Disputatio XXXVI: De Tillichiana Correlatione et Potentia Entis

On Tillich’s Correlation and the Power of Being

Quaeritur

Utrum doctrina Tillichiana de potentia entis et methodus correlationis possint theologicam veritatem sustinere, si intellegantur non existentialiter sed participatione ontologica.

Whether Tillich’s doctrine of the power of being and his method of correlation can sustain theological truth when reinterpreted, not existentially, but through ontological participation.

Thesis

Tillich’s “power of being” expresses an authentic intuition of divine immanence and creative causality, but his existential and correlational method requires ontological deepening. Only when esse is understood as participation in the Logos, as the act of God giving actuality to being, can Tillich’s insight into the “God above God” become a true theology of the living presence of the divine within creation.

Locus Classicus

“God is the ground of being: He is being-itself, not a being.” — Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I, §2.

This sentence encapsulates Tillich’s attempt to speak of God beyond theism and to preserve transcendence without objectification. Yet it also poses the central ambiguity as to whether “being-itself” signifies divine act or abstract ground.

Explicatio

Tillich sought to overcome both classical theism and modern atheism by identifying God as being-itself, the ground and power of all that is. For him, existence derives its reality from participation in this ultimate ground, while estrangement and non-being describe the human condition of finitude and anxiety. The divine, in turn, is not one being among others but the inexhaustible depth of all being, that power by which beings stand against the threat of non-being.

Tillich’s method of correlation proposes that theology answers the existential questions posed by human reason with the revelatory answers given by faith. Human existence and divine revelation stand in dialectical relation, for while the former raises the question, the latter supplies the answer in symbolic form.

Yet this correlation harbors an instability. By locating revelation within the horizon of human questioning, it risks reducing divine truth to the measure of human existential concern. The “God above God,” meant to transcend finite projections, may dissolve into the abyss of indeterminacy if not grounded in an ontological act of divine self-communication.

A participatory reinterpretation restores ontological density to Tillich’s insight. “Being-itself” is not an abstract essence but the living act (actus essendi) by which God communicates being. The “power of being” is the self-diffusive vitality of the Logos -- creative, sustaining, and redemptive—through whom all things receive their actuality. Thus, correlation becomes not merely epistemic but ontological, for human questioning participates in divine self-revelation because both arise from the same ground, the creative Word.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Classical theism claims that Tillich’s identification of God with “being-itself” erases the Creator–creature distinction. If God is identical with being, then creation is not truly other, and transcendence is lost.

Ob. II. Existential theology supposes that the participatory reinterpretation misreads Tillich’s purpose. He intended “being-itself” symbolically, not metaphysically. To return to ontology is to revert to the very essentialism he overcame.

Ob. III. Empirical realism opines that the “power of being” is a poetic expression, not a real cause. Nature operates through physical laws, not through an indeterminate divine potency.

Ob. IV. 4. Barthian dialectic holds that correlation compromises divine sovereignty. God’s Word does not emerge as an answer to human questioning but confronts it from without, judging and recreating it.

Responsiones

Ad 1. Tillich’s identification of God with being-itself does not collapse the distinction if being is understood as participatory. The creature receives its act of existence from the divine act without sharing its essence. God remains transcendent as the unparticipated source, yet immanent as the act that grants participation.

Ad 2. Tillich’s symbolic intention can be affirmed without denying ontological grounding. Symbols mediate reality only if they participate in it. To interpret being-itself through participation gives substance to the symbol and prevents it from dissolving into pure metaphor.

Ad 3. Physical law describes regularities within being but cannot account for the actuality of existence itself. The “power of being” names the metaphysical act that makes any law operative. It is not a rival cause but the enabling act through which causal relations exist at all.

Ad 4. Correlation does not entail equality between divine and human discourse. When grounded in participation, it becomes the ontological structure by which divine revelation encounters finite reason: the same Logos who gives being also gives understanding. The Spirit mediates correlation not as negotiation, but as illumination.

Nota

Tillich’s theology bears witness to a profound tension of the modern mind: the desire to affirm divine immanence without surrendering transcendence. His “God above God” and “power of being” preserve the mystery of God beyond objectification, yet his existential method risks losing the concreteness of divine act.

By recasting correlation within participatory ontology, theology can retain Tillich’s sensitivity to existential depth while grounding it in metaphysical realism. The anxiety of finitude is no longer the final horizon but the occasion for divine self-giving. The potentia entis becomes not an abstraction but the creative vitality of the triune God, the living causality of the Logos through the Spirit.

Determinatio

Tillich’s correlation, rightly understood, gestures toward the participatory structure of all theological knowledge: every question of existence presupposes the prior act of divine self-bestowal. His “power of being” thus anticipates a theology of causation in esse: God as the act by which beings stand in their being. The existential becomes metaphysical, and metaphysics itself becomes personal, for the act of being is the act of divine love communicating itself to what is not God.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXVII: De Iudicio Reflectente et Mediis Transcendentalibus

In the preceding disputation, we found in Tillich’s notion of the potentia entis a powerful though ambiguous intuition of divine immanence—the sense that God’s creative act is not external to being but the ground of its very actuality. Yet this insight remained caught between ontology and experience, between divine causality and human self-understanding. Tillich’s correlation sought to mediate these realms, but its existential method lacked a clear account of how such mediation becomes possible within finite reason itself.

This impasse leads us to the question of the transcendental mediation that unites the finite and the infinite within the very structure of cognition. If theology is to affirm the divine presence as the power of being, it must also explain how the human mind recognizes this power and participates in it. Here the critical philosophy of Kant offers decisive assistance: for in the Critique of Judgment Kant uncovers a faculty within reason that bridges nature and freedom—the reflectierende Urteilskraft, whose act of seeking unity among particulars mirrors, in finite mode, the very creativity of the divine Logos.

Therefore we proceed to Disputationem XXXVII: De Iudicio Reflectente et Mediis Transcendentalibus, in which it shall be examined how the reflecting judgment serves as the intellectual analogue of participation in the divine reason, and how through this mediating faculty the human mind, echoing the Logos, gathers the manifold of experience into purposive unity.

Disputatio XXXV: De Ontologia Idealistica et Theologia Logi

On Idealist Ontology and the Theology of the Logos

Quaeritur

Utrum ontologia idealistica, quae in Kantio, Fichtio, Schellingio et Hegelio manifestata est, repraesentet ascensum rationis ad Logos divinum, an potius reditum mentis in se ipsam, qua finitum absolutum simul fingit et negabit.

It is asked whether idealist ontology, as expressed in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, represents reason’s ascent toward the divine Logos, or rather the mind’s return into itself, wherein the finite simultaneously imagines and abolishes the Absolute.

Thesis

German Idealism constitutes the modern mind’s attempt to recover metaphysical unity after the fragmentation of the Enlightenment. Yet in seeking to ground all being in reason, it unwittingly disclosed the structure of participation itself: the finite intellect’s dependence on an infinite act of self-revelation. Idealism thus stands as philosophy’s penultimate step toward the theology of the Logos—its concepts purified, its limits exposed. What it intuited as the self-positing Absolute is, in truth, the eternal Word in whom thought and being coincide. Hence, the Theologia Logi does not negate Idealism but fulfills it: the dialectic of reason becomes doxology.

Locus Classicus

“Omnia per ipsum facta sunt, et sine ipso factum est nihil quod factum est.” — Ioannes 1:3
(“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”)

In this Johannine confession, the identity of being and intelligibility is affirmed not as a principle of mind but as a Person. The ens rationis of Idealism becomes the ens personalis of revelation: reason’s absolute is found to be the self-utterance of God.

Explicatio

Kant’s Critiques sought to reconcile freedom and nature by locating necessity within the synthetic activity of the understanding. His transcendental unity of apperception marks the dawn of modern ontology: the self as the condition of possibility for experience. But the same structure that grounds appearances cannot ground itself. Reason’s self-legislation presupposes the unity of being and thought, that is, the Logos that makes such legislation possible.

Fichte radicalized this movement: the Ich posits both itself and the Nicht-Ich. Yet this absolute self-positing remains empty without a prior act that endows the I with its being. In trying to make freedom the source of reality, Fichte discovers that freedom must already participate in the creative act that enables positing at all.

Schelling turned from Fichte’s subjectivism toward the identity of spirit and nature. For him, the Absolute is not the ego but the living unity of subject and object, the self-revelation of the infinite in the finite. In this, Schelling approached a theology of creation, though without yet recognizing its Trinitarian form.

Hegel consummated the dialectic, seeing in history the unfolding of absolute Spirit, wherein the finite negates itself into reconciliation. Yet his system, while grasping the truth that the real is rational, erred in mistaking rational necessity for personal freedom. The Spirit’s self-realization is not the dialectic of logic but the procession of love: per Verbum ad Patrem in Spiritu.

Thus, Idealism’s movement from Kant’s subject to Hegel’s Spirit charts philosophy’s pilgrimage toward the Logos. Its dialectic becomes transparent only when seen as the finite intellect’s attempt to mirror the eternal act in which God knows and loves Himself. The theological correction of Idealism is not its destruction but its conversion: the Absolute is not the self-positing of reason, but the self-giving of the Word.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Kantianism claims that all knowledge is confined to phenomena. The noumenal is unknowable; hence theology, if it claims to know the divine, violates the limits of reason.

Obj. II. According to Fichte, the Absolute is the moral self’s pure act of freedom. No transcendent Word is needed to ground it.

Obj. III. For Hegel, the Logos is the unfolding of Spirit within history. To posit a personal divine Word beyond this process is to regress to pre-critical metaphysics.

Obj. IV. Naturalism holds that idealism’s “absolute” is a conceptual fiction; theology’s Logos adds mythic personality to philosophical abstraction.

Obj. V. Post-modern hermeneutics argues that all claims of totality are oppressive, and that to identify the divine with Logos is to reinscribe the metaphysics of presence that must be deconstructed.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant’s boundary between phenomena and noumena presupposes their common ground in intelligibility. The unknowable thing-in-itself is intelligible enough to be named.Theology names this common ground as the Logos, in whom the knowable and the real are one.

Ad II. Freedom is not its own origin but a participation in divine freedom. The Ich can posit only because it is first posited. The moral act, rightly understood, is the finite echo of the creative act of the Word.

Ad III. Hegel’s Spirit is true in form but false in content: its dialectical unfolding is indeed the structure of revelation, but the reconciliation it seeks occurs not in logic but in the Cross, where the finite and infinite meet personally.

Ad IV. Naturalism confines rationality to its empirical shadow. The reality of law, order, and meaning already testifies to the Logos as their unifying cause.

