Disputatio XX: De Theologia ut Actu Verbi et Spiritus

On Theology as the Act of the Word and the Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum theologia non sit sermo humanus aliis superior, sed ipsa actio Verbi et Spiritus, in qua et per quam omnis loquela theologica habet esse suum—ita ut verbum fidei non solum de Deo loquatur, sed in ipso Dei loquendo subsistat.

Whether theology is not a human discourse standing above others but the living act of the Word and the Spirit, within and through which all theological speech receives its being—such that the word of faith does not merely speak about God, but subsists within God’s own act of speaking.

Thesis

Theology is the continuing act of divine self-communication in language. The Word is its content and the Spirit its cause. Human discourse participates in this act finitely, not by nature but by grace. Thus, theology speaks truly only as it becomes the act of the Word through the causality of the Spirit, the infinite in the finite.

Locus classicus

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears.”
— John 16:13

This verse establishes the pneumatological condition of all theological truth. The Spirit’s speech is not autonomous but relational and derivative: he speaks what he hears from the Word. The Spirit thus mediates the eternal discourse of the Son within the languages of history. Theology lives as the finite echo of an infinite conversation between Word and Spirit. It is not merely reception of information but participation in an act of divine speaking.

“Qui idoneos nos fecit ministros novi testamenti, non litterae sed Spiritus; littera enim occidit, Spiritus autem vivificat.”
“He has made us competent ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
— Second Letter to the Corinthians 3:6

Here the Apostle locates theological truth not in the formal structure of language (littera) but in the vivifying act of the Spirit. The contrast is not between words and silence, nor between doctrine and experience, but between language severed from divine causality and language animated by the Spirit. Theology is thus not the possession of correct propositions as such, but the Spirit-effected act in which language becomes life-bearing. Where the Spirit acts, speech is no longer mere sign but event; not merely meaningful, but true.

Taken together, these witnesses establish that theology occurs only where the Word speaks through the Spirit and the Spirit authorizes finite language to bear divine life. Theology is therefore not a secondary discourse about revelation but the continuing act of revelation in linguistic form.

Explicatio

In human sciences, language and meaning are related externally: propositions describe or directly denote states of affairs. In theology, language and being coincide in the divine act. The Word is the ratio essendi of both creation and signification. The Spirit, as the divine causal medium, renders finite discourse proportionate to infinite meaning, linking felicity (authorized saying) with truth (ontological correspondence).

Let us formalize the relation as an analogy between divine and human discourse:

• Let L∞ denote the eternal Word, the infinite language of divine self-communication.

• Let Lₜ denote finite theological discourse, the language of faith and confession.

• Let Auth(Lₜ) denote the authorization of Lₜ by the Spirit.

• Then, theological truth obtains only if Auth(Lₜ) → (Lₜ ⊂ L∞); that is, finite discourse is true insofar as the Spirit causes its participation in the divine Word.

This causality is non-competitive. Human language remains finite and historical, yet within it the Spirit effects ontological reference. The Word speaks through words. Accordingly, the infinite inhabits the finite without destroying it. Theology is precisely this indwelling speech; it is an act in which divine causality and human signification coincide.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Kantian Transcendentalism limits cognition to phenomena structured by the categories of understanding. Theology, as human reflection, can express moral faith but not divine causation within thought or speech. To say that theology is an act of Word and Spirit is to mistake moral symbolism for metaphysical participation, violating the autonomy of reason and the bounds of possible experience.

Obiectio II. Barthian Revelationism insists that revelation is the wholly other act of God, never a human process. Theology may witness to the Word but is not itself the Word’s act. To identify theology with the act of Word and Spirit is to blur the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creature, turning divine revelation into a form of human religiosity.

Obiectio III. Wittgensteinian linguistic conventionalism teaches that meaning arises from the use of language within forms of life (Lebensform). Theological felicity, then, is determined by ecclesial grammar, not metaphysical causation. To posit the Spirit as the cause of meaning introduces a category mistake,for causes belong to physics, not to language. The Spirit’s “authorization” adds nothing to grammatical propriety.

Obiectio IV. In Hegelian idealism, Spirit realizes itself through human consciousness and divine speech is the dialectical unfolding of Absolute knowing. Theology, therefore, is not a separate act of Word and Spirit but the self-comprehension of Spirit in finite reason. To posit transcendent divine causality within theology is to regress to pre-critical representationalism.

Obiectio V. Within post-liberal theology, theology’s truth is intralinguistic: it is coherence within the Church’s rule of faith. Divine causation is a superfluous hypothesis. Any claim that the Spirit determines what is in or out of T, or that the Word speaks through language, replaces theological humility with metaphysical presumption.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s boundaries define reason’s autonomy, not God’s. Revelation does not transgress the categories of understanding but fulfills them by constituting their very possibility. The Spirit does not add a second cause to human thought but founds its capacity to signify God. Theological cognition is thus not heteronomous but participatory: reason becomes itself when moved by the Spirit to speak truthfully of the Word.

