Theology as Analogy

St. Evagrius Pontius

“Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.” 

- St. Gregory of Nyssa

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

This is a theological reflection for a convert friend who is struggling with the difference between reactionary fundamentalism and traditional faithfulness, which has been a difficult balance for me to discover, as well. I have come to see that ideas that become more important than Christ are idols and we must consistently see past principle to the personhood of both God and the people around us. Many students struggle with the belief that theology is a direct revelation of truth. Academic theology actually only supplies us with tools to start finding the truth, not providing the truth itself. The Truth itself is Jesus Christ. We can only know through analogy, knowing this through that, and the concepts we hold in our heads are different than the realities that exist in the world. And, yet, we can be transformed by these outer realities made present within our lives through image and language. As St. Evagrius said, "The Theologian is the one who prays!" Therefore, the Church has endeavored to provide the faithful with limits to speculation and safe confines for the faith "once and for all received" through the Gospels, Old and New Testaments, Creeds, the declarations of the 7 Ecumenical Councils, and the spiritual experiences of the Holy Fathers of the Church. These are "forms" that enable us to hold the "substance" - the Life of the Holy Spirit. 

The Fathers often included allusions to philosophy, science and art in their theology, because anything that allows us to draw close to the Person of Christ is theological and helpful. "All truth is God's truth." The Fathers were not afraid of learning from the science and philosophy of the day, but instead, demanded that it submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Thomists and the Palamites all used geometry to understand theology, and Scholastics drew up "mandalas" of heaven, the universe and complicated schematics of how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. 

St. Basil the Great

Thomas Aquinas

The Cappadocian Fathers also talk about these same kinds of ideas, of being icons that stand for things that cannot be uttered or understood. I mention these concepts in depth in my paper here. It is best expressed in St. Basil the Great's approach to the Essence and Energies problem, whereby we can see and feel the sun, without becoming the sun, and we can see and know other objects without becoming other objects. The perfect balance between gnosis and objectivism must be found, or all of reality falls apart and we either cannot know anything, or we become one with everything. There is a very fine line in the middle where analogy has meaning, where symbols unite higher and lower worlds, and where human life is able to reflect the ultimate reality of the Person of God. 

This analogical approach to theology grew and blossomed in the West, not just in the East. The Analogia Entis of Thomism, which expresses how we "know" (experience Him as He reveals Himself) God without really "knowing God" (knowing God in a complete, equal or unmediated way) preserves both the Kataphatic revelation of Scripture and the Apophatic experience of mystery, without breaking them apart. This is why many of the Greek Orthodox bishops who came to the Council of Florence to unite with the Pope (only to renounce their decision when the people of Constantinople rejected the declaration) were astonished, "The Latins are more Greeks than the Greeks!" 

We often struggle as Christians with a hateful, dogmatic attitude because we think that our scholastic theology directly describes truth, and fail to realize that we only understand through analogy. If we understand this, then any other analogy that helps illustrate theology is useful, as long as it is defined and constrained by the One we know as Truth, Our Lord Jesus Christ.