Disputatio XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis

On the Confrontation of Languages: Theology and the Secular Word

Quaeritur

Utrum inter linguam theologicam, quae in Verbo et Spiritu fundatur, et sermones saeculares, qui autonomiam suam vindicant, oriatur verus conflictus; et utrum theologia possit adhuc praedicare veritatem in mundo, ubi scientia, ars, et cultura sibi munus veritatis usurpaverunt.

Whether there arises a genuine conflict between theological language, grounded in the Word and the Spirit, and the secular discourses that claim their own autonomy; and whether theology can still proclaim truth in a world where science, art, and culture have each usurped for themselves the office of truth.

Thesis

The theological word, because it participates in divine truth, does not compete with secular reason but interprets its conditions. The Spirit who makes theology possible also animates all authentic acts of meaning without thereby rendering them theological. Hence, theology’s speech does not withdraw from modern languages but judges and fulfills them: it discloses that every search for truth is already a response to divine communication.

Locus classicus

“In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:4–5

The verse identifies the universality of divine illumination: every act of understanding presupposes the light of the Logos. Secular discourse, even in its apparent autonomy, speaks within that light and cannot escape it. The confrontation between theology and modernity is therefore not external opposition but internal forgetfulness.

Explicatio

After the Disputationes on Word and Spirit, theology now faces its cultural horizon. Modernity has multiplied languages of truth—scientific, aesthetic, political, technological—each claiming autonomy. Yet all presuppose intelligibility, value, and communicability—conditions that theology interprets as participation in the Logos.

Theological discourse (L_t) encounters secular discourse (L_s) not as rival systems but as divergent appropriations of a shared intelligible order. Formally, we may express this as two distinct interpretive relations to the same divine ground (L_∞):

$$L_t<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\pi </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}, L_s<msub><mi>R</mi><mi>\delta </mi></msub>L_{\mathrm{\infty }}$$

Lt​Rπ​L∞​, Ls​Rδ​L∞, ​where R_π denotes participation through grace (Spirit-mediated correspondence) and R_δ denotes derivative dependence (natural reason’s participation in the Logos).

The difference is not in the object (the divine ground of meaning) but in the mode of participation.

Theology thus does not flee from modernity’s languages; it uncovers their hidden metaphysics, their reliance upon borrowed light. Where secular language treats meaning as construct, theology confesses meaning as gift.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Scientific Naturalists like Steven Weinberg and Richard Dawkins claim that science explains the world without recourse to divine speech. Theology’s claim to interpret meaning is obsolete; language about God adds nothing to predictive or explanatory power. The “light of the Logos” is a poetic metaphor for natural intelligibility, not its cause.

Obiectio II. Philosophical Postmodernists like Michel Foucault and Richard Rorty hold that all claims to meta-language or transcendence are expressions of power. Theology’s assertion that secular reason “borrows light” masks its own will to authority. There is no divine ground of meaning—only historical formations of discourse. The Logos is another name for the dominant narrative of Western metaphysics.

Obiectio III. Voices like Paul Tillich and Don Cupitt argue that to preserve credibility, theology must translate its symbols into existential or cultural meanings. The language of revelation should yield to human experience and creativity. To claim that secular reason still depends on divine light is nostalgic; theology must learn from, not correct, secular wisdom.

Obiectio IV. John Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy claim that secular reason is not merely derivative but inherently nihilistic and must therefore be rejected, not engaged. The Church should withdraw into its own grammar, its own nova lingua, abandoning dialogue with modernity. Engagement risks corruption of the sacred by the profane.

Responsiones

Ad I. Scientific explanation presupposes an ordered reality and a rational subject capable of truth, conditions that science cannot itself generate. Theology does not compete with explanation but discloses its ground: intelligibility itself as participation in the Logos. The Spirit’s presence in the act of reason makes knowledge possible; to call this “poetic” is to confuse causality with metaphor. The light of the Logos is the ontological precondition for all epistemic light.

Ad II. Postmodern suspicion rightly unmasks language’s entanglement with power, but theology interprets this entanglement as the distortion of participation. The Spirit, not the will to power, is the true condition of meaning. Deconstruction reveals the instability of all autonomous discourse; theology explains it: when speech forgets its source, it fragments. The Logos is not a regime of power but the gift of communicability that enables critique itself.

Ad III. Liberal translation preserves relevance at the cost of reality. Symbols derive their power from the truths they signify, not from subjective resonance. The nova lingua theologiae is indeed open to culture, but as illumination, not adaptation. The Spirit interprets human experience by orienting it toward divine meaning; theology learns from culture only by discerning in it the traces of grace.

Ad IV. Radical Orthodoxy rightly insists that theology is not founded upon secular reason, but withdrawal denies providence. The same Spirit who consecrates the Church animates the world’s search for truth. The task is not isolation but interpretation—to read secular languages as estranged offspring of the divine Word. The nova lingua must not retreat but translate, not by compromise but by conversion: making alien speech once more transparent to grace.

