Aristotle and Scholasticism

in this lecture we're looking at Aristotle in the rise of scholastic theology and the reason for this lecture is because in our last lecture we looked at the teachings of boethius on the subject of foreknowledge and God's sovereignty over evil events well the problem is is for a number of years for a number of centuries actually nothing in terms of scholastic theology or systematic theology you might say today was undertaken in the West now there's usually a myth here the myth is that people stopped doing theology they stopped caring about the Bible that these were truly the Dark Ages the fact that matter is that's not the case there were a number of scholars of varying levels of fame and importance all throughout the centuries after boëthius down until the time of Anselm and the rise of scholastic theology proper the problem though in terms of dealing with theological categories is that many of these folks were relatively unimportant you might say in terms of the development of doctrines that become so vitally important as the centuries wear on the more important fact though is that most of the scholars during this age during the time of Charlemagne and his successors or people who are focused more on history on the classics on literature and on the kinds of things that would be very vital and very interesting in a historical context but in terms of the development of theology in the church they have only a marginal impact so it's not the case that we go from boëthius to a time of very low output or low interest in theology or Bible to suddenly only in the high middle ages the people begin to discover that the Bible is interesting and that theology is important what we do see happen though in the context of the 11th century just as we turn into the second millennia of the church we do see arise is a number of reflections on the sub of methodology and it's that methodology that really gives rise to the Scholastic method as we call it and so we can go ahead and begin with the definition too often scholasticism is seen as a theology or a philosophy unto itself a lot of this is the result of the Protestant Reformation as well as a result the fact that many of us are not overly familiar with scholasticism Luther in particular was very fond of mocking and denigrating thus classic theologians from the Middle Ages some of God so far as to believe that Luther's Reformation in part was an overturning of the old order and an overthrowing of the Scholastic method and the way the story is usually told is that for centuries Aristotle was relatively lost in the West the belief here is that without Aristotle there would be no scholasticism Aristotle is the one who gives categories and a certain appeal in a foundation upon logic and it's Aristotle's categories amongst other works that we believe at least in the popular view of this is the impetus it is at least the source of the ideas that into the European bloodstream that gives rise to scholasticism this story is usually embellished a bit it said that Aristotle had been lost in that therefore when the Crusades came about and when pressure was put on Byzantium and in particular on Constantinople that a number of folks fled to the West bringing with them Aristotle and the rest they say is history the problem with this though is that it really doesn't have much weight in the historical record a lot of this anti Aristotle push comes itself from the Reformation and there are good reasons to question the method of Aristotelian logic Luther certainly was right on some level to challenge this as a wellspring of a lot of crazy ideas and crazy methodologies the Reformation is in part a return to a historical grammatical a more renaissance understanding of the way that we approach the Bible and so anything that seems to introduce an alternative methodology seems to be a problem the issue though is that this idea seems the tree Aristotle like it's a virus as if anyone who reads him suddenly become some sort of scholastic as if they immediately abandon the Bible for logic and hyper rationality and so the other factor frankly in the modern world in terms of our perhaps hesitation to scholasticism is a result of the Reformation there have been some tones in the critique of the Middle Ages by say Protestants that almost put all the weight of hyper rationalism on top of this scholastic movement pair that up with the common urban legend that no one in the Middle Ages had Bibles that no one really read the scriptures that they were chained up and not available to people and you have really fertile ground for a real conspiracy theory as to the origins of scholastic theology and so this sudden eruption of scholastic theology in the 11th century usually strikes the new student to the subject as a bit of a problem as if this is some new venture some new change in the medieval world but we want to say a couple things about this first and foremost while Aristotle has a pretty significant impact on the medieval world and on scholasticism it's not Aristotle himself who drives Europeans to do scholastic thinking it's that Aristotle alone in other words after all Aristotle was well known to the east and they don't get involved in scholastic theology in the way that the West does rather the issue in the West is how they use Aristotle the Aristotelian logic as it's called is more of a product in the West as to how certain scholastic theologians debated these issues than they are a result of Aristotle himself after all let's not