Omnia in Christo Truth in St. Thomas Aquinas
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‘Truth’ has several senses in Aquinas. Two common principles serve to unify these various senses. The first is that ‘true’ (verum) and ‘being’ (ens) are convertible terms. The thought is that a thing is knowable just insofar as it exists (even if it exists just in the intellect, as in the case of negative realities and ‘possibles’). ‘True’ imports relation to an intellect as ‘good’ imports relation to an appetite. In both cases, what is ‘true’ or ‘good’ is some being (ens or ‘existing thing’). ‘True’ is being under the aspect of its intelligibility. That leads directly to the second principle: Truth is a relation— specifically, a relation of conformity—between intellect and thing. Thus, truth in its most fundamental sense is, for Aquinas, an adequatio intellectus et rei—a proportion of equivalence between the intellect and the thing it knows. These two principles immediately highlight the distinction between two senses of truth outlined above: truth in things and truth in the intellect composing and dividing.
Robert Joseph Matava, PhD
truth by asking whether truth resides only in the intellect or also in things. The assumption is that truth is in the intellect; the question is whether it is anywhere else. As we have seen, Thomas concludes that truth is in things, but that it is primarily in the intellect. However, the sense in which Thomas here holds truth to reside primarily in the intellect is not by the intellect’s reflexive judgment of its own conformity with given reality (composing and dividing to form a speculative proposition), although this is one way truth is in the human intellect. Nor is the assumed sense the intellect’s conformity with given reality in the intellect’s first operation (which is presupposed by such a reflexive judgment). Albeit, truth is in the intellect in this second way also, but just as in quadam re vera—as in any thing that is true—because in grasping what a thing is, the intellect has the form proper to its nature. Rather, Thomas concludes that “truth resides primarily in the intellect and secondarily in things according as they are related to the intellect as their principle.”
St. Thomas maintains truth is both in the intellect and in things. But while he acknowledges truth in some sense is in things, he maintains that truth is not primarily in things, but in the intellect. Moreover, “properly speaking, truth resides in the intellect composing and dividing.” In other words, truth is chiefly in the Here, two things must be noted. The first is that the ‘relation to intellect, and not simply by the intellect’s first grasp of being, an intellect’ in which the truth of things consists is specifically a whereby it has the form proper to its nature in possessing a likeness conformity of the thing to its conceptual archetype or exemplar of the thing known (since the form proper to the intellect’s nature idea. Insofar as a thing conforms to its exemplar idea, it has the is ‘knowing’ or ‘apprehending’). Rather, truth is properly in the ‘form proper to its nature’ and is said to be ‘true.’ The second thing intellect’s reflexive act of judging that the likeness it bears of the to note is that the intellect by conformity to which things are here thing known corresponds to the way that thing is in actual fact. said to be true is the divine intellect. Truth To make such a judgment is not merely to is in things by virtue of the relation things ‘form a quiddity’ or apprehend the essence T h o m a s b e g i n s h i s bear to the mind of God, for “everything is of a thing (quod quid est); it is to form a called ‘true’ absolutely, according to a relation proposition about what is real by—most consideration of truth to the intellect on which it depends” and all fundamentally—using ‘is’ in a copulative things depend on the mind of the Creator for sense (or by employing some grammatical by asking whether truth they have of being and intelligibility. equivalent). Truth, then, is primarily in the resides only in the intellect whatever For Thomas then, the primary sense in which intellect insofar as truth is a characteristic truth resides in the intellect is according to a of propositions—which only exist in some or also in things. practical mode, and the intellect in question is intellect—formed in the act of judgment. the mind of God. This reflects that Thomas’ analogy of truth is an integral aspect of his theology of God—a theology that begins with The idea that truth is propositional is relatively uncontroversial, the fact of creation (ST I q. 2) and with what creation implies about even if the details of Aquinas’ theory of truth are unfamiliar or one God’s existence, His transcendence, and the radical dependence of holds for a different view of propositions and their extra-mental creatures upon Him. reality. Often, when we think about the nature of truth, we tend to think of it as a property of speculative propositions, namely, when Robert Joseph “RJ” Matava is an assistant professor of theology at a proposition picks out some delimited, understandable aspect of Christendom’s Graduate School in Alexandria, VA. Matava received his given reality, which we might call an ‘obtaining state of affairs.’ Such PhD from the University of St. Andrews. The above excerpt on truth a view, as far as it goes, accords with Thomas’ theory of truth, but in Aquinas is from an essay that was presented at a session of the 2011 it does not completely represent it. International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, sponsored by the Center for Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University, where In any case, it is not this understanding of ‘truth in the intellect’ RJ was a fellow last year. RJ, his wife, Danielle, and their three children which opens the discussion in Question Sixteen of the First Part of are members of Queen of Apostles parish in Alexandria. the Summa Theologiae. There, Thomas begins his consideration of
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