Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate et Prooemium ad Partem II

Prooemium ad Partem II

De Lingua et Modeling Theologico

In the first part of these Disputationes, the inquiry was directed toward being: toward participation, causality, and the ontological conditions under which creatures exist and are ordered toward God. That inquiry established that intelligibility is not accidental to reality, nor imposed upon it by cognition, but belongs to the structure of being itself as grounded in the Logos.

The present part turns not away from ontology, but toward its articulation. Theology does not merely contemplate what is; it must speak. Yet speech is not a secondary operation added to being. Language is itself a mode of participation. If reality is ordered toward intelligibility, then language is the creaturely form in which that intelligibility may be received, borne, and confessed.

This turn therefore concerns neither linguistics as a technical discipline nor language as a social artifact. It concerns the ontological conditions under which language can mean at all, the structure of intentionality by which speech is about something, and the way finite discourse may inhabit an intelligible order that precedes it.

Accordingly, this part proceeds in three movements. First, it examines language and intentionality as grounded in objective intelligibility rather than in consciousness or convention. Second, it considers theological modeling as the disciplined articulation of meaning within that intelligible order. Third, it reflects upon the limits of modeling, not as failures of language, but as disclosures of transcendence.

Throughout, language will be treated not as expressive projection but as responsive participation. Theology speaks truly not because it masters its object, but because it is drawn into alignment with an intelligibility that precedes and exceeds all speech.

Nota Methodologica Generalis: De Limitatione Phenomenologiae

In these Disputationes, a strict distinction is maintained between ontological intelligibility and phenomenological disclosure.

Ontological intelligibility denotes the objective order of meaning by which beings are what they are and by which truth is possible at all. This intelligibility is grounded in the Logos and exists apart from human awareness, perception, language, or historical horizon. It is not constituted by acts of consciousness, nor does it depend upon conditions of manifestation.

Phenomenological accounts of disclosure, horizon, appearing, or worldhood concern the manner in which beings are encountered or understood by finite subjects. Such analyses may illuminate the structure of experience, but they do not ground intelligibility itself. Accordingly, phenomenological categories are not employed here to explicate the ontological conditions of meaning.

For this reason, distinctions such as being and beings, horizon and appearance, disclosure and withdrawal, though significant within phenomenological inquiry, are not used analogically to describe teleo-spaces or the Logos-grounded order of intelligibility. To do so would risk conflating the conditions of experience with the conditions of being.

Phenomenology may therefore appear in these disputations only diagnostically or critically, never as a positive source of metaphysical grounding. The task of these disputations is not to describe how meaning appears, but to inquire into what must be the case for meaning to exist at all.

On Language and Intentionality

Quaeritur

Utrum lingua humana intelligibilis sit non ex conscientia vel conventione humana, sed ex participatione in Logos, qui est intelligibilitas obiectiva rerum; et utrum intentionalitas sermonis non sit motus psychologicus, sed directio ontologica intra spatium teleologicum, quo significatio ipsa possibilis est.

Whether human language is intelligible not from human awareness or convention, but from participation in the Logos, who is the objective intelligibility of things; and whether intentionality in speech is not a psychological movement, but an ontological directedness within a teleological space in which signification itself is possible.

Thesis

Language does not generate meaning. It presupposes intelligibility.

The intentionality of speech is not grounded in consciousness, perception, or linguistic practice, but in participation in the Logos as the objective order of meaning. Human language is intelligible because it inhabits teleo-spaces of significance that precede all acts of speaking, thinking, or hearing. Intentionality is thus ontological before it is linguistic, and linguistic before it is psychological.

Locus Classicus

“In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum.”
John 1:4

Life is not added to intelligibility, nor intelligibility to life. The Logos is both the light by which things are intelligible and the ground in which meaning abides. Language participates in this light only because it is already there.

Explicatio

The modern account of language commonly begins from the subject. Words are treated as expressions of mental states, intentions as acts of consciousness, and meaning as a function of use, convention, or pragmatic success. Such accounts may describe how language functions within a community, but they cannot explain why language can mean at all. The present disputation proceeds otherwise.

Language is intelligible only because reality is intelligible. Meaning does not arise when a subject intends an object; intention itself is possible only because being is already ordered toward intelligibility. This order is not linguistic. It is not psychological. It is ontological.

Intentionality, properly understood, is not an inner aim or mental direction. It is the structure by which something can be about something. Such aboutness cannot be manufactured by signs, nor imposed by convention. It presupposes a space of possible significance in which reference, truth, and understanding may occur. This space is what has been named a teleo-space.

Teleo-spaces are not purposes imposed upon language. They are fields of intelligibility that draw language into meaningful articulation. They do not determine what must be said, but they make saying possible. They are not products of linguistic practice, but conditions of it.

Human language, therefore, does not create meaning but responds to it. Words are formed within a prior order of significance that precedes speech and exceeds it. To speak is to inhabit that order, however imperfectly.

The Logos is the objective ground of this order. The Logos is not a word among words, nor a concept among concepts, but the intelligibility in virtue of which anything can be meaningful at all. Language participates in the Logos not by resemblance, but by dependence. It means because reality is already ordered toward meaning.

Intentionality in speech is thus not subjective projection but ontological alignment. When speech intends truth, it does not impose sense upon the world but conforms itself to an intelligibility that precedes it. Falsehood arises not from the absence of the Logos, but from resistance to it.

The Spirit’s role is not to inject meaning into language from without, but to align finite speech with the intelligible order already given. The Spirit authorizes speech by restoring it to its proper orientation toward truth. In this way, language becomes capable of theological meaning not by elevation beyond creatureliness, but by faithful inhabitation of the teleo-spaces of intelligibility grounded in the Logos.

Objectiones

Ob I. If intelligibility exists apart from human awareness and language, then language becomes superfluous. Meaning would exist whether or not anyone speaks.

Ob II. If intentionality is ontological rather than psychological, then human responsibility for meaning is undermined. Speech would merely echo a prior order.

Ob III. To ground language in the Logos collapses the distinction between theology and philosophy, making linguistic theory dependent upon theological claims.

Responsiones

Ad I. Language is not superfluous but responsive. Meaning precedes speech, but speech is the mode by which meaning becomes communicable. The prior existence of intelligibility does not negate language; it grounds it.

Ad II. Ontological grounding does not eliminate responsibility. Participation is not compulsion. Human speech may conform to intelligibility or resist it. Responsibility arises precisely because meaning is given and not invented.

Ad III. The Logos is not introduced as a theological hypothesis but as the necessary name for objective intelligibility itself. Theology does not annex language theory; language theory, when pursued to its ground, opens onto theology.

Nota

This disputation corrects a fundamental error of modern linguistic thought: the assumption that meaning originates in the subject. Meaning originates in reality’s intelligible order.

Language is possible because the world is already ordered toward sense. Intentionality is possible because intelligibility precedes intention. The Logos is therefore not the conclusion of linguistic analysis but its presupposition.

Theological language does not differ from other language by possessing a special syntax or vocabulary, but by explicitly acknowledging the source of intelligibility in which all language already participates.

Determinatio

It is determined that:

1. Language presupposes intelligibility and does not generate it.
2. Intentionality is ontological before it is psychological.
3. Teleo-spaces of meaning precede linguistic practice.
4. The Logos is the objective ground of intelligibility.
5. The Spirit aligns finite speech with this ground without abolishing its finitude.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVII

If language does not originate meaning but responds to an intelligible order that precedes it, then theological discourse cannot be understood as mere description or representation. It must instead be understood as modeling: the disciplined construction of forms that allow intelligibility to appear without being exhausted.

This raises the decisive question of truth in theology. If language inhabits teleo-spaces rather than generating meaning, by what criterion are theological models true? Is truth correspondence, participation, manifestation, or something else?

We therefore proceed to Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica, in which the nature of theological truth is examined in light of the Logos as the ground of intelligibility and the Spirit as the author of faithful speech.

Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina

On Intentionality and Divine Knowing

Quaeritur

Utrum intentionalitas divina sit ipse actus quo Deus seipsum cognoscit et in hoc seipso cognoscendo omnia cognoscit; cum cognitio Dei non sit receptio specierum ab extra sed expressio sui ab intra, ita ut hic actus intentionalis sit simul causa et exemplar omnis cognitionis creatae, quae participatione in eo subsistit.

Whether divine intentionality is the very act by which God knows Himself and, in knowing Himself, knows all things; since God’s knowledge is not the reception of forms from without but the inward expression of Himself, such that this intentional act is both the cause and exemplar of all created knowing, which subsists by participation in it.

Thesis

All true knowledge, whether divine or creaturely, is intentional, ordered toward what is known. In God, however, intentionality is not a relation added to being but is identical with being itself. God’s act of knowing is His act of being. Divine intentionality is therefore the archetype of intelligibility and the ground of theology’s possibility, for to know anything at all is to participate, analogically, in the self-knowing Word of God.

Locus Classicus

Psalm 36:9
Apud te est fons vitae,
et in lumine tuo videbimus lumen.
“For with you is the fountain of life,
and in your light we see light.”

John 1:1, 4
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος…
ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν,
καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων.
“In the beginning was the Logos…
in Him was life,
and the life was the light of human beings.”

Augustine, De Trinitate IX.10.15
Non sic cognoscit Deus creaturam quomodo creatura cognoscitur a creatura,
sed quomodo cognoscit seipsum Deus.
“God does not know the creature in the way a creature is known by a creature,
but in the way God knows Himself.”

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.14, a.5
Deus cognoscit omnia non in seipsis, sed in seipso.
“God knows all things not in themselves, but in Himself.”

These witnesses converge upon a single claim: divine knowing is not receptive but constitutive. God’s light is not an added condition for knowledge but the source in which all seeing occurs. The Logos is not merely the bearer of meaning but the act in which intelligibility itself subsists.

Explicatio

Intentionality names the directedness proper to every act of knowing. In finite intellects, this directedness presupposes a real distinction between knower and known. The intellect reaches beyond itself toward what it is not, receiving determination from an object that stands over against it. Knowledge thus unfolds as a movement across distance, mediated by forms, representations, or signs.

