The divers works of a man are likely to bear some relation and resemblance to each other. Abaelard was a reasoner, more specifically speaking, a dialectician according to the ways of Aristotelian logic. And in categories of formal logic he sought to rationalize every matter apprehended by his mind. Swayed by the master-interest of the time, he turned to theology; and his own nature impelled him to apply a constructive dialectic to its systematic formulation. The result is exemplified in the extant portion of his Theologia (mis-called Introductio ad Theologiam), which was condemned by the Council of Sens in 1141, the year before the master’s death. The spirit of this work appears in the passage already quoted from the Historia calamitatum, referring to what was substantially an earlier form of the Theologia.[427] The Theologia argues for a free use of dialectic in expounding dogma, especially in order to refute those heretics who will not listen to authority, but demand reasons. Like Abaelard’s previous theological treatises, it is filled with citations of authority, principally Augustine; and the reader feels the author’s hesitancy to reveal that dialectic is the architect. Nor, in fact, is the work an exclusively dialectic structure; yet it illustrates (if it does not always inculcate) the application of the arguments of human reason to the exposition and substantiation of the fundamental and most deeply hidden contents of the Christian Faith. Obviously Abaelard was not an initiator here. Augustine had devoted his life to fortifying the Faith with argument and explanation; Eriugena, with a far weaker realization of its contents, had employed a more distorting metaphysics in its presentation; and saintly Anselm had flown his veritable eagle flights of reason. But Abaelard’s more systematic work represents a further stage in the application of independent dialectic to dogma, and an innovating freedom in the citation of pagan philosophers to demonstrate its philosophic reasonableness. Nevertheless his statement that he had gathered these citations from writings of the Fathers, and not from the books of the philosophers (quorum pauca novi),[428] shows that he was only using what the Fathers had made use of before him, and also indicates the slightness of his independent knowledge of Greek philosophy.
On the other hand, Abaelard’s way of presenting authorities for and against a theological proposition was more distinctly original. He seems to have been the first purposefully to systematize the method of stating the problem, and then giving in order the authorities on one side and the other—sic et non; as he entitled his famous work. But the trail of his nature lay through this apparently innocent composition, the evident intent of which was to emphasize, if not exaggerate, the opposition among the patristic authorities, and without a counterbalancing attempt to show any substantial accord among them. This, of course, is not stated in the Prologue, which however, like everything that Abaelard wrote, discloses his fatal facility of putting his hand on the raw spot in the matter; which unfortunately is likely to be the vulnerable point also. In it he remarks on the difficulty of interpreting Scripture, upon the corruption of the text (a perilous subject), and the introduction of apocryphal writings. There are discrepancies even in the sacred texts, and contradictions in the writings of the Fathers. With a profuse backing of authority he shows that the latter are not to be read cum credendi necessitate, but cum judicandi libertate. Assuredly, as to anything in the canonical Scriptures, “it is not permitted to say: ‘The Author of this book did not hold the truth’; but rather ‘the codex is false or the interpreter errs, or thou dost not understand.’ But in the works of the later ones (posteriorum, Abaelard’s inclusive designation of the Fathers), which are contained in books without number, if passages are deemed to depart from the truth, the reader is at liberty to approve or disapprove.”
This view was supported by Abaelard’s citations from the Fathers themselves; and yet, so abruptly made, it was not a pleasant statement for the ears of those to whom the writings of the holy Fathers were sacred. Nothing was sacred to the man who wrote this prologue—so it seemed to his pious contemporaries. And who among them could approve of the Prologue’s final utterance upon the method and purpose of the book?
“Wherefore we decided to collect the diverse statements of the holy Fathers, as they might occur to our memory, thus raising an issue from their apparent repugnancy, which might incite the teneros lectores to search out the truth of the matter, and render them the sharper for the investigation. For the first key to wisdom is called interrogation, diligent and unceasing.... By doubting we are led to inquiry; and from inquiry we perceive the truth.”
To use the discordant statements of the Fathers to sharpen the wits of the young! Was not that to uncover their shame? And the character of the work did not salve the Prologue’s sting. Abaelard selected and arranged his extracts from pagan as well as Christian writers, and prepared sardonic titles for the questions under which he ordered his material. Time and again these titles flaunt an opposition which the citations scarcely bear out. For example, title iv.: “Quod sit credendum in Deum solum, et contra”—certainly a flaming point; yet the excerpts display merely the verb credere, used in the palpably different senses borne by the word “believe.” There is no real repugnancy among the citations. And again, in title lviii.: “Quod Adam salvatus sit, et contra”—there is no citation contra. And the longest chapter in the book (cxvii.) has this bristling title: “De sacramento altaris, quod sit essentialiter ipsa veritas carnis Christi et sanguinis, et contra.”
Because of such prickly traits the Sic et non did not itself come into common use. But the suggestions of its method once made, were of too obvious utility to be abandoned. First, among Abaelard’s own pupils the result appears in Books of Sentences, which, in the arrangement of their matter, followed the topical division not of the Sic et non, but of Abaelard’s Theologia, with its threefold division of Theology into Fides, Caritas, and Sacramentum.[429] But the arrangement of the Theologia was not made use of in the best and most famous of these compositions, Peter Lombard’s Sententiarum libri quatuor. This work employed the method (not the arrangement) of the Sic et non, and expounded the contents of Faith methodically, “Distinctio” after “Distinctio,” stating the proposition, citing the authorities bearing upon it, and ending with some conciliating or distinguishing statement of the true result. In canon law the same method was applied in Gratian’s Decretum, of which the proper name was Concordia discordantium canonum.
These Books of Sentences have sometimes been called Summae, inasmuch as their scope embraced the entire contents of the Faith. But the term Summa may properly be confined to those larger and still more encyclopaedic compositions in which this scholastic method reached its final development. The chief makers of these, the veritable Summae theologiae, were, in order of time, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. The Books of Sentences were books of sentences. The Summa proceeded by the same method, or rather issued from it, as its consummation and perfect logical form; thus the scholastic method arrived at its highest constructive energy. In the Sentences one excerpted opinion was given and another possibly divergent, and at the end an adjustment was presented. This comparative formlessness attains in the Summa a serried syllogistic structure. Thomas, who finally perfects it, presents his connected and successive topics divided into quaestiones, which are subdivided into articuli, whose titles give the point to be discussed. He states first, and frequently in his own syllogistic terms, the successive negative arguments; and then the counter-proposition, which usually is a citation from Scripture or from Augustine. Then with clear logic he constructs the true positive conclusion in accordance with the authority which he has last adduced. He then refutes each of the adverse arguments in turn.
Thus the method of the Sentences is rendered dialectically organic; and with the perfecting of the form of quaestio and articulus, and the logical linking of successive topics, the whole composition, from a congeries, becomes a structure, organic likewise, a veritable Summa, and a Summa of a science which has unity and consistency. This science is sacra doctrina, theologia. Moreover, as compared with the Sentences, the contents of the Summa are enormously enlarged. For between the time of the Lombard and that of Thomas, there has come the whole of Aristotle, and what is more, the mastery of the whole of Aristotle, which Thomas incorporates in a complete and organic statement of the Christian scheme of salvation.[430]