Medieval Scholasticism
Medieval Scholasticism
A multiplicity of factors shaped Aquinas the person, the theologian, the scholar. A combination that put him point and center among the greatest Western intellectuals.
God planted Aquinas in fertile soil. As a young adult, Aquinas joined the relatively new order, the Order of the Friars Preachers, or the Dominicans, mendicant brothers equally devoted to scholarship and service to the Gospel. They offered freedom of movement and exploration of the world beyond cloister walls. The young Aquinas was allowed to mix with the best minds of the burgeoning medieval universities, and to encounter ancient philosophers of whom Aristotle became his central focus. Freedom to engage inter-religious and secular dialogue, and to explore the intimate relationships between nature and grace, presented for Aquinas the devout Christian and theologian a platform for unprecedented intellectual pursuit.
The way that Aquinas thought and wrote, and his pedagogy should be understood in the context of Medieval Scholasticism. Instead of the professor (or then, master) writing his syllabus, the curriculum was set forth in the charters of the school. There were clearly defined hoops a student had to jump through, first to earn his baccalaureate (equivalent to our graduate degree) that took six years, and then his masters--- another eight years--- required of anyone who wanted to teach. Of course, the universities admitted only men.
An authoritative text from ancient philosophers (Aristotle, Plato), theologians (Augustine, the church fathers, Muslims and Jews), not chosen by the teacher/master were the works to be read, disputed, and resolved. The introduction of Aristotle’s metaphysics, natural philosophy, and analytics influenced this pedagogy called scholasticism, a method that is believed to have dominated the schools from the twelfth century until the beginning of the seventeenth. Peter Abelard’s Sic et Non (12th century), demonstrated a scholastic approach to thinking and writing.
The university also put forth the principles of interpretation, or hermeneutic. The student’s job was to apply the principles of interpretation to exegete (take each word and section apart to examine the author’s meaning) the assigned texts. Commentaries are used today as aids to exegete texts from Scripture, for example, and are usually line-by-line explications. Then, a commentary a student might use to understand the texts, could be anything from exploring the essence of a word (what does the word “beginning” mean in Genesis 1, for example) to an essay written in the tone more like a sermon. Aquinas authored several commentaries, among them, his most important on Job, the Psalms, Matthew, John, and Paul’s Epistles.
If one was pursuing master status he had to deliver a disputation a couple of times during the academic year. The master would present a question to which the student would have to apply sophisticated logic to deliver a negative and a positive response. The student had to defend views he did not agree with. Another student was assigned to respond to the arguments of the one giving the dispute. The master met with the students to determine a resolution, or a systematic answer to the question in dispute. On this format Aquinas based all most of his work.
The university had a school of philosophy and of theology, among other “schools.” After a rigorous fourteen years of theological study, where the Bible was the central text, to earn his “Master in the sacred Page” ( the equivalent of our Ph.D.), Aquinas had to exegete and compile a commentary on The Sentences. This was a complex compilation of difficult texts from Scripture and the Church Fathers, compiled by Peter Abelard in 1160.
This was a piece from which Aquinas lectured over years, and it was groundbreaking for his original scheme: things proceed from God as their source, and they return to God in the end. His methodology clearly reflected the philosopher’s and a discussion of how he merges the two disciplines is forthcoming.
Therefore, it is important to understand that although he was quintessentially a theologian, his intellect stretched so far as to integrate philosophical metaphysics.
Aquinas’ genius lay in his ability to synthesize vast and disparate sources into intelligible and convincing discourse.
As such, any historian of philosophy must include Thomas Aquinas in his or her annals. At Aquinas’ death, masters in the Arts faculty at the University of Paris requested of the Dominican general chapter that Aquinas’ works begun there and not finished, be sent to them. It is amazing that masters in other disciplines were showing an interest in the work of a theologian, but one whose philosophy would be challenged, and venerated over the centuries.