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Analogia entis

See also: Catholic theology

The analogia entis (Latin for "analogy of being") is the philosophical claim that the class of relationship of the "being" of created things and the "being" of God is one of "analogy", and the theological and other ramifications of this.

It has been called a guiding principle of thought (or Denkform) which synthesizes many disparate themes in Catholic doctrine and theology: that general names or statements about God (such as God "is", "is infinite", "is a consuming fire", "is love", "is just", "is our father", "is patient") are true but analogies. It is associated with the Latin phrase “maior dissimulitudo in tanta similitudine":

“For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them."

— Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.

The modern formulation of the analogia entis emphasizes a cognitive rhythm: the double motion in and beyond:

“What is meant by analogia entis is precisely this: that in the very same act in which the human being comes to intimate God in the likeness of the creature, he also comes to intimate Him as the one who is beyond all likeness."

— Przywara, Schriften vol 2, p404

Overview

Analogia entis gives a name to a broader range of considerations or usages than its strict definition may suggest: theological discussion of the term has been described as "remarkably confused". To expose the different facets of the term, this article treats analogia entis as five related usages:

• cognitive: a non-mystical, fallable human cognitive event involving the characteristic double motion in-and-beyond (distinct from deduction, intuition, instress, etc.);

• rhetorical reflex: that whenever we state something positive about God, we should immediately also state that this is not a limitation on God: so reconciling the cataphatic with the apophatic;

• philosophical: building on the Aristotelean category of metaphor, and Aquinas's real distinction between essence and existence in creatures, which contrasts with the unity of essence and existence in God (divine simplicity): God is not a creature and not part of the cosmos but is uniquely behind and above the cosmos, so God's "being" is infinitely different from our "being", not an end-point in some continuum of being.

• theological: a symbolic mechanism of general revelation favoured by God in communicating his nature to humans (distinct from, for example, dreams, signs and wonders, angels or syllogisms) and a reliable denkform that underlies much Catholic theology. This usage has been controversial with some Protestant theologians who accuse it of being natural theology.

• religious or noetic form: the application of analogia entis as life, e.g., as a pattern for biblical interpretation, devotions, and Catholic literature.

Readers should be aware that there can be considerable re-interpretation of the term, so that the concept that a person of one community writes about may be different from the concept of those from another community they are nominally quoting from.

Background

There is no single, universally authoritative, and unambiguous doctrine of the analogia entis.

— Ry O. Siggelkow

Analogy

Main article: Analogy

Analogia entis is not a fancy synonym for analogy, however the term is sometimes enlarged so that 'being' includes all kinds of analogous predication about God not just essential and infinite being.

Analogy has the general form A is to B as C is to D:

A : B :: C : D

Some analogies get presented condensed (e.g., into metaphors) by leaving out terms so that one thing is referred to by mentioning another: A is a C. (There is a core case, which other terms relate to in various pros hen ways.) So "God is Good" is the analogy "the goodness of humans is to their nature as the goodness of God is to his nature.."

Analogical reasoning can be distinguished from other modes, such as induction and deduction. Analogical statements can be distinguished from other kinds of statement, such as univocal and equivocal.

Such analogy is asymmetric, working in one direction only: the metaphor "God is Father" (i.e., the analogy "God is to us as a human father is to their child") does not imply "Father is God."

Similarly, an analogical statement does not rule out another statement that would be contradictory if interpreted univocally: "God is Father" does not rule out "God is Mother." But every analogy breaks down when extended too far.

In Christian thought, God has been analogized against many created or experienced things: being, goodness, truth, beauty, just, kind, love, a friend[12], a judge[13], an advocate[14], a fire[15], a hound, a worm[16], divine law[17].

Development

The term was originally coined around 1350 by Albert Magnus and developed subsequently, notably in the 1920s and 1930s by Jesuit Erich Przywara and German theologians, such as former Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar. The concept has a longer history than the term, and drew on commentary by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Aristotle.

Key developments include:

• 4th Century B.C.E.: Aristotle discusses analogy and the pros hen legomena, and distinguished "analogy of proportion" from "analogy of attribution"
• 1st Century: Mark 4:14 notes that indirect language was Jesus’ preaching idiom: “He did not say anything to them without using a parable.
• 1st Century: St Paul’s mirror analogy in 1 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly", i.e. that we do not see directly or entirely or well but in the nature of a poor partial reflection of something greater.

• 2nd Century: Ireneus Against Heresies states that the Son (who is knowable and known) declares the Father (who is invisible.)

• 4th Century: St Augustine's phrase sempor major ("always greater"), that God is always more.

