I’m enjoying thinking through this with you. I think one point of possible confusion is way in which analogical predication as a method relates to specific analogical metaphysics or analogical Christologies. Personally, I’m fine in a broad sense signing up for analogical predication as long as we immediately have lots of conversations about the content of the identity/non-identity and make sure we arent ending up with a semantic black box redescribed as divine. Again, DBH and Milbank are often criticized (usually) by Thomists for not maintaining this apophaticism reserve of divine attributes and instead demanding that divine goodness truly relate to creaturely goodness in a knowable way. And even though I love Przywara and Balthasar, they are proposing a specific form of analogical metaphysics that I think lacks sufficient room to breathe—and cordons off big parts of the Catholic theological tradition. BUT what I wish most of all is that DBH and Milbank and Wood and Troutner would unite on criticizing the policing mechanisms which they ALL have suffered from and situate the specific debate over analogy and Christology within their much larger shared terrain of emancipating the ressourcement.
What is odd in Troutner's pieces (especially "Crisis"), though, is that he seems to see DBH as an opponent in this broader debate, despite the fact that Hart employs analogy precisely to defend so much of what I *think* Troutner (and Wood) actually want to profess. I don't know enough about all of their various theological projects, nor the academic politics behind it all, to know exactly how we got here. But it's frustrating.
In any event, analogy is much bigger than any one thinker. And I think that abandoning it for any kind of univocal metaphysics is a big mistake, as I argued in both parts of this series.
I've been racking my brain about this and appreciate your contributions and the comment by @andrewkuiper
I like to frame up Dr Troutner's challenge in the following way. I find it helpful to use a three domain model of reality, which some say can be found in both Jenson & Joseph Bracken's approaches: infinite & timeless; eternal & everlasting; and temporal & transient.
Does any given grammar of identity hold up across all three domains, while navigating between the Eutychian - Nestorian shoals, without falling into dia- or syn- chronic abstraction?
I've tried to figure out how various thinkers approach this so I can use their accounts as foils to better understand the question? I focused on DBH, Norris Clarke, Joseph Bracken & JDW.
What they all seem to have in common is indeed the way we all must talk about participatory ontology, analogically. They all seem to stay within Chalcedon's contours while venturing a positive (Neo-) account of it using perichoretic logic with a semantic univocity.
Are those necessary moves also sufficient to meet Dr Troutner's challenge?
They certainly suffice in DBH's account because the divine ideas as eternal archetypes aren't free-standing abstractions or free-floating forms but exist perfectly & fully & personally in the Logos spanning every domain of reality. [The amount of nuance required to defend this can't be stuffed into a combox but Bulgakov's sophiology approximates what I'm trying to express.]
That's why I think that both your explications & DBH's approach are necessary & sufficient to meet Dr Troutner's challenge.
Does that mean, however, that this basic grammar of identity necessarily forecloses on any further speculation, which would attempt to more precisely specify how this semantic univocity operates in our perichoretic logic?
Not at all. But that's why DBH thus refers to some accounts as neo-Neo, I guess? Below, are three commendable examples, at least in my estimation. When I say "also invoked," I mean beyond but not without a semantic univocity & participatory analogy.
The most modest move would be that of Norris Clarke, who also invoked a structural analogy within his personalist Thomism.
Another defensible move would be that of Joseph Bracken, who also invoked a structural univocity within his process approach, i.e. Divine Matrix, metaphysically.
Finally, JDW also invokes a structural univocity, further specifying it in terms of an hypostatic identity. It will obviously parallel DBH's indispensable grammar of identity, perichoretically, Clarke's primacy of the person and especially Bracken's structural univocity.
Are no accounts susceptible to Dr Troutner's critique?
If not in form, any account that comes across as radically apophatic or that cannot accommodate for the symmetry between humanization & divinization --- Incarnation & theosis --- has built an anti-Eutychian firewall so thick that, for all practical purposes, serves Nestorian ends, where the human side can never actually penetrate the divine subject.
Which thinkers have thus fallen prey to this critique? Well, none of my guys & gals!
This is my summary of two weeks' worth of substack reflections.
