# Analogically, Univocally, and Equivocally



## C. Matthew McMahon

What does it mean to know: analogically, univocally, and equivocally? How would you explain them?
Which do you hold to and why?


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## Contra_Mundum

Notes from Turretin, Vol. 1 4th topic: "The Decrees of God in General..."

Concerning the first question...
...God and man are herein described differently. In man the idea is first impressed then expressed; in God the idea is only expressed. "In man, the things themselves are the exemlpar and our knowledge is the image; but in God the divine knowledge is the exemplar and the things themselves the image or its expressed likeness." (p. 312). Everything we know, we know subsequently. Everything God knows, he knows antecedently. All our knowledge is original with God.

All ideas whether possible or future are in the mind of God. But we do not therefore conceive of him either as possible or as future, but as actual and eternal. All things, possible and future--as far as we are concerned--depend on him. He is all things not essentially (as if he could be equally two contradictory things), but in the manner in which things actually come to pass. An idea presumes some connection between theprototype and the image. But the creator-creature distinction remains, seeming to imply that no similitude is possible between man's thoughts and God's. Yet it must exist at the level of *analogy,* though not at the level of *univocation.*


> when two things agree in one *univocal* and common concetion.... Thus there is not granted a similitude between God and his creatures because those things which are said concerning God and concerning creatures are not said *univocally,* but *analogically.* Second, we must distinguish the similitude of expression or representation (as one thing distinctly represents and expresses another, whether they agree in another common thing or not; for the idea which is in God represents most perfectly the creature itself and so the idea is properly called the similitude of the thing known).


 (p.313)
As a perfect being, God is not one to act according to any external ideas, only internal and essential ones. Neither can there be any such thing as an external, independent idea. Every idea has its source and origination in him.


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## C. Matthew McMahon

God knows the tree outside my window univocally, and I know it analogically. If this is true, we know the same tree, but to different extents. Correct?


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## crhoades

For what it's worth from a Van Til Glossary by John Frame:
http://www.thirdmill.org/files/english/html/pt/PT.h.Frame.VanTil.Glossary.html

Univocal: (1) (Aquinas) Language that describes its object literally. (2) (VT) Thinking autonomously rather than analogously (q.v.), as if one were divine.

Analogy, analogical reasoning: (1) (Aquinas) Thinking in language that is neither literally true (univocal), nor unrelated to the subject matter (equivocal), but which bears a genuine resemblance to that subject-matter. (2) (VT) Thinking in subjection to God´s revelation and therefore thinking God´s thoughts after him.


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## Contra_Mundum

Back in seminary I had time to think deeper than today. 

Yes, I think Turretin is getting at something like that.

Turretin is one reason why I will never think of Van Til as one who spoke "outside the pale of Reformed Orthodoxy." Thornwell is another. If I can find those notes, I'll post them too.


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## crhoades

> _Originally posted by Contra_Mundum_
> Back in seminary I had time to think deeper than today.
> 
> Yes, I think Turretin is getting at something like that.
> 
> Turretin is one reason why I will never think of Van Til as one who spoke "outside the pale of Reformed Orthodoxy." Thornwell is another. If I can find those notes, I'll post them too.



Thanks for the Turretin quotes...never read them before.


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## C. Matthew McMahon

Can we say this:

Analogically "“ understanding at the level of analogy.
Univocally "“ understanding things as they are in themselves (only God can accomplish this), or having one meaning only.
Equivocally "“ of the same name and category, but different; like a real man and a picture of a real man.


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## R. Scott Clark

*univocal knowledge etc*



> Univocal: (1) (Aquinas) Language that describes its object literally. (2) (VT) Thinking autonomously rather than analogously (q.v.), as if one were divine.
> 
> Analogy, analogical reasoning: (1) (Aquinas) Thinking in language that is neither literally true (univocal), nor unrelated to the subject matter (equivocal), but which bears a genuine resemblance to that subject-matter. (2) (VT) Thinking in subjection to God´s revelation and therefore thinking God´s thoughts after him.



This is not quite correct. JMF is following CVT's rather misleading account of Thomas. CVT was correct that Thomas was wrong, but he was wrong about what Thomas said.

What Thomas taught is that the human intellective faculty can, at some point, intersect with the divine. Thus is doctrine of analogy was vitiated by his neo-Platonism. Thomas didn't teach a genuine analogy. He cheated.

He did not teach "autonomous" knowledge - he wasn't Kant or Butler. CVT had only a few slots to put folks with whom he disagreed, so he tended to slot Thomas into the Kant/Butler slot. 

Which leads me to a second point. 

We probably don't want to define "univocal" as knowing things "in themselves." 

Until Kant, we agreed that we can know created things "in se" (Ding an sich). Only after Kant did we begin to assume a sort of epistemic skepticism about our ability to know things as they are.

Kant took the traditional Protestant distinction (see below) between God's knowledge and ours and applied to everything. So, instead of God in himself (Deus in se) being "hidden" from us, which is certainly true, he made everything "in itself" hidden. Hence the need for a new ethic and a new deistic religion.

