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Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence

Theory of Truth in De Veritate?
Joshua Lee Harris

Abstract: At least since Martin Heidegger’s influential reading of Thomas Aquinas’s

account of truth as a precursor to modern philosophy’s unfortunate “forgetfulness
of being,” it has been popular to classify the Angelic Doctor as one of the forerun-
ners of the modern “correspondence theory” of truth. In what follows, I attempt
to answer the question of whether or not this is a correct assessment. I want to
suggest that Aquinas’s account of truth has superficial concord but deep conflict with
modern correspondence theories. The argument proceeds in two major segments:
First, I attempt to establish a working definition of correspondence theory by trac-
ing its development in the work of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand
Russell. Next, in light of these fundamental features of correspondence theory, I
sketch out the way in which Aquinas’s own account is in superficial concord but
deep conflict with it.

A
t least since Martin Heidegger’s influential reading of Thomas Aquinas’s
account of truth as a precursor to modern philosophy’s unfortunate
“forgetfulness of being,”1 it has been popular to classify the Angelic
Doctor as one of the forerunners of the modern “correspondence theory” of truth.2
In what follows, I attempt to answer the question of whether or not this is a cor-
rect formulation. Like Alvin Plantinga’s account of the relationship between the
empirical sciences as a field of inquiry and naturalism as a metaphysics, I want to
suggest that Aquinas’s account of truth has “superficial concord but deep conflict”
with modern correspondence theories.3
The argument proceeds in two major segments: First, I attempt to establish a
working definition of correspondence theory by tracing its development in the work
of John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell. Without pretending to have
included every version of the theory in this brief excursus, I submit that reading these
three figures in continuity offers a workable definition capturing the basic commit-
ments shared by those who identify as correspondence theorists. Second, in light of
these fundamental features of correspondence theory, I sketch out the way in which
Aquinas’s own account is in concord and conflict with it. Although correspondence
theory’s reliance upon the basic structure of the truthmaker-truthbearer relationship
is somewhat vindicated in Aquinas, three fundamental commitments in the Angelic
2 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

Doctor’s metaphysical system make fuller concord with correspondence theory

impossible. These commitments are as follows: (1) that truth can be predicated of
the thing as well as the intellect; (2) the rejection of “third thing” theories of the
concept; and most importantly, (3) that truth is predicated of God essentially but
of creatures analogically.
At the very least, I submit that this argument shows why contemporary tenden-
cies to label Aquinas an advocate of correspondence theory must come with some
important qualifications. At most, it shows that Aquinas’s account of truth does
not warrant the label at all.

What is the Correspondence heory of Truth? Locke, Mill, Russell

Although the correspondence theory of truth is most notably adopted by major
figures in modern philosophy, surprisingly little philosophical energy is dedicated to
the subject of truth qua truth in modernity until the twentieth century. Among the
modern figures who do deal with the subject is John Locke in his Essay Concerning
Understanding. According to Locke, truth in general is defined as follows:

A right joining or separating of signs, i.e. either ideas or words. Truth,

then, seems to me, in the proper import of the word, to signify nothing
but the joining or separating of Signs, as the Things signified by them
do agree or disagree one with another. The joining or separating of signs
here meant, is what by another name we call proposition. So that truth
properly belongs only to propositions.4

Two points encased in this definition are immediately relevant for our present
purposes. First, Locke’s account of truth involves the mind’s ability of “joining
or separating” words and ideas in order to create propositions. This puts him in
the same philosophical neighborhood as Aquinas; for the latter too argues that
truth “resides in the intellect composing and dividing.”5 However, for our current
purposes, the second point is equally or perhaps even more important to realize:
namely, that on Locke’s definition, truth is exclusive. On his view, “truth belongs
only to propositions.”
What we have in Locke, then, is a definition of truth that involves the agree-
ment of things in the world with the right combination of signs which together
make a proposition. However, Locke does not take pains to describe what the neces-
sary ontological conditions might be for this right relationship. This is presumably
because Locke is more concerned with problems associated with knowledge than
truth. Locke seems to think that the nature of this “agreement” between proposi-
tions and things in the world is immediately obvious to our “perception” without
further description—to such an extent that it does not merit much investigation.6
Locke does, however, consider an objection to his definition of truth (which
is, not coincidentally, identical to an earlier objection he entertains in regards to his
definition of knowledge):7
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 3

Objection against verbal truth, that “thus it may all be chimerical.” But
here again will be apt to occur the same doubt about truth, that did
about knowledge: and it will be objected, that if truth be nothing but the
joining and separating of words in propositions, as the ideas they stand
for agree or disagree in men’s minds, . . . it amounts to no more than the
conformity of words to the chimeras of men’s brains.8

