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RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA I. Introduction. II. Preparation. Orthodoxy and Philosophy (§ i).
I. Introduction: The term scholasticism is commonly used to designate the scientific theology of the Middle Ages, from the eleventh to the sixteenth century. As an index of the scope of this theology may be mentioned the notice by Johannes Pitseus in De illustribus Anglia, scraptoribus (Paris, 1619), who counts 160 English commentators upon the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard (q.v.); 152 commentaries were produced by the Dominicans, almost as many by the Minorites, not to speak of other works. Distinguished from exegetical, homiletical, and practical works, and heretical literature, the term scholasticism applies to what is now known as systematic theology, or dogmatics; and all the schoolmen of the varying tendencies represented orthodox church doctrine. By the reform theologians at the conclusion of the Middle Ages, the Humanists, and the Reformers, the prevalent dogmatics and its method was stigmatized as " school theology," and characterized as empty formalism, and untheological speculation, subtle and pedantic, in contrast with vital considerations held to be practical and religious, or a theology based on the Bible. From this point of view resulted its unjustified depreciation as well as the incorrect adverse parallelism of scholastic and mystical theology. Scholasticism and mysticism, however, represent a relation similar to that of dogmatics and religious contemplation. The latter also gives rise to theoretical explanations, as a rule referred to as " mystical "; yet, in the nature of the case, they qualify themselves as the descriptions of soul states, the antecedents of Christian ethics. Although they are in contrast with scholastic methods, they are not incompatible with them and their object was, with the aid of speculative inquiry, the analysis of church doctrine. The adverse judgment is also incompetent, because, instead of applying pure historical standards, it is pronounced from the point of view of present-day philosophy and the religious antithesis of the time of the Reformation. A correct judgment can arise only from a due historical appreciation of the religious, ecclesiastical, and scientific conditions from which scholasticism proceeded. Such a review will lead to the verdict that scholasticism fixed its vision firmly upon the loftiest goals of human knowledge, and that it strove for their attainment with a marvelous and untiring acumen, faithfully availing itself of all means at its command. That the religious and
Bohoenherr Scholasticismsecular knowledge of the times imposed limitations is self-evident. And that in this work, many of its virtues cast their shadows, and that the spontaneous activity of its spirit gradually crystallized in forms and stagnated into fruitless exercises of a purely formal mental acuteness is not characteristic of scholasticism alone. Nay, rather at the climax of its movement was there such an abundance of strenuous earnest thinking and a measure of enthusiastic devotion as has not elsewhere appeared in all the ages of the history of theology, sad its original thinkers in number and eminence have in all probability not since then been surpassed.
II. Preparation: The history antecedent to scholasticism is the whole theology of the earlier Middle Ages. This period took over Christianity in the shape of fixed formulated doctrines,
:. Ortho- and the representatives of these doc- doay and trines were at the same time the ex-