is predestination), that his thoughts are far above our thoughts (Is. 55:8), and that he is
"above" and we are "below" (Eccles. 5:2)--if, in other words, we are to truly affirm the
Creator-creature distinction.
B. Analogy
All of this leads us, finally, to the doctrine of analogy. When we assert certain
predicates of God, based on God's own self-revelation, we use them in one of three
senses: univocally, analogically or equivocally. If we say that the predicate "gracious"
means exactly the same thing, whether in God or in a creature, we are using "gracious"
univocally. At the other end of the spectrum, if we say that by using that predicate we are
ascribing something to God whose appropriateness is unknown to us, we are using it
equivocally. If, however, God is said to be "gracious" in a way that is both similar and
dissimilar to creatures, we say it is analogical. For instance, when we acknowledge that
God is a "person," do we really mean to say that he is a person in exactly the same sense
as we are? When we follow scripture in using male pronouns to refer to God, do we
really believe that he is male? Unless we are willing to ascribe to God (in a univocal
sense) all attributes of human personhood, predications must be analogical.
Human language cannot transcend its finitude, so when God reveals himself in human
language, he draws on human analogies to lead us by the hand to himself. It is correct
description, but not univocal description. As we will argue below, the univocal approach
to such language almost always tends toward rationalism and the suspicion of the
mystery inherent in the Creator-creature distinction. And equivocal approaches, such as
those adopted in some forms of mysticism and in the wake of Kant, denying any certainty
about the truth of our predications, tend toward skepticism under the guise of God's
mysterious incomprehensibility.
religious language does not state what is literally true of God but involves only analogical predication"
(ibid., vol. 3, 336). Henry appears to confuse "literal" with "univocal," while those who appeal to analogy
hold that predications of certain attributes in God are literal but analogical. This approach, says Henry, is
"a futile attempt to explore a middle road between univocity and equivocity." However, "only univocal
assertions protect us from equivocacy; only univocal knowledge is, therefore, genuine and authentic
knowledge" (ibid., 364). Not only does an analogical approach lead to skepticism, but (according to
Henry) it is basically the same thing as a symbolic theology. This would make Aquinas a precursor of
Protestant liberalism. Henry appears to be encumbered by a positivist view of language and propositional
assertions. Theology, for instance, "consists essentially in the repetition, combination, and systematization
of the truth of revelation in its propositionally given biblical form" (ibid., vol. 1, 238). Interestingly, both a
liberal theologian such as Langdon Gilkey ("Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language,"
Journal of Religion, Vol. XLI [July 1961], 200) and a conservative such as Carl Henry (God, Revelation
and Authority, vol. 1 [Waco: Word, 1976], 237-8) erroneously link univocity to premodern and analogy or
equivocity as modern (liberal) moves. This is to miss a rather dominant strain of theological prolegomena
running from the patristics to Aquinas to the reformers and their successors.
incomprehensibility to affirm an essentially equivocal stance, although Pannenberg argues that our frankly
equivocal ascriptions of praise to God for specific attributes is justified by the proleptic anticipation of
revelation at the end of history. See his chapter "Analogy" in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 1,
translated by George H. Kehm (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), 211-38. It should also be pointed
out that Calvin was hardly the inventor of this idea or, for that matter, the notion of accommodation, which
we find replete in the writings of the church fathers: Chrysostom and Athanasius as well as Augustine and
Ambrose. It was abundant in apophatic theology and persisted through the middle ages, despite attempts to