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Thirteen HANDMAIDEN to THEOLOGY

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Thirteen HANDMAIDEN to THEOLOGY Thirteen HANDMAIDEN TO THEOLOGY To this day when people describe Medieval philosophy as the ancilla theologiae— handmaiden to theology—they often intend the term to be derogatory. The term implies that philosophy is not an autonomous science and is of little value, that such philosophy is dictated by theology. When people use this term it is often a disavowal of the intellectual heritage of the Middle Ages. Still, the expression ancilla theologiae does not mean what is commonly thought, and Medieval philosophy was truly philosophy and reached a high intellectual level. As it turns out, this pejorative evaluation of Medieval philosophy was not the work of objective historians of philosophy or something contrived by Marxist ideologues. It first appeared during the Reformation in a campaign against the papacy. An editor wrote in the preface to A. Tribbechovia’s De doctoribus scholasticis [About the Scholastic Doctors] (written in 1665, published in Jena, 1719) that the work could not be published earlier because it disagreed with the Scholastic conception of philosophy as dedicated to the service of papal theology. “[N]on puduit asserere scholasticam esse ‘philosophiam in servitute theologiae papae redactam.’”1 Tribbechovia thought that the ecclesiastical censors watched to see that philosophical works were in line with official theology. Philosophy as the handmaiden to theology was philosophy subordinated to the theology endorsed by Rome. Different enemies of the Catholic Church, including Marxists, picked up this view, and it eventually became part of common opinion. The propaganda was so effective that, to this day, Medieval philosophy is regarded as the servant of theology and many regard the Middle Ages as the darkest period in history. However, philosophy was treated as the ancilla theologiae well before the Middle Ages, and this subordination meant something other than what some people commonly suppose. In his work Philosophia christiana cum antiqua et nove comparata (1878), [Christian Philosophy Compared with Ancient and Modern], G. Sanseverino reminds us that Aristotle had already recognized theology as the highest science to which we should subordinate all other domains. Aristotle identified first philosophy and wisdom with theology and said the other sciences were its servants.2 However, when Aristotle spoke of theology he did not mean a body of knowledge based on supernatural revelation because he did not know of any such thing. He meant metaphysics and an exposition of the first substance, God, as the highest manifestation of being.3 The first author who subordinated philosophy to revelation was not a Christian. He was the Jewish, neo-Platonic philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. He applied the term “wisdom” to the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament, to 84 SCIENCE IN CULTURE philosophical theology, or metaphysics. And he thought that the proper role of philosophy is to serve revealed knowledge. Philo’s view should not be too surprising, since he was convinced, as was Aristobulus before him, that Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato had derived their philosophy from the Sacred Scriptures.4 According to Philo and Aristobulus, philosophy originated in the Sacred Scripturees. So, all the more, we should subordinate it to Scripture. Philo made an analogy: as the liberal arts (enkyklia) are necessary to master philosophy, so philosophy is necessary to acquire wisdom. Philosophy is a training for wisdom. And wisdom is the knowledge and science of the causes of divine and human things. Philo said that “just as encyclic music is the servant of philosophy, so philosophy is the servant of wisdom” (“hosper he en kyklios mousike philosophias, houto kai philosophia doule sophias”). Philo illustrated the subordination of philosophy to wisdom (the Sacred Scriptures) with the example of the Egyptian slave woman Hagar who was subordinate to Sarah, Abraham’s wife (Genesis, 16). Philo influenced Clement of Alexandria. And Clement grafted this concep- tion of philosophy as the servant of theology on to the Christian tradition. Clement drew an analogy between the relation of the liberal arts to philosophy, and the relation of philosophy to wisdom. He concluded that “wisdom is the mistress who rules philosophy” (“kyria toinun he sophia tes philosophias”).5 St. Gregory Thaumaturgus did not use the term “mistress.” He spoke of a helper or companion in labor (synerithos), which has approximately the same meaning.6 Other Greek Fathers, such as Gregory Nazianzenus, Gregory of Nyssa, Amphilochus Iconiensis, and Didymus Caecus, shared this opinion and men- tioned the biblical allegory of Sarah and Hagar to give a supernatural dimension to the relation of philosophy to theology.7 In the Latin tradition, St. Aurelius Augustine never used the expression ancilla theologiae. In the eleventh century St. Peter Damian said that the so- called artes humanae should be the ancilla dominae. The “human arts” should be “handmaidens of the Lady,” and this Lady is the Sacred Scripture. We should remember, however, that when scholars in the eleventh and twelfth century spoke of philosophy, they were thinking of dialectics, not metaphysics, because the strictly philosophical writings of Aristotle had not yet been translated. Dialectics was de facto the maidservant of theology. And this, in turn, was in agreement with the Aristotelian understanding of dialectics as an aid (organon or instrument). The understanding of philosophy in the eleventh and twelfth century as handmaiden to theology did not mean that Sacred Scripture dictated the particular views of philosophy. It meant that theology used the logical instruments of dialectic. Robert Meledunensis wrote: “non tamen ipsae artes eius (theologiae) sunt ornamentum, sed instrumentum” (“the liberal arts are theology’s instrument, not its ornament”).8 When metaphysics blossomed in the thirteenth century, its methodological status did not depend on its relation to theology. St. Thomas understood natural.
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