The Return of Thomistic Political Philosophy, Part II

Here is the second part of our interview with Raymond Dennehy about two recently re-issued works of Jacques Maritain’s political philosophy, Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and Natural Law. You can read the first part of the interview here.

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Thomistica.net: What is the relevance of these books to the political and cultural scene in the US and Europe and elsewhere in the world?

Dr. Dennehy: Again, permit me to recall what I wrote in the book’s foreword:

The decision to reissue the single-volume edition of Jacques Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and Natural Law could hardly have come at a more urgent time, a time when, perhaps as never before, the future of democracy hangs in the balance. That Maritain wrote them back in the 1940s, in answer to the Fascist and Communist attacks on democracy, human rights, and Christianity, does nothing to diminish their timeliness. Yes, Fascism and Communism have been defeated, but the secularization of the West that fuels the treats to Christianity and human freedom continue unabated. Consider, for example, the absence of any reference to God in the European Union’s constitution; the legal challenges to the phrases ‘under God’ in our Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on our currency; the British law that forbids teachers in Catholic schools from teaching that homosexuality is immoral; the astonishing success of the homosexual agenda in the United States, Europe, and Latin America in legalizing same-sex “marriage”; and (to borrow then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s characterization) the “atomic bomb” that was dropped on democracy in 1973 – the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision and its logical consequences: laboratory reproduction and human embryo stem-cell research. The right to life is the most fundamental and important of all rights. The other rights of speech, worship, assembly, etc., are important because there can be no political society worthy of human beings without them; however, the primacy of the right to life comes down to this: if one does not have life, one does not have anything, let alone rights. A government that fails to respect the right to life can hardly be expected to respect any other rights and certainly cannot be accused of inconsistency for failing to do so.

In the long run, the most devastating of these assaults on human dignity and freedom is the movement now underway to relegate Christianity to a backwater subculture of crosses and candles. To be sure, these other assaults directly attack the pillars of democracy: freedom of religion and speech, the right to life, the meaning of marriage and family life. But, as Maritain argues in both Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and Natural Law the ideals of modern democracy are Christian in origin and the values of Christianity energize its institutions. Thereby hangs a tale. Attempts to establish religion without God do not succeed. John Dewey’s A Common Faith is a case in point. If there can be no religion without God, it follows that there can be no Christianity without God; and if there can thus be no Christianity, can there be democracy?

Thomistica.net: Some Catholic thinkers have criticized the notion of human rights, Alasdair MacIntyre for instance. How do you think Maritain would respond to critiques like MacIntyre’s?

Dr. Dennehy: I have not read MacIntyre in some years, but my initial thought is that Maritain would respond to the communitarian argument in two ways. First, he would point out that the “society of free men” that he describes and defends is not individualist in the way that advocates of the laisssez faire conceived of society as a kind of heap of individuals struggling to ascend to the top and whose obligations to society were negatively conceived as not harming others by force, fraud, or intimidation. Maritain argues, on the contrary, that a society of free men has four characteristics; it is personalist, communal rather than individualistic, pluralist, and Christian or at least Theist. Thus for Maritain a society worthy of free persons must not only be just but also commit itself to “civic friendship.” The second way that Maritain would reply to the communitarians is to call attention to the rights of the person as ontologically grounded in human nature in virtue of what it means to be a human being. The exigencies of the human person arise from that ontological fact: each human being is not simply a part of society but a whole as well. Unlike animal groups, human society has a common good, which Maritain describes as a moral good that pertains to society as a whole and yet flows over each of its members. If I am qualified to teach philosophy, society can compel me to teach the subject, but it cannot compel me to teach a particular philosophy as true. The reason is that each of us is a whole in himself has been created by God to exist by his own free will. Maritain borrows here from Aquinas who argues that just as the runner strives to win the race but cannot put all that he is and has in the effort to win (he knowledge of astronomy and the Bible, e.g.), so the person cannot put all that he is and has into serving society (his knowledge of God, the desire to know the truth, and to increase his “freedom of personal expansion,” e.g.). Thus, for Maritain, the rights of the person follow from the nature of the person.

