‘Theological Metaphysics’ and the Christological Determination of the Principle of Analogy: A Response to John Betz's <i>Christ, the Logos of Creation</i>

Abstract This paper is a response to John Betz's book, Christ, the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics (Emmaus Academic, 2023). The essay confines itself to answering two methodological questions, namely: Does Przywara's approach to analogy indeed represent the basic form (‘ Denkform ’) that analogy has ‘always assumed’ in Catholic dogmatics? The second related question is: Does this form of ‘theological metaphysics’ somehow escape the severe critique of ‘any metaphysics’ represented in the Enlightenment and subsequent theology? We argue that the second question is partly answered in and with the first, namely that no such ‘Catholic Denkform ’ can be firmly identified in the history of Catholic dogmatics and therefore any ‘metaphysical theology’ built upon the analogy of being remains open to the critique of metaphysics in the western philosophical and theological traditions.