The ontological divide
I was just reading back over an old conversation I had on this blog with George Hunsinger, after his 2006 debate with David Bentley Hart on the analogia entis, and it appears to me now that Hunsinger completely undermines himself in his wild anxiety to avoid ‘metaphysics.’ Two points are at the heart of his quarrel with Hart: first, we need to reject any notion of ontological continuity between God and creation; second, “we would need to agree that the ontological divide is bridged by the Incarnation alone.” But these points imply at least as vigorous a metaphysics as Hart’s perspective—specifically, a metaphysics premised on God’s being intrinsically and necessarily discrete with respect to creaturely being, except in the case of the incarnation. In simpler terms, that means that God is “somewhere else” and only came “here” in Jesus.
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True, but his main concern seems to be avoiding a certain kind of metaphysics – the analogy of being.
The metaphysical picture which you ascribe to Hunsinger above still allows him to maintain that creation offers no revelation of what God is like nor any reconciliation with God, which seems to be what he is really concerned about in those comments.
The metaphysics you outlined above, in fact, seems to be exactly the kind of “ad hoc” metaphysics that Hunsinger mentioned earlier on in the comments.
True, that’s helpful. I was pinning Hunsinger as more of an anti-metaphysical purist than those comments in fact make him out to be. His quarrel with Hart’s metaphysics, at least in that very narrow context, has to do only with the threat of a system that would establish, besides Christ, some other mediating principle between God and humanity. Which is fair enough.
Still, my point would be that in trying to avoid Hart’s metaphysics, he founds a different, much more ‘threatening’ metaphysics—threatening, or at least a bit silly, because it reduces God to a discrete entity who must ‘bridge’ a ‘divide’ before being with his creatures.
You know more of the context here than I do – I’m only going off of the immediate conversation from your blog. But is Hunsinger’s ad hoc metaphysics all that threatening or silly? Consider the following two points:
1) The only sense of God being a “discrete entity” that Hunsinger is actually committed to here is that God is “wholly Other” and exists (in the metaphyiscally non-committal sense of “is not a fiction”).
2) What does the image of “bridging a divide” actually mean? Since he is here denying “ontological continuity” & co, I’m reading him as basically saying that there is nothing automatic about the connection between God and creation. That connection is only ever the result of God’s free grace.
But to switch sides here: if I am right to interpret H. this way, this still leads to an apparent absurdity. Do we really want to say that grace is only located in the Incarnation? What about God’s holding me in existence? It’s difficult to see how that gracious act is completely reducible to the Incarnation.
I don’t really understand all the issues at stake with these discussions, but it strikes me that the Hunsinger side of the debate is really lacking something important that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Right, he’s saying that there’s “nothing automatic about the connection between God and creation”—and it seems to me already that such a position implies that God and creation are discrete metaphysical entities. I don’t think you’ll find Nyssa or Thomas speaking about any single ‘bridge’ or ‘connection’ between God and humanity, because creation is not ‘elsewhere’ from God; it is, as you say, in God and sustained by God’s love.
To say this another way, I think that the sense in which Hunsinger is committed to God’s being ‘wholly Other’ is in the metaphysically committal sense of ‘existing discretely somewhere else.’ Obviously it’s necessary to insist on God’s otherness, but I’m much happier to do so in Eckhart’s way, saying that God is distinct in his very indistinctness from all things.
Eckhart’s phrase is very striking. Do you happen to know off the top of your head a good place where one could find him talking about such things?
I don’t have any Eckhart on hand, so point to an exact citation. It’s a major theme of his, though, so you’ll find it in almost anything he writes. What it means to call God ‘one,’ in Eckhart’s eyes, is to say that God is indistinct. Some old notes of mine on the subject quoted below.
It’s worth saying, though, that I don’t think this idea is peculiarly Eckhartian. Something basically similar is implied by Thomas’s account of God as ipsum esse. (Of course, Hunsinger wouldn’t have any interest in bowing to either of these figures.)
“His treatments of unity as a transcendental in the commentaries on Wisdom, on Exodus, on Ecclesiasticus are part of his central original contribution. If you consider unum according to its higher meaning, it means indistinctio. If you understand unity as indistinction, then it’s peculiar to God. God has a peculiar ability to be all things. Not all things in their contingency, but all things insofar as they exist. God is therefore indistinct from all things—so unity means that God is identical with everything. This only applies to God; no created thing can ever be identical with everything else. So the paradox: God is distinct from all of us in the fact that he is indistinct.”
That just blew my mind.
I’m not so sure about that connection with Aquinas (but then again, I’m not sure I understand Aquinas, and I’m sure I don’t understand Eckhart).
