Reason Faith Philosophy in The Middle Ages

Reason and Faith:
Philosophy in the
Middle Ages
Part I
Professor Thomas Williams
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Thomas Williams, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies,
University of South Florida
Thomas Williams, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at

the University of South Florida, received his B.A. in Philosophy from
Vanderbilt University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University
of Notre Dame in 1994. Before joining the faculty of the University of South
Florida in 2005, he taught at Creighton University and the University of Iowa,
where he received a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award in
2005. He was the Alvin Plantinga Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of
Religion at Notre Dame from 2005 to 2006.
Professor Williamss research interests are in medieval philosophy and theology
(with a focus on Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus) and the
philosophy of religion. He is the coauthor of Anselm, a volume in the Great
Medieval Thinkers series from Oxford University Press, with Sandra Visser. He
edited The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus and co-edited Thomas
Aquinas: Disputed Questions on the Virtues. His translations include
Augustines On Free Choice of the Will and Anselm: Basic Writings.
Professor Williams has contributed essays to four other volumes in the
Cambridge Companions seriesAugustine; Anselm; Abelard; and Medieval
Philosophyas well as essays for the Cambridge History of Medieval
Philosophy and The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas. Journals where his
articles have appeared include Modern Theology, Philosophy and Literature,
Apeiron, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and
Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie. He is on the editorial board of Studies in
the History of Ethics.
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Table of Contents
Reason and Faith: Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Part I
Professor Biography ........................................................................................... i

Course Scope ...................................................................................................... 1
Lecture One Faith Seeking Understanding.................................... 4
Lecture Two Augustines Platonic Background............................. 9
Lecture Three Augustine on Authority, Reason, and Truth ........... 13
Lecture Four Augustine on the Origin of Evil.............................. 16
Lecture Five Boethiuss The Consolation of Philosophy............. 19
Lecture Six Boethius on Foreknowledge and Freedom.............. 22
Lecture Seven Anselm and the 11th-Century Context..................... 25
Lecture Eight Anselms Proof That God Exists ............................ 28
Lecture Nine Anselm on the Divine Attributes ............................ 31
Lecture Ten Anselm on Freedom and the Fall ............................ 34
Lecture Eleven Abelard on Understanding the Trinity .................... 37
Lecture Twelve Abelard on Understanding Redemption.................. 40
Timeline ............................................................................................................ 43
Map ................................................................................................................... 46
Glossary ............................................................................................................ 48
Biographical Notes........................................................................................... 53
Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 57
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Scope:
The great medieval Christian thinkers would all have been bewildered by the
idea, widespread in contemporary culture, that faith and reason are
fundamentally at odds. Though their philosophical outlooks varied widely, they
were in general agreement that philosophical reasoning could and should be
used to defend and elucidate the doctrines of the Christian faith. This use of
philosophy took three main forms. First, medieval thinkers used philosophical
reasoning to prove the existence of God and to establish conclusions about the
divine attributes. Second, they used philosophical views about the acquisition of
knowledge to determine which Christian doctrines are beyond the scope of
rational demonstration. And third, they used philosophical argumentation to
defend Christian beliefs against objections and to establish the internal
consistency of Christian doctrine by showing the compatibility of Christian
beliefs that might appear to contradict each other. In making all three kinds of
arguments, medieval Christian thinkers felt free to adopt the views of non-
Christian philosophers when those views could be pressed into the service of
Christian teaching; and they were confident that the errors of pagan philosophy
could be exposed by the use of natural reason, without appealing to faith in a
supernatural revelation.
This general agreement about the proper roles of faith and reason provided a
certain continuity in the history of medieval philosophy, but there were striking
discontinuities as well. As new philosophical texts were discovered and new
techniques of argumentation introduced, as philosophical schools rose to
prominence or fell into eclipse, the ways in which medieval philosophers carried
out their project of faith seeking understanding changed dramatically. For
Augustine, at the beginning of the medieval period, philosophy meant
Platonism, but for Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, it was Aristotle, not
Plato, who was known simply as the Philosopher. Philosophers also had to
cope with changing fashions in theology, not to mention simple church politics.
Thus, Peter Abelard was the target of ecclesiastical harassment for making an
argument that Anselm had made, without controversy, a mere half-century
earlier.
Medieval philosophy began with Augustine (354430), who was deeply
influenced by the fundamental Platonic distinction between the intelligible
realmperfect, unchanging, and accessible only by the mindand the sensible
realmimperfect, ever-changing, and apprehensible by the senses. In some
strands of Platonic thought, these two realms are irreconcilably at odds; the fact
that our souls are embodied is a regrettable, if temporary, impediment to human
fulfillment. For Augustine, however, the sensible realm is created by God and
reflects his goodness. The temporal and embodied character of our experience
means that we must rely on authority in our quest for truth. Nonetheless, by
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reflecting on the imperfections and mutability of creatures, the human mind can
come to understand something of the unchanging perfection of the creator.
Precisely because we come to know God as both perfect and creator, Augustine
was faced with the perplexing problem of the origin of evil in a world created
by a perfect God.
Boethius (c. 476c. 526), writing a century later than Augustine, continued the
tradition of pressing pre-Christian philosophy into the service of Christian
thought. In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius turns to Philosophy,
personified as a woman, for comfort and reassurance that the world is justly
governed by divine providence. Philosophy argues that there is one God who
governs the universe and has power over all things, including human affairs.
She also undertakes to show how human freedom and moral responsibility are
possible, arguing that because God is eternalthat is, outside time altogether
he does not foreknow our actions (he simply knows them, timelessly) and our
actions are therefore not necessary in any sense that threatens freedom or moral
responsibility.
For nearly 500 years after the death of Boethius, there was little noteworthy
philosophical activity. In the 11th century, however, there was a revival of
philosophical techniques and their application to theological discussion. The
outstanding Christian philosopher of the 11th century was Anselm (10331109),
who developed an explicit and systematic account of what he called the reason
of faith: the intrinsically rational character of Christian doctrines in virtue of
which they form a coherent and rationally defensible system. Anselms most
famous contribution to Christian philosophy is his argument for the existence of
God, but his account of the divine nature has also had an enduring influence.
The leading 12th-century philosopher, Peter Abelard (10791142), is often
thought of as a theological rebel, but in fact, he was firmly in Anselms tradition
of elucidating and defending Christian doctrine in accordance with the standards
of philosophical reasoning. His controversial treatments of the Trinity and the
Atonement show a willingness to challenge received theological wisdom in the
pursuit of philosophical rigor.
The recovery of the full Aristotelian corpus by the end of the 12th century
revolutionized Christian thought in the Latin West. Aristotles thinking offered
a conceptual apparatus of obvious power and usefulness for philosophy and
theology, but many of Aristotles ideas were at odds with Christian doctrine.
Thirteenth-century thinkers had to figure out how to accommodate this new
material. Thomas Aquinas (c. 12251274), using the works of Aristotle as his
primary philosophical inspiration, developed arguments for the existence of
God, as well as an account of the powers and limits of human reason in knowing
God. He also drew on Aristotle for his understanding of human nature and
ethics. By contrast, Bonaventure (c. 12171274) was willing to borrow
Aristotelian doctrines when he found them helpful, but he argued passionately
against excessive enthusiasm in following Aristotle. Such excesses were
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attributed to the integral Aristotelians of the University of Paris, for whom
Aristotelian philosophy was a complete, freestanding account of the natural
world.
This engagement with Aristotelian philosophy, in all its different forms, made
the 13th century a particularly lively and inventive period in Christian
philosophy. This energy continued through the work of John Duns Scotus
(1265/661308) and William Ockham (c. 12881347). But Aristotelianism did
not remain dominant for long. Such thinkers as Nicholas of Autrecourt
(c. 12951369) and Nicholas of Cusa (14011464) marked a turn away from
Aristotle and toward a kind of Platonism that would become dominant during
the Renaissance.

Lecture One
Faith Seeking Understanding
Scope: The great medieval Christian thinkers would all have been bewildered
by the idea, widespread in contemporary culture, that faith and reason
are fundamentally at odds. Though their philosophical outlooks varied
widely, they were in general agreement that philosophical reasoning
could and should be used to defend and elucidate the doctrines of the
Christian faith. They used philosophical reasoning to prove the
existence of God and to establish conclusions about the divine
attributes. They also tried to determine which Christian doctrines are
beyond the scope of rational demonstration by examining philosophical
views about how human beings acquire knowledge. They used
philosophical argumentation to defend Christian beliefs against
objections and to establish the internal consistency of Christian
doctrine by showing the compatibility of Christian beliefs that might
appear to contradict each other. They felt free to adopt the views of
non-Christian philosophers when those views could be pressed into the
service of Christian teaching, and they were confident that the errors of
pagan philosophy could be exposed by the use of natural reason,
without appealing to faith in a supernatural revelation.
Outline
I. The great medieval Christian thinkers would all have been bewildered by
the idea that faith and reason, or theology and philosophy, are
fundamentally at odds. For them, both the techniques and the content of
philosophy are (by and large) compatible with the Christian faith.
A. All of them agreed that philosophical reasoning can and should be used
to defend and elucidate the doctrines of the Christian faith.
1. They used philosophical reasoning, in many cases borrowed from
pagan philosophers, to prove the existence of God and to establish
conclusions about the divine nature.
2. On the basis of philosophical doctrines about the nature and scope
of human knowledge, they distinguished between Christian
doctrines that can be known by reason alone and those that can be
known only by faith.
3. They used philosophical argumentation to defend Christian beliefs
against objections and to establish the internal consistency of
Christian doctrine by showing the compatibility of Christian
beliefs that might appear to contradict each other.
B. All of these great thinkers took a generally accommodating attitude
toward pagan philosophy.

1. They felt free to adopt the views of non-Christian philosophers
when they could be pressed into the service of Christian teaching,
as well as on matters on which Christian teaching was silent.
2. They were (in general) confident that the errors of pagan
philosophy could be exposed by the use of natural reason, without
the need to appeal to supernatural revelation.
3. They held that Christianity can be shown to be superior to pagan
philosophy by the standards accepted by the pagan philosophers
themselves.
II. In spite of these broad areas of agreement, however, medieval philosophy is
far from monolithic. The contours of the accommodation between faith and
reason changed as particular philosophical systems and techniques came
into widespread use or fell into disfavor.
A. In this course, we will examine the contributions of the most influential
thinkers throughout the period, both for their intrinsic philosophical
importance and as illustrating the development of Christian
engagement with issues of faith and reason.
B. Augustine is representative of early medieval philosophy in several
ways.
1. He is heavily influenced by Platonism, which was the dominant
philosophical outlook well into the 12th century.
2. What Augustine takes from Platonism is not so much a set of
precise doctrines or arguments but a general outlook. Thus, he is
concerned more with elaborating a vision than with articulating
precise reasons in support of a thesis. This more visionary or
holistic approach is typical of early medieval philosophy.
C. Boethius is, broadly speaking, in the same tradition as Augustine
though as the primary transmitter of philosophical logic in the early
medieval period, he is more technically minded than Augustine and
provides more careful support for Platonic-Augustinian theses.
D. Beginning in the 11th century, philosophy becomes more focused on
the development of careful argument. This development becomes even
more pronounced with the reintroduction of the complete works of
Aristotle in the late 12th and early 13th centuries.
1. The 11th century saw a renewed emphasis on careful argument in
the service of elucidating and defending Christian doctrine.
Anselm defended recognizably Augustinian views, but his method
was very unlike Augustines: a more-or-less continuous series of
precise arguments.
2. In the 12th century, Peter Abelard conceived an ambitious project
of reformulating Christian doctrine in a rationally coherent way.

3. The reintroduction of Aristotle in the late 12th and early 13th
centuries gave Christian philosophers the materials to develop
systematic theories using analytically precise and highly technical
methods. At the same time, it posed new problems for the
relationship between faith and reason, because Aristotle had put
these methods to use in arguing for conclusions that were seen as
incompatible with Christian teaching.
E. Even in the period of Aristotelian dominancethe 13th and early 14th
centuriesa variety of approaches to questions of faith and reason
were possible.
1. Bonaventure cast traditionally Augustinian positions in
Aristotelian language but generally resisted the claims of
Aristotelian philosophy to provide an adequate account of the
natural world, let alone the supernatural world.
2. Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus largely agreed in their
views about what we can know about God using the methods of
Aristotelian philosophy; they also shared a generally Aristotelian
view of knowledge. But they drew quite different conclusions
from that view in their account of religious language.
3. William Ockham was also heavily influenced by Aristotle, but he
was much more skeptical about the prospects for a purely
philosophical knowledge of God.
F. In the 14th century, as the Aristotelian tradition began to lose its
dominating position, new philosophical stances came to the fore and,
with them, new ways of understanding the relationship between faith
and reason.
III. Within the historical narrative just outlined, certain authors and certain
topics will receive particular attention.
A. Though medieval philosophers wrote on an astonishingly wide range
of topics, we will consider only those that have an obvious connection
with the central topic of faith and reason:
1. How, in general, do human beings come to know anything? And in
light of the answer to that question, how (if at all) can human
beings come to know about God apart from supernatural
revelation?
2. What are the attributes of God, and how do those attributes bear on
other philosophical topics? For example, can divine
foreknowledge be reconciled with human free will?
3. If indeed God is unimaginably different from the objects of our
ordinary experience, how can we use our languagewhich is
derived from such experienceto talk about God?

4. Can such Christian doctrines as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and
the Atonement be defended against charges of irrationality and
incoherence?
B. This course focuses on the history of philosophy; we will not be
concerned either with matters of revealed theology or with intellectual
history more broadly.
1. Revealed theology (or just theology, for short) takes some kind of
supernatural revelation as its starting point, whereas philosophy
takes its starting point from premises that are accessible to unaided
human reason. Natural theologythe project of trying to prove the
existence and nature of God by reason alone, without relying on
supernatural revelationis, thus, a part of philosophy and not of
(revealed) theology.
2. The chief concern of the historian of philosophy is what people
thought and what arguments they brought forward in support of
what they thought, whereas the intellectual historian is more
attentive to external contextual influences on what people thought.
3. Given the relative isolation of medieval philosophy from broader
currents of the time, a history-of-philosophy approach is especially
fitting, though we will examine broader contextual matters where
appropriate.
C. Though many topics receive frequent discussion throughout the period,
we will concentrate on particularly influential or striking examples.
1. For example, although nearly all medieval Christian philosophers
discussed the claim that God is outside of time, we will examine
the discussion of the topic in Boethiuss Consolation of
Philosophy, which was particularly influential.
2. Anselm and Abelard made similar arguments against a traditional
theory of the Atonement, but only Abelard got into hot water for
them; thus, we will consider Abelards discussion.
Essential Reading:
Stephen P. Marrone, Medieval Philosophy in Context, in A. S. McGrade, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy.
Paul Vincent Spade, Medieval Philosophy.
Supplementary Reading:
David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought.
Thomas Williams, Some Reflections on Method in the History of Philosophy.

Questions to Consider:
1. In what ways does the medieval discussion of the relationship between faith
and reason challenge contemporary assumptions?
2. How does the significance of reason change over the course of the
Middle Ages in light of changing philosophical interests and approaches?

Lecture Two
Augustines Platonic Background
Scope: Platonic philosophy draws a fundamental distinction between the

intelligible realmperfect, unchanging, and accessible only by the
mindand the sensible realmimperfect, ever-changing, and
apprehensible by the senses. According to Plato, the objects of the
senses are merely imperfect copies of what is ultimately real, but
because we inhabit bodies, which bombard us with sensation and entice
us with pleasure, we find it difficult to know those ultimate realities. To
remedy this blindness, we need to detach our souls from our bodies as
much as possible. Although Augustine (354430) finds this Platonist
picture compelling and adopts much of it, he also sees that Christian
belief requires him to modify it in several ways. The doctrine of the
Incarnation in particular challenges Platonisms negative assessment of
the body and the material world.
Outline
I. Platonism was Augustines primary philosophical inspiration.
A. Augustine puts his encounter with Platonism at the center of the
Confessions.
B. Two developments reduce his overt appeals to Platonism as his career
progresses.
1. As Augustine immerses himself in Scripture, scriptural language
and imagery tend to supplant Platonist language and imagery.
Moreover, his reading of Scripture (particularly of Saint Paul)
provides an independent starting point for philosophical reflection.
2. Augustines discovery of anti-Christian writings by one of the
leading Platonists forces him to establish a critical distance
between Platonism and his own thinking.
C. Nevertheless, Augustine can be aptly described as a Platonist to the end
of his days. Even his interpretation of Scripture has a recognizably
Platonist cast.
D. What Augustine took from the Platonists was not so much a set of
doctrines as a particular outlook and approach. The essentials of
Augustines Platonic outlook can be best conveyed by means of an
extended analogy.
1. Imagine that you are a high-school senior who has found the one
and only perfect partner, Pat.

2. You leave your hometown to go to college; Pat remains behind.
Yet you remain committed to Pat and seek to maintain as much of
a relationship as you can, in spite of the distance.
3. Eventually, however, yielding to loneliness and to the importunity
of friends, you agree to go out with Chris. Chris, though no Pat, is
enough like Pat to be attractive to you.
4. Gradually, you become involved with Chris and forget about Pat
altogether.
E. The analogy illustrates the fundamental Platonic contrast between the
perfect and the imperfect, the changeless and the changing, the
intelligible and the sensible.
1. Your hometown is the world of what is perfect, unchanging, and
accessible only by the mind (intelligible). It is your true homeland,
the only place in which you can have perfect peace and rest.
2. Pat represents something in that perfect, unchanging, intelligible
world that will give you that peace and rest.
3. College is the world of what is imperfect, changing, and busy: the
world of what can be apprehended by the senses (sensible, as
opposed to intelligible).
4. Chris represents the imperfect, sensible things that we spend our
lives chasing after, even though they can never truly bring us that
perfect peace and rest.
II. Platonism exploits this fundamental contrast between intelligible and
sensible in at least three important ways that influence Augustine.
A. In metaphysics, the part of philosophy that asks questions about the
fundamental structure of reality, it supports the doctrines of
participation and emanation.
1. Sensible things are said to participate in (or imitate) certain perfect
and unchanging realities that Plato called Forms.
2. These sensible things emanate (literally, flow forth) from an
unchanging first principle, the One. The further something is from
the One, the less good it is.
B. In epistemology, the part of philosophy that asks questions about the
nature and acquisition of knowledge, this fundamental contrast leads to
a certain ambivalence about sensible things.
1. On the one hand, because sensible things participate in the Forms,
they can remind us of the Forms.
2. On the other hand, because sensible things are deficient, they can
also blind us to the Forms.

3. The general tendency of Platonism is to emphasize the epistemic
dangers posed by sensible things, rather than their epistemic
usefulness.
C. In ethics, this fundamental contrast supports an emphasis on asceticism
and moral purification. Given that what blinds us to our true intelligible
homeland is sensation and sensation is a function of the body, it is very
important to the Platonist to separate the soul from the body as much as
possible.
III. Although Augustine accepts this general Platonic outlook, his Christian
belief requires him to modify its application in several ways.
A. In metaphysics, he accepts participation but rejects emanation. God
creates all things, including sensible things, freely and by choice.
Given that God creates sensible things, it is no longer open to
Augustine to say that sensible things as such are bad.
B. This metaphysical revision requires a revision in the ethical
application, as well.
1. The body is a divine creation, not an evil, shadowy pseudo-reality
that only gets in the way of our true happiness. Its dangerousness
lies not in its distance from the good but in its tendency to
monopolize our attention and pervert our imagination.
2. The mere metaphysical distance of sensible things from God is
not a fall, because it is in accordance with Gods perfect will that
there be highly limited, changeable, material beings, including
bodies. But moral depravity is truly a fall. This is the moral revolt
against Gods ordering of things, the deliberate choice to prefer the
lower to the higher or to choose the lower for its own sake rather
than for Gods sake.
C. Augustine continues to accept the Platonists epistemological
application of the contrast, but he seems much more interested in the
reminding aspect than in the blinding aspect. He concentrates on ways
in which we can use sensible things as a springboard for coming to
know intelligible reality.
Essential Reading:
J. M. Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized.
Augustine, Confessions, Book VII.
Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography.
James J. ODonnell, Augustine: A New Biography.

1. To what uses does Augustine adapt the fundamental Platonist contrast
between the intelligible and the sensible?
2. In what ways does his Christian belief require Augustine to modify or even
reject his Platonic inheritance?

Lecture Three
Augustine on Authority, Reason, and Truth
Scope: Augustine argues that every human beings search for truth must begin
with the acceptance of authority, not merely in religion, but in all areas
of human life. Historical claims in particular must be accepted or
rejected on the basis of authoritative testimony. Christianity involves
such historical claims, and Augustine seeks to show that it is
reasonable to accept the testimony on which Christianity rests. Yet
although Augustine emphasizes the importance of believing, he affirms
that human reason, properly exercised, is capable of coming to some
knowledge of God. By reflecting on the imperfections and mutability
of creatures, the human mind can come to understand something of the
unchanging perfection of the creator.
Outline
I. Augustine was a crucial figure in the development of the notion that a
religion is a body of teaching about historical and metaphysical realities.
A. For many people in Augustines day and before, religion was primarily
a matter of what people did, not what they believed. Similar attitudes
are in evidence today among those who are not concerned with
doctrine but participate in worship because it works for them in some
way.
B. Augustine criticizes philosophers before him who were willing to
participate in religious rituals that were at odds with their philosophical
beliefs. Augustines viewthat ritual and teaching must be
consistentmarks an important turning point and remains influential to
the present day.
II. If we are to evaluate religion in terms of truth, we must ask how human
beings attain truth. When this question is posed with reference to religious
matters, it is often referred to as the problem of faith and reason.
A. Faith and reason seem to be opposed in several ways.
1. They involve different methods of arriving at beliefs. Faith relies
on testimony; reason relies on evidence and examination.
2. They involve different contents. Faith involves belief in such
things as the Trinity and the Incarnation, which seem incompatible
with basic principles of reason.
3. They seem to involve different ways of holding beliefs. Faith
involves commitment; reason involves detachment.

B. This standard way of contrasting faith and reason, though not entirely
inapplicable to Augustine, misrepresents Augustines approach in three
crucial ways.
1. It treats both faith and reason entirely as ways of acquiring
beliefsas cognitive processes. But for Augustine, both faith and
reason involve not only our cognitive side but also our affective
side.
2. It ignores the purpose of seeking the truth. Until we know what
knowledge is for, we cant evaluate whether faith or reason or both
might serve that aim.
3. It assumes that there is such a thing as a purely rational approach
to the truth, so that faith involves a repudiation of the purely
rational life that would otherwise be possible. But Augustine
denies that any such purely rational approach to truth is possible.
III. Augustines account of how we attain truth is called the theory of
illumination. Though the theory is not much more than an extended analogy
between sight and intellectual vision, it does help make sense of
Augustines emphasis on the importance of the affective side in our
attainment of truth.
A. The theory of illumination presents knowledge as an analogue to
vision.
1. In order for physical vision to take place, we need the power of
vision itself, the presence of a visible object, light, and the proper
direction of our eyes.
2. Analogously, for intellectual vision to take place, we need the
power of intellectual vision (the mind itself), the presence of the
intelligible object, some kind of intelligible light, and the proper
direction of our wills.
B. The proper direction of our wills is the only requirement for intellectual
vision that is not always met. Consequently, failure of intellectual
vision will always be traceable in some way to a failure of will: that is,
to sin in some form.
IV. The purpose of seeking truth is transformation rather than information.
A. For someone so committed to the life of the mind, Augustine places a
strikingly low value on the possession of knowledge.
1. He argues in the Confessions that knowledge is valuable only
insofar as it leads one to love and honor God.
2. He applies this analysis even to biblical interpretation: Knowledge
of Scripture is not a destination in itself but merely a vehicle by
which we might be carried toward our destination.

B. In principle, reliance on authority (that is, on testimony taken to be
reliable and definitive) can be as valuable for transformation as reliance
on reason. In fact, Augustine is convinced that the humility necessary
for acceding to authority is in itself a precondition for transformation.
V. A successful search for truth will always involve reliance on authority at
some point. Because this is true in everyday life, it should not surprise or
dismay us that it is true with respect to Christianity, as well. Faith is simply
reliance on divine authority.
Essential Reading:
Augustine, Confessions and On Free Choice of the Will.
J. M. Rist, Faith and Reason, in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine.
Ronald H. Nash, The Light of the Mind: St. Augustines Theory of Knowledge.
Thomas Williams, Biblical Interpretation, in Eleonore Stump and Norman
Kretzmann, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine.
1. What is the role of the will in knowledge, according to Augustine? What
are his philosophical reasons for giving the will so great a role?
2. Under what circumstances, and for what purposes, is the pursuit and
attainment of knowledge valuable, according to Augustine?

Lecture Four
Augustine on the Origin of Evil
Scope: According to Augustine, given that God is good, everything he creates

is good, and given that God is the creator, nothing exists that he does
not create. The origin of evil is, therefore, a particularly perplexing
problem for Augustine. Part of his solution is to argue that evil, in
itself, is not anything. It is a mere privation: a lack of measure, form, or
order. The other part of his solution is to blame moral evilthe
privation of goodness in the willon human free choice. Moral evil
enters the picture when we misuse our free choice to turn away from
the perfect goodness of God to the fragmentary and defective goodness
of creatures. Yet even though free choice comes with the potential for
misuse, God was right to give it to us, because we cannot live rightly
without it.
Outline
I. Augustine begins his dialogue On Free Choice of the Will by asking, Isnt
God the cause of evil? The question seems surprising because it expects an
affirmative answer.
A. If God is ultimately responsible for the whole of creation and there is
evil in creation, it seems that God must be responsible for evil. But if
God is responsible for evil, he acts unjustly in punishing sinners.
B. The question of the origin of evil was the first philosophical question to
get a grip on Augustine, and he remained deeply interested in the
question throughout his career.
C. His inability (at first) to answer the question drove him to the
Manichees, who taught that evil was independent of, and co-eternal
with, good. Augustine credits the Platonists with providing the answer
he was seeking.
II. Augustine comes to his account of good and evil by reflecting on God and
his relation to creation.
A. God is incorruptible and immutable.
1. God is a being so great that one cannot even conceive of a being
that would be greater. Given that the incorruptible is greater than
the corruptible and the immutable greater than the mutable, God
must be incorruptible and immutable.
2. Augustine learns from the Platonists that if God is to be
incorruptible and immutable, he must be entirely outside of space
and time, just as truth is. In fact, God is identical with truth.

