Medieval Reactions To The Encounter Between Faith And Reason

Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Reason The Aquinas Lecture, 1995 Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Reason Under the auspices of the Wisconsin-Alpha of Phi Sigma Tau by John F. Wippel Marquette University Press Milwaukee 1995 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 94-74397 ISBN 0-87462-162-3 Copyright © 1994 Marquette University Press Published in the United States of America Prefatory The Wisconsin-Alpha Chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the National Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University, each year invites a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas. The 1995 Aquinas Lecture, Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Reason, was delivered in the Tony and Lucille Weasler Auditorium on Sunday, February 26, 1995, by Monsignor John F. Wippel, Ordinary Professor of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy and Academic Vice-President of The Catholic University of America. Born in Pomeroy, Ohio, John Wippel began his seminary training at St. John Vianney Seminary in Steubenville, Ohio and completed his undergraduate work at The Catholic University of America where he also earned an M.A. in Philosophy and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology. After ordination in 1960 he taught for one year at The Catholic University of America and then pursued doctoral studies at the University of Louvain which awarded him the Ph.D. in 1965. He also holds the post-doctoral degree of Maître-Agrégé de l’Ecole Saint Thomas d’Aquin from Louvain-la-Neuve which he received in 1981. He resumed teaching at The Catholic University of America in 1963 and became Ordinary Professor in 1972. Since June of 1989 he has been Academic Vice-President of the University. Monsignor Wippel received the Cardinal Mercier prize from the University of Louvain in 1981 for his book, The Metaphysical Thought of Godfrey of Fontaines. He is also the author of Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (1984). He is coeditor and coauthor of Medieval Philosophy: From St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa (1969); he is editor of Studies in Medieval Philosophy (1987) and author of the chapter in that volume on “Thomas Aquinas and Participation.” He is coauthor of Les questions dispu­tées et les questions quodlibétiques dans les facultés de théologie, de droit et de médecine (1985), having contributed Part II of that volume, “Quodlibetal Questions, Chiefly in Theology Faculties.” He has translated Boethius of Dacia: On the Supreme Good, On the Eternity of the World, On Dreams (1987). Besides his books, Msgr. Wippel is the author of over fifty articles in journals and in encyclopedias and chapters in books on mediæval philosophy. Some of his most recent articles bear the following titles: “Godfrey of Fontaines: Divine Power and the Principle of Noncontradiction,” “Individuation in James of Viterbo,” “Thomas Aquinas on What Philosophers Can Know about God,” “Thomas of Sutton on Divine Knowledge of Future Contingents,” “The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics,” and “Truth in Thomas Aquinas.” To Msgr. John F. Wippel’s distinguished list of publications, Phi Sigma Tau is pleased to add: Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Reason by John F. Wippel Mediæval Reactions to the Encounter between Faith and Reason John F. Wippel Introduction In order to introduce this topic I would like to turn to the Prologue of Bishop Stephen Tempier’s well known condemnation of 219 propositions issued March 7, 1277, at Paris.1 However one may assess the justification for such action on the part of the Bishop, the contents of his decree point to a crisis at the University of Paris. According to the Prologue, the prohibited propositions were allegedly taught by certain