausting or containing it. To speak of creation as “worded” does not mean that it is the Word, but that its being bears the trace of the Word’s utterance. The infinite remains transcendent even while immanent in the finite. Thus, the doctrine of participation preserves both dependence and distinction.

Ad III. Chaos and disorder mark creation’s finitude, not its absence of divine order. The Logos grants intelligibility even to imperfection: finitude includes the potential for failure, limitation, and conflict. Yet these apparent irrationalities become meaningful within the teleological horizon of providence. The cross remains the archetype: what appears as negation of order is, in divine wisdom, the means of a higher reconciliation. Creation’s intelligibility, therefore, is not the denial of mystery but the assurance that mystery itself is ordered to meaning.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes the intelligibility it cannot generate. The discovery of order through empirical method already assumes that the world is rationally structured and consistent—a condition theology explains as participation in the divine Logos. Natural law, symmetry, and mathematics are not self-originating; they are the formal vestiges of divine reason. Theology does not compete with science but interprets the precondition of its success. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility that science explores but cannot explain.

Ad V. Postmodern skepticism rightly observes that human language mediates all understanding, but it errs in treating meaning as purely subjective. The world is intelligible because it is spoken—not by humans first, but by the divine Word. The analogy between creation and language is not metaphorical but metaphysical: both are acts of signification. The Spirit mediates this relation by translating divine speech into created order and human comprehension. Thus, while interpretation is human, meaning is divine. The cosmos is not a text we invent but a text we inhabit.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a profound theological epistemology. The human capacity to know the world is itself a participation in the divine act of speech. To understand is to retrace, in thought, the creative grammar by which God called things into being.

Thus, the sciences—when rightly ordered—are not profane but theological activities: they read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. This is why the world is intelligible at all: its being is linguistic before it is material. Every true discovery is a translation of the Word’s creative logic into human comprehension.

The Spirit’s role is central. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would decay into abstraction. The Spirit causes the correspondence between human reason and divine reason—the very possibility that meaning in the world can meet meaning in the mind. We might say that the Spirit is the hermeneutical bond of creation: the one who makes the world readable and reason receptive.

Therefore, creation’s intelligibility is neither self-explanatory nor imposed from outside.It is an ongoing relation of divine communication: the Logos speaks, the Spirit interprets, the creature understands.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Creation is not a silent fact but a spoken act: esse arises from dicere.

2. The intelligibility of the world derives from its participation in the divine Logos, not from autonomous rational structure.

3. The Spirit preserves and animates this intelligibility, making the world perpetually communicative to human reason.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself participatory—an act of re-speaking what God has already said in being.

5. The doctrine of creation and intelligibility thus completes the movement begun in revelation: the world is revelation extended into matter, speech made visible, and intelligibility the trace of God’s continuing Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

Creation has shown itself to be the first intelligible: the world is ordered because it issues from the divine Wisdom who is the Word.
Yet the intelligibility of origin demands the constancy of continuance.
For if God’s creative act were only initial, the coherence of beings would lapse the moment they came to be. To create intelligibly is also to preserve, for the Word who calls things forth must likewise hold them in being.

Hence the question now arises: How does the divine act continue within creation without dividing itself from transcendence? Is providence but foresight, or the very presence of causality itself in all that acts? Does the creature persist by its own power, or by the ceaseless motion of the divine will that works in all things?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae, and ask how the same Word who spoke creation into being also sustains it through every moment of its existence, and how divine causality operates within the order of secondary causes without abolishing their reality or freedom.

Disputatio X: De Revelatione et Cognitione Dei

On Revelation and Knowledge of God

Quaeritur

Utrum revelatio sit actus ipsius Dei se manifestantis, non per deductionem rationis sed per communicationem Spiritus; et utrum cognitio Dei oriatur non ex speculatione humana sed ex participatione in Verbo revelato, ita ut hic actus cognoscendi simul sit passio et donum, quo Deus cognoscitur in ipso actu quo se revelat.

Whether revelation is the very act of God’s self-manifestation, not the product of rational deduction but the communication of the Spirit; and whether knowledge of God arises not from human speculation but from participation in the revealed Word, such that this act of knowing is at once reception and gift—God being known in the very act by which He reveals Himself.

Thesis

True knowledge of God (cognitio Dei) occurs only within revelation. Revelation is not the transmission of information about God but the divine act in which God gives Himself to be known. Hence, theology is not reflection upon an object but participation in a subject—the divine Word who both reveals and knows Himself.

Locus Classicus

Ὅτι ὁ Θεὸς ὁ εἰπών· Ἐκ σκότους φῶς λάμψει, ὃς ἔλαμψεν ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν πρὸς φωτισμὸν τῆς γνώσεως τῆς δόξης τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐν προσώπῳ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” — 2 Corinthians 4:6

Paul here links revelation and cognition in a single act: the God who once created light now re-creates understanding. Knowledge of God is not attained but illumined—an inward illumination that mirrors the original fiat lux. In revelation, God remains the subject; human knowing is His radiance in us.

