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Sunday School

Lesson 6: Scholastic Theology

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David Capoccia

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Summary

This lesson explores the rise of scholastic theology in the medieval church, examining how the rediscovery of Aristotle and the establishment of universities shaped Western Christian thought. We are reminded that the integration of secular philosophy with biblical truth has been a recurring danger throughout church history. Six key scholastic theologians are examined—Anselm, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham—each contributing positively and negatively to the development of Western theology.

Key Lessons:

  1. The attempt to integrate secular philosophy with Christian theology has repeatedly introduced error into the church, from Platonism in the early church to Aristotelianism in the medieval period.
  2. The relationship between faith and reason must always keep Scripture as the foundation—reason is a gift from God but must operate under biblical assumptions, not autonomously.
  3. The drift toward works-based salvation through Ockham’s neo-Pelagianism and the sacramental theology of the scholastics made the Reformation both necessary and inevitable.
  4. Even brilliant theological systems like Aquinas’s explanation of transubstantiation, when built on human reasoning rather than Scripture, introduce destabilizing errors.

Application: We are called to guard against adopting any wisdom or system built on anti-biblical foundations, no matter how sophisticated or appealing it appears. Our reasoning, apologetics, and evangelism must always begin with and be governed by Scripture as the sufficient foundation for all truth.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How can we distinguish between the legitimate use of reason to understand Scripture and the dangerous elevation of reason above Scripture?
  2. In what ways do modern churches repeat the scholastic error of integrating secular systems (psychology, business models, philosophy) with biblical truth?
  3. How does Anselm’s motto “I believe in order to understand” differ from Abelard’s emphasis on reason before faith, and which approach better aligns with Scripture?

Scripture Focus: Mark 10:45 is examined in connection with Anselm’s satisfaction theory of the atonement, showing that Christ’s ransom was paid to God, not Satan. Colossians is referenced as Paul’s warning against philosophy built on anti-biblical foundations. The sufficiency of Scripture for life and godliness is affirmed throughout.

Outline

Introduction

Right. Good morning and welcome back to our church history 102, the medieval church Sunday school. Last week we looked at the development of medieval monasticism, especially in the west.

Today we’re looking at what grew out of western monasticism, or rather what succeeded monastic education and theology, which is scholasticism—the theology of the schoolmen.

Scholastic theology is important for two reasons. Not only have we inherited some of the theological contributions of the scholastics as American evangelicals today, but scholasticism also paved the way for both the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Reformation theologians and Enlightenment advocates both built on and reacted against medieval scholastic thought.

Furthermore, scholastic theology, as especially formulated by Thomas Aquinas, still largely undergirds Roman Catholic theology and practice today.

This is important for us to look into. Here’s my agenda for today’s class: we will talk about the origins of scholasticism, what scholasticism is, and then we’ll meet and discuss the lasting contributions of certain scholastic theologians. We’ll meet six of them.

Let’s ask God’s blessing on this time. Lord, as we again look at history—your history, Lord—how you’ve worked in the past, even through people, we are preparing to be encouraged. We’re preparing to be informed. We’re preparing to be warned.

I pray that you’d help me to explain this material well and help us, God, in the very end to be once again driven to your scriptures as the only sure foundation for truth. And Lord, make us zealous for the truth against error and for the gospel for the sake of the lost in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

By the 1100s and 1200s, some important changes had taken place in Western Europe that would ultimately affect Christians’ worldviews.

The Rediscovery of Aristotle

The first is the rediscovery of a certain teacher and his work. Can anyone guess who that teacher was? I mentioned in an earlier class that might be the only way that you would know, but that person is Aristotle. Who’s Aristotle?

He’s one of the eminent ancient Greek philosophers. He was the student of—does anybody know?

Plato. Aristotle was the student of Plato and Plato was the student of Socrates. If you’re thinking about those big-name Greek philosophers, those would be the three.

While there’s much that we could say regarding Aristotle’s ideas on various topics, two of Aristotle’s most important contributions for medieval thought regard logic and truth.

“Aristotle was the student of Plato and Plato was the student of Socrates.”

First, I’ll explain this picture in just a second. Aristotle provided a full language of logic that expanded on the basic ideas of premise and conclusion provided by Plato. For example, have you ever heard of something called a syllogism?

This is a certain compact argument that comes from Aristotle. Aristotle’s logical system allowed for more precise thought and argument.

Plato vs. Aristotle on Truth

Second, there’s Aristotle’s view of truth and of discovering truth.

This painting on the PowerPoint slide is one of my favorite paintings. It’s called the School of Athens by Renaissance artist Raphael. The painting shows many different Greek academics and philosophers with Plato and Aristotle in the center. I’ll blow that up for you. Plato is the one on the left, Aristotle on the right.

Now, these two figures’ gestures are meant to be emblematic of their views of truth. What do you see them doing?

Plato on the left, what’s he doing?

He’s pointing upwards. Well, Aristotle, the one on the right, he’s gesturing outwards toward the viewer.

You may remember that we talked about Plato and Platonism in the 101 course.

Plato argued that the only sure reality was the one that existed outside the physical world. Comprehending the abstract world of ideas was the only way to discern truth in the physical world.

By knowing the unseen world, Plato taught, you will understand the seen world. But Aristotle argued the opposite: that the only reality one could be sure of is what one could observe with the senses. By making careful observations of the physical world, you could understand to some degree what is unseen.

“Aristotle argued the only reality one could be sure of is what one could observe with the senses.”

For Aristotle, by knowing the seen world you can understand the unseen world. That’s why Plato points to the heavens, to the world of the unseen, to know truth. But Aristotle gestures toward the seen world as the way to know truth.

Now, would you say Americans are more Aristotelian or Platonic in their thinking about truth and how to know truth?

Yeah.

Yeah. They follow Aristotle—the more Aristotelian view. It’s what you can see. It’s the physical world that’s true and how what’s true. Indeed, this kind of thinking has been passed down to us Americans through modernism and through the Enlightenment and even through the scholastics of the high Middle Ages who were rediscovering Aristotle.

