Theological Studies

54 (1993)

AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER

THE ABYSS
GREGORY P. ROCCA, O.P.
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley

A narrow abyss cleaving the face of the earth down to

P ICTURE DEEP,
its core, where super-hot magma bubbles and percolates, gushing
and spurting through the labyrinthine tunnels which are our planet's
fiery arteries. Smoke gyres upward in widening spirals. Towering cliffs
angle upwards and backwards from the chasm to left and right, so that
one standing atop either cliff would be too high up and too far back to
view the chasm's nucleus. To behold the depths, one would somehow
have to hover below the canyon rim along the rocky wall on either side,
without a secure hold and in constant danger of being buffeted by
upwelling air currents. Even then, all an observer could see would be
a mass of hazy, congealing clouds backlit and limned by a reddish
glow—a dark blaze and a blazing darkness.
This image is an apt metaphor, I think, for the ways in which Chris-
tians have understood what goes on when they talk about God, that
dark blaze and blazing darkness on top of Mount Sinai or at the bottom
of the abyss. On the one hand, some Christians have taken the extreme
agnostic position, that we cannot know or say anything positive about
the mysterious Lord of heaven and earth. Many of these agnostics are
mystics who have been plunged by God's grace into the very abyss
itself and who, on being brought back to the land of clear air and bright
sunshine, can only stammer and babble about what they have experi-
enced of God's tenebrous fire. Human words and concepts can no longer
express what they have learned of God by having "suffered" God ex-
perientially, and the apophatic discourse of negative theology is their
natural home—if they want to talk at all. Negative theology is the
only recourse for those who have been chosen by God for a descent into
the abyss. There are other agnostics, however, often of a more aca-
demic bent, who may not be mystics but who hold, for various philo-
sophical or theological reasons, that our knowledge and talk about God
is only equivocal at best, that what we know and say about our world
has no intrinsic relation to what we can know or say about the God who
is "wholly Other." Of course, such academic agnostics show a surpris-
ing ability to be quite garrulous about God while still clinging to their
perch on what we might call the left-hand Cliff of Equivocity.
On the other hand, there are Christians who have taken their stand
641
642 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

on the right-hand Cliff of Univocity. For them, our worldly knowledge

and speech apply to God in the same way as they apply to the realities
of our world. There is nothing surprising or different about our knowl-
edge and talk of God, for God is simply the most excellent reality
among all the other realities of our world, different in degree but not
in kindfromall the other objects of our knowledge. They may acknowl-
edge that God is mysterious, but all the while they press for clear
conceptual distinctions and demand that God be conceived in human
terms. For them, our knowledge and talk of God are as clear and bright
as the air and sunshine which surround them on the Cliff of Univocity.
Still other Christians, however, would hold that talking about God is
more like hovering dangerously between the Cliffs of Equivocity and
Univocity while peering and pointing below toward the Dark Lumi-
nosity at the heart of the world. I hope to show in this article that
Aquinas's understanding of God-talk—which involves a unique, com-
plicated, and subtle weaving of negative and positive theology, of anal-
ogy and incomprehensibility—amounts to such a hovering over the
abyss.

AQUINAS THE NEGATIVE THEOLOGIAN

Aquinas the negative theologian stands in a long tradition reaching

back to Hellenistic Judaism,1 Middle Platonism, gnosticism,2 and
many patristic writers. I will focus on the one we call Pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite as the carrier of this tradition; for he not
only is the major source for Aquinas's negative theology but also
stands in contrast to Thomas as an apophatic theologian. Most likely a
Syrian writer who flourished around 500 and who attempted to syn-

1
Echoes of Hellenistic Judaism's negative theology are found in the New Testament's
assertions that God and God's ways are invisible, immortal, ineffable, indescribable,
unsearchable, and untraceable (Rom 1:20; 11:33; 2 Cor 9:15, 12:4, 1 Tim 6:16).
2
Jean Danielou distinguishes the three sources: "For a Jew, to say that God is tran-
scendent is to say that he cannot be measured by any created thing, and is therefore
incomprehensible to the creaturely mind; but at the same time it is to assert that his
existence can be known. For the Plantonist, to say that God is ineffable is to say that he
surpasses any conception of him that the mind can form in terms of the sensible world;
but it is also to affirm that, if only the mind can shake itself free from all conceptions of
that kind, it will be able to grasp his essence. For the Gnostic, however, the matter goes
far deeper. God is unknown absolutely, both in his essence and in his existence; he is the
one of whom, in the strictest sense, nothing is known, and this situation can be overcome
only through the Gnosis" (A History of Early Christian Doctrine before the Council of
Nicea 2: Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture, trans, and ed. J. Baker [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1973] 335-36).
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 643

thesize Neoplatonism with Christianity, he took the pseudonym of

Paul's famous convert at Athens mentioned in Acts 17:34 and thereby
gained an almost apostolic authority for his writings throughout the
Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.3
For Dionysius, God is not one of the beings;4 the essence-surpassing
God is the God removed from our knowledge, inaccessible to mind and
speech and sight;5 God is the unnameable one.6 But Dionysius faces a
problem: How can the unnameable God be praised by Scripture with
all sorts of names?7 He tries to overcome the dilemma by balancing
positives and negatives, theses and denials, so that he may be true
both to the scriptural praises and to the ultimate unknowability of the
Nameless One. In a passage remarkable for the beautiful exactitude of
its Greek rhetoric and the mystic fervor which inspires it, he writes:
God is known in all and separate from all; God is known through knowledge
and through unknowing, and of him there is understanding, reason, knowl-
edge, apprehension, perception, opinion, imagination, and name and all other
things—and yet he is neither understood nor spoken nor named; he is not any
of the beings nor in any of the beings is he known; he is all in all and nothing
in anything; he is known to all from all, and to no one from anything. 8

The specific nature of Dionysius's negative theology is a much-

debated question in contemporary Dionysian scholarship. Does he
have two negative theologies, one rational and the other mystical, or

3
For two English translations of the Dionysian corpus, see The Divine Names and
Mystical Theology, trans, with Introduction by John Jones (Milwaukee: Marquette,
1980); The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist, 1987). Other
literature on Pseudo-Dionysius: Vladimir Lossky, "La thgologie negative dans la doc-
trine de Denys TAr^opagite," Revue des sciences philosophiques et thiologiques 28 (1939)
204-21; Jean Vanneste, he mystdre de Dieu (Brussels: Descl6e, 1959); Walter M. Neidl,
Thearchia: Die Frage nach dem Sinn von Gott bei Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita und
Thomas von Aquin (Regensburg: Habbel, 1976); John Jones, "The Character of the
Negative (Mystical) Theology for Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite," Proceedings of the
American Catholic Philosophical Association 51 (1977) 66-74; Salvatore Lilla, "The
Notion of Infinitude in Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita/' Journal of Theological Studies 31
(1980) 93-103; Michel Corbin, "Negation et transcendance dans l'oeuvre de Denys/'
RSPT 69 (1985) 41-76; Paul Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within thePseudo-
Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984). See also
R. G. Williams, "The Via Negativa and the Foundations of Theology: An Introduction to
the Thought of V. N. Lossky," in New Studies in Theology, no. 1, ed. S. Sykes and D.
Holmes (London: Duckworth, 1980) 95-117.
4
The Divine Names 7.3 (872A). Citations within parentheses or brackets refer to the
third volume of Migne's Patrologia Graeca.
5 6
Ibid. 1.4 (593A). Ibid. 1.6 (596A).
7 8
Ibid. 1.6 (596ABC). Ibid. 7.3 (872A).
644 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