B. Things other than God have being because they are from God and are
in some ways like God. But they also lack being because they are not
wholly what God is. They are corruptible and extended in space and
time.
C. By reflecting on the logic of corruptibility, Augustine comes to see that
evil is a privation (that is, a mere lack or absence).
1. There are two ways in which something can be incorruptible:
either by being supremely good or by not being good at all.
2. Corruption by definition involves damage, and if something is not
at all good, it cannot be damaged. Thus, everything that can be
corrupted has to be, in some sense, good. If something is
completely corruptedthat is, deprived of all goodnessit will
then be incorruptible, but only in the sense that it will not exist at
all.
3. Thus, everything that exists is good insofar as it exists. Evil is not
a substance (a positive reality in its own right) but merely a
privation. In other words, evil is nothing more than a lack of
goodness where goodness ought to be.
III. Goodness consists in measure, form, and order; evil is a privation of
measure, form, or order.
A. By measure Augustine means the greatness or excellence of a nature.
The more measure a thing has, the more it resembles God.
1. It is in this sense that angels are better than human beings and that
worms and vipers are low-level goods.
2. One could speak of the privation of this form of good as
ontological evil, though Augustine does not use such language.
Ontological evil is not evil in any worrisome sense, because the
things that suffer from such evil are still good insofar as they
exist.
B. Augustine uses form to refer to the extent to which a given thing lives
up to the standards of its nature.
1. It is in this sense that a virtuous human being is better than a
vicious human being. (Every human being has the same measure.)
2. The most noteworthy privation of form is moral evil. The origin of
moral evil is a particularly perplexing question and will be treated
independently below.
C. Augustine uses order to refer to the harmonious arrangement of things.
1. The privation of order would be called natural evil, but
Augustine argues that there is no privation of order.
2. The appearance of disorder in the universe results from our limited
perspective. If we could grasp the arrangement of the whole

cosmos, we would see that it is perfectly ordered by divine
providence.
IV. Augustine devotes sustained attention to the origin of moral evil, which is a
deprivation of form.
A. Augustine argues that the human wills initial turning from good to evil
must be uncoerced and, therefore, a matter for which human beings are
themselves responsible.
1. If God created human nature in such a way that the fall was
inevitable, God would be blameworthy for our evil will.
2. Thus, it is the human will itself that is responsible for its own
turning from good to evil.
3. There remains, however, a degree of mystery. Because evil is a
nothing, the human turn to evil is, in one sense, inexplicable.
B. Note that immoral acts subsequent to the original sin could, in
principle, be explained in the same way or differently. Augustine
comes more and more to emphasize the ways in which an inherited
defect in human nature interferes with, or perhaps completely
eliminates, our freedom.
1. Pursuing the details of this development would take us very far
afield and require consideration of theological and scriptural
matters.
2. Nevertheless, to the end of his career, Augustine remains
concerned to uphold the justice of God.
Essential Reading:
Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will and Confessions, Book VII.
Eleonore Stump, Augustine on Free Will, in Eleonore Stump and Norman
Kretzmann, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Augustine.
1. What is the significance of Augustines view that evil is a privation, and
how does Augustine arrive at that view?
2. How does Augustines understanding of goodness as measure, form, and
order complicate his account of the origin of evil?

Lecture Five
Boethiuss The Consolation of Philosophy
Scope: Deposed from high government office and imprisoned on charges of

treason, Boethius (c. 476c. 526) composed The Consolation of
Philosophy, in which Philosophy, personified as a woman, appears to
offer him comfort and reassure him that human affairs are governed by
an all-encompassing providence. Many readers have wondered why
Boethius, a Christian, would turn to philosophy rather than to theology
or Scripture for consolation during his troubles. But because his grief
stems from his inability to see that everything in the universe comes
together to form a single, rationally coherent system, the therapy that
he needs must come from reason, as manifested in Philosophy.
Philosophy argues that there is one God who governs the universe and
has power over all things, including human affairs.
Outline
I. Boethiuss Consolation of Philosophy, written when Boethius was exiled
and in prison, was one of the most influential books ever written in Latin. It
takes the form of a dialogue between the prisoner Boethius and Philosophy,
personified as a woman.
A. Both its imagery and its arguments became part of the common stock
of medieval ideas.
B. Its interpretation poses a problem, however, because it does not seem
explicitly Christian. Why would a Christian author turn to philosophy,
not to faith, in the greatest crisis of his life?
1. Some interpretations suggest that Boethius was never more than
superficially Christian and that his real loyalty was to pagan
philosophy.
2. Others emphasize the Christian imagery and language of the
Consolation and present it as a thoroughly Christian work.
3. Intermediate between these two views is a third: Boethius set out
to write a philosophical rather than a theological work in order to
emphasize what Christians had in common with the best pagan
thought, as representatives of civilization over against the
barbarians who had falsely accused and imprisoned him.
C. The prisoners main complaint is that divine providence leaves human
affairs ungoverned, so that the wicked have power and the good suffer
at their hands. The Consolation, therefore, examines the nature of
providence, its relation to human affairs, and the nature of good and
evil, moving outward from one mans feelings about a specific

historical situation to a timeless, global, Gods-eye view of the whole
sweep of the universe.
II. Boethius first complains about the loss of good fortune.
A. Philosophy replies that it is of the nature of fortune to be fickle.
B. Moreover, the goods of fortune are not true goods.
III. What, then, are true goods? Philosophy begins to answer this question by
examining false goods.
A. Everyone seeks happiness: a good so complete that it leaves nothing
more to be desired.
B. Misguided people seek to attain happiness through wealth, public
office, kingship, celebrity, and pleasure. Yet these false goods do not
even provide the partial happiness for the sake of which people pursue
them.
C. People seek these goods as if they were separate things, when in fact,
they are all one. True happiness is an all-encompassing good.
D. Such happiness cannot be found in transient things.
IV. God is the perfect good and the source of happiness.
A. There has to be a perfect good that is the source of all goods.
B. That good has to be in God, because we already believe that nothing
better than God can be imagined. We must further admit that God is the
source of his own goodness and is, indeed, identical with that
goodness.
C. Further, given that divinity and happiness are the same thing, it follows
that human beings become happy by attaining divinity.
V. Recall that all the imperfect goods can be recognized as imperfect because
they are partial; the perfect good must be a unity. Thus, the one and the
good (or unity and goodness) are the same.
A. We can see this by looking at the natural tendency of things to maintain
their unity and integrity and noting that when a thing loses its unity
altogether, it ceases to exist.
B. Thus, all things desire or aim at unity, which means that all things
desire or aim at the good.
C. This good, the one God, governs the universe, as we can see from the
way in which all the disparate natures that inhabit the universe form a
single coherent system.
Essential Reading:
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy.

John Marenbon, Boethius.
1. How does the discussion of happiness in The Consolation of Philosophy
serve as part of Philosophys answer to the challenge posed by the prisoner
Boethius?
2. In what specific ways do human beings misconceive, and therefore, miss
happiness?

Lecture Six
Boethius on Foreknowledge and Freedom
Scope: The Consolation of Philosophy is best known for its influential

discussion of the problem of divine foreknowledge and human
freedom. Boethius worries that if Gods foreknowledge is both
comprehensive and infallible, our actions are necessary. We cannot do
anything other than what we, in fact, do because we cannot act in such
a way that God turns out to have been mistaken. Yet it is hard to see
how we could ever deserve blame or punishment for doing wrong, or
praise or reward for doing right, if we never have the power to do
anything other than what we do. Philosophy undertakes to show how
human freedom and moral responsibility are possible within Gods
providential governance of the universe. She explains that God is
eternalthat is, outside time altogetherso that he does not foreknow
our actions; he simply knows them, timelessly. She then uses the
doctrine of divine eternity to show how our actions are not necessary in
any sense that threatens freedom or moral responsibility.
Outline
I. Philosophys arguments to this point have solved one problem only to
introduce another: If God is really as powerful and good as she says, why
are there evils?
A. Philosophy sets a high bar for herself: She plans to argue that the
powerful men are in fact always the good, while the wicked are always
the abject and weak; that vices never go unpunished, nor virtues
unrewarded; that the good always achieve success, and the wicked
suffer misfortune.
1. Success in human action depends on two things: will and power.
Everyone, whether virtuous or wicked, wants to attain happiness,
but the wicked dont attain it. Therefore, we must conclude that
they lack the power to attain it.
2. Boethius objects: Dont evil men clearly have power, given that
they are able to do evil? Philosophy replies: No, because evil is
nothing, the power to do evil isnt really power at all.
3. Because goodness is the reward everyone seeks, the virtuous
person has his reward simply in virtue of being good.
4. Just as virtue itself is the reward of the good, wickedness itself is
the punishment of the wicked. Wickedness demeans the wicked
person and transforms him into an animal.

B. Boethius is willing to accept these arguments, but he still expresses the
wish that these wild animals were not allowed to go on rampages and
destroy the good.
1. Philosophy replies that they are not allowed to do so. Their
schemes often come to bad ends, and in any event, death soon
overtakes them.
2. Philosophy also notes that the wicked are actually worse off when
their schemes succeed: Its bad to desire evil but even worse to
achieve it.
C. Yet Boethius notes that even the wise would prefer wealth, respect,
status, and power at home to poverty and disgrace in exile.
1. Philosophy invokes divine providence in answer to reassure
Boethius. Boethius, however, insists on more than reassurance; he
wants an explanation.
2. Philosophy notes that such an explanation will have to include a
discussion of several complicated issues: fate, chance, divine
foreknowledge, predestination, and free will. The discussion of
foreknowledge and free will is the chief philosophical legacy of
the Consolation of Philosophy.
II. In Book V of the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius offers a solution of
enduring value to the problem of foreknowledge and freedom. In the course
of laying out his solution, he also offers the classic discussion of the
doctrine of divine eternity.
A. The problem of foreknowledge and freedom is an argument purporting
to show that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human free
choice.
1. What God foreknows must be the case.
2. What must be the case is not subject to human free choice.
3. God foreknows all our future actions.
4. Therefore, our future actions are not subject to human free choice.
B. Philosophy says that the solution depends on a correct understanding of
two things: the nature of Gods foreknowledge and the nature of
necessity (the must referred to in II.A.1 and II.A.2).
C. Gods knowledge of the future is not properly called foreknowledge at
all, because God is eternal.
1. Eternity is the complete and perfect possession of illimitable life
all at once.
2. Gods life is not successive, as ours is. He has no past or future but
only an all-encompassing, eternal present.
3. Consequently, his foreknowledge is analogous to our own vision of
something present, as when we watch a chariot race.

D. The necessity involved in Gods knowledge of the future is not
incompatible with free choice.
1. Its true that if we see the charioteer doing something, he must
be doing it, yet we do not suppose that this must in any way
interferes with the charioteers free choice.
2. This is the same kind of necessityBoethius calls it conditional
necessitythat attaches to what God foreknows.
3. Thus, what God foreknows is conditionally necessary. But
something that is conditionally necessary can still be subject to
human free choice. Therefore, the original argument for the
incompatibility of foreknowledge and freedom fails.
Essential Reading:
Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy.
John Marenbon, Boethius.
1. What is the problem of foreknowledge and freedom, and what is
Philosophys solution to the problem?
2. What role does the doctrine of divine eternity play in the Consolation?

Lecture Seven
Anselm and the 11th-Century Context
Scope: For nearly 500 years after the death of Boethius, there was little
noteworthy philosophical activity. The 11th century saw a revival of the
techniques of philosophical argument known as dialectic and of their
application to theological discussion. Though leading 11th-century
figures differed in emphasis and temperament, there came to be
considerable agreement that it was appropriate to use dialectic both to
elucidate Christian doctrine and to defend it. But it remained for
Anselm (10331109) to develop an explicit and systematic view of the
place of dialectic in theology. Anselm speaks of the reason of faith,
the intrinsically rational character of Christian doctrines in virtue of
which they form a coherent and rationally defensible system. The
doctrines of the Christian faith are intrinsically rational because they
concern the nature and activity of God, who is himself supreme reason
and exemplifies supreme wisdom in everything he does. And because
human beings are rational by nature, we can grasp the reason of faith.
Outline
I. There was little noteworthy philosophical activity from Boethius to
Anselm.
A. The political instability caused by the fall of Rome and the various
barbarian invasions was hardly conducive to intellectual life
generally.
B. The education of the period was primarily literary and historical, rather
than philosophical.
C. The only noteworthy philosopher of the period was John Scottus
Eriugena, who wrote during the relative calm of the Carolingian era
(9th century). He had no subsequent influence to speak of, except as a
translator, but the story of his death is worth knowing.
II. For no reason that we can discern, the 11th century saw a revival of
dialectic. According to a standard picture of the period, the disputes over
the relationship between dialectic and Christian theology produced three
main camps.
A. Rationalists, typified by Berengar of Tours, maintained the absolute
supremacy of reason and disdained reliance on authority of any kind.
B. Obscurantists, typified by Saint Peter Damian, privileged faith and
authority; they were highly skeptical of dialectic or even overtly hostile
to its use.

C. Moderates, typified by Lanfranc of Bec, held that dialectic, properly
used and within certain limits, was compatible with Christian faith.
III. The reality, however, was far more complicated than this standard picture
suggests.
A. Berengar was not a thoroughgoing rationalist; he accepted Christian
doctrines on the basis of authority. He used dialectic to formulate those
doctrines in intelligible ways and to argue against mistaken construals
of doctrine.
B. Damian was hostile to what he regarded as improper uses of dialectic,
but he did not oppose the use of dialectic in principle.
C. Thus, in Anselms immediate intellectual context, there is a general
consensus that it is appropriate to use dialectic for at least two
purposes:
1. Dialectic can be used to elucidate Christian doctrine, that is, to
explain what it means and guard against misinterpretation.
2. Dialectic can be used to defend Christian doctrine, that is, to argue
against challenges to the truth or intelligibility of Christian
doctrine.
D. It remains for Anselm to work out a clear and explicit doctrine of the
powers and limits of human reason.
IV. Anselm offers a clear and well-worked-out view on the relationship
between faith and reason.
A. Anselm has a very high view of the powers of reason and of the need
for philosophical examination of authoritative texts.
1. He thinks many items of Christian belief can be definitively
established by reason alone.
2. He thinks reason can even establish the truth of the doctrines of the
Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement.
3. He thinks the content of authoritative texts cannot even be
definitively determined without the use of reason.
B. Anselm thinks of faith primarily as a volitional rather than an epistemic
state; faith is what purifies the heart and will so that reason does not get
misdirected.
C. To someone who already has faith, the primary use of reason is to
penetrate more deeply into what is already believed.
D. Anselms claim that I believe in order to understand is not
inconsistent with his belief that reason can establish many truths of the
Christian faith. He holds that faith is needed to discover the arguments,
whereas any sufficiently well-disposed and intelligent person can
follow those arguments.

Essential Reading:
Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, The Reason of Faith, in Anselm.
Thomas Williams, Saint Anselm.
Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century.
1. In what ways did political and institutional factors contribute to keeping
philosophical activity in abeyance between Boethius and the 11th century?
2. What does Anselm mean by the reason of faith? How does he understand
the relationship between faith and reason?

Lecture Eight
Anselms Proof That God Exists
Scope: At the request of his monks, Anselm composed the Monologion, a

template for philosophical reflection on the nature of God, starting
from premises that were widely accessible. Anselm was dissatisfied
with the complex argumentation of the Monologion; he wanted a single
argument that established a whole range of conclusions about God at
once. That single argument, which Anselm presents in the Proslogion,
has come to be known as the ontological argument. By exploring the
conception of God as that than which a greater cannot be thought,
Anselm argues, we can prove not only that God exists but that he is
wise, just, good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and so forth. Almost
immediately, Anselms argument was criticized by a monk named
Gaunilo, who complained that if Anselms argument proved the
existence of a greatest conceivable being, it also proved the existence
of the greatest conceivable island, which is nonsense.
Outline
I. Anselms argument for the existence of God, which has come to be known
as the ontological argument, has proved to be his most enduring
contribution to philosophy.
A. Anselm offered several independent proofs of the existence of God in
his first major work, the Monologion. The Monologion, written at the
request of his monks, was intended to be a template for philosophical
reflection on the nature of God, starting from premises that were
accessible even to those who do not accept the authority of Scripture or
the fathers of the church.
B. Anselm was dissatisfied with the Monologion because it involved a
complex chain of argumentation; he wanted a single argument that
established a whole range of conclusions about God at once.
C. Anselm became so preoccupied with his search for that single
argument that he came to regard it as a temptation from the devil, but
he found it impossible to give up on the idea. When the argument
finally came to him, he presented it in a new work, the Proslogion.
II. The ontological argument is an attempt to show that merely by examining
the concept of God, we can see that God does and, indeed, must exist.
A. God is a being than which a greater cannot be thought.
B. Because we can conceive of such a being, this being exists in our
minds, in the way that a painting exists in the mind of a painter who
has yet to paint it.

C. To exist in reality is greater than to exist only in the mind. Thus, if we
think of God as existing only in the mind, we can think of something
greater than God. But God is that than which nothing greater can be
thought.
D. It follows, then, that God exists in reality as well. In fact, it is
incoherent to suppose that that than which nothing greater can be
thought exists only in the mind.
III. Variations on this argument can be used to establish not just the existence
of God but also Gods perfect goodness, omnipotence, justice, and so forth.
It can thus serve as the single argument for which Anselm had been
searching.
IV. The reception of Anselms argument was influenced by his first critic, a
monk named Gaunilo, who complained that if Anselms argument proved
the existence of a greatest conceivable being, it also proved the existence of
an island than which no greater island can be thought.
A. Gaunilo ingeniously constructs an argument that he believes is exactly
parallel to Anselms but with an absurd conclusion.
B. He also argues that God is so beyond human comprehension that we
cannot say that that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in
our minds.
C. Anselm replies that Gaunilo has misunderstood the original argument.
The argument for a greatest conceivable island is not actually parallel
to the argument for a greatest conceivable being.
D. Moreover, Anselm argues, it is possible to conceive of God to the
degree necessary for his argument to work.
V. The ontological argument itself has been largely rejected by philosophers
(although there is no consensus about where, exactly, its failure lies). But
Anselms conception of God as that than which nothing greater can be
thought remains influential even today.
Essential Reading:
Anselm, Monologion, Proslogion, and the exchange with Gaunilo, in Anselm:
Basic Writings.
Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, The Argument of the Proslogion, in
Anselm.
Brian Davies, The Ontological Argument, in Brian Davies and Brian Leftow,
eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm.

1. What is the purpose of the ontological argument?
2. Why, according to Anselm, is Gaunilos lost island argument not parallel
to his own ontological argument?

Lecture Nine
Anselm on the Divine Attributes
Scope: The ontological argument establishes so many different divine

attributes that it is difficult to see how one and the same being can
possess all of them at once. For example, God is supposed to be both
merciful and impassible; but to be impassible is to be incapable of
emotion, whereas mercy seems to require the emotion of compassion.
Anselm devotes considerable attention to dissolving such apparent
contradictions in his account of the divine attributes. The picture of
God that emerges is at odds with well-entrenched popular conceptions
of God and even seems to contradict Scripture, but Anselm argues
powerfully that his own conception of God is both rationally grounded
and theologically superior.
Outline
I. Once Anselm has established the existence of God in the Proslogion, two
main tasks remain.
A. First, he must figure out what (if anything) we can know about God on
the basis of the ontological argument, besides the fact that he exists.
This is important because the whole point of the ontological argument
was to provide a single argument from which we could derive a great
deal of information about the divine nature.
B. Second, he must demonstrate that those attributes are consistent with
each other. If one of Gods attributes contradicts another, then God is
logically impossible, and the whole argument falls apart. And at first
glance, it does seem that some of Gods supposed attributes contradict
other ones.
II. The first task proves to be altogether straightforward.
A. Given that God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, we
know that God is whatever it is greater to be than not to be.
B. On this basis, Anselm is able to argue that God exists through himself,
that everything else depends on him for existence and well-being, that
God is unlimited in power and knowledge, that God is just, and so on.
C. The various attributes of God, Anselm argues, are not, in fact, many
distinct attributes; they are all identical with God and with each other.
1. If Gods various attributes were distinct from God himself, God
would be dependent on something other than himself to be what he
isin violation of the principle that God is utterly independent of
everything other than himself.

2. Nevertheless, we have to use a variety of distinct concepts in
trying to think of the one simple divine nature.
III. The second task is considerably more difficult. Anselm has to resolve
several apparent contradictions among the divine attributes that are
generated in the course of completing the first task.
A. It appears that Gods mercy contradicts his impassibility.
1. Mercy implies compassion, but if God is impassible (incapable of
feeling emotion), he does not experience compassion.
2. Anselm distinguishes between the affect of compassion, which
God does not experience, and the effect of compassion, which we
do experience. God acts mercifully without experiencing any
emotion.
3. Given his Platonic-Augustinian intuitions about value, Anselm did
not feel the need to argue that impassibility is better than
passibility. Nevertheless, it is possible to defend the doctrine of
divine impassibility against contemporary objections that an
impassible God would be cold and impersonal.
B. It appears that Gods omnipotence contradicts his justice.
1. If God is omnipotent, he can do everything, but if God is perfectly
just, he cannot lie.
2. Anselm argues that omnipotence should not be construed as the
ability to do everything but as the possession of all power. The
power to lie is not really a power at all but a kind of weakness.
Therefore, omnipotence does not require the ability to lie; it
actually excludes such an ability.
3. Anselms account of omnipotence has the resources to answer the
Paradox of the Stone: Can God create a stone so heavy that he
cannot lift it?
C. It appears that Gods mercy contradicts his justice.
1. If God is just, he will punish the wicked; if God is merciful, he
will spare the wicked.
2. Anselm first appeals to Gods goodness. If God is to be
unsurpassably good, he must be good both to the wicked and to the
good.
3. He then argues that Gods justice to himself requires God to show
mercy to sinners.
4. The philosopher can trace the conceptual relations among
goodness, justice, and mercy and show that God not only can but
must have all three; still, no human reasoning can hope to show
why God displays his justice and mercy in precisely the ways in
which he does.

IV. Anselms arguments concerning the divine attributes illustrate three general
points about his philosophical method and his continuing relevance to
philosophy.
A. His arguments show the techniques of dialectic at work. Anselm
frequently solves a problem by distinguishing between two different
senses of an expression or noting two different ways in which a
statement might be true.
B. Anselm is unswerving in his commitment to exploring the reason of
faith. Although he does not think that reason can uncover everything,
he is convinced that reason can go a long way toward making the
Christian faith intelligible.
C. Although most philosophers think that the ontological argument fails as
a proof for the existence of God, many contemporary philosophers of
religion think that Anselms conception of God as that than which
nothing greater can be thought is the most promising basis on which
to think about God and his attributes.
Essential Reading:
Anselm, Proslogion, in Anselm: Basic Writings.
Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, The Divine Attributes, in Anselm.
Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm.
1. How does Anselm use the ontological argument to generate a list of divine
attributes? How does this use of the argument relate to the arguments
original purpose?
2. How does Anselms discussion of the divine attributes extend and clarify
his understanding of Gods greatness?

Lecture Ten
Anselm on Freedom and the Fall
Scope: Saint Paul asked the Corinthians, What do you have that you have not
received? He expected the answer nothing. But Anselm notes that if
literally everything we haveevery desire, every choice, every
actionis received from God, it is God who deserves all the praise for
the good we do and all the blame for the evil we do. Anselm explains
how we can reconcile human freedom and moral responsibility with the
claim that everything we have is received from God. Rational creatures
receive two fundamental inclinations from God: an inclination to
choose what they think will make them happy and an inclination to do
what they believe they ought to do. When they choose to act on one of
these inclinations in preference to the other, that choice is not received
from God, and thus, they can be held responsible for it.
Outline
I. Anselm introduces the problem of freedom and the fall by quoting from
Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 4:7): What do you have that you have not
received?
A. Pauls question clearly expects the answer nothing. But if, in fact, we
have nothing but what we have received from God, it becomes difficult
to see how we deserve credit for anything good or blame for anything
bad.
B. Anselm explicitly applies Pauls question to the angels, not to human
beings.
1. By discussing the fall of the angels, Anselm excludes a number of
complications that arise in the case of human beings but are
extraneous to Anselms main interest. (This is typical of the way in
which medieval thinkers use angels in their philosophical
discussions.)
2. Nonetheless, what Anselm says about angels will apply to human
beings, because the human will is structurally the same as the
angelic will, and the question about our moral responsibility is also
the same.
C. The essence of the problem is that the angels that did not fall had the
gift of perseverance. If creatures have nothing that they have not
received, the good angel had perseverance because he received it from
God. Accordingly, the bad angel lacked it because he didnt receive it
from God; thus, the fall of the devil was Gods fault.
II. Anselms initial solution to the problem is that God gave all the angels the

will to persevere, but the evil angels abandoned that will. In order to
understand this solution, however, we must explore Anselms account of
freedom and his theory of motivation.
A. Anselm defines freedom as the power to preserve rectitude of will for
its own sake.
1. Freedom is not the power to sin or not to sin. God is free, but he
cannot sin.
2. Because rectitude of will preserved for its own sake is Anselms
definition of justice, Anselms definition of freedom is explicitly
moral: Freedom is the capacity for justice.
B. Anselm argues that rational natures (angels and human beings) are
motivated by two sorts of considerations. He calls them justice and
advantage; in contemporary language, we could call them morality
and happiness.
C. The angels who abandoned the will to persevere did so because they
willed something else in preference to justice.
1. Anselm acknowledges that he cannot identify what this
something extra was.
2. When the evil angels abandoned their will for justice, God
punished them by taking away all their happiness.
3. God gave the good angels that something extra as a reward for
their choice to preserve justice. As a result, the good angels can no
longer sin.
III. Anselm elaborates the necessary conditions for free choice by imagining an
angel that is created one step at a time.
A. An angel with only the will for happiness would necessarily will
happiness. Such an angel would be neither praiseworthy nor
blameworthy, because his will would be the work and gift of God.
B. Similarly, an angel with only the will for justice would necessarily will
what is just.
C. An angel with both wills, however, can initiate an action that is not
received entirely from God.
D. These considerations show that it was impossible for God to make a
free creature who would be guaranteed not to fall.
E. Anselms view clearly implies that there is something the angels did
not receive from God: the content of their free choice either to
persevere or to reject perseverance. Anselm recognizes this implication
but is cagey about stating it openly.

