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Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm
This volume includes Erich Pryzwara's Analogia Entis, originally published in 1932, and his subsequent essays on the concept analogia entis—the analogy between God and creation—which has certain currency on philosophical and theological circles today.
652 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2013
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February 22, 2019
"The central question of Analogia Entis relates to the simultaneous similarity and dissimilarity between God and creatures. . . . The prioritization of difference between creature and Creator may seem at odds with a project so intent on maintaining humanity’s orientation toward God (or, for that matter, philosophy’s orientation toward theology), but it is precisely in the asymmetry of these relations that Przywara highlights the beauty of God’s self-gift. . . . Although we are never capable of autonomously attaining the end toward which we strive, God traverses this gulf on our behalf, freely giving the revelation culminating in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The divine is always infinitely beyond the creaturely, providing the very possibility of any and all essences, all existences, and all analogies. And yet, through a gratuity beyond limitation, we are invited to know the composer of the universal rhythm by and in which all things live, move, and have their being." Lots of other good summaries and comments here.
As I came back and looked over these comments, I thought that there seems to be a connection to Niebuhr's "Christ Above Culture" (Catholic) category in Christ and Culture : Human beings are oriented toward God, but we can't get there on our own—fortunately, God takes us the rest of the way (and the happy pagans miss Heaven by inches).
I read only Part I. It's got too much of the flavor of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation and Charles Taylor's A Secular Age in its Catholic "blame the Reformation" narrative. Barth appears to be the primary target/interlocutor, and the introduction seems to hope that the differences between Barth and the RCC are not as great as some think.
The g in analogia is soft because it's considered Ecclesiastical Latin.
Ressourcement
i: Catholic emphasis on tradition
Translator's Preface
xiv: Analogia Entis one of the most challenging works of philosophical theology ever written; 4-fold aim of the long introduction
xv: translation is more literal than dynamic
xvin10: language itself is analogical
Preface to the 1962 Edition
From the Preface to the First Edition of Analogia Entis I (1932)
xx: essence/existence in Aquinas
xxi: interaction with Barth; creatureliness and Heidegger
xxii: Augustine and "God in us and God beyond us"; the oscillating in-and-beyond
xxii-xxiii: creaturely mutability; positive and negative aspects of being
xxiii: God's sovereignty
Translator's Introduction (John R. Betz)
1: Catholic ontology
3: Pieper found Analogia Entis "virtually unreadable"
3: reasons that metaphysics is unpopular
4-5: the importance of Pryzwara
7: misunderstanding of analogia entis
9: John Paul II and Benedict 16
9-10: Fourth Lateran Council and expressions of analogia entis
11: Barth's opposition
1. Erich Przywara (1889-1972): Life and Writings
12: contradiction/tension/opposites/polarity/analogy
13: analogia entis not original to Pryzwara
14: Pryzwara thought that culture needed a religious answer
16: criticize to build up
18: Pryzwara opposed Luther's supposed denial of secondary causes; Pryzwara thinks that Protestantism destroys creaturely similarity to God (as if it denies the both-and of immanence and transcendence)
18-20: see here and here.
21-22: Barth's letter about Pryzwara
23: analogia entis and natural theology
25n75: Pryzwara not anti-Semitic
2. The Prior Philosophical and Theological History of the analogia entis
31: origins of analogia entis
32: Heraclitus and Parmenides as dialectical extremes
33: Plato and participation; Aristotle and analogy/mean (p. 39 too)
33n94: Desmond's Being and the Between
34: Plato's line
34-35: Plato's philosophy lacks creation ex nihilo and transcendence
35-37: Aristotle and analogy
37-43: Aquinas
39n111: Cajetan vs. Suarez
39-40: 2 theological uses of analogy; presumption and despair (analogia entis)
40: errors of agnosticism—assuming that our words about God have only an ambiguous reference
41n114: role of participation
42n116: nature and grace
3. The analogia entis in Przywara's Early Work (1922-26)
43: definition of analogia entis (also n120)
44: analogia entis is biblical
44-45n124: repeating the Lutheran-Reformed theology bashing ("theopanism")
46: analogia entis as via media; more analogia entis definition
48: analogia entis can't build bridges in metaphysics
49-50: Thomas more anoretic than systematic; creature's vocation is worshipful silence before mysteries [anti-intellectual?]
