. Name commonly given to the system of thought and teaching used in the early universities (or “schools”), especially those of Paris and Oxford. Scholasticism begins in the belief that God’s truth can and ought to be known by rational understanding as well as by revelation. It draws a distinction between an understanding of God based on “simple” belief based on revelation, and an understanding drawn from questioning and argument, resolved by means of logic (the “scholastic method”). The Schoolmen’s method of proceeding can be characterized as argumentative, authoritative, and additive.
(1) Argumentative: Truth can be found by argument, which is to say by the asking and answering of questions. Although these questions (quaestiones) originally arose from issues in a biblical text that were separable from and wider than the general run of commentary, they expanded to encompass the great philosophical-theological issues of Christianity, such as the nature and number of God, the number and purpose of sacraments, or the typology of sin. A”classic” scholastic question runs according to a set form. First the question is posed, with a formulaic Quaeritur utrum…, An…, or Videtur quod…(“It is asked whether…,” “Whether…,” or “It seems that…”). Then the arguments for the proposition are given (“And it seems that it is, because…”), followed by the arguments against, sed contra (“on the other hand”) or objectio (“it is objected…”). The writer then makes his judgment for the proposition (almost never against: that is simply the way the questions are posed) in a Solutio (“solution”) or Respondeo quod (“I answer that…”) and completes the question by answering each of the objections in turn Ad quod…(“to that which was objected…”). The meat of the arguments pro and con is culled from acknowledged “authorities,” the second characteristic of the method.
(2) Authoritative: Truth should be sought in the opinions of the authorities of the past. Preeminent among these is the Bible, but since Scripture can be self-contradictory it cannot be relied upon to provide the solution itself. The next “level” of authority is the writings of the Latin and Greek fathers, in particular Augustine and Jerome: these are regarded as almost as authoritative as the Bible itself. Finally, more “modern” writers, closer to contemporaneous, may be adduced as secondary evidence, but their opinions are frequently given anonymously.
(3) Additive: Truth is additive: one system is not to be replaced by another, but rather each single truth can be added to all others to give a fuller picture. The classic epigrammatic statement of this belief is found in Bernard of Chartres, repeating what was even then a truism, that the scholars of his day were like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants: they saw farther than the giants, not through their own efforts but from their higher vantage point. Thus, reading a succession of medieval authors addressing the same question we find identical points used in argument for and against the issue. The difference between them will almost always be a difference in weighting of the same evidence rather than something new or different. This approach arises not from a lack of imagination or originality but from a worldview that thought that most “truth” had already been discovered by the authorities of the past.
This method is a means of exposition, not of deliberation. The method is not used in order to arrive at the truth—that is done by a prior and inner appeal to traditional doctrine, experience, and common sense with reason. The method is simply the means of stating, in convincing fashion, what the solutions are and what the arguments might be.
Landgraf, Artur Michael. Introduction à l’histoire de la littérature de la scholastique naissante, ed. Albert M.Landry, trans. Louis B.Geiger. Montreal: Institut d’Études Médiévales, 1973.
Flint, Valerie I.J. “The ‘School of Laon’: A Reconsideration.” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 43 (1976): 89–110.
Chenu, Marie Dominique. La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin, 1957.
——. Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K.Little. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. [Selected chapters from La théologie au douzième siècle.]
——. Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. Albert-M. Landry and Dominic Hughes. Chicago: Henry Regenery, 1964.
Colish, Marcia L. “Systematic Theology and Theological Renewal in the Twelfth Century.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 18 (1988):135–56.
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Grabmann, Martin. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode. 2 vols. Freiburg-im-Breisgau: Herder, 1909–11.
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