Truth according to Aquinas?

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Malcolm

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how does Aquinas define truth philosophically and how does that definition relate to our Lord’s statement “I am the way, and the truth, and the life" ?

Jesus is “conformity to reality” ? Jesus “is reality” ?
 
I get confused with this as when you study truth the definition turns out to be in turn the same thing reversed.

Truth is normally reality or something accurate to reality
 
My problem is that I feel like we are not allowed know the real truth as this involves esoteric knowledge of the world which is forbidden as occult
 
So Jesus and the angels do use magic I presume but humans are forbidden
 
Well i might take that back about Jesus and angels using magic but I mean to say they use supernatural powers not sure if they call that magic !
 
That’s a good question. Aquinas’ De Veritate is here. Although St Thomas believes that ‘being’ and ‘goodness’ are convertible, he does not believe the same with ‘true.’

Truth is not convertible with being insofar as something could be said to be true which encapsulates some “lack” or non-being (he uses the example of fornication—where we could say it is true that such and such a person is fornicating, but that is an activity lacking in some good) to call a proposition true cannot be the same as saying “it exists.”

Aquinas says, “ An alternative answer would be that in the statement, “The true is that which is,” the word is is not here understood as referring to the act of existing, but rather as the mark of the intellectual act of judging, signifying, that is, the affirmation of a proposition. The meaning would then be this: “The true is that which is—it is had when the existence of what is, is affirmed.””

To me, this seems like what philosophers call the “correspondence theory of truth”—a proposition is true insofar as it corresponds to reality.
 
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To me, this seems like what philosophers call the “correspondence theory of truth”—a proposition is true insofar as it corresponds to reality.
This is why I asked about Jesus saying “I am the truth” , I don’t understand how Jesus is the correspondence of propositions to reality.

Will I find the answer in De Veritate ? not sure I can understand it but I will try if it answers this.
 
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