Some s. c. Catholics demonise Tempier and Kilwardby

Note, Stephen II Tempier had been wary of St Thomas Aquinas, since he valued Plato and esp. Aristotle highly.

This means, some have construed it as if St Thomas Aquinas stood condemned posthumously by his erstwhile bishop.

Now, I don't think he was mentioned by name, but there were such rumours back then. 48 years later, when St Thomas Aquinas was canonised, Stephen III of Paris issued a declaration saying St Thomas was not condemned.

This has in some quarters been construed as if the condemnations by Tempier (a prototype of the Syllabus errorum by Pope Pius IX) had been overturned.

On some issues, what Tempier condemned and what St Thomas Aquinas endorsed was about two shades or one shade apart.

For instance, St Thomas Aquinas said, each angel is its species, since idividuals of one species de facto are separated by being created in different matter - while Tempier condemned the idea that God couldn't have done otherwise, but need to have created different angels in different species.

16 (81). Quod, quia intelligentie non habent materiam, deus non posset plures eiusdem speciei facere.

In other words, "that, since the intelligences (angels) don't have any matter, God couldn't have created more of a same species."

St Thomas on his part only says that God in fact didn't (for same reason). This doesn't mean St Thomas considers the angels are just a few, no, rather he considers there are "infinite numbers" (to human mathematicians) of species of angels. The nine choirs of angels are just major groupings.

This is the kind of tension which some have so construed that if you are for Tempier, you are against Aquinas or if you are for St Thomas, you think Tempier is overturned or was a "fanatic" or sth. Dominic Statham seems to have little use for them:

In the thinking of Plato, when ‘the Demiurge’ (the creator) shaped the world, he was not free to make it as he wished, but had to conform to certain rules and principles. In addition he had to use materials he had not created himself and these tended to resist his attempts to form them. Similarly, his pupil Aristotle saw the creator as having only limited power to impose his preferred order on the natural world. Galen was another influential Greek writer who rejected the Genesis account of creation because this was contrary to his understanding that the creator would be limited in his work by the nature of matter.

St. Thomas Aquinas was aware of this, and corrected these sides.

Btw, the problem with Aristotle was rather he considered God as "lacking motivation" to prefer or impose any order at all, except what the love of God self imposes on an eternal world.

Obviously St Thomas answered this that God is three Persons, therefore Love, therefore can create out of love.

Upcoming are the exact quotes from St. Thomas and a part in which I consider Newton.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris 13
St. Remigius
1.X.2018