Analogy of Attribution
| Principal locus | Summa theologiae I, q. 13, aa. 5–6; De principiis naturae, ch. 6 |
|---|---|
| Definition | Predication of one name of several things through their ordered reference to a primary analogate |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Thomistic philosophy |
| Status | Thomistic philosophical and theological synthesis |
Analogy of attribution is the Thomistic account of a name predicated of several realities because each bears an ordered relation to one primary analogate. The realities are neither named in exactly the same sense, as in univocal predication, nor merely by coincidence, as in pure equivocation. Aquinas's standard example is health: an animal is healthy as the subject possessing health, medicine is healthy as its cause, and urine is healthy as its sign. Later Thomists call this ordered pattern analogy of attribution and use it, with important qualifications, to explain true speech about God and creatures.[1][2]
Primary and derivative predication
Attribution begins with an order among analogates. Health belongs formally and intrinsically to the living animal. Food or medicine is called healthy because it preserves or restores that health; a complexion or diagnostic sign is called healthy because it manifests it. The secondary things do not all possess one common form of health in the same manner. Their naming is intelligible because the derivative senses point toward the primary one. Thus the term has unity without a definition equally realized in every subject.[2]
Aquinas uses this structure in De principiis naturae and again in the Summa's treatment of divine names. The example is logical, but it rests on real causal or significative relations. Analogy is not a decorative ambiguity imposed after the facts. It follows an ordered reality and allows the mind to signify that order without flattening its terms. A bare list of homonyms, by contrast, has no such focal unity: the bank of a river and a financial bank share spelling through linguistic history, not one primary perfection.[1][2]
Intrinsic and extrinsic attribution
Later scholastic manuals distinguish extrinsic attribution, in which a secondary analogate receives only a denomination through its relation to another, from intrinsic attribution, in which the named perfection is truly present in distinct modes. Urine is healthy chiefly as a sign and medicine as a cause; neither is a living subject of health. Yet goodness, being, wisdom, and causality are not merely labels stuck onto creatures from outside. Creatures really are good, really exist, and may really be wise, though finitely and by participation.[1]
This qualification is indispensable in theology. If every divine name applied to creatures only extrinsically, ordinary affirmations about created goodness would be hollow. If every such name were univocal, God and creatures would fall under a more universal genus and the Creator-creature distinction would be obscured. Thomistic God-talk therefore often combines attribution to God as the first source with an intrinsic, participated perfection in the creature. The causal dependence establishes order; participation preserves the reality of the finite perfection received.
Names said of God and creatures
Aquinas holds that names such as good and wise are said of God and creatures analogically. The creature proceeds from God and imitates, within a finite mode, a perfection that is in God eminently and without creaturely limitation. The name is therefore primarily predicated of God with respect to the reality signified, even though human beings first learn its creaturely mode and first use the word of created things. The order of knowing and the order of being are not identical.[1]
The Catechism teaches the doctrinal frame: creatures bear a likeness to their Creator, human language can truly name God from creaturely perfections, and every expression must be purified of finite limitations. Attribution helps explain why the same term is not meaningless when carried upward to God. It does not comprehend the divine essence. God is not one especially impressive member of the class of good or wise beings; he is the uncreated source in whom every pure perfection exists according to the divine manner.[3]
Relation to proportionality
Analogy of attribution is commonly contrasted with analogy of proportionality. Attribution emphasizes ordered reference to a first analogate: medicine is healthy because it causes health in the animal. Proportionality emphasizes likeness between relations: bodily sight is to the eye as intellectual understanding is to the mind. The distinctions illuminate different features of analogical language, but the history of their classification is complex. Aquinas supplies the governing examples and arguments; later commentators systematized the labels and disputed how the modes fit together.[4]
Cajetan gave proportionality a prominent role in divine predication, while other Thomists and Francisco Suárez developed broader accounts of attribution. These are real school debates, not alternative dogmas.
Limits and common errors
Analogy of attribution does not mean that every theological word changes sense at will. Its ordered senses must be grounded in reality, and an argument must respect the precise analogical middle term it employs. Nor does analogy license agnosticism. Aquinas expressly rejects pure equivocation between God and creatures, because then no reasoning from effects to their cause could proceed and revelation's affirmative language would fail to teach. What is denied is comprehension and univocal containment, not knowledge altogether.
A second error is to treat the primary analogate as merely the first item noticed in speech. Primacy here concerns the perfection and the relations that depend upon it. In the health example, the organism is primary even if a physician first notices a sign. In theological predication, God is primary in being and causality even though created goods are first in ordinary human experience. The distinction guards both metaphysical realism and the humility proper to Catholic confession of the incomprehensible God.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Back to citation occurrence 1.2 Back to citation occurrence 1.3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, question 13, articles 5–6 — Analogical predication of names common to God and creatures, their reference to one source, and their primary predication of God.
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, chapter 6 — Univocal, equivocal, and analogical predication, illustrated by the primary and derivative senses of health.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 39–43 — Authoritative teaching that human words truly attain to God by creaturely perfections while remaining analogical and inadequate to his mystery.
- Back to citation Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, question 2, article 11 — Aquinas's distinction of analogical modes, including proportionality and the analogy between bodily sight and intellectual understanding.