Ad II. Barth’s distinction between revelation and theology guards divine freedom but misconceives the Spirit’s immanence. Theology is not revelation itself but its continuation within the economy of language. The Word once spoken in Christ continues to act in the Church through the Spirit. The Spirit’s causality ensures that theology’s human speech remains the site of divine self-communication, not its substitute.

Ad III. Wittgenstein is right that meaning depends on use, but theological use presupposes a deeper authorization. The Church’s grammar exists because the Spirit constitutes it. Felicity, in theology, is not mere conformity to rules but participation in divine life. The Spirit’s causality is not empirical but constitutive. He makes possible the very relation between finite sign and infinite referent.

Without the Spirit, theological grammar collapses into tautology; with the Spirit, it becomes the living speech of God.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic recognizes the unity of thought and being but confuses participation with identity. The Spirit in theology is not the world’s consciousness of itself but God’s causal presence within finite language. The divine Word does not evolve into human understanding; it speaks through it. Theology is not Spirit’s self-mediation but Spirit’s indwelling of the finite as grace.

The difference between divine and human remains, yet it is precisely in this difference that communion occurs.

Ad V. Post-liberal coherence explains theology’s internal structure but cannot account for its truth. Felicity within the community (FT) requires linkage to truth-conditions (TC) that obtain in divine reality. That link is the Spirit’s causality. The Word guarantees referential content; the Spirit guarantees participation. Thus, theology is neither self-referential grammar nor speculative metaphysics but a dual act: the Word speaking, the Spirit authorizing.

Theological meaning is therefore realist because it is caused.

Nota

To speak of theology as the act of Word and Spirit is to confess that all true theology is God’s own discourse in the mode of the finite.
The Holy Spirit determines inclusion within T (the formal language of theology) and mediates the causal link between felicity and truth.
The Word provides the ontological content of that truth; the Spirit provides its efficacious form.

Hence: FT + TC = Truth of Theological Speech where FT (felicity conditions) ensure internal coherence and authorization, and TC (truth conditions) denote the real divine states of affairs modeled ontologically by T. The Spirit, as both formal and causal principle, unites these two in a single act of divine communication.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theology is not autonomous discourse but the continuing act of the divine Word communicated through the Spirit.

2. The Spirit’s causality is non-competitive and constitutive: it authorizes human language to bear divine truth.

3. The Word’s eternity is the meta-language within which all finite theological languages (Lₙ) are interpreted and fulfilled.

4. Truth in theology arises when the felicity of human speech (authorization within T) is linked, by the Spirit, to real states of divine being modeled in ontology.

5. The nova lingua theologiae is therefore incarnational: the infinite speaks within the finite, and the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

In this union, theology ceases to be mere talk about God and becomes God’s own speaking through the creature. Theology is thus the act of Word and Spirit, an event of truth in which language itself becomes participation in divine life.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXI

In the foregoing disputation it was affirmed that theology is not merely a reflective discourse about divine realities but the very event of divine speech, the actus Verbi et Spiritus in which God addresses the world through human language. The theologian, in speaking truly, does not stand before the Word as observer but is caught up within the living exchange between Word and Spirit. Theology thus appeared as participation in a trinitarian act rather than the exercise of a solitary intellect.

Yet this very insight now summons a further inquiry. If theology is the act of Word and Spirit, by what means are these two united and distinguished within the one speaking of God? How does the communicatio between Verbum and Spiritus ground the possibility of theological meaning, such that divine truth may be both given and received? And what does this communication imply for the structure of theological language itself, for its authority, its coherence, and its power to signify beyond itself?

Therefore we pass to Disputationem XXI: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae: De Communicatione Verbi et Spiritus, in which it will be examined how the divine Word and the Holy Spirit together constitute the meta-linguistic horizon of theology, the inner dialogue by which the infinite speaks itself into the finite and gathers finite speech into the eternal conversation of God.

Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino

On the Meta-Language of Theology and the Divine Word

Quaeritur

Utrum meta-lingua theologiae non sit sermo humanus aliis superior, sed ipsum Verbum divinum, in quo et per quem omnis lingua creata interpretatur; et utrum Deus non habeat aliud verbum de se quam se ipsum, ita ut Logos sit meta-lingua analogice dicta, qua universa loquela humana in veritatem redigitur.

Whether the meta-language of theology is not a human discourse standing above others but the divine Word Himself, in whom and through whom all created language is interpreted; and whether God possesses no other word about Himself than Himself, such that the Logos is the meta-language, analogically so called, by which all human speech is gathered into truth.

Thesis

The only true meta-language of theology is the eternal Word. All human theological languages—old, new, symbolic, propositional—exist as finite object-languages within the field of divine communication. The Logos is both their ground and their interpreter, the infinite discourse in which their partial meanings are united and fulfilled.

Locus Classicus

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — John 1:1

This verse establishes the primacy of divine speech: before there were languages, there was the Word; before there were signs, there was meaning itself. The divine Logos precedes, grounds, and interprets every act of human speaking. The Word is not one being among others but the intelligible act by which all that is becomes intelligible.

“Tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo.”
“But You were more inward than my inmost self and higher than my highest.” — Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones III.6.11

Augustine here confesses that God is not encountered as an object within language or consciousness, nor as a voice external to the soul, but as the interior ground of intelligibility itself. God is nearer than thought and prior to every act of understanding. This inwardness is not subjectivity but ontological priority: the Logos as that by which both mind and meaning are possible.

Taken together, these witnesses establish that the Word of God is not merely spoken to creatures but spoken in them, not as a linguistic artifact but as the living source of sense and truth. The Logos is thus rightly confessed as theology’s true meta-language: not a discourse about God, but God’s own self-articulation in which all created speech finds its meaning and measure.

Explicatio

The notion of meta-language in logic and model theory designates a higher-level language used to describe the rules, syntax, or semantics of another. In theology, such a separation is impossible. No language can stand outside the Word of God in order to describe it, for all language already exists within the act of divine self-communication. All human discourse remains within the domain of divine utterance, because the Word is both the Creator of speech and its ultimate hearer. This meta-lingua is not transcendental consciousness nor a meta-subject interpreting meaning, but the very ratio intelligibilitatis of being and speech.

Thus, when theology speaks about God, it does so within God’s own communicative act. The Logos is not an external commentary on the world but the internal ratio by which it exists and becomes intelligible. Every language—whether philosophical, poetic, or dogmatic—functions as an object-language within the comprehensive “meta-language” that is God’s eternal self-utterance.

This means that the relation between divine Word and human language is not hierarchical but participatory, that is, a relation of constitutive causality in the order of signification. Let us represent this formally (and then explain it):

Let L₁, L₂, L₃ … denote the many object-languages of creation: ordinary speech, philosophical reasoning, scriptural idiom, the nova lingua of faith.

Let L∞ denote the divine Logos, the Word that encompasses and grounds all finite discourse.

Then for every Lₙ, the relation Lₙ ⊂ L∞ holds analogically. This symbol of inclusion does not name a merely logical or set-theoretic relation, but signifies ontological dependence: each finite language exists and is intelligible only through the constitutive causality of the Word. This is not linguistic hierarchy but participation grounded in Logos.

Hence, divine meta-language is not an external code but the infinite ontological horizon of interpretation which precedes and grounds every act of understanding. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the divine Word into the polyphonic tongues of creation and returning creation’s words into praise.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Ludwig Wittgenstein and the later linguistic turn argue that language-games possess internal criteria of meaning; there is no meta-language beyond them. To claim that the Logos functions as a meta-language imposes a totalizing framework that violates the autonomy of forms of life.

Obiectio II. Karl Barth maintains that revelation is wholly event and never a stable linguistic form; thus, there can be no divine meta-language, for God’s Word encounters us only as momentary address, never as standing structure of meaning.

Obiectio III. Jacques Derrida and his heirs hold that all language is differential play without final referent or transcendental signified. The claim that the Logos interprets all language reintroduces a metaphysics of presence which deconstruction has exposed as illusion.

Responsiones

Ad I. Wittgenstein rightly observes that meaning arises within language-games at the level of human use. Theology, however, concerns the ground of linguistic possibility itself. The Logos is not a competing game but the fundus of all grammars, the ratio loquendi that makes any signification possible. Without the Word as ontological ground, even internal coherence loses intelligibility.

Ad II. Barth rightly emphasizes the event-character of revelation, but the event itself presupposes the eternal Word. The Logos is not a static structure but the living continuity of divine speech. Revelation as event is the historical manifestation of that eternal discourse. Thus, divine meta-language is not a standing text but the ongoing act of self-communication through the Spirit.

Ad III. Deconstruction’s critique of presence inadvertently confirms the theological claim: no finite language can secure its own meaning. The Logos, however, is not an available presence within language but the transcendent act that bestows meaning upon the play of difference. The Spirit does not close différance but transfigures it into relation.

Nota

To speak of the divine Word as theology’s meta-language is to confess that all truth is linguistic because all being is spoken—not as linguistic construction, but as Logos-grounded intelligibility. The cosmos itself is a sentence within the discourse of the Logos. In this sense, theology’s many models and expressions, as examined in Disputationes XVII–XVIII, are not rival statements but varied declensions of a single Word.

This view transforms the philosophy of language into a theology of communion. Meaning no longer rests upon formal conventions or social contracts but upon participation in the divine speech-act that sustains creation. Hence, all interpretation is ultimately Christological: every word finds its coherence only in the Word made flesh.

Formally we may write (and then explain):

∀w ∈ Lₙ, Meaning(w) = Participation(w, L∞),

where this participation grounds both reference (Refₘ) and the donation of theological sense (Ref*ₗ). Semantic realism thus appears as the linguistic echo of creation’s metaphysical realism.