Ad V. The Logos transcends the metaphysics of presence because He is not a static presence but the eternal self-giving that constitutes all presence. The Word that words is also the Word that withholds, the silence within speech, the beyond within the within.

Nota

German Idealism, when seen from within theology, is the modern world’s unknowing commentary on the prologue of John. Its dialectic is the shadow of creation’s intelligibility: reason circling around its source, seeking within itself the act that sustains it. In attempting to ground being in thought, Idealism stumbled upon the truth that thought is grounded in the divine act of speaking.

Thus, the Absolute of the philosophers is the Logos of theology translated into immanent terms. The self-positing of Spirit is but the mirror image of the self-utterance of God. The dialectic’s longing for completion is the metaphysical nostalgia of creation for its Creator.

Idealism therefore ends not in reason’s self-enclosure but in its opening to the Infinite. When reason recognizes that its own structure is participatory, the Hegelian synthesis yields to worship: ratio adorans. In that moment, the circle of thought becomes a hymn—the reconciliation of intellect and being in praise of the Word.

This disputation does not affirm a Hegelian ontology. Although German Idealism discloses, in distorted form, the structure of participation, it errs in treating this structure as the self-unfolding of reason or Spirit. No dialectical necessity governs the Logos; no historical process exhausts His act; no system closes what is grounded in personal freedom. What Idealism grasps formally, theology confesses personally. Fulfillment here does not mean speculative completion, but ontological conversion: reason is not crowned by system, but received by grace.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. German Idealism is philosophy’s most luminous approach to the Logos from within the bounds of reason.

2. Its systems disclose, though inverting, the structure of participation: finite intellects imaging the eternal act of divine knowing.

3. The Theologia Logi restores to Idealism its missing Person: the Word who is not the product of thought but its source.

4. The Absolute is not a system but a communion; not logic’s totality but love’s total gift.

5. Hence, the truth of Idealism lies not in its autonomy but in its completion within Christ, the personal Logos who gathers both being and reason into one act of eternal intelligibility.

Therefore we conclude: Logos est ratio redempta. The Logos is reason redeemed.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXVI

If Idealism reveals reason’s striving toward unity, and theology discloses that unity as the living Logos, then the next question concerns the power that makes this unity actual in existence. For being is not merely intelligible; it is dynamic, self-communicating, and free. What Idealism conceived as the dialectical energy of Spirit theology names as the potentia entis, the power of Being that is God Himself.

Hence we advance to Disputatio XXXVI: De Tillichiana Correlatione et Potentia Entis, in which it is asked how Tillich’s “power of being” and method of correlation may be reinterpreted within participatory ontology, so that the unity of thought and being achieved in the Logos may also be seen as the living causality of divine presence within all that is.

Disputatio XXXIV: De Logōs Synagōgē: Verbum ut Congregatio Entis

On the Word as the Gathering of Being

Quaeritur

Utrum Logos divinus, qui in principio erat apud Deum et per quem omnia facta sunt, intelligi debeat ut principium congregationis entium, an potius ut nomen metaphoricum pro ordine naturae et cohaerentia rationali rerum.

It is asked whether the divine Logos, who in the beginning was with God and through whom all things were made, should be understood as the true principle of the gathering of beings, or merely as a metaphor for the rational order and coherence of things.

Thesis

The Logos is not a symbol of rational order but is its ontological source. All beings cohere because they are gathered into intelligibility by the eternal Word. This gathering (synagōgē) is not an external arrangement but is rather an interior constitution: Each thing is what it is by participation in the unifying act of the Logos. Therefore, the world that worlds does so only because the Word that words gathers it into being. In principio erat Verbum, and in that beginning every multiplicity is reconciled.

Locus Classicus

“In ipso omnia constant.” — Colossians 1:17 (“In him all things hold together.”)

Heraclitus called the Logos the hidden harmony that orders all things (frag. 50). Heidegger, in Einführung in die Metaphysik, recovered this ancient sense of logos as synagōgē. It is the gathering that lets beings appear together as a world. John’s Gospel further declares that the  Logos who gathers all things is not an abstraction but a Person: the eternal Son through whom being itself becomes communicative.

Explicatio

The Greek logos first meant “to gather, to collect.” Before it meant “speech,” it signified the unity that draws together the many. Heraclitus saw that without this hidden gathering there would be no world, only flux. Yet the gathering he perceived remained impersonal: order without love.

In the fullness of revelation, the logos of the philosophers becomes the Logos of God. He is not merely the principle of intelligibility but its living act: the Word who both speaks and is what is spoken. Through Him, the multiplicity of beings is not dissolved but harmonized and diversity becomes communion.

Heidegger’s logos as synagōgē recognizes that language gathers beings into presence. But the later Heidegger stopped at the threshold: the logos for him discloses Being but is not itself personal. Theology completes the movement. The gathering of being is not an event of language alone but the act of the divine Word through whom all being is spoken.

Hence, to say the Word gathers being is not metaphor but metaphysics.
Every act of understanding, every law of nature, every relation of love, is a participatory mode of this gathering. What philosophy glimpsed as coherence, theology confesses as communion: the world is not simply ordered; it is embraced.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Naturalism supposes that the unity of the world arises from physical laws and causal regularities, and the Logos adds nothing to this explanation. It merely personifies the intelligibility of nature.

Obj. II. Heidegger affirms in section VII of Sein und Zeit that the Logos is the gathering of language itself. However, he also assumes that to identify it with a divine subject is to return to onto-theology and suppress the openness of Being.

