Calvin and Przywara's Analogia Entis: A New Start for an Old Debate

Abstract

This paper brings the thought of John Calvin into dialogue with Erich Przywara's Analogia Entis in order to reboot the Reformed-Catholic dialogue on the analogy of being, which Karl Barth has tended to dominate. The paper begins by distilling from Analogia Entis, and explicating, nine key principles that express Przywara's understanding of the analogy of being (Part I). It then turns to the relationship between God and creation expressed in Calvin's Institutes 1.1–5, demonstrating that in these crucial opening chapters Calvin explicitly affirms his own version of each of these nine principles save one, which he explicitly endorses elsewhere in the Institutes (Part II). Based on this analysis, the paper proposes that the relationship between Calvin and Przywara ought best to be viewed as one of dissimilarity amid greater similarity and that Calvin be retrieved as a fruitful resource for Reformed-Catholic détente on the issue of ontology.