Nothing of this structure may be transferred uncritically to God. In God there is no distance, no reception, no transition from potency to act. Divine knowing is not a movement toward an object but the eternal act in which intelligibility subsists as reality itself. God does not become informed; He is the fullness of form. God does not acquire knowledge; He is knowledge.

The Father knows Himself in the Son. This knowing is not representational but generative. The Son is not an idea of God but the eternal Logos, the expressed intelligibility of the divine essence. Divine cognition is therefore not an act alongside being but the very form of divine life. The identity of knowing and being does not dissolve personal distinction but grounds it. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not divided by cognition but constituted in its fullness. Divine simplicity is not the absence of relation but the plenitude of intelligibility so complete that relation itself subsists without composition.

Within this single eternal act, all that is intelligible is comprehended. God knows creatures not by attending to them as external objects but by knowing Himself as communicable being. Creatures are known in God as finite participations in divine intelligibility. To be created is already to be intelligible, and to be intelligible is already to be comprehended within divine knowing. God’s knowledge of creatures is therefore not observational but causal. God knows all things by causing them to be what they are.

This does not collapse creation into divine self-contemplation. On the contrary, it is precisely this mode of knowing that secures the reality and distinctness of creatures. A creature is finite because it is known as finite. To be known by God is not to be absorbed into God but to receive determinate being within the order of participation. Creaturely intelligibility is not autonomy from God but dependence upon divine reason. A world independent of divine knowing would not be more real but unintelligible.

From this follows the participatory character of all creaturely knowledge. Human knowing is not an autonomous orientation toward truth that later happens to correspond with reality. It is a finite participation in the divine act of intelligibility. When the human intellect knows truth, it does so because it already stands within the light by which God knows all things. This participation is analogical, not univocal. The finite intellect mirrors the structure of divine cognition without sharing its fullness. Illumination does not confer infallibility. It establishes proportion between finite intellect and intelligible being.

The Spirit mediates this participation not by supplying additional objects of knowledge but by conforming the intellect to intelligibility itself. Illumination is not the addition of content but the restoration of right orientation. To know truthfully is to be rightly situated within the light that precedes all cognition. Epistemic autonomy describes the operation of human faculties but not their ground. Theology does not deny the integrity of natural cognition. It explains why cognition is possible at all.

Critical philosophy rightly describes the limits of unaided reason. Theology does not dispute this analysis. It confesses a gift. Participation in divine knowing is not an extension of phenomenal cognition into the noumenal realm, nor an illicit metaphysical inference. It is the transformation of the knower through revelation. God is not known as an object placed before consciousness but as the ground within which consciousness is made possible. The limits of reason are not violated but fulfilled.

Divine intentionality thus names the ontological ground of intelligibility itself. Truth is not first a property of propositions but the temporal echo of an eternal act. Because God is intelligible in Himself, reality is intelligible. Because reality is intelligible, creatures can know. Theology alone renders explicit what every act of knowing already presupposes.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. If God’s knowing is identical with His being, then knowing must imply a distinction between knower and known. Such distinction introduces composition and violates divine simplicity.

Obiectio II. If God knows creatures only in knowing Himself, then creatures lack independent intelligibility and collapse into divine self-contemplation.

Obiectio III. If human knowing participates in divine knowing, human intellect would appear divine or infallible, contrary to experience.

Obiectio IV. Modern epistemology grounds knowledge in human cognitive structures. Divine participation is unnecessary and undermines autonomy.

Obiectio V. Kant restricts knowledge to phenomena. Participation in divine knowing would entail illicit access to the noumenal.

Responsiones

Ad I. The distinction in God is relational, not compositional. Divine knowing is identical with divine being, internally differentiated as personal relation. Simplicity is not threatened but fulfilled.

Ad II. God knows creatures as their cause. Being known in God secures, rather than negates, creaturely distinctness.

Ad III. Participation is analogical. Human knowing is illuminated, not divinized. Finitude remains.

Ad IV. Autonomy describes operation, not origin. Participation grounds cognition without replacing it.

Ad V. Revelation does not extend reason into the noumenal but transforms the knower. God is known as ground, not as object.

Nota

Divine intentionality reveals that truth is not first a property of propositions but an act of God. All finite truth is an echo of divine self-knowing. The Logos is the intelligible act in which all meaning subsists. Creation, providence, language, and knowing all stand within this horizon.

Human knowledge does not stand beside divine knowledge but within it, as participation within plenitude. To know truthfully is already to think within the light by which God knows Himself.

Determinatio

1. Divine intentionality is identical with divine being; God’s act of knowing is His act of being.
2. God knows Himself eternally in the Logos, and in knowing Himself knows all things as possible and actual participations in His being.
3. Divine cognition is not representational or receptive but creative and constitutive of intelligibility.
4. Creaturely knowing is analogical participation in divine knowing, mediated by the illumination of the Spirit.
5. Human knowledge remains finite and fallible, yet genuinely participates in divine intelligibility.
6. Truth is not autonomous from God but the temporal reflection of God’s eternal self-knowing.
7. Theology is possible because intelligibility itself is grounded in divine intentionality.

