71. The Ideas in God and the Location of Truth

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

• Whether All Things Known by God Have Ideas: Completing the treatment of divine ideas from the previous question
• The Nature and Location of Truth: Whether truth exists in things or in the understanding
• Truth vs. Goodness: Contrasting these two transcendental properties of being
• Knowledge vs. Love: How knowing and desiring operate in fundamentally contrary ways
• The Scope of Divine Truth: How truth relates to God’s knowledge and understanding

Key Arguments #

On Divine Ideas (Question 15, continued) #

Objections to Ideas of All Things Known:

• The idea of evil cannot be in God, yet God knows evil things
• God knows non-existent things that never will be, but these cannot have ideas as exemplars
• God knows prime matter, which has no form and thus no idea
• God knows genera, singulars, and accidents, which Plato did not grant forms/ideas for

Thomas’s Resolution:

• Ideas as Exemplars vs. Rationes: An idea functions both as an exemplar (principle of making) and as a ratio/reason (principle of knowing)
• Evil: Known through the idea of good, not through its own idea. Evil is privation/lack, so it is known through what it lacks (as blindness is known through sight)
• Non-Existent Things: God has speculative knowledge of things that never will be; these have ideas only as rationes (principles of knowing), not as exemplars
• Prime Matter: Cannot be made without form. Matter has an idea only insofar as it is part of the composite (matter-form); it is not an idea separate from the composite
• Particulars: Known through the idea of species; singular things are individuated through matter (which Plato did not hold to be created). However, divine providence extends to singulars, not merely to species

On the Location of Truth (Question 16, Article 1) #

Objections:

1. Augustine rejects defining truth as “what is seen,” since stones in the earth would not be true if truth required being perceived
2. If truth were only in understanding, nothing would be true except what is understood—the error of ancient philosophers who said whatever seems so is true
3. The principle “that on account of which each thing is so, is more so” suggests the cause of truth (the thing itself) is more true than the effect (the statement)
4. Aristotle states in Metaphysics 4 that “from the sitting, the statement becomes true”

Thomas’s Resolution:

• Truth is Chiefly in the Understanding: Following Aristotle’s Metaphysics 6, truth and falsity are properly in the understanding, not in things
• Distinguished from Goodness: Goodness is primarily in things; love/desire tends toward the thing. Truth is primarily in the mind; knowledge receives the known into itself
• Distinction of Knowledge and Love: Knowledge brings opposites together in the mind (by one knowledge we know both health and sickness). Love cannot embrace opposites (one cannot love both virtue and vice)
• Truth in Things is Secondary: Things are called true insofar as they have an order to an understanding from which they depend
  • Per se order: When an understanding causes the thing (e.g., the carpenter’s understanding causes the house)
  • Per accidens order: When an understanding knows the thing but does not cause it (e.g., we know a tree but do not cause it)
• Basis of Truth in Things: Truth is derived from understanding to the thing understood. The thing is called true because it achieves likeness to the form in an understanding
  • Artificial things: true by order to human understanding (the artist’s form)
  • Natural things: true by order to divine understanding (God’s ideas)

Important Definitions #

Ratio #

• The principle or reason by which something is known
• Distinguished from exemplum (exemplar), which is the principle of making
• Translates imperfectly into English; sometimes rendered as “reason” but with a sense of the intelligible ground of a thing

Exemplum (Exemplar) #

• The form in the mind of an artist according to which something is made
• The intelligible pattern that guides production
• Distinguished from ratio as the principle of being/making rather than knowing

Privatio (Privation) #

• The absence of a form in a subject capable of having it
• Strictly distinguished from absolute non-being
• Evil is privation/lack, not simple non-being

Concausa #

• That which is caused together with something else
• In Plato’s account: the form together with matter in the composite (since Plato did not create matter)

Scientia Visionis (Science of Vision) #

• God’s knowledge of things that actually exist or will exist
• Distinguished from scientia simplicis intelligentiae (science of simple understanding) for non-existent things

Examples & Illustrations #

Evil and Privation #

• Blindness is known through sight (which is good), not through its own principle
• Ignorance is known through knowledge, as a lack of knowledge
• This parallels how we might know nothing by understanding something (the negation of all things)

Prime Matter #

• Compared to clay in relation to sphere and cube: clay can become either sphere or cube but not both simultaneously; similarly, prime matter can become any material substance but is not actually any of them
• Prime matter cannot be known by itself, only through forms
• Likened to Heisenberg’s principle: we know matter only through the forms of matter

Truth in Things #

• A true stone: one that achieves the proper nature of a stone according to divine understanding
• A true house: one that achieves likeness to the form in the carpenter’s mind
• The judgment about a thing must be taken per se (as such), not per accidens (accidentally)

Knowledge vs. Desire #

• “I left my heart in San Francisco”: the heart (faculty of desire) goes to the beloved thing
• “My heart’s not in it”: the will/desire is not inclined to the thing
• “Where your treasure is, there also your heart shall be” (Christ): love follows the beloved
• By contrast: “Do you grasp what I’m saying?” (understanding) means the known enters the mind

Notable Quotes #

“Truth is that by which is shown what is” - Augustine, Book on True Religion

“The true and the false are not in things, but in the understanding” - Aristotle, Metaphysics 6

“Truth is the highest likeness to the beginning without any unlikeness” - Augustine, Book on True Religion

“The truth is a rightness perceptible only by the mind” - Anselm

“The truth of each thing is a property of its being, rendered stable to it” - Avicenna

“I am the way, the truth, and the life” - Christ (John 14:6)

“He illuminated the Church more than all the doctors” - Pope John XXII (on Thomas Aquinas)

“In his book, a man will advance more in one year than in the teaching of the others for a lifetime” - Pope John XXII (on Thomas Aquinas)

Questions Addressed #

Question 15, Article 3: Whether All Things Known by God Have Ideas #

Resolution:

• Ideas (as exemplars) exist for all things that come to be from God in time
• Ideas (as rationes) exist for all things known by God, even non-existent things
• Evil has no idea as exemplar or ratio; it is known through the good
• Prime matter has no separate idea; it is included in the idea of the composite
• Genera, singulars, and accidents are known through the ideas of the species and subject
• Divine providence extends to singulars, not merely species, as a special feature of divine care

Question 16, Article 1: Whether Truth Is Only in the Understanding #

Resolution:

• Truth is chiefly (primarily) in the understanding
• Truth is secondarily in things insofar as they have an order to an understanding
• Things are true by achieving likeness to an intelligible form (exemplar) in an understanding
• Being (not truth) in things causes the truth of our statements about them
• The foundational principle: “Knowledge is as the known is in the knower”; desire is as “the one desiring is inclined to the thing desired”

Additional Context #

Berquist includes remarks on:

• Historical Context: References to Marx and Engels’s division of materialist vs. idealist philosophers, noting the absence of a dualist middle position (mind and matter as two principles) that was held by Anaxagoras and Plato
• Pedagogical Notes: Remarks on the difficulty of translation (ratio into English), the use of examples to clarify concepts (truth cannot be “dug up” or “found” in nature), and the importance of understanding Thomistic distinctions
• Vatican II Context: Brief mention of Pope John XXIII and his connection to Thomas Aquinas through his predecessor Pope John XXII, with emphasis on Thomas as “common doctor” of the Church
• Book Reference: Discussion of The 33 Doctors of the Church, a popular treatment providing anecdotes and historical context for Church doctors
• Pedagogical Humor: Comments on the nature of philosophy (paying to talk about nothing) and the difference between losing one’s mind (bad) and losing one’s heart (depends on to whom)