Carrying Names Over to God: Analogy Between Univocal and Equivocal, and Whether Names Apply First to God or to Creatures (ST I q.13 a.5–6)

Orientation #

He opens by saying “these next two articles” matter because we name perfections in creatures first and then carry the words over to God. At the end he says “now we’ve got time to start seven” but decides to wait, and the class discusses meeting around Thanksgiving. The previous class treated q.13 a.4 (why divine names are not synonyms) and the next takes up a.7 on names implying relation to creatures.

The class, in order #

1. Carrying a name over (“carried over, but each time it’s carried over”) #

Point: names are first placed on creatures and then carried over to God with a changed meaning; the student must track the change.

• Impositio nominis = placing a name upon a thing (as in English “put a label on”); translatio nominis = carrying a name across/over. Thomas speaks this concretely even in the fifth book of Wisdom [ed.: Metaphysics V].
• The word “in” (Thomas on the fourth book of Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]): first placed on being in this room, then carried to part in a whole, genus in species, species in genus, form in matter, whole in its parts, you in my power, and finally “where your treasure is, there your heart shall be.” Each carrying-over gives a little different meaning; the mind is led along by the word but must understand the difference.
• Monsignor Dionne’s remark [ed.: transcript “Diana”]: of some people, “you can’t move the word.”
• Anaxagoras as a case of falling back on an earlier meaning: nothing comes from nothing, so what comes out of matter must already be “in” it—imagined as things in a place, or a part in a whole.

2. Article 5, objections 1-3 (“everything equivocal is reduced to something univocal”) #

Point: three reasons for thinking names are said univocally of God and creatures.

• Obj. 1: every equivocal is reduced to a univocal, as the many to the one. “Dog” said equivocally of the barking one and the sea one (cf. sea lion, sea horse) must be said univocally of all barkers, else one goes on forever. His illustration: “bat” is equivocal of the baseball bat and the belfry bat, but univocal of all baseball bats and univocal of all flying ones; the univocal seems to underlie the equivocal. Agents likewise: man generates man (univocal agent, agreeing with effect in name and definition); the sun causes heat but is hot only equivocally. So the first agent should be univocal.
  • Aside on univocal vs equivocal cause, from Thomas on the Resurrection (Sentences, forty-third distinction): the divinity of Christ is an equivocal cause of our resurrection (the divine nature cannot rise), the human nature of Christ a univocal cause (we rise as he rose); the univocal cause is joined to the equivocal, so through him we rise. “That’s a very important distinction.”
• Obj. 2: in equivocals no likeness is noted; but the creature is like God (Genesis 1:26, “to our image and likeness”); so something is said univocally. He notes the objection means equivocal by chance.
  • Digression on naming: a common name said of two with the same meaning is sometimes kept by one as its own name while the other gets a new name because something stands out. Thomas’s article “whether incest is fornication”: broadly, yes; but incest has a special extra reason for being bad, so it gets a new name and the other keeps “fornication.” Second meaning of incest, from non castus; Thomas says it is named by antonomasia—the man of incest is unchaste terribly so.
  • The division of one name said of many: univocal (exactly the same meaning) vs equivocal (other meanings). Equivocal subdivides: by chance (two students named Michael, two girls named Mary—nothing to do with same-shaped noses) vs by reason (a connection and order among the meanings). Boundary: does “bat” mean the wood first or the animal first? Neither—no order. “To be in” means being in place first, then the rest—order. The equivocal by reason, adding something, gets the new name “analogous” (from the word for proportion, though not every equivocal by reason involves proportion), while the other keeps the common name “equivocal.” Thomas sometimes divides into three at once—same meaning / entirely different / a middle with connection—and neither way is “the correct way.”
• Obj. 3: the measure is homogeneous with the measured (tenth book of Metaphysics): a line by inches (a length), a surface by square inches, a volume by cubic inches; Aristotle’s virtuous man is the measure of other men, Mozart of musicians, Homer of poets. God is the first measure of all things, so must be homogeneous.
  • Aside: Thomas attaches attributes to attributes (good to perfect, everywhere to infinite, eternal to unchangeable); following Aristotle, being a measure belongs to the one, so “measure of all things” could attach to God’s unity. Plato in the Laws corrects Protagoras: God, not man, is the measure of all things. He suggests “measure” here may be a broader sense.

