. Term from the Greek, Θεoλoγία, (“theologia”), “the knowledge of God.” For Christians, theology proceeds from “evidence” provided by God via forms of revelation—biblical, experiential, creational. The classic medieval statement of the nature of theology is Anselm of Bec’s “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum), which illustrates both the medieval given starting point of religious belief and simultaneously the trust in reason, “understanding,” as a way to God. Theological orthodoxy is decided by the consensus of the community of the faithful. In the Christian case, this was settled at general councils of the church, which considered and formulated statements about the nature of God and God’s relationship with Creation and pronounced on their validity.
Sources of theology are various and debated among theologians. The Bible stands in a unique place as the authoritative word of God and holds primacy among means of revelation. However, God is believed not to be limited to revelation to those intelligent or learned enough to be able to read Scripture and interpret it, using the tools of reason. Hence, there has always been a special place in Christian theology for direct revelation—God speaking directly to the faithful believer. For Christians, direct revelation is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and after his ascension the communication of tradition has been carried on by the Holy Spirit. A third method of revelation of God to humankind is by observation of the created order. We can infer the nature of God from the world around us and from our relationships with other human beings.
Theology as a subject in itself did not exist until the establishment and flourishing of the universities. Until then, theological speculation had taken place in a wide variety of settings and writings: biblical commentary, sermons, treatises, liturgy, hymns, works of spiritual revelation. Indeed, any attempts to make generalizations about the nature of God and Creation, drawn from the various forms of revelation, are the stuff of “theology.” Theology exists even in the Gospels, notably in the Gospel of John, where the writer makes inferences about God and Creation from the experience of the life of Christ, against the background of the Hebrew Scriptures. The basic theological doctrines of Christianity were framed at general (or ecumenical) councils of the church: Nicaea I (325, on the divinity of Christ), Constantinople I (381, on the dual nature of Christ), Ephesus (431, on the singularity of the person of Christ), Chalcedon (451, on the dual nature of Christ), Constantinople 11 (553, on the persons of God), Constantinople III (680–81, on the existence of both divine and human wills in Christ), and Nicaea II (787, on the iconoclastic controversy). These doctrines, formulated from the writings of the church fathers, were made orthodox by the agreement of the general councils, representing the consensus of the whole church. The underlying theological theme was the nature of Christ as one person with two natures and wills, divine and human, and the relations of the three persons of the Trinity.
During the revival of interest in theology in the Carolingian schools, the main topics of debate were pre-destination and the nature of the eucharist. Neither of these subjects was new, but they were given fresh impetus by such scholars as Johannes Scottus Eriugena, Gottschalk, and Paschasius Radbertus. “Predestination” concerned the belief that some people were divinely and infallibly led to salvation. Gottschalk’s extreme view of the matter, “double predestination,” held that others were similarly led to damnation. This opinion was condemned, since it limited the actions of God. The nature of the eucharist had provoked surprisingly little disagreement among the early fathers. But Paschasius Radbertus questioned the identity of the Eucharistic Body of Christ with his True Body in Heaven. His opinion was not influential in the 9th century, but it resurfaced in the thought of Berengar of Tours (11th c.) whose opposition to the doctrine of the Real Presence provoked a finely wrought defense by Lanfranc of Bec.
The heyday of theology as an academic subject was in the late 12th and 13th centuries in Paris. The University of Paris was famed as the leading center for the study of theology in the West, and its scholars were listened to by the highest members of the church. Indeed, they often took those positions themselves: from the 13th century, a university education became a well-established route to ecclesiastical and political preferment. It was in the mid-13th century, too, that we first encounter questions as to whether theology is a science, which is to say, a suitable topic for reasoned investigation. The corollary to this was to ask who could make theological statements. The Christian principle that the means of salvation must be available to every believer implied that any faithful person, no matter how simple or uneducated, must be able to understand enough of the nature of God—theology—to follow a path to eternal life. This meant that direct revelation had to be admitted as a means of knowledge about God. But it was understood to be partial. Opinion among the theological doctors leaned toward professional specialization: their methods were the only foolproof way to higher knowledge about the nature of God and the principles of religion.
The precise definition of certain theological issues was heightened by the “question” form of scholasticism, and it was at this time that a number of topics were honed to sharpness. For example, the number and definition of the sacraments were settled at this period. It is perhaps no coincidence that this was also the era of persecution of heretics and Jews—those who put themselves outside defined orthodoxy. Theology was influenced by the new availability of translations of the metaphysical works of Aristotle. Although the impact of Aristotle on the Latin West has been much discussed, it is not clear that any issues of orthodoxy were affected by the use of his philosophy by Christian scholars. They rebutted his ideas on the eternity of the world (as against Creation) and the unity of the Intellect (which denied the bodily resurrection of the individual). What they did take to, coming as it did in the right place at the right time, was Aristotle’s method. His division of substance and accident, for instance, enabled a precise formulation of the changes wrought by the eucharist as transubstantiation.
No less interesting than the issues faced by speculative theologians in the 12th and 13th centuries were those developments in moral and practical theology, particularly associated with Peter the Chanter and his circle in the 12th century and some of the mendicant theologians in the 13th century. The Franciscans were especially plagued by the debate over apostolic poverty and theological questions about the ownership of property.
How, if at all, did any of this “high theology” discussed in the universities make its way down to ordinary people, or even the less educated clergy? The obvious medium is in sermons, and the theological content of preaching is the subject of much new research, difficult as it is to study a phenomenon that is essentially oral, context-specific, and transitory. Nevertheless, the high percentage of mendicants among Paris theologians from almost their foundations is striking; the orders recognized the importance of theological training and research to their preaching aims.
The question of who might make theological statements was heightened by vernacular translations of the Bible. “Heretical” groups of laypeople, such as Lollards, or groups living in community and following an abbreviated rule, like béguines, made their own interpretations of orthodox theology. Often condemned by the official church, they represented a desire by ordinary devout believers to formulate a deeper understanding of God that yet took into account the everyday experiences of the majority of the faithful.
It is only with hindsight that we make “theology” into a medieval concern, as though it were somehow in opposition or juxtaposition to the study of sacred scriptures. Theologia is not a term much used by medieval writers. They prefer to concentrate on the texts they used for basic knowledge and call themselves not “masters of theology” but “masters of the sacred page” or “masters of sacred scripture.” These terms illustrate how, as so often, our attempts to formalize and distinguish reflect our own views of order and fitness, not those of medieval scholars themselves.