The Church, as communio verbi, is the living medium of this divine meta-language in history. Its confession, liturgy, and doctrine are not human projections upon silence but Spirit-authorized articulations of the eternal discourse of the Word and Spirit. In the Church’s speech, divine meta-language enters temporal form without loss of transcendence.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The divine Logos is the only true meta-language of theology: the eternal act of meaning in which all created languages participate.

2. All human theological discourse (Lₙ) functions as finite object-language within this horizon; its truth lies in participation, not autonomy.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, translating the eternal Word into temporal speech and returning human language into praise.

4. Philosophical denials of meta-language rightly expose the limits of human systems but fail to see that divine discourse is not a system but the very act of meaning itself.

Therefore, theology’s meta-language is not analytical but incarnational: the Word made flesh is the hermeneutical center in which all human words are gathered and made true.

Transitus ad Disputationem XX

The preceding disputation has shown that theology cannot transcend itself by means of a higher, detached language. Its meta-lingua is not an external code but the reflexivity of the divine Word within finite speech: the Word illumining itself in the medium of human discourse. Theology thus appears not as commentary upon revelation but as revelation’s own self-interpretation, the finite word drawn into the infinite articulation of God’s Logos.

Yet this discovery opens a deeper question. If theology truly occurs within the self-speaking of the Word, what is its mode of actuality? How does the human act of theologizing participate in the divine act of speaking? What role belongs to the Spirit, through whom finite utterance is gathered into the living voice of God?

Therefore we advance to Disputatio XX: De Theologia ut Actu Verbi et Spiritus, in which theology will be considered not as a superior human discourse about the divine, but as the very action of the Word and Spirit—an event wherein God, in speaking through human language, continues the eternal dialogue of truth within time.

Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis; Prooemium ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine;

Prooemium ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

Why Theology Must Confront the Limits of Reason

The theological inquiry now turns from language to logic, from signification to formal necessity. Having examined how divine truth becomes speakable in human discourse, theology must now ask how that same truth encounters the structures of reason itself, and where reason, in fidelity to its own vocation, must acknowledge what exceeds it.

Logic stands at theology’s threshold. It promises rigor, necessity, and demonstrative clarity. Yet every attempt to formalize truth also exposes the limits of formalization. The human intellect, in seeking to order intelligibility into complete systems, discovers that any consistent system of finite propositions is necessarily open: truths arise that cannot be derived within the system that recognizes them. This discovery, rendered precise in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, is not a defeat of reason but its purification. It reveals that reason’s strength lies not in closure but in its capacity to witness beyond itself.

Throughout the history of thought, the aspiration toward a total logic has repeatedly reappeared. Aristotle sought closure through syllogistic necessity; the medievals through scientia demonstrativa; Descartes through clarity and distinctness; Leibniz through the characteristica universalis; the positivists through symbolic formalism. Yet each attempt, by pressing logic toward completeness, has uncovered the same structural paradox: the more consistent the system, the less it can account for its own truth. Theology receives this paradox not as contradiction but as confession: finite reason mirrors the infinite Logos precisely in its inability to ground itself.

Within the model-theoretic vision of these Disputationes, logical incompleteness is interpreted as the formal analogue of the creature’s dependence upon God. Just as every theory requires a model in which its sentences are true, so every act of reasoning presupposes a reality that transcends its formulations. Truth exceeds provability; intelligibility exceeds syntax. The Infinite is the necessary truth-ground of the finite. Thus logic is not alien to theology but already oriented toward it. The law of thought itself bears witness to the Logos who is both Reason and Revelation.

Praefatio ad Partem III: De Logica et Incompletudine

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Ratio concludit, et revelatur infinitum

Theology speaks because truth gives itself to be spoken. Yet what gives itself is never given exhaustively. Divine truth is not an object that can be captured within finite form, but the living intelligibility in which all forms participate without containment.

For this reason, theological models are always provisional, not because they are arbitrary, but because they are faithful. Their finitude is not a defect but a sign of transcendence. Where modeling reaches its boundary, theology does not fall silent from ignorance, but pauses in reverence.

This praefatio therefore frames the inquiry that follows. If truth is participatory and grounded in the Logos, then transcendence is not opposed to intelligibility. It is its depth. The limits of language do not negate truth; they testify to its excess.

The task of theology at this point is not to abandon speech, but to learn how speech fails well: how it gestures beyond itself, how it allows silence to speak, and how it confesses truth precisely where conceptual mastery ends.

Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis

On the Limits of Theological Modeling and the Transcendence of Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum omne modelum theologicum sit verum participative sed finitum formaliter; et utrum hic finis non sit defectus sed indicium transcendenciae veritatis divinae, quae non comprehenditur sed communicatur; ac demum utrum Spiritus Sanctus hunc ordinem servet, ut finitum maneat capax infiniti sine confusione.

Whether every theological model is true by participation yet finite in form; and whether this limit is not a defect but a sign of the transcendence of divine truth, which cannot be comprehended but can be communicated; and finally, whether the Holy Spirit preserves this order so that the finite remains capable of the infinite without confusion.

