Copyright © 1996 R.J. Kilcullen
To follow this lecture you will need either the Readings or Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, and either Supplement, or E. Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages.
According to Aristotle, Plotinus, Avicenna and Averroes the universe has always existed; according to Aristotle the world is self-subsistent, in no sense created by God. According to Plotinus the world has always existed as an emanation from the First, which is its source or principle, as the sun is the source of light. Avicenna adopted this view, and said that God is therefore the creator of the world, meaning its source: so according to Avicenna the world is created eternally. According to Christians the world of creatures was created a finite time ago. Thomas Aquinas's position is that it is impossible for philosophy either to prove or disprove Christian belief on this point: philosophically it is possible that the world is created eternally, but philosophically it cannot be proved that the world is eternal. We know that the world is not eternal because the creator has revealed that fact to us in the bible: that the world is not eternal is a truth of faith, not provable or disprovable by philosophy. So in this and the next article he refutes philosophical arguments both for and against the eternity of the world.
"I answer that nothing except God can be from eternity"; He offers no proof - it is known from the Bible, for example the texts just quoted in "On the contrary". Instead of proving his opening statement he goes on to disprove arguments to the contrary: "And this statement is not impossible to uphold". Whether the world has existed eternally depends on whether God has willed that it should: god is under no necessity to will the existence of creatures at all - see Summa theologiae, part 1, q.19, a.3, Readings, p.133.
In the reply to objection 5 note the point that creation is not change, or movement: change, as Aristotle says, presupposes a substrate that persists through the change, i.e. something that was already there, under the opposite form (e.g. non-musical) before the change happened. If creation were change there would have been something there already to which God gave a new form. Creation originates both matter and form together, with nothing pre-existing.
In reply to objection 6, "he had the eternal will" is explained by Summa theologiae, part 1, q.19, a, 7, Readings, p.135. "Imaginary time"; before the creation of the world there was no time, but we can imagine time. If the world was created in 4004 BC (the date Bishop Ussher calculated in the 17th century), then we can imagine 4005 BC, but there was no such time. We can imagine that from 10,000 BC God had a plan according to which the world would begin in 4004 BC, but this is just human imagination. Even if we do imagine that, we don't have to imagine that any change occurred in God in 4004 BC. "Nor is it necessary for some change to be presupposed, even on account of imaginary time". "Suitable matter" a few lines down: we can't make a chair out of water; the matter must already be under some form, e.g. of wood, that makes it suitable for receiving the form of a chair. But God's creation is not restricted in that way - he creates matter and form together.
In Reply to objection 9 there is a suggestion that God had a reason for making the world a finite time ago, rather than eternally, namely to make it more obvious that it depends on him. But as John of Jandun (a 14th century writer) remarked, creation happened but once, and that was a long time ago.
Read article 2.
In this article Thomas refutes arguments on the other side, arguments by which some Christians thought they could prove that the world was created a finite time ago. "Those things which God must will of necessity" (answer, second paragraph); God must will his own being and his own blessedness. But he need not will anything relating to creatures.
Reply to objection 1 relates to the neo-Platonic doctrine, already known to Augustine (who came later than Plotinus), and held notably by Avicenna, that God created the world eternally. In this reply Thomas rejects the argument that God must have existed before creation because an efficient cause precedes its effect, by saying that creation is instantaneous (not a change or motion); the "hardly intelligible" doctrine of the neo-Platonists, which the analogy of the eternal footprint does little to explain, is philosophically possible.
Reply to objection 7 admits that a series of accidental causes, but not of per se causes, could go back to eternity. This makes a difference to our understanding of the first and second ways (Readings, p.106 (Summa theologiae, part 1, q. 2, art. 3)). What is the distinction between a per se and an accidental series? Note the examples: the hand moving the stick that moves the stone is a per se series, a man begetting a man who begets a man who begets a man is an accidental series. In the first example, the stick does not move the stone except because, and while, the hand is moving the stick. But the great-grandfather may be dead: the man begets as a man, not as a son or great-grandson. The members of the per se series must be active simultaneously: they cannot be infinite in number because, according to Aristotle, there cannot be an actual infinity. But there can be a potential infinity - i.e. something that can be sub-divided or added to over and over without end; so the series of men can be added to without end. The hierarchy of per se causes must be finite and have a first member, but there need not have been or ever be a first or last man.
Read article 3.
