Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Actus Divinus Ipsum Verum Efficiat

 On Constitutive Causation: Whether the Divine Act Makes Truth Itself

Quaeritur

Utrum divina actio non solum efficiat res esse, sed etiam efficiat verum esse; et utrum veritas theologiae consistat formaliter in actu Logos constituente ipsum ordinem entis, ita ut “truth through the Logos” sit constitutiva veritas, non tantum correspondentia.

Whether the divine act not only brings things into being but also brings truths into being, and whether theological truth formally consists in the Logos’ constitutive act that establishes the very order of being—so that “truth through the Logos” is constitutive truth, not mere correspondence.

Thesis 

Divine action is constitutive of theological truth. The Logos does not merely correspond to an independently existing world, but He makes the world, and thereby makes the truth about the world. Thus, theological truth is not simply descriptive adequation but constitutive adequation: truth obtains because the Logos acts. The Holy Spirit effects the union between statement and reality, such that the felicity of theological language and the ontological grounding of its truth coincide.

Therefore, Truth = Divine Constitutive Act + Spirit-Authorized Assertion. Metaphysically, God makes truth by making being, and the Spirit binds word to being. In short: in theology, truth is not first something we discover about reality, but something God constitutes by acting.

Locus Classicus

1. John 1:3 — πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο

πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν.
“All things came to be through Him, and without Him not one thing came to be.”

Creation is not merely production of being but production of the order of being. Thus the Logos is not a truth-teller but a truth-maker: all truths about creatures depend on the act that constitutes them.

2. Hebrews 1:3 — φέρων τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως

“He upholds all things by the word of His power.”

The ongoing reality and truth of all things is constituted by the Logos’ sustaining act. Verum is continually performed by the divine act.

3. Augustine, De Trinitate XV.2

Veritas est ipse Deus in quo nihil mutabile, nihil mendax.
“Truth is God Himself, in whom there is nothing changeable or false.”

Truth is identical with God’s actus essendi. Thus, creaturely truths are true by participation in divine truth.

4. Athanasius, Contra Gentes 41

ὁ Λόγος τὸ εἶναι τοῖς οὖσι δίδωσιν.
“The Word gives being to the things that are.”

To give being is to give truth conditions. The Logos constitutes essence and therefore constitutes truth.

5. Martin Luther, WA 40/III, 342

Deus dicendo facit.
“God, by speaking, makes.”

Luther’s ontology of the Word grounds a strong truthmaker principle and thus divine speech is not annotation but creation.

Explicatio

While in XLVIII we distinguished internal and external truth, in XLIX we argued that external truth requires truthmakers, which are hyperintensional divine acts. Now we articulate the deeper principle: The truthmaker for any theological proposition is the Logos’ constitutive causation.

1. Constitutive vs. Efficient Causation

While classical efficient causation claims that A causes B, theological constitutive causation declares that A is the very ground of B’s existence, identity, order, and truth. Efficient causation explains why a candle lights the room; constitutive causation explains why there is such a thing as light, order, and intelligibility at all. Theology claims God does the latter.

Since the Logos constitutes 1) the being of things, 2) the structure of their relations, 3) the intelligibility through which truths are possible, and 4) the order that statements answer to, divine causation is thus truth-making, not merely world-making.

2. Why Theology Requires Constitutive Causation

1. Theology’s claims depend on the identity of God’s actions, not merely on worldly states of affairs.

2. Only constitutive causation can explain why distinct divine acts yield distinct truths.

3. The Spirit’s role in felicity (XLVIII) requires grounding in ontological acts, not merely representation.

4. The incarnation shows that God’s act is the truthmaker of salvation (John 1:14).

3. Constitutive Truth vs. Correspondence

Correspondence is derivative while constitutive causation is primary. This entails both that statement S is true because God has acted such that the world corresponds to S, and that the “correspondence” is a manifestation of constitutive causation, not its origin. Hence theology’s fundamental truth relation is:

Λ ⊨* T

The Logos constitutively satisfies T.

Objectiones

Ob I: According to Thomistic epistemical realism -- "Truth is adequation alone” - truth resides in the intellect, and adequation requires only that statements match being, not that being be caused by God for that purpose.

Ob II:  Classical Analytic Metaphysics claims that truths supervene on the distribution of properties across the world. Thus, no hyperintensional divine acts are needed.

Ob III: Neo-Barthian theology declares that God reveals truth in Christ but does not ontologically ground all truths through constitutive act.