I’m enjoying thinking through this with you. I think one point of possible confusion is way in which analogical predication as a method relates to specific analogical metaphysics or analogical Christologies. Personally, I’m fine in a broad sense signing up for analogical predication as long as we immediately have lots of conversations about the content of the identity/non-identity and make sure we arent ending up with a semantic black box redescribed as divine. Again, DBH and Milbank are often criticized (usually) by Thomists for not maintaining this apophaticism reserve of divine attributes and instead demanding that divine goodness truly relate to creaturely goodness in a knowable way. And even though I love Przywara and Balthasar, they are proposing a specific form of analogical metaphysics that I think lacks sufficient room to breathe—and cordons off big parts of the Catholic theological tradition. BUT what I wish most of all is that DBH and Milbank and Wood and Troutner would unite on criticizing the policing mechanisms which they ALL have suffered from and situate the specific debate over analogy and Christology within their much larger shared terrain of emancipating the ressourcement.
What is odd in Troutner's pieces (especially "Crisis"), though, is that he seems to see DBH as an opponent in this broader debate, despite the fact that Hart employs analogy precisely to defend so much of what I *think* Troutner (and Wood) actually want to profess. I don't know enough about all of their various theological projects, nor the academic politics behind it all, to know exactly how we got here. But it's frustrating.
In any event, analogy is much bigger than any one thinker. And I think that abandoning it for any kind of univocal metaphysics is a big mistake, as I argued in both parts of this series.
I've been racking my brain about this and appreciate your contributions and the comment by @andrewkuiper
I like to frame up Dr Troutner's challenge in the following way. I find it helpful to use a three domain model of reality, which some say can be found in both Jenson & Joseph Bracken's approaches: infinite & timeless; eternal & everlasting; and temporal & transient.
Does any given grammar of identity hold up across all three domains, while navigating between the Eutychian - Nestorian shoals, without falling into dia- or syn- chronic abstraction?
I've tried to figure out how various thinkers approach this so I can use their accounts as foils to better understand the question? I focused on DBH, Norris Clarke, Joseph Bracken & JDW.
What they all seem to have in common is indeed the way we all must talk about participatory ontology, analogically. They all seem to stay within Chalcedon's contours while venturing a positive (Neo-) account of it using perichoretic logic with a semantic univocity.
Are those necessary moves also sufficient to meet Dr Troutner's challenge?
They certainly suffice in DBH's account because the divine ideas as eternal archetypes aren't free-standing abstractions or free-floating forms but exist perfectly & fully & personally in the Logos spanning every domain of reality. [The amount of nuance required to defend this can't be stuffed into a combox but Bulgakov's sophiology approximates what I'm trying to express.]
That's why I think that both your explications & DBH's approach are necessary & sufficient to meet Dr Troutner's challenge.
Does that mean, however, that this basic grammar of identity necessarily forecloses on any further speculation, which would attempt to more precisely specify how this semantic univocity operates in our perichoretic logic?
Not at all. But that's why DBH thus refers to some accounts as neo-Neo, I guess? Below, are three commendable examples, at least in my estimation. When I say "also invoked," I mean beyond but not without a semantic univocity & participatory analogy.
The most modest move would be that of Norris Clarke, who also invoked a structural analogy within his personalist Thomism.
Another defensible move would be that of Joseph Bracken, who also invoked a structural univocity within his process approach, i.e. Divine Matrix, metaphysically.
Finally, JDW also invokes a structural univocity, further specifying it in terms of an hypostatic identity. It will obviously parallel DBH's indispensable grammar of identity, perichoretically, Clarke's primacy of the person and especially Bracken's structural univocity.
Are no accounts susceptible to Dr Troutner's critique?
If not in form, any account that comes across as radically apophatic or that cannot accommodate for the symmetry between humanization & divinization --- Incarnation & theosis --- has built an anti-Eutychian firewall so thick that, for all practical purposes, serves Nestorian ends, where the human side can never actually penetrate the divine subject.
Which thinkers have thus fallen prey to this critique? Well, none of my guys & gals!
This is my summary of two weeks' worth of substack reflections.
https://theologoumenon.substack.com/p/looking-at-the-divinehuman-union