50: Reformation —> modernity (dialectical theology); [sounds like a dialectic between Przwara and Barth; see here]
50-53: anti-Lutheran/Reformed (no cooperation with grace) / theopanism vs. pantheism
55: 3 clarifications of analogia entis
56: purpose of analogia entis; Barth's/Przywara's unity (also 57-58)
59: fear and love; analogia entis not just a both-and
60: finding and searching [cf. Matthew Lee Anderson's book]
4. The Analogia Entis (1932)
62-65: summary of sections 1-4
63: the basic formula of a creaturely metaphysics
64: Descartes's meta-noetic starting point
66-67: Aristotle and mean (also 70)
67: participation and give (two analogies)
68-69: philosophy and theology
70: logic and non-contradiction (and analogia entis); mean between extremes (see p. 73)
71-72: contra Pelagius
5. Philosophical and Theological Criticisms of the analogia entis
75: Heidegger/Barth <— Luther
76-78: arguments against analogia entis
78-80: Heidegger's philosophy is metaphysics (Przywara turns Heidegger on his head); Heidegger is theological; brandishing terms
80-81: Heidegger's main points of criticism
81: analogia entis redeems metaphysics
82: limits of human capacity—what about salvation?
82n228: reference to C.S. Lewis
83: general philosophy arises out of wonder
84: different readings of Barth (did he understand the analogia entis?); Reformed folks probably won't read Przywara
86-87: Barth's misunderstanding of the analogia entis
87: Barth and event
88: Barth's suspicion of philosophy
88: Barth —> no natural theology (see pp. 90-92; "point of contact" and Brunner; "capacity for grace" and theopanism)
92-93: theopanism; guiding questions of whether or not Barth understood Przywara
93-95: Barth's retraction?; Vatican 1 and natural theology
95: the question is whether von Balthasar is right or Keith Johnson is right (Reformed theologians want Johnson to be right, and Catholic theologians want von Balthasar to be right)
95: Barth's caricature of Przywara's analogia entis
95-96: explanation of Przywara's analogia entis
96n268: Johnson's error (about Przywara's analogia entis)
97-101: Barth's major criticisms
99n274: more silly stuff about cooperating with grace
100: Barth saw little different between Catholicism and liberal Protestantism (grace restores nature—Aquinas)
100: Barth goes beyond Calvin [I've been waiting for someone to say this]
101: Barth probably misunderstood Pryzwara; von Balthasar thinks that Barth misunderstood the analogia entis
102: five or six clarifications by von Balthasar; analogia entis is not Monism
103: the analogia entis as a middle way
104-05: God's sovereignty and secondary causes are both preserved in the analogia entis
106: Barth seemed to deny general revelation [Calvin did not]
106-12: five criticisms of Barth, and Przywara's responses
105n290: pantheism and theopanism are two consequences of denying the analogia entis
105n291: potentia oboedientialis is nuanced and rejects neutrality
106-07: the first two criticisms are accepted as just Catholic; the other three are responded to
108-09: being structurally "open upward" does not deny original sin (see n298)
109: paradox of becoming who you are
111n304: Keith Johnson's "problematic claim"
112: the analogia entis is not just abstract—the Incarnation makes the analogia entis concrete
113n312: Przywara vs. von Balthasar
114n313: charitable reading of Barth
114-15: Johnson is right that Barth understood and rejected the analogia entis as Catholic doctrine
115: Betz's ecumenical appeal (re: the similarities between Barth and the RCC, see 4–6 here)
164-65 (n24): failure of Protestant thought
166n26: Barth and modern idealism unintentionally negate the difference between Creator and creature
167: theopanism as "immanent theology" (it's a priori metaphysics—see p. 169)
167: definition of metaphysics
171: an infallible magisterium
172: the church vs. science (see n42 and n43)