Transitus ad Disputationem XVI

If divine knowing is creative and participatory, then language cannot be treated as a neutral instrument appended to cognition. Speech is the exterior articulation of intentionality, the manifestation of intelligibility in shared signs. Yet theological language bears a unique burden: it seeks to signify the divine act that grounds all signification. How finite words may bear infinite intelligibility now demands inquiry.

Therefore we proceed to Disputatio XVI: De Lingua et Intentionalitate, where it is asked how language participates in divine knowing and whether speech, when taken up into revelation, becomes more than sign, namely a vessel of participation in the speaking God.

Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico

On Intension and Intention in Theological Discourse

Quaeritur

Utrum in theologia intensio significet participationem sermonis in veritate quam nominat, intentio vero designet pneumaticam ordinationem sermonis et cognoscentis ad Deum; et utrum hae duae constituant duplicem structuram loquelae theologicae, scilicet formam significationis et actum directionis.

Whether in theology intension signifies the participation of speech in the truth it names, while intention designates the pneumatic ordering of both speech and knower toward God; and whether these two together constitute the dual structure of theological discourse, namely the form of meaning and the act of orientation.

Thesis

Theological discourse is constituted by a double ordering. By intension, language participates in divine truth. By intention, that same language is directed by the Spirit toward its divine referent. Theology remains true only where these two are held together, so that what is said of God and the act of saying it belong to one unified movement of faith.

Locus Classicus

1 Corinthians 2:16
ἡμεῖς δὲ νοῦν Χριστοῦ ἔχομεν.
“We have the mind of Christ.”

Here cognition and orientation are inseparable. To possess the mind of Christ is not merely to grasp correct propositions but to be inwardly ordered by the Spirit toward God’s own knowing and willing.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XIII, theological intension was shown to be participatory. Meaning is not generated by abstraction but received through divine self-communication. Language shares in what it signifies because it is authorized by the Spirit.

Yet theology does not consist in meaning alone. Theological language is not static content but enacted confession. It is spoken toward God. This directedness is intention.

Although intensio and intentio share an etymological root in intendere, they differ in theological function. Intensio names the form of meaning, the structure by which language participates in divine reality. Intentio names the orientation of the speaker, the act by which language and knower are ordered toward God as their end.

In theology these cannot be separated. Language that participates in divine meaning but is not rightly oriented becomes formalism. Language that intends God without true participation collapses into enthusiasm. Only the Spirit holds form and direction in unity.

Formally, and then explained:

Let I(p) denote the intension of a theological predicate p, its participatory form of meaning and J(p) denote the intention with which p is uttered, its pneumatic orientation toward God.

The relation I(p) → J(p) expresses not a logical inference but a theological completion. Meaning reaches its truth only as it is drawn toward God by the Spirit. Theological truth is therefore not exhausted by semantic adequacy but fulfilled in right orientation.

Theological discourse is thus teleological. It moves from participation to communion, from meaning to invocation. To confess is not merely to signify but to be directed. Theology speaks from God and toward God in one act.

This resolves the classical tension between speculative and practical theology. Speculation concerns intensio, the contemplation of truth. Practice concerns intentio, the movement of will toward the good. In the Spirit these are one. To know God truly is already to be ordered toward God rightly.

Objectiones

Ob I. Meaning and intention are properties of individual minds. To invoke the Spirit as their cause undermines epistemic autonomy.

Ob II. Language is governed by public use, not inward intention. Pneumatological intention adds nothing to semantic explanation.

Ob III. Within the Church, intention is simply conformity to communal grammar. Divine authorization is unnecessary.

Ob IV. Intention belongs to moral willing, not to cognition. Theology confuses ethics with knowledge.

Ob V. Finite language never coincides with intention. To claim convergence through the Spirit reinstates a metaphysics of presence.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theology does not begin with the autonomous subject but with divine address. The Spirit does not override cognition but grounds it. Finite intentionality becomes genuinely God-directed only because it is first drawn.

Ad II. Public use is necessary but not sufficient for truth. The same words may be grammatically correct yet theologically empty. The Spirit distinguishes mere use from confession.

Ad III. Ecclesial grammar defines possibility, not actuality. The Spirit animates grammar, making it a living act of truth rather than a closed system of use.

Ad IV. In revelation, intellect and will are not divided. To know God is to love God. The Spirit unites cognition and desire in a single act of faith.

Ad V. Theology does not deny finitude or différance. It confesses that finitude is upheld by grace. Intension and intention converge not by closure but by participation. The Word becomes flesh without ceasing to be Word.

Nota

The dual structure of theological discourse mirrors the Incarnation. As the Word assumes human nature without abolishing it, so divine meaning assumes human intention without coercion.

Intensio secures truth. Intentio secures direction. The Spirit secures their unity.

Where intensio is isolated, theology becomes a system. Where intentio dominates, theology dissolves into affect. Only their union yields confession.

