# What does it mean to know God by analogy?



## shackleton (Aug 21, 2009)

I have been studying apologetic' s by reading Clark and Van Til. Clark says it is wrong to say we know God by analogy and Van Til says we only know God by analogy, but I am not clear what it means to "know God by analogy." 
Can anyone clear this up?


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## Prufrock (Aug 21, 2009)

When speaking of the so-called communicable attributes of God, we cannot predicate the attributes univocally (or in an identical sense) to God and man; neither are they predicated equivocally (as though we meant something entirely different by the terms). Thus, when we speak of "justice" in God, we do not mean something entirely different than "justice" in man; neither, however, is justice predicated to both in precisely the same manner. We say that the communicable attributes (such as justice) are in God "originally, independently and essentially," whereas they are in man "secondarily, accidentally and participatively." The examplar is in God; its analogy in man.


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## Marrow Man (Aug 21, 2009)

Well said, Paul.


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## Dieter Schneider (Aug 21, 2009)

shackleton said:


> I have been studying apologetic' s by reading Clark and Van Til. Clark says it is wrong to say we know God by analogy and Van Til says we only know God by analogy, but I am not clear what it means to "know God by analogy."
> Can anyone clear this up?



There is a good discussion in Robert Reymond's Systematic theology if you have got it! He sides against van Til!


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## Contra_Mundum (Aug 22, 2009)

But the terminology of "analogy" is much, much older that CVT or Gord.Clark. You can find the term in Thornwell and earlier in Turretin.

CVT pressed the expression into theological combat-service in the milieu of late 19th/early 20th century philosophy, as he sought for weapons to fight unchristian, non-biblical thought in his own era. (We might compare the possibility that Apostle John did something similar with the language of "logos" in his time).

Other expressions in this topic are "archtype/ectype." Post-reformation Reformed dogmaticians were quite at home with this sort of language. However, as a school especially perhaps in America, as Reformed theology was shoved into a backwater (as institutions were taken over by liberals, as orthodoxy was marginalized in both the Church and academia) a great deal of our heritage has been obscured, and is only recently being rehabilitated.

Both on the Presbyterian side, and the Dutch side, we are only just now having a "renaissance" of sorts, in recovery of Turretin or Bavink--men who were last studied either in Latin, or in the Dutch of the old country. What we are seeing is the thought of later men--be it Louis Berkhof or CVT--in the new light shed by their own conservative, orthodox teachers and influences.

Today, it is much more apparent how indebted CVT was to his confessional roots, and not (as his detractors often portrayed him) as beholden to the philosophic currents of his day--however much he was a product of his times (as is everyone).


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## Confessor (Aug 22, 2009)

I also think it's important to recognize that analogicalness must apply to concepts that are not basic or irreducible; i.e., analogicalness applies only to concepts that can be subdivided further. An analogy always has some point of contact and some point of discontact.


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## Prufrock (Aug 22, 2009)

Contra_Mundum said:


> But the terminology of "analogy" is much, much older that CVT or Gord.Clark. You can find the term in Thornwell and earlier in Turretin.



Indeed, and even further back in the late Medieval period. 

I should add the caveat to my above post that I am not very familiar with (Cornelius) Van Til's writings; what I wrote above is the understanding of analogical knowledge by the Reformed scholastics of the 17th Century, which may or may not have the same connotations as in CVT's thought.


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## Semper Fidelis (Aug 22, 2009)

Excellent, excellent, excellent post Bruce.

On a very simple scale, the idea of analogy preserves the idea that God is the Creator and knows everything in Himself and stands in no need of the creature or the creation to know something. To say that we know what God knows univocally would be to say that we know something just as God knows that fact. 

When people criticize analogical knowledge they will usually do so by noting that if God reveals something to us then, as far as the Revelation of that proposition goes, we know that revealed proposition just as God knows it. They will criticize any view that would note that we still only understand it as a creature because God (as Calvin says) "lisps" Truth to us in a way that our creaturely understanding can _apprehend_ but, even in the proposition revealed, we do not still fully _comprehend_ the fact as God understands it.

I agree with Bruce that the archetypal/ectypal distinction is good here (as much as I understand it). Even with ectypal theology, there is a requirement for us creatures to apprehend and cohere that which God reveals to us. Those who criticize the knowledge of analogy in theological knowledge rightly criticize _some_ who use ectypal theology as an excuse to make revelation contradict itself. That which God has revealed to us in our creaturely capacity is not contradictory and we cannot use the higher "as God knows it" archetypal theology to argue that the contradiction is resolved in the mind of God. It's not an excuse, in other words, for sloppy methodology and just port out the "God understands the contradiction". Sometimes we need to labor harder at what God _has_ revealed to us while still maintaining that, at best, ectypal theology is accomodated to the creature and is analogical.

I, therefore, maintain that there is a right use of ectypal theology that still preserves the Creator/creature distinction and that knowledge is analogical and not univocal. The argument for univocal knowledge may touch on a critique of an improper use of ectypal theology but it is not the solution to the problem and God, and He alone, comprehends the thing in itself.

Another great way of summarizing this difference is something that Mr. Winzer noted many months back. I don't remember the specific discussion nor do I remember the precise words that he used but I'll summarize the idea. We can never truly know anything in ourselves but we know Him who knows everything in itself. Our knowledge of the world and ourselves is relational. We are created by a God who knows everything and are in relationship to Him and, therefore, trust what He says rather than being left with skepticism. To know anything comprehensively takes Infinite understanding and presence. All attempts at knowledge that try to apprehend Truth independent of or apart from God are doomed to skepticism.


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## shackleton (Aug 22, 2009)

Semper Fidelis said:


> To say that we know what God knows univocally would be to say that we know something just as God knows that fact.
> 
> When people criticize analogical knowledge they will usually do so by noting that if God reveals something to us then, as far as the Revelation of that proposition goes, we know that revealed proposition just as God knows it. They will criticize any view that would note that we still only understand it as a creature because God (as Calvin says) "lisps" Truth to us in a way that our creaturely understanding can _apprehend_ but, even in the proposition revealed, we do not still fully _comprehend_ the fact as God understands it.



From what I understand this is the gist of the Clark/Van Til controversy, to what degree do we know what God knows? Is it in the same way, as Clark states, or by analogy, as Van Til states. I would say I agree more with VT on this. We think God's thoughts _after_ him. 

God knows infinitely more about Jesus dying on the Cross than we know, even when reading all the info of it in the scriptures.


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## Confessor (Aug 22, 2009)

shackleton said:


> From what I understand this is the gist of the Clark/Van Til controversy, to what degree do we know what God knows? Is it in the same way, as Clark states, or by analogy, as Van Til states. I would say I agree more with VT on this. We think God's thoughts _after_ him.
> 
> God knows infinitely more about Jesus dying on the Cross than we know, even when reading all the info of it in the scriptures.



I don't want to start a whole thing, but that's a misleading oversimplification of the whole controversy. Clark agreed that we could know propositions in a different way from God, and he agreed that we could not know propositions in as "deep" a way as God does, for God knows every proposition in relation to every other one. Clark made a ton of distinctions of how man's and God's knowledge are different, but because he wouldn't say that the meaning of an isolated proposition is different for each, he was termed a rationalist, etc.

It's similar to what I said before: analogy presupposes _some_ point of contact; otherwise it is purely equivocal.


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