173: a priori and a posteriori need each other to be understood
176n46: Reformed critique of the analogia entis is based on a misunderstanding
176-77: Augustine: if it's understood, it's not God
[slight preference for the noetic over the ontic]
178: grace does not destroy but perfects nature (Thomas)
179: Augustinian tension (harmony?) between thinking and believing; immaculate conception
181: limits (even with revelation—n66); see pp. 186, 222-23
[Genesis 1: the division is a creative demarcation, which allows for life; Genesis 3 is a rebellion against limits and creaturely finitude; see Christ and Apollo; Mozart said that his best work was his operas because he was constrained by the libretto]
186-87: submitting to the church
190-91: summary
Section 2: Analogia Entis
192: Przywara isn't a nominalist
[Hegel is a cataphatic modalist]
[dialectic results in divine revelation]
[reason provides for human participation in being]
194-95: Plato vs. Aristotle; Augustine as the Christian Plato
196: moving upstream
196-97: logic vs. dialectic vs. analogy
section 6: non-contradiction is intrinsically analogical (to preserve the dynamism)—otherwise it becomes a principle, and not the means by which we arrive at principles
[Greek middle voice (active-passive tension) is used (cf. Jesus who uses the middle voice in Luke 22:25—reference to Aeneid and Anchises?) to grammatically encapsulate the tension that Przywara has been talking about the whole time]
203: theopanistic/pantheistic dialectics; Heraclitus vs. Parmenides (see pp. 205ff.)
206: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics equates analogy with the middle; analogy as the foundation of all thought
...
213: Dr. Harvey mentioned some connection to Jonathan Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and trembling
214?: the self-diffusing nature of God's goodness makes creation possible
216: definition of analogy?
228: potential oboedientialis, receptive capacity
229: Augustine and Plagiarism; Aquinas and secondary causes
230: theopanism and pantheism
230: a creature (Satan) who can say no to God (God's power is so great that He can create such a creature); Hume's argument against the teleological argument (this world is so messed up) is answered by a God who is powerful enough to create a world that can be messed up (the world is not emanation)
231: "alterity"—von Balthazar thinks that Przywara unintentionally leaves out the possibility of Incarnation/Christology; Barth thinks that Przywara makes creatures too prepared for God; Irenaeus: human nature bears the capacity to carry divinity (Incarnation is possible)—cf. Zeus and Semele (she exploded because divinity and humanity are incompatible in Greek mythology); Donnelly: tournament of mythos/stories/narratives (Mary vs. Semele)
232n222: "proportionable"
235: longing
238: "in the analogia entis, practically everything refers back to the the span between 'ano' understood as 'from the above and back to the above' and 'ana' in the sense of an 'intrinsic order'"
240n15: Eros as the desire for union with transcendence; Eros impregnates the world
244-45: artistic creation (Donnelly has an article related to this in Wood's Tolkien among the Moderns)
245-46: Plato's participation necessarily precludes Aristotle's identity (Donnelly: Aristotle is often known as "the philosopher," and Plato is just a heretical theologian)
248-51: true, good, beautiful
250: imagery of hitting a mark with a bow (virtue)
251: necessity vs. contingency
252: "Platonic poetry"
254-56: Przywara plays with the etymology of catholic to deal with Plato and Aristotle
257: "subservient" seems problematic; the "unmoved mover" can't be divine (p. 258: the prime mover is Aristotle's god); Junius Johnson: this isn't really what Aristotle thinks (it's more Neoplatonic)
257: "mutilation" is not damaging, but rather something that is incomplete (such as a torso, which should have a head, limbs, etc.)
