# The Christian Tradition, volume 3 (Pelikan)



## RamistThomist (Feb 20, 2018)

Pelikan's analysis of medieval theology is seeing it as a troubled synthesis of the Augustinian tradition. Merely saying one is an Augustinian is not good enough. All Westerns claim Augustine. Warfield's statement that the Reformation was a triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church is misleading. 

Pelikan begins his narrative by showing the unity of "the Faith." The Faith, following St Vincent of Lerins, is that which is believed at all times by all peoples everywhere. Deviating from this point, as Pelikan (and history) shows, almost always leads to heresy and schism. And those who fall into schism rarely continue. Pelikan gives a number of helpful passages from Bede to the point.

My problem with the above analysis is that Vincent's clam works only on the broadest terms. In actually defining what the church believed it is worse than useless.

Pelikan notes that Augustine's ambiguity on the sacraments was embarrassing, as it was his clarity on grace that embarrassed his followers. And this tension would spark the Eucharistic and predestinarian debates of the 9th century and the 11th century. Pelikan is nothing if not fair. He does show how Berengar and Gottscalc did honestly and accurately quote Augustine to the contrary of the rest of the church. 

Regardless, they can't be seen as the protagonists because their doing theology outside the interpretation of the church did leave them to other, more troubling conclusions (e.g., trine deitas). The Eucharistic debages hinged on the "conversion." How do the elements change (198)? It becomes clear that the Church did teach a real presence in the Eucharist, if not necessarily a full-orbed transubstantiation. Berengar and later Protestants would retort that many Fathers did teach a "figurative" presence to the Body. But the Catholic response was when the Fathers spoke of the Eucharist as a "figure," it was a figure of the Church not the real Body of Christ or the Eucharist. This is a good point Pelikan makes, and brings up the Medieval view of the threefold body, but Pelikan should have developed the point. 

How did the church react to attacks on the Faith? Interestingly, as it appears to Pelikan, most of the divergences from catholic unity promoted some form of manicheanism or dualism. This almost always attacked the doctrine of God (since it posited different deities opposed to one another) and always downplayed the liturgies (235). 

Also includes discussion of Mary, the saints, and scholasticism. 

In any case, medievalism set the stage for later Reforms. It left key questions unanswered. Combined with an increasingly volatile political situation, troubling times were ahead...and that is the next volume.


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