Thus theology is neither mere science nor pure devotion. It is ordered speech addressed to God, true because it participates, faithful because it intends.

Determinatio

It is determined that:

1. Theological discourse possesses a dual structure of intensio and intentio.

2. Intensio grounds participatory meaning; intentio grounds pneumatic orientation.

3. The Spirit unites these without confusion or collapse.

4. The truth of theology lies not only in what is said but in its being said toward God.

5. Theology is therefore at once contemplative and doxological.

Transitus ad Disputationem XV

Human intention has been shown to be derivative and participatory. The mind of faith intends divine truth only because it is already intended by God. If our knowing is genuinely directed toward God, this must be because divine knowing precedes and grounds it.

A deeper question therefore arises. Does God know creatures by representation or by causation? Is divine knowledge receptive, as in us, or creative, identical with being itself? How does finite cognition participate in an eternal act of knowing that does not learn but gives being?

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputatio XV: De Intentionalitate et Cognitione Divina, where it will be asked how divine knowing relates to creaturely being, and how all finite acts of understanding are grounded in that eternal cognition by which all things are known, willed, and sustained.

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 fidei participat ipsam rem de qua loquitur; et utrum modeling theologicum sit interpretatio huius intensionalis structurae intra ordinem entis, per quam verbum confessionis inseritur in veritatem ontologicam a Spiritu causatam.

Whether intension in theology is not merely a mental conception but a mode of participation by which the speech of faith 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 confession is inserted into ontological truth as caused by the Spirit.

Thesis

Theological intension is participatory. The meaning of theological language does not arise from abstraction over finite instances but from participation in divine reality mediated by the Spirit. Modeling is the act by which this intensional participation is rendered intelligible within an ontological framework. Thus, theological realism is grounded not in extension but in intension ordered toward being.

Locus Classicus

Isaiah 55:11
כֵּן יִהְיֶה דְבָרִי אֲשֶׁר יֵצֵא מִפִּי לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי
“So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.”

Here the divine Word is not a sign pointing beyond itself but an efficacious act. Meaning and effect are inseparable. This unity is the archetype of all theological signification.

John 6:63
τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ λελάληκα ὑμῖν πνεῦμά ἐστιν καὶ ζωή ἐστιν.
“The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Theological language lives because it is Spirit-borne. Its intension is not neutral content but living participation.

Explicatio

In philosophical logic, intension is commonly defined as conceptual content, distinguished from extension, the set of entities to which a term applies. Such a distinction suffices for empirical and formal domains. It fails in theology. Theological language does not begin with finite concepts later projected toward God. It begins with divine self-communication received in faith.

Accordingly, the intension of a theological predicate is not an internally generated concept but a participatory form. When theology confesses Deus est bonus, the predicate bonus does not derive its meaning from created goodness and then ascend by analogy. Its meaning is given from above, through participation in divine goodness itself. The Spirit is the mediating cause of this participation. Meaning is not constructed but received.

This participatory structure gives theological language its realism. Words refer because they are authorized. Predicates signify because they are grounded in divine causality. Theological intension is therefore neither subjective nor merely conceptual. It is ontologically thick. Meaning is already oriented toward being.

Modeling enters at this point. The task of modeling is not to invent reference but to interpret it. Theology does not ask whether its language refers but how it refers. Modeling is the reflective act by which theology interprets the intensional participation of its language within a structured ontology.

Formally, and then explained:

Let p be a theological predicate, I(p) denote its intensional content as given through participation in divine reality, and M(p) denote the ontological interpretation of that predicate within a theological model.

The relation I(p) → M(p) does not move from concept to reality but from participation to intelligibility. Modeling unfolds what is already given in faith. Ontology follows intension, not the reverse.

This is why theological predicates are irreducibly intensional. Their meaning cannot be exhausted by truth conditions across possible worlds or by extensions within a domain. Distinct predicates may be extensionally equivalent yet intensively distinct, because they participate in divine reality under different aspects. Creator, Redeemer, and Lord do not divide God but articulate distinct participatory relations.

Theological language thus inhabits a space of hyperintensionality. Its precision lies not in narrowing meaning but in preserving distinction without separation. Modeling safeguards this precision by making explicit the structural relations among predicates without reducing them to univocal properties.

In this sense, modeling is a theological discipline before it is a formal one. It presupposes revelation, confession, and Spirit-given participation. Logic serves theology here by clarifying structure, not by dictating content.

Objectiones

Ob I. Meaning is exhausted by extension. Intension adds nothing real and is therefore irrelevant to ontology.

Ob II. Theological language lacks empirical reference and is therefore cognitively meaningless. Modeling merely disguises nonreferential discourse.

Ob III. Meaning arises solely from use within a form of life. Formal or intensional analysis misconstrues theological grammar.

Ob IV. Extensional semantics suffices for all truth claims. Intensional modeling violates semantic adequacy.

Ob V. The truth of theology is internal to ecclesial grammar. External modeling reintroduces metaphysical realism illegitimately.