It is easy to see how, if successful, this objection would be devastating to Locke’s

theory of truth. If the business of truth were exhausted by the joining or separating
of signs which together make the “strange ideas all men’s heads are filled with,”9 there
would be no accountability of truth to things in the real world. This would imply a
rather nightmarish incommensurability between individual intellects regarding the
“truth(s)” to which each supposedly has access.
It is against this disagreeable implication that Locke posits his definition of
truth as constrained by the agreement of ideas and things in the world. So although
truth resides in propositions composed by the mind, it is made true by a reality
outside of the mind. Even so, again, an extended analysis regarding the nature of
the relationship between propositions and the reality to which they agree remains
wanting. Presumably, such an investigation would be dismissed by Locke as an ill-
fated and mistaken inquiry into “real essences.”10
With this, we can move on to Mill’s Logic, which builds on Locke’s commit-
ments regarding the nature of propositions and truth. According to Mill, the tradition
of epistemology and logic—including figures as diverse as René Descartes, Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz and Locke—tends mistakenly to blur what ought to be a clear
distinction between “judgments” and “propositions.”11 This confusion, according
to Mill, is due primarily to this tradition’s failure to recognize that “propositions
(except sometimes when the mind itself is the subject treated of ) are not assertions
respecting our ideas of things, but assertions respecting the things themselves.”12
The difference is clear: for Locke, propositions are about ideas, which in turn agree
or disagree with things in reality. For Mill, however, propositions are about things
in reality—without the mediating presence of ideas.13
Perhaps the most telling passage in which Mill reveals his commitment to a
correspondence theory of truth does not contain assertions but questions. The task
of a theory of truth, for Mill, is to answer the following questions:

What is the immediate object of belief in a Proposition? What is the matter

of fact signified by it? What is it to which, when I assert the proposi-
tion, I give my assent, and call upon others to give theirs? What is that
which is expressed by the form of discourse called a Proposition, and the
conformity of which to fact constitutes the truth of the proposition?14

The most interesting part of this passage for our purposes is in the last question—
namely, Mill’s use of the word “fact” to describe that by which propositions are made
true.15 Although he does not say it explicitly, in Logic Mill seems to arrive upon
4 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

something close to what is perhaps now the most widespread definition of corre-
spondence theory: that truth is a correspondence between propositions and facts.
Despite this shift of emphasis that occurs from Locke to Mill, the great utilitar-
ian still does not have much to say about the nature of facts. Again, Mill seems to
retain an immediate confidence in the intelligibility of a world that can be divided
into individual components sharing a logical structure with the propositions to
which they correspond.16 A more developed ontology of facts remains wanting—if
for no other reason than that such an account would answer questions that simply
do not arise in Logic.
Perhaps the fullest and most recognizable exposition of the proposition-fact
relationship specifically and the modern correspondence theory of truth generally,
however, comes from Bertrand Russell. Russell, a philosopher famous for changing
his mind on many fundamental positions, sticks to a strong correspondence theory
of truth throughout his large, undulating oeuvre.17 Although he defends some ver-
sion of the theory in many places, perhaps the most explicit lies in his Philosophy
of Logical Atomism.
In the Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Russell directly takes on the challenge of
developing the ontological implications of his correspondence theory of truth. By
first establishing the building blocks of a “logically perfect language” (inherited in
large part from Gottlob Frege’s Begriffsschrift), Russell believes it possible to deduce
real world constituents standing in one-to-one correspondence relations to those
linguistic building blocks.18 Yet again, much like his forerunners Locke and Mill,
Russell’s insistence upon a one-to-one correspondence relation with reality owes
itself to an intuitive confidence in the ability of well-formed language to map non-
linguistic reality as it exists in itself.19
According to Russell, the fundamental building blocks of a logically perfect
language are names and predicates. For example, in the proposition “Socrates is wise,”
[Ws] ‘Socrates’ is the name and ‘wise’ is the predicate. Relations too are a kind of
predicate, as evidenced by the proposition “Socrates is the teacher of Plato” [Tsp].
Therefore, since names and predicates are fundamental in his logical language, to
do justice to his aforementioned intuition of correspondence with reality Russell
must sketch the foundations of his ontology in terms of constituents that map to
these linguistic building blocks in the mode of a univocal isomorphism. Thus, he
argues for the existence of “particulars” [mapped to names], “properties” [mapped
to one-place predicates] and “relations” [mapped to multi-place predicates].20
When mixed and matched, these names and predicates combined with the
logical machinery inherited from Frege’s Begriffsschrift (i.e., logical operators expressed
roughly by the English words ‘if-then,’ ‘not,’ and ‘all’)21 form propositions, which
are linguistic units marked by a unique property: namely, the property of having
a “truth value.”22 That is to say, like Locke and Mill—and crucially for our discus-
sion—Russell’s account is committed to the position that only propositions can be
true or false. This is the case because the concept of truth is synonymous with the
reference of propositions.23
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 5

Now Russell’s ontology has already committed itself to the idea that every
linguistic unit implies the existence of a corresponding non-linguistic, ontological
constituent. Therefore, in relation to propositions, we arrive upon the reality of
“facts.” Mirroring their linguistic counterparts, facts are actual “states-of-affairs”
which involve real particulars instantiating real properties standing in real relations
to one another.24 Finally, we can make full sense of Russell’s explanation of facts:
by facts, he remarks,

