Month: June 2010

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.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. Right now, we’re going through the doctrine of God and in relation to that doctrine, we are covering the doctrine of truth. Our guide for our study has been the Summa Theologica of the great medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas. If you do not own a copy of the Summa, you can read it online at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re going to be asking if the good is logically prior to the true.

Notice first what the question is not asking. The question is not asking what is going on in actuality. It is asking what is going on in our understanding. Why could it not be asking if the good is actually prior to the true? The answer is simple. Aquinas is discussing transcendentals. Transcendentals are those things that exist wherever being exists. It is not that being shows up and then being becomes good and then being becomes true. They are all three there.

However, in our understanding, which comes first? Aquinas answers that the true comes first. We understand that something is before we can understand that it is good. He does of course affirm that the good and the true are the same in substance but they differ only in idea and thus differ in sequence.

Aquinas based this on two ideas. The true refers to being itself and thus something can be true without really being desirable. The devil truly exists and has being. Now contrary to what some people might think, insofar as he has being, he is good. Being is a good thing. The problem is not that his existence is evil. What is evil is what he does with that existence, in which case he is the most depraved of all and one whom our Lord has said was a murderer from the beginning.

No one would desire to be as the devil is for instance. Even the most hardened atheist if he understood the way of the devil now would know that that truly is the way that he is but that that is not the way he would desire to be. Thus, the idea of something that can be known is there prior to knowing how that thing is good or not.

This gets to the second argument of Aquinas also. Knowledge precedes appetite. Do you really want something that you have no clue what it is? Now someone might say we want Heaven, but we do have an idea of what Heaven is. We know many things mainly by knowing what it is not. You can take away suffering and death and fill the cosmos with the manifest presence of God and you want Heaven. When you know those things are what Heaven is, then it is at that point that Heaven becomes desirable. In the same way, before you can desire anything, you have to know what it is. Knowing relates to the true and desire relates to the good. Therefore, truth is logically prior to goodness.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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 as a subset as it were of that doctrine, we are discussing the doctrine of truth. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at newadvent.org. Our question tonight is if the true and being are convertible terms.

Aquinas tells us that something is true insofar as it can be known. For this reason, God is the truest of all in that he is the one who can be most known even if we cannot approach knowing all that he is. God is the one who is pure being and because of that, he is the one who is supremely knowable. However, there are reasons that true is convertible with being.

We can know something insofar as it is and since God is of course, he is most knowable, but we know other things in relation to their actuality. Our intellects come to apprehend them and while the knowledge resides in our intellect, the content of our knowledge, what it is that we have knowledge of, exists often independent of us, as a man can have knowledge of himself.

Aquinas tells us that truth and being really only differ in idea. Truth about something can only be truth insofar as has been said as the thing is. You cannot have truth about something insofar as it is not. You can know that it is truly not this, but you can only know what it truly is insofar as it, well, is.

This is also why we should be constantly seeking out knowledge. We should want to know the world as it is and there is a great joy in having knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Too often, and I have been guilty of this as well, it is easy to complain about a course in school asking “When will I ever use this?” When we do this, we are treating knowledge only as a practical means instead of viewing knowledge as an end in itself. It is good to know things simply for the sake of knowing them.

For the medievals, true was a transcendental. Wherever you had being, there you had the true. It was right alongside the good and the beautiful, which we will discuss the good in relation to the true later on. In all cases, these concepts only differed by idea. Our minds can only grasp certain things about being. We can grasp the truth of being by the intellect. We can grasp the desirability of being in that it is good and this is through the will. We can also grasp through the appetite the beauty of things.

Thus, we conclude that in Aquinas, and in reality, that the true and the being are convertible. Is this something difficult to understand? Indeed it most certainly is, but when we know something, we have to say that we know it as it is not and even if we know what it is not, this is still making some statement about what it is.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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 Thomas Aquinas. Right now, we’re discussing the doctrine of truth. Some may wonder why we discuss the doctrine of truth when we discuss the doctrine of God, but Aquinas found it important and as we go along, we will come to see why he did so.

Does truth reside in the intellect composing and dividing? What is meant here is the framing of propositions. We must understand that for Aquinas and for Aristotle, there were a number of ways that information could be taken in about the world and ways that people could respond to it.

The first was through the sensible and this is the way that animals can also respond. In this case, when your dog hears you calling his name, he comes to the sound of your voice. He’s cued in to respond to certain sensors in a way. When an animal feels pain, they respond to the pain. However, they do not form a philosophy of pain.

