10. Letter Thirteen. To an Ignoramus in the Field of Dialectic
letter thirteen. To an Ignoramus in the Field of Dialectic The most common and fundamental schema of learning in the Middle Ages was the seven liberal arts, which comprehended the trivium of the verbal or logical arts (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic or logic) and the quadrivium of the so-called mathematical arts
(arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music).1 Grammar enabled correct speech and writing, together with interpretation of poetry; rhetoric was the art of persuasion; and dialectic or logic imparted the skills necessary for distinguishing between truth and falsehood.
Although from one period to another the arts within the trivium shifted in relative importance, grammar was always the first to be studied for the obvious reason that a working knowledge of Latin was essential before any other formal higher learning could be approached. In late antiquity rhetoric held the highest standing, as can be sensed from Augustine's Confessions. In the early Middle Ages grammar predominated. In the twelfth century both dialectic, or logic, and rhetoric gained prestige at the expense of grammar. Although we must not force our own terms upon the twelfth century, to an extent the rivalry between dialectic and grammar corresponds to a friction between theory and practice.
1. In the Didascalicon (2.20) Hugh of St. Victor touches upon similar matters of relevance to the worldviews of Peter Abelard and other twelfth-century contemporaries.
other controversi es From what has been said about the trivium, it is evident that dialectic was not far from being an altogether new area of study. A revolutionary development of the twelfth century, associated above all with Peter Abelard himself, was to transform dialectic from being a discipline concerned with identifying and rejecting false arguments to one that encompassed much more than that. Even in Abelard's most restrictive understanding of the craft he made his own, dialectic stood preeminent among the liberal arts. In his Dialectica he gave the following definition: "Dialectic, to which all judgement of truth and falsehood is subject, holds the leadership of all philosophy and the governance of all teaching."2 Beyond philosophy and teaching lay theology and faith itself. Here dialectic constituted a means of reasoning that could enable its practitioner to determine or even construct the elements of faith on the basis of rational argumentation.
In other words, dialectic became in Abelard's eyes no longer merely a weapon with which to defend faith from the outside against the falsities of flawed or even heretical doctrines. In his view it could actually be a force within faith, a component in its inner workings.
Letter Thirteen is addressed to an unidentified and possibly imaginary recipient who is ignorant in dialectic. Still worse, from Abelard's point of view, his addressee is hostile to dialectic and thinks it bad that others should study it. In this letter Abelard rails that some of his contemporaries in the world of learning are like the fox in the fable about sour grapes; his version has sour cherries instead of grapes, but the moral is the same. Unable to achieve a mastery of dialectic, they denigrate its methods as being mere sophistries and fallacies. (In two versions of his Theologia, Abelard refers to opponents of another sort, those who lay claim to proficiencies in dialectic they truly lack, as pseudodialecticians.)3 Since the critics being rebutted here have no training or aptitude in dialectic, Abelard must combat
2. Dialectica, ed. De Rijk, p. 470, lines 3–4, trans. Constant J. Mews, "Peter Abelard on Dialectic, Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument," in Rhetoric and Renewal in the Latin West 1100–1540: Essays in Honour of John O. Ward, ed. Constant J. Mews, Cary
J. Nederman, and Rodney M. Thomson, Disputatio 2 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), 37–53, at 43.
3. Theologia "Summi boni" 2.5–26, pp. 115–23, and in the Theologia Christiana 3.1–58, pp.
194–219.
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their accusations by employing the method of argumentation with which they are familiar. Accordingly, he adduces Scripture and patristic authorities such as Augustine and Jerome to prove that dialectic is necessary for interpretation of the Bible, refutation of heresy, and other purposes. By implication, the practitioners of dialectic (the logicians) are themselves also indispensable.
Abelard differentiates resolutely between dialectic and sophistry, which resemble each other in employing logical arguments but differ in that the logical arguments in dialectic are true while those in sophistry are false. He cites authorities from both the Bible and the Church Fathers to confirm that knowledge of dialectic is required for avoiding the pitfalls of sophistry. While on this topic, Abelard makes a point of emphasizing both how logic underpins New Testament revelation, since in Greek the Word (as "In the beginning was the Word" [John 1.1]) is logos, from which the word logic derives, and how logic is fundamental to philosophy, which is love of Christ as the Father's wisdom (sophia).4
Although Abelard's works contain many considerations of philosophy, the excursus on logic and logos in Letter Thirteen seems to be the most sustained treatment of them he produced.5 After this sec4. Elsewhere, Abelard deals with Christ as wisdom itself in Sermon 33, in PL 178:
582B–607A, at 592B, and in the Soliloquium, ed. and trans. Charles S. F. Burnett, "Peter
Abelard Soliloquium: A Critical Edition," Studi Medievali, 3rd series, 25 (1984): 857–94, at 886–87.