• 6th century: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's On the Divine Names discuss God's hyper-being or pre-being

• 11th century: Anselm's Proslogion, subverting his famous Ontological argument, says to God "you are that (being) greater than which can be conceived"

• 13th century: Paul’s mirror analogy was re-worked in the negative by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 as "for between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them."[18]

• 13th Century, Albert Magnus used and perhaps coined the term in his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics lib. 4, tr. 1, c. 3

• 13th century, St Thomas Aquinas looked at these statements through eyes informed by Aristotle’s Categories and q. 10 Metaphysics, and proposed that our theological language and knowledge of God must therefore be classed as analogical (rather than univocal or equivocal).

• 14th century, the actual term was used around 1325 by Petrus Thomae in his Quaestiones de ente q. 10

• 16th century, the term was used around around 1500 by Thomas Cajetan in a commentary on Aquinas’ Summa[19]

• 1920s and after, Jesuit Erich Przywara wrote his book Analogia entis,
• 1940s and after, Hans Urs von Balthasar,
• 1960s and after, Pope Benedict XVI's famous Regensburg Lecture has been called a commentary on Erich Przywara's book Analogia entis.

Usages

Cognitive

Scientist Douglas Hofstadter has claimed that analogy is the core of human cognition. Pseudo-Dionysius' purported book Symbolic Theology discussed dissimilar similarities and the need for the human mind to have and use symbols.

One facet of analogia entis is as a fallible, non-mystical human cognitive event involving the characteristic double motion of in-and-beyond (and distinct from deduction, intuition, instress, etc.) and subsequent unresolvable oscillation.

In Catholic theological usage, the analogia entis is a foundation organizing and epistemological principle of religious cognition: for Bonaventure, for example, the cosmos is conceived as a treasury of things that can be used for analogy.

"All created things of the sensible world lead the mind of the contemplator and wise man to eternal God... They are the shades, the resonances, the pictures of that efficient, exemplifying, and ordering art; they are the tracks, simulacra, and spectacles; they are divinely given signs set before us for the purpose of seeing God. They are exemplifications set before our still unrefined and sense-oriented minds, so that by the sensible things which they see they might be transferred to the intelligible which they cannot see, as if by signs to the signified."

— Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis ad Deum, 2.11, as quoted 165

Such analogy has been mentioned by modern Popes.

I want only to state that reality and truth do transcend the factual and the empirical, and to vindicate the human being's capacity to know this transcendent and metaphysical dimension in a way that is true and certain, albeit imperfect and analogical. ...Faith clearly presupposes that human language is capable of expressing divine and transcendent reality in a universal way—analogically, it is true, but no less meaningfully for that.

— Pope John Paul II, Fides et ratio., S83, S84

Rhetorical reflex

Every metaphor breaks down at some point, but it is a distinctive of analogia entis that the analogy is raised to simultaneously affirm its limit. Consequently, the influence of analogia entis can be seen where positive statements concerning God are immediately qualified by statements with words such as "dissimilarity" or "infinitely more"

An example of this rhetorical reflex is in Joseph Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity":

God has become quite concrete in Christ, but in this way his mystery has also become still greater. God is always infinitely greater than all our concepts and all our images and names.

Philosophical

Logic

Analogy

See also: Analogy

St Thomas Aquinas made a distinction between the univocal and equivocal terms of Aristotle’s Categories but added an intermediate but distinct kind: analogical terms where you understand something greater by the measure of something lesser. For Aquinas, “nothing can be said in the same sense of God and creatures.”

Thomas Cajetan attempted to reduce all analogy to three kinds (inequality, attribution, proportionality) and state which ones, in logical use, could be used syllogistically.

In the modern version of analogia entis, while the object providing the “measure” can be any thing, the subject of the intimation is specifically God.

The thing being measured may not only be some created thing or positive transcendental (i.e. things having ‘being’ in some real or metaphysical sense) but also a negative thing or absence: seeing in some bad thing the absence of expected good provides the analogy for reckoning God as the being with no absence of good (in) then seeing (beyond) that God is infinitely more than ‘good’.

Predication and names of God

Following from the Fourth Lateran Council, all “God is ...” statements must be interpreted analogically not absolutely. For example, all the following cases are analogies because love, fire, unity, etc are limited (at least by having finite definitions) while God is not limited.

• Deuteronomy 4:24 “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire”

• Deuteronomy 6:4 “The LORD our God, the LORD is one”

• Psalms 84:11 “For the LORD God is a sun and shield”

• 1 John 1:5 “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all”

• 1 John 4:8 “God is love”

Aquinas discussed this as analogia nominum (analogy of names).

