TRUTH & FALSEHOOD231transubstantiation.” Related ideas include
(1) the presence of Christ’s entire body,
blood, soul, and divinity in each fragment
of the bread and wine, and (2) the endur-
ance of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist
even after the mass, so that the Eucharist
should be worshiped in the same way t
hat God is worshiped. These views are
still taught in the recent Catechism of the
Catholic Church. See also EUCHARIST.
TRINITY, DOCTRINE OF. In Christi-
anity, the belief that God is not a homoge-
nous or undifferentiated being but rather
that God is one in substance and three in
persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The
triune nature of God has been treated in
the Western church as involving the
Father begetting the Son and the Holy
Spirit proceeding from the Father and the
Son. For the Orthodox in the East, the
Holy Spirit is understood as proceeding
from the Father and who, together with
the Father and the Son, is to be worshiped
and glorified. Traditional, canonical views
of the trinity in the Church (both East
and West) have sought a middle ground,
avoiding what are generally seen as unac-
ceptable alternatives. Among the views
that traditional Christianity seeks to
avoid is modalism, which sees the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit as three modes or
ways in which God is revealed to creation.
In some churches, modalism is suggested
when a blessing is offered in the name of
God, as creator redeemer, and sanctifier.
These three titles refer to God as revealed
in human history as opposed to referring
to the Godhead without reference to
modes of divine action in the world.
Another unacceptable position is some
form of tri-theism in which Christians
wind up acknowledging three Gods. A
recent project among some Christian phi-
losophers is to defend what is called a
social theory of the trinity according to
which there are three divine centers of
consciousness but not three distinct Gods.TRUTH & FALSEHOOD. According to
realism, truth and falsehood are proposi-
tional values. Propositions like 2 + 2 = 4
or “There are planets,” are true when the
state of affairs they refer to obtain. Argu-
ably, the first proposition has always and
will always obtain, whereas the second
obtains now but did not obtain 14.5 billion
years ago at what is believed to be the
Big Bang. The propositions “There are
unicorns” and “Napoleon won the Battle
of Waterloo” are false because the relevant
states of affairs do not obtain. This form
of realism is Platonic and allows that
the existence of truth and falsehood does
not depend on the existence of minds
or language. A correspondence account,
according to which truth and falsehood
are a function of sentences that either
correspond or do not correspond with
reality, faces the problem of holding
that there are no truths if there are no
sentences. A coherent, epistemic theory
of truth is that a sentence or proposition
is true if it coheres with an ideal body of