he Jüngel Book: Eberhard Jüngel on Parabolic Truths and the Analogia Fidei Seth Hart The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you.”
he Problems with Analogy Jüngel believes that modern aporia and atheism can be traced directly to the failures of the medieval scholastic tradition of a metaphysically necessary God.5 he justiication for this claim comes in Jüngel’s linking of Immanuel Kant with Thomas Aquinas. Kant, according to Jüngel, was dependent upon Aquinas’s system of analogy in his attempt to predicate God, and what Kant revealed was that Aquinas’s system, which combined the analogy of proportionality with the analogy of intrinsic attribution, left the essence of God unknowable. 6 The analog y of proportionality relies upon a comparison of two relations (an attribute applies only in proportion to the appearance of that attribute in like kind) while the analogy of intrinsic attribution notes a likeness between two analogates, while stressing that one holds the predicate primarily while the other does so imperfectly (“healthy” can be used for both a person and for food, but food is called healthy only secondarily, in that it is merely the cause of health in an individual). Aquinas’s formula for analogy, however, meant that God could only be known through his relations to the world. his Kant called “symbolical anthropomorphisms.” 7 Human predication of God was merely symbolic and did not deine God in his being intrinsically. This left theology open for the later atheistic critiques of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche. 8 An unknown God was one step shy of a nonexistent God. Jüngel
—Matthew 13:10–11 NIV
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berhard Jüngel (b. 1934) is perhaps the most inf luential voice in the discussion of a Protesta nt a na log y of faith, or analogia fidei, since K a rl Ba r t h. 1 Like Barth, Jüngel has been interested in crafting a responsible theological method for predicating the divine. 2 The Protestant t r ad it ion h a s nor m a l ly re si ste d t he grounding of analogical descriptions of God on creation. Following Luther, theological predication centred not on an analogy of being (analogia entis) but on the person of Christ. his has since been known as the analogy of faith (analogia idei). Developing the presuppositions laid out in Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, Jüngel’s christocentric approach attempts to rectify modernity’s philosophical critique of the possibility of theology.3 His proposed solution, an analogy of advent, is grounded upon the capacity of metaphor and parable to carry the full weight of the theological task.4 he success or failure of his endeavor rests primarily on his analysis of parable and metaphor as they relate to the person of Jesus Christ. Can Jüngel’s treatment therefore provide a foundation from which to derive an analogia idei? 25
Seth Hart is from the small town of Neosho, Missouri. Before studying at Regent, he served in a church in Phoenix, Arizona, while completing a Master of Strategic Ministry. After completing his MATS with a concentration in Interdisciplinary Studies, Seth will begin doctoral studies in science and religion at the University of Oxford.