Analogia Entis: Hunsinger, Spencer, Hart
The much anticipated session has come and gone, and was quite as enjoyable as I could have hoped. The presentations were thick and quick-moving, so my notes are incomplete and my memory is fading fast. I kept up with Hunsinger for the most part; Spencer spoke quickly enough and glossed enough that I missed much of what he said; Hart’s language was usually too mesmerizing for me to have taken the time to make copious notes. Still, I think I can get the major points down. Hopefully others who were there heard better what I missed.
George Hunsinger started, as Joshua Ralston notes, with a crowd-pleasing set of criticisms. “I do not believe in the analogia entis,” he announced. “And even if I did, I think we would be obligated to ignore it.” The analogia entis is a dangerous idea, and Hart’s work falls victim to just the dangers that Hunsinger fears. Hart’s work, I say, and Hunsinger was careful to specify: his criticisms were of the implied author of this book, The Beauty of the Infinite, and he expected that David Bentley Hart the person would have other ways to avoid or allow his criticisms. He entitled his presentation “David Bentley Hart: An Attempt to Understand Him.”
Hunsinger made sure to begin with affirmations. He quite liked the book, thought it had many good things to say. He liked, for example, Hart’s way of speaking about the filioque, which gained much ecumenical ground, and he liked Hart’s criticisms of Jenson on the Trinity, and he liked Hart’s unusual (for the Eastern Orthodox) affirmation of Anselm.
It’s Hart’s metaphysics that make Hunsinger so uncomfortable, the metaphysical strand that runs through Hart’s Christology and doctrine of creation, which impels Hart towards a focus on ontology (he says) rather than a straightforward Christology. “Why does the implied author of this book talk so much about the form of Christ and the pattern of Christ as opposed to Jesus Christ himself?” But again, Hunsinger stressed, he’s really not sure if he’s understanding Hart’s argument correctly.
With the analogia entis, are we talking about an analogical interval or an analogical divide? Hart acknowledges that there’s a difference in kind between God and the created order, but there’s also an element of proportionality or continuity. The analogia entis, in other words, comes to function as a principle of mediation—but Christ is the sole mediator between God and humanity. For Barth, Hunsinger says, the connection between God and creation is mediated entirely by the sovereign will of God.
The thrust of Hunsinger’s concern seemed to be the eclipse of Jesus Christ as the one mediator, and he went on to ask in several different contexts whether Hart was finding ways for the human ascent to God to be accomplished in other ways. Does the incarnation suggest for Hart that our souls can take on their own ascent to God? (This question came with a warning about neo-Platonism.) Is Hart replacing koinonia as the name of our relation with methexis? Does Hart suggest that church or its members can somehow reproduce the hypostatic union of God and humanity in Christ, which is unique in kind? Does conceiving salvation as a practice call into the question the completed work of Christ? Hunsinger didn’t frame all of these as questions, but all as challenges on a theme: these were the illustrations of the dangers of allowing the analogia entis into our theology, that we end up circumventing Christ or proving him irrelevant for our journey to God if we allow some other continuity of being.
Archie Spencer had to abbreviate his paper quite a bit and speak quickly besides, both conditions which made him hard for me to follow. He also had some pointed things to say to Hart, though he thought the book highly worth reading. Mainly, I think, he was frustrated with Hart’s lack of attentiveness to Aquinas paradigmatically and to the whole history that followed him. “Hart,” Spencer said, “thinks that he can read off [the early Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa] as though their reinterpretations through the history of theology matters little.” In what sounded to me like an over-identification of Hart with Milbank, Spencer accused Hart of “colonizing history” by “scouring history to find what modernity has lost.” This is what Hart does when he believes it possible to recede before Aquinas to recover the tradition of Christian ontology, as if the way that Thomas or anyone after him read that tradition was irrelevant.
Spencer didn’t leave these claims unsubstantiated; most of what I failed to follow was his attempt to demonstrate exactly what Hart missed in Aquinas and how that mattered. Still, I think this captures the core of his critique. His summary quoted Balthasar at length on careful ecumenism and listening, and demanding that we not read too quickly past Thomas or Kant or Barth in order to get back to the patristics.
Somewhere or other, Spencer also charged Hart with thinking that he could avoid the dangerous aspects of neo-Platonism while still embracing the neo-Platonic theurgic tendencies as compatible with Christian truth. (This made it seem even more like Spencer was parroting certain criticisms of Radical Orthodoxy where they completely miss Hart’s work. It’s Milbank who invokes the theurgical dimensions of neo-Platonism over and over, not Hart.)
David Bentley Hart wandered up with a tissue box and let us know that he was ill, and proceeded to keep us laughing for the first several minutes of his presentation. He had only scribbled notes and nothing formal prepared, so his lecture was somewhat disconnected though quite coherent in its individual responses. And as I said, I was too taken by his language to take many notes. So I understood him well, I think, but I can’t reproduce his comments.
