Book Symposium

Faith, Doctrine, and Experience in Analogical Metaphysics

Stephen M. Fields, SJ

Issue 4

Volume 1

pp. 893 - 917

https://doi.org/10.65172/vA9UAiUjMWLM2Umx

Abstract

Stephen M. Fields, SJ, examines John Betz’s model of analogical metaphysics, which synthesizes faith and reason through the Logos. Fields explores how analogy serves as a transcendental condition for Christianity, enabling an "analogously analogous" synthesis that transforms philosophical categories through the Incarnation. By drawing on Pierre Rousselot and Karl Rahner, he demonstrates how analogical metaphysics integrates religious experience and doctrine, thereby obviating liberal solipsism while maintaining the integrity of both nature and grace.

Citations

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Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 17.

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my Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature, Grace, and Modernity (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016)

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Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: Seabury, 1977), 250.

Pierre Rousselot, Intelligence: Sense of Being, Faculty of God, trans. Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1999), 52–53.

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Pierre Rousselot, The Eyes of Faith, trans. Joseph Donceel, SJ (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 25.

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Edward Schillebeeckx, Revelation and Theology, vol. 2, trans. N.D. Smith (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1968), 30–75.

Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 42

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Graham Long, Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism (Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2004), 10, 36.

Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes, December 7, 1965, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 2:1060–1135, at 1109.

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