I recently watched the documentary What is a Woman? Without going into specifics, I was struck by the constant tension within the film between the propositions “there is one truth” and “we each have our own truth.” This dichotomy, of course, is the classical problem of the one and the many as applied to the concept of truth itself. As with so many dichotomies, a useful discussion will require distinctions that draw from the experiences behind both propositions. To facilitate such a discussion, I would like to turn to the way that the word “truth” is used in the statement “God is truth” (and yes, my discussion will shamelessly take the existence of a creator-god for granted).
It is an old assertion that God is truth. Sometimes we ask, like Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?” And, more specifically, how can God be truth itself rather than simply true or truthful? Part of this confusion arises from the ways we speak. We are prone to limiting judgements of truth or falsity to statements about facts, and sometimes only to empirically verifiable facts, as in “that cow is brown,” or “I didn’t do it” (Or, once upon a time, “She is a woman.”) We judge such statements as true or false based on sense data or on how reliable we consider the source based on experience. Others limit truth to subjective experience or preference as in “my truth” or “it was true for that culture.” Neither of these ways of speaking about truth are strictly what is meant when we assert that God is truth. To understand what is meant by “God is truth” I turn to Thomas Aquinas, the master of distinctions. Drawing from the first part of Thomas’s Summa Theologiae I hope to show how truth, understood as residing primarily in the mind, or intellect, can be said of God, and how that way of understanding truth makes sense of truth as both “one truth” and “many truths.”
Thomas Aquinas readily admits that there are many different definitions of truth with varying degrees of validity, but he nevertheless emphasizes a primary definition of truth as existing in the intellect (I will use the term intellect instead of mind, because it is more precise within the context of St. Thomas’ writing). For Aquinas, truth can be said to reside in the intellect when the intellect conforms properly to the object understood. That is, to the extent that the intellect understands something as the thing actually exists, to that extent, truth exists in the intellect. If my understanding of a tree corresponds to the way that tree actually exists, truth resides in my intellect. The existence of certain attributes in the tree are only called true then in a secondary way, in that they are related to the intellect. This does not mean, however, that my intellect produces the truth of the object, as in some modern idealist (mis)understandings, but only that truth is most properly understood in relation to the intellect. It is not wrong to call many things true, therefore, as long as we remember that we are speaking of them in relation to an intellect’s understanding of them.
This understanding of truth is also very different from modern linguistic reductions, which understand truth and falsity as merely applying to words. According to Thomas’ understanding, truth is applied to words in another secondary way, as the correspondence of words to the understanding of the intellect. This is actually a very common sense view. For instance, “I borrowed the car” is only a true statement if it corresponds to what I know about my own actions. Thus, when we speak about the truth, we are relying on our experiences to give us knowledge about the way things actually exist, but not as though our experiences create truth. Nevertheless, because things and words are only called true in a secondary way, it may seem as though there is no absolute truth, which would in fact be the case if human intellects were the only kind of intellect.
However, when it comes to natural things, we do not have to wait for a human intellect to know them to say that they are true, for natural things can be called true absolutely in relation to the Divine intellect, that is, God’s intellect. The fact that all things that exist can be called true, points to the key principle for understanding how we can say that God is truth. The principle is that being and truth are the same reality understood in different ways. This astounding, yet simple and illuminating principle is in fact a key to much of Aquinas’ thought. When being is understood as the act of existing, then truth can be understood as “being” related to the intellect. Now, we tend to think of all things as potentially knowable; yet, immediately we realize that we cannot actually know all things. For God, however, this is not the case. All things, having come forth from God, are called true because they correspond to His intellect.
But can God Himself correspond to His own intellect? Well, based on our principle that being and truth are two ways of speaking about the same reality, this question is the wrong question. God does not need to correspond to His intellect, because God’s intellect is His act of existing, His being. This is Thomas’ first argument for saying that God is truth. According to Aquinas, God is His own act of existing. Things that we know, and we ourselves, have existence, but clearly we are not existence itself. God, on the other hand, is being itself, and therefore the cause of all other being. Since truth, then, is “being” as it is conformed to the intellect, and God is identical with His own being and with His own act of intellect, then God is clearly truth, and truth in the highest degree.
According to Aquinas, therefore, we can trace a hierarchy for how we call things true that connects our understanding of truth in its primary and most absolute sense with the ways we speak about truth every day. If Joe says “Lassie is a dog” and is telling the truth, that means, for Aquinas, that Joe’s words signify a truth in his intellect. The knowledge that Lassie is a dog is a truth in Joe’s intellect, because Joe’s intellect is conforming to the way that Lassie actually exists. In a secondary and corollary manner, Lassie is called a true dog because Lassie’s mode of being is related to Joe’s intellect. But Lassie can also be called a true dog regardless of whether Joe or any human knows that Lassie is a dog, because Lassie expresses the form of dog that is understood by God. This last point leads to Aquinas’ second argument for saying that God is truth.
God is truth, and truth in the most absolute sense, because He is the source of the truth in all things. In other words, he is the one truth by which many truths can be called true. For Aquinas, anything that has a characteristic, but whose essence is not the same as that characteristic must have it through another. The example he often uses is that anything that has heat, must have it from something which has the essence of heat, namely fire. In a similar, but distinct way, all truths in a created intellect are called true because they correspond in some manner to the one divine truth. At the same time, we can speak about “many truths,” both because there are many created intellects, and because our individual intellects conform to many objects. Nevertheless, each truth of our intellect can only be called true because the object known also conforms to God’s intellect.
This also does not mean that when we know some truth we are knowing some “part” of God, for God has no parts. Rather, the way we say that truth is in a created intellect or in a created thing is only analogical to the way we say God is truth. That is, true things do indicate something real about the way God is true, but they cannot indicate the essence of God as truth which is a total knowing and knowability beyond the grasp of our weak intellects; yet, because God is truth itself, and the cause of truth in things, therefore the truth of things lends some pale reflection of what it means to say that God is truth.
“God is truth,” thus remains somewhat of a mysterious saying, because God Himself is a mystery. Nevertheless, the way we use truth when predicated of God helps make sense of the general confusion around the concept of truth. Going back to What is a Woman?, we find many who speak casually of “your truth” as one independent truth among others. While they may be expressing some glimmer of the fact that truth primarily resides in the intellect, the willingness of such persons to concede to obvious fictions (such as one woman accepting her own non-existence) points to a mistaken impression that the intellect constitutes, rather than discovers, its objects. Fortunately, with the help of Thomas Aquinas, we can articulate the sources of such errors and find clarity in the ways that we speak about truth as both one and many.
“The furthest degree of slavery is reached when they devote themselves to boxes and abrogate the possession of reason which is theirs; for once they lower their eyes from the light of the highest truth down to the world of darkness below, they are then shrouded in a cloud of ignorance, and become confused by destructive emotions.” ~ Philosophy to Boethius ("The Consolation of Philosophy")