Essential Reading:
Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil, in Anselm: Basic Writings.
Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselms Account of Freedom, in Brian
Davies and Brian Leftow, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Anselm.
Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm.
1. Why does Anselm use a discussion about angels to answer a question about
human beings?
2. What are the two fundamental motivations that Anselm recognizes, and
how do the two of them together provide the necessary condition for free
choice?

Lecture Eleven
Abelard on Understanding the Trinity
Scope: Peter Abelard (10791142) was famously a wreck in his personal life
and constantly at odds with ecclesiastical authority (his works were
condemned at two church councils), but he was the outstanding
philosopher and theologian of the 12th century. Although he
acknowledged that God surpasses the power of human understanding,
he was not willing to make the incomprehensibility of God an excuse
for obscurity or careless thinking. Christian doctrine, he argued, must
be elucidated and defended in accordance with the standards of
philosophical reasoning. Abelard took this approach most persistently
(and most controversially) to the doctrine of the Trinity. Through the
use of philosophical techniques, we can show that the doctrine of the
Trinity makes sense and can be defended against any objections.
Outline
I. Abelards life explains a lot about the difficulties he encountered in his
academic career.
A. His combativeness and intellectual arrogance made enemies of his
teachers.
B. His infamous romance with Heloise demonstrated his impetuousness.
Its brutal conclusion was the occasion for his entering monastic life and
focusing on his theological work.
II. One of Abelards primary interests was a wide-ranging effort to reformulate
Christian doctrine in a rationally coherent way. The doctrine of the Trinity
was at the center of this project.
A. Abelard wrote three treatises on Christian theology, each focused on
the Trinity.
1. The first treatise, written around 1120, was condemned by the
Council of Soissons in 1121, and Abelard was forced to burn it.
2. Undeterred, Abelard elaborated his arguments in a second treatise,
which was twice as long and added a great deal of praise for pagan
philosophers. This second treatise was left unfinished when
Abelard abandoned it to produce a third.
3. Thanks to a vigorous propaganda war and clever ecclesiastical
maneuvering by Bernard of Clairvaux, the third treatise was
condemned at the Council of Sens in 1141. This condemnation put
an end to Abelards teaching career.
B. Three general features of Abelards engagement with Trinitarian
doctrine reveal his approach to questions of faith and reason.

1. Abelard placed his specific reflections on the Trinity in the context
of a general account of the scope and limits of human knowledge.
2. He argued that pre-Christian philosophers recognized the
Trinitarian nature of God. Consequently, we can see that the
doctrine of the Trinity can be grasped (to some extent) by reason
alone.
3. He insisted on the use of philosophical techniques to elucidate and
defend the doctrine of the Trinity. The fact that God is ultimately
beyond human comprehension does not excuse sloppy thinking or
entitle us to take refuge in vague claims about mystery.
III. Abelard situates his reflections on the Trinity in the context of a general
account of the scope and limits of human knowledge. Although it is
difficult to make out exactly how Abelard envisions the relationship
between faith and reason, it is clear that he denies the possibility of any
genuine conflict between the two.
A. He says that except by divine illumination, no one can learn the least
thing. If all learning, of whatever kind, is a product of divine
illumination, we can expect that what is learned by means of authority
will cohere with what is learned by means of reason.
B. Reason itself also reveals that God far exceeds what can come under
human discussion or the powers of human intelligence. Thus, reason
recognizes its own limits and the consequent need to accede to
authority.
C. Because God exceeds the powers of human reason, it is both proper
and necessary to use similitudes (analogies) in talking about God.
IV. As evidence that the doctrine of the Trinity can be grasped by reason,
Abelard cites what he regards as adumbrations of the doctrine in pre-
Christian philosophers.
A. Pagan philosophers had knowledge of the Trinity both by reason and
by grace.
1. Abelards need to defend his citation of pagan writers says a lot
about the intellectual climate of the time.
2. Abelard brings forward pagan witness that the Word was
generated (was begotten), that the Word (the Son) and the Father
are co-eternal, and that the Holy Spirit as a third person proceeded
from God and the Word.
B. Abelard probably goes further than is necessary (or wise) when he
defends the claim that Gentile philosophers before Christ were saved,
even though he does so in part by appealing to Paul.
V. Because there is no conflict between reason and authority and because the
adumbrations of Trinitarian doctrine in pre-Christian philosophers

demonstrate that the Trinity is amenable to rational investigation, Abelard
insists on developing a rational account of the Trinity that dissolves its
apparent paradoxes.
A. The ultimate incomprehensibility of God is not a license for obscurity.
By using similitudes, arguments, and careful philosophical
distinctions, we can at least approximate the truth about God.
B. The fundamental issue in making sense of the doctrine of the Trinity,
Abelard holds, requires getting clear on the various kinds of sameness
and difference.
1. The doctrine of the Trinity requires (for example) that the Father
and the Son be the same God but different persons. If the three
persons are not the same God, Abelard will fall into the heresy of
tritheism; if the three persons are not distinct from each other, he
will fall into the heresy of modalism.
2. Believing that the traditional accounts of sameness and difference
(deriving from Boethius) are not sufficient, Abelard develops a
more fine-grained account by appealing to everyday things that
can serve as analogues to the way in which the three persons are
both the same and different.
3. This account allows him to speak coherently of the relations of
sameness and difference that must hold within the Godhead
according to the doctrine of the Trinity.
Essential Reading:
Peter King, Peter Abelard.
Jeffery Brower, Trinity, in Jeffrey Brower and Kevin Guilfoy, eds., The
Cambridge Companion to Abelard.
1. On what grounds did Abelards teaching on the Trinity run afoul of the
orthodoxy of his day?
2. Does Abelard treat the doctrine of the Trinity any differently from the way
he would treat any other problem in metaphysics?

Lecture Twelve
Abelard on Understanding Redemption
Scope: Abelards theory of the Atonement shows the complexities of his

engagement with both authority and reason. He developed his theory in
commenting on Pauls Letter to the Romans, accepting the authority of
the scriptural text but showing how its meaning can be made clear only
through philosophical analysis. He risked ecclesiastical censure by
rejecting a widely held theory of the Atonement on the grounds that it
makes no philosophical sense. He also tried to show how an
understanding of the divine nature enables us to adjudicate among rival
theories of the Atonement. According to Abelard, the death of Christ
delivers us from the punishment for the sin of our first parents, thereby
inspiring our gratitude and enabling us to serve God out of love rather
than out of fear.
Outline
I. The Christian doctrine of the Atonement states that the suffering, death, and
resurrection of Christ effect a reconciliation between God and human
beings. Various theories of the way in which the Atonement works have
been proposed, and Abelard got in trouble for revising or rejecting the
dominant theories of his own day.
A. Theories of the Atonement can be classified as objective or subjective.
1. Objective theories describe the Passion itself as accomplishing
something. For example, a penal substitution theory holds that
Christ undergoes on our behalf the punishment owed to us for sin;
a ransom theory holds that Christs death pays a ransom owed to
the devil in order to free us from his control.
2. Subjective theories locate the efficacy of the Passion in us. For
example, an exemplarist theory holds that the Passion is simply a
manifestation of divine love that awakens an answering love in the
believer.
B. It is commonly said that Abelard both rejects objective theories and
accepts a subjective, exemplarist theory. Neither claim is true, though
neither claim is entirely without foundation.
C. As in the case of Trinitarian doctrine, Abelard seeks an account of the
Atonement that is philosophically defensible and coherent. His
arguments against the theories he rejects are purely philosophical ones.
II. Abelard discusses the Atonement in his commentary on Pauls Letter to the
Romans.
A. The commentary has two overarching themes:

1. Abelard insists that Paul always wishes to exalt divine grace at the
expense of human merit. Accordingly, he denies Pelagianism, the
view that it is possible to act well without divine grace.
2. We are meant to serve God out of love rather than out of fear.
B. A purely exemplarist theory does not fit the themes of the Romans
commentary at all well. Though Abelard will emphasize the subjective
transformation brought about by the Passion (in accordance with the
second theme), he also has to acknowledge an objective aspect,
because otherwise, our response to the Passion would bring about our
own redemption (in violation of the first theme).
III. Before he explains what the objective element is, Abelard explains what it
is not. He rejects the ransom theory (thereby incurring the wrath of Bernard
of Clairvaux).
A. The elect are, by definition, not under the jurisdiction of the devil.
B. The only right the devil could have over human beings would be one
given by God.
1. The devil had wrongly seduced us, thereby gaining no right over
us.
2. It would be more fitting for us to have some right over the devil
than vice versa.
3. The devil lied in promising immortality.
C. Human beings sinned only against God, and it is therefore up to God to
forgive.
IV. The objective element in the Atonement, Abelard argues, is our release
from what we might call the objective dominion of sin: that is, our being
liable to the punishment for sin. Thus, Abelard teaches a theory of penal
substitution.
V. There is also a subjective dominion of sin, which is disordered desire
concupiscence. The Passion also delivers us from disordered desire.
VI. The question is whether the Passion delivers us from disordered desire
naturally or supernaturally. If it is does so naturally, Abelard will be open to
Bernards charge of Pelagianism.
A. Abelard emphatically affirms that no one acts well apart from grace.
But the text Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (Romans 9:13)
poses a problem for this view.
1. It appears that God acts unjustly. Abelard argues, however, that
God can treat human beings however he pleases without doing
them any injustice.

2. Yet even if God is not blameworthy for giving grace to some but
not others, it certainly appears that human beings are not at fault if
they act badly because they have not received grace.
3. In response, Abelard first argues that God is not blameworthy,
because he offers grace to saints and sinners alike. Sinners are
blameworthy for rejecting grace.
4. The problem with this response, as Abelard sees it, is that (if we
are to avoid Pelagianism) we must say that it takes grace to accept
grace.
5. Abelards unstated assumption in his solution to this problem is
that the grace we need in order to accept grace is just Gods
creating our nature appropriately.
B. In light of these arguments, one cannot entirely acquit Abelard of
Pelagianism in his attempt to offer a philosophically palatable account
of the Atonement. It depends on how we define Pelagianism.
1. If we define it as the view that one can act rightly apart from grace,
then Abelard is no Pelagian.
2. But if we define it as the view that human beings in their present
state can will rightly through an unaided exercise of their power of
free choice, then Abelard is an unapologetic Pelagian. Any other
view, Abelard thinks, would be inconsistent with what we know
about the nature of God.
Essential Reading:
Thomas Williams, Sin, Grace, and Redemption, in Jeffrey Brower and Kevin
Guilfoy, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Abelard.
Gustav Aulen, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of
the Idea of the Atonement.
Philip Quinn, Abelard on Atonement: Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary,
Illogical, or Immoral About It, in Eleonore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith.
1. How does Abelards overall interpretation of the Letter to the Romans
constrain his account of the Atonement?
2. What are the subjective and objective elements in the Atonement as
Abelard understands it? How do those elements work together?

Timeline
354 .................................................. Birth of Augustine

387 .................................................. Augustine baptized by Ambrose of Milan
397 .................................................. Augustine writes the Confessions
411 .................................................. Augustine becomes aware of the influence
of Pelagius
430 .................................................. Death of Augustine
c. 476 .............................................. Birth of Boethius
526 .................................................. Execution of Boethius
c. 540 .............................................. Benedict writes his Rule
711 .................................................. Moors control Spain
768814 .......................................... Reign of Charlemagne
800 .................................................. Birth of John Scottus Eriugena
877 .................................................. Death of John Scottus Eriugena
910 .................................................. Beginning of Benedictine monastic reform
at Cluny
1033 ................................................ Birth of Anselm
1054 ................................................ Schism between Western and Eastern
Churches
10731085 ...................................... Papacy of Gregory VII, a period of
extensive church reform
10761078 ...................................... Anselm writes the Monologion and
Proslogion
1079 ................................................ Birth of Peter Abelard
10851090 ...................................... Anselm writes On the Fall of the Devil
1090 ................................................ Birth of Bernard of Clairvaux
1093 ................................................ Anselm becomes archbishop of Canterbury
1095 ................................................ First Crusade begins
1099 ................................................ Crusaders take Jerusalem
1109 ................................................ Death of Anselm
1115 ................................................ Bernard founds monastery at Clairvaux

1121 ................................................ Abelards theology condemned by the
Council of Soissons
c. 1128 ............................................ Latin translations of Aristotles new logic
made by James of Venice in Constantinople
Council of Sens
1142 ................................................ Death of Abelard
1153 ................................................ Death of Bernard of Clairvaux
1206 ................................................ Birth of Albert the Great
1208 ................................................ Beginning of the Order of Friars Minor
(Franciscans)
1215 ................................................ Statutes of the University of Paris approved
by the papal legate
1216 ................................................ Beginning of the Order of Preachers
(Dominicans)
1217 ................................................ Birth of Bonaventure
1225 ................................................ Birth of Thomas Aquinas
1243 ................................................ Bonaventure joins the Franciscans
1253 ................................................ Death of Robert Grosseteste, translator of
Aristotles Ethics
12561259 ...................................... Aquinas is Dominican regent master of
theology at Paris; begins Summa contra
Gentiles
1259 ................................................ Bonaventure writes The Journey of the Mind
to God
1265/66 ........................................... Birth of John Duns Scotus
1266 ................................................ Aquinas begins Summa theologiae
theology at Paris for the second time
1274 ................................................ Death of Bonaventure; death of Thomas
Aquinas
1277 ................................................ The bishop of Paris condemns 219
propositions
1280 ................................................ Death of Albert the Great
c. 1288 ............................................ Birth of William Ockham

1295 ................................................ Birth of Nicholas of Autrecourt
13051307 ...................................... John Duns Scotus is Franciscan regent
master of theology at Paris
1308 ................................................ Death of John Duns Scotus
1309 ................................................ The papal court moves to Avignon
1324 ................................................ Ockham is called to Avignon to answer
charges of heresy
1328 ................................................ Ockham flees Avignon under cover of
darkness
1337 ................................................ The Hundred Years War begins
1347 ................................................ Death of William Ockham; the Black Death
1369 ................................................ Death of Nicholas of Autrecourt
1377 ................................................ The papal court returns to Rome
1378 ................................................ Rival claimants to the papacy create the
Great Schism
1401 ................................................ Birth of Nicholas of Cusa
1417 ................................................ The Council of Constance ends the Great
Schism
1453 ................................................ Fall of Constantinople
1464 ................................................ Death of Nicholas of Cusa

1. Duns, Scotland: John Duns Scotus was born in Duns in 1265 or 1266.
2. Oxford: Oxford was the leading English university in the 13th and 14th
centuries.Both John Duns Scotus and William Ockham were educated there. Robert
Grosseteste was chancellor of the university from 1215 to 1221.
3. London: William Ockham taught philosophy in London from 1321 until he was
summoned to Avignon in 1324.
4. Canterbury: Lanfranc of Bec was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to
1089.Anselm was Archbishop from 1093 to 1109.
5. Moerbeke, Flanders: William of Moerbeke was born here around 1215.
6. Brabant, Flanders: Siger of Brabant was born here in 1240.
7. Cologne: Albert the Great taught at Cologne from 1248 to 1254; Thomas Aquinas
was his student there and then began teaching in his own right. Scotus began teaching
at Cologne in 1307 and died there the next year.
8. Laon: John Scottus Eriugena resided at the court of the Charles the Bald from 845.
9. Soissons: The Council of Soissons condemned Abelards teaching in 1121.
10. Bec, Normandy: Anselm studied in Bec (under Lanfranc) from 1059, became prior
of Bec in 1063, and became abbot of Bec in 1078a post he held until becoming
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093.
11. Paris: Abelard tutored and married Hlose here in the 1110s and was castrated by
her relatives. The University of Paris, which received its official charter in 1215, was
the leading European university in the 13th and early 14th centuries. Albert the Great
taught at Paris from 1245 to 1248; Thomas Aquinas was among his students.
Bonaventure was Franciscan master of theology at Paris (12541257) while Aquinas
was Dominican master of theology (12561259, 12681272). The Condemnation of
1277 was issued by the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier. Scotus was Franciscan
master of theology from 1305 to 1307.
12. Chartres: A ground of Platonically-inclined theologians and philosophers
flourished at Chartres in the 12th century.
13. Sens: Condemnation by the Council of Sens (1141) ended Abelards teaching
career.
14. Munich: Ockham was in Munich under the protection of Ludwig of Bavaria from
1329 until his death in 1347.
15. Nantes: Abelard was born here in 1079.
16. Brixen: Nicholas of Cusa was Bishop of Brixen from 1450 to 1464.
17. Cluny: The Abbey of Cluny was the center of monastic reform in the 12th century.
Its abbot, Peter the Venerable, welcomed Peter Abelard and mediated with Bernard
of Clairvaux after Abelards condemnation by the Council of Sens in 1141.
18. Aosta: Anselm was born in Aosta in 1033.
19. Pavia: Boethius was exiled to Pavia, where he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy
and was executed around 526.
20. Ravenna: King Theodoric employed Boethius as head of government c. 520
21. Avignon: The papal court was at Avignon from 1309 to 1377. Ockham was
summoned to Avignon to answer charges of heresy in 1324, and he fled in 1328.
22. Bagnoregio: Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza) was born in Bagnoregio in 1217.
23. Rome: Boethius was born in Rome around 476.
24. Aquino: Thomas Aquinas was born in Aquino in 1225.
25. Hippo: Augustine was ordained a priest in 391, served as bishop from 395 until his
death in 430, and wrote his major works (including the Confessions and City ofGod),
in Hippo.
26. Tagaste: Augustine was born in Tagaste in 354.

Glossary
absolute power: Gods ability to act beyond the limits of nature as discerned by
reason (as contrasted with ordained power).
accidental form: In Aristotelianism, a form that can begin or cease to
characterize a thing without affecting the things identity (for example, color,
size).
active (agent) intellect (nous poietikos in Greek; intellectus agens in Latin): In
Aristotelianism, the power that creates intelligible objects out of the objects of
sensation.
actuality (energeia in Greek; actus in Latin): In Aristotelianism, the state of
actually being a certain way (as opposed to potentiality).
analogy: A use of language in which a single term has different but related
meanings.
aseity: From the Latin a se, from himself; Gods aseity is his complete
independence from anything other than himself, not merely with respect to his
existence but with respect to every feature or quality that he possesses.
concupiscence (concupiscentia in Latin): Excessive or disordered desire.
dialectic: In medieval educational theory, techniques of philosophical reasoning
that involve distinguishing the meanings of ambiguous terms and developing
rigorous arguments; see also trivium.
Dominican: A member of the Order of Preachers, founded in the early 13th
century to teach, preach, and defend the Christian faith.
emanation: In neo-Platonism, the necessary flowing forth of all things from
the One.
epistemology: The part of philosophy that asks questions about the nature and
acquisition of knowledge.
equivocity (aequivocitas in Latin): A use of language in which a single term has
two or more unrelated meanings.
eternity (aeternitas in Latin): According to Boethius, the complete and perfect
possession of illimitable life all at once; a mode of existence in which there is
no before and after.
everlasting (sempiternus in Latin): Existing at all times or having endless
temporal duration (as contrasted with eternity).
exemplarism: A theory of the Atonement according to which the effectiveness
of the death of Christ is limited to its serving as an inspiring example of divine
love.

fideism: Exclusive reliance on faith, at least in theological matters (as opposed
to rationalism).
form: (1) In Platonism (idea or eidos in Greek; idea in Latin), the perfect
paradigm of a quality or nature; for example, the Form of the Good or the Form
of Beauty. (2) In Aristotelianism (morphe in Greek; forma in Latin), a
constituent of a thing that gives it actuality (see substantial form and
accidental form).
fortitude (fortitudo in Latin): The virtue in the sensitive appetite by which we
are disposed to overcome obstacles that stand in the way of our attaining what
reason recognizes as good.
Franciscan: A member of the Order of Friars Minor (Order of Lesser Brothers),
founded in the early 13th century to carry out the ideals of Saint Francis of
Assisi.
illumination: The divine enlightening of the human intellect so as to enable it to
grasp intelligible things (variously interpreted by different medieval thinkers).
immutable: Incapable of undergoing change.
impassible: Incapable of experiencing emotion.
infused virtues (virtutes infusae in Latin): Virtues poured in by God (as
contrasted with natural virtues).
integral Aristotelians: Medieval philosophers who treated Aristotelian
philosophy as a complete, freestanding account of the natural world. Also called
Latin Averroists.
intellectual appetite: The capacity for rational desire (as contrasted with
sensitive appetite). Thomas Aquinas identifies the will with intellectual
appetite.
intelligible: Knowable by, or accessible to, the mind or intellect (as opposed to
sensible).
irenic separatism: An expression used to describe Ockhams approach to the
relation between faith and reason that avoids both fideism and rationalism.
justice (iustitia in Latin): The virtue in the will by which we are disposed
properly toward the common good.
Latin Averroists: See integral Aristotelians.
Manicheism: A sect that taught that evil is independent of, and co-eternal with,
good.
metaphysics: The part of philosophy that asks questions about the fundamental
structure of reality.

motion (kinesis in Greek; motus in Latin): In Aristotelianism, change in quality
or size or place.
mysteries of faith (mysteria fidei in Latin): In Thomas Aquinas, Christian
doctrines that cannot be proved philosophically and, therefore, must be taken on
faith (as contrasted with preambles to faith).
natural law: In Thomas Aquinas, the self-evident principles on which all
practical reasoning is based; in John Duns Scotus, the necessary and self-evident
moral truths that even God cannot change.
natural theology: The project of trying to prove the existence and nature of
God by reason alone, without relying on supernatural revelation.
natural virtues (virtutes naturales in Latin): Virtues acquired by practice or
teaching (as contrasted with infused virtues).
nominalism: The denial that there are universal entities.
Ockhams razor (Occams razor): Also known as the principle of ontological
parsimony; the methodological principle that one should not posit more entities
or kinds of entities than are necessary to explain something.
ordained power: Gods ability to act within the limits of the natures he has
created (as contrasted with absolute power).
participation: In Platonism, the way in which particular finite things resemble
or imitate the perfect paradigms (Forms).
passive intellect (nous pathetikos in Greek; intellectus passivus in Latin): In
Aristotelianism, the storehouse of intelligible objects; the initially blank slate on
which the active intellect writes ideas.
Pelagianism: The denial of the need for divine grace for right action. The
heresy gets its name from the British monk Pelagius (c. 354c. 420), whom
Augustine accused of magnifying human freedom at the expense of divine
grace.
penal substitution theory: The theory of the Atonement according to which
Christ undergoes the punishment for sin on behalf of human beings
potentiality (dynamis in Greek; potentia in Latin): In Aristotelianism, the state
of being possibly but not actually a certain way (as opposed to actuality).
practical reason: The kind of thinking that aims at making or doing something
(as opposed to theoretical reason).
practical wisdom/prudence (prudentia in Latin): The virtue of practical
reason that enables someone to ascertain readily, in particular circumstances,
how to attain the human good.

preambles to faith (praeambula fidei in Latin): In Thomas Aquinas, Christian
doctrines that can be proved philosophically, without appeal to revelation (as
contrasted with mysteries of faith).
privation: A lack or absence.
propter quid argument: An argument from the essence of a thing to some
feature that it possesses.
quadrivium: In medieval educational theory, the secondary or advanced
disciplines of music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry; in practice, the
quadrivium (a term coined by Boethius, though the underlying idea goes back to
Pythagoras) was in eclipse for much of the period from the 6th through the 11th
centuries, and the trivium was dominant.
quia argument: An argument from effect to cause.
ransom theory: The theory of the Atonement according to which the death of
Christ was a ransom paid to release human beings from captivity.
rationalism: Exclusive or excessive reliance on reason in theological matters;
excessive optimism about the powers of human reason to arrive at the truth,
particularly the truth about God (as opposed to fideism).
self-evident: Knowable without proof, simply by reflection on the concepts
involved.
sensible: Knowable by, or accessible to, the senses (as opposed to intelligible).
sensitive appetite: In human beings, the capacity for sub-rational desire (as
contrasted with intellectual appetite).
simple: Not composite.
skepticism: Doubts about the power of human reason to come to a truthful
account of the ways things are.
soul (psyche in Greek; anima in Latin): In Aristotelianism, whatever it is that
accounts for the fact that something is alive.
spiration: Literally, breathing out: a word used to describe the procession of
the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.
substance: A being capable of independent existence (not independent of God
but independent of other things, as opposed to an accident, which can exist only
in a substance).
substantial form: In Aristotelianism, a form that makes a thing what it is (for
example, the soul makes a human being human).
temperance (temperantia in Latin): The virtue in the sensitive appetite by
which we are disposed to desire what reason recognizes as good and reject what
reason recognizes as evil.

theoretical reason: The kind of thinking that aims simply at knowing (as
opposed to practical reason).
trivium: In medieval educational theory, the elementary or foundational
disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (logic). However, in the period
from the 6th through the 11th centuries, dialectic was either omitted or treated as
mere memory work, and the resulting education focused on grammar and
rhetoric and was, thus, largely literary. In the 11th century, dialectic was revived
as a serious intellectual discipline.
univocity (univocitas in Latin): A use of language in which a single term is used
with one consistent meaning.
via affirmationis/via affirmativa: Literally, the way of affirming; an approach
to discourse about God that emphasizes what God is. Also called kataphatic
theology.
via remotionis/via negativa: Literally, the way of negating; an approach to
discourse about God that emphasizes what God is not. Also called apophatic
theology.
virtue: A disposition in the emotions, will, or intellect that enables its possessor
to act reliably, readily, and with pleasure in accordance with the demands of
morality.
voluntarism: A theory of freedom that gives particular emphasis to the will
(voluntas) and accords it a high degree of independence from the intellect.

