I’m glad you are arguing forJordan’s importance here. I have argued for it in one or more arguments with Thomists. But your misrepresentation of my disagreements with Jordan, and your curious conviction that all talk of analogy is dualistic rather than modal, and your either-or approach (either Wood or Manualism!) is all quite ridiculous. So try to understand: my disagreement with Jordan’s book is that I think it preserves a dualism that still needs to be overcome. And, frankly, you simply don’t get what the whole debate about analogy was and is.
I want to begin by saying thanks for such an interesting piece on a topic I think is very important. I think you do an excellent job of delving into dense topics with both clarify and concision—a rare gift in theological writing, to be sure! Even so, I want to offer some pushback on one of the points you made.
But I want to focus on one of the claims you make about Hart above; I think you may be misrepresenting his view in an important way. You say that the nouvelle theologie asserted "[a]n unsurpassable analogical “gap” or caesura between creature and Creator, even in Christ’s own person" and, if I understand you correctly, suggest that this is essential to Hart's own theology as well.
While there is no doubt that Hart agrees with Aquinas that human language about God must be analogical, I disagree that this represents any kind of "gap" between the creature and the Creator. First, I'd like to clarify the linguistic issue here, and then suggest the ramifications for the metaphysical disagreement at issue in this broader debate.
The basic options in language about God are threefold: we can speak of God univocally, analogically, or equivocally. The first and the last terms are essentially antonyms: to speak of God univocally would be to assume that God is basically a being in the same way we are. So, for example, a univocal theology would assume that if God is loving, God is loving in the same way we are.
Equivocal language insists on just the opposite view: equivocal theological expression assumes that God is infinitely different from us, and that there is no real comparison between God and creatures at all: hence Barth's "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and the world (and this equivocal approach is indeed essential to the whole Reformed project).
Analogy is basically a position between these two poles of the spectrum: it argues that though we use language about God drawn from human experience, that such words cannot be taken univocally, since God really is different from us—God is absolute, ultimate, eternal, uncreated, etc. But at the same time, if God is the creator, then there is obviously an extremely intimate connection between God and the (created) world—if there were an infinite gap between them, there would be no way to talk of God creating the cosmos at all. So there must be difference but also real relation.
So, analogy insists, our language about God does not perfectly describe God, but nor does it fail to refer to God at all. So, when we speak of God as loving, we mean something *like* what human loving is, but not identically so. It should be clear that though Aquinas is the most famous exponent of this method of theological expression, he is by no means its only user or defender. Indeed, I would argue that most Christian discourse is incomprehensible without recourse to analogy.
No I doubt that I have said anything above that anyone reading this didn't already know, but I think it's important to make these different linguistic options clear so that we can then properly understand the real metaphysical debate going on between Wood and Hart. And I worry that your attempt to map these two thinkers on two horns of a dilemma in modern Roman Catholic thought may obscure more than it illuminates.
To return to the quote above: the claim that analogy involves asserting an "unsurpassable analogical “gap”" between God and the world is already to profoundly misunderstand the work analogy does: as I argued above, analogy is precisely about both maintaining but also already always bridging such a gap: God is not the world, and yet the world comes solely from God. God must be both perfectly transcendent and yet fully immanent. And, whatever one might argue about de Lubac or von Balthasar, D.B. Hart most certainly *does not* believe that any gap between humanity and God is "unsurpassable". Indeed, Hart's most recent work is an extended argument that humanity is already essentially participating in the divine(!) (One can see this in his You Are Gods as well as the lecture series The Light of Tabor: https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/the-light-of-tabor-notes-toward-a) So this misconstrual of Hart's position is a serious issue in the discourse above.
This point is only of greater importance if we consider the way Wood wants to bridge this same gap. Again, I have not read his book yet, but if the views he advanced in the post linked above are indicative, I think I can at least sketch the metaphysical approach.
Wood seems to argue that Christ's personhood serves as a unifying reality between humanity and God—the natures of which are themselves "naturally" distinct. In other words, Wood assumes that there really is a gap between God and the world, but that the Incarnation somehow bridges this against all conceptual intelligibility.
[Now, my guess is that Wood would not want to dispense with analogical reference (I'm not even remotely familiar enough with the corpus of his work to say anything definitive here), but if he were to move to either end of the spectrum, it *seems* to me that he would want to argue for a more univocal approach (just as your article above seems to suggest), though interestingly it seems that, for Wood, "Person" must function as metaphysically prior to the divine essence, since the former is able to mediate the latter with human nature. So it seems that, from Wood's perspective, there is more of an ontological, rather than a truly metaphysical, gap between the divine and the human, which is then crossed through the metaphysics of Personhood. My own view is that this is metaphysically problematic, but I hasten to admit that at this point I am speculating (perhaps a bit wildly!), as Wood did not go into such detail in the post I reference above. So I certainly may be in error here. In any event, my main point here is to clarify Hart's, not, Wood's, position. So to that task I shall return.]
Again, to be clear, for Hart, this is a solution to a problem that just doesn't exist, because, as an Advaitin/Neoplatonist/theo-monist, Hart believes that we *already are* within God. Whatever work needs to be done to complete our salvation, it is not the bridging of some essential ontological or metaphysical gap, because God is the reality within which we are already contained (as Hart's reading of creatio ex nihilo makes abundantly clear).
If anything, then, it is Wood's position (as I speculatively sketch above in the bracketed parenthetical) that assumes a serious gap between God and the world—with the Incarnation achieving "what is impossible for man" but which is, graciously, not impossible for God. For Hart, though, the Incarnation is something more like the manifestation or realization of a fact that is already true not just about Jesus, but about all humans (and indeed, of the whole creation!) Now of course, one could certainly critique Hart here for going beyond the boundaries of pious orthodoxy—but the idea that he is defending a stodgy theological dualism is, I think, quite incorrect.
All of that said, while I agree there there *is* a disagreement between Hart and Wood on this and other questions, I am not sure that your post above elucidates that disagreement in a way that clearly communicates Hart's actual position (though it seems to do a great job of showcasing Wood's argument). Of course, we also shouldn't lose track of the fact that both seem to agree on many things of real importance (Christian universalism being the most obvious). In any event, my concern is that your effort to read these two thinkers though the lens of modern Roman Catholic theological debate obscures too much; this shouldn't surprise us, considering that Hart is not Roman Catholic (and of course the same goes for Milbank). To make sense of this debate, I think, we will need a truly ecumenical frame of reference.
Frankly, Tim is making a bit of a mess here. My only disagreement with Wood is that he isn’t monist enough for my taste. And I don’t believe his approach to “hypostasis” works as well as he would make it. The talk of what’s at stake over the issue of analogy (or of Przywara) here is simply wrong. And I remain convinced that a dualism of nature cannot be coherently overcome by the seeming univocity of “person”.
Have you written anything in response to Wood's hypostatic vision of incarnation? I would love to read your thoughts on this topic, as for me it is quite compelling as it stands, so your views contrary to that would be quite edifying. Thank you.
Having approached Wood’s book (and both sides of the Thomist divide in Catholic theology—which includes Hart and Milbank) from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, what I’ve found most surprising and significant about Wood’s The Whole Mystery of Christ is that, as far as I know he is the first Catholic theologian to not find it necessary to lift the Eastern Fathers out of their unique Eastern context in order to make them pertinent to an assumed Thomistic Orthodoxy. In my opinion, as an Orthodox Christian, Wood’s simple willingness to treat Maximus as a bastion of orthodoxy (rather than a forerunner of “true” catholic orthodoxy) is the most significant contribution by a catholic to theology in I can’t say how long. The possibility of opening actual dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox in my opinion begins with wood. David Bentley Hart has fallen as you mention into the same trap as the rest praising pryzwara and forgetting the vitality of Eastern Orthodox theology in the likes of Maximus was its hesitation to go head over heals for Aristotle and instead draw on stoicism and even to the extent of completing in unforeseeable ways the project of neo-platonism. The point isn’t Hegel, the point is to gain the freedom to draw from all sources especially as was done by Maximus. We still have more to learn from him and even Nyssa.
