624 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
things not seen1 was interpreted by Bernard and other con temporaries to mean that faith was an uncertain opinion. What Abyelard probably meant was, that faith does not rest upon authority, but upon inquiry and experience. There are times, however, when he seems to contradict himself and to set forth the opposite principle. He says, " We believe in order to know, and unless ye believe, ye cannot know."2 His contemporaries felt that he was unsound and that his position would overthrow the authority of the Church.3
The greater doctrines of the Trinity and the existence of God, Abyelard held, could not be proved as necessary, but only as probable. In opposition to the pruriency of Scolasticism, he set up the principle that many things pertaining to God need neither to be believed, nor denied, for no dan ger is involved in the belief or denial of them.4 He gives as examples, whether God will send rain on the morrow or not, and whether God will grant pity to a certain most wicked man or not. On the other hand he declared that to affirm that we cannot understand what has been taught about the Trinity is to say that the sacred writers them selves did not understand what they taught.5 As for the Catholic faith, it is necessary for all, and no one of sound mind can be saved without it.6
3. In his statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, Abaelard laid himself open to the charge both of modalism
1 Introd. ad Theol., Migne, p. 1051, also p. 959. Fides quippe dicitur existimatio non apparentium, cognitio vero ipsarum rerum experientia per ipsam earam prcesentiam.
2 Credimus ut cognoscamus ; nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. See other quotations in Hefele, V. 463-469 ; also Deutsch, in his chapter on Faith and Knowledge, pp. 168 sqq.
8 So the charges of Bernard and the Synod of Sens, and Otto of Freising. De gestis Frid., 48.
4 Introd. ad Theol., Migne, p. 986.
6 Introd. ad Theol., Migne, p. 1052.
6 Catholica quippe est fides, id est universalis quce ita omnibus necessaria est ut nemo discretus absque ea salvari possit, Migne, p. 986. In view of such a statement, Poole's remark has much in its favor, "it was not really Abselard's results that formed the strength of the indictment against him, but the method by which he reached them," R. 153.
§ 100. ABJELARD'S TEACHINGS AND THEOLOGY. 625
and Arianism. It called forth Bernard's severest charges. Abselard made no contribution to the subject. The idea of the Trinity he derived from God's absolute perfections. God, as power, is the Father; as wisdom, He is the Son; as love, the Spirit. The Scriptures are appealed to for this view. The Father has put all things in His power, Acts 1:7. The Son, as Logos, is wisdom. The Holy Spirit is called good, Ps. 143 : 10, and imparts spiritual gifts. The figure gave much umbrage, by which he compared the three persons of the Trinity to the brass of which a seal is made, the form of the seal, and the seal itself proceeding from, or combining the brass and the form. " The brass itself which is the substance of the brazen seal, and the seal itself of which the brass is the substance, are essentially one; yet the brass and the seal are so distinct in their properties, that the property of the brass is one, and the property of the brazen seal another." These are ultimately three things: the brass, aes, the brass capable of sealing, sigillabile, and the brass in the act of sealing, Sicilians.
4. In his treatment of the atonement, Abselard has valu able original elements.1 Strange to say, he makes no refer ence to Anselm's great treatise. Man, Abselard said, is in the power of the devil, but the devil has no right to this power. What rights does a slave have over another slave whom he leads astray ? Christ not only did not pay any price to the devil for man's redemption, he also did not make satisfaction to divine justice and appease God's wrath. If the fall of Adam needed satisfaction by the death of some one, who then would be able to satisfy for the death of Christ ? In the life and death of the Redeemer, God's pur pose was to manifest His love and thus to stir up love in the breast of man, and to draw man by love back to Himself. God might have redeemed man by a word, but He chose to set before man an exhibition of His love in Christ. Christ's love constitutes the merit of Christ. The theory anticipates the modern moral influence theory of the atonement, so called.
1 They are found in his Com. on Romans, as well as in his Introd. ad Theol, and his Sermons, V., X., XII. 2s