Biographical Notes
Note: In keeping with what has become the standard practice in histories of
medieval philosophy, these biographical notes are alphabetized according to
their subjects first names.
Albert the Great (12061280). Albert was received into the Dominican Order
in 1223 and educated by Dominicans in Padua and Cologne. In the 1240s, he
rose through the ranks at the University of Paris, becoming a leading exponent
of the new Aristotle and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. From 1248 to 1252,
he directed the Dominican house of studies in Cologne. In later years, he served
in a variety of ecclesiastical roles, including three years as bishop of Ratisbon
(now Regensburg). Albert was an encyclopedic thinker, writing on a remarkable
range of scientific, philosophical, and theological topics. His work on natural
science proved especially important to later thinkers, but his greatest influence
was through his student, Thomas Aquinas.
Anselm of Canterbury (10331109). Anselm was the most important
philosopher-theologian in the 800 years between Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas. Deeply influenced by Augustine, he was nevertheless a highly original
thinker, with a fertile mind for the development of arguments. Originally
attracted to the Abbey of Bec because of the reputation of its school, which was
under the direction of the eminent theologian Lanfranc, Anselm was soon
inspired to become a monk himself. He never lost his love of the monastic life,
though his ever-increasing administrative responsibilitiesfirst prior, then
abbot of Bec and, ultimately, archbishop of Canterbury under two exceedingly
vexatious kings of Englandtook him further and further away from the peace
of the cloister. In such works as the Monologion and Proslogion (10761078)
and Cur Deus Homo (10941098), Anselm seeks to offer necessary reasons in
support of Christian doctrine.
Augustine of Hippo (354430). Both as a transmitter of Christian Platonism
and as a theologian and biblical commentator, Augustine has been one the most
influential figures in Western Christianity. When Augustine converted to
Christianity in 386, he wanted to lead a life of philosophical retirement. His
ordination to the priesthood in Hippo Regius in 391, then his elevation to bishop
of Hippo in 395 made such a life impossible for him. As a bishop, Augustine
was a public figure: a spell-binding preacher, ecclesiastical controversialist,
pastor, polemicist, and theologian of wide reputation. His extensive writings
include the semi-autobiographical Confessions, The City of God, and his
influential work On the Trinity.
Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, c. 476c. 526). Boethius was
born into the Roman aristocracy and educated in the Classical tradition. He
conceived the ambitious project of translating all of Plato and Aristotle into
Latin, then showing how the two thinkers could be harmonized. Though he
came nowhere near finishing this project, he did translate a good deal of

Aristotles logic, as well as writing commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry.
These works were the primary philosophical textbooks in the Latin West for the
next 600 years. Boethius also wrote several short theological works, but he is
best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, written while he was in prison.
Boethius had been a high-ranking official under Theodoric, but for reasons that
are not altogether clear, he fell out of favor and was charged with treason and
engaging in magic. He was executed on those charges, probably in 526.
Bonaventure (12171274). Born Giovanni di Fidanza in Tuscany, he took the
name Bonaventure (good fortune) when he became a Franciscan in 1243/44.
From 1254 through 1257, Bonaventure served as Franciscan master of theology
at the University of Paris, engaging in public disputation, lecturing, and writing
on philosophical and theological topics. In 1257, he was appointed minister
general of the Franciscans, a move that put an end to his university career,
though not to his writing. Bonaventures most influential work, The Journey of
the Mind to God, was written to provide a spiritual path to God that any
Franciscan could follow, yet it was no less a philosophical and theological
treatise than any of his academic writing had been. Bonaventure became an
influential figure in the church and was appointed a cardinal in 1273.
John Duns Scotus (1265/661308). We know little of Scotuss early life,
though it seems likely that he began his studies with the Franciscans at an early
age. He studied at Oxford, then went to the University of Paris, where he
lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard in 13021303 and served as
Franciscan master of theology from 1305 through 1307. For reasons we do not
know, he was transferred to the Franciscan house in Cologne in 1307; he died in
Cologne the following year. Even during his life, the adjective subtle had come
to be associated with Scotuss thought, which is ingenious, difficult, and
inventively defended; soon after his death, he came to be known as the Subtle
Doctor. His surname, Duns, is the origin of our English word duncea slur on
the inanities of some of his followers, who emulated the difficulties of Scotuss
thought without being able to approach his brilliance.
John Scottus Eriugena (c. 800c. 877). Although he worked at the court of
Charles the Bald in France in the late Carolingian period, Eriugena was an Irish
monk. (Eriugena, a name he apparently bestowed on himself, means Irish-
born; other people called him Scottus, which means Scottish, but in those
days, people thought of Ireland as part of Scotland.) At that time, Irish monks
were almost the only people in the West who still knew Greek, and Eriugenas
greatest influence was as a translator, particularly of the works of pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite. Eriugenas own philosophical system, an ambitious
neo-Platonic construction with decidedly pantheistic overtones, has occasionally
drawn some interest from philosophers with an affinity for more exotic versions
of Platonism than Augustines, but it has never been part of the mainstream of
Christian thinking. Eriugena was condemned as a heretic at two regional
councils in the 850s for his teaching on predestination, which was regarded as

having Pelagian tendencies and as placing too much confidence in the power
of dialectic to solve theological problems.
Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 12951369). Most of what we know about
Nicholass life is limited to his trial in the 1340s. In 1340, Nicholas was charged
with teaching 66 erroneous propositions. The trial dragged on, first in Paris,
then at the papal court in Avignon, until 1346, when Nicholas was required to
make a public recantation. In 1347, his treatise Exigit ordo (Order Demands)
was ceremonially burned, though the work continued to be circulated, and at
least one copy has survived to the present day.
Nicholas of Cusa (14011464). Nicholass original academic interest was in
canon law, in which he received a doctorate from the University of Padua in
1423. His interest in philosophy and theology came from a sort of revelation he
had on his journey back from Constantinople, to which he had been sent in 1437
on a fruitless mission to negotiate the reunion of the Eastern and Western
Churches. Nicholas described this revelation as an experience of learned
ignorance, an insight that transcends the limits of reason, and he gave the title
On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia) to his most influential work.
Despite suspicions that his views were ultimately pantheistic, Nicholas was
never accused of heresy. He was made a cardinal in 1449 and a bishop in 1450.
Peter Abelard (10791142). Born in Brittany into the minor nobility but
determined from an early age to devote himself to learning, Abelard studied
under many of the most eminent teachers of his day. He frequently quarreled
with his teachers and was eager to defeat them in public debate. As a result, he
acquired a reputation as an intellectual powerhouse, attracting students of his
own. After his ill-fated affair with Heloise, which resulted in his castration,
Abelard sought the peace of monastic life and devoted himself to teaching and
writing theology. His Trinitarian speculations were condemned at two councils
(Soissons, 1121; Sens, 1141). Though these condemnations, along with Bernard
of Clairvauxs energetic propaganda campaign against him, discouraged people
from citing Abelard explicitly, it is clear that he had extensive influence on 12th-
century thought.
Siger of Brabant (1240c. 1284). Siger was a leader of the integral
Aristotelians at the University of Paris and one of the prime targets of the
Condemnation of 1277. In the face of charges of heresy, Siger fled from Paris to
Italy, where he died under mysterious circumstances. Dante placed Siger in
heaven in the Paradiso, where Thomas Aquinasin life a bitter opponent of the
integral Aristoteliansintroduces Siger to the poet.
Stephen Tempier (d. 1279). A Paris-trained theologian, Stephen (tienne)
Tempier became bishop of Paris in 1268. His chief legacy was the
Condemnation of 1277, a list of 219 condemned theses taught by some
scholars of arts. The Condemnation circulated widely, and bachelors of
theology were required to swear that they would not teach any of the prohibited
theses.

Thomas Aquinas (Thomas of Aquino) (c. 12251274). After joining the
Dominicans over the protests of his family, Thomas Aquinas was sent to study
at Paris under Albert the Great. He followed Albert to Cologne but then returned
to Paris in 1251 to complete his studies. From 1256 to 1259 and again from
1268 to 1272, he occupied one of the Dominican chairs of theology at the
University of Paris. Aquinas was a tireless opponent of the integral Aristotelians
in the arts faculty, but he was also an ardent defender of the propriety of using
Aristotle in formulating Christian theology. His writings include extensive
commentary on Aristotle, as well as his two great syntheses of theology, Summa
theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. Aquinas was regarded by some as rather
too friendly to Aristotle to be quite safe, and some of his views were officially
proscribed by the Condemnation of 1277. The condemnation of Aquinas was
soon retracted, however, and Aquinas was canonized in 1323.
William (of) Ockham (c. 12881347). Ockham (also spelled Occam) was
educated by the Franciscans in London and Oxford. Around 1323, someone
went to the papal court, then located in Avignon, and charged Ockham with
teaching heresy. Ockham was summoned to Avignon to answer the charges.
Ockham remained in Avignon for four years, being questioned occasionally by
the investigators but otherwise left free to continue his writing. A dispute
between Michael Cesana, the minister general of the Franciscans, and Pope John
XXII led Ockham to accuse the pope of effectively abdicating his office by
stubbornly teaching heresy. The fallout from this bold declaration led Cesana,
Ockham, and two other Franciscans to flee Avignon under the cover of night.
They eventually came under the protection of Ludwig of Bavaria, the Holy
Roman Emperor, in Munich. Ockham was excommunicated in 1328 for leaving
Avignon without permission. He remained under imperial protection for the rest
of his life and wrote exclusively on political matters.

Bibliography
All quotations from the works discussed in this course were translated from
Latin by the instructor. Some of these translations, including all the quotations
from Anselm, as well as those from Augustines On Free Choice of the Will,
have appeared in print; the books in which they appear are listed in the
bibliography. (In a few cases, the translation used in this course differs slightly
from the published version in order to bring out a nuance that is particularly
relevant to the material being discussed.) The other translations were made
specifically for this course.
The bibliography also lists the work of other translators. These translations were
not used in the course itself, but they represent, in the instructors judgment, the
best published English translations of the Latin works.
Those especially in interested in issues arising in the translation of medieval
philosophers from the Latin West may wish to consult Thomas Williams,
Transmission and Translation, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval
Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 328346), also available at
http:// shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/trans.pdf.
Essential Reading:
Anselm. Anselm: Basic Writings. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2007. This volume contains all the major works of Anselm in a careful
translation with notes and a glossary.
Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: Signet Classics,
1963. Much more than an autobiography, the Confessions is a wide-ranging
meditation on God, creation, sin, and the human condition. Of the many
translations of the Confessions, Warners offers the best combination of fidelity
to the Latin text and a vivid, accessible style.
. On Free Choice of the Will. Translated by Thomas Williams.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. This work represents Augustines earliest attempts
to come to grips with the origin of evil. It introduces many of the themes that
become prominent in Augustines mature works, and for that reason, it serves as
the best short introduction to Augustines thought in his own words.
. On True Religion. In Augustine: Earlier Writings, edited by John H. S.
Burleigh. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1979. On True
Religion is one of the key texts in which Augustine lays out his view of the
relationship between faith and reason.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by V. E. Watts, New
York: Penguin, 1969, or translated by P. G. Walsh, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999. To acquire a taste for The Consolation of Philosophy,
C. S. Lewis wrote, is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages.
Bonaventure. The Journey of the Mind to God. Translated by Philotheus
Boehner. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. This remarkable work unites philosophy,

theology, and Franciscan spirituality in a dense but rewarding meditation on the
possibility for knowledge of God.
Brower, Jeffrey, and Kevin Guilfoy, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Abelard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Abelard is most often
studied today for his contributions to the more technical areas of philosophy. As
a result, some of the essays in this volume are dense and difficult in spots.
Nonetheless, the collection as a whole is an excellent guide to Abelards
thought.
Cross, Richard. John Duns Scotus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
This book is an excellent short introduction to Scotuss philosophy and
theology.
Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993. Davies writes with exceptional clarity even about the most difficult
material in Aquinass thought.
Hyman, Arthur, and James J. Walsh, eds. Philosophy in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. This exemplary collection of philosophical texts
represents the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions from the 4th through the
14th centuries.
John Duns Scotus. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Translated by Allan
B. Wolter. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998. This
volume contains translations of Scotuss most important writings on the nature
of the will and its freedom, the natural law and its relation to the divine will, and
other aspects of morality.
. Philosophical Writings: A Selection. Translated by Allan B. Wolter.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Scotuss central writings on metaphysics, natural
theology, the theory of knowledge, and human nature are collected in this
indispensable volume.
King, Peter. Peter Abelard. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/abelard. King offers the best short overview of
Abelards thought, with more attention to Abelards views on faith and reason
than that topic is usually given.
Lohr, C. H. The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle. In The Cambridge
History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony
Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, pp. 8098. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1992. Lohr discusses the varying fortunes of Aristotle in science, philosophy,
and theology from Boethius through the Renaissance. He gives particular
attention to the crucial debates of the 13th century.
McGrade, A. S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. This collection of essays offers an
excellent overview of the development of medieval philosophy in the Christian,
Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The volume is organized topically, rather than
according to individual authors, giving a sense of the sweep of medieval

thinking on such issues as language and logic, metaphysics, ethics, human
nature, and politics.
McInerny, Ralph, and John OCallaghan. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/aquinas. Two leading
Thomists present the essentials of Aquinass thought in a form accessible to
non-specialists.
Nicholas of Cusa. Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. Edited by H.
Lawrence Bond. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. This collection contains On
Learned Ignorance and other works of Nicholas of Cusa, as well as an extensive
introduction.
Noone, Timothy B., and R. E. Houser. Saint Bonaventure. Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/bonaventure. The authors
survey Bonaventures main philosophical and theological contributions and
offer a good sense of the distinctive flavor of Bonaventures thought.
Pasnau, Robert C. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. Pasnau offers a detailed account of Aquinass views on
the relationship between mind and body, the mechanisms of cognition, personal
identity and immortality, and the will.
Rist, J. M. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003. Rist explores Augustines thought against the
background of the Platonism that Augustine adopted and developed. Many
readers find this the best single book on Augustines thought, and it is fully
accessible to a non-specialist.
Spade, Paul Vincent, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. The leading scholars of William of Ockham
analyze his contributions to logic, metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, ethics,
and politics. This is an indispensable guide to Ockhams thought.
. Medieval Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy. This article serves as a
short orientation tour for medieval philosophy, with many links to more detailed
discussions of particular authors and topics.
. William of Ockham. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham. Spade provides an excellent overview
of the central areas of Ockhams philosophical and political writings.
Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. The 18 essays in this
volume cover the whole range of Augustines philosophical work, as well as
much of his theology.
Thijssen, Hans. Condemnation of 1277. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/condemnation. Thijssen surveys the history of the
Condemnation of 1277 and explains the unanswered questions about who
exactly was being condemned and what significance the Condemnation had.

Thomas Aquinas. Disputed Questions on the Virtues. Translated by E. M.
Atkins, edited by Thomas Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005. These disputed questions are records of academic debates on the virtues
held while Aquinas was teaching at the University of Paris. The introduction
explains the role of virtue in Aquinass ethics as a whole and places the disputed
questions in their intellectual context.
. Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God. Translated by Anton C. Pegis.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. This volume is the most
accessible source for Aquinass account of faith and reason, his arguments for
the existence of God, and his account of the divine nature.
Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams. Anselm. New York: Oxford University
Press, forthcoming (2008). Visser and Williams divide their discussion of
Anselms work into two main areas: the divine nature and the economy of
redemption. This book seeks to offer a comprehensive and systematic account
of the whole of Anselms philosophy and theology.
Williams, Thomas. John Duns Scotus. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus. This article aims at giving a non-
technical explanation of the thought of this most technically sophisticated
thinker. The presentation of Scotuss celebrated argument for the existence of
God is worth especially close attention.
. Saint Anselm. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm. This article offers an overview of
Anselms life and works, his proofs of the existence of God, his account of the
divine nature, and his views on sin and freedom.
Aulen, Gustav. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of
the Idea of the Atonement. Translated by A. G. Herbert. New York: Wipf &
Stock, 2003. Aulens classic study of the history of the Christian doctrine of
redemption helps situate Abelards contributions in their intellectual context.
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Revised edition with a new
epilogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Browns 1967
biography of Augustine quickly became the standard work on Augustines life.
This revised edition takes account of developments in scholarship since the
publication of the original work.
Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Anselm.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. This useful collection considers
every major aspect of Anselms thought, as well as his intellectual background
and his influence on later thinkers.
Dod, Bernard G. Aristoteles latinus. In The Cambridge History of Later
Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan
Pinborg, pp. 4579. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Dod
discusses the translations and translators that made possible the complete
reintroduction of Aristotle into the Latin West in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Holopainen, Toivo. Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century. New York:
E.J. Brill, 1996. Holopainen argues persuasively for a reexamination of the four
leading figures in the 11th-century revival of dialectic: Peter Damian, Lanfranc
of Bec, Berengar of Tours, and Anselm of Canterbury.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1972. Hopkins offers a useful roadmap through
Anselms writings, as well as philosophical commentary.
Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought. New York: Vintage
Books, 1962. This classic work is a highly readable survey of medieval thought
from its roots in Classical Greek philosophy through the 14th century. It is,
unfortunately, out of print and hard to find, but it is worth the search.
Kretzmann, Norman. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinass Natural Theology
in Summa Contra Gentiles I. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kretzmann carefully expounds Aquinass account of our knowledge of God, his
arguments for the existence of God, and his account of the divine attributes. A
mix of historical scholarship and philosophical defense, this book is challenging
but rewarding reading.
Luscombe, David. Medieval Thought. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. Luscombes work is especially useful for its discussion of the 14th and
15th centuries.
Marenbon, John. Boethius. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Marenbon discusses the full range of Boethiuss work and its intellectual
context, devoting about a third of the book to The Consolation of Philosophy.
. The Philosophy of Peter Abelard. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997. Marenbons treatment of Abelards philosophy is particularly
noteworthy for its careful and extensive assessment of Abelards ethical theory.
McInerny, Ralph. Analogy of Names Is a Logical Doctrine. In Being and
Predication: Thomistic Interpretations, pp. 279286. Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1986. In this essay, the leading exponent of
Aquinass doctrine of analogy gives his most succinct and accessible
explanation of the doctrine.
Murray, Michael J., ed. Reason for the Hope Within. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1998. The rising generation of Christian philosophers considers the
fundamental topics of faith seeking understanding.
Nash, Ronald H. The Light of the Mind: St. Augustines Theory of Knowledge.
Ann Arbor, MI: Academic Renewal Press, 2003. Nashs treatment of
Augustines theory of knowledge offers the most careful investigation available
of the theory of illumination, along with a discussion of other topics, such as
skepticism.
Noone, Timothy B. The Franciscan and Epistemology: Reflections on the
Roles of Bonaventure and Scotus. In Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of
E. A. Synan, edited by R. E. Houser, pp. 6390. Minneapolis: Center for
Thomistic Studies, 1999. A leading exponent of medieval Franciscan

philosophy considers the theory of knowledge in Bonaventure and John Duns
Scotus against the broader historical context of developments in epistemology.
ODonnell, James J. Augustine: A New Biography. New York: HarperCollins,
2005. This highly controversial (and hostile) reappraisal of Augustines life and
work is written with extraordinary verve.
Quinn, Philip. Abelard on Atonement: Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary,
Illogical, or Immoral About It. In Reasoned Faith, edited by Eleonore Stump,
pp. 281300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Quinn seeks to rescue
Abelard from the misunderstandings of both his critics and his admirers in this
excellent and admirably clear essay.
Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas. New York: Routledge, 2005. Stump places Aquinas
in dialogue with contemporary philosophy on such issues as metaphysics, the
nature of God, human nature and cognition, ethics, incarnational theology, and
the problem of evil. Many regard this as the best book available on Aquinass
thought as a whole.
, ed. Reasoned Faith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. This
collection of essays by both theists and non-theists explores faith and reason, the
nature of revelation, the nature of God, and the problem of evil.
Van Inwagen, Peter. The Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006. A leading philosopher of religion examines the greatest difficulty for
belief in God.
Williams, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003. This collection provides the most
comprehensive account of Scotuss philosophical writings, although (owing to
the highly technical nature of Scotuss philosophy) some of the essays in this
volume make for difficult reading in spots.
. A Most Methodical Lover? On Scotuss Arbitrary Creator. Journal of
the History of Philosophy 38 (2000): 169202. This article makes the case for a
controversial reading of Scotus as teaching that Gods creative act is, in an
important sense, arbitrary.
. Some Reflections on Method in the History of Philosophy.
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/method.pdf. This brief essay considers a range
of possible approaches to the history of philosophy, including an account of the
approach exemplified by this course.
. The Libertarian Foundations of Scotuss Moral Philosophy. The
Thomist 62 (1998): 193215. This article examines the importance of Scotuss
account of freedom, as contrasted with that of Thomas Aquinas, in the larger
context of his ethical theory.
. Transmission and Translation. In The Cambridge Companion to
Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. S. McGrade, pp. 328346. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003. This paper considers the channels of
transmission by which medieval philosophical texts have come down to us, with
special attention to three case studies: the works of Anselm, John Duns Scotus,

and the 14th-century Dominican Robert Holcot. It also discusses the difficulties,
both interpretive and linguistic, involved in translating Latin texts into English.
A preprint is available online at http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/trans.pdf.
Internet Resources:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://ccel.org. The library links to a
variety of classics of Christian thought, including extensive translations of
Augustine.
EpistemeLinks. www.epistemelinks.com/Main/MainText.aspx. EpistemeLinks
offers more than 2,000 e-texts, including works of Aristotle and all the major
medieval philosophers.
The Franciscan Archive. www.franciscan-archive.org. The archive offers both
Latin editions and extensive translations of Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and
other important Franciscan writers. The translations can be somewhat old-
fashioned and stodgy, but they include a great deal of material not available
elsewhere.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook. www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html. This site
contains vast resources for the student of medieval history.
Summa Theologica. www.newadvent.org/summa. Aquinass greatest work is
presented in the standard translation by the fathers of the English Dominican
Province.

Reason and Faith:
Philosophy in the
Middle Ages
Part II
Professor Thomas Williams
THE TEACHING COMPANY

Thomas Williams, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies,
University of South Florida
Thomas Williams, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at

the University of South Florida, received his B.A. in Philosophy from
Vanderbilt University in 1988 and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University
of Notre Dame in 1994. Before joining the faculty of the University of South
Florida in 2005, he taught at Creighton University and the University of Iowa,
where he received a College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Teaching Award in
2005. He was the Alvin Plantinga Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of
Religion at Notre Dame from 2005 to 2006.
Professor Williamss research interests are in medieval philosophy and theology
(with a focus on Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Duns Scotus) and the
philosophy of religion. He is the coauthor of Anselm, a volume in the Great
Medieval Thinkers series from Oxford University Press, with Sandra Visser. He
edited The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus and co-edited Thomas
Aquinas: Disputed Questions on the Virtues. His translations include
Augustines On Free Choice of the Will and Anselm: Basic Writings.
Professor Williams has contributed essays to four other volumes in the
Cambridge Companions seriesAugustine; Anselm; Abelard; and Medieval
Philosophyas well as essays for the Cambridge History of Medieval
Philosophy and The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Aquinas. Journals where his
articles have appeared include Modern Theology, Philosophy and Literature,
Apeiron, Faith and Philosophy, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and
Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie. He is on the editorial board of Studies in
the History of Ethics.
2007 The Teaching Company. i

Table of Contents
Part II
Professor Biography ........................................................................................... i

Course Scope ...................................................................................................... 1
Lecture Thirteen The Rediscovery of Aristotle .................................... 4
Lecture Fourteen Bonaventure on the Minds Journey into God .......... 8
Lecture Fifteen Aquinas on What Reason Can and Cannot Do ....... 12
Lecture Sixteen Aquinass Proof of an Unmoved Mover ................. 15
Lecture Seventeen Aquinas on How to Talk About God ...................... 18
Lecture Eighteen Aquinas on Human Nature...................................... 21
Lecture Nineteen Aquinas on Natural and Supernatural Virtues ........ 24
Lecture Twenty Scotus on Gods Freedom and Ours ....................... 27
Lecture Twenty-One Scotus on Saying Exactly What God Is .................. 30
Lecture Twenty-Two What Ockhams Razor Leaves Behind ................... 34
Lecture Twenty-Three Ockham on the Prospects for Knowing God .......... 38
Lecture Twenty-Four The 14th Century and Beyond ................................. 41
Map ................................................................................................................... 44
Timeline ............................................................................................................ 46
Glossary ............................................................................................................ 49
Biographical Notes........................................................................................... 54
Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 58
ii 2007 The Teaching Company.

