The Analogy of Law: From Law to Law

DEUM NEMO VIDIT, no man has seen God, the Apostle John, that favorite of Jesus, said in his first epistle (1 John 4:12). It follows that no one has seen the Divine Promulgator of the natural law. Nor has anyone seen the natural law. The natural law is not writ on tablets of stone, nor inscribed upon golden tablets, nor painted on scrolls nor scratched on sheaves of parchment, and so no one has seen the natural law writ in any visible media. How, then, not having seen either the Divine Legislator or a "Natural Law Code" can we say such a thing exists?

Like any natural theology, our knowledge of God begins with our senses, with what we are able to detect about the world around us. This is what is closest to us in a psychological and pedagogical sense. The world and our senses as the inform our minds are the bases of all our knowledge, and from the created order and our comprehension of it we are able to work backwards, as it were, to the uncreated God. The Invisible is known from the visible, the Uncreated from the created world, "being understood by the things that are made" (Rom. 1:20), so from creation God's power and divinity may be known.

In the area of the natural law, it is no different. We begin with our experience of the ordering of the cosmos and of the ordering of civil society through human law. These we know. We know the legislators who have promulgated that law. We know where they may found. We know that judges use (or should use) these laws in the fashioning of their decisions. We know that they exist, that they govern a society, that they are based upon the will of the legislator and upon some sort of reason and, at least in theory, for the common good. Thus it is that "the law of society comes before the law of nature in a psychological and pedagogical sense." Simon, 69. Human law is our visible springboard, as it were, to the invisible, the hidden natural law. But we ought not presume that the word "law" is understood univocally when used of human law and when used of natural law. We must be aware that the word "law" may be used analogically:

[W]e cannot presume that the concept of law applies in the same senses to the laws of society and to natural laws. The term law, as predicated of the laws of the state and the laws of nature, may convey not one meaning but a set of relate meanings; briefly, it may be analogical.

Simon, 69. In the comparison of two objects, the relationship of analogy merits some more extensive treatment, as it is a middling concept, one between univocity and equivocity. ("Et iste modus communitatis medius est inter puram aequivocationem et simplicem univocationem." ST, Ia, q. 13, a. 5, c.) Supposing two objects (x, y), we may want to know their relationship. They may both be red in color (perhaps two red apples). X is a red apple. Y is a red apple. The term "red apple" (or for that matter, "red" and "apple") is predicated of both x and y univocally, that is, in the exact same sense, unequivocally. The term "red apple" for both x and y involve the same res significata, they signify the same thing. The term "red apple" has a certain ratio propria, and the two objects share both the term "red apple" and the ratio propria relating to the term "red apple."

The same predicate may be said of two objects in an entirely equivocal sense. Suppose x is the "leaf" on a tree. Suppose that y is the "leaf" of a table. The term "leaf" is used equivocally. It has an entirely unrelated meaning when applied to x than when applied to y. There is no relationship between x and y despite the fact that they are both leaves. In an equivocal use of terms, the terms involve different res significatae, different things are signified. McInerny gives a multiple example of equivocal uses of the word "ball."

Cinderella, dancing on the balls of her feet at the ball, was having a ball until she slipped on a ball.

McInerny, 90. In each instant, the term "ball" is used equivocally. There is no real shared meaning between each use of the word "ball."


Two objects, however, may share predicates that are in some ways equivocal and in some ways unequivocal. In such contexts, the predicate is used in an analogical way. That is, the common name between them has the same res significata, but it is signified in different ways in each of the objects. McInerny, 104. Understanding the analogical use of words is important, particularly in discussing matters pertaining to God where words cannot be predicated univocally of God when comparing him to things of creation (since he differs substantially from creation), but they cannot be said to be entirely equivocal (or else we would not know God at all, or at least we would not be able to express any truths about God). As E. M. Macierowski puts it:

[I]f the created names that we apply to God are univocal, the divine transcendence is annihilated; if they are equivocal, our language is vain and we have to give up knowing God. Here again analogy must intervene to escape these two extremes.

Macierowski, 13.

St. Louis by El Greco

Thus, when we say that God is "just," and that St. Louis was "just," we do not use the term "just" univocally of God and St. Louis. God's justice is far above St. Louis's justice, as good as St. Louis's justice may have been. Yet neither are God's justice and St. Louis's justice unrelated or equivocal. In some ways, St. Louis's justness participates or shares similarities to God's justness, and in some ways God's justness is similar or alike to St. Louis's justness. That is, the predicate "just" is used analogically when used of both God and St. Louis. This is how the word "law" is used when predicated of eternal law or natural law and when predicated of human law. The word law in reference to the eternal law or the natural law is neither used univocally, nor used equivocally, but analogically.

Since analogy uses terms in a non-univocal sense, an analogy, though it involves the same term, involves a plurality of meanings (rationes). There is, however, a common thread in the use of analogy, and there is a certain ordering, an order per prius et posterius, among the rationes or meanings of the same term, some being closer to the primary meaning or the ratio propria which is the form or perfection they all refer to. McInerny, 104.

We can say that the analogous name signifies a plurality or rationes which are related per prius et posterius; that is, one ratio is primary and presupposed by the others, this being revealed by the fact that the first ratio enters into the others. These secondary rationes signify diverse proportions or analogies to the first; they are said per respectum ad unum.

McInerny, 98. The term (word) is simply a way of signifying (modus significandi) a particular form or perfection (res significata). The term or word, when used analogously, has at least two but often a plurality of rationes. Each ratio, however, signifies the same form or perfection (the res significata), but it does so in a different way. The form or the perfection signified by the word or term is the id a quo nomen imponitur ad significandum, that particular thing which is the term or word has, by convention, been picked to designate. McInerny, 99.

Analogous names thus have the same res significata and diverse modi significandi. Each ratio involves both the res significata and a way of signifying it. The ratio propria is not the res significata, but the primary and controlling way of signifying the res significata. . . . We see now the precise meaning of saying that the many rationes of the analogous name are partly the same and partly different. They are the same as to the res significata; they differ as to the modi significandi.

McInerny, 99.

The analogous use of terms is generally divided into two kinds: terms used plurium ad unum and terms used unius ad alterum. McInerny, 102-03. The analogy unius ad alterum may be further subdivided into analogy of proportion and analogy of proportionality. McInerny, 113. The analogy of proportion is one where the objects have a particular relation between them. The analogy of proportionality is when the objects are not related through proportion, but rather a similarity of two proportions to one another.

Going back to the distinction between analogy plurium ad unum and analogy unius ad alterum. The latter exists when the terms are used of two or more objects with reference to another object. The former is in play when the the term is used of one object with reference to its use in another object. Thus we may say that a judgment is just and a judge is just. The term "just" is used analogically plurium ad unum, since the term just points to another object, namely God who is all just. On the other hand, if we use the term healthy to refer to medicine prescribed by a veterinarian to cure an animal and an animal, the analogy is unius ad alterum, since the term healthy as predicated of medicine prescribed by a veterinarian refers to the healthy animal. There is no reference to something other than the two objects compared with the same term. When analogy is used of God, it always has to be in the sense of unius ad alterum, as there is nothing other than creation and God. And when a term is used of a creature and applied eminently of God, there is no third to which the analogy can refer. McInerny, 111.

Once having hinted that the term "law" predicated of human or civil law and of the natural law may involve analogy, Simon turns to his definition of human law. That will be addressed in our next post.

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McInerny refers to Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America, 1996).

Macierowski refers to Bernard Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas (E. M. Macierowski, trans.) (Marquette University Press, 2004)