forget Aristotle is a pagan living centuries before the time of Christ his impact on the church can only be measured insofar as he is being used the other factor is too often what's happening is we believe that the Scholastic's or because they're so into logic because they're so into the rational method there's too much of an effort to see them as modern rationalists as if they cared not at all for faith and as if their rationalism was some kind of figment of their own imagination well the fact the matter is is the story itself is quite different the development of scholastic method and the rise of these new ideas that began in the 11th century and that carried all the way down until the Reformation and really reaching its culmination under Aquinas or a vital period of the church's history that the church should embrace as I always say if someone in this classic period says something that we don't agree with well we have to have two assumptions based on that one we should not simply critique their context or the people they're reading as the source of that problem maybe someone said something wrong because they themselves have a wrongheaded view about this we all need to blame Aristotle for everything the other factor though is that just because someone says something that we do not like something that is theologically out of joint maybe where we're coming from doesn't mean that everything else they have to say is itself suspect besides within the context of Protestant theology within three generations of the Reformation there arose even within our own tradition this rise of Protestants classicism as it's called which follows many of the same trajectories trying to understand doctrines within a certain rational logical framework trying to clarify language in an attempt to understand how all of our doctrines hold together so scholasticism in your mind should not be a dirty word rather certain Scholastic people certain doctrines might be problematic and just because something comes from a century that we're unfamiliar with doesn't mean it's there for heresy okay so what is going on in the eleventh century well but simply you have a meditation throughout Europe with some figures probably whose names you're not going to recognize who are dealing with methodological concerns about how we understand our theological ideas the importance here though is not so much that they're arguing over doctrines per se but rather they're arguing about what is the best way to come to a conclusion about a doctrine or about a belief now I think it needs to be said right now that we do this in our own context none of us for example believe that methodology is irrelevant particularly not when it comes to our theology or our faith well what's in play here is usually a spectrum of different opinions that within the context of the eleventh century began to create some friction amongst theologians in which led to the rise of certain theologians who tried to break past this problem to a better alternative well I decided the spectrum you have two extremes now both of these extremes are relatively idealized that is to say it's very hard to find anyone who holds to these kinds of extremes in any point in the Middle Ages on the one extreme there are those who are more or less what we would call rationalists now we have to very careful put air quotes around this word rationalist they are not rationalists in the way that the European enlightenment becomes rationalist rather these folks believe that the issue of dealing with theology means that God has given us a mind to think logic is from God God himself is not illogical and so whenever we're confronted with a problem or whenever we're confronted was something that lacks clarity whatever there seems to be a friction point between what we're saying about something and its route in Scripture or in the church's tradition a rationalist in the generic sense will say that we apply the tools or mind to come to the base of a conclusion now there's one figure who's often cited as the man who sort of effects this throughout Europe Berengar of tour now you're probably not going to recognize that name but amongst medieval historians in particular those who dabble in philosophy or who teach philosophy in theology from the Middle Ages Berengar is often one of the arch enemies or at least he's the man who people sort of scratch their head about part of that's the way that Berengar is described if there's anybody who gets sort of stacked up the enlighten and view upon his back its Berengar he's described in textbooks and in secondary sources as a thoroughgoing kind of hyper rationalist the belief is that if a doctrine doesn't pass muster intellectually that Berengar throws it out and you can only imagine that in the context again of the post enlightenment world Berengar looks all too modern the problem here though is that Berengar isn't modern he's medieval and when he is touting the use of rational method or of intellectual method what he's doing rather is not saying so much that our minds come to scripture as the objective standard and that our minds are somehow the things that scripture must pass through in order for us to believe it so if the Bible says that there are miracles and we say in a more modern tone well we can't prove how these work therefore they must be someone from that century describing something that's natural something that we can't explain and therefore miracles or the belief that Christ does miracles or someone else does miracles is to be