SCHOLASTICISM

SCHOLASTICISM. This word is chiefly associated with the theological movement beginning in the eleventh-century Christian West, and brought to its highest point by Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure at the University of Paris in the mid-thirteenth century. Centered on “schools,” beginning with the cathedral schools mandated by Charlemagne (q.v.) such as at Chartres, then moving to the great medieval universities of Paris, Oxford, Heidelberg, etc., Scholasticism sought to resolve perceived contradictions in Scripture and the Church Fathers (qq.v.) through recourse to the logic of the newly rediscovered texts of Aristotle coming to the West from Muslim Spain. A form of intellectual apologetics, Scholasticism ultimately came to dominate every approach to theology (q.v.) in the West. For all intents and purposes, it became “theology,” and “systematics” and, more generally, all academic theological work ever since. It was also profoundly different in approach and spirit from the monastic tradition of theological reflection, based on the meditation on liturgy (q.v.) and Scripture, which had prevailed in both East and West until Scholasticism’s rise. While Bernard of Clairvaux (12th c.) was the last great exemplar of this older approach in the West, it continued in the Orthodox world, even winning a signal victory over Byzantium’s (q.v.) own version of Scholasticism in the hesychast (q.v.) controversy of the 14th c.

Western Scholasticism might mark a significant philosophical or theological parting of the ways between Roman Catholicism (q.v.) and Orthodoxy. But the participation of Mediterranean and Russian Orthodox hierarchs in the intellectual milieu of Scholasticism has ensured a place for it in the history of Orthodox thought. Both Roman Catholic and Protestant Scholastic problems made their way into the catechetical and theological schools of Constantinople, Kiev, and finally Russia. Bishops such as Cyril Lukaris, Peter Mogila, and the author of Peter the Great’s Spiritual Regulation (qq.v.), Theophanes Prokopovich, all utilized the categories of Scholasticism and based their writings upon it. After Peter the Great, Scholasticism became the basis of the Latin curricula of Russia’s schools, theological and secular, which followed Kievan and European prototypes, respectively. Whether this phenomenon is considered a “foreign invasion” of ideas onto Orthodox soil or a necessary dialogue involving the intellectual history of the greater Church depends on one’s predisposition toward the “legitimate” history of Holy Tradition (q.v.).