Scope:
The great medieval Christian thinkers would all have been bewildered by the
idea, widespread in contemporary culture, that faith and reason are
fundamentally at odds. Though their philosophical outlooks varied widely, they
were in general agreement that philosophical reasoning could and should be
used to defend and elucidate the doctrines of the Christian faith. This use of
philosophy took three main forms. First, medieval thinkers used philosophical
reasoning to prove the existence of God and to establish conclusions about the
divine attributes. Second, they used philosophical views about the acquisition of
knowledge to determine which Christian doctrines are beyond the scope of
rational demonstration. And third, they used philosophical argumentation to
defend Christian beliefs against objections and to establish the internal
consistency of Christian doctrine by showing the compatibility of Christian
beliefs that might appear to contradict each other. In making all three kinds of
arguments, medieval Christian thinkers felt free to adopt the views of non-
Christian philosophers when those views could be pressed into the service of
Christian teaching; and they were confident that the errors of pagan philosophy
could be exposed by the use of natural reason, without appealing to faith in a
supernatural revelation.
This general agreement about the proper roles of faith and reason provided a
certain continuity in the history of medieval philosophy, but there were striking
discontinuities as well. As new philosophical texts were discovered and new
techniques of argumentation introduced, as philosophical schools rose to
prominence or fell into eclipse, the ways in which medieval philosophers carried
out their project of faith seeking understanding changed dramatically. For
Augustine, at the beginning of the medieval period, philosophy meant
Platonism, but for Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, it was Aristotle, not
Plato, who was known simply as the Philosopher. Philosophers also had to
cope with changing fashions in theology, not to mention simple church politics.
Thus, Peter Abelard was the target of ecclesiastical harassment for making an
argument that Anselm had made, without controversy, a mere half-century
earlier.
Medieval philosophy began with Augustine (354430), who was deeply
influenced by the fundamental Platonic distinction between the intelligible
realmperfect, unchanging, and accessible only by the mindand the sensible
realmimperfect, ever-changing, and apprehensible by the senses. In some
strands of Platonic thought, these two realms are irreconcilably at odds; the fact
that our souls are embodied is a regrettable, if temporary, impediment to human
fulfillment. For Augustine, however, the sensible realm is created by God and
reflects his goodness. The temporal and embodied character of our experience
means that we must rely on authority in our quest for truth. Nonetheless, by

reflecting on the imperfections and mutability of creatures, the human mind can
come to understand something of the unchanging perfection of the creator.
Precisely because we come to know God as both perfect and creator, Augustine
was faced with the perplexing problem of the origin of evil in a world created
by a perfect God.
Boethius (c. 476c. 526), writing a century later than Augustine, continued the
tradition of pressing pre-Christian philosophy into the service of Christian
thought. In The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius turns to Philosophy,
personified as a woman, for comfort and reassurance that the world is justly
governed by divine providence. Philosophy argues that there is one God who
governs the universe and has power over all things, including human affairs.
She also undertakes to show how human freedom and moral responsibility are
possible, arguing that because God is eternalthat is, outside time altogether
he does not foreknow our actions (he simply knows them, timelessly) and our
actions are therefore not necessary in any sense that threatens freedom or moral
responsibility.
For nearly 500 years after the death of Boethius, there was little noteworthy
philosophical activity. In the 11th century, however, there was a revival of
philosophical techniques and their application to theological discussion. The
outstanding Christian philosopher of the 11th century was Anselm (10331109),
who developed an explicit and systematic account of what he called the reason
of faith: the intrinsically rational character of Christian doctrines in virtue of
which they form a coherent and rationally defensible system. Anselms most
famous contribution to Christian philosophy is his argument for the existence of
God, but his account of the divine nature has also had an enduring influence.
The leading 12th-century philosopher, Peter Abelard (10791142), is often
thought of as a theological rebel, but in fact, he was firmly in Anselms tradition
of elucidating and defending Christian doctrine in accordance with the standards
of philosophical reasoning. His controversial treatments of the Trinity and the
Atonement show a willingness to challenge received theological wisdom in the
pursuit of philosophical rigor.
The recovery of the full Aristotelian corpus by the end of the 12th century
revolutionized Christian thought in the Latin West. Aristotles thinking offered
a conceptual apparatus of obvious power and usefulness for philosophy and
theology, but many of Aristotles ideas were at odds with Christian doctrine.
Thirteenth-century thinkers had to figure out how to accommodate this new
material. Thomas Aquinas (c. 12251274), using the works of Aristotle as his
primary philosophical inspiration, developed arguments for the existence of
God, as well as an account of the powers and limits of human reason in knowing
God. He also drew on Aristotle for his understanding of human nature and
ethics. By contrast, Bonaventure (c. 12171274) was willing to borrow
Aristotelian doctrines when he found them helpful, but he argued passionately
against excessive enthusiasm in following Aristotle. Such excesses were

attributed to the integral Aristotelians of the University of Paris, for whom
Aristotelian philosophy was a complete, freestanding account of the natural
world.
This engagement with Aristotelian philosophy, in all its different forms, made
the 13th century a particularly lively and inventive period in Christian
philosophy. This energy continued through the work of John Duns Scotus
(1265/661308) and William Ockham (c. 12881347). But Aristotelianism did
not remain dominant for long. Such thinkers as Nicholas of Autrecourt
(c. 12951369) and Nicholas of Cusa (14011464) marked a turn away from
Aristotle and toward a kind of Platonism that would become dominant during
the Renaissance.

Lecture Thirteen
The Rediscovery of Aristotle
Scope: The recovery of the full Aristotelian corpus by the middle of the 13th
century revolutionized Christian thought in the Latin West. Aristotles
thinking offered a conceptual apparatus of obvious power and
usefulness for philosophy and theology, but many of Aristotles ideas
were at odds with Christian doctrine. Thirteenth-century thinkers had
to figure out how to accommodate this new material as prohibitions
against lecturing on Aristotles works proved ineffective. Albert the
Great (12061280) did more than anyone else in making the study of
Aristotle respectable by using Aristotelian principles to systematize
theology, though Alberts most enduring influence was as the teacher
of Thomas Aquinas (c. 12251274). By contrast, Bonaventure (c.
12171274) was willing to borrow Aristotelian doctrines when he
found them helpful, but the character of his thinking is not noticeably
Aristotelian, and he argues passionately against excessive enthusiasm
in following Aristotle. Such excesses were attributed to the integral
Aristotelians of the University of Paris, for whom Aristotelian
philosophy was a complete, freestanding account of the natural world.
Outline
I. Beginning late in Abelards lifetime, the full corpus of Aristotles works
began to become available in Latin.
A. Until this time, scholars had had access only to some of Aristotles
logical works and a handful of other texts.
1. The Categories (containing Aristotles theory of terms) and De
interpretatione (containing Aristotles theory of statements), as
translated by Boethius, were the only Aristotelian texts in wide
circulation in the early Middle Ages.
2. Early medieval scholars also had access to Porphyrys Isagoge (an
introduction to the Categories) and commentaries and original
logical works by Boethius.
B. The first new translations were of the remainder of Aristotles logical
works (dubbed the new logic).
1. The Prior Analytics (containing Aristotles theory of the
syllogism) did not make a great impact because its contents were
known at second hand.
2. The Posterior Analytics (containing Aristotles theory of scientific
knowledge) was too difficult to make a great impact immediately.

3. The Sophistical Refutations (a handbook of fallacies) generated
considerable interest, leading to a number of developments in
logic.
C. These were followed by Aristotles scientific, metaphysical, ethical,
and political writings, along with extensive commentary by Muslim
thinkers.
1. The earliest translations were often unreliable because of the
number of intermediaries between the Greek original and the Latin
translation.
2. Robert Grosseteste made the first complete translation of
Aristotles Ethics some time around 1250.
3. By the middle of the 13th century, William of Moerbecke had
revised or replaced earlier translations, working directly from the
Greek. His translations were used by Thomas Aquinas.
II. The recovery of the full Aristotelian corpus coincided with the rise of the
universities, establishing a determinate institutional context in which the
new accommodations between Aristotelian reason and Christian faith
would have to be worked out.
A. The universities grew out of the famous cathedral schools that had an
international draw.
B. The premier European university in the 13th century was the University
of Paris, which was officially founded in 1215, though the statutes of
the university were in existence for some years before that.
C. Universities were divided into faculties. The arts faculty provided the
basic training for students, who would then proceed to the higher
faculties, such as medicine, law, or theology.
1. Students would begin their arts training at around 14 or 15 and
study for about six years. Because the arts faculty provided a
preparatory education, arts masters would typically teach in arts
only two years, then move up to a higher faculty.
2. After a stint as a master of arts, a student who went into the
theology faculty would have a further eight years (or more) of
training before becoming a master or doctor of theology.
D. The newly translated works of Aristotle made their first appearance at
the University of Paris in the arts faculty.
1. Beginning in 1210, there were repeated prohibitions of reading
Aristotles works (that is, lecturing on them publicly), which were
regarded as theologically dangerous.
2. The very fact that the prohibitions had to be repeated is evidence
that they were not altogether successful. Certainly by the 1250s,

people were unabashedly lecturing on whatever Aristotle was
available.
III. Aristotles work seemed attractive because it was wide-ranging, systematic,
and rigorously argued; it seemed dangerous because Aristotle explicitly
taught views that contradicted Christian doctrine.
A. Many features of Aristotles work made it deeply attractive to thinkers
of this period.
1. The wide range of Aristotles thought (logic, science, metaphysics,
ethics, politics) appealed to the medieval longing for encyclopedic
knowledge.
2. Its systematic charactera small stock of principles, concepts, and
distinctions employed across disparate contextsand hierarchical
organization of different fields of inquiry appealed to the medieval
passion for unity and order.
3. Its primarily argumentative (rather than mystical) character fit with
the increasing emphasis on rigorous argumentation.
4. The systematic, hierarchical, and argumentative character of
Aristotles thought is encapsulated in his understanding of
science. A science is a body of knowledge expressed as
arguments that proceed from first principles to conclusions. The
conclusions of a higher science serve as first principles for
subordinate sciences.
B. Yet some of Aristotles teaching was clearly at odds with Christian
doctrine.
1. He taught that the world had always existedindeed, that the
notion of a beginning of time was incoherent.
2. He claimed that God had no concern for the world.
3. It was hard to find any clear acknowledgment of personal
immortality in Aristotle, and in places, he seems to deny it
outright.
4. His ethical theory seemed to emphasize self-love and self-
fulfillment.
5. In general, Aristotles philosophy was naturalistic; it left little
room for appeals to such supernatural activities as grace (in ethics)
or divine illumination (in the theory of knowledge).
IV. We can see three kinds of reaction to the new Aristotelian philosophy.
A. The integral Aristotelians of the arts faculty treated Aristotelian
philosophy as a complete, freestanding account of the natural world.
1. Those who were inclined to think this way typically interpreted
Aristotle under the influence of the Arabic commentator Averroes;
thus, they are also known as Latin Averroists.

2. A key figure was Siger of Brabant, who is said to have held a two-
truths theory, according to which a statement could be true in
philosophy but false in theology.
B. Conservative reaction in the theology faculty, exemplified by
Bonaventure, largely rejected Aristotelian thought. Bonaventure was
willing to borrow Aristotelian doctrine or techniques when he found
them useful, but his thinking was not noticeably Aristotelian, and he
argued passionately against what he took to be excessive enthusiasm in
following Aristotle.
C. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas staked out a moderate position.
1. Albert the Great did more than anyone else to make the study of
Aristotle respectable by using Aristotelian principles to
systematize theology.
2. Alberts most enduring influence, however, was as a teacher of
Thomas Aquinas, who not only wrote extensive commentaries on
Aristotle but did theology in a thoroughly Aristotelian way.
Essential Reading:
C. H. Lohr, The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle, in Norman Kretzmann,
Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later
Medieval Philosophy.
Bernard G. Dod, Aristoteles latinus, in Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny,
and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy.
1. Why did the reintroduction of the full Aristotelian corpus have such wide-
ranging effects on medieval philosophical thought?
2. What role did the nature of the 13th-century university play in the disputes
over Aristotle?

Lecture Fourteen
Bonaventure on the Minds Journey into God
Scope: Bonaventure identifies six ways of approaching the knowledge of God.

The first two involve discerning the traces that God has left in his
creative activity within the sub-rational world: first, as a basis for
reaching conclusions about God and, second, as evidence of Gods
presence in sensible things. The next two involve discerning the image
of God borne by the human intellect: first, in our natural powers and,
second, in our powers as reformed by grace. The two highest ways
involve discerning God in himself: first, in reasons grasp of the unity
of nature in God and, second, in faiths grasp of the trinity of persons
in God.
Bonaventures account of the minds journey to God reveals an
independent and critical approach to the newly ascendant Aristotelian
philosophy. In his account of creation, Bonaventure rejects the
Aristotelian doctrine that the material world has always existed, but in
his account of theoretical knowledge, he tries to synthesize the
Aristotelian account of knowledge through sensation with the
Augustinian account of knowledge through illumination.
Bonaventures approach is not to carve off distinctive spheres of
competence for faith and reason or theology and philosophy but to use
philosophy as one available technique within theology, which
encompasses all knowledge about God.
Outline
I. In his most influential work, The Minds Journey into God (Itinerarium
mentis in Deum; also translated as The Journey of the Mind to God),
Bonaventure identifies six ways of approaching the knowledge of God.
A. Bonaventure takes the image of the six-winged seraph as standing for
six progressive illuminations by which human beings can come to
know God.
B. Each pair of wings corresponds to a different level in the hierarchy of
being.
1. The first pair represents the traces of Gods activity that can be
discerned in the sub-rational world. Here, we contemplate God
outside us or below us.
2. The second pair represents the image of God borne by the human
intellect. Here, we contemplate God within us.
3. The third pair represents God himself. Here, we contemplate God
above us.

II. The first steps in attaining knowledge of God begin with knowledge of the
sensible world.
A. Bonaventure first considers the vestiges (literally, footprints) of God
in the visible world as a basis for reaching conclusions about God as
their source.
1. Part of Bonaventures goal is to insist that the visible universe is
not self-explaining. Creatures require explanation in terms of the
power, wisdom, and goodness of their creator.
2. The ancient philosophers were correct in drawing the conclusion
that God ordered the world, but they failed to draw the conclusion
that God originated the worldthough that conclusion ought to
have been evident to them, as well.
B. Bonaventure then considers the vestiges of God as providing evidence
for Gods presence in sensible things.
1. Through sensation, human beings are a microcosm. Everything
existing in the sensible world enters the human being through the
portals of the senses.
2. What enters the human soul is not, of course, the thing itself but its
likeness. In this way, sensation detaches the sensible thing from its
particular place and time, thus preparing it to be understood
universally by the intellect.
3. The generation of the sensible likeness mirrors the eternal
generation of the Word in the Trinity.
III. The next steps in attaining knowledge of God arise from considering the
image of God borne by the human intellect.
A. Bonaventure first considers the image of God imprinted on our natural
powers.
1. In this step, he offers an account of theoretical knowledge that
seeks to integrate Augustine with Aristotle.
2. He first describes the activity of intellect in Aristotelian terms. It
consists of knowing first terms, then propositions, and then
inferences.
3. Yet he appeals to Augustine to argue that the intellect can have no
certainty unless it is taught and illumined by truth itself.
4. Like Augustine, Bonaventure sees in the souls memory,
understanding, and love an image of the Trinity.
5. He even finds Augustinian images of the Trinity in Aristotelian
divisions of the sciences (for example, the division of natural
philosophy into metaphysics, mathematics, and physics).
B. He then considers the image of God as reformed by grace.

1. Our natural powers must be restored by the theological virtues of
faith, hope, and charity.
2. The study of Scripture is indispensable for the work of this step.
3. Note that Bonaventures description gives Scripture a certain
preeminence over the philosophical reasoning described by the
previous step.
IV. In the two final steps, Bonaventure turns from created things to God
himself.
A. He first considers the essential attributes of God by investigating the
notion of being. This consideration relies especially on the Old
Testament, which proclaims the unity of the divine essence and names
God as I am Who am (Exodus 3:14).
1. In a way reminiscent of Anselm, Bonaventure argues that being
itself is so certain that it cannot be thought not to be.
2. The most pure being must exist from itself and be eternal and
supremely one.
B. Finally, Bonaventure considers the proper attributes of the three
persons in God by investigating the notion of goodness. This
consideration relies especially on the New Testament, which proclaims
the plurality of divine persons and says, No one is good but God
alone (Luke 18:19).
1. Goodness is, by its very nature, self-communicating. The divine
goodness must therefore be supremely self-diffusive.
2. The self-communication of divine goodness is realized in the
multiplicity of persons in the Godhead.
V. Bonaventures approach cannot be easily characterized as either
philosophical or theological because he does not recognize a clear division
of labor between the two.
A. Philosophical reasoning transforms an object of faith into something
intelligible.
B. Theology is free to draw on both revelation and reason for its premises.
C. Rather than seeing philosophy and theology as involving two different
subject matters or as having two different spheres of competence,
Bonaventure prefers to see theology as encompassing all knowledge
about God. Philosophy is one available technique within theology.
Essential Reading:
Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God.
Timothy B. Noone and R. E. Houser, Saint Bonaventure.

Timothy B. Noone, The Franciscans and Epistemology: Reflections on the
Roles of Bonaventure and Scotus, in R. E. Houser, ed., Medieval Masters:
Essays in Memory of E. A. Synan.
1. Why is it difficult to talk about Bonaventures approach to faith and reason
in the same terms we use for talking about other authors?
2. How does Bonaventures use of both sensible and intelligible creation as
stepping stones to knowledge of God illustrate his blending of
philosophical and theological arguments?

Lecture Fifteen
Aquinas on What Reason Can and Cannot Do
Scope: Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle, held that all human knowledge
ultimately derives from sense experience. Consequently, by the
exercise of their natural intellectual powers, human beings can know
only those facts about God that are somehow evident from reflection
upon sense experience, for example, that God exists, that there is only
one God, and so forth. Other things that Christians believe about God,
such as his being a Trinity, are not evident from sensible things; such
facts must be revealed if human beings are to have any awareness of
them at all. Yet (Aquinas believes) God also reveals truths that can be
known apart from revelation, because otherwise, too few people would
know them.
Outline
I. Aquinas follows Aristotle in affirming that all natural human knowledge
originates in sensation. One consequence of this view is a clear distinction
between truths about God that we can know by the exercise of natural
reason, unaided by supernatural revelation, and truths about God that we
must take on faith.
A. In this present life, the human intellect can grasp only what can be
inferred from the objects of the senses. Because sensible objects are
effects that fall short of the power of their cause, we can know some
things about God, but we cannot achieve knowledge of his essence.
1. Aquinas calls these naturally knowable truths preambles to faith.
2. Among the preambles to faith are that God exists, that there is only
one God, that he is omnipotent and immutable, and so forth. We
can (in principle) come to know these on the basis of reasoning
about sensible things.
B. There are also truths about God that exceed the ability of human reason
because they cannot be discerned by examining sensible things.
1. Aquinas calls such truths mysteries of faith.
2. Among the mysteries of faith are the Trinity and the Incarnation.
II. Although the mysteries of faith exceed the powers of natural reason, it is
reasonable to believe in them.
A. Aquinas argues that it is reasonable to think that not everything is
accessible to human reason. Even in mundane affairs, we find that we
have a tenuous grasp even on what we apprehend by means of the
senses.

B. Given that there are such truths, it is important for several reasons that
God reveal them to us.
1. God has higher things in mind for us than what our reason can
figure out. But if we did not know about this higher good, we
would not strive wholeheartedly for it.
2. Gods revealing these truths to us allows us to have a truer
knowledge of God, and it strengthens our view that God exceeds
our reason.
3. We are, thus, freed from presumption, which is the mother of
error.
4. Such knowledge of the noblest realities brings the greatest
perfection and joy to the soul.
C. God confirms the truth of this teaching by works that surpass the
ability of all nature.
III. It is also reasonable for God to reveal the preambles to faith, even though in
principle we can discover them on our own.
A. If God did not reveal them, few people would know them, because
most people are too stupid, busy, or lazy to do the intellectual work
necessary to discover them.
B. Even those who would come to know God would take a long time to do
it, because these truths are profound, presuppose much other
knowledge, and cannot fittingly be pursued by the young.
C. Many people who would not be able to see the force of the arguments
would hold their conclusions in doubt.
IV. Although faith surpasses reason, it cannot conflict with reason.
A. Aquinas offers several arguments for the claim that faith and reason
cannot conflict.
1. All truths are given to us by Godeither by nature or by grace
and God cannot contradict God.
2. All truths are contained within the divine wisdom, and perfect
wisdom cannot include contradictions.
3. All truths are taught to us by God, and God would be a bad teacher
if he taught us contradictory things.
4. Only the false can be opposed to the true.
B. Aquinas admits that sometimes there appears to be a conflict between
the two.
1. The situation he envisions is one in which someone produces an
argument against a doctrine of the faith.
2. In such a case, we know that theres something wrong with the
argument. We just have to find the mistake.

3. Aquinass approach offers a program for incorporating Aristotles
philosophy within Christian theology while resisting Aristotles
errors. It therefore steers a middle course between conservative
resistance to Aristotle and the two-truths theory of the integral
Aristotelians.
C. We can understand what is distinctive in Aquinass view by comparing
it to Augustines.
1. In one sense, the Augustinian view is more pessimistic about
reason than Aquinass, because it claims that there can be no
genuine understanding of God apart from faith. Reason can be
properly directed only if the will is right, but the will is not right
unless it is submitted to God in faith.
2. In another sense, though, Augustinianism is more optimistic about
reason than Thomism. Once you believe, you can try to use reason
about practically all of the faith. There is no need to distinguish
between mysteries and preambles.
3. According to Augustine, faith is necessary because of the
perversity of the will. According to Aquinas, faith is necessary
because of the weakness of our intellect.
Essential Reading:
Ralph McInerny and John OCallaghan, Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God, chapters 19.
Norman Kretzmann, Theology from the Bottom Up (chapter 1), in The
Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinass Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles
I.
1. What philosophical considerations make it necessary for Aquinas to
distinguish between preambles to faith and mysteries of faith?
2. How does Aquinass understanding of the relationship between faith and
reason make him a centrist figure in the 13th-century debate?

Lecture Sixteen
Aquinass Proof of an Unmoved Mover
Scope: Before arguing that God exists, Aquinas deals with two objections to
the project of proving Gods existence: first, that it is unnecessary to
prove Gods existence because it is self-evident that God exists and,
second, that it is impossible to prove Gods existence because the
existence of God is exclusively a matter for faith and revelation. In
response, Aquinas argues that the existence of God is not self-evident
in the way a mathematical or logical truth is, but it can be proved by
reasoning backwards from effectsthe objects of our sense
experienceto God as their ultimate cause. There are five ways to
prove that God exists. The first and most evident of these is an
argument from motion. Everything that is in motion must be put in
motion by some other thing. Because an infinite series of movers is
impossible, there must be a first mover that is not itself in motion. This
first unmoved mover, Aquinas says, is God.
Outline
I. Before Aquinas offers his five proofs for the existence of God, he deals
with the objection that the existence of God cannot be proved: either
because it is self-evident or because it just has to be taken on faith.
A. Aquinass approach to this objection illustrates his use of the
Scholastic method, which framed philosophical inquiry as a debate
between opposing points of view.
1. The Scholastic method begins with a quaestio: a question that can
be given a yes-or-no answer.
2. Then, one marshals the best arguments from authorities (the big
names in the field) for the view that one rejects.
3. Then, one sets forth ones own view and gives arguments for it.
4. Finally, one considers the opposing arguments and explains why
they fail. Perhaps one finds a mistaken premise or logical fallacy in
the original argument, or perhaps one shows that the authority is
wrong if interpreted in one way but right if interpreted in another
way.
B. Aquinas interprets Anselm as holding that the existence of God is self-
evident. In reply, he denies that the existence of God is self-evident in a
way that would make a proof of Gods existence otiose.
1. A proposition is self-evident when one can tell, just by thinking
about the concepts involved, that it is true.

2. According to Anselm, once we understand the concept of God, we
can see that God exists.
3. Aquinas argues that we cannot, in this life, have the kind of
understanding of God that would enable us just to see that God
exists.
C. The objection that the existence of God must simply be taken on faith
takes off from Aquinass response to Anselm. If we cannot have any
direct insight into the nature of God, how are we supposed to prove
that God exists?
1. Aquinas replies by distinguishing between two different kinds of
arguments. In an argument propter quid, we argue from the nature
of a thing to its features; in an argument quia, we argue backwards
from effects to cause.
2. Because we have no direct insight into the nature of God, we
cannot have any propter quid arguments about God. But we can
have quia arguments about God by reasoning backwards from
Gods effectssensible thingsto their cause.
II. Each of the five ways begins from some fact that can be observed by the
senses and argues on that basis for the existence of God.
A. The first way argues on the basis of motion that there must be a first
unmoved mover.
B. The second way argues on the basis of causality that there must be a
first uncaused cause.
C. The third way argues on the basis of contingency (the fact that things
are capable of existing and of not existing) that there must be a
necessary being.
D. The fourth way argues on the basis of the degrees of perfection that
there must be a maximally perfect being.
E. The fifth way argues on the basis of apparently purposive behavior
that there must be an intelligent being that directs all things to attain
their ends.
III. A detailed look at the first way to prove that God exists, which Aquinas
calls the clearest way, offers a glimpse into Aquinass argumentative
method and his use of Aristotelian principles.
A. It is evident to the senses that some things are in motion.
1. In Aristotelian jargon, three kinds of changes count as motion:
change in quality, change in size, and change in place.
2. Each of these changes involves going from potentiality (potentially
being a certain way) to actuality (actually being a certain way).

B. Whenever something goes from potentiality to actuality, there must be
something that causes it go from potentiality to actuality.
1. Something that causes motion is in actuality, whereas something
that undergoes motion is in potentiality. For example, something
that is actually hot is needed to heat what is only potentially hot.
2. Because nothing can be both in actuality and in potentiality in the
same respect at the same time, nothing can move itself.
3. Thus, everything that is moved is moved by some other thing.
C. Because there cannot be an infinite regress of movers and things
moved, we must come to a first unmoved mover.
1. In an infinite series of movers, there is no first mover.
2. If there is no first mover, there is no motion.
3. Therefore, there is no infinite series of movers.
Essential Reading:
Brian Davies, Getting to God (chapter 2), in The Thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Norman Kretzmann, The God of the Self-Movers (chapter 2), in The
Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinass Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles
I.
1. Why can Aquinas not take it for granted that it makes sense to argue for the
existence of God?
2. How does Aquinas employ Aristotelian principles in making his argument
from motion?

