Abstract
The logic of theological language is receiving more and more attention these days. Many students of this problem are of the opinion that analogy is the only method appropriate to the interpretation of theological language.1 This was also St. Thomas’ view as is well known. It may therefore be instructive for us to see what he meant by analogy, and why he considered it as the most appropriate instrument for the correct understanding of theological language. We will do this, but at the same time keep our research within the limits of the present essay, whose aim is to reconstruct Aquinas’ philosophical teaching out of the Scripta super libros sententiarum. This means that our conclusions concerning his doctrine of analogy will pertain only to his first major work and not his entire literary production. Whether such conclusions apply also to his more mature works will be verified in the next chapter.
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References
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John of St. Thomas formulates the following judgment on Cajetan’s interpretation: “The difficulties concerning analogy, which are mostly metaphysical, have been argued so thoroughly and subtly by Cajetan in the opusculum On the Analogy of Names that no room is left to discover anything further” (John of ST. Thomas, Cursus philosophiae thomisticae, (Marietti ed.) I, p. 481).
CAJETAN, De analogia nominum, c. 3.—For a more adequate exposition of Cajetan’s views see B. Mondin, The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Theology, The Hague 1968, pp. 35–40.
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© 1975 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Mondin, B. (1975). The Logic of Theological Language. In: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Philosophy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1679-7_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1679-7_8
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