The answer lies in the traditional Reformed distinction between archetypal (original) knowledge which only God has and ectypal (derivative) knowledge which creatures can have. 

Ectypal knowledge is true, but analogical. An analogy is parallel to, but does not intersect the original. 

Plotinus' scheme had it that we can only know truth if we climb up the scale of being. Thus, anything that isn't divine/ultimate is false and to that degree non-existent. Unfortunately, this scheme (chain of being) was widely assumed in medieval theology and tends to undergird much modern theology also.

G. Clark (as I understand him) and Herman Hoeksema likewise seem to argue that unless we know something as God knows it, if only momentarily, we are forever doomed to skepticism. 

CVT, on the other hand, defended the traditional distinction on the ground that the alternative makes divinity a prerequisite for knowledge. Such a schem, in effect, agrees with the serpent.

Hence for CVT and for the confessional Protestant theologians (both Lutheran and Reformed) analogy merely means derivative, true, creaturely, finite, knowleldge.

Equivocation is saying two, contradictory, things about the same term at the same time or using the same term in two ways simultaneously. 

God knows and speaks about reality univocally. 

Because of sin, humans too often speak equivocally. Of this, Christians ought to repent and seek to speak analogically, thinking God's thoughts after him.

See R. Muller's _Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics_ vol 1

Mike Horton's _Covenant and Eschatology_

You might also see my application of these principles in an essay on the Clark/Van Til controversy in _The Pattern of Sound Words_. The Strimple festschrift published by P&R.

Blessings,

rsc


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## Arch2k

How can knowledge be true unless it at some point intersects with the divine knowledge?

Col. 2:2-3
...that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and[a] of Christ, 3 *in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.*


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## JohnV

> _Originally posted by R. Scott Clark_
> 
> 
> 
> Univocal: (1) (Aquinas) Language that describes its object literally. (2) (VT) Thinking autonomously rather than analogously (q.v.), as if one were divine.
> 
> Analogy, analogical reasoning: (1) (Aquinas) Thinking in language that is neither literally true (univocal), nor unrelated to the subject matter (equivocal), but which bears a genuine resemblance to that subject-matter. (2) (VT) Thinking in subjection to God´s revelation and therefore thinking God´s thoughts after him.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is not quite correct. JMF is following CVT's rather misleading account of Thomas. CVT was correct that Thomas was wrong, but he was wrong about what Thomas said.
> 
> What Thomas taught is that the human intellective faculty can, at some point, intersect with the divine. Thus is doctrine of analogy was vitiated by his neo-Platonism. Thomas didn't teach a genuine analogy. He cheated.
> 
> He did not teach "autonomous" knowledge - he wasn't Kant or Butler. CVT had only a few slots to put folks with whom he disagreed, so he tended to slot Thomas into the Kant/Butler slot.
> 
> Which leads me to a second point.
> 
> We probably don't want to define "univocal" as knowing things "in themselves."
> 
> Until Kant, we agreed that we can know created things "in se" (Ding an sich). Only after Kant did we begin to assume a sort of epistemic skepticism about our ability to know things as they are.
> 
> Kant took the traditional Protestant distinction (see below) between God's knowledge and ours and applied to everything. So, instead of God in himself (Deus in se) being "hidden" from us, which is certainly true, he made everything "in itself" hidden. Hence the need for a new ethic and a new deistic religion.
> 
> The answer lies in the traditional Reformed distinction between archetypal (original) knowledge which only God has and ectypal (derivative) knowledge which creatures can have.
> 
> Ectypal knowledge is true, but analogical. An analogy is parallel to, but does not intersect the original.
> 
> Plotinus' scheme had it that we can only know truth if we climb up the scale of being. Thus, anything that isn't divine/ultimate is false and to that degree non-existent. Unfortunately, this scheme (chain of being) was widely assumed in medieval theology and tends to undergird much modern theology also.
> 
> G. Clark (as I understand him) and Herman Hoeksema likewise seem to argue that unless we know something as God knows it, if only momentarily, we are forever doomed to skepticism.
> 
> CVT, on the other hand, defended the traditional distinction on the ground that the alternative makes divinity a prerequisite for knowledge. Such a schem, in effect, agrees with the serpent.
> 
> Hence for CVT and for the confessional Protestant theologians (both Lutheran and Reformed) analogy merely means derivative, true, creaturely, finite, knowleldge.
> 
> Equivocation is saying two, contradictory, things about the same term at the same time or using the same term in two ways simultaneously.
> 
> God knows and speaks about reality univocally.
> 
> Because of sin, humans too often speak equivocally. Of this, Christians ought to repent and seek to speak analogically, thinking God's thoughts after him.
> 
> See R. Muller's _Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics_ vol 1
> 
> Mike Horton's _Covenant and Eschatology_
> 
> You might also see my application of these principles in an essay on the Clark/Van Til controversy in _The Pattern of Sound Words_. The Strimple festschrift published by P&R.
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> rsc
Click to expand...