I love this. My only disagreement is in evaluating how far DBH and Milbank move beyond the minimum Thomistic consensus. If we take Wood's book as one front in a larger discursive battle instead of its epicenter, I think it becomes clearer. Bulgakov and Sophiology in general are also a clear break with an easy "analogia entis" model and no one has done more to bring those figures into the light within these circles than those two.
Yes, that is how I *wish* to view things too. Again, I think that Hart and Milbank *should* be on the same team, and essentially are. But I think that Hart is wedded to the term analogy, and Milbank to the name Aquinas, in a way that obscures matters.
If we are talking sociology, this book is not the epicenter. Hart and Milbank are the foundation and indispensable to moving the conversation. But I think Jordan's book lays bare the break most clearly.
I also think the dislike for Hegel reflects not just a genealogy but a substantive disagreement about the role of the conceptual order, especially vis-a-vis Milbank.
Tim, I’m sorry but you’re simply confused about our disagreement on one issue or two with Jordan’s book. You also seem to think the word “analogy” has a univocal meaning. I know you think you’ve got this matter surrounded, but you don’t.
Really fascinating, thanks. I wonder if you have any reading suggestions for "amateurs" or those who find this all interesting but don't really have enough of the professional background to evaluate all the claims professionally?
I’m glad you are arguing forJordan’s importance here. I have argued for it in one or more arguments with Thomists. But your misrepresentation of my disagreements with Jordan, and your curious conviction that all talk of analogy is dualistic rather than modal, and your either-or approach (either Wood or Manualism!) is all quite ridiculous. So try to understand: my disagreement with Jordan’s book is that I think it preserves a dualism that still needs to be overcome. And, frankly, you simply don’t get what the whole debate about analogy was and is.
It’s interesting to see that your take on Hart is the most scandalous part of this piece for a lot of people.
Only because it’s staggeringly wrong. And because I’m so lovable.
I’d like to re-structure that sentence, so that the word staggeringly modified “lovable”.
I blush.
Thank you. Really helpful to give the lay of the land as you see it.
I want to begin by saying thanks for such an interesting piece on a topic I think is very important. I think you do an excellent job of delving into dense topics with both clarify and concision—a rare gift in theological writing, to be sure! Even so, I want to offer some pushback on one of the points you made.
Now, I haven't read Wood's book yet, though I did engage with a short piece he wrote on his substack that seems to have been a summary/outline of his thinking on the themes in that text (https://jordandanielwood.substack.com/p/neo-chalcedonian-christology).
But I want to focus on one of the claims you make about Hart above; I think you may be misrepresenting his view in an important way. You say that the nouvelle theologie asserted "[a]n unsurpassable analogical “gap” or caesura between creature and Creator, even in Christ’s own person" and, if I understand you correctly, suggest that this is essential to Hart's own theology as well.
While there is no doubt that Hart agrees with Aquinas that human language about God must be analogical, I disagree that this represents any kind of "gap" between the creature and the Creator. First, I'd like to clarify the linguistic issue here, and then suggest the ramifications for the metaphysical disagreement at issue in this broader debate.
The basic options in language about God are threefold: we can speak of God univocally, analogically, or equivocally. The first and the last terms are essentially antonyms: to speak of God univocally would be to assume that God is basically a being in the same way we are. So, for example, a univocal theology would assume that if God is loving, God is loving in the same way we are.
Equivocal language insists on just the opposite view: equivocal theological expression assumes that God is infinitely different from us, and that there is no real comparison between God and creatures at all: hence Barth's "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and the world (and this equivocal approach is indeed essential to the whole Reformed project).
