THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ing as the grounds of his decisions the Scriptures, the Fathers, and the ancient councils with their creeds, he proceeds first of all to propound a question, offering next a solution by means of one or more patristic passages. Authorities which seem to contradict this conclusion are next adduced; and the opposition is met by one of two methods, both Abelard's — either by the hypothesis that the words may be taken in two different senses in the two authorities, or by the weighing of authorities, in which case the Bible is assumed to be infallible, and Augustine has the greatest weight among the Fathers. Another way of posing the question is to cite some contemporary statement and confirm or refute it. Reason takes a secondary place. The natural reason is indeed a reflection of the presence of God, yet it needs to be helped and completed by revelation. He admits that the creation of the world by God was known to the heathen " by a course of philosophical reasoning," as well as the law of nature " by which man understands and is conscious what is meant by good and evil "; and he here anticipates the later scholastic attitude. Theology is bound to set forth the positive doctrine of the Church, but in its fundamentals it agrees with the natural and rational results arrived at by the human mind. The Lombard, however, does not reach the scientific clearness of his successors in relation to these questions, while, on the other hand, he usually resists the tendency to hair-splitting so characteristic of many of them.
The first book of the " Sentences " deals, principally from a cosmological standpoint, with the evidences for the existence of God. For the doctrine of the Trinity he appeals to the analogies used
since Augustine, while denying that a
4. Analysis real knowledge of the doctrine can be
of the obtained from them without positive
" Sen- revelation and faith, and emphasizing
tences." the fact that no human speech can
give a satisfactory account of the nature of God. Joachim of Flore asserted that Peter changed the Trinity into a quaternity, and the charge was investigated at the Lateran Council of 1215. The basis of this charge was the manner in which he distinguished the divine substance from the three persons, asserting, as a realist, the substantive reality of this common substance. Joachim accused him of adding this substance to the three persons; but Innocent III. and the council decided that he was perfectly orthodox. The relation between the prescience of God and events is conceived in such a way that neither that which happens is the actual ground of the foreknowledge nor the latter of the former, but each is to the other a causa sine qua non. Predestination is thus, as a divine election, the preparation of grace, the foreknowledge and preparation of the blessings of God, through which man is justified. There is no such thing as merit antecedent to grace, not even in the sense that man can merit not to be cast away. The omnipotence of God consists in this, that he does what he wills and suffers nothing. A distinction is made between the absolute uncaused will of God, which is always accomplished, and what may be
called his will in a loose sense. To the signa beneplaciti, the signs of the latter, including commands, prohibitions, counsels, operations, permissions, results do not always correspond — " for God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, yet did not will it to be done." The second book deals with creation and the doctrine of the angels, usually following Hugo. Peter considers the " image " and " likeness " of God as distinct, but does not decide for any of the three explanations of this distinction which he quotes. He rejects the traducianist theory of the origin of the human soul. He calls the will free, inasmuch as it " has power to desire and choose, without coercion or necessity, what it has decreed on grounds of reason," but he denies Abelard's theory that the moral character of an act depends on the will of the doer. Of some importance is the strong emphasis laid upon the actually sinful character of the nature derived from Adam, in conjunction with the condemnation of Abelard's proposition that " we inherit from Adam not guilt but penalty." In regard to grace he shows some independent thought, which had its influence on later teaching. Grace (gratia operans) is a power (virtus) which frees and heals the will, enabling it to perform good and meritorious works; of the two coefficients to the production of these, grace and the will, grace is the more important. The third book deals with Christology, reproducing the traditional orthodox conceptions, but showing some influence from Abelard. One portion of this discussion brought him into suspicion of Nihilianism, of which he was accused by John of Cornwall and Walter of St. Victor, and more than one council took up the question, though without deciding it. The charge of Nestorianism, which Gerhoh of Reichersberg brought against the Christology of his time, was made also against the Lombard. In regard to the atonement, he endeavored both to follow out the accepted system of his day and to make use of suggestions from Abelard. Christ merited glorification by his life, and by his death man's entrance into Paradise, his liberation from sin and its penalty and from the power of the devil. Christ as man is a perfect and sufficient sacrifice to achieve reconciliation, through the revelation of God's love made in his death; " the death of Christ then justifies us, when by it love is awakened in our hearts." Further, Christ sets man free from eternal punishment relaxando debitum; but to set man free from the temporal punishment, which is remitted in baptism and mitigated by penance, " the penances laid upon those who repent by the Church would not suffice unless the penalty borne by Christ were added to release us." There is a lack of clearness about this whole subject; the ideas of Abelard (Anselm is not noticed) show themselves now and again through all the effort to preserve the objective notion of the work of redemption. The fourth book deals with the sacraments. Here Peter follows Hugo and the Decretum of Gratian; and his teaching was of great significance for the later development. He was probably the first to make a distinct classification of seven and only seven sacraments; he laid down the dogmatic questions to be discussed under the