The Analogy of Being
What are the issues at the heart of the difference between
Protestantism and Catholicism? We've looked at some issues here
recently--satisfaction, indulgences, temporal punishment,
sacrifice, purgatory.
Karl Barth thought these all missed the point. He felt the
major difference to be the understanding of the relationship
between the Creator and his creation, summed up in the concept
of analogia entis, the "analogy of being." In the
earliest part of his monumental Church Dogmatics he
throws down the gauntlet:
I regard the analogia entis as the invention of
Antichrist, and think that because of it one can not become
Catholic. Whereupon I at the same time allow myself to
regard all other possible reasons for not becoming Catholic,
as shortsighted and lacking in seriousness (Church
Dogmatics, I/1:x).
He elaborates further on:
[In Catholicism] grace ... becomes nature, in which ...
God's action disappears at once and dissolves into the
action of the man visited by grace, in which what is outside
all human possibility is here at once transformed into a
something enclosed within the Church's reality, and the
personal act of divine approach into a continuously present
and objective relation. Roman Catholic faith believes in
this transformation. It can recognise itself and God's
revelation again in this continuously present relation
between God and man, in this objective revealedness. It
affirms an analogia entis, the actuality of a
likeness in the creature to God even in a fallen world and
therewith the possibility of applying the profane "es
gibt" (there is) even to God and divine things; just as
it is the--of course ontological--presupposition of the
transformation, the circumvention and neutralisation of the
decisive character of revelation and faith (CD
I/1:44).
It's an essential point for Barth that God veils himself
and--through revelation--unveils himself. If he spoke to us
without a veil, directly, or even through such an analogia
entis "it would be the end of us and the end of all things"
(I/1:192-93). The only analogy of which we may properly speak is
what Paul calls (Romans 12:6) analogia tes pisteos, the
analogy of faith, "the correspondence of the thing known with
the knowing, of the object with the thought, of the Word of God
with the word of man in thought and in speech" (I/1:280).
The New Catholic Encyclopedia (first edition; s.v.,
"Analogy of Faith") comments on Barth's "violent rejection of
the analogia entis" by observing that he was reacting
against liberalism and existentialism, and "built upon
Kierkegaard's notion of God as 'completely other' than man, and
as totally transcendent"; the analogy of faith means that God
"gives meaning to the words" (the priority of revelation),
whereas the analogy of being allows philosophical speculation to
"sit in judgment on the Word of God." It argues,
To reject the analogia entis entirely, however,
cuts man off so radically from God that, as Emil Brunner
points out, the end result can be nothing but the most
advanced form of Nominalism, in which human words take on
divine meanings that are purely arbitrary and are in no way
reflected in a reality already existing in the midst of
creatures.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia roots the Catholic
understanding of analogy in Aristotle and Plato by means of
Pseudo-Dionysius--"all the things that are called being are so
called by reference to one subject that is being in the primary
sense." Thus, "affirmative statements can ... be made about God
(ST
1a,13.12), both on the basis of the perfections and on the
basis of revelation" (s.v., "Analogy").
It then expands on the Catholic theological use of analogy (s.v.,
"Analogy, Theological Use of"):
While in the Catholic theory of analogy it is legitimate
to use human concepts and human language when one talks
about God because of a permanent analogy existing between
God's being and man's being, according to the Protestant
theories of analogy any such use is condemned, because after
the Fall there is no longer an analogy of being between God
and man. ...
... Catholic and Protestant theologians generally agree
that the very possibility of any knowledge of God, both
natural and revealed, rests on analogy: in the natural
knowledge it is man who takes some concepts from nature and
applies them to God; whereas in the supernatural knowledge
it is God Himself who chooses some of the concepts used by
man in order to tell him something about Himself. The first
kind of analogy is called analogia entis, the second,
analogia fidei. According to the Catholic doctrine on
the relationship between grace and nature, there is no
conflict, but harmony, between the two analogies: grace does
not destroy analogy, but, by raising it into analogy of
faith, fulfills it. On the contrary, according to the
Protestant doctrine on the relationships between nature and
grace, there can be no harmony between the two analogies but
only conflict: analogy of being cannot be redeemed and
therefore it cannot be raised into analogy of faith. ...
From the Catholic point of view such a conflict is
inadmissible: "to separate the supernatural from the natural
knowledge of God in this radical way is to render the former
unintelligible and impossible, since revelation, and this is
clear, does not change our natural mode of knowing, but
utilizes the natural instruments of our knowledge, our
acquired concepts, and our mental constructions"....
