Medieval Scholasticism Research Articles

Pastoral Care by Debate

The use of debate in Piers Plowman and Dives and Pauper is a response to a long-standing conversionary challenge faced by pastoral carers: the social and psychological variety of the flock—“lay multiplicity.” Dives and Pauper represents this in the huge spectrum of Dives' questions and objections, and Piers Plowman in an even wider range of dissenting and troubled voices. But these texts use debate very differently to deal with the unpredictable reactions of the laity. Pauper engages with Dives using the readerly, rhetorical, and logical techniques derived from later medieval scholasticism. Langland avoids these techniques and eschews scholastic forms of resolution; his predilection for debate and deep-structural dialectics insists on the need to keep central theological and spiritual counterpoints in play, all the while opening up conceptual and imaginative “gaps” that bring with them an implicit imperative. It is from here that the poem's demand for spiritual renewal comes.

Řád lásky podle Bonaventury

One of the important questions concerning the theological virtue of charity is the order of charity. It is a simple problem of the succession in the expression of charity in relation to various people. It is obvious that we are obliged to love all people, but they have a different grade of perfection and dignity. It is also impossible to express our charity to all people in the same way and in the same intensity, because our time, strengths and means are limited. This is why the question of order in our expression of charity is so important. The beginning of our considerations on the order of charity deal with the celebrated verse from Gal 6:10, which explicitly provides a preference to people of the same religion. The idea of the order of charity was a standard part of various commentaries and tracts on the theological virtue of charity of the first Christian centuries. This paper is focused on a commentary on this question in the writings of a very important representative of High Medieval Scholasticism St. Bonaventure. His concept is continuously compared with some other important authors of this era, the Dominicans Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan John Duns Scotus.

Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions

Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions H. George Anderson Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions. Edited by Timothy J. Wengert, Mark A. Granquist, Mary Jane Haemig, Robert Kolb, Mark C. Mattes, and Jonathan Strom. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017. 850 pp. If you are looking for the pronunciation of Oecolampadius, this is not the dictionary for you. But if you want to explore the many dimensions of the Lutheran heritage—the length, breadth, and depth of it—this book will bring ample rewards. In his introduction, General Editor Timothy Wengert emphasizes that Lutherans form a "worldwide movement within the church catholic" (xxi). This focus on the global spread of the Lutheran tradition is apparent in the international network of contributors who provide entries on Lutheran churches in many countries of the world, from Angola to Zimbabwe. Biographical articles portray Lutheran leaders from every continent. This global perspective alone makes the dictionary an outstanding contribution to Lutheran scholarship. Of course, covering so vast a landscape in 850 pages means that hard choices had to be made. North American readers may look for familiar topics in vain, or find them subsumed under larger categories, while distant events get the headlines. Neither of the two major Lutheran churches in Canada has an entry, while two Brazilian church bodies each get separate treatment. Although the charismatic movement in the United States of the 1970s is well–covered within a general article on Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, the Fifohazana Movement in Madagascar gets an article [End Page 356] of its own. In addition to the dimension of geographical breadth, Wengert's introduction also introduces the dimension of chronological length by placing Lutheranism "within the church catholic." Although many of the theological articles begin with Luther, they frequently launch the discussion by noting medieval currents that influenced his thought. Articles on Patristics, Aquinas, Biel, Augustine, and Late–Medieval Scholasticism further explore his connection to the long theological heritage of Western Christianity. Many entries offer perspectives on Luther, his life, thought, sources, and opponents. All the personalities around him receive attention and almost every territory in sixteenth-century Europe gets separate treatment. His theological influence is traced through articles on original sin, eschatology, free will, the church and other standard topics—but also on less familiar subjects like exorcism and witchcraft. Post-Reformation developments that affected all Christian traditions are noted. The centuries between Luther and the Luther Renaissance of the 1890s are often "fly-over country" in other books. Here they are given better attention with entries on the eighteenth century, on general intellectual movements, including Rationalism, Pietism, and Existentialism, and also on individuals like Kant and Hegel. Articles on recent concerns—ecology, gender and sexuality, the women's movement, race, and ecumenical dialogues—provide helpful summaries aided by up-to-date bibliographies that offer leads for further study. The title names "The Lutheran Traditions." That is an acknowledgement of Lutherans' classic struggle with evaluating the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy and its relevance to today. Editors Wengert and Kolb represent two strands of that inheritance, embodied in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). Kolb and Wengert have collaborated on several projects, notably the Book of Concord (2000), and their involvement in this new project signals the effort to be balanced. Wengert's introduction to the volume says that contributors have been asked to show "a fairmindedness that tries accurately to present" the material (xxxv). In general the dictionary is irenic. However, some authors let their bias show. The article on [End Page 357] Inner-Lutheran Ecumenism (366f.), for instance, follows the development of the Synodical Conference but ignores the productive series of mergers among other Lutheran bodies after 1918, omitting the formation of the ALC in 1930, the TALC and LCA mergers in the early 1960s and the ELCA in 1988. Likewise, the article on Lutheran education focuses mainly on schools from an LCMS perspective. Its text and bibliography would have been more balanced if they had included Richard Solberg's History of Lutheran Higher Education in North America (1985). Accounts of the tapestry of mergers among Lutherans in the United States also drop a few stitches...

Thomism in the Renaissance: Fifty Years after Kristeller. Divus Thomas 120 ed. by Alison Frazier

Reviewed by: Thomism in the Renaissance: Fifty Years after Kristeller. Divus Thomas 120 ed. by Alison Frazier John Monfasani Alison Frazier, editor. Thomism in the Renaissance:Fifty Years after Kristeller. Divus Thomas. Bologna: Edizioni Studio Domenicano, 2017. pp. 232 Paper, €30.00 In his long scholarly career, Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999) produced an extraordinary number of seminal books and articles, one of which was the 1967 monograph Le Thomisme et la pensée italienne de la Renaissance, which presented the evidence for the intellectual vitality of Thomism in the Italian Renaissance. In 2017, on the fiftieth anniversary of Kristeller's book, the collection of articles under review was presented originally as papers at the Chicago meeting of the Renaissance Society of America and brought together for publication in record time by Alison Frazier. The articles pay tribute to Kristeller by offering fresh contributions on Renaissance Thomism. Paul Richard Blum, at the start, and Kent Emery Jr., at the end, put in context Kristeller's work and treat the significance of the five core articles. Matthew T. Gaetano starts things off by examining two sixteenth-century Dominicans teaching in via Sancti Thomae at the University of Padua: Sisto Medici and Girolamo Vielmi. Both Medici and Vielmi were thoughtfully open to the best intellectual developments of the day, using humanist literary elegance while stressing, with Cicero, that style without substance is vacuous, and also acknowledging the need of competence in Greek and Hebrew. Contra the humanists, however, they called attention to the universal aspect of Catholic theology reaching all peoples at all levels as opposed to only those comfortable with classicizing Latin. As Emery notes, Vuelmi argued that, contrary to the charge of retrogression, medieval scholasticism represented progress in theology as it brought coherence to the disparate inheritance of the Church Fathers. Jozef Matula offers a penetrating analysis of the Thomism of one of the most intriguing scholastics of the Renaissance, Agostino Nifo (1469/70–1538). Fixing dynamic evolution as his most characteristic feature, Matula traces Nifo's development from an ardent Averroist to a critic of Averroes making use of the Greek commentators, Thomas, Albert the Great, and even the Platonist Marsilio Ficino. Nifo would eventually call Thomas vir doctissimus et omnium meo iudicio Peripateticorum princeps ("the most learned and the prince of all Peripatetics in my judgment"). But, as Matula shows, Nifo's Thomism was selective. In the works where Thomas's ideas did not suit him, Nifo ignored him. The article of Brian Garcia and Andrea A. Robiglio is really two articles in one. Robiglio reveals a startling discovery. One of the finer texts of the Quattrocento is the dialogue Eremita of the humanist Antonio de Ferraris, "il Galateo" (1444–1517). Not surprisingly, the celebrated historian Eugenio Garin included it in perhaps the most widely read collection of humanist texts, his Prosatori Latini del Quattrocento (1952). So intent was Garin on presenting Quattrocento humanism as anti-medieval that he bowdlerized the text, omitting the ending where Thomas Aquinas appears to provide the dénouement of the whole dialogue. Robiglio's discovery thus confirms Kristeller's assertion that Thomism was far more influential in the Renaissance than generally believed. [End Page 753] Brian Garcia's contribution gives another salutary lesson. He proves that the Expositio super libros de anima of Dominic of Flanders (Baudoin Lottin, †1479) was deliberately altered by Renaissance editors to bring it more in line with Thomist orthodoxy. Garcia thus confirms that one must return to the manuscripts, if available, if one wishes to make a study of any Renaissance text. Eva del Soldato studies two very different authors, the Platonist and Greek émigré Cardinal Bessarion (†1472), whose In Calumniatorem Platonis of 1469 was a seminal document in Renaissance Platonism, and the university professor Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657), whose De Pietate Aristotelis erga Deum et Homines (1645) was the last great attempt to defend Aristotle as a virtual Christian. What del Soldato discovered and ably proves is that both Bessarion and Liceti used Thomas extensively, but selectively, in making their argument, one in defense of Plato, and the other in defense of Aristotle. The final article is Robert Trent Pomplun's brilliant "Thomism and the Study...

