Calling all Thomists

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Matthias123

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I am having difficulty understanding the relation of “human truth” and “divine truth”. I understand that Thomas defines that human truth is in the intellect and that is the intellect conforming itself to things. I also understand that divine truth is the divine intellect conforming itself to things. However I also know that Thomas understood truth to be objective.

So take for example something created by man. To demonstrate where my reasoning fails, I will use a sock. Now I, with my intellect understand a sock to be only something that goes on my foot. I can see with my senses that it has the appearance that fits my concept of a sock. Therefore my intellect is conformed to the object, and it is true.

Now a second person, perhaps from another culture believes that a sock can also be something that is put on the hand, and worn as a mitten. This does not fit my concept of a sock, however it does fit that second person. Now we have a situation where it is true that it is a sock, and it is not true that it is a sock. Now I understand that these truths are not contradicting each other because they are both relative to the intellect that is making the determination. Now assuming that the divine intellect is not concerned with the concept of sock, insofar as it was not created by him directly, but indirectly through the creation of man who created the sock, how could we possibly define exactly what a sock is?

My first initial reaction is that the concept of sock is relative on the person. Now this gets into dangerous territory because I know it is logically impossible for truth to be completely subjective. This is because that the truth that truth is subjective would be an absolute truth and thus contradict the statement. Therefore there must be a middle ground that is drawn. From what I understand truth is a superposition of objectivity and subjectivity, which is synonymous with the superposition of divine truth and human truth, to which the divine truth is superior.

However I still do not understand the complete relation between human truth and divine truth, and Aquinas’s understanding of falsity. When, and in what circumstances is it permitted to say that someone is false? I know that Aristotle writes in the Metaphysics that the most certain of all truths is that two contradictory statements cannot at the same time be true. Therefore we know that truth cannot contradict truth. However if the divine truth is relative to the divine intellect, how can divine truth ever contradict human truth, and how can I ever say that someone is wrong when their own truth is actually truth?
 
Matthias123 said:
So take for example something created by man. To demonstrate where my reasoning fails, I will use a sock. Now I, with my intellect understand a sock to be only something that goes on my foot. I can see with my senses that it has the appearance that fits my concept of a sock. Therefore my intellect is conformed to the object, and it is true.

Now a second person, perhaps from another culture believes that a sock can also be something that is put on the hand, and worn as a mitten. This does not fit my concept of a sock, however it does fit that second person. Now we have a situation where it is true that it is a sock, and it is not true that it is a sock. Now I understand that these truths are not contradicting each other because they are both relative to the intellect that is making the determination.
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Hello.

It is true that man has in his mind a concept that you called sock, which he or she invented. But when he actualizes a sock in reality, man is not truly actualizing an objective reality that is “Sock”, but rather that which best resembles the “idea” of that sock. So the objective reality of a sock is relative, thus enabling another person to convert it in to mittens; however the idea of a sock is still distinct from the idea of mittens, as in, you truly have an idea of that which you named sock. But there is no such thing as a objective truth that is “sock”, as in, something that exists for the purpose of going on your feet. The very thing that makes it a sock is only true in terms of it serving your subjective purpose. But not only is it not an objective truth, it is not a intellectual truth either, such as the proposition that a triangle has three sides. It is always true that that which we call a triangle, has 3 sides. It is not aways true that a sock is a sock. Truth is eternal. And so it seems that the idea of a sock is a fantasy or a product of the human imagination, rather then an intellectual truth.

The truth of God is always true and all truths exist in relation to God. For example; It is true that God created an actual person, in so far as the term “personal” actually signifies that which has a “personal nature”. There is truly a nature that is “personal”. Its not just a mere intellectual opinion. The truth of it, that which is personal, is objective and eternal. So not only does God have an eternal idea of man, he actualizes into existence a “true man”. While men can only attempt to mold preexisting materials into that which only resembles the invented concept in their head, and even the resemblance has no objective truth to it; there is only the concept, the fantasy.

I must admit that i am not a Thomist by academic profession, but rather i am a great admirer of Aquinian philosophy and theology. Although some people have said that my ideas are good. And so, at risk of being uninspiring and misleading I thought that i would have a try anyway;). Any errors are completely my own and have nothing to do with Aquinas.

