Lesson 10 Flashcards
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury
1093
Universities of Paris and Oxford
1150
Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council
1215
Aquinas, Summa Theologica
1272
Who was Pope Innocent III what significant contributions did they make to the church?
Innocent greatly extended the scope of the Crusades, directing crusades against Muslim Iberia and the Holy Land as well as the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in southern France. He organized the Fourth Crusade of 1202–1204, which ended in the sack of Constantinople.
Elected pope on January 8, 1198, Innocent III
* reformed the Roman Curia,
* reestablished and expanded the pope’s authority over the Papal States,
* worked tirelessly to launch Crusades to recover the Holy Land,
* combated heresy in Italy and southern France,
* shaped a powerful and original doctrine of papal power within the church and in secular affairs,
* and in 1215 presided over the fourth Lateran Council, which reformed many clerical and lay practices within the church.
Who was Bernard of Clairvaux what significant contributions did they make to the church?
As the founder and abbot of the Abbey of Clairvaux, St. Bernard (1091-1153) was centrally responsible for the early expansion of the Cistercian Order throughout Europe. Tens of thousands heard his powerful preaching, and he personally attracted and helped many hundreds of men to follow a call to monastic life.
Cistercian monk and mystic, founder and abbot of the abbey of Clairvaux and one of the most influential churchmen of his time
co-founder of the Knights Templar, and a major leader in the reformation of the Benedictine Order through the nascent Cistercian Order.
Who was Francis of Assisi what significant contributions did they make to the church?
St. Francis is known for his ministry to the poor and underprivileged, his care for nature and animals, and founding the Franciscan order.
caring for lepers and even trying to negotiate peace between Christians and Muslims during the Fifth Crusade
Who was Anselm what significant contributions did they make to the church?
Anselm’s philosophical premise that God is “that which nothing greater can be conceived” baffled other medieval philosophers and scholars and gained Anselm great esteem throughout Europe. Anselm also made significant contributions to Catholics’ belief in a trinitarian God, God in three persons.
having discovered and articulated the so-called “ontological argument;” and in theology for his doctrine of the atonement.
Who was Peter Abelard what significant contributions did they make to the church?
medieval philosopher and theologian known for his controversial views on love and his relationship with Heloise. He emphasized the importance of reason in theology and sought to reconcile faith and reason.
founder of nominalism for his claim that a universal is a name (nomen) or significant word (sermo). He is also credited with inspiring a school of followers called the nominales.
Who was Thomas Becket what significant contributions did they make to the church?
Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until he was murdered in 1170. He is noted for engaging in conflict with Henry II of England over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the King in the Canterbury Cathedral.
Who was Thomas Aquinas what significant contributions did they make to the church?
the greatest of the Scholastic philosophers. He produced a comprehensive synthesis of Christian theology and Aristotelian philosophy that influenced Roman Catholic doctrine for centuries and was adopted as the official philosophy of the church in 1917.
talian Dominican friar and priest, an influential philosopher and theologian, and a jurist in the tradition of scholasticism from the county of Aquino in the Kingdom of Sicily, Italy.
He argued that you use Reason up to the point where you don’t understand anymore and then use faith. You start with reason first. An example would be the trinity. We can’‘t understand everything about God being three persons in one God. We use reason to understand as much as possible and then faith takes it from there.
What was scholasticism? Include the contributions of Abelard and Aquinas
.Scholasticism was an attempt to integrate theology and philosophy into one system; to harmonize faith and reason (using understanding to support faith). In western Europe at the height of the Middle Ages all education was in the hands of the church, and the great thinkers were all monks and clergy. Their thinking was carried on against the background of what had gone before—the classical philosophy of ancient Greece, the Bible and the teaching of the early Christian writers. What the scholastics or ‘schoolmen’ did was to put it into a logical system. Their quest of faith was a quest for logical formulation.
