By JOHN R. GILHOOLY

Recently, a New Testament colleague informed me that there were discussions among New Testament scholars about Thomas Aquinas and analogy. I couldn’t figure out why New Testament scholars cared about Cajetan’s reading (or re-readings) of Thomas Aquinas, but it turns out that he was talking about the legitimacy of using analogical predication as a framework for understanding biblical texts. After further conversation, my colleague said a precis on analogical predication in Thomas Aquinas might be helpful.

A lot of writing on Thomas is specialist literature in the strong sense, i.e., it assumes a lot of background and quibbles over details that normal people simply wouldn’t care about. Of course, real expertise is usually measured in such things. We love to train people for their “well, actually…” moment. Beyond that, Thomas is a figure that people love to claim to understand but perhaps only slightly less than they love claiming that other people don’t. Look: Thomas Aquinas wrote something like 8 million words. Anyone who writes that much is likely to be a source of controversy. It is also true that ‘experts’ on Thomas range widely in their opinions about him. In light of the complexity of the readings, some of those sorts of debates simply are not germane to retrieval for biblical studies.

For example, sometimes Thomas uses different illustrations to describe analogy; these illustrations seem to produce different accounts, and his “doctrine” was hotly contested in the next century. A reason for this is that Thomas does not ever set out his doctrine of analogical predication. He simply uses/discusses analogy in his theological and philosophical writings. From what I understand of the current conversations, the usage in recent books in biblical studies is similar. The notion of analogy is dropped in with an assumed familiarity, and it does not appear to me that the notion is intended to be particularly technical or fine-grained. This is not a criticism—in fact, I am not convinced that Aquinas’ notion was (always) as technical or fine-grained as his successors and their critics have tended to be. To the extent that such usage is intended to fortify historic Christian exegesis against the strong tendency in biblical studies to atomism and atheological readings, any grain at all is gratifying. Nevertheless, if the precise thirteenth or fourteenth century explication of the Categories that discloses a particular relation of ratio and ens or whether it was wise for Boethius to think analogy was a species of equivocation is important for your interpretation of Scripture, then you will need more than I give you here. Also, seek help.

My goal is to show the general contours of Thomas’s ideas as discovered in the Summa Theologiae I.13.

The chief organizing idea of question 13 is an epistemological doctrine that Aquinas has from Boethius (and Aristotle): everything is known according to the power of the knower. He has developed a corollary of this idea in the heading of the question when he writes: unumquodque enim nominatur a nobis, secundum quod ipsum cognoscimus, i.e., we name everything according to our knowledge of that thing. Explaining how these doctrines apply to God takes him 12 separate questions, of which we will look only at the first five. These questions develop according to the logic of the learner (ordo cognoscendi). I’ll paraphrase.

Article 1: Can God be given a name?

Thomas says, Yes. On the basis of his reading of Aristotle, Thomas believes that words are signs of ideas. This means that the relationship between a word and the referent of the word passes through our intellect. Therefore, we can name anything to the extent that we can understand it. This is related to a fundamental axiom about the relation of being and intelligibility that Thomas has received from both Aristotle and the Neoplatonists (such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Fraudulent). ‘Words and signs’ he received from our theologian, Augustine. Thomas had already argued in the Summa that we can have some understanding of God in this life. So, clearly, we can name him at least to the extent that we can understand him. These names will never signify his essence (his “whatness”), but they do disambiguate between him and other things about which we might speak. Different names, of course, disambiguate him in different ways. For example, we use abstract terms to help us point out his simplicity, and we use concrete terms to help us point out his substance. Because all of our talk is creaturely (FYI, we are creatures), all speech about God will be imperfect to the extent that the names include something that we do not understand to be true about God. For example, when we say, “God is goodness,” we do not mean that he is an inert abstract property. [You might notice that this is often how contemporary analytic philosophers take the claim, which is why they often find it shocking that anyone ever thought it.] Thomas relies here on a distinction between how God actually is (modus essendi), how we understand God (modus intelligendi), and how we refer to God in language (modus significandi). That set of distinctions does all the heavy lifting for Thomas for the rest of the question.

Article 2: Can we talk about what God is?

Thomas says, Yes. This article is about whether our speech about God (the names that we give him, e.g., wise) pick out God’s substance. Of course, they cannot do this perfectly (see above), but that is not for Thomas to say that they cannot do it at all. Again, they do so only to the extent that we know him. It might be better to say that they point out rather than pick out. We know that he is and that he is in various ways but not what he is. We know quia est, not quid est. This is basic, basic Aquinas.

First, Thomas explains that negative names of God (e.g., infinite) do not signify what he is. Instead, they deny something about him in an effort to highlight his otherness from the things that he has made. In contrast, positive names (e.g., good) are disputed. He points out that Moses Maimonides taught that positive names are really disguised, negative names. In other words, when we say that “God is alive,” we are really saying that he is not like an inanimate object. Other thinkers say that positive names describe a relation (usually causal) that obtains between God and other creatures, so that they are really not about God’s nature at all. For example, “God is good” really means “God causes the good that we find in creatures.”

Thomas holds that both of these opinions are wrong. First, neither of those opinions can explain why some names are more fitting for God than others. If “God is good” means “God causes the good that we find in creatures,” then also we should be able to say, “God is a body” because “God causes the bodies that exist in creatures that have them.” But that fails. Second (and third), both of those opinions require us to caveat each claim we make of God because no one who sings “God lives” means that “God causes the life that exists in creatures.” They just mean God lives.