Muslims Preserve Aristotle

Now, strangely, who are the ones responsible for bringing Aristotle back to the minds of Western Europeans?

Aristotle was Greek, but it wasn’t the Byzantines who helped the Western Europeans find Aristotle again. Who was it?

It was the Muslims.

As the Islamic empires expanded in the 600s and 700s, conquering Muslims encountered many Greek writings which Muslim scholars copied, preserved, and translated into Arabic. These scholars were particularly fascinated by the writings of Aristotle, calling him the first teacher. Some of the foremost Muslim academics wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s different philosophical works.

As Western Europeans interacted with Muslims in the high middle ages—that’s about 1000 to 1300, especially in crusading efforts in Spain and Sicily—Christians were reexposed to Aristotle and Arabic translations and commentaries. Christian scholars soon translated these Arabic works into Latin to begin studying Aristotle again for themselves. Eventually they found some original Greek texts and translated from those.

Western Europeans, like the Arab scholars before them, became fascinated with the teachings of Aristotle, particularly the idea that we can use observation and logical inference to better understand truth.

“Christians were reexposed to Aristotle through Arabic translations and commentaries.”

The Establishment of Universities

Now by this time in Western Europe there is an increasing demand for education which leads to a second big change. We have the rediscovery of Aristotle but we also have the establishment of universities.

When you think of universities, which do you think of as being the oldest and most prestigious in the world?

Princeton. Okay. Princeton, Oxford. Oxford and Cambridge.

Yeah, those are some of them. Now, Princeton is indeed prestigious, but it’s only maybe 400 years old. But the European universities go back much further, even to the 11th and 12th centuries. I’ve listed some of the first universities on the slide: Bologna, Paris, Oxford. Later we have Cambridge, which came from some of the lecturers at Oxford.

Education was not super important to those living in the early Middle Ages.

Most academic learning or study took place in the church, either cathedral schools or monastic schools. A scholarly bishop or abbot might take on young students, usually of nobility, students who aspired to church or government office, and the abbot or those at the monastery would educate them.

As more and more people moved into the cities in the latter Middle Ages, the cathedral schools which were in the cities became more and more popular. Until the teachers at these various church schools decided to pull their resources together to create a separate learning institution that has come to be known as the university.

Medieval universities were not the grand multi-building institutions that we know today. Rather, they were probably only one building with a number of professors who provided higher education in four main departments or faculties: theology, law, medicine, and the arts.

Thus, universities, not cathedral schools and not monasteries, became the new centers of learning and would remain so even to the present day.

“Universities, not cathedral schools and not monasteries, became the new centers of learning.”

So then in the high Middle Ages we have this revival of interest in education and study galvanized by the reintroduction of Aristotle into European thought and the development of the university system.

What Is Scholasticism?

What then comes to dominate the theological thinking of the time? Well, that’s what I was talking about at the beginning. Something called scholasticism.

If you read a little bit about church history or if you simply read the reformers, you may hear scholasticism or scholastic theology or scholastic and automatically think of something negative, maybe even something that’s overly complicated, highly speculative, or simply unbiblical.

We will see. However, the reason for this is because the reformers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin were reacting against what later came to characterize and dominate scholastic theology.

More basically, scholasticism simply refers to the theology of the schoolmen.

“Scholasticism simply refers to the theology of the schoolmen—Western Europe’s new universities.”

That is the theology of Western Europe’s new universities. There was considerable diversity in this new school theology.

Nevertheless, the Scholastics were united in three distinctive ways.

Faith and Reason

First, the Scholastics were intensely interested in the relationship between faith and reason.

What could reason all by itself, apart from the Bible, accomplish for someone?

Could people use mere reason and observation of the natural world to discover God or to discover different Christian doctrines?

Or if reason was not enough for these discoveries, could reason still help Christians further understand biblical doctrines and appreciate them? Could Christians or can Christianity be shown to be in harmony with natural reason?

“Could people use mere reason and observation of the natural world to discover God?”

Or might it even be possible for something to be true according to pure reason but false according to divine revelation or maybe vice versa?

Scholastics didn’t all answer these questions the same way, but these were the kinds of questions that they were interested in.

Systematic Account of Christian Truth

Second, the scholastics sought to offer a complete systematic account of Christian truth. They wanted to examine and explain doctrines logically and from every angle—not just explaining the what, but the why.

Scholastics wanted to bring all Christian doctrine into a united and logically consistent system of theology which explained the entire body of revealed truth. You’ll see among the scholastics a certain document called a suma, which is Latin for summary. It’s basically an attempt at systematic theology—a summary of a certain doctrine or even of all Christian truth.

“Scholastics wanted to bring all Christian doctrine into a united and logically consistent system of theology.”

This quest for systematic knowledge meant that some scholastics spent considerable time and effort investigating questions that we would probably think were minute or even pointless. Could God have incarnated as an animal instead of a man or a woman instead of a man? Can an angel be in two places at the same time? Can two angels be in the same place at the same time? Which is more effective: four five-minute prayers or one 20-minute prayer?

Not all the scholastics asked those questions, but some of them did, spending weeks debating them.

Engagement with Aristotle’s Philosophy

Third, the Scholastics engaged with Aristotle’s philosophy to pursue questions of general truth. The Scholastics were not just interested in explaining and summarizing Christian doctrine, but explaining and summarizing the whole world, all truth, answering fundamental questions such as what is matter, what is mind, what is time, what is space, what is being, what is the nature of cause and effect.

Thus, the schoolmen were also the philosophers of the high and late middle ages. These schoolmen found a ready guide and sharpening opponent in the thinking of Aristotle.

As a pagan philosopher, not everything Aristotle taught was compatible with biblical Christianity. He is notable for believing that the universe had to be eternal—the universe has no beginning and would have no end. That doesn’t fit with the Bible.