The second book in this volume, The Rights of Man and the Natural Law, contain seminal references to the human person that Maritain will develop more fully in his book, The Person and the Common Good, which appeared in print about 1948.

Thomistica.net When did you become interested in Maritain? What has been the focus of your research in Maritain?

Dr. Dennehy: I first read Maritain while an undergraduate at the University of San Francisco, having been taught philosophy by a series of Thomists there. While in my doctoral studies at the University of Toronto, I read Jacques Maritain, mainly his Degrees of Knowledge. I was searching for a philosophical basis for human rights, which basis I stumbled upon on in The Person and the Common Good. That was his notion of subsistence, which served as the foundation of my doctoral dissertation, The Subject as the Metaphysical Ground of Maritain’s Personalism.

I am a founding member of the American Maritain Association and served as its president for seven years.

The Return of Thomistic Political Philosophy, Part I

                                              

Two volumes of Jacques Maritain’s political philosophy are being re-issued by Ignatius Press. The books in question, Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and the Natural Law, are being released as a single volume. We spoke with Raymond Dennehy, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco and author of the foreword to the re-issue. Below is the first part of that interview. Part two of the interview will appear shortly.

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Thomistica.net: When were Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and the Natural Law originally published?

Dr. Dennehy: Both works were published in French in New York by Editions de la Maison Francaise, Les Droits de l’ Homme et la Loi Naturelle in 1942 and Christianisme et Democratie in 1943.

Thomistica.net: Could you tell us something about the context of these books? Why did Maritain write them? How do they relate to his other work, including his other work in political theory?

Dr. Dennehy: When the outbreak of World War II made it impossible for Maritain and his wife to return to France from his lecture tour in Canada and the United States, he continued to support his countrymen by working with the Free French in New York City. Through radio addresses and publications, he called the attention of Americans to the condition of the French people, appealing for food and money for French relief. Throughout the war, Maritain also worked with the New School in New York City, producing works of a more philosophical and scholarly nature on the subjects of democracy, totalitarianism, and human rights, such as Les Droits de l ‘Homme et la Loi Naturelle; miniature editions of Christianisme et Democratie were dropped by British Royal Air Force planes over occupied France in 1944.

One way that these works relate to other of Maritain’s works is that the theme of the relation between philosophy and faith constitutes an idee fixe in his writings. Consider, for example, his Integral Humanism, the chapter in his Man and the State entitled “The Democratic Charter,” Scholasticism and Politics, and An Essay on Christian Philosophy. Maritain was convinced that the ideals of modern democracy are Christian in origin and that the values of Christianity energize its institutions. (See my foreword in the Ignatius Press edition of Christianity and Democracy and The Rights of Man and the Natural Law for an account of how Maritain sees the relation between faith and speculative philosophy and faith and practical philosophy and thus for what he understands the term “Christian philosophy” to mean.)

None of which diminishes Maritain’s personal drama in reconciling faith and reason. Despairing of ever finding truth (their teachers at the Sorbonne were skeptics and materialists), Maritain and his wife, Raissa, entered into a suicide pact: if they could not find meaning in materialism within one year, they would kill themselves. Fortunately, their discovery of the lectures of Henri Bergson at the College de France showed them that the human mind could transcend the physic-mathematical symbols of mechanistic science and know reality as it is in itself. Bergson’s doctrine, seemed to Maritain and his circle, to promise a new metaphysics: “…Bergson revived the worth and dignity of metaphysics in the minds of his listners, minds engaged in their sorrow by agnosticism or materialism, when he said, with an unforgettable emphasis, to those minds brought up in the most depressing pseudo-scientific relativism, ‘it is in the absolute that we live and move and have our being.’”

While strongly attracted to Bergson’s doctrine of intuition, Maritain eventually arrived at the point where he could no longer accept Bergson’s critique of the concept and his identification of the real with absolute becoming. It was, interestingly enough, Martain’s conversion to Catholicism that led him to this repudiation. The Maritains were baptized in the Catholic Church in 1906. Leon Bloy was their godfather. With his introduction to Catholic doctrine, Maritain found himself unable to square Bergson’s critique of the concept with the “conceptual pronouncements of the religious faith.” The precise difficulty was this: God presents the transcendent truths of revelation, truths that are “inaccessible to our reason,” in the form of conceptual propositions. Now if, as Bergson contends, the concept is incapable of grasping the real as it is and is only a practical instrument for symbolizing it, then Divine revelation is impossible. Maritain rejected this conclusion, concluding instead that the Bergsonian critique of the concept rests on an error.

This moment in Maritain’s life testifies to his personal integrity. Entering the Church with the conviction that philosophy contained inherent errors that made it incompatible with revealed truth, he was prepared to abandon the intellectual life altogether. What was at stake here was Maritain’s search for absolute truth, and, believing that this was found only in Christian doctrine and that philosophy was essentially incompatible with that doctrine, he would give up his philosophical interests. For two years after his conversion, Maritain gave himself over mainly to the study of theology and religion.

Although his initial reasons for repudiating Bergsonism were theological, there were also philosophical ones. Like Bergson, he wished to defend our direct and veridical knowledge of the real in all its dynamism and diversity; but, unlike him, he sought to defend the conditions of intelligibility, viz., conceptual knowledge, on the ground that otherwise we could have no knowledge at all. His introduction to the writings of Thomas Aquinas in 1908, thanks to Father Clerissac, provided him with metaphysical and epistemological principles that persuaded him that his position on the concept was philosophically defensible and reconcilable with divine revelation.

Thomistica.net: What is Maritain’s thesis in Christianity and Democracy? What is his thesis in The Rights of Man and the Natural Law?

Dr. Dennehy: Maritain’s main thesis in Christianity and Democracy is, as I stated above, that the ideals of modern democracy are Christian in origin and that the values of Christianity energize its institutions. However, as Donald Gallagher points out in his global introduction to the volume, besides offering support for the war effort against Nazi Germany, the two books contain a number of ideas central to Maritain’s philosophy; “ideas whose ramifications extend to every aspect of philosophy and which are inspired by theology.” Among them the reader will find ideas and themes that include “the dignity of the human person, the person and the common good, the rights of the person and natural law, organic and personalist democracy, equality and the free society, the ‘terminal freedom’ of autonomy and fulfillment, the inspiration of the Gospel in the socio-temporal order. All these are expressed trenchantly in Christianity and Democracy and Rights of Man and are developed fully in works published by Jacques Maritain in the 1940s and early 1950s.”

A sinner free from a key dimension of concupiscence?

It is often asked why God deprived us of the gift of freedom from concupiscence. Many and various explanations have been offered. These are not contrary one to another but can be complementary.

I’m wondering whether the following has ever been proposed. But first, I will be more precise by what I mean by the preternatural gift of freedom from concupiscence. I mean precisely the having of despotic (or quasi-despotic) control over the passions, such that no passion would arise except at the command of the will and that a passion willed would arise at the will’s command.

Were God not to have deprived us of this gift, then we could have been all the more wicked sinners. The lack of despotic control over passions deprives us of a kind of dominion that, were we to enjoy it while yet being wicked of will, we could sin more greviously and more cleverly than we can when our passions are in some measure unhinged from our wills, so that our own bodies through these passions betray us. They betray our own intentions. They also betray us publicly (think, e.g. of lie detector tests). Just picture wicked sinners with despotic control over their passions. 

2012 ACPA Meeting Call for Papers: Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions

The next meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association will be November 2-4, 2012 in Los Angeles, hosted by Loyola Marymount University. The theme of the conference is “Philosophy in the Abrahamic Traditions”:

Classical and Post-Classical Philosophy in the Greek tradition played powerful roles in the formation of philosophical, scientific and theological thought produced in the religious and cultural milieux of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The scriptures, theologies and fundamental concerns of these Abrahamic religious traditions have reciprocally enriched the development of both religious thought and secular philosophy and science, by prompting ethical, metaphysical and epistemological questions that have continued to challenge philosophers from the time of Philo up to the present day. While political conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries have led to a public emphasis on distinctions and differences among these faiths, the history of philosophy shows over the centuries that thinkers of each tradition share in the common purpose of seeking to reconcile the principles and insights of their beliefs with the truths of secular natural reason. Through argument and counter argument philosophers and theologians have engaged their peers and predecessors inside and outside their own faith traditions, in order to advance to more and more sophisticated and penetrating analyses of faith principles, philosophy, and truth. For our 2012 meeting I propose that we take the occasion to enter into the same sorts of engagements within and across specific historical and religious boundaries, without topical restriction, so that we may come to better understand the richness of our own tradition and the commonalities of thinkers of the religions of the Abrahamic traditions.

Papers in any area of philosophy are also considered. The deadline for electronic paper submissions has been extended to April 12, 2012. The conference website is here, and paper submission guidelines are here.

The Salmanticenses Enter the Digital Age

Thanks to the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, the Cursus Theologicus of the Salamanca Discalced Carmelites is now available eletronically via the Internet Archive. The Cursus, based on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae and originally intended as a textbook for Carmelite theology students, was put together by various authors and editors during most of the 17th century and completed at the beginning of the 18th century. The version digitized by PIMS is the twenty volume edition published in Paris between 1870 and 1883. Three volumes seem to be missing, however: 6, 7, and 15.

New Document from the International Theological Commission

Yesterday the International Theological Commission published a new document entitled “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria.” Work began on the document in 2004. Here is a summary of its content from the press release:

The document examines a number of contemporary theological issues and sets forth, in light of the foundational principles of theology, methodological criteria which must be considered decisive for Catholic theology vis-à-vis other related disciplines, such as the religious sciences. The text is divided into three chapters: theology presupposes attentive listening to the word of God accepted in faith (chapter 1); it is practised in communion with the Church (chapter 2); and its aim is to ground a scientific approach to God’s truth within a horizon of authentic wisdom (chapter 3).

Happy Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, Again

On January 28 I wished our readers a happy feast day as it was Aquinas’s liturgical feast according to the calendar of Paul VI. But, as I also noted in that post, March 7 is Aquinas’s feast day on the old calendar. Since both calendars are in force in the Roman Rite I see no reason why we cannot celebrate Aquinas’s liturgical feast twice.

In the past Aquinas’s feast was observed on March 7, the day on which he died in 1274 at the abbey of Fossanova, where he had stopped after taking ill on his way with Reginald of Piperno to the second Council of Lyons.

It should be mentioned that January 28 is also a significant date. Aquinas’s relics were translated to the Dominican church in Toulouse on that date in 1369.

Metaphysics in the Thought of Alfarabi

On Thursday, March 15th Dr. Joshua Parens, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, will deliver a lecture titled “The Place of Metaphysics in Alfarabi’s Thought.”

The Ernest L. Fortin Lecture Series is directed by Dr. Marc D. Guerra and sponsored by Ave Maria University, Berry College, and the Stuck with Virtue Conference Series. 

The lecture will take place at 5:00pm in the Student Union Ballroom on the campus of Ave Maria University.

For more information contact marc.guerra@avemaria.edu

New English Translation of De Potentia from Oxford

Oxford University Press is projecting the publication of a new English edition of the De Potentia for this summer. Veteran translator of Aquinas, Richard J. Regan, SJ, of Fordham University is producing the translation. In some ways this will replace the old translation of 1932 by Lawrence Shapcote, OP, which has been out of print for years. But in some ways it won’t replace it. I was disappointed to see that the new translation will be abridged. Here is the explanation for this move from the OUP website:

However, the De Potentia is a very long work indeed (the 1932 translation fills three volumes), and a full translation would be a difficult publishing proposition as well as a challenge to any translator. Recognizing this fact, while wishing to make a solid English version of the De Potentia available, Fr. Richard Regan has produced this abridgement, which passes over some of the full text while retaining what seems most important when it comes to following the flow of Aquinas’s thought.

