In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Doctrine of God and the Analogy of Being
  • Steven A. Long

As a philosophic matter, the doctrine of God is founded upon understanding of the analogia entis. After all, no other foundation is possible, as outside being there is nothing. The analogicity of being and its foundational character are conspicuous. First, in his Metaphysics, Aristotle affirms that being is not a genus, as it must contain all its differences, whereas a genus cannot contain the difference that is the foundation of species because then all beings of that genus would necessarily be of that species. Nor yet could being be a species as though it modified a substratum defined in terms of nonbeing. Thomas very clearly concurs with this teaching and develops it with great precision. As Thomas puts it, "nothing is able to be outside that which is understood by being, if being is included in the understanding/concept of the things of which it is predicated."1 [End Page 1101]

Another way to understand the foundational relation of the analogical formality of being for the doctrine of God is the realization that there can be nothing in the conclusion of our reasoning that is not implicitly and actually present in the premises. Thus if "being" means only "being material" in the premises that found our reasoning to the existence of God, then "being" can only mean "being material" in our conclusion. Hence the analogical character of being is prior to, and the foundation for, the philosophic judgment that God exists, although some recognize the nature of this premise only after realizing the conclusion they have drawn. But the judgment that being is intrinsically analogous is not something solely available following the proof that God exists. This is to say, the second sense of separatio famously adverted to by St. Thomas in his Commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate2 refers not to intrinsically spiritual being, but to the immateriality of proportionate being as passing through, and irreducible to, any given genus or species of being: which notionally but not really could admit the thesis that there is only material being.

The judgment that being is only material being is possible in a notional or merely conceptual sense because this is imaginable; this judgment is not valid, because the causal inference to God is warranted. But this causal inference to God is itself possible because "to be" or "being" does not originally mean merely and exclusively "to be material" or "material being" and—if it did—no conclusion from the given premises would be possible: axiomatic atheism would necessarily be implied. It suffices to observe that the difference is not contained in the genus, so that if being were held formally to mean merely "material being" then the differentiae of material being would be held not to be real:3 which is contrary to fact, showing that being is irreducible to any genus or species.

The present essay first addresses the foundation of the Aristotelian and Thomistic doctrine of God in the analogia entis, the analogy of being, understood in terms of the division of being by act and potency. Second, [End Page 1102] it considers the foundations of metaphysics and the real distinction of essence and existence. Third, it concludes by considering how this understanding provides the rational foundation for an account of God as infinite in every transcendental and pure perfection and as transcendent cause of finite being.

Analogia Entis

The formality of being is an analogical formality. Aristotle articulates the roots of the analogy of being in the division of being by act and potency in chapter 6 of book 9 of the Metaphysics:4

Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases by induction, and we must not seek a definition of everything but be content to grasp the analogy—that as that which is building is to that which is capable of building, so is the waking to the sleeping, and that which is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but has sight, and that which is shaped out of the matter to the matter, and that which has been wrought to the unwrought. Let actuality be defined by...

pdf

Share