Ob IV: Process theology argues that divine causation is only persuasive and thus not constitutive.  Accordingly, truths arise cooperatively through divine-creaturely synergy.

Ob V: Postliberal Linguistic Theology tells us that theological truth is intra-textual, and thus it concerns the shape of Christian discourse, not metaphysical grounding.

Responsiones

Ad I:  Adequation requires a ground of being. Since God constitutes being, He constitutes the order in which adequation is possible. Thus constitutive causation underwrites, not replaces, adequation.

Ad II: Supervenience explains dependence but not grounding. Truth requires a because—a reason for being thus. Divine constitutive act supplies this grounding, not merely the extensional pattern.

Ad III: Revelation is not separable from ontology because to reveal the Father, the Son must be eternally begotten, and thus He must be the primal constitutive act. Revelation presupposes ontology, not vice versa.

Ad IV: Persuasion cannot alone constitute truth. Theology requires more. Indeed, the object of faith must be ontologically able to make truths true. Constitutive causation is required for realism.

Ad V: Grammar governs internal truth (felicity), but external truth requires a real God who grounds the being spoken of. Without constitutive causation, theology collapses into performance without ontology.

Nota

Constitutive causation solves the problem raised in XLVIII–XLIX. Accordingly, internal truth as Spirit-authorized assertion and External truth as Logos-constituted reality coincide because the Spirit unites the word to the act by which the Logos grounds truth.

Thus theological truth is neither sheer correspondence, sheer grammar, nor sheer experience, but it is rather participation in the constitutive act of the Logos.

Determinatio

We determine:

1. Truth in theology is grounded in the Logos’ constitutive act, which gives being, order, and intelligibility.

2. Constitutive causation is hyperintensional, because divine acts differ in internal form, not merely in effect.

3. Correspondence is a derivative effect of constitutive causation, not its replacement.

4. The Spirit is the mediating principle, uniting linguistic felicity with ontological grounding.

5. Christ is the paradigm of constitutive truth, for in Him the truthmaker and truth coincide.

Thus: Theology speaks truly because God makes truth, and God makes truth because He is the One who makes being.

Transitus ad Disputationem LI

Having established that the Logos constitutes truth through constitutive causation, we now proceed to the next question: How does the constitutive act of the Logos relate to the real presence of the Word in revelation, sacrament, and ecclesial proclamation? For if truth is constituted by divine act, then the presence of the Logos is the mode by which truth becomes accessible to creatures.

Thus we move to: Disputatio LI: De Verbo Realiter Praesente: Utrum Praesentia Logi Sit Conditio Omnis Veritatis Revelatae where we shall examine how constitutive causation becomes manifest presence, binding ontology to revelation.

Disputatio XLIX De Veritate Facienda: De Truthmakeribus et Hyperintensionalitate Theologica

 On the Making of Truth: Truthmakers and Theological Hyperintensionality

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologiae requirat veritatem facientia (truthmakers) quae non tantum determinent extensionem enuntiationum sed ipsam rationem, modum, et causam secundum quam enuntiationes theologicae verae sunt; et utrum haec veritatem facientia sint hyperintensionalia, id est, finioris resolutionis quam illa quae per modum possibilitatis vel extensionis explicari possunt.

Whether the truth of theology requires truthmakers that determine not only the extension of theological claims but the very reason, manner, and cause by which such claims are true; and whether these truthmakers must be hyperintensional, that is, finer-grained than any account reducible to modal or extensional equivalence.

Thesis

In theological discourse, two claims may share an extension yet differ in truth because Spiritus Sanctus determines felicity and actus Dei determines truth. Thus truthmakers in theology must be more fine-grained than possible-world semantics or classical extensional identities.

Locus Classicus

1. “Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο” — John 1:14

Ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

This is a paradigmatic case of truthmaking: the claim “God is with us” is true because God has acted, not because of a description of the world’s extension. No possible world analysis captures the ontological fact that God has joined Himself to flesh. The truthmaker is the very event of incarnation, not a set of worldly facts.

2. Fiat lux. Et facta est lux. — Genesis 1:3

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר‎
“God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”

Here divine speaking is truthmaking: verbum is res. The statement “light exists” is true because of a specific divine act. Not all causes producing the same extension could be the truthmaker of this theological claim.

3. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate 1.1

Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.

But in theology, the adequation is not passive comparison; it is acheived through divine causation: adaequatio fit per actum Dei constituens ipsum esse rei.

4. Cyril of Alexandria, In Joannis 1.9

Ὁ λόγος ἀληθεύει τὰ ῥητὰ ποιῶν.
“The Word makes true what is spoken.”

A direct witness to theological truthmaking.

Explicatio

While XLVIII distinguished internal truth (felicity of faith’s language) and external truth (adequation to divine reality), XLIX specifies the metaphysical principle by which external truth occurs, that is, that truth is made true by divine acts.

Why Theological Truth Requires Truthmakers

In theology:

1. A proposition’s extension does not fix its truth.

   • “God forgives” and “God elects” may apply to the same set of saved persons yet differ profoundly in reality.

2. The causal grounding matters:

   • Forgiveness is a specific act of mercy, not merely an outcome.

3. The mode of divine presence matters:

   • Christ’s Eucharistic presence is not interchangeable with omnipresence, though extensionally both may involve presence.

4. The source of felicity matters:

   • Statements authorized by the Spirit differ even if extensionally identical with statements not authorized.

This yields a hyperintensional truth-structure.

Hyperintensionality Explained

A context is hyperintensional when:

• substitution of co-referential terms changes truth,

• substitution of necessarily equivalent propositions changes truth,

• grounding, not just extension, determines truth.

Theology is hyperintensional because:

1. Divine acts differ in their inner form, not only in outcome.

2. Participation is specific and non-interchangeable 

3. Felicity (Spirit-authorization) cannot be replaced by mere semantic equivalence.

4. Truth is identical with being only in God, not creatures.

5. Revelation determines the mode of truth, not merely the result.

Thus theology inevitably operates at a finer semantic grain than any modal logic.

For example, “Christ is present” is not made true in the same way by omnipresence and by Eucharistic presence, even if no difference in extension can be specified.

Objectiones

Ob I. Truthmaking violates divine simplicity by treating divine acts as distinct truthmakers.

Ob II. Hyperintensionality undermines classical semantics and threatens coherence. Truth should depend only on the world, not on modes of presentation.

Ob III. Scripture itself often speaks extensionally: “Your faith has saved you.” Why therefore introduce metaphysical machinery alien to the biblical text?

Ob IV. If truth requires divine acts as truthmakers, we risk collapsing into occasionalism or voluntarism.

Ob V. Truthmaking presumes metaphysical realism incompatible with postliberal grammar models of theology.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine simplicity is not violated, for the truthmaker is God as acting, not “a part” of God. The distinction is one of formal expression, not ontological composition.

Ad II. Hyperintensionality does not threaten coherence, but rather it protects the specificity of divine revelation. Theology cannot collapse distinct divine acts into one extension without losing referential integrity.

Ad III. Scripture’s economy of language does not negate metaphysics. The biblical claim is hyperintensional in that faith saves because it unites one to Christ, not because of abstract extension.

Ad IV. Truthmaking is not voluntarism, for it locates necessity in God’s being, not in arbitrary divine willing, and therefore preserves secondary causality at the creaturely level. Accordingly, while voluntarism posits an arbitrary divine decree,  truthmaking anchors truth in God’s eternal act.

Ad V. Grammar models (Lindbeck) explain internal felicity but not external reality. Truthmakers bridge that gap without collapsing theology into metaphysics or vice versa.

Nota

Truth in theology cannot be reduced to any of these:

• correspondence

• coherence

• pragmatic usefulness

• communal grammar

• modal possibility

This is the case because none of these capture the specificity of divine causation. Thus, Truth = Felicity + Divine Fact-making. The Spirit authorizes what the Father and Son accomplish. This, however, requires a semantics richer than extension or modality; it requires a hyperintensional semantics grounded in ontological participation.

Determinatio

We determine that:

1. Theological propositions require truthmakers in the form of divine acts, not merely worldly facts.

2. Truthmakers in theology are hyperintensional, because divine actions differ not only in effect but in internal form.

3. The Spirit mediates truth, ensuring that felicity (internal truth) and divine causation (external truth) coincide.

4. Theology requires a semantics beyond the modal, for God cannot be captured extensionally.

5. Christ Himself is the supreme truthmaker, for in Him every divine act is both form and fulfillment.

Transitus ad Disputationem L: De Causatione Constitutiva

Having shown that divine acts are truthmakers and that theology is hyperintensional, we now ask how such truthmaking occurs in actu, such that a theological statement becomes true through God.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio L: De Causatione Constitutiva: Utrum Divina Actio Ipsum Verum Efficiat where we inquire as to whether the Logos not only makes truths true but constitutes the very ontology in which theological truth obtains.