Ἄγνωστος μὲν ὁ Θεὸς κατ’ οὐσίαν, γνωστὸς δὲ κατὰ τὰς ἐνέργειας αὐτοῦ. 

“God is unknowable in essence, yet knowable in His energies.” — Gregorios Palamas, Triades I.3.21

Palamas captures the paradox of all theology: the divine nature transcends comprehension, yet through His self-manifesting operations (energeiai), God truly makes Himself known. Revelation is thus both concealment and disclosure—the finite intellect participates in the divine light without exhausting its source. The knowledge of God is a participation in His self-communication, not an inspection of His essence.

“Die Offenbarung ist das Geschehen, in dem Gott sich selbst mitteilt. 

“Revelation is the event in which God communicates Himself.” — Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, §4

For Barth, revelation is not primarily the transmission of information but the self-giving of God. The content and act of revelation coincide: to know God is to encounter Him in His self-utterance. This event occurs supremely in Jesus Christ—the Word of God spoken in history and received in faith through the Spirit.

From Paul through Palamas to Barth, a coherent theology of revelation emerges. Revelation is not human ascent but divine descent: the light shines, the energies manifest, the Word communicates Himself. Knowledge of God (cognitio Dei) is therefore participatory and receptive—an act in which the finite intellect is illumined by the infinite, enabled to know truly though never comprehensively. Revelation and cognition are thus one movement from God to creature: God making Himself known, and the creature knowing in that making.

Explicatio

Revelation and cognition in theology are not parallel processes but one act viewed from two sides. When God reveals, He does not merely disclose propositions; He grants participation in His own self-understanding.

In the natural order of knowing, the subject apprehends an object. In revelation, the human knower is taken up into the act of divine self-knowledge. This is why revelation cannot be grasped through detached speculation. To know God is to be drawn into God’s own interpretive act—the Son’s eternal vision of the Father made present by the Spirit.

We may express this structurally (and then explain it):

• Let R represent revelation, the act of divine self-disclosure.

• Let K_h represent human knowledge of God, and K_d divine self-knowledge.
  The theological relation K_h ← R → K_d means: human knowing of God arises from and participates in divine knowing through revelation. The arrows indicate that revelation is the mediating act linking the two, not a neutral transmission.

Thus, the nova lingua theologiae (developed in Disputatio IX) is the very medium of revelation’s occurrence. God speaks in human words, and in those words He both gives Himself and illumines human understanding. This is why theology’s language must be both faithful to its divine source and humble in its human form—it carries the mystery of divine cognition within finite utterance.

Objectiones

Ob I. According to an empiricist epistemology, knowing God by revelation is impossible, because genuine knowledge requires sensory data or empirical verification. Since God is invisible and transcendent, a claim to divine revelation or cognition cannot meet the criteria of knowledge. Hence theology’s claim to knowledge of God is at best symbolic or metaphorical, not genuine cognition.

Ob II. If God is all-knowing, all-powerful and perfectly loving, then one would expect full clarity in divine revelation, so that human beings would know God unmistakably. Yet human experience is marked by ambiguity, dispute over revelation, and even ignorance of God’s being. Therefore the claim that God reveals Himself such that human cognition genuinely knows Him is doubtful.

Ob III. On the model of Karl Barth, revelation is not an object-of-knowledge but a divine event that confronts the human subject. One cannot therefore speak of “cognition of God” in the standard sense (as knowing a thing) when it comes to God. Theology must witness this event, not claim propositional knowledge. Thus the doctrine of cognition of God seems to import human epistemic categories into theology illegitimately.

Ob IV. Drawing on the apophatic tradition, one holds that God’s essence is utterly transcendent and beyond human concepts. Any attempt to speak of cognition of God risks projecting finite categories onto the infinite. Revelation may indicate God’s presence, but cognition of God qua God remains impossible. Theology must affirm unknowing rather than knowing.

Ob V. According to post-modern constructivist theology, our concepts of God are culturally, linguistically and historically conditioned. “Revelation” and “knowledge of God” are thus human constructions, not transcendent disclosures. To speak of cognition of God presumes universality of epistemic access which overlooks the diversity of human situatedness.

Responsiones

Ad I. While it is true that empirical knowledge depends on sensory input and verification, knowledge of God by revelation belongs to a different epistemic order, that of divine self-communication. God does not become an object among others but enters human cognition through the act of the Spirit. Thus revelation is not mere metaphor but the grounding of the cognitive relation: God authorises the knowing by revealing Himself. Human cognition remains finite and mediated, yet genuinely knows God insofar as it participates in the divine self-communication.