Analogy is basically a position between these two poles of the spectrum: it argues that though we use language about God drawn from human experience, that such words cannot be taken univocally, since God really is different from us—God is absolute, ultimate, eternal, uncreated, etc. But at the same time, if God is the creator, then there is obviously an extremely intimate connection between God and the (created) world—if there were an infinite gap between them, there would be no way to talk of God creating the cosmos at all. So there must be difference but also real relation.
So, analogy insists, our language about God does not perfectly describe God, but nor does it fail to refer to God at all. So, when we speak of God as loving, we mean something *like* what human loving is, but not identically so. It should be clear that though Aquinas is the most famous exponent of this method of theological expression, he is by no means its only user or defender. Indeed, I would argue that most Christian discourse is incomprehensible without recourse to analogy.
No I doubt that I have said anything above that anyone reading this didn't already know, but I think it's important to make these different linguistic options clear so that we can then properly understand the real metaphysical debate going on between Wood and Hart. And I worry that your attempt to map these two thinkers on two horns of a dilemma in modern Roman Catholic thought may obscure more than it illuminates.
To return to the quote above: the claim that analogy involves asserting an "unsurpassable analogical “gap”" between God and the world is already to profoundly misunderstand the work analogy does: as I argued above, analogy is precisely about both maintaining but also already always bridging such a gap: God is not the world, and yet the world comes solely from God. God must be both perfectly transcendent and yet fully immanent. And, whatever one might argue about de Lubac or von Balthasar, D.B. Hart most certainly *does not* believe that any gap between humanity and God is "unsurpassable". Indeed, Hart's most recent work is an extended argument that humanity is already essentially participating in the divine(!) (One can see this in his You Are Gods as well as the lecture series The Light of Tabor: https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/the-light-of-tabor-notes-toward-a) So this misconstrual of Hart's position is a serious issue in the discourse above.
This point is only of greater importance if we consider the way Wood wants to bridge this same gap. Again, I have not read his book yet, but if the views he advanced in the post linked above are indicative, I think I can at least sketch the metaphysical approach.
Wood seems to argue that Christ's personhood serves as a unifying reality between humanity and God—the natures of which are themselves "naturally" distinct. In other words, Wood assumes that there really is a gap between God and the world, but that the Incarnation somehow bridges this against all conceptual intelligibility.
[Now, my guess is that Wood would not want to dispense with analogical reference (I'm not even remotely familiar enough with the corpus of his work to say anything definitive here), but if he were to move to either end of the spectrum, it *seems* to me that he would want to argue for a more univocal approach (just as your article above seems to suggest), though interestingly it seems that, for Wood, "Person" must function as metaphysically prior to the divine essence, since the former is able to mediate the latter with human nature. So it seems that, from Wood's perspective, there is more of an ontological, rather than a truly metaphysical, gap between the divine and the human, which is then crossed through the metaphysics of Personhood. My own view is that this is metaphysically problematic, but I hasten to admit that at this point I am speculating (perhaps a bit wildly!), as Wood did not go into such detail in the post I reference above. So I certainly may be in error here. In any event, my main point here is to clarify Hart's, not, Wood's, position. So to that task I shall return.]
Again, to be clear, for Hart, this is a solution to a problem that just doesn't exist, because, as an Advaitin/Neoplatonist/theo-monist, Hart believes that we *already are* within God. Whatever work needs to be done to complete our salvation, it is not the bridging of some essential ontological or metaphysical gap, because God is the reality within which we are already contained (as Hart's reading of creatio ex nihilo makes abundantly clear).
If anything, then, it is Wood's position (as I speculatively sketch above in the bracketed parenthetical) that assumes a serious gap between God and the world—with the Incarnation achieving "what is impossible for man" but which is, graciously, not impossible for God. For Hart, though, the Incarnation is something more like the manifestation or realization of a fact that is already true not just about Jesus, but about all humans (and indeed, of the whole creation!) Now of course, one could certainly critique Hart here for going beyond the boundaries of pious orthodoxy—but the idea that he is defending a stodgy theological dualism is, I think, quite incorrect.