3. Sed contra (“wisdom in the creature is a quality”) #

Point: two arguments that names are said equivocally.

1. What is said by the same name but not the same meaning is equivocal; wisdom in the creature is a quality (an accident), not so in God; a change of genus changes the notion, since genus is the first part of the definition (Porphyry). “That seems to be good to me.”
2. God is more distant from creatures than creatures from each other; but some creatures are so distant that nothing is said of them univocally—those not in one genus (the ten categories). “Thing” said of a man and of his shape: a man and a dog are two things differently from a man and his shape, since the shape is something of the man. His own case: being a man vs being in this room—when generated I came to be; entering the room I came to be in this room, must qualify; leaving, I cease to be—qualified again. If being is not said the same of these, how much more of him who says “I am who am,” and to St Catherine of Siena, “you are she who is not.”

4. Body of article 5 (“not according to the same definition, but in a deficient way”) #

Point: nothing is said univocally, nothing purely equivocally; all is said by analogy.

1. Not univocally: an effect not equal to the agent’s power receives the likeness deficiently; what is divided and multiplied in effects is in the cause simply and in one way (the sun by one power produces many forms); all perfections pre-exist in God united. “Wise” said of a man signifies a perfection really distinct from his nature, power and being (“for me to be is not to be wise”); said of God it signifies nothing distinct from his nature, power or being. Said of man the name “draws a line around and comprehends” the thing; said of God it leaves it uncomprehended and exceeding the name—Dionysius’s super sapiens.
2. Not purely equivocally (as some say): then nothing could be known or demonstrated of God from creatures; always the fallacy of equivocation—against the philosophers and against Romans chapter one verse twenty, the text Vatican I uses for man’s knowing God from creatures.
3. Therefore by analogy—Greek analogia, which the English Euclid renders “proportion.” Thomas uses “proportion” for a ratio itself, not (as Euclid) for a likeness of ratios, so “proportion” itself becomes equivocal. Two ways: (a) many have a ratio to one—“healthy” of medicine (cause) and urine (sign) in relation to the animal’s health; his cases: your complexion is healthy (a sign), your exercise is healthy (productive or conserving); (b) one has a ratio to the other—“healthy” of medicine and of the animal. First meaning: to have one’s body in good condition; other things healthy as producing or signifying that. So names are said of God and creatures analogically, since we can only name God from creatures, and the creature has order to God as beginning and cause—a middle between pure equivocation and the simply univocal (the threefold division).

• “Nor wholly diverse as in equivocals”: here in equivocis keeps the common name for the purely equivocal—like “animal”: from the biology teacher it is common to man and beast, from your girlfriend it is kept for the beast and is an insult. Healthy/medical is Aristotle’s example in the fourth book of Wisdom for how “being” is said.

5. Reply to objection 1 (“the equivocal agent precedes the univocal agent”) #

Point: in predication the equivocal reduces to the univocal, but in action the reverse.

• Predication: “bat” must be said univocally of baseball bats and of rodents before equivocally of all; so univocal predication is more fundamental. He thinks univocal/equivocal were said of words first and carried over to causes.
• Action: the non-univocal agent is universal cause of the whole species (the sun of the generation of all men); the univocal agent is not, else it would cause itself—“I’m not the cause of man, I’m the cause of a man” in my son; the particular cause of this individual partaking of the species. Repeats: the humanity of Christ could not cause our resurrection without his divinity; the divinity could without the humanity, but he chose this way (Christ the mediator).
• The universal agent, not univocal, is not wholly equivocal, since there is always likeness of effect to maker: call it the analogous agent.
• Likewise all univocals reduce to a first that is analogous—being, and with it one, something, thing. From logic: the same thing can be genus and species, but not every genus is a species of a higher one, or there would be no most universal; being and something are said of everything; but being is not said univocally of my being a man and my being in this room. “What’s said of all is said of all equivocally”—by reason, or analogously, as Thomas likes to say.

