Aquinas and Analogy

This monograph examines Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of analogy, a central component of medieval theological discourse about divine predication. McInerny argues that modern interpretations have fundamentally misunderstood Aquinas's position, particularly the influential reading advanced by Cajetan in the sixteenth century. The work contends that Aquinas's theory of analogy is primarily logical rather than metaphysical, grounded in Aristotelian semantics rather than a special theory of being.

McInerny demonstrates that for Aquinas, analogical predication represents a middle way between univocal and equivocal language when speaking about God. When terms like "good" or "wise" are applied both to creatures and to God, they are neither used in exactly the same sense (univocally) nor in completely different senses (equivocally), but analogically. The author shows how this position emerges from Aquinas's broader philosophical framework, particularly his understanding of how language functions in relation to concepts and reality.

The work systematically challenges the "existential Thomist" interpretation associated with Gilson and Maritain, which treats analogy as primarily a metaphysical doctrine about the relationship between finite and infinite being. McInerny argues instead that Aquinas's texts support reading analogy as fundamentally concerned with the logical structure of predication. This interpretation has significant implications for understanding how theological language operates and what claims about divine attributes actually mean.

McInerny's analysis engages extensively with the medieval commentary tradition, showing how later Thomists, especially Cajetan, introduced distinctions foreign to Aquinas's own thought. The monograph traces how Cajetan's threefold division of analogy (attribution, proportionality, and inequality) became mistakenly attributed to Aquinas himself, obscuring the original doctrine. Through careful textual analysis, McInerny recovers what he takes to be Aquinas's authentic position: that analogical terms have a primary meaning derived from creatures, which is then extended to God in a way that preserves semantic continuity while acknowledging the infinite difference between Creator and creation.

This scholarly intervention matters for contemporary philosophy of religion because it clarifies how classical theism understands religious language. By showing that Aquinas's analogy is logical rather than metaphysical, McInerny provides resources for defending the meaningfulness of God-talk against both anthropomorphic reduction and apophatic excess. The work thus contributes to ongoing debates about whether and how human language can meaningfully refer to transcendent reality.