Disputatio XLVIII: De Veritate per Logon

On Truth Through the Logos

Quaeritur

Utrum veritas theologica consistat in relatione satisfactionis inter propositionem et mundum, an potius in actu interpretativo Logi, per quem mundus et significatio simul constituuntur.

Whether theological truth consists in a relation of satisfaction between proposition and world, or rather in the interpretive act of the Logos, through which both world and meaning are jointly constituted.

Thesis

Truth in theology is not exhausted by the model-theoretic relation M ⊨ T, but is grounded in the constitutive act of the divine Word, denoted Λ ⊨* Tₜ, by which the Logos brings being and meaning into coincidence. Theological truth is thus truth through the Logos.*

Locus Classicus

Πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν.
“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” — Ioannes 1:3

ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ... τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται· καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων, καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν.
“For in him all things were created ... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossenses 1:16–17

Verbum quod loquitur Pater, non sonus est caducus, sed ipsa Veritas gignens intellegentiam. — Augustinus, De Trinitate XV.11.20
“The Word which the Father speaks is not a transient sound, but the very Truth begetting understanding.”

Explicatio

1. Formal Background. In classical model theory, M ⊨ T states that the formula T holds in the model M = ⟨D, I⟩, where D is a domain of discourse and I an interpretation function. The structure of meaning is therefore parasitic upon a prior ontology. The world-as-model is presupposed.

2. Theological Critique. Theological assertions, however, subvert this presupposition. They claim that the world itself—the domain D and its intelligible structure I—arises from the Logos. Theology cannot therefore merely use a model, but it must rather account for the ontological act by which any model becomes possible. The satisfaction relation becomes reflexive: truth depends on the act that grants both being and meaning.

3. Constitutive Satisfaction. To mark this difference, we introduce a higher-order satisfaction relation:

   $$\mathrm{<b><br></b>}$$

   where Λ (the Logos) is not a model but a principium interpretationis. The truth of Tₜ lies not in correspondence with a world but in participation in the act through which the world and its intelligibility are conjoined. Accordingly, the Logos does not describe reality, but rather donates it.

4. Ontological Implication. Theological truth is thus a communion of act and meaning: adaequatio per donationem, not per representationem. The created intellect is invited into this divine self-interpretation, so that knowing becomes a form of being-known. Here the traditional formula veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei unfolds into its deeper ground: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et Verbi.

Objectiones

Obj. 1 If truth depends upon divine interpretation, theology collapses into voluntarism or fideism: what is true becomes true only by divine decree.

Obj. II. To say “the Logos makes propositions true” seems circular, since the truth of “Logos” itself depends upon the very act being defined.

Obj. III.  Classical model theory already includes interpretation functions; why invoke an additional divine interpreter?

Responsiones

Ad I. The theological claim is not that propositions are true because God declares them, but that there could be propositions and truth at all only because God gives being and meaning together. This is not fideism but a participatory metaphysical realism intensified: divine act is the ontological root of correspondence itself.

Ad II. The circularity is transcendental, not vicious. Every finite act of understanding presupposes the light by which it sees. To name the Logos as source of intelligibility is not to argue in a circle but to acknowledge the ontological reflexivity of reason: in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum (John 1:4).

Ad III. Model theory presupposes a stable domain and interpretive mapping; it does not explain their being. The theological turn to Λ names the meta-ontological ground of this stability. The Logos is not an extra semantic function but the act that makes semantics possible.

Nota

The movement from M ⊨ T to Λ ⊨* Tₜ marks theology’s crossing from formal logic to metaphysical participation. While in logical satisfaction the world precedes the word, in constitutive satisfaction the Word precedes the world. Herein lies the theological reversal: esse is the effect of dicere, being is the echo of divine speech.

Determinatio

1. The Logos as Transcendental Interpreter. All truth presupposes the Logos as the ontological condition of intelligibility.

2. From Correspondence to Communion. Theological truth is not mere adequation but participation in the act of divine signification.

3. Model Theory as Theological Grammar. Formal semantics retains analytic utility only when transposed into this participatory horizon.

4. Truth Through the Logos. The theological analogue of model-theoretic satisfaction is the creative utterance by which being and meaning are given together.