For discussion of this convention, see Leclercq, "Ad ipsam sophiam Christi," pp. 161–81. Other monastic authors identified Christ with sophia and philosophia: see
Henri Rochais, "Ipsa philosophia Christus," Mediaeval Studies 13 (1951): 244–47. In monastic use the term philosophia often designated the monastic life as a whole: see Leclercq, Etudes sur le vocabulaire monastique, pp. 39–67 and 156–57.
Abelard, when describing his entry into monasticism in the Historia calamitatum, describes his aspiration to be "nec tam mundi quam Dei vere philosophus" (a true philosopher not of the world but of God): 653–4, ed. Monfrin, p. 81; trans. Radice, p. 19. The fusion Abelard sought to bring about between the two forms of philosophia seemed unreachable to a contemporary such as Bernard of Clairvaux: see Gianni Festa, "San Bernardo di Chiaravalle tra ipsa philosophia Christi e philosophorum ventosa loquacitas," Divus Thomas: Jahrbuch für Philosophie und spekulative Theologie 96 (1993): 207–38.
For a distillation of findings on the semantic range of philosophia in Medieval Latin, see Teeuwen, Vocabulary of Intellectual Life, pp. 395–99.
5. Zerbi, "Philosophi" e "Logici," 31–34.
other controversi es tion Abelard explicates the descent of the Holy Ghost at the Feast of Pentecost as a conversion of the disciples into philosophers and logicians.6 Christ used reasoning and miracles to bring to the faith
Greeks and Jews, respectively. As miracles have become less useful in guiding people to faith, reasoning has grown all the more important.
Finally, it is true that poor logic can result in error. Quoting Augustine, Abelard sees this liability as an additional incentive to ensure that scholars be trained in logic and motivated to employ it correctly.
Dialectic instructs in how to distinguish truth from falsehood, how to attain truth, and how to avoid falsehood. It teaches not only how to learn but even how to teach, according to a turn of phrase
Abelard appropriates from Augustine. Beyond learning and teaching, dialectic is tied to religion: logicians are bound up more than merely etymologically with the Word of God, the logos. In their study of the word of God the logicians belong to the enterprise of philosophy, which is itself devoted to the wisdom (sophia) of the Father.
With an unnamed addressee and without any references to specific controversies in Peter Abelard's life, Letter Thirteen has proved difficult to date. Smits leaned toward a date around 1130, while Jolivet inclined toward dating it perhaps around 1132. See Jean Jolivet, Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard, 2d ed. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1982), 269–72.
Since no manuscript survives, in constituting the text Edmé Smits and his predecessors were constrained to rely on the 1616 editio princeps. For information on the earliest printed edition, see the introduction to Letter Twelve above. The letter has been translated into French: Jean Jolivet, Abélard ou la philosophie dans le langage: Présentation, choix de textes, bibliographie, Vestigia 14 (Fribourg, Switzerland: Éditions universitaires, 1994), 150–56.
6. As Peter von Moos summed up this aspect of Letter Thirteen, "To the founder of the monastery of the Paraclete, the miracle of Pentecost was the decisive entry of God into the human history of language and the point of revaluation of all values in the theory of speech"; see "Literary Aesthetics in the Latin Middle Ages: The Rhetorical Theology of Peter Abelard," in Rhetoric and Renewal, 81–97, at 86–87.
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Letter Thirteen A certain fable with a hidden meaning that tells of a fox has been taken into common usage as a proverb.7 "The fox," they say,
"after seeing cherries on a tree began to creep onto it so that it could nourish itself with them. When it could not reach them and, having slipped back, fell down, it said peevishly, 'I do not care for cherries; their taste is terrible.'"8 In the same way too certain teachers of our own time, since they cannot attain the capacity of dialectical reasoning, curse it in such a way that they reckon all its teachings to be sophisms and deceptions rather than consider them to be forms of reason. These "blind leaders of the blind"
[Matthew 15.14] knowing not, as the Apostle [Paul] said, "the things they say, nor whereof they affirm" [1 Timothy 1.7], damn that which they do not understand, and accuse that of which they have no knowledge. They judge deadly the taste that they have never attained. Whatever they do not understand, they say is stupidity; whatever they cannot comprehend, they regard as madness.