Upon Aristotle’s rediscovery, many Catholics reacted against Aristotle and warned against his teaching.

“The schoolmen were also the philosophers of the high and late middle ages.”

But the tide had turned by the 13th century. To quote church historian Nick Needham in his book 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: “Scholastic theologians were hailing Aristotle as the great pagan forerunner of Christian truth whose philosophy was almost perfectly suited to undergird and express and explain the theology of the church. The schoolmen now sought to bring together Aristotle’s philosophy and Christian theology into a harmonious unity.”

Does that sound familiar at all? Have we seen this before? Christianity finding some philosopher or some philosophical system and saying, “We need to integrate this with Christian truth.”

Where have we seen this? Psychology. Today, the same thing is still happening. We’re trying to bring psychology, science, business, and other sectors of what is considered secular wisdom into the church, integrated with the church.

But even before the modern era, just go back to the early church. This is exactly what we saw in the one-on-one course with Plato and Platonism. Remember Alexander of Alexandria—one of the second and third century fathers in Alexandria—he was basically saying we need to establish Christian Platonism. Augustine has a strong Platonic influence in him. It’s the same thing but with a different philosopher: trying to take secularism and integrate it with Christian truth.

That’s usually a little bit of a danger, and it was a danger in the early church. It will prove a danger in the medieval church, and it is still a danger today.

So these are the three distinctives of scholastic theologians.

The Method of Disputation

Scholastic theologians went about their work chiefly by disputation.

A new method of discovering and engaging with truth, disputation was used in both their writings and classrooms. How did disputation work?

Generally, there is an initial question or statement proposed by one side. Then a response to that question or counter statement from the opponent’s side, and then a counter response by the first side including a rebuttal of the other side’s arguments.

This method of disputation emphasized the knowledge and use of various authorities both philosophical and theological for expressing both sides of the argument.

Rather than proving one side over the other—say we have Aristotle on one side and the Bible and church fathers on the other side—the goal of disputation was actually to unite the different authoritative traditions of western thought in some satisfactory way, showing that all could be made to harmonize.

“The goal of disputation was to unite different authoritative traditions in some satisfactory way.”

Because of the intellectual sharpness required to take part in such theological disputations, other branches of learning soon adopted this scholastic method. Part of the tradition still exists in academic approaches at universities today.

This is a way of really trying to get at truth from every angle, explain it, and deal with any problems it has.

So we’ve seen where scholasticism appears and what it is. But now, let’s meet some notable scholastics and examine what kind of legacies they left Christ Church. I’ve chosen six scholastic theologians. There are plenty more, even more important ones that I simply couldn’t cram in today’s lesson, but we can at least do six and we’ll meet them in chronological order.

Anselm of Canterbury

We start with Anselm of Canterbury.

Anselm lived from 1033 to 1109. Born in Aosta, northern Italy, he became a Benedictine monk and then in 1078 an abbot at a monastery in Normandy. In 1092, he became Archbishop of Canterbury, but soon became embroiled in the investiture controversy between the English kings and the pope.

Anselm was a faithful Christian and faithful churchman renowned for his zealous devotion to biblical truth and his deep reverence and love for Jesus.

“Anselm was a faithful Christian renowned for his zealous devotion to biblical truth and deep love for Jesus.”

Anselm was known as the father of scholasticism and the first of the schoolmen, though technically he was alive before the rise of universities.

Before Anselm, most theological education was mainly devotional. Students learned about the Bible and church tradition for the purpose of applying it to living the Christian life. Anselm took the devotional aspect of education into a more investigational area with a scholastic method.

Anselm did not believe that one could know God by reason alone. But after one believes in the truth of the scriptures, one could use reason to know the truth of the Bible better or more fully.

Like Augustine, Anselm’s personal motto was, “I believe in order to understand.” One area in which Anselm sought to more fully investigate his faith is the existence of God. Can logic and observation of the natural world support what I already believe by faith? Are there divine proofs in the world of God’s existence?

Anselm’s Proofs for God’s Existence

From his meditation and study come many arguments or proofs that will probably sound familiar to you. These come from Anselm’s work, the ontological argument for the existence of God. Every effect must have a cause. Creation is an effect that must have a cause. The cause must be God.

The teleological argument for the existence of God. There’s a great amount of observable order and beauty in creation. Such artistic design implies a designer. The designer must be God.

“Every effect must have a cause. Creation is an effect. The cause must be God.”

And the moral argument for the existence of God. Men have consciences that convict them of right and wrong. This points to a lawgiver who gives men these convictions.

The Ontological Argument

Anselm’s most famous argument, however, is a little hard to comprehend, and it has been debated throughout the centuries as to whether it is valid or not. That is the ontological argument for the existence of God.

This argument is unique in that it does not use any observations, only reason to attempt to prove what faith already believes. Here’s an organized breakdown of what Anselm presents in his proof where we see the ontological argument.

Number one, God exists in the understanding but not in reality. This is an assumption made for a reductio ad absurdum argument. Number two, existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone.

Number three, a being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality can be conceived. Number four, a being having all of God’s properties plus existence in reality is greater than God from premises one and two.

Number five, a being greater than God then can be conceived. Number six, it is false that a being greater than God can be conceived from the definition of God.

Number seven, hence it is false that God exists in the understanding but not in reality. Number eight, God exists in the understanding, a premise to which even the fool agrees. Number nine, hence God exists in reality.

I don’t know if you followed all that. Don’t worry about it. It is one of those complicated arguments. Basically, he’s saying if you can think of God, it’s proof that God exists because if God only exists in the understanding, then you can conceive of something greater than God that also exists in reality. And so God logically must exist.

Like I said, people are still debating whether that’s a valid argument. Now remember, Anselm did not intend this argument as a proof with which you could convince unbelievers. This is not a new evangelistic method. He still argued that faith needed to come first. This was only to strengthen and further explore his faith.

“Anselm did not intend this argument as a proof to convince unbelievers. Faith needed to come first.”

Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement

Anselm was notable for these proofs, but he’s also notable for his systematic theology of the atonement of Jesus. In explaining Anselm’s concept, let me first quote a verse from the Bible.

Mark 10:45: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

We are familiar with this verse. Christ came to give his life as a ransom for many. But to whom did Christ give himself up as ransom?

The popular view at Anselm’s time was that Christ had given himself as a ransom to Satan. After all, Satan was the one holding people captive in bondage to sin. And Christ gave himself up as an indescribably valuable ransom to free the captives, as Ephesians 4 says.

This viewpoint greatly bothered Anselm, for he asked himself, “How does God owe Satan anything? Why does Satan have the right to request a ransom?” What Anselm argued for instead was that the ransom was not paid to Satan but to God.

His theory is called the satisfaction theory of the atonement. Anselm presented this argument in his other important work, “Cur Deus Homo”—why God became man—which is set up as a dialogue between Anselm and a character named Boso. You can read an excerpt later from this work in the slides.

Anselm reasoned that mankind’s sin has robbed God of the honor God is due. And since God is the greatest being in the universe, he cannot allow himself to not be honored. Thus, unless someone restores the honor to God that he is due, the offenders must all be punished.

The only person who could restore the honor that God was due was Jesus Christ, which Jesus did by offering his own perfect life as satisfaction to God.

Now, Anselm never specifically connected his satisfaction theory with Jesus suffering punishment for sin. Anselm only said that Jesus was positively restoring God’s missing honor.

Later theologians would build on Anselm’s theory and connect Jesus providing satisfaction with Jesus providing himself as a substitute to suffer the punishment of man’s sin. So Jesus doesn’t provide just positive satisfaction for God’s honor but also fulfills the negative debt of justice to God.

“Substitutionary atonement—the classic and biblical understanding—we Protestant evangelicals hold to today.”

This is the classic and biblical understanding of the atonement to which we Protestant evangelicals hold today. Substitutionary atonement, or penalty substitution, goes by different names. Anselm’s theory was an important step in articulating that.

Peter Abelard

That’s all we can say about Ansom. We’ll move on to the next scholastic. The second important scholastic is Peter or Pierre Abalard, alive from 1079 to 1142.

You probably won’t find him quite as winsome as Anselm of Canterbury.

Born in Brittany, northwest France, Abalard studied theology at the famous Cathedral School of Notre-Dame in Paris as it was developing into Paris University.

Becoming dissatisfied with the school’s head and with the teaching of the school’s head, Abalard set up his own rival lectures and eventually won over all the students to come listen to him.

Thus, Abalard quickly established his own reputation as a genius and was perhaps the most brilliant and controversial Catholic thinker of the 12th century. He soon became head of the Paris school and had students coming to him from all over Europe.

“Abelard was perhaps the most brilliant and controversial Catholic thinker of the 12th century.”

Unfortunately, Abalard also soon became famous for a titanic moral failure: the love affair he carried on with his young private student.

She became pregnant out of wedlock and though the two were secretly married, she allowed herself to be committed to a nunnery so that Abalard could continue his amazing academic career. At that time, you had to be clergy or celibate to teach in universities.

Her humiliated guardian and uncle, though furious at the immorality carried out under his nose and the seeming dumping of his daughter in a monastery, arranged for Abalard to be attacked in his bedroom and forcibly castrated.

Deeply chastened and seemingly repentant, he retired from the school so he might join a Benedictine monastery. But Abalard’s troubles did not end as different teaching opportunities still opened for him as a monk.

He again got in trouble with the religious authorities and was convicted of heresy several times but then pardoned.

He basically had to hide in a monastery in the years before his death so that he was not excommunicated by the pope.

Abelard’s Emphasis on Reason

Abelard was an important scholastic for his emphasis on the power of reason.

Unlike Anselm who stressed that faith needed to come before belief, Abelard thought that reason could come before faith and that one could by reason come to believe what others accepted by faith.

Abelard felt that people ought to exercise their reason much more than they actually do. His most important theological work, “Sic et Non” (Yes and No), furthered this goal. This was written after Abelard’s scandal and chastening and his monastic cloistering.

In it, Abelard posed 158 theological questions and then listed authoritative answers from the Bible and early church teaching. The problem was these answers appeared to contradict one another, which made some people really upset.

Abelard made no attempt to resolve the differences of opinion because he wanted people to think for themselves and use reason to reconcile the apparent conflicts.

“Abelard wanted people to think for themselves and use reason to reconcile apparent conflicts.”

As Abelard says himself in the presence of Sigebert, “Therefore I have made this present collection as a basis for discussion in the schools according to the fashion recommended by Aristotle to all serious students. For through doubt we are prompted to inquire and through inquiry we grasp the truth as the truth himself said, ‘Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be open to you.’”

Separately, Abelard famously articulated the idea of limbo for infants. Can anybody tell me what that is?

Basically, it’s a special spiritual place that infants go which is not heaven and it’s not hell. It’s a middle state known as limbo.

Abelard also introduced the moral influence theory of the atonement. That theory is that Christ came to teach and provide a good example for believers. That’s why he lived. That’s why he died. That’s why he went on the cross.

Now, this is a biblical concept, but it is not the primary motivation for the incarnation or the atonement. This theory can be and is often overemphasized, especially in liberal Christianity.

Still around today, the sum of Abelard’s significance—I’ll quote Nick Needham again. He says, “Abelard’s lectures and writings had a great impact on the 12th century West. They shook the minds of students awake, inspiring them to ask questions and use reason as a way of investigating and determining the meaning of theological statements.” So he’s like a catalyst for further thought.

Peter Lombard

A third important scholastic is Peter Lombard, alive from 1096 to 1164.

Born in Lombardy, northern Italy, hence the name. He studied at the universities of Bologna and Paris, probably under Abelard.

From 1140, he taught theology in Paris and became bishop of Paris in 1159, shortly before he died. Lombard is known as the father of systematic theology because of his greatest work called the Four Sentences. That title is a little bit misleading because it’s not just four sentences. It’s really four books presenting a systematic theology.

Like Abelard, Lombard compiled a series of authoritative statements from the Bible, church fathers, ecumenical councils, and other authorities on every aspect of Christian theology. Whether you wanted to talk about the sacraments, the incarnation, or Christian virtues, he assembled the most important and authoritative statements from all these different sources.

But whereas Abelard left the assembled statements just there without comment, Lombard wrote solutions to all difficulties and apparent contradictions among the different cited authorities. He used careful logic to judge between them all.

“Lombard is known as the father of systematic theology because of his greatest work, the Four Sentences.”

So he is indeed presenting a systematic presentation of all Christian thought. The Four Sentences became the most widely used theological textbook in the Middle Ages. If you were studying theology at the university after Lombard, you were going to be looking at his Sentences. That was going to be your main teaching tool.

It became expected that anyone becoming a doctor of theology would write a commentary on Lombard’s Sentences. That’s just what you did if you were going to become a doctor of theology.

Lombard’s Sacramental Theology

In the sentences, significantly, Lombard was the first to define the number of Roman Catholic sacraments as seven, and they still are today: Baptism, Holy Communion, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Ordination, and Extreme Unction.

Lombard also was one of the earliest Catholic theologians to teach clearly that the sacraments were not just signs of God’s already declared and applied grace, but were in themselves effective means of delivering grace to believing participants.

To explain that, for example, Baptism and Communion are not mere symbols of what God has already done for you. These are rituals in which, when they are performed correctly, they give you the grace of God that you need for your spiritual life and salvation.

“The sacraments were not just signs of grace but effective means of delivering grace to participants.”

He’s one of the first but not the last Catholic theologian to articulate that concept.

Thomas Aquinas

We’ll move on from him to talk about the fourth scholastic, the one that is most important. Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225 to 1274.

The younger son of a Lombard noble, Aquinas was born at the castle of Rocca near Aquino in the territory of Naples, Italy. Aquinas studied at the University of Naples and was intended from a young age to succeed his relative as the abbot of the old prestigious Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino.

However, at age 19, Aquinas announced his intention to join the newly formed Dominican order.

Thomas’s family, dismayed, actually kidnapped him and held him in their home for two years trying to change his mind. They urged him not to become a Dominican. At one point, his desperate brothers even hired a prostitute to seduce him so that Aquinas would give up his desire for celibacy.

Aquinas responded by grabbing a burning log from the fireplace and chasing the woman out.

Realizing that they couldn’t break him, the family finally let Aquinas escape and he became a Dominican in 1244.

Aquinas went on to study at the universities in Paris and Cologne. In 1252, he started teaching theology at Paris. In 1261, he joined a traveling papal college that was teaching in various Italian cities.

Aquinas was a deep thinker but also a humble man with a blameless life. He became a famous lecturer and prolific writer though he never finished his greatest work, the Summa Theologiae, because he suddenly abandoned all writing in 1273, the year before he died.

“Aquinas was a deep thinker but also a humble man with a blameless life.”

Why exactly he did this is not clear. He only reportedly told his secretary that all his writing suddenly seemed to him like pure straw.

Some suppose that Aquinas suffered a nervous breakdown, others that he had had a glorious spiritual experience during one communion which wholly changed his perspective.

Respected during his lifetime, he became much more venerated by the Roman Catholic Church after his death. He was canonized as a saint in 1323.

Called the prince of the scholastics and the greatest of all the schoolmen, Aquinas was extremely theologically and philosophically influential during his time and afterwards. Even today, the Catholic Church greatly requires that all who study to become priests or other leaders in the church must study Aquinas’s work.

Aquinas’s Major Works

Aquinas, like Abelard, had an extremely high view of the capacity of human reason and he taught that reason alone could discover much about what was true in the world and true about God. Aquinas also looked quite favorably upon Aristotle’s philosophy even as the supreme achievement of human reason and the best account of the universe that man’s unaided intelligence could give.

Aquinas acknowledged that Aristotle was not right about everything. He needed correction from the Bible in certain areas. Nevertheless, for Aquinas, Aristotle represented a solid foundation of rational knowledge upon which the revelation of Scripture could be laid to perfect.

Aquinas’s two most important works are the Summa Contra Gentiles and the Summa Theologiae. The Summa Contra Gentiles, also translated as the Handbook Against the Pagans, was a document intended to enable Christians to present Christianity to non-Christians such as Jews and Muslims and refute their errors.

The work was divided into four parts. Parts one through three argue on the basis of reason and philosophy to establish the existence of God and the doctrines of creation and providence. He uses similar arguments to Anselm’s earlier proofs, though he rejected Anselm’s and came up with his own.

“For Aquinas, Aristotle represented a solid foundation of rational knowledge upon which Scripture could be laid.”

In part four, the last part of the work, Aquinas explains truths that only divine revelation can make known: the Trinity, the incarnation, and the resurrection.

You can see just in the layout of that work Thomas Aquinas’s thinking working out practically. Human reason gives you a good foundation, but God perfects it through Scripture. That’s how he thought Christians should persuade Jews and Muslims.

The Summa Theologica

Now, the Summa Theologica was even more significant. Also known as the Summa, this work was intended to be a new introductory summary of Christian theology for university students, even to replace Lombard’s Sentences.

However, the 3,500-page work ended up covering a lot of ground, pretty much commenting on every aspect of Christian belief and practice. From a literary standpoint, this work functions as one of the greatest systematic theologies ever written.

“The Summa Theologica functions as one of the greatest systematic theologies ever written.”

The Summa is arranged in the form of a disputation with 512 questions which are themselves divided into a number of articles and points. For each question, Aquinas followed the same thorough approach.

