The analogia entis (Latin for "analogy of being") is the philosophical claim that the class of relationship of the "being" of created things and the "being" of God is that of analogy. And also the theological and devotional ramifications of this claim.
This entails that God's existence is entirely different to the being and modes of being of all things in the cosmos (all "creatures") and therefore to us is ineffable directly: however, analogy can provide true but indirect (though not necessarily reliable) cognition. All other predications apart from "being" may be treated in the same way, as analogical. It has also been summarized as the proposition that there is no (e.g. natural or conceptual) system of which God and creatures are both directly part.
It has been called a guiding principle of Catholic thought (or Denkform) which synthesizes many disparate themes in Catholic doctrine and theology: that general names or predications about God (not only names such as "is a Consuming Fire", "is our Father", "is Patient" or predications of God's perfections "is infinite", "is love", "is just", but even being itself: that God "is") are true but analogies. It is associated with the Latin phrase "maior dissimulitudo in tanta similitudine":
The modern formulation of the analogia entis emphasizes a cognitive rhythm (drawing on Aquinas' ): a double motion of and :
Some 20th century Protestant theologians suspected analogia entis as proposing a different source of knowledge of God to divine revelation, or proposing acts competitive to the event of faith, or for tending to emphasize God's transcendence over his immanence.
Background
Analogia entis has had rather different meanings in particular philosophical, theological or devotional disciplines: sometimes with broad meaning (e.g., used for any divine predication) or narrow meaning (e.g., used strictly about divine being only), and sometimes used to name its perceived implications.
The term comes from Greek geometry, where it is used for a rule (in the sense of a measurement: kanōn, this being sometimes extended into the sense of a requirement or law.) Used in this sense, "analogy" relates to the geometric/epistimological question "what can we soundly measure against to understand God?" rather than the mental/phenomenological/theological question "what does analogy let us say about God?" which this article more concentrates on.
Development The term was originally coined around 1250 by Albert Magnus and developed subsequently, notably in the 1920s and 1930s by Jesuit Erich Przywara and Germanic theologians, such as former Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar. The concept has a longer history than the term, and drew on commentary by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Aristotle.
Analogy
Analogia entis is not a fancy synonym for analogy; however, the term is sometimes enlarged so that 'being' includes all kinds of analogous predication about God not just essential and infinite being.
Analogy has the general form A is to B as C is to D: A : B :: C : D So "one and the same term is analogically attributed to two realities whenever it is attributed to each of them in a way which is partially the same and partially different."
Some analogies get presented condensed (e.g., into metaphors) by leaving out terms so that one thing is referred to by mentioning another: A is a C. (There is a core case, which other terms relate to in various pros hen ways.) So "God is Good" is the analogy "the goodness of humans is to their nature as the goodness of God is to his nature.."
Analogical reasoning can be distinguished from other modes, such as induction and deduction. Analogical statements can be distinguished from other kinds of statement, such as univocal and equivocal.
Such analogy is asymmetric, working in one direction only: the metaphor "God is Father" (i.e., the analogy "God is to us as a human father is to their child") does not imply "Father is God." Similarly, an analogical statement does not rule out another statement that would be contradictory if interpreted univocally: "God is Father" does not rule out "God is Mother." But every analogy breaks down when extended too far.
In Christian thought, God is commonly analogized against many created or experienced things: being, goodness, truth, beauty, just, kindness, love, a friend, a judge, an advocate, a fire, a hound, a worm, divine law.
Cognition Scientist Douglas Hofstadter has claimed that analogy is the "core of human cognition." Pseudo-Dionysius' purported book Symbolic Theology discussed dissimilar similarities and the need for the human mind to have and use symbols.
One facet of analogia entis is as a fallible, non-mystical human cognitive event involving the characteristic double motion of in-and-beyond (and distinct from deduction, intuition, instress, etc.) and subsequent unresolveable oscillation between the in and the beyond.
Religious cognition In Catholic usage, the analogia entis is a foundational organizing and epistemological principle of religious cognition: for Bonaventure, for example, the cosmos is conceived as a treasury of things that can be used for analogy.
Aquinas' ideas on analogy presuppose that "cognition of the supernatural realm cannot be attained from this world by the mere exercise of our natural cognitive powers, but only through divine revelation and faith in the content of this revelation."
Modern Popes have treated analogy as one cognitive mechanism which revelation may use:
Philosophical
Analogy
Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas took the distinction between the univocal and equivocal terms from Aristotle's Categories and also an intermediate but distinct kind: analogical terms where you understand something greater by the measure of something lesser. For Aquinas, "nothing can be said in the same sense of God and creatures." According to theologian K. Surin "at the heart of Aquinas' views on the nature of language about God is his thesis that all assertions about God are to be construed analogically." This linguistic thesis then is the ground for his metaphysical theses.
