Edward Cairns, Ph.D.: "Christianity Through the Centuries:" Ch.13--Medie...

SPEAKING OF THE 1%-ers WHILE OVERLOOKING THE 99%-ers, we proceed.

Anselm (1033-1109), born in northern Italy, serving as Abbot of Bec and later as Canterbury’s Chief Leader, wrote the Monologium, Proslogium, and Cur Deus Homo. Cairn calls his view of the atonement a “theory,” being both commercial and judicial, replacing the theory of a payment to the Devil. Cairn’s word “theory” begs more questions and he offers no answers.

Abelard (1079-1142), a canon at the Notre Dame and UofP lecturer, lover of Heloise who experienced a retaliatory, testicular exfiltration (gonadectomy), loser to Bernard of Clairveaux, moderate realist, emphasizer of individual (versus organizations), proponent of intelligo ut credam, sponsor of the moral theory of the atonement, retired. He wrote Sic et Non with 158 propositions showing the conflicts and contradictions of earlier writers. So much for Lerin’s canon, often cited by some. 

Gratian’s Decretum became an important legal textbook. 

Peter Lombard (1100-1160 wrote his famed Sentences covering God, man’s happiness, Christ, sacraments and eschatology; it was declared as authoritative at the 1439 Council of Florence.

Albert Magus (1206-1280), UofP, polymath, was the teacher of Acquinas (1225-1274). Aquinas connected Aristotle and the Bible, was a moderate realist, author of the Summa Theologicae (3000 articles, 600 questions, 3 major sections), a Cathedral-like mind, a rationalizer of indulgences as a stop-gap to penance, an advocate of churchly authoritarianism, a proponent of the fallen and wounded man with abilities surviving, and the separator of nature and grace. The ovum laid by Aquinas ended with the strutting, fully plumed peacock of Trent. 

Occam (1300-1349) was a “full-fledged nominalist, insisting that dogmas were not rationally demonstrable, but depended on churchly authority, thus, denying Acquinas’s synthesis of reason and revelation with reason preceding revelation. Luther liked Occam allegedly. 

Realism and moderate realism buttressed churchly authoritarianism including the sacramental system. Cairns claims that nominalism issued in the Renaissance and all-things-earthly, a massive over-simplification and hollow exegesis on our view. 

Universities arose from 1200 forwards out of the Cathedral schools, based on the trivium, quadrivium and professional schools, e.g. BAs, MAs, and doctorates. Bologna-law. Paris—theology, but also medicine and law. By 1400, there were 75 European universities. Scholasticism and universities produced a flow of graduates into government, law, and the churches.