Reviews
Thomas Joseph White, ed., The Analogy of Being: Invention of the
Antichrist or the Wisdom of God? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010, xiv
+ 440pp. $48.00
Few issues have so marked Protestant–Roman Catholic dialogue in the twentieth
century as the controversy regarding the ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis). Karl
Barth and Erich Przywara engaged each other in the 1920s and 1930s, in many ways
disagreeing about the legacy of Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysical and epistemological
thought, and Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians have tried to make sense of
their spat ever since. Why has this debate received such attention? White states: ‘as
the participants in the debate realized, what was at issue with the analogia entis was
not just any theological doctrine, but in some sense the most basic of all doctrines:
the doctrine of the relation between God and creation’ (p. 36). Thus it effects a host
of issues, not least the relation between nature and grace and that between
philosophy and theology.
Thomas Joseph White has edited essays from a conference held by the
Dominican House of Studies and the John Paul II Cultural Center in 2008. They
include contributions from Protestant and Roman Catholic scholars, and they interact
with Barth, Przywara and Thomas Aquinas, as well with as a range of other thinkers
and topics. The volume proves helpful for understanding Przywara, Aquinas and the
very idea of analogy.
Firstly, the volume is very useful in pointing to a subtle reading of Przywara, a
reading that in many ways eluded Karl Barth. John Betz offers an analysis of
Przywara’s project and its theological context, describing the back history of the
analogia itself as well as the doctrinal architecture of Przywara’s approach. Most
illuminating were his reflections on Przywara’s reading of Romans 1:21 (p. 52 n. 56)
and the calm and sure way in which he demonstrates the a posteriori and exegetical
nature of Przywara’s argument (p. 55). Przywara seeks to honor the Creator/creature
distinction, the results of the fall upon natural human reason, as well as not only the
possibility but the actuality of revelation and knowledge of God. In many ways
the beauty and power of his project is displayed here.
Secondly, a series of essays engage the thought of the angelic doctor and his
place in a ressourcement approach to contemporary theology. Reinhard Hütter makes
a compelling case that Thomas saw a link between the notion of transcendental
analogy and participation in God, for ‘to participate is to have partially what another
is without restriction’ (p. 230). Later in the volume Bruce Marshall seeks to
differentiate between metaphysical and linguistic analogy, suggesting that analogy
International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 16 Number 1 January 2014
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd