# Question on Scholasticism and Nominalism



## LadyCalvinist (Aug 14, 2011)

Greetings,

Whenever I read about the Middle Ages the Scholastics and the Nominalists always come up. I confess I don't know much about either group, what they believed and how it affected Christianity. Could someone please explain them to me?


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## py3ak (Aug 14, 2011)

The Scholastics were the academic theologians - they engaged in the work of theology at a university level, if you like. And they developed approaches to and methods for teaching theology that were distinctive as well. I would imagine that the first person to come to mind for most people when "the Scholastics" are mentioned is Thomas Aquinas. But he was only one (though a great one) of many, and of course there were enormous numbers of disputes and disagreements among them. And since it was a movement that spanned several centuries, naturally there was a good deal of development as well.
Sometimes "scholastic" will be used pejoratively to mean dry or speculative or impractical or divorced from the text of Scripture. Scholastic theology can be all those things; but it can also be fascinating, agreeable to Scripture without prying into what Scripture leaves alone, and a source of great comfort and illumination. A lot depends on the practitioner.
And Scholasticism continued after the Middle Ages; in fact there is a large and deep body of Protestant Scholastic writings, where you find some of the most wonderfully precise theology ever written.


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## Reformed Thomist (Aug 14, 2011)

Very basically, the 'problem of universals' -- the controversy between 'nominalists', 'realists', and 'conceptualists' -- is about metaphysics, in particular, is rooted in the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle. In the late ancient and mediaeval periods, Plato and Aristotle were a big deal to philosophers and theologians alike; to many, Aristotle _was_ science or secular/natural knowledge.

In Plato, the quintessential *strong realist*, we have the Theory of Forms, universal, eternal entities which all particular entities participate in and from which particulars derive their reality. A horse is a 'horse' insofar as it participates in 'horseness', an immaterial 'Form' really existing _out there_. Aristotle, a *moderate realist*, reigned this in in asserting that while universals exist they do not exist _out there_, but rather _within_ particulars as individualised, and multiplied. The *nominalist* school rejects this framework. It denies that a horse is a 'horse' because it participates in some universal 'horseness' entity; rather, a horse is a 'horse' simply because people have decided to _name_ this particular arrangement of matter 'horse'. Universals do not exist. The third party, the *conceptualists*, assert that universals exist but in the mind only; they have no external or substantial reality. This is sort of a middle-way between realism and nominalism.

The realist vs. nominalist debate is still alive in a real way in the controversy surrounding gay 'marriage'. It is not uncommon to find conservatives arguing that 'gay marriage' is an oxymoron, because 'marriage' has an unchanging definition: 'Marriage' always and forever involves members of the opposite sex, and so any relationship between members of the same sex is simply not marriage, even if people want to call it marriage. In other words, entities have essences, and we cannot change the essence of 'marriage' (into, say, involving members of the same sex) simply because we feel like it. Marriage is what it is, forever and always. (Even if gay people go and 'get married', they're not really married; they only _think_ they're married. Gay marriage is an _impossibility_, given the unchanging definition of marriage.) On the other hand, we often hear liberals argue that 'marriage' can be whatever we want it to be; all _meaning_ is just _use_. Whatever we choose to call it, it is. There is no unchanging definition of marriage.


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## greenbaggins (Aug 14, 2011)

Yes, Scholasticism was a method of getting across the information in theology. You would have a thesis (a position) on a particular topic in theology. You would put forward the arguments for it, answer the objections against it, and then examine the proof-texts from Scripture. It does NOT imply any particular theological viewpoint, contrary to what some authors would say. 

Nominalists believe that there is no such thing as a "Platonic ideal" of some particular object. Names for things are therefore mostly arbitrary. Specific instances are the only really important things.


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## DMcFadden (Aug 14, 2011)

Diane, I found McGrath's _Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation_ as illuminating on the question you are asking. He traces it through the philosophical schools and persons leading up to the 16th century Reformation.


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## LadyCalvinist (Aug 14, 2011)

Thanks to all who responded this has been helpful.


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