Anselm of Canterbury - forerunner of the Scholastic movement; his famous statement was “Credo ut intelligam” -“I believe so that I may understand” (faith seeking understanding). He argued for the existence of God from the nature of being itself in his Ontological Argument (in Proslogion) - there is something than which a greater cannot be thought to exist (there is something that is the greatest of all in conception-that nothing greater can exist); since existence in reality is better than just existence in the mind, therefore this being that is greater than any other thought must exist in reality; Anselm also developed a theory of the Atonement in Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man), “Satisfaction Theory” - “Satisfaction which cannot be given by anyone but God, and ought to be given by no one but man, must be given by a God-man.” sin runs up a debt with God which humans can never themselves repay. But Christ’s death was of such worth that it ‘satisfied’ God’s offended majesty and earned a reward. Hence the Father gives humanity salvation on account of the merits of Christ.
Peter Abelard was one of the pioneers of Scholasticism; his theological Method - Christian Rationalism - the use of reason to do theology; I only believe what I can understand; Abelard’s book Sic et Non (Yes and No) (1122) set the stage for discussing the relationship between faith and reason in Christian theology.
“Moral Influence” Theory of Atonement - rejected Anselm’s view; he said that God is love and forgives out of love, He took no pleasure in the death of Christ; Christ is our example (died for us because he loved us); awakens love in us
Abelard’s desire to reconcile faith and reason in the context of Christian theology set the stage for the work of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century.
Thomas Aquinas - affiliated with Dominican order; studied under Albert the Great; was called “dumb ox”; his “Summa Theologiae” - 60 volumes; applied Aristotle to theology using questions, objections, authorities, logic
The Five Ways - proofs for God’s existence: the argument from movement, the argument from causality (cosmological argument), the argument from existence (ontological argument), the notion of perfection, the argument from order (teleological argument)
Doctrine of Analogy -use of human language to talk about God; if language for God is univocal (same meaning on human and religious level), can’t use; if language for God is equivocal (one meaning on human level and another meaning on religious level), pushed to extreme we are not talking about the same thing at all; Thomas said language about God is analogical (similar meaning)
Reason and Faith - inversion of Augustinian perspective; must begin with reason then add faith; natural theology (natural law) - the truths that can be discerned from nature/reason; Thomas never questions any accepted doctrines of the Church - his primary thrust was to use reason to further understand the doctrines; Thomas always looks to the past (Fathers, Scripture)
His innovations would become orthodoxy - “Thomism” of permanent value, Papal encyclical (1879)
Transubstantiation
a. “Substance” (the substance of the bread and wine actually change into the substance of the body and blood of Christ) - the essence of a thing and “accidents” - the outward characteristics of a thing (the accidents, bread and wine, don’t change)
Relationship of Grace & Merit - grace is a substance that God infuses into the human soul (only to the elect); this grace must be exercised through acts of charity which accrues merit for us; this merit must overcome the sin in our lives; grace must come first by a sovereign work of God, but there are things we must do; indulgences bought merit of past saints
How did Bernard of Clairvaux have an impact on the church of his day?
.Bernard thought the best theology is done in the context of pursuing the spiritual life; must take time to pray and meditate; he said “he who takes himself for a master, becomes the disciple of a fool”; in the Cistercian Reform he tried to reform the Benedictine Rule; emphasis on manual labor; strict diet and silence
In “On Loving God” Bernard describes the 4 degrees of love: by nature humans love themselves; learn to love God for the sake of His goodness; we learn to love God for God’s sake alone; we learn to love ourselves for God’s sake (mystical idea of losing yourself in God)
Bernard and the Bible - God speaks directly to us through the Scriptures; we experience God himself in the Bible; the Holy Spirit makes the text plain to us and it is not mere intellectual understanding of the text; Christ daily comes to us in the Spirit (through the Word); speaks of “chewing and digesting the honey of the Scriptures”
He also published sermons on the Song of Songs which he interpreted allegorically.
Explain the history, theology, and practice of the Medieval Church
During the Middle Ages, roughly 500-1500 C.E., the Catholic Church dominated Europe, and the spread of the religion was reaching kingdoms far and wide.
For nearly a thousand years, theologians used a fourfold scheme of biblical interpretations:
1. The literal teaches the events
2. Allegory what your are to believe
3. The moral senses what you are to do
4. the anagoriered by a swarm of mystical interpretations.
- Much medieval theology justified the inclusion of matrimony in the list of sacraments
- They believed that the coming
of the kingdom of heaven had a direct connection with the sacrament of penance. - Introduced the theology of “Transubstantiation” into the sacraments.