Nicely done, sir. Would you say, then, that the question presents a false dilemma? It seems implied in you post. In other words, would you say that these terms are not necessarily exclusive of each other, but are used variously, and perhaps even complimentarily at times, as they relate to different aspects of our knowledge?


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## ARStager

I second Dr. Clark's citation of Horton's _Covenant and Eschatology_. 

He taught a course out here at RTS-C this summer called "Ministry in a Postmodern Context", and we dealt with these categories at length. The whole history of philosophy is a wrestling match between the universals and particulars, and with how seriously to take Plato's attempted reconciliation of Parmenides and Heraclites (and their univocity and equivocity). 

I think I'm saying that right?


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## ARStager

> How can knowledge be true unless it at some point intersects with the divine knowledge?


Jeff:

It's analogical, true knowledge. It's divinely sanctioned as analogy. Not just ANY analogy will do (we'd err all over the place, and it'd be called heresy and/or idolatry in that case), but only ones with the divinely revealed stamp of approval. 

Am I right here, Dr. Clark, others?


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by Jeff_Bartel_
> How can knowledge be true unless it at some point intersects with the divine knowledge?
> 
> Col. 2:2-3
> ...that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and[a] of Christ, 3 *in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.*



Jeff, 

I don't think it was Paul's intention to teach here that by virtue of faith in or union with Christ Christians have access to divine knowledge or knowledge that only God can have. On such a reading, we would have to say that when Paul says "all the treasures" that we have archetypal knowledge. This just isn't true. We don't even know ourselves truly let alone everything else. We don't know the future. We only know what is revealed to us (Deut 29:29). 

This isn't to say that we can't have true knowledge. We can and do, but it is derivative, not original. 

Scripture seems to make clear that God, in Calvin's words, "lisps" or more literally (balbutire) "speaks baby talk" to us. What he says and what we know is true, but it is accommodated to our finitude. The Reformed orthodox taught that the "finite is not capable of the infinite" (finitum non capax infiniti). This is what CVT called "the Creator/creature distinction." 

If we can have God's knowledge of one thing, why not everything? If we can have a little divine knowledge, why not a lot? To say we have such is to do as the medivals and Plotinus and put us on the scale of being. The Reformation was rightly a rejection of that very notion. 

God made us as creatures and image bearers. To say we must have divine knowledge (of the sort God has) to know truth is to say that we cannot be an image bearer without being God. Gen 1:26 and Eph 4:24 beg to differ. We were made to know God as he reveals himself, not to be God or to know as God knows in himself.

I hope this clarifies.

rsc


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## R. Scott Clark

> Nicely done, sir. Would you say, then, that the question presents a false dilemma? It seems implied in you post. In other words, would you say that these terms are not necessarily exclusive of each other, but are used variously, and perhaps even complimentarily at times, as they relate to different aspects of our knowledge?



John,

Thanks for the good word.

No, not exactly. I think univocity is one thing, equivocity another and analogy a third thing. They belong to different orders. 

As humans were capable of analogy and equivocity. Only God is capable of true univocity. 

You are correct that analogy and univocity are not absolutely opposed, however. If so, then God could not speak to us, but he does speak to us. It is not we who can overcome the Creator/creature distinction, but God who has graciously overcome it in revealing himself to us, in nature (contra Barth) but chiefly in Christ and the Word written.

Blessings,

rsc


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by ARStager_
> 
> 
> 
> How can knowledge be true unless it at some point intersects with the divine knowledge?
> 
> 
> 
> Jeff:
> 
> It's analogical, true knowledge. It's divinely sanctioned as analogy. Not just ANY analogy will do (we'd err all over the place, and it'd be called heresy and/or idolatry in that case), but only ones with the divinely revealed stamp of approval.
> 
> Am I right here, Dr. Clark, others?
Click to expand...


Andrew,

Yes, that's correct. Some assume that any analogy is necessarily false. That doesn't follow. God is able to overcome the ontological distinction. 

Its true that there is some falsehood (or at least things not literally true) in analogy or it wouldn't be analogy. An analogy is *like* something without being that something.

For example, God reveals himself as repenting, having a body etc. We understand these images as they were intended: as divinely revealed and authorized illustrations of Himself but not to be absolutized or made literal.

God is not bodily but spirit. God doesn't change his mind. He is not surprised by the future he decreed! Still, he speaks this way (using homely images) in order to communicate important truths to us. 

In that way CVT was quite right. All our speech about God is analogical and all his speech to us is analogical. 

In my (as yet unfinished) book on this and related topics, I describe the refusal to accept these divinely sanctioned analogies as "the quest for illegitimate religious certainty."

Blessings,

rsc


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## C. Matthew McMahon

> God is not bodily but spirit. God doesn't change his mind. He is not surprised by the future he decreed! Still, he speaks this way (using homely images) in order to communicate important truths to us.



Playing the DA: So God lies in order for us to understand important truths about Him that are not necessarily true? (i.e. God repents).


