Analogy Is Not Just for Thomists

Can non-Thomists use analogy discourse? This is the question that arises from reading to Nicholas Smith’s “Becoming God: A Response to Hans Boersma’s Participatory Metaphysics.” Smith’s article is a response to my recent webinar on “Participatory Metaphysics and Creation out of God.” For the most part, Smith is in agreement with the participatory approach that I outlined in my talk. We both have an Eastern view of deification, inspired by Maximus the Confessor. I am grateful for his kind review, delighted that, for most part, we are on the same page.

On one point, however, Smith expresses disagreement with me. I suggested in the webinar that in divinization, we participate in the divine energies “in an infinitely inferior created mode.” Smith discerns here the problematic specter of Thomistic analogy doctrine, presumably along the following lines: We will be made gods, perhaps, but we will receive this grace of divinization only in an analogous, inferior manner.

Smith elaborates on a variety of additional differences between Maximus and Aquinas, and I should make clear that these additional issues did not, in any way, feature in my webinar. I would not want Smith’s reader to think that I am Thomistic on all of the points where Smith highlights differences between these two theologians. I am not. I suppose I should take comfort from the fact that once my book Theophanizing Love will be out, no one will suspect me ever again of being Thomistic—to put the matter in a rather understated fashion. So, while Smith’s discussion on the differences between Maximus and Aquinas is interesting, most of it does not pertain to what I said in the webinar. My webinar makes clear that I am thoroughly Maximian (not Thomistic) in my thinking.

That said, my webinar did mention analogy, and the question is whether it turns me into a Thomist rather than a follower of Maximus. Now, analogy is prominent both in Dionysius and in Maximus. Vladimir Lossky makes clear that Dionysius uses the adverb ἀναλόγως (“analogously”) over seventy times, and he declares it to be the “pivot” of Dionysius’s understanding of hierarchy.[1] Lossky’s entire article is illuminating.

According to Dionysius, one’s perception of God is always dependent upon his creaturely capacity. Those higher on the hierarchical scale of being have greater capacity for the vision of God than those lower; and among human beings, purity affects one’s capacity either positively or negatively. One’s analogous or proportionate relationship to God determines his capacity for God. Dionysius explains, therefore, in The Celestial Hierarchy, that in a hierarchy, “the first passes on what he has received to the one who follows, with providence spreading the divine light to all in an analogous manner (ἀναλόγως).” (CH 3.3).[2]

The degree of one’s illumination always depends, for Dionysius, upon one’s analogous participation in God. As a result, the highest angels have the greatest capacity for God, and they are supposed to draw those below them into God’s light, in a manner that is consistent with the capacity of that lower rank of angels. “It is common,” writes Dionysius, “to all the deiform intelligibles [i.e., angels] to have, in general, a participation in wisdom and knowledge; either in an immediate and primary way or in a secondary and inferior way—this is no longer common, but it is determined for each according to its suitable proportionality (ἀναλογίας)” (12.2).[3] Dionysius here claims that a creaturely proportionality or analogy determines one’s relation to God, since it determines the degree of illumination that each is able to handle.

In The Divine Names, Dionysius offers his definition of the eternal causes or logoi of created things (a notion similar to Platonic ideas or forms), and he then states that we are meant “to be led up through analogous (ἀναλογικῆς) knowledge of these things to the Cause of all things, so far as possible (ὡς οἷοὶ)” (DN 5.9).[4] The degree of deification, for Dionysius, appears to be proportionate or analogous to one’s capacity for illumination.

Turning now to Maximus, both the concepts of “likeness” and of “analogy” are key to his theology. Smith’s blogpost speaks critically of the notions of “imitation” and “analogy.” I share his apprehension in principle, since these notions often function in unhelpful ways, separating the creator from the creature. I would agree, for instance, that in Thomas Aquinas’s use of these terms, we witness an incipient rupture between nature and the supernatural.

However, the mere use of imitation and analogy discourse does not yet imply a modern, nominalist distancing of creator and creature. Luke Steven, in his fine book Imitation, Knowledge, and the Task of Christology in Maximus the Confessor, discusses in detail what he calls the patristic “likeness epistemology,” which he explains is Platonic in origin: “Like knows like,” we might say. Or, “the pure in heart shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). Steven shows that both “likeness” (ὁμοιότης) and analogy (ἀναλογία) pervade Maximus’s writings.[5]

What is more, deification too, for Maximus, is according to likeness. He comments, for example, “The mystery transforms those who partake in a worthy manner into itself and, by grace and participation (χάριν καὶ μέθεξιν), renders them similar (ὁμοίους) to the one who is good as the cause of everything that is good” (myst. 21 [CCSG 69.48).[6] This is “likeness epistemology” applied straightforwardly to deification itself (cf. also 24 [69.58]). Likeness to God means that, through participation, those who are deified have the identically same energy that God has (qu. Thal. 59.8; [CCSG 69, 58])—though in a fitting and proportionate manner, in line with the particular creaturely nature and in line with the worth of one’s progress in virtue.[7] Likeness itself is not problematic. It is problematic only when it is removed from a participatory context. In Christian Platonism, imitation and likeness were, traditionally, participatory concepts.