• Exodus 3:14 “I am who am”

For St Thomas Aquinas, even “being” as in: “I am who am” of Exodus 3:14, is an analogy when used of God: our understanding God’s “being” is by analogy to our being.

… whatever names unqualifiedly designate a perfection without defect are predicated of God and of other things: for example, goodness, wisdom, being, and the like. But when any name expresses such perfections along with a mode that is proper to a creature, it can be said of God only according to likeness and metaphor. … For we cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him…

— Summa contra gentiles, 30 2,4

Dialectic

Theologian Ivor Morris saw Analogia entis as dialecticism, "though not of the Hegelian kind, the obvious difference being that...the movement of thought is poised between thesis and antithesis and never advances, as with Hegel, to the idea of a higher synthesis."

Epistemology

St Thomas Aquinas wrote:

Our natural knowledge begins from sense. It can therefore extend so far as it can be led by sensible things. But our intellect cannot in this way attain insight into the divine essence. Sensible things are indeed effects of God, but they are not proportionate to the power of their cause, and for this reason the whole power of God cannot be known from them. Neither, consequently, can his essence be seen. But since effects depend on their cause, sensible things can lead us to know that God exists, and to know what is bound to be attributable to him as the first cause of all things, and as transcending all his effects. In this way we know that God is related to creatures as the cause of them all; that he differs from creatures, since he is none of the things caused by him; and that creatures are separated from God because God transcends them, not because of any defect in God

— APPENDIX TO Q. 4, ART. 3, 12, Art. 12. (Whether, in this life, God can be known through natural reason.)

"We speak of God in the best ways that are available to us by ascribing to God in an analogous way the perfections found in creatures."

Metaphysics

The metaphysical distinction between essence and existence in all beings apart from God is termed the real distinction.

In Thomistic theology, God is whose essence is his existence. ...

Ontology

Key proponents of analogia entis position it as theology not philosophy. John Betz summarizes Przywara's stance: “For as of yet, from a purely philosophical perspective, nothing whatsoever can be made out about who God is or what he has revealed, or even that there is such thing as revelation."

However it is to some extent founded on a philosophical claim about the "ground of being" of creatures which then allows such theology. Przywara's argument is that "All that can be made out metaphysically with any degree of certainty apart from revelation is that creaturely being is not its own ground, that it is not being itself, that it ‘is’ only in the form of becoming, and that theology, that is, the science of a God of revelation, is a reasonable possibility or to put it in still more minimalist terms, a ‘non- impossibility’"

For Edith Sein the relationship between Being and Becoming is analogia entis.

Phenomenology

Theophany

Edith Stein said that being was anything we could think of.(check up PDF) and distinguished finite and infinite being.

For Stein, the analogia entis is a relation between two "I am": the human and creatural "I am" and the divine "I am." Stein starts with the phenomenon of individual awareness, ego cognito: "my certitude about my own existence is the most primordial, intimate and immediate self-experience I can have": this real, temporal, finite being that one experiences as her own is an analogue of ("faintly visible") divine, eternal being.

Rick- The “being” component of the “analogy of being” is that the perception or existence of any kind of positive thing or virtue or quality or transcendent may lead us to intimate the same of God, and therefore that God is, and his relation to us. The “measure” ranging from lillies of the field, beauty, sacraments, sexuality, mathematics, the whole of creation. Through analogy, we get constant and momentary glimpses of something in-and-beyond what we see, and intuit or reason or intimate some conception of God, however arbitrary or limited or culturally or mentally bound.

Detractors

14th century theologian John Duns Scotus and some subsequent theologians propose a Univocity of being.

Theological

Biblical roots

Multiple passages in the Bible decry the human ability to directly grasp and understanding God directly or well. Isaiah 55:8 My ways are not your ways, and neither are my thoughts your thoughts. Rom 11:34 Who has known the mind of God?

However, Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

“For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. ” (Romans 1:20)

The Peshitta version of I Cor 12:13 translated to Aramaic then to English expresses it: Now we see as in a mirror, in an allegory, but then face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I shall know as I am known. (I Cor 12:13 Aramaic Bible in Plain English -Peshitta).

Catholic formulation

The idea was found (implicitly?) in Book XV of Augustine's De Trinitate.(Betz "The Analogia entis as a Standard of Catholic Engagement..." in Modern Theology 2018)

The major formulation of the idea was given in passing in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 "maior dissimulitudo in tanta similitudine" : For between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them. [20] (in a comment on the kind of perfection in grace that humans could attain is not the same as the perfection of God but only analogous.)