259: Platonic "heroic idealism" ("in face of death") vs. Aristotelian "tragic realism" ("sobering wreck"); realism —> idealism (Plato) vs. idealism —> realism (Aristotle)
260: "Augustine is emphatically a 'Christian Plato,' and Thomas a 'Christian Aristotle'"; God is truth-goodness-beauty
261: ano is an ascent towards God; ana is a descent from God; n172: Hegel's Trinity is modalistic and creation is pantheistic
262: interlacing right and left hands
264: knowing the mirror and not the person
265: felix culpa? (reference to Augustine's City of God 11.18 (n218: "Beauty is composed from the opposition of the world's contraries"); n219: "I endeavor to be ranked among those who, having made some progress, write and who, through writing, continue to progress"; "God . . . through himself overcomes even the greatest gulf of contradiction, that between good and evil"
266: imago Trinitatis
267: something about the Reformation's "distance of the ineradicable homo peccator; see n231: Przywara doesn't like Luther's simil iustus et peccator
268: "The word that best captures the essence of Augustinianism is . . . 'night.'"; "the absurdity—the 'non-sense'—of a God put to death by his creation"
269: suspended in God
270: "the 'superluminous darkness' of God"
278: Augustine's trinity (Father/memory, Son/intellect, Spirit/will) and Thomas's trinity (intellect and will)
280n322: Protestant misunderstanding of potentia oboedientialis
282-83: we can't get away from sense perception
284-85: freedom
286: "Thomas has a penchant for portraying God with the features of the artist"
287: music
288: manuduction
289: Anselm (see n402)
290-94: capacity and aptitude; inclination; see n414 and n419; capacity, aptitude, inclination, and secondary causality; great creaturely independence (God as the efficient cause of human freedom); "we are 'God's co-laborers (in the soul's salvation)'"
294n445: Aquinas and God's permission of evil crimes to bring forth a greater good
295: process of coming from God and going towards God is a repeated circle, but not a formula
296-300: human, spirit/angelic, and divine as a middle
295-96 (and n454): Catholicism as a middle way (between "Divine omnificence and the creature's own proper agency")
296: "border as transition"
299 (n285 and n488): angels are creatures and are infinitely distant from God
301n504: Shema (Deut. 6:4)
305: infinite difference between God and creatures; Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas
307-08: summary of the major sections so far
310: potentia obedientialis
314: Bach's "Art of Fugue"
As I came back and looked over these comments, I thought that there seems to be a connection to Niebuhr's "Christ Above Culture" (Catholic) category in Christ and Culture : Human beings are oriented toward God, but we can't get there on our own—fortunately, God takes us the rest of the way (and the happy pagans miss Heaven by inches).
I read only Part I. It's got too much of the flavor of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation and Charles Taylor's A Secular Age in its Catholic "blame the Reformation" narrative. Barth appears to be the primary target/interlocutor, and the introduction seems to hope that the differences between Barth and the RCC are not as great as some think.
The g in analogia is soft because it's considered Ecclesiastical Latin.
Ressourcement
i: Catholic emphasis on tradition
Translator's Preface
xiv: Analogia Entis one of the most challenging works of philosophical theology ever written; 4-fold aim of the long introduction
xv: translation is more literal than dynamic
xvin10: language itself is analogical
Preface to the 1962 Edition
From the Preface to the First Edition of Analogia Entis I (1932)
xx: essence/existence in Aquinas
xxi: interaction with Barth; creatureliness and Heidegger
xxii: Augustine and "God in us and God beyond us"; the oscillating in-and-beyond
xxii-xxiii: creaturely mutability; positive and negative aspects of being
xxiii: God's sovereignty
Translator's Introduction (John R. Betz)
1: Catholic ontology
3: Pieper found Analogia Entis "virtually unreadable"
3: reasons that metaphysics is unpopular
4-5: the importance of Pryzwara
7: misunderstanding of analogia entis
9: John Paul II and Benedict 16
9-10: Fourth Lateran Council and expressions of analogia entis
11: Barth's opposition
1. Erich Przywara (1889-1972): Life and Writings
12: contradiction/tension/opposites/polarity/analogy
13: analogia entis not original to Pryzwara
14: Pryzwara thought that culture needed a religious answer
16: criticize to build up
18: Pryzwara opposed Luther's supposed denial of secondary causes; Pryzwara thinks that Protestantism destroys creaturely similarity to God (as if it denies the both-and of immanence and transcendence)
18-20: see here and here.
