A term’s signification (what it brings to mind) derives from experience, which does not equip us with the idea of a wholly simple entity possessed of every perfection. Rather than admit language’s inability to properly reference the divine essence, Aquinas regulates the signification oftheological discourse through the Aristotelian notion of focal meaning.
Aristotle sought an element common to our various uses of the term ‘‘being,’’ which can refer to both substances and accidents (Metaphysics (Met.) IV.2,1003b5-11). Technically, the term is equivocal as it signifies differently in different contexts. Nonetheless, the various significations are related. Employing terminology developed by Pseudo-Augustine, Boethius, and Simplicius in their commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories, medievals generally claimed that the term ‘‘being’’ is equivocal ‘‘by design (a consilio),” like the term ‘‘healthy’’ said of both medicine and patient, rather than equivocal ‘‘by chance (a casu)’’ as ‘‘bat’’ said of baseball bats and certain nocturnal flying mammals. Equivocal terms of any type are contrasted with univocals, which supposit for (or refer to) disparate individuals conceived under a single concept, as ‘‘person'' said of Aquinas and Aristotle. Note analogy and univocity are context dependent; for instance, ‘‘healthy'' when said of two different persons is subordinated to one idea and thereby functions univocally.
As concerns the term ‘‘being,'' Aristotle noted that it is said primarily of substances and in a secondary or derivative sense of accidents (Met. IV.2, 1003b5-11). Thus, the various uses of the term are unified through a focal meaning appropriate to the primary analogue, to which the term most properly applies. Following Aristotle's Greek, this species of equivocation is sometimes referred to as an instance of ‘‘pros hen (toward one)’’ equivocation, where the various significations of a designedly equivocal term are distinguished through what the medievals term analogy ‘‘of attribution (per attrihutionem)’,’ which involves signification in a ‘‘prior and posterior manner (perprius et posterius)’’ with the analogous term referring properly to the primary analogue, and in a derivative or posterior sense to the secondary analogues.
In addition to analogy of attribution, medieval thinkers also recognized analogy of proportionality (proportionalitas), likewise inherited from Aristotle, where a relation holding between members of a set is clarified through a comparison to another set whose members stand in a similar relationship: thus the sepion is to the squid, as the spine is to the fish, and the backbone is to land animals (Posterior Analytics, II.14, 98a20-23).
In De veritate, composed during Aquinas’ first Parisian regency, this species of analogy is used to name God (II.11c), but most scholars agree that Aquinas’ later works favor the use of analogy of attribution. Seeing analogy of attribution at play in theological discourse, Aquinas notes that our notions of the traits we ascribe to God derive from creatures, whose modes of existence furnish the everyday or baseline signification of our language (ST Ia.13.6c). Ordinary signification cannot then do justice to the intention of the theologian, who understands the ramifications of divine simplicity. Accordingly, God talk must annex notions of supereminence, causality, and simplicity, recognizing that to ascribe a perfection x to the divine essence requires that we understand that God is the cause of x in creatures and that God possesses x in the highest possible degree, but in a manner that does not violate divine simplicity. The adjustment does not suppose that we can comprehend what it is for x to exist in this manner, but it allows Aquinas to plot a middle ground between idolatry (the worship of a creature) and a negative theology such as that of the influential twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, who claimed that we know of God only what he is not (Guide for the Perplexed I.58).
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