How is God known by us and how do we name God?
Aquinas has a very precise and very unique theory of divine naming from what he calls
analogy--likeness and also unlikeness.
The theory begins from the idea that we know God by looking at effects of God and thinking
about the cause of those effects.
Our thought moves, as it were, from effects to the cause of the effects.
So the whole created reality as it is around us, comes from God, and we can, by reflecting
on it, see that it has a source of hidden origin, the transcendent creator who gives
being to all things.
From that we can derive some kind of way of seeing what God is in so far as he creates
effects that are like him, not identical with him.
This allows us to achieve real knowledge of God that is not direct, and it's imperfect,
but it's also real.
When Aquinas develops this theory, he leans on the writings of an ancient sixth-century,
Father of the Church name Dionysius the Areopagite,
who speaks about three ways in which we name God.
And he uses the Latin terminology of the via causalitatis, the via negationis
or remotionis,
and the via eminentiae.
The way of causality, the way of negation, and the way of preeminence.
So let's take an example from the idea of God's goodness.
The way of causality states the argument in this way: God has created a world of good
things.
We can see some ontological goodness in all things that are, but the effects must in some
way resemble the cause.
So we must in some way be able to attribute goodness to God.
We can name God as one who is good, but then we need to practice the way of negation.
God's goodness is not like our goodness.
He's wholly dissimilar,
insofar as his goodness is eternal, infinite, uncompromisable, essential to himself and
so forth.
And then this leads us to think about the way of preeminence.
The goodness of God is preeminent.
God is the author of the goodness of all other things, and so his goodness remains above
our world, transcendent incomprehensible, hidden, and yet real, but manifest in his effects,
not immediately evident to us.
From this Aquinas derives a theory of divine naming that he calls analogical.
The word analogy comes principally from Aristotle's philosophy, and it's used to denote a term
that manifests when two things are like each other, but not identical.
Here Aquinas's situating himself between two extremes.
One extreme claims that we know God so accurately, you might say from creatures that we can name
what God is in almost precisely the same sense that we can name creatures.
The other extreme claims that God is so transcendent, we can hardly name God at all.
Analogy theory situates itself between these two extremes by claiming we can say true things
of God, but only by likeness and dissimilitude.
God is both unlike his creation and the properties or perfections
we find in the creation can truly be predicated of God, but then in a wholly different and
super-eminent way.
Aquinas tells us that analogical terms that we use to signify God do truly denote what
God is.
For example, if we say God is wise, or good, or simple, or truth, we're saying something
real about what God is in himself.
Nevertheless, this divine naming is certainly non-comprehensive in the sense that we don't
comprehend God or get our mind completely around him in the way we might understand,
for example, a chemical formula or a math problem.
Our analogical knowledge of God is marked by what is classically called apophaticism.
God is veiled in darkness.
We speak of God as one who we know imperfectly, indirectly from his effects that are his creatures.
For us to know God in a more perfect way,
we need God to take a step toward us and to reveal himself, and he's done that most perfectly
by becoming human and giving us the grace of a yet greater and more intimate friendship
with him through faith.
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