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by webmaster_
> 
> 
> 
> God is not bodily but spirit. God doesn't change his mind. He is not surprised by the future he decreed! Still, he speaks this way (using homely images) in order to communicate important truths to us.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Playing the DA: So God lies in order for us to understand important truths about Him that are not necessarily true? (i.e. God repents).
Click to expand...


Fair question. 

Scripture is clear that God does not lie, but Scripture is equally clear that God does not reveal himself to us as he is in himself. 

Everything he says to us is true, but its also true that everything God says is accommodated to our finitude. We must not assume that "true" means "univocal" or "archetypal." 

If God spoke to us without that accommodation we would be consummed. Ask Isaiah. 

It is the case that the distance between God means that Scripture is necessarily analogical. 

rsc


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## Arch2k

I understand the point being made here, and I agree with it to some degree. That being said, it _seems_ to me that to say ALL knowledge we have of God is analogical leads to a denial of the image of God in man and/or revelation being just that....revelation.

Also, in order for us to understand what analogies mean, we must first understand them LITERALLY. In other words, the bible says that God repented that he made man....is the fact that God can repent (i.e. he can change/have emotion etc.) what He is trying to convey to us in Genesis 6? Or is he trying to convey the fact that God will not tolerate sin, but will punish it (or the literal interpretation of this analogy). All analogies must be understood literally, or you don't really understand what is MEANT by the analogy.

What about literal statements like the WSC:

What is God?

God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangable in his being wisdom power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.

Is there analogy in this statement? Maybe I'm just not seeing it. If not, has not given this to us as revelation (the concept, not the WSC)?

Just some questions/thoughts. Good discussion so far.


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## Contra_Mundum

The following is running notes/quotes from J. H. Thornwell, vol 1, 4th Lecture. All of it is germane, but the language in question starts coming out on pp116-17 thereabout.