Instead, Thomas holds the positive names are predicated substantially of God – they name or point out some fact about his essence insofar as we can understand him. So how do the names work? Thomas asks us to remember what he already argued about divine perfection and human knowledge earlier in the Summa. Since we only know God after a creaturely fashion, we can only use creaturely terms to describe him. These terms do not place God in the same genus as a created object about which we might make the same claim. Hence, when we say, “God is good,” we really mean something like “whatever good we find in creatures pre-exists in God in a better and higher way.” This informs the causal order in exactly the other way round of the opposing opinions. God is not good because he causes goodness; he causes goodness because he is good. Having read Euthyphro would help you here.

Article 3: Can we talk about God literally?

Thomas says, Yes. Just because all the names do not fully capture the essence of God does not mean that they are all metaphorical. Here Thomas introduces a distinction: the signification of a name and the mode of signification. The signification of a name in this context would be the perfection that the name is intended to point out (e.g., wisdom). These sorts of perfections are not dependent on any particular characteristics of a bodily or composite creature (because they are abstract terms). In contrast, some modes of signification are appropriate first to creatures, and these often imply composition that does not exist in God (they are concrete). Thomas is simply developing what he already said in the first article of the question.

Article 4: Is everything we say about God synonymous?

Thomas answers, No. That might be surprising because Thomas affirms the simplicity of God (and you should too). But remember the distinction between modus essendi and modus intelligendi. He reasons that if all the names were synonyms, they would be redundant. But the Bible speaks about God in different ways without redundancy. The reason that the names are not synonymous is because the words relate to the thing they pick out through our intellect. Since our intellect is not simple, it conceives even of simple things under multiple headings. The names (modus significandi) pick out God (modus essendi) on the basis of what we think about God (modus intelligendi). Knowledge is had according to the power of the knower. The composition in the names reflects our composition, not God’s. The names do not mean the same thing when we say them because we do not mean the same thing or think the same thing when we say them. But that does not mean for Thomas that God is divided.

Article 5: Do we use the same terms for God and creatures univocally?

Thomas says, No. This strikes him as obvious because names do not belong to creatures in the same way that they belong to God and because we do not apply terms univocally even between creatures. But these are quick sed contra responses, which he develops further.

The bulk of Thomas's answer is based on the notion that causes are greater than effects – this is a metaphysical principle that is axiomatic for most medieval theology. Since creatures are effects of God, so to speak, their likeness to God (under whatever heading) is imperfect. It falls short of what God is. This is a simple consequence of being a creature. What that means is that when we apply an abstract term to a creature (e.g., wisdom), we refer to something other than the essence of the creature. We refer to a fact about the creature (presumably) but to a property that he need not have had. In contrast, when we say, “God is wise,” we do not mean to describe some fact about God that he could have or fail to have variously. We mean to say what he is substantially. Since he is simple, any attribution is an attempt to say something about his essence, which is not true for creatures.

However, this does not mean that a word applied to God and to creatures is purely equivocal. If that followed, then we could not say or demonstrate anything about God at all on the basis of created things. He thinks that result falls afoul both of philosophy (see his five ways) as well as his reading of Romans 1:20. Finally, analogy appears!  Thomas says huiusmodi nomina dicuntur de Deo et creaturis secundum analogiam, id est proportionem ­– these names are said about God and creatures according to analogies, i.e., according to proportion. That id est proportionem is important because it safeguards for Thomas the notion that our speech about God is at least univocal enough that the terms can refer. However, our speech is not purely univocal between God and creatures because we do not think or mean the same things when we use the same word for God and for creatures.

Hence, he says that names function in this proportionate way. Either we use a term to indicate that many things have that term in common in some sense or we use a term to indicate that two things are alike with reference to that term.

Here the common medieval example is the manner in which urine relates to health (ew…). When I say that medicine and urine are healthy (of course, I would never say that but imagine I am a physician from the 1200s), I am saying that both those things are related to the question of the health of the body. When I say that medicine and animal are healthy, by contrast, I am saying that the medicine causes the animal to be healthy. The first example he takes shows the proportion between many things and one term, and the second shows the proportion between two things in light of one term.

It is in that way that we say things about God and creatures analogically, not purely equivocally and not purely univocally. Univocal and equivocal speech are modified by “purely” in these contexts (purem). Analogice is intended to be a middle ground between purely equivocally speech and purely univocal speech. The point is that when we apply the same term to God and creatures we do not mean the term in a stagnant one-to-one ratio. Anything we say about God and creatures is according to the relationship that exists between God and creatures. That relationship (a kind of proportion) establishes a middle ground or mean (medius) between pure equivocation (using the same word with different dictionaries) and simple univocation (applying the same word in the exactly the same way to two things).

The important insight here for Thomas is that we already use terms this way for creatures. We know that, when we say that the urine is healthy, we do not mean the same thing as when we say the medicine is healthy. (At least, I hope we know that). Yet, healthy is the appropriate or fitting term to apply to either.  Since we do not always use terms univocally even among creatures, it is no surprise that we do not apply terms univocally between God and creatures. If some of this sounds squishy or your mind runs to counterexamples, it might help you to know that in the century prior to Aquinas it was common to unite the word analogy with another Latin term – ambiguity. Thomas is not offering an extended formal treatment of the topic so much as he is trying to safeguard Biblical language about God against misunderstanding. (It might also be true that you require less specificity than Thomists and Scotists require because you are not a specialist in the reception history of Aristotle.)

Here I place the inevitable comment about how complex his view is after all, but this provides the general idea. And, in general, it is a good idea. As a final aside, too, I want to mention that there have been developments (even refinements?) in philosophy of language in the last 700 years. Accepting Thomas’ approach as useful or fecund does not require slavish regard to it as the last and final word on these matters.