by Salome Heil

Created on: March 20, 2010

When religion was filling the minds of the people of the High Middle Ages, the idea of reason and faith emerges. Before these two concepts made known their existence, religion was one of the main causes of internal strife within a society, and it also became a main subject matter at universities. On the other hand, the modern church made its first appearance during this time. As religion became a prominent aspect, people began to acquire much knowledge that started to counteract with the ideas of religion. To reconcile these two ideas, reason and faith, the scholastics emerged. Three of which were Abelard, Aquinas, and Anselm. While Anselm and Aquinas both started their arguments off by using reason, Abelard used faith as a foundation to his argument.

The scholastic, Peter Abelard, wrote Sic et Non to explain about how “the multitudinous words of the holy Fathers [some] sayings seem not only to differ from one another but even to contradict one another” (Abelard). Primarily, he stated that since writers lacked the guidance of the Holy Spirit, then the writers were unable to fully comprehend the words of the holy Fathers. They gave difference significances to the same thing. Also, hey describes how the translators could of translated long. He said that “We must take \special care that we are not deceived by corruptions of the text or by false attributions when sayings of the Fathers are quoted that seem to differ from the truth or to be contrary to it….” (Abelard). Hence, Abelard uses faith as a foundation, but he checks this by using reason. Aquinas had a different perspective on faith and reason.

The scholastic, Thomas Aquinas, wrote the Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles to discuss the Truths of God. He talks about how “if a truth of this nature were left to the sole enquiry of reason, three disadvantages would follow” (Aquinas). To begin, he says that these three disadvantages are that the knowledge of God are confined to a small number, that to use reason would take an extremely long time and that people did not have that kind of dedication, and “there is some admixture of error in  most of the investigations of human reason” (Aquinas). He quickly concluded that these concepts should be proposed as faith and not reason. Also, he describes how faith and reason must coincide to have a logical explanation or argument. He proves his point by saying that “whatever is put into the disciple’s

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