Thomas Aquinas on the Claim that God is Truth

Abstract

Thomas Aquinas argues that God can be identified with the truth as such. He holds that ‘God is truth’ is an analogical claim that asserts, first, that God exemplifies truth to the highest possible degree and, second, that God is the cause of all truth. To understand his arguments fully, one must also understand his claim that created truth “participates in” or “imitates” divine truth. Creatures participate in or imitate God just by virtue of being created. Thus, these claims simply reiterate that God causes all created truth by causing all created being. Aquinas’s claim that God is truth may seem nonsensical to contemporary readers, but properly understood, it is quite modest, and poses few intellectual obstacles beyond those posed by classical theism itself.

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