His main theme, it seems to me, was to clarify the nature and purpose of the analogia entis: it does not aim to find a new mediator between God and humanity; rather, it is shorthand for “what sort of ontology would follow from the assertion that God is truly transcendent, that all being comes from him, and from the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.” “There is no mediator between us and God but God,” he agrees, but it is insufficient to say (as Hunsinger did) that all that mediates between God and creation is God’s sovereign will, for it is vacuous not to extend that into the category of being—God’s will is what willed us into being, with a certain stamp of the divine nature. Will we simply gloss over all those parts of our Scriptures that speak of the divine image imprinted on humanity? These do say something about ontology, manifestly. “We are fortuity and grace; our nature is a gift and only a gift.” But our nature is a gift of God and bears an image of him, and this is what we mean when we say that our nature is related analogously to God’s: that there is a certain continuity, not of essence but of creation, so analogy expresses both the continuity and discontinuity that is already clear in our central doctrines.
(I’m piecing together from my memory phrases and arguments from different stages of his presentation. Correct me if I’m getting something wrong.)
In response to the charges of neo-Platonism, Hart admitted their truth unashamed. “I am not afraid of the term neo-Platonism—I am a Platonist in some sense—because I believe that Platonism has always been part of Christianity by the providential will of God.” Indeed, it has been one of the “disastrous foibles” of Protestantism to deny that heritage altogether, to deny that it is present already in the New Testament.
Finally, I should make mention of Hart’s regular insistence that his treatment of the analogia entis is an eight page section in a book over four hundred pages long. Christology was a constant theme throughout his sections on creation and salvation, where the analogia entis was a brief transition between the doctrines of Trinity and creation. There is no way that the analogia entis threatened to overcome Christ as mediator. This was no concession, since Hart truly believes in the analogia entis—and as he said at the beginning of his presentation, so does George Hunsinger—but he did want to set it in the same role of importance that he had in the book: which, next to Christology, is infinitesimal.
Hunsinger, in the end, suggested a final exchange to clarify the nature of the disagreement. For Barth, Hunsinger said, the answer to the question ‘What ontological conclusions flow from the doctrine of creation?’ is none at all. He expanded on this a bit, but I didn’t write it down and I can’t remember what he said. Hart’s basic response was, ‘of course there are ontological conclusions, whether you want to call them that or not.’
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Archie Spencer gave criticisms of the Analogia Entis in David Bentley Hart’s book, The Beauty of the Infinite, and Hart gave a response. Read discussions about this meeting at Faith and Theology and at Brian Hamilton.
a review done by Brian Hamilton
Many thanks for this marvellous summary—I’ve really been looking forward to hearing about this session.
I get the impression that the criticisms don’t quite come to terms with what Hart is really trying to do—but I could be mistaken!
I get the same impression, and I think even Hunsinger would to some extent agree—he was quite insistent at the beginning that he wasn’t sure if he was understanding Hart correctly. I appreciated Hunsinger’s wholehearted Christocentrism, but I think Hart made a good case that ignoring the ontology that stems from our basic confessions doesn’t make for a better Christology, only for a thinner theology.
This sounds like this was an invigorating series of conversations to hear, and I am glad to read about them.
I am surprised by Hart’s bold response to the accusations of neo-Platonism. And his point reminds me of my questions about the task to come to terms with how Christanity has been influenced by sources/forces other than itself. For example, last night in Malinda Berry’s class we participated in a thorough presentation about the influences of ancient religions, and more specifically, goddess-based religions practiced in Canaan, on the Christian tradition. The influences, the similarities and contrasts in practice, are startling, and the presenting group demonstrated this when they asked the class to participate in communion, with bread and grape juice, along side of the ancient tradition of eating figs and drinking milk. In the ancient practice, eating the figs represented eating the body of the Canannite goddess, and the drink was being nourished by her milk. (I need to research this more on my own.) I found myself paralyzed, unable to participate in either. All I could hear was Paul talking about food sacrificed to idols… and I am having more and more trouble affirming the celebration of Eucharist anywhere other than the Greek Orthodox Church right now, or anywhere I end up where they maintain a belief in transubstantiation. What does this do to my relationship to and experience of communion at Fellowship of Hope? Not to mention I cannot even participate in Eucharist at the Greek Orthodox Church as I have not yet become a member.
Lastly, I am wondering about Orthodox perspectives on analogia entis. As this conversation is new to me, I did some poking around and found a source that mentioned the Orthodox’s rejection of both analogia entis and analogia fidei. Can you say a something about why this is, or point me in a direction for learning more about this?
Thank you for this excellent post. A very fair summary of my remarks.
Allow me to also register gratitude for your posting this. Very helpful.