Obj. III. Nominalism asserts that only individual things exist, and thus the idea of a unifying Logos is an abstraction derived from linguistic convenience.

Obj. IV. Idealism holds that the world’s unity lies in the activity of the human mind. Accordingly, the Logos is merely a projection of finite reason upon the whole.

Obj. V. The Trinitarian skeptic declares that if the Logos is a personal hypostasis, distinct yet divine, then theology would risk positing two gods, one who gathers and one who is gathered.

Responsiones

Ad I. Physical law explains order only by presupposing the intelligibility of being. To speak of law is already to invoke Logos. The personification is not addition but recognition: the world’s rationality is the trace of a rational Word.

Ad II. Heidegger rightly saw the logos as the gathering of being but mistook impersonal disclosure for final truth. The openness of Being is itself the echo of the divine act that gives it; the Logos does not close openness but grounds it.

Ad III. Nominalism mistakes the plurality of names for the plurality of realities. That things are nameable and coherent already presupposes the gathering unity of meaning, the very act of the Logos.

Ad IV. Idealism confuses participation with projection. Human reason can unify experience only because it is itself gathered by the divine reason that constitutes all intelligibility.

Ad V. In the Trinity there is no dualism but procession: the Father gathers in the Son, and the Son gathers all in the Spirit. The gathering of being is one act in three relations, the unity of love.

Nota

The Logos synagōgē is not a poetic metaphor nor a mere philosophical category but a theological disclosure. The world’s intelligibility is the mode of its dependence. What Heraclitus and Heidegger called the “gathering” is, in Christian confession, the personal act of the Son through whom all things subsist. This doctrine rescues metaphysics from abstraction and returns it to communion.

To say that the Word gathers being is to affirm that intelligibility is love, that to be known and to be are one act in the divine. Thus, ontology and revelation coincide at the level of ground, not discourse: esse itself is the Word’s embrace.

DETERMINATIO

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The Logos is the ontological source of all gathering; the coherence of beings is participation in His unifying act.

2. The philosophical notion of logos as rational order finds its fulfillment, not negation, in the personal Word of God.

3. The intelligibility of the world is therefore a mode of divine presence; Being is communicative because it is spoken.

4. The Heideggerian “gathering of language” is true but incomplete; it must be transfigured into a theology of the Word who both speaks and is.

5. Hence, the world that worlds does so only because the Word that words gathers it into being.

Therefore we conclude: Verbum est congregatio entis; et esse est sermo Verbi. The Word is the gathering of being, and being itself is the speech of the Word.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXV

If the Logos gathers beings into unity, He also gathers thought itself, for reason is one mode of being’s participation in the Word. Philosophy has long sought this gathering through its own dialectic, from Kant to Hegel, yet without recognizing the personal Logos who grounds it.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio XXXV: De Ontologia Idealistica et Theologia Logi, in which we inquire as to how the movement of German Idealism—its striving toward absolute reason—finds its true resolution not in self-consciousness, but in the divine Logos who is both the ground and goal of all intelligibility.

Disputatio XXXIII: De Systemate Incompleto et Veritatis Factore Infinito

On the Incomplete System and the Infinite Truthmaker

Quaeritur

Utrum systema finitum, in quantum consistenter ordinatur secundum leges propriae rationis, possit intra seipsum veritatem suam continere, an vero ad veritatem plenam indiget fundamento infinito quod ipsum transcendit et sustentat.

It is asked whether a finite system, in so far as it is consistently ordered according to its own rational laws, can contain its truth within itself, or whether it requires an infinite foundation that both transcends and sustains it.

Thesis

Every finite and consistent system is incomplete: it cannot contain within itself the totality of truths expressible in its own language. This incompleteness is not a mere logical curiosity but a metaphysical disclosure, the formal sign that the finite participates in an infinite act of truth beyond itself.

The Infinite is not an external supplement to the system but the very act that makes it capable of coherence and meaning. Therefore, all truth in the finite presupposes the veritatis factor infinitus, the Infinite Truthmaker, in whom the true and the real coincide.

Locus Classicus

“In ipso omnia constant.” — Colossians 1:17
(“In him all things hold together.”)

Aquinas, interpreting this text, teaches that God is not only the cause of being but of the very truth of beings: “Omnis veritas in creaturis est participatio veritatis divinae.” (De Veritate, q.1 a.4). 

Hence, truth’s coherence within the created order depends on the divine act that grounds all propositions and all realities.

Explicatio

In 1931, Kurt Gödel demonstrated that any formal system capable of expressing arithmetic cannot be both complete and consistent. If it is consistent, then there exists true statements within its own language that it cannot prove. This result, though strictly mathematical, carries immense metaphysical weight: It reveals the structural humility of all finite rationality.

For theology, Gödel’s theorem is not the end of explanation but its transfiguration. It shows that the finite, by its very integrity, gestures beyond itself. Truth, once formalized, exceeds the capacity of the system to contain it. Every finite logos implies a greater Logos within which it subsists.

Thus, incompleteness is the formal signature of participation. It is not a failure but an invitation; it is a sign that the finite word, if true, speaks from the Infinite Word who alone is complete in Himself. Just as a proposition’s truth requires correspondence with a reality beyond language, so every finite order of truth requires grounding in an infinite act of being and knowing. This act is the Veritatis Factor Infinitus, the divine Logos in whom all truths are both spoken and fulfilled.