In reply to objection 2 note again the distinction between creation and motion.
Avicenna's psychology is a version of Aristotle's and so is Thomas Aquinas's, so there is a general resemblance. Notice that in Avicenna plants and animals, as well as human beings, have souls. Notice that the human soul functions as the form of the body, but is not merely a corporal form (p.66). Notice the Intelligentia in effectu (p.69, LH), which is the Agent Intellect and Giver of Forms (p.74, LH near the bottom); this is a single separate intellectual substance that gives thoughts to human minds; this is something Thomas Aquinas will reject.
Read Summa theologica, part 1, q.79 art.1, Readings, p.144.
"The act of understanding is his very being in God alone"; all of God's acts and attributes, and his being, are identically himself, since God is absolutely simple, without composition of any sort (Readings, p.124, LH, and 112 (Summa theologiae, part 1, q. 14, art. 4, and q. 3, art. 7)). But the human intellect is a power in some way distinct from the soul and from each of the soul's other powers and from the human individual.
Read article 2.
"To be passive" translates the Latin verb patior, which can also be translated "to suffer" or "to undergo". In the first of the three senses distinguished in this article there is a connotation of suffering - something that belongs is being taken away. In the second sense something is being taken away, but it need not be something that should be there - e.g. if a patient (a word that derives from patior) undergoes treatment and becomes well, illness is taken away. In the third sense there is just change: it need not be that anything is taken away, in fact something may be added. In this third sense anything that is actualised in any sense at all may be said to "undergo" change. For human beings, to understand is to undergo in this last sense, i.e., to change, by acquiring a new perfection.
At "This is clear" there could be a new paragraph division. In this paragraph he argues that we can't know except by the actualising of a potency. In the next paragraph he argues that this potency is not all actualised all the time. The matter of the heavenly bodies is all actualised all the time - they never change; but what we know changes from time to time - we know nothing at first and gradually learn.
In reply to objection 2 notice the term "possible intellect"; that is, our intellect as capable of coming to know, but not yet knowing.
Read article 3.
The theory of the agent intellect means that in knowing the mind is not merely passive: it has to work on producing a conception of its object, a conception which is then received and retained by the passive part of the mind. Notice at the bottom of the LH column the word "species". In the present context this means the same as "form". When we were talking before about genera and species, species meant a class of things, e.g. the human race as distinct from other species of the genus animal. Here species means the form that the members of a species in the other sense all have - e.g. the form of humanity.
Read article 4.
According to Avicenna and Averroes the Agent Intellect is a separate substance, separate from human individuals, one for the whole human race. That is, the agency that performs the activity involved in thinking - that abstracts concepts by which what we experience through the senses becomes intelligible - is not part of our individual minds. According to Avicenna the possible intellect - i.e. the passive or receptive part of the mind that receives and retains the concepts worked out by the agent intellect and is thereby actualised in its understanding - is part of our individual minds; according to Averroes even the possible intellect is one for the whole human race. In this article Thomas Aquinas rejects the theory that the active intellect is a separate substance, in the next article he will reject the theory that it is one for the whole human race.
Some background is needed so that you can understand the argument of this article. First, remember the idea of a series of things causing things to cause things, the per se subordinated series of causes, like the hand making a stick push a stone. In the Aristotelian cosmology the first cause in the series is God, and below him come the sun and the crystalline spheres of the heavens - the light and heat and movement of the heavens causes earthly causes to have their effects. God and the heavens in this subordinated series are "universal" and "equivocal" causes of whatever happens on earth ("equivocal" because their effects are not of the same species as the cause). But these higher universal causes work through the lower more specific causes - God causes each member of the series to cause the next member to cause etc. and the last member of the series is the immediate and specific cause of the effect. Read Supplement, p.74, the whole LH side (Gilson, History, p. 214. Pause.
Second, you should understand that what Thomas Aquinas wants to say is that similarly there is a series of subordinated causes, intellects, producing the effect of understanding in our minds. There must be above my mind a higher intellect that causes my mind to understand. In this series the highest member is the intellect which is God. Unless God causes lower causes to cause I cannot understand. He does not want to rule out the possibility that the series of causes may include other super-human intellects besides God's: I don't think he thinks it does, but he doesn't make an issue of it - maybe there is a many-stage series from God's intellect through one or more cosmic created intellects down to our intellect, or maybe there are only two stages, God's intellect and ours. But what he does want to insist on is that there must be, in a human being's soul, not only the final effect, understanding, but also the lowest cause, an agent intellect. God is the highest of the superior causes of understanding, and there may possibly be a super-human Agent Intellect with capitals, but there is at any rate an agent intellect in each human soul.
