A Treatise on True Theology with the Life of Franciscus Junius by Franciscus Junius

Author:Franciscus Junius [Junius, Franciscus]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781601783417
Publisher: Reformation Heritage Books
Published: 2014-10-22T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3

How Many Parts Theology Contains

Even if the meaning of true theology (which we have decided to discuss in this passage) seems to have been shaped as it were by a pattern1 from those matters which we have just shown, nevertheless a certain equivocation still attaches to that very narrow term theology and its definition which we just now employed. We must first make a distinction before we come to a more complete explanation of this theology with which we are dealing. For the significance of this distinction is so great that these very discrepant topics cannot be suitably enough differentiated with the same term, nor can these quite disparate ideas, which we designate with one word, be contained in one genus. Therefore, as those ideas which are explained under the designation theology differ in their whole genus according to nature and their own quality, but fittingly share some qualities by a certain analogy, so also the consonance2 of the term, or equivocation (as it is commonly called) must be established. Nevertheless, we must first also explain in this passage what this equivocation is, because it is not a pure equivocation but an analogical one, as it is popularly named in the schools. We call that a pure equivocation in which there is obviously and completely a differing meaning of those things which are said equivocally. For thus we may speak in the manner of the scholastics. But an analogical equivocation is one in which, of those things which are said equivocally, the meaning is the same in one respect or relatively, and at the same time differs in another respect. Equivocation of this kind quite generally occurs in explaining the terms for divine and human matters.

According to this homonymy, therefore, which we call analogical, we establish the method of theology as twofold in these words:

Thesis 6: This theology is either archetypal, undoubtedly the wisdom of God Himself, or it is ectypal, having been fashioned by God.

First we must set out the signification of this analogical division, then indeed demonstrate its necessity. Its signification is as follows: theology, which is talked about in our discourse, is one, οὐσιώδη καὶ ἄκτιζον, that is, essential and uncreated.3 For the sake of instruction then, we will call this theology in our brief essay archetypal or prototypical.4 But the other kind we designate συμβεβηκυῖαν καὶ κτιζήν, that is, nonessential and created, or dispositional; this you might also conveniently call ectypal, as a certain copy and, rather, shadowy image of the formal, divine, and essential theological image. And indeed this archetypal theology seems to me once to have been called by the orthodox fathers exemplary. God has fashioned the second kind of theology on the model of the divine and immutable exemplar, proportionally to the creatures’ capacity. More contemporary authorities have designated the former theology as in relation to itself, and the second one as relative. The one theology is the very same thing as unbounded wisdom,5 which God possesses concerning His own person and

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