A Comparison of Christ's Atonement in the Medieval Scholastic Period - Introduction

     When comparing three of the most prominent theologians of the Medieval Scholastic period: Anselm, Peter Abelard and St. Thomas Aquinas, one must note their relative places in time. Thus I will rightly begin with Anselm, born in the Italian village of Aosta, who lived from 1033 to 1109. His memory enjoys the titles, “The Tongue of Augustine” and “The Second Augustine” because of his self conscious effort to appropriate that great man’s theology, and as we shall hopefully see—if one can imagine it—even emulate certain aspects of it. And rightly so, for whom else in the 1000 years prior to Anselm was a theological mind worthy of such flattery? Would anyone dare to disagree that before Anselm, Augustine was the name that sticks out among those theologians whose words are necessary to consult. It is true, many great men and women lived in those so called, “Dark Ages” between these two men: Gregory the Great in the 6^th century and Scotus Erigena in the 9^th are but two examples. But the scope of this paper lies within the 2^nd millennia.

Like Augustine before him was posthumously referred to as the “Father of Medieval Theology”, Anselm turned out to be considered the father of the time following his life; in hindsight, he is considered the “Father of Medieval Scholasticism”. I make these observations, as I will likewise do with Peter Abelard and Saint Thomas Aquinas, in order to highlight the importance of these men in the progress of theological thoughts and philosophical meanderings that take us on a journey from the Ransom Theory of the atonement to the various theories adopted in the Scholastic Period.

Peter Abelard lived from 1079 to 1142; being born in a village in France called Le Pallet, lived most of his life in France. Abelard’s most notable historical moment may actually have had nothing to do with his work on the theory of universals called, conceptualism, or his ideas on the atonement, or his being condemned as a heretic, but his forbidden romance with his most beautiful and intellectually deserving student Heloise. Their love for one another has been burned in the annals of time by pen and brushstroke alike.

Where Anselm is lauded by the Church as a hero, Abelard was condemned as a heretic under the judgment of Bernard of Clairvaux only one year before his death in 1142, having aged 63 years). Though he stood against the Nominalists with Thomas on the issues of universals, his heterodox views along with his extracurricular interests cause his memory to thus be rewarded by a strange mix of both scathing remarks and admiration.

Lastly, one of the 33 esteemed “Doctors of the Church”, Saint Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, “…was born in 1225, in the family castle at Roccasecca. Forty-nine years later on March 7, 1274, he died at Fossanova, perhaps 20 kilometers distant from his birthplace. Between those two he had lived in Naples, Cologne, Paris, Rome, Orvieto, Viterbo, Paris again, and finally Naples.” [i] Thomas is considered by many to be the foremost Catholic Theologian, having contributed to the doctrinal definitions now extolled by Roman Catholics and also having shaped the pagan philosophy of the late Medieval Period and Western thought thereafter. Like Anselm and Abelard—and their intellectual ancestor Origin—he too was largely concerned with the marriage of faith and knowledge. Though the three of them would have disagreed on the vows and terms of this marriage, the thought of divorcing the two disciplines wasn’t even marginal. Thomas’ contribution to the world of philosophy has been far reaching, having philosophers even as recent as Etienne Gilson referring to themselves as “Thomists”; a category bearing the name of its pioneer, Thomas Aquinas.

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[i] Ralph M. McInerny, Aquinas (Blackwell Publishing Ltd: Oxford, 2004), 3.