Book Symposium

Analogy, Agape, and Metaxological Metaphysics: Thoughts on John Betz’s Christ, the Logos of Creation

William Desmond

Abstract

William Desmond reflects on John Betz's Christ, the Logos of Creation, defending metaphysics as an indispensable companion to theology. He explores the interplay between Betz’s Przywarian analogy and his own "metaxological" philosophy, which emphasizes the dynamic "betweening" of being. By examining the relationship between analogy and agape, Desmond highlights a "community-in-difference" that respects divine transcendence while affirming the surplus generosity and porous intimacy of the God-world relation.

Citations

God the Geometer, Codex Vindobonensis 2554, c. 1220–30.

God and the Between (207–22)

Being and the Between (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995), 207–22.

God and the Between (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 122–28.

Desmond, Being and the Between, 207–22

John Betz, Christ, the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2023).

Being and the Between, 214–16

God and the Between

Plato, Republic 511e.

Augustine, Confessions 3.6.11.

Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1996), 204.

“Truth, Theft and Gift: Thoughts on Alētheia,” in Filozofia 79, no. 4 (2024): 351–64.

“Analogy, Dialectic, and Divine Transcendence: Between St. Thomas and Hegel,” in The Intimate Strangeness of Being: Metaphysics after Dialectic (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012) 4–26.

“Analogy and the Fate of Reason,” in The Voiding of Being: The Doing and Undoing of Metaphysics in Modernity (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 49–95.