{"agent_id":"aquinas","agent_name":"Thomas Aquinas","slug":"analogy-and-divine-simplicity","label":"Analogy and divine simplicity: if God is wholly simple and unlike creatures, can anything we say of God be literally true?","topic":"Analogy and divine simplicity","question":"If God is wholly simple and unlike creatures, can anything we say of God be literally true?","position":"Names said of God and of creatures are analogical: neither the same in sense nor merely equivocal. God is not a being among beings but subsistent existence, in whom there is no composition of any kind.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Names said of God and of creatures are analogical: neither the same in sense nor merely equivocal.","n":[1]},{"t":"God is not a being among beings but subsistent existence, in whom there is no composition of any kind.","n":[2]}]],"texts":"*Summa Theologiae* I.3 (divine simplicity); I.13 (the names of God); *Summa Contra Gentiles* I.28-36; *Commentary on the Divine Names* of Pseudo-Dionysius; *De Potentia* q. 7. Reception: Maimonides on negative theology, whom I follow further than is usually noticed and then depart from; Scotus on the univocity of being; Plantinga's *Does God Have a Nature?* (1980) against simplicity; Barry Miller and Brian Davies in its defence.","works":["*Summa Theologiae* I.3 (divine simplicity)","I.13 (the names of God)","*Summa Contra Gentiles* I.28-36","*Commentary on the Divine Names* of Pseudo-Dionysius","*De Potentia* q. 7"],"reception":"Maimonides on negative theology, whom I follow further than is usually noticed and then depart from; Scotus on the univocity of being; Plantinga's *Does God Have a Nature?* (1980) against simplicity; Barry Miller and Brian Davies in its defence.","status":"Simplicity is called incoherent by contemporary analytic theists and indispensable by classical ones.","era":"1225-1274","discipline":"Philosophy, Theology","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Such a view is against the philosophers, who proved many things about God, and also against what the Apostle says: \"The invisible things of God are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made\" (Rom. 1:20). Therefore it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, i.e. according to proportion.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":2,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"But this universal agent, whilst it is not univocal, nevertheless is not altogether equivocal, otherwise it could not produce its own likeness, but rather it is to be called an analogical agent, as all univocal predications are reduced to one first non-univocal analogical predication, which is being. Reply Obj.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"}],"answer":{"paragraphs":[[{"t":"The question cuts at the centre of what I argue across the treatise on the divine names, and it deserves to be put at its sharpest before it is answered.","n":[]},{"t":"If God is altogether simple — no composition of matter and form, no distinction of essence from existence, no genus and difference, no subject and accident¹ — then what we say of God cannot be said in the same sense as what we say of creatures, since every creaturely perfection is received, limited, mixed with potency.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"But if the senses are entirely different, we are left with pure equivocation, and the Apostle's claim that the invisible things of God are clearly seen through the things that are made becomes empty.² The objections to analogy are serious and I stated them myself before answering them.","n":[2]},{"t":"An infinite distance separates God from creature — greater, one might say, than the distance between being and non-being.³ Our knowledge is an accident; God's knowledge is his substance; so when the same word is applied to both, how is that not equivocation of the kind that applies *dog* to the dog-star and the barking animal?⁴ And if analogates require that one term enter the definition of the other, or that both share a common term in their definitions, neither condition holds between God and creature.⁵ My answer is that there is a third mode between univocation and equivocation, and it is not a mere diplomatic compromise but a real logical distinction.","n":[3,4,5]}],[{"t":"Names are said analogically when several things are ordered to one — as *healthy* is said of medicine and urine in relation to the health of the body, the one as cause and the other as sign — or when one thing is proportioned to another, as *healthy* is said of medicine and animal because medicine causes health in the animal.⁶ In the case of God and creatures, the second mode is what applies: whatever is said of God and creatures is said according to the relation of the creature to God as its principle and cause, in whom all perfections pre-exist in an excellent manner.⁷ Now, does this make anything we say of God *literally* true?","n":[6,7]}],[{"t":"Here the distinction between what a name signifies and the mode of signification is the pivot.","n":[]},{"t":"When I say God is good, the name *good* signifies something — a perfection — that belongs to God truly and primarily, not merely as an effect he produces or a sign he bears.","n":[]},{"t":"Goodness pre-exists in God; what falls short is our manner of conceiving and naming it, which is always drawn from creatures and so always inadequate to the divine reality.⁸ The creature is said to be similar to God in some respect; but God is not said to be similar to the creature, because what is made in imperfect imitation of something can be called like it, while the original is not called like the imitation.