Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

The sacred name of Theology, from its primary use among the faithful, designated that doctrine alone which explained and proved the Divinity of Christ the Lord: wherefore St. John the Evangelist was called the Theologian by a title of special dignity, because, like an Eagle flying higher than the rest, he gazed upon the rays of Christ's Divinity with unblinking eyes:

For the other three Evangelists, says Augustine, as it were walking on the earth with the Lord as a man, said little about His Divinity: but this one, like an eagle disdaining to walk on the earth, raised himself not only above the earth and above the whole expanse of air and sky, but even above the whole host of Angels and the whole array of invisible powers, and reached Him through whom all things were made.

Gregory Nazianzenus was likewise at some time honored with a similar name, because among the sacred Doctors he treated that doctrine of the Divinity of Christ the Lord more subtly and more sublimely: Theodoretus, however, and whatever other Greek Fathers are chiefly engaged in explaining the mysteries of the incarnate Word, profess that they are detained not in Theologia, but in Oeconomia; for this reason, that the adorable mystery of the incarnate Word pertains to that special providence of God by which He supplies us with the means necessary for obtaining eternal salvation.

But in the course of succeeding ages it came to pass that the sacred name of Theology was granted not only to each of the two doctrines discoursing on the Divinity and Humanity of Christ, but also to that one which holds, as it were, the middle place between the two; therefore it was called Scholastic, because by the Academic method and the retired exercise of Disputations it defends all the mysteries of the Faith against Infidels with whatever force of arguments it can; separating the true from the false, the certain from the doubtful, and eliminating and purging the Catholic dogmas from the masked and counterfeit assertions of heretics.

Now the first of the holy Fathers who seems to have adapted sacred Doctrine to the manner of the Dialecticians by disputations and arguments was St. Clement Alexandrinus, a man certainly most distinguished in sacred as well as profane literature, the disciple of the most celebrated Pantaenus, and the Master of the most famous Origen in the Alexandrian school.

Many men, renowned at once for doctrine and for piety, at length followed him; among whom St. Damascene seems to have obtained the palm, inasmuch as around the year 739 or 800 he so confined the sacred streams of this divine doctrine, flowing more broadly and more abundantly in the vastest writings of the Greek Fathers as in a spacious channel, within certain little rivulets of questions and answers, that what the rest had written in a greater volume, he himself comprised in four little books on the orthodox Faith.

After some centuries had elapsed, namely around the year one thousand one hundred and forty, Peter Lombard, Bishop of the Parisians, imitated him; for having collected the sentences of the Latin Fathers, especially of Saint Augustinus, he arranged them all so wisely and methodically in four books, that from this outstanding work he was called the Master of the Sentences.

Thereafter it had various Commentators and Interpreters of its writings, who, overflowing with the waters of divine wisdom, like the river of Paradise, were divided into four Heads, that is, into four principal Academies of Theologians: namely the Seraphic and the Subtle of the Franciscans, the Angelic of the Preachers, the Spiritual of the Nominalists, and the more unconstrained and free of the rest.

All these you would rightly call those sixty valiant men who surround the mystic couch of Salomon, namely the Church of Christ, from among the strongest of Israel, all holding swords and most skilled in war, each one's sword upon his thigh because of the terrors of the night, namely the incursions and ambushes of heretics and of other men of darkness, which the Scholastic Theologians, the watchmen and sentinels of the Church, perceive beforehand, and, when they are brought out into open battle, pierce and slay them with the spear-point of reasonings: For the weapons of our warfare (says the Apostle) are not carnal, but the power of God for the destruction of strongholds, destroying counsels and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

Hence all the heretics, the sowers of tares and the craftiest adulterators of Catholic truth, harass the Theologian Doctors with the bitterest mockeries of every kind. For Wicleffus, impiously no less than ignorantly, said that Universities, Schools, Colleges, graduations and masterships were introduced from paganism, and profit the Church just as much as the devil.

Who does not know that Luther, a most filthy man, everywhere calls Scholastic Theology ignorance of the truth, empty fallacy, and the Academies in which it is taught the brothels of Antichrist! Who is unaware with how many insults Calvin, that most impious fury, devoted to drink, a scoundrel, attacks the Theologian Doctors, especially those of Paris, when he called them Sophists, horned Asses, two-footed Beasts, and other things of that kind?

But why wonder if the shadows shun the light, the wolves attack the dogs, the poisons reject the antidote? For they are hostile to Scholastic Theology and to its students for this reason, that they understand that this doctrine itself is that mystic Davidic Tower in which hang a thousand shields, all the armor of the strong, that is, a most strongly fortified