Classical Christianity teaches that truth is not subjective but objective, echoing St. Augustine’s idea that:
“The true is that which is.”
Truth is reality. You can’t ignore it by refusing to believe it. We can deny the earth is round, but if we fly westbound for fifty-one hours, we get back to where we began.
St. Anselm, another important thinker in the great tradition, gave us this
definition:
“Truth is a supreme likeness without any unlike-ness. . . .”1
He means that truth is the ultimate degree of continuity between two things. A little boy’s first attempt to draw a circle will not be true. It will be close—to some degree—but the end product will be rough and bumpy. Not the shape we would want for bicycle tires. But if the boy carefully guides his crayon around the rim of a bowl, the result will be circular, a supreme likeness—true.
Now if we blend Augustine’s and Anselm’s thinking, we get a very helpful definition of truth: Truth is a supreme likeness to reality.
This practically begs the question: What is reality? What’s really real?
The answer: the Eternal Three—Father, Son, and Spirit. The Triune God is the ground of all being, the ultimate fact, the source that is true.
When we talk about becoming true, we mean acquiring a supreme likeness to the Trinity.
Room to Reflect
How do I usually think about truth — as something subjective to me, or as something objective and rooted in God?
What does the image of the little boy’s circle teach me about my own attempts to live truthfully?
How does the idea of truth as “a supreme likeness to reality” — with reality being the Triune God — challenge or reshape my understanding of what it means to live “in truth”?
Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa Theologica: First Part: (Devoted Publishing, 2018), 87.