Thesis

Theological models are necessarily bounded expressions of divine truth. Their formal incompleteness is not failure but fidelity. Each model bears witness to a truth that exceeds it, and this excess is the very condition of theological realism. Divine transcendence is not what theology fails to reach, but what it faithfully signifies precisely by not exhausting.

Locus Classicus

“O altitudo divitiarum sapientiae et scientiae Dei! Quam incomprehensibilia sunt iudicia eius, et investigabiles viae eius.”
Romans 11:33

The Apostle confesses not ignorance but excess. Divine truth is known truly yet never comprehensively. Theology does not abolish mystery; it articulates it.

Explicatio

Every theological model interprets the language of faith (T) within an ontological structure that renders its claims intelligible. Yet such interpretation is intrinsically finite. No model can coincide with divine truth, for divine truth is not a formal object but the living ground of all intelligibility.

This finitude is not accidental. It belongs to the structure of modeling itself. Theological models inhabit teleo-spaces of intelligibility grounded in the Logos. These spaces draw finite forms toward meaning without permitting enclosure. To model truly is therefore to articulate within an order that precedes the model and exceeds it.

Formally:

Let M denote a theological model.
Let V denote divine truth.

The relation

M ⊂ V

does not signify containment of truth within the model, but participation of the model within truth. The inclusion is analogical, not spatial. Divine truth exceeds every formal articulation because it is grounded in God’s self-being, not in conceptual determination.

This limit does not undermine theology. It secures it. If theology could exhaust divine truth, God would be reduced to a logical totality. Instead, the Spirit preserves an open horizon of intelligibility, a structured incompleteness analogous to the Gödelian insight that no consistent system can internalize the conditions of its own truth.

Thus, theological incompleteness is not epistemic failure but ontological honesty. To speak truly of God is to acknowledge that one’s speech refers beyond itself to an inexhaustible fullness of meaning.

Two horizons of truth therefore govern theological modeling:

• Perfectio formalis: the internal coherence and felicity of the model.

• Adequatio transcendens: the model’s participatory orientation toward divine reality beyond all system.

The Spirit mediates between these horizons, ensuring that finite models remain ordered toward the infinite without collapsing into silence or confusion.

Objectiones

Ob I. If every theological model is limited, theology can never yield certainty.

Ob II. Limits imply unknowability, collapsing theology into apophatic negation.

Ob III. Gödelian incompleteness introduces an alien mathematical formalism into theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Theological certainty is not exhaustive comprehension but participatory assurance. Certitudo fidei rests on communion with the faithful God, not on formal closure.

Ad II. Limits do not negate knowledge but sanctify it. Cataphatic and apophatic speech are concentric movements around the same truth. To know God truly is to know Him as inexhaustible.

Ad III. The Gödelian analogy is not foundational but illuminative. It  clarifies a structural truth: intelligibility exceeds formalization. Logic witnesses this excess; theology names its ground.

Nota

The finitude of theological models reveals their vocation. They are not idols but icons. An idol contains what it names. An icon reveals what exceeds it.

Theological models are icons of truth: finite forms rendered transparent to infinite meaning. The Spirit ensures their porosity, guarding them from closure while sustaining their coherence.

Hence theology’s structure is eschatological. Every true model anticipates fulfillment beyond itself, when formal adequacy and divine presence will finally coincide, not by exhaustion but by glorification.

Symbolically:

T + M → V*

where V* denotes transcendent truth as the ground of all participation. The notation reminds us that truth always exceeds its representations even as it grants them reality.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Theological modeling is necessarily finite.

2. Its limits signify divine transcendence, not error.

3. Truth in theology is participatory and inexhaustible.

4. The Spirit preserves both coherence and openness.

5. The incompleteness of theology secures its realism.

Transitus ad Disputationem XIX

The limits of modeling reveal that theology speaks within two orders at once: the human order of finite signification and the divine order of self-communicating truth. Every theological utterance, if true, participates in both. It speaks of God while being spoken by God.

This double belonging presses the inquiry forward. If theology’s words are grounded in divine intelligibility, then what is the nature of that grounding? Is there a meta-linguistic horizon in which theological discourse is authorized and unified? And how does this horizon relate to the eternal Logos in whom all meaning is already articulated?

We therefore proceed to Disputatio XIX: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae et Verbo Divino.

Disputatio XVII: De Modeling et Veritate Theologica

On Modeling and Theological Truth

Quaeritur

Utrum modeling theologicum sit actus interpretationis, quo lingua fidei T per Spiritum in ordine entis interpretatur et inhabitat, ut veritas divina in forma creata manifestetur; et utrum veritas theologica non sit mera correspondentia, sed participatio, ita ut modelum fiat locus in quo significatio finita communicat cum veritate infinita.

Whether theological modeling is the act of interpretation by which the language of faith T, through the Spirit, is interpreted within and inhabits the order of being, so that divine truth is manifested in created form; and whether theological truth is not mere correspondence but participation, such that the model becomes the site where finite meaning communicates with infinite truth.

