Existence and Analogy. [Sequel to He Who Is]. Longmans, Green. 1949.

by E.L. Mascall

From one point of view, this book may be considered as a sequel or a. supplement to an earlier work entitled He Who A Study in Traditional Theism, which was published in 1943.Several reviewers of that book, while treating it upon the whole with what I cannot now help feeling was a somewhat undeserved indulgence, did me the sewice of pointing out that perhaps its chief deficiency lay in the fact that, while it made repeated reference to the doctrine of analogy, it nowhere contained an adequate account of what the doctrine of analogy is. The present work originated in an attempt to fill that gap, but as the task went on it became more and more clear to me that there is another doctrine of equal importance for the construction of any sound scheme of rrational theology, namely the doctrine of existence and indeed that the two are very intimately connected. What emerged in the end was, more or less independent survey, and it is this that is now in thereaders hands.

Genres: Theology

Unknown Binding

Reviews

[Jordan Coy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sequel to his book, "He Who Is", Dr. Mascall follows up on his previous volume by discussing further questions related to traditional theism from a Thomistic perspective. This book focuses on two issues related to Traditional Theism: the Essentialist/Existentialist conflict and the doctrine of analogy. This book is less polemical and less expansive than the previous volume, but it is a good supplement to "He Who Is".

Essentialist vs Existentialist
"Essentalism" is expressed (in various degrees) by Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza, and Mascall sets this conception of God's being in contrast to the "existentialism" of Thomas Aquinas:

"Understood from the essentialist standpoint, this statement (in God essence and existence are identical) simply affirms that existence is analytically contained in the notion of God’s essence, and leads us straight to the ontological argument as that is presented in Descartes’ Fifth Meditation. From the existentialist standpoint, on the other hand, it tells us that the fact that God exists in the way in which he does (namely self-existently) is the fact from which every truth about the nature of God can be derived." (19)

Mascall rejects the approach of the essentialists due to the lack of knowledge we have of God's essence. He sees the weakness of the essentialist's "ontological" argument as the lack of knowledge of God due to his transcendence and yet they will argue for His existence from knowledge of God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived" when we cannot conceive of this being.

"The kind of knowledge of God’s essence which one would require in order to make the argument valid is one which God’s very transcendence would seem to deny us. It could be possessed only by God himself and by those who enjoy the beatific vision; they see that God exists as clearly as we see that a whole is greater than its part, but we cannot see God’s essence, we know God only in his effects." (25)

“The fundamental criticism, which is that any ontological argument demands, as the condition of its construction, that we shall have a knowledge of God’s nature which the very notion of God denies to us.” (27)

Since we can know God only in His effects, the Thomistic Five ways (uncaused cause, unmoved mover, etc.) gives us arguments for God's existence that aren't undermined in the same way the essentialist approach is undermined.


Doctrine of Analogy

But how do we speak of God? By the doctrine of analogy. To summarize, the doctrine of analogy is important because "We cannot, in short, know God’s essence by forming a concept of it, but we can know it analogically in our concepts of finite beings." (121)

“the question of analogy does not arise at all in the mere proof of the existence of God; it arises only when, having satisfied ourselves that the existence of finite being declares its dependence upon self-existent being, we then apprehend that no predicate can be attributed to finite and to self-existent being univocally.” (95)

“Thus, assuming that life is an analogous and not' a univocal concept, it is asserted that cabbages, elephants, men and God each possess life formally (that is each of them is, quite literally and unmetaphorically, alive), but that the cabbage possesses life in the mode proper
to a cabbage, the elephant in that proper to an elephant, the man in that proper to a man, and finally God in that supreme, and by us unimaginable, mode proper to self-existent Being itself.” (104)

“When, however, I say that God is good or wise or just, I am inevitably asserting that goodness, wisdom and justice are inherent in the nature of God, for in God there are no accidents, no qualities that are not included in his essence. It follows that all our statements about God have a directly existential reference, such as is possessed by none of our statements about finite beings except those in which existence is explicitly asserted.” (119)


In conclusion, Mascall makes a strong argument for the existentialism of Aquinas, seeing the weakness of the essentialist who claim we can prove God’s existence by our direct conception of his divine essence. Since, however, God is transcendent and we cannot divide His essence from His existence, we cannot abstract and conceive God in a way that relates to our finite understanding. Instead, the unknowable essence of God is understood analogously.

4/5 A strong defense of Thomsitic existentalism and a helpful supplement to “He Who Is”

[TheRabbidCow]

New printing by Angelico Press with Forward by Rowan Williams