Principles for All Retrievalists: Introducing a New Series

Abelard’s Sic et non and Reconciling Conflicting Patristic Authorities

In this new series, entitled Principles for All Retrievalists, we want to work through Abelard’s prologue to his Sic et non, where he gives us the universal method for handling conflicting authorities among the fathers. The text gives us the principles which the scholastics followed as they retrieved the fathers, guiding bachelor commentators on e.g., Lombard’s Sentences, and producing great theologians like Thomas. For those interested in retrieval today (whether of the fathers, the scholastics, or any other body of important theologians), understanding and following these principles is absolutely necessary for doing retrieval well.

This first post merely introduces the series.

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Theology especially proceeds through authorities. Yet with the proliferation of authorities, e.g., in the vast corpus of patristic writings, arises also many conflicts between them.

What exactly are conflicting authorities? They are two propositions which are not merely diverse, but adverse (or, either contradictory or contrary); together, they are either of the form (1) that Socrates is and is not wise; or of the form (2) that he is healthy and sick.

Throughout the history of theology, we very frequently find conflicting authorities. Anselm for example in his Monologion reminds us that Greeks “confess three substances in one person,” whereas Latins “confess three persons in one substance.” These authorities manifestly conflict, for the divine substance is said to be one and three, whereas a divine person is said to be three and one–which are contraries. Anselm will protest that these both are held “by the same faith,” and thus they only appear as contraries; but they certainly are conflicting, i.e., at least apparently contrary, at most actually so.¹

Conflicting authorities must be reconciled (conciliatio; relatedly, convenientia; harmonia; etc.) as much as possible–as we find super-eminently in scholasticism, where reconciliation of conflicting authorities from the fathers was most especially practiced. We see the roots of this in medieval law, where canonists developed methods for doing this in their own discipline.² Such methods theologians usurped and applied to their own needs (and even vice versa, as in Gratian’s c. 1140 Concordia discordantium canonum).³ And of course, the (now⁴) most famous theological text here is Peter Abelard’s Sic et non.⁵

Similar to Lombard and his Sententiae, this Magister Petrus also intended Sic et non for university use, given that conflicting authorities induce questioning and thereupon disputing. Lombard himself would make use of some of Abelard’s material, which a (presumably) later editor called also (wrongly) “a collection of sentences.” This has resulted in many parallel passages between the texts.⁶

Nonetheless, Abelard’s attempt at a classroom text proved inferior to Lombard’s, and we can give two straightforward reasons for this. For one, Abelard does not provide help throughout his text in reconciling his authorities (perhaps he expected to do this in class), and his remarks in the prologue do not help with this except at the level of basic principles. By contrast, Lombard’s many “interlinear” comments guide the student, enabling his Sententiae to be used without Lombard’s immediate presence. And for another, Abelard often compiles many authorities in favor of either part, where Lombard compiles few. The resulting complexity versus simplicity makes one text harder and the other easier for student learning. Besides both these reasons, of course, can be added others related to the persons of their authors–e.g., Abelard’s lamentable past, versus Lombard’s Lateran victory, e.g.

Nonetheless, Abelard’s Sic et non is rightly understood as a, if not the medieval handbook for handling conflicting authorities among the fathers. Our intention here is to understand this text well, which requires us to first introduce it, and then consider its prologue very carefully. In the prologue, we will see, Abelard lays out his marvelous program, one which only a logician as powerful as he could provide, and one which managed to identify the universal method for handling conflicting authorities among the fathers.

1. Anselm, Monologion, prologus (Schmitt vol 1, page 8). “Quod enim dixi summam trinitatem posse dici tres substantias, Graecos secutus sum, qui confitentur tres substantias in una persona eadem fide, qua nos tres personas in una substantia. Nam hoc significant in deo per substantiam, quod nos per personam.”

2. See e.g., Kuttner, Harmony from Dissonance: An Interpretation of Medieval Canon Law (1960). See for further, and comparison with scholastic theologians, Morrison, Tradition and Authority in the Western Church, 300–1140 (Princeton, 1969).

3. See for some initial, Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 66ff (reconciliation of authorities).

4. Abelard’s Sic et non was rediscovered by Victor Cousin in the 1830s. See his Peter Abelard, Sic et non, ed. Victor Cousin, Ouvrages inédits d’Abélard (Paris, 1836). Cousin’s interpretation and evaluation of Abelard has subsequently influenced Abelardian scholarship–although not without criticism–see e.g., Wei, “Of Scholasticism and Canon Law: Narratives Old and New.”

5. For some introduction to Abelard, see Clanchy, Abelard, A Medieval Life, 1997. For his influence on later scholastics, Luscombe, The School of Peter Abelard: The Influence of Abelard’s Thought in the Early Scholastic Period (Cambridge, 1969).

6. See Peter Abailard: Sic et Non. A Critical Edition; at the end are listed all the parallels.