Thesis

Modeling in theology mediates between the formal structure of faith’s language and the reality of divine being. It is the Spirit’s interpretive act by which finite expressions are rendered adequate to divine truth. Thus, theological truth arises when the language of faith is modeled within ontological participation—when speech and being converge under the causality of the Spirit.

Locus classicus

“Sanctifica eos in veritate; verbum tuum veritas est.”
John 17:17

Christ does not identify truth with correct description but with the Word itself. Divine truth is not represented by language from without but participated from within. Theological modeling therefore does not construct truth but aligns finite speech to the truth that precedes and grounds it.

Explicatio

The term modeling in theology designates the act of relating T, the formal language of faith, to its referent in divine reality.
Earlier disputationes established that:

• T (Disputationes I–V) is syntactical and governed by felicity,

• divine causality (VI–VII) ensures the real participation of creaturely being in God, and

• divine intentionality (X–XVI) grounds meaning and language in God’s own communicative act.

Modeling now unites these strands. 

Modeling does not create the ontological environment in which theology speaks. That environment is already given. Language is intelligible because it inhabits teleo-spaces of meaning grounded in the Logos as objective intelligibility. Theological modeling therefore does not insert discourse into being but articulates finite forms within an intelligible order that precedes all interpretation. The Spirit’s work is not ontological fabrication but faithful alignment: rendering finite models transparent to the Logos that lures intelligibility into form.

To model theology is not to construct analogies from below but to interpret forms drawn from revelation within the teleo-spaces of participation that make meaning possible. Every theological model is a finite schema through which divine truth becomes intelligible without being exhausted

Formally (and then explained):

• Let T = the language of faith.

• Let M = the ontological model interpreting T.

• Let FT = the felicity conditions under which speech is rightly ordered.

• Let TC = the truth conditions under which that speech corresponds to being.

The structural relation:

FT + M → TC means that when faith’s language is interpreted within a Spirit-formed ontological model, its felicity becomes truth. In simpler terms: theological modeling is the Spirit’s way of making language true.

This makes theology’s truth participatory rather than merely propositional. A model does not “mirror” God as a copy but “shares” in God as a participation. Its adequacy is analogical: it communicates divine truth in finite mode.

Thus, the veritas theologica is always twofold — immanent within the model and transcendent beyond it. No model contains God, yet each true model signifies and participates in God’s truth.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According the the logical positivist tradition of Ayer and Carnap, theological models cannot, by definition, be verified or falsified by experience. They are neither analytic nor synthetic propositions but expressions of emotion or moral attitude. Modeling such language formally only disguises its non-cognitive nature. To call theological models “true” is to misuse the word “truth.”

Obiectio II. According to George Lindbeck and post-liberal theology, 
religious language functions like grammar within a community of faith. Modeling theology in reference to divine reality reintroduces an outdated representationalism. Theological statements are true when they coherently express the community’s faith, not when they correspond to an external metaphysical domain. Truth is intra-linguistic, not ontological.

Obiectio III. The analytic realism of Alston or Swineburn would likely argue that model-theoretic semantics, by abstracting theological assertions into formal systems, actually removes them from their epistemic grounding in revelation and evidence. Theology must rest on propositional revelation and rational inference, not on semantic or metaphysical models. Modeling may aid clarity but cannot determine truth.

Obiectio IV. The process and open theism of Hartshorne might object that modeling presupposes static ontology and determinate truth conditions, but God and creation exist in dynamic relation. If the divine reality itself is temporal and evolving, theological models that aim for determinate truth are conceptually obsolete. Truth in theology should be relational and open-ended, not formalized and fixed.

Obiectio V. Postmodern constructivism, e.g., Jean-François Lyotard and Mark C. Taylor argues that all models are human constructs reflecting power, history, and language. Theological “models” therefore reveal only the imagination of believers, not divine reality. There is no metalanguage of truth, only competing narratives. To speak of Spirit-grounded modeling is to mask human construction in theological authority.

Responsiones

Ad I. Logical positivism’s verification principle undermines itself, being neither analytic nor empirically verifiable. Theological models, by contrast, are truth-apt within the ontological domain established by revelation. They are not empirical hypotheses but formal articulations of divine causality and participation. Truth here is not observational but metaphysical—an adequation between language and the divine act of being. The Spirit secures this adequation by constituting reference: the link between the finite symbol and the infinite reality it signifies.

Ad II. Post-liberal coherence captures the communal form of theology but not its referential depth. The Church’s grammar is Spirit-constituted, not self-enclosed. Modeling theology does not abandon grammar; it explicates how grammatical felicity opens onto truth.
Theological statements are true not merely because the community authorizes them but because the Spirit interprets them into ontological reality. Modeling thus bridges communal coherence (felicity) and divine correspondence (truth).

Ad III. Analytic realism is correct in affirming propositional truth, but theological propositions derive their meaning from participation, not mere correspondence. Model-theoretic structure preserves formal rigor while accommodating the transcendence of its referent.
Revelation supplies the data; modeling orders it logically and ontologically. Truth in theology is not confined to human inference but extends to divine causation: the Spirit ensures that models do not merely describe revelation but participate in its act.

