Human Being as Primary Analogate of Being: Reflections on Blanchette's

Professor Blanchette proposes taking human being as the primary analogate for metaphysics. I would modify this by taking, as primary analogate, the pattern of operations by which human persons are related to the totality of being. In this way the primary analogate in metaphysics is sublated in what theology names the imago Dei, and forms the basis for analogically conceiving God as an infinite act of understanding love, and the Trinitarian processions as the immanent terms of those operations. The continuity between metaphysical and theological inquiry is thus secured not only by a shared analogical procedure but also by a common analogate.