"Very often the Protestant polemic against the so-called analogia entis also completely misses the genuinely Evangelical approach to theological thought. This does not happen because an understanding of analogy which has not been understood is being disputed, but rather because these critics are thinking much too much in the same direction as the opponent which they believe they are combating. If all that were at stake were to respect God as the Totally Other, nothing would be more appropriate than to think up the much-scorned analogia entis. But that cannot ultimately be the concern of a theology which accords with the gospel. The great Przywara did then insist, in a certain tension with the tendency of his argumentation, that the constantly new experience of still greater similarities between God and creature may not fail to take place. ... Briefly put: the gospel is to be understood as the event of correspondence."
- Eberhard Jüngel in God as the Mystery of the World, 284, 286.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Jüngel and the Event of Correspondence.
This was paradigm-shifting for me:
2 comments:
Does the "anologia entis" concern the analogy of being as it occurs during the historical searches for doctrine within the Church (i.e. Nicaea, Chalcedon, early explorations of the being/nature), or is it a technical term that becomes established with a different meaning later on (Scholastic, Reformation, Modern)?
Hi Brian - Thanks for your question. Jüngel speaks of the mischaracterization of the analogia entis in relation specifically to more recent Evangelical debates between Barth and Przywara. But I think that given his historical analysis of the use of analogy extending back to Plato, he also means an analogia entis formulated by Plato and then qualified by Aquinas which seeks to bridge the ontological distinction between God and humanity.
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