Because in fact we cannot refute by principles of reasoning people who lack reason, at least let us restrain their presumption through the testimonies of the Sacred Scriptures, on which they profess that they rely very much. Therefore let them recognize how much the art (which is to say, dialectic), which they so vehemently detest as being opposed to the Sacred Scriptures, is commended
7. "Mystica quaedam . . . fabula" could also be translated as "a certain allegorical fable."
8. In the Latin fabular tradition this fable, which usually features grapes instead of cherries and which remains entrenched in the English expression "sour grapes," is attested first in the fables of Phaedrus (first century c.e.), Book 4, Fable 3, in Babrius and Phaedrus, ed. and trans. Ben Edwin Perry, Loeb Classical Library 436 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 302–5. Though Phaedrus's verse fables were themselves not widely known in the Middle Ages, they exercised a powerful indirect influence through prose adaptations that went under the name of Romulus (and hence these versions are sometimes entitled Romulus) and that were often joined with the Distichs of Cato as components of the most basic textbook for the study of Latin
(and simultaneously for the acquisition of rudimentary ethical principles).
other controversi es by the doctors of the Church and is judged by them to be necessary to the Sacred Scriptures.9
Certainly, blessed Augustine dared to extol this type of knowledge with such great praise that in comparison with the other arts he acknowledges it to be the only one leading to knowledge, as if it were the only one that should be called knowledge. For this reason in the second book of On Order he refers to it thus:
They call dialectic the discipline of disciplines. It teaches to teach, it teaches to learn. In it reasoning itself makes itself evident and reveals what it is, what it intends. It alone knows; it not only intends to make people knowledgeable but also can do so.10
In the second book of On Christian Doctrine the same man professes that among all the arts dialectic and arithmetic in particular are needed for reading Scripture, the first to resolve questions and the second to analyze the transcendent secrets of allegories which we often examine in the natures of numbers. In doing so, he extolled dialectic so much the more as he judged it necessary, obviously, for putting an end to all manner of dubieties expressed in questions.
Moreover he said as follows:
Those things remain which do not relate to the bodily senses but to mental reasoning, where the discipline of disputation and number prevails. But the discipline of disputation avails greatly at delving into and 9. In this long passage Abelard appears to use the terms ars and scientia interchangeably to designate dialectic, but at the same time he "makes the point that dialectic is the only true 'scientia' because it alone enables us to have knowledge ('scire')"; see Luscombe, "'Scientia' and 'disciplina,'" 87. In the sentence that follows, it could be translated as "science," but at the cost of its association with the Latin verb
"to know."
10. De ordine 2.13.38, ed. William M. Green, in Aureli Augustini opera, part 2, vol. 2,
CCSL 29 (1970): 128. Abelard makes use of this passage elsewhere in the Theologia
"Summi boni," 2.5, "Laus dialectice," ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 115, lines 38–41;
Theologia Christiana 2.117, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 184–85, lines 1785–89; Theologia "Scholarium," 2.19, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 415, lines 262–66; and Collationes, 2.76, ed. and trans. Marenbon and Orlandi, 96–97. For context, see Jolivet, Arts du langage et théologie, 269–72, and Jolivet, "Doctrines et figures," 115.
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resolving all sorts of questions which arise in the Sacred Scriptures.
The only dangers there are excessive pleasure in quarreling and a certain childish showiness in misleading an opponent. For there are many things which are called sophisms, conclusions in reasoning which are false and which very often mimic true conclusions in such a way as to mislead not only the slow-witted but also the clever who are less sedulously attentive.
In my estimation, the Scripture expresses loathing for this sort of fallacious conclusions in that passage where it is said: "He that speaketh sophistically, is hateful" [Ecclesiasticus 37.23].11
It is plain that the arts of dialectic and sophistry are very distinct from each other, since the first consists in the truth of reasoning and the second in the appearance of such truth; the second imparts false lines of argument and the first resolves them and teaches that they can be detected as false through the discernment of true argumentation. And yet each of the two disciplines, dialectic as well as sophistic, relates to the discernment of arguments, and no one will be able to be discerning in arguments, other than by having the capacity to distinguish false and deceptive lines of argument from true and consistent ones.