I mean the kind of thing that makes a proposition true or false. If I say
“It is raining”, what I say is true in a certain condition of weather and is
false in other conditions of weather. The condition of whether that makes
my statement true (or false as the case may be).25

A well-formed proposition made up of names and predicates is made true by its

corresponding fact, which itself is made up of particulars, properties and relations.
Thus, what we have in Russell’s logical atomism is a fuller and more robust
account of what Locke and Mill have already sketched in a less rigorous manner:
namely, that truth is nothing other than the correspondence of well-formed linguistic
propositions (truthbearers) with non-linguistic facts (truthmakers)—both of which
share a univocal logical structure. Supported by the brief historical sketch above, this
definition of the correspondence theory of truth will serve as the standard against
which Aquinas’s alternative can be measured.

Supericial Concord, Deep Conlict:

Aquinas and Correspondence heory
We are now in a position to investigate some similarities and dissimilarities
between Aquinas’s account of truth and our working definition of correspondence
theory. First, there must be a point of agreement between Aquinas and correspon-
dence theory: namely, the mutual admission of a truthbearer-truthmaker relationship.
Truthbearers and truthmakers are technical terms that function exactly the way their
names imply. Truthmakers are things that make truthbearers true, and truthbearers are
things that can be true or false according to their passive relationship to truthmakers.
It is easy to map this relationship in the figures just described. Although Locke’s
account of truthmakers is vague, he certainly has a truthbearer in the proposition.
Mill takes it a step further, arguing for the existence of facts as truthmakers. Finally,
Russell gives the most substantial ontology of truthmakers as facts in his logical
atomism. Despite this disparity, all three are united by the commitment that truth
can only be predicated of propositions. That is to say, the correspondence theorists
we examined all agree that propositions are truthbearers, and that there is something
“in reality” that serves as a truthmaker.
Where does Aquinas stand on the issue of the truthbearer-truthmaker relation-
ship? A cursory look at the sed contra in the second article of question one in De
Veritate might suggest that Aquinas has a simple account of the truthbearer: “The
Philosopher says: “The true and the false are not in things but in the mind. Truth
6 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

is “the conformity of thing and intellect.” But since this conformity can be only in
the intellect, truth is only in the intellect.”26 Aquinas justifies this point in the next
article, arguing that truth and falsity occur only in the second act of the intellect,
the act of judgment. The first act of the intellect, which is definition, is not yet
true or false because formed concepts are simply Aquinas’s version of the building
blocks of language.27 Not unlike the correspondence theorists above, Aquinas is
clear that truth or falsity is possible when “the intellect judges about the thing it
has apprehended at the moment when it says that something is or is not. This is
the role of “the intellect composing and dividing.”28 Indeed, substitute “joining
and separating” for componentis et dividentis and we have what seems to be Locke’s
aforementioned point in Aquinas’s Latin. Given this discussion in De Veritate and
many other places in Aquinas’s oeuvre, we must agree with William Wood’s recent
claim that for Aquinas, “intellects are the primary truthbearers.”29
So if we have a clear account of truthbearers in Aquinas, what are the truth-
makers? Again, not unlike our modern correspondence theorists, for Aquinas it is
the “thing,” i.e., an extramental reality to which the truthbearing intellect bears a
relationship of adequation. Thus, as Aquinas remarks later in question one, the
created intellect is “measured by things.”30 In order to have his famous definition
of truth as adaequatio rei et intellectus31—for created intellects, at least—there must
be a relationship of formal identity between the truthbearing intellect and the
truthmaking thing.
This is the sense in which I claim that Aquinas’s formulation of truth has a su-
perficial concord with correspondence theory. Like Locke, Mill and Russell, Aquinas
invokes a truthbearer-truthmaker relationship involving a judging intellect and an
extramental reality. Thus truth is not a purely mental or intellectual matter. What
remains to be seen in Aquinas’s definition of truth, though, are the conditions of
possibility for this relationship of adaequatio between intellect and thing. As I will
now attempt to show, the answers to this question begin to reveal the deep conflict
between Aquinas and our definition of modern correspondence theory.