Hope you enjoyed.
 
Matthias123 said:
I am having difficulty understanding the relation of “human truth” and “divine truth”. I understand that Thomas defines that human truth is in the intellect and that is the intellect conforming itself to things. I also understand that divine truth is the divine intellect conforming itself to things. However I also know that Thomas understood truth to be objective.

So take for example something created by man. To demonstrate where my reasoning fails, I will use a sock. Now I, with my intellect understand a sock to be only something that goes on my foot. I can see with my senses that it has the appearance that fits my concept of a sock. Therefore my intellect is conformed to the object, and it is true.

Now a second person, perhaps from another culture believes that a sock can also be something that is put on the hand, and worn as a mitten. This does not fit my concept of a sock, however it does fit that second person. Now we have a situation where it is true that it is a sock, and it is not true that it is a sock. Now I understand that these truths are not contradicting each other because they are both relative to the intellect that is making the determination. Now assuming that the divine intellect is not concerned with the concept of sock, insofar as it was not created by him directly, but indirectly through the creation of man who created the sock, how could we possibly define exactly what a sock is?

My first initial reaction is that the concept of sock is relative on the person. Now this gets into dangerous territory because I know it is logically impossible for truth to be completely subjective. This is because that the truth that truth is subjective would be an absolute truth and thus contradict the statement. Therefore there must be a middle ground that is drawn. From what I understand truth is a superposition of objectivity and subjectivity, which is synonymous with the superposition of divine truth and human truth, to which the divine truth is superior.

However I still do not understand the complete relation between human truth and divine truth, and Aquinas’s understanding of falsity. When, and in what circumstances is it permitted to say that someone is false? I know that Aristotle writes in the Metaphysics that the most certain of all truths is that two contradictory statements cannot at the same time be true. Therefore we know that truth cannot contradict truth. However if the divine truth is relative to the divine intellect, how can divine truth ever contradict human truth, and how can I ever say that someone is wrong when their own truth is actually truth?
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I think that you are going to need to come up with a better analogy. Your idea of sock needs to be something that excludes the possibility of being a mitten.

Before I can answer something more specific I need to know if you have something better than that analogy.

Paul
 
My problem is, I do not understand how Thomas is saying that truth is objective. I know that truth is objective of course, but his truth theory is confusing.
  1. For example Thomas says that truth is the confirmity of the intelect to things. He also says that truth resides in the intelect. Therefore human truth is relative to our minds. Now if this follows for the divine truth, the divine truth is relative to God’s divine intelect, and is not always true for us. So basicly as far as I understand is he is saying that all truth is relative, but we should always follow the truth in the divine intelect. However I know that there is error here, because Thomas teaches objective truth.
Another anology:

Now let us take something that is created by God. Human sexually is created by God, and he has a concept of what human sexuality is. In his divine intellect he has the concept of human sexuality as between one man and one woman. Now this truth exists in his intellect, and is unchangeable to his eternal nature. Now what if person A’s concept of human sexuality is that human sexuality is between same sex peoples. Since person A’s intellect is not in conformity to the object, it would see God’s concept of human sexuality as false. Now the truth that human sexuality is true in the divine intellect, and is not truth in the intellect of person A. Therefore, truth is relative.

There is some major errors here, because I know that all truth is not relative:
  1. The truth that “all truth is subjective” is true.
  2. The truth that “all truth is subjective” becomes an absolute truth.
  3. That absolute truth is objective.
  4. Therefore all truth is not subjective.
Where the heck am I going wrong?
 
Is “human truth” another phrase for “human knowledge”?

All knowledge is relative in the sense that it pertains to a certain individual. But of course that in no way implies the doctrine of relativism that says there are no absolutes.
 
Your question is not clear to me. You cite Aristotle’s dictum that I know that “the most certain of all truths is that two contradictory statements cannot at the same time be true.”

I’d start by disagreeing with Aristotle. The most certain of all truths is that truth exists. Anyone who doesn’t believe that might as well throw in his intellectual towel. You have to believe that before you can argue about whether two contradictory statements at the same time can be true.