only one? The problem is compounded by the fact that, although in the
third chapter of his Mystical Theology and elsewhere he clearly distin-
guishes rational affirmative theology from mystical negations and un-
knowing, in his Divine Names we often discover a mixture of positive
and negative theology within rational theological discourse. However,
even at the conclusion of the Divine Names, which is a work of con-
ceptual, affirmative theology, Dionysius mentions his preference for
"the way up through negations" which "guides the soul through all the
divine notions, notions which are themselves transcended by that
which is far beyond every name, all reason and all knowledge."9 Al-
though he does not treat his preferred way, that of mystical negation,
until the Mystical Theology, it has nevertheless already been function-
ing in the Divine Names as a corrective guide for affirmative notional
theology.10 Another passage clearly distinguishes the mystical from
the notional and philosophical way to God:
Theological tradition has a dual aspect, the ineffable and mysterious on the
one hand, the open and more evident on the other. The one resorts to symbol-
ism and involves initiation. The other is philosophic and employs the method
of demonstration The one uses persuasion and imposes the truthfulness of
what is asserted. The other acts and, by means of a mystery which cannot be
taught, puts souls firmly in the presence of God.11

I would argue that Dionysius has only one negative theology, a via
negativa which is based on a mystical, nonconceptual grasp of God's
transcendent supereminence and is opposed to all conceptual, affirma-
tive, positive theology.12 For Dionysius, God is absolutely unknowable

9
Ibid. 13.3 (981AB; Luibheid trans. 130). This passage and many others (ibid. 1.1
[588AB1; 7.3 [872AB]; Celestial Hierarchy, 2.3 [141A]; Utter 9.1 [1105CD]; Mystical
Theology 3 [1032D-1033D]) display the superiority, in Dionysius's eyes, of the mystical
way of negation. Lossky has some fine words on the Dionysian mystical way of unknow-
ing, which requires spiritual detachment, purgation, and the continual denial of predi-
cates in order to prepare for ecstasy, union, and finally divinization ("Th6ologie nega-
tive" 211-18).
10
Divine Names 13.3 (980B-981B).
II
Letter 9.1 (1105D; Luibheid trans. 283). Dionysius remarks that Blessed Hi-
erotheus, his esteemed teacher, was instructed (the word mucin originally meant to be
initiated into the mysteries) by divine inspiration, "not only learning but also experi-
encing the divine things" (Divine Names 2.9 [648B]; Luibheid trans. 65). The reference
to initiation reflects the liturgical underpinnings of Dionysius's mystical theology; his
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy also develops an epistemology of sacramental symbols as ways
to God. Rorem's study (above, n. 3) points out the many biblical allusions and liturgical
symbols which undergird the positive theology of the Divine Names.
12
A more extended argument for this position may be found in Gregory Rocca, "Anal-
ogy as Judgment and Faith in God's Incomprehensibility: A study in the Theological
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 645

in conceptual, notional, or rational terms. Although the negative the-

ology which appears in the Divine Names takes the form of conceptual
denials, in itself it is actually the polar opposite of all conceptual ac-
tivity and is written as a corrective by one who has already been
mystically plunged into the blazing, murky abyss of God. Ultimately,
for Dionysius, the highest form of theology is that beatific ignorance
which transpires in mystical union with God and which even tran-
scends the very opposition between affirmation and negation.
Aquinas is indebted to Dionysius for the thesis of God's incompre-
hensibility; but at the same time he mitigates the starkness of the
axiom about God's absolute unknowability and propounds a sanitized,
domesticated version of the Dionysian via negativa so that it becomes
a "way" fully at home within the confines of a positive, affirmative
theology. For Aquinas, God is indeed that supereminent darkness
which transcends our knowledge and leaves us in ignorance; he ap-
proves of those who say that on Mount Sinai Moses "approached the
darkness in which God is";13 in another passage he claims, following
Dionysius, that we are best joined to God in this life according to a type
of ignorance which is "a kind of darkness, in which God is said to
dwell."14 We are ignorant of God because God's infinite reality and
perfection surpass and exceed every conception of our intellect.15 The
ultimate human knowledge of God occurs when someone "knows that
he does not know God, inasmuch as he realizes that what God is ex-
ceeds everything we understand about him."16 Our learned ignorance
is the result of our awareness that God transcends our knowledge, and
thus we know that God exceeds our knowledge without knowing the
divine transcendence itself. God dwells in a supereminent darkness,
for the darkness of our ignorance is the direct consequence of God's
infinitely dazzling light, and the very admission of our ignorance mys-
teriously evokes in some way a sense of God's infinite beyondness.
However, Aquinas also softens the extreme negative theology of Di-
onysius and his adherents, for his own negative theology is not a total
Epistemology of Thomas Aquinas" (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America [Ann
Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1989] 73-86).
13
Summa contra gentiles (SCG), ed. C. Pera (Rome: Marietti, 1961) 3.49.2270.
14
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (SS) 1.8.1.1.ad 4. Joseph Owens comments on
this "darkness of ignorance" in "Aquinas—'Darkness of Ignorance' in the Most Refined
Notion of God," in Bonaventure and Aquinas: Enduring Philosophers, ed. R. W. Shahan
and F. J. Kovach (Norman, Okla.: Univ. of Oklahoma, 1976) 69-86. He sees the dark-
ness as signifying for Aquinas our nonconceptual and nonquidditative knowledge of God,
where there is "privation of both intuitional and conceptual light" (86).
16
SS 1.2.1.3; De Veritate (DV) 2.1; SCG 1.14; cf. SS 1.34.3.1.; 4.49.2.6-7; DV 10.11.
16
De potentia (DP) 7.5.ad 14; also Expositio super librum De causis 6.160; Expositio
super librum Dionysii De divinis nominibus (DDN) 7.4.731.
646 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

and supreme unknowing which leaves us in pure ignorance of God but

teaches instead that God always exceeds every kind of human knowl-
edge.17 He synthesizes his view of God's incomprehensibility in two
theses: that no creature by its own natural powers can possess a quid-
ditative grasp of God's essence, which "remains totally unknown,"18
but at best can know only that God is and what God is not;19 and that
no creature can ever possess a comprehensive, infinite grasp of the
divine essence, even in the beatific vision.
For Aquinas, to have a quidditative knowledge of some object is to
know it essentially, i.e. to have a definition of its essence which rep-
resents the object in a comprehensive way. This is precisely the kind of
knowledge we cannot possess of God in this life, though it is possible
through God's grace in the beatific vision of heaven.20 Until heaven,
then, when the divine mystery will be directly present to our con-
sciousness, God cannot be known essentially by any creaturely kind of
knowledge, since no creature whose being and essence are distinct can
represent the God whose being and essence are identical, for every
creaturely bit of knowledge is limited to some finite aspect of reality
and thus cannot represent God's infinite supereminence. Moreover, no
created intellect, whose existence is a finite participation in God's ex-
istence, can by its own natural powers see the essence of God, who is
the infinite and subsisting act of existence itself.21
Even more radically for Thomas, however, God's incomprehensibil-
ity means that no created intellect will ever grasp God as much as God
is able to be grasped, even in heaven's eternal beatific vision.22 The

