It has been called a guiding principle of Catholic thought (or Denkform[a]) which synthesizes many disparate themes in Catholic doctrine and theology: that general names or predications about God (not only names such as "is a Consuming Fire", "is our Father", "is Patient" and predications of perfections "is infinite", "is love", "is just", but even being itself: that God "is") are true but analogies.
[b] In Christian thought, God is commonly analogized against many created or experienced things: being, goodness, truth, beauty, just, kindness, love, a friend,[7] a judge,[8] an advocate,[9] a fire,[10] a hound, a worm,[11] divine law.
[c] 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.)
In Catholic usage, the analogia entis is a foundational organizing and epistemological principle of religious cognition:[d] for Bonaventure, for example, the cosmos is conceived as a treasury of things that can be used for analogy.
[...]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.Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas took the distinction between the univocal and equivocal terms from Aristotle's Categories and also an intermediate but distinct kind: analogical terms where you understand something greater by the measure of something lesser.
[18] Thomas Cajetan attempted to reduce all analogy to three kinds (inequality, attribution, proportionality)[5] and state which ones, in logical use, could be used syllogistically.
[20] 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.
[...] whatever names unqualifiedly designate a perfection without defect are predicated of God and of other things: for example, goodness, wisdom, being, and the like.
[...] For we cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him[...]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.
Instead, the "ever greater" denotes a dynamic disproportionality, so that whatever characteristics we attribute to God must be continually dis/qualified on the basis of a difference that has no limit or end.
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.
"[25] In this view, Analogia entis is to some extent founded on a philosophical claim about the "ground of being" of creatures which then allows theological investigation.
"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."
"[37]: 140 However, his philosophy has been called a kind of analogia entis argument for the inner world only[38] in its concern for essense, existence and cognition, even though it rejects the remainder of scholastic theology.
The modern positioning of analogia entis as being essential to (and quintessential of) Catholic theology was driven by mid-century Jesuit theologian Fr.
"[44][45]: 678 [h][l] Pryzwara saw the analogia entis as central or essential to Catholic theology, to the history of Western thought,[m] to truth[n] and indeed to reality:[o] we understand by (or receive inspiration from) mediating analogies.
[r] Pope Benedict XVI's Regensberg address[54] 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.
Pope Benedict also spoke of "the great et-et" (both-and) of Catholicism: both faith and works, Jesus being both God and Man, etc, things which are in apparent contradiction: for proponents of analogia entis it provides a resolution without falling into paradox.
"[v] Some Protestant detractors take the analogia entis as meaning that unsaved humans can reach a saving knowledge of God outside grace, revelation, faith, etc, but merely by autonomous insight.
"[18]: 420 Karl Barth, a 20th century German protestant dogmatic theologian who was a friend of Erich Przywara and Hans Urs von Balthasar, notoriously asserted at one stage that the analogia entis was the only thing that prevented him becoming Catholic, and the invention of the anti-Christ.
"[2]: 61 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.
[63] 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.)
[64] However, Protestant theologian Jonathan Platter notes that "Barth did misunderstand both Thomas (Aquinas) and Pryzwara in attributing to them the idea that the analogia entis locates the possibility of revelation in a relation established by creation prior to the grace enacted in Christ.
"[65]: c.149 Catholic writers tend to view Barth's early objections as, to some extent, based on a caricature [66] or extra baggage [67] Fr.
Przywara stressed "analogia entis in no way signifies a 'natural theology'" [68][z] Barth conditionally withdrew his objection "as the invention of the anti-Christ" for a version of analogia entis couched as God making himself known[69] (as espoused by Gottlieb Söhngen student of Przywara and teacher of Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.)