Abstract

The essay aims at showing the contribution that the philosophical-theological debate in the 20th century, described in connection with some of its relevant figures and some of its essential moments, has supplied to an adequate elaboration of the theoretical notion of analogy. It dwells first of all upon Erich Przywara’s work Analogia entis which represents the initial and unavoidable step of such debate. Then it refers to the criticisms to Przywara’s position raised by Karl Barth in his Kirchliche Dogmatik and focused on the reference to the notion of analogia fidei. The contribution suggested about this issue by Hans Urs von Balthasar is then considered and analyzed above all in relation to the “classical” monography he dedicated to Barth and with reference to the nexus between Przywara’s analogia entis and Barth’s analogia fidei he investigates. Also in connection to the perspective traced by Eberhard Jungel and with the most recent positions of Przywara himself, the essay outlines in this way a path which moves from the logic to the history, from the principle of non-contradiction as foundation of the analogia entis to the paradoxical contradiction of Christ’s cross, understood as origin of an analogia Christi and put to the centre of the relation of identity and difference between God and man.