Now, even if we confine our attention to Roman theology, we find a large adoption of Abélard’s singularly prophetic conclusions. As to the Trinity, it is now a universal and accepted practice to illustrate it by analogies derived from purely natural phenomena, which are always heretical if taken literally. One of the proudest achievements of St. Thomas and the schoolmen was the construction of an elaborate analogical conception of the Trinity. On the equally important question of Scripture Abélard’s innovation proved prophetic. In that age of the doctrine of verbal inspiration he drew attention to the human element in the Bible. Even the Catholic Bible is no longer a monochrome. Abélard’s speculation about the ‘accidents’ in the Eucharist—that they are based on the substance of the air—is now widely and freely accepted by theologians. His moral principles relating to sins done in ignorance and to ‘suggestion, delectation, and consent’—both of which were condemned, at Bernard’s demand—are recognised to be absolutely sound by the modern casuist. His notion of heaven is the current esoteric doctrine in Rome to-day; his theory of hell is widely held, in spite of a recent official censure; his pleading for Plato and his fellow-heathens would be seconded by the average Catholic theologian of to-day.
It is hardly necessary to point out how entirely the non-Roman theology of the nineteenth century has accepted Abélard’s spirit and conclusions. The broadest feature of the history of theology during the century has been the resumption and the development of the modifying process which was started by Abélard eight centuries ago. The world at large has taken up his speculations on the Incarnation, the atonement, original sin, responsibility, inspiration, confession, hell and heaven, and so many other points, and given them that development from which the dutiful son of the Church inconsistently shrank.[39] A curious and striking proof of this may be taken from Tholuck’s dissertation on ‘Abélard and Aquinas as interpreters of Scripture.’ The distinguished German theologian, who is the author of a well-known commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, says that when he read Abélard’s commentary on that Epistle, in preparing his own work, he seriously hesitated whether it would not suffice to republish the forgotten work of Abélard instead of writing a new one. When one recollects what an epitome of theology such a commentary must be, one can appreciate not only the great homage it involves to the genius of the man whom Bernard scornfully calls a ‘dabbler in theology,’ but the extent to which Abélard anticipated the mature judgment of theological science.
It seems, however, a superfluous task to point out the acceptance of Abélard’s spirit, method, and results by theology in general. The more interesting and important question is the acceptance of his ideas by the Church of Rome. That we have abundantly established, and we may now proceed to inquire whether, and to what extent, Abélard had a direct influence in the abandonment of the mystic attitude and the adoption of one which may be fairly entitled ‘rationalistic.’
Here we have a much more difficult problem to deal with. It may at once be frankly avowed that there is little evidence of a direct transition of Abélard’s ideas into the accepted scheme of theology. Some of the most careful and patient biographers of Abélard, as a theologian, say that we cannot claim for him any direct influence on the course of theological development. Deutsch points out that his works must have become rare, and the few copies secretly preserved, after their condemnation by the pope; certainly few manuscripts of them have survived. He had formed no theological school (as distinct from philosophical), or the beginning of one must have been crushed at Sens. His Roman pupils and admirers were probably not men who would cultivate loyalty under unfavourable circumstances. The schoolmen of the following century only know Abélard from passages in Hugh of St. Victor and others of his enemies. The first to reproduce what Deutsch takes to be the characteristic spirit or method of Abélard is Roger Bacon; it is extremely doubtful if he had any acquaintance whatever with Abélard. The world was prepared to receive the ideas of Abélard with some respect in the thirteenth century, but it had then a task which was too absorbing to allow a search for the manuscripts of ‘a certain Abélard,’ as one later theologian put it. The Arabians and Jews had reintroduced Aristotle into Europe. He had come to stay; and the schoolmen were engrossed in the work of fitting him with garments of Christian theology.
On the other hand there are historians, such as Reuter, who grant Abélard a large measure of direct influence on the development of theology. It is pointed out that a very large proportion of the masters of the next generation had studied under Abélard. Reuter instances Bernard Sylvester of Chartres and William of Conches, as well as Gilbert de la Porée. Clearer instances of direct influence are found in the case of Master Roland of Bologna (afterwards to ascend the papal throne under the name of Alexander III.) and Master Omnebene of the same city. It is, in any case, quite clear that Abélard was pre-eminently a teacher of teachers. On the other hand it would be incorrect to lay too much stress on the condemnation by Pope Innocent. All the world knew that Bernard had prudently kept the unexecuted Bull in his pocket, and that Abélard was teaching theology at Cluny, with the pope’s approval, a few months after the condemnation.
It is best to distinguish once more between the spirit or method of Abélard and his particular critical conclusions. His conclusions, his suggestions for the reconstruction of certain dogmas, were lost to theological science. The cruder notions of the earlier age and of Bernard continued to be regarded as the truth for many centuries. Even the masters, such as Roland of Bologna, who did found their theology more conspicuously on that of Abélard, prudently deviated from his opinions where they were ‘offensive to pious ears.’ His treatment of the Trinity is, perhaps, an exception. Not that Abélard’s favourite analogies—that of the seal and its impression, and so forth—were retained, but he had set an example in the rationalistic or naturalistic illustration of the mystery which persisted in the schools. All the great schoolmen of the following century accepted the Abélardist notion of a rationalistic illustration and defence of the Trinity. They constructed an elaborately meaningless analogy of it, and invented a ‘virtual’ distinction—a mental distinction which might be taken to be objective for apologetic purposes—between the essence and the personalities. But Abélard’s penetrating and reconstructive criticisms of the current dogmas of original sin, the Incarnation, responsibility, reward and punishment, inspiration, omnipotence, etc., degenerated into, at the most, obscure heresies—sank back into the well of truth until long after a rebellious monk had broken the bonds which held the intellect of Europe.