First, he presents evidence which seems to oppose his own view—evidence from the Bible, evidence from the church fathers, evidence from different philosophers or different logical arguments. Then Aquinas offers a reason or quotation for the view that he favors. Then he presents detailed arguments for that view and finally he responds to the arguments against his own view and refutes them.

This is just like your classic scholastic disputation method. Later in the slides you can see an example of Aquinas’s disputation method as he responds to the question whether the sacraments are necessary for salvation. You’ll see the objections, you’ll see his reason, you’ll see his explanation, and then his response to the objections.

Aquinas’s Summa ultimately offered the fullest explanation of the doctrines and practices that had come to prevail in the western church, especially the sacraments. Remember, those things were officially adopted in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, but Aquinas comes later and he gives basically the philosophical and theological proof for what the church already believes.

Aquinas and Transubstantiation

Aquinas’s explanation of transubstantiation is particularly notable as Aquinas was the first Catholic theologian to offer a full account of the doctrine. Now can anyone remind us what transubstantiation is again?

The bread and the wine, when you offer it up right—so Glenda, Glenda’s got the right idea. This refers to the miraculous turning of the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Jesus during the mass, during the celebration of communion, which gives Jesus’s special grace to those who partake or who witness that miracle.

Now the great problem with transubstantiation is that it doesn’t look like anything special is happening. The miraculously transformed bread and wine still look and act exactly like regular bread and wine. They still smell like it, taste like it. The bread gets moldy if it’s uneaten and left over. The wine makes you drunk if you drink too much of it.

So how can you say that these have miraculously become the actual body and blood of Jesus? They just look like regular bread and wine.

Well, Aquinas borrowed some terminology from Aristotle to come up with a sophisticated answer.

Aristotle had made a distinction between the substance of something—which is the inner reality of something, which determines its outer form—and the accidents of something, that is the outward qualities that can be detected by the five senses. Now accidents we use that term in a totally different way, but listen to the way that Aristotle is using it. The things you can see, the things that you can detect on the outside of something by your five senses, Aristotle called them the accidents. But the inner reality—that’s the substance.

To illustrate this with an example: how do I am human? You can observe my accidents—that I have a human body, flesh and bone, a human voice, a human smell. I get tired and hungry like a human does, et cetera.

But you cannot see the inner reality of my humanness. I don’t mean the inner parts of my body, but the substance of me as a human. You simply must assume my inner reality from the accidents that you detect on the outside through your senses. You recognize that I am human even though you cannot see that inner reality because you see the outward accidents.

This is the only way to know what is unseeable. You look at the accidents.

But here’s where Aquinas was innovative. He argued that in the miracle of transubstantiation, the substance of the bread and wine change while the accidents don’t.

That is, the inner reality—the breadness and wineness—it changes to the actual body and blood of Jesus. Though the physical qualities of the bread and wine that are discernible by the senses, they stay the same.

Thus, according to Aquinas, in communion, you are not eating the physical body and blood of Jesus because they are not locally present. Instead, you’re eating the essence of Jesus’s body and blood, which is actually more real and confers supernatural grace.

“In transubstantiation, the substance of bread and wine changes while the accidents don’t.”

Now, if that was hard to follow, I understand—it is a sophisticated argument. You could even say it’s an ingenious explanation, and the Catholic Church adopted it as its official explanation of transubstantiation.

Problems with Aquinas’s Reasoning

But you may notice this argument does not come from the Bible. It comes from mere human reasoning.

Also, Aquinas’s idea introduces a destabilizing philosophical problem.

If our senses can be entirely deceived by a particular object’s inner reality based on outer accidents that do not correspond, then how can we know the truth of anything?

“If our senses can be entirely deceived, then how can we know the truth of anything?”

The logical outcome of this is radical skepticism. We cannot be sure of the real truth or inner reality of anything that we observe if what Aquinas says is true. And others who found issue with his argument would make this point.

To be sure, Aquinas did have his critics in different areas, and we’ll meet one in a moment. But in terms of intellectual depth and historical impact, Aquinas would prove to be one of the three master theologians of the Western Church alongside Augustine of Hippo and John Calvin.

John Duns Scotus

More briefly, let’s meet a fifth scholastic, John Duncotus.

I’ll skip this. You can read that later in the slides.

John Duncotus lived from 1265 to 1308, born in Dun’s Scotland—hence the name. Scottish, he joined the Franciscans as a youth and went to study at Oxford and Paris, becoming a doctor of theology. He lectured on Lombard’s Sentences at Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris from 1297 to 1307 before moving to Cologne and dying there.

His most important works were two commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences.

Scottus formed much of his theology in opposition to Aquinas. While Aquinas sought to bring theology and human philosophy closer than ever, Scottus sought to drive the two irrevocably apart.

Beginning a revolutionary new trend in scholastic theology, Scottus emphasized the limitations of pure reason to discover God and Christian doctrine.

“Scotus emphasized the limitations of pure reason to discover God and Christian doctrine.”

Scotus on God’s Will vs. Intelligence

And this is because of a particular concept for which Scotus would become famous. In contrast to Aquinas, Scotus argued that God’s acts are driven primarily by his will, not his intelligence.

That is, God does not will something because it is right, reasonable, or fitting. Rather, something is right, reasonable, or fitting because God wills it.

“Something is right, reasonable or fitting because God wills it—not the other way around.”

To illustrate this with a Christian issue: Why was Jesus’s atonement for sinners accepted and effective? His coming as a baby, living his 33 years, dying on the cross. Why that and not something else?

Scotus would say it was not because of any inherent worth or power in those actions themselves, but because God willed to accept them as sufficient payment for sin. Theoretically, he could have willed to accept something else, but this is what he willed to accept.

Now, if God’s will and not his intelligence is the determining factor of God’s actions, then we humans cannot prove Christian doctrines to be reasonable. Because those doctrines are not required by reason, but simply by God’s choice.

Instead, we humans can only accept by faith what is God’s revelation—what God has actually told us and shown us what he has chosen to do.

