![]() ![]() ![]() Scholars cannot agree when or where he was born, students try to avoid reading his dense work, and some theologians wonder if he strayed into heresy. Perhaps no great medieval thinker is as little understood as John Duns Scotus. Some of these commentaries have become well known, but Sentences, unfortunately, remains largely untranslated and unavailable. The great theological minds of the later Middle Ages, including Aquinas, Scotus, Bonaventure, and William of Ockham, defined the foundations of their philosophical theology by writing detailed commentaries on the Sentences. Peter’s analysis is slightly stodgy, but it invites sophisticated philosophical analysis. From there Peter proceeds, using the same careful analysis, to the relation of the three persons to one another, and to creation. so that satisfying their questions we may more fully instruct the meek.” Then he tirelessly combs through Scriptures in search of precedent for the puzzling doctrine of “the plurality of persons and the unity of divine essence.”Įventually his reasoning takes him to Augustine’s idea that the nature of the Trinity can be discovered in the three-fold operations of the human mind. While exploring questions about the Trinity, for example, he quotes Augustine: “Against the garrulous reasoners, more elated than capable, one must use catholic reasons and congruous similitudes. Peter consistently looks to both tradition and reason. The first book, on the unity of God and the nature of the Trinity, is followed by books devoted to created beings and their corporeal and spiritual natures, the Incarnation and Christ’s rescue of humanity, and the sacraments and the four last things (death, judgment, hell, and heaven). and open things withdrawn from theological inquiry and display the knowledge of the church’s sacraments as far as our poor understandings might reach.” So begins Peter’s prologue to the four books in which he attempts to navigate a path between reckless speculation and authoritarianism. "We have studied to encircle the Tower of David with shields. This text, called Sentences, would become the template for formal theological discourse well into the Modern period. ![]() Peter Lombard responded to this clash by writing a textbook characterized by its rigorous approach to the whole spectrum of theological knowledge. Ecclesiastical authorities struggled just as vigorously to maintain the primacy of church fathers such as Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great. Peter Abelard (1079–1142), author of Sic et Non (Yes and No), questioned everything-and readily flouted church authority-in a quest for theological truth. The intellectual climate of the early twelfth century was stormy. When Peter found himself at the crossroads of competing approaches to theology, he again chose the middle ground. PETER LOMBARD’S birthplace, the Piedmontese town of Novara, lies at a strategic crossroads between Turin, Milan, Genoa, and Switzerland. ![]()
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