トマス・アクィナス著SUMMA CONTRA GENTILESの現代的解釈(5)

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There is a complex relationship between the order of being and the order of names. Creatures are both like and unlike God. Thomas combines the causal principle that every agent produces its like with Dionysius' notion that creatures have a diminished participation in, and dimly reflect God. The likeness of creatures to God enables us to speak about him; their unlikeness underscores the inadequacy of our discourse. Scripture itself alternates between affirming and denying likeness. The Dionysian language of teleological imitation is an important component of Thomas's account of the divine names. Given the unilateral dependency of creatures on God, it is more appropriate to state that creatures are like God than that God is like creatures. The former way of speaking emphasizes dependence, receptivity, and motion toward a model or source. That all human speech about God consists of unlike likenesses explains why Thomas expends more effort correcting sophisticated errors about God and why a detailed treatment of the resources and limits of human discourse precedes the discussion of divine perfection. In his preferred description of God as ipsum esse subsistens Thomas introduces us to the grammatical violence involved in our attempt to speak about God. In that description, we simultaneously deploy concrete (subsistens) and abstract (esse) modes of signifying. In our experience, existing things are concrete, while simple things are abstract. The perfections that we discover in creatures in divided and particular ways are present in God simply, indistinguishably, and concretely. While we can know that this is so, we cannot directly or simply conceptualize what we know. We must use both concrete and abstract modes of signifying in our language about God. The detailed treatment of naming focuses upon the res significta and the modus significandi of names. Two words may share the same res significata but have different modi significandi. For example, "to run" (currere) and "running" (currens) signify the same thing but do so in different modes. The infinitive signifies abstractly whereas the participle signifies concretely. Since all our knowledge originates in sense, our mode of signifying is tied to the sensible world of composite entities. Yet the perfection signified (res significata) in a name such as "good" may apply to beings that transcend the realm of composite creatures. In speaking of God, we must simultaneously affirm the res significata and deny the modus significandi of the name and then proceed to apply the res significata to God in a more eminent way. But even the way of supereminence fails to grasp God. Although univocal naming of God is impossible, the causal dependence of creatures upon God, whose perfections they dimly reflect, salvages our names from mere equivocity. Our names of God are analogical. It is legitimate to speak of analogy when there is an order of the names either to some other thing, as "health" is predicated of many things, or to some one of the names, as "ens" is said principally of substance and secondarily of accident. Since there is nothing independent of God the former is not viable. The causal dependence of creatures upon God makes the latter possible. Causal likeness, then, is the foundation for the analogy of names. The order of naming is the reverse of the order of reality. Names originally imposed to creatures apply to God secondarily; yet, since God is the source of all perfection, the perfection signified by the name is realized more fully in God than in creatures.
2006-02-28

トマス・アクィナス著SUMMA CONTRA GENTILESの現代的解釈(5)

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