Propuestas de Franz Brentano para una correcta interpretación de Aristóteles

A considerable part of the work of Brentano from his youth to the end of his life is concerned with the thought of Aristotle. His peculiar way to access Aristotle makes of Brentano a rather eccentric figure among the nineteenth and early twentieth century’s Aristotelian scholarship. On the one hand, he doesn’t reject emphasizing the use of philological and historical resources in order to understand ancient texts and indeed he makes extensive use of them himself; on the other hand, he believes that the main guide for the study of ancient philosophy should be a philosophical hermeneutics. Therefore, he develops a sharp criticism against Zeller and other scholars. Is for this reason that Brentano considered medieval scholastics as more appropriate interpreters of classical philosophy than them, in particular Aquinas. In our remarks, we will seek to review the main features of the method for interpreting Aristotle defended by Brentano.

The ontological and epistemological superiority of hylomorphism

Materialism—the view that all of reality is wholly determined by the very, very small—and extreme nominalism—the view that properties, kinds, and qualities do not really exist—have been the dominant view in analytic philosophy for the last 100 years or so. Both views, however, have failed to provide adequate accounts for the possibility of intentionality and of knowledge. We must therefore look to alternatives. One well-tested alternative, the hylomorphism of Aristotle and the medieval scholastics, was rejected without being refuted and so deserves further examination. I will argue that Aristotelian hylomorphic provides a markedly superior account of knowledge, cognitive normativity, and intentionality.

"Summum Bonum" in the Zurich Reformation: Zwingli and Bullinger

Huldrych Zwingli has been rashly criticized for his philosophical theology, manifest in works such as "De Providentia Dei", by those whose measure of what constituted the true Reformation was a strict Biblicism, and who viewed philosophical theology as a corrupt remnant from medieval scholasticism. Yet Zwingli deftly uses the concept with its doctrinal baggage in order to support a doctrine of God’s Providence and grace towards humanity. Ultimately the Reformer derives providence and predestination, indeed the whole salvific economy, from a philosophical concept of God as supreme power and as highest good. In his own time Zwingli’s successor, Heinrich Bullinger, had to defend Zwingli’s openness to classical philosophy and his acceptance of the pagan quest for truth. This concept of "Summum bonum" also occurs in Bullinger at key points, being not only understood as all-sufficiency but also related to the names of God and thus to the Divine self-revelation, indeed as a source of covenant history. This paper explores the roots of this concept and how it evolves into a salvation-historical and therefore biblical motif in the Zurich Reformation and thus its import for the understanding of God’s relation to the created order.

Educational Background and Theological Foreground: A Study of Correlation between the Medieval System of Higher Education and Medieval Scholastic Theology in the Thirteenth Century

The article is a piece of interdisciplinary research: it connects historical-theological studies of medieval Christian thinking and studies in the history of Christian education. It is built around the conviction that the socio-cultural and intellectual context on the one side and the form and content of theology on the other side are always correlated to each other. In other words, the system or type of education that a person goes through influences his mode of thinking and, at last, his theology. The weight and value of this contextual-theological stance are checked and examined within a historical-theological analysis of thirteenth-century university education and the formation of the phenomenon of medieval scholasticism. The study detects and shows the connections between the educational model that was prevalent at the time and the theology that was formulated. Such a thesis is confirmed and illustrated by the test case of Thomas Aquinas and his Summa theologiae . In the end, the conclusion offers a number of brief notes concerning the educational and intellectual value of study for lay Christians and Christian educators of the present day.

