“Analogia entis”: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith by Steven A. Long (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 629 thought but is rather the transcendent Creator who has formed us in his own image and likeness. In this respect, one might suggest an alternative subtitle for the book: God without Parts: “No assembly required.” MICHAEL J. DODDS, O.P. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, California “Analogia entis”: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith. By Steven A. LONG. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Pp. 152. $26.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-268-03412-2. With this new work, brief but incisive, “on the analogy of being, metaphysics, and the act of faith,” Steven A. Long pursues his crusade in support of the restoration in Christian culture of a philosophy that is likely to help in understanding the faith, as the encyclical Fides et Ratio clearly hopes for. To fulfill this purpose, philosophy, and above all metaphysics, must begin by being truly itself and taking note of its autonomy as well as its proper value. Long does not cease to warn against the “supernaturalist” temptation, widespread today, which consists in making the philosophical disciplines depend intrinsically on data that belong to the properly supernatural order. In this “philosophy from above,” the density of nature is overshadowed, both on the ontological and on the epistemological level, to the (presumed) advantage of grace. (Cf. Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace [New York: Fordham University Press, 2010]; and my review in: Revue thomiste 111 [2011]: 287-91.) In response, it is important to recall that metaphysics, prescinding from revelation, can be constituted by itself as a science and, as wisdom, is capable of accounting for the unity of reality in its diversity. The analogy of being plays an essential role here since it gives metaphysics its proper object, ens commune, and it constitutes the foundation of the possibility of a natural knowledge of God, the cause of the object of metaphysics. In Analogia entis, on the question of the analogy of being, Long defends general theses to which every Thomist worth his salt, if not every Christian conscious of the philosophical demands of his faith, would subscribe without difficulty. The author’s insistence on the coherence of the philosophical order and the central role of the analogy of being, in metaphysics as in theology, concurs as well with the teaching of Benedict XVI. At his 16 June 2010 audience, dedicated to the figure of St. Thomas Aquinas, the pope in effect underscored that “the historical mission of the great master” was to “show this independence between philosophy and theology, and at the same time, their 630 BOOK REVIEWS reciprocal relations” and he recalled how much the doctrine of analogy was fundamental for grounding the validity of our speech about God. But Long also defends more specific and consequently more polemic theses. He judges in effect that a vast sector of contemporary Thomism has encountered an impasse in abandoning the doctrine of the analogy of being essentially conceived as the analogy of proportionality. This doctrine had become classical among the Scholastics at least since Cajetan, and Jacques Maritain has developed it more recently. According to this model, it is legitimate to attribute “being” to God and to man analogically by reason of a likeness of relations between the being of God and the being of man: God’s being is related to his essence as man’s being is related to his. Now, in place of the primacy of the analogy of proportionality, some have wanted to substitute the analogy of attribution. It is legitimate to attribute “being” to God and to man analogically because man’s being depends on and participates in the divine Ipsum Esse. For Long, this substitution presents a double obstacle. First, it threatens the Creator’s transcendence since it seems to establish a direct relation between created perfection and divine perfection. Second, it undermines the autonomy of the natural order by introducing the relation to God into the very definition of being. But, our author hammers home, “it is not by the relation to God that the creature is constituted, it is by God that the creature...