Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

CHAPTER 3: MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Doctrine and dogma

While medieval philosophy is philosophy, it is dominated by Christian themes - including the formation of the fundamental doctrines and the influence of dogma. Transition from Greek to Medieval philosophy as a decline in Hellenism and ascent of Christianity including incorporation of Greek philosophical and theological ideas has been discussed in the previous pages and in the outline of periods, names and dates.

Doctrine in theology refers to theoretical component of religious experience. Dogma refers to the first principles at the core of doctrine, professed as true and essential by those of the faith.

The periods of medieval philosophy

The Patristic Period: from the origins of Christianity: the time of Christ to the formation of the major and fundamental doctrines and the triumph of Christianity as an organized Church (ending, philosophically, with Augustine)

The Scholastic Period: of philosophical construction devoted to the elaboration of a philosophy in which the subject matter and guiding principles were determined by ‘dogma’

The patristic period: establishment of the Christian Church and dogma.

The Patristic Period was, at least in things of the spirit, an age of richness and promise extending from the time of Christ to the death of Augustine in 430 - or, interpreted most widely, until the Council of Trullo in 692. Concern is with the development of dogma in this period.

Early theology

The Acts of St. Paul

The Gnostics

The Apologists - the Logos doctrine (logos, reason, the first cause, in God); free will and original sin.

The period, which results from the fusion of early Christian religion with Hellenistic philosophy, is much richer in theology than in philosophy. St. Augustine (353 - 430) - the greatest representative of the age, the only figure who fully deserves the title: philosopher, has no immediate philosophic descendents, and comes into his own much later in an age clearly medieval.

Earliest Christian communities varied greatly in type but can be classified as (a) Gentile, and as (b) a type still oriented largely to Jewish religion. Very early, there emerged from these two sources: Hellenistic Christianity, exemplified by St. Paul, in whose writing - two significant natures: (1) exaltation of Christ, (2) interpretation of his person in then dominant Hellenistic concepts…contains only the germ of the later doctrine of Trinity, and union of human and divine natures in Christ.

The doctrine of the Trinity on which the whole theology of Western Christianity is ultimately based, was not given definite form until the Council of Niacea in 325, and was established as a secure and accepted basis of the new Church until the Trinitarian disputes in controversy between Arians and Athanasius’ followers were settled by the Council of Constantinople, 381, and further disputes on the relation between the human and divine in Christ were ended - in the West at least - by the Council of Chacedon, 451. Prior to these developments there was considerable controversy employing Hellenistic philosophical terminology - largely Platonic.

Council of Niacea 325 turned away from Neoplatonism, and devised a formula for the Christian conception of Jesus Christ: the son of God and at the same time truly God incarnate. The Nicene definition established the meaning of faith which Christians were to hold and its defenders had recourse less to philosophical or theological speculation than to the Scripture as they understood it.

Athanasius completed the Nicene definition in such a way as to include the third member of the Trinity - the Holy Spirit - and achieved a definition which became the starting point of a genuinely philosophical doctrine. By doing this he set the stage for St. Augustine’s formulation of a truly Christian philosophy which made use of Hellenistic classical Greek phraseology without being subservient to it.

Patristic philosophy provided the materials of the medieval synthesis achieved during the Scholastic Period and thereby determined the complexion of Western European Civilization of the Middle Ages.

Augustine’s ethics: The supreme goal of human conduct is a religious, mystical one - the mind’s union with God in the vision of God (to take place in a future, true life)…Rich and poor alike were capable of salvation - but possession of private property is a hindrance to the soul: Augustine places emphasis on poverty…though the highest good is the transcendent good, a relative perfection may be obtained by performance of external works: venial sins may be wiped out by prayer, fasting, alms…Man was free to sin or not to sin…but this was corrupted by Adam, and the entire human race is corrupted: now it is not possible for man not to sin…God alone can change him.

His philosophy of history: In the City of God: a universal philosophy of history (considers temporal and historical processes in the context of external nature and the purpose of God): it became the prototype of such modern - though radically different - philosophical interpretations of history such as those offered by Rousseau, Hegel, Comte, Nietzsche, Marx, Spengler, and Frobenius. The essential features: (1) historical process is a purposive teleological whole, (2) the process is predestined by God to bring about the redemption of some men and the destruction of others (but this does not preclude free will…)

Scholastic period

The free roaming of the human mind within the framework of dogma - in time leading to the freeing of human reason, intellect from its theological bondage. The agenda of scholasticism: o elaborate a system of thought which will square with dogmas.

Stages: (1) Formative: ninth-twelfth centuries: Platonism, Neoplatonism and Augustinianism are the dominant philosophical tendencies. Universals are real essences and prior to things; (2) culmination: Aristotle’s philosophy is dominant: universals are real but immanent (and not transcendent)…the period of great, comprehensive systems: Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas. (3) Decline: fourteenth century. Universals are not real but mere concepts, particulars alone are real, universals are real only in the mind, hence after things: the Nominalism of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.

Problems of Scholasticism: (1) Relation between faith and reason, (2) relation between will and intellect, (3) distinction between nature and grace, (4) status of universals.

Formative Period - the Schoolmen

John Scotus Eriugena b. (Ireland 810 - d. 877): Neoplatonism.

Anselm of Canterbury (1033 - 1109): first Scholastic Synthesis - proofs for the existence of God based on Platonic conception of universals existing independently of particulars.

Peter Abelard (1079 Pallet - 1142 Paris)

School of Chartres. Cathedral at Chartres

John of Salisbury (1115 - 1180)

Culmination

Albertus Magnus (1193 - 1280)

St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 - 1274)

At the same time as this culmination (thirteenth century), Anti-Scholastic tendencies are developing: mysticism, pantheism, natural science:

John Fidanza (1221 - 1274), called St. Bonaventura, a mystic.

Roger Bacon (1214 - 1294): science.

Decline

John Duns Scotus (b. c. 1274 - 1310), opposition to St. Thomas

William of Occam (1280 - 1347), the great leader of this nominalist revival. Ockham’s razor refers to superfluous universals.

Scholasticism declines after the thirteenth century along with the rise of nationalism, mysticism, tolerance of natural science and the spirit of free inquiry by the Church (as being not relevant to the province of God)…including the elevation by the Church of Aristotle’s value (originally as a conservative device)

Fourteenth Century Mysticism: the greatest figure in this movement is Meister Eckhart, a Dominican teacher who died in the prison of his order.

…Leading to the modern period which begins with the renaissance and the (religious) reformation.