De locis theologicis

In this branch of learning, teachers of theology must carefully and necessarily avoid two faults that Cicero mentioned. One is that we must not take unknown things as known or uncertain things as certain. Many errors are committed in theology on this point,

as by those who embrace the opinions of D. Thomas or Scotus without examination and fight for them as if for their altars and hearths. Although those who thought that nothing could be known with certainty said many absurd things, they were right in this: a wise person should follow what seems probable to him and reject the contrary, avoiding the arrogance of affirmation and fleeing rashness, which is far removed from wisdom. But to avoid this fault it is not enough to devote time and care to considering matters; we must also use diligence and modesty to ask the most learned about matters we do not know. Those who study in the distinguished universities of the Christian world, instructed by frequent discussions with the most learned men and challenged daily by debate with highly trained young people, can avoid this fault more easily. The person who happens to have a learned and devout teacher will fare especially well: one who separates certain things from uncertain ones, sets aside empty questions, chooses useful and necessary ones, and teaches his students that there is, so to speak, a learned ignorance, and that it is wiser to be ignorant of some things than to know them. The second fault is that some devote too much study and effort to obscure, difficult, and unnecessary matters. I see many of our own people err in this way too, pursuing at great length questions that Porphyrius avoided. He was an impious man, but prudent in this respect, so that you could recognize him as a disciple of Plato and Aristoteles: they discussed things only when appropriate in place and time, and pursued no questions that would overwhelm rather than help the minds of young people. Our theologians, however, spend long discussions on such matters at inappropriate times and places, matters that neither young people can bear nor old people endure. Who could bear those discussions of universals, the analogy of names, the first thing known, the principle of individuation (as they call it), the distinction between quantity and the thing that has quantity, the maximum and minimum, the infinite, increase and decrease, proportions and degrees, and hundreds of other such things? Even though I was not especially slow-witted and devoted much time and care to understanding them, I could not even form an idea of them in my mind. I would be ashamed to say I did not understand, if the very people who discussed them understood them. Why now list those other questions: whether God could make matter without form, create several angels of the same species, divide a continuum into all its parts, separate a relation from its subject, and many others still more pointless, which I neither wish nor ought to write here, lest anyone who happens upon this passage judge all the authors of the schools by the abilities of a few. Once these faults have been avoided, the effort and care devoted to natural things worthy of knowledge will not only, as that author says, rightly earn praise; it will also be most necessary if we want theologians to be accomplished and fully wise. Hieronymus prudently advises Pammachius that if he has fallen in love with a captive woman—that is, secular wisdom—he should shave her head and cut off the enticements of her hair and the ornaments of her words, along with her dead nails. For then the captive will bear many children, and the Moabite woman will become an Israelite.