We define two notions for intuitionistic predicate logic: that of a submodel of a Kripke model, and that of a universal sentence. We then prove a corresponding preservation theorem. If a Kripke model is viewed as a functor from a small category to the category of all classical models with (homo)morphisms between them, then we define a submodel of a Kripke model to be a restriction of the original Kripke model to a subcategory of its domain, where every node in the subcategory is mapped to a classical submodel of the corresponding classical model in the range of the original Kripke model. We call a sentence universal if it is built inductively from atoms (including and ⊥) using ∧, ∨, ∀, and →, with the restriction that antecedents of → must be atomic. We prove that an intuitionistic theory is axiomatized by universal sentences if and only if it is preserved under Kripke submodels. We also prove the following analogue of a classical model-consistency theorem: The universal fragment of a theory Γ is contained in the universal fragment of a theory ∆ if and only if every rooted Kripke model of ∆ is strongly equivalent to a submodel of a rooted Kripke model of Γ. Our notions of Kripke submodel and universal sentence are natural in the sense that in the presence of the rule of excluded middle, they collapse to the classical notions of submodel and universal sentence.

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