Transcript Lesson 30: Knowing God in the Middle Ages

Lesson 29: Knowing God in
the Middle Ages
How can I know God?
We can only ask this question because of grace
•General Revelation
•Special Revelation
“Since
the canon
Scripture
is God:
complete
and abundantly
sufficient
Four
primary
meansofof
knowing
Wesleyan
“Quadrilateral”
for every purpose, what need is there to add to it the authority of the
church’s interpretation? The reasonJ.I.
is that,
by its very depth, the
Packer
1. Scripture
Holy Scripture is not received by all in one and the sane sense, but
“Quest for
Godliness”
declarations are subject to interpretation,
now
in one way, now in
2. its
Tradition
another. So it would appear that we can find almost as many
“Restless experientialist”
as there are people.”
3. interpretations
Reason
4. Experience
Peregrinus
“Entrenched
intellectuals”
Mysticism
“The mystic believes that there is an absolute and that he or she can
enjoy an unmediated link to this absolute in a super rational experience.”
Winfield Corduan, Mysticism: An Evangelical Option?
1. “Purgation”
repentance
2. “Illumination” study of scripture
3. “Union”
being in the presence of God
The Mystic Path
Action
Normal Living
Contemplation
Union with God
Augustine
Francis of Assisi
Bonaventure
Nicolas of Cusa
Gregory the Great
Bernard of Clairvaux
Scholasticism
‘the Queen of the Sciences”
Scholastic theology was the way that theology was done in the Middle Ages
Philosophy was a valuable asset to Christian theology
•Demonstrate the reasonableness of faith
•Enabled theologians to systematically arrange and order theology
Plato
Aristotle
The Universities and the Rise of
Scholasticism
al-Azhar University 970
Univesitas scholarium
the whole body of students
University of Bologna
Universitas magistrorum
the whole body of teachers
University of Paris
2 fold method of teaching:
Theology
Law
Medicine
Arts
Lecture
Disputation
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
‘I believe in order to know’
Ontological argument for God
Proslogion
“God is that then which nothing greater can be conceived”
Cur deus homo (Why God became Man)
Peter Abelard (1079-1142)
‘The doubting Peter?’
Sic et non (Yes and No)
Peter Lombard (1100-1160)
Four Books of the Sentences
God, creation and Old Testament
Salvation through Christ
Sacraments and last things
‘When Augustine says anything clearly, Lombard
obscures it. And if there was anything slightly
contaminated in Augustine, Lombard corrupts it”
First to define the 7 sacraments
Bonaventure
Retracing the Arts to Theology
“The manifold wisdom of God, which is clearly
revealed in sacred scripture, lies hidden in all
knowledge and in all nature”
Robert Grosseteste (1168-1253)