Responsiones

Ad I. Extension presupposes intension. In theology, extension cannot ground meaning because divine reality is not one instance among others. Intension names the participatory relation by which predicates signify God analogically rather than univocally.

Ad II. Empirical verification is not the measure of cognitive meaning. Theological language refers by divine causality, not by observation. Modeling makes explicit the formal conditions under which such reference is coherent.

Ad III. Use presupposes authorization. The Church speaks meaningfully because the Spirit authorizes its speech. Modeling articulates the inner logic of this authorization without denying praxis.

Ad IV. Extensional semantics fails where predicates are intensively distinct despite extensional equivalence. Theology necessarily operates at the intensional level because its referent is infinite.

Ad V. Ecclesial coherence is necessary but not sufficient for truth. Theological language claims participation in divine reality. Modeling expresses this claim formally, uniting felicity and truth.

Nota

Theological language is not descriptive in the ordinary sense. It is confessional, participatory, and performative. Yet it is not therefore noncognitive. Its cognition is grounded in participation rather than observation.

In model-theoretic terms, theology is a living model whose satisfaction conditions are secured not by the world alone but by the Spirit’s causality. Theological intension is thus sacramental in structure: a finite sign bearing infinite content.

To speak truly of God is to speak within God’s own self-giving. Modeling does not add to this gift. It renders its form intelligible.

Determinatio

It is therefore determined that:

1. Intension in theology is participatory, not merely conceptual.

2. Theological meaning is given through divine causality mediated by the Spirit.

3. Modeling interprets this intensional participation within an ontological framework.

4. Theological realism is grounded in intension ordered toward being.

5. Precision in theology arises from faithful participation, not semantic reduction.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIV

The intension of theological language has been shown to be participatory and ontologically grounded. Yet meaning alone does not exhaust theology. Theological language is not only what is meant but what is intended. It is speech directed toward God, uttered in faith, shaped by will and confession.

Meaning and intention must therefore be distinguished without separation. Theological truth is not merely modeled correctly but intended rightly. Here the intellect and the will converge. Understanding becomes invocation.

Accordingly, we proceed to Disputatio XIV: De Intensione et Intentione in Discurso Theologico, where it will be asked how intensional meaning relates to intentional speech, and whether theology reaches its truth not only in semantic adequacy but in the Spirit-led act of confession itself.

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 ad finem dirigit; et utrum haec causalitas non sit actio extrinseca vel occasionalis, sed praesentia interna, qua Deus per Verbum et Spiritum Sanctum causat esse, agere, et ordinari creaturas, ita ut simul conserventur contingentia, libertas, et bonum creationis.

Whether divine providence is a continuous causality by which God not only created the world from nothing but also preserves it in being and directs it to its end; and whether this causality is not an external or occasional action, but an inner presence, by which God through the Word and the Holy Spirit causes creatures to be, to act, and to be ordered, in such a way that contingency, freedom, and the goodness of creation are preserved.

Thesis

Locus classicus

Colossians 1:17
καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων
καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν

He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.

Acts 17:28
ἐν αὐτῷ γὰρ ζῶμεν καὶ κινούμεθα καὶ ἐσμέν

For in him we live and move and have our being.

These texts confess not a distant Creator but a present causality. The Logos is not merely the origin of the world but its abiding coherence. Providence is the ontological holding together of all that exists.

Explicatio

If creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word, then its intelligibility must endure only if that Word remains causally present. A creation that depended upon God only at its origin would not persist. It would lapse into nothingness the moment divine causality ceased. Providence therefore names not a secondary doctrine appended to creation but the inner truth of creation itself.

Creation is not a completed past event. It is an ongoing relation of dependence. To exist as a creature is to receive being continuously. The world does not possess existence as a stored property. It exists only as given, moment by moment, by divine causality.

This causality must be understood properly. Divine causation is not mechanical impulse, nor episodic intervention, nor competition with finite causes. God does not act alongside creatures as one cause among others. Rather, God causes creatures to be causes. Creaturely agency is real because it is grounded in divine causality, not despite it.

Here the traditional language of conservatio, concursus, and gubernatio names three aspects of a single act.

Conservatio names the preservation of being. Creatures continue to exist because God continuously wills and causes their existence.

Concursus names cooperation. God works in and through creaturely causes so that their actions are genuinely theirs, while still dependent upon divine causality.

Gubernatio names ordering. God directs all things toward their end without overriding the integrity of finite processes.

These are not successive acts. They are conceptual distinctions within one indivisible divine activity.

The Holy Spirit is the mode of this presence. The Spirit is not merely the giver of life in an initial sense but the living mediation of divine causality within the world. Through the Spirit, divine intention becomes the interior vitality of creation. The Spirit is the cause of continuity. He joins the Word’s creative causality to the temporal unfolding of creaturely existence.

This pneumatological mediation safeguards contingency and freedom. If divine causality were external, creaturely action would be either overridden or rendered illusory. If divine causality were absent, creaturely action would dissolve into randomness. The Spirit’s presence preserves the middle path. Creatures act freely because they are continuously enabled to act. Dependence upon God is not the negation of freedom but its condition.