In the first paragraph of the answer he says that there must be some higher Intelligence (God and perhaps another) by which our soul is helped to understand. But notice in the second sentence that from this higher intellect we acquire the power to understand - not just the effect, understanding, but a power that brings about understanding. Why we must have our own power to understand is explained in the next paragraph. Notice half way down: "Just as in other perfect [i.e., complete, "stand alone"] natural things, besides the universal active causes [God and the heavenly bodies], each one is endowed with its proper [i.e. its own] powers" etc.
Notice in the third paragraph the argument that from experience we know that we work at understanding, and this activity could not be attributed to us unless the agency that does it was part of ourselves. According to the Aristotelian theory of light and vision, a source (e.g. the sun) gives off light and the light is received into the air or other medium and makes the medium luminous, i.e., able to transmit an image of the object, called the visible species or form, which travels through the medium to our eye. Similarly Thomas says, the divine intellect produces in our souls an effect like the luminosity of the medium, which makes the soul able to do something - not just to transmit species, but to abstract them and impress them on the passive part of the mind, the possible intellect. Re-read the objections and replies.
Read article 5.
This is clear enough. To understand the reply to objection 1 remember Avicenna's doctrine (Supplement, p.66, LH, Gilson, pp. 198-9) that the human soul functions as the form of a body but is not merely that; Thomas Aquinas also holds this, and that in its intellectual operations the soul does not use the body, "it is not the act of any corporeal organ". In Reply to obj. 2 he means that, if you are to abstract a concept common to many individuals, your mind must be capable of relating to each of the many individuals at once, so as to recognise that there is something common. In reply to obj.3, the agent intellect is in common to all men - i.e., each human being has one, but not the identical one. And these many agent intellects must all derive from one principle or source, just as in Plato's theory of forms there is one form which all the many participate: in this case, the divine intellect is the principle from which all our intellects derive.
Recall that in this context species means the same as form. Notice the contrast between the principle attributed to Plato, just after footnote 12, "that the form of the thing known must be in the knower in the same manner as in the thing known itself", and the principle Thomas himself subscribes to, second last sentence of the answer, "the received is the receiver according to the mode of the receiver". This comes from Boethius, Consolation, book 5, prose 4, Readings, p.6, LH, three quarters of the way down: Thomas Aquinas is ascribing to Plato the mistake Boethius warns against there. Compare the reply to objection 2 with Boethius, Readings, p.6, RH.
Read article 2.
On p.149.RH (Summa theologiae, part 1, q. 84, art. 2), three quarters of the way down, he says, "Now by matter the form of a thing is determined to some one thing". According to Thomas Aquinas forms are individuated by matter - Socrates and Plato have the same form, humanity, received into different parcels of matter in space. At the bottom of the page he says that the senses "receive the form of the thing known, without matter indeed, but subject to material conditions"; If you touch a hot metal object your sense of touch receives the heat, but not in metal - no metal enters your fingers; but your finger is itself a material object and becomes physically hot, and the sensation of heat is individual, confined to a particular place and time, under "material conditions".
This brings us to article 3. ("Innate" means "inborn", in you from birth.) This article criticises Plato's doctrine of anamnesis or reminiscence: that in its existence before birth the soul "saw" the Forms, then forgot them at birth, and is reminded of them by encountering their imperfect imitations in this world. On this theory the soul has in it at birth the knowledge of all the forms - all the species are innate - but this knowledge is blocked or hindered. Read article 3. Pause.
Read article 4.
Notice the teleological assumption: that there has to be some purpose in an arrangement that exists by nature.
Read article 5.
The purpose of this article is to show that Augustine's version of Platonism, altered so as to harmonise with Christian belief, is not at variance with Thomas's Aristotelian theories. Augustine located Plato's Ideas in the mind of God; compare Readings, p.130, RH, the question "Of Ideas" (Summa theologiae, part 1, q. 15). According to Thomas we know things in the ideas in God's mind in the sense that our Agent Intellect is derived from God's Intellect; we do not know the ideas in God's mind as objects.
In articles 2-5 Thomas has rejected various theories about how we know material things. Now we come to the theory he accepts. Before you read it know that the word "immute" means "bring about a change in", not to be confused with "immutable" which means the opposite, "not capable of being changed". "Immute" is not really English at all; it is the Latin verb immutare which the translator has retained instead of translating. Read article 6. Pause.
Read article 7.
A couple of words need explaining. "Lesion" means damage. "Quiddity" is the same as essence, the answer is the question, What sort of thing is it? - in Latin, Quid est? In between understanding actually and not understanding at all there is understanding habitually - i.e. you've understood it once, and can again if you turn your mind to it, but you are not actually thinking of it now - 7 times 6 is what? 42. You knew, but weren't actually thinking of it. See Supplement, end of p.66 and top of p.67 (Gilson, pp. 198-9).
Questions 79 and 84 give you the main parts of Thomas Aquinas's account of the processes of human knowledge. Re-read the summary in Supplement, p.98. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this theory is that it presents knowing as an action as well as a reception: the mind has an active part as well as a passive part. The passive part obtains understanding as a result of intellectual effort by the active part. In Thomas Aquinas's psychology sensation also involves activity: sensation is not just a being impinged upon by something outside, but a perception of that something. Another noteworthy feature of Aquinas's theory is that the human intellect derives all its knowledge from sensation; the objects of our knowledge are the natures of bodily, sense-perceptible things: this is in contrast with Plato, according to whom the objects of knowledge are the immaterial Ideas. The mind is active, and its power and activity depend causally upon a higher intelligence, God; but what it is active upon, the things from which it abstracts the forms it knows, are bodies. As a cause the Agent Intellect is subordinate to a higher, immaterial being, but the understanding it produces is of material things.
Let's move on now, and read the last extract from Summa theologica part 1. In Readings, read q.105 article 4.
Re-read p.136, (part 1, q.19, art 8), and on p.138 q.23, a.8.
God moves the human will in several ways. One is simply in the sense that the superior cause in the series gives the lower cause its power; so even when we will something evil, our will could not have its effect unless God gave power. But in addition, God can incline us to want something: and this is not to do violence to the will.
Read art.5.
The first paragraph of the answer maintains that God does confer efficacy on secondary causes: he does not, except when he works miracles, by-pass creatures and produce effects directly. Some terminology needs explaining; form is the first act, operation the second act. Recall that both potentiality and actualisation are ambiguous: potentiality can mean power to do something, or it can mean ability to become something; similarly actualisation can mean acting, or it can mean actually being what the thing was able to become. First act is actualisation in the sense of being what was able to become, second act is actualisation in the sense of acting.
The next paragraph refers to Aristotle's four causes - cf. Supplement, p.118 (Metaphysics, 1013 a25 ff). In Aristotle's teleological physics, the end is the basic cause. Now re-read the rest of the article, which sums up some ideas we have encountered a number of times in earlier pages.
This complete the extracts from Summa theologica, part I. Let me remind you of the conventions of citation. The three parts are usually represented by Roman numerals, though sometimes Arabic numerals are used. The last article you read on p.156 is cited as Summa, or ST, 1, q.105, a. (or art.) 5; or sometimes simply S.T., 1, 105, 5. Part 2 is divided into two parts, referred to as 1-2 and 2-2 (read "first part of the second part", "second part of the second part"). So the first item we will read on p.157 is S.T., 1-2, 6,4. Another of Thomas Aquinas's writings is also a Summa, The Summa contra gentiles, SCG, which is divided into books and chapters. Look through Supplement p.100, RH, and make sure you understand the references. Pause.
In other words, you can push or restrain a person's hand but you can't physically force them to want or not want something. But notice in the reply to obj. 1, that God can incline the human will to want or not want. Notice in reply to obj.3, that a sinful choice is always for the sake of something that is genuinely good; sin is not a choice of evil for the sake of evil. A person who tells a lie, for example, does so in the hope of achieving something in some way good.
Read art.5.
If someone bumps your hand, for example, the results of the movement of your hand are involuntary on your part. But if you wanted them to bump your hand and produce that result, the result is not simply involuntary on your part.
Read art.6.
