Reconsidering the Analogy of Being
An ecumenical dialogue between RPC and TWU
March 21, 2007
Laura Van Dyke
On March 15, fifty students, guests, and a handful of professors made their way towards Block Hall for the much anticipated presentation of Trinity’s Philosophy Society: a joint lecture by Doctors Archie Spenser and Chris Morrissey titled “Reconsidering the Analogy of Being: An Ecumenical Dialogue.”
Living up to the weighty title, Acts Seminary professor Archie J. Spenser took the floor first, and proceeded to deliver a powerfully convincing support of Karl Barth’s frequently misunderstood rejection of the ontological predication of God. This rather thick topic was delivered with Spenser’s usual auditory gusto, unapologetically denying the traditionally Thomistic interpretation of the analogy of being. Barth based this rejection on his conviction that Catholic Thomism contained deeply problematic philosophical presuppositions, as well as serious theological limitations, such as the placement of the Catholic definition of causality at the core of Thomistic analogy.
Spenser’s insistence that Barth, though limited himself, nevertheless be given “the same hearing Aquinus and Von Balthasar get” in the discussion surrounding analogy and ontology was suitably received by an engaged audience. Spenser punctuated such statements as “we possess our being, because God possesses our being” with a decisive upwards thrust of a confident finger, raised in emphatic gesture and indicating a Barthian frustration with the Catholic magisterium’s allowance of two complex, conflicting streams of Thomistic interpretation on analogy to simultaneously exist within Catholic thought: namely, Aristotelian Thomism, as well as the defective stream of Neoplatonic Thomism.
When Spenser’s allotted time ran out, RPC’s C.S. Morrissey was given the chance to give his lecture: “Karl Barth’s Last Stand: A Refutation of Revelational Positivism’s Revolt against Reason.” This revolt was merrily caricaturized by Morrissey as alike to “revolting against the periodic table,” so clearly is the sundering of faith and reason an impossible option for the Christian intellectual. The revelational positivism of Barth’s Reformed inheritance was dismissed as “modernism’s dirty bathwater”; therefore, rather less than qualified to truly inform Christian thinking.
As his lecture thesis, Morrissey argued for the complex and “multiple significations of the analogy of being,” locating ecumenical angst on this issue among Christian thinkers of all traditions and denominations, rather than exclusively between those of Catholic or Protestant persuasion. In between frequent and disarming endorsements for his Latin classes, Morrissey managed to defend what he viewed the correct Aristotelian Thomistic interpretation of the analogy of being by citing three distinguishing features: it is logical, it is epistemological, and it is ontological. In other words, Thomism is “not neoplatonism,” as many argue, and metaphysics is not causal “onto-theology”: “being” is a transcendental term, not a category or master concept, as Barth thought.
Thus, there is no “concept” of being – only a transcendental relativity that defies neoplatonism. Against the Barthian objection that Thomistic metaphysics tends towards arrogating our rational grasp of God, Morrissey emphasized that on the contrary, Thomism fully recognizes fallen humanity’s limited capacity for knowledge of the divine. Finally, Morrissey warned, along with Aquinas, that theology is prone to go astray when it rejects metaphysics. Thus, theology needs the philosophical categories and distinctions offered by Thomistic philosophy, and ignores them at its peril.
Morrissey summed up his argument with a pithy pro-Thomistic quip: without philosophy, “theology degenerates into ideology and fideism.” When Spenser was given a chance to respond in turn to Morrissey’s lecture, however, he strongly stressed the Barth’s emphasis on reason’s insufficiency only as a starting point that presupposes being – reason itself, argued Spenser, figures heavily in Barth’s theology, especially in his Dogmatics. His reservations regarding reason and a possible sympathy towards fideism are founded on his typically Reformed rejection of “anything that is a Promethean attempt to steal grace from God”; thus, the Catholic doctrine of infused grace is extremely problematic to his sola Christianity, in each of its five renowned manifestations.
Morrissey concluded his portrayal of Thomistic metaphysics with an appeal for a “clear headed understanding of the analogy of being”; though many in the audience at this point perhaps smiled, it is safe to say that at the very least we left better informed about the interface between theology and philosophy on this issue, and the subsequent ecumenical significance surrounding the discussion on ontology and analogy.
As a fitting closure to a most scintillating and thought-provoking night, President of RPC Tom Hamel lead us in a rousing rendition of Amazing Grace, followed by, quite properly, a recitation of the Pater Noster together in unison.
Now you go...
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