The Concept of Freedom in the Political Theory of Late Medieval Scholasticism

The Concept of Freedom in the Political Theory of Late Medieval Scholasticism

Being: An Entity, an Activity, or Both an Entity and an Activity?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three major religions of the Western world, are all monotheistic. On the basis of their sacred scriptures, all three profess belief in God as Ultimate Reality, a single transcendent entity who as Creator of heaven and earth is responsible for the enormous diversity of finite entities in this world. Neoclassical theism, based on the processoriented cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, on the contrary, affirms that Creativity, an activity that transcends its embodiment in finite entities, is Ultimate Reality and that God is its primordial nontemporal embodiment or “accident.” Is there a possible third philosophical position that can mediate between these two rival metaphysical systems by postulating that Being is necessarily both entity and activity? In what follows, I claim that this is indeed possible, if one accepts a revision of the Whiteheadian category of society as more than an enduring aggregate of genetically interrelated actual entities with a “common element of form” or “defining characteristic.” It is instead a new corporate entity that exists in its own right even though derivative in its ongoing structure and scope of operation from the interrelated activity of constituent actual entities frommoment to moment. I argue this point by dividing the article into three parts. In the first part, I critique the preoccupation of classic theism, starting with Thomas Aquinas in medieval scholasticism but also including modern-day Thomists ðe.g., Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, James Felt, and Norris ClarkeÞ with Being as an individual entity rather than Be-ing as an ongoing process with something like Whiteheadian creativity as its principle of operation. Then in

КОНЦЕПТ VS. ПОНЯТИЕ: ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЗМ VS. КОНВЕНЦИОНАЛИЗМ

The paper deals with two semiotic entities – a concept and a notion , which are considered ambiguous in modern linguistic and philosophical researches. The purpose of the work is to analyze the relations of a concept and a notion on the example of linguistic signs of juristic communication area. The paper considered two polar points of view on the relations of a concept and a notion. The author notes that some researchers identify these notions proceeding from the etymology of these words and contextual substitutability, while others, and the cognitive linguistics representatives as well, distinguish between them basing on the works by Plato, Aristotle and medieval scholastics who made a distinction between sense and rational knowledge. The author relies upon the theory developed by A.M. Kaplunenko who speaks about the evolution of knowledge forms – from the concept to the term. The author makes the conclusion about the necessity to distinguish between a concept and a notion according to the degree of agreement of the characteristics attributed to the object or phenomenon under consideration. The notion is considered as a mental unit with clear semantic boundaries, while the concept is a vague semantic entity bearing both the natural reasoning knowledge appropriate for the notion and the phenomenological feelings based on the individual experience and personal knowledge.

Ideas on the Move: Context in Transnational Intellectual History

Intellectual historians have often associated contexts with places. In this paper, I examine the effects of this association and develop a different model more suited to transnational study. I guide my analysis by a study of neo-scholastics in the early part of the twentieth century, who wrote for a transnational audience. They were able to make their texts intelligible to readers in different countries by drawing on a shared archive of medieval scholasticism. Their example, I suggest, provides insights into the meaning and value of contextualization, and opens up new ways to understand how ideas transcend geographical and temporal divides.

Signs and reality

Signs and reality are the two fundamental topics of ontology. Reality is whatever exists independently of how we think about it. Signs are those aspects of reality that living things use to interpret, act upon, and communicate about reality. Every signal in a neuron, every thought in a brain, every bit in a computer, and every symbol in any language, natural or artificial, is a sign. Since signs are also part of reality, signs of signs are the part of reality that includes every branch of science including ontology itself. For applied ontology, that distinction is embodied in digital computers: everything in a computer is a sign, either of the outside world or of other signs inside. Aristotle introduced a theory of signs, which he related to language and logic, the medieval Scholastics extended it, and Peirce developed it as the foundation for ontology. His semiotic addresses important issues that have been neglected by the mainstream of 20th century analytic philosophy. The index of that book is a warning of the terminology to come: abstract particulars; argument from almost indiscernible cycles; blob theories; bundle theories; iden- tity of indiscernibles; indiscernibility of identicals; particulars (bare, perfect, thick, thin); tropes (a posteriori, bundles, causality, co-extensive, higher-order, independent existence of, natural classes of, nontransferable, sparse); universalia (ante res, in res, inter res).

Towards a Thomistic Theory of Intentional (“Fictive”) Individuals (II)

Following Aristotle’s stimuli, the medieval scholastics produced the theory of beings of reason (= intentional beings), i.e. beings that can only exist as an object of our reason (and in no other way). It is remarkable that an important component was omitted by the scholastic scholars, namely the teaching of intentional (nowadays called “fictional” more frequently) individuals, e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, Hephaistos etc. This issue was dealt with later by A. Meinong, E. Mally, T. Parsons and E. N. Zalta. This contribution strives to propose an alternative theory founded on the scholastic, specifically Thomistic thought. The author distinguishes 1) individual description of intentional individual, 2) this individual itself, and 3) its “representative” existing sometimes in the real world. An intentional being, in this conception, has only the properties ascribed to it by its description and the property of individuality (and no other property). Nevertheless, an intentional individual bears these properties differently from the real individual. Therefore, the author distinguishes two kinds of predication, the real and the intentional one. In this context, other logical problems of intentional individuals are addressed. By the “representative” of an intentional individual (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) the author means e.g. its image made by the reader of A. C. Doyle in his (reader’s) fantasy, or a real picture (illustration) in the Hound of Baskerville book, further the actor who plays the role of famous detective in the film adaption of the novel etc. The goal of the contribution is to show that if existence is the first-level predicate, it can be predicated informatively, for as such it is able to distinguish the individuals that exist really from those that do not.

Philosophical and ideological influences on the religious beliefs of Modern times

In the article of Oleh Shepetyak «Philosophical and ideological influences on the religious beliefs of Modern times» the main landmarks of the philosophy of René Descartes and Immanuel Kant, and their impact on Christian religious consciousness of Modern times and subsequent periods are highlighted. It is shown that the peculiarity of these thinkers’ concepts is appeal to man as a criterion, in Cartesianism person becomes a criterion of truth and in Kantianism the criterion of morality. This was a world wide revolution of Modern times which precisely due to these peculiatities paved the demarcation line between medieval scholasticism and subsequent periods.

Towards a Thomistic Theory of Intentional (“Fictive”) Individuals (I)

Following Aristotle’s stimuli, the medieval scholastics produced the theory of beings of reason (= intentional beings), i.e. beings that can only exist as an object of our reason (and in no other way). It is remarkable that an important component was omitted by the scholastic scholars, namely the teaching of intentional (nowadays called “fictional” more frequently) individuals, e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, Hephaistos etc. This issue was dealt with later by A. Meinong, E. Mally, T. Parsons and E. N. Zalta. This contribution strives to propose an alternative theory founded on the scholastic, specifically Thomistic thought. The author distinguishes 1) individual description of intentional individual; 2) this individual itself, and 3) its “representative” existing in the real world. An intentional being, in this conception, has only the properties ascribed to it by its description and the property of individuality (and no other property). Nevertheless, an intentional individual bears these properties differently from the real individual. Therefore, the author distinguishes two kinds of predication, the real and the intentional one. In: this context, other logical problems of intentional individuals are addressed. By the “representative” of an intentional individual (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) the author means e.g. its image made by the reader of A. C. Doyle in his (reader’s) fantasy, or a real picture (illustration) in the Hound of Baskerville book, further the actor who plays the role of famous detective in the film adaption of the novel etc. The goal of the contribution is to show that if existence is the first-level predicate, it can be predicated informatively, for as such it is able to distinguish the individuals that exist really from those that do not.

Heideggerowska destrukcja metafizyki: filozofia średniowieczna i nowożytna. Część I

The article is focused on thorough analysis and “destruction” of St Thomas’s Aquinas, Descartes’s and Spinoza’s philosophy undertaken by M. Heidegger in the years 1926–27 (Gesamtausgabe Vol. 23). As to St Thomas’s metaphysics Heidegger follows the explanation of mutual connections of transcendental notions: ens, res, unum, aliquid, veritas, bonum. He fixes his attention on the last two ones. The notion of veritas gives opportunity to concern St Thomas’s theory of knowledge. The real ontology of Aquinas is hidden – in Heidegger’s opinion – in his “proofs” of God’s existence. The metaphysics of Cartesius and Spinoza (detailed explanation of the Meditations and the Ethics) is presented by Heidegger such as to prove their dependence upon the medieval scholasticism. Exposition of Cartesian philosophy in Gesamtausgabe Vol. 23 is valuable complement of the Cartesian concept of world reconstructed in the Sein und Zeit. Descartes, such as Spinoza, is not interested in the special way of Being and the specific temporality of the human Dasein. Cartesius chiefly tends to find the absolutely certain axiom of metaphysics. Spinoza “dissolves” human Dasein in the eternal substance conceived radically, to the end, in Aristotelian-scholastic way.