21-22: Barth's letter about Pryzwara
23: analogia entis and natural theology
25n75: Pryzwara not anti-Semitic
2. The Prior Philosophical and Theological History of the analogia entis
31: origins of analogia entis
32: Heraclitus and Parmenides as dialectical extremes
33: Plato and participation; Aristotle and analogy/mean (p. 39 too)
33n94: Desmond's Being and the Between
34: Plato's line
34-35: Plato's philosophy lacks creation ex nihilo and transcendence
35-37: Aristotle and analogy
37-43: Aquinas
39n111: Cajetan vs. Suarez
39-40: 2 theological uses of analogy; presumption and despair (analogia entis)
40: errors of agnosticism—assuming that our words about God have only an ambiguous reference
41n114: role of participation
42n116: nature and grace
3. The analogia entis in Przywara's Early Work (1922-26)
43: definition of analogia entis (also n120)
44: analogia entis is biblical
44-45n124: repeating the Lutheran-Reformed theology bashing ("theopanism")
46: analogia entis as via media; more analogia entis definition
48: analogia entis can't build bridges in metaphysics
49-50: Thomas more anoretic than systematic; creature's vocation is worshipful silence before mysteries [anti-intellectual?]
50: Reformation —> modernity (dialectical theology); [sounds like a dialectic between Przwara and Barth; see here]
50-53: anti-Lutheran/Reformed (no cooperation with grace) / theopanism vs. pantheism
55: 3 clarifications of analogia entis
56: purpose of analogia entis; Barth's/Przywara's unity (also 57-58)
59: fear and love; analogia entis not just a both-and
60: finding and searching [cf. Matthew Lee Anderson's book]
4. The Analogia Entis (1932)
62-65: summary of sections 1-4
63: the basic formula of a creaturely metaphysics
64: Descartes's meta-noetic starting point
66-67: Aristotle and mean (also 70)
67: participation and give (two analogies)
68-69: philosophy and theology
70: logic and non-contradiction (and analogia entis); mean between extremes (see p. 73)
71-72: contra Pelagius
5. Philosophical and Theological Criticisms of the analogia entis
75: Heidegger/Barth <— Luther
76-78: arguments against analogia entis
78-80: Heidegger's philosophy is metaphysics (Przywara turns Heidegger on his head); Heidegger is theological; brandishing terms
80-81: Heidegger's main points of criticism
81: analogia entis redeems metaphysics
82: limits of human capacity—what about salvation?
82n228: reference to C.S. Lewis
83: general philosophy arises out of wonder
84: different readings of Barth (did he understand the analogia entis?); Reformed folks probably won't read Przywara
86-87: Barth's misunderstanding of the analogia entis
87: Barth and event
88: Barth's suspicion of philosophy
88: Barth —> no natural theology (see pp. 90-92; "point of contact" and Brunner; "capacity for grace" and theopanism)
92-93: theopanism; guiding questions of whether or not Barth understood Przywara
93-95: Barth's retraction?; Vatican 1 and natural theology
95: the question is whether von Balthasar is right or Keith Johnson is right (Reformed theologians want Johnson to be right, and Catholic theologians want von Balthasar to be right)
95: Barth's caricature of Przywara's analogia entis
95-96: explanation of Przywara's analogia entis
96n268: Johnson's error (about Przywara's analogia entis)
97-101: Barth's major criticisms
99n274: more silly stuff about cooperating with grace
100: Barth saw little different between Catholicism and liberal Protestantism (grace restores nature—Aquinas)
100: Barth goes beyond Calvin [I've been waiting for someone to say this]
101: Barth probably misunderstood Pryzwara; von Balthasar thinks that Barth misunderstood the analogia entis
102: five or six clarifications by von Balthasar; analogia entis is not Monism
103: the analogia entis as a middle way
104-05: God's sovereignty and secondary causes are both preserved in the analogia entis
106: Barth seemed to deny general revelation [Calvin did not]
106-12: five criticisms of Barth, and Przywara's responses
105n290: pantheism and theopanism are two consequences of denying the analogia entis
105n291: potentia oboedientialis is nuanced and rejects neutrality
106-07: the first two criticisms are accepted as just Catholic; the other three are responded to
108-09: being structurally "open upward" does not deny original sin (see n298)
109: paradox of becoming who you are
111n304: Keith Johnson's "problematic claim"
112: the analogia entis is not just abstract—the Incarnation makes the analogia entis concrete
