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Q

How did the condemnation of Etienne Tempier in 1277 affect Saint Thomas Aquinas?
https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-condemnation-of-Etienne-Tempier-in-1277-affect-Saint-Thomas-Aquinas/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl

Hans-Georg Lundahl

Studied religions as curious parallels and contrasts to Xtian faith since 9, 10?

Answered Mon

It did not affect Saint Thomas Aquinas personally, since he had already died.

It did somewhat affect the reception of his writings.

Bishop Tempier, though not mentioning St Thomas among condemned authors may have had a suspicion against his orthodoxy as ulterior motive.

It is fairly certain there was at least an urban legend that parts of St Thomas’ theology had been condemned in the sentences condemned. This urban legend is still promoted by English scholars.

Some of them, at least.

In the year when St Thomas was canonised, Stephen Tempier’s successor Stephen III Bourret absolved all and any theses actually in St Thomas’ writings from any suspicion of having been condemned by Stephen Tempier, but the condemnation was not rescinded.

By then it seems to have been settled that Tempier did not in fact condemn any thing which St Thomas had directly defended.

Here is a phrase about the new sentence of Stephen Bourret:

“Cependant, un retournement de perspective n'allait pas manquer de se produire. Redoutant cette dérive fidéiste qui s'était amorcée suite à l'intervention de Tempier, le pape Jean XXII allait réhabiliter la doctrine thomiste par la canonisation, en 1323, de Thomas d'Aquin, suivie, deux années plus tard, de la levée, par Etienne Bourret, de tout interdit que cette doctrine avait pu encourir de par la condamnation de 1277, comme il a été dit ci-dessus.”

The analysis of Stephen Tempier promoting “fideism” (an anachronistic term, at least) I do not share, but the fact is, the act of Stephen Bourret was a lifting of any forbidding which the doctrine of St Thomas could have incurred by the condemnation of 1277.

In other words, Stephen Bourret was not saying the sentences of St Thomas had actually been forbidden by those condemnations.

A case in point:

St Thomas argues that all angels are IN FACT of different species, since immaterial.

Stephen Tempier condemns the sentence that they NEED TO be of different species since God were somehow not able to give immaterial things any principle of individuation.

This obviously is one of the diversities between the bishop and the dominican which have been construed as conflicts.

So, St Thomas has not argued that God could not make a haecceitas in purely spiritual things apart from their species, Stephen Tempier has not defined that God actually does create all angels or all angels of any given order in the same species. St Thomas did not argue what Stephen Tempier forbade later; and Stephen Tempier did not forbid what St Thomas Aquinas had argued earlier.

BUT they were arguably of diverse opinion on the matter what God in fact did when creating angels.*

Here is the source in Louis Valcke:

http://www.erudit.org/revue/ltp/2000/v56/n1/401278ar.pdf

Here is my quoting it, when giving the condemnations of Stephen Tempier:

Index in stephani tempier condempnationes

* In other words, I find it probable Tempier was a Scotist. Note, he was NOT a Nominalist, but firmly opposed to that.