Catholicism and Historical Narrative: A Catholic Engagement with Historical Scholarship ed. by Kevin Schmiesing (review)

Reviewed by: Catholicism and Historical Narrative: A Catholic Engagement with Historical Scholarship ed. by Kevin Schmiesing Glenn W. Olsen Catholicism and Historical Narrative: A Catholic Engagement with Historical Scholarship. Edited by Kevin Schmiesing. [Catholic Social Thought, Vol. 8.] (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing. 2014. Pp. x, 215. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-8180-8857-9.) This collection of nine essays, seven of which are mainly on American history, is preceded by a brief introduction by its editor, Kevin Schmiesing. The opening essay is a thoughtful general piece by Paul Radzilowski on “Audience, Method, Subject, and Faith: Dilemmas of the Catholic Historian.” Radzilowski makes good use of some of Christopher Dawson’s writings and is also in dialogue with one of the most penetrating Catholic historians today, Christopher Shannon. Radzilowski has a number of citations and appreciations of this reviewer’s work, which in turn lists appropriate bibliography. In a very well-done article, “The Opening of the American Mind: Protestant Scholasticism at Harvard, 1636–1700,” Scott McDermott argues that the conventional historiography on the Puritans in America fails to show the depth of their debt to medieval scholasticism. Tom Jodziewicz’s “Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and the American Narrative” next shows how Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin are at one and the same time outliers and exemplars of basic American cultural themes. Jodziewicz contrasts the American narrative of freedom and the Catholic Worker narrative of self-imposed discipline in a community bounded by love. He makes astute comments on all the ways in which freedom has been understood in American history. In chapter 4, “‘A Convenient Untruth’: The Pro-Choice Invention of an Era of Abortion Freedom,” Keith Cassidy attempts to correct the narrative of the history of abortion in America. Cassidy is committed to what he calls “objective history” (p. 74). It would have been preferable to distinguish between objective history, which only God can write, and fairness, which means always attempting to tell the truth. Chapter 5, by the son of a well-known student of especially the thought of Christopher Dawson, Clement Anthony Mulloy, examines the story of Margaret Sanger: “Catholicism and Birth Control in American History: The Sanger-[James A.] Ryan Debate. This is a clear-minded and satisfying piece. In chapter 6, “‘Where Religious Freedom Runs in the Streams’: Catholic Expansion in Antebellum Newport,” John F. Quinn shows that Newport was an exception to the common New England pattern of a Catholicism oppressed by Protestantism. Religious diversity made Newport more accepting of Catholics than most other, largely Protestant, New England cities. [End Page 147] In chapter 7, Adam Tate, “The Power of Historical Narrative: Bishop John England, American Catholicism, and the National Jubilee of 1826,” takes up Bishop England’s Catholic narrative. The argument is that Americans from the first made up for certain deficiencies originating in the lack of a national identity—no common ancestry, no homogenous ethnicity, no long history, and so forth—by constructing historical narratives. A common nineteenth-century Protestant narrative was that the country had been founded on Protestant principles, which freed humans from superstition and made progress possible. Other narratives, some liberal, some republican, shared features or partly overlapped with the Protestant narrative, but the problem each raised for Catholics was the integration of non-Protestants into such societies. Thus John England formed his Catholic narrative as part of the 1826 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Marynita Anderson takes up the relatively neglected story of nineteenth-century religious women in chapter 8, “Valiant Women of Faith and Action: Finding Catholic Sisters in the Story of Nineteenth-Century America.” In the last chapter, “Popes, Catholics, and Jews: É questa la maniera di fare storia?” Ernest Greco examines the controversy concerning the Catholic Church and the European Jews during World War II, sometimes called “The Pius Wars.” The bibliography on this subject is much more extensive than this essay indicates. There is a brief index. Glenn W. Olsen University of Utah Copyright © 2015 The Catholic University of America Press