That is the area of the intellectual which is also an area the angels and God have. God and angels do not gather knowledge through sense experience. This is for the simple reason that they do not have bodies through which they can gather information for sense experience. They can know the sun is hot through intellectual means, but not through experience.

There was also desirability. This does not rely on the senses though it can be gained through sense experience and this lies in the area of the appetite. Desirability was different in that the desirability of the object lay in the object itself. For the intellect, the knowledge of the object lies in the mind of the knower.

While we gain some information through the senses, it is the intellect that works on making distinctions. For instance, I can touch two different animals and register them as “furry.” Both of them have four legs. Both of them have tails. Both have two eyes. However, one constantly has its tongue hanging out of its mouth and the other has whiskers around a tiny nose. I conclude the former is a dog and the latter is a cat.

The composing and dividing refers to taking different parts of information that comes through sense experience and learning to make knowledge claims about them. This takes place in the intellect. The intellect receives the information from the senses and in this way it makes distinctions about all that it receives. It can distinguish between a dog and a cat because it knows the sense experience is different. In the same way, it can also distinguish between truthfulness and falsity.

By saying a judgment is true, the intellect is looking at the information it receives and is looking at what it sees in the world and is saying that what the proposition states does indeed correspond to the facts of the world. If it does not, then the intellect says the opposite.

Thus, we agree with Aquinas once again and have learned more about the doctrine of truth.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are continuing our dive into the ocean of truth from a Christian worldview. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God lately which is central to the Christian worldview. Last night, we finished discussing ideas and tonight, we’re going to start discussing the doctrine of truth which has eight sections to it. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you do not own a copy, you can go to newadvent.org and read one for free. For now, let’s get to the question. Does truth reside only in the intellect?

Truth should be a doctrine central to all worldviews. All of them need to have an accounting for truth. What is it, can it be known, and how can we know it? In the Christian worldview, truth is that which corresponds to reality. It is something that we can know and we can know either by reason alone or by reason with the help of divine revelation. We can know that God exists by reason, for instance. We can only know that he is a Trinity by revelation.

Aquinas says that truth resides in the intellect as well. When you desire something, the desirability lies in the object that you desire. When you know something however, the knowledge does not lie in the object. It lies in the knower. For instance, if I desire a refreshing beverage, the desirability of the drink lies in the drink itself. If I claim knowledge of what makes that up, the knowledge does not lie in the drink, though it is about the drink, but the knowledge lies in me.

The truth of things however does not lie in relation to our intellect. If it was, then truth would be changing as there is hardly a proposition that everyone on Earth will agree to. We have people who are flat-Earthers and people who deny that Jesus existed and people who deny moral absolutes. However, if there is a divine intellect, then there is eternal truth as truth is based on the knowledge of that divine intellect. The reason eternal and unchanging truths can exist is because there is an eternal and unchanging intellect that is the source of all truths.

If truth depended on our intellects, then we would have the conclusion that contradictory statements could be true, which is what Aristotle dealt with when he dealt with the philosophy of Protagoras. Something is not true because one happens to believe it or holds a position sincerely. It is true regardless of one’s own beliefs on the matter. However, truth resides in the divine intellect and we all seek to grasp the knowledge that is in that intellect. This is one reason also why Christians should be seekers out of knowledge. In gaining knowledge, are getting closer and closer to the mind of God.

In conclusion, Christians are to be people of truth. It behooves us that if we are to claim this for ourselves, then we must have a good doctrine of truth. As we go along in this study, we will learn more about truth and be able to answer more the three questions presented earlier.

We shall continue tomorrow.

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 now and we’re using the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval theologian, philosopher, and apologist as our guide. If you do not own a copy, you can read it online at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re going to finish up the section on ideas. Let’s go to the question.

Aquinas brings up tonight the term exemplar. What does this mean? In the Aristotlean mindset, there were four causes. The material cause was what something was made of. The formal cause was what it is. The efficient cause was what brought it into being. The final cause was the reason for its being.

The medieval theologians added two more causes. The instrumental cause was that through which something came into existence. The exemplar cause, which is what Aquinas is speaking of, is that after which something comes into existence. He does not mean after as in chronology, but after as in the basis for it. The blueprints of a house are the exemplar cause of the house for instance.

In this way, the forms are the exemplar cause of all that is. God is the efficient cause of what he creates, but the exemplar cause are the ideas in the mind of God. We could even say that the Son is the wisdom of God allegorically and thus the Son is the instrumental cause of creation.

An objection comes up at this point however. What about evil. If there are exemplar causes for all that God knows, does that mean that there is a form of evil? God does know things that are evil, but it is said that he himself does not know evil. How can this be if there are ideas of all that God knows?