“Gödel’s logical structure thus functions as a formal witness to the theological truth that no consistent finite system is complete, because only the Infinite is both consistent and complete.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Formalism declares that Gödel’s result is purely mathematical, that it concerns syntactic provability, not metaphysical dependence. To read theology into it is to mistake analogy for argument.

Obj. II. Empiricism argues that truth arises from verification within experience. There is no “infinite truthmaker,” only empirical coherence among statements.

Obj. III. Idealism holds that truth and being are functions of thought itself. The infinite is the ideal limit of reason, not a real act distinct from it.

Obj. IV.  Naturalism supposes that truth is property of propositions relative to models, and that invoking an infinite ground adds nothing explanatory.

Obj. V. Atheistic existentialism opines that the incompleteness of reason is evidence not of divine participation but of absurdity. The human quest for total meaning fails because there is none.

Responsiones

Ad I. Gödel’s theorem, though formal, unveils a metaphysical pattern: the incapacity of the finite to ground its own truth. To discern analogy here is not category error but insight into structural isomorphism between logic and being, between incomplete systems and contingent worlds.

Ad II. Empirical verification presupposes an order of reality already coherent and intelligible. To explain truth by observation alone is to presuppose the very intelligibility that demands an infinite ground.

Ad III. If the infinite were merely the ideal limit of thought, truth would remain self-referential and circular. But truth points outward to that which exceeds thought, for the Infinite is not a concept but the act in which all concepts are made true.

Ad IV. Model-theoretic accounts describe truth within a framework but cannot ground the framework’s own adequacy. To say a sentence is true in a model begs the question of the model’s relation to reality.
The Veritatis Factor Infinitus is that ultimate model-maker in whom every finite interpretation participates.

Ad V. Existential absurdity arises only if meaning is sought apart from the Infinite. Incompleteness, seen theologically, is not futility but the condition for grace. It is the openness through which the finite receives its truth.

NOTA

Gödel’s incompleteness theorem should not be mistaken as a logical proof of God’s existence, but as a formal analogy of the creature’s dependence upon the Creator. Gödel does not introduce excess, but renders visible what was already structurally required for intelligibility. Incompleteness functions here as a metaphysical symbol: what logic shows formally, theology confesses ontologically. Every finite order—linguistic, physical, or moral—bears within it an unprovable truth that sustains it from beyond. This unprovable truth is not epistemic failure but ontological transparency: the sign that the finite rests upon the Infinite. Thus, theology may read the structure of incompleteness as the rational mirror of creation itself: the finite is consistent only because it is open to what it cannot contain.

DETERMINATIO

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Every finite and consistent system of truth is necessarily incomplete, revealing the structural openness of the finite to the Infinite.

2. The incompleteness of the finite is the formal analogue of creaturely dependence: what cannot prove itself must be grounded in that which simply is.

3. The Veritatis Factor Infinitus—the Infinite act of being and understanding—is the metaphysical condition for any finite truth.

4. Gödel’s result, rightly interpreted, signifies that truth transcends syntactic closure just as creation transcends itself toward the Creator.

5. Hence, the finite is not self-sufficient; its coherence is the shadow of an uncreated Light.

Therefore we conclude: Omne systema finitum in Veritate infinita subsistit, that Every finite system subsists in Infinite Truth.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXIV

If every finite order is incomplete and every truth depends upon an infinite ground, theology must now ask: what is the nature of that Infinite itself? Is the divine act of truth merely transcendent, or does it gather the finite into its own intelligibility?

Thus we proceed to Disputatio XXXIV: De Logōs Synagōgē: The Word as Gathering of Being, in which we inquire as to how the Infinite Truthmaker, the divine Logos, gathers all finite systems into unity, revealing that the world that worlds does so only because the Word that words holds it together.

Disputatio XXXII: De Ratione Quaerente et Spiritu Intelligentiae

On the Questioning Reason and the Spirit of Understanding

Quaeritur

Utrum ratio humana, in eo quod naturaliter quaerit sufficientem causam et universale intellectum, agat ex se ipsā, an vero haec inquisitio sit signum participationis Spiritus Intelligentiae, qui est ipsa actio intelligibilitatis divinae in creatura.

It is asked whether human reason, in its natural drive toward sufficient reason and universal intelligibility, acts from itself, or whether this very questioning is the sign of participation in the Spirit of Understanding—the divine act of intelligibility present within the creature.

Thesis

The finite intellect does not generate its own light but participates in the divine Light that enables understanding. Reason’s perpetual inquiry into causes and grounds, its ratio quaerens, is not autonomous curiosity, but it is instead the trace of the Spirit’s presence in the intellect. The desire for sufficient reason is itself evidence of participation in infinite reason (ratio infinita). Thus, Spiritus Intelligentiae is both the condition and the telos of all rational inquiry: every genuine question already presupposes the divine horizon that alone can answer it. Accordingly, by Spiritus Intelligentiae we mean not a psychological impulse nor an abstract principle, but the Holy Spirit as appropriated to intelligibility—the personal act by which divine understanding is participated in the finite intellect.

Locus Classicus

“In lumine tuo videbimus lumen.” — Psalm 36:9
(“In thy light shall we see light.”)

Augustine interprets this as meaning that all human understanding occurs within the illumination of divine intellect: “Quod intelligimus, in ipsa luce intelligimus quae est Deus.” (De Trinitate XII.15). 