Then again, disputing Aristotle, in physics there is the problem of defining light, which can be treated either as a wave or as a particle at the same time. Whew!

In any case, truth can be both objective and subjective at the same time. Depends on what you mean by objective and subjective. If by subjective you mean existing in the mind, everything is subjective because everything we know exists in the mind. However, some things that exist in the mind do not exist in reality. This is where imagination comes into play. Other things that exist in the mind do exist in reality, such as your now famous sock.

The problem is to find a method by which we can reconcile God’s knowledge and ours. God’s knowledge is true knowledge that is imparted to us both through our intellect (science, philosophy) and our imagination (faith, poetry). But the devil wants to lure us away. Such is the case when a Catholic scientist willingly admits that God designed and created the universe, then turns around and says he doesn’t believe in intelligent design. Such Catholic scientists have been lured (or should I say bullied?) into this subjective notion by atheist scientists who want to keep God as far away from science as possible. You don’t go anywhere in the field of biology (or in some other scientific fields) if you don’t kowtow to the atheist view that science cannot approach any scientific notion that even implies the existence of a higher intellect than man’s (unless, of course, it might be the higher intellect of another species on some foreign planet).
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Other things that exist in the mind do exist in reality, such as your now famous sock.
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There is in reality a “thing” that we assign the “function” of the idea that we call sock.
But there is no such thing as an objective reality called “sock”, for a sock cannot be classed as being the objective “nature” of something.

How is it that you failed to see that?😦

Not believing in intelligent-design as proposed by ID theorists, is not the same as not believing in Intelligent-Design in the broadest possible sense of the term. It is possible to be a Theistic-evolutionist.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
You cite Aristotle’s dictum that I know that “the most certain of all truths is that two contradictory statements cannot at the same time be true.”

I’d start by disagreeing with Aristotle.
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:eek: … BAD move, buddy.

For one, what Aristotle actually said was that the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect (you seem to have left out that last part).

But for another, you’ll want to take note that Aristotle and Aquinas are incredibly close buddies, and Aquinas is in agreement with probably over 98% of everything Aristotle ever said.

In all seriousness, I doubt you should ever start out by simply disagreeing with Aristotle about anything… because even if all of his final conclusions are not quite right, most all of the fundamental principles that he was are working with to reach that conclusion are perfectly solid.
Charlemagne_II said:
The most certain of all truths is that truth exists.
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According to what even you yourself said above, Aristotle obviously already granted that “truth exists” implicitly when he said that “the most certain of all truths is…”
Charlemagne_II said:
Then again, disputing Aristotle, in physics there is the problem of defining light, which can be treated either as a wave or as a particle at the same time.
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This doesn’t affect the validity of Aristotle’s principle either.

Physics doesn’t say “it’s both a particle and not a particle at the same time in the same respect” or “it’s both a wave and not a wave at the same time in the same respect”.

What physics does seem to be saying is that “it’s both a particle and a wave at the same time and in different respects”, which is most certainly not a problem.

Plus there’s also the question, it seems, of exactly how opposed a “particle” and a “wave” in nature really are, and whether or not you can even correctly say that “a particle is not a wave” or “a wave is not a particle” to begin with.
Charlemagne_II said:
In any case, truth can be both objective and subjective at the same time.
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But not also in the same respect.
 
Not believing in intelligent-design as proposed by ID theorists, is not the same as not believing in Intelligent-Design in the broadest possible sense of the term. It is possible to be a Theistic-evolutionist.

Of course it is. Who said anything to the contrary?
 
*But for another, you’ll want to take note that Aristotle and Aquinas are incredibly close buddies, and Aquinas is in agreement with probably over 98% of everything Aristotle ever said.

In all seriousness, I doubt you should ever start out by simply disagreeing with Aristotle about anything… because even if all of his final conclusions are not quite right, most all of the fundamental principles that he was are working with to reach that conclusion are perfectly solid.*

:bowdown: ARISTOTLE! :highprayer:
 
Charlemagne_II said:
It is possible to be a Theistic-evolutionist.