Transitus ad Disputatio XLVIIIa

If truth is grounded in the constitutive act of the Logos—if being and meaning are given together through the divine Word—then truth cannot remain an abstract relation between proposition and world. It must manifest as a differentiation within intelligibility itself. The Logos does not merely make statements true; He orders the very ways in which reality can be intelligible.

Yet intelligibility is not monolithic. The same Logos through whom all things are made gives reality under distinct modes of grounding: one ordered by necessity and closure, the other by gift and openness. These modes are not products of human reflection, conscience, or linguistic convention. They precede all subjectivity and make possible the very experience of obligation, failure, promise, and freedom.

The classical Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel must therefore be reconsidered at this deeper level. If truth is through the Logos, then Law and Gospel are not merely words spoken about reality or to the conscience, but structures by which reality itself is intelligible. Law names intelligibility grounded in itself; Gospel names intelligibility grounded in another. Their distinction is ontological before it is existential, and theological before it is psychological.

Accordingly, we must now ask whether Law and Gospel belong to the very fabric of intelligibility itself, and whether their unity is found not in the subject but in the Logos who holds necessity and contingency together without confusion.

Thus we proceed to Disputatio XLVIIIa: De Lege et Evangelio ut Structuris Intelligibilitatis, wherein it shall be shown that Law and Gospel are not strategies of discourse nor states of consciousness, but real structures of intelligibility grounded in the Logos and enacted through the Spirit.

Disputatio XLVII: De Contingentia Gratiae et Donatione Spiritus

On the Contingency of Grace and the Giving of the Spirit

Quaeritur

Utrum gratia, quae ex necessitate amoris divini oritur, contingenter tamen conferatur, et quomodo huiusmodi contingens donum in ordine Spiritus collocetur.

Whether grace, though proceeding from the necessity of divine love, is nevertheless bestowed contingently, and how such a contingent gift is ordered within the work of the Spirit.

Thesis

Since God is love, Grace arises necessarily from the divine nature. However, since creatures are finite and free, this grace is received contingently. The contingency of grace does not contradict divine necessity but manifests it in temporal form: necessitas amoris becomes contingentia doni. The Holy Spirit mediates this transition, translating eternal plenitude into temporal gift. Accordingly, divine necessity may appear as freedom and love as grace.

Locus Classicus

Ὁ ἄνεμος πνεῖ ὅπου θέλει, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδας πόθεν ἔρχεται καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγει· οὕτως ἐστὶ πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ Πνεύματος.

— Ἰωάννης 3:8

“The wind blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” — John 3:8

Here Christ compares the Spirit’s operation to a wind that moves freely yet lawfully: ubi vult spirat. Grace thus reveals itself as contingent in its temporal bestowal though grounded in divine necessity. The Spirit acts neither by whim nor by determinism, but according to the wise freedom of love.

“Gratia Dei non est secundum debitum, sed secundum libertatem voluntatis eius.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I–II, q.112, a.1

“The grace of God is not given according to debt, but according to the freedom of His will.” — ST I–II, q.112, a.1

Aquinas locates grace between necessity and arbitrariness. God necessarily wills the good, yet the particular mode of His giving remains free. Grace manifests divine necessity under the aspect of freedom: necessitas amoris in libertate donationis.

“Ἡ χάρις ἐστὶν ἐνέργεια τοῦ Θεοῦ σωτήριος, ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς διὰ τοῦ Υἱοῦ ἐν Πνεύματι Ἁγίῳ προϊοῦσα.”

— Γρηγόριος Νύσσης, In Canticum Canticorum Hom. XIII

“Grace is the saving energy of God, proceeding from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.” — Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Song of Songs XIII

Gregory presents grace as the dynamic operation (energeia) of the Triune life itself, as an eternal act proceeding from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. Its contingency in time corresponds to its procession in eternity. What is eternal in God appears as temporal gift to creatures.

“Haec est summa et potissima fides Christianorum: credere Deum esse misericordem, non ex debito, non propter merita nostra, sed ex mera voluntate et gratuita bonitate.”

— Martin Luther, De Servo Arbitrio (WA 18, 719)

“This is the sum and substance of the Christian faith: to believe that God is merciful—not from obligation, nor because of our merits, but from His sheer will and gratuitous goodness.” — The Bondage of the Will

For Luther, the contingency of grace is the revelation of divine freedom, not its limitation. God acts freely because He is bound only to His own goodness. Grace is not a response to human disposition but the overflow of divine voluntas misericordiae. What seems contingent to us is the historical manifestation of a love that is, in God, eternal and necessary.

