be those who devote themselves in depth to the sciences of
the Hellenes and do not use these simply to exercise the mind
but instead adopt their sterile opinions.” The reaction was
even more vigorous in the fourteenth century when, after the
great Latin classics had been translated into Greek, rationalist
and humanist claims roused the opposition of Gregory Pala-
mas (d. 1359), who developed a new systematization of the
spiritual tradition of the Greek East. Since the fourth century
this tradition had devoted itself to reflection on the incarna-
tion of the Word and the divinization of creatures, to the
union of the divine and the human, the uncreated and the
created. This was the background for the two great debates
peculiar to the East—the iconoclastic struggle, which was the
final phase of the christological controversies (union of the
spiritual and the sensible), and the debate over Palamism
(divinization, communication of God to the human crea-
ture, and rejection of any rationalism in theology)—the vic-
torious outcome of which is celebrated by the Feast of Or-
thodoxy. Established in 843, this feast commemorates the
restoration of icon worship and Orthodox rejection of the
theological rationalizers.
There have been other developments in Orthodox the-
ology; for example, in the nineteenth century, the influence
of G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schelling in Russia. But
even in fairly personal systematizations this theology has re-
mained faithful to its special character. It is not a simple in-
tellectual exercise but a call to live in a personal way the truth
revealed by Jesus Christ and proclaimed in the faith of the
Orthodox church, which draws its life and inspiration from
the Holy Spirit. Theoretical knowledge must be integrated
with life experience and with prayer that is practiced as part
of the church community and in its liturgical celebration.
The Latin fathers differ very little from the Greeks.
However, beginning with Anselm and continuing through-
out Scholasticism, a favorite formula of Augustine’s became
the motto for an exercise of reason in theology that is peculiar
to the medieval West. In Augustine, reason and faith supply
each other with nourishment within the unity of contempla-
tion, in accordance with his formula: “Intellige ut credas,
crede ut intelligas” (“Understand that you may believe, be-
lieve that you may understand”; Sermons 43.9). The second
part of this formula has often been expressed by means of Isa-
iah 7:9: “Nisi credideritis non intelligetis” (“Unless you be-
lieve, you shall not understand”; Septuagint and Vulgate).
Augustine himself focuses less on the duality of the two
spheres than on the union of the two activities or ranges of
activity in reaching the fullness of truth. For truth in itself
is one. It exists in the triune God; it is to be found in the
Wisdom of God that has come to us in sensible form in Jesus
Christ. On our side, there is an intelligere, or knowing, that
prepares for and nourishes faith, and an intellectus, or under-
standing, which is the fruit of a devout and loving faith that
makes use of the resources and analogies supplied by nature
and reaches the intellectus fidei, or understanding of faith, so
that “what faith grasps the mind sees” (On the Trinity
15.27.49).
The intellectus fidei of Anselm (d. 1109) is not quite the
same as that of Augustine. Anselm means a use of reason on
the basis of faith (“I desire to gain some understanding of
your truth which my heart believes and loves”), but reason,
for him, has the power to discover at its own rational level
the necessary connection that gives the truth of faith its ob-
jective coherence. That is what he means by understanding
what we believe; this is true of the existence of God and it
is true of redemption, which we can think out “as though
we knew nothing about Christ.”
The monastic theology of Bernard of Clairvaux, who
was nineteen years old when Anselm died, is quite different
in character: a theology of the spiritual struggle and of the
life of mystical union as experienced in the cloister. However,
from Anselm and the theologians at Bec came the initiatives,
timid at first, that produced Scholasticism. Anselm of Laon
was a disciple at Bec. He in turn had Abelard for a pupil, but
the pupil was too gifted and too aware of his gifts to find sat-
isfaction at Laon. Abelard inaugurated what became system-
atic theology and the dialectical method of bringing together
opposed theses that call for a solution. This method of the
quaestio (interrogation) was applied in commentaries on
Peter Lombard’s Book of Sentences, which was to be the text-
book for the teaching of theology down to the sixteenth cen-
tury. The teaching was done in schools or universities and
came to be known as “Scholasticism.”
Scholastic theology had very great practitioners in Bona-
venture and Thomas Aquinas (both of whom died in 1274).
Thomas’s intention was to search out and express, with the
help of analysis, the perceived order of things and reason, an
order determined by God. That which revelation discloses
to us provides the starting point, of course, but the Scholastic
also had a fearless trust in the rational mind as trained in the
school of Aristotle. Profound insights, rigorous arguments,
honesty about the data, and sureness of Catholic sensibility
have made Thomas the “Common Doctor” of the Catholic
church. Following the Augustinian tradition, Bonaventure
insisted more on the interior supernatural enlightenment
and transformation that are necessary conditions for under-
standing sacred doctrine.
Although opposed to one another as realist and nomi-
nalist, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham in the
fourteenth century were at one in criticizing the trust in spec-
ulative reason when this takes God and Christian realities for
its object. Ockham marked the beginning of the via moderna
which was introduced in the universities in the fifteenth cen-
tury. The development of a theology marked by abundant
discourse and nice distinctions led by way of reaction to spir-
itual currents and a mysticism that were unrelated to dogma
(Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ). But another and dif-
ferent current was also born: humanism with its cultivation
of the ancient languages, its criticism of Scholasticism, its
publication of texts that printing carried far and wide. Mar-
tin Luther (d. 1546) was heir to all three currents: Ockhamist
voluntarism, mystical inwardness, and the textual resources
of humanism. Nonetheless, he would mark a new beginning.9136 THEOLOGY: CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY