Analolgy in divine attributions

Abstract

It has been traditionally sustained that predicates attributed to God and to the creatures are analogical predicates. But, what is analogy? Several philosophers have thought that analogy should be taken as a form of ambiguity. Here we argue that predicates attributed to God and to creatures are neither ambiguous nor vague. Following some suggestions given by McDaniel, we propose a view of analogy in which the semantic phenomenon is associated with the more or less natural character of the property or properties that the entities that satisfy the analogous predicate instantiate. A predicate “q” is analogous if and only if the property Q, which something instantiates, if and only if it is q, is less natural that any property X so that anything that instantiates X, instantiates Q. Furthermore, it is required that the entities of which the analogous term is predicated should be either ontologically or epistemically dependent on each other.