I don’t want to come off as someone who just wields Aquinas as an authority figure (as some of us non-analytic philosophers are wont to do), but I think any Thomistic account of the transcendentals (being, unity, truth, goodness and beauty) has to involve the doctrine of analogical predication of God and creatures. So yes, I agree that Thomas understands truth to be a two-termed relation of adaequatio *for creatures*, but because God is simple he knows things through his own essence. So if we predicate this relation of adaequatio in God we have to remember that we do not mean the same thing as when we predicate it of creatures. The result, for Aquinas in q. 16, is that God is Truth itself. Of course, again, by “Truth itself”, I do not mean the unity expressed by numerical identity, as you correctly say would imply some odd conclusions. I mean transcendental unity (the tenability of which I realize could be controversial).

So can I agree with your interpretation of John 14 as ” ‘conformity or equation’ between [the Son] and the Father”? Perhaps, if you’ll allow that conformity in God is radically different than the conformity between created intellects and the things they know.

I know you have better things to do than to trudge through dry papers on Aquinas, but if you or your readers are interested in where I’m coming from here I have a working draft of a paper up on exactly this topic at academia.edu:

https://www.academia.edu/7361638/Does_Aquinas_Hold_a_Correspondence_Theory_of_Truth_in_De_Veritate

Thanks again, and all the best.

So in De Veritate q. 1, art. 2, Aquinas tells us that truth consists in “the conformity or equation of thing and intellect.” Thus truth is a relation. More exactly, it is a two-termed relation: “…conforms with… .” The relata–i.e., what can fill the slots–are intellects and things. What we have, then, is really a form of correspondence.

Now the passage you cite (ST Ia, q. 16, a. 5) falls nicely in line here. There Aquinas says, truth is “found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is.” So we can sharpen things up even further, and say that truth is the conformity of things in the intellect (e.g., thoughts, beliefs) with things as they are. In this connection, apprehension and conformity are distinct but co-extensive relations.

By extension, then, what Jesus is saying in John 14:6 is that there is a “conformity or equation” between himself and the Father. That fits the context of the passage beautifully, don’t you think? But if so, then Jesus isn’t saying he is numerically identical with truth (or even Truth). He’s saying there is a conformity between Father and Son.

So I’m not confident that your Phil Christi argument against correspondence will hold up. For that argument–the one you label (1)-(4)–makes use of an ‘is’ of numerical identity at step (2) before drawing its final conclusion: (4) Ergo, truth itself is not the correspondence of linguistic propositions and non-linguistic reality. However, as I think you’d agree, numerical identity isn’t in view in John, chapter 14.

There is so much to say about Jesus’ profound statement! Thanks for moving things along, Joshua.

I see you’re still thinking about Jn. 14 here! Thanks to you and Dr. Franks once again for engaging my questions and pushback in PC.

It didn’t occur to me to clarify it at the time, but when I affirmed that “Christ is identical with the Truth,” I wasn’t talking about *numerical* identity (though I can’t speak for Donald Miller, I’m afraid). If I were, then I agree with you that I would be committed to saying that God was somehow identical with the propositional truths you describe here. The kind of unity expressed by the identity that I’m talking about is transcendental unity–not numerical unity. See Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 11, a. 1, ad 1 (re: unity) and Ia, q. 16, a. 5 (re: truth). On this view, “truth” would be predicated essentially of God and only analogously of creatures, which would deal with the obviously intolerable result of identifying God with a mathematical truth.

But perhaps you deny that there is such a distinction between transcendental unity vs. numerical unity. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this matter, and my apologies for being unclear about this.