6. Replies 2 and 3; the incarnation qualification (“a greater unlikeness”) #

• Reply 2: the creature’s likeness to God is imperfect, not even in genus. He remarks Thomas could have been more complete (the objection took “equivocal” as excluding likeness); Thomas stresses the distance. Fourth Lateran Council (brought to his attention by Paul VI): no likeness of creature to God without a greater unlikeness. Scripture’s “Who is like the Lord?"—more unlike than like, yet still like. His Saudi Arabia class: a Muslim head objected to Shakespeare calling reason God-like; he answered with Lateran IV.
• Reply 3: God is not a measure proportioned to the measured; no need of one genus.
• The other objections (sed contra) conclude only that nothing is said univocally, not that it is said (purely) equivocally.
• Qualification for the treatise on the incarnation: “man” is said univocally of Christ and of us, since it means human nature, body and soul; the article concerns God in his divine nature. Aside: when his soul is separated he is a man secundum quid; at the resurrection, man in the same sense as now.

7. Article 6, objections and sed contra (“names are said of creatures before they’re said of God”) #

Point: since the equivocal by reason has an order among meanings, is good/wise said first of us or of God?

• Obj. 1: we name as we know (names are signs of things understood, the Philosopher); we know creatures first; so “Daddy” is said of my daddy before of God.
• Obj. 2: Dionysius, names translata (carried over) from creatures to God—lion, stone. He notes these examples are metaphors, properly said of the creature.
• Obj. 3: names common to God and creatures are said of God as cause (Dionysius); what is said by causality is said afterwards—health of the animal before medicine. He replies in passing: if names were said of God only that way you’d have a point, but some are said substantially.
• Sed contra: Ephesians 3:14-15, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named. Fatherhood in the angels: a teacher is father of students, one angel illuminates another. Asides: De Koninck calling students “children” at seminar breaks; when his teacher Kasurik died it was like his own father dying.

8. Body of article 6 (“as far as the thing signified through the name”) #

Point: the name is said first of that which enters the definition of the others; the answer needs a distinction.

1. In analogical names all are said with regard to one thing placed in the definition of all; the definition is what the name signifies (fourth book of Wisdom); so the name is said first of that one and then of the others as they approach it more or less. Healthy of the animal falls in the definition of healthy said of medicine (cause) and of urine (sign).
2. Names said metaphorically of God are said of the creature first, since of God they signify only likeness to such creatures: the field “laughs” = it has itself in beauty when it flowers as a man when he smiles (aside: a woman’s face is most beautiful when she smiles, not laughs), a likeness of proportion; God a “lion” = he acts strongly in his works as the lion in his.
3. Names said properly of God: it would be the same if said only by causality—if “God is good” meant only that he causes creatures’ goodness, or “wise” only that he causes Aristotle’s wisdom, then the creature’s goodness/wisdom would be in the definition and the name said of the creature first. But (shown above) they are said not only causally but essentially—he earlier said “substantially”—these perfections pre-exist in God more eminently.
4. The distinction: as to the thing signified, said of God first (the perfections flow from God into creatures); as to the placing of the name, on creatures first (we know creatures first), whence they keep the creature’s way of signifying.

• Aristotle in the fifth book of Wisdom makes the same distinction: “nature” is first placed on birth, later on the inner source of birth, though in things the inner source is more fundamental. So Thomas is not inventing the distinction to meet a theological problem. Two orders: the order of imposition (which follows the order in which we know) and the order in things.

