THE IMPORTANCE OF EBERHARD JÜNGEL FOR THE ANALOGIA ENTIS DEBATE Ry O. Siggelkow Between the two World Wars, the so-called analogia entis (analogy of being) was famously defended by the Jesuit philosopher-theologian Erich Przywara against the onslaught of attacks it received from Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Despite the ubiquity of the term in theological discourse during the mid-twentieth century, it is now widely acknowledged that the numerous debates that have ensued around the analogia entis have been remarkably confused. On the Protestant side, following Barth, the analogia entis has often been rejected for setting up a formal system that comes too close to subsuming God into creation. On the Catholic side, however, it is commonly argued that the analogia entis does nothing of the sort. Rather, it has been asserted time and time again that the analogia entis is, in fact, intended to protect the sheer otherness of God. In his seminal book God as the Mystery of the World, the Protestant theologian Eberhard Jüngel observes that, paradoxically, the usual Protestant “criticism of the genuinely Catholic doctrine of the so-called ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis) is directed against the very thing against which this doctrine itself is directed.”1 According to Jüngel, clouded by the “early” Barth’s polemics against the analogia entis, Protestant and Catholic discussions have often missed the important shift in Barth’s thought on the subject. In contrast to Barth’s early critique, which interpreted the doctrine as emphasizing an ontological similarity between God’s being and creaturely being, the later Barth, according to Jüngel, “feared that the so-called analogia entis would not do justice to the difference between God and man by overlooking the nearness of God.”2"Fgurkvg"L¯pignÓu"enctkÝections of the later Barth’s understanding of analogy and his own work in moving the discussion of analogy forward, it is still common to hear the same type of polemically-driven discourse between Roman Catholics and Protestants that took place in the mid-twentieth century. The primary purpose of this paper is to respond to and offer a critique of John R. Betz’s recent attempt to resurrect Przywara’s doctrine of the analogia entis. Betz’s failure to engage Jüngel’s work on analogy in his defense of the analogia entis is an evasion of the most pressing and serious critique of Przy1 Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of Theqnqi{"qh"vjg"EtwekÝgf"Qpg"kp"vjg"Fkurwvg"dgvyggp"Cvjgkuo"cpf"Vjgkuo, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 281–282. 2 Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World, 282. Emphases are in the original unless otherwise noted.
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