Scholastic formulations

Aquinas

St Thomas Aquinas provides a three-fold distinction: “We do not know what God is but only what is he is not and what relation he maintains with everything” [Contra Gentiles, I:30]: It is this relation that is the basis of analogia entis.

For Aquinas, the analogia entis is placed as a form of knowledge that is intermediate but distinct from what is known by positive theology (Cataphatic theology]) and by what is known via negativa (Apophatic theology). The analogia entis is not cataphatic, in the sense associated with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, because analogy does not limit God.

In contrast, Duns Scotus taught that God's existence and our existence is the same concept of being (though in different modes): see Univocity of being.

Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury's Proslogion first addresses God as "you are that than which a greater cannot be conceived" (his famous Ontological argument) but then "you are that which greater than can be conceived": interpreted by analogia entis the former is the "in" step and the latter is the "beyond" step: a paradox perhaps but not a contradiction.

Anselm fills out the "beyond" step stating that God is before and beyond even eternal things and that he alone is what he is and who he is.

vestigia trinitatis ??? Aselm?

Later

Notable 16^th Century scholastic formulators of analogia entis were Thomas Cajetan and John of St. Thomas, and Francisco Suárez’s Disputationes Metaphysicae. (Betz)

Modern formulations

Until recently, most of the key 20th century theological writings on analogia entis were unknown and unavailable in English. Consequently, it has had a much greater influence on continental (especially German-reading Catholic) theologians than anglophone ones.

Pryzwara

The modern positioning of analogia entis as being essential to (and quintessential of) Catholic theology was driven by mid-century Jesuit theologian Fr. Erich Przywara. Analogia entis explicates a key part of Jesuit spirituality: St Augustine's dynamic slogan Latin: Deus semper major ("God is always greater") was the title of Przywara's theological commentary on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.

For example in his difficult 1932 book Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm which provided a major formulation of the idea: this ever-greater God "explodes the limits of every metaphysics as such." For Pzyrwara, this explosion must also blow up some influential Catholic dogmatic tendencies: though it could be treated as a theological system, "rightly understood, the analogy of being is the destruction of every system."

Przywara's thought has been summarized as the more we grow towards God, the more we realise how much further than we thought we need to grow, there being a trembling or oscillation between the two. (He also deals with much wider and more detailed or obscure philosophical issues than this suggests, participating in early 20th century European philosophical/theological currents such as Existentialism, Phenomonology, dialectical theology as well as traditional Augustinianism and Thomism, all under the rubric of analogia entis, and perhaps inappropriately technical for an encyclopedia article.)

Pryzwara saw the analogia entis as central or essential to Catholic theology, to truth and indeed to reality: we understand by (or receive inspiration from) mediating analogies." For Przywara, the analogy entis is a communication from God that calls the believer into service (kenosis).

For Przywara, the analogia entis is nothing more than God’s concurrent immanence (in the world) and transcendence (beyond the world). In Przywara’s view, numerous Catholic doctrines and devotions flow from the analogia entis as a noetic form, such as the Catholic understanding of the Incarnation, synergism (the cooperation of humans and God in salvation), sacramentalism, mystical piety, religious authority and community, the example of Mary, and the nature of the church. [21]

Far from being a rhetorical trope or a philosophical tool, analogy for Przywara is the style of thought that best corresponds to the way in which being makes itself known. Not only is analogy, for Przywara, built into every level of Catholic theology. It is the glue that holds those levels together. The analogy of being is nothing more than the philosophical form that the Roman Catholic Church takes as it embodies God’s presence in the world.

Von Balthasar

For Przywara's protégé Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Christ is the “concrete analogy of being”, being both God and man:we learn everything of God by looking at Christ as the measure For Przywara and many subsequent theologians, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, analogia entis is seen as a primary tool by which a multitude of apparently disparate things (such as the Real Distinction) have a unity, and can be analyzed or weighed (and this to the extent that analogia entis has been queried as a theological panacea.)

Von Baltasar responds to Barth's concern that analogia entis sidelines Christ for scholastic wordplay, with a theology that Christ's homostatic union (as both God and man) itself is a necessary analogy of the divine homoousios within the Trinity.

Von Balthasar invokes the analogia entis in multiple other places:

• He further says The saint is right, contrary to all those who see him from the outside, to feel that he is the worst sinner and failure (because the saint knows more than us due to their analogia entis experience of God’ holiness.)
• As an implication, because analogous statements are approximate, a certain Christological and theological pluralism (Catholicism) is necessarily due to these individual limitations (Truth is Symphonic 1j).

The analogia entis is a condition of good theology and a test of bad theology.

