Upvote:1
In effect, this is a conflation of two distinct theological concepts: the 4 senses of Scripture (of which literal is one) and the necessity of analogy to talk about God's attributes.
The conflation is a side-effect of the particular language that Kreeft uses.
He contrasts "literal, univocal language" with "analogical or metaphorical language". The key theological distinction is between univocal and analogical. I have never come across someone qualifying "univocal" as "literal" nor someone equating analogical and metaphorical.
univocal contrasts with equivocal and describes what a word represents. univocal means the word has one meaning across the uses (= called one) whereas equivocal means the word represents multiple means across the uses (= called equal). For example, the word bank means can mean a place for storing valuables, the edge of a river, etc.
Aquinas argues in the Summa (Prima Pars, Q13 A5) that no name of God can be said univocally of God and creatures. The question becomes how do we understand statements like "God is good" (or "God is love"). It cannot be univocal as Aquinas says because God is simple and perfect and "all perfections existing in creatures divided and multiplied, pre-exist in God unitedly." In man, saying he is wise is distinct from his existence or power but in God to be wise is to be and to be powerful.
Nor can terms be equivocal because then we can understand nothing about God because "for the reasoning would always be exposed to the fallacy of equivocation" (Ibid.) That is, the situation would be two things that are called the same thing without any relationship between them. Thus, we couldn't say what it meant for God to be good from knowing what "man is good" means.
The solution according to Aquinas is analogy (or proportion) which is where the word is understood according to a proportion or casual relationship. The typical example is "healthy" which can be applied to a person or food or urine where in the first in means "has health", the second it causes health and the last implies a sign of health.
Analogy in this sense is literal; that is God really is good, just, love, etc -- we aren't using that phrasing to represent something else, unlike when we talk about the allegorical sense of Scripture. More importantly, his Goodness is more real than what we think of as goodness in creature because his is the source and cause of the goodness we possess.