(Originally written March 19, 2007 in Book 13)
Analogical Predication: The Only Alternative
If terms cannot be applied to God in a univocal or an equivocal sense, they must be applied analogically.
The analogical way of speaking about God helps to solve Parmenides' paradox because being is not taken as univocal. Being is analogical and thus things essentially differ in being.
Being cannot be univocal because it would mean that everything that hath being would be one. Being cannot be equivocal because whatever hath being hath being and what else cannot hath being or they are one. Therefore, Being must analogical.
God does not have properties at all. "God is the perfections that his creatures only have by causal participation" (263).
Univocal Concepts but Analogical Predication
Scotus was correct that any concept applied to men and God must be univocally understood. Aquinas was correct in stating that concepts must be analogically affirmed of God.
The attribute of man and God are same but the application of that attribute differs in God and man.
Whatever concept is understood of God must be understood univocally, but must be predicated (attributed to) of God must be predicated analogically.
Finite Concepts and Finite Predications
Aquinas held God is one in reality, but many things logically.
We cannot know the substance of God, but we can predicate many things about God substantively.
While there is an infinite difference in perfection between Creator and creatures, there is not a total dissimilarity. Thus, concepts are univocally understood.
A creature must bear some similarity to its creator.
The Causal Basis for Analogy Between God and Creatures
Analogy is based on intrinsic causality.
Analogy is based on efficient causality.
Analogy is based on essential causality. God is the cause of the very being of the world, not only its beginning.
Analogy is not based on material causality. God is the cause of the existence of matter, but he is not material. God is the cause of all perfections in the world, but not the imperfection resulting from the limiting conditions of a material world.
Analogy is based on principal, not instrumental causality.
God is the principal, intrinsic, essential and efficient cause of the being and perfection of the world.
Objections and Responses
1) Why select some, but not all qualities drawn from the world and apply them to God?
- Only some things flow from God's efficient, principal, essential and intrinsic causality.
2) Words are divorced from their finite mode or conditions are devoid of meaning.
- The univocal concept of the words remains the same while the way in which they are predicated charges.
-Terms applied to God are not made meaningless only extended without limitations
3) Analogy rests on the assumption that causality provides without limitations.
-If something is caused it must be caused by something. God cannot give what he does not have. Thus if God does not have existence He cannot give existence.
4) Any analogous predication of God as a "First cause" involves an infinite regress of meaning to identify the univocal element.
-The only way to predicate something of a finite being and an infinite being must be analogous because if it is univocal it predicates it equivocally. An infinite being cannot have the same mode as a finite being. It must be predicated analogously.
5) Even assuming the metaphysical assumption that there is a similarity among beings, that ontology is not univocally expressible.
-This is not a mere theistic. It is the only alternative to monism.
6) Since Wittgenstein the distinction between equivocal and univocal is obsolete, and thus, the notion of analogy is obsolete.
7) A general theory of analogy does not work.
This is not an analogical theory, but rather a metaphysical scheme in which language fits. This metaphysical scheme is rooted in reality and thus, the language is so rooted.
13. Model Religious Language
The Background of the Contemporary Language Problem
Hume is the source of the contemporary problems of religious language.
Hume: Two kinds of propositions
There are only two kinds of meaningful statements:
1. Statements expressing elation of ideas
- true by definition
- not informative about the real world
2. Statements about matters of fact
Kant called he former analytic and the latter synthetic.
Wittgenstein: Linguistic Silence
Wittgenstein held that what was mystical (religious experience) cannot be expressed in words.
He held that we are to eliminate religious language, not religious experience.
Ayer: Religious Language and Verification
In Language, Truth and Logic A. J. Ayer attempted to eliminate all metaphysics and theology.
He held that no statement can be meaningful unless it is tautological or empirically verifiable.
But Ayer's principle of verifiability is neither tautological nor verifiable and thus, meaningless on his grounds.
Ayer was neither atheistic nor agnostic. He was non-cognitivistic. He held that no cognitively meaningful statement can be made about a transcendent reality.
2/15/07 - 3/19/07
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