And yet, you claim that “philosophers could used whatever half-baked premises they wanted in constructing arguments for the existence of God, and have little fear of being contradicted” even though the Summa contains refutations of weak arguments for the existence of God. Also, The Church specifically denounced the Doctine of the Double Truth, which by all accounts is a premise that would, in practice, act to protect religious claims from falsification. “Philosophers” would have risked Inquisitional investigation had they not dropped their “half-baked premises they wanted in constructing arguments for the existence of God”.
I admit I was mostly thinking of the 17th/18th centuries when I wrote the above paragraph… but it was dangerous to be a heretic in the 13th century too.
I don’t think he is claiming it wasn’t dangerous to be a heretic in the 13th century. I’m pretty sure he is calling into question the claim that “it was dangerous to question that the existence of God could be proven through reason”, which was a very common belief throughout most of the middle ages and was held with very little danger as far as I can tell. I’m surprized that you are unaware of this given that you “have master’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame”.
So the thing of it being dangerous to deny that the existence of God could be proven by reason may have been a more 17th/18th century phenomenon. As intellectuals got less religious, that made it possible to fear that someone like Pierre Bayle was secretly an atheist (and actually, historians still aren’t sure what to make of Bayle). That was probably less of an issue in the middle ages.
That said, the Summa is a rather blatant example of writing down your bottom line first and then going back and figuring out how to argue for it. Aquinas is constantly noting how some point of Aristotle’s views may seem to conflict with Christianity, but every single time it miraculously turns out that Aristotle has been misunderstood and his views don’t actually conflict with Christianity (there might be one or two exceptions to this where Aquinas is forced to conclude Aristotle was wrong about something, but if there are they’re very rare, and I’m not actually sure there are any at all).
This was in the context of a fair number of people in Aquinas’ time reading their Aristotle (and Averroes) and actually drawing the heretical conclusions. It’s not clear to me whether the “doctrine of double truth” was something anyone actually advocated, but assuming it was it appears to have been a dodge to allow heretical Aristotelians to advocate their heretical ideas while saying, “oh, this is just the conclusions you can reach by reason, we also recognize there are contrary conclusions that can be reached by faith.”
(Actually, come to think of it, this is pretty much Bayle’s strategy centuries later. The big difference is the focus on heresy vs. focus on atheism.)
In other words, the people who were targets for the inquisition were the people who were saying heretical truths could be discovered by reason. If you said the orthodox view could be discovered by reason, church authorities weren’t going to haul you before the inquisition because your arguments for the orthodox view weren’t strong enough.
People who take for granted that Aquinas was a great philosopher because everyone says so need to stop and consider how the history of medieval philosophy might have turned out differently if the more heretical strains of Aristotelianism hadn’t been suppressed.
I’m pretty sure he is calling into question the claim that “it was dangerous to question that the existence of God could be proven through reason”, which was a very common belief throughout most of the middle ages and was held with very little danger as far as I can tell
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This doctrine was supposed (though we don’t know if correctly) to be a doctrine that although reason dictated truths contrary to faith, people are obliged to believe on Faith anyway. It was supressed.
And yet, you claim that “philosophers could used whatever half-baked premises they wanted in constructing arguments for the existence of God, and have little fear of being contradicted” even though the Summa contains refutations of weak arguments for the existence of God. Also, The Church specifically denounced the Doctine of the Double Truth, which by all accounts is a premise that would, in practice, act to protect religious claims from falsification. “Philosophers” would have risked Inquisitional investigation had they not dropped their “half-baked premises they wanted in constructing arguments for the existence of God”.
I don’t think he is claiming it wasn’t dangerous to be a heretic in the 13th century. I’m pretty sure he is calling into question the claim that “it was dangerous to question that the existence of God could be proven through reason”, which was a very common belief throughout most of the middle ages and was held with very little danger as far as I can tell. I’m surprized that you are unaware of this given that you “have master’s degree in philosophy from Notre Dame”.
EDIT: Carinthium beat me to the punch.
So the thing of it being dangerous to deny that the existence of God could be proven by reason may have been a more 17th/18th century phenomenon. As intellectuals got less religious, that made it possible to fear that someone like Pierre Bayle was secretly an atheist (and actually, historians still aren’t sure what to make of Bayle). That was probably less of an issue in the middle ages.
That said, the Summa is a rather blatant example of writing down your bottom line first and then going back and figuring out how to argue for it. Aquinas is constantly noting how some point of Aristotle’s views may seem to conflict with Christianity, but every single time it miraculously turns out that Aristotle has been misunderstood and his views don’t actually conflict with Christianity (there might be one or two exceptions to this where Aquinas is forced to conclude Aristotle was wrong about something, but if there are they’re very rare, and I’m not actually sure there are any at all).
This was in the context of a fair number of people in Aquinas’ time reading their Aristotle (and Averroes) and actually drawing the heretical conclusions. It’s not clear to me whether the “doctrine of double truth” was something anyone actually advocated, but assuming it was it appears to have been a dodge to allow heretical Aristotelians to advocate their heretical ideas while saying, “oh, this is just the conclusions you can reach by reason, we also recognize there are contrary conclusions that can be reached by faith.”
(Actually, come to think of it, this is pretty much Bayle’s strategy centuries later. The big difference is the focus on heresy vs. focus on atheism.)
In other words, the people who were targets for the inquisition were the people who were saying heretical truths could be discovered by reason. If you said the orthodox view could be discovered by reason, church authorities weren’t going to haul you before the inquisition because your arguments for the orthodox view weren’t strong enough.
People who take for granted that Aquinas was a great philosopher because everyone says so need to stop and consider how the history of medieval philosophy might have turned out differently if the more heretical strains of Aristotelianism hadn’t been suppressed.
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