WILLIAM OF ALVERNIA. - Medieval theologian and philosopher, born at Aurillac after 1180, died in Paris in 1249. He was a master of theology at the University of Paris and from 1228 bishop of that city.
His principal work is the Magisterium divinale (1223-40), divided into seven parts: De Trinitate, De universo, De anima, Cur Deus homo, De fide et legibus, De Sacramentis, De virtutibus.
He belongs, together with William of Auxerre and Philip the Chancellor, to that group of theologians who, after the condemnations of 1210 and 1215, found themselves having to confront Aristotle in order to correct and combat his theses incompatible with Christianity, while at the same time studying him and effecting an initial assimilation of Aristotelianism within Catholic theology (F. Steenberghen). Of this group, G. d’A. is the most notable philosophical personality. He was strongly influenced by Avicenna, but did not allow himself to be dominated by him (Masnovo, I, p. 205). He demonstrates the existence of God as the good and being per essentiam, the reason for all goods and beings by participation (in which essence and being are distinguished), and also makes use of the argument from motion (ibid., p. 262). Unlike William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, and Alexander of Hales, for whom the concept that best reveals the nature of God is that of summum bonum, G. sees in the concept of “being per essentiam” that which best characterizes God. Against Avicenna, G. vigorously affirms that God freely created the world and that the world had a beginning. In his voluntaristic conception of creation (opposed to Avicenna’s naturalism), he finds support in Averroes, whom he considers Christian and highly esteems. He conceives the human soul as the form of the body, spiritual and immortal, but not as the unique form of man. He does not admit the distinction between agent intellect and possible intellect: there is neither a separate agent intellect, as in Avicenna’s manner, nor an agent intellect as a faculty of the soul, because, according to G., there is no distinction between the soul and its faculties.
According to Gilson (though Masnovo disagrees), G. is a typical representative of Avicennian Augustinianism. The theory of the Alvernian on the knowledge of first principles and of the causal nexus, which would require a habitus or infused “mos” from God, suggests, according to Masnovo, that of D. Hume.