thrown out Berengar is not in this camp rather where Berengar is is he is of the opinion then when it comes to the method of describing once the algae that we have to privilege a real serious logical rational commitment from the way we think about it in other words Berengar does not glory in unresolved tension or conflict within scripture now this is a depending that most people share today you can often hear in Protestant and evangelical circles people say well scripture interprets Scripture so if you have a tough passage or you have two passages that seem to have friction or conflict between them well the issue must be worked out and we use our minds or the clarity of our language or the removal of unhelpful language from our speech that makes it sound as if two verses or two sections or two something within our theology is an ultimate conflict for Berengar he really is more in that category he's saying God gave us a mind our minds while maybe sinful in some level are used within the context of faith the reason Berengar is under fire though is he went a bit too far with his method for some of his contemporaries in the 11th century Berengar was a man who had it in for doctrine or least for certain doctrines and so it's no wonder that at least in the modern world historians tend to believe wrongly I'm saying here according to the historical record they tend to believe that Berengar does not believe in the authority of Scripture at all but he does he just believes that our minds are the primary tool to resolve conflict and even if you went too far he didn't go so far as some might go in terms of rationalism on the counterbalancing side on the opposite end of the spectrum you have those who are but a mystically committed to the idea that we simply accept everything on authority and the types of folks that are often cited here or men like Peter Damien as well as a number of others what had happened over the course of the move from the Classical period into the medieval world is some in favor of a more platonic approach to theology tended to take their Platonism in a very mystical direction and the way this sort of worked itself out is you see people who begin to sort of embrace some rather idiosyncratic positions as to the way in which things are simply always accepted by authority they have in other words a real allergy to the fact that our minds and a rationalistic sense or going to parse out or piece together anything in terms of doctrine it's just open your mind swallowed whole if things seem contradictory don't try to figure it out and these folks tend to again be somewhat characterized by moderns as the kind of fundamentalist the irrational kind of bible-thumping twisted more simplistic Minds who for their zeal for Scripture and for the authority maybe of the papacy maybe of the tradition have embraced a kind of obscurantist irrationality within their faith again this is a character where these folks tend to come from is more from the perspective of a real concern about using our rational minds to determine what we will believe and not believe and if push comes to shove they would rather us not even attempt to logically piece together or fix or understand our doctrines if it means that it's somehow weakens the authority of either the scriptures or of the church now by large this spectrum is historically true there was a debate in the 11th century on this historical method the problem though is again the way modern historians or modern fans of medieval theology tend to play this up is again almost from our own context you have the modern rationalist and you have the obscurantist but a fundamentalist on the other side the problem is all these folks are tending to come from the same position they both believe that you have authority on the one hand of Scripture and Church and that you have our minds or rational faculties on the other maybe a better way to look at this is sort of to take ourself out of the historical context and just do a bit of theology as to what they're arguing over here the fundamental root of the problem here to put it simply is where is the locus of sin and the problem with in theology the fact the matter is it's every one of these folks on either end of the spectrum believe that theology is prone to wander theologians are prone to water to be more specific they all admit that people can get it wrong they all can admit that there is some challenge in the process of theology the problem though is that either side is fundamentally convinced that one thing or another thing is the root cause of that problem so those on the rational side Berengar side tend to believe that the problem with lack of clarity or confusion or even problems in doctrine come as a result of overweening pride and authority within the church or with those who simply believe they're basing what they believe off Scripture what they're saying is is the authority is not being challenged but rather the way you're using that authority is being challenged they are saying that our minds are given to us by God rational method is not a problem and they tout it as really the thing that can correct any of the problems within the church in terms lack of clarity about its convictions or its dogmas on the other side though is not that they have any fear of Authority per se but that they have a fear of where our minds might go people like Peter Damien and others are more fearful of where our rationalism will take us that it will undermine Authority that it will stink of just this sort of