All of that said, while I agree there there *is* a disagreement between Hart and Wood on this and other questions, I am not sure that your post above elucidates that disagreement in a way that clearly communicates Hart's actual position (though it seems to do a great job of showcasing Wood's argument). Of course, we also shouldn't lose track of the fact that both seem to agree on many things of real importance (Christian universalism being the most obvious). In any event, my concern is that your effort to read these two thinkers though the lens of modern Roman Catholic theological debate obscures too much; this shouldn't surprise us, considering that Hart is not Roman Catholic (and of course the same goes for Milbank). To make sense of this debate, I think, we will need a truly ecumenical frame of reference.
Frankly, Tim is making a bit of a mess here. My only disagreement with Wood is that he isn’t monist enough for my taste. And I don’t believe his approach to “hypostasis” works as well as he would make it. The talk of what’s at stake over the issue of analogy (or of Przywara) here is simply wrong. And I remain convinced that a dualism of nature cannot be coherently overcome by the seeming univocity of “person”.
Have you written anything in response to Wood's hypostatic vision of incarnation? I would love to read your thoughts on this topic, as for me it is quite compelling as it stands, so your views contrary to that would be quite edifying. Thank you.
My forthcoming book The Light of Tabor is on this issue (among others).
That’s great news, I look forward to reading it 🙏
Having approached Wood’s book (and both sides of the Thomist divide in Catholic theology—which includes Hart and Milbank) from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, what I’ve found most surprising and significant about Wood’s The Whole Mystery of Christ is that, as far as I know he is the first Catholic theologian to not find it necessary to lift the Eastern Fathers out of their unique Eastern context in order to make them pertinent to an assumed Thomistic Orthodoxy. In my opinion, as an Orthodox Christian, Wood’s simple willingness to treat Maximus as a bastion of orthodoxy (rather than a forerunner of “true” catholic orthodoxy) is the most significant contribution by a catholic to theology in I can’t say how long. The possibility of opening actual dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox in my opinion begins with wood. David Bentley Hart has fallen as you mention into the same trap as the rest praising pryzwara and forgetting the vitality of Eastern Orthodox theology in the likes of Maximus was its hesitation to go head over heals for Aristotle and instead draw on stoicism and even to the extent of completing in unforeseeable ways the project of neo-platonism. The point isn’t Hegel, the point is to gain the freedom to draw from all sources especially as was done by Maximus. We still have more to learn from him and even Nyssa.
I love this. My only disagreement is in evaluating how far DBH and Milbank move beyond the minimum Thomistic consensus. If we take Wood's book as one front in a larger discursive battle instead of its epicenter, I think it becomes clearer. Bulgakov and Sophiology in general are also a clear break with an easy "analogia entis" model and no one has done more to bring those figures into the light within these circles than those two.
Yes, that is how I *wish* to view things too. Again, I think that Hart and Milbank *should* be on the same team, and essentially are. But I think that Hart is wedded to the term analogy, and Milbank to the name Aquinas, in a way that obscures matters.
If we are talking sociology, this book is not the epicenter. Hart and Milbank are the foundation and indispensable to moving the conversation. But I think Jordan's book lays bare the break most clearly.
I also think the dislike for Hegel reflects not just a genealogy but a substantive disagreement about the role of the conceptual order, especially vis-a-vis Milbank.
Tim, I’m sorry but you’re simply confused about our disagreement on one issue or two with Jordan’s book. You also seem to think the word “analogy” has a univocal meaning. I know you think you’ve got this matter surrounded, but you don’t.
Hear hear!
Incisive, and insightful. I just love what you produce.
Really fascinating, thanks. I wonder if you have any reading suggestions for "amateurs" or those who find this all interesting but don't really have enough of the professional background to evaluate all the claims professionally?
Which part, Jordan's book or the broader situation in contemporary theology?
Let's say, for someone who's had Theology 101 at the college level but not more than that…
Any or all of the above?