Tautology or Heresy? On the Problem of Forming Affirmative Essential-Statements About the One and Simple God in Aquina’s Writings

Abstract

One purpose of human language is to express truth by revealing to us something about something in the form of a declarative sentence. Aquinas’s doctrine of divine names represents a decisive attempt to justify human speech about God, especially in its affirmative dimension, against reductive interpretations of apophatic theology. According to Thomas, concepts of pure perfections can be asserted in an analogous way about God himself. In this way, they can make us aware of something about his nature. Against Thomas’s analogy thesis the extent of vagueness of divine names is repeatedly raised. This essay shows that the problem lies especially in explaining in a convincing way their non-synonymity and thus their significance as divine names for us. This reveals a fundamental formal discrepancy in human thought and speech with regard to the one and simple God.