Why St. Thomas Needs Analogy

There are at least two reasons why St. Thomas Aquinas adopts analogical thinking, and they have to do with his metaphysics. The first relates to St. Thomas Aquinas's view of being. Being (esse = "to be") is a transcendental shared among all things that exist bar none. All things share in being, but in different ways since there is not only being in which they share, but there are clearly separate beings that share in being. So there must be some way for St. Thomas to handle this unity and diversity. As Hampus Lyttkens explains the situation:

As being is varied in many different ways, but is nevertheless common to all things, [St. Thomas] had to find a formula expressing both what is common and what is different [among beings]. In adopting analogy for this purpose, Aquinas follows the tradition that had substituted analogy for the Aristotelian πρὸς ἓν concept.

Lyttkens, 199.

But this is only one reason and one kind of analogy. St. Thomas also had to find another sort of analogical thinking that related to his theology, in particular one dealing with his understanding of how man acquired his knowledge (his epistemology, which is moderate realism, and in which man's knowledge comes to him from his senses out of which he abstracts concepts, essences of things). If man is to know God, he will know God only through concepts abstracted from the knowledge he has gained through his senses.* St. Thomas has to adopt analogical thinking because if he used the concepts reason had abstracted from the visible world univocally of God, it would make God something completely knowable, and God's transcendence from the world would be threatened. On the other hand, if concepts gained from the visible world were only usable equivocally with respect to God, they would have no meaning for us, and God would be unknown and unknowable. We could have to confess ignorance, and we would remain all agnostics. Using analogical thinking allowed St. Thomas to steer the course between a God that was unlike his creation to a God that was like his creation and so understand God as both immanent and transcendent, a God both unlike and yet like his creation.

Lyttken explains:

[For St. Thomas] there is some connexion between God and the world. The creation is regarded as an effect of God preexisting in Him and both intellectually and naturally, and accordingly resembling God in some way. God's knowledge of His creation is based on His essence being in various ways imitated by creation. But the likeness of the things to God is also a prerequisite of man's knowledge of God.

Aquinas must no make neither too much, nor too little, of this likeness of creation to God. If that likeness is made to distant, or is denied, the gap between God and the world cannot be bridged. God would then be a stranger to his creation, as His knowledge of this is contingent on its being like Himself. Man, on his part, could never have any knoweldge of God, and his road to salvation would then be closed. And that is not all. The whole object of creation--to glorify God and return to Him as its highest good--would be lost. The very existence of creation would then be problematical, as it must in any case be like its creator in that it is being. . . . .

Too great a likeness of creation to God would, on the other hand, threaten the sovereignty and transcendence of God. Man would then be able to acquire immediate and direct knowledge of the divine. Revelation and salvation would be unnecessary. The ultimate consequence would be a pantheism obliterating the boundaries between God and His works, between God and man.

In this situation analogy becomes the formula which is the mean of two extremes. It states that the creation is both like and unlike God. . . . . [Aquinas] rejects both extremes by stating that quite univocal or quite multivocal [equivocal] statements with reference to God are excluded, seeing that--as our concepts are taken from creation--this would mean that creation would either be on a part with, or absolutely unlike God. . . .

We don't want to make God and the world equivalent. Nor do we want to make God and the world strangers. We want to make God creator, the world created, and we want to know God, as St. Paul says, "for the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable." (Romans 1:20). Let us not be inexcusable. Let us adopt analogical thinking of God so that we may "from the creation of the world," fathom the "invisible things" of God, "his eternal power . . . and divinity."

Analogy is the way to avoid error, but, more, it is the way to know, as best as we are able by our lights until we reach the state of the blessed, God. And by knowing Him, we learn to love Him.

_____________________________
*Even Scripture uses material things or relations to describe God. The need for analogy is not limited to man's natural knowledge of God attained through the use of reason. It is required to understand the very concepts that the Scriptures use to describe God. When God is described as a rock, or a shield, or a horn of salvation (2 Sam. 22:3), these terms are obviously not used univocally of God. Nor are they used equivocally of God or we would not understand them as telling us anything. They are used analogically.