Monday, May 11, 2009

James Chastek's take on scholastic theology: The first principle of scholasticism

The first principle scholastic thought was that all the authors of Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, and (to a lesser extent) Aristotle formed a unified body of thought, so much so that all apparent contradictions were, as a rule, merely apparent and ultimately even beneficial. For a scholastic, when John said that no one had ever seen God (Jn. 1) and Paul said that God is clearly seen by all since the foundation of the world (Rm. 1) both were speaking of the same truth (the knowability of God) in different ways. It would be contrary to the very nature of Scholasticism to look at the difference between John and Paul and to take it as a principle for utterly distinct- or even different- Johannine and Pauline theologies.A fortiori, the scholastic thinker would have never seen his own theology as a differnt sort of theology from Paul, Augustine, John, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil, Dionysius an Aristotle etc…

Scholasticism died when it was no longer taken for granted that there was a single unifying reality that held together the authors of Scripture and the Fathers of the Church. Aristotle, for his own part, was isolated from the other infuences he was once mixed with to make him so much more powerful and effective.


Also of interest: The double reality of dignity and Why the soul is a particular thing but not a substance