Ratzinger

Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensberg address said:

The faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason, there exists a real analogy, in which - as the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 stated - unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language. God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf

— Regensberg Address[22], 9/12/06])

That analogy is real is ground by which we can say that what is measured (i.e. in) and what is beyond, though so great, are not so different in kind and scale as to be meaningless, because what is in is there because of the free choice of the creator and so allows him to reveal himself. ???

Pope Benedict also spoke of "the great et et" (and, and) of Catholicism: Jesus being God and Man, etc, which are contradictory position. For some of them, the resolution is an application of analogia entis (??)

Orthodox treatment

The modern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart uses the analogia entis in his book The Beauty of the Infinite, noting “The analogy of being does not analogize God and creatures under the more general category of being, but is the analogization of being (itself) in the difference between God and creatures” (p241-2)

Catholic criticism

According to historian William Ashworth, Descartes held that God's immutability was the ground of natural laws and the conservation of motion, but denied that the world was "a collection of signs that demonstrated divine attributes or pointed to God." However, his philosophy has been called a kind of analogia entis argument for the inner world only in its concern for essense, existance and cognition, even though it rejects the remainder of scholastic theology.

Protestant treatments

Analogia entis was not an issue in Reformation theology and not considered a rival to special revelation. For Martin Luther, reason "knows that there is a God, but it does not know who or which is the true God." Calvinists have stressed the correct limits of ideas such as analogia entis. For Anglican theologian Rowan Williams, the analogia entis is the proposition that "there is no system of which God and creatures are both part."

According to theologian Ry Siggelkow, "It is now widely acknowledged that the numerous debates that have ensued around the analogia entis have been remarkably confused."

Some Protestant detractors take the analogia entis as claiming that unsaved humans can reach a saving knowledge of God outside grace, revelation, faith, etc, but merely by autonomous insight. For example, theologian Paul Brazier defines analogia entis as "the idea that we can know and understand God soundly, securely, primarily, through analogy in God’s creation."

Some Protestant commentators connect the analogia entis to ideas of the Trinitarian Vestages mentioned by St Thomas Aquinas[23], and Thomistic ideas that an effect resembles its cause, therefore being a form of natural theology, unacceptable to e.g. Calvinists but acceptable to other theology.

Karl Barth

Karl Barth, a 20th century German protestant dogmatic theologian who was a friend of Erich Przywara and Hans Urs von Balthasar, notoriously aserted at one stage that the analogia entis was the only thing that prevented him becoming Catholic, and the invention of the anti-Christ.[24]

Barth's views may have altered radically over his life: protestant theologian Ry Siggelkow puts it "In contrast to Barth’s early critique, which interpreted the doctrine as emphasizing an ontological similarity between God’s being and creaturely being, the later Barth, according to Jüngel, feared that the so-called analogia entis would not do justice to the difference between God and man by overlooking the nearness of God."

The early critique: using Aquinas' teachings that grace does not destroy but supports and perfects nature (Latin: gratia non destruit se supponit et perficit naturam), and that the analogia entis means humans participate in a similarity to God ( similitudo Dei); Barth reasoned that consequently if the experience of God is always a possibility, the analogia entis circumvents the need for grace. Barth regarded it as a kind of natural theology and therefore counter to salvation by grace and scriptural revelation of the new covenant only (and particularly imprudent in Nazi Germany as potentially reinforcing their nature-worship mythologies.) God alone provides knowledge, nothing comes from a consideration of natural things.[25]

Catholic writers tend to view Barth’s early objections as, to some extent, based on a caricature or extra baggage Fr. Przywara stressed “analogia entis in no way signifies a ‘natural theology’”

Barth conditionally withdrew his objection “as the invention of the anti-Christ” for a version of analogia entis couched as God making himself known (as espoused by Gottlieb Söhngen student of Przywara and teacher of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.) Barth proposed what he called analogia relationalis then analogia fidei[26] in response, including the idea that the only thing that God can be analogized from is Jesus and his humanity. “If analogia entis is interpreted as analogy of relation or analogy of faith, I will no longer say nasty things (about it)”

Eberhard Jüngel

Lutheran theologian Eberhard Jüngel has claimed the common Protestant objections (following from the early Barth view) tend to “miss the point of the so-called analogia entis entirely."

However, Jüngel ultimately rejects analogia entis as making God unapproachably distant. He developed an "analogy of advent" based on God approaching humans.

Islamic theology

According to theologian Joshua Ralston, medieval Sunni theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Al-Maqsad al-Asna (The 99 Beautiful Names of God) rejects analogia entis: "to speak rightly about God is emphatically to speak “after revelation”—so analogy and reason may be used, but only in light of what God has first revealed (in the Qur'an)."

Religious

In theologian John Betz's view, the intention of Przywara's formulation of analogia entis was to “dispose his contemporaries to ever-more humble service of an ever-greater God, whose 'depths' no creature can fathom apart from the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10)"

For spiritual and devotional exercises

Contemplating nature and drawing analogies about the goodness of God was commended as a spiritual exercise by Jesus: Matthew 6:25 consider the lilies of the field. Following this practise, St Francis of Assisi’ s song Canticle of the Sun is an expression and celebration of the analogia entis.

The method is expanded to include anything good by St Paul: Philippians 4:8 For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praiseworthy, think on these things. The concept of analogia entis lets us suggest that Paul is giving a spiritual exercise here, not merely policing thought for moralist purposes.

(The cases above are analogies because of the mental movement from the concrete thing glimpsed to the spiritual reality grasped. When thinking about something finite that has goodness, beauty etc our mind can move to seeing the same quality but more in God: both in and beyond the thing glimpsed.)

The role of analogy was traditional: "For Erasmus the fundamental law of Christian piety is to move through visible things to that are invisible; visible things are not in themselves evil, however, but neutral."

"When set against all human love and mercy, and against our deserts, do not God's great love and great mercy indeed seem unbounded?"

— Erasmus, On the Immense Mercy of God (1530)

St Anselm’s Ontological Argument [27] “We conceive of God as a being than which no greater can be conceived.” can be seen as a devotional statement that attempts induce an analogia entis cognition. 1) God is great, 2) God is the being greater than which cannot be conceived, 3) the recursion of this takes us beyond what can be conceived.

At its fullest extent, it is the realization that we possess no essence, no being, no foundation that is not always, in every moment, imparted to us from beyond ourselves, and that does not therefore always exceed everything that we are in any moment of our existence.

In Catholic doctrine

First Vatican Council (1870) As can be seen (C IV.1), the Catholic concept of analogia entis does not surplant special revelation or the mysteries of faith and grace or the mission of the church. A person in the natural light of human reason uses analogia entis to get so far only (CII.1) ; “Divine power” is needed for more progress (CII.3), which is not excluded from operating by analogia entis; and indeed scripture (CII.4) may speak to us by analogia entis.

C II On Revelation. 1. If anyone shall say that the One True God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be certainly known by the natural light of human reason through created things; let him be anathema.

3. If anyone shall say that man cannot be raised by Divine power to a higher than natural knowledge and perfection, but can and ought, by a continuous progress, to arrive at length, of himself, to the possession of all that is true and good; let him be anathema.

4. If anyone shall not receive as sacred and canonical the Books of Holy Scripture, entire with all their parts, as the Holy Synod of Trent has enumerated them, or shall deny that they have been Divinely-inspired; let him be anathema.

C IV.1 On Faith and Reason. If anyone shall say that, in Divine Revelation, there are no mysteries, truly and properly so-called, but that all of the doctrines of faith can be understood and demonstrated from natural principles, by properly-cultivated reason; let him be anathema. Dei-Filius

Mimesis

In René Girard's psycho-social mimetic theory or imitation, mimetic desire can be viewed as a drive to make real an analogy: that the relation between us and some object should be the same as our model's (i.e., the other party's) relation. Furthermore, metaphysical desire "all desire is a desire to be" which makes the desire to make real the analogia entis. In this view, humans have a built-in hunger to be like God, which has been used to explain the doctrine of original sin and apotheosis.

In the arts

Many Catholic authors are noted as having analogia entis as part of their culture or world-view, such as Walker Percy. In writing, it may contract it to simpler “in” and “beyond” rhythms in their writing. The rhythm of “in” (analogy) and “beyond” (transcendence from beauty, paradox, contradiction, counter-analogy, limitation, mind-blowing, etc.) is of course a general hallmark of [poetry] and common in the short story.

The complement in literature to analogia entis has been called analogia verbis wherein human rhetoric and literary symbol also participate, by analogy, in the life of God.

Nothing is profane for those who know how to see

— Flannery O’Connor

In the work of influential Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor analogia entis is central to her aesthetic and she adopts the in-and-beyond rhythm as her overarching authorial rhythm https: She “embraces the analogia entis, whereby the surface of being, including the symbols inhering in fictional texts themselves, participates in the mystery of the divine life...those who read O’Connor’s fiction experience a sense of the uncanny."