Truth is Predicated of hings

We have just explored the primary sense in which Aquinas argues that truth
is predicated. Since truth is most properly an adaequatio rei et intellectus, it follows
that truth is primarily predicated of the intellect as opposed to things. Thus, we have
said that intellect is the primary truthbearer for Aquinas. Although this is certainly
the case, it is crucial to realize that the intellect is not the only truthbearer in De
Veritate. On the contrary, as John Wippel captures well in his two-part investigation
called Aquinas on Truth,32 Aquinas invokes the explanatory framework of analogy to
explain what is meant by the truth of the intellect and the truth of the thing: “Truth
in the full and complete sense is assigned to the intellect insofar as the intellect’s
grasp of a thing corresponds to that thing as it is in itself. Truth is then assigned to
things themselves, but only analogically, because of their capacity to produce truth in the
intellect [my emphasis].”33 In De Veritate, Aquinas puts it this way:
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 7

A natural thing, therefore, being placed between two intellects is called

true in so far as it conforms to either. It is said to be true with respect to
its conformity with the divine intellect in so far as it fulfills the end to
which it was ordained by the divine intellect. This is clear from the writ-
ings of Anselm and Augustine, as well as from the definition of Avicenna,
previously cited: “The truth of anything is a property of the act of being
which has been established for it.”34

The final sentence of this passage quoted from Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing
is perhaps the most interesting for our discussion. If truth can be predicated of a
thing’s “act of being,” then there must be a truth that does not reside in the intel-
lect. Rather, this truth—the truth of the thing—is “true” in the sense that it has
the capacity to cause truth in the intellect, which is truth in a primary sense. This
secondary sense in which truth can be predicated of the thing as it is in itself is an
analogical sense of truth. Still, even with this qualification, it seems fair to say that
the thing as well as the intellect can serve as a truthbearer, for Aquinas.
If this is the case, though, Aquinas’s account of truth has already departed from
the modern correspondence theory defined above. As Locke, Mill and Russell all
say in their own ways, propositions—the sort of thing that can be composed with
individual linguistic units—are the only possible truthbearers. On this definition,
it is simply nonsense to say that truth is somehow a “property” of a thing’s “act of
being.” Even if it is true that the divine intellect is ultimately responsible for the
truth of the thing (which we will explore in the third and final point), it remains
that the thing acts as both a truthbearer and a truthmaker in Aquinas’s account.
That is to say, the thing itself receives a truth of its own and makes another kind of
truth in the intellect.35
Theological differences between Aquinas and the moderns aside (or postponed,
rather), the most fundamental commitment of modern correspondence theory is an
ontologically significant distinction between truthbearers and truthmakers. This is
an important part of what makes correspondence a “realist” as opposed to an “an-
tirealist” theory of truth in the first place.36 Thus, insofar as Aquinas feels at liberty
to assign both of these roles to the thing, there seems to be an incommensurable
difference between his position and our above definition of correspondence theory.37

Against the “hird hing” hesis

We have just demonstrated why modern correspondence theory requires two
distinct relata—a truthbearing proposition and a truthmaking thing—but it may be
the case that a third thing is necessary, as well. In order to see why, we can examine
some basic implications of what we have gathered so far:
1. Propositions are not identical to minds because minds are the kinds of
things that “join” and “separate” concepts in order to form propositions.38
2. Truth is the correspondence of linguistic propositions and non-linguistic
facts.
8 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

3. There is no truth without minds, because without minds there are no

propositions.
If minds are not identical to the propositions they form, but nonetheless necessary
for the existence of those propositions, it seems fair to say that a correspondence
theory of truth is committed to three—not two—distinct entities that together
are necessary conditions for truth: namely, minds, concepts (which together make
propositions) and things (which together make facts). Now, as is clear from the
previous discussion, the addition of a “third thing” adds a further complication in
regards to the correspondence relationship. Not only does the thing have to stand
in isomorphism with the mind—it has to go through a proposition to do so.
Now on this point it is important to note that there is perhaps a more significant
divergence even among the modern correspondence theorists we have examined
already—especially since Russell’s own mind seems to have changed quite signifi-
cantly on the topic.39 For at least Locke and Mill, however, it is fair to say that the
specter of an epistemological anti-realism (i.e., that the truth of propositions is in
some sense unknowable) does rear its head.40 How are minds able to apprehend the
truth of the propositions they compose?
Perhaps the most impressive contemporary Thomist response to this question
has been offered by the philosopher John P. O’Callaghan in his book Thomist Realism
and the Linguistic Turn, among other places.41 Against the Lockean doctrine of the
“third thing” thesis, O’Callaghan presents Aquinas’s epistemology as an alternative
that resists “entifying” the concept. In other words, according to O’Callaghan,
there is simply no “third thing” between intellect and thing in Aquinas’s realism.
Although we have already briefly alluded to this point by saying that intellects—not
propositions—are the primary truthbearers for Aquinas,42 it is worth examining
the point further in order to appreciate the degree of difference between modern
correspondence theory and Aquinas.
One way to think about this difference between Aquinas and correspondence
theory is his insistence upon the adaequatio of intellect and thing as a relation of
formal causation. Against modern empiricism’s tendency to reduce this relation-
ship to a sensory stimulus that says nothing of the object as it is in itself, Aquinas’s
alternative “results in an ontological condition of absolute formal identity between
knower and known.”43 But what could it mean to have such a formal identity, and
how is it possible?
It is important to note that any answer to this question that draws from Aqui-
nas is going to be ontological through and through. After all, “the true is a state of
being even though it does not add any reality to being.”44 Therefore it must be a
key ontological distinction that illuminates Aquinas’s understanding of adaequatio.
This is the distinction between the “passive” and “active” intellect.
In Question 79 of the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas follows Aristotle by admit-
ting of both a passive and active intellect: “The Philosopher says (De Anima iii, 5),
“As in every nature, so in the soul is there something by which it becomes all things,
and something by which it makes all things.” Therefore we must admit an active
intellect.”45 Now because it is possible for human minds to acquire knowledge it
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 9

does not yet have, it follows that it is possible for the intellect to receive an intelligible
species from the object it is trying to understand. This point is rather uncontroversial,
and even the aforementioned empiricist could agree. What is unique to Aquinas’s
account is the passive and active intellect working together:

Now nothing is reduced from potentiality to act except by something in

act; as the senses are made actual by what is actually sensible. We must
therefore assign on the part of the intellect some power to make things
actually intelligible, by abstraction of the species from material conditions.
And such is the necessity for an active intellect.46

The object in the world is material, so it cannot achieve a formal identity with the
knower qua material. The role of the active intellect in Aquinas, then, involves a
“dividing and composing” that is not simply material.47 It abstracts the form or
“whatness” from the object and makes it intelligible to the intellect by becoming
identical with the thing. This activity is necessary because, unlike Plato’s doctrine of
the immaterial Forms, Aquinas conceives of form and matter as united in individual
substances.48 The successful combination of an impression upon the passive intel-
lect and the active intellect’s abstraction from the phantasm is a proper adaequatio
between mind and object. This is what is meant by the formal identity between
knower and known. In a rather literal sense, then, the intellect becomes the thing by
way of this formal identity. As such, according to O’Callaghan’s line of argument,
there is no reason to posit a subsisting third thing called the “concept” between
intellect and thing because the concept is nothing more than “the informed activity
of the intellect as it grasps res extra animam.”49 In fact, to introduce such an entified
third thing would be to introduce a problem that simply cannot arise for Aquinas.50
Therefore, insofar as modern correspondence theory does not admit metaphysi-
cal commitments such as the act/potency distinction or formal cause, it parts way
with Aquinas’s account at a rather fundamental level. Any argument that attempts
to harmonize the two must take account of this disparity.

Truth is Predicated of God Essentially, of Creatures Analogically

Regarding the doctrine of analogy, Cardinal Thomas Cajetan, the great
commentator on Aquinas’s works, remarks in his De Nominum Analogia that “[k]
nowledge of this [analogy] is necessary, since without it, it is not possible that
anyone learn about metaphysics, and many errors in other sciences proceed from
ignorance of it.”51 Gerald B. Phelan upholds the doctrine with a similar seriousness
in a famous Aquinas lecture, calling the doctrine the “salvation of philosophy.”52
Although there is perhaps a good case to be made for the position that these two
statements are overzealous in regards to the overall impact of analogy as a doctrine,
there can be no doubting the fact that Aquinas’s ontology—and his account of
truth—is unthinkable without it.
10 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

A helpful way to begin when understanding analogy is by distinguishing it

from metaphor when comparing language about God and creatures. In De Veritate,
Aquinas says,

Sometimes the name implies something belonging to the thing primar-

ily designated which cannot be common to God and creature. . . . This
would be true, for example, of anything predicated of God metaphorically,
as when God is called lion, sun, and the like, because their definition
includes matter which cannot be attributed to God. At other times,
however, a term predicated of God and creature implies nothing in its
principal meaning which would prevent our finding between a creature
and God an agreement of the type described above. To this kind belong
all attributes which include no defect nor depend on matter for their act
of existence, for example, being, the good, [truth] and similar things.53

For Aquinas, these two ways of naming God—metaphor and analogy—are both
ways in which we use creaturely language to describe he who is not creaturely:
namely, God. The way of metaphor is marked by a direct attribution of some nature
that does not belong to God in any way for the sake of expressing an attribute that
does belong to God. The metaphorical sentence, “God is a lion,” is a good example
because it involves an attribution of a nature that does not belong to God in any
way (matter) in order to express an attribute that does belong to God (power) in a
pre-eminent way.
By contrast, the way of analogy does not involve the attribution of a nature
that does not belong to God in any way. On the contrary, the doctrine of analogical
predication between God and creatures is most adequately expressed by the so-called
“transcendentals,” which include concepts such as being, unity, truth, goodness and
beauty, among others. On the face of it, the predicates of sentences such as “God is”
and “the lion is” seem to mean the same thing in the same respect. But this would be
a mistake, for Aquinas, since “[i]t is impossible to say that something is predicated
univocally of a creature and God because in all univocal predication the nature signi-
fied by the name is common to those of whom the univocal predication is made.”54
In other words, when we say that “God is” and “the lion is,” we are expressing some
kind of relationship between that which is signified by the name (“God” and “the
lion”) and that which is signified by the predicate (“is”).
But these two relationships are different. In the case of God and being, the
relationship is one of absolute identity; for in Aquinas’s God of divine simplicity all
the transcendentals are united in a preeminent fullness. This is part of what it means
for the transcendentals to be “convertible.”55 It could be said, for example, that God
“is” being itself or the ground of being.56 In the case of the relationship between the
lion and being, by contrast, the relationship is one of participation. That is to say, the
lion is not absolutely identical to being itself; for a lion is a contingent being—one
that could fail to exist without effecting a change in being itself. The lion has or shares
its being, which is a way to capture its status as an imperfect imitation of the divine.
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 11