113n312: Przywara vs. von Balthasar
114n313: charitable reading of Barth
114-15: Johnson is right that Barth understood and rejected the analogia entis as Catholic doctrine
115: Betz's ecumenical appeal (re: the similarities between Barth and the RCC, see 4–6 here)
164-65 (n24): failure of Protestant thought
166n26: Barth and modern idealism unintentionally negate the difference between Creator and creature
167: theopanism as "immanent theology" (it's a priori metaphysics—see p. 169)
167: definition of metaphysics
171: an infallible magisterium
172: the church vs. science (see n42 and n43)
173: a priori and a posteriori need each other to be understood
176n46: Reformed critique of the analogia entis is based on a misunderstanding
176-77: Augustine: if it's understood, it's not God
[slight preference for the noetic over the ontic]
178: grace does not destroy but perfects nature (Thomas)
179: Augustinian tension (harmony?) between thinking and believing; immaculate conception
181: limits (even with revelation—n66); see pp. 186, 222-23
[Genesis 1: the division is a creative demarcation, which allows for life; Genesis 3 is a rebellion against limits and creaturely finitude; see Christ and Apollo; Mozart said that his best work was his operas because he was constrained by the libretto]
186-87: submitting to the church
190-91: summary
Section 2: Analogia Entis
192: Przywara isn't a nominalist
[Hegel is a cataphatic modalist]
[dialectic results in divine revelation]
[reason provides for human participation in being]
194-95: Plato vs. Aristotle; Augustine as the Christian Plato
196: moving upstream
196-97: logic vs. dialectic vs. analogy
section 6: non-contradiction is intrinsically analogical (to preserve the dynamism)—otherwise it becomes a principle, and not the means by which we arrive at principles
[Greek middle voice (active-passive tension) is used (cf. Jesus who uses the middle voice in Luke 22:25—reference to Aeneid and Anchises?) to grammatically encapsulate the tension that Przywara has been talking about the whole time]
203: theopanistic/pantheistic dialectics; Heraclitus vs. Parmenides (see pp. 205ff.)
206: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics equates analogy with the middle; analogy as the foundation of all thought
...
213: Dr. Harvey mentioned some connection to Jonathan Edwards's sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and trembling
214?: the self-diffusing nature of God's goodness makes creation possible
216: definition of analogy?
228: potential oboedientialis, receptive capacity
229: Augustine and Plagiarism; Aquinas and secondary causes
230: theopanism and pantheism
230: a creature (Satan) who can say no to God (God's power is so great that He can create such a creature); Hume's argument against the teleological argument (this world is so messed up) is answered by a God who is powerful enough to create a world that can be messed up (the world is not emanation)
231: "alterity"—von Balthazar thinks that Przywara unintentionally leaves out the possibility of Incarnation/Christology; Barth thinks that Przywara makes creatures too prepared for God; Irenaeus: human nature bears the capacity to carry divinity (Incarnation is possible)—cf. Zeus and Semele (she exploded because divinity and humanity are incompatible in Greek mythology); Donnelly: tournament of mythos/stories/narratives (Mary vs. Semele)
232n222: "proportionable"
235: longing
238: "in the analogia entis, practically everything refers back to the the span between 'ano' understood as 'from the above and back to the above' and 'ana' in the sense of an 'intrinsic order'"
240n15: Eros as the desire for union with transcendence; Eros impregnates the world
244-45: artistic creation (Donnelly has an article related to this in Wood's Tolkien among the Moderns)
245-46: Plato's participation necessarily precludes Aristotle's identity (Donnelly: Aristotle is often known as "the philosopher," and Plato is just a heretical theologian)
248-51: true, good, beautiful
250: imagery of hitting a mark with a bow (virtue)
251: necessity vs. contingency
252: "Platonic poetry"
254-56: Przywara plays with the etymology of catholic to deal with Plato and Aristotle
257: "subservient" seems problematic; the "unmoved mover" can't be divine (p. 258: the prime mover is Aristotle's god); Junius Johnson: this isn't really what Aristotle thinks (it's more Neoplatonic)
257: "mutilation" is not damaging, but rather something that is incomplete (such as a torso, which should have a head, limbs, etc.)