The information at the OUP site puts the page count of Fr. Regan’s abridgement at 368, which, admittedly, is still quite generous. The 1952 Newman Press unabridged single volume edition of the Shapcote translation comes to 476 pages. Is that really too much for OUP? One might guess that OUP, although they are a nonprofit, is concerned about the bottom line. That would not be an irrelevant consideration. After all, OUP would like to stay in business and we would like them to stay in business too. Their service to the academic world is invaluable. But consider the fact that in December they published — to take a random example — F.C. Beiser’s The German Historicist Tradition, a 608 page tome. While I would personally be interested in reading Beiser’s book, I cannot imagine that it would wildly outsell an unabridged version of the De Potentia. So why shortchange the latter?

No doubt there are factors of which I am unaware. Are they insurmountable? Perhaps there is still time for OUP to reconsider.

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UPDATE: Michael Dougherty notes in his comment below that the Shapcote translation for the De Potentia has been brought back into print by Wipf and Stock and is also available online in HTTP format. These observations make me further question the value of the upcoming abridged Oxford translation.

Two Anniversaries

Father Kurt Pritzl, a true son of St. Dominic, dies natalis Feb. 21, 2011.  

“May He support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done! Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at the last!” 

From “Wisdom and Innocence”, a sermon of Bl. John Henry Newman, born Feb. 21, 1801.

The 10th Anniversary of the Dallas Medieval Text Series

2012 marks the ten year anniversary of the commencement of a capacious publishing project in the area of Medieval Studies.  In ten short years, The Dallas Medieval Text Series, under the sturdy editorial guidance of Dr. Philipp Rosemann, has brought twelve substantial medieval works into English, with three more soon to be released.  The volumes are published by Peeters Press in Louvain, Belgium.  Congratulations to Dr. Rosemann and his collaborators for their outstanding work.  Below is some further information from the project’s website:

Launched in 2002, the Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations series pursues an ambitious goal: to build a library of medieval Latin texts, with English translations, from the period roughly between 500 and 1500, which will represent the whole breadth and variety of medieval civilization. Thus, the series is open to all subjects and genres, ranging from poetry and history through philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to treatises on natural science. It will include, as well, medieval Latin versions of Arabic and Hebrew works. Placing these texts side by side, rather than dividing them in terms of the boundaries of contemporary academic disciplines, will, we hope, contribute to a better understanding of the complex coherence and interrelatedness of the many facets of medieval written culture.

Published Volumes

• DMTT, vol. 1: Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber contra Wolfelmum. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Ziomkowski. xvi-152 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1192-5, 40 €/US$58;

• DMTT, vol. 2: Ranulph Higden, Ars componendi sermones. Translated by Margaret Jennings and Sally A. Wilson. Introduction and Notes by Margaret Jennings. x-76 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1242-7, 24 €/US$36;

• DMTT, vol. 3: Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on “De Mystica Theologia.” Edition, Translation, and Introduction by James McEvoy. xii-139 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1310-3, 35 €/US$51;

• DMTT, vol. 4: A Thirteenth-Century Textbook of Mystical Theology at the University of Paris: The “Mystical Theology” of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eriugena’s Latin Translation with the Scholia translated by Anastasius the Librarian and Excerpts from Eriugena’s “Periphyseon.” Edition, Translation, and Introduction by L. Michael Harrington. xii-127 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1394-3, 30 €/US$43;

• DMTT, vol. 5: Henry of Ghent’s “Summa”: The Questions on God’s Existence and Essence (Articles 21-24).Translation by Jos Decorte and Roland J. Teske, S.J. Latin Text, Introduction, and Notes by Roland J. Teske, S.J. x-290 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1590-9, 35 €/US$51;

• DMTT, vol. 6: Henry of Ghent’s “Summa”: The Questions on God’s Unity and Simplicity (Articles 25-30).Latin Text, Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Roland J. Teske, S.J. xi-388 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1811-5, 45 €/US$66;