Aquinas further develops this insight:“Lux intellectualis quae in nobis est nihil aliud est quam participatio lucis divinae.” (ST I.79.4). 

Hence, reason’s light is participatory, not self-originating; the Spirit of understanding is the act whereby finite intellect becomes luminous to itself and to the world.

Explicatio

The human mind is naturally a ratio quaerens; it is a being drawn toward the intelligible. It seeks not only facts but their sufficient reasons, not only order but the ground of order. Leibniz gave this drive formal expression in the principium rationis sufficientis: nothing exists without a reason why it is so and not otherwise.

Yet the principle, when pursued consistently, transcends the finite. This is so because every finite reason refers to another, and the chain cannot complete itself except in a necessary and infinite act of reason. Thus, the principle of sufficient reason functions as an analogia mentis: the finite intellect mirrors within itself the structure of the infinite intellect in which all reasons are one. What Leibniz articulates metaphysically, Kant restrains critically, and Gödel formalizes logically—but none abolish the intellect’s orientation toward the unconditioned; they merely show that it cannot be satisfied from within finitude.

Kant sought to delimit this movement within the bounds of possible experience, identifying the desire for total explanation with the transcendental illusion of reason. But theology reinterprets this “illusion” as the trace of the Spirit, the sign that finite reason is oriented by nature toward the infinite. Gödel showed that no consistent system can prove its own completeness. Gödel does not reveal the infinite itself, of course, but he reveals the impossibility of closure within finitude. Theology names what logic can only leave open: the finite intellect cannot rest in its own light but must open itself to the greater light in which all truths cohere.

Therefore, the unending search of reason is not futility but vocation; it is a created participation in the Spirit of understanding. The Spirit is the lumen superius that draws thought beyond itself toward the fullness of intelligibility: the Infinite in which the true and the real coincide.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Empiricism claims that reason’s questions arise from sensory experience; they are inductive extensions of perception, not signs of divine participation. Inquiry proceeds from curiosity, not grace.

Obj. II. Kantians argue that the drive toward sufficient reason is a regulative principle, useful for coherence but not constitutive of reality. It expresses the form of human reason, not any participation in a transcendent intellect.

Obj. III. Naturalism supposes that intellectual curiosity is an evolutionary advantage; the search for explanation enhances survival. Thus, no divine Spirit need be invoked to explain it.

Obj. IV. Existentialism asserts that the questioning drive signifies the absence of meaning, not its presence. It testifies to human finitude and anxiety, not to participation in divine reason.

Obj. V. Mysticism holds that to ascribe reason’s restlessness to the Spirit is to confuse knowledge with faith. The Spirit speaks in silence, not in reasoning; rational inquiry distracts from contemplation.

Responsiones

Ad I. Empiricism mistakes the occasion for the cause. While inquiry begins with experience, its form transcends experience; the very demand for universal explanation cannot be derived from particular sensations. It testifies to a light within the intellect that orders appearances toward being.

Ad II. Kant rightly names the demand for totality “regulative,” yet this very regulation presupposes an orientation toward the unconditioned. Theological reason reads this not as illusion but as vocation: the Spirit inclines the intellect toward its true completion in divine understanding.

Ad III. Natural explanation may describe the mechanism by which curiosity functions, but not why the cosmos is intelligible at all. The explanatory success of science itself presupposes that reality is structured according to reason, a structure theology identifies with the spiritus intelligentiae.

Ad IV. Existential anxiety is indeed the shadow of transcendence. The question persists because the answer is real. The question persists not because meaning is absent, but because it is excessive: finitude cannot contain what addresses it. Anxiety is not the proof of nothingness but the affective form of transcendence resisted. The void that drives thought forward is the echo of the infinite within the finite; it is the Spirit’s hidden prompting toward the ground of being.

Ad V. Contemplation and reason are not opposites but stages of the same participation. The Spirit who grants silence also animates inquiry; the one light illumines both mind and heart. Rational questioning, rightly ordered, is a form of praise.

Nota

The restlessness of reason is not an imperfection of intellect but its created likeness to the infinite intelligibility of God. Accordingly, the principle of sufficient reason is not a human invention but a vestige of the Spirit’s own act of understanding within the finite mind. Reason asks because it has already been addressed. Every question presupposes the divine Word that calls it into thought.

Hence, the structure of inquiry is itself participatory. The ratio quaerens is the Spirit reflecting upon itself within the creature, not by identity but by created participation, according to the measure of finite intellect.To reason is already to echo the divine dialogue in which knowing and being coincide. The mind’s drive toward completion—what Kant called "the transcendental subreption" and what Gödel formalized as incompleteness—is, theologically, the trace of the Spirit’s self-communication. In every genuine act of understanding, the finite intellect becomes translucent to the Infinite Light that grounds it.

Thus, questioning is not the negation of faith but its rational form; the open system of inquiry mirrors the openness of creation to its Creator. Reason’s incompleteness is grace made epistemic. This incompleteness is a formal sign that the Spirit of Understanding continues to speak within the human mind, drawing thought beyond itself toward the Truth that both conceives and fulfills it.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Human reason, as ratio quaerens, bears within itself an impulse toward sufficient explanation that cannot be satisfied within finitude.

2. This impulse is not self-generated but arises from the participation of the intellect in the divine light, in the Spiritus Intelligentiae who is both source and goal of all understanding.

3. The principle of sufficient reason is therefore a formal echo of the Spirit’s creative intelligibility: every reason points beyond itself to the infinite Reason that grounds all.