Because these two relationships are different, analogical predication between

God and creatures is not univocal predication. Yet neither is analogical predication
outright equivocation; for there is still a discernible proportionality between the
two relationships. Even though God’s relationship to his being is infinitely differ-
ent from the lion’s relationship to its being, the two relationships are themselves
related by the fact that God’s being is the ontological condition of possibility or
“ground” for the lion’s being by participation. Aquinas expresses this point elsewhere
in the Summa: “It must be said that every being in any way existing is from God.
For whatever is found in anything by participation, must be caused in it by that to
which it belongs essentially.”57
Now because truth is a transcendental for Aquinas, it follows that the truth
predicate—like the being predicate—is applied to God and creatures analogically.
We have already established that truth can be predicated of created intellects, which
are truthbearers in the act of judgment. In this case, the thing known “measures” the
intellect, which is to say that it serves as a truthmaker outside of the intellect. Thus,
in the case of created intellects, knowing is an adaequatio intellectus et rei between
two discreet things: namely, an intellect and thing.
In God, however, this is not the case. According to the metaphysical doctrine of
divine simplicity, again, God is “truth itself.”58 This means that, unlike created intel-
lects, God confers rather than receives truth from the objects of his knowledge: “[A]
principle and that which arises from the principle are said to be related. Therefore,
since God is the principle of things through His essence, by knowing His essence
He knows creatures.”59 The relationship described here in De Veritate is one between
an “exemplar” and its effect. What this means is that, unlike created intellects, God’s
knowledge of things is constitutive of those things in the first place.60
Once again, what we have here is a collapse of the truthbearer-truthmaker
relationship. Since God himself is truth in the sense that truth is predicated of him
and by him, God is both truthbearer and truthmaker. Since God is truth itself,
what we have at the heart of Aquinas’s account of truth is an adaequatio in which
no “dividing and composing” is necessary; for God’s immediate knowledge of his
own essence is also his immediate knowledge of things: “[I]f inasmuch as specifies
His knowledge from the point of view of the knower, then it is true that God knows
things only inasmuch as they are in Him; for He knows them from their likeness,
which is identical in reality with Himself.”61
Indeed, on this point, we can almost hear our modern correspondence theorists
in the objection in Question 16 of the Summa: “It seems that God is not truth.
For truth consists in the intellect composing and dividing. But in God there is not
composition and division. Therefore in Him there is not truth.”62 Like this objector,
for Locke, Mill and Russell, propositions—those things that are composed in the
mind—are the only truthbearers. Yet in Aquinas, only a metaphysics involving the
mutual participation of created intellect and created thing in God can provide the
conditions of possibility for any adaequatio between them. The doctrine of analogy
provides the framework of intelligibility for such an account; therefore, insofar as
modern correspondence theory demands a univocal definition of truth, we must
12 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

acknowledge a deep conflict accompanying the superficial concord between Aquinas

and correspondence theory.

Conclusion: Supericial Concord, Deep Conlict

I have attempted to show that there is superficial concord but deep conflict
between modern correspondence theories of truth and Aquinas’s own account of
truth. The argument proceeded from a brief look at fundamental commitments of
John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell—whose work on truth, although
different in some important ways, can be understood in continuity as an accumu-
lation of insights toward an internally coherent theory. From this brief historical
trajectory, we came up with the following definition of a modern correspondence
theory of truth to which Aquinas’s own view can be compared: truth is nothing
other than the correspondence of well-formed linguistic propositions (truthbearers) with
non-linguistic facts (truthmakers)—both of which share a univocal logical structure.
We then noted the way in which Aquinas’s definition of truth as adaequatio
rei et intellectus is similar to modern correspondence theory. In both accounts, there
is a truthbearer-truthmaker relationship. That is to say, for both Aquinas and the
moderns, truth resides in the intellect as a result of composition and division mea-
sured by the thing. This act of the intellect is called judgment, and so adaequatio is
a formal identity between the judging intellect and the thing judged.
Beyond this similarity, however, lie some apparently irreconcilable differences
between Aquinas and modern correspondence theory. In this study, we looked at
three implications of Aquinas’s account that prove irreconcilable with correspon-
dence theory. First, we saw that created things can serve as both truthbearer and a
truthmaker. They are truthbearers insofar as they have an act of being established
for them, and they are truthmakers insofar as they measure the created intellects to
which they are enjoined in the adaequatio relation. But this is incompatible with
correspondence theory; for in correspondence theory truthbearers and truthmakers
have to be ontologically separate. Further, since propositions are the sole truthbear-
ers, it is senseless to speak of a truth “of the thing.”
Second, relying heavily on the work of John P. O’Callaghan, I argued that
Aquinas’s cognitive theory cannot accommodate a “third thing” or representationalist
account of the concepts and propositions as subsisting entities ontologically separate
from the intellect that composes them. Instead, relying crucially on the act-potency
distinction, Aquinas’s account of the concept is simply the intellect in act. Since
there is no such distinction in modern correspondence theory, Locke, Mill and
Russell—each in their own way—are forced to entify concepts and propositions in
order to consider their correspondence to facts. But this third thing thesis creates
epistemological problems that do not arise in Aquinas’s adaequatio relation. Thus,
in some sense, correspondence theory is designed to address questions that Aquinas’s
account does not have to consider.
Finally, third, we considered the doctrine of analogy and its metaphysical im-
plications for Aquinas’s account of truth. Because truth can be predicated of created
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 13

