Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re going through the doctrine of God right now and our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. If you do not own a copy , I invite you to go to NewAdvent.org where you can click the Summa link and read it for yourself. We are on the topic of Truth right now in the Prima Pars and tonight we’re asking the question “Whether God is Truth.”
Aquinas answers that he is for truth is that which conforms to an intellect. Now in God not only does his being conform to his intellect but rather his act of intellect is his being. It is his being and his intellect that is the cause of all other being and of all other intellect.
But didn’t we say earlier that truth lies in dividing and composing. If that is the case, then it would seem that God cannot be truth. After all, God is simple in his essence and what is simple does not have any parts in it so there can be no composing and dividing.
However, this is for us in human terms because we must understand things in that way. We understand not innately but by a process. God has no process for he is eternal. Thus, in his one simple act of being God understands all truth. He does not need a process.
Truth has also been said by Augustine to be a likeness to its source and in the medieval times, the authorities of the church in the past and great thinkers like Aristotle were taken seriously. (Would that we had such today!) If this is right, then it would seem God cannot be truth for there is no likeness to a source in God.
The answer to this is to consider another statement. Aquinas tells us that we can say of the Father “The Father is of Himself because he is not of another.” Thus, the divine intellect can be called a likeness of its source seeing that its being is not unlike its intellect.
But what about the truth of sinning? Suppose the truth of God is that Bob is going to cheat on his wife today. If that is the case and God is truth, then it would follow that that truth is from God. However, no sin can be from God and therefore, that truth cannot be from God.
However, Aquinas says that it is a fallacy to think this way. All the truth that exists in the statement is of God. However, that the act itself takes place is not of God for the truth is not the same as the action. God eternally knows that Bob will cheat on his wife today, but that does not mean that God’s knowledge is the cause of Bob doing such.
Let us remember in closing that even Athanasius argued on the basis of John 14:6 that Jesus could be said to be the truth of the Father. We can indeed say that we serve the God of all truth and all truth comes from him so let us be diligently seeking it all the more.
We shall continue tomorrow.
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