Can you begin to get a sense of the wider implications of
this?
Catholicism insists study of theology must follow study of
philosophy; grace builds upon nature; reason and revelation are
reconcilable; faith and works can go together; we can cooperate
in salvation; visible things, whether sacraments or sacramentals,
nature as well as images, are means of approach to God; the
spiritual life can be thought of as an interior ascent to God.
All of these things are rooted in a particular understanding of
the relationship of man to God.
The Protestant understanding emphasizes God as "Wholly
Other," who can be known not by reason, but only by revelation;
philosophy can give no true knowledge of God; we know God
through his own self-disclosure; salvation is his gift, received
through faith alone; we celebrate those sacraments rooted in
explicit commands of Christ; to imagine visible things can be
means of approach to God is idolatry; the spiritual life is
grounded in the acceptance by faith of revealed truth.
I've only cited the New Catholic Encyclopedia so
far--let's turn to an authoritative source, the
Catechism of the Catholic Church:
40 Since our knowledge of God is limited, our
language about him is equally so. We can name God only by
taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance
with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.
41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to
God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness
of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth,
their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite
perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking
his creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from
the greatness and beauty of created things comes a
corresponding perception of their Creator". ...
43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this,
our language is using human modes of expression;
nevertheless it really does attain to God himself ....
Richard McBrien (Catholicism), underscores the
importance of this dividing line between Protestant and Catholic
thought, referring to David Tracy's book, The Analogical
Imagination (Crossroad, 1981). Catholicism looks for
similarities between man and God (the analogical), while
Protestantism emphasizes the dissimilarities (the dialectical).
For Catholicism we come to a knowledge of God through our
knowledge of the created world, and especially of the
humanity of Jesus, who is the "primary analogue," and
through an understanding of our own human experience.
Because the reality of God is mediated through such visible
signs as these, the Catholic analogical imagination is
essentially sacramental (p. 15).
Thus, for Catholicism, "Realities are more similar than
dissimilar. The Church and the world are more alike than
different" (p. 78).
As the citation from the New Catholic Encyclopedia
indicated, this approach is linked in history especially with
that of
Pseudo-Dionysius, the 5th/6th century Christian philosopher
who, writing under the pseudonym of the Biblical Dionysius the
Areopagite, mingled Christian and Neoplatonic thought. Here are
some examples (taken from the edition of his works in the
Paulist Press "Classics of Western Spirituality" series). First,
from the Divine Names:
We use whatever appropriate symbols we can for the things
of God. With these analogies we are raised upward toward the
truth of the mind's vision, a truth which is simple and one.
We leave behind us all our own notions of the divine (p.
53).
... [A]ll being drives from, exists in, and is returned
toward the Beautiful and the Good (p. 79).
... [T]here is a simple self-moving power directing all
things to mingle as one, that it starts out from the Good,
reaches down to the lowliest creation, returns then in due
order through all the stages back to the Good, and thus
turns from itself and through itself and upon itself and
toward itself in an everlasting circle (p. 84).
So there is nothing absurd in rising up, as we do, from
obscure images to the single Cause of everything, rising
with eyes that see beyond the cosmos to contemplate all
things, even the things that are opposites, in a simple
unity within the universal Cause (p. 100).
In the Mystical Theology, he emphasizes that though
you start with what is known and seen, you must then put it
behind you, "to strive upward as much as you can toward union
with him who is beyond all being and knowledge" (p. 135). Moses
is one who does this as he ascends the mountain and is wrapped
in cloud. He
breaks free of them, away from what sees and is seen, and
he plunges into the truly mysterious darkness of unknowing.
Here, renouncing all that the mind may conceive wrapped
entirely in the intangible and the invisible, he belongs
completely to him who is beyond everything (p. 137).
In the Celestial Hierarchy, he elaborates on these
principles in discussing the ranks of heavenly intelligences;
through this hierarchy, we are lifted up toward God, from it,
light can be passed on to those below (pp. 153-154). In the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, this becomes the model for the
church, in which everything is interrelated, and the church
participates in the divine life, both raising men to God and
dispensing grace, and separating the more sacred ranks from the
more profane (pp. 198, 213, 238).
In the 13th century, St. Bonaventure continued with this way
of thinking, particularly in The Soul's Journey into God,
where he uses St. Francis' seraphic vision to describe six
stages of the contemplative ascent to God, through and in his
vestiges in creation, through his image stamped upon our natural
powers and in it as reformed by grace, as unity and as trinity.
