Thomas Aquinas · Theology
How Aquinas solved the problem of how finite human language can say anything true about an infinite, utterly simple God - through the doctrine of analogy.
We call God ‘good,’ ‘wise,’ ‘powerful,’ ‘living.’ But here is a deep puzzle. God, for Aquinas, is infinite, eternal, and utterly unlike any creature - not a being among beings but the source of all being. So when we say ‘God is good,’ do we mean ‘good’ in the same sense we mean it of a person? Surely not - God’s goodness is infinite and unlike ours. But if ‘good’ means something completely different when said of God, then we have no idea what we are saying. How can finite words say anything true about an infinite God?
Aquinas’s solution is analogy. Words like ‘good’ are said of God and creatures neither univocally nor equivocally, but analogically - according to a real proportion or relation. Consider how we call both a person and their diet ‘healthy’: not in exactly the same sense (the diet isn’t healthy the way the body is), nor in totally unrelated senses, but by a real relation (the diet causes health). Likewise, creatures are good because God, who is goodness itself, is their cause; their goodness is a created likeness of his. So ‘good’ said of God and of us is related but not identical - pointing truly toward God while never capturing him.
Because God so exceeds our concepts, Aquinas leans heavily on the via negativa - the way of negation. We make progress in knowing God largely by stripping away what he is not: not finite (so infinite), not changeable (so immutable), not composite (so simple), not bodily, not bounded. Each negation removes a creaturely limitation and points us toward a transcendence we cannot positively picture. Combined with analogy (which lets us affirm something, however imperfectly) and the way of causation (God as source of every perfection), the way of negation keeps God-talk honest: it speaks, but always with the reverent awareness that God is greater than anything we can say.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Aquinas uses analogy to speak of God, between saying words mean exactly the same and entirely different things. Explain the problem and his solution, in your own words.
Leads to Ludwig Wittgenstein.
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