SCHOLASTICISM: Problem of Faith and Reason

Christianity as religion focused on "mysteries of faith"
                            Incarnation (Christ as God and man)
                            Trinity (3 persons in one God)
                            Eucharist (bread/wine as body/blood)
                           Virgin Birth (Mary remains Virgin)
                            Immaculate Conception (Mary conceived without original sin)

Fideism: faith (fides) as fundamental, not reason:  early Christianity emphasizes faith:
              Tertullian 3rd C. AD: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"
                             Athens: symbol of Greek philosophy
                            Jerusalem: symbol of Judaism and Christianity (Crucifixion)
                            "I believe because it is absurd,," i.e. faith not accessible to reason

Middle Ages: rise of scholasticism: rational understanding of religion

12th C. Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109)
      Cur Deus Homo? (Why did God become Man?)  only a man could atone for sin of Adam

      Ontological proof for the existence of God: example of syllogistic reasoning:
      1) God is, by definition, a being greater than which nothing can be conceived (imagined).
      2) Existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind. (It is better to exist than not exist.)
      3) God must exist in reality; if God did not, then God would not be the being than which
            nothing greater can be conceived (imagined).

13th C. Recovery of Aristotle, especially Logic, Politics, Metaphysics
              Aristotelian categories:
                        substance (essence)  vs  accident (contingent aspects, appearances)
                        potency (potential state) vs act (bringing something into existence)
                              God as First Cause in change of existence (see Aquinas Quaestio)

Scholasticism: "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectam)
                      application of Aristotlesian categories to the truths of faith
                           such as,  transubstantiation as explanation for real presence in Eucharist
                           continuity between natural order and grace
                              Aquinas: "grace builds on and completes nature" (see Erasmus for similar idea)
                                            grace as "created habit" = becomes human, not only divine (Ozment Ch 2)

Medieval scholastic curriculum of seven liberal arts:

              trivium: grammar               quadrivium: arithmetic astronomy
                             rhetoric                                          geometry    music
                             logic (& dialectics)                       = (natural philosophy)

University degrees and faculties (doctorates): theology, law, medicine

Purpose of knowledge in scholasticism:
        pursuit of abstract, rational intellectual truth
                        about God, creation (mankind as part of creation), Redemption
        encyclopedic approach to knowledge sub specie eternitatis
                         truth is ahistorical, beyond time    ("under the eye of eternity")
                         eg Aquinas: summa of all knowledge about God, man, creation

Dialectics: techniques of argumentation, proving theological points.

Syllogistic reasoning:  Major premise:  All men are rational
                                    Minor premise:  Socrates is a man.
                                   Conclusion:     Therefore, Socrates is rational.