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The bread is good because it is crusty and tasty and the baker has whatever it takes to bake this good bread but this does not mean that the baker is crusty and tasty! Similarly just because Ellie is morally good this does not mean that God is morally good. Indeed, Aquinas would consider the whole idea of God being morally good to be nonsense as this would imply that God was in time and had potential to act in one way rather than another (which is impossible if God is wholly simple, timeless and spaceless) and it also implies that there is a standard of goodness independent of God against which God can be judged.
Through analogy of attribution, statements about God such as God is good or God is wise, God is just or God is loving can be held to be true, but we have almost no idea what it means for these statements to be true when applied to God. It would be tempting to say we have no idea but this would not be the case--at least we know that they mean God has whatever it takes to produce goodness, wisdom, love or justice in human beings--so there is some content, albeit very little.
An obvious problem that arises if we talk of someone who is evil instead of someone who is good. Take the following:
God is evil
Peter Vardy is evil
The logical form of this is identical to all the previous statements and it would seem reasonable to hold that this is true as well. Why cannot it be said that God has whatever it takes to bring about evil in Peter Vardy? Aquinas deals with this problem and his answer depends on how evil is defined. For Aquinas, evil is a privation or falling short of the good. Something is evil to the extent that it falls short of what it should be. Human beings, therefore, are evil to the extent that they fall short of what it is to be a human being. It is impossible for God to be evil since it is logically impossible for God to fall short of what it is to be God. Being timeless, spaceless, etc., God cannot be other than God is--so talk of God as being evil is nonsensical.
Analogy of Proportion
Analogy of Proportion is different from analogy of attribution and is based on the idea that each thing has its own genus or species. A thing is good in proportion to whatever it is to be that thing. Thus
A good seagull
A good flea
A good black widow spider
A good human being
All are different things. A thing is good to the extent that it is fully whatever it is to be that thing. On this view, to say that "God is perfectly good" is to say that God is perfectly whatever it is to be God. This must be necessarily true, since God cannot be other than what God is. Therefore God must be perfectly good. It is vitally important to recognize that this has nothing to do with the idea of God being morally good. Notice that we can say that God is good even though we may not know whatever it is to be fully God.
In the final analysis, analogy enables language drawn from our spatio-temporal universe to be applied to a timeless and spaceless God and for this language to be held to be true--but the content of this language is extremely limited.
Metaphor
Instead of talking about God analogically we can also talk of the timeless and spaceless God using metaphors. Metaphors that have been applied to God include:
God is my rock
God is a living fire
God is our Father
God is a shepherd
God is a great king
No serious theologian would think that God is literally a rock, fire, male, etc. Metaphors can be used to refer to God without describing God, they can be helpful ways of talking about God which do not actually describe what God is. Metaphors can also have a truth value. Assume I say:
Margaret Thatcher came into the conference hall all flags flying.
Margaret Thatcher came into the conference hall with her tail between her legs.
No one thinks these statements are to be taken literally but they are each expressing opposite truth claims which may be accepted or rejected. Gerry Hughes SJ maintains that it is preferable to use metaphorical language about God as it is less likely to mislead and it does not even try to describe God. Instead metaphors express something of God's reality.
Univocal language
Blaise Pascal referred to the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers." In saying this he was expressing reservations about the timeless and spaceless God of traditional theology, derived from Aristotle, with the very limited content that can be understood in language about such a God.
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