Bible Students

A reflection based on “The Story of Christian Theology” by Olson (chapters 21-23)

This week’s chapters discuss the next major stage of Christian development through one of the golden ages of Christian thinkers, the Scholastic age. 

Chapter twenty-one covers Scholasticism. Scholasticism was the next major development from 1,100 to 1,500. Scholasticism claimed Christianity was both logical and understandable. While previous eras had focused on the heresies which had come against the church from “inside” the church (they came from the physical church, not the spiritual church), this era focused on the pagan beliefs around them, attempting to present Christianity as appealing to the scholastics around their culture. Theologians of this time claimed theology as the queen of the sciences, because while sciences studies created things theology studied the Creator Himself. However, while attempting to present Christianity as appealing to the modern-day philosophers, theologians argued that human reason could not be the root of theology, rather revelation must be the root of theology. They did claim divine revelation and philosophy were compatible. Two of the most well-known apologists of the Scholastic age were Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. They helped develop some of the most well-known apologetic arguments of today, including Anselm’s ontological argument and the Thomistic cosmological argument. While logic is a gift of God, they reasoned, it is not complete without divine intervention. Human reason is flawed, but can be aided by divine intervention and revelation. Additionally, divine revelation, if it is true revelation, is not open to subjective and emotional denial, as human reason is. Humans are able to suppress natural conclusions to believed premises. However, true divine revelation reveals true conclusions that must be addressed, not suppressed. Anselm was a student of the theology of Augustine. Anselm wrote his theology in the form of a prayer, which helped his readers to empathize with his understanding of God rather than outright oppose it. Anselm’s ontological argument is a well-known argument, though personally I do not find it appealing. Ironically, I believe the philosophical developments of chapter twenty-three contribute to my distaste for the ontological argument. I believe nominalism has a solid criticism of the way we see the world. The world does not seem to be naturally categorized past the surface level. I believe making the claim that existence is an attribute that something has is presumptional, and does not logically play out. Additionally, I do not believe the potential for a greater being (from abstract thought to concrete existence) necessitates the reality of the existing being. This argument is difficult to argue against, I believe due to the linguistic system of humans, which naturally categorizes things, and I do not believe existence can be given to something in the way Anselm does. 

Chapter twenty-two covers Aquinas, one of the greatest apologetic minds in Christian history. Aquinas can not be conceived as anything but the greatest Catholic theologian ever. Aquinas wrote against Muslim apologists during his time when Islam and Christianity came head-to-head. With Anselm, there was no super-natural/natural divide in knowledge. Aquinas wrote that there was a grace-laid road to logic and understanding. Aquinas rejected Anselm’s theistic ontological argument, and insisted God can be demonstrated as a necessary being through the cosmological argument. If everything is a result of a long chain reaction, which Aquinas believed everything was, then there must be an original action to react to. Otherwise, there would be an infinite regress of reactions, which defies the meaning of a reaction. A reaction can only react to an action. If there is no original action, there can be no reaction. Therefore, there must be an original action. This original action must have no previous action, otherwise it would be a reaction to that original action. It must be the first mover, which is self-moved, not moved by any other. The only thing which can be understood to fit this description would be God, an infinite being. This apologetic argumentation has been expanded upon by minds such as William Lane Craig, and in today’s most popular form is known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The formulation is a little different, but the same essential first mover is necessary for the existence of anything. 

Finally, the twenty-third chapter discusses Nominalists. One of the important figures of this time was William of Ockham, who studied at Oxford in the 1,300s. This is where nominalism comes from. Nominalism as an epistemological framework claims that we can not really group multiple things into one or a set of words. Words, in their very nature, are simplistic and only act as a shadow of the thing which they are describing. This means that while there may be many “red” things, every instance of “red” is a different and unique example, and so the classification of “red” can only be pushed so far (for example, as touched on two chapters ago). There are no universals or shared traits between objects, only the appearance of so. While William of Ockham may not have gone this far, to say there are no universals, but his followers certainly extrapolated his ideas to this. Another theological issue of the time was the Euthyphro Dilemma. Does God command good because it is good, or are things good because God commands them? This issue has been dealt with thoroughly, and has a simple explanation: God is good, and so commands good things. He commands things that are consistent with His own nature. Therefore, God is neither contradictory to His own nature, nor is He arbitrary. Another point of apologetics of the time was that natural reason can not explain that only one God exists, if the definition of God is a high spiritual being. I believe this point is not very groundbreaking, as biblically we believe in multiple gods, as that is how the biblical authors describe the world they live in. There are many powerful spiritual beings, but only one Creator, which can be deduced from reason. 

This section was very apologetics-centered, which I personally really enjoyed. Apologetics is a special conversation for me, as I appreciate the way Christians have addressed cross-religious peoples. While I am not a fan of Anselm’s ontological argument, I am a big fan of Thomas Aquinas’ first mover cosmological argument, and especially the work that has been done in recent years by Craig to advance the Kalam cosmological argument. I do believe there is some base for Nominalism, though human epistemology necessitates a world where things really can be categorized, in order to make any sense of the world. I believe the interaction between Nominalism and Realism should be expanded upon, especially in the Christian conversation.