What impact did Scholasticism have on church history?

Reflections on the Schoolmen

Enough — yes, we say enough — of the scholastic doctors and the philosophical divines for our present purpose. To wade through a number, and select a few as genuine specimens, is dry and wearisome work. But they form a certain link in the chain of events between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries which has its importance; and the reader will see what is meant by the general term of "the schoolmen" at that period of our history. One salutary lesson we may at least learn from the examples before us, and that is, the utter darkness and perplexity of the mind, however great the learning and study, when the word of God, in its divine simplicity, is not known and believed. One single text, "The just shall live by faith," when used of God in the hands of Luther, was sufficient to clear away the darkness of the middle ages, while the seventeen volumes folio of Thomas Aquinas, and all the other folios of all the great schoolmen, only deepened the gloom of ignorance and perplexity as to the knowledge of God and the way of salvation. The greatest development of the natural powers of the human mind leads no guilty sinner to the cross of Christ — to the precious blood which alone cleanseth from all sin. The enemy of souls, taking advantage of the growing celebrity of the Aristotelian philosophy, seduced the best of the doctors to believe that the most important work they could be engaged in, was the reconciling of the teaching of Christ with the decrees of the Greek philosopher, lest the scholars should think more highly of the latter than the former. Such was the miserable work of the best of the schoolmen at that time; but no doubt many of simpler minds, who were not blinded by the subtleties of logic, found the way of truth and salvation amidst the darkness, though much perplexed and bewildered.

The rise of public schools or academies in the twelfth century, and the increase of intellectual activity, no doubt contributed greatly to the weakening of the papacy and the feudal aristocracy. This led the way to the rise and the establishment of the third estate in the realm — the middle classes — and to commercial enterprise. The enlightenment and the liberties of Europe from this period steadily advanced. Schools were erected almost everywhere, the thirst for knowledge increased. "The kings and princes of Europe seeing what advantages a nation may derive from the cultivation of literature and the useful arts, invited learned men to their territories, encouraged a taste for information and rewarded them with honours and emoluments." But with such an increase of mental activity, many wild and dangerous doctrines and opinions were taught. Scholastic theology, Aristotelian philosophy, sacred and civil law, had their place and reputation by turns. It was about this time the middle of the twelfth century — that the great universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Paris were founded; with many others on the continent. Greek and Hebrew were studied and lectures given in the way of expositions and commentaries on the holy scriptures, which the Lord could use in blessing to the students, and through them to others.

"To impose some restraint," says Dean Waddington, "on this great intellectual licentiousness — to revive some respect for ancient authorities — to erect some barrier, or at least some landmark, for the guidance of his contemporaries, Peter the Lombard published his celebrated "Book of the Sentences." Having studied for some time in the famous school at Bologna, he proceeded to Paris for the purpose of prosecuting his studies in divinity. The Book of the Sentences is a collection of passages from the Fathers, especially from St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine — a sad mixture, no doubt, of truth and error; but the Lord is above all and could use His own word, though intermixed with fashionable subtleties, for the conversion and blessing of souls. It long retained an undisputed supremacy in the theological schools, and its author was raised to great honours.

These acts of injustice and oppression, committed within the bounds of Christendom, need not occasion much surprise, when we consider the condition of the professing church at this period. Ecclesiastics of every grade, from the Pope downwards, were engaged in a scramble for wealth and power, and the schoolmen and other theologians were exhausting their learning and eloquence in idle controversies, and profitless speculations on questions beyond the ken of finite minds. "Never," says Roger Bacon, the most learned Englishman of the age, "never was there so great an appearance of wisdom, and so great ardour in study, in so many faculties and so many countries, as during the last forty years — for doctors are scattered in every city, in every castle, in every borough, and yet never was so great ignorance and misapprehension. The mass of students doze like asses over bad translations of Aristotle, and waste together the time, labour, and expense they lay out upon them. Appearances are all which engross their attention, and they care not what it is they know, but only to appear very learned before the senseless multitude."

