 A third reading of Descartes on eternal truths is that they are ideas in finite minds. If truth is the conformity of thought with its object (“To Mersenne, 16 October 1639,” AT 2:597, CSMK 139), then eternal truths are ideas. But Descartes has also said that eternal truths have no existence outside of our thought. They are true ideas, but not true ideas in the mind of God because eternal truths are creatures. A problem with this third reading, however, is that, although it allows eternal truths to be truths, it is not clear that it allows them to be  eternal.[23]  In some passages Descartes does distance himself from the appellation ‘eternal truth’: he refers to “those truths which are called eternal” (“To Mersenne, 27 May 1638,” AT 2:138, CSMK 103) and to “[t]he mathematical truths which you call eternal” (To Mersenne, 15 April 1630, AT 1:145, CSMK 23). And he allows that things can be identified as ‘eternal’ so long as they “are always the same” (Fifth Replies, AT 7:381, CSM 2:262). So a deflationary view of the eternality of Cartesian eternal truths might be in order. However, Descartes says to Mersenne that “from all eternity [God] willed them [eternal truths] to be, and by that very fact he created them” (“To [Mersenne], 27 May 1630,” AT 1:152, CSMK 25). Descartes as a rule shies away from making claims about theological matters, but it is not clear that we want to attribute to him the view that finite minds are co-eternal with   God.[24]  Perhaps he holds that human minds exist at every point in the series that God wills, or perhaps his understanding of the eternality of eternal truths is more deflationary: God wills a single series for all eternity, and that series includes unchanging true ideas in finite minds.