Now, all that may seem like a kind of subtle argument with subtle distinctions, and probably it is, but it is significant.

The ultimate effect of Scotus’s arguments would be the laying of a foundation for Christian theology that was more Bible-based than philosophy and reason-based, which is really what the late medieval church needed and what today’s church still needs. We want our thinking and theology to be based on the Bible, not autonomous human reasoning.

Now, Scotus would also oppose Aquinas on the idea of Mary’s immaculate conception. Remember we talked about that last week. This ignited a long war of words between the Franciscans, of whom Scotus was one, and the Dominicans, of whom Aquinas was one.

Aquinas had argued that Mary was not immaculately conceived but saved by God in the womb. Scotus argued that Mary most likely was immaculately conceived and therefore free from original sin. The immaculate conception was made a doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church in 1854.

Catholics ultimately came to appreciate Scotism, as his theology came to be known, and later dubbed Scotus the subtle doctor due to his theology’s complexity. But those less enthused with Scotism, like the Christian humanists of the Renaissance era, used the man’s name as a pejorative. If any teacher’s theological writings seemed overly complicated or obscure, he was a dun, from which we get the term dunce.

William of Ockham

The sixth and final scholastic for us to meet is William of Ockham, 1285 to 1349.

Born at Ockham in Surrey, southern England, he studied theology at Oxford where he joined the Franciscan order and later became a professor.

However, Ockham was tried for heresy in 1324 for siding with the spiritual Franciscans against the conventional Franciscans and the Pope. A little bit of background here: you remember how the Franciscans drifted away from Francis of Assisi’s original idea, his original rule of absolute poverty and childlike faith?

Well, the spiritual Franciscans, as they came to be known, were a movement within the Franciscan order to get back to Francis’s original ideals, while the conventuals, which is what the other side came to be known, wanted to keep the changes that had been instituted since Francis’s time.

The pope sided with the conventuals and began persecuting the spiritual Franciscans as heretics. And Ockham sided with the heretics, so Ockham was going to be persecuted too.

Ockham was condemned by the pope in 1328 and fled to Germany where he was protected by the anti-papal Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Bavarian. There Ockham continued to teach and write, especially against the papacy, and served the Holy Roman Emperor until his death.

Ockham was a highly influential thinker and furthered the divorce between faith and philosophy that Scotus had started. Ockham agreed with Aristotle that human knowledge was limited to observation and experience mediated by the senses. Thus, human reason could never find the invisible God or work out God-breathed doctrines.

“Human reason could never find the invisible God or work out God-breathed doctrines.”

Therefore, Ockham argued that reason should not be used to prove God or Christian doctrines, but simply to examine and explain the various statements of scripture.

This represented a helpful shift in Christian theology that would pave the way for the Reformation. So thanks, William.

Ockham’s Neo-Pelagianism

But then Mr. Ockham had to throw a massive spanner in the works by popularizing neo-Pelagianism.

Okay. Does anyone remember what Pelagianism is?

It’s basically work salvation. Pelagius, fifth century, taught that he denied the doctrines of original sin and predestination and asserted that all humans have the ability to obtain salvation by their own free will and by their own good works.

Augustine had been a determined opponent of Pelagius, and most of the scholastics in the medieval period followed Augustine’s anti-Pelagian theology of grace. But Ockham broke from this and brought back Pelagianism in a new form—not even semi-Pelagianism, but full-on Pelagianism. Ockham essentially taught that any unbeliever could merit God’s grace by a two-step process.

Step one: a person prepares himself to receive God’s grace by doing his best.

In so doing, the person does not technically merit his salvation. But God is a God who promises to reward effort.

So God freely gives grace to those who have so prepared themselves to receive further grace and merit salvation because that’s what step two is. Once you’ve prepared yourself by doing your best, God gives you the grace to get the rest of your salvation.

The unbeliever now cooperates with ongoing divine grace to merit eternal life.

However Ockham tried to spin it, what he taught essentially put salvation in the hands of human will and moral effort.

“What Ockham taught essentially put salvation in the hands of human will and moral effort.”

And it reduced God’s predestination to foreknowledge of what humans would do in the future. In short, he was teaching works-based salvation, an obviously false gospel.

Many schoolmen, including John Wycliffe, whom we’ll meet next time, soon adamantly opposed Ockham’s neo-Pelagianism. But others adopted it and it became popular. It became known as the via Moderna, the new way, as opposed to the via Antiqua, which was the old way of the previous schoolmen.

The via Moderna of neo-Pelagianism came to dominate scholastic theology by the end of the medieval period, which helps explain why the reformers came out swinging against the scholastics when they appeared. Scholasticism had turned into something that was so obviously unbiblical.

Unfortunately, Ockham had a huge hand in that.

Ockham’s Razor

One last point on AAM. You may have heard of AAM’s razor, which is attributed to him. What is AAM’s razor?

Yeah, Mark. It’s the idea that the most simple explanation is probably the correct one, right? We usually remember it as the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one.

“Between two otherwise equal solutions, the simpler solution is to be preferred.”

Technically, it’s a little different from that. Between two otherwise equal solutions, the simpler solution is to be preferred. But AAM didn’t come up with this. He does use it and he does articulate that principle. But so did the other scholastics even before AAM’s time.

This is how history works. Sometimes something gets attached to someone even if he’s not the originator of it. And that’s why we know of AAM’s razor today.

Concluding Reflections and Questions

That brings me to the end of our discussion. Hopefully you see after today’s lesson some aspects of scholastic theology that were good, but others—even many others—that were problematic at best and evil at worst.

Scholastic theology is indeed in a sorry state by the time of the Reformation. Yet these are the people and ideas that have helped shape Western Christianity, especially Roman Catholicism, but also aspects of Protestantism.

“These are the people and ideas that have helped shape Western Christianity.”

Questions about what you’ve heard? Yeah, Glenda.