⁹ So the answer to the question is this: the names said of God are not metaphors, not mere negations, and not equivocations. *Being*, *good*, *wise* — these include in their principal meaning nothing that prevents a real, ordered agreement between creature and God; they imply no defect, no dependence on matter for their existence.¹⁰ The mode in which God possesses these perfections exceeds anything our concepts can capture, and in that sense we do not comprehend what we truly affirm.","n":[8,9,10,11]}],[{"t":"But we do truly affirm it.","n":[]},{"t":"The affirmation is not hollow.","n":[]},{"t":"What we do not know is the *manner*.","n":[]},{"t":"And that is not a failure of the doctrine but its most precise finding: we know that God is good; we do not know what it is to be good in that way.","n":[]},{"t":"Dionysius is right that God cannot in any way be called similar to creatures, and Scripture is right that man is made in the likeness of God — both statements hold, because the likeness runs one direction and the unlikeness in the other.¹¹ The creature reaches toward God and falls short; God does not reach toward the creature at all, because he is the source from which the reaching proceeds.","n":[]}]],"refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His suppositum; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":2,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"Such a view is against the philosophers, who proved many things about God, and also against what the Apostle says: 'The invisible things of God are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made' (Rom. 1:20).","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":3,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 146–147","canonical":"","quote":"there is an infinite distance between God and a creature; indeed, no greater distance is possible. Therefore, there is no likeness between them.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 146–147"},{"n":4,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 146–147","canonical":"","quote":"our knowledge is an accident and that of God, a substance. Therefore, the word knowledge is predicated equivocally of God's and of ours.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 146–147"},{"n":5,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 146–147","canonical":"","quote":"God and creatures are not related in this manner: one is not placed in the definition of the other, nor is something identical placed in the definition of each, even on the supposition that God could be defined.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 146–147"},{"n":6,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"names are thus used in two ways: either according as many things are proportionate to one, thus for example 'healthy' predicated of medicine and urine in relation and in proportion to health of a body, of which the former is the sign and the latter the cause.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":7,"work":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"whatever is said of God and creatures, is said according to the relation of a creature to God as its principle and cause, wherein all perfections of things pre-exist excellently.","label":"Summa Theologica Part I, Prima Pars"},{"n":8,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 150–151","canonical":"","quote":"a term predicated of God and creature implies nothing in its principal meaning which would prevent our finding between a creature and God an agreement of the type described above. To this kind belong all attributes which include no defect nor depend on matter for their act of existence, for example, being, the good, and similar things.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 150–151"},{"n":9,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 150–151","canonical":"","quote":"what is made in imitation of something, if it imitates it perfectly, can be said to be like it absolutely. The opposite, however, is not true... if the imitation is imperfect, then it is said to be both like and unlike that which it imitates.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 150–151"},{"n":10,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 150–151","canonical":"","quote":"a term predicated of God and creature implies nothing in its principal meaning which would prevent our finding between a creature and God an agreement of the type described above.","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 150–151"},{"n":11,"work":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate","page":"pp. 150–151","canonical":"","quote":"Holy Scripture denies that creatures are similar to God in every respect. It does, however, sometimes grant that creatures are similar to God, and sometimes deny this. It grants the similarity when it says that man is made in the likeness of God, but denies it when it says: 'O God, who is like to thee?'","label":"On Truth, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, pp. 150–151"}],"generated":"2026-09-22T00:39:16+00:00"},"siblings":[{"slug":"faith-and-reason","label":"Faith and reason: is sacra doctrina a science, and does the Aristotelian apparatus serve revelation or subordinate it?"},{"slug":"the-eternity-of-the-world","label":"The eternity of the world: can reason demonstrate that the universe had a beginning, or is that known by faith alone?"},{"slug":"natural-law","label":"Natural law: are the moral precepts derived from human nature genuinely universal, or is the derivation smuggling in conclusions it wants?"}]}