idiosyncratic belief that I've constructed out of thin air that may or may not comport with Scripture or with the teachings of the church in other words put simply both admit that there's a problem there's a fundamental issue with the way theology is done that could lead us into error both sides though are in disagreement as to what the fundamental answer is to rectify this problem well into the midst of this battle and it really was a serious enough battle within both monastic scholastic theologians as well as what begins to arise is certain numbers of schools in the stay and aged into the midst of this comes a very interesting figure by the name of lon Frank of Beck now Beck is a monastic house and it was kind of like an Ivy League quality real serious theological powerhouse in the 11th century and beyond when lon Frank is the head of it lawn frock of Beck therefore is poised to be a real voice in this debate over the methodology of how we do theology and as lon Frank who begins to describe and discuss sort of a centrist position is that a moderate in the sense that he is somehow between two wild-eyed raving lunatics but he's in the middle or rather he dialectically wants to be about what both of these extremes are trying to say lon Frank began to argue that when it comes to theology we do both he said that our minds are given to us by God they are there for a reason we have to think about our theology we can't simply be obscurantists who appeal to the authority of certain things because the fact the matter is is those authorities the scriptures for example invite us to think about them in a way that requires our minds to be awake and to be active and to be thoughtful the salon Fox says rational dialectical method weighing and comparing being very careful with our language these kinds of things is a good thing it is the tool of all theologians but Mon Franck pulled back and he said however there are doctrines and there are beliefs that if our minds cannot simply grasp them and if they're clearly taught in Scripture then the authority of the Bible alone is over where our rational minds might take us and so lawn frock I wouldn't say solves the problem because the problem rages on for some time in fact in many ways one can't be as classic without first addressing the problem of the reliance or the balance between faith and reason in fact when I even put it that way the balance of the issue between faith and reason we can see that this is an issue all the way down until today people even in the modern world are discussing where does faith begin and end and where does reason come about and come to bear on what we believe well the importance for all of this in particular the importance of lawn frog Quebec is that so much them in their own context / save these individuals but rather for lawn Franck it's the fact that one of his prized students a man who will come to the monastic house there and back in order to learn and who himself will rise up and become a teacher and a theologian who will dominate the majority of nearly a century or two of scholastic theology in the West is none other than Anselm lawn Frank is really the wellspring he's the man who comes into an Tom's life just as these methodological problems arising and they're on the scene and so Anselm as he begins to look at the issues of methodology just like lawn Franck begins for the first time to really weigh in on the subject of how we reason about God how can we even defend who he is can we reason our way to the existence of God or do we simply accept it on the authority of Scripture alone and it's in this context that in some gives one of the great quotes the issue of faith and reason that have ever been uttered in the history of the church he argues quote that I believe in order to understand that slogan that phrase is symptomatic of this centrist position I believe I have the authority of faith I come to the Scriptures as a child as one who want to learn from the Word of God but I don't simply shut my mind off and leave my rational mind to the side as if good faith means that we have no deep thoughts or deep thinking on any of these subjects as if we don't wrestle with Scripture whenever we don't understand it and themselves because I believe it's in the context of my having faith that I begin to wrestle with it in terms of my understanding and so in the end its Anselm who begins with a real strong foundation of the relationship between reason and faith and the ways in which our rational minds can come to certain truths about God that begins in part they're not entirely on his own the wellspring of this classic method and all of the ongoing and the ensuing debates on both doctrine as well as on methodology really find their culmination their cohesion point in what an sum has to say and his answer is I believe in order to understand it's a both/and and it's from the basis of that belief of that methodological principle that Anselm is able to argue on the one hand that he believes in God fundamentally he has faith in God but it's appropriate at times to argue even for his existence from the context of our rational minds

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 53,248

Rating: 4.8271604 out of 5

Keywords: Aristotle (Author), Scholasticism, Philosophy (Field Of Study), Anselm Of Canterbury (Author), Landfranc of Bec, Peter Damian, 11th Century (Event), Medieval Philosophy (Literature Subject)

Id: JeA7QPm8f8g

Length: 24min 25sec (1465 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2015