Truth is correspondence
between
reality and ideas.

 

The primary truth is being or that which makes each individual reality what it is. This truth is an idea which becomes embodied in a creature. "Things that exist … are active as well as passive. They tend not only to develop, and also to realize more and more perfectly this idea which they are created to express, but they also tend to reproduce themselves." (Catholic Encyclopedia: Truth) For example, this pine tree embodies the idea of "tree" as a universal concept but is also specified further as this kind of tree (e.g. pine), further, the kind of pine it is and also this individual tree of the specie. The universal idea of "tree" or pattern exists in the mind of God with all its possible variations, modifications and individuations which may become apparent in the history of the universe. We read in scripture: "For all things were known to the Lord God, before they were created: so also after they were perfected he beholdeth all things." (Ecclesiasticus 23:29)

 

St. Augustine defines ideas in God as follows: "Ideas are certain principle forms, of permanent and immutable type of things, they themselves not being formed. Thus they are eternal and existing always in the same manner, as being contained in the divine intelligence." (Summa, Part I, Q.15, Art. 2)

For the Greek theologians ideas in God are not static patterns. "They are exemplars, divine powers, energies and attributes, dynamic realities whereby the transcendent God brings the world into being, makes it participate in His perfections and enables it finally to return to him." (Vivian Boland, OP, Ideas in God according to St. Thomas Aquinas, Google Book p. 32)

Here an objection can be raised. If God is One, how can there be many ideas in Him? First of all, the oneness of God is not primarily mathematical one but his "unity of being". In God his innumerable ideas are the intelligence of his being or Who He Is. "God knows all in one single indivisible act. ...God does not only possess an activity of knowledge, but is Himself knowledge. His knowing is, in consequence of His absolute simplicity, really identical with His Essence." (Dr. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Herder Book Co.,MO, 1952, p. 39)

An analogy with human intelligence may help to understand this. Each human being is one intelligent entity with many ideas which do not destroy his or her intelligent oneness because they are spiritual, that is, they have no material quantity.

2. Transcendent Truth