Gilson, at least (IIRC), parses the ipsum esse as following. God, unlike creatures, is his own act of existence (esse) – his essence and his existence are identical. In creatures, however, there is a real distinction between essence and the act of existence. Creaturely existence, as the kind of thing that is added to an essence, cannot be univocal with the divine existence (which is one with the divine essence). I suppose you could put it this way: creaturely existence is the result of God’s efficient causation, but it separate from God’s existence.
Under that reading of Aquinas, I can’t see what sense it would make to say that God is all things insofar as they exist. Rather, one would have to say that God is in all things through efficient causation insofar as they exist. But that sounds like something very different.
You know this stuff much better than I do, however. Am I misunderstanding something here?
By the way, happy 4th of July. Are you waving American flags and marching around to John Phillips Sousa?
I doubt whether I really do know this stuff better than you do; I have a terrible time keeping all the scholastic distinctions in my head.
That particular doctrine of Thomas’s, you’re right, doesn’t give Eckhart any credence; but I think there are other parts that do. In our own time, Herbert McCabe and Denys Turner have been providing good anti-metaphysical readings of Aquinas. And certainly Eckhart thinks he’s getting a lot of this stuff from him, and not without reason.
Cf. the Summa pt. I, q. 11 on unity. In the first article he argues that “one” adds no reality to “being,” but only means “undivided being.” “It is manifest,” he says, “that the being of anything consists in undivision; and hence it is that everything guards its unity as it guards its being.” Then he adds in article two that, though ‘one’ can be understood as different from ‘many’ in several ways, “the ‘one’ which convertible with “being” is opposed to ‘multitude’ by way of privation; as the undivided is to the thing divided.” We’re not far here from Eckhart’s same notion of unity as indistinction—though obviously indistinctus isn’t necessarily the same as indivisus. That could be an important part of Eckhart’s originality.
Even that’s not far off, though. I have a hard time seeing how something like indistinction from creation couldn’t by implied by the following, with which he ends his question on unity (ST I, 11.4, respondeo), and which invokes this broader notion of ipsum esse that I have in mind:
“Since ‘one’ is an undivided being, if anything is supremely ‘one’ it must be supremely being, and supremely undivided. Now both of these belong to God. For He is supremely being, inasmuch as His being is not determined by any nature to which it is adjoined; since He is being itself, subsistent, absolutely undetermined. But He is supremely undivided inasmuch as He is divided neither actually nor potentially, by any mode of division; since He is altogether simple, as was shown above (Question 3, Article 7). Hence it is manifest that God is ‘one’ in the supreme degree.”
And a happy fourth to you! Not only am I flying flags—several of them—but I’ve been wearing one around, like a cape, all day long! Some people say it’s disrespectful, but I say it expresses how America ennobles us all.
This will probably be my last post because I’m going to South Dakota for a week with my students tomorrow morning, but I’ll throw some last thoughts at you before I go.
There are two distinguishable and possibly separable issues that seem to be cropping up:
1) Metaphysics in our understanding of God
2) God’s identity with creatures
1) Taking “metaphysics” in the pejorative sense (rather than the thin sense of metaphysics simply as something like the study of what reality is really like), it seems clear that neither Eckhart nor Thomas are metaphysicians. Eckhart clearly not. Aquinas can be seen not to be one once one grasps that “being” is spoken of God only analogically.
2) However, while it strikes me that neither Thomas nor Eckhart are doing metaphysics, it nonetheless seems that Thomas does not want to claim identity between God and creation the way that Eckhart does.
None of the Aquinas quotes adduced above seem to me to indicate any kind of identity with creatures. “Undivided” could be understood in two senses. First, a thing might be a unity within itself, and so be undivided “on the inside” or “in se” or something of the sort. Second, a thing might be said to be undivided from other things.
If Eckhart were to use the language of indivisibility, it strikes me that he would say that God is indivisible in the second sense. Thomas, however, seems only to be saying it in the first sense. The language of simplicity is the clue here: to be “simple” in the philosophical language of the medievals (as I understand them) means not to be compound.
A human person is not metaphysically simple, because she is a compound unity of body and soul. An angel, though more simple than a human because it is composed only of immaterial form, is nonetheless compound because its essence is distinct from its existence.
God, unlike any creature, is “absolutely simple” in that his essence is his existence. There is not even a logical distinction to be made between God’s essence and existence, which explains in part why God is so mysterious to us who do not know through essences. (In fact, this also explains why “being” cannot be said of God in the same way that it is said of creatures. God’s “being” is a beingessence and therefore only analogous to what in creatures is called their act of being.)
So in describing God as supremely one in the passages above, it seems to me that Aquinas is saying that God is, unlike all other creatures, absolutely unified/simple/not-compound in his own act of being. Aquinas is not saying that God is “one” with creatures in the sense of being identical with them insofar as they exist (though Aquinas does want to say that God is present in all things by his power).