Here, too, I'm quoting from the volume of his works in the
Paulist Classics of Western Spirituality series. The universe,
Bonaventure said,
is a ladder by which we can ascend into God. Some created
things are vestiges, others images; some are material,
others spiritual; some are temporal, others everlasting;
some are outside us, others within us (p. 60).
...[T]he whole material world [is] a mirror through which
we may pass over to God, the supreme Craftsman (p. 63).
Concerning the mirror of things perceived through
sensation, we can see God no only through them as through
his vestiges, but also in them as he is in them by his
essence, power and presence" (p. 69).
In the Legenda Major, this mystical/philosophical
theology provides the framework for the telling the life of St.
Francis who "in an ordered progression from the lowest level
reached the very heights" (p. 321).
The Catholic Church is not alone in its indebtedness to
Neoplatonism for both philosophy and spirituality--the New Age
movement has the same roots. A Vatican document,
Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life (Jesus as the
true Aquarius, in other words), describes its basis thus:
The essential matrix of New Age thinking is to be
found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was
fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in
the 18th and 19th centuries. It was
particularly strong in freemasonry, spiritualism, occultism
and theosophy, which shared a kind of esoteric culture. In
this world-view, the visible and invisible universes are
linked by a series of correspondences, analogies and
influences between microcosm and macrocosm, between metals
and planets, between planets and the various parts of the
human body, between the visible cosmos and the invisible
realms of reality. Nature is a living being, shot through
with networks of sympathy and antipathy, animated by a light
and a secret fire which human beings seek to control. People
can contact the upper or lower worlds by means of their
imagination (an organ of the soul or spirit), or by using
mediators (angels, spirits, devils) or rituals.
How is that different from what we've been looking at?
Catholic thought can't criticize the New Age movement for its
"essential matrix"--it can only assert its own unique authority.
There are some good points in that critique, but it doesn't look
at the role of Neoplatonism in both. And if the Catholic
theologian believes in using created things to ascend to God
(knowing that they are but stepping stones, and eventually must
be negated), what is to rule out the use of New Age techniques?
That was Matthew Fox's experience. But that's also what led a
conservative theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, to recommend
Meditations on the Tarot, by a so-called "Christian
Hermeticist."
And consider these comments from a work that has led many
into the New Age movement, The Power of Myth, by Joseph
Campbell and Bill Moyer. All myths and names and images of God
are masks, metaphors "for what lies behind the visible world"
(p. xviii); all being is interconnected, as myths show; "the
idea of God as the Absolute Other is a ridiculous idea. There
could be no relationship to the Absolute Other" (p. 227).
The Protestant theologian can't go there, however. I return
to the point I made earlier:
The Protestant understanding emphasizes God as "Wholly
Other," who can be known not by reason, but only by
revelation; philosophy can give no true knowledge of God; we
know God through his own self-disclosure; salvation is his
gift, received through faith alone; we celebrate those
sacraments rooted in explicit commands of Christ; to imagine
visible things can be means of approach to God is idolatry;
the spiritual life is grounded in the acceptance by faith of
revealed truth.
Here, too, was another critical element of Luther's dissent.
It arises in the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518.
Thesis #19: "That person does not
deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the
invisible things of God as though they were clearly
perceptible in those things which have actually happened."
Thesis #20: "He deserves to be called
a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and
manifest things of God seen through suffering and the
cross." (LW 31:40)
Revelation is necessary for Luther because speculation on the
basis of what is visible will not lead one to a knowledge of
God. Yet what God reveals of himself is, at the same time,
concealed. God shows only his "back side." This revelation of
the posteriora Dei takes place in suffering and the
cross, not in common human morality or in the design and order
of creation. And it demands faith--for only faith recognizes
that the One on the cross is, in fact, God (McGrath, Luther's
Theology of the Cross, pp. 149-50).
The theology of the cross and the theology of glory are
mutually exclusive. As he says in Bondage of the Will
(1525):
Faith has to do with things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Hence
in order that there may be room for faith, it is necessary
that everything which is believed should be hidden. It
cannot, however, be more deeply hidden than under an object,
perception, or experience which is contrary to it (LW 33:62)
The analogia entis is yet another human work, a way
for us to reach up to God, a philosophical Tower of Babel. The
analogy of faith is the theology of the cross, that
doubts human effort and reason, and clings by faith alone to the
Word. |