I hope some of you are thinking this through and are already seeing the solution. God does not know evil as a substance but rather he knows evil in the way he knows the lack of goodness. There is no idea of evil because evil is not a substance but rather a lack in a substance.

Since this is the case, this does not mean that there is an idea of evil but rather God knows evil as it is a likeness. It tries to resemble that which is good in a sense but it does not. It is parallel to the way we describe God. We best describe him by what he is not. We know evil only by what it is not. There can be no such thing as pure evil.

Our application is that all things are good because God created them. It is when they are twisted from what they were that they become evil or if they are used in a way that is not intended. While the environmental movement I do believe does go too far, we should celebrate the diversity of life that God has created and in doing so, we honor him.

Tomorrow, we shall start the study on truth.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’re discussing the doctrine of God right now and our guide is being the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. If you do not have a copy, you can read one for free at newadvent.org and I encourage you to do so. We’re covering the topic of ideas right now and tonight we’re going to ask if there are many ideas.

Ideas are essentially forms as we said. A form is what makes a thing what it is. Last night, we did state that there are forms. Plato had just misplaced them. The forms were in the objects themselves for Aristotle and for Aquinas, they are also ideas in the mind of God.

But then we have a problem. If his ideas are his essence, then is he not many instead of being simple? If he is not simple, then it would seem that we have a problem with our system. On the other hand, if there is but one idea, then it would seem there cannot be many things, but we know that there are many things. How do we deal with this?

However, the answer to this is really quite simple. We have already said that God’s knowledge is his being and in himself, he understands all things that can be and all the ways that they can be. If we will ponder on this then, we will find the solution to the problem.

Aquinas asks us to picture a builder and the builder has in his mind the idea of a house. However, in order to understand the house, he also has to understand all the parts that make up the house. There are many facets of the one idea that he understands.

In the same way, in understanding himself and all the ways being can be as he is being, God thus knows all the forms. These forms of course are not something external to him that he learns about. God does not learn about anything through a likeness. God cannot be informed by anything outside of himself. You will never tell God anything that he does not know.

Also, the forms are not that by which he understands but that which he understands. God does not understand catness by seeing the likeness of cats. He understands cats because he knows that that is a way of being and thus, he can have understanding of it.

Our conclusion today is that there are many forms and this does not present a problem for the doctrines of Thomism. Our benefit today is that we must recognize that there are tough problems for every system of thought, but the best thinkers are those who know the problems and are able to deal with them. We should be just as diligent in our studies today. I have said before that if you are to argue for one side, you had better understand the opponent’s side well enough that you can argue for it as well. Let’s be faithful in learning arguments today.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the Ocean of Truth. We’re studying the doctrine of God in Christian thought right now and we’re on the topic of ideas. Our guide for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. You can read along in this study on an online copy of the Summa at newadvent.org. The section on ideas has three articles. Let’s begin!

Ideas are essentially forms. What needs to be understood is that the question of forms comes from Plato’s philosophy. Plato tried to explain the essence of things by speaking of forms and there were forms for everything. Not only physical objects but such relations as “larger than” or the one one of my philosophy professors decided was his favorite form, “To the left of.”

Aristotle did not deny the existence of the forms, but he denied them the way that Plato presented them. Plato had the forms independent of God. For Aristotle, the forms were in the objects themselves and all objects partook of a certain essence that made them what they were.

In Aquinas, the forms are ideas in the mind of God, but the ideas are equal to his essence. His nature is his knowledge after all. It is by these that things are what they are. The idea of the cat is always in the mind of God. Of course, we could say the idea of a unicorn is as well, although in the world as far as we know, that idea has never been actualized.

But do the forms really exist in God? After all, forms are the way by which we apprehend knowledge. However, one objector quotes Dionysus as saying that God does not know things through ideas. After all, God does not understand things through something outside of himself.

Aquinas’s answer is that he agrees. However, the way of ideas in the mind of God is not that God may understand. In Plato’s philosophy, this would be the case. In Plato, the ideas existed of themselves and did not exist in the intellect as they did in Aristotle’s worldview.

God also knows all things through himself, but then the objector says that if this is the case, then God does not know things through ideas. Of course, Aquinas agrees that God does not know things through ideas but it is by the ideas that all other things are. Ideas in the mind of God are given actuality in the world outside of the mind of God and thus exist. God does not know himself through an idea.

