is used equivocally when it is used in entirely different senses.  It is used

analogically when it is employed because of the connection observable between

two relations.  For example:

The Wisdom of God.  This cannot be a univocal use of the word wisdom,

because that would mean that God's wisdom was neither more nor less than

man's wisdom, which is false.  It cannot be equivocal, for in that case it

would convey nothing to the mind.  If God's wisdom had absolutely nothing in

common with man's, human language would be entirely unfit for the purposes of

revelation.  The expression 'the wisdom of God' is employed analogically, for

there is something in common between the wisdom of man and the wisdom of God.

What is partial, limited and incomplete in man, is perfect and infinite in

Some have attacked the validity of analogy through mistaking analogy

for metaphor.  Metaphor expresses an imaginary resemblance, but analogy

expresses a real resemblance.  For example, 'All flesh is grass' is a

metaphor.  There is an imaginary resemblance between 'flesh' and 'grass' that

justifies the figure.  'I am the door' is a metaphor.  'This is My body' is a

metaphor.  What deplorable superstition and error have resulted from the

regarding of this metaphor as a reality.  Neither the bread used by the Lord

Himself, nor that which has been used since by His disciples through the

ages, has ever been anything but bread.  Analogy, however, implies a real

resemblance.  Power, personality, presence, mean something real, whether

spoken literally of man or figuratively of God.

Our next problem, therefore, is to consider how the anthropomorphic

terms of Scripture are to be received, and what provision God has made for

the true and full use of analogy.  One word in conclusion.  We have entitled

this section, The definition of analogy.  Strictly speaking, however, analogy

is extremely difficult to define.  Bishop Butler, whose Analogy is well -

known, refused to attempt its definition, and proceeded rather to its

application.  We must not be taken to task for attempting something that

greater minds have avoided; we use the word 'definition' in a loose sense,

and not in a strictly logical one.

In our study of the underlying principle of analogy, we have advanced

from the severely mathematical conception (set forth by the symbols A:B, C:D)

to a consideration of the anthropomorphic language of revelation.  It will be

necessary, before we go further, to consider the objections to, and the

justification of this use of human terms to set forth the divine.

Many readers will be acquainted with the philosopher's charge against

religion, and its use of the human to express the divine:

'The lions, if they could have pictured a God, would have pictured Him

in fashion like a lion; horses like a horse; the oxen like an ox'.

The implication is that man has pictured God as a gigantic man, and

consequently thinks of Him in terms that are human raised to a superlative

power.  There is some truth in this gibe of the philosopher; but it is only

half the truth, which as Tennyson puts it, may be 'ever the blackest of

We must now turn our attention to the following questions: