Truth is threefold. In each of the three planes of which we speak of it, truth is a conformity. Logical truth is the conformity of the mind to reality. Moral truth is the conformity of one’s speech to what is known in the mind. Ontological truth is the conformity of the thing to its universal concept or essence; we may also call ontological truth the conformity of the thing to its archetype in the Divine Mind.
As contrast clarifies the mind, these things are best illustrated by their opposites: the opposite of logical truth is a falsehood (not a fallacy, which is an error in reasoning); the opposite of moral truth is a lie; and the opposite of ontological truth is a counterfeit. We should add that even counterfeit gold (“fool’s gold”) is real pyrite, so the opposition between ontological truth and counterfeit is an analogous opposition. This is because everything that is possesses the transcendental we call “truth.”
The logical order is the order of the mind, that is, of thought. If what I know in my mind conforms to the reality that is external to my mind, then I know the truth. The comical utterance of the old man whose grandson has come home from college with strange ideas — “He knows a lot that ain’t!” — captures this idea beautifully by way of contrast.
It should go without saying that, today, we live in an age that does not respect logical truth. Our minds are encouraged to be non-conformist. “I have my truth, you have yours,” says the modern relativist, imprisoning his mind in a dungeon of falsehood. And it is a dungeon, a prison. Our Lord’s utterance, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32), while it applies supremely to the supernatural plane of faith as liberating us to live the life of grace in freedom, also applies to the lower but not unimportant plane of natural knowledge. Falsehood, like its moral counterpart, sin, is enslaving.
The moral order is the order of human acts, that is, of doing. Included in moral acts are the words we say. This is why the opposite of moral truth is, properly speaking, not a falsehood, but a lie. Here, the conformity is not between my mind and the extra-mental realities outside of it, but between what I know in my mind and the speech I utter externally. If I know that it is raining outside now, and that the rain is freezing on the ground (as is the case with Richmond’s gloomy weather today), but I say, instead, that it is a bright, sunny day outside and seventy degrees, then I have told a lie. And that is a sin.
One interesting wrinkle in the concept of moral truth is that I may, in good faith, be deceived and believe a falsehood. That is, without any culpability on my part, my mind is not in conformity with reality. In that case, if I externalize the falsehood in my speech, I have not actually lied. That is to say, I have not violated moral truth, though what I say is objectively false. (This is one reason why it is not prudent, much less charitable, to accuse someone who utters a falsehood of being a liar. Only if we have clear knowledge that he knew the truth and told the falsehood can we accuse a person of lying.) On the other hand, if I believe that it is sunny and seventy degrees outside — because of some false report I have heard as I lay in bed sick in a windowless room — but say that it is cold and rainy and the rain is freezing on the ground, then I have lied, even though what I said was objectively true.
The highest plane of truth, and the most abstract, is ontological truth. Everything that is is true inasmuch as it conforms to its own nature — its universal concept. A duck is a true duck; a man is a true man, etc. But we can, analogously, speak of a person who poses as a friend, but who lacks the proper attributes of a friend as being a “false friend.” We can speak of a fake $100 bill as a “counterfeit,” even though the counterfeit itself is true to its counterfeit nature — like a genuine pyrite, an authentic decoy duck, or a real mannequin.
Logical truth is studied in the sciences of logic and epistemology; moral truth, in ethics and moral theology; ontological truth, in metaphysics, also called ontology.
When we say that God is “Absolute Truth,” we mean that He is truth in all three of these ways: logical, moral, and ontological. Let us proceed with considering God as Absolute Truth in this threefold manner.
First, a word of explanation about my sources. In addition to the philosophical training I received from my mentor, Brother Francis, I am relying for my explanations here on the theological work of Monsignor Joseph Pohle in his book, God, His Knowability, Essense, and Attributes. What I have written up to this point has been strictly philosophical; what follows is theological, and my words are essentially paraphrasing Monsignor Pohle’s text where I am not quoting him outright.