Accordingly, writers on dialectic have not failed to produce a treatise on this art, since the very prince of the Peripatetics, Aristotle, also communicated this art, writing the Sophistical Refutations.12
For as knowledge of evil is also needed for a just man, not so that he should do evil but so that he should be able to guard against 11. De doctrina Christiana 2.31.48, ed. Martin, CCSL 32: 65–66. Abelard deploys this same passage in the Sic et non 1.29, ed. Boyer and McKeon, pp. 117–18, lines 150–62;
Theologia "Summi boni" 2.5, "Laus dialectice," ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 115–16, lines 44–54; Theologia Christiana 2.117, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 185, lines 1789–1800;
Theologia "Scholarium" 2.19, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 415, lines 272–83; and Collationes 2.76, ed. and trans. Marenbon and Orlandi, 96–97.
12. The works from Aristotle's (384–322 b.c.e.) Organon (a collective term for his writings on logic) that had been translated into Latin by Porphyry and Boethius and that circulated in the early Middle Ages were known as the ars vetus or logica vetus. The Sophistical Refutations belonged instead to the other parts of the Organon, such as the Prior Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, and the Topics, which were translated in the twelfth century and later and which were designated as the ars nova or logica nova.
other controversi es evil after recognizing it,13 so too a dialectician cannot be lacking experience in sophisms, so that he may be able to protect himself from them. Nor will he have discernment in the principles of arguments, unless having recognized falsities as well as truths, he has the capacity to distinguish the second from the first and to differentiate each of the two thoroughly.
For this reason too, just as blessed Jerome attests, Solomon himself encourages us very much to recognize false as well as true forms of argument. For writing against the slanders of Magnus, an orator of the city Rome, just as we too now write against very much the same types, Jerome spoke thus, amid other words about that most wise Solomon:14
In the opening of Proverbs [Proverbs 1.1–6] he reminds that we should understand words of prudence and verbal artifices, parables and obscure speech, sayings of the wise and riddles, which are properly the realm of dialecticians and philosophers.15
For what does he understand by words of wisdom and verbal artifices, if not the incompatibility of true and false forms of argument? As we have said, these are so connected to each other, that a person who is ignorant of the false cannot be discerning in the true, since for the understanding of anything whatsoever, the 13. Abelard expresses the same thought in similar words in Theologia "Summi boni"
2.7, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 116, lines 70–72; Theologia Christiana 3.6, ed.
Buytaert, CCCM 12: 196, lines 61–63; Theologia "Scholarium" 2.29, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 421, lines 438–40; and Dialectica, ed. De Rijk, 469.
14. Magnus, a professor of rhetoric in Rome, was also the addressee of Jerome, Letter 70 (dated 397), ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 700–708, which contains the famous defense of retaining profane literature so long as it is treated like the captive woman in Deuteronomy 21.10–14 (by removing from it all that is earthly and idolatrous).
15. Jerome, Letter 70.2, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 701. In the Theologia Christiana 1.102,
2.2, and 2.119-a, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 113–14, lines 1312–16; 132, lines 19–23; and 186, lines 2–5; and in the Theologia "Scholarium" 1.162, 2.2, and 2.20, ed. Buytaert and Mews,
CCCM 13: 384, lines 1872–76; 406, lines 20–23; and 416–17, lines 313–17, Abelard adverts repeatedly to the idea expressed in this sentence, quoting it or closely paraphrasing it.
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knowledge of its opposite is needed. For no one will know virtues thoroughly who is ignorant of vices, especially since some vices are so close to virtues that because of their similarity they easily mislead many people, just as false argumentations entice very many into fault because of their similarity to true ones. Out of this arises not only the variety of propositions in dialectic, but also the multiplicity of errors in the Christian faith, since by the snares of their assertions wordy heretics entice into all manner of sects many naïve people, who, not at all trained in argumentations, take a likeness for the truth and a fallacy for reasoning.
