Analogy for the Christian’s knowledge of God is an important feature. We have referred to Thomas Aquinas’s analogia entis (analogy of being) frequently here at the blog; on the other hand we have referred to Karl Barth’s analogia fidei/relationis as an alternative way to think analogical knowledge of God. In this post let me refer us to Thomas Torrance’s understanding of analogy vis-à-vis the hypostatic union; if you are familiar with Barth’s understanding, then this will sound somewhat familiar. The primary point I want to highlight is how analogy is framed for Torrance; he grounds analogical knowledge of God not in a capacity human beings have latent within their accidents to habituate in disciplines that allow them to attain to some sort of knowledge of God. Instead, Torrance grounds analogical knowledge of God exclusively in Jesus Christ (seems pretty biblical to me); and true to form he uses the homoousios/hypostatic union in order to accomplish his development on analogia. He writes:

Analogy and the hypostatic union

Hypostatic union involves two important factors here.

(i) It tells us that we can know God only in human terms, in terms of analogy. All knowledge of God and his relations with mankind are analogical, for in Christ, God has become like man, has taken on a human image, so that we may know God, and understand his revelation in terms of the image, likeness and analogies of man.

(ii) It tells us that it is not by human image, likeness, and analogies that we know God and understand his revelation, but rather through the hypostatic union of the human images, analogies, and likenesses in Jesus Christ to God himself, that we know God. That means that only certain particular analogies are used, those which repose upon, and derive from, this one particular man, for he alone is in hypostatic union with God. All other analogies are empty, and contain nothing of God, but Jesus Christ is filled analogy, analogy where the content and substance lie in the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ. In the language of the epistle to the Hebrews, he is the effulgence of God’s glory, but also the express image of God, the reality of the God he images in himself.. All true knowledge of God is through Christ the Word, for there is only one Word, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, who has declared him. But that Word has once and for all become man, assumed human form, and never divests himself of that human form. It is in this particular and unique human form for ever joined to the Word or Son of God, that we are given to share in the mystery of God. In Jesus Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and in him alone, do we know God, and have communion with him.[1]

We see the classical notion of ‘accommodation’ present in Torrance’s offering; we see the Reformed archetypal/ectypal knowledges functioning for Torrance; and we see Jesus Christ as the only fulcrum through which a genuine knowledge of God is arrived at. If we read carefully we can see how Torrance, as he consistently does, grounds the epistemic in the ontological; i.e how he follows an order of being to knowing, and then knowing back to being all enshrined within the unio personalis of the man from Nazareth, Jesus Christ. This is an important piece for Torrance, he constantly presses upon the idea of mediation, homoousion, and the double consubstantiality of the two natures unioned together in Jesus. We see a dialectic of the divine ground of Jesus’ person allowing for actual knowledge of God to be mediated in human ways, and the reception of the mediation received for humanity in the primacy of Christ’s humanity as archetypal humanity for us. This is why Jesus Christ is so important for Torrance’s analogical knowledge of God. Analogy plays a serious role for Torrance, but it is one that is modulated by Jesus Christ for us; thus it can be said that God reveals Godself in the Son of Man, and in the Son of Man Godself is translated for us in such a way that he meets us in our dusty existence to the point that the cross becomes the ultimate place of revelation. Here he reverses the curse, by becoming the curse for us; he undoes Babel, and speaks to us in the new tongue of the new Creation (II Cor. 5.17), wherein eyes to see and ears to hear are given by the Spirit. This movement for Torrance, at least temporally/historically, starts in the manger and climaxes in the ascension (at least penultimately); accommodation, analogical knowledge of God continues from the right hand of God through the priestly session of the Son of Man for us.

This is the Christological analogia  for Torrance, and it is fundamentally different than what we get in people like Thomas Aquinas, classical theism in general, David Bentley Hart et al. There is a theology of nature, and theory of revelation that reorients things for Torrance, such that analogical knowledge has gravitas precisely because creation itself has primal telos from and in Christ.

[1] Thomas F. Torrance, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 193.