Medieval Theories of Analogy
Medieval theories of analogy were a response to problems in three areas: logic, theology, and metaphysics. Logicians were concerned with the use of words having more than one sense, whether completely different, or related in some way. Theologians were concerned with language about God. How can we speak about a transcendent, totally simple spiritual being without altering the sense of the words we use? Metaphysicians were concerned with talk about reality. How can we say that both substances (e.g., Socrates) and accidents (e.g., the beardedness of Socrates) exist when one is dependent on the other; how can we say that both God and creatures exist, when one is created by the other? Medieval thinkers reacted to these three problems by developing a theory which divided words into three sorts. Some were univocal (always used with the same sense), some were purely equivocal (used with quite different senses), and some were analogical (used with related senses). Analogical terms were thought to be particularly useful in metaphysics and theology, but they were routinely discussed in commentaries on Aristotle’s logic and in logic textbooks. The background to the discussion was given by what is often called the analogy of being or metaphysical analogy, the doctrine that reality is divided both horizontally into the very different realities of substances and accidents and vertically into the very different realities of God and creatures, and that these realities are analogically related. Nonetheless, the phrase “medieval theories of analogy” as used here will refer to semantic analogy, a set of linguistic and logical doctrines supplemented, at least from the fourteenth century on, by doctrines about the nature of human concepts.
Read the rest here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analogy-medieval/
AI
Medieval theories of analogy address how terms apply to God and creatures without being either purely univocal (same meaning) or purely equivocal (different meaning).
The core problem: if words like good, being, or wise mean exactly the same for God and humans, God is reduced to a creature. If they mean completely different things, we cannot meaningfully speak about God at all.
Main positions:
- Analogy of attribution (Aquinas)
A term applies primarily to God and secondarily to creatures (or vice versa).
Example: “healthy” applies primarily to an animal, secondarily to medicine (as cause).
Creatures are called good insofar as they derive goodness from God. - Analogy of proportionality (Aquinas)
The term applies according to proportion.
God is good as God, humans are good as humans.
The relation is similar, not the content. No shared definition, but a structured similarity. - Rejection of univocity (Aquinas)
Against Scotus. Univocal terms would collapse the creator–creature distinction. - Univocity of being (Duns Scotus)
Scotus argues that being must be univocal; otherwise metaphysics and theology are impossible.
God and creatures share being in the thinnest possible sense, though infinitely differently instantiated. - Later developments
Ockham pushes toward equivocity and semantic minimalism.
This weakens analogy and contributes to the breakdown of classical metaphysics.
Bottom line: Analogy is a semantic strategy to preserve meaningful God-talk while maintaining divine transcendence. Aquinas uses analogy to protect mystery; Scotus uses univocity to protect rational coherence. The disagreement shapes later medieval and modern philosophy.
Analogy and Theology
Another classical theological problem that is closely tied to the problem of the knowledge of God is that of the titles one can correctly attribute to God (the “divine names”). This theme, treated by pseudo-Dionysius in De Divinis Nominibus, was taken up and given a complete treatment by Thomas Aquinas for whom analogy would play a decisive role. First of all, he maintained that the names that denote what God most certainly is not (imperfections or ontological or moral limits) cannot be attributed to God. He then states that we can attribute to God the words we use to describe the perfections of creatures, but only by analogy, as our language refers mainly to what we know of creatures. These are in fact an effect of which God is the cause, a cause that cannot be known directly by us. We cannot speak of Him univocally because God is a cause that is infinitely higher than His effects and transcends their natures as He does not belong to any genus. We cannot speak of Him equivocally, since there is a cause-effect relation, which is a real relation from the creatures towards God. Thus, the names signifying God’s perfections are used by analogy of proportion, God being here the summum analogatum. When one says that something is good, one says this most properly of God, who is good in and of Himself, rather than of creatures, who are good only by participation. Other names can be attributed to God only metaphorically. This happens either when one signifies a perfection by means of a name describing a creature who possesses it or when, instead of the name of a certain perfection, the creature’s name is attributed to God, with the intention of attributing that perfection to Him. This happens, for example, when in Holy Scripture God is called a “rock” or “lion,” with the intention of attributing the perfections of a rock and a lion to him (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 13).
INTERS – Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, edited by G. Tanzella-Nitti, I. Colagé and A. Strumia, https://inters.org/analogy
Nochrisis 