Lecture 33: Universities and Theology
within a short time; thus, Scripture was employed technically
as “proof texts” for theological positions.o The four books of Sentences written by Peter Lombard (1100–
1160) provided doctrinal statements and scriptural proofs
organized according to the topics of the Trinity, creation and
sin, Incarnation and the virtues, and the sacraments and “last
things” (death, judgment, heaven, hell). The Sentences became
the standard textbook for Catholic theology and the basis for
commentary by subsequent masters.• If the substance of Scholastic theology was doctrine contained
in propositions or sentences, its life and bite came from the
invigoration offered by the challenge of philosophy, specifically
that of Aristotle, whose works had been translated from Greek into
Arabic by Muslims and from Arabic into Latin.
o Aristotle’s teachings (for example, on the human soul and on
the relation of God to the world) were less apparently congenial
to Christian doctrine than had been those of Plato, whose view
of the world had been adjudged compatible with the Bible by
Christian thinkers from Justin through Origen to Augustine.o For such masters as Thomas Aquinas, however, the teachings
of Ibn Sīnā (Latin, Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Latin, Averroës),
based in an understanding of Aristotle that emphasized the
godless aspect of the Greek sage, had to be engaged by the
Catholic faith in the same way that ancient philosophers had
to be engaged by the early church fathers if Christian faith
was to be considered fully rational in character and reasonable
to maintain.• In its medieval manifestation, Scholastic theology had great
dynamism because of its employment of dialectic, developed
especially by Peter Abelard (1079–1142). His Sic et non (Thus and
Not Thus) brought dialectical reasoning to theology as he worked
through some 158 apparent contradictions in Christian philosophy
and theology.