17
Summa theologiae (ST) 1.12.1.ad 1,3; 1.12.7.ad 2.
18
SCG 3.49.2270.
19
Thomas expresses this view many times (SS 1.3.1.3; 1.8.1.1; SCG 1.11.66,69;
1.12.78; DP 7.2.ad 1,11).
20
SS 1.2.1.3; 3.24.1.1.2; 3.24.1.2.1; 3.35.2.2.2; 4.10.1.4.5; 4.49.2.1.ad 3; 4.49.2.7.ad 8;
W2.1.ad 9; 8.1; 10.11; SCG 1.3.16-17; 1.25.233-34; 3.49.2268; DP 7.5.ad 1, ad 5, ad 6,
ad 9; ST 1.3.5; 1.12.2; Compendium theologiae (CT) 1.26.
21
ST 1.12.2,4. John Wippel asserts that from the very beginning of his career Thomas
taught that we have no quidditative knowledge of God, and that when Thomas says that
what God is remains totally unknown to us, he is taking quidditative knowledge strictly,
in the sense of a comprehensive or defining knowledge (Metaphysical Themes in Thomas
Aquinas [Washington: Catholic University of America, 1984] 238-41).
22
Karl Rahner sees this as Thomas's more radical view of God's incomprehensibility
("An Investigation of the Incomprehensibility of God in St. Thomas Aquinas," Theolog-
ical Investigations [New York: Seabury, 1979] 16:244-54) and prefers himself to speak
of God's "holy inconceivability" ("The Experiences of a Catholic Theologian," Communio
11 [1984] 404-14, at 406). See also Paul Wess, Wie von Gott sprechen? Eine Ausein-
andersetzung mit Karl Rahner (Graz: Styria, 1970). Elizabeth Johnson retrieves the
tradition of God's incomprehensibility as a critical resource for feminist theological
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 647

reason is God's unique status as the infinite act of subsisting being,

which no creature can ever comprehend infinitely.23 He expresses the
difference between seeing and comprehending God in heaven by a
clever use of different grammatical forms of the same word: "God's
very infinity will be seen but it will not be seen infinitely, God's total
essence will be seen but not totally."24 Paradoxically, the blessed will
see God's infinity without comprehending it:25 "Whoever sees God in
essence, sees that which in God exists infinitely and is infinitely know-
able, but this infinite mode does not belong to the seer so that he
himself should know infinitely, just as someone can know with prob-
ability that some proposition is demonstrable though he himself does
not know it demonstratively."26
In addition to these two theses, Thomas puts forward a tamer ver-
sion of the Dionysian via negativa so that it becomes, not a mystical
way to God beyond the boundaries of rational, affirmative theology, as
in Dionysius, but one of three moments within the overall structure of
affirmative theology which serves to correct the deficiencies and uni-
vocalist tendencies of that theology. He often affirms that we know
God in three connected ways: by causality, negation, and superemi-
nence.27 For example, we know God is holy because God is the cause of
our holiness, but we also know that God is not holy in the same way as
we are holy, not because God's holiness is less than ours but because it
transcends ours by its own supereminent, infinite excellence. Thus, the
second or negative moment, by recourse to the third moment's height-
ened awareness of God's supreme excellence, corrects any possible uni-
vocalist misunderstandings of the first moment's positive affirmation
which is based on God's gracious causality.
In practice, Thomas's negative theology can take three different

discourse ('The Incomprehensibility of God and the Image of God Male and Female/' TS
45 [1984] 441-65; She Who Is [New York: Crossroad, 1992] 104-20).
23
SS 1.2.1.3; 1.3.1.1; 3.14.1.2.1; 4.49.2.3; SCG 3.49.2268; 3.55; ST 1.12.7; 1.62.9;
1-2.4.3; 2-2.27.5; 3.10.1; DDN 1.1.34; DP 7.3.ad 5; DV 8.1.ad 9; 8.2; 20.4-5; CT 1.106;
1.216.
24
DV 8.2.ad 6; cf. 8.4.ad 6; DP 7.1.ad 2.
25
Rahner realizes the mystery of heaven's beatific vision, especially when we remem-
ber that the blessed see God as a simple whole and as incomprehensible: "The assertion
of the direct vision of God and assertion of his incomprehensibility are related for us here
and now in a mysterious and paradoxical dialectic" ("An Investigation" 247).
26
ST 1.12.7.ad 3. H.-F. Dondaine, in an article replete with rich historical data,
manifests how Thomas displayed his originality in keeping to a middle course between
the Augustinians and Albert the Great on the question of whether we know God essen-
tially or comprehensively ("Cognoscere de Deo 'quid est*," Recherches de thCologie anci-
enne et mCdiCvale 22 [1955] 72-78).
27
DDN 1.3.104; 7.1.702; SCG 3.49.2270; DP 9.7; ST 1.11.3.ad 2; 1.13.10.ad 5.
648 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

forms. First, he often speaks of what may be called qualitative nega-

tions, which deny some quality of God on the grounds that it is intrin-
sically imperfect and thus incompatible with God's perfection: e.g., God
is incorporeal, immutable, and without any temporal succession. This
is the sort of negation Aquinas has in mind whenever he says that
although we cannot know what God is, we can know what God is not.
Second, he describes what might be called objective modal negations:
these are corrective negative judgments applied to positive divine per-
fections which deny that those perfections are subject to any objective
creaturely mode or limitation. For example, when we say in a positive
fashion that God is good, we do not mean that God is good in the same
way that humans are good, since we, unlike God, follow moral laws
and have to struggle with our emotions in order to be good.29 Finally,
Aquinas recognizes what might be termed subjective modal negations:
these deny that the subjective, human way in which we understand
positive divine perfections are to be attributed to those perfections
themselves. For example, when we say "God is wise," the proposition
signifies semantically that an accidental quality inheres in a subject,
but this does not mean that God's wisdom is actually an accidental
quality inhering in God, for in reality divine wisdom is identical with
the divine nature itself.30
For Aquinas, our knowledge of God can grow as we add the nega-
tions one to another, and we approach closer to the divine mystery by
denying more and more imperfections of God and by realizing ever
more deeply that we cannot impute to God our finite and creaturely
modes of being and understanding. In a text imbued with mysticism, in
which Thomas shows himself a worthy successor of Dionysius, the
continuing negations finally burst the confines of all rational pursuits
and lead us into the darkness of ignorance:

When we proceed into God through the way of negation, first we deny of him
all corporeal things; and next, we even deny intellectual things as they are
found in creatures, like goodness and wisdom, and then there remains in our
understanding only the fact that God exists, and nothing further, so that it
suffers a kind of confusion. Lastly, however, we even remove from him his very