Ad IV. Process theology rightly emphasizes relationality, but divine relationality is not temporal becoming; it is the eternal act of self-communication. The Spirit’s causality is continuous, not evolutionary.
Theological models do not freeze divine life into static concepts; they describe stable relations of participation within the dynamic plenitude of God. Truth in theology remains determinate because God’s being is faithful—unchanging in love though living in relation.

Ad V. Postmodern constructivism exposes the finitude of all discourse, but theology interprets this finitude as the very site of divine communication. The Spirit’s presence does not negate historical contingency but transfigures it.Theological models are indeed human in form, yet divine in authorization. Their truth is pneumatic: God speaks in and through finite structures of meaning.To deny all meta-language is itself a meta-linguistic claim; theological realism acknowledges limitation without surrendering truth. The Spirit makes human language capable of transcendence.

Nota

Modeling theology is the grammar of divine realism. It allows theology to speak truthfully of God without collapsing into empiricism or fideism. Each formal model M interprets the language of faith within an ontological environment of participation, where the believer’s predicates correspond to divine correlates:

D_G → D, where D_G denotes a divine property (e.g., goodness in God) and D its participated correlate in the believer.

This relation, mediated by the Spirit, ensures that theology’s language does not float above reality but is anchored in divine causation. Hence, modeling is not speculative construction but a mode of communion: the structured correspondence of word and being within divine speech itself.

The Church, as communitas interpretans, lives within this modeling process. Its doctrine, liturgy, and confession are the Spirit’s ongoing interpretation of divine truth into the finite forms of history.
Theology’s models thus evolve not by invention but by the Spirit’s continual translation of the one Word into ever-new horizons of intelligibility.

In this sense, the entire economy of revelation can be described as a divine modeling of truth in time — the Word becoming flesh, history, and sacrament.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Modeling in theology is the Spirit’s act of relating faith’s language T to divine being, rendering it true through participation.

2. Theological truth is participatory, not merely representational: the model is a locus of communion between finite meaning and infinite reality.

3. The multiplicity of models reflects the analogical fullness of divine truth, not its relativism.

4. The Spirit mediates all modeling, ensuring coherence between felicity (right speaking) and truth (real being).

5. Theology thus achieves realism without idolatry: its words do not replace God but share in His communication.

Transitus ad Disputationen XVIII

Theology has discerned that its language of modeling is not a mere imitation of scientific representation, but a mode of participation in divine revelation. Through analogy and symbol, models open a window into the reality they cannot contain.Yet every model discloses its own insufficiency. To signify the infinite is always to fall short of the infinite. Therefore, the more faithfully theology speaks, the more deeply it senses the silence that surrounds its words.

Hence, modeling truth leads inevitably to the recognition of transcendence. If divine reality is the act by which all meaning is given, then no finite structure can encompass it without distortion. The limits of modeling are therefore not obstacles to truth but its boundary markers, the signs where creaturely thought acknowledges its dependence on the uncreated Light.

Thus we advance to Disputatio XVIII: De Finibus Modeling Theologici et Transcendentia Veritatis, in which we ask whether theological models can ever be adequate to divine reality, how truth manifests itself beyond conceptual form, and how the transcendent Word gathers even the failure of language into the fullness of His self-disclosure.

Disputatio V: De Relatione inter Veritatem et Felicitatem Theologicam

On the Relation between Theological Truth and Felicity

Quaeritur

Utrum inter veritatem et felicitatem theologicam talis sit distinctio ut neque confundantur neque separentur; cum felicitas sit forma a Spiritu data qua sermo idoneus fit ad dicendum de Deo, veritas autem sit effectus ontologicus eiusdem Spiritus quo quod dicitur vere est; ita tamen ut utrumque sit opus unius Spiritus operantis in duobus ordinibus, verbi et entis.

Whether between theological truth and felicity there exists such a distinction that they are neither confused nor separated; since felicity is the form given by the Spirit whereby speech becomes rightly ordered toward God, and truth is the ontological effect of that same Spirit by which what is spoken truly is; both being the work of one Spirit operating within the two orders of word and of being.

Thesis

Felicity and truth are two inseparable dimensions of theology’s participation in divine speech. Felicity concerns the Spirit-given rightness of theological language within T, the language of faith. Truth concerns the fulfillment of that language within divine reality. They differ as form and effect: felicity renders theological speech speakable, truth renders it real.

Locus Classicus

1. Isaiah 55:11 (MT)
לֹא־יָשׁוּב אֵלַי רֵיקָם כִּי אִם־עָשָׂה אֶת־אֲשֶׁר חָפַצְתִּי
“My word shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose.”

Divine speech is performative: it is felicitous because it may be uttered by God, and true because it accomplishes the reality it names.

2. Hebrews 4:12 (NA28)
Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργής
“For the word of God is living and active.”
The Word’s life is its power to actualize what it declares.