4. Finite systems, like finite intellects, remain incomplete; their very openness to completion reveals their participation in the infinite.

5. The restlessness of reason is thus not a defect but a sign of grace. It is the intellectus in via seeking its home in Intellectus aeternus.

Hence we conclude: Ratio quaerens est Spiritus seipsum desiderans.
The questioning reason is the Spirit desiring itself.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXIII

Having seen that every inquiry of reason presupposes the infinite act of understanding that grounds it, we turn now to the formal structure of that dependence. If every finite order is incomplete, what is the nature of the infinite truthmaker in which it finds completion? This question leads directly to the next disputation: XXXIII: De Systemate Incompleto et Veritatis Factore Infinito. Here the logical insight of Gödel becomes a theological axiom. The finite requires the infinite not only to be known, but to be true.

Disputatio XXXI: De Conceptuali Schematismo et Verbo Reali

On Conceptual Schematism and the Real Word

Quaeritur

Utrum conceptus humanus sit schema sufficiens ad apprehendendum divinam veritatem, an vero omne conceptum, ut finitum et intentionaliter clausum, indigeat participatione Verbi realis ut fiat verum de re et non tantum in mente.

It is asked whether the human concept is a sufficient schema for apprehending divine truth, or whether every concept, as finite and intentionally enclosed, requires participation in the Real Word in order to be true of reality and not merely within the mind.

Thesis

Concepts are forms of thought by which the intellect schematizes being. Yet the conceptual schema, as finite and discursive, does not contain the fullness of the real. Theological truth demands not only conceptual adequation but ontological participation. Therefore, every true theological concept must be conformed to, and fulfilled by, the Verbum reale, the Real Word that grounds both thought and being.

By Verbum reale we do not mean (a) the human spoken word, nor (b) a mental concept elevated by intensity, nor (c) a second object alongside concepts, but the subsisting act of intelligibility (Logos subsistens) in whom being and truth coincide, and by whose participation finite concepts are rendered true de re.

The Word is not merely the object of theology, but its constitutive cause: the act in which the conceptual becomes real. Hence, the intellect’s schemata are true only insofar as they are taken up and completed in the Real Word.

Locus Classicus

“In thy light shall we see light.” — Psalm 36:9

The Fathers interpreted this as a confession of the participatio intellectus divini—that the human mind sees truly only in the light of the divine. 

Athanasius writes: “The Word is the light that illumines every man; by participating in Him, the mind becomes mind indeed.” 

Aquinas echoes: “Intellectus noster non intelligit nisi per participationem lucis divini intellectus.” (ST I.79.4). 

Thus, conceptuality in theology is not autonomous schematization but participatory illumination.

Explicatio

Kant described human cognition as a synthesis of intuitions under concepts, governed by the transcendental schematism that orders appearances in time. In this view, knowledge arises from the spontaneous activity of the understanding, which imposes form upon the manifold of intuition.

But such a scheme, while sufficient for the phenomena, cannot reach the noumenon. The concept mediates but does not disclose being as it is. The structure of finite knowing is thus intentional, not ontological: it orders what appears to us, not what is.

For theology, this limitation is decisive. If the concept’s formality closes knowing within itself, no divine reality could ever be known; the Word would remain forever outside human reach. The only alternative is that the Word itself participates in the concept, making it not only a schema of thought but a vessel of real presence.

Theology does not claim a noumenal intuition of God, nor a discursive concept adequate to divine essence. Rather, it claims that the condition of intelligibility itself is personal and self-communicating. The intellect does not cross a boundary; it is inhabited by the light that makes boundaries intelligible at all.

This is the meaning of the Verbum reale: not merely the word spoken, but the Word that speaks through the human word, giving it truth and being. When theology utters, “God is love,” the conceptual structure of is and love does not capture God; it becomes true only when the Spirit gathers that utterance into participation with the Real Word, which is love.

Hence, theological schematism is pneumatic, not transcendental: it depends upon the Spirit’s act of conforming thought to reality. The intellect does not constitute its object but is constituted by the divine light that enables understanding.

The Real Word thus functions as the infinite horizon of intelligibility, the meta-logos within which conceptual forms are true. The human concept is an instrument, the Spirit the act of illumination, and the Logos the truthmaker of all thought.

Interlocutio cum Davidsone

Donald Davidson, in his celebrated essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974), denied the existence of any distinction between scheme and content. For him, there is no neutral reality to be “interpreted” through a scheme, nor any scheme-independent world. Language and world are one continuous web of belief. Thus truth consists in the internal coherence of that web, not in correspondence with something beyond it.

Davidson’s refusal of scheme–content dualism collapses the ontological distinction between act and articulation. By identifying truth with coherence within a web of belief, he treats intelligibility as immanent to linguistic practice rather than as an act that grants language its reach beyond itself.

Thus, the move that is designed to collapse relativism succeeds only at the cost of transcendence. By abolishing the space between scheme and content, Davidson inadvertently abolishes the possibility of logos as mediation. If there is no “beyond” of language, there can be no Word that enters into it. His monism of truth leaves no ontological interval through which the divine could speak.

The theological consequence is grave. The Incarnation presupposes exactly what Davidson denies: that there is a reality (res divina) which can enter into and transform the finite scheme of human discourse.
Without the possibility of a divine Word beyond our conceptual frame, theology dissolves into anthropology: its language is no longer participatory but self-referential.