If someone doesn't bump your hand, but makes you do something by threat, then what you do is voluntary on your part. You act unwillingly, so there is a sense in which the act is involuntary; but the second paragraph of the answer argues that in the primary sense of the term "voluntary", acts done under threat are voluntary, because you do choose to do the thing, though under other circumstances, i.e. if the threat had not been made, you would not have made this choice. Compare this with Abelard, who would say that in such a case you do consent but do not will (Readings, p.50 (Abelard's Ethics, pp. 7-9). The difference is verbal: what Abelard calls consent Thomas calls will, and says that under threat you will unwillingly.
In reply to obj.1 note that compulsion means physical force pushing your body to do something. Compulsion does not here include threats.
In the next article "concupiscence" means physical desire or longing. Read article 7.
Longing to do something makes that act more voluntary. In Reply to obj.2 "incontinence" means lack of self-control. What articles 4-7 amount to is this: No one can literally force your will: they can force your body, and such force makes the action, if it can be called an action, involuntary. They can threaten, and then you act unwillingly, but the act is still voluntary because you have chosen it as a means to avoid the threat. If you do something out of longing your act is voluntary, even if for a while you struggle against your desire. The underlying question of course is, what acts are you responsible for? You are responsible for what you choose to do.
Read article 8.
The treatment in q.6 of the voluntary and the involuntary is derived from Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2I.1. Ignorance and error are taken up again in q.19.
If you choose to do something that you mistakenly think is wrong though in fact it is right, then your choice is evil. Does it follow that if you choose what you think is right your act is good? Read article 6.
So if you are wrong through malice or negligence, your error is no excuse: your act is evil even though you think it is good. Notice that ignorance of divine law is no excuse: he does not mean divine positive law, but natural law, i.e. morality. Errors about moral principles do not excuse, because you ought to know. But sometimes error about factual circumstances may excuse - provided the circumstance was not something you ought to have found out about. Notice the reply to objection 1: Dionysios (the pseudo-Areopagite again) says that an act is not good unless it is good in all respects; it is evil if it is evil in any respect. If you mistakenly do the wrong thing, by an error not due to malice or negligence, your act is excused, but it is not good. On this topic see essay 2, "Bayle on the Rights of Conscience" in my book Sincerity and Truth.
Read article 7.
Notice that intention means an end lying beyond the act, to which the act is referred in some way. By intention Abelard seems to have meant something different, namely the act one decides to do; see Readings, p.53.
Read 1-2, q.20. a.1 (p.165).
"In relation to their genus" means in relation to their kind or sort - there is no contrast here with species. Almsgiving is a good kind of act, though in a particular instance it may be evil because it is done to achieve a bad end. In that case the end willed makes the act bad - evil is "found first of all in the act of the will, whence it passes to the external act". An act that is good or evil in its kind, if considered in itself, i.e. not as referred to an end, is good or evil because it conforms or does not conform to the rules of morality, which are apprehended (according to Thomas Aquinas) by reason. This good or evil, i.e. being a good or evil kind of act, is prior to the act of will: if we choose to do something evil in its kind the choice is evil because the act is evil, not vice versa - it is not that the act is evil because the choice is.
Read article 2.
Notice Dionysios' principle again. The end does not justify the means; acting for a good purpose does not make the act good. Notice reply to obj.3, and contrast Abelard, Readings, p. 53.
Read article 3.
To understand the second paragraph of the answer recall the distinction between three sorts of acts (Readings, last line of p.161 and on to p.162 (2-2, q. 19, a. 5)): acts good in their kind, like almsgiving; acts evil in their kind, like murder; and acts which are in their kind indifferent, like picking up a straw. The first sentence of the second paragraph of this reply refers to acts indifferent in their kind; the second sentence refers to the other two sorts.
Read article 4.
The first paragraph refers to acts indifferent in their kind, the second paragraph to the other two sorts, those that are good or evil in their kind. (He speaks of matter and circumstances: an act good in its kind or "matter", like almsgiving, may be bad because of some circumstance, e.g. if you give away money you should use for something else.) What he is saying in article 4 is that if the act is indifferent in its kind, like picking up a straw, so that it is good or evil only because it is done for some good or evil purpose, then actually doing it adds nothing to the goodness or evil of the purpose, except in the accidental ways he goes on to describe. But if the act is good in its kind, as almsgiving is good, then actually doing it is good (though there is no loss of good if one really would have done it but for some external obstacle).
Read articles 4 and 5.
