Review article
Is God similar? Lateran rule of speaking about God
Stjepan Kušar
orcid.org/0000-0001-6262-6197
; Hrvatsko katoličko sveučilište
Abstract
The Fourth Lateran Council formulated a theological rule of analogous speech about God: „The similarity which we notice between the Creator and the creature cannot be so great as to prevent us from detecting a greater dissimilarity, i.e. unlikeness remains greater than likeness”. The interpretation of the rule shows that God’s creation and redemption of man is the basic affirmation of man’s similarity to the Creator. The negative formulation of the rule and „a greater dissimilarity” between them exclude the reverse affirmation so that speech about God signals the ineffable: when speaking about the ineffable God, we do not speak to pronounce God, but not to just keep silent about God.
Keywords
Lateran IV; God; Creator; creature; speech about God; analogy; rule; theology
Hrčak ID:
192648
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2017.
Visits: 1.488 *