Ad II. The hiddenness of God and the ambiguity of human reception are real. Yet they do not negate that God reveals Himself; rather they indicate the finitude of human cognition and the mystery of divine freedom. Revelation is genuine, but its reception always occurs within historical, cultural, and existential constraints. Theology acknowledges the partiality of our knowledge (cf. “we see in a mirror dimly”) while affirming that cognition of God is possible because God discloses Himself. The fact that human cognition is limited does not show that cognition is impossible—instead it shows that the mode of cognition is participatory and mediated, not autonomous.

Ad III. Barth rightly emphasises revelation as event rather than object; theology is witness. Yet recognising revelation as event does not preclude cognition of God. The divine event triggers the cognitive relation: God speaks, human hearing occurs, understanding responds. Theology’s cognition of God is therefore event-grounded and relational rather than purely conceptual. The “object” known is not a thing outside but the living God who reveals. Thus knowledge of God remains propositional in one sense (we can speak truly of God) but always contextualised in the revelatory act.

Ad IV. The apophatic tradition protects the transcendence of God, but must be balanced with the cataphatic: God reveals Himself in ways we can know. The doctrine of cognition of God must affirm that while God’s essence remains ineffable, He reveals Himself truly in His acts and Word. Revelation does not exhaust God’s being but gives genuine knowledge of Him as He wills to be known. Theology holds that human cognition knows God analogically: we do not fully capture His essence, yet we know Him truly given His self-disclosure.

Ad V. Constructivism draws attention to the mediation of language and culture in theology—but revelation critiques and transcends those mediations. Knowing God by revelation means that human frameworks are not the origin of theology’s truth but the occasion for divine self-communication. Theology remains culturally embodied, yet its claim to knowledge is not simply human-constructed—it rests on God’s act of revealing. Therefore cognition of God is not eliminated by cultural mediation; instead it is enabled by the Spirit working within human contexts.

Nota

Revelation (revelatio) and knowledge (cognitio) form a single circle of divine communication. God reveals in order to be known, and He is known only in the revealing. This mutuality is the structure of the Trinitarian economy: the Father reveals through the Son; the Spirit causes that revelation to be received as knowledge within believers.

In the economy of faith, the Word that reveals becomes also the form of human knowing. Hence the ancient formula, fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”), describes not curiosity but participation: faith already contains understanding implicitly because it shares in the divine act of self-knowing.

If we recall earlier symbolic language, Tₙ, the “new language of theology,” is the linguistic body of revelation. Within this language, every true statement about God is a double movement:

• from God to man (revelation, grace descending), and

• from man to God (understanding, faith ascending).
  These two movements coincide in the Spirit, the living bridge of knowledge.

Thus, theology is not about God as distant object but about God in actu loquendi et cognoscendi—in the very act of speaking and knowing Himself within us.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Revelation is God’s own self-disclosure, not information about God but the communication of God Himself.

2. Knowledge of God (cognitio Dei) arises within this act of revelation as participation in divine self-knowing.

3. The Spirit mediates this communion, enabling the human mind to know God by sharing analogically in God’s own knowledge of Himself.

4. The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic form of revelation—finite words rendered luminous by divine presence.

5. Therefore, theology’s cognitive act is not speculative but participatory: to know God is to dwell within the Word that both reveals and knows.

Transitus ad Disputationem XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

In the tenth disputation, revelation was examined as the divine act of self-manifestation, wherein God is known not through speculative deduction but through participation in His self-communication. There we saw that knowledge of God arises when the human intellect, illumined by the Spirit, receives the Word as both the object and the principle of its own understanding. The divine act of revelation thus fulfills the very aim of cognition: to know reality as it is known by God Himself.

Yet if revelation discloses the nature of divine knowing, it also implies something about the nature of the world that is known. For the Word who reveals is the same Word through whom all things were made. Revelation, therefore, is not an intrusion into an otherwise mute cosmos but the unveiling of a world already constituted as meaningful. The divine self-disclosure presupposes a creation capable of bearing and conveying the intelligibility of God.

Hence theology must now turn from the epistemic to the ontological, from the act of knowing God to the structure of the world that makes such knowing possible. If the Word speaks, creation must be linguistic; if the Spirit illuminates, creation must be intelligible. The universe is not a collection of inert facts but a woven order of signification, a living discourse of divine wisdom in which reason and being coincide.

The question thus arises: is the intelligibility of the world a natural property of matter, or a participation in divine reason? Does the order discerned by science arise from within the world itself, or from the eternal Logos who grounds its rationality? The answer bears decisive weight for theology, for only if creation is intelligible through participation in divine wisdom can revelation and knowledge retain their unity with being.

We therefore advance to Disputationem XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi, wherein it will be asked how the world, created through the Word of God, possesses within itself an intelligible order; whether this intelligibility is autonomous or participatory; and how the Holy Spirit sustains this living communion between divine reason and the created cosmos, so that the world remains not merely existent, but knowable, meaningful, and good.