Lecture Seventeen
Aquinas on How to Talk About God
Scope: Aquinass Aristotelian strategy of arguing from effects to cause allows

us to establish a wide range of conclusions about God, but it also
threatens to undermine the meaningfulness of our language about God.
Our language reflects our concepts, and our concepts are all ultimately
derived from our experience of the objects of the senses. But the
objects of the senses fall far short of God. How, then, can the words
that we use for ordinary objects be meaningful when applied to God?
Aquinass answer is that created things resemble or imitate their
creator. We can, therefore, use the language that derives from
experience of creatures to speak meaningfully about God, although our
words cannot have exactly the same meaning in theological language
that they have in ordinary language.
Outline
I. Given the fact that God far exceeds our understanding, how can we say
anything true about God? In medieval terminology, how can we have
names for God?
A. Some of Aquinass sources concerning this issue particularly
emphasized the via remotionis or via negativa: that is, the approach to
speaking of God that insists that we can say only what God is not.
1. According to these authors, God is so much beyond the sensible
things that we must use in order to understand him that the best we
can do is to say of him what he is not.
2. Some would even go so far as to say that even the affirmative
names are really disguised negatives.
3. Maimonides had held that affirmative names for God actually
express (a) what God is not and (b) Gods relation to creatures.
B. Aquinas allows a role to the via remotionis, but he insists that it can
and must be supplemented by the via affirmationis: the practice of
using affirmative names to speak of God.
1. If no positive predications are possible, there is no reason to call
God one thing in preference to another.
2. Although God transcends sensible things, such things do provide
enough clues to his nature that we can derive positive conclusions
about God and express them in affirmative names.
II. Aquinas develops a general theory about how names work, then applies it
to the case of names for God.

A. The general theory of names, derived from Aristotle, holds that we can
name something insofar as we can understand it.
1. Words are signs of ideas, and ideas are resemblances
(similitudes) of things.
2. Thus, words do serve as signs of things but indirectly: They
signify things by means of our intellects conception of the things.
B. We can, therefore, name God insofar as we can understand God.
1. Given that we cannot understand God as he is in himself, we also
cannot name God as he is in himself. (In that sense, the proponents
of the via remotionis were right.)
2. But because we can understand God as he is known from
creatures, we can name him on the basis of our knowledge of
creatures.
III. Because God possesses all the perfections of creatures, though in a more
excellent way, we can apply the names for those perfections to Godin the
technical jargon of the day, we can predicate those names of God.
A. If a name implies a perfection without limitation, we can apply it
literally to God.
1. For example, good does not imply any limitation; thus, we can
apply it literally to God, as we apply it literally to creatures.
2. We can also predicate it in the mode of supereminence, in which
case, it applies only to God. For example, we can predicate highest
good of God alone.
B. If a name implies some limitation or defect, we can apply it
metaphorically to God. For example, we can predicate rock
metaphorically of God.
IV. Aquinass main interest is in names that can be predicated literally of both
God and creatures.
A. Even these names are inadequate in a way. As all our names do, they
get their meaning through our intellects conception, and our intellects
conception falls short of the reality of God.
1. Our names for God suggest multiplicity within God, even though
God has no parts of any kind.
2. We have to use a plurality of names, all of which are signs of the
same thingthe divine essencewhich we conceive in a variety
of ways.
B. For these reasons, such names are predicated analogically of God.
1. Analogical predication is contrasted with equivocal predication (in
which the same word is used with entirely different meanings) and

with univocal predication (in which the same word is used with
exactly the same meaning).
2. In analogical predication, the same word is used with different but
related meanings.
3. For example, the expression my niece is predicated analogically of
my niece and a photograph of my niece.
4. On Aquinass theory, God is the original of which all creatures are
images. Our knowledge of God is somewhat like our knowledge of
someone we know only from a photograph.
Essential Reading:
Brian Davies, Talking About God (chapter 4), in The Thought of Thomas
Aquinas.
Ralph McInerny, Analogy of Names Is a Logical Doctrine.
1. What philosophical and theological considerations push Aquinas to find the
middle ground of analogy between purely univocal predication, on the one
hand, and purely equivocal predication, on the other?
2. How is the doctrine of analogy related both to Aquinass metaphysics of
God (his account of what God is) and his epistemology of God (his theory
of how we know God)?

Lecture Eighteen
Aquinas on Human Nature
Scope: Aquinas adopts a generally Aristotelian picture of human nature. For

Aquinas, the human soul is the form of the body; that is, it organizes or
structures matter in such a way as to make it a living human organism.
Aristotles view that the soul is the form of the body might be taken to
imply that when a human organism ceases to live, the soul simply
ceases to exist, but Aquinas argues that we can prove philosophically
that the soul survives the death of the body. The Christian doctrine of
the resurrection of the body adds that the soul will not exist
permanently in its separated state but will be reunited with matter.
Unlike the survival of the soul, however, the resurrection of the body
cannot be proved philosophically. Belief in resurrection is a matter of
faith.
Outline
I. Aquinass understanding of the human soul derives from Aristotles
account of change in the Physics and Metaphysics and his account of soul
in De anima (On the Soul).
A. Rejecting the arguments of Parmenides, Aristotle held that what comes
to be arises both from what is and from what is not.
1. In every change, there must be three principles. There is
privation (what is not), form (what comes to be), and the subject
(the thing that exists both before and after the change).
2. When the subject of the change is a substance, what comes to be is
an accidental form.
3. When a new substance comes into being, such a substance cant be
the subject that exists before the change and endures throughout
the change; instead, the subject of the change is matter, and what
comes to be is a substantial form.
4. A soul is a substantial form: It is what makes a given parcel of
matter to be the living thing that it is.
B. Aquinass starting definition of soul, derived from Aristotle, is the
first principle of life in those things in our world which live.
1. This definition means, in effect, that the presence of some sort of
soul is what makes the difference between something that is alive
and something that is not.
2. On this understanding of soul, every living thing has a soul, even
plants.

3. Aquinas argues that a soulwhat makes a given physical thing
alivecannot itself be a physical thing.
C. The human soul, unlike other souls, is a substance: a thing in its own
right.
1. Only substances carry on activities of their own, and the human
soul carries on an activity of its own, namely, intellectual
understanding.
2. Because it is a substance in its own right, independent of the body
that it ensouls, it must be produced directly by God and cannot be
destroyed except by God.
II. The human intellect, which is the defining power of human beings, is both
an active power and a passive power.
A. The intellect is passive in the sense that it moves from potentiality to
actuality. The intellect starts off as a blank slate with nothing written
on it, but gradually, we acquire understanding and the mind fills with
thoughts.
B. If the passive intellect is the blank slate on which thoughts are written,
the function of the active or agent intellect is to write those thoughts.
To explain the function of the agent intellect, Aquinas offers a quick
lesson in ancient Greek philosophy.
1. Plato thought that the forms of material objects existed on their
own, apart from matter, and were, therefore, intelligible. Thus,
there is a Form of Horse, and all knowledge of horses is really
knowledge of the Form of Horse.
2. Aristotle maintained that there were no such things as immaterial
ideas. He was prepared to go along with Plato to this extent: What
makes a given horse a horse is a form. But he denies that this form
exists apart from matter.
3. On Aristotles account, to understand horses is to think about the
universal horse, not about any particular horse. (Particular horses
are sensible, not intelligible.)
4. The agent intellect must, therefore, create the intelligible object by
abstracting universal horse-ness from the particularizing
conditions in which we always encounter it.
III. Aquinas struggles to make his understanding of human nature consistent
with Christian belief in the resurrection of the body.
A. The immortality of the soul is a preamble to faith. That is, we can know
on purely philosophical grounds that the soul does not cease to exist
just because the body ceases to exist.
1. As we have seen, the soul is a substance, because it has an activity
of its own, independent of the body.

2. Things acquire actuality to the extent that they acquire form, and
they are corrupted to the extent that they are separated from form.
But the soul is itself a form. Thus, the soul cannot be corrupted,
because it cannot be separated from itself.
B. The resurrection of the body, however, is a mystery of faith. It cannot
be proved by natural reason.
1. The soul maintains an aptitude to inform a body.
2. Souls separated from their bodies are identifiable individuals. This
claim seems inconsistent with other things Aquinas says, but he
needs it in order to make sense of the practice of prayers to saints.
Essential Reading:
Brian Davies, Being Human (chapter 11), in The Thought of Thomas Aquinas.
Robert C. Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature.
Eleonore Stump, The Nature of Human Beings (Part II), in Aquinas.
1. What does Aquinas mean by calling the soul both a substantial form and a
substance in its own right?
2. What difficulties related to the problem of faith and reason are posed by
Aquinass Aristotelian account of human nature?

Lecture Nineteen
Aquinas on Natural and Supernatural Virtues
Scope: Aquinass account of the virtues shows how he resisted both the
extreme naturalism of the integral Aristotelians and the conservative
hostility to Aristotle. Even as he adopted much of Aristotles
philosophy, he did not agree with the integral Aristotelians that
philosophy by itself offers a comprehensive, autonomous account of
everything there is. Aquinas insisted that in addition to the natural
order, which philosophy investigates, there is a supernatural order,
which is beyond the competence of philosophy. The supernatural order
does not supersede the natural but brings it to a higher fulfillment.
Within ethics, this understanding of the relationship between natural
and supernatural allowed Aquinas to affirm that there is indeed such a
thing as natural happiness and that it does not lose its importance
simply because, as Christians affirm, there is also a supernatural
happiness, of which Aristotle was unaware. For Aquinas, natural
happiness is what sets the standards of natural law, and natural
virtuespreeminently temperance, fortitude, justice, and practical
wisdomdispose us to attain such happiness. But in addition, there
must be supernatural virtues that dispose us to attain supernatural
happiness. Natural virtues are attained by a natural process of moral
development; supernatural virtues are acquired by divine gift.
Outline
I. Aquinas develops his account of natural law by appeal to an analogy
between the functioning of theoretical reason (the sort of thinking that aims
simply at knowing the truth) and the functioning of practical reason (the
sort of thinking that aims at making or doing something).
A. Theoretical reason starts from first principles and proceeds by way of
theoretical argument or syllogism until it reaches a conclusion.
1. First principles are known without proof.
2. They play a role in speculative reasoning, although an individual
reasoner may not explicitly formulate them.
B. Practical reason also starts from first principles. It proceeds by way of
practical argument or syllogism until it issues in a particular action.
1. The first principles of practical reason are called natural law.
2. The principles of natural law play a role in practical reasoning,
although an individual reasoner may not explicitly formulate them.
C. The very first principle of natural law is that good is to be done and
pursued, and evil is to be avoided. The most general precepts of the

natural law are more substantive principles that point out specific
goods that are to be pursued. The human good involves three broad
types of good.
1. As it is for every creature, it is good for us to maintain ourselves in
existence.
2. As it is for every animal, it is good for us to reproduce ourselves
and to care for our offspring.
3. For us alone among all animals, it is also a good to exercise the
powers of rational thought and (consequently) to live in society
and to know God.
D. These three goods are arranged hierarchically (so that the unique
human good is the best of these three goods) and inclusively (so that
our unique good subsumes the other two without superseding them).
II. In order to attain the human good through rational choice, we need virtues.
A. We need virtues to moderate or rectify the sensitive appetite (that is,
our capacity for sub-rational desires).
1. Our sensitive appetite is aimed only at the part of our good that we
share with the lower animals. Because the sensitive appetite can
come into conflict with reason, we need virtues that bring the
sensitive appetite into conformity with reason.
2. The virtue of temperance ensures that we desire what reason
recognizes as good and reject what reason recognizes as evil.
3. The virtue of fortitude ensures that we overcome obstacles to our
attainment of what reason recognizes as good.
B. We also need a virtue to moderate or rectify the intellectual appetite
or will (that is, our capacity for rational desire).
1. The will needs no virtue in order to be aimed at our individual
good; that is the natural orientation of the will.
2. But because the human good involves life in society, the will does
need a virtue that disposes it properly toward the common good.
This is the virtue of justice.
C. Finally, we need a virtue in reason itself that enables us to discern
readily, in particular circumstances, how to attain our good. This is the
virtue of practical wisdom or prudence.
III. The human good is twofold: In addition to the natural happiness of which
Aristotle spoke, there is a supernatural happiness. Aquinass account of the
twofold human good reveals his distinctive way of accommodating
Aristotelian philosophy within Christian theology.
A. The natural human good is the life of practical reason: a life in which
our natural powers are developed to their ultimate perfection. The life
of theoretical reason is, in an important sense, superhuman. But as a

Christian, Aquinas believes that God intends human beings for a life
that surpasses their nature.
B. Aquinass account of natural and supernatural happiness shows a
distinctive approach to the relationship between Aristotle and Christian
faith.
1. Against those masters in the faculty of arts who asserted the
autonomy and integrity of the natural order (as understood by
Aristotle), Aquinas insists on a supernatural fulfillment for human
beings.
2. Unlike conservatives in the faculty of theology, however, Aquinas
insists that the supernatural builds on, rather than obliterates, the
natural. This approach allows Aquinas to affirm that there is such a
thing as natural happiness and that it does not lose its importance
for moral theory simply because there is also such a thing as
supernatural happiness.
C. Just as there are natural virtues that dispose us to attaining our natural
good, there are also supernatural virtues that dispose us to attaining our
supernatural good.
1. Whereas natural virtues are acquired, supernatural virtues are
infused (literally, poured in) by God.
2. There are infused counterparts to each of the cardinal virtues:
infused temperance, fortitude, justice, and practical wisdom. The
infused cardinal virtues perfect our natural capacities so that we
will deal with the concerns of our natural life in a way that is
informed by our supernatural destiny.
3. There are also infused virtues that perfect our natural capacities so
that we can deal directly with concerns that transcend our natural
life altogether. These are the three theological virtues of faith,
hope, and charity.
Essential Reading:
Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on the Virtues.
Eleonore Stump, The Nature of Human Excellence (Part III), in Aquinas.
1. How do the virtues function in Aquinass ethics? What is their role, and
how are they related to the various powers that belong to human nature?
2. How does Aquinass twofold understanding of happiness reflect his general
approach to the relationship between faith and reason?

Lecture Twenty
Scotus on Gods Freedom and Ours
Scope: John Duns Scotus (1265/661308) was a Franciscan, and it was

characteristic of the Franciscans to regard the will as a power higher
than, and to some extent, independent from, the intellect. Scotus
followed this emphasis in his account of both divine and human
freedom. The human will does not simply ratify the intellects
judgment about how it would be best to act; it can reject the intellects
judgment and choose otherwise. Without this sort of freedom, the will
would be merely a passive instrument of the human intellect, and
human acts would not be free. Gods freedom is like ours, but the
scope of his will is much greater. God cannot change necessary
truthshe cannot make 2 plus 2 equal 5, for exampleand he cannot
act unjustly. Scotus understands these restrictions to be quite minimal,
so that in a sense, Gods activity, both in creating and in establishing
the moral law, is arbitrary.
Outline
I. Just four years after the death of Thomas Aquinas, Stephen Tempier, bishop
of Paris, published a list of 219 philosophical and theological theses.
Anyone teaching or listening to these theses would be excommunicated.
This event is known as the Condemnation of 1277.
A. The Condemnation did not identify the people suspected of teaching
heresy.
1. Tempier simply wrote of some scholars of arts at Paris,
suggesting that the rivalry between the faculties of theology and
arts had something to do with the Condemnation.
2. Scholars have soughtwith mixed resultsto identify the authors
or disseminators of the condemned theses. It is widely thought that
Thomas Aquinas was a target of part of the Condemnation.
3. At any rate, it seems clear that the Condemnation was, in some
way, a reaction to the reintroduction of Greek philosophy and its
overenthusiastic reception by some in the faculty of arts and even
in the faculty of theology.
B. The Condemnation can be seen as an attempt to reassert the
prerogatives of revealed theology.
1. Many of the condemned theses assert the dignity and autonomy of
philosophy and of the natural world.
2. The Condemnation gives particular emphasis to the notion of
divine omnipotence. The notion of Gods absolute powerhis
ability to act beyond the limits of nature as discerned by reason

is central to the project of reining in the pretensions of natural
human reason.
3. Though it is not clear how much the Condemnation really changed
what was being taught at Paris, a renewed emphasis on divine
omnipotence is certainly noticeable after 1277. We see this clearly
in John Duns Scotuss account of divine freedom.
II. Scotus (1265/661308) holds that Gods absolute power extends to
everything that does not involve a contradiction. This view has implications
both for Gods act of creation and for his establishment of the moral law.
A. Gods act of creation is, to a certain extent, arbitrary.
1. Scotus claims that God must act justly in whatever he does, but he
also claims that Gods justice does not affect how he treats
creatures. God is under no obligation to anything outside himself.
2. God must also act rationally in whatever he does. This means that
God will take the appropriate means to whatever end he wishes to
attainGod cannot thwart himselfbut he is absolutely free with
respect to his choice of ends.
B. Gods act of moral legislation is also, to a certain extent, arbitrary.
1. The natural law in the strict sense includes only those moral truths
that are self-evident and true by definition. God cannot change
these.
2. Most moral truths, however, do not belong to the natural law in
this strict sense. These other moral truths are all completely subject
to the divine will.
3. Scotuss account of the Ten Commandments illustrates this
distinction.
III. Scotus defends a theory of human freedom that parallels his theory of
divine freedom in many ways, though the scope of human freedom is, of
course, more limited.
A. In Scotuss theory of human freedom, as in his theory of divine
freedom, it is the will, rather than the intellect, that has the final say.
1. This fits with the Franciscan emphasis on the will.
2. It also fits with Tempiers condemnation of several theses that
tended to make the will a mere executive power for the intellect.
Such theses seemed to make sin a matter of ignorance or faulty
reasoning rather than a matter of deliberate choice.
B. The central element of Scotuss theory of human freedom is his denial
that the will is intellectual appetite (a capacity for rational desire).
1. Scotus argues that if the will were merely intellectual appetite, as
Aquinas had held, we would not be free. The will would have to
choose whatever the intellect judges to be good.

2. Furthermore, intellectual appetite is aimed at happiness. But in
order to choose morally, we must choose what is right, not what
we think will make us happy.
3. Thus, although the inclination to pursue our own good is certainly
part of our psychology, it cannot be the whole of our ability to
choose.
Essential Reading:
John Duns Scotus, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality.
Hans Thijssen, Condemnation of 1277.
Thomas Williams, The Libertarian Foundations of Scotuss Moral Philosophy
and A Most Methodical Lover? On Scotuss Arbitrary Creator.
1. How does the emphasis on divine omnipotence in the Condemnation of
1277 provide a background for Scotuss view of Gods will in its relation to
both creation and the moral law?
2. In what ways does Scotuss account of the will reflect a more Augustinian
than Aristotelian understanding of human nature?

Lecture Twenty-One
Scotus on Saying Exactly What God Is
Scope: Like Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus accepts Aristotles view that
natural knowledge of God must be obtained by reasoning from effects
to cause. He denies, however, that this view implies any slippage of
meaning in the words we use in talking about God. Unless theological
language has the same meaning as ordinary language, we will not be
able to know anything about God at all, and it will be impossible for
theology to be an argumentative discipline. In defending this view,
Scotus must find a way to preserve a radical discontinuity between God
and creatures without sacrificing the continuity of language that he
claims is necessary.
Outline
I. The differences between Aquinas and Scotus are illustrative of the
difference between Dominicans and Franciscans more generally.
A. Though it is often said that the Franciscans were hostile to Aristotle
and the Dominicans embraced Aristotle, the reality was more
complicated.
1. Granted, it was two DominicansAlbert the Great and Thomas
Aquinaswho did the most to make Aristotle respectable in 13th-
century Christian philosophy, and a FranciscanBonaventure
who resisted the new Aristotelianism most emphatically.
2. But even Bonaventure used Aristotelian terminology when it
suited him, and Scotus (also a Franciscan) is unabashedly
Aristotelian.
B. A better way to explain the difference is to say that the Franciscans
were much more in the spirit of Augustine than the Dominicans were.
1. Like Augustine, the Franciscans tended to emphasize the role of
the will and of love more than the role of the intellect and
knowledge.
2. In particular, they tended to have a more radical view of the
freedom of the will than the Dominicans did.
3. It is important to note, however, that these are merely general
tendencies or characteristic temperaments of the two orders. They
suggest only a broad uniformity of outlook, which was compatible
with quite marked divergences in teaching. Franciscans and
Dominicans argued among themselves as much as they argued
against each other.
II. Scotus goes much further than Aquinas in rejecting the via negativa.

A. More emphatically than Aquinas, Scotus argues that any negation
presupposes an affirmation.
B. In a characteristically Franciscan way, Scotus also argues, Negations
are not the object of our greatest love. This argument points to
Scotuss claim that theology is primarily a practical rather than a
theoretical discipline.
III. Scotus argues that it is possible by natural means (that is, without
supernatural help) for the human intellect in this present life to acquire a
concept in which God, and God alone, is grasped.
A. Scotus agrees with Aquinas that all our knowledge begins from
creatures.
1. Consequently, by our natural powers, we can know God only by
an argument quia, not by an argument propter quid.
2. We cannot know the essence of God in this life.
B. Scotus disagrees with Aquinas, however, in holding that we can apply
certain predicates univocallywith exactly the same meaningto God
and creatures. His three best arguments for univocal predication are the
following:
1. One can doubt whether God is a finite being or an infinite being
while being quite certain that he is a being. Consequently, the
concept of being that is affirmed of God is univocal in the two
concepts of finite being and infinite being.
2. If all our concepts come from our experience with creatures, the
concepts we apply to God will also come from creatures. They
wont just be like the concepts that come from creatures, as in
analogous predication; they will be the very same concepts that
come from creatures.
3. The test (derived from Anselm) by which we determine what to
predicate of God depends on univocity.
C. Scotuss doctrine of univocal predication is no mere technical point but
a matter of deep importance throughout his theological and
philosophical work. Scotus argues compellingly that univocity is
necessary for three reasons.
1. Without univocity, it will turn out that we do not quite know what
we are saying when we say of God that he is good, just, powerful,
and so on.
a. We will be using our ordinary language to speak about God,
but that language will have a different meaningand we will
not be able to specify just what that meaning is.
b. Thus, univocity is necessary to secure the intelligibility of
theological language.

2. An argument in which the key words change meaning is a bad
argument.
a. Without univocity, the key words in many theological
arguments will change meaning: They will mean one thing as
applied to creatures but something else as applied to God.
b. Thus, univocity is necessary to secure the status of theology as
an argumentative discipline.
3. According to the Aristotelian view of knowledge, we know God
as we know anything elseon the basis of creatures. The points
made in III.C.1 and III.C.2 above show that without univocity,
such knowledge will be impossible because the language we use in
speaking of creatures will be inapplicable to God, and there will be
no legitimate way to argue from what we know about creatures to
any facts about God.
D. Not only can we acquire concepts that apply univocally to God, but we
can acquire a proper concept of God (that is, that applies only to
God).
1. In one sense, we cannot possess a proper concept of God in this
life because we cannot know Gods essence as a particular thing.
We know God in the way that we know someone we have heard
about but have never met.
2. But by taking any of those predicates to the highest degree (for
example, highest good, first cause), we can construct a concept
that applies only to God.
3. Despite appearances, the concept of infinite being is a non-
complex concept that applies to God alone. To know God as
infinite being is to have the most adequate knowledge of God of
which we are capable in this life: it is the simplest concept, and it
is the most fruitful concept.
Essential Reading:
John Duns Scotus, Mans Natural Knowledge of God (II), in Philosophical
Writings: A Selection.
Thomas Williams, John Duns Scotus.
James F. Ross and Todd Bates, Natural Theology, in Thomas Williams, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus.
1. In what ways does Scotuss account of our knowledge of God reflect his
Franciscan leanings?

2. How does Scotus begin from roughly the same theory of knowledge as
Thomas Aquinas but end up with a radically different account of religious
language?

Lecture Twenty-Two
What Ockhams Razor Leaves Behind
Scope: William Ockham (c. 12881347) is best known for what has come to
be called Ockhams razor, the methodological principle that one should
refrain from positing entities unless there is compelling reason to do so.
Ockham employed this principle to reduce drastically the basic
categories in the Aristotelian inventory of the world. Where Scotus had
recognized 10 irreducible categories of beings, Ockham acknowledged
only 3: substance, quality, and relation. And the entities in the category
of relation are needed only for theological reasons pertaining to the
Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist. If it were not for revelation,
Ockham argued, we would see no reason at all for this third category.
Ockhams nominalism, his denial that there are universal entities, is not
a consequence of the razor. Ockham does not argue merely that we
have no good reason to posit universal entities but that theories of
universal entities are outright incoherent.
Outline
I. William Ockham (c. 12881347) is best known for the principle of
ontological parsimony, or Ockhams razor: the principle that one should
not needlessly multiply entities.
A. Ockham was not the first to appeal to this principle, but he made
unusually extensive use of it.
B. Strictly speaking, the razor does not allow one to deny entities; it
simply cautions against positing them unless there are compelling
theoretical reasons to do so.
C. The relevance of Ockhams razor to issues of faith and reason may not
seem immediately evident, and the connection is not often discussed.
But in fact, Ockhams extensive use of the razor represents a
destabilizing force in the medieval synthesis of faith and reason.
1. We will examine in some detail Ockhams use of the razor within
his metaphysics. This use is an exercise of reason: The razor is a
principle of reason, and Ockham applies it through arguments and
logical analysis.
2. Yet Ockham will note that this exercise of reason leaves him with
a metaphysical theory that is too sparse to support the requirements
of Christian faith.
3. He will, therefore, add back into his metaphysical theory certain
features whose only purpose is to allow a coherent statement of
Christian doctrine. Thus, for Ockham, the elucidation of Christian
doctrine is not simply a matter of the best philosophy pressed into

the service of Christian revelation; it requires admitting principles
or entities that the best philosophy, left to itself, would reject.
II. Ockham uses the razor to eliminate entities in all but 3 of the 10 traditional
Aristotelian categories.
A. Aristotle had recognized 10 irreducibly different categories.
1. There was always debate about whether the categories were a
classification of words or a classification of entities.
2. Scotus had held that the categories were a classification of entities.
There are 10 irreducible categories of being.
B. Ockham argues that as far as reason alone is concerned, only 2
categories are needed: substance and quality.
1. Substances are beings capable of independent existence.
2. Qualities are the characteristics or features of substances.
3. Ockham argues against the need to posit entities in other
categories by analyzing statements that appear to refer to such
entities. For example, the truth of Socrates is similar to Plato
does not require us to believe that, in addition to Socrates, Plato,
and their qualities, there is a special relational entity of similarity
that belongs to Socrates.
C. Nevertheless, Ockham believes that for theological reasons, we have to
admit entities in a third category: relation.
1. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity cannot be stated without
recourse to relations.
2. Although Ockham is motivated by the desire to maintain Christian
orthodoxy, the ideal of accommodating both faith and reason
seems to be destabilized by his retention, for exclusively
theological purposes, of ideas that do not otherwise pass rational
muster.
III. Ockham is also notorious for his nominalism: his denial that there are any
universal entities.
A. The usual reason for positing universals is that they help with
epistemology; that is, they are useful for grounding knowledge (and the
language that expresses such knowledge).
1. We need universals to provide objects for the intellect. I have
sensation of a particular dog, but I have intellectual knowledge of
the universal dog.
2. We need universals to provide a subject matter for the sciences.
Science deals with what is universal; if there were no universal
entities, then science would deal only with concepts.