28
For more on the three forms of Aquinas's negative theology, see Rocca, "Analogy as
Judgment" 151-58.
29
Objective modal negations are the same as the via negativa understood as the second
moment of the threefold way to God, which means that Aquinas's negative theology
encompasses more than the via negativa.
30
For a full account of Aquinas' treatment of subjective modal negations, see Gregory
Rocca, "The Distinction between Res Significata and Modus Significandi in Aquinas's
Theological Epistemology," Thomist 55 (1991) 173-97.
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 649
existence, as it is in creatures, and then our understanding remains in a
certain darkness of ignorance according to which, as Dionysius says, we are
best united to God in this present state of life; and this is a sort of thick
darkness in which God is said to dwell.31

AQUINAS THE POSITIVE THEOLOGIAN

Through his own prayer and his reading of mystics like Dionysius,
Aquinas certainly learned the ways of negative theology, but he was
also a more insistent positive theologian than the majority of mystics,
at least until that December day in 1273 when he underwent the
mysterious experience that left him unable to write any more32 and led
him to consider all he had written till then as mere straw. His view of
God-talk, at least until that last December of his life, is a subtle and
intricate weaving of negative and positive theology, the latter being
the more fundamental, even though in order to thrive as theologia it
must first pass through the corrective lenses of negative theology. The
main reason why Thomas's positive theology takes precedence over his
negative theology is that the foundational truth of his entire system-
atic theology is the ringing affirmation of God's pure positivity as
ipsum esse subsistens, the subsisting act of being itself.33
Despite the many accents of his negative theology, therefore, Aqui-
nas continually asserts that we can make true judgments about God's
very nature and being, whether by reason or by faith.34 He opposes
those who, like Maimonides, are so tightly constrained by negative
theology that they interpret seemingly positive predications like "God
is good" to mean only that God is not evil or that God causes our
goodness. Thomas argues that the positive nature of predications like
"God is good" cannot simply be reduced to such negative or causal
interpretations. Rather, he claims that such predications tell us some-
thing true about God's very nature.

31
SS 1.8.1.1.ad 4; cf. DDN 13.3.996.
32
Although it is true that after 6 December 1273 Thomas added nothing in writing to
his major academic works then in progress, scholars date his brief letter to the abbot of
Monte Cassino (Epistola ad Bernardum Abbatem Casinensem) to early 1274 when he
was on his way to the second council of Lyons. The letter deals with a recondite issue
about predestination found in Gregory the Great's Moralia. In this case, as also in the
legend about his commentary on the Song of Songs to the Cistercian monks of Fossanova
during the last few weeks of his life, Thomas's charity outweighed his disinclination to
write or dictate. See Antoine Dondaine, "La lettre de Saint Thomas a l'abbg du Mont-
cassin," in St. Thomas Aquinas 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974) 1.87-108.
33
ST 1.3.4; see Rocca, "Analogy as Judgment" 164-73, 462-93.
34
SS 1.2.1.3; 1.22.1.2; 1.35.1.1.ad 2; DV 2.1; DP 7.5-6; ST 1.13.2,6,12.
650 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
When it is said that "God is good," the meaning is not "God is the cause of
goodness" or "God is not evil/' but "that which we call goodness in creatures
preexists in God," and preexists according to a higher mode. From all of this,
then, it does not follow that to be good belongs to God insofar as he causes
goodness, but rather vice versa, that because he is good he diffuses goodness to
things.35
Aquinas is quite willing to walk a tightrope, for although his negative
theology denies that we have any intuitive concept of God's essence or
being, his positive theology affirms that we can make true judgments
about that same divine reality; and although he supports a robust via
negativa, he will not permit affirmative propositions about God to be
reduced to a merely negative interpretation.
How can Aquinas hold all of this together? How can he swing be-
tween the poles of positive and negative theology, partaking of both
while being reduced to neither? He accomplishes this balancing act by
means of the analogical predication of the divine names.36
But which type of analogy does Aquinas have in mind, and what is
the nature of that analogy? Up until about forty years ago the reigning
interpretation of Aquinas on analogy was that of the Dominican Car-
dinal Cajetan de Vio, who, in his 1498 De nominum analogia et de
conceptu entis,37 proposed a fourfold typology of Thomistic analogy and
explained the nature of genuine analogy in highly conceptualistic
terms. Basing himself mainly on a combined reading of two early
texts, 38 Cajetan holds that Aquinas recognizes only four analogical
types: of inequality, of attribution, of improper metaphorical propor-
tionality, and of proper proportionality.39 According to Cajetan, how-
ever, only the last type is genuine analogy, for it alone posits real
perfections in both God and creatures, according to a fourfold propor-
tionality (e.g., creatures' being : creatures :: God's being : God). In the
analogy of attribution, however, the perfection only really exists in the
prime analogate, while it is merely attributed to the secondary analo-

35
ST 1.13.2; cf. 1.13.6.
36
In many texts (SS 1.4.1.1; 1.34.3.2.ad 3; 1.45.1.4; DV4.1.ad 10; ST 1.13.3), Aquinas
subdivides predications which refer positively to God's being into those which are met-
aphorically true and those which are true according to the proper and literal meaning of
their terms (and hy "literal" he does not mean an iconic idea with a physical referent but
rather the strict truth of a judgment). His theory of theological analogy is meant to
explain how we can speak truthfully about God in a nonmetaphorical fashion. Contrari-
wise, much of contemporary writing on theological epistemology tends to blur the dis-
tinction between metaphor and analogy.
37
Ed. P. N. Zammit (Rome: Angelicum, 1934); trans. E. A. Bushinski and H. J. Koren,
in The Analogy of Names and the Concept of Being (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1953).
38 39
SS 1.19.5.2.ad 1, and DV 2.11. De nominum analogia, chaps. 1-3.
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 651

gates by reason of their extrinsic relation to the prime analogate (e.g.,

the human body is really healthy while food is only called healthy
because it helps to keep the human body really healthy). Cajetan thus
denied any intrinsic real analogy to direct two-term judgments like
"God is good," and equated genuine analogy with four-term propor-
tionalities.40 But in the decade between the early 1950s and the early
1960s, several Thomists began to criticize Cajetan's reading of Aqui-
nas and concluded that Thomas recognizes the genuine analogical na-
ture of direct two-term judgments.41 Although a few today still follow
the Cajetanian interpretation, Cajetan's critics have largely won the
debate over the proper typology of Thomistic analogy.42
The conceptualist tradition of analogy actually originates with John
Duns Scotus. Combating the extreme equivocity he detects in Henry of
Ghent, Scotus holds that the concept of being is one, is formally neutral
vis-a-vis God and creatures, and is distinct from its finite and infinite
40
Modern proponents of Cajetan's typology include George Phelan (Saint Thomas and
Analogy [Milwaukee: Marquette, 1941]); Eric Mascall (Existence and Analogy [London:
Longmans, 1949]); James Anderson (The Bond of Being [St. Louis: Herder, 1949]);
Jacques Maritain (The Degrees of Knowledge, trans, under the supervision of G. B.
Phelan from the 4th French ed. [New York: Scribner, 1959] 418-21).
41
Santiago Ramirez found that, contrary to Cajetan's view, the two texts from the
early Thomas are not parallel and thus not able to be combined into a total theory (De
analogia, in Edicion de las obras completas de Santiago Ramirez, OP., ed. V. Rodriguez
[Madrid: Institute de Filosofia "Luis Vives," 1970-72] 2/4.1811-50; the original article
appeared in Sapientia 8 [1953] 166-92). George Klubertanz and Bernard Montagnes
discovered that, although in the early text of De veritate 2.11 Thomas had focused on the
four-term analogy of proportionality in order to protect God's infinite otherness, he later
abandoned proportionality as the only possible analogy between God and creatures once
he realized that the direct two-term judgment about God did not derogate from divine
transcendence (G. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and
Systematic Synthesis [Chicago: Loyola Univ., 1960] 27, 86-100, 109-10; and B. Mon-
tagnes, La doctrine de Vanalogie de I'itre d'apr&s saint Thomas d'Aquin [Louvain/Paris:
Publications Universitaires/B^atrice-Nauwelaerts, 1963] 7-10, 65-66, 75-93). Ham-
pus Lyttkens demonstrated that the analogy of proper proportionality is neither primary
norfreeof serious internal problems (The Analogy between God and the World, trans. A.
Poignant [Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1952] 49-54,63-74). Ralph Mclnerny mar-
shaled trenchant reasons against Cajetan's insistence that all analogy of attribution is
extrinsic, proving that analogy for Thomas, formally as such, is quite neutral with
regard to whether the perfections in question are extrinsic (as in the traditional example
of the predicate "healthy," where only the primary analogate, the living body, is really
healthy) or intrinsic (as in the traditional example of the predicate "being," where both
the primary and secondary analogates, substance and accidents, are really instances of
being) (The Logic ofAnalogy: An Interpretation ofSt. Thomas [The Hague: Nijhoff, 1961]
chap. 1).
42
For more on the Cajetanian tradition and its critics, see Rocca, "Analogy as Judg-
ment" 25-37.
652 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

modes in God and creatures.43 Since being is the simplest concept of

all, and since every analogical predication involves at least some con-
cept of being, all analogy is reducible to a common univocal core of
being, with its various modes arranged like layers around it. 44 At-
tempting to hew a middle course between Henry's equivocity and
Scotus's univocity, Cajetan describes the "confused" unity of the anal-
ogous concept which lies at the heart of the genuine analogy of proper
proportionality. The unity is confused because the concept is only im-
perfectly abstracted from its real modes in God and creatures (rather
than being perfectly abstracted, as would occur with a fully univocal
concept), but even such a confused analogical unity, according to Ca-
jetan, is able to escape Henry's equivocity without falling prey to
Scotus's univocity.45
Cajetan's analogous concept, however, with its confused proportional
unity, has been criticized on the grounds that it is ultimately reducible
to either univocity or equivocity.46 Realizing that Aquinas never em-
ploys the conceptus analogus of Cajetan, who succumbed to Scotus's
conceptualism even as he tried to avoid his univocalism, some au-
thors47 focus instead on judgment as a way of understanding Aquinas's

43
Opus Oxoniense, Ordinatio 1.8.1.3, nos. 81-82; 1.3.1.1-2, nos. 26-30 (Opera Om-
nia, ed. C. Balic [Vatican City, 1950] 4:190, 3:18-20); Quaestiones subtilissimae in
Metaphysicam 4.1.5.
44
Cyril Shircel, The Univocity of the Concept ofBeing in the Philosophy of John Duns
Scotus, (Washington: Catholic Univ. of America, 1942); fitienne Gilson, Jean Duns Scot
(Paris: Vrin, 1952); Michael Schmaus, Zur Diskussion uher das Problem der Univozitdt
im Umkreis des Johannes Duns Skotus (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissen-
schaften, 1957).
45
De nominum analogia, chaps. 4-10.
46
Montagnes, La doctrine de Vanalogie 150-58; Henri Bouillard, The Knowledge of
God, trans. S. D. Femiano (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968) 105-7.
47
Etienne Gilson writes that "the Thomist doctrine of analogy is above all a doctrine
ofthe judgment of analogy" (Jean Duns Scot 101). Claiming in general that analogy is
the semantic expression of the judgments philosophers make and the result of how
language must work in order to do justice to insight, David Burrell also discerns in
Aquinas a view of analogy as usage based on insightful judgments {Analogy and Philo-
sophical Language [New Haven: Yale, 1973] chaps. 1-2, 6-7, 9). A few other scholars
have also begun to view analogy as judgmental rather than conceptual. W. Norris
Clarke sees analogy as based on our ability to make the judgments we do ("Analogy and
the Meaningfulness of Language about God: A Reply to Kai Nielsen," Thomist 40 [1976]
61-95, at 64-72). For Colman O'Neill, all analogy is judgmental because it occurs when
a predicate is transferred from its normal linguistic context to a new one not originally
its own; to speak of "analogical concepts," he says, is a "disastrous misunderstanding"
("La predication analogique: L'el&nent n£gatif," in Analogic et dialectique, eds. P. Gisel
and P. Secretan [Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1982] 81-91, at 82). He writes that "the
theological theory of proper analogical predication deals with the very complex phenom-
enon of complete statements which express judgments inspired by faith about the reality
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 653
48
use of analogy. Theological analogy, in particular, is in Thomas's
eyes the only valid way of explaining epistemologically, in a second-
ary, after-the-fact reflection, what takes place in the primary ontolog-
ical and theological judgments that bear upon God's very being.49
Aquinas's theological analogy is actually an epistemological reflection
upon the truth status of the theological judgments he has already
made, and so one cannot understand his view of analogy without ap-
preciating the truth of his basic theological positions.50 And only if
Thomas's use of theological analogy is understood more as a matter of
judgments than of concepts can it thread its way amidst various
threatening shoals.51
One would look in vain, however, for an explicit statement from
Aquinas that theological analogy is a matter of theological judgments.
My contention that his theological analogy is a matter of judgment is
an interpretation of his thought based on two main reasons: the posi-
tioning of analogy's treatment within his theological works; and the

of God.... It is false to place this theory on the same footing as those which deal only
with concepts" ("Analogy, Dialectic, and Inter-Confessional Theology," Thomist 47
[19831 43-65, at 57).
48
What Thomas means by analogy here is not to be confused with the so-called ar-
gument from analogy, which comprises four terms and is much used in biology and the
other sciences; see Mary Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame: Univ. of
Notre Dame, 1966).
49
See Rocca, "Analogy as Judgment" chaps. 6-7, 10, 13.
50
O'Neill writes that theological analogy "has to do with the linguistic expression of
a knowledge about God that is held, whether rightly or wrongly, to be already acquired
and to be true, even though necessarily imperfect. Those who speak in this way of
analogical predication take it as given that there are judgments about God, whether of
faith or reason, in which, by means of concepts drawnfromthe created world, the human
person attains the reality of God himself. All that the theory of analogy is meant to do
is to account for the oddities of linguistic expression which result from this conviction"
("Analogy" 45).
51
The conceptualistic understanding of analogy is rightfully subject to the critique of
those who claim that since it is tantamount to univocity it derogates from God's glory
and transcendence. Consider Barth's famous pronouncement against such a view of
analogy: "I regard the analogia entis as the invention of Antichrist, and think that
because of it one cannot 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 [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936-77] 1/l.x). Eliza-
beth Johnson summarizes Pannenberg's critique of analogy so understood: "Analogy is
a relation requiring a logos common to both analogates. The structure of analogy un-
derstood in this way held goodfromprimitive human thought to the Neoplatonic causal
schema, and no subsequent concept of analogy, whether early Christian, medieval, or
modern, has ever broken through the confines of that Neoplatonic schema and its pre-
suppositions If one is opposed to univocity, however slight, existing in the essential
characteristics of Creator and creature, one must oppose analogy" ('The Right Way to
Speak about God? Pannenberg on Analogy," TS 43 [1982] 673-92, at 687).
654 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

