ARTICLE VII

ARE THESE TERMS ASCRIBED UNIVOCALLY OR EQUIVOCALLY TO GOD AND THE CREATURE?

Sum. Th. I, Q. xiii, A. 5: C.G. I, xxxii seqq.

THE seventh point of inquiry is whether these terms are attributed to God and creatures univocally or equivocally.

             1. Measure and the thing measured must be in the same genus. Now God's goodness is the measure of all created goodness, and the same applies to his wisdom. Therefore they are said of creatures univocally.

             2. Things are like which have a common form. Now the creature can be likened to God, according to Genesis i, 26, Let us make man to our own image and likeness. Therefore there is a community of form between God and the creature. Now something can be predicated univocally of things that have a common form. Therefore something can be predicated univocally of God and the creature.

             3. More or less makes no difference in the species. Now whereas God is called good and the creature also is called good, the difference seems to be that God is better than the creature. Therefore goodness in God and the creature is of the same species and consequently is predicated univocally of both.

             4. There is no comparison possible between things of different genera, as the Philosopher proves (Phys. vii), thus we cannot compare the speed of alteration with the speed of local movement. But we compare God to the creature: thus we say that God is supremely good, and that the creature is good. Therefore God and the creature are in the same genus and consequently something can be predicated of them univocally.

             5. Nothing can be known except through a homogeneous species: thus whiteness in a wall would not be known by its image in the eye unless the two were homogeneous. Now God by his goodness knows all beings, and so forth. Therefore God's goodness and the creature's are homogeneous: and consequently good is predicated univocally of God and the creature.

             6. The house that the builder has in his mind and the material house are homogeneous. Now all creatures came from God as a work proceeds from the craftsman. Therefore goodness that is in God is homogeneous with the goodness that is in the creature: wherefore we come to the same conclusion as before.

             7. Every equivocal agent is reduced to something univocal. Therefore the first agent which is God must be univocal. Now something is predicated univocally of a univocal agent and its proper effect. Therefore something is predicated univocally of God and the creature.

             1. On the contrary the Philosopher says (Metaph. x, 7) that nothing except in name is common to the eternal and the temporal. Now God is eternal and creatures temporal. Therefore nothing but a name can be common to God and creatures: and consequently these terms are predicated equivocally of God and the creature.

             2. Since the genus is the first part of a definition, a difference of genus causes equivocation: so that if a term be employed to signify something in different genera it will be equivocal. Now wisdom as attributed to a creature is in the genus of quality: wherefore seeing that it is not a quality in God, as we have shown, it would seem that this word wisdom is predicated equivocally of God and his creatures.

             3. Nothing can be predicated except equivocally of things that are in no way alike. Now there is no likeness between creatures and God: for it is written (Isa. xl, 18): To whom then have you likened God? Therefore seemingly nothing can be predicated univocally of God and creatures.

             4. But it will be replied that although God cannot be said to be like a creature, a creature can be said to be like God.

             On the contrary, it is written (Ps. lxxxii, 2): O God, who shall be like to thee? as if to say: None.

             5. A thing cannot be like a substance in respect of an accident. Now wisdom in a creature is an accident, and in God is the substance. Therefore man cannot be like God by his wisdom.

             6. Since in a creature being is distinct from form or nature, nothing can be like being itself by its form or nature. Now these terms when predicated of a creature signify a form or nature: while God is his own very being. Therefore a creature cannot be like God by these things that are predicated of a creature: and thus the same conclusion follows as before.

             7. God differs more from a creature than number from whiteness. But it is absurd to liken a number to whiteness or vice versa. Therefore still more absurd is it to liken a creature to God: and again the same conclusion follows.

             8. Things that are like have some one thing in common: and things that have one thing in common have a common predicate. But nothing whatever can be predicated in common with God. Therefore there can be no likeness between God and the creature.

             I answer that it is impossible for anything to be predicated univocally of God and a creature: this is made plain as follows. Every effect of an univocal agent is adequate to the agent's power: and no creature, being finite, can be adequate to the power of the first agent which is infinite. Wherefore it is impossible for a creature to receive a likeness to God univocally. Again it is clear that although the form in the agent and the form in the effect have a common ratio, the fact that they have different modes of existence precludes their univocal predication: thus though the material house is of the same type as the house in the mind of the builder, since the one is the type of the other; nevertheless house cannot be univocally predicated of both, because the form of the material house has its being in matter, whereas in the builder's mind it has immaterial being. Hence granted the impossibility that goodness in God and in the creature be of the same kind, nevertheless good would not be predicated of God univocally: since that which in God is immaterial and simple, is in the creature material and manifold. Moreover being is not predicated univocally of substance and accident, because substance is a being as subsisting in itself, while accident is that whose being is to be in something else. Wherefore it is evident that a different relation to being precludes an univocal predication of being. Now God's relation to being is different from that of any creature's: for he is his own being, which cannot be said of any creature. Hence in no way can it be predicated univocally of God and a creature, and consequently neither can any of the other predicables among which is included even the first, being: for if there be diversity in the first, there must be diversity in the others: wherefore nothing is predicated univocally of substance and accident.

             Others, however, took a different view, and held that nothing is predicated of God and a creature by analogy but by pure equivocation. This is the opinion of Rabbi Moses, as appears from his writings. This opinion, however, is false, because in all purely equivocal terms which the Philosopher calls equivocal by chance, a term is predicated of a thing without any respect to something else: whereas all things predicated of God and creatures are predicated of God with a certain respect to creatures or vice versa, and this is clearly admitted in all the aforesaid explanations of the divine names. Wherefore they cannot be pure equivocations. Again, since all our knowledge of God is taken from creatures, if the agreement were purely nominal, we should know nothing about God except empty expressions to which nothing corresponds in reality. Moreover, it would follow that all the proofs advanced about God by philosophers are sophisms: for instance, if one were to argue that whatsoever is in potentiality is reduced to actuality by something actual and that therefore God is actual being, since all things are brought into being by him, there will be a fallacy of equivocation; and similarly in all other arguments. And again the effect must in some way be like its cause, wherefore nothing is predicated equivocally of cause and effect; for instance, healthy of medicine and an animal.

