15. We , not God, are the analogy
15. We, NOT GOD, ARE THE ANALOGY
The name “Michael” means “Who is like God?” The implied answer to this rhetorical question is, of course, “No one.” But doesn’t that mean St. Thomas is wrong when he says we can think and speak of God by analogies with earthly things? God is not like anything else at all.
The answer to this question depends on whether analogy means that God is like creatures or vice versa. St. Thomas says it is vice versa. God is indeed not like anything else; but everything else is like Him. He is the standard, the touchstone, the “prime analogate”, and we creatures are the analogies. That is what St. Thomas means by saying that the positive names for God, all of which are analogical, are predicated (said) not primarily of creatures but of God.
It seems that names are predicated primarily of creatures rather than of God. . . .
On the contrary, it is written: I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of Whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named (Eph 3:14-15); and the same applies to other names applied to (both) God and creatures. . . .
In names predicated of many in an analogical sense, all are predicated because they have reference to one same thing . . . such a name must be applied primarily to that which is (first) . . . and secondarily to those others as they approach more or less to that first. Thus, for instance, healthy (is first) applied to animals (and then secondly it also) comes into the definition of healthy applied to medicine, which is called healthy as being the cause of health in the animal, and also into the definition of healthy which is applied to urine, which is called healthy in so far as it is the sign and effect of the animal’s health. . . .
The words God is good, or wise, signify . . . that these (properties) exist in Him in a more excellent way. . . . These names are applied primarily to God rather than to creatures because these perfections flow from God to creatures. . . .
The same rule does not apply to metaphorical . . . names . . . all names applied metaphorically to God are applied to creatures primarily rather than to God . . . so the name lion applied to God means only that God manifests strength in His works, as a lion in his (I,13,6).
Scripture uses many earthly analogies for God. But the analogies work only one way: everything is in some way a little bit like God (that is why they can lead us to God: the “rainbow bridge”), but God is not like them. He made us in His image, not vice versa. He is not called “our Father” because His fatherhood is named after ours, but because ours is named after His. (That’s the point of the passage from Ephesians that St. Thomas quotes above.) When Christ said to His disciples, “I have food to eat of which you do not know”, they interpreted it literally; and He corrected them: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (Jn 4: 31-34). They did not understand that this “soul food” is real food, and that body food is only an image or analogy of that. That which nourishes spiritual life—namely, doing the will of the Father, loving and trusting surrender to His will—is not an image of the bread that nourishes physical life; bread is an instructive image of it. Everything is. God’s world is a cathedral full of icons.
Some of these icons are metaphors: God can be called a lion not because He really is a lion. Other icons are not mere metaphors: God is called good, and Father, and love because He really is good, and Father, and love. The analogical use of the word is applied to creatures and the literal use is applied to God. We are the analogy, not Him. In metaphors, the analogical use is applied to God and the literal use to creatures.
What makes a lion a lion is its finite form, its lion-ness, and this is the shape of those particular limits on being, truth, goodness, and beauty that God designed the lion to have. For instance, to be a lion is not to be as big as an elephant or as gentle as a pussycat. These limits are not in God, so God is not a lion. But all the perfections these limits limit—all the being, truth, goodness, and beauty that are in a lion—are in God without limit. All the perfections of a pussycat are in God too. Thus God is simultaneously maximally strong and maximally gentle. He is the standard for the “gentle-man”.
The philosophical principle in St. Thomas that explains and justifies this one-way analogy (a principle we will see later) is that essence limits existence (being), and that God is infinite, unlimited existence, Being itself rather than a being. If you don’t understand that, don’t worry. Just remember that being, for St. Thomas, is not an abstraction. If it’s only an abstraction to you, leave it alone; it will do you no good and much harm to think of God as an abstraction. That’s like thinking of a volcano as an abstraction.