3. Origen, Homiliae in Ieremiam I.7
Ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ λόγος ζῶν ἐστι καὶ ἐνεργής
“The Word of God is living and operative.”
Origen locates truth not in static correspondence but in divine operation.

4. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 58.1
Verbum Dei non sonat tantum sed facit.
“The Word of God does not only sound but acts.”
Speech and effect in God are one act.

5. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik I/1, §4
Das Wort Gottes geschieht, indem Gott selbst handelt und redet.
“The Word of God happens as God Himself acts and speaks.”

Across these witnesses the same confession is given: in God, felicity and truth coincide. He speaks rightly because He is Truth; His Word is true because it performs what it speaks.

Explicatio

Disputationes III and IV taught that theology is governed internally by felicity and externally by truth. Felicity marks the Spirit’s authorization of speech within T. Truth names the external adequation of that authorized speech within the divine reality.  To express this relation, we use the symbolic shorthand:

FT + Modeling = TC.

FT designates the felicity conditions of T, the Spirit’s gift of coherence and authorization. “Modeling” designates the interpretation of this speech within being, the structured account of the ontological order in which God’s Word is fulfilled. TC designates the truth conditions of theology, the divine states of affairs in which what theology declares is realized.

This relation does not fragment theology. Felicity is the inward form of truth’s possibility; truth is the outward realization of what felicity initiates. To speak felicitously is to speak in a manner destined for fulfillment; to speak truly is to behold that fulfillment realized. Thus, felicity is the inception of truth’s journey into language; truth is felicity’s completion in being.

Objectiones

Ob I. Classical correspondence realism claims that felicity adds nothing to truth. A statement is felicitous precisely because it is true. To distinguish them introduces redundancy and obscures the unity of adaequatio.

Ob II. Speech-act pragmatics holds that felicity conditions pertain to the success of an utterance, not to its truth-value. To unite felicity and truth conflates pragmatic efficacy with ontological correspondence.

Ob III. Kant maintains that “truth” pertains to theoretical reason, while “felicity” concerns practical harmony with moral law. Theology may not merge these domains without overstepping transcendental limits.

Ob IV. Post-liberal theology locates truth within communal grammar. Felicity is simply correct performance within that grammar. To posit a distinction is to introduce an external realism foreign to intratextual coherence.

Responsiones

Ad I. Truth and felicity coincide in God but diverge in theology. Truth concerns the ontological adequation of word and being; felicity concerns the pneumatic authorization of the word to bear this adequation. Theology requires both because human speech is finite. Felicity is not redundant; it is the Spirit’s gift that makes truth bearable in language.

Ad II. Speech-act theory sees only the human dimension of felicity. Theology sees its divine ground. Felicity is not merely pragmatic success but the Spirit’s act of rendering a finite utterance proportionate to divine truth. It includes pragmatic order while surpassing it in participation.

Ad III. Kant’s dualism dissolves within revelation. The Spirit unites cognition and moral participation in a single divine act. Felicity is not moral sentiment but the Spirit’s presence in knowledge. Truth becomes event rather than ideal, and felicity becomes the condition of truth’s event.

Ad IV. Post-liberal coherence safeguards grammar but neglects ontology. Felicity is not reducible to communal performance; it is the Spirit’s life within that grammar. Truth arises when this felicitous grammar is interpreted within divine being. Grammar participates in reality rather than replacing it.

Nota

Imagine felicity and truth as the two movements of a single divine circuit. Felicity is the descent of the Spirit into speech. Truth is the return of that speech into being. The Word proceeds felicitously and returns truthfully.

To seek truth without felicity is presumption: attempting to name God without the Spirit. To seek felicity without truth is solipsism: words that comfort but do not correspond. Only when the two converge does theology become the viva vox of the gospel.

The relation is therefore circular. What begins in the Spirit’s authorization ends in the Spirit’s fulfillment. The same divine act that renders theology speakable renders it true.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Felicity and truth are distinct yet inseparable moments of theology’s participation in divine communication.

2. Felicity concerns the rightness of speech within T; truth concerns its realization within divine being.

3. The same Spirit who authorizes speech also fulfills it.

4. Felicity anticipates truth; truth consummates felicity.

5. Theology’s discourse is thus a participation in the causal communication of God, in whom word and reality coincide.

Transitus ad Disputationem VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

In the fifth disputation, felicity and truth were shown to be two movements of one divine act: felicity as the Spirit’s descent into language, truth as the Spirit’s fulfillment of that language in being. Theology thus speaks truly only where it speaks felicitously, for the Spirit binds word and reality within a single motion.

Yet this unity presupposes a deeper source. The Spirit who authorizes and fulfills is the Spirit of the Father, whose causal act gives being, meaning, and intelligibility. If theology is to understand its own possibility, it must inquire into the divine causality that grounds both the world to be spoken and the speech that speaks it.

We therefore advance to Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica, wherein it will be asked how divine causality constitutes the possibility of theological discourse, how divine and human agency join in the act of saying, and how the verbum hominis becomes instrument of the Verbum Dei without confusion or division.

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.