The doctors of the Church themselves also remind us to train in disputations against this plague, so that what we do not understand in Scriptures, we may not only seek from the Lord by praying, but also search out from each other by disputing. From this concern comes also that observation of Augustine in his treatise
On Mercy when he explicated those words of the Lord "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you" [Luke 11.9]. "Ask," he said, "by praying, seek by disputing, knock by questioning," that is, by interrogating.16 For we are not equipped to rebut the attacks of heretics or of any infidels whatsoever, unless we are able to unravel their disputations and to rebut their sophisms with true reasonings, so that falsity may yield to truth and dialecticians may crush sophists. As blessed
Peter cautions, dialecticians are "always ready to satisfy everyone that asks us the reason for that hope (or faith) which is in us"
[1 Peter 3.15]. To be sure, when we have refuted those sophists in this disputation, we will display ourselves as dialecticians, and we will be truer disciples of Christ, who is the truth, by that much more as we attain greater power in the truth of reasoning.17
16. Pseudo-Augustine, Tractatus de oratione et eleemosyna, in PL 40: 1225–28, at 1227.
This passage also influenced Abelard in the Sic et non 1.28, ed. Boyer and McKeon, p. 117, lines 149–50; Theologia "Scholarium" 2.40, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 427, lines 615–16; and Collationes 2.75, ed. and trans. Marenbon and Orlandi, 96–97.
17. The interplays between Christ as the truth, wisdom, or word; logicians as fol-
other controversi es To come to the point, who would not know the art of disputation, by which term it is established that dialecticians as well as sophists are known without distinction?18 Indeed the very Son of God, whom we call "the Word," the Greeks name logos, which is the conception of the divine mind or God's wisdom, or reasoning.
On this basis too Augustine says in the forty-fourth chapter of the book On Eighty-Three Different Questions, "'In the beginning was the Word' [John 1.1], which is called logos in Greek."19 In the book
Against Five Heresies the same author says: "'In the beginning was the Word' [John 1.1]: the Greeks do better to say logos, inasmuch as logos signifies word and reasoning."20 So too Jerome wrote in his letter to Paulinus on the Sacred Scriptures:21
"In the beginning was the Word" [John 1.1]: logos signifies many things in Greek. For it is the word, principle, calculation, and cause of everything whatsoever, by which all things which exist are. Rightly we understand all of them in Christ.22 lowers of the word; and philosophers as lovers of wisdom are also elaborated in Abelard's Soliloquium, ed. Burnett, 889.
18. Smits marked the final clause as a crux because the passage appeared to him to be faulty. If something has indeed been omitted, the gist could be that both dialecticians and sophists are known for the art of disputation, which Abelard goes on to identify (with the backing of the Gospel of John) as logic.
19. De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, 53, in PL 40: 11–100, at 54. Other quotations of this passage will be found in Abelard, Theologia Christiana 16-a and 66-b, ed. Buytaert,
CCCM 12: 78, lines 1–2, and 295, lines 10–11; Theologia "Scholarium" (short redaction)
67, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 13: 428, lines 796–98; and Theologia "Scholarium" 1.59, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 341–42, lines 651–52.
20. The text is now ascribed not to Augustine but to Quodvultdeus (died 454), Adversus quinque haereses, ed. René Braun, CCSL 60 (1976): 288. Abelard quotes it in the Theologia Christiana 1.21 and 4.66-b, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12: 80, lines 254–57, and 295, lines 12–13; Theologia "Scholarium" (short redaction) 67, ed. Buytaert, CCCM 12:
428, lines 803–5; and Theologia "Scholarium" 1.60, ed. Buytaert and Mews, CCCM 13: 342, lines 656–58.
21. The addressee is Paulinus (353/4–431), bishop of Nola and future saint, who was taught early by Ausonius and became later a friend of Jerome, Augustine, and others.