259: Platonic "heroic idealism" ("in face of death") vs. Aristotelian "tragic realism" ("sobering wreck"); realism —> idealism (Plato) vs. idealism —> realism (Aristotle)
260: "Augustine is emphatically a 'Christian Plato,' and Thomas a 'Christian Aristotle'"; God is truth-goodness-beauty
261: ano is an ascent towards God; ana is a descent from God; n172: Hegel's Trinity is modalistic and creation is pantheistic
262: interlacing right and left hands
264: knowing the mirror and not the person
265: felix culpa? (reference to Augustine's City of God 11.18 (n218: "Beauty is composed from the opposition of the world's contraries"); n219: "I endeavor to be ranked among those who, having made some progress, write and who, through writing, continue to progress"; "God . . . through himself overcomes even the greatest gulf of contradiction, that between good and evil"
266: imago Trinitatis
267: something about the Reformation's "distance of the ineradicable homo peccator; see n231: Przywara doesn't like Luther's simil iustus et peccator
268: "The word that best captures the essence of Augustinianism is . . . 'night.'"; "the absurdity—the 'non-sense'—of a God put to death by his creation"
269: suspended in God
270: "the 'superluminous darkness' of God"
278: Augustine's trinity (Father/memory, Son/intellect, Spirit/will) and Thomas's trinity (intellect and will)
280n322: Protestant misunderstanding of potentia oboedientialis
282-83: we can't get away from sense perception
284-85: freedom
286: "Thomas has a penchant for portraying God with the features of the artist"
287: music
288: manuduction
289: Anselm (see n402)
290-94: capacity and aptitude; inclination; see n414 and n419; capacity, aptitude, inclination, and secondary causality; great creaturely independence (God as the efficient cause of human freedom); "we are 'God's co-laborers (in the soul's salvation)'"
294n445: Aquinas and God's permission of evil crimes to bring forth a greater good
295: process of coming from God and going towards God is a repeated circle, but not a formula
296-300: human, spirit/angelic, and divine as a middle
295-96 (and n454): Catholicism as a middle way (between "Divine omnificence and the creature's own proper agency")
296: "border as transition"
299 (n285 and n488): angels are creatures and are infinitely distant from God
301n504: Shema (Deut. 6:4)
305: infinite difference between God and creatures; Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas
307-08: summary of the major sections so far
310: potentia obedientialis
314: Bach's "Art of Fugue"
September 11, 2025
The hardest book I've ever read, but certainly no work comes close to Fr Przywara's magnum opus. The Eerdman's translation by Dr Betz and Dr Hart includes a number of supplementary articles which help illuminate Przywara's thought, though unfortunately they avoided publishing his controversial works, such as 'Judaism and Christianity' and 'The New Theology' for perhaps obvious reasons. Some of the notes reflect the ongoing feud over Przywara's legacy between those who see his spirit being given over to Karl Rahner (in Fr O'Meara's biography on Erich Przywara) and others seeing Przywara as more or less a prototype for Hans Urs von Balthasar (alluded to in this edition).
An annotated version of this book would benefit readers well but for the time being this translation suffices. Pryzwara produced the most German prose to perhaps ever exist. It abounds with unspecific guillemets, neologisms, allusions to his contemporaries that make no sense without a deep historical knowledge and of course unbelievably dense sentences. Nonetheless there is little that can be reserved from Przywara in due praise.
An annotated version of this book would benefit readers well but for the time being this translation suffices. Pryzwara produced the most German prose to perhaps ever exist. It abounds with unspecific guillemets, neologisms, allusions to his contemporaries that make no sense without a deep historical knowledge and of course unbelievably dense sentences. Nonetheless there is little that can be reserved from Przywara in due praise.
June 20, 2019
Among the most complicated books I have ever read. It is very important to my personal theology and metaphysics.
January 5, 2022
This is a hard read, but worth it.
November 26, 2017
Am I right to say that Husserl and Heidegger scholars ought to read this more than the Thomists should? There is a lot to take in this book, and I for one can only remember about 10% of the content that Przywara discussed. But I'm simply amazed that he was able to go through the whole history of philosophy and theology, perhaps way better than a Barth or a Heidegger could.
[Best read with Edith Stein!]
[Best read with Edith Stein!]
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