I consider it myopic for anyone to suggest that I have no choice but to believe in the analogia entis. Anyone who says this is guilty of a failure of intellectual imagination. There is no reason why one cannot take an ad hoc approach to ontology and metaphysics — for the sake of Christ and the Gospel.
We need to think systematically in theology, but not in terms of a system.
Prof. Hunsinger, thank you for your comments. I am especially glad to hear that I represented you fairly.
I agree that asserting the analogia entis as an inevitable conclusion is unhelpful and incorrect. To be fair, though, I don’t think Hart said that you have no choice but to believe in it, only that you already in fact do—presumably (though Hart didn’t fill this out) because you hold to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo and believe that God is the source of all being. Perhaps your sense was different, but I understood part of Hart’s aim on Saturday morning to be demonstrating the weakness of the analogia entis. The analogia entis is not a mediator, it is not salvific, it is merely an ontological admission that our being comes from God and remains interminably dependent on God. All of this must still be understood Christologically—for where else do we really glimpse God?—but coming to know Jesus illumines rather than overcomes the truth of creation.
Maybe, too, I just haven’t seen a good ad hoc ontology at work; I’ve much more often just seen ontology ignored. How would an ad hoc approach to ontology understand the imago dei?
Brian,
Yes, I understood Hart differently. I think he was implying that no one who holds an orthodox view of creation could avoid accepting the analogia entis along with all that Hart thinks goes with it, like a fully developed metaphysics. As if one could not affirm creation ex nihilo and God as the source of all being without accepting the analogia entis, etc.
The analogia entis, for Hart, is a principle of ontological continuity between God and the creation. That makes it a principle of mediation. It plays a strong role in his understanding of salvation, which includes a Christianized Neo-Platonist version of the soul’s ascent.
Hart rejected my term “ontological divide” in favor of his term “analogical interval.” This shows that he is asserting something more than you take him to mean by analogia entis. If your view of Hart on this matter were correct, he and I would have little or nothing to argue about.
Hart rejects the view I affirm about the truth of creation. He rejects that creation is preserved solely by the sovereign power and gracious freedom of God. He dismisses this idea as “volitional.” For him preservation has to be strongly “ontological” (his analogy of beauty). Although I think the term “volitional” is reductionist when it comes to God’s active care for and preservation of creation, I find Hart’s rejection of this view to be telling. He wants the wrong kind of intelligibility in theology. For me there is a crucial difference between theology and metaphysics, as seen for example, in the difference between methexis or metousia (sturctural principles) and koinonia (the free mystery of grace).
The views that Hart denounces so vehemently in his book — Calvin and the Reformed tradition, Barth, the “Yale school” with its reliance on narrative instead of metaphysics, and analytical philosophy — are pretty much where I live.
As I see it Hart does not appreciate the dangers of trying to defeat secular metaphysics — whether French poststructuralist, Heideggerian, etc. — on its own terms.
On the imago dei, I would follow Bonhoeffer, Barth and recent Catholic theology. The imago is a matter of relationality not merely rationality (as traditionally believed). Our being created in and for relationships is an image of the Holy Trinity, which is itself a koinonia of love and freedom, joy and peace.
Prof. Hunsinger, thanks for your detailed response. Perhaps I’m hearing Hart as I want to hear him, as paying attention to ontology and really saying things about it without pretending that our tenuous grasp of such things ever comes to us otherwise than Christologically. That recognition seemed to be behind his repeated reminder that his section on the analogia entis is only eight pages long, while his Christology is constant. That said, he certainly maintains a strong notion of ontological continuity, an analogical interval as you said.
I’m still having trouble understanding what you say as an alternative. I agree that “creation is preserved solely by the sovereign power and gracious freedom of God,” but correlatively our very existence, our very being, rests on God’s having (freely) given that being to us and sustaining us in it. What, then, do we name that relation? Surely we cannot ignore that creation has ontological dimensions any more than we can imagine to have exhausted the mystery of God by appealing to those ontological dimensions. To state my confusion another way, I don’t see why understanding our basic relation to God as koinonia in the Spirit excludes saying that God in freedom has given the world being that is related to his being but is nonetheless wholly different in kind. In fact, if that Spirit is really the Lord the giver of life, I don’t know how to say anything otherwise.
Yes, thanks for this…I was stuck in Paris and sadly missed the session.
As I see it Brian, there is no koinonia in the Spirit apart from the mediation of Christ. As Athanasius liked to put it, the Son is in the Father, and the Spirit is in the Son. This is a kind of short-hand, admittedly, but it gets things on the right track.
First, we would need to establish that there is no ontological continuity, no analogical interval, between God and the world. Nothing like that is entailed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.
Then we would need to agree that the ontological divide is bridged by the Incarnation alone.
All the works and ways of God with the world have their controlling center in Christ and nowhere ese. The Spirit is not a second Mediator alongside of Christ. Whether in revelation or in reconciliaiton, the Spirit’s work is entirely christocentric.