3. We need universals to ground predication. If I say, This rose is
red, I predicate the general concept red of this rose. The universal
entity redness is what gives objectivity to this predication.
B. The difficulty with positing universals is that they behave in
metaphysically odd ways.
1. They are one and yet many: The universal red is one entity, yet it
exists in every red thing.
2. They are both in things and separate from them: The universal man
exists apart from any given man, yet it must exist in every man
(because otherwise, we could not predicate man of every man).
C. On the basis of such metaphysical difficulties, Ockham argues that the
very idea of universal entities is incoherent.
D. He then undercuts the motivation for positing universal entities by
arguing that they are not needed for epistemological purposes.
1. The objects of the intellect are individuals.
2. The universality of science is not a matter of its dealing with
universal entities. Rather, science deals with statements that have
universal terms in them; those universal terms stand for
individuals, not universal entities.
3. The qualities of things are all we need to ground our predication.
A rose and its quality of redness are sufficient to give an objective
basis for my statement This rose is red. The concept is general,
not because it is a concept of a universal entity, but simply because
it can be applied to many distinct things.
E. Ockhams nominalism was widely influential. Some historians of
medieval thought, especially those sympathetic to Thomas Aquinas,
have regarded it as the beginning of all the philosophical and
theological ills of modernity.
1. Some have argued that nominalism leads to skepticism. The
nominalist denies that there are real, objective natures that we can
come to know.
2. Opponents of nominalism also argue that it means no one way of
conceptualizing the world is superior to any other. This leads to a
loss of confidence that the world is intelligible.
3. Yet Ockham was convinced that the world is intelligible, and he
was not inclined to skepticismexcept for his skepticism about
the prospects of natural theology.
Essential Reading:
Paul Vincent Spade, William of Ockham.

David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, chapters 2728.
Paul Vincent Spade, Ockhams Nominalist Metaphysics: Some Main Themes,
in Paul Vincent Spade, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ockham.
1. How does Ockham represent a radical departure from the prevailing
metaphysical and epistemological theories of medieval Aristotelianism?
2. What is the relation between Ockhams razor and his nominalism?

Lecture Twenty-Three
Ockham on the Prospects for Knowing God
Scope: In light of the serious deficiencies he found in the arguments of his

predecessors, Ockham held a noticeably dimmer view of the prospects
for natural knowledge of God. He held that it is impossible to prove, by
natural reason alone, that there is a first cause. Natural reason cannot
rule out the possibility of an infinite regress, in which each effect is
fully explained by its cause, which in turn, is fully explained by its
cause, and so on. Moreover, it cannot be proved that there is a being
than which no greater can be conceived. Such claims must rest on
supernatural revelation and are the objects of faith, not of philosophical
proof. It is even possible that the best philosophical theory will be at
odds with the demands of Christian doctrine; in such a case, Ockham
thinks there will be no neutral grounds by which the conflict between
faith and reason can be resolved.
Outline
I. Although Ockham is noticeably (and notoriously) less sanguine than his
predecessors about the possibility of attaining knowledge of God by the
exercise of natural reason alone, apart from revelation, the contrast between
Ockham and Aquinas or Scotus should not be exaggerated.
A. All three are situated within the mainstream of Christian thought on
these matters, which has rejected both fideism (exclusive reliance on
faith) and rationalism (exclusive reliance on reason).
B. All three accept that it is legitimate to use the achievements of pagan
philosophy in Christian thought.
C. All three affirm that the powers of human reason are not only limited in
themselves but also damaged by the fall, so that reason requires both
supplementation and repair by the deliverances of faith.
II. Nevertheless, Ockham differs from both Aquinas and Scotus in important
ways.
A. Ockham rejects the claim that theology counts as an Aristotelian
science, that is, as an organized body of knowledge that proceeds from
self-evident principles to conclusions that are seen to follow
deductively from those principles.
1. Both Aquinas and Scotus had regarded theology as a science, even
though the principles of theology are not self-evident to us. They
are self-evident to God and to the blessed; thus, they can serve as
the basis for a science.

2. Ockham replies that it makes no sense to say that I have scientific
knowledge of a conclusion that follows from something that is
self-evident only to someone else.
B. Ockham rejects the claim that Christian theology builds on and perfects
Classical philosophy in a way that meets the intellectual standards and
aims of the Classical philosophers themselves.
1. Both Aquinas and Scotus argued that many of the truths affirmed
by Christian doctrine can be shown to be true by the methods of
Classical philosophy and that Christian doctrines that cannot be
shown to be true in this way can at least be shown not to contradict
reason.
2. Ockham rejects both claims. He is skeptical both about natural
theology (the enterprise of proving truths about God by
philosophical reasoning) and about the prospects of showing that
the mysteries of the faith are consonant with reason.
III. Ockham is deeply skeptical about natural theology.
A. At most, he thinks, we can prove that there is a being such that no other
being is more perfect than it.
1. Such a being could be finite for all we can know.
2. Nor can we prove that there is only one such being.
B. In rejecting the arguments given by his predecessors, Ockham shows
little interest in rehabilitating their arguments. His interest in natural
theology seems purely destructive.
IV. Ockham is also deeply skeptical about the prospects of showing that the
mysteries of faith are consonant with reason. We can see this skepticism at
work in his treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity.
A. The impasse comes about because Ockham rejects the category of
relations on philosophical grounds (as discussed in Lecture Twenty-
Two), yet it appears that the doctrine of the Trinity requires relations.
1. Ockham defends what he takes to be Aristotles theory that there
are no relative entities (see Lecture Twenty-Two).
2. Yet he also concedes that the doctrine of the Trinity seems to
suggest that the three divine persons are constituted by the
relations they bear to one another.
B. Ockham rejects the approach of Aquinas and Scotus to such apparent
conflicts.
1. Both Aquinas and Scotus insist that if a philosophical theory is
incompatible with a doctrine of the faith, there is a mistake in the
arguments for that theory. The mistake can be exposed by purely
rational means.

2. Ockham, in contrast, insists that the Aristotelian theory that there
are no relative entities is, on purely rational grounds, the only
defensible theory. There is no mistake in it for reason to expose.
3. It is only by faith that we know the theory is false. Thus, we have
to hold a restricted version of the Aristotelian viewbasically, we
hold the Aristotelian view but carve out an exception as needed for
theological purposes. There would be no neutral grounds on which
to defend this exception against objections from a non-Christian
philosopher.
V. Ockham has been described as an irenic separatist on the question of faith
and reason.
A. He does not reject natural reason altogether or rely purely on faith.
B. Yet he does reject the view of Christian theology as the culmination of
Classical philosophya view common to Augustine, Anselm, Abelard,
Aquinas, and Scotus.
Essential Reading:
Alfred J. Freddoso, Ockham on Faith and Reason, in Paul Vincent Spade, ed.,
The Cambridge Companion to Ockham.
David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought, chapters 2728.
1. In what ways does Ockham represent a continuation of the main line of
medieval thinking on issues of faith and reason and in what ways does he
represent a departure?
2. How does Ockham differ from Aquinas and Scotus in his account of
apparent conflicts between faith and reason?

Lecture Twenty-Four
The 14th Century and Beyond
Scope: Aristotelianism did not remain dominant for long. By 1350, it was
losing ground rapidly, and by 1400, a new Renaissance version of
Platonism was widespread and thriving. Nicholas of Autrecourt
(c. 12951369) challenged some of the main tenets of medieval
Aristotelianism, including the principle that we can infer causes from
effects without experiencing both. Consequently, he denied that it was
possible to infer anything at all about God on the basis of creatures.
Nicholas of Cusa (14011464) adopted a mystical brand of Platonism
that emphasized the infinite distance between God and creatures. Given
that God is beyond all comparison, human reason, which proceeds by
means of comparison, is utterly incapable of grasping God. We must,
therefore, go beyond reason and use what Cusa called intelligence, a
power of knowing that does not involve a process of argument but a
direct vision of reality.
Outline
I. The best account of later medieval philosophy does not see it simply as a
decline from a glorious summit but as involving a loss of confidence in one
project and a shift of focus to other projects.
II. Both philosophical and theological developments led to the waning of
Aristotelianism in the 14th century.
A. The Condemnation of 1277 and its aftermath led to a more cautious
approach to Aristotelianism. One of the targets of the Condemnation
had been Aristotelian natures as a limit on divine omnipotence.
B. The Aristotelian tradition itself ran into intractable problems in
accounting for human knowledge.
1. For Aristotle, the individual substance is the most basic thing and
the primary object of knowledge, yet only what is universal is fully
intelligible.
2. If all our knowledge comes from the senses, how can we know the
essences of things? Medieval Aristotelians had developed an
elaborate psychological machinery to explain how we come to
know essences, when in fact, it appears that we cannot know
essences at all.
III. Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 12951369) is representative of 14th-century
anti-Aristotelianism.

A. Nicholas derides Aristotle as like the God of our age and insists that
none of Aristotles views rests on secure argument.
B. There are only two sources of certainty.
1. The law of non-contradiction, combined with experience, is the
only source of natural certainty.
2. Faith is the source of supernatural certainty.
C. Causal arguments are not sources of certainty.
1. Nicholas argued that we cannot logically infer the existence of a
cause from an effect or vice versa. We can experience causal
connections, but we cannot infer them in the absence of
experience.
2. Consequently, we cannot infer the existence of God on the basis of
a causal proof.
IV. Nicholas of Cusa (14011464) is representative of Renaissance Platonism.
A. All rational inquiry involves a movement from what is unknown to
what is known.
1. We advance in knowledge by using what is already familiar as a
pattern by which to investigate what is unfamiliar.
2. The greater the distance between the familiar thing we know and
the unfamiliar thing we are inquiring into, the harder it is to draw
our conclusions.
3. Given that the distance between God and creatures is infinite, the
truth of God is always beyond our reach. We can approach it, but
we never attain it.
B. We must, therefore, get beyond the process of rational inquiry (which
is characteristic of Aristotelian thought) and rely instead on direct
intuition of the truth, which Nicholas calls intelligence.
1. God is a coincidence of opposites. God includes all conceivable
perfections, even incompatible ones.
2. Reason, relying on the law of non-contradiction, rejects the
coincidence of opposites. But intelligence sees unity where reason
sees contradiction.
V. Further developments within Aristotelianism offer more illustrations of the
breakup of the medieval conversation on issues of faith and reason.
A. After Ockham, the Aristotelian tradition in the universities seems to
have lost its energy for the systematic exploration of issues of faith and
reason.
1. Some later Aristotelians came to concentrate more and more on
narrow technical questions that could be resolved by purely logical
means.

2. Logic itself was a major preoccupation of the universities in the
14th and 15th centuries.
3. Questions of faith and reason that lent themselves to logical
analysis, such as the problem of foreknowledge and free will, were
given particularly close attention.
B. Political philosophy began to take center stage in the 14th century in
light of the pressing debates about the nature of authority and law in
both church and state. There is a clearer path to the modern world from
late medieval political philosophy, along with medieval science, than
there is from the medieval discussions of faith and reason.
C. Those today who are interested in recovering the medieval project
would have to work to restore confidence in the presuppositions that
allowed the project to flourish in the first place, perhaps thereby
inaugurating, not a return to, but a true heir of, that project.
Essential Reading:
Nicholas of Autrecourt, Letters to Bernard of Arezzo, in Arthur Hyman and
James J. Walsh, eds., Philosophy in the Middle Ages.
Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance, in Nicholas of Cusa: Selected
Spiritual Writings.
David Luscombe, Medieval Thought, chapters 78.
For contemporary work that carries on the tradition of faith seeking
understanding, see the following:
Michael J. Murray, ed., Reason for the Hope Within.
Eleonore Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith.
Peter van Inwagen, The Problem of Evil.
1. How do both Nicholas of Cusa and Nicholas of Autrecourt react against the
Aristotelian theory of knowledge?
2. In what ways did developments in the church and in the universities
contribute to the fragmentation of intellectual life in the late Middle Ages?

1. Duns, Scotland: John Duns Scotus was born in Duns in 1265 or 1266.
2. Oxford: Oxford was the leading English university in the 13th and 14th
centuries.Both John Duns Scotus and William Ockham were educated there. Robert
Grosseteste was chancellor of the university from 1215 to 1221.
3. London: William Ockham taught philosophy in London from 1321 until he was
summoned to Avignon in 1324.
4. Canterbury: Lanfranc of Bec was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to
1089.Anselm was Archbishop from 1093 to 1109.
5. Moerbeke, Flanders: William of Moerbeke was born here around 1215.
6. Brabant, Flanders: Siger of Brabant was born here in 1240.
7. Cologne: Albert the Great taught at Cologne from 1248 to 1254; Thomas Aquinas
was his student there and then began teaching in his own right. Scotus began teaching
at Cologne in 1307 and died there the next year.
8. Laon: John Scottus Eriugena resided at the court of the Charles the Bald from 845.
9. Soissons: The Council of Soissons condemned Abelards teaching in 1121.
10. Bec, Normandy: Anselm studied in Bec (under Lanfranc) from 1059, became prior
of Bec in 1063, and became abbot of Bec in 1078a post he held until becoming
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093.
11. Paris: Abelard tutored and married Hlose here in the 1110s and was castrated by
her relatives. The University of Paris, which received its official charter in 1215, was
the leading European university in the 13th and early 14th centuries. Albert the Great
taught at Paris from 1245 to 1248; Thomas Aquinas was among his students.
Bonaventure was Franciscan master of theology at Paris (12541257) while Aquinas
was Dominican master of theology (12561259, 12681272). The Condemnation of
1277 was issued by the Bishop of Paris, Stephen Tempier. Scotus was Franciscan
master of theology from 1305 to 1307.
12. Chartres: A ground of Platonically-inclined theologians and philosophers
flourished at Chartres in the 12th century.
13. Sens: Condemnation by the Council of Sens (1141) ended Abelards teaching
career.
14. Munich: Ockham was in Munich under the protection of Ludwig of Bavaria from
1329 until his death in 1347.
15. Nantes: Abelard was born here in 1079.
16. Brixen: Nicholas of Cusa was Bishop of Brixen from 1450 to 1464.
17. Cluny: The Abbey of Cluny was the center of monastic reform in the 12th century.
Its abbot, Peter the Venerable, welcomed Peter Abelard and mediated with Bernard
of Clairvaux after Abelards condemnation by the Council of Sens in 1141.
18. Aosta: Anselm was born in Aosta in 1033.
19. Pavia: Boethius was exiled to Pavia, where he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy
and was executed around 526.
20. Ravenna: King Theodoric employed Boethius as head of government c. 520
21. Avignon: The papal court was at Avignon from 1309 to 1377. Ockham was
summoned to Avignon to answer charges of heresy in 1324, and he fled in 1328.
22. Bagnoregio: Bonaventure (Giovanni di Fidanza) was born in Bagnoregio in 1217.
23. Rome: Boethius was born in Rome around 476.
24. Aquino: Thomas Aquinas was born in Aquino in 1225.
25. Hippo: Augustine was ordained a priest in 391, served as bishop from 395 until his
death in 430, and wrote his major works (including the Confessions and City ofGod),
in Hippo.
26. Tagaste: Augustine was born in Tagaste in 354.

Timeline
354 .................................................. Birth of Augustine

387 .................................................. Augustine baptized by Ambrose of Milan
397 .................................................. Augustine writes the Confessions
411 .................................................. Augustine becomes aware of the influence
of Pelagius
430 .................................................. Death of Augustine
c. 476 .............................................. Birth of Boethius
526 .................................................. Execution of Boethius
c. 540 .............................................. Benedict writes his Rule
711 .................................................. Moors control Spain
768814 .......................................... Reign of Charlemagne
800 .................................................. Birth of John Scottus Eriugena
877 .................................................. Death of John Scottus Eriugena
910 .................................................. Beginning of Benedictine monastic reform
at Cluny
1033 ................................................ Birth of Anselm
1054 ................................................ Schism between Western and Eastern
Churches
10731085 ...................................... Papacy of Gregory VII, a period of
extensive church reform
10761078 ...................................... Anselm writes the Monologion and
Proslogion
1079 ................................................ Birth of Peter Abelard
10851090 ...................................... Anselm writes On the Fall of the Devil
1090 ................................................ Birth of Bernard of Clairvaux
1093 ................................................ Anselm becomes archbishop of Canterbury
1095 ................................................ First Crusade begins
1099 ................................................ Crusaders take Jerusalem
1109 ................................................ Death of Anselm
1115 ................................................ Bernard founds monastery at Clairvaux

Council of Soissons
c. 1128 ............................................ Latin translations of Aristotles new logic
made by James of Venice in Constantinople
Council of Sens
1142 ................................................ Death of Abelard
1153 ................................................ Death of Bernard of Clairvaux
1206 ................................................ Birth of Albert the Great
1208 ................................................ Beginning of the Order of Friars Minor
(Franciscans)
1215 ................................................ Statutes of the University of Paris approved
by the papal legate
1216 ................................................ Beginning of the Order of Preachers
(Dominicans)
1217 ................................................ Birth of Bonaventure
1225 ................................................ Birth of Thomas Aquinas
1243 ................................................ Bonaventure joins the Franciscans
1253 ................................................ Death of Robert Grosseteste, translator of
Aristotles Ethics
theology at Paris; begins Summa contra
Gentiles
1259 ................................................ Bonaventure writes The Journey of the Mind
to God
1265/66 ........................................... Birth of John Duns Scotus
1266 ................................................ Aquinas begins Summa theologiae
theology at Paris for the second time
1274 ................................................ Death of Bonaventure; death of Thomas
Aquinas
1277 ................................................ The bishop of Paris condemns 219
propositions
1280 ................................................ Death of Albert the Great
c. 1288 ............................................ Birth of William Ockham

1295 ................................................ Birth of Nicholas of Autrecourt
13051307 ...................................... John Duns Scotus is Franciscan regent
master of theology at Paris
1308 ................................................ Death of John Duns Scotus
1309 ................................................ The papal court moves to Avignon
1324 ................................................ Ockham is called to Avignon to answer
charges of heresy
1328 ................................................ Ockham flees Avignon under cover of
darkness
1337 ................................................ The Hundred Years War begins
1347 ................................................ Death of William Ockham; the Black Death
1369 ................................................ Death of Nicholas of Autrecourt
1377 ................................................ The papal court returns to Rome
1378 ................................................ Rival claimants to the papacy create the
Great Schism
1401 ................................................ Birth of Nicholas of Cusa
1417 ................................................ The Council of Constance ends the Great
Schism
1453 ................................................ Fall of Constantinople
1464 ................................................ Death of Nicholas of Cusa

Glossary
absolute power: Gods ability to act beyond the limits of nature as discerned by
reason (as contrasted with ordained power).
accidental form: In Aristotelianism, a form that can begin or cease to
characterize a thing without affecting the things identity (for example, color,
size).
active (agent) intellect (nous poietikos in Greek; intellectus agens in Latin): In
Aristotelianism, the power that creates intelligible objects out of the objects of
sensation.
actuality (energeia in Greek; actus in Latin): In Aristotelianism, the state of
actually being a certain way (as opposed to potentiality).
analogy: A use of language in which a single term has different but related
meanings.
aseity: From the Latin a se, from himself; Gods aseity is his complete
independence from anything other than himself, not merely with respect to his
existence but with respect to every feature or quality that he possesses.
concupiscence (concupiscentia in Latin): Excessive or disordered desire.
dialectic: In medieval educational theory, techniques of philosophical reasoning
that involve distinguishing the meanings of ambiguous terms and developing
rigorous arguments; see also trivium.
Dominican: A member of the Order of Preachers, founded in the early 13th
century to teach, preach, and defend the Christian faith.
emanation: In neo-Platonism, the necessary flowing forth of all things from
the One.
epistemology: The part of philosophy that asks questions about the nature and
acquisition of knowledge.
equivocity (aequivocitas in Latin): A use of language in which a single term has
two or more unrelated meanings.
eternity (aeternitas in Latin): According to Boethius, the complete and perfect
possession of illimitable life all at once; a mode of existence in which there is
no before and after.
everlasting (sempiternus in Latin): Existing at all times or having endless
temporal duration (as contrasted with eternity).
exemplarism: A theory of the Atonement according to which the effectiveness
of the death of Christ is limited to its serving as an inspiring example of divine
love.

fideism: Exclusive reliance on faith, at least in theological matters (as opposed
to rationalism).
form: (1) In Platonism (idea or eidos in Greek; idea in Latin), the perfect
paradigm of a quality or nature; for example, the Form of the Good or the Form
of Beauty. (2) In Aristotelianism (morphe in Greek; forma in Latin), a
constituent of a thing that gives it actuality (see substantial form and
accidental form).
fortitude (fortitudo in Latin): The virtue in the sensitive appetite by which we
are disposed to overcome obstacles that stand in the way of our attaining what
reason recognizes as good.
Franciscan: A member of the Order of Friars Minor (Order of Lesser Brothers),
founded in the early 13th century to carry out the ideals of Saint Francis of
Assisi.
illumination: The divine enlightening of the human intellect so as to enable it to
grasp intelligible things (variously interpreted by different medieval thinkers).
immutable: Incapable of undergoing change.
impassible: Incapable of experiencing emotion.
infused virtues (virtutes infusae in Latin): Virtues poured in by God (as
contrasted with natural virtues).
integral Aristotelians: Medieval philosophers who treated Aristotelian
philosophy as a complete, freestanding account of the natural world. Also called
Latin Averroists.
intellectual appetite: The capacity for rational desire (as contrasted with
sensitive appetite). Thomas Aquinas identifies the will with intellectual
appetite.
intelligible: Knowable by, or accessible to, the mind or intellect (as opposed to
sensible).
irenic separatism: An expression used to describe Ockhams approach to the
relation between faith and reason that avoids both fideism and rationalism.
justice (iustitia in Latin): The virtue in the will by which we are disposed
properly toward the common good.
Latin Averroists: See integral Aristotelians.
Manicheism: A sect that taught that evil is independent of, and co-eternal with,
good.
metaphysics: The part of philosophy that asks questions about the fundamental
structure of reality.

motion (kinesis in Greek; motus in Latin): In Aristotelianism, change in quality
or size or place.
mysteries of faith (mysteria fidei in Latin): In Thomas Aquinas, Christian
doctrines that cannot be proved philosophically and, therefore, must be taken on
faith (as contrasted with preambles to faith).
natural law: In Thomas Aquinas, the self-evident principles on which all
practical reasoning is based; in John Duns Scotus, the necessary and self-evident
moral truths that even God cannot change.
natural theology: The project of trying to prove the existence and nature of
God by reason alone, without relying on supernatural revelation.
natural virtues (virtutes naturales in Latin): Virtues acquired by practice or
teaching (as contrasted with infused virtues).
nominalism: The denial that there are universal entities.
Ockhams razor (Occams razor): Also known as the principle of ontological
parsimony; the methodological principle that one should not posit more entities
or kinds of entities than are necessary to explain something.
ordained power: Gods ability to act within the limits of the natures he has
created (as contrasted with absolute power).
participation: In Platonism, the way in which particular finite things resemble
or imitate the perfect paradigms (Forms).
passive intellect (nous pathetikos in Greek; intellectus passivus in Latin): In
Aristotelianism, the storehouse of intelligible objects; the initially blank slate on
which the active intellect writes ideas.
Pelagianism: The denial of the need for divine grace for right action. The
heresy gets its name from the British monk Pelagius (c. 354c. 420), whom
Augustine accused of magnifying human freedom at the expense of divine
grace.
penal substitution theory: The theory of the Atonement according to which
Christ undergoes the punishment for sin on behalf of human beings
potentiality (dynamis in Greek; potentia in Latin): In Aristotelianism, the state
of being possibly but not actually a certain way (as opposed to actuality).
practical reason: The kind of thinking that aims at making or doing something
(as opposed to theoretical reason).
practical wisdom/prudence (prudentia in Latin): The virtue of practical
reason that enables someone to ascertain readily, in particular circumstances,
how to attain the human good.

preambles to faith (praeambula fidei in Latin): In Thomas Aquinas, Christian
doctrines that can be proved philosophically, without appeal to revelation (as
contrasted with mysteries of faith).
privation: A lack or absence.
propter quid argument: An argument from the essence of a thing to some
feature that it possesses.
quadrivium: In medieval educational theory, the secondary or advanced
disciplines of music, astronomy, arithmetic, and geometry; in practice, the
quadrivium (a term coined by Boethius, though the underlying idea goes back to
Pythagoras) was in eclipse for much of the period from the 6th through the 11th
centuries, and the trivium was dominant.
quia argument: An argument from effect to cause.
ransom theory: The theory of the Atonement according to which the death of
Christ was a ransom paid to release human beings from captivity.
rationalism: Exclusive or excessive reliance on reason in theological matters;
excessive optimism about the powers of human reason to arrive at the truth,
particularly the truth about God (as opposed to fideism).
self-evident: Knowable without proof, simply by reflection on the concepts
involved.
sensible: Knowable by, or accessible to, the senses (as opposed to intelligible).
sensitive appetite: In human beings, the capacity for sub-rational desire (as
contrasted with intellectual appetite).
simple: Not composite.
skepticism: Doubts about the power of human reason to come to a truthful
account of the ways things are.
soul (psyche in Greek; anima in Latin): In Aristotelianism, whatever it is that
accounts for the fact that something is alive.
spiration: Literally, breathing out: a word used to describe the procession of
the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.
substance: A being capable of independent existence (not independent of God
but independent of other things, as opposed to an accident, which can exist only
in a substance).
substantial form: In Aristotelianism, a form that makes a thing what it is (for
example, the soul makes a human being human).
temperance (temperantia in Latin): The virtue in the sensitive appetite by
which we are disposed to desire what reason recognizes as good and reject what
reason recognizes as evil.

theoretical reason: The kind of thinking that aims simply at knowing (as
opposed to practical reason).
trivium: In medieval educational theory, the elementary or foundational
disciplines of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (logic). However, in the period
from the 6th through the 11th centuries, dialectic was either omitted or treated as
mere memory work, and the resulting education focused on grammar and
rhetoric and was, thus, largely literary. In the 11th century, dialectic was revived
as a serious intellectual discipline.
univocity (univocitas in Latin): A use of language in which a single term is used
with one consistent meaning.
via affirmationis/via affirmativa: Literally, the way of affirming; an approach
to discourse about God that emphasizes what God is. Also called kataphatic
theology.
via remotionis/via negativa: Literally, the way of negating; an approach to
discourse about God that emphasizes what God is not. Also called apophatic
theology.
virtue: A disposition in the emotions, will, or intellect that enables its possessor
to act reliably, readily, and with pleasure in accordance with the demands of
morality.
voluntarism: A theory of freedom that gives particular emphasis to the will
(voluntas) and accords it a high degree of independence from the intellect.