Providence must therefore be distinguished from determinism. Determinism treats causality as compulsion. Divine causality is not compulsion but donation. God gives being and action without dictating the finite mode of their exercise. Because divine causality is deeper than finite causality, it does not displace it.

The problem of evil must be addressed within this framework. Providence encompasses all that exists insofar as it exists. Evil, however, is not a positive being but a privation. God causes the being of acts. He does not cause the defect within them. Finite freedom entails the possibility of failure. Providence does not eliminate this risk but orders it toward redemption. The cross stands as the decisive form of this ordering. What appears as negation becomes the place where divine faithfulness is most fully revealed.

Providence is therefore not an empirical hypothesis competing with natural explanation. It is a metaphysical confession concerning the ground of existence itself. Without providence, the world would not merely lack guidance. It would lack being.

Objectiones

Ob I. If divine causality is continuous and universal, then all events are determined by God and creaturely freedom is illusory.

Ob II. If God must continuously sustain creation, then creation is defective. A perfect creation would persist independently.

Ob III. If providence governs all things, then evil must be caused or willed by God.

Ob IV. The apparent randomness and suffering of the world contradict the claim that it is governed by providence.

Ob V. Modern relational and process theologies argue that divine causality must evolve with the world. Continuous causality appears static and incompatible with genuine novelty.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine causality is not competitive with finite causality. It is constitutive. Freedom is preserved precisely because God causes the creature to act as a true cause.

Ad II. Dependence is not imperfection. Independence would negate creation itself. Continuous dependence is the form of creaturely existence.

Ad III. God causes being, not privation. Evil arises from finite freedom and limitation. Providence orders even failure toward redemption without authoring it.

Ad IV. Providence is discerned not in constant intervention but in intelligibility, persistence, and ordered meaning amid change.

Ad V. Divine causality is eternally active yet temporally manifest. God’s constancy grounds novelty rather than suppressing it.

Nota

Providence is best understood as creatio continua. The Word who speaks being into existence does not cease to speak. Every moment of being is the renewal of the creative fiat. This is not repetition in time but eternal presence.

The Spirit ensures that this causality is not mechanical necessity but personal faithfulness. Providence is promise enacted as ontology. The world endures not because it is self sufficient but because it is addressed continuously by God.

Thus the doctrine of providence secures three things simultaneously: the reality of divine sovereignty, the integrity of creaturely freedom, and the intelligibility of the world.

Determinatio

1. Providence is the continuous act of divine causality by which creation is preserved and ordered.

2. Divine causality is interior and constitutive, not external or competitive.

3. The Holy Spirit mediates this causality within creaturely action.

4. Creaturely freedom and contingency are grounded, not negated, by providence.

5. Evil is permitted within providence but not caused by God.

6. Providence completes the doctrine of creation as an ongoing relation of dependence.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIII

If divine causality is continuous, interior, and non competitive, then theology must ask how such causality can be spoken without distortion. Providence is not directly visible. It is confessed. It is named through finite language that must point beyond itself to an infinite act.

We therefore turn to the question of theological modeling and intensional meaning. How can language signify a causality that exceeds representation without collapsing into metaphor or mechanism? What is the relation between the conceptual content of theological terms and the reality they intend?

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 remains living and knowable within creation.

Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order present in the world is not an autonomous rational structure nor a self sufficient logos, but a participation in the eternal Logos through whom all things were made. The Holy Spirit preserves this participation as a living relation, sustaining the correspondence between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

Locus classicus

Psalm 33:6
בִּדְבַר־יְהוָה שָׁמַיִם נַעֲשׂוּ
וּבְרוּחַ פִּיו כָּל־צְבָאָם

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,
and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

John 1:3
πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο
καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν

All things came to be through him,
and without him not one thing came to be that has come to be.

These texts testify that creation is not merely effected by divine power but articulated by divine reason. Being itself is given through Logos, and life and coherence are sustained through Spirit.

Explicatio

The question of the world’s intelligibility is not secondary to theology but intrinsic to the doctrine of creation itself. To confess that the world is created through the Word is already to confess that it is ordered toward meaning. Creation is not the production of brute material later subjected to rational description. It is the emergence of being through divine intelligibility.

The Logos does not merely precede the world as an efficient cause. He is the intelligible form by which the world is constituted as knowable. To exist as a creature is therefore to stand within a relation of participation. Being and intelligibility are not separable gifts. What comes to be through the Word comes to be as meaningful.

This must be stated with care. The intelligibility of the world is not an intrinsic possession of matter, nor is it an autonomous rational principle embedded within nature. There is no self sufficient logos of the world. The order we discover in nature is derivative. It is a finite participation in divine reason, not a parallel source of intelligibility alongside it.

We may express this formally for clarity, while immediately guarding against misinterpretation.

Let C(x) signify “x is created,” and L(x) signify “x participates in the Logos.”

The claim ∀x[C(x) → L(x)] states that to be created is already to stand within the sphere of divine intelligibility. This does not identify creaturely being with divine being. Participation is not identity. It names a relation of dependence that preserves distinction.