I haven’t been able to find in Maximus the precise language of becoming God “in all but essence” (though I agree it expresses a Maximian sentiment). Jordan Wood uses the exact same expression in his recent book The Whole Mystery of Christ,[8] with an appeal to Ambiguum 41.5, which speaks of man “becoming everything that God is, without, however, identity in essence, and receiving the whole of God instead of himself.”[9] The “identity” (ταὐτότης) that we receive in divinization is an identity between God’s energies and ours (rather than an identity in essence).

The question is: What does Maximus mean when he speaks of an identity of human and divine energies? It is certainly a striking term, but we have to be careful not to jump to conclusions, for we do have to reconcile it somehow with Maximus’s obvious analogy discourse. Maximus states explicitly that in deification, God grants “the gift of divinization proportionately (ἀναλόγως) to created beings” (qu. Thal. 22.7).[10] Luke Steven summarizes, “When creatures achieve identity with God, it is not an unqualified meeting, but unfolds in a way that suits. It unfolds ‘in proportion’ (κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν), as Maximus often puts it.”[11]

It is possible that Maximus is deliberately paradoxical, both affirming strict identity and putting limits on this identity. Or perhaps he simply means that the virtues of divinized human beings are the same ones as God’s virtues and in that sense identical. For example, our humility is a participation in Christ’s humility; our wisdom a sharing in Christ’s wisdom; and so forth. This would not preclude that, even when divinized, we will have our perfected virtues in an analogous, proportionate manner. Regardless of how we resolve the apparent tension in Maximus’s language, one need not be a Thomist to speak of divinization as taking place proportionately or by analogy.

The centrality of the notions of likeness and analogy in Maximus—and his use of them even in connection with deification—is a matter of some importance. The question concerns the uniqueness of Christ, which is to say, the question of how the divinization of his human nature relates to ours. Jordan Wood does not accept that the incarnation of Christ was unique, but I am quite sure that Maximus did. As I hope to make clear in my forthcoming book, on his understanding, Christ’s divinization is archetypal and perfect, whereas ours is (and always remains!) merely a participation in his; ours is always analogously patterned upon his.

Alexis Torrance has recently shown that the difference between Christ and other human beings was important also to Gregory Palamas.[12] Palamas appealed to John 1:16, “Of his fulness (ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος) have all we received.” The glory of God—as well as every other one of the divine energies—comes to us via the hypostatic union. Torrance then makes the following noteworthy observation:

Palamas offers a distinction between the state of the deified and the state of Christ on the basis of this text in combination with Colossians 2:9 (‘in him dwelleth all the fullness [πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα] of the Godhead bodily’). While Christ is himself the fullness of God in the flesh, even the deified remain distinct insofar as their deification is utterly and forever contingent upon the person of Christ: they receive ‘of his fullness’ and never become ‘the fullness’ itself.

The uniqueness of Christ and of his divinization is important. Without an analogous difference between Christ’s divinization and ours, we cannot have the eternal progress (epektasis) that Smith acknowledges we may look forward to. Only if Christ’s divinization remains infinitely greater than ours can we infinitely progress. More importantly, only if his divinization is eternally and infinitely greater than ours can we recognize his uniqueness and adore him forever in the new Jerusalem: “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever” (Rev. 5:12–13).

Analogy is not a Thomistic specialty; it belongs to the Great Tradition of the church.

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[1] Vladimir Lossky, “La Notion des ‘analogies’ chez Denys le Pseudo-Aréopagite,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 5 (1930): 279–309, at 279, 292.

[2] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 298.

[3] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 299.

[4] My translation, HB. Cf. Lossky, “La Notion,” 303.

[5] Luke Steven, Imitation, Knowledge, and the Task of Christology in Maximus the Confessor (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2020).

[6] I quote from Maximus the Confessor, On the Ecclesiastical Mystagogy, ed. and trans. Jonathan J. Armstrong, with Shawn Fowler and Tim Wellings, SVPPS 59 (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2019).

[7] I use Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios, trans. Maximos Constas, FC 136 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018).

[8] Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022), 92.

[9] I quote from Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, trans. Nicholas Constas, 2 vols., Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014).

[10] Cf. Steven, Imitation, 85.

[11] Steven, Imitation, 84.

[12] Alexis Torrance, Human Perfection in Byzantine Theology: Attaining the Fullness of Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 188

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