> Lecture IV, The Nature and Limitations of Our Knowledge of God.
> 
> concerning who God is, what is his nature?
> 
> God is not perfectly comprehensible (hence, following Calvin we may say rightly that he is in comprehensible). We do not share in his personal knowledge, therefore understanding him. Neither is God perfectly incomprehensible, meaning that he is absolutely unknowable, because he has revealed something of himself to us, hence we can know him.
> 
> p107. We cannot represent Him to the understanding, nor think of Him as He is in Himself. But in and through the finite He has given manifestations of His incomprehensible reality.
> 
> There are three conditions which consciousness never can transcend. The first is, that the immediate matter of our knowledge is not things as they are in themselves, but things as they appear--phenomena, and not the transcendent reality which underlies them and imparts to them their coherence and their unity.
> 
> p108. Another condition is, that we know only those appearances of things which stand in relation to our faculties. There may be other appearances which they are capable of presenting to other intelligences. It would be unphilosophical to assume that our senses exhaust all the properties of matter, or our consciousness all the properties of mind. All that we can say is, that they exhaust all the appearances or phenomena which we are capable of knowing. Others may exist, but their existence to us is a blank.
> 
> The third is, that in knowing phenomena, and the phenomena related to us, we are irresistibly impelled to postulate a transcendent something beyond them, as the ground of their coexistence and uniformity.
> 
> p109. Hence, in our knowledge of the finite there are evidently two elements or factors. There is, first, the relative and phenomenal, which can be conceived and known; this is the proper object of thought. There is, secondly, the substance or substratum, the quasi absolute, which cannot be represented in thought, but which is positively believed as existing. One element addresses itself to intelligence and the other to faith. Both are felt to be equally true.
> 
> p110. In all this there is nothing peculiar either in our knowledge or our ignorance of God. The mystery which shrouds His being is the same in kind with the mystery which shrouds the being of every other object.
> 
> p111. What are the intuitions by which we represent in thought the comprehensible element of our knowledge? How, in other words, do we think God?
> 
> p112. All the simple ideas, which enter into the complex notion of God, as thought by human understanding, are derived from the human soul. The possibility of theology depends upon the postulate that man reflects the image of His Maker.
> 
> p113. Relative perfection is construed as the manifestation of the absolute. It is the form under which it appears to our conditioned consciousness. It is not the same with it, nor like it, but reveals it--reveals it as existing; reveals it as a necessary article of faith conceived only under analogy. The relative perfection, in other words, is the form or symbol under which the absolute appears.
> 
> p114. Absolute: that which is self-existent and underived--which exists without dependence upon, or necessary relation to, any other being.
> Infinite: that which includes all reality, all being and all perfection within itself. It is the totality of existence.
> 
> p116. cannot be represented in thought; yet relative can have no meaning without it
> 
> Our conception of the perfections of God embraces two elements--a positive and a negative one. The positive one is the abstract notion of any particular perfection, such as wisdom, intelligence, justice, truth, benevolence or power, furnished by the phenomena of our own consciousness. The negative one is a protest against ascribing the perfection to God under the limitations and conditions of human experience.
> A perfection abstractly considered is only a generalization of language; it is incapable of being realized in thought except as given in some special and definite manifestation. Knowledge in the abstract, for example, has no real existence; it is only a term expressive of that in which all single acts of knowledge concur, and applicable alike to every form of cognition. It marks a relation which universally obtains. Now, when we attribute knowledge to God, we mean that there exists in Him a relation analogous to that signalized by this term
> p117. among us. When we undertake to realize the relation as it exists in God, we transcend the limits of our faculties. We can only say that it is to Him what the highest perfection of cognition is to us. But as we are obliged to think it in some concrete form, we conceive it as a species of intuition, in which the Divine consciousness penetrates at a glance the whole universe of being and possibility, and surveys the nature and relations of things with absolute, infallible certainty. The relation in Him expresses all that we compass by intuition, reasoning, imagination, memory and testimony. The analogy is real and true. The things analogous are by no means alike. God has not faculties like ours, which are as much a badge of weakness as a mark of distinction and honour. He knows without succession, and apprehends all relations without reasoning, comparison or memory. He is not subject to the condition of time nor the necessities of inference. But though knowledge in Him is manifested differently from knowledge in us, yet the essence contained in the abstract relation finds its counterpart in a manner suited to an infinite consciousness. Hence we think Divine, under the analogy, not under the similitude, of human cognition. There is that in Him which stands in the same relation to certainty as intuition to us.
> 
> Power, abstractly considered, expresses the relation of a cause to its effect. In itself we can no more conceive it in its human than its Divine manifestations. It is that in the cause which produces the effect, and we think it only in connection with its effects. Now, this relation is conceived as subsisting in God with reference to his sovereign will. There is something in Him analogous to what we experience in the operations of our own wills.
> 
> p118. moral and intellectual perfections The abstract notions are generalizations from the sphere of our own experience, and we think them in God as something which is the same to Him as these relations are to us. The thing positively represented is the human manifestation in its purest form, but it is attributed to God in the way of analogy, and not of actual similitude. His infinite perfections are veiled under finite symbols. It is only the shadow of them that falls on human understanding. Such is the process. A perfection is given under manifold forms and conditions. The perfection is reduced to an abstract notion, equally realized in all and equally cognitable in all, but in itself actually inconceivable. We ascribe it to God in the perfection of its essence as an abstract notion, and endeavor to think of it under relations in Him analogous to those in which it is revealed in us. We are sure that there is something in Him which corresponds to these relations in us. Hence the positive element in our efforts to think God is always analogical.
> 
> p120. [from Berkeley] "œthe term analogy comes to signify all similitude of relations or habitudes whatsoever."
> 
> p121. "œHis doctrine, therefore, of analogical perfection in God, or of knowledge of God by analogy, seems very much misunderstood and misapplied by those who would infer from thence that we cannot frame any direct or proper notion, though never so inadequate, of knowledge or wisdom as they are in the Deity, or understand any more of them then one born blind can of light or colors."
> 
> one defect in B.´s argument: It takes for granted that we have a positive knowledge of knowledge, wisdom and every other human perfection, simply and in themselves. Yet no one has more conclusively shown than himself that abstract terms have no objects corresponding to them, but are only contrivances of language for the abridgment of human thought. They express nothing that can ever be conceived apart from individuals. We cannot, therefore, think knowledge in general except as manifested in some particular instance of cognition.
> 
> Hence to attribute knowledge to God is to think Him as knowing in some way. We must take some form of human consciousness and transfer it to Him. But the most perfect form, that of intuition itself, is manifested in us under conditions which cannot be applied to God. But the most perfect form is the highest under which we can conceive it. As, therefore, we cannot attribute it in this finite form to God, all that we can say is that knowledge of Him is analogous to knowledge in us. It is a relation which implies absolute certainty and infallibility. We attribute the finite to God under a protest that the finite form only expresses a similarity of relation.
> Again, the difference betwixt Divine and human know-
> p122. ledge is not one simply of degree. It is a difference in kind. God´s knowledge is not like ours, and therefore we are utterly unable to think it as it is in Him. We can only think it under the analogy of ours in the sense of a similarity of relations. It is to Him what ours is to us. It is to the whole universe of being, actual and possible, what ours is to the small portion that presents itself to our faculties.
> This protest is only a series of negations--it affirms simply what God is not, but by no means enables us to conceive what he really and positively is.
> 
> Still these negative notions are of immense importance. They are clear and pregnant confessions that there is a transcendent reality beyond all that we are able to conceive or think, in comparison with which our feeble thoughts are but darkening counsel by words without knowledge. They reveal an unknown sphere to which the region of the known bears no more proportion than a point to infinite space. They stand as an awful warning of the immensity of human ignorance. Besides this they are regulative principles, which indicate how far we are at liberty to reason from the positive element of our knowledge, and apply our conclusions to God. . . . Hence, the negative in thought has a positive regulative value.
> 
> p123. summary: As we know only in and through our own faculties, our knowledge must be determined by the nature of our faculties. The conditions of consciousness are such that we can never directly apprehend aught but the phenomenal and relative; and yet in the apprehension of that we are constrained to admit a real and an absolute as the necessary explanation of appearances. The finite is never apprehended in itself; it is only known in the manifestations of it contained in the finite. As existing, it is known--it is a positive affirmation of intelligence; but it cannot be translated into the forms of the understanding--it cannot be conceived, except as the annihilation of those limitations and conditions which are essential to the possibility of human thought. We know that it is, but we know not what it is. In our actual concept of God, while we are constrained to recognize Him as an infinite and absolutely perfect being, yet we are unable to realize absolute and infinite perfection in thought. We only know that it must be; but our utmost efforts to grasp it amount to nothing more than the transmutation of a series of negations into delusive affirmations. The matter of our thought, in representing the Divine perfections, is taken from the phenomena of human consciousness. The perfections which we experience in ourselves are reduced to their utmost abstraction and purity, and then applied to God in the way of analogy. We do not know His perfections, consequently, as they are in themselves or in Him, but as they appear to us under finite forms and symbols. This analogical conception, however, is accompanied with the belief that the relative necessarily implies the absolute; and therefore in the very act of imperfect thought our nature protests against the imperfect as an adequate or complete representation. We feel that we see through a glass darkly--that it is only a glimpse of truth that we obtain; but the little, though partial and defective--a mere point compared to the immense reality--is inexpress-
> p124. ibly precious, for its object is God. If it is only the hem of His garment that we are permitted to behold, it impresses us with a sense of His glory.
> 
> p125. objections answered: that analogical knowledge is not true knowledge.
> p126. We either know him like this, truly, in the way he has designed us to know Him, or our whole nature is a lie.
> 
> This is no delusion. The relation in which He stands to His works is clear and unambiguous, though the mode in which He realizes it transcends our capacity of thought.
> [in other words, this is axiomatic]
> 
> unless that primitive law of intelligence which compels us to think design as the only adequate explanation of such phenomena is a lie, then we are sure God is wise and knowing and good.
> 
> Unless conscience is false, the testimony must be accepted as true.
> 
> {either} we must construe our whole nature into an organ of deceit, or recognize these partial and relative conceptions as just conceptions of God as far as he appears to us.
> 
> [If this conception be false then we really can´t know anything. All of the knowledge we possess of ANYTHING is predicated on the reality of the God of Holy Scripture. If He is false, then we are helplessly adrift in a tragic sea of relativism, and radical skepticism has won the day. ]
> 
> p127. We are obliged to trust in the veracity of consciousness.
> 
> The man, therefore, who is free from scruples as to the existence of the soul or the material world, who is per-
> p128. suaded that the phenomena which they present to him are not vain and delusive shows, but sober and permanent realities, is inconsistent with himself in denying equal certainty to our knowledge of God. His argument, legitimately carried out, would land him in universal skepticism. It is enough that we have the same guarantee for the truth and certainty of our knowledge of God as we have for the truth and certainty of our own being and the existence of an outer world. The knowledge of both is subject to the same limitations, the same suspicions, the same cavils. They stand or fall together.
> 
> [from Mansel] "œTruth and falsehood are not properties of things in themselves, but of our conceptions"
> 
> "œTruth, therefore, in relation to man admits of no other test than
> p129. the harmonious consent of all human faculties, and as no such faculty cantake cognizance of the Absolute, it follows that correspondence with the Absolute can never be required as a test for truth. The utmost deficiency that can be charged against human faculties amounts only to this: that we cannot say that we know God as God knows Himself--that the truth of which our finite minds are susceptible may, for aught we know, be but the passing shadow of some higher reality which exists only in Infinite Intelligence"
> 
> Reality is that which we perceive to exist, and we perceive it as existing under the relation in which it stands to our faculties.
> 
> this a. knowlegde is not merely true, but amply adequate for religion
> p130. in his present, incomplete condition his primary need is for education, not satisfaction.