Her frequent trope of featuring a disabled, mentally ill, criminal or racist character whose supposed external characteristics coincides (in) with an internal grotesqueness (in the judgment of the sympathetic able-bodied or respectable character the reader identifies with), only to then show that (beyond) the judgemental character—and by extension we the reader—is in fact even more internally groteque (and therefore that disability or racism is irrelevant to this angle though central to the story and necessary for the effect). Indeed, O’Connor inverts the specifics in “The Lame shall Enter First” by making the sympathetic character a liberal one-legged person judging the “ugly” person who is a hick bible salesman. Indeed, she goes beyond to say that even good in people is grotesque, not because of bad perception but because it is only halfway finished.

This challenging interplay has been taken up in other works, notably the film Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri which specifically shows a character Red Welby reading a Flannery O'Connor book.

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Erasmus

Cities and Routes of Erasmus
Oxford, Cambridge London Reading Canterbury Deventer Utrecht Calais Steyn Delft Rotterdam St Omer 's-Hertogenbosch Paris, Cambrai Brussels, Antwerp Orléans Louvain Turin Cologne Bologna Mainz Strasbourg Florence Freiburg im Breisgau Sienna, Padua Basel Rome, Venice Konstanz Cumae

↓Birth

↓Orphaned

↓Vows

↓Ordained

↓Dispensations

↓

↓Death

Netherlands

France

Brabant

Italy

England

Brabant

Basel

Freiburg

England

England

France

Basel

Basel

France

Basel

P2

S4

I8

A6

P3

J2

L10

A4

C7

P3

│

1465

│

1475

│

1485

│

1495

│

1505

│

1515

│

1525

│

1535

Timeline of Erasmus

Counter-Reformation

↓Councils

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓Trent

↓

↓

Gregorian and Cluniac Reforms

Mendicants

Oratories and Societies

Lay Groups

Humanism

Protestant Reformations

English Reformations

Counter Reformation

Vatican II

│

900

│

1050

│

1200

│

1350

│

1500

│

1650

│

1800

│

1950

Second Millennium Western Reformist Movements

Heresy

Elizabethan - "Catholics were not regarded as heretics, but could nevertheless be persecuted under the guise of treason, as William Allen pointed out in his True, sincere and modest defence of English Catholics (1584)" Nicolette Mout Peace without concord: religious toleration in theory and practice Cambridge University University PressPress, 2008 https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521811620.014

Contents of Novum Testamentum

From Samuel Prideaux Tregelles THE EDITIONS OF ERASMUS https://www-cambridge-org.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/core/books/an-account-of-the-printed-text-of-the-greek-new-testament/editions-of-erasmus/BE9DC3777ED19F642E4218A742D65B60

NOVUM TESTAMENTUM A NOBIS VERSUM: THE ESSENCE OF ERASMUS' EDITION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT Henk Jan de Jonge The Journal of Theological Studies, NEW SERIES, Vol. 35, No. 2 (OCTOBER 1984), pp. 394-413 (20 pages)

Erasmus' Novum Testamentum of 1519 Henk Jan de Jonge https://www.jstor.org/stable/26745113

Contents of Edition

Novum Instrumentum omne (1516)	Novum Testamentum omne (1519)	Novum Testamentum omne (1522)	Novum Testamentum omne (1527)	Novum Testamentum omne (15xx)
Dedication to Leo X	Letter of Leo X	Letter of Leo X	Letter of Leo X	Letter of Leo X
Froben Letter	Example	Example	Example	Example
Paraclesis	Paraclesis	Paraclesis	Paraclesis	Paraclesis
Apologia	Example	Example	Example	Example
Methodus	Ratio seu methodus?
??	Example	Example	Example	Example
??	Example	Example	Example	Example
Greek + Vulgate??? + introductions 548 pages Verbum	Greek + Erasmus Latin + introductions c400 changes Sermo	Greek + Erasmus Latin + introductions c 120 changes Verbum	Greek + Erasmus Latin + Vulgate + introductions c100 changes, 90 to Rev from complutensian Verbum	Greek + Erasmus Latin + introductions 4 changes Verbum
Annotations 410 pages	588 pages in separate volume	??	??	??
	Summary arguments against certain contentious and boorish people
	Solecisms	Example	Example	Example
Travels of Peter and Paul	Example	Example	Example	Example
Place names	Example	Example	Example	Example
	Greek paratexts	Example	Example	Example

Published separately:

• Methodus expanded to Ratio published separately
• Paraclesis
• Latin NT, by dutch? with Erasmus intro explaining why bad idea
• Aldine 1518 just greek? w coreections
• 1521 greek only by Fobens representative Nic Gerbell

Aprox 300,000 published by 1522.

Co-workers:

• Beatus Rhenanus (1511-1528 at Froben)
• Oecolampadius - first edition

Justified as critical text (de Jonge says).