It was far otherwise with the spirit of Abélard, the fundamental principle or maxim on which all else depended. The thirteenth century cordially accepted that principle, and applied itself to the rationalisation of theology. It wholly abandoned the mysticism of Bernard and the school of St. Victor. The Cistercian had summed up Abélard’s misdeeds thus in his letter to the pope: ‘He peers into the heavens and searches the hidden things of God, then, returning to us, he holds discourse on ineffable things of which a man may not speak.’ In the very sense in which this was said of Abélard, it may be urged as a chief characteristic of the saintly schoolmen of the thirteenth century. Even St. Bonaventure was no mystic in the anti-rational sense of Bernard; simply, he applied to theology the reason of Plato instead of the reason of Aristotle. Archbishop Roger Vaughan, in his Life of St. Thomas, says that the schoolmen owed the ‘probatur ratione’ in their loci theologici to Abélard. That is already a most striking vindication of Abélard’s characteristic teaching as to the function of reason, for we know how important the ‘proofs from reason’ were in the scheme of Aquinas and Scotus. But they really owe far more than this to Abélard. If they have deserted the dreamy, rambling, fruitless, and fantastic speculation of the mystic school for a methodical and syllogistic inquiry concerning each point of faith, it is largely due to the example of Abélard. The schoolmen notoriously followed Peter the Lombard. From the Sentences of Peter the Lombard to the Sic et Non of Peter Abélard—through such works as the Sentences of Roland and Omnebene of Bologna and the so-called Sentences of Peter Abélard—is a short and easy journey. No doubt we must not lose sight of that other event which so powerfully influenced the theology of the thirteenth century: the invasion of the Arab and Jew philosophers. Theirs is the only influence of which the schoolmen show any consciousness in their elaborate fortification of dogma to meet the criticism of reason and conscience—except for the avowed influence of the Lombard; and along that line we may trace the direct influence of Abélard.
In the circumstances it makes little difference to the prestige of Abélard whether we succeed in proving a direct influence or no. There are few who will think less of him because he was beaten by St. Bernard in diplomatic manipulation of the political force of the Church. The times were not ripe for the acceptance of his particular criticisms, and the mystic school was the natural expression of this conservatism. We may even doubt if Deutsch is correct in saying that the thirteenth century was prepared to receive them, but that its attention was diverted to Spain. Renan has said that they who study the thirteenth century closely are astonished that Protestantism did not arise three hundred years earlier. That is the point of view of a logician. The Reformation was not in reality, though it seems such in theory to the student of the history of ideas, an intellectual development. No doubt it could not have succeeded without this development to appeal to, but it was a moral and political revolt. How little the world was prepared for such a revolt at the end of the thirteenth century may be gathered from a study of the life of that other rebellious monk, William Occam. This success the Anselms and Bernards achieved: they spread, with a moral renovation, a spirit of docility and loyalty to the Church. The subtlety and intellectual activity they could not arrest came to be used up in an effort to restate the older dogmas in terms which should be at once conservative and acceptable to the new rational demand.
It is equally difficult and more interesting to determine how far Abélard himself was created by predecessors. Nowadays no thought is revolutionary; but some notions are more rapid in their evolution than others. To what extent Abélard’s ideas were thus borrowed from previous thinkers it is not easy to determine with precision. He was far from being the first rationalist of the Middle Ages. Scotus Erigena and Bérenger (of anti-sacramental fame) were well remembered in his day. He himself studied under a rationalistic master—Jean Roscelin, canon of Compiègne,—in his early years. We do not know with certainty at what age he studied under Roscelin, and cannot, therefore, determine how great an influence the older master exercised over him. But there can be little doubt that Abélard must be credited with a very large force of original genius. At the most, the attitude of his mind towards dogma was determined by outward influences, concurring with his own temperament and character of mind. It is more than probable that this attitude would have been adopted by him even had there been no predisposing influence whatever. His rationalism flows spontaneously and irresistibly from his type of mind and character. In the development of the rationalist principle we see the exclusive action of his own intelligence. To most of us in this generation such dogmatic reconstruction as Abélard urged seems obvious enough; yet one needs little imagination to appreciate the mental power or, rather, penetration, which was necessary to realise its necessity in the twelfth century.
One is tempted at times to speculate on the probable development of Abélard’s thoughts if that great shadow had not fallen on his life at so early a period. There are two Abélards. The older theologian, who is ever watchful to arrest his thoughts when they approach clear, fundamental dogmas, is not the natural development of the freethinking author of the Sic et Non. With the conversion to the ascetic ideal had come a greater awe in approaching truths which were implicitly accepted as divine. Yet we may well doubt if Abélard would ever have advanced much beyond his actual limits. Starting from the world of ideas in which he lived, he would have needed an exceptional strength to proceed to any very defiant and revolutionary conclusions. He was not of the stuff of martyrs, of Scotus Erigena, or Arnold of Brescia. He had no particle of the political ability of Luther. But such as he is, gifted with a penetrating mind, and led by a humanist ideal that touched few of his contemporaries, pathetically irresolute and failing because the fates had made him the hero of a great drama and ironically denied him the hero’s strength, he deserves at least to be drawn forth from the too deep shadow of a crude and unsympathetic tradition.