Trinity And Divine Simplicity
Christianity inherited the fastidiousness of a philosophical system which cannot countenance the notion of any plurality in God, and regards anything but the utmost simplicity as unworthy of him. That was also a position highly congenial to Islamic monotheism, and Giles of Rome notes that Averroes gives that reason for insisting that there can be no Trinity in God Errores Philosophorum IV.7 . But for Christians the doctrine of the Trinity presented a challenge here which had to be taken up. The...
The Soul
Genesis 2.7 describes how God breathed life into Adam. That accorded with the consensus of the ancient philosophers that the soul is the animating principle of living beings. That is to say, it is the presence of the soul which makes it possible for the matter of which the body is composed to act as a living thing. Augustine thought the soul was something more. In man the soul is more than mere animator even vegetables have life . It is more than the power of sensation which animals also have...
Aristotle
With Aristotle, the story is very different. First a portion of his logic, and then almost the entire corpus, were successively made available to mediaeval scholars in Latin translations. By the end of the third century AD the six books of Aristotle's logic, later known as the Organonwith commentaries by the third-century Porphyry, were the standard textbooks from which logic was taught. Porphyry had an influence here in his own right, which is to be seen in Ammonius c.440-c.520 , in Philoponus...
Theology And Philosophical Method
We have touched already on the question of the use theologians felt it proper to make of the methods developed by classical philosophers. There were fundamental problems here to do with the ways in which human understanding comes by what it knows, and conveys it to others. Christians recognised two gifts which did not come into the philosophers' reckoning revelation in Holy Scripture and the gift of faith which is inseparable from trust on the part of the believer. 'I believe' is not identical...
Macrobius
By reading Cicero the Latin-speaking Christian could thus get a pretty comprehensive picture of at least the outline pattern of ancient Greek thought. Macrobius' Commentary on the Dream of Scipio would help further on a number of points. Eriugena seems to have known it. He makes a reference to the question of the location of hell within the circle of the planets and thus 'within the ambit of this world', and comments on the difficulty that the Platonists do not allow for any place outside the...
The Idea Of Theology And The Conflict Of Interests
The term theologia was not normally used in Christian writers for what we should now call 'theology' until the thirteenth century. Until the twelfth century it was more usual to speak of 'the study of Holy Scripture'. Even Aquina s, late in the thirteenth century, speaks of sacra doctrina in the Summa Theologiae in preference to theologia. The notion of a discipline which PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES amounted to the systematic study of the Christian faith by rational methods grew...