"It can scarcely be argued that Erasmus pretended to give an edition of the Greek in his Novum Instrumentum. His pretensions were different: to render the Greek as well as possible in a new translation which met the demands of the times, and whose Latin wa purer, clearer and more correct than that of the Vulgate". de jong p400

Annotations had English etc research in his Latin. The Greek is supporting documentation.

"In judging the Greek text in Erasmus' editions of the New Testament, one should realize from the start that it was not intended as a textual edition in its own right, but served to give the reader of the Latin version, which was the main point, the opportunity to find out whether the translation was supported by the Greek."p 413 "The quality of the Greek edition made little difference, as long as it could justify the choice of wording and phraseology of the Latin translation." p410

Erasmus working on Latin text since 1504. 1506 Paul, 1509 Gospels. Worked on Greek only 1514-1516?

Split

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was to split. One editor agreed; two had good-faith questions about size, based on an inaccurate count, which I believe I have answered. So I will go ahead and split boldly, but try to do it in a non-disruptive way. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 05:54, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

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<Start of discussion>

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

<End of discussion>

Inquisition: roman canon legal system

Ecclesiastical courts were important parts of European legal systems particularly from the 1200s to the 1700s. These operated under Roman-canon system, which provided more certain procedures and criteria for legal cases than the secular legal courts: unlike the early German practice there was no trial by ordeal; unlike the later Austrian practice, the accused needed to be informed of the specific charges; unlike the English jury-system, the decisions were not made by amateurs of a similar class on subjective standards like beyond a reasonable doubt.

Capital offenses required either a confession made freely or the testimony of two unimpeachable witnesses, both for primary and circumstantial information: execution could be commuted to life sentences or exile, and these could be fully commuted after a few years. Some crimes, such as sedition and heresy (frequently considered as related crimes, both equally threatening to autocrats) had cruel executions such as burning, as public warnings; judges in some cases would commute the executions to less cruel methods, such as being strangled before being burned.

In situations where there was no confession, no witnesses, but there was cogent incriminating evidence that convinced the judge the accused was lying, certain limited non-maiming tortures were allowed. The kind and amount of torture was strictly regulated. The accused had to freely repeat the confession later when not under duress. In the view of some historians, the all-or-nothing sentencing and the extremely high evidentiary bar impelled the system to adopt torture, the fear of which had its own efficacy.

The absence of a confession, and the availability of appeals to Rome, meant that sometimes arrest by the Inquisition resulted in years of incarceration without a conviction. Sometimes ransoms were paid to get people out:

From the 1500s, judges increasingly used a less stringent standard of proof to impose milder punishments (poenae extraordinaria), such as penal servitude or floggings, rather than resorting to torture to get a confession. . In some circumstances, inquisitors would try to get the defendant to confess to some lesser crime to avoid capital punishment. For heresy cases, if the accused confessed then recanted their heresy, they thereby put themselves under whatever power the Church had to protect the accused from the full punishment at the hands of the secular authority, sometimes being disappeared to monasteries.

Erasmus as Evangelist

According to some scholars, Erasmus should not be considered a neutral or disinterested scholar, but as an evangelist using scholarly methods: historian Hilmar Pabel writes "an essential aspect of Erasmus' life's work...(was)...his participation in the responsibility of the bishops and all pastors to win souls for Christ."

To have peace with the Turks, it would be best for them to convert, which means they need to be evangelized (War with the Turks); their evangelization required peace within Christendom (and the Christian communities under the Turks), which required the conversion of Europe (both the political class and socially)--education of a Christian Prince--, and its evangelization; which in turn required peace with God in individuals, which required their conversion--Enchiridion--, which required their evangelization--particularly by preaching (Ecclesiastes and Paraphrases and Annotations) and prayer (e.g. devotional reading of the Gospels in the vernacular, vernacular prayer of the Mass) Even "theology was to be metamorphic speech, converting persons to Christ."

Although vernacularity was a logical implication his theology of accommodation, his own projects were to purify and promulgate the sources (ad fontes) in Greek and Latin and to create the educated readers who could imbibe those sources.

Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther

Erasmus has been described as the alter ego of Martin Luther: similar early story and intertwined careers, but entirely different personalities.

• Education - Brethren
• Monk - Augustinian
• 95 Thesis
• New Testament and Luther Bible
• Early mutual suspicion and non-aggression
• Similar circles: humanist -> prot
• Free will/mercy/dialog
• Erasmus responding to Luther's publication
  • removes repent
  • turk
  • catechism
• Hatred
• Impact: Massing Europe v US