Analogia entis talk gives us a different understanding of both revelation and reconciliation than does the Christ-centered approach that I recommend.
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:15-17).
Thanks again, Prof. Hunsinger, for your willingness to have this conversation. That last comment was helpful in clarifying the differences at stake. As I’ve said, I think your Christocentrism is indispensable—if we lose that we’ve lost everything, since “in him all things hold together.” I’m still wondering if analogia entis is necessarily either revelatory or instrumental in reconciliation or a mode of mediation; I understood Hart to be rejecting all of this in his talk. But that question, I take it, is largely historical: it would require a closer look at how the analogia entis was understood and employed in earlier centuries. I admit, I’m still hopeful that a Christ-centered ontology is possible, even implied in passages like the one you cite. But perhaps, as you say, that ontology is much more circumspect than would allow the assertion of an analogia entis.
I think Hart’s view of salvation needs to be scrutinized carefully. The Neo-Platonist elements in it are not, I would say, under theological control.
Examining earlier centuries might or might not be useful. The term wasn’t in use, though the substance of the idea might be there to some extent. The position I am trying to represent is rooted in the Reformation with its solus Christus.
The analogia entis, by definition, sets up a second foundation, that is independent of Christ. One cannot build upon such a thing without loss.
“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire” (I Cor. 3:11-15).
I must confess, I have just begun to digest the implications and problems around the idea of the analogia entis. These blogs have a nice summary of the discussion, with some comments left by Dr. Hunsinger himself.
After reflecting on the discussion afterwards, I must say that Hart seemed to make a whole lot of sense to me and I understood Hunsinger’s…
Speaking of duels, I’ve been really looking forward to hearing about the recent exchange between George Hunsinger and David Bentley Hart. Brian, David and Joshua have now posted excellent summaries of the session, and it sounds as though it was an interesting discussion. From the reports so far, though, I can’t help feeling that perhaps the criticisms of Hart didn’t quite get to the bottom…
It does not seem to me that Hart is questioning whether there is more than one foundation, but just how big that one foundation is.
…suggested that he could subsume Barth’s analogia fidei into the Catholic analogia entis, or how David Bentley Hart (see p. 242) playfully turns the tables on Barth (a move which was debated at a recent session covered here and here), but as stated above, that may be more interesting to full-time theologians. The matter is not whether there is more than one mediator or more than one foundation, but just how big that mediator and foundation is. The question is not which of the two…
Thank you for the fair representation of my remarks. Despite the handicap of the shortness of time that I was under, (under normal conditions I am considered a highly effective communicator) you seem to have picked up on my central critique. Having studied the issue of analogy for some years I can tell you that though there were many brilliant moments in Hart’s book, that section was abysmal from am historical point of view, as far the tradition of analogy actually developed. Had I been given the time to focus on the paper I actually prepared for the occasion, your assessment of my “parroting” the critique of Milbank would be very different. If you read him carefully you will see that at a number of critical points he invokes Milbank. The result of his Neo-Platonism is the same in my estimation. On analogy, at least, he is indeed “colonizing history”. I am finishing the final edit on the paper I wrote for the occasion for publication soon. Then I will finally be clearly understood. I found out to late that I was merely to do a book review. What you heard was a contorted abstract of a carefully argued paper. Of course my concerns were completely overlooked as a result of the speed at which I had to read. Hart never did respond to me.
Prof. Spencer, thanks for your response here. It was largely my unfamiliarity with the history of this concept that kept me from following the details of your presentation, I’m sure, and I’ll look forward to reading your finalized argument more carefully in print. By my comment regarding Radical Orthodoxy, I only meant that Hart is certainly not guilty of the strong-handed history that RO is sometimes (not unjustly) accused of. Hart’s historical dependence strikes me as much more organic, as really rooted in the tradition and growing outwards rather than flailing to find certain arguments within history.
And as I recall, Hart at least did say in response that he didn’t want to overcome or ignore Aquinas in reaching behind him; he only wanted to go back to the roots of the tradition of Christian ontology. That doesn’t respond to your charge of misrepresentation, but it does respond to the charge of dismissing Aquinas.
Hi Brian,
Thanks for the response. It is not a matter of his dismissal of Thomas, it is a matter of applying von Balthaasar’s understanding (which he largly recieves from Przywara) to Aquinas and then reading Nyssa as preparing for this same view in Aquinas. It simply cannot be done on any historical basis. The term does not even show up till Cardinal Cajetan. This is what I mean by his colonizing of history. Furthermore, he does not substantiate this reading historically, he merely assumes it. Had he read Jungel more closely he would have realized that this was a huge category mistake. If you send me your email I will send you a PDF version of my paper on condition it not be circulated. (Sorry for the personal note. You may edit it out if you wish)
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