During the latter part of eleventh century we meet with the famous names of Lanfranc, Anselm, and Berengar. A fresh impulse was given to intellectual activity by the labours of these and other eminent teachers. It was about this time that the old cathedral schools developed into seminaries of general learning, and these became the parents of our modern universities. This intellectual activity, following a long apathy, became so extremely attractive that thousands crowded to the lectures, and, like men long debarred from the tree of knowledge, too eagerly embraced what they heard. But it was a reaction against the dogmatic authority of the church, which taught men that it was henceforth possible to reason and inquire.

Peter Abelard was the most audacious, and by far the most popular, of all the lecturers on dialectics — professedly the science or art of discriminating truth from error by human reason. This remarkable man was born in 1079, near Nantes, in Brittany. His father, Berengar, was lord of the castle of Le Pallet, and although Peter was his eldest son, he early preferred "the conflicts of disputation to the trophies of arms," and, resigning the family inheritance of his brothers, betook himself to the life of a scholar. He was first a pupil of Rosellin, then of William archdeacon of Paris, and also of Anselm, theological lecturer of Laon. But the long and extraordinary history of this man we need not follow. It is a history of victories, crimes, and misfortunes. He was at once the representative and the victim of that scholastic theology which endangered the power and the constitution of the Roman church. He was the first instance of a man professing the science of theology without being a priest. Wherever he went, thousands of enthusiastic scholars surrounded his chair. "Crowds," says Bernard's biographer, "amounting to thousands, crossed high mountains and broad seas, and endured every inconvenience of life, to enjoy the privilege of hearing Abelard lecture." "His eloquence," says another, "was so fascinating, that the listener found himself irresistibly carried away by the stream; arid if an opponent was hardy enough to stand up against him, the acuteness of his logic was as infallible as the torrent of his oratory had been, and in every combat he carried away the prize."*

Wycliffe, according to his biographers, soon became master of the civil, the canon, and the municipal law; but his greatest efforts were diverted to the study of theology, not merely that barren art which was taught in the schools, but that divine science which is derived from the spirit as well as from the letter of scripture. In the prosecution of such inquiries, he had numerous and formidable difficulties to contend against. It was a study which the church had not sanctioned, and had not provided for. The sacred text was neglected, scholastic divinity had taken the place of the authority of scripture; the original language of the New, as well as of the Old Testament, was almost unknown in the kingdom. But, in spite of all these disadvantages and discouragements, Wycliffe pursued his way with great perseverance. "His logic," says one, "his scholastic subtlety, his rhetorical art, his power of reading the Latin scriptures, his varied erudition, may be due to Oxford; but the vigour and energy of his genius, the force of his language, his mastery over the vernacular English, the high supremacy which he vindicated for the scriptures, which by immense toil he promulgated in the vulgar tongue — these were his own, — to be learned in no school, to be attained by none of the ordinary courses of study."*

Though he speaks with great respect of the holy scriptures, he strangely contends for an alliance between philosophy and Christianity, reason and faith. He denounces the sophistry of the fashionable learning of his time, and complains that the original languages of the Old and New Testament were neglected; that children got the knowledge of scripture, not from the Bible itself, but from versified abridgements; that lectures on the "Sentences" were preferred to lectures on scripture. In this way he exposed the ignorance, the superstition, and the idleness of the religious orders, and so brought down upon himself the charge of heresy and the censures of the church, though he lived and died a strict Roman Catholic, probably about the year 1292. His last work was a compendium of theology.

