Analogi dalam Ajaran Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

Treating the doctrine of analogy in a theological sense leads us to a kind of dilemma; as on one hand, we are actually limited to knowing God only on the basis of sensible creatures, knowledge of creatures does not enable us to see the essence of God through His effects, thus ruling out any univocal knowledge of God. On the other hand, a purely equivocal knowledge is no knowledge. Aquinas offers a way out of such a dilemma that is called the analogical way of predication. Insofar as God is the cause of creatures or material things there is some similarity between them as between cause and effect which enables us not to know what God is but at least whether God exists. However, insofar as there is an infinite inequality between God and creatures, we can predicate of God what we know from creatures only, surely after removing from the created things the finite characteristics that properly belong to them.