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## JohnV

> _Originally posted by R. Scott Clark_
> 
> 
> 
> Nicely done, sir. Would you say, then, that the question presents a false dilemma? It seems implied in you post. In other words, would you say that these terms are not necessarily exclusive of each other, but are used variously, and perhaps even complimentarily at times, as they relate to different aspects of our knowledge?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> John,
> 
> Thanks for the good word.
> 
> No, not exactly. I think univocity is one thing, equivocity another and analogy a third thing. They belong to different orders.
> 
> As humans were capable of analogy and equivocity. Only God is capable of true univocity.
> 
> You are correct that analogy and univocity are not absolutely opposed, however. If so, then God could not speak to us, but he does speak to us. It is not we who can overcome the Creator/creature distinction, but God who has graciously overcome it in revealing himself to us, in nature (contra Barth) but chiefly in Christ and the Word written.
> 
> Blessings,
> 
> rsc
Click to expand...


Thank you for your answer. Could I impose upon you for another? What, then, does it mean that we as redeemed in Christ have the mind of Christ (contra Barth: reducing Christ's mind to ours)?


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## C. Matthew McMahon

> It is the case that the distance between God means that Scripture is necessarily analogical.



DA: Does God repent and not repent at the same time and in the same sense?

Malachi 3:6 "For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. (NO)

Genesis 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (YES)


Both are the Word of God. What makes one more analogical than the other?