The reason that this is the case should be obvious to those of you who have been paying attention. God is the one being who has his essence as his existence. Because of that, there can be no idea of God that is granted existence. Interestingly, some theologians did think of God the Father eternally thinking of himself and this thought would have to be absolutely perfect and thus would have to have existence, hence, the Son who would be as eternal as God is then. Second, there would be love between these two, hence the Spirit.

But that’s another debate.

We shall continue tomorrow.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters. Here, we seek to go pass Sunday School material of most churches sadly and dive into the ocean of truth. It is my hope that leaving here, you will have a deeper knowledge of the faith handed down to all the saints. Right now, the aspect of that faith that we’re covering is the doctrine of God as discussed in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. Speaking of deeper knowledge, we’re going to wrap up tonight the topic of God’s knowledge. We’re asking tonight if God has speculative knowledge of things. Now if you want to follow along, a copy of the Summa can be found at NewAdvent.org. Let’s begin!

There are two kinds of knowledge being discussed in this case. A practical knowledge is a knowledge more of the use of things. A speculative knowledge is more at the truth of things. Speculative knowledge concerns realities like the good, the true, and the beautiful. In fact, any knowledge that relies on abstraction falls into this.

Consider a triangle. If you want, draw the triangles I describe. First, draw a scalene one. Next, draw an isosceles triangle. After that, draw an equilateral. If you’re not drawing, just try to picture one of each of these in your mind. Consider each of them. They all three are triangles though of quite different shapes.

Now what if I told you “Those are good pictures, but I want to know what makes a triangle? Can you draw a picture of triangularity?” At this point, you would be stumped. That is something that cannot be drawn as triangularity itself cannot be material. You can draw material representations of what a triangle will look like, but you cannot draw triangularity.

Some would say God would not have this knowledge because his knowledge is the cause of things and speculative knowledge is the end of things. Aquinas disagrees. Speculative knowledge is the end of things of course, but that does not mean that God does not possess that knowledge for not all of his knowledge has to be causal knowledge.

Practical knowledge refers to objects in so far as they can be operated on. In this, God does not have practical knowledge of himself as that would be impossible. He cannot be operated on. He does have speculative knowledge of himself however as he has knowledge of who he is and that he is the end of all things as well as the cause of all things. God also has practical knowledge of evil in the same way that a doctor has practical knowledge of sickness, as he can work to eliminate evil the way a doctor works to eliminate disease.

For our purposes, we can take a benefit in this. One of my favorite passages is Romans 8 where we find the verse that says all things work together for good to those that love the Lord. Here, we find both kinds. God has the speculative knowledge of the good that is to be reached. He also has the practical knowledge of how to get that good. We can be sure that he will do such for us.

Tomorrow, we begin a whole new section.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the doctrine of God and right now, we’re studying the knowledge of God. Our text for this has been the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas which can be read at newadvent.org. Tonight, we’re going to be asking if the knowledge of God is variable.

Part of the problem with the Aristotlean system was to ask how God could know all things in a changing world if he himself was unchanging? One of the problems however that Aristotle had was that he had not really developed a doctrine of existence itself. This was a more medieval formulation. Aquinas helped shape much of this thought for his time period and for ours as well.

To begin with, if God has knowledge of the variable, does that means his knowledge is variable? No. All that follows from the fact is that God knows things that vary. However, God can know what they will be like at point X in time and then he can know what they will be like later in point Y.

However, it could be that God had created more than he created. Even if you wish to posit a multiverse for the sake of argument, we can always say God could have created one more of any object that we see. If that is the case, and God knows all that he makes, it would seem that he can know more than there is since there could be more.

Again however, this does not mean that God’s knowledge is changing but he knows how things that he made could change. If God had created X that doesn’t exist, he would know it as an actuality. As it is, he knows X as a potentiality that will simply never be. By knowing himself, God knows all things as they are and all things as they could be and all things that could have been.

What about temporal truths? For instance, that Christ was born is a historical fact. Around 2000 years ago, Christ is born would have been a historical fact. 4,000 years ago “Christ will be born” would be a fact about the future, but still true. Can the eternal God know a truth that is temporal?

This assumes however that God knows the things as they happen as if he is in time. He doesn’t. God sees the entire spectrum but he can look at any point on it and know the truths that are at that point. He also knows them in relation to all other points. That does not mean of course that his knowledge is changing but he has knowledge of things that can change.

What we can learn from this is that God is not in flux in his knowledge. If he knows something, he knows it, and that will not change. This is something helpful to keep in mind when we wonder if God knows what is going on in our lives. Yes. He does. He has always known it and he will be there if you choose to trust in him.

We shall continue tomorrow.