Biographical Notes
Note: In keeping with what has become the standard practice in histories of
medieval philosophy, these biographical notes are alphabetized according to
their subjects first names.
Albert the Great (12061280). Albert was received into the Dominican Order
in 1223 and educated by Dominicans in Padua and Cologne. In the 1240s, he
rose through the ranks at the University of Paris, becoming a leading exponent
of the new Aristotle and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas. From 1248 to 1252,
he directed the Dominican house of studies in Cologne. In later years, he served
in a variety of ecclesiastical roles, including three years as bishop of Ratisbon
(now Regensburg). Albert was an encyclopedic thinker, writing on a remarkable
range of scientific, philosophical, and theological topics. His work on natural
science proved especially important to later thinkers, but his greatest influence
was through his student, Thomas Aquinas.
Anselm of Canterbury (10331109). Anselm was the most important
philosopher-theologian in the 800 years between Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas. Deeply influenced by Augustine, he was nevertheless a highly original
thinker, with a fertile mind for the development of arguments. Originally
attracted to the Abbey of Bec because of the reputation of its school, which was
under the direction of the eminent theologian Lanfranc, Anselm was soon
inspired to become a monk himself. He never lost his love of the monastic life,
though his ever-increasing administrative responsibilitiesfirst prior, then
abbot of Bec and, ultimately, archbishop of Canterbury under two exceedingly
vexatious kings of Englandtook him further and further away from the peace
of the cloister. In such works as the Monologion and Proslogion (10761078)
and Cur Deus Homo (10941098), Anselm seeks to offer necessary reasons in
support of Christian doctrine.
Augustine of Hippo (354430). Both as a transmitter of Christian Platonism
and as a theologian and biblical commentator, Augustine has been one the most
influential figures in Western Christianity. When Augustine converted to
Christianity in 386, he wanted to lead a life of philosophical retirement. His
ordination to the priesthood in Hippo Regius in 391, then his elevation to bishop
of Hippo in 395 made such a life impossible for him. As a bishop, Augustine
was a public figure: a spell-binding preacher, ecclesiastical controversialist,
pastor, polemicist, and theologian of wide reputation. His extensive writings
include the semi-autobiographical Confessions, The City of God, and his
influential work On the Trinity.
Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, c. 476c. 526). Boethius was
born into the Roman aristocracy and educated in the Classical tradition. He
conceived the ambitious project of translating all of Plato and Aristotle into
Latin, then showing how the two thinkers could be harmonized. Though he
came nowhere near finishing this project, he did translate a good deal of

Aristotles logic, as well as writing commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry.
These works were the primary philosophical textbooks in the Latin West for the
next 600 years. Boethius also wrote several short theological works, but he is
best known for his Consolation of Philosophy, written while he was in prison.
Boethius had been a high-ranking official under Theodoric, but for reasons that
are not altogether clear, he fell out of favor and was charged with treason and
engaging in magic. He was executed on those charges, probably in 526.
Bonaventure (12171274). Born Giovanni di Fidanza in Tuscany, he took the
name Bonaventure (good fortune) when he became a Franciscan in 1243/44.
From 1254 through 1257, Bonaventure served as Franciscan master of theology
at the University of Paris, engaging in public disputation, lecturing, and writing
on philosophical and theological topics. In 1257, he was appointed minister
general of the Franciscans, a move that put an end to his university career,
though not to his writing. Bonaventures most influential work, The Journey of
the Mind to God, was written to provide a spiritual path to God that any
Franciscan could follow, yet it was no less a philosophical and theological
treatise than any of his academic writing had been. Bonaventure became an
influential figure in the church and was appointed a cardinal in 1273.
John Duns Scotus (1265/661308). We know little of Scotuss early life,
though it seems likely that he began his studies with the Franciscans at an early
age. He studied at Oxford, then went to the University of Paris, where he
lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard in 13021303 and served as
Franciscan master of theology from 1305 through 1307. For reasons we do not
know, he was transferred to the Franciscan house in Cologne in 1307; he died in
Cologne the following year. Even during his life, the adjective subtle had come
to be associated with Scotuss thought, which is ingenious, difficult, and
inventively defended; soon after his death, he came to be known as the Subtle
Doctor. His surname, Duns, is the origin of our English word duncea slur on
the inanities of some of his followers, who emulated the difficulties of Scotuss
thought without being able to approach his brilliance.
John Scottus Eriugena (c. 800c. 877). Although he worked at the court of
Charles the Bald in France in the late Carolingian period, Eriugena was an Irish
monk. (Eriugena, a name he apparently bestowed on himself, means Irish-
born; other people called him Scottus, which means Scottish, but in those
days, people thought of Ireland as part of Scotland.) At that time, Irish monks
were almost the only people in the West who still knew Greek, and Eriugenas
greatest influence was as a translator, particularly of the works of pseudo-
Dionysius the Areopagite. Eriugenas own philosophical system, an ambitious
neo-Platonic construction with decidedly pantheistic overtones, has occasionally
drawn some interest from philosophers with an affinity for more exotic versions
of Platonism than Augustines, but it has never been part of the mainstream of
Christian thinking. Eriugena was condemned as a heretic at two regional
councils in the 850s for his teaching on predestination, which was regarded as

having Pelagian tendencies and as placing too much confidence in the power
of dialectic to solve theological problems.
Nicholas of Autrecourt (c. 12951369). Most of what we know about
Nicholass life is limited to his trial in the 1340s. In 1340, Nicholas was charged
with teaching 66 erroneous propositions. The trial dragged on, first in Paris,
then at the papal court in Avignon, until 1346, when Nicholas was required to
make a public recantation. In 1347, his treatise Exigit ordo (Order Demands)
was ceremonially burned, though the work continued to be circulated, and at
least one copy has survived to the present day.
Nicholas of Cusa (14011464). Nicholass original academic interest was in
canon law, in which he received a doctorate from the University of Padua in
1423. His interest in philosophy and theology came from a sort of revelation he
had on his journey back from Constantinople, to which he had been sent in 1437
on a fruitless mission to negotiate the reunion of the Eastern and Western
Churches. Nicholas described this revelation as an experience of learned
ignorance, an insight that transcends the limits of reason, and he gave the title
On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia) to his most influential work.
Despite suspicions that his views were ultimately pantheistic, Nicholas was
never accused of heresy. He was made a cardinal in 1449 and a bishop in 1450.
Peter Abelard (10791142). Born in Brittany into the minor nobility but
determined from an early age to devote himself to learning, Abelard studied
under many of the most eminent teachers of his day. He frequently quarreled
with his teachers and was eager to defeat them in public debate. As a result, he
acquired a reputation as an intellectual powerhouse, attracting students of his
own. After his ill-fated affair with Heloise, which resulted in his castration,
Abelard sought the peace of monastic life and devoted himself to teaching and
writing theology. His Trinitarian speculations were condemned at two councils
(Soissons, 1121; Sens, 1141). Though these condemnations, along with Bernard
of Clairvauxs energetic propaganda campaign against him, discouraged people
from citing Abelard explicitly, it is clear that he had extensive influence on 12th-
century thought.
Siger of Brabant (1240c. 1284). Siger was a leader of the integral
Aristotelians at the University of Paris and one of the prime targets of the
Condemnation of 1277. In the face of charges of heresy, Siger fled from Paris to
Italy, where he died under mysterious circumstances. Dante placed Siger in
heaven in the Paradiso, where Thomas Aquinasin life a bitter opponent of the
integral Aristoteliansintroduces Siger to the poet.
Stephen Tempier (d. 1279). A Paris-trained theologian, Stephen (tienne)
Tempier became bishop of Paris in 1268. His chief legacy was the
Condemnation of 1277, a list of 219 condemned theses taught by some
scholars of arts. The Condemnation circulated widely, and bachelors of
theology were required to swear that they would not teach any of the prohibited
theses.

Thomas Aquinas (Thomas of Aquino) (c. 12251274). After joining the
Dominicans over the protests of his family, Thomas Aquinas was sent to study
at Paris under Albert the Great. He followed Albert to Cologne but then returned
to Paris in 1251 to complete his studies. From 1256 to 1259 and again from
1268 to 1272, he occupied one of the Dominican chairs of theology at the
University of Paris. Aquinas was a tireless opponent of the integral Aristotelians
in the arts faculty, but he was also an ardent defender of the propriety of using
Aristotle in formulating Christian theology. His writings include extensive
commentary on Aristotle, as well as his two great syntheses of theology, Summa
theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles. Aquinas was regarded by some as rather
too friendly to Aristotle to be quite safe, and some of his views were officially
proscribed by the Condemnation of 1277. The condemnation of Aquinas was
soon retracted, however, and Aquinas was canonized in 1323.
William (of) Ockham (c. 12881347). Ockham (also spelled Occam) was
educated by the Franciscans in London and Oxford. Around 1323, someone
went to the papal court, then located in Avignon, and charged Ockham with
teaching heresy. Ockham was summoned to Avignon to answer the charges.
Ockham remained in Avignon for four years, being questioned occasionally by
the investigators but otherwise left free to continue his writing. A dispute
between Michael Cesana, the minister general of the Franciscans, and Pope John
XXII led Ockham to accuse the pope of effectively abdicating his office by
stubbornly teaching heresy. The fallout from this bold declaration led Cesana,
Ockham, and two other Franciscans to flee Avignon under the cover of night.
They eventually came under the protection of Ludwig of Bavaria, the Holy
Roman Emperor, in Munich. Ockham was excommunicated in 1328 for leaving
Avignon without permission. He remained under imperial protection for the rest
of his life and wrote exclusively on political matters.

Bibliography
All quotations from the works discussed in this course were translated from
Latin by the instructor. Some of these translations, including all the quotations
from Anselm, as well as those from Augustines On Free Choice of the Will,
have appeared in print; the books in which they appear are listed in the
bibliography. (In a few cases, the translation used in this course differs slightly
from the published version in order to bring out a nuance that is particularly
relevant to the material being discussed.) The other translations were made
specifically for this course.
The bibliography also lists the work of other translators. These translations were
not used in the course itself, but they represent, in the instructors judgment, the
best published English translations of the Latin works.
Those especially in interested in issues arising in the translation of medieval
philosophers from the Latin West may wish to consult Thomas Williams,
Transmission and Translation, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval
Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 328346), also available at
http:// shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/trans.pdf.
Essential Reading:
Anselm. Anselm: Basic Writings. Translated by Thomas Williams. Indianapolis:
Hackett, 2007. This volume contains all the major works of Anselm in a careful
translation with notes and a glossary.
Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Rex Warner. New York: Signet Classics,
1963. Much more than an autobiography, the Confessions is a wide-ranging
meditation on God, creation, sin, and the human condition. Of the many
translations of the Confessions, Warners offers the best combination of fidelity
to the Latin text and a vivid, accessible style.
. On Free Choice of the Will. Translated by Thomas Williams.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. This work represents Augustines earliest attempts
to come to grips with the origin of evil. It introduces many of the themes that
become prominent in Augustines mature works, and for that reason, it serves as
the best short introduction to Augustines thought in his own words.
. On True Religion. In Augustine: Earlier Writings, edited by John H. S.
Burleigh. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1979. On True
Religion is one of the key texts in which Augustine lays out his view of the
relationship between faith and reason.
Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by V. E. Watts, New
York: Penguin, 1969, or translated by P. G. Walsh, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999. To acquire a taste for The Consolation of Philosophy,
C. S. Lewis wrote, is almost to become naturalised in the Middle Ages.
Bonaventure. The Journey of the Mind to God. Translated by Philotheus
Boehner. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. This remarkable work unites philosophy,

theology, and Franciscan spirituality in a dense but rewarding meditation on the
possibility for knowledge of God.
Brower, Jeffrey, and Kevin Guilfoy, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Abelard. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Abelard is most often
studied today for his contributions to the more technical areas of philosophy. As
a result, some of the essays in this volume are dense and difficult in spots.
Nonetheless, the collection as a whole is an excellent guide to Abelards
thought.
Cross, Richard. John Duns Scotus. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
This book is an excellent short introduction to Scotuss philosophy and
theology.
Davies, Brian. The Thought of Thomas Aquinas. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993. Davies writes with exceptional clarity even about the most difficult
material in Aquinass thought.
Hyman, Arthur, and James J. Walsh, eds. Philosophy in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983. This exemplary collection of philosophical texts
represents the Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions from the 4th through the
14th centuries.
John Duns Scotus. Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Translated by Allan
B. Wolter. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998. This
volume contains translations of Scotuss most important writings on the nature
of the will and its freedom, the natural law and its relation to the divine will, and
other aspects of morality.
. Philosophical Writings: A Selection. Translated by Allan B. Wolter.
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987. Scotuss central writings on metaphysics, natural
theology, the theory of knowledge, and human nature are collected in this
indispensable volume.
King, Peter. Peter Abelard. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/abelard. King offers the best short overview of
Abelards thought, with more attention to Abelards views on faith and reason
than that topic is usually given.
Lohr, C. H. The Medieval Interpretation of Aristotle. In The Cambridge
History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony
Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, pp. 8098. New York: Cambridge University Press,
1992. Lohr discusses the varying fortunes of Aristotle in science, philosophy,
and theology from Boethius through the Renaissance. He gives particular
attention to the crucial debates of the 13th century.
McGrade, A. S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. This collection of essays offers an
excellent overview of the development of medieval philosophy in the Christian,
Jewish, and Islamic traditions. The volume is organized topically, rather than
according to individual authors, giving a sense of the sweep of medieval

thinking on such issues as language and logic, metaphysics, ethics, human
nature, and politics.
McInerny, Ralph, and John OCallaghan. Saint Thomas Aquinas. Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/aquinas. Two leading
Thomists present the essentials of Aquinass thought in a form accessible to
non-specialists.
Nicholas of Cusa. Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings. Edited by H.
Lawrence Bond. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1997. This collection contains On
Learned Ignorance and other works of Nicholas of Cusa, as well as an extensive
introduction.
Noone, Timothy B., and R. E. Houser. Saint Bonaventure. Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/bonaventure. The authors
survey Bonaventures main philosophical and theological contributions and
offer a good sense of the distinctive flavor of Bonaventures thought.
Pasnau, Robert C. Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. Pasnau offers a detailed account of Aquinass views on
the relationship between mind and body, the mechanisms of cognition, personal
identity and immortality, and the will.
Rist, J. M. Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2003. Rist explores Augustines thought against the
background of the Platonism that Augustine adopted and developed. Many
readers find this the best single book on Augustines thought, and it is fully
accessible to a non-specialist.
Spade, Paul Vincent, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ockham. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2005. The leading scholars of William of Ockham
analyze his contributions to logic, metaphysics, the theory of knowledge, ethics,
and politics. This is an indispensable guide to Ockhams thought.
. Medieval Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy. This article serves as a
short orientation tour for medieval philosophy, with many links to more detailed
discussions of particular authors and topics.
. William of Ockham. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ockham. Spade provides an excellent overview
of the central areas of Ockhams philosophical and political writings.
Stump, Eleonore, and Norman Kretzmann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to
Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. The 18 essays in this
volume cover the whole range of Augustines philosophical work, as well as
much of his theology.
Thijssen, Hans. Condemnation of 1277. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/condemnation. Thijssen surveys the history of the
Condemnation of 1277 and explains the unanswered questions about who
exactly was being condemned and what significance the Condemnation had.

Thomas Aquinas. Disputed Questions on the Virtues. Translated by E. M.
Atkins, edited by Thomas Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005. These disputed questions are records of academic debates on the virtues
held while Aquinas was teaching at the University of Paris. The introduction
explains the role of virtue in Aquinass ethics as a whole and places the disputed
questions in their intellectual context.
. Summa contra Gentiles, Book One: God. Translated by Anton C. Pegis.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. This volume is the most
accessible source for Aquinass account of faith and reason, his arguments for
the existence of God, and his account of the divine nature.
Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams. Anselm. New York: Oxford University
Press, forthcoming (2008). Visser and Williams divide their discussion of
Anselms work into two main areas: the divine nature and the economy of
redemption. This book seeks to offer a comprehensive and systematic account
of the whole of Anselms philosophy and theology.
Williams, Thomas. John Duns Scotus. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/duns-scotus. This article aims at giving a non-
technical explanation of the thought of this most technically sophisticated
thinker. The presentation of Scotuss celebrated argument for the existence of
God is worth especially close attention.
. Saint Anselm. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anselm. This article offers an overview of
Anselms life and works, his proofs of the existence of God, his account of the
divine nature, and his views on sin and freedom.
Aulen, Gustav. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of
the Idea of the Atonement. Translated by A. G. Herbert. New York: Wipf &
Stock, 2003. Aulens classic study of the history of the Christian doctrine of
redemption helps situate Abelards contributions in their intellectual context.
Brown, Peter. Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Revised edition with a new
epilogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Browns 1967
biography of Augustine quickly became the standard work on Augustines life.
This revised edition takes account of developments in scholarship since the
publication of the original work.
Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Anselm.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. This useful collection considers
every major aspect of Anselms thought, as well as his intellectual background
and his influence on later thinkers.
Dod, Bernard G. Aristoteles latinus. In The Cambridge History of Later
Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan
Pinborg, pp. 4579. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Dod
discusses the translations and translators that made possible the complete
reintroduction of Aristotle into the Latin West in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Holopainen, Toivo. Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century. New York:
E.J. Brill, 1996. Holopainen argues persuasively for a reexamination of the four
leading figures in the 11th-century revival of dialectic: Peter Damian, Lanfranc
of Bec, Berengar of Tours, and Anselm of Canterbury.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1972. Hopkins offers a useful roadmap through
Anselms writings, as well as philosophical commentary.
Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought. New York: Vintage
Books, 1962. This classic work is a highly readable survey of medieval thought
from its roots in Classical Greek philosophy through the 14th century. It is,
unfortunately, out of print and hard to find, but it is worth the search.
Kretzmann, Norman. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinass Natural Theology
in Summa Contra Gentiles I. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Kretzmann carefully expounds Aquinass account of our knowledge of God, his
arguments for the existence of God, and his account of the divine attributes. A
mix of historical scholarship and philosophical defense, this book is challenging
but rewarding reading.
Luscombe, David. Medieval Thought. New York: Oxford University Press,
2004. Luscombes work is especially useful for its discussion of the 14th and
15th centuries.
Marenbon, John. Boethius. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Marenbon discusses the full range of Boethiuss work and its intellectual
context, devoting about a third of the book to The Consolation of Philosophy.
. The Philosophy of Peter Abelard. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1997. Marenbons treatment of Abelards philosophy is particularly
noteworthy for its careful and extensive assessment of Abelards ethical theory.
McInerny, Ralph. Analogy of Names Is a Logical Doctrine. In Being and
Predication: Thomistic Interpretations, pp. 279286. Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1986. In this essay, the leading exponent of
Aquinass doctrine of analogy gives his most succinct and accessible
explanation of the doctrine.
Murray, Michael J., ed. Reason for the Hope Within. Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1998. The rising generation of Christian philosophers considers the
fundamental topics of faith seeking understanding.
Nash, Ronald H. The Light of the Mind: St. Augustines Theory of Knowledge.
Ann Arbor, MI: Academic Renewal Press, 2003. Nashs treatment of
Augustines theory of knowledge offers the most careful investigation available
of the theory of illumination, along with a discussion of other topics, such as
skepticism.
Noone, Timothy B. The Franciscan and Epistemology: Reflections on the
Roles of Bonaventure and Scotus. In Medieval Masters: Essays in Memory of
E. A. Synan, edited by R. E. Houser, pp. 6390. Minneapolis: Center for
Thomistic Studies, 1999. A leading exponent of medieval Franciscan

philosophy considers the theory of knowledge in Bonaventure and John Duns
Scotus against the broader historical context of developments in epistemology.
ODonnell, James J. Augustine: A New Biography. New York: HarperCollins,
2005. This highly controversial (and hostile) reappraisal of Augustines life and
work is written with extraordinary verve.
Quinn, Philip. Abelard on Atonement: Nothing Unintelligible, Arbitrary,
Illogical, or Immoral About It. In Reasoned Faith, edited by Eleonore Stump,
pp. 281300. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. Quinn seeks to rescue
Abelard from the misunderstandings of both his critics and his admirers in this
excellent and admirably clear essay.
Stump, Eleonore. Aquinas. New York: Routledge, 2005. Stump places Aquinas
in dialogue with contemporary philosophy on such issues as metaphysics, the
nature of God, human nature and cognition, ethics, incarnational theology, and
the problem of evil. Many regard this as the best book available on Aquinass
thought as a whole.
, ed. Reasoned Faith. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993. This
collection of essays by both theists and non-theists explores faith and reason, the
nature of revelation, the nature of God, and the problem of evil.
Van Inwagen, Peter. The Problem of Evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006. A leading philosopher of religion examines the greatest difficulty for
belief in God.
Williams, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003. This collection provides the most
comprehensive account of Scotuss philosophical writings, although (owing to
the highly technical nature of Scotuss philosophy) some of the essays in this
volume make for difficult reading in spots.
. A Most Methodical Lover? On Scotuss Arbitrary Creator. Journal of
the History of Philosophy 38 (2000): 169202. This article makes the case for a
controversial reading of Scotus as teaching that Gods creative act is, in an
important sense, arbitrary.
. Some Reflections on Method in the History of Philosophy.
http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/method.pdf. This brief essay considers a range
of possible approaches to the history of philosophy, including an account of the
approach exemplified by this course.
. The Libertarian Foundations of Scotuss Moral Philosophy. The
Thomist 62 (1998): 193215. This article examines the importance of Scotuss
account of freedom, as contrasted with that of Thomas Aquinas, in the larger
context of his ethical theory.
. Transmission and Translation. In The Cambridge Companion to
Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. S. McGrade, pp. 328346. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003. This paper considers the channels of
transmission by which medieval philosophical texts have come down to us, with
special attention to three case studies: the works of Anselm, John Duns Scotus,

and the 14th-century Dominican Robert Holcot. It also discusses the difficulties,
both interpretive and linguistic, involved in translating Latin texts into English.
A preprint is available online at http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~twilliam/trans.pdf.
Internet Resources:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library. http://ccel.org. The library links to a
variety of classics of Christian thought, including extensive translations of
Augustine.
EpistemeLinks. www.epistemelinks.com/Main/MainText.aspx. EpistemeLinks
offers more than 2,000 e-texts, including works of Aristotle and all the major
medieval philosophers.
The Franciscan Archive. www.franciscan-archive.org. The archive offers both
Latin editions and extensive translations of Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and
other important Franciscan writers. The translations can be somewhat old-
fashioned and stodgy, but they include a great deal of material not available
elsewhere.
Internet Medieval Sourcebook. www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html. This site
contains vast resources for the student of medieval history.
Summa Theologica. www.newadvent.org/summa. Aquinass greatest work is
presented in the standard translation by the fathers of the English Dominican
Province.

Reason Faith Philosophy in The Middle Ages

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Reason and Faith:

Professor Thomas Williams

THE TEACHING COMPANY

Thomas Williams, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at

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Professor Biography ........................................................................................... i

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Scope: Platonic philosophy draws a fundamental distinction between the

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Scope: According to Augustine, given that God is good, everything he creates

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Scope: Deposed from high government office and imprisoned on charges of

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Scope: The Consolation of Philosophy is best known for its influential

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Scope: At the request of his monks, Anselm composed the Monologion, a

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Scope: The ontological argument establishes so many different divine

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Scope: Abelards theory of the Atonement shows the complexities of his

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354 .................................................. Birth of Augustine

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