Against Davidson, theology must affirm a transcendental asymmetry: there is both a word spoken by man and the Word that speaks man into being. The finite conceptual scheme is not abolished but gathered into the Infinite Logos. Theological realism thus restores what Davidson’s pragmatism erases: the ontological distance within which relation, revelation, and participation become possible.

For the Word that words does not stand outside discourse as a second world, but within it as its constituting act. In that act, scheme and content, concept and being, are reconciled, not by fusion but by participation.

Hence, theology agrees with Davidson that the dualism of scheme and content cannot stand as a rigid opposition, but it insists that their unity must be ontological, not linguistic. It must concern the unity of the Logos that gathers both thought and thing into truth.

Obiectiones

Obj. I. Kantians claim that concepts are the sole means by which the understanding orders experience. To claim access to reality beyond conceptual mediation is to violate the limits of reason and regress to dogmatic metaphysics.

Obj. II. In the phenomenological tradition, the phenomenon appears only within intentional correlation. “Real Word” as a cause of intelligibility is a metaphysical projection beyond the horizon of appearance.

Obj. III. Analytic thought assumes that concepts are semantic structures, that their truth depends on usage and reference, not on any “Real Word.” To posit a metaphysical truthmaker is unnecessary duplication of explanatory entities.

Obj. IV. Postmodern thought supposes that language produces the world it describes. There is no “Real Word” behind words; every word is its own world. Theological appeal to a transcendent Word reinstates metaphysics as domination.

Obj. V. Theological nominalism argues that God’s Word signifies by divine will, not by ontological participation. To assert that human concepts participate in the divine Word risks collapsing Creator and creature.

Responsiones

Ad I. Kant rightly limits the spontaneity of finite understanding, but his very limitation testifies to the reality that exceeds it. The incompleteness of conceptual schematism points to the act of being that grounds it. Theology affirms that this act is personal—the divine Logos—who enables finite thought to know without abolishing its limits.

Ad II. Phenomenology discloses intentionality but not its source. The appearing of phenomena presupposes a ground of appearance. The Verbum reale is not another phenomenon but the condition of manifestation itself—the “light in which all appearing appears.”

Ad III. Semantic structure explains the operation of meaning within discourse, not the reason that meaning itself exists. The “Real Word” names not an entity among meanings but the ontological act that makes meaning possible. Without a truthmaker transcending use, semantics floats without being.

Ad IV. If every word creates its own world, no world could gather the words into intelligibility. Yet meaning presupposes gathering (logos). The postmodern thesis thus refutes itself: the very claim that all is linguistic difference depends upon the unity of discourse, which is the act of the Real Word.

Ad V. Participation does not collapse the distinction of Creator and creature but secures it. The concept’s reality is derivative, not identical, with the divine Word. God remains transcendent as the source in which all signification finds its being. The human word is true not by essence but by grace. Participation here is neither univocal nor reciprocal. The concept participates in the Word as effect in cause, not as part in whole. The Word remains fully itself without the concept; the concept is nothing without the Word.

Nota

Conceptual formality without participation yields only the shadow of truth. The conceptus humanus orders appearances, but its schematism remains empty unless gathered into the act of the Verbum reale. Theological thought, therefore, cannot be confined to semantics; it is ontology in the mode of speech. When the Word becomes flesh, language itself becomes real, and signification is transfigured into presence.

The crisis of modern thought, from Kant’s transcendental limits to Davidson’s denial of scheme and content, rests upon the refusal to take  participation seriously. To restore the link between concept and reality is to rediscover the Logos as the living syntax of being. Every act of understanding that truly corresponds to what is, does so because the Word that words makes it so.

A distinction must be drawn between conceptus ut forma (the determinate intelligible structure grasped by the intellect) and conceptus ut actus (the intellect’s living participation in intelligibility). The former may remain merely intentional; the latter is true only insofar as it is actuated by the Real Word.

Hence, the conceptus is not the measure of truth but its vessel. Accordingly, meaning flows from the act that speaks through it. The Verbum reale does not destroy language but fulfills it. In every true judgment, finite reason is gathered into the infinite discourse of the Logos. Thus, theology’s task is not to transcend language but to let language become transparent to the One who, by speaking, makes all things real.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The human concept, as schema of the understanding, orders appearances but does not generate being.

2. Theological truth requires that this schema be taken up into the act of the Real Word—the divine Logos who is the principle of intelligibility itself.

3. The Spirit mediates this participation, illumining the intellect so that its concepts signify truly, not only performatively but ontologically.

4. Therefore, the conceptus is fulfilled only in participatio Verbi realis: the finite form of thought becomes true when it participates in the infinite act of knowing and being.

5. The Real Word is the bridge between syntax and semantics, between felicity and truth, between human discourse and divine reality.

Hence we conclude: Omnis conceptus verus est verbum participatum, that every true concept is a participated word. In the gathering of the Logos, conceptual schematism becomes revelation: the intellect is not merely the possessor of forms, but the hearer of the Word that makes being intelligible.

Transitus ad Disputationem XXXII

The participation of the finite concept in the Real Word reveals the intellect’s deeper longing for the Infinite Understanding. The very act of questioning becomes evidence of the Spirit who moves thought toward sufficiency. 

Thus we pass to Disputatio XXXII: De Ratione Quaerente et Spiritu Intelligentiae, where the eros of reason is interpreted as the trace of divine intelligibility within the creature.