9. Reply 1 and the discussion of “Father” (“place the name father upon Daddy first”) #

• Reply 1 holds as regards the placing of the name: Father is placed on Daddy before God.
• Sign of this: people with a bad human father have a hard time with God the Father; the reverse in St Thérèse of the Little Flower (“how sweet it is to think of God as our Father”), who had a very good father. A student adds a case of a woman whose father, she thought, committed suicide, who told her explicitly she could hardly relate to God as Father. Another pattern: a man attaches to a father figure when his natural father fails him; likewise daughter and mother.
• Student question: how does this square with Ephesians, where fatherhood is God’s first? Answer: not that we place “father” on God first, but in the things themselves God is father before the human father; same with good—placed on candy first, but goodness is found in God first and infinitely more perfectly. The student: it’s mixing up senses of “before.” Reason and faith always harmonise; apparent disharmony comes from a missing distinction. “Never affirm, some deny, always distinguish”—an exaggeration, but with truth in it.
• Closing: could start article seven but waits; scheduling around Thanksgiving.

His words #

• impositio nominis; placing a name upon a thing, as “put a label upon.”
• translatio nominis; carrying a name over (trans = across, latio = carrying).
• Natural Hearing; [ed.: Physics].
• book of Wisdom (fourth, fifth, tenth); [ed.: Metaphysics].
• univocal; one name said of many with exactly the same meaning.
• equivocal; one name said of many with other meanings.
• equivocal by chance / purely equivocal; the same sound merely happens to signify two, no order among meanings.
• equivocal by reason; a connection and order among the meanings; renamed “analogous.”
• univocal cause / equivocal cause; offspring is what the parent is (cat from cat) vs sun causing heat.
• antonomasia; the common name kept for the outstanding case (the man of incest as the unchaste).
• super sapiens (Dionysius); the thing signified exceeds the name.
• analogia; Greek for proportion, as in the English Euclid.
• proportion; Thomas uses it for a ratio itself, not a likeness of ratios.
• analogous agent; the universal cause, not univocal but not wholly equivocal.
• secundum quid; a man in a qualified sense when the soul is separated.
• translata; names carried over from creatures to God (Dionysius).
• essentially / substantially; names said of God in himself, not only as cause.
• thing signified vs placing of the name; the two orders of priority.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 5 (objections, sed contra, body, replies).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 6 (objections, sed contra, body, reply 1).
• Genesis 1:26; Romans 1:20; Ephesians 3:14-15 (as quoted within the articles).

Mentioned

• Thomas on Physics IV, the meanings of “in”.
• Aristotle, Metaphysics IV (healthy/medical and “being”), V (“nature”; placing of names), X (measure homogeneous).
• Thomas, Sentences, distinction 43 (Christ’s resurrection as cause of ours); Thomas’s Sentences article on whether incest is fornication.
• Plato, Laws (God, not man, the measure); Porphyry (genus first part of the definition).
• Fourth Lateran Council on likeness and greater unlikeness; First Vatican Council on knowing God from creatures.
• Euclid (English translation of analogia).

His questions #

• Do we invent new words for God or carry the words over—and do they keep the same meaning? We carry them over, and the meaning changes each time.
• Does “bat” first of all mean the piece of wood or the animal? Neither; there is no order, so it is equivocal by chance.
• Are a man and his shape two things the way a man and a dog are? No; the shape is something of the man, so “thing” is not said of both in the same sense.
• When I came into this room, did I come to be? Only “in this room”—one must qualify; being is not said the same of being a man and being in a room.
• Does “healthy” mean the same of your complexion and of your exercise? No: of exercise as producing health, of complexion as a sign of it.
• Is being said of my being a man and my being in this room univocally? No; the most universal names are said of all analogously.
• Is “man” said univocally of Christ and of us? Yes; it means human nature, body and soul—the article concerns God in his divine nature.
• Is there fatherhood in the angels? In a sense: one angel illuminates another, as a teacher fathers students.
• How does “Father said of Daddy first” square with Ephesians? Two senses of “before”: in placing the name, Daddy first; in the things, God first.