De locis theologicis

Those who fell into this error rely on these arguments. Clemens Alexandrinus testifies that there were such people, in lib. 1 Stromatum, in these words: “I have not overlooked what some people noisily and foolishly proclaim: that one should occupy oneself with matters that contain the faith, but skip external and superfluous matters, which wear us down uselessly and keep us busy with things that contribute nothing to the faith. Others even think that philosophy entered human life from evil, to destroy people, since it came from some malignant inventor.” He says again in the same book: “Some who think themselves clever refuse to touch philosophy or dialectic, and will not learn the study of nature either; they require only bare faith, just as if they had never cared for a vine but wanted to receive grapes straightaway from the beginning. The Lord is called a vine allegorically; through diligence and the art of cultivating the field, which is exercised by reason and speech, its fruit must be harvested,” and so on. Luther, who gathered all the heresies of all heretics into one Camarina, not only asserted that philosophy is useless and harmful to a theologian but also that all speculative disciplines are errors. This new

Socrates, evidently, embraced moral philosophy with great admiration; he condemns only the philosophy concerned with contemplation. Cornelius Agrippa, too, the most vain man in living memory, in his book entitled De vanitate scientiarum declared war not only, like Pacuvius’ Zethus, on philosophy but on all human disciplines and even divine ones. There is no need to discuss the sort of minds these men usually have; it is obvious. For it is easy to understand why they want their followers to be strangers to disciplines grounded in reason. Just as Epicurus rejects dialectic, and the followers of Mahomet among the Saracens keep people far from every discipline because they understand that all rational disciplines and arts are opposed to their perverse teaching, so the Lutherans want to draw their followers away from every way of knowing, lest they discover the sect’s most absurd errors. But since truth never opposes truth and always agrees with and serves it, the noblest founders of our schools rightly called all human sciences to serve as handmaids in the art and ministry of true wisdom. Julianus, out of envy, forbade Christians by law to study the liberal arts. Socrates, lib. 3 Historiae ecclesiasticae, cap. 12 and 16, and Sozomenus, lib. 6 Hist. tripartitae, cap. 37, report this. Therefore, I never cease to wonder that the practice of excluding human reasoning from theological discussion has been introduced into some Catholic schools—a considerable loss to ecclesiastical learning if the custom takes hold. For then the best and most outstanding theologians will be those who have memorized the most passages and, as jurists are reproached, have become indexes and catalogues of books. This happened in Germany under Luther: cobblers who had memorized the New Testament were regarded as great and distinguished theologians. Even women, because they could recite the Gospels and the Pauline epistles from memory, challenged the theologians of every university to debate and dared to contend with men—not virgins, but utterly corrupt women. Such is Lutheran theology: since it has no sharpness and shows no mark of intelligence, no one among them values the finest and most brilliant mind, however keen his intellect and perception of truth, or however well he grasps the order and connection of divine and human affairs, and understands their causes, effects, antecedents, and consequences. Perhaps these things will be said more suitably elsewhere. Now let us return to our purpose.