Analogy of Proportionality
| Principal locus | De veritate, q. 2, a. 11 |
|---|---|
| Definition | Analogical predication founded on a likeness between relations rather than an identical form or measurable ratio |
| School | Thomism |
| Branch | Thomistic philosophy |
| Status | Thomistic philosophical and theological synthesis |
Analogy of proportionality is an analogical mode in which a likeness between relations permits one term to be predicated according to distinct modes. The classic form is not a mathematical equality but a correspondence: sight is related to the eye as understanding is related to the mind. Each power perfects its own subject in a different order. Thomists use this structure to explain how a perfection can be truly affirmed of God and creatures without placing both under one univocal concept or reducing the words to equivocation.[1][2]
A likeness of relations
In De veritate Aquinas describes a mode of agreement according to proportionality, illustrating it with bodily sight and intellectual understanding. Sight is the eye's act of apprehending visible things; understanding is the intellect's act of apprehending intelligible things. The word does not impose the physiology of an eye on the mind. It marks a likeness in the relation of operation to power. The shared intelligibility lies in ordered relations, while the subjects and their proper modes remain diverse.[1]
The term proportion can mislead modern readers because Aquinas does not require numerical quantities. Scholastic proportionality includes an ordered correspondence, commonly expressed as A is to B as C is to D. What matters is that the relation can be recognized under different modes. The account therefore differs from univocation, where one definition is applied in the same essential sense, and from pure equivocation, where identical sounds carry unrelated meanings.[1][3]
Proper and metaphorical proportionality
Later Thomists distinguish proper proportionality from metaphorical proportionality. In proper analogy the perfection signified is formally present in each analogate according to its mode: a human intellect is wise finitely, and God is wise in the uncreated divine manner. In metaphor, the predicate belongs formally to one order and is transferred because of a likeness of effect or action. A lion is courageous properly; Christ is called a lion metaphorically to signify royal strength and victory, not animal nature.[2]
The distinction preserves the literal truth of central divine names. Calling God good, living, wise, or being is not merely poetic imagery. Creaturely defects and material conditions are denied, while the pure perfection is affirmed eminently. Other biblical names—rock, shield, consuming fire—plainly employ metaphor. Both kinds can disclose truth, but they do so differently. A theological argument may not silently treat a metaphorical transfer as though it supplied a univocal definition of the divine nature.
The Creator and creature
Catholic teaching permits and requires true affirmative speech about God. The Catechism teaches that every creature bears a certain likeness to the Creator, that creaturely perfections provide a basis for naming him, and that such speech remains limited. Proportionality articulates this combination. Created wisdom is to a rational creature according to a received and finite mode; divine wisdom is identical with God's simple being. The predicate is true in each case, but it is not realized within one genus or measure.[2][4]
This account also explains the priority of negation and eminence in theology. Whatever belongs to a perfection's creaturely mode—composition, acquisition, limitation, dependence—is removed from God. The perfection itself is not erased but confessed as pre-existing in the first cause more perfectly than in its effects. Consequently, analogy neither makes God a magnified creature nor leaves believers with empty sounds. It yields genuine, though non-comprehensive, knowledge ordered to worship and contemplation.[2][4]
Attribution and later Thomistic debate
Proportionality and attribution answer related questions. Proportionality highlights the distinct mode in which each analogate possesses or expresses a perfection. Attribution highlights their order toward a primary analogate and causal source. In speaking of God and creatures, both insights may be needed: the creature really possesses goodness proportioned to its finite nature, while that goodness is caused by and ordered to God, who is good without participation. Treating the modes as absolutely isolated can conceal this cooperation.
Thomas did not present every later textbook subdivision as a single closed taxonomy. Cajetan's De nominum analogia made analogy of proper proportionality central; other Thomists and Suárez contested elements of that account or assigned a larger role to intrinsic attribution. Those controversies affect the interpretation of Thomas and the logical machinery of natural theology. They do not alter the Church's confession that God is truly known from creatures and infinitely exceeds every created concept.[1]
Use in argument and doctrine
Analogical terms must be handled with logical discipline. An argument cannot move from created wisdom to divine wisdom as if both were instances of one neutral essence, nor can it infer that no conclusion is possible because their modes differ. The effect manifests its cause according to the effect's capacity. From created actuality, order, goodness, and intelligence, reason can know something true about the first cause while recognizing that the cause contains these perfections in a superior manner.
The doctrine is sometimes caricatured as a compromise halfway between univocity and equivocity. It is better understood as a positive account of ordered likeness within greater dissimilarity. The mind knows through creatures because creatures are real effects and likenesses of God; it fails to comprehend because the finite mode of its concepts cannot contain infinite being. Proportionality names one precise way of preserving both judgments, and its usefulness depends upon never allowing either to cancel the other.
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, De veritate, question 2, article 11 — Aquinas's distinction of analogical modes, including proportionality and the analogy between bodily sight and intellectual understanding.
- Back to citation occurrence 2.0 Back to citation occurrence 2.1 Back to citation occurrence 2.2 Back to citation occurrence 2.3 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 Thomas Aquinas, De principiis naturae, chapter 6 — Univocal, equivocal, and analogical predication, illustrated by the primary and derivative senses of health.
- Back to citation occurrence 4.0 Back to citation occurrence 4.1 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.