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by Jeff_Bartel_
> I understand the point being made here, and I agree with it to some degree. That being said, it _seems_ to me that to say ALL knowledge we have of God is analogical leads to a denial of the image of God in man and/or revelation being just that....revelation.
> 
> Also, in order for us to understand what analogies mean, we must first understand them LITERALLY. In other words, the bible says that God repented that he made man....is the fact that God can repent (i.e. he can change/have emotion etc.) what He is trying to convey to us in Genesis 6? Or is he trying to convey the fact that God will not tolerate sin, but will punish it (or the literal interpretation of this analogy). All analogies must be understood literally, or you don't really understand what is MEANT by the analogy.
> 
> What about literal statements like the WSC:
> 
> What is God?
> 
> God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangable in his being wisdom power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth.
> 
> Is there analogy in this statement? Maybe I'm just not seeing it. If not, has not given this to us as revelation (the concept, not the WSC)?
> 
> Just some questions/thoughts. Good discussion so far.



Briefly, in a word, the literal is the analogical and the analogical is the literal. The words of Scripture are meant to be understood in their intended sense. I would encourage you to see Horton, Muller et al on this. 

God is literally all of his attributes, but we must not assume that we understand those attributes as they exist in God. We have analogies of them, i.e., we have some idea of holiness and to the degree it conforms to Scripture it is true, but we must not think that we know what holiness is in God. This gets back to J B Phillips' line, "Your God is too small." 

God transcends our ability to understand as he is in himself. He is the God who says, "I am." We cannot say that. We cannot even really, fully comprehend it. We can apprehend it, we can think of rough analogies, but we cannot enter into God's existence as he experiences it.

rsc


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by webmaster_
> 
> 
> 
> It is the case that the distance between God means that Scripture is necessarily analogical.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> DA: Does God repent and not repent at the same time and in the same sense?
> 
> Malachi 3:6 "For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. (NO)
> 
> Genesis 6:6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (YES)
> 
> 
> Both are the Word of God. What makes one more analogical than the other?
Click to expand...


All of God's word is analogical, but not all analogies are identical. There are varieties of literary genres in Scripture so must attend to those particularites. 

Richard Muller wrote a brilliant essay in 1982 or '83 in the Westminster Theological Journal in defense of classical theism against Open Theism (to which they've never responded!) in which he gave an very good exegesis of Mal 3. 

The figurative language used in Mal 3 only makes sense against the background of the literal truth of God's immutability. We're he actually mutable as the open thesists teach, the passage makes no sense at all. 

The same is true of Gen 6. When Scripture posits repentance (Nacham) of God, it presumes we can tell the difference between literal truth and figuarive language.

Its not that Gen 6 and Mal 3 are more analogical (analogical does not equal figurative) its that all Scripture is analogical, all of it is a condescension, and in so condescending, God made use of more and less figurative language in the history of revelation.

rsc


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## R. Scott Clark

> Thank you for your answer. Could I impose upon you for another? What, then, does it mean that we as redeemed in Christ have the mind of Christ (contra Barth: reducing Christ's mind to ours)?



Christ is THE Word par excellence. He is the face of God, the self-disclosure. By virtue of our union with him we are progressively conformed to his image. As part of that process, we are imbued with the mind of Christ. 

The Reformed, contrary to the Lutherans, argued that in his humanity, even Jesus had only a sub-species of ectypal theology. They called it "the theology of union." Muller is very good on this. The theology of union (theologia unionis) means that the deity has archetypal knowledge, but the humanity does not have archetypal knowledge. Jesus was true man, and as such, in his humanity, never had archetypal knowledge. Not even the glorified have archtetypal knowledge. The Reformed call their knowledge, "theologia beatorum" (theology of the blessed), another subset of ectypal theology. The other is pilgrim theology, more or less what we're doing here.

Therefore, to have the mind of Christ is not to achieve archetypal knowledge, but to "have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus." The category there less epistemic than ethical.

rsc


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## Arch2k

This topic seems to be very closely related to the relationship between God's eminence and his transcendence. I believe that a fair balance must be kept between the two so that one does not enter into the liberal camp, or err in the other direction leading to neo-orthodoxy.


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## R. Scott Clark

> _Originally posted by Jeff_Bartel_
> This topic seems to be very closely related to the relationship between God's eminence and his transcendence. I believe that a fair balance must be kept between the two so that one does not enter into the liberal camp, or err in the other direction leading to neo-orthodoxy.



Jeff,

Yes, liberalism has denied God's immanence (that he is with us; deism) and his transcendence (pantheism; he's so totally identified with creation that he is indistinct from it).

The classical Reformed approach to analogy that I'm advancing does neither of these. In this approach it is God who comes to us in his revelation (Word and incarnation), we do not climb up to heaven, as it were. It is God who gets to set the terms of his relations to us. 

Sadly, this approach has been eclipsed in the modern period by fundamentalism (a sort of climbing into heaven) or the illegitimite quest for religious certainty (intersection of the human and divine intellective faculties) and revivalism (the illegitimate quest for religious experience.

