Is God's truth subjective?

[Ben_Sinner]

What I mean is, is something true just because “That’s how God made it to be” ?

If yes, isn’t that just a higher form of subjective truth, since its based on what God made it out to be, rather than it just “being true”?

 

[e_c]

We can distinguish between two kinds of necessity (or “objectivity” if you like)…

Absolute - can’t ever possibly be different due to the idea of difference being contradictory (like the laws of mathematics, God’s essential attributes, etc.)

Relative - could be thought to be different, even though it is not so (humans have 4 limbs, there are 7 continents, arguably the laws of physics, the history of salvation, that there is something other than God, etc.)

Absolute necessity, relative necessity.

Does that help?

 

[GEddie]

By definition, truth cannot be subjective, it either is or isn’t.

 

[Rhubarb]

I think this harkens back to the Euthyphro Dilemma. We can say there are moral truths (I guess morality and… Uh. Human nature are objective per Catholic thinking? Correct me if I’m wrong.) These things are hand-crafted by God, though, which to me implies that they could have been crafted differently. Maybe there’s orders of objectivity? Like, maybe human nature is subjective to God, as it could’ve been created differently, but it’s objective to us being on a lower order of objectivity?

 

[Rhubarb]

I think this harkens back to the Euthyphro Dilemma. When I hear about ‘objective truths’ I generally hear about certain things. (I guess morality and… Uh. Human nature are objective per Catholic thinking? Correct me if I’m wrong.) These things are hand-crafted by God, though, which to me implies that they could have been crafted differently. Maybe there’s orders of objectivity? Like, maybe human nature is subjective to God, as it could’ve been created differently, but it’s objective to us being on a lower order of objectivity?

I probably didn’t explain that well. If it’s confusing I’ll make another pass at it.

 

[John_Martin]

Truth resides in the intellect, not in objects.
Truth to the intellect is about knowing objects as they are rather than knowing something other than the object and calling it the object known.
Truth can vary either if my opinion about the object says I know it differently now, even though the object remains the same as it always was, or if the object changes but my opinion says it is the same as it always was (not apprehending the change).
The only place where there would be non-subjective truth of the knower of truth knowing the object without a discrepancy between the knowing and the object itself is in the Divine intellect. There is truth in God’s intellect because he knows what is really real and is not “confused”. The “objects” he knows are always exactly as he knows them.

Because the truth we know was “learned” through sensitive apprehension of objective reality, and reasoning about it, we are subject to varying recognition of the fullness of truth, and always returning to re-apprehend the real things to compare to our knowing of them, improving our opinions, our understandings, of truth. Truth is subjective for us, mutable, because we are subjects examining to know, and because the material from which we know is always in movement. The immutable has come among us, which we know as Catholics, but I won’t get into that here - yet there is One who can be apprehended and does not change, within our material reality from which we come to know truth.

 

[fhansen]

What I mean is, is something true just because “That’s how God made it to be” ?

If yes, isn’t that just a higher form of subjective truth, since its based on what God made it out to be, rather than it just “being true”?

God is truth/reality/existence. He cannot be separated from truth as if truth could be different, at His whim…

 

[Ben_Sinner]

I also have another question.

What separates God’s situation from solipsism?

Because it is said that it would be impossible for a solipsist to know objective truth because his mind is all that exists and therefore his mind would be truth itself…with this he can make anything to be true or untrue…which is basically a glorified way of saying truth is based on what he decides it to be (subjective)

Isn’t this similar to what God’s situation is?

 

[John_Martin]

I also have another question.

What separates God’s situation from solipsism?

Because it is said that it would be impossible for a solipsist to know objective truth because his mind is all that exists and therefore his mind would be truth itself…with this he can make anything to be true or untrue…which is basically a glorified way of saying truth is based on what he decides it to be (subjective)

Isn’t this similar to what God’s situation is?

First, God’s “situation” - unlike the solipsist, God does not create reality and then change his mind about it - he does not say, “I am creating an angel that will live forever”, and then recant, saying, “I have decided that the angel will die or cease to live.” So, what he has created never changes from what he initially knew. Even contingent creatures, which are accidentally different from their form (such as a dog losing a leg), yet they are never naturally other than what he knows them to be.

What God knows never varies, and is always identical to the thing he knows, so he knows the “truth” of what he knows, rather than approximations.

As for the solipsist, though he does not exist (because what he knows, or opines to know, is actually outside himself even though he will not admit it), he will not know the truth until he admits to something being “other” and admits to some degree of “knowing the other”. As long as he contains the other in his imagination as its only “place of being”, he does not know its reality, because he is not “knowing it AS Other”, which it actually is.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

I also have another question.

What separates God’s situation from solipsism?

Because it is said that it would be impossible for a solipsist to know objective truth because his mind is all that exists and therefore his mind would be truth itself…with this he can make anything to be true or untrue…which is basically a glorified way of saying truth is based on what he decides it to be (subjective)

Isn’t this similar to what God’s situation is?

No because we are not figments. He wants us to share in knowing, of our initiative, through using our faculties.

Things in the real world take a lifetime to find out only part of them.

The “subjective” can be objective, because that’s the value of testimony, when you have got a feel for evaluating it.

God decided to be truth and isn’t arbitrary about it.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

I also have another question.

What separates God’s situation from solipsism?

Because it is said that it would be impossible for a solipsist to know objective truth because his mind is all that exists and therefore his mind would be truth itself…with this he can make anything to be true or untrue…which is basically a glorified way of saying truth is based on what he decides it to be (subjective)

Isn’t this similar to what God’s situation is?

No because we are not figments. He wants us to share in knowing, of our initiative, through using our faculties.

Things in the real world take a lifetime to find out only part of them.

The “subjective” can be objective, because that’s the value of testimony, when you have got a feel for evaluating it.

God decided to be truth and isn’t arbitrary about it.