On the Subject-Matter of Theology in the Summa Halensis and St. Thomas Aquinas

439 The Thomist 79 (2015): 439-66 ON THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THEOLOGY IN THE SUMMA HALENSIS AND ST. THOMAS AQUINAS BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts “So now we accord faith to the things done in time for our sakes.” – Augustine, De trinitate 4.24 OMINICAN AND FRANCISCAN views on “the nature of theology” are often pitted against one another. The Franciscan approach is seen as primarily practical rather than speculative, oriented toward the will or affect, Christocentric , attuned to history; the Dominican method is primarily speculative rather than practical, oriented toward the intellect, theocentric, attuned to being. Whatever the merit of such comparisons,1 on the issue of the “subject matter” of theology— what theology is properly about, that is, its proper “object”— the positions adopted by the Summa halensis2 (associated with, 1 See Bruce Marshall’s helpful insight regarding their deeper similarity in “‘Quod scit una vetula’: Aquinas on the Nature of Theology,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 6. 2 Alexander of Hales, Summa theologiae (Summa halensis), 4 vols. (Quaracchi, Florence: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1924-48). As Walter Principe explains, “an important theological work written after 1240, the so-called Summa Fratris Alexandri, was long thought to be Alexander’s own work. In recent decades, however, scholarly opinion has concluded that, however great the influence of Alexander on the composition of this Summa, his own authentic teaching must be sought in the Glossa and in his Quaestiones rather than in the Summa Fratris Alexandri” (Walter H. Principe, Alexander Hales’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967], 15). Nevertheless, since it is still assumed that much of it is D 440 BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN though not exclusively authored by, Alexander of Hales,3 and the earliest theoretical treatment on the Franciscan side)4 and Thomas Aquinas exhibit a remarkable degree of agreement, despite prime facie appearances to the contrary. Specifically, the Halensian definition makes explicit what remains rather more implicit for Thomas, namely, the affirmation that theological science has as its “formal object” (ratio) the Christ-centered, self-revelation of the Trinity in salvation history, as recorded in Scripture.5 I. THE FORMAL OBJECT IN THE SUMMA HALENSIS: TRINITY REVEALED IN CHRIST’S “WORKS OF RESTORATION” The Summa halensis begins its discussion of what theological science is by distinguishing broadly three dimensions or “valences” of theology.6 It “comes forth from God” (ex Deo) Alexander’s actual writing and as a whole it reflects his influence—and thus is thoroughly Halensian—we will refer to this text throughout as the Summa halensis. 3 For background on Alexander see V. Doucet in, Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quattuor libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi, Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi XII–XV (Quaracchi, 1951–57), 1.7*-75*. 4 As “founder of the Franciscan school,” Alexander “gave the school its body of teachings and its characteristic spirit” (Jacques Guy Bougerol, Introduction to the Works of Bonaventure [Patterson, N.J.: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1963], 15). “Among the earliest scholastics to engage Aristotle’s newly translated writings, in particular, the Metaphysics,” he had a profound effect on the evolution of Scholastic theology in the second quarter of his century, and certainly ranks among the scholastic luminaries of the entire thirteenth (Christopher M. Cullen, “Alexander of Hales,” in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia and Timothy B. Noone [Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2002], 104). 5 The topic of this investigation falls within a larger question, often dubbed “the nature of theology” and in particular its scientific and sapiential status, much discussed by medieval Scholastics and even more by their subsequent commentators and researchers. On this topic, M.-D. Chenu’s classic La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1957) considers the relationship between the Summa halensis and Thomas on the issue of the scientific character of theology, but does not treat the particular comparison pursued here; the case is similar with A. Oliva’s Les débuts de l’enseignement de Thomas d’Aquin et sa conception de la...

Morality as Knowledge in the Ethical Theory of Thomas Aquinas

The article discusses the importance of Aristotle’s teaching in the history of medieval Western scholasticism. It is suggested that two main interpretations of his theory were formed in the philosophical thought of the thirteenth century: the first conception was proposed by the teachers at the Faculty of Arts in Paris University – Siger of Brabant and Boethius of Dacia; the other was put forward by Thomas Aquinas. Both approaches acquired particular significance in medieval culture. Boethius demonstrated the social status of University Magisters, teachers of philosophy, whereas Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelian ideas in theological discourse. He explained the role of intelligence and logic in morality. It stimulated the development of new trends in Christian world view.