Of course it is. Who said anything to the contrary?
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Uh, around this forum? You’d be surprised…
Charlemagne_II said:
:bowdown: ARISTOTLE! :highprayer:
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Good Lord.

Alright, fine. I’ll play along. Yes.
Of course, the following might be a little more appropriate:
:bowdown: AQUINAS! :highprayer:
…and your choice of icons is, of course, exaggerated. But whatever.
You obviously don’t understand just how much Aquinas respected Aristotle.
 
masterjedi

*…and your choice of icons is, of course, exaggerated. But whatever.
You obviously don’t understand just how much Aquinas respected Aristotle. *

At your age I also thought my elders were pretty dumb! 😉
 
masterjedi747 said:
You obviously don’t understand just how much Aquinas respected Aristotle.
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In Aquinas’ works he respected Aristotle only as much as he agreed with what Aristotle had to say. Not that their was some kind of authoritative awe surrounding the man Aristotle (maybe you were getting at that, but I had to mouth off just to be on the safe side).

And these terms of human truth and divine truth seems a lot similar to the term human knowledge and divine knowledge since the conforming intellect is a central part to the theory.

peace,
Michael
 
Shike said:
In Aquinas’ works he respected Aristotle only as much as he agreed with what Aristotle had to say.
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Well, that’s true. But I’m honestly only aware of a small handful of points on which Aquinas ever disagrees with Aristotle… for the most part he agrees entirely, and even went to far as to refer to Aristotle simply as “the Philosopher”, rather than by name.
Shike said:
Not that there was some kind of authoritative awe surrounding the man Aristotle
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If not, there certainly was by the time Aquinas got through with him. 😛

But I mean, you also have to remember that Aristotle’s works were lost for quite a long time, and had only been recently re-discovered around the time that Aquinas was writing. So it was a pretty big deal, especially when someone like Aquinas studied his works and gave him such a large amount of credit.
Charlemagne_II said:
At your age I also thought my elders were pretty dumb! 😉
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Plenty of my elders are undoubtedly far more intelligent than I will ever be.
But because they’re incredibly well-educated, not just because they’re older than I am.
 
I find the distinction between “human truth” and “Divine Truth” completely fascinating. I believe that it is the least understood relationship in christianism and Abrahamic religions as a group. I also may be being rude in terms of this thread, a) not having read every post, and b) posing an answer that I feel addresses your concern but is not strictly Thomist. I dare to do this because of a bridge created for me by St Thomas, who, a few months before he died, claimed that he had had a revelation of such proportion as to make all his writings “…as straw.” Any Thomists on here likely know this story better than I do, but nevertheless, it is a segue into a remarkable area which concerns your original difficulty, Matthias123

St. Thomas’ final pronouncement upon the cessation of his writings tends to confirm for me something I have felt to be true for several decades now, since a rather remarkable experience in my own life. That is simply that “human truth” has to do with the funda-“mental” nature of subject-object awareness, and that Divine Truth has to do with Consciousness, as such,

Now we humans tend to dismiss pure Consciousness as such both as a concept and as an experience. In fact, it is a rarity to encounter someone who even would consider that term. At least I have found this to be the case among Catholics. It is not so among certain other groups or individuals, especially, who have had what might be construed as an experience such as St. Thomas had. Whatever that was, it was strong enough to defeat his desire to write more of his magnificent treaties.

What I am proposing is that St. Thomas’ main body of writings, though based on the action of his magnificent intellect on faith, contemplation, meditation, or even mystical experience, were all in the realm of human truth, or truth about the Divine, written as a human dealing in a subject-object mode of experience. I think that his final revelation is when he might have experienced Truth as the divine, insofar as an exceptionally blessed human is capable of doing this. It was an experience, I believe, in the very nature of his awareness.

In other words, his understanding transformed in nature from an objective thinking about the truth, to an understanding of that same truth by Identity. He saw, finally, that he himself as a soul could not be separate from his Vision of God. Being so accurate in his intellect and strong in his faith allowed a rare fusion given to few. He saw Divine Truth not as an object of faith or intellectual apprehension, but as a living experience without bounds, as a “being” of it distinct from an “observation” of it, if you will.