As a post scriptum, I would add that the language of God’s “identity” with the creature strikes a sour note to me on a first hearing. However, Eckhart’s formulation is certainly an interesting enough claim made by a certainly smart enough Christian thinker to be worth more exploration. Furthermore, I’m not at all sure I understand well enough what he’s actually claiming for these initial feelings to be worth anything.
I am left somewhat skeptical but compelled and intrigued by E’s daring formulation. I’ll be interested to read any comments you may have had when I get back in a week.
Greetings. I am late to this discussion, having just discovered it. Perhaps I am too late.
In any case, I am interested in the notion that certain views I have expressed would somehow “vigorously imply” some sort of metaphysics.
A lot would seem to hang on the word “imply” here, wouldn’t it? (I’ll let the “vigorously” pass.)
Perhaps someone would be kind enough to define the word “metaphysics” for me, and then to explain why some particular metaphysics (only one?) is somehow required by my views.
I understand myself to be relatively agnostic when it comes to “metaphysics,” and to hold that Christian theology properly has (and needs) no systematic metaphysical commitments. But I have no objection, in principle, to being metaphysically ad hoc and eclectic.
Perhaps this conversation has ended, but on the chance that it hasn’t, I’ve decided to add just one thought. (By the way, Brian, I’m really enjoying your website—this is the first time I’ve checked it out!)
Without commenting directly on either Hart’s or Hunsinger’s positions (which I’m not equipped to do), I’m wondering what would happen if we refused to speak any longer of the analogia entis, as though it were some thing—another mediator, a being or structure of being, existing alongside or in addition to Christ—and instead understood the term as saying something about us, about the way we think, or perhaps better put: about the way the world, insofar as it is manifest or revealed to us, comes to language.
In scripture, the world is revealed to us as God’s gracious creation—sharing, if nothing else, in the goodness of God. But it is not as though language permits us to say exactly what this means. We will have always only been able to draw an analogy: God is good like the good things around us, but more unlike them than like them. This is the best we can say. We can say more, but always only by identifying a similarity within a greater dissimilarity.
Whether this is a fairly accurate description of our situation as participants in a discourse concerning God is, perhaps, open for debate. But it seems to me this is distinct from the question regarding Christ’s status as sole mediator of both creation and redemption. One can reject analogy as a valid description of our thought and accept solus Christus. Conversely, one can reject solus Christus and affirm analogy. Or deny both or accept both. Or take an agnostic stance toward one or the other or both.
I, speaking only from my experience as a Christian, and not really as an expert on these matters, find myself affirming both. I do not know whether my view corresponds or departs from those of Hart or Hunsinger, though I am beginning to think that it lies pretty close (at least in its bare outlines) to that of Erich Przywara, whom I am researching at the moment for my comprehensive exams.
Not sure if this shed any light, or only muddled things! Please let me know if you disagree with my interpretation of Przywara, or have any thoughts/reactions.
Here is a comment that I posted today at The Gadfly blog.
As I have continued to ponder the analogia entis question, I have been fascinated to discover that a strand of Aquinas scholarship exists in which it is denied that Aquinas actually subscribes to the kind of analogia entis that is commonly ascribed to him and that is found in some classical Thomism.
Laurence Paul Hemming, for example, states that “there is no formal analogia entis in Aquinas … [His] analogical way of speaking .. provides no basis for ontological inference from us to God” Postmodernity’s Transcending: Defining God (Notre Dame, 2005), pp. 133-34. (This was part of my concern about Hart.)
Hemming’s conclusions were anticipated in Divine Science and the Science of God by Victor Preller (Princeton, 1967). Preller argues that in Aquinas the famous five ways already presuppose the knowledge of faith, and that the resulting natural theology is so highly formal (a kind of speculative algebraic notation) that it is completely empty of specific content. Again, if so, there can be no inference from natural to revealed theology, nor can natural theology provide a basis from which any knowledge of God could be inferred or on which it could rest.
Hemming and Preller both make a strong case that Aquinas has a very profound sense of the “metaphysical” otherness of God. In his book Speaking the Incomprehensible God (CUA, 2004), Gregory Rocca also argues that what Aquinas sets forth as the knowledge of reason already rests, in very important respects, on the knowledge of faith.
In general I find these readings of Aquinas to be intriguingly compatible with Barth. Preller, in particular, would be worth a detailed and careful assessment.
Wow, this is helpful. I will definitely be looking into Hemming at last.
Thanks, Prof. Hunsinger, for those comments; sorry for having missed the earlier one until now! Hemming’s book sounds very interesting.
