It is impossible to say that something is predicated univocally of a creature and God because in all univocal predication the nature signified by the name is common to those of whom the univocal predication is made. Hence, from the point of view of the nature signified by the predicate, the subjects of the univocal predication are equal, even though from the point of view of its real existence one may take precedence over another. For example, all numbers are equal from the point of view of the nature of number, even though, by the nature of things, one number is naturally prior to another. No matter how much a creature imitates God, however, a point cannot be reached where something would belong to it for the same reason it belongs to God. For things which have the same formal characters but are in separate subjects are common to the same subjects in regard to substance or quiddity but distinct in regard to the act of being. But whatever is in God is His own act of being; and just as His essence is the same as His act of being, so is His knowledge the same as His act of being a knower. Hence, since the act of existence proper to one thing cannot be communicated to another, it is impossible that a creature ever attain to the possession of something in the same manner in which God has it, just as it is impossible for it to attain the same act of being as that which God has. The same is true of us. If man and to exist as man did not differ in Socrates, man could not be predicated univocally of him and Plato, whose acts of existing are distinct.

Nevertheless, it cannot be said that whatever is predicated of God and creatures is an equivocal predication; for, unless there were at least some real agreement between creatures and God, His essence would not be the likeness of creatures, and so He could not know them by knowing His essence. Similarly, we would not be able to attain any knowledge of God from creatures, nor from among the names devised for creatures could we apply one to Him more than another; for in equivocal predication it makes no difference what name is used, since the word does not signify any real agreement.

Consequently, it must be said that knowledge is predicated neither entirely univocally nor yet purely equivocally of God's knowledge and ours. Instead, it is said according to an analogy, or, in other words, according to a proportion. But an agreement according to proportion can happen in two ways, and according to these two, a community of analogy can be noted. There is a certain agreement between those things for which there is a proportion to each other from the fact that they have a determinate distance between, or some other relation to each other, just as two [has a relation] to unity because it is its double. Also, an agreement is sometimes noted, not of two things to each other, between which there is a proportion, but rather of two proportions to each other – just as six agrees with four because just as six is the double of three, so four is the double of two. The first mode of agreement, therefore, is one of proportion; but the second, of proportionality.

Hence, also according to the mode of the first agreement, we find something said analogously of two [things] of which one has a relation to the other, just as "a being" is predicated of substance and accident from the relation that accident has to substance, and "healthy" is predicated of urine and animal from the fact that urine has some relation to the health of an animal. But sometimes something is said analogously in the second mode of agreement, just as the term "sight" is predicated of bodily sight and of the intellect because just as sight is in the eye so understanding is in the mind.

Because therefore in those [things] that are said analogously in the first mode, there must be some determinate relation between the [things] to which there is something common through analogy, through this mode, it is impossible that something be said analogously of God and a creature; because no creature has such a relation to God that through it the divine perfection would be able to be determined. But in the other mode of analogy, no determinate relation is noticed between the [things] to which there is something common through analogy. And, for this reason nothing prevents some name's being said analogously, according to this mode, of God and a creature.