Following Saint Thomas Aquinas, Pohle defines logical truth as, the “conformity of the mind to its object,” which is essentially the same as what we said above. God is “absolute reason,” in Himself; that is to say, He is “pure intelligence.” The “conformity” that exists in God is an identity of being with thought. In creatures, every act of knowing is a vital accident: that is, not the actual substance of the intelligent being himself — be he man or angel — but something “accidental” to (or “had by”) that intelligent substance. (The same is true of other accidents I have: my height, location, etc. Whereas substances exist in themselves, accidents exist in another.) In the case of the Creator Himself, His knowledge is a substantial act; it is absolutely identical to the Divine Essence, God’s life, and attributes. (There are no accidents in God; all is one in Him, and all is identical to His substance.) As Saint Thomas taught, knowledge in God is not a quality or a habit, but is His substance, that is, Pure Act.
We can put it this way: God is His own infinite comprehension.
Monsignor Pohle:
The perfection of logical truth, be it remembered, depends on three factors : (1) a cognizable [knowable] object; (2) a cognitive power; and (3) the union of both in the act of cognition. The richer, the clearer, the more intelligible an object is, the more powerful and penetrating is the faculty of cognition, the more intimate is the comprehension of the object by the faculty in the act of cognition, the higher and more perfect is the truth of the resulting knowledge.
God is Primal Truth, the All-Truth, and the Super-Truth. As such, He is (1) the most intelligible, or knowable, of all things. In addition, (2) His knowing power is equal to His infinity of being, and, therefore, (3) the union of the two is the most perfect, the most intimate that can be, and this results in a perfect identity between His being and His knowing. “Consequently,” Monsignor Pohle tells us, “God’s knowledge of Himself must culminate in an infinite comprehension of His own Essence, in and by virtue of which He adequately and exhaustively understands Himself and all things external to Himself.”
From this, it follows that God is “the essentially subsisting, personal, living Truth.” When Jesus calls Himself “the way, the truth and the life,” He means that He is “logical truth,” because this is His mission as the Teacher, par excellence, of mankind.
Above, we have considered God as “Absolute Reason” in Himself. In relation to His knowing creatures — men and angels — God is Absolute Truth. He created men and angels in His own image, as creatures endowed with intellect and will. For this reason, then, God is the Prototype of all intelligences. Moreover, all that He created came from a knowing Mind and is therefore knowable. Each act of a rational creature conforming his mind to reality is, then, a created reflection of the Divine cognition. Or, as Monsignor Pohle has it, “Consequently, every single act of truth-perception on the part of a finite intellect, and the created mind itself are but a weak reflex of the Divine Spirit and the Divine Knowledge.”
God is Thought Itself and therefore He thinks, but the creature merely “re-thinks,” in a finite and imperfect way, the thoughts of the Divine Intellect. At this point, Monsignor Pohle cites a pertinent passage from the Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thomas:
As the soul and other beings are called “true” in their natures, as bearing some likeness to the supreme nature of God — which is truth itself, as being its own fullness of actual understanding — so what is known by the soul is true for the reason that there exists in the soul a likeness of that divine truth which God knows. Hence on the text (Ps. XI, 2), “Truths are diminished from the sons of men,” the Gloss says: “The truth is one, whereby holy souls are illumined: but since there are many souls, there may be said to be in them many truths, as from one face many images may appear in many mirrors.”
It is in the supernatural knowledge of faith, and, ultimately, in the Beatific Vision, that man’s cognition is most completely united with God’s. As Saint John writes about the Logos, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4); and later: “That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (v. 9).
Monsignor Pohle closes this section of his book with a paraphrase from the Jesuit theologian, Leonardus Lessius, who attempts to describe the way truth descends upon the created universe from its Divine Source:
Gushing from its divine fount, it first flows through the channel of creation into the forms of created things, imparting to them their ontological truth (cognoscibility [i.e, knowability). Thence it forces its way into the intellect of those creatures who are endowed with reason (=logical truth ), seeps through into the passions and moral actions of men, until finally, having lost much of its original impetus, it terminates in the truths that men speak and write. It finds a second channel in Supernatural Revelation, which originates in the infusion of faith and reaches its climax in the beatific vision of God.
In the next Ad Rem, I will consider God as Absolute Moral Truth and Absolute Ontological Truth.
