Changes

<blockquote>It can be argued that our contemporary criteria of compatibility have not always been employed. Consider the case of the reconciliation of the Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics with Catholic theology. As soon as most works of Aristotle and its Muslim commentators were translated into Latin (circa 1200), it became obvious that some propositions of Aristotle’s original system were inconsistent with several dogmas of the then-accepted Catholic theology. Take, for instance, the Aristotelian conceptions of determinism, the eternity of the cosmos, and the mortality of the individual soul. Evidently, these conceptions were in direct conflict with the accepted Catholic doctrines of God’s omnipotence and free will, of creation, and of the immortality of the individual human soul.[[CiteRef::Lindberg (2008)|p. 228–253]]. Moreover, some of the passages of Scripture, when taken literally, appeared to be in conflict with the propositions of the Aristotelian natural philosophy. In particular, Scripture seemed to imply that the Earth is flat (e.g. Daniel 4:10-11; Mathew 4:8; Revelation 7:1), which was in conflict with the Aristotelian view that the Earth is spherical. It is no surprise, therefore, that many of the propositions of the Aristotelian natural philosophy were condemned on several occasions during the 13th century.[[CiteRef::Lindberg (2008)|p.226-249]]. To resolve the conflict, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and others modified both the Aristotelian natural philosophy and the biblical descriptions of natural phenomena to make them consistent with each other. On the one hand, they stipulated that the laws of the Aristotelian natural philosophy describe the natural course of events only insofar as they do not limit God’s omnipotence, for God can violate any laws if he so desires. Similarly, they modified Aristotle’s determinism by adding that the future of the cosmos is determined by its present only insofar as it is not affected by free will or divine miracles. Similar modifications were introduced to many other Aristotelian propositions. On the other hand, it was also made clear that biblical descriptions of cosmological and physical phenomena are not to be taken literally, for Scripture often employs a simple language in order to be accessible to common folk. Thus, where possible, literal interpretations of Scripture were supposed to be replaced by interpretations based on the Aristotelian natural philosophy.[[CiteRef::Grant (2004)|p.220-224, 245]] Importantly, it is only after this reconciliation that the modified Aristotelian-medieval natural philosophy became accepted by the community.[[CiteRef::Lindberg(2008)|p.250-1]]