• DMTT, vol. 7: Viking Attacks on Paris: The “Bella parisiacae urbis” of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.Edition, Translation, and Introduction by Nirmal Dass. x-130 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-1916-7, 35 €/US$51;

• DMTT, vol. 8: William of Saint-Amour, De periculis novissimorum temporum. Edition, Translation, and Introduction by G. Geltner. xiv-157 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2010-1, 37 €/US$54;

• DMTT, vol. 9: Albert of Saxony, Quaestiones circa logicam (Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic). Introduction, Translation, and Notes by Michael J. Fitzgerald. x-261 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2074-3, 42 €/US$61;

• DMTT, vol. 10: Thomas Bradwardine, Insolubilia. Edition, Translation, and Introduction by Stephen Read. ix-227 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2317-1, 39 €/US$57;

• DMTT, vol. 11:Hildegard of Bingen, Two Hagiographies: Vita sancti Rupperti confessoris/Vita sancti Dysibodi episcopi. Introduction and English Translation by Hugh Feiss, O.S.B. Latin Edition by Christopher P. Evans. x-163 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2318-8, 35€/US$51.

Just Published

• DMTT, vol. 12: On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: The Thirteenth-Century Textbook Edition. Edition, Translation, and Introduction by L. Michael Harrington. xiv-296 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2481-9, 45€/US$66.

In Press

• DMTT, vol. 13.1: Ranulph Higden, “Speculum curatorum”/A Mirror for Curates, Book I: The Commandments. Introduction, Edition, and Translation by Eugene Crook and Margaret Jennings. Ca. xv-417 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2487-1;

• DMTT, vol. 14: Robert Grosseteste at Munich: The “Abbreviatio” by Frater Andreas, O.F.M., of the Commentaries by Robert Grosseteste on the Pseudo-Dionysius.Edition, Translation, and Introduction by James McEvoy. Prepared for Publication by Philipp W. Rosemann. Ca. x-131 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2560-1;

• DMTT, vol. 15: Boncompagno da Signa, Amicitia and De malo senectutis et senii. Edition, Translation, and Introduction by Michael W. Dunne. Ca. ix-166 pp., ISBN 978-90-429-2608-0.

Thoughts on "A Long Way to Go"

Our Thomist confrere and savant, Dr. Christopher Malloy, raises penetrating questions regarding the analogy of being and analogical predication of God, engaging some of the matter of my recent book, Analogia Entis:  On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith.  With customary insight, he cuts to the quick of the matter, and the brief remarks ensuing are an effort to engage his analysis as adequately and accurately as possible.  

Here is one summary expression of his question:  

AND SO MY QUESTION IN A NUTSHELL: As analogy is analogous, so analogy of proportionality is analogous (and in various ways). ***Is not one way in which it is analogous the inclusion of proportion (as a one way street way) within the analogy of proportionality, not as totally subsumed by it but as included in it in a way that, while proportionality negates the “two way” movement (the blasphemous determination of God with respect to creature), yet the proportion still communicates NOT ONLY a relation of proportions (As man is to what is his, so God is to what is his) BUT ALSO a proportion of one to another (man’s being to God’s being)? 

My answer in brief—inviting comments from one and all—is as follows.  

