Abelard’s Rationalism.—The Relation between Reason and Dogma. The proud, self-reliant, self-conscious Abelard could be nothing else than a rationalist. He was the type of the controversial metaphysician. He was the fighting dialectician,—intolerant of restraint, devoid of respect for authority, seeking the prize of victory at any cost. Erigena, as a mystic, harmonized reason and dogma because they are equal; Anselm, as an orthodox scholastic, harmonized them because reason is subordinate to dogma and conforms to it; Abelard, as a rationalist, harmonized reason and dogma because dogma is subordinate to reason and conforms to reason. To Anselm reason merely clarifies dogma; to Abelard “dogma is only a provisional substitute for reason.” Anselm never questions dogma, while Abelard calls dogma before the bar of the reason and then acts as dogma’s advocate. We must try all dogma in court, and, contrary to modern legal practice, we must doubt it until it proves its innocence. For “it is through doubt we come to investigation, and through investigation to the truth.” A good example of Abelard’s attitude appears in his Sic et Non, a treatise in which he sets the views of the Fathers over against one another so that the reason may decide upon the truth. Another example of his method appears in his examination of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the third book of Christian Theology he cites twenty-three objections and in the fourth book answers them. This rationalizing spirit led him to advocate the doctrine of free-will, to place theresponsibility of moral conduct and theoretical belief upon the individual, to regard Christianity as the consummation of all religions and not as the presentation of anything new.
If in these discussions he was more brilliant than profound, if he wrote upon many questions without solving any, if the weight of his personality could not prevail in his controversies, it was because the science of the twelfth century offered him little empirical support against the actual power of the church and the mighty inward strength of faith of the people. What means had Abelard to support his position that rational science should determine faith? Nothing but the hollow methods of scholastic logic and the traditions of the church—the very things against which he was rebelling. Abelard set for himself a problem, but he lacked the means of its solution. It was, however, a problem that has never vanished from the memory of the European peoples.
The unrest in Abelard’s teaching is representative of the last century of this period, which he brought to a close. There was growing a general revolt from the unfruitful methods of the scholastic dialectic, coupled with feverish desire for knowledge. There was, on the one hand, a great reaction toward mysticism with the Victorines, Bernard of Clairvaux and Bernard of Tours, and toward eclecticism with John of Salisbury and Peter the Lombard. On the other hand, there was an interesting growth in empirical science. But these theoretical interests were but eddies in the great current of events. For Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the memorials in earthly form of all the ideals sacred to the mediæval mind, had fallen into the hands of the infidel! Thewestern world was preparing for the rescue, and the Crusades were the last and the frenzied expression of the Platonic idealism of the Middle Ages. They bring the first two periods to a spectacular climax. Is it a mere coincidence that Abelard brings to a close the dominance of idealism on the theoretic side at the time when earthly symbols of that idealism were being destroyed?
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PERIOD OF CLASSIC SCHOLASTICISM (1200–1453)
The General Character of this Last Period. The first one hundred and fifty years of this period was the golden age of scholasticism; the remaining one hundred years was a period of decline. The period of Classic Scholasticism was a natural growth from the Transitional Period. At the end of the Transitional Period the church, in spite of Mohammedans, Jews, heretics, and the classics, outshone all else, and its life and dogma were the most worth while. In this period appeared a theology, adequate to its life and dogma,—a theology which was floated by the wave of piety of the Mendicant Orders. Acquaintance with the true Aristotle was the needed stimulus. The favorable conditions for that stimulus were (1) the triumph of the church and papacy, (2) the intense piety of the Mendicants, (3) the general culture derived from an inner development of the church and from contact with the East in Constantinople, Palestine, and Spain. Aristotle and the Mendicants were the new forces, and they achieved their position against the hostility of the old Orders, the universities, and the teachers. The triumph was possible because the new forces contributed nothing really new, but merely completed the old scheme of things. The new Aristotle, as it was understood, taught metaphysics, epistemology, and politics in a way to vindicate dogma as against the opposition of William of Champeaux and Roscellinus. The Mendicants on their part vindicatedall dogma by blending it with faith on the one hand, and with reason on the other.
The scholasticism of the Transitional Period was predominantly controversial, while the character of this period, which we are now entering, is synthetic and constructive. The infusion of fresh blood into culture, from not only the logical but the physical works of Aristotle, resulted in the renewal of interest in the dialectic and in the construction of systems of metaphysics and psychology. The central problem now concerns the respective scopes of reason and faith, and to its solution logic and psychology are applied. A complete solution seemed to be made by Thomas Aquinas, which had its literary expression in Dante. Without the introduction of any new philosophical principle the world of nature, as interpreted by Aristotle, was apparently brought by Thomas into theoretical harmony with the Augustinian conception of the world of grace. But no sooner did Thomas seem to have formulated scholastic philosophy for all time, than controversy broke out afresh. For pantheistic mysticism gained its independence through one of Thomas’s own brother Dominicans, Eckhart; then Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, drew up a metaphysical programme based upon the Augustinian theory of the will, and gave a new direction to philosophy; and furthermore nominalism grew great upon Aristotle’s logic and the new empirical psychology. For the churchman, philosophy reached its completeness in Thomas Aquinas. The later tendencies are regarded by the churchman as deteriorations, and even modern philosophy is looked upon as but temporizing with the classic system of Thomas.
GROWTH OF MOHAMMEDANISM DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, SHOWING ITS CONTACT WITH CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION
The Conquests of the Mohammedans during the different epochs are shown by the different shading and the dates placed on the map.