In these witnesses—the Gospel, Aquinas, Gregory, and Luther—the same paradox of grace is illuminated from differing angles. The Spirit’s freedom (ubi vult spirat), Aquinas’s libertas donationis, Gregory’s ἐνέργεια σωτήριος, and Luther’s mera voluntas et gratuita bonitas all converge upon one truth: that grace is both free and faithful, contingent in appearance yet necessary in source.

The contingency of grace thus safeguards the transcendence of divine love. Were grace necessary in its distribution, God’s will would be bound by external law; were it arbitrary, His goodness would cease to be intelligible. In reality, divine necessity and freedom coincide: Deus necessario et libere amat. The Spirit manifests this coincidence by translating eternal love into temporal acts of mercy, so that what is necessary in God may become contingent for us—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.

Explicatio

What was named ontologically as possibility in the preceding disputation here appears personally and economically as the work of the Holy Spirit. In the metaphysical structure developed in the preceding disputation, possibility mediates necessity and contingency. Here, that mediation takes personal and salvific form. Grace is the realization of divine possibility within time—the act whereby God’s eternal necessity expresses itself as temporal mercy.

Divine necessity, rightly understood, is not mechanical determination but the perfect consistency of love with itself. Because God is necessarily good, He necessarily wills to communicate His goodness. Yet the form of this communication is not determined by nature but by freedom. Hence, grace is necessary quoad Deum, contingent quoad creaturam.

This dual aspect explains the paradox of salvation: that it is both divinely willed from eternity and freely bestowed in time. The contingency of grace does not imply arbitrariness but the fittingness (convenientia) of divine wisdom to the diverse conditions of creatures. In the order of the Spirit, grace assumes contingency as its very mode—grace is not an exception to divine order but its most intimate manifestation.

The Spirit, therefore, is the person of contingency in God: not in the sense of mutability, but as the openness of divine love to new relations. As the Father is the source and the Son the expression, the Spirit is the donation—the actuality of possibility, the temporalization of the eternal.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Necessitarianism claims that if grace flows necessarily from the divine nature, then no act of God could fail to bestow it. The contingency of grace would be illusory, for divine will would coincide with natural necessity.

Ob. II.  Libertarianism holds that if grace is contingent, then it is arbitrary; divine freedom becomes indistinguishable from caprice, and God’s constancy of love is undermined.

Ob. III. Pelegianism argues that if grace is contingent in its bestowal, then human cooperation can determine its reception. The gift becomes dependent on creaturely conditions rather than divine initiative.

Ob. IV. Modern Determinism supposes that contingency is merely epistemic, a function of our ignorance. From the standpoint of divine omniscience, grace is neither free nor contingent, but eternally fixed in a necessary decree.

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine necessity concerns the actus amoris, not the modus doni. God necessarily loves, but the way in which this love is communicated remains free. The distinction between essence and economy safeguards both necessity and contingency without contradiction.

Ad II. Divine freedom is not indeterminacy but superabundant self-determination. Grace is contingent not because it lacks reason but because its reason lies beyond necessity: ratio doni est bonitas donantis, not the need of the recipient.

Ad III. Human cooperation does not cause grace but manifests it. The contingency of grace includes the contingency of secondary causes; God ordains human response as the created medium through which His free gift becomes visible.

Ad IV. The contingency of grace is ontological, not merely epistemic. From the divine perspective, the act is necessary; from the creaturely perspective, it is free and unforeseen. The one act of God appears under two modalities, necessity and contingency, according to the order of participation.

Nota

Grace is the contingentia caritatis: the form in which divine love enters time. It is the historical mode of that which is metaphysically eternal. The contingency of grace is thus not an imperfection but its splendor—the glory of divine freedom refracted through the prism of created finitude.

The Spirit is the agent of this refracting. As light passing through crystal diversifies without division, so the Spirit distributes grace “as He wills” (1 Cor. 12:11), revealing the inexhaustible creativity of divine necessity. In every contingent act of grace, eternity touches time anew.

Determinatio

1. Grace proceeds necessarily from the divine essence: God, being Love itself (□G → □L), cannot but communicate Himself; the necessity of grace is identical with the necessity of divine self-diffusion.

2. The manifestation of grace is contingent: although grace proceeds necessarily in God, its historical and personal appearance (◊Gr ∧ ¬□Gr) depends upon the receptivity of creatures and the divine will’s fitting adaptation to them.