I don’t think this question involves a mistake.  Rather, it grasps the reason why those who have deemed the analogy of being (as an analogy of proper proportionality) to be foundational—to be the evidentiary basis upon which causal wisdom supervenes in the demonstrations of the truth of the proposition that God exists—have nonetheless thought it contained a virtual analogy of proportion.  It contains a virtual analogy of proportion because, as you note, while there is no strict proportion between divine and created perfection, there is a comparison of any one thing with any other owing to the real relation of creature to Creator.  However, given that there is not any determined relation of God to creature, when we affirm the real ordering of creature to Creator we must mentally subtract what the formulation humanly seems to imply about God, namely that God has a real determined relation to the creature.  This is to translate the virtual proportion—the realization of the real ordering of creature to God and the comparison of creature to God as one to another—back into the analogy of proportionality, precisely because we must maintain the “one way street” ordering of creature to God, must not suppose that the perfections predicated of God comprehend God or measure God (for as Thomas expressly says in the ST, these perfections incomprehend God and are exceeded by God, and this is the very reason why analogy of proportionality is necessary with respect to the divine names, because howsoever real is the ordering of creature to God, everything that is said of God is said by way of identity with His simple substance, and God has no real determined relation to the creature).  Genuine proportion requires more than one way order, and—affirmed with respect of the relation of creature to God—we must nonetheless negate real determined relation of God to creature, which is to retranslate the analogy of virtual or transferred proportion (proportionis translatum) into the analogy of proportionality. 

Another way of viewing this:  the formal analogy of being will not do our causal reasoning for us, and the relation of effect to cause is always attributive (the effect is attributed to the cause).  But normally this implies a reciprocal relation or determinate proportion of cause to effect and here there is absolutely none.  That is why it is a virtual attribution or proportion, because God is not really and determinately related to the creature, and formally we do not directly know Ipsum Esse subsistens per se merely by knowing that there must be a reality which is the full perfection of act unlimited by potency. We know that God is the full perfection of act with no potency whatsoever, but knowing the truth of this proposition is not to know the full perfection of act itself and directly: rather we know only the true proposition that God is.

The causal analysis is nested within and founded upon the formal analogy of being as a likeness of diverse rationes of act limited by potency; this causal analysis (which moves from composite to simple, from act limited by potency to Actus Purus) discerns the necessary dependence of creature upon God, and the real ordering of creature toward God.  We cannot avoid the cognitive limitations of our understanding and language, and these insights are expressed as attributive and affirming a proportion.  But because the attribution is one way, and the proportion is one way, we must translate it back into proper proportionality, which preserves the absolute transcendence of God.  The perception that the creature is really ordered to God is retained as a causal inference proceeding from the creature’s clear reception of existential act, expressed in a virtual analogy of attribution and a virtual analogy of proportion.  But any actual proportion is not only one way:  if I say that the nickel is half the dime, the dime is twice the nickel; but there is no such strict proportion that encompasses creature and God, while nonetheless we can affirm as you say the “one way” order, the creature’s real dependence on and ordering toward God.  Likewise, we can attribute creatures to God in that they depend on God, and are ordered toward God:  but God is not really ordered toward, or dependent upon, the creature.  Normally if one says “that hat is Steve’s” one could also say Steven has this hat.  But when we try this with respect to creature and God, the “God has the creature” is a conceptual relation, because creation is absolutely free and there is no real determined relation of God to creature. This is again a function of the truth that everything affirmed of God is affirmed by way of identity with His simple substance, but it is not the essence of God that He cause “Steve”—I am not a necessary emanation from God.  Indeed, the causing of Steve is wholly ad extra with respect to the divine Good, as is the causing of any and all created being and good whatsoever.  The proper name of God is not “Cause of Steve” or even “Cause of the Universe” although God is the cause of the universe because it depends wholly on God.  The truth is that naturally, we cannot grasp a reality so perfect that its free and unnecessitated act is wholly ab extra and implies no change in the agent.  This is another aspect of the absolute transcendence of God.  The important thing to note here is that the causal knowledge of God is rooted in the analogy of being understood as an analogy of proper proportionality—it proceeds from the evidence of diverse rationes of act as limited by potency; and, while retaining the causal insight into the real ordering of the creature, we are never free to imply a determined relation of Creator to creature, and so all strict proportion is negated.  Thus, these analogies of effect to cause and of one to another are analogies of transferred proportion, of virtual attribution and proportion.  But they require to be properly understood that we mentally retranslate them into proper proportionality while retaining the causal knowledge—predicated on the analogy of being—of the real ordering of creature to God.  As the Lateran Council affirmed, there is a likeness of creature to God which always is exceeded by a greater unlikeness.