Nota

The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is not warfare but translation. Every language of modernity—scientific, political, artistic—bears within it a theological remainder: a hunger for meaning. The nova lingua theologiae speaks into this multiplicity not as rival ideology but as the meta-language of communion, interpreting all speech as longing for the Word.

The Spirit’s illumination is thus catholic: it extends beyond the Church’s grammar to all truthful speech, wherever reason still remembers the light.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The confrontation between theology and secular discourse is internal to meaning itself; secular reason unknowingly depends upon the divine Logos for its intelligibility.

2. Theology’s new language does not abolish secular languages but reveals their participatory structure and reorders them toward truth.

3. Scientific and cultural autonomy describe functional independence, not ontological self-sufficiency; their intelligibility remains Spirit-given.

4. Postmodern critique and liberal accommodation each err: the first by forgetting transcendence, the second by dissolving it.

5. Theology’s task in the contemporary horizon is interpretive and missionary—to translate the world’s fragmented languages back into participation in the eternal Word.

Thus the nova lingua theologiae stands not beside but within the world’s discourse, interpreting it to itself, until every language confesses once more that “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”

Transitus ad Disputationem XXIII

In the preceding disputation it was considered how the language of theology stands amid the many tongues of the age—philosophical, scientific, and political—and how, within that contest of discourses, it preserves its own mode of truth. We found that theology cannot simply translate itself into the idioms of secularity without losing its substance; yet neither can it ignore those idioms, for they articulate the world into which the divine Word has entered. Theological speech must therefore discern, within the multiplicity of languages, those structures of intelligibility through which creation itself remains open to divine address.

This discernment now presses a new question. If theology speaks within a world already patterned by scientific and rational forms of understanding, what is the foundation of those forms themselves? Are the so-called “laws of nature” merely human generalizations abstracted from experience, or do they possess a deeper ontological ground that makes the cosmos intelligible to both science and theology alike? And if such a foundation exists, does it derive from the same Logos who orders all things and sustains them in being?

Therefore we advance to Disputationem XXIII: De Fundamento Legum Naturae, in which it shall be examined whether the laws of nature arise from contingent regularity or from the divine reason imprinted in creation, and how this grounding of law reveals the world as both intelligible to reason and transparent to the creative Word.

Disputatio XXI: De Meta-Lingua Theologiae: De Communicatione Verbi et Spiritus

On the Meta-Language of Theology: On the Communication of Word and Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum nova lingua theologiae sit ille modus loquendi, in quo sermo humanus, assumptus a Verbo et animatus a Spiritu, fit instrumentum divinae communicationis; et utrum haec lingua non substituat linguas humanas, sed eas transformet, ut participent in ipsa veritate quae loquitur—ita ut in ea infinitum non tantum se revelet sed loquatur, et finitum non tantum audiat sed respondeat.

Whether the new language of theology is that mode of speech in which human words, assumed by the Word and animated by the Spirit, become instruments of divine self-communication; and whether this language does not replace human languages but transforms them, so that they participate in the very truth that speaks—in which the infinite not only reveals itself but speaks, and the finite not only hears but answers.

Thesis

The nova lingua theologiae arises where divine Word and human speech coincide under the causality of the Spirit. It is new because its being and meaning are renewed from within by divine presence. Theology thus speaks truly only as it becomes the language of divine communication itself: the eternal Word articulated in finite discourse, the infinite made audible in the finite.

Locus classicus

“We speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.” — 1 Corinthians 2:13

Here Paul identifies a linguistic transfiguration: words remain human, yet their origin and order are divine. The Spirit teaches, and through this teaching, human speech becomes the medium of divine wisdom: a new language of theology.

Explicatio

The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic form of participation.
In philosophy, language is typically conceived as a human system of symbols; in theology, language is the place where divine and human communicability meet. The Word (Logos) is not only the content of revelation but its grammar; the Spirit is the causality that makes human utterance bear truth.

Thus, theological language is double in form but single in act:

• Human as finite sign and historical utterance.

• Divine as bearer of infinite meaning.

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. Finally, let Auth(Lₜ) denote the authorization of Lₜ by the Spirit.

Then:

Theological truth obtains only if Auth(Lₜ) → (Lₜ participat L∞ per Spiritum); that is, finite discourse is true not by inclusion within the divine Word but by real participation in it, as the Spirit makes human language proportionate to divine meaning.

The nova lingua is therefore neither an abstract meta-language nor a private religious dialect. It is the site where human speech becomes transparent to divine reality, where felicity (Spirit-given authorization) and truth (correspondence with divine being) coincide.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Kantian Transcendentalism claims that human cognition is confined to phenomena structured by the categories of understanding. Accordingly, theology can express moral faith but not divine causation in thought or speech. To claim that language participates in divine Word and Spirit mistakes moral symbolism for metaphysical participation, violating the autonomy of reason and the limits of possible experience.

