Dist. 8, Part 1, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/8/q/bon-sent-I-d8-p1-a1-q1
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### Article I. *On the truth of God.*
### Question I. *Whether truth is a property of the divine being.*

That truth is a property of the divine being is shown by authorities and reasons.

1. *First*, thus: Jerome to Marcella, and it is found in the text: "God alone truly is, to whose essence our being, compared, is not"; but what belongs to one alone is proper to it: therefore truth is proper to the divine being.

2. *Likewise*, Augustine in *On True Religion*: "Falsity is from those things which imitate that One, by which whatever is, is one, inasmuch as they cannot fulfill it." If therefore no creature can fulfill that supreme One, truth is not in any creature, but falsity is in all.

3. *Likewise*, Augustine in the *Soliloquies* and in *On True Religion* says that the uncreated light is the ground of knowing itself and all knowable things: therefore if truth is the ground of knowing, and the uncreated light alone is truth: therefore truth is a property of God alone.

4. *Likewise*, Anselm in the book *On Truth* says that all things are true by the first truth: he understands this either effectively or formally; not effectively, because likewise all things could be called true by the first goodness: therefore it is understood formally: therefore there is no other truth than the uncreated truth: therefore if it is in God and is God, truth is the property of God alone.

5. *Likewise*, it is proved by reasons thus: truth and vanity are opposed; but every creature has vanity and admixture with non-being, since it is from nothing, and God alone is wholly free of this: therefore truth is in God alone.

6. *Likewise*, truth is opposed to shadow. For what is the shadow of a thing does not have truth; but creatures are shadows of that supreme being: therefore they do not have truth in their being.

7. *Likewise*, truth is that by which something is true; but truth is true, since it is knowable; but it is established that it is so not by another than itself, because otherwise there would be an infinite regress; but what is true by itself is true by essence: therefore every truth is true by essence; but the uncreated truth alone is true by essence: therefore truth is a property of God alone.

**On the contrary:**

1. If truth is a property of God, then truth is either complex or incomplex. Not complex; for such is with composition, but in God there is no composition. Not incomplex; for this is convertible with being: therefore since entity is not a property of God, by parity of reason neither will truth be.

2. *Likewise*, the true is equally common as the good, and in a certain way more so; but goodness is not a property of God: therefore by parity of reason neither is truth.

3. *Likewise*, truth is the ground of discerning Creator from creature, and creature from creature; but what is the ground of discerning and distinguishing is diverse in diverse things: therefore there is one truth in God and another in the creature, and one in one creature and another in another: therefore it is not proper to God alone.

4. *Likewise*, Augustine in the *Soliloquies*: "True is that which is," therefore truth is entity itself: therefore it is not proper to essence, because if so, by the same reasoning by which it is said: *Truth is* *a property of essence*, it could be said conversely, since they are entirely the same.

> **Conclusion.** Truth, insofar as it is opposed to falsity, is also found in creatures according to its threefold comparison — to the subject which it informs, to the principle which it represents, to the intellect which it excites; but insofar as it is opposed to admixture, it is a property of God alone.

**I respond:** It must be said that truth has a threefold comparison. For it has comparison to the subject which it informs, to the principle which it represents, and to the intellect which it excites. In comparison to the subject of truth, truth is called the indivision of act and potency. In comparison to the principle, truth is called the representation or imitation of the supreme unity and the first [exemplar]. In comparison to the intellect, truth is called the ground of discerning.

And in all these comparisons truth can be taken in two ways: in one way, as it is distinguished against falsity; in another way, as it is distinguished against admixture, according as the true is called pure and unmixed.

As truth is divided against falsity, which is the privation of indivision and imitation and expression, so since in the creature there is in some way to be found indivision and imitation and expression, thus truth is not only in the Creator, but also in the creature; and so it is not assigned [as] a property of God.

In another way, as truth is divided against admixture or impurity, so it is in God alone. For in God alone there is pure indivision, not mixed with any diversity; in God alone there is pure imitation and likeness, not mixed with any unlikeness; and in God alone there is expression of light not mixed with obscurity. But in the creature there is indivision with diversity of act and potency, and imitation with unlikeness; and further in it there is expression with obscurity. And therefore in this way truth is a property of the divine being; and thus the Master and Augustine and Jerome take it. For they call true that being which has nothing of possibility, nothing of vanity, nothing of non-entity. And therefore in God past and future do not fall, which are in some way non-beings.

**To the arguments for the affirmative:**

*To 1, 2, 5, 6.* And thus proceed the first two authorities and reasons.

*To 3.* But to that which is objected, that there is no other truth than the eternal, because it alone causes understanding; it must be said that just as color is the object of sight and the moving cause of sight — yet not without the act of light — and differs from light itself; so it must be said that created truth, although it cannot move without uncreated truth, is nevertheless moving in its own way and another truth than that one.

*To 4 and 7.* To that which is objected from Anselm, that all things are true by the first truth; it must be said that the true by its imposition states a comparison to the exemplary cause, just as the good to the final cause. For just as something is called good by reason of order, so true by reason of expression; and the ground of expressing belongs to the exemplar itself. Just as therefore, when it is said of created goods that they are good by uncreated goodness, goodness predicates the end in the ablative, not the form, because God's goodness is the form of no created thing; likewise, when it is said that all things are true by uncreated truth, the ablative states the formal exemplary cause. For all true things are and are born to express themselves through the expression of that supreme light; and if it ceased to flow in, the rest would cease to be true. Therefore no created truth is true by essence, but by participation; and through this the last point is clear.

**To the arguments to the contrary:**

To that which is objected in the contrary, that it is not a property; the response is clear: because

he objects concerning truth as it has opposition to the defect of falsity, not to the admixture of possibility; for in the aforesaid way it belongs not only to the Creator, but also to the creature.

*To 4.* To that which is objected, that truth is the same as the divine essence; it must be said that of the account of *property* in the creature there are these three: first, that it belongs to one alone; second, that it is the ground of becoming known; third, that it differs from that whose property it is. The first two pertain to perfection, but the last to imperfection, because it excludes simplicity. And therefore truth is called a property of the divine essence, not because it differs or is inhering in the divine essence as an accident in a subject, but because it belongs to it alone and is the ground of knowing it. And this is the cause why, conversely, essence is not a property of truth, because it is not the ground of making it known, as conversely.

But if you ask, since essence and truth signify the same, why one is the ground of knowing the other, and not conversely; to this some have said that, although essence and truth signify the same, nevertheless one — namely, truth — is more a ground of knowing by reason of what is connoted. But this cannot stand, because truth connotes nothing. Therefore it must be said that this is by reason of the mode of signifying and understanding.

And it should be noted that there is a twofold way of speaking about these names: in one way, by reason of that which they name or signify; in another way, by reason of that in which what they name is signified as posited. Hence it differs to say *sense* and *sense of man*; because the first is said in common of the sense of man and of brute, the second properly of man. If therefore we take such names according to themselves, the account of essence is one thing, and of truth another, since essence states *what*, truth the condition of being. But when we draw essence and truth to God, although they are the same, yet by reason of the general things signified one is taken as a property of the other; and there is no synonymy there, nor are they synonymous names, but the account of subject and property remains according to the mode of signifying, and remains also according to the mode of understanding; because through essence in the creature we understand essence in the Creator, and through the truth of the creature we understand uncreated truth. Hence just as created truth is a property and the ground of knowing created essence, so uncreated truth, according to the account of signifying and understanding, is the ground of knowing and understanding uncreated essence.