The world is therefore intelligible not because it is divine, but because it is spoken.

This intelligibility is not static. The Logos who brings creation into being does not withdraw once creation stands. If the world is to remain intelligible, the relation of participation must be preserved. Here the role of the Holy Spirit becomes decisive.

The Spirit is not merely the giver of life in a biological sense. He is the living bond by which the rational structure of creation remains ordered toward understanding. The Spirit maintains the correspondence between divine meaning and creaturely apprehension. Without this ongoing mediation, intelligibility would collapse either into abstraction or into opacity.

This pneumatological dimension guards theology from two errors. On the one hand, it resists rationalism, which treats intelligibility as self grounding. On the other hand, it resists voluntarism, which treats order as arbitrary imposition. The Spirit does not impose meaning from without, nor does He leave creation to explain itself. He preserves intelligibility as a living relation.

It is therefore no accident that scientific inquiry presupposes the intelligibility of nature. The success of the sciences depends upon the prior givenness of order, coherence, and lawfulness. These are not conclusions of science but its conditions. Theology does not compete with scientific explanation. It accounts for the possibility of explanation itself.

Nor does the presence of disorder, entropy, or suffering negate creation’s intelligibility. Finitude includes limitation, vulnerability, and decay. Yet even these are intelligible within a teleological horizon shaped by divine wisdom. The cross remains the decisive pattern. What appears as negation or breakdown of order becomes, within divine providence, the site where deeper meaning is disclosed.

Thus creation’s intelligibility is neither naive optimism nor denial of tragedy. It is the confession that nothing stands outside the horizon of meaning established by the Word and sustained by the Spirit.

Objectiones

Ob I. If the intelligibility of the world depends upon participation in the divine Logos, then human reason appears heteronomous. Genuine autonomy in science and philosophy would be undermined.

Ob II. To claim that all intelligibility derives from the Logos risks collapsing Creator and creature into a single ontological order, thereby tending toward pantheism.

Ob III. The presence of apparent randomness, disorder, and suffering in nature contradicts the claim that the world is rationally ordered.

Ob IV. Scientific naturalism explains order through natural laws and mathematical regularities without appeal to divine speech. Theological appeals to Logos are therefore unnecessary.

Ob V. Hermeneutical skepticism holds that meaning arises from interpretation rather than from being itself. To speak of the world as “spoken” is merely metaphorical.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy does not require self origination. Human reason is genuinely free precisely because it participates in divine reason rather than being isolated from it. Participation grounds freedom. It does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation preserves distinction. The Logos is present as cause, not as substance. The world reflects divine wisdom without becoming divine. Transcendence is not compromised by immanence rightly understood.

Ad III. Disorder belongs to finitude, not to meaninglessness. What appears chaotic within a limited horizon may still belong to a wider teleological order. The intelligibility of creation includes mystery, not its elimination.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes intelligibility it cannot itself generate. Theology does not replace science but accounts for the rational conditions under which science is possible.

Ad V. Meaning is not projected onto the world but received from it because the world is already articulated by divine speech. Interpretation is human, but intelligibility is given.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a theological epistemology. To know the world is to retrace, in finite understanding, the grammar by which God called it into being. Every act of genuine understanding is therefore participatory.

The sciences are not alien to theology. They are disciplined forms of listening. They read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. Their success testifies not to the self sufficiency of reason, but to its vocation.

The Spirit stands as the hermeneutical bond between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding. He is the one by whom the world remains readable and the intellect remains receptive. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would become either inert structure or arbitrary construction.

Creation is therefore not a completed fact but an ongoing act of divine communication. The Logos speaks. The Spirit interprets. The creature understands.

Determinatio

1. Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word.

2. The order of the world is participatory, not autonomous.

3. The Holy Spirit preserves intelligibility as a living relation.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself an act of participation.

5. The intelligibility of the world is the visible trace of divine speech.

Transitus ad Disputationem XII

Having established that divine causality is not a rival to creaturely agency but the very ground of its intelligibility, we must now consider how this causality persists beyond the originary act of creation. For if God is not only the one a quo all things proceed but also the one in quo they subsist, then creation cannot be understood as a completed event left to the autonomy of finite processes. Rather, it must be conceived as a continuous act, sustained at every moment by the same Word through whom all things were made.

This raises a further and more delicate question. How does divine causality operate in the ongoing order of the world without dissolving the reality of secondary causes or rendering creaturely action illusory? If God sustains all things immediately, does this leave any genuine causal efficacy to creatures? And if creatures truly act, how is their action ordered to God without collapsing into either occasionalism or a competitive dualism of causes?

The doctrine of providence thus emerges not as an appendix to creation but as its necessary explication. It concerns the continuation of divine causality through time, the mode by which God preserves, concurs with, and orders finite causes toward their ends, and the manner in which freedom and contingency are upheld within a world wholly dependent upon God. Providence names the grammar by which creation remains creation—neither autonomous nor annihilated, neither divinized nor abandoned.

Accordingly, we advance to Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae, where we inquire 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, integrity, or freedom.