This is the last of our extracts from S.T. 1-2, which discusses various matters relevant to morality. We have touched on only a very few of the topics of this part. It includes a treatise on Ethics parallel to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, a treatise on law (including a famous and influential treatment of natural law); a treatise on grace; and a discussion in detail of the various virtues and vices. For the Readings in this course I chose questions relating to excuse and inculpation. Many people these days seem to think that if you think something is right then it's right for you, if you mean well you do well, if you didn't know you're not to blame, if you couldn't help it you're not to blame. Thomas Aquinas takes a more rigorous view, though he does allow some excuses. There is a moral law, which everyone should know and can know by natural reason: if you don't know that murder is wrong then that's no excuse, you should know. The moral law makes some kinds of acts evil in kind, and others good in kind, and leaves others indifferent in kind. If an act is evil in kind, then nothing in the circumstances or in your purpose in doing it can make it good. If it is good in kind or indifferent, it is not good without qualification unless it is also good in reference to the concrete circumstances and in its purpose: as Dionysios says, good results from the entire cause, evil from any defect. To be good the act has to be good or indifferent in kind, good with reference to circumstances, and good in its purpose - all these things are required concurrently, lack of any of them makes the act evil. If you do something in any respect evil out of ignorance or error, your act cannot be good, but it may be excusable: not, as I said before, if the act is evil in its kind, because you can and should know the moral law; if your ignorance relates to some circumstance of the act you are excused unless the ignorance was voluntary or negligent. If you knew what you were doing was wrong but were overcome by longing to do it, that is no excuse; if you were threatened and did it out of fear, that is no excuse; if you were literally and physically forced, that is an excuse - in fact it is no longer your act.
So if you already believe the true faith you should not doubt it, and you should not raise doubts in the minds of believers.
Read art. 8.
Heathens and Jews should not be compelled to believe, but they should be prevented from hindering the faith of others. Heretics - i.e. ex-Christians who have fallen into unbelief - should be compelled to keep their promise to believe. Notice that both parts of this position rest on the premise that faith is voluntary. This is explicit at the end of the first sentence of the answer, "because to believe depends on the will". Christians have promised to believe and should be compelled to keep their promise: this supposes that belief depends on the will, because only voluntary acts can be promised. The doctrine that belief is voluntary comes from Augustine - see the quotation in Objection 3. Since Duns Scotus most philosophers have held that belief is not voluntary, at least not directly. You can will to do or not do certain things likely to affect your belief (e.g. listen to someone, read some book), but you can't believe just by willing to believe. See my book Sincerity and Truth, pp.140.ff.
Read art. 9.
Notice that the Church has no spiritual jurisdiction over unbelievers. In saying that it may have temporal jurisdiction he means through lay Christian rulers - the emperor, kings, etc.; Thomas Aquinas seems to have held the view that in Christian lands temporal rulers are subject to direction from the pope. So when unbelievers dwell among Christians they are subject to the ordinary temporal laws.
Read article 10.
The Church is entitled to remove non-Christian rulers ruling Christian subjects, but it may leave them in power to avoid scandal.
Read article 11.
Christians are entitled to prevent the practice of non-Christian religions, but may tolerate them for a good reason.
Read article 12. and question 11, article 3.
Looking back over the last few pages, it is clear that Thomas Aquinas does not uphold freedom of inquiry and discussion and religious freedom in the modern sense. But he is not at the other extreme: he does not support the forcible conversion of Jews or unbelievers, or the removal of their children or their baptism against their parents wishes; he holds that the Church does not have spiritual jurisdiction over unbelievers; he holds that unbelieving rulers and the practice of other religions may be tolerated to avoid scandal. He does not want Christians weak in faith to have close dealings with unbelievers and does not want them to listen to religious controversy, but he says that some Christians may have dealings and discussions with unbelievers - not to learn from them in religious matters, not to test the truth of Christian belief, but to convert them. Thomas's position on these various points was typical of medieval Christians and indeed of Christians generally until quite recently. Pierre Bayle and John Locke in the late 17th century were among the first to put forward clearly modern ideas of freedom of discussion and freedom of religion, and such views were for a long time after that rejected by the leaders of all the major Christian denominations. On the history of toleration see Josef Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation. Of medieval thinkers Ockham came closest to modern ideas on freedom of discussion, but he was still at a considerable distance. Read Supplement, pp.21-2 (Kilcullen "Ockham and Infallibility, Journal of Religious History, 16 (1991), pp. 406-9).
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