intellects and created things only by participation in truth itself, it immediately begs
the transcendental question for which Aquinas’s account is ultimately designed to
provide an answer: namely, the question of whether God is truth itself. Aquinas’s
straightforward answer to this question is simply unintelligible in the modern ac-
counts of Locke, Mill and Russell, who leave no room for an analogical conception
of being or truth. Ultimately, it is this participatory metaphysics as a whole that
is the deepest and most profound difference between Aquinas and modern cor-
respondence theory.
These points are certainly not the only ones that could be raised in response to
this question, but if I am correct they do support our thesis: namely, that Aquinas’s
account of truth bears a superficial concord but deep conflict with modern cor-
respondence theories of truth.

Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto

Notes
1. James Orr’s recent article in New Blackfriars offers a clear and comprehensive account
(and critique) of this move by Heidegger in his Marburg lectures prior to Sein and Zeit. See
James Orr, “Heidegger’s Critique of Aquinas on Truth,” New Blackfriars 95, no. 1055 (Jan
2014): 45.
2. David Marion’s article in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy mentions Aquinas
as a key progenitor of correspondence theories of truth with some important qualifications
mentioned in the present paper. See David Marion, “The Correspondence Theory of Truth,”
in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Fall 2013). http://plato.
stanford.edu/archives/fall2013/entries/truth-correspondence/. Also see Dallas Willard, “Verso
una teoria fenomenologica della verita come corrispondenza,” in Discipline Filosofiche 1
(1991): 125.
3. See Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
4. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Understanding (University Park, PA: Penn State
University, 1999), 565.
5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 16, a. 2.
6. On this point, see Locke, Essay, 570.
7. Ibid., 553.
8. Ibid., 568.
9. Ibid.
10. It is well known that Locke is critical of metaphysical theories that purport to inquire
after “real essences”—that is, those things by which things are what they are. “Supposition,
that species are distinguished by their real essences, useless.” Ibid., 403.
11. See John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1882), 107–108.
14 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

12. Ibid., 109.

13. It is worth pointing out that this commitment presumably implies a sharp separation
between Mill and Aquinas’s Aristotelian account, the latter of which involves the mediating
presence of “phantasms” in the imagination from which the intellect must abstract in order
to know. On this point, see Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 85, a. 1, sed contra.
14. Mill, A System of Logic, 111.
15. Here we may have reason to sharpen Alasdair MacIntyre’s immortal quip, “Facts, like
telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth-century invention,” with a qualification:
namely, that facts in technical philosophy of language are a nineteenth-century invention. See
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Rationality? (South Bend, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1989), 357.
16. For Mill, “The world we talk about in our propositions is the world that we come
to know in our ordinary sense experience or inner awareness. The ontology of the world
as reflected in language and logic is the ontology of the world as we know it to be.” Fred
Wilson, “John Stuart Mill,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta
(Spring 2014 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/mill/.
17. Alfred North Whitehead famously called Russell “a Platonic dialogue in himself.”
Among the positions on which Russell changed his mind throughout his career are his original
“logical atomist” account of facts, his empiricism and perhaps most strikingly, his shift from
dualism to “neutral monism” in ontology. On these points, see Elizabeth R. Eames, “The
Consistency of Russell’s Realism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 27.4 (1967):
502–511.
18. See Bertrand Russell, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (Abingdon, UK: Routledge
Classics, 2010), 25.
19. Eames, “The Consistency of Russell’s Realism,” 510.
20. See Russell, Logical Atomism, 18–19.
21. Frege’s original Begriffschrift does not employ the logical operators used in Russell’s
updated notation (i.e., ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if-and-only-if,’ or ‘some’), but their equivalents are still
expressible in his original language.
22. On this point, see Gottlob Frege, “On Sense and Reference” in Translations from
the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, 3rd edition, ed. and trans. Peter Geach and Max
Black (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), 45.
23. This is not to say that propositions always refer to a truth value; however, a truth
value is always the reference of a proposition. On this point, see Frege, “On Sense and Refer-
ence,” 42.
24. See Russell, Logical Atomism, 19.
25. Ibid., 6–7.
26. Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952), q. 1, a. 2, sed contra.
27. For an extended account of Aquinas’s first act of the intellect as an “insight into
phantasm” that is not yet true or false, see Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in
Aquinas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 38.
28. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 3, respondeo.
 Does Aquinas Hold a Correspondence Theory of Truth? 15