process of elimination by which he chooses analogy as the only possible

way to understand epistemologically what takes place in our talk
about God. First, then, the very placement of Thomas's treatment of
theological analogy within the larger context of his treatise on the one
God shows that for him such analogy subsists in a secondary consid-
eration reflecting back upon primary theological judgments. In three
of his major works—the Summa theologiae, the Compendium theolo-
giae, and the Summa contra gentiles—he treats of analogy only after
having proved to his own satisfaction that God exists, that God is one,
simple and perfect, the pure and infinite act of being, and that in
creation God bestows the Divine Mystery upon creatures by creating in
them a likeness to the divine nature and persons. His discussion of
analogy is situated after the treatment of his core theological truths,
not before, as would be our modern propensity.
The second reason for viewing Thomistic analogy as a matter of judg-
ment is the manner in which Thomas portrays analogy as a mean be-
tween univocity and equivocity. For him, there are only three possibili-
ties for understanding what goes on epistemologically when we talk
about God's very being in a nonmetaphorical manner—univocity, equiv-
ocity, and analogy—and once he has rejected the first two alternatives on
the grounds of his previous theological judgments, analogy is the only op-
tion left. In the Summa theologiae, e.g., he refuses univocity since it
detracts from God's unity, simplicity, and incomprehensibility:

Nothing can be predicated univocally about God and creatures, since no effect
whose production does not require the total power of its agent cause can re-
ceive a full likeness of the agent, but only a partial one; so that what occurs
among effects separately and plurally, exists in the cause simply and unitedly,
as the sun by its single force produces many different forms in all things
beneath it. Likewise, all perfections existing in creatures separately and plu-
rally, preexist in God unitedly. Thus, whenever any perfection term is predi-
cated of a creature, it signifies that perfection as distinct in idea from all
others: e.g., when we call a human wise we signify a perfection that is distinct
from the essence, power or existence of humans; but when we call God wise we
do not intend to signify anything distinct from the divine essence, power or
existence. And so, when wise is predicated of a human, the name somehow
circumscribes and comprehends the reality meant; but this is not the case with
God, where wise does not comprehend the divine reality but lets it remain as
surpassing the name's meaning. It is clear, then, that the name wise is not
predicated with an identical meaning of God and humans, and the same can be
said for all other names.52

ST 1.13.5.
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 655

Since Thomas already knows through his first-order theological judg-

ments that God is one, simple and incomprehensible, univocity cannot
be a valid option for his second-order theological epistemology. The
same article goes on also to reject pure equivocity as a valid option
since, if the divine names were equivocal, "then nothing at all could be
known or demonstrated about God on the basis of creatures, for one's
reasoning would always be exposed to the fallacy of equivocation"; but
Thomas affirms that philosophers and Paul the Apostle (and presum-
ably theologians like himself) have claimed to know some truths about
God based on the nature of creation.
Finally, after this process of elimination, the same article maintains
that names such as "wise" must be predicated of God and creatures
according to analogy, i.e. proportion (which is the original etymologi-
cal meaning of the Greek analogia).

Names are predicated according to proportion in two ways: either because

many things bear a proportion to one reality, as medicine and urine are called
healthy insofar as both possess an order and proportion to the animal's health,
since medicine is a cause of health and urine is one of its signs; or because one
thing bears a direct proportion to the other, as medicine and the animal are
called healthy insofar as medicine is the cause of the health which exists in the
animal. And in this second way some things are predicated of God and crea-
tures analogically, neither purely equivocally nor univocally. For we are not
able to name God except from creatures, and thus whatever is said about God
and creatures is predicated inasmuch as the creature is ordered to God as to its
causal principle in whom all the perfections of things preexist surpassingly.
Now the analogical type of commonality is a mean between pure equivocity
and simple univocity. For in analogical predications there is neither one mean-
ing, as occurs in univocal predications, nor totally diverse meanings, as occurs
in equivocal predications, but the name which is predicated analogically in
multiple ways signifies different proportions to one single reality: as when
healthy, said of urine, refers to the sign of an animal's health, but when said of
medicine signifies the cause of that same health.53

Thomas does not clarify why he favors the one-to-one over the many-
to-one proportion, but it is clear from elsewhere that it has to do with
his desire to underscore divine freedom and transcendence, for if God
and creatures were given a common name by reference to some third
reality, then in his view that third reality would somehow be prior to
God and determine God's being. 54

53
Ibid.
54
SCG 1.34.297. This move is simply the epistemological correlative of Aquinas's
ontological rejection of any reality beyond or above God, whether it be Greek Necessity/
Fate, Platonic Forms, or Whiteheadian Creativity.
656 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

As in Aquinas's view analogy is closer to equivocity than to univoc-

ity, 55 so is its unity to be found not in the single concept but in the
single reality to which all the analogates bear some proportion, order,
or relation.56 Urine, medicine, and food can all be called healthy, by
extension, because we judge them to have an intelligible relation to the
single reality of animal health, which is the most natural subject for
the predicate "healthy." A meaning gets extended analogically when a
word is used to name a secondary analogate precisely because it is
judged to have an intelligible relation to the primary analogate. Thom-
as also notes that in the case of God and creatures, being and naming
are not on the same plane:
Since we arrive at the knowledge of God through things other than God, the
reality referred to by the names predicated of God and other things exists by
priority in God according to his own mode, but the meaning of the name
belongs to God by posteriority, and thus God is said to be named from his
effects.57
While God, ontologically speaking, is the primary locus for every an-
alogical name shared with creatures, at the epistemic level of knowing
and naming, most names (except for a few like "God" and "YHWH")
find their primary home in creatures and are then extended to refer to
God.
In general throughout his works,58 Aquinas rejects univocity as an
appropriate epistemology for the divine names because it would re-
quire him to contravene certain truths about God he already holds
dear: e.g., that God is incomprehensible, simple, superexcellently per-
fect, that God does not participate in any perfection but is that perfec-
tion essentially, and that God's being and essence are identical. In a
word, he rejects univocity because it derogates from the theological
truth (known in judgment) of God's infinite transcendence, which he