Thomas Cajetan attempted to reduce all analogy to three kinds (inequality, attribution, proportionality) and state which ones, in logical use, could be used syllogistically.
In the modern version of analogia entis, while the object providing the "measure" can be any thing, the subject of the intimation is specifically God.
The thing being measured may not only be some created thing or positive transcendental or perfection (i.e. things having 'being' in some real or metaphysical sense) but also a negative thing or absence: seeing in some bad thing the absence of expected good provides the analogy for reckoning God as the being with no absence of good (in) then seeing (beyond) that God is infinitely more than 'good'.
Predication and names of God
Following from the Fourth Lateran Council, all "God is ..." statements must be interpreted analogically not absolutely. For example, all the following cases are analogies because love, fire, unity, etc. are limited (at least by having finite definitions) while God is not limited.
Deuteronomy 4:24 "For the LORD your God is a consuming fire" Deuteronomy 6:4 "The LORD our God, the LORD is one" Psalms 84:11 "For the LORD God is a sun and shield" 1 John 1:5 "God is light; in him there is no darkness at all" 1 John 4:8 "God is love"
Aquinas discussed this as analogia nominum (analogy of names).
Exodus 3:14 "I am who am"
For St Thomas Aquinas, even "being" as in: "I am who am" of Exodus 3:14, is an analogy when used of God: our understanding God's "being" is by analogy to our being.
Dialectic Theologian Ivor Morris saw Analogia entis as dialecticism, "though not of the Hegelian kind, the obvious difference being that[...]the movement of thought is poised between thesis and antithesis and never advances, as with Hegel, to the idea of a higher synthesis."
Przywara saw this unresolving 'poise' not as static but dynamically, as a cognitive/logical trembling or oscillation between the thesis in and antithesis beyond that must always cycle between the two:
Epistemology Thomas Aquinas wrote:
Metaphysics
The metaphysical distinction between essence and existence in all beings apart from God is termed the real distinction. In Thomistic theology, God is whose essence is his existence.
Ontology Key proponents of analogia entis tend to position it as post-philosophical theology. John Betz summarizes Przywara's stance: "For as of yet, from a purely philosophical perspective, nothing whatsoever can be made out about who God is or what he has revealed, or even that there is such thing as revelation."apud Vainio op. cit.
In this view, Analogia entis is to some extent founded on a philosophical claim about the "ground of being" of creatures which then allows theological investigation. Przywara's argument is that "All that can be made out metaphysically with any degree of certainty apart from [i.e., when excluding] revelation is that creaturely being is not its own ground, that it is not being itself, that it 'is' only in the form of becoming, and that theology, that is, the science of a God of revelation, is a reasonable possibility or to put it in still more minimalist terms, a 'non-impossibility'"
Phenomenology For Edith Stein the relationship between Being and Becoming is analogia entis; 'being' is anything we can think of; she distinguished finite and infinite being.
"We speak of God in the best ways that are available to us by ascribing to God in an analogous way the perfections found in creatures."
Theophany For Stein, the analogia entis is a relation between two "I am": the human and creatural "I am" and the divine "I am." Stein starts with the phenomenon of individual awareness, ego cognito: "my certitude about my own existence is the most primordial, intimate and immediate self-experience I can have": this real, temporal, finite being that one experiences as her own is an analogue of ("faintly visible") divine, eternal being.
Detractors 14th century philosopher-theologian John Duns Scotus and some subsequent theologians propose a Univocity of being: that God's existence and our existence is the same concept of being, though in different modes.
Theological Some key proponents of analogia entis position it as theology not philosophy. Von Balthasar, corresponding with Karl Barth, wrote "the analogia is in no sense a philosophical but rather a purely theological principle"Lochburnner, Hans Urs von Balthasar und seine Theologen-Kollegen" p 275]
Biblical roots Multiple passages in the Bible decry the human ability to directly grasp and understand God directly or well. Isaiah 55:8 "My ways are not your ways, and neither are my thoughts your thoughts." Rom 11:34 "Who has known the mind of God?"
However, Psalm 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."
"For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Romans 1:20)
The Peshitta version of I Cor 13:12 translated to Aramaic then to English expresses it: "Now we see as in a mirror, in an allegory, but then face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I shall know as I am known." (I Cor 13:12)Aramaic Bible in Plain English -Peshitta
Catholic formulation The idea was found implicitly in Book XV of Augustine's De Trinitate in approach later called the .
The major formulation of the idea was given in passing—in a comment that the kind of perfection in grace that humans could attain is not the same as the perfection of God but only analogous—by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 "For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them." ()
Scholastic formulations Aquinas