From this standpoint Divine revelation is not, I would think, an *arrived at *construct, but an outflowing of experiential exposition of the sense of self being at one with the sense of “I.” It is, in fact, aas ar as I cans see, the actual “atonement.” the death of the sense of person into the acceptance of the Divine as the Source and substance of one’s Being.

The reason this is being postulated in these terms is simple. It is possible for a human to experience Consciousness in its purity, unaffected by time, space, or identification with person. That Consciousness is undifferentiated and ineffable, self reflexive state which appears to the “human” mind to be nothing. Yet it is ALL. It is equivalent to “I” with no other qualification, and radically distinct from the circumstantial, temporal “me” we ignorantly yet hopefully call I. Once having experienced this foundational state, it is empirically understood that everything that we regard to be ourselves is an add-on, a superimposition which could not and would not exist without this substrate of “I.”

Everything added on to this state, namely our experience of self as a person (“person” literally means “sound through a mask”) is a manifestation of this wholeness into an individuated awareness we mistake for our actual self. Everything we think of as our "self " is in fact a veneer of divided awareness that requires a seer and a seen. That seer seeing is the realm of human truth, as it has to comprehend everything in terms of division. The mind’s job is to divide, or see twice. The Consciousness it stems from is undivided and sees/IS as One. It is the realm of Divine Truth. St. Thomas, I strongly suspect, experienced that rarest of cases, the fusion of the two and the ability to sustain it while in a state of normal “personhood.”

I hope that that is useful in understanding the distinction. A very good scholarly book about the dynamics of this understanding you are seeking is The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object by Franklin Merrell-Wolff. There are many others, but this one is maybe the best by a contemporary writer in English, so there is less room for the exigencies one experiences due to translation. An excellent insight as to how a mind in this state works might be A Thousand Names for Joy by a remarkable woman named Byron Katie, also a contemporary.

As a side note, it has always fascinated me why Thomistic scholars pursue interpreting his written work, instead of pursuing his actual work, which is whatever it was that led him or allowed him to make his final pronouncement about his writing, with all energy available. I have my own theory about that, but as you might guess, it is not popular. It has to do with the difference between human truth and Divine Truth.
 
masterjedi

Plenty of my elders are undoubtedly far more intelligent than I will ever be. But because they’re incredibly well-educated, not just because they’re older than I am.

Think about what you have just said. Intelligence is not related to how well educated we are. In my field of work throughout life I have met many extremely well educated people who could not think their way out of a paper bag.

When you have arrived at a certain age, you will quickly (and probably painfully) learn that this is true.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Intelligence is not related to how well educated we are. In my field of work throughout life I have met many extremely well educated people who could not think their way out of a paper bag.
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I have serious doubts that we’re in agreement on what “incredibly well-educated” means.
I don’t just mean that they’re an expert in one or two particular fields of work or study. I’m talking about people that almost anyone with a basic education could walk up to, and manage to hold an intelligent argument or conversation with regarding almost anything at all. I’m talking about people who are considered genuinely intelligent, even wise, and whose opinion on almost anything is at least understandable and respectable, (even to the extent that, if I actually happen to find myself in disagreement with them, I am often genuinely concerned that they understand something about the matter that I don’t). I only know a handful of such people, it’s true, but all of them are my elders, and I respect all of them considerably more (no offense intended) than most other people I know.
 
masterjedi

I have serious doubts that we’re in agreement on what “incredibly well-educated” means.

To be incredibly well educated is no substitute for wisdom. I have met people who could talk circles around me on almost any subject. I consider them incredibly well educated people and “smart.”. Yet some of these same people do not believe in God.

“The fool in his heart says there is no God.” Psalms 14:1
 
Perhaps they do not believe because they are well educated enough to see through antropomorphism, but not well educated enough to see other alternatives than atheism? “Education” means “to lead out of.” Presumabley that means “out of” ignorance. Christianism has its own brand of that, which brand is not palatable to some who thoroughly examine its premises.

I believe that St. Thomas did, and percieved what he finally did as a function of exhausting his intellections. But I wasn’t there, and didn’t talk with him about it, so I have my own brand of ignorance as well.
 
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