The medievals sought the "beatific vision" or the "vision of God" (visio Dei) wherein they expected to see the Father without any mediation. In our day, there are great "blissed out" religious services wherein folk expect to "meet God" (the Father) without any mediation (means of grace or preached Word). Or the pietists have led us to think we can achieve the vision of God via private devotional exercises.

My point is that Christ IS the image of God, the vision of God, the Word of God (John 1.1!). God has become immanent (!) but, in himself, he remains transcendent in his glory. In his immanence he has accommodated himself truly, infallibly, wonderfully. Therefore we must give ourselves to wholly to his self-disclosure to settle (what a compromise!) for God's mediated revelation rather than seeking the illegitimate paths to God. 

Neo-Orthodoxy errs by removing the revelation from Scripture to an existential encounter. It will not submit to God's self-disclosure. It is embarrassed by the humanity of the Word. In its own way, despite all their talk about Christocentrism, they really have trouble with the incarnation, with Jesus' humanity. 

Classical liberalism, otoh, won't have his transcendent deity. If it cannot have "all" God immediately, it will shut him in a closet, as it were.

The confessional Reformed say: a pox on both your houses. We will let God be God, we will let God be true and every man a liar.

Blessings,

rsc


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## Arch2k




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## JohnV

> _Originally posted by R. Scott Clark_
> I think univocity is one thing, equivocity another and analogy a third thing. They belong to different orders.
> 
> As humans were capable of analogy and equivocity. Only God is capable of true univocity.
> 
> You are correct that analogy and univocity are not absolutely opposed, however. If so, then God could not speak to us, but he does speak to us.





> Christ is THE Word par excellence. He is the face of God, the self-disclosure. By virtue of our union with him we are progressively conformed to his image. As part of that process, we are imbued with the mind of Christ....
> 
> Therefore, to have the mind of Christ is not to achieve archetypal knowledge, but to "have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus." The category there less epistemic than ethical.



I understand. Barth is avoided; pretention of godhood ( what some call "neutrality" ) is avoided; creator/created distinction upheld; Christ maintains His true mediatorial place; and man can still know. 

Perhaps another, if I may? How does man have certainty? Is not univocity implied in certainty? In fact, is not univocal knowledge implied in the assertion that man cannot know univocally? Or, to put the same question another way: is objectivity possible within analogy and equivocity?

[Edited on 8-4-2005 by JohnV]


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## R. Scott Clark

> Perhaps another, if I may? How does man have certainty? Is not univocity implied in certainty? In fact, is not univocal knowledge implied in the assertion that man cannot know univocally? Or, to put the same question another way: is objectivity possible within analogy and equivocity?
> 
> [Edited on 8-4-2005 by JohnV]



Last one John 

No, that's the point of distinguishing between analogy and univocity. As I understand it, we're not capable of univocity. If univocity belongs to God, then we're restricted to analogy. 

Objectivity is not the same thing as absolute certainty. To predicate objectivity of something is to say it is outside of me, not the product of my experience (contra Kant). 

Reality is objective to our experience of it. God establishes it and we conform to it. Because it is given (data) we can know it. That's why we've traditionally not been idealists/rationalists but tended toward a sort of restrained empiricism. Here I'm influenced a bit by A. Plantinga, some of whose program I think coheres well with CVT's presuppositionalism.

How do we know that we know? Well, we're made to know and God has revealed himself. 

Can we obtain certainty beyond our sensory apprehension of revelation? Yes, inasmuch as the Spirit witnesses to us that it is true. Is there anything beyond that? No. Not unless we claim special revelation - but we're not pentecostals so we're shut up to Scripture illumined and preached.

Can we confirm revelation with some other authority? No. If we could then we should call that revelation. There can't be anything beside or above divine revelation or it no longer norms. 

We cannot have the sort of knowledge or certainty God has. We are to be thankful then that Jesus let Thomas touch his side. That is a wonderful picture of his condescension to us in revelation.

There will be absolute certainty in the parousia, but by then (as in the flood and in the Red Sea) it will be too late for those who've not hid behind the doorposts of God's house, under the blood of the lamb.

rsc


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## JohnV

> Last one John



That's enough to chew on for a while. I appreciate your patience and thank you for your answers. I'll have to give these some thought.


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## ARStager

Okay, I just had one of those "I get it" moments as I combined my first week's worth of Koine Greek with this discussion. For some reason I couldn't figure out what the difference was between "archetypal" and "ectypal" knowledge was, other than trying to remember the English definitions attached to them ("original" and "derivative", respectively). 

Then I realized that "arche" in Greek is "first or beginning" and "ek" in Greek is the preposition for "out of" or "from". 

I wish I had another crack at the Vocab section of the GRE test with all these Greek tidbits and connections I'm making. 

Tangential, I know. But hey...


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## JohnV

Well, I had a thought too, tied to something I learned before. Whether one knows antithetically or not, one knows antithetically, to abuse poor old Aristotle. So whether it is analogical, ectypal, or through zen, its at least antithetical.


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