I myself am agnostic on the analogia entis, let alone its appearance or absence in Aquinas. The metaphysical conclusion I find problematic is that God, in his being, is somehow discrete with respect to creatures, that God is “elsewhere” than us. That seems to me to reproduce metaphysics in its bad sense, as ontotheology, rather than moving beyond those dangers. I don’t mean to imply that you have any kind of systematic metaphysics implicit in what you’ve said; it is indeed ad-hoc and partial; but one of the conclusions that seems to me implied is precisely the one I’ve just named. To say it another way, in trying to avoid the dangers of a metaphysical system for theology you’ve ended up reproducing the worst characteristic of some of those systems: the reduction of God to one discrete entity among others.
In trying to avoid the dangers of a metaphysical system for theology you’ve ended up reproducing the worst characteristic of some of those systems: the reduction of God to one discrete entity among others.
Well, I can’t see that I disagree with the substance of your position, as you state it in your comment of 14 September. Beyond that, I can’t see that I’m guilty as charged.
If one agrees with theologians like Barth, Aquinas, Kierkegaard and Torrance that God is Wholly Other, then there aren’t too many ways of making the point without being vulnerable to the kind of uncharitable criticism that you see fit to level against me. Rather incautiously, I might add.
Perhaps you could direct me to something I’ve written that would show me the error of my ways?
I may certainly be wrong, but I don’t think I’ve been too uncharitable or incautious—it’s just that my philosophical sympathies on this point, which are vaguely Neoplatonist, are at odds with yours. It has seemed to me here that you’re calling God ‘Wholly Other’ in a specifably metaphysical way: that God’s being is metaphysically distinct from our being, that one cannot posit any relation between them—not even an ‘analogical’ one—without denying Christ. There is an ontological chasm between God and creation that is only crossed in the person of Jesus. Isn’t that what you’ve argued?
My contention is that this way of framing things implies a kind of ontological limit to God’s being—God’s being is “discrete” at least with respect to creaturely being—which I’d prefer to do away with. As I mentioned in one of the comments above, I prefer Eckhart’s way of stating God’s otherness: God is ontologically distinct from all things precisely in being indistinct from all things.
Well, this is indeed uncharitable, You make too many assumptions about my views in order to place them in a ridiculous light.
I deny that God’s being is “discrete” relative to creaturely being in the sense that you attribute to me. And I certainly do not rule out analogical discourse. I suggest that you read Preller.
I also suggest that you engage in a little more inquiry before jumping to conclusions about someone’s views. The God of the Bible, however, is not “indistinct.”
It sounds like I’ve come across as far more derisory than I intended; for that I apologize. I also apologize if I’ve terribly misrepresented you here. My strategy was to draw an unintended consequence from your way of framing the argument that most people, including yourself, would find distasteful—namely, that God is “intrisincally and necessarily discrete with respect to creaturely being”—precisely in order to cast doubt on that way of framing the argument. Perhaps the consequence just doesn’t follow (though you seem to recognize that the danger is inherent to saying God is ‘Wholly Other’ in your earlier comment; my suggestion was that it was only a danger for certain construals of God’s otherness). I’ll leave off insisting on it, because I ought indeed to ‘engage in a little more inquiry.’
Thank you. There are more sorts of things in the world, it would seem, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I’m in way over my head here, but I can’t resist throwing out a thought that occurs to me. It’s hardly even a thought, it’s more… well, here it is.
What if there were some way to say that any mediation implied by the analogia entis is somehow Christoform or Christomorphic or Christo-something-or-other?
What gave me this idea is something Teilhard suggests in The Divine Milieu: namely, that the form God’s omnipresence takes in the universe is “the Word incarnate, our Lord Jesus Christ,” understood as the “active centre, the living link, the organising soul of the Pleroma” (pg. 122 in my edition). In other words, for Teilhard, “the divine omnipresence translates itself within our universe by the network of the organising forces of the total Christ,” the “center of radiation for the energies which lead the universe back to God through His humanity” (122-23). God’s omnipresence is “the omnipresence of christification” (123).
I hesitate to quote Teilhard like this without giving some explanation of his overall theology, since he’s so often misunderstood. In any case, I’ve always liked this overall idea of omnipresence expressed through Christification, because it sort of unifies things: i.e., to the question, “how/why is God present everywhere?” we have a more unified response, rather than, “Oh, well He/She’s present everywhere because it’s in the nature of God to be omnipresent, and besides that He’s also everywhere because of the Incarnation, and then you’ve got that sacramentality thing too going on,” etc.
Now, by analogy (haha), could there be some way in which any sort of mediation involved in the analogy of being could be united/connected/related to the mediation of Christ? Just as, for Teilhard, omnipresence is expressed through Christification, could the analogia entis be expressed through… through what? Through Christ’s mediation?
Again, I’m in way over my head here, but I thought I’d throw out this germ of an idea, and maybe others can do something with it.