Why did Thomas Aquinas develop the doctrine of analogy rather than any of the other alternatives?

The doctrine of analogy was intended to explain how, given the limitations under which the human intellect operates, talk about God could be adequate to the task. It allowed Aquinas to reconcile two apparently conflicting positions: that "we cannot speak of God at all except in the language of creatures"[a7] and human language may properly be used to describe the transcendent God. However, Aquinas thought that analogy is not always necessary to reconcile these doctrines. It becomes clear that he did not wish to abandon the via negativa, but merely to assign it a lesser role in natural theology. In order to explain why he opted for analogy the theological language with which it dealt must be isolated from the language which could be otherwise understood. There is a preliminary course to take in answering this question. Aquinas’ dissatisfaction with other ways of understanding religious language made his search for a distinctive position a necessity. In part this question can be answered by negatively surveying the alternatives.

What was wrong with the via negativa of Maimonides? Aquinas appears to have thought that it was an inconsistent doctrine, and with good reason. His boldest objection to the theory rests upon a logical point: "Unless the human intellect knew something positively about God, it could not deny anything of Him.(1)" If nothing is known of a thing then the suspense of judgement rather than a policy of negation has been justified. Maimonides does allow that the impossibility of God’s non-existence can be demonstrated [a2] but (unlike Aquinas) does not use this proof to formulate a set of principles that give grounds for the exclusion of predicates from the subject "God".

Maimonides thus lacks a criteria which would enable him to decide whether to negate one attribute or its opposite. Why say that God is living (he is not dead) rather than say that God is dead (he is not living)? Obviously his choice accords with theological intuitions, but these intuitions seem to have a gratuitous place in his account. As Aquinas points out, it is unsatisfactory to claim God is living merely because "He does not belong to the genus of lifeless things" since "it will at least have to be the case that living said of God and creatures agrees in the denial of the lifeless." [a6]

The quotation just cited does not merely reinforce Aquinas’ point about the priority of affirmations to negations and the point about the incomplete nature of Maimonides account. Its primary point is a semantic one. The "meaning of those names are known to us solely to the extent that they are said of creatures"[a6]. The meaning of a word cannot be grasped simply by recognising that it is different from that of its opposite. Maimonides has evacuated the words he uses of God of all meaning [4-a6] and so his model (predications being negated of a ship) is inadequate. This account of Aquinian objections to the via negativa of Maimonides explains why he had to adopt a different position.

As was mentioned earlier, Aquinas still believed himself to be speaking from within the tradition of negative theology. "God is said to be...beyond naming because his essence is beyond what we understand of Him and the meaning of the names we use.(2)" However the crucial distinction between his position and that of Plotinus and Maimonides is that the nature (or essence) of God cannot be grasped by human reason; it is not that the nature of God transcends reason or is unintelligible, as his predecessors apparently held. After all God is form, the intelligible element of being, though being infinite form he is beyond the reach of a finite human mind. Sontag emphasises this distinction: "His [God’s] simplicity and unity are not for Thomas of the extreme kind of a Dionysius or Plotinus.(3)"

How does this bear significance for Aquinas’ preference for analogy? It made it conceivable that true things are said of God, (though it remained inconceivable that a human should understand the thing in question). The inferences that Aquinas drew from his Five Ways legitimised a great deal of theological language. It demonstrated that God was unlike creation, being immutable, infinite, uncaused, necessary and perfect. The role analogy was to take up was that of providing legitimacy for the remaining literal predications.

There is a question as to why Aquinas should have endeavoured to legitmise predications such as God is wise, God is living and so on. It certainly troubled Father Copleston: "St Thomas’ insistence that we can know something of God from creatures is based on the fact that creatures, as effects of God must manifest God, though they can only do this imperfectly(4)." Certainly it appears to sit ill at ease with Thomas’ negative method which furnished positive and directly applicable attributes, the method then proceeding "by denying predication according to an already present conception of God.(5)" Prima facie the predicate "living" seems to make no sense at all when applied to a being both simple and immutable. Copleston’s explanation is insufficient to explain why Aquinas should have attempted such a difficult compromise. Aquinas could have accommodated these predications alongside the metaphors of Holy Teaching, arguing that it is grace that lifts our understanding beyond the images these words evoke [F-K 3]

One way of understanding Aquinas’ use of analogy is to suggest that he was writing what is nowadays called descriptive metaphysics. Aquinas was drawing out the consequences of what were regarded as common sense views. These demanded that God could be said to be living, without recourse to negation or "wrapping in many sacred veils" [F-K 3], or meaning the cause of the living (since common sense denies God a corporeal body and yet he is the cause of bodies.(6)) As he says against Maimonides, the impropriety of the view "no reasoning proceeding from creatures to God could take place" is made "evident from all those who have spoken about God." [a5] The religious temperament thought that such things could be said literally of God, analogy was to explain how this was possible. Support for this interpretation is lent by the distinction he forms between predications normally regarded as metaphorical and those he was to call analogical. The former could receive a negative reply to the question "is this really true" the latter could not(7). Aquinas believed he had identified a special way of talking about God.

None of these reasons are sufficient to explain why analogy should be regarded as the best explanation of how predications can be literally made of God. There was at least one viable alternative, developed later by Dun Scotus. However, there is no point in speculatively stating that such a position simply might not have occurred to Aquinas. A proper explanation of his opting for analogy will presume (on hypothesis) he had reasons for rejecting something like Scotus’ view (without searching through his works to anticipations of it). Of course, if in fact he had no idea of any alternative between analogy and the via negativa then he did opt for analogy out of lack of alternatives.