Obiectio II. Barth and Brunner held that revelation is the wholly other act of God, not a linguistic system accessible to humanity. Theology may bear witness to revelation but is not itself revelation’s continuation. To speak of a new language of theology that shares in divine communication is to blur the infinite qualitative distinction between Creator and creature, turning revelation into religious expression.

Obiectio III. Wittgenstein claims that meaning arises from the use of language within a form of life (Lebensform). The felicity of theological discourse is determined by ecclesial grammar, not metaphysical causation. To posit the Spirit as the cause of meaning introduces a category mistake: causation belongs to nature, not to language. The Spirit’s “authorization” adds nothing beyond communal propriety.

Obiectio IV. Hegelian Idealism claims that the Spirit realizes itself in the dialectical unfolding of human consciousness. Accordingly, theology is not a distinct divine act but the self-expression of the Absolute within finite reason. The nova lingua theologiae is thus unnecessary because human discourse already manifests divine Spirit in its self-development. To posit transcendent causality in theology regresses to pre-critical metaphysics.

Obiectio V. George Lindbeck and Kathryn Tanner both hold that theology’s truth is intralinguistic, that it is a coherent discourse within the Church’s rule of faith. Divine causation is thus a superfluous hypothesis. To claim that the Spirit determines what counts as true speech reintroduces metaphysical realism under the guise of pneumatology. The “new language” of theology should be understood as communal practice, not ontological participation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s limits define the autonomy of reason, not the transcendence of God. Revelation does not violate the categories of thought but constitutes their ground. The Spirit does not add a second cause to cognition but founds its capacity for meaning. Thus, the nova lingua arises precisely where reason is fulfilled by grace; the Spirit elevates the finite intellect to participation without abolishing its structure. Theological discourse thus becomes rational in a higher sense. a rationality transfigured by participation.

Ad II. Barth rightly insists on divine freedom, yet divine freedom includes the liberty to dwell within human language. The nova lingua does not erase the Creator–creature distinction but actualizes it: God’s Word remains transcendent even while speaking immanently. The Spirit’s presence ensures that theology is not revelation itself but its living continuation, for the Word still speaks in the Church’s speech.

Ad III. Wittgenstein’s insight that meaning arises from use is incomplete. The ecclesial Lebensform exists because the Spirit sustains it. The grammar of faith is not self-originating; it is founded in divine authorization. The Spirit’s causality is not physical but constitutive; it makes the correspondence between sign and referent possible. Without the Spirit, theology reduces to linguistic anthropology; with the Spirit, grammar becomes sacrament: the finite sign that mediates infinite truth.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic rightly perceives the relation between thought and being but confuses participation with identity. The divine Word does not evolve into human consciousness; it speaks through it. The Spirit is not the world’s self-realization but God’s personal presence within the finite. The nova lingua therefore represents not the self-consciousness of reason but the descent of divine communication. Communion arises not by dialectical necessity but by grace.

Ad V. Post-liberal theology correctly locates truth within the Church’s language but cannot explain why that language bears truth at all. Felicity requires truth conditions that obtain beyond grammar, and this occurs through the Spirit’s causality. While the Word guarantees referential content, the Spirit vouchsafes participation. Thus, theology’s “new language” is not another dialect but the transformation of language itself into the site of divine truth.

Nota

To speak of the nova lingua theologiae 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 = Veritas Theologica, 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. The nova lingua theologiae is the linguistic manifestation of the act of Word and Spirit: the infinite Word speaking through finite words.

2. The Spirit’s causality is non-competitive and constitutive; it authorizes human speech 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. Theological truth arises when felicity (Spirit-given authorization) is linked to truth through modeling.

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

In this union, theology ceases to be speech about God and becomes God’s own speech through the creature, language redeemed into truth, and truth made audible as the living Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXII

The preceding disputation disclosed that the meta-language of theology is not a neutral system above divine speech, but the living communicatio between the Word and the Spirit, the eternal dialogue through which divine truth both descends into and gathers up finite discourse. Within this communication, the human theologian speaks only insofar as the Spirit appropriates human language into the self-expression of the divine Word. Theology is thus dialogical in its very essence: it exists as participation in an ongoing conversation between God and the world.

Yet every divine conversation meets a worldly reply. The Word that enters human speech inevitably encounters other languages—philosophical, scientific, political, and poetic—each claiming its own authority over meaning. How does theology, as the speech of the Spirit, engage these rival discourses without losing its distinctive mode of truth? Can the language of faith coexist, translate, or contend with the languages of secularity, or must it reclaim a logic of its own, irreducible to the grammar of the age?

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXII: De Confrontatione Linguarum: Theologia et Saecularitas Sermonis, wherein it shall be examined how the sacred and secular orders of speech meet and resist one another, how theology maintains its truth within the pluralism of tongues, and how the Spirit sustains the integrity of divine discourse amid the babel of the world.

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.