Analogia entis
The most important application of the relationship of analogy, with regard to historical consequences, was that which was undertaken in the field of ontology. This was the analogical relation between beings and Being, or beings and essence, known in the Middle Ages as "analogia entis."
The origins of this lie again in Aristotle. He began with the statement: "There are many ways in which a thing may be said to 'be,' but they are related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and are not homonymous." To define being we use the verb "is" (esti), which affirms onticity, or participation in Being — and we use it to define being "in many ways": as quality, quantity, place, time, relation. We say the horse is white, the horse is two meters tall, the horse is here, etc. It is evident that in defining the horse "in many ways" we always use the verb "is" analogically in relation to a principle: the horse is white in analogous relation to whiteness as such; the tree is tall in analogous relation to tallness as such. Consequently, the knowledge we have of the onticity of a specific horse or of a specific tree is analogous. It relies on the analogy of its attributes — the analogy of quality, quantity, place, time and relation ("analogia attributionis," as the Scholastics were to call it).
But even if we use the verb "is" to define "in many ways," the onticity of the subject on the basis of the analogy of its attributes, the primary determination of the onticity of being is still always made with reference "to one thing," that is, with reference to what the specific subject "is." We say primarily that this is a horse and this is a tree. We define the specific subject by reference to the one horse and the one tree, that is, to the essence of horse and the essence of tree: "While 'being' has all these senses, obviously that which is primarily is the 'what,' which indicates the essence of the thing" — "the essence of each thing is one." And the reference of the specific subject to the "first one," that is, to the essence, is also analogous. Every specific subject participates "according to the same logos" in the common essence. It has the same logos as the essence — "for it is in virtue of the logos of the essence that the others are said to be ... for all will be found to contain the logos of the essence."
It is evident that determining the subject not only on the basis of the analogy of attributes but also with reference to the logos of its essence exhausts analogous relation as a possibility of defining or knowing being. Aristotle uses the concept of analogy to safeguard the unity of the subject. He does not extend analogy to mean a relation of ontological identity, the participation of beings in Being as such. The relation of beings to Being is for Aristotle a relation of cause and effect — a relation of transition from potential being (dynamei on) to actual being (energeiai on), a relation of moved and mover ("whence comes movement," — not a relation of analogical participation in Being. The regressive sequence of effect and cause, moved and mover, refers the Being-as-such of nature to a principle which transcends nature, to the "first unmoved mover," "which moves without being moved, being eternal, essence and actuality?"
The Scholastics were the first to use the analogical relation of beings and Being to define Being in itself, or God, the "first mover," the transcendent First Cause of Being. Every being participates in Being. It is an "ens per participationem," whereas God, the "first and ultimate" being, the "eternal and best," does not participate in Being but constitutes Being in itself, "ens per essentiam," self-existence, in analogy to which whatever is, is.
The relation of beings to the Being-as-such of nature, and the relation of the Being-as-such of nature to God, the Cause of Being, can, in the scholastic view, lead to the analogical knowledge of God, since relation itself is analogous, with only one unknown term, namely, God. The Being-as-such of nature occupies the position of the "third of the comparison" between beings and God. The Scholastics used as their model the mathematical analogy a:b=c:d (2 : 3 = 4 : 6), in which when one term is unknown it can be defined by the productive combination of the remaining three. If the unknown term is 4 we have the relation a:b=c:x (2 : 3 = 4 : x, 2.x = 3.4, x = 3.4/2 = 6).
Thus the relation between beings and Being, and between Being and God, may be expressed according to the Scholastics with the precision of mathematical analogy: beings: Being = Being : x, where x represents the Cause of Being, namely, God. In this case, the analogical participation of beings in Being is the key for understanding the analogical participation of the Being of beings in its divine Cause, and God, the Cause of Being, is defined analogously in relation to Being, the cause of beings.
We have seen that the participation of beings in Being was defined by Aristotle as the subject's analogical reference to its essence, and as the analogy of the attributes of the subject to the attributes of Being-as-such.
In the former case, the subject "is spoken of" (is known) according to the logos of its essence. The participation of the subject in Being is defined as an analogical participation in its essence. On the basis of this definition of the relation between subject and essence, we can say by analogy that in God this relation is a relation of identity: the subject that participates in the essence is the essence itself. The Being of God is God himself, and the essence of God is his very existence.
