Triplex Via
Triplex Via (lit. from Latin: threefold way) describes a traditional teaching in philosophical theology about types of speech about God: A distinction is made between statements that refer to God's effects (per causalitatem); Statements which keep misunderstandings away from God and negate them (per remotionem); Statements that go beyond misunderstandings to a higher meaning than we can understand (per eminentiam). The doctrine has origins in Middle Platonism and can already be found in Christian theologians of the 2nd / 3rd Century, then with Pseudo-Dionysius and very many medieval theologians.
To characterize the applicability of our concepts and words to God, three types of relation are classically used: similitude (univok), different meaning (equivok), similar meaning (analog). Elaborations of what is known as a theory of analogy tie in with statements made by Aristotle and Boethius and discuss similarities with regard to the observable effects, the conceptual relationships (“proportions”) and the like. Ä. In the context of so-called apophatic or " negative " theology, the human inability to adequately understand or name God is particularly accentuated.
The fourth Lateran Council has 1215 words, "between the Creator and the creature can not detect any so similar that no even greater dissimilarity would determine between them." This formula is still conducting in front of the Catholic theology.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Heinrich Denzinger : “Compendium of creeds and church teaching decisions”. Improved, expanded, translated into German and edited by Peter Hünermann with the assistance of Helmut Hoping. Freiburg 37th edition 1991, No. 806.