One factor should be isolated and discussed separately. Aquinas is likely to have been favourable towards analogy because it was a necessary ingredient in his proofs for the existence of God. This is particularly important because the word "making" does not seem to admit of anything but an analogical interpretation. The world must have been made, something must have made it, and it must have been made in an unusual sense of the word "made". "But what is the relevant sense, and how can it be learned and taught?(8)" Geach talks of the "various familiar senses of the word, with complex likenesses and differences between them" and that in this case the sense "will be brought out dialectically from the fact that what is said to be made is the world". There is a complex interplay between affirmation, "making" needs must have resemblances to creaturely "making" though these need not be known, though it is known that this making cannot be like that which would make the activity part of the world itself.

Ignoring the strength of this last reason, it can be urged that there is more economy is Scotus’ handling of this kind of religious language. It seems less torturous to suppose that phrases such as "God is wise" are justly arrived at by: "...considering a formal characteristic of something and by removing from that formal characteristic the imperfection which it has in creatures, and by reserving that formal characteristic and attributing it completely the highest perfection, and in this way attributing it to God." [a4] Copleston takes a doctrine of religious language that employs modified univocal concepts very seriously indeed. He suggests that the doctrine of analogy has a tendency to collapse into it(9). "Our idea of divine intelligence has, therefore a positive content; but what can that content be?....we either attain a positive concept of the divine essence as such or we attain a concept of the "essence" of intelligence, apart from finitude or infinity....(10)"

Two questions relevant to this essay arise from Copleston’s commentary. First, do his arguments for the collapsible nature of analogy have any force? Secondly might Aquinas himself have intended these consequences? Clearly the answers given yield a great deal of influence as to what can be counted as a good explanation of his opting for analogy. If analogy is not a distinctive doctrine then there is no need to explain why Aquinas should have preferred it to one of univocal concepts.

One dull observation goes someway to answering the second question. The very phrase "words are used of God and creatures in an analogical way" [a7] is evidence that Aquinas intended to distinguish it from univocal language. The first question is obviously more difficult to answer. Clearly, if analogy implied that postive concepts of the divine essence could be formed then Aquinas philosophy would be inconsistent. The human mind is unable to form such concepts. Aquinas could only have been mistaken in thinking analogy a sound option. Copleston’s alternative, that "essences" of concepts can be obtained seems to imply a more benign univocation between God and creature. However, it may be emphasised that Copleston does not take enough notice of Aquinas’ denial of God’s being related to creatures: "...being related to God is a reality in creatures, but being related to creatures is not a reality in God.(11)" If an essence of a creaturely-Godly concept could be formed then would this not imply that God is really related to creatures? In some sense God and creature would be identical. Copleston’s proposed reduction does not consider this important element of Aquinas’ theology.

It might simply be said that Aquinas’ is mistaken in saying the relations between creatures and God are one-way. Allowing this criticism , Copleston’s reduction still not need be carried through. It is wrong to force a dilemma between permitting equivocation or a "positive concept of our idea of the divine intelligence.(12)" The positive content may lie in the second order idea, the creaturely manifestation, which must be similar to the signification of the word used of God though we have no positive conception of that. This is not to say that the term is simply negated. Neither is it to say that a human really is able to refine his formal characteristics so that they may be applied to God. Here it might be worthwhile to point out Aquinas’ sensitivity to language use. In the example above it is not clear that there is any essence of the word "making" only resemblance between various applications. If this is to wrongly impose a modern idea of family resemblance on Aquinas, a less contentious example can be provided: "Goodness as such is not identifiable with any special good making characteristic... but for any given good thing you can find a good making characteristic X such that for that thing to be good is the same as for that thing to be X.(13)" Since there is no particular essence of some concepts when used (even) of creatures why would Aquinas want to attempt to find essences of predicates that could be applied both to God and creature?

Aquinas really had identified a third alternative when he opted for the doctrine of analogy. He adopted analogy out of dissatisfaction with traditional negative theology and any use of modified univocal concepts. This attempt to outline the distinguishing characteristics of analogy also encompassed an explanation of the reasons why Aquinas may have opted for it.

  • (1) Copleston [1] p137, op.cit. De Potentia 7,5
  • (2) Davies p60 op.cit. Ia.13.Iad.I
  • (3) Sontag p48
  • (4) Copleston [2] p352
  • (5) Sontag p48
  • (6) Copleston [1] p134
  • (7) Davies p66
  • (8) Geach p110
  • (9) Copleston [2] chapter XXXV section 5
  • (10) ibid. p358
  • (11) Davies p70, op.cit. Ia 13.7
  • (12) Copleston [2] p358
  • (13) Geach p82

Bibliography

Copleston. F.C., Aquinas Middlesex: Penguin, 1965

Copleston. F.C., A History of Philosophy Volume II London: Burnes & Oates Ltd, 1966

Davies. B., The Thought of Thomas Aquinas Oxford: Clarendon, 1992

Sontag.F., Divine Pefection: possible ideas of God London: SCM, 1962

Geach. P.T., "Aquinas" Three Philosophers (with G.E.M. Anscombe) Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973

[a = analogy pack & F-K= Faith and knowledge pack]

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