22. Jerome, Letter 53.4, ed. Hilberg, CSEL 54: 449.
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Therefore, since the Word of the Father, Lord Jesus Christ, is called logos in Greek, just as it is named the sophia of the Father, this knowledge seems to relate very much to him which is connected with him also by name and which is by a certain derivation from logos called logic; and just as Christians seem properly to be so called from Christ, so is logic from logos.23
In addition, lovers of logic are all the more truly called philosophers as they are truer lovers of that higher sophia. Indeed, when that highest wisdom of the highest Father assumed our nature so that it might illuminate us with the light of true understanding and turn us from love of the world toward love of itself, it made us at once Christians and true philosophers.24 When he promised to the disciples that capacity of wisdom by which they might be able to rebut the arguments of those who contradicted them, and when he said "For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist" [Luke 21.15] (indeed after love [philo-] of him [sophia], on account of which philosophers are truly so called), obviously he promises them an arsenal of reasoning by which they may be made the highest logicians in disputing.25
That hymn of Pentecost "Beata nobis gaudia" (Blissful Joys to Us) carefully differentiates those two (which is to say, about this love and its teaching by which philosophers as well as highest logicians are produced), when it is said: "So that they may be fluent in words and aflame with charity."26 For that arrival of the heavenly
23. Compare Soliloquium, ed. Burnett, 889.
24. The wisdom of God is of course Christ (1 Corinthians 1.24: "Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God").
25. At the opening of the Historia calamitatum Abelard employed metaphors of weapons and warfares to characterize his commitment as a young man to dialectic; see ed. Monfrin, pp. 63–64, lines 25–28; trans. Radice, p. 3. On the pervasiveness of such metaphorics in his writing and on its meaning, see Andrew Taylor, "A Second
Ajax: Peter Abelard and the Violence of Dialectic," in The Tongue of the Fathers, 14–34.
26. The hymn (early tenth century), which remains the hymn for lauds on Pentecost and throughout the octave, is sometimes wrongly ascribed to Hilary (Schaller/
other controversi es Spirit, having been revealed in fiery tongues, conferred upon them these two things especially, that through love it should produce philosophers and through the power of reason the highest logicians. On this basis the Spirit was aptly made apparent in the likeness of fire and tongues, so that it might confer upon them love and eloquence in all manner of tongues.
To come to the point, who could not know that even the Lord Jesus Christ himself refuted the Jews in repeated disputations and crushed their slanders in writing as well as in reasoning, that he increased the faith very much not only by the power of miracles but also by the strength of words? To accomplish these ends, why did he not use miracles alone, by which the Jews particularly, who seek signs, would be motivated, if not because he decided to instruct us by his own example as to how through reasoning we might entice to faith even those who search for wisdom? The Apostle [Paul], differentiating between these two, said, "For the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom" [1 Corinthians 1.22], which is to say, that the Greeks are moved to faith very much by reasons, just as the Jews are especially by signs. Since, however, miraculous signs have now run short, one means of combat remains to us against any people who contradict us: that we may overcome through words, because we cannot do so through deeds, especially since among people of discernment reasoning carries greater force than miracles; it is easy to be uncertain whether or not a diabolic illusion produces miracles. On this basis the truth says, "There shall arise false prophets and [they] shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect" [Matthew 24.24].27
Könsgen, no. 1617). The most commonly used English version of the hymn begins with the words "Round Roll the Weeks." For the Latin text, see Arthur S. Walpole, ed., Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1922; repr.,
Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), 365–67, no. 115 (as well as AH 2: 50, no. 51, 27: 99, no. 42, 51:
97, no. 91). The hymn would have had special meaning to Abelard because it names the Paraclete prominently: "Beata nobis gaudia / anni reduxit orbita, / cum spiritus paraclitus / effulsit in discipulos."
27. "The truth" designates Jesus Christ (John 14.6: "I am the way, and the truth,
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But in fact you will say that even in logical reasoning error intrudes very much, so that when the reasons for arguments are advanced, it is not easily determined which should be accepted as reasonable and which should be rejected as sophisms. Thus, I say, it happens to those who have not acquired expertise in arguments.
So that this will not chance to happen, care must be expended upon the principle of reasoning (which is to say, of the teaching of logic), which as blessed Augustine recalls "is very valuable in delving into all types of questions which occur in sacred literature."28 And certainly this is needed among those teachers who, trusting that they are adequate in resolving questions, hardly escape them. and the life"). Abelard's text of Matthew 24.24 differs slightly from the Vulgate.
Additionally, the Douay-Rheims translates loosely the clause "ut in errorem inducantur."
28. De doctrina Christiana 2.31.48, ed. Josef Martin, CCSL 32 (1962): 65–66. As noted above when Abelard employed the same passage, he also uses it the Sic et non, Theologia "Summi boni," Theologia Christiana, Theologia "Scholarium," and Collationes.