3. The Holy Spirit mediates between necessity and contingency: in the Spirit, the unchanging love of God becomes freely given gift (□L → ◊Gr), so that divine necessity is expressed as temporal generosity without ceasing to be eternal.

4. Contingency in grace is not defect but plenitude: it signifies not imperfection but the overflow of infinite love into finite form—the mode by which immutability makes the new possible.

5. In Christ the logic of grace is fulfilled: the eternally necessary Son (□F) becomes contingently incarnate (◊F), and through this union the necessity of love and the freedom of gift coincide.

6. Thus, the contingency of grace reveals divine rationality as donation: grace is intelligibility-in-gift, the rational outpouring of necessary love through the Spirit into the ever-new contingencies of creation.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVIII: De Fine Creationis et Ordine Amoris

The mystery of grace leads inevitably to the mystery of order. For every gift implies an orientation, and every donation seeks its end. If grace is the contingent manifestation of divine love, then creation itself must be ordered toward love as its final cause.

The next disputation therefore asks how this ordo amoris—the harmony between divine necessity, created freedom, and ultimate purpose—constitutes the final intelligibility of all things. We turn from the contingency of grace to the teleology of love, from donum to finis.

Let us transition then to Disputationem XLVIII: De Fine Creationis et Ordine Amoris, in which we shall demonstrate that love, which is necessary in God and contingent in grace, also pertains to the universal end through which everything returns in the unity of the Spirit. 

Disputatio XLVI: De Possibilitate ut Medio inter Necessarium et Contingens

On Possibility as the Ontological Mean between Necessity and Contingency

Quaeritur

Utrum possibilitas sit conditio ontologica intelligibilitatis ipsius, qua ens vel sit per se intelligibile et necessarium, vel sit intelligibile per aliud et contingens; et utrum sine tali possibilitate neque necessitas neque contingentia intelligi possint.

Whether possibility is the ontological condition of intelligibility itself, by virtue of which a being is either intelligible in itself and necessary, or intelligible through another and contingent; and whether without such possibility neither necessity nor contingency can be intelligible at all.

Thesis

Possibility is not a logical operator nor a deficient mode of being, but the ontological openness of intelligibility itself. Necessity names being whose intelligible ground is wholly internal to itself.
Contingency names being whose intelligible ground lies in another and is received as gift. Possibility is that by virtue of which intelligibility can be either self-grounding or gift-grounded at all.
In God, necessity and possibility coincide without tension; in creatures, possibility appears as the condition of contingent reception.

Locus Classicus

Quia apud Deum omnia possibilia sunt. — Matthaeus 19:26
“For with God all things are possible.”

Δύναμις ἐστὶν ἀρχὴ μεταβολῆς ἐν ἄλλῳ ἢ καθ᾽ ἕτερον. — Aristotle, Metaphysica Θ, 1046a10
“Power is the principle of change in another, or in the same insofar as it is other.”

Omne possibile habet veritatem in Deo sicut in primo possibili. — Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q.14, a.9 ad 3
“Every possible has its truth in God as in the first possibility.”

Explicatio

Intelligibility here names not epistemic accessibility nor semantic coherence, but the ontological ground by virtue of which a being is what it is and is determinately intelligible as such. Necessity and contingency are often introduced as opposed modal statuses: what cannot be otherwise versus what might have been otherwise. Such descriptions are formally correct but ontologically superficial. They describe how propositions behave under modal operators, not what must be true of being itself for such distinctions to be meaningful.

This disputation proceeds at a deeper level. It asks how necessity and contingency are grounded in intelligibility.

A being is necessary insofar as the intelligibility of what it is is wholly internal to itself. Such a being does not depend upon another either for its being or for its being intelligible as what it is. Its act of being is self-identical and self-grounding. Necessity, so understood, is not brute inevitability but ontological sufficiency of intelligibility.

A being is contingent not because it is incomplete or only partially actual, but because the intelligibility of what it is does not reside wholly within itself. A contingent being is fully actual. What it lacks is not being, but self-grounding intelligibility. Its intelligible ground lies in another. Contingency therefore names not deficiency but donation. To be contingent is to be intelligible as gift.

Necessity and contingency thus differ not by degree of actuality but by the location of their intelligible ground. One is intelligible per se; the other per aliud.

Yet this distinction itself presupposes a deeper condition. For intelligibility to be either self-grounded or gift-grounded, intelligibility must not be closed upon itself. There must be something by virtue of which intelligibility is open to grounding without being exhausted by any particular grounding. This condition is what we name possibility.