Lanfranc and Anselm are names famous in church history at this time, though not so much for grace as for learning and controversy: both were archbishops of Canterbury. They had both been monks, and celebrated teachers in that humble rank. Upwards of four thousand scholars attended the prelections of Lanfranc when a monk at Caen. Anselm was of equal reputation in Normandy. Lanfranc, however has the unenviable reputation of confirming, by his great influence and learning, the dogma of transubstantiation. In the darkness of the tenth century it had made its first authoritative appearance in the church. It was attacked by Berengar of Tours, who used all the powers of his mind, and all the resources within his reach, to demonstrate its unsoundness. But Lanfranc defended it, and having the majority of the clergy on his side, Berengar was confuted, stripped of all his preferments, and condemned to a rigorous seclusion for the remainder of his life. Berengarism became a term of reproach, and was considered a heresy. Thus the mysterious dogma of the Real Presence was established about the middle of the eleventh century. Lanfranc died in 1089. William Rufus appointed Anselm to be his successor. He has the reputation of being a great divine, a sincere Christian, and most blameless in his life. He died in 1109, being the sixteenth year of his archbishopric, and the seventy-sixth of his age. Both Lanfranc and Anselm, we need scarcely say, were zealous supporters of the power of Rome.

Transubstantiation was decreed in the same Lateran Council, and never before, that is, in 1215. The word betrays itself. It is the expression of the adoption by the schoolmen of the heathen Aristotle's doctrine of substance and accidents, a kind of substratum of each being with qualities of colour, form, etc., attached. It was denied however by most famous doctors in the church, also of those days, as John Scotus Erigena, the great doctor of Charles the Bald's Court, by Ratramn or Bertram, and others, but established as an article of faith in the Third Council of Lateran. This is quite true, that the most magniloquent terms were used as to the Eucharist, and as to baptism too, when the idea of sacramental grace supplanted spiritual life in the church, as the apostles had predicted. A change was spoken of in the water, as well as in the elements of the Eucharist, the visible water was changed (metastoicheiountai) into a certain divine and ineffable power.

Now you know, Mr. R., that to maintain transubstantiation you have, believing that Christ is in heaven as a man, to hold that Christ is not in extension as filling space in the Eucharist. This is distinctly held and asserted, but only as substance according to the unfounded and obsolete scholastic material philosophy. But though Chrysostom and Ambrose in East and West speak in the strongest terms rhetorically, the doctrine of the ancient Fathers was not transubstantiation, but the contrary. Such a thing was never thought of as its not being bread, only they would say it was not common bread, after the epiklesis or invocation to which they attributed the change, which made it a sacramental figure of Christ's body and blood, efficacious in blessing where faith was, as Augustine diligently insists. It is historically certain, that some of the greatest scholastic doctors, as Scotus, did not hold it; that even down to the Reformation it was said by the Romish doctors and prelates that it could not be proved by Scripture, so that Bellarmine says this is probable; and that it never was decreed as a dogma till 1215. Bellarmine asserts that a local Roman council had a short time before. The contrary doctrine was used as an argument to prove that Christ had taken flesh and had two natures. Of all the Fathers, Cyril is perhaps the strongest in the Catechetical discourses which he delivered, says Jerome, when a young man. Not only he speaks of the bread and wine as Christ's body and blood, but calls them, in his lecture on the sacramental service, a sacrifice of propitiation.

N*. I am not concerned in what they teach, but they do nothing of the kind. I do not justify what they say, for the grossest superstition and immorality and heresy is found in them, but they do not teach that. The very doctrine of substance and accidents is scholastic Aristotelism. The system of seven sacraments is from Lombard. In the tenth century it was largely discussed, the greatest doctors denying it, and was never settled as a church dogma till 1215, by the same Pope and council that established the Inquisition, at the time the papacy was in its highest pitch of power, in fact governed the world, and all was in a state of infamous corruption, as we have seen. There is another thing which curiously points out how, when the Canon of the Mass was framed, I suppose substantially in the seventh century, there was no such thought. In consecrating the cup, following, I apprehend, the Vulgate, it reads in reciting Christ's words at the institution, "which shall be poured out." That is, it makes Christ not institute a sacrifice or offer Himself at the institution of the Eucharist, but declare that He was going to be sacrificed and His blood shed on the cross. Strange to say, the Canon of the Mass is a positive denial of the pretended sacrifice in the Eucharist. Christ speaks of it as a thing to take place afterwards, not as anything then accomplished in any sense. It is 'effundetur,' not 'effunditur.'