56
Analogy for Aquinas is a kind of systematic and intelligible ambiguity or equivoc-
ity, as distinct from a haphazard and accidental homonymy. The idea of an intelligible
ambiguity goes back to Aristotle's logic and metaphysics, whereas the name analogia
finds its home in mathematical and biological contexts. See Rocca, "Analogy as Judg-
ment" 179-96; Harry Wolfson, Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, ed.
Isadore Twersky and George Williams (Cambridge: Harvard Univ., 1977) 1:455-77;
2:514-23.
56
A detailed investigation of what Thomas understands by analogical discourse may
be found in Rocca, "Analogy as Judgment" chaps. 6-7.
57
SCG 1.34.298.
58
SS 1.24.1.1.ad 4; 1.48.1.1.ad 3; 1.35.1.4; DV 2.11; 10.13.ad 3; SCG 1.32-34; DP 7.7;
ST 1.13.5-6,10. See Montagnes, La doctrine de Vanalogie 67-70, 181-83; Hampus
Lyttkens, "Die Bedeutung der Gottespradikate bei Thomas von Aquin," Neue Zeitschrift
fur systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 6 (1964) 280-83.
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 657

has already established to his own satisfaction. He refuses equivocity

because, at root, it would mean that we could not know anything at all
about God; but he already knows he knows certain truths about God.
However strange it may seem to modern ears which, accustomed to
Kantian sound waves, instinctively place epistemology before ontol-
ogy, and the discussion of the transcendental conditions for knowledge
before the avowed fact of knowledge itself, Aquinas repudiates a uni-
vocalist epistemology on the basis of a theological ontology which sub-
sists in judgments, and renounces an equivocalist epistemology on the
grounds that it cannot do justice to the very fact that we do make true
judgments about God. On the second-order level of epistemology, anal-
ogy is the only option which is genuinely responsive to the truths of
Thomas's first-order web of theological judgments. Only analogy can
justify epistemologically what he already knows through his theolog-
ical judgments, and thus analogy can only be understood in terms of
those same judgments.
But analogy is a highly paradoxical option,59 for analogical predica-
tions say something true about God by using concepts whose meaning
at the divine level we cannot really understand.60 For example, we can

59
J. H. Nicolas is uncomfortable with any paradoxical interpretation that underscores
the extreme negativity of Aquinas's theology, for Thomas spent his whole life searching
for and saying "ce que Dieu est," and it is contradictory to say that one knows the divine
attributes without knowing the divine essence, since each attribute is the divine essence
partially known ("Affirmation de Dieu et connaissance," Revue thomiste 64 [1964]
200-222, at 200-204, 221-22). Nicolas's position, however, is directly rooted in his
assessment of what Thomas understands by judgment and truth: since judgment is
nothing more than the application of a previously known form or concept to a subject,
then any true judgment about God will have to use a concept of God's essence or attrib-
utes which in some manner attains "ce que Dieu est"; for him, then, to posit that our
affirmations of God imply no knowledge, even imperfect, of what God is, cannot be
consistent with Thomas's notion of truth. See Denis Bradley, "Thomistic Theology and
the Hegelian Critique of Religious Imagination," New Scholasticism 59 (1985) 60-78, at
77-78. Wess also sees an incompatibility between Thomas's notions of the mystery and
the natural knowability of God, but it is clear he does not understand the difference
between judgment and quidditative insight in Thomas when, in a Kantian fashion, he
criticizes the Thomistic proofs for God's existence because they cryptically rely on the
Anselmian ontological proof, which requires an adequate concept of God (Wie von Gott
sprechen? 107, 123-26).
60
O'Neill notes that since judgments use concepts, there is a paradox inherent in all
theological discourse: theological judgments affirm transcendence even though by
means of limited concepts ("La predication" 87-89; "Analogy" 52,57). Those who speak
of theological analogy as a projection, perspective, or tending towards God are also aware
of this paradox (Edward Schillebeeckx, Revelation and Theology [New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1968] 167,175,177,205-6; William Hill, Knowing the Unknown God [New York:
Philosophical Library, 1971] 88-97, 123, 144). Gilson remarks that true analogical
judgments about God orient us toward a goal, "the direction of which is known to us but
658 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

know the truth that God exists without knowing what the divine ex-
istence is in itself.
To be can mean two different things, signifying either the act of being, or the
propositional composition which the mind devises by joining predicate to sub-
ject. Taking to be in the first sense, we cannot know God's being, nor God's
essence; but only in the second sense. For we know that this proposition which
we form about God when we say "God is," is true.61
Thomas's positive theology is rather like a blind person pointing to and
making true judgments about a reality which he or she cannot actually
see. Even analogy itself is thoroughly suffused with a conceptual un-
knowing as referred to God, and with the various dialectical moments
of negative theology outlined above.62 Moreover, if we tend automati-
cally to think ofjudgments as built up out of concepts, so that the truth

which, because it is at infinity, is beyond the reach of our natural forces" (The Christian
Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas [New York: Random, 1956] 110). Clarke holds that
through the mediation (not representation) of the analogous concept, God is situated at
an "invisible apex" in an upward direction, and that a knowledge is gained which is
"obscure, vector-like, indirect, non-conceptual," such that God must be affirmed and yet
is still beyond representation ("Analogy" 93-95).
61
ST 1.3.4.ad 2. ST 1.13.12 and SCG 1.36 teach that we can form true affirmative
propositions about God. Although the divine nature is one and simple, the mind can only
know it through a plurality of judgments; but the mind also realizes that one and the
same simple God corresponds to its various judgments.
62
A few writers have interpreted analogy within a Thomistic perspective as involving
the threefold way to God, but without ascribing the notion as such to Aquinas. Bouillard
notes that analogy has all three moments since "it is a synthesis of a thesis and an
antithesis," where the way of eminence is the synthesis (Knowledge of God 109). Mcln-
erny asserts that even affirmative divine names have moments of negation and emi-
nence ("Can God Be Named by Us? Prolegomena to Thomistic Philosophy of Religion"
Review of Metaphysics 32 [1978] 53-73). O'Neill considers the threefold via within
analogy as a dialectic of mutually correcting judgments, not of contrary concepts which
could then result in some "higher" concept of God ("Analogy" 52-53, 59-60); even the
judgment "God exists" shows moments of negation and eminence ("La predication" 8 5 -
88). Those who compare analogy with dialectic often make Hegel the dialogue partner of
Thomas. For the theological importance of the two traditions of analogy and dialectic,
see Pierre Gisel and Philibert Secretan, eds., Analogie et dialectique (Geneva: Labor et
Fides, 1982); for the confrontation between analogy and dialectic, see Bernhard Lake-
brink, "Analektik und Dialektik: Zur Methode des Thomistischen und Hegelschen Den-
kens," in St. Thomas Aquinas, 1274-1974: Commemorative Studies (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974) 2:459-87. David Tracy shows the complementarity
of analogy and dialectic: just as analogy (based on manifestation) without its own neg-
ative moment becomes wooden univocity, so dialectic (based on proclamation) left to
itself becomes equivocity and destruction (The Analogical Imagination [New York:
Crossroad, 1981] chaps. 5,10). O'Neill considers analogy the fundamental matrix within
which dialectic can find a home, for dialectic itself cannot be basic ("Analogy" 43-54,
62-65).
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 659

