Bavinck on truth

Scripture, accordingly, uses the word “truth” in more than one sense. And philosophy, too, as a rule distinguishes between three concepts of truth: truth or veracity in essence (in things); truth or veracity in expression (in words); truth or veracity in knowing (in the intellect); in other words, metaphysical, ethical, and logical truth or veracity. 121 Metaphysical or ontological truth consists in an object, person, or cause being all that belongs to its nature. In that sense gold that is gold not only in appearance but also in reality is true gold. The antonyms of truth in that sense are falsehood, spuriousness, vanity, nonbeing. In this sense truth is a property of all being; it is identical with substance. Especially Augustine often spoke of truth in that sense. All being or essence as such is true and beautiful and good. Granted, there is immense diversity in degrees of creaturely being; yet all things have received from God a unique being of their own and as such participate in the divine being. 122 From the consideration of this creaturely being Augustine moves to the consideration of God. In Scripture God is called the true God in distinction from idols, which are vanities. Thus, in Augustine, God is the true, unique, simple, immutable, and eternal being. By comparison to his being, creatural being is to be considered nonbeing. God is the “supreme being, the supreme truth, and the supreme good.” He is pure being. He does not possess but is the truth. “O Truth, which you truly are!” 123 In addition, God is also the truth in the second sense, that is, the ethical sense. By ethical truth we mean the correspondence between a person’s being and a person’s self-revelation in word or deed. Those who say one thing but think another are untrue; they are liars. The antonym of truth in this sense is the lie. Now in the case of God, there is complete correspondence between his being and his revelation (Num. 23:19; 1 Sam. 15:29; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18). It is impossible for God to lie or deny himself. Finally, God is also the truth in a logical sense. This truth consists in correspondence between thought and reality, the conformity or adequation of the intellect to the [real] thing. Our concepts are true when they bear the exact imprint of reality. In this sense truth is opposed to error. Now God is the truth also in that he knows all things as they really are. His knowing is correct, unchangeable, fully adequate. Indeed, in his knowing he is the truth itself, just as in his being he is the ontological truth. God’s knowledge is dynamic, absolute, fully correspondent truth. It is not acquired by research and reflection but is inherent in the divine being (essential) and precedes the existence of things. It is of one piece with God’s very nature and, therefore, substantial truth. God’s word, law, and gospel, accordingly, are pure truth. They are all as they should be. Now though these three meanings of the term “truth” are distinct, they are also one. This unity arises from the fact that truth in all three senses consists in correspondence between thought and being, between the ideal and the real. God is truth in a metaphysical sense, for he is the unity of thought and being. He is completely self-conscious. He is truly God, fully answering to the idea of God that is present within himself. God is truth in an ethical sense, for he reveals himself, speaks, acts, and appears as he truly is and thinks. And he is the truth in a logical sense, for he conceives things as they are; rather, things are as he conceives them to be. He is the truth in its absolute fullness. He, therefore, is the primary, the original truth, the source of all truth, the truth in all truth. He is the ground of the truth—of the true being—of all things, of their knowability and conceivability, the ideal and archetype of all truth, of all ethical being, of all the rules and laws, in light of which the nature and manifestation of all things should be judged and on which they should be modeled. God is the source and origin of the knowledge of truth in all areas of life; the light in which alone we can see light, the sun of all spirits. “You I invoke, O God, the truth in, by, and through whom all truths are true.” 124