In the latter case, the subject "is spoken of" (is known) "in many ways," on the basis of the analogy of its attributes to the attributes of Being-as-such (quality, quantity, place, time and relation). The analogical participation of the subject in the attributes of Being-as-such necessarily exhausts the knowledge of Being within the limits of experience in the world — since the experience of quality and quantity, of place, time and measurable relation always refers to the sensory reality of the world. It is nevertheless possible for us to recognize in beings that are partial and incomplete certain attributes which transcend the Aristotelian categories of being. These attributes can, through an intellectual ascent to the absolute ("regressus in infinitum"), disclose the perfections of Being. That is to say, they can make known to us by analogy the transcendent attributes of God. Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great summarized these attributes, which can be the foundation of a transcendent analogy, in the predicates: "unum, verum, bonum, res, aliquid" (one, true, good, thing, something). Being in itself is real, a reality ("res"). By transcending the partial and incomplete, it is always one ("unum"). In contrast with the other beings, it is something ("aliquid"). With regard to the knowledge we have of it, it is true ("verum"). And with regard to its willed intentionality, it is good ("bonum"). The Scholastics called these five predicates of being "transcendentals" ("transcendentalia"). Their reference to God constitutes not an experiential analogy, but a transcendent analogy, an intellectual extension ("extensio") of these predicates beyond the limits of experience in the world, in the space of the transcendent absolute. Thus we can come to know the attributes of God's essence, namely, unity, goodness, truth, supreme onticity and supreme otherness, with the aid of the intellect ("per lumen intellectus"), through the analogical elevation of the perfections of beings to the absolute and transcendent perfection of God, which is the Cause of every perfection.
Scholastic analogy as theological epistemology
We can draw two basic conclusions from this brief account of scholastic teaching on analogy as an epistemological path and method.
1. The knowledge of God by analogy, as established by the Scholastics, is confined to an intellectual approach to the essence of God, which is a transcendent but nevertheless ontic essence — a transcendent object ("objectum") of the intellect. Scholastic analogy ignores the personal existence of God, the Triad of the divine persons, the mode of existence of the divine essence, which is personal. They thus introduce into the field of Christian theology not only the "poverty" of Judaic monotheism, but a conception of God which is incomparably inferior. For the personal God of biblical revelation and ecclesiastical experience they substitute the impersonal conception of a transcendent "object," a logically necessary absolute cause and origin of beings.
This transcendent "object" is accessible only through the subject's ability to rationalize. It is understood solely in the context of the antithesis between the absolute and the relative, the infinite and the finite. God is separated from the world by the sharpest possible contrast between the transcendent and the immanent, the empirically existent and the empirically non-existent, sensible reality and intellectual conception.
Consequently, the analogy of the Scholastics established an ontology of exclusively ontic categories. It left the existential problem untouched, the problem of the mode of exis-tence of God, humanity and the world. It accepted existence a priori as logically determined. Matter remained ontologically unexplained, and the origin or principle of what exists was transferred to the necessity of the things that determined essence, not to the freedom of the person, not to triadic love as the self-determination of the mode of existence.
2. Scholastic analogy ignored the personal mode of existence, not only as an ontological reality but also as a means of cognition. It ignored the cognitive power of personal relation, the disclosure — the unmediated knowledge — of the person through the energies of the essence, which are always personal. It ignored the immediacy and universality of the knowledge, beyond any conceptual signification that accompanies erotic "astonishment," the unexpected revelatory cognition of personal uniqueness and dissimilarity that arises in the relationship of love.
Thus for the Scholastics even the knowledge of God was not a universal (rather than just intellectual) cognitive experience of the revelatory disclosure of the person of God within the limits of a dynamic interpersonal relationship between God and humanity. For them it was not the eros of God for humanity and humanity for God that reveals unutterably and discloses indefinably the uniqueness and dissimilarity of the mystery of personal existence. But it was the human intellect ("la raison seule") which objectifies God's existence as the logical necessity of an impersonal principle and cause of the world.
Consequently, the Scholastics established an epistemology that exhausted the possibility of cognition in the conventional categories of objective syllogisms and restricted the truth to the coincidence of the concept with the object of thought, or opened up the way to a mysticism of essence, a contemplation of an impersonal absolute, which precisely because it is impersonal permits no solution other than pantheism or agnosticism.
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