of judgments is dependent on the meaning of concepts, in the case of

theological analogy we must reverse the direction and think of the
very meaning of the divine names as dependent upon the truth of
theological judgments.63
Finally, a concrete example may illumine what I think Thomas has
in mind when he places analogy at the nexus of his positive and neg-
ative theology. I can point to some papers on a lectern and announce,
"Here is my talk"; I can also proclaim, while sweeping my arms in a
180-degree arc so as to designate the whole room containing both au-
dience and lectern, "Here is my God." I have four points about these
two sentences. First, they are both instances of analogical discourse
since they both signify analogically by means of a complex web of
interlocking judgments, though the former is secular, noncontroversial
discourse, while the latter is theological, disputed discourse. The first
sentence is analogical discourse because we implicitly relate it in our
minds to the very same sentence—"Here is my talk"—when it is used
to refer to what comes out of my mouth while I am actually speaking.
Because we understand the intrinsic relation between intelligible ver-
bal sounds and intelligible written marks on pieces of paper, we spon-
taneously extend the meaning of the word "talk" by using it to make
what we understand to be a true and literal, nonmetaphorical judg-
ment: words on paper are truly my talk though they are not exactly the
same reality as my spoken words. The word "talk" receives its ex-
tended meaning precisely by being understood and used in two differ-
ent judgments about the real world which bear an intrinsic relation to
one another; it does not possess its extended meaning beforehand all on
its own.
However, the second point says these two sentences are also quite
different as instances of analogical discourse, since God is much more

63
Clarke writes that God cannot be defined or meant before discovering him, at least
philosophically: 'The philosophical meaning of God should be exclusively a function of
the way by which He is discovered* ("Analogy" 84 n. 9). Without special reference to
Aquinas, other authors make similar points: Michael Levine holds that the judgment of
God's existence is necessary for any literal or analogical talk about God (" "Can We
Speak Literally of God?' " Religious Studies 21 [1985] 53-59, at 53-54); more generally,
Richard Swinburne argues that the analogical meaning and coherence of any words or
thoughts about God depend on the prior truth of certain statements about God (The
Coherence of Theism [Oxford: Clarendon, 1977] 1-5, 48-49, 70-71, 278-80, 294-96).
With reference to Aquinas, David Burrell states generally that in talk about God, mean-
ing is not so much presupposed as it is constituted by judgment ("Aquinas on Naming
God," TS 24 [1963] 183-212, at 202). Even more universally, Bernard Lonergan con-
tends that for Thomas knowledge always measures meaning, and that there is a "clear
reduction of meaning to knowledge" (Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David
Burrell [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1967] 152-53).
660 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

mysterious than any kind of talk whatsoever, is totally hidden from

our powers of sensation, and is obscure to our powers of conceptualiza-
tion. If we return for a moment to the two different significations of the
first sentence, "Here is my talk," we note that only the fourth word,
"talk," actually changes meaningfromone context to the other; in both
contexts, the word "here" refers to an area of space that can be pointed
to, the word "is" retains its meaning of temporally limited existence,
and the word "my" signifies something I possess as having been pro-
duced by me. But if we compare the first with the second sentence, we
find that not only the word "God," but even the first three words of
each sentence, together with the whole context in which they stand,
demonstrated different semantic functions. Precisely because someone
like Aquinas has already judged, within appropriate doxological and
theological contexts, that God is a mysterious and loving being unpro-
duced by me whose illimitable existence cannot be spatially or tempo-
rally constrained—because of the supposed truth of such judgments—
the meanings of the first three words in each sentence cannot be the
same. In the theological sentence, the word "here" cannot refer to a
spatial area but rather to a Mystery who transcends space; the word
"my" cannot refer to something I possess but rather to a gracious Being
who possesses me; and the word "is" must not be limited to temporal
existence.
The third point counters those who see a hidden core of univocity
lurking in the meanings of the first three words of each sentence. They
would be right if those meanings were first abstracted as concepts from
our experience of God and creatures and then later predicated as ge-
neric meanings of God and creatures. But Thomas permits no latent
univocal meanings, for we do not know what a concept really means
once it has been extended to God, which is why he constantly applies
the correctives of negative theology to the creaturely concepts we use
to speak about God. He does not use such concepts because he sees how
they apply to God's inner nature but because they are the best tools he
can find for trying to speak the Inexpressible. Eschewing any prying
into God's inner being, he would refuse the gambit of those who would
try to force him to find common abstract meanings and content him-
self, as a negative theologian, with showing how God's perfections are
not like ours.
Finally, however, Aquinas does think theological discourse can ex-
tend creaturely concepts so that they point to God and speak truthfully
about God, even though they cannot give us insight into God and
cannot be distilled down to reveal a common univocal meaning. At this
point, those who think they detect a hidden equivocity lurking in the
significations of the two sentences are deeply troubled: How can the
theological sentence mean anything at all if there are no common
 AQUINAS ON GOD-TALK: HOVERING OVER THE ABYSS 661

meanings and if we do not know how our concepts apply to God? Aqui-
nas will respond that, at the level ofjudgment, the theological sentence
cannot be equivocal precisely because it is true, although it expresses
its truth by projecting creaturely concepts toward an infinite mystery
which remains absolutely inconceivable. Whereas he rejects univocity
due to God's incomprehensibility, he repudiates equivocity on the
grounds of the believer's ability to know some truth about God. In
Aquinas's eyes, those who consider all speech about God to be inher-
ently equivocal are reduced in the end to holding that we can never say
anything true about God, even that God exists.
CONCLUSION
Aquinas's theory of God-talk, a subtle and nuanced view which hov-
ers over the divine abyss between the crags of purely positive and
purely negative theology, evinces Christianity's penchant for invoking
and positively identifying a God who is at the same time essentially
mysterious and hidden, a God who is neither univocally dissolved into
us humans nor equivocally placed beyond every ability of ours to know
and name in prayer and worship. Thomas's God-talk blends both the
positive and the negative, but the positive is foundational for the neg-
ative, for God is the pure positivity of infinite Being who in creation
has also acted positively on our behalf. This stance accords well with
the views of other theologians who also see God as pure positivity,
albeit in terms different from Aquinas's—Kasper, e.g., who sees God
as pure and positive Love, or even Barth, who toward the end of his career
finally admits that a God-talk based on the world of creation and
redemption must have something positive to say if Christ is ultimately
the positive "Yes"fromGod to that world and from that world to God.
Aquinas's analogy-based theological epistemology only escapes idol-
atrous univocity, however, to the degree that it is based on judgment
rather than concept, is continually interpreted by the dialectics of neg-
ative theology, and is conscious that the concepts used in its true judg-
ments about God cannot give us any insight into the inner nature of
God. His theological epistemology gladly grasps, as the only viable
alternative, the inescapable paradox that in all our theologizing we
link judgmental truth with conceptual agnosticism.
Finally, Thomas's theological epistemology implies that when we
talk about God, the very meanings of the words we use are somehow
dependent upon what we hold to be true about God. From his perspec-
tive, our theological epistemology is ultimately based on the perceived
truth-status of our foundational theological judgments, not the other
way around. This suggests that the theory of God-talk to which we
subscribe will always be indebted to the truths about God we hold dear.