Possibility here is not unrealized potential, nor a lack awaiting fulfillment, nor a merely logical consistency condition. It is not a shadowy intermediate realm between nothing and being. Nor is it identical with Aristotelian potentiality understood as ordered toward act as its completion. Rather, possibility names the ontological openness of intelligibility itself: the fact that intelligibility, even when fully actual, is not exhausted by self-identity alone.

In necessary being, this openness is not indeterminacy. It is the non-exhaustive character of actuality itself. Necessary being is wholly intelligible in itself, yet its intelligibility does not close upon itself in sterile self-containment. It includes within itself the condition for intelligibility beyond itself without requiring such intelligibility to be realized. In this sense, necessity and possibility coincide in God, not because God is incomplete, but because divine actuality is not consumptive of intelligibility.

In contingent beings, this same ontological openness appears under the form of reception. What in God is self-grounded openness appears in creatures as dependence. The contingent does not generate its own intelligibility; it receives it. Yet such reception would be unintelligible unless intelligibility were already open to donation. Contingency therefore presupposes real possibility.

Possibility is thus not a third ontological category alongside necessity and contingency. It is the condition under which intelligibility can be either self-grounded or gift-grounded at all. It is prior not temporally, but intelligibly. Without it, necessity would collapse into closed self-identity and contingency into brute facticity.

Bridging Clarification

This account must be distinguished from both modal logic and classical potentiality. Modal systems presuppose a domain of intelligibility within which necessity and possibility can be formally tracked. They do not explain the ontological openness that makes such tracking meaningful. Likewise, potentiality conceived as a lack ordered toward completion cannot account for creation, freedom, or grace without collapsing contingency into hidden necessity.

The possibility articulated here is neither a formal operator nor an incomplete state of being. It is intelligibility considered precisely as non-exhaustive and non-algorithmic: real, grounded, and open to otherness without compulsion.

Objectiones

Ob. I. Possibility pertains only to cognition, not to being itself. It names the agreement of concepts with conditions of experience and cannot ground necessity or contingency ontologically.

Ob. II. If God is necessary, then all that proceeds from God proceeds necessarily. Possibility therefore names only ignorance of necessity.

Ob. III. Human existence is defined by projected possibility. Possibility is grounded in freedom, not in divine intelligibility.

Ob. IV. If all possibilities are real, then contingency dissolves into a plurality of equally actual worlds.

Responsiones

Ad I. Epistemic possibility presupposes ontological intelligibility. Conditions of experience are intelligible only because intelligibility is real prior to cognition.

Ad II. Divine necessity is not coercive but communicative. To deny real possibility is to deny creation.

Ad III. Existential projection presupposes an ontological horizon of intelligibility not generated by the subject.

Ad IV. Possibilities are real as intelligible grounds in God, not as parallel actualities.

Nota

The ontology of possibility articulated here is the condition for judgment itself. Rules do not determine their own applicability, and formal systems do not certify their own adequacy. Judgment requires intelligibility that is open without being subjective.

Possibility is therefore the ontological correlate of teleo-space: the real, non-algorithmic openness by which standards can be articulated, rules assessed, and forms evaluated as successful or unsuccessful. Without such possibility, intelligibility would either be mechanized or subjectivized.

Possibility is thus not optional. It is the condition under which intelligibility can ground normativity without coercion and freedom without arbitrariness.

Determinatio

1. Possibility is the ontological condition of intelligibility itself.
2. Necessity names intelligibility wholly grounded in itself.
3. Contingency names intelligibility grounded in another and received as gift.
4. Possibility is that by virtue of which intelligibility can be either self-grounding or gift-grounding at all.
5. It is non-algorithmic, non-coercive, and real.
6. Therefore, possibility is the ontological mean between necessity and contingency, not as a third thing, but as the condition under which both are intelligible.

Theologically, this possibility corresponds to the Logos as the ground of intelligibility in which all things are intelligible before they are actual.

Transitus ad Disputationem XLVII

If intelligibility is open without compulsion, then gift is possible without necessity and freedom without arbitrariness. What metaphysics discerns as ontological possibility, theology encounters as grace.

For if grace proceeds from the necessary goodness of God, yet is received as undeserved and contingent, then grace must be grounded in that openness of intelligibility by which necessity gives without compelling and contingency receives without claim.

Thus we proceed to ask whether grace, though rooted in divine necessity, manifests itself as a contingent gift—ut amor necessarius Dei contingenter salvet.