What I got from the lessons is those theologians—most of them had bits and pieces of the true gospel, but in between was very bad. And even the one with transubstantiation in Scripture, which means they’re crucifying Christ over and over every time they say his body and his blood turned to the real body and blood of Christ. So the Catholic teaching was so bad, but then as you can see, some tried to go to the apostolic teaching, but most of it was contaminated.

Yeah, so you make some good observations, Glenda. I’ll make a few comments on it. This is the thing with medieval Christianity and even medieval theologians. It’s not all bad, and some of it is pretty good. Certain theologians are more good than bad, but some of it is very bad. Certain people—you’re like, “I’m not sure you’re even a believer,” because that’s so much heresy. That’s so close or that’s so much error.

Yeah, understandable. And there’s—we do want to be generous and recognize that we don’t ultimately know what’s going on in these people’s hearts. But we do have to recognize too that this is the reason why the Reformation was necessary. You had more and more drift into this error, even to the point of no longer being compatible with salvation.

In regard to transubstantiation and the idea of sacrificing Christ over and over again, Aquinas actually makes a comment on that. And something that you should appreciate is that Roman Catholicism is maybe more sophisticated than we sometimes suspect.

Catholics would not say they’re sacrificing Christ over and over again. Rather, they’re tapping into the sacrifice that had already been accomplished once and for all. So it’s almost like through the Mass and through the offering of the wafer, they’re bringing themselves and the church back into that moment that had already been accomplished. And that salvation that was accomplished is dispensed in a new and fresh way for those who are there.

Now, you don’t get that from the Bible. You get that from tradition. You get that from human reason. And there’s the big problem.

They may have wonderful, ingenious explanations for what the church is doing, but the thing is they don’t come from the scriptures. And that’s the main problem. But you’re right.

There’s plenty of mixture between these Christians and these theologians. And we can appreciate the good, but we need to learn the lessons from the bad. Was there another hand somewhere else?

Okay, Mark.

Guarding Against Human Reason Over Scripture

Dave, what are some things that you would recommend for us to guard against relying on human reason over and above the scriptures? For example, the scriptures say we should love the Lord with our mind, right? We’re not avoiding using our minds, but how can we guard against relying on human reason over and above God’s truth?

Okay, that’s a good question, Mark. That’s a question that requires a pastoral answer. The Bible is not anti-reason, right? Reason is actually a gift from God, and it’s a tool to be used to worship God, to know God, and to serve God.

But the thing is, reason always needs a foundation. Reason always operates according to assumptions. This is one of the things that Ken Ham answers in Genesis have really hammered home, and also apologists like presuppositional apologetics, which is drawing attention to this.

You need to start with biblical assumptions. You need to look at the world from a biblical perspective if you want to understand, observe, and reason correctly.

You should reason, but you want to reason according to the scriptures. The problem is people think that you can reason neutrally. They say, “Before we talk about the Bible, let’s have neutral ground and let’s just talk based on reason and observation of the world whether these things you say are true.”

No, your reason needs something to interpret it. As soon as you assert neutral ground, you’re saying, “I’m going to assume that God is not true and that supernatural things don’t happen. Now I want you to explain how Christianity can be true.” You’ll never get there because your assumptions have already destroyed any foundation that a Christian might attempt to assert.

So what does that mean for us? Practically speaking, we must interpret the world, as Ken Ham says, with biblical glasses. You must let this be the foundation of your reasoning and of your apologetics and your evangelism.

It always goes back to the Bible.

“We must interpret the world with biblical glasses. It always goes back to the Bible.”

And we must beware—I’ve said this before in this class and in other places—you must beware of any wisdom presented to you that uses an anti-biblical foundation. When it’s built on something that ignores the Bible or rejects the Bible, however wise it appears, it is not going to be profitable for you. It’s not going to be profitable for the church. It’s only going to hurt the church, which is what Paul warns against in Colossians.

I’m amazed at so many Christians throughout history who are so into philosophy when Paul explicitly warns against philosophy and things that only seem wise but are actually capturing. They ensnare you. And Christians again and again stumble as if totally naive into the trap of philosophy because we ignore the anti-biblical foundation and we say, “Well, look at this good thing that they’re saying here. All right, we’re going to adopt that method. We’re going to adopt that way of thinking and it will assist Christianity.”

Not if it has an anti-biblical foundation. It’s going to hurt Christianity and it could even destroy the gospel. That’s what’s happened again and again historically.

“Don’t try and salvage anti-biblical foundations. You’re just going to hurt the church.”

So we need to be discerning. Not just, “Is that particular statement anti-biblical?” Consider what’s the foundation on which it rests. What are the assumptions that are driving that system or driving that practice? Are they anti-biblical? Do they ignore and operate as if the Bible’s not true? Then you can’t use it.

You need to stay away from it. Don’t try and salvage it. You’re just going to hurt yourself. You’re going to hurt the church.

Okay, that’s 10 o’clock. That may have generated more comments and questions, but you can come talk with me about it afterwards. I feel very passionate about that because I feel like it’s a blind spot of our church today, but we need to let church history warn us about that.

Let me close our time. Next week is our final lesson. We will look at some more theologians, but this time theologians and the movements that they led. These are those who were kicked out of the church. We’re going to talk about the pre-reformation movements, the persecuted brethren who were rediscovering and holding again the true gospel and helped pave the way for fuller reformation. We’ll talk about that next time.

Closing Prayer

Let’s close in prayer. Lord, I do pray that you would help us to learn the lesson of church history. Again and again, we see, Lord, the folly of trying to integrate anti-biblical human wisdom into your word and your gospel. Lord, protect us from that.

Sometimes that trap is obvious and sometimes it’s not. Oh Lord, help us to protect one another. Help us to hold fast your truth, to let this be what guides our reasoning, and to let this be what helps us see what is wise and helpful.

Thank you that you’ve given us this sufficient word so that we do not need anything for life and godliness as Christians that the world and its wisdom would offer. But Lord, help us to believe that and to live accordingly.

Bless the rest of the service today. Amen.

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