29. William Wood, “Aquinas on the Claim that God Is Truth,” Journal of the History of
Philosophy 51.1 (Jan 2013): 23.
30. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 8, respondeo.
31. Ibid., q. 1, a. 1, respondeo.
32. See John Wippel, “Aquinas on Truth,” The Review of Metaphysics 43.2 (1989),
295–326.
33. See ibid., 299.
34. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 2, respondeo.
35. See n28 above for the thing as truthmaker.
36. This separation of truthbearer and truthmaker does not always hold in realist theories
of truth. Roderick Chisholm, for example, has defended a realist theory of truth in which
states of affairs serve as both truthbearers and truthmakers. This is fair enough, but at this
point I have doubts about whether this theory can properly be called a correspondence theory
of truth. At the very least, this account cannot satisfy the definition adopted in this paper.
For a treatment of this case, see Richard A. Fumerton, Realism and the Correspondence Theory
of Truth (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 12n.
37. It is this incommensurability that John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock seem to
me to have grasped more readily than William Wood. For this debate, see John Milbank and
Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 200), 8; and Wood, “Aquinas
on the Claim that God is Truth,” 41.
38. See n4 above.
39. See Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific
Method in Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court. Revised edition, London: George Allen &
Unwin, 1926).
40. “Words have their consequences, as the signs of such ideas: and things agree or
disagree, as really they are; but we observe it only by our ideas.” Locke, Essay, 682; and
“With the first of these opinions, that which denies Noumena, I have, as a metaphysician,
no quarrel; but, whether it be true or false, it is irrelevant to Logic.” Mill, A System of Logic,
78n.
41. John P. O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism and the Linguistic Turn: Toward a More Perfect
Form of Existence (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2003).
42. See n27 above.
43. This point is made forcefully in a recent article by James Orr. See “Heidegger’s
Critique of Aquinas on Truth,” 52.
44. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. I, a. 1, 4.
45. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, p. I q. 79, a. 3.
46. Ibid.
47. See Aquinas, De Veritate, q. I, a 3.
48. “According to the opinion of Plato, there is no need for an active intellect in order
to make things actually intelligible; but perhaps in order to provide intellectual light to the
intellect. . . . For Plato supposed that the forms of natural things subsisted apart from mat-
ter, and consequently that they are intelligible: since a thing is actually intelligible from the
16 Dispositions, Habits, and Virtues

very fact that it is immaterial. . . . But since Aristotle did not allow that forms of natural
things exist apart from matter, and as forms existing in matter are not actually intelligible; it
follows that the natures of forms of the sensible things which we understand are not actually
intelligible.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, p. I, q. 79, a. 3.
49. O’Callaghan, Thomist Realism, 168.
50. O’Callaghan rightly draws attention to the fact that modern understandings of
words like “being” and “thing” tend to be univocal, whereas for Aquinas they are analogical.
This is crucial for understanding Aquinas’s avoidance of issues arising from representational
accounts of the concept. On this point, see Ibid., 194–8.
51. Thomas De Vio Cajetan, De Nominum Analogia, trans. Joshua P. Hochschild, in
Joshua P. Hochschi1ld, The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 211.
52. Gerald B. Phelan, “Saint Thomas and Analogy,” in The Aquinas Lecture 1941 (Mil-
waukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1973), 41.
53. Aquinas does not explicitly name truth in this passage, but because truth is clearly a
transcendental like being and goodness, it is safe to say that it belongs among these “similar
things.” Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 2, a. 11, respondeo.
54. Ibid.
55. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 1, a. 1, sed contra.
56. Perhaps the most well-known way of speaking about God in Aquinas is “subsisting
being itself.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q.4, a. 2.
57. Aquinas Summa Theologiae, Ia., q. 44, sed contra.
58. “[I]t follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sov-
ereign and first truth.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 16, a. 5, respondeo.
59. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 2, a. 3, sed contra.
60. “His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every
other intellect.” Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 16, 1, respondeo. Incidentally, although this
view is apparently shared by Alvin Plantinga—who holds a modern correspondence theory
of truth—his rejection of divine simplicity makes this “agreement” with Aquinas difficult
to understand. See Alvin Plantinga, “How to Be an Anti-Realist,” Proceedings and Addresses
of the American Philosophical Association 56.1 (Sept 1982): 70.
61. Aquinas, De Veritate, q. 2, a. 3, ad 2.
62. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 16, 5, obj 1.