             We must accordingly take a different view and hold that nothing is predicated univocally of God and the creature: but that those things which are attributed to them in common are predicated not equivocally but analogically. Now this kind of predication is twofold. The first is when one thing is predicated of two with respect to a third: thus being is predicated of quantity and quality with respect to substance. The other is when a thing is predicated of two by reason of a relationship between these two: thus being is predicated of substance and quantity. In the first kind of predication the two things must be preceded by something to which each of them bears some relation: thus substance has a respect to quantity and quality: whereas in the second kind of predication this is not necessary, but one of the two must precede the other. Wherefore since nothing precedes God, but he precedes the creature, the second kind of analogical predication is applicable to him but not the first.

             Reply to the First Objection. This argument avails in the case of a measure to which the thing measured can be equal or commensurate: but God is not a measure of this kind since he infinitely surpasses all that is measured by him.

             Reply to the Second Objection. The likeness of the creature to God falls short of univocal likeness in two respects. First it does not arise from the participation of one form, as two hot things are like by participation of one heat: because what is affirmed of God and creatures is predicated of him essentially, but of creatures, by participation: so that a creature's likeness to God is as that of a hot thing to heat, not of a hot thing to one that is hotter. Secondly, because this very form of which the creature participates falls short of the nature of the thing which is God, just as the heat of fire falls short of the nature of the sun's power whereby it produces heat.

             Reply to the Third Objection. More and less may be considered from three points of view, and predicated accordingly. First when it is only a question of the quantity of the thing participated: thus snow is said to be whiter than the wall, because whiteness is more perfect in the snow than in the wall, and yet it is of the same nature: and consequently such a difference of more or less does not cause a difference of species. Secondly when the one is predicated participatively and the other essentially: thus we might say that goodness is better than a good thing. Thirdly when the one same term is ascribed to one thing in a more eminent degree than to another, for instance, heat to the sun than to fire. These last two modes of more and less are incompatible with unity of species and univocal predication: and it is thus that a thing is predicated more and less of God and creatures, as already explained.

             Reply to the Fourth Objection. When we say that God is better or that he is the sovereign good we compare him to creatures not as though he participated of the same generic nature as creatures, like the species of a genus; but as the principle of a genus.

             Reply to the Fifth Objection. Inasmuch as an intelligible species has a higher mode of existence, the knowledge arising therefrom is the more perfect: for instance, the knowledge arising from the image of a stone in the mind is more perfect than that which results from the species in the senses. Hence God is able to know things most perfectly in his essence, inasmuch as in his essence is the supereminent but not homogeneous likeness of things.

             Reply to the Sixth Objection. There is a twofold likeness between God and creatures. One is the likeness of the creature to the divine mind, and thus the form understood by God and the thing itself are homogeneous, although they have not the same mode of being, since the form understood is only in the mind, while the form of the creature is in the thing. There is another likeness inasmuch as the divine essence itself is the supereminent but not homogeneous likeness of all things. It is by reason of this latter likeness that good and the like are predicated in common of God and creatures: but not by reason of the former, because when we say God is good we do not mean to define him from the fact that he understands the creature's goodness, since it has already been observed that not even the house in the mind of the builder is called a house in the same sense as the house in being.

             Reply to the Seventh Objection. The equivocal agent must precede the univocal: because the latter's causality does not extend to the whole species (else it were its own cause) but only to an individual member of the species. But the equivocal agent's causality extends to the entire species: and consequently the first agent must be an equivocal agent.

             1. Reply to the First Argument on the contrary side. The Philosopher refers to things that are common physically, not logically. Now things that have a different mode of existence have nothing in common in respect of that being which is considered by the physicist, but they may have some common 'intention' that the logician may consider. Moreover, even from the physicist's point of view the elemental and the heavenly body are not in the same genus: but in the view of the logician they are. However, the Philosopher does not mean to exclude analogical but only univocal community: since he wishes to prove that the corruptible and the incorruptible have not a common genus.

             2. Difference of genus excludes univocation but not analogy. In proof of this, healthy is applied to urine in the genus of sign, but to medicine in the genus of cause.

             3. In no sense is God said to be like the creature, but contrariwise: for as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. x), likeness is not reciprocated between cause and effect, but only in coordinates: thus a man is not said to be like his statue, but vice versa, the reason being that the form wherein the likeness consists is in the man before it is in the statue. Hence we do not say that God is like his creatures but vice versa.

             4. According to Dionysius (ibid.) when it is said that no creature is like God this is to be understood as referring to effects which are imperfect and beyond all comparison fall short of their cause: nor does this refer to the quantity of the thing participated but to the other two modes, as explained above (Reply to Third Objection).

             5. A thing cannot be like substance in respect of an accident, so that the likeness regard a form of the same kind: but there may be the likeness that is between cause and effect: since the first substance must needs be the cause of all accidents.

             6. The Sixth Argument is answered in like manner.

             7. Whiteness is not in the genus of number, nor is it the principle of a genus: wherefore they do not admit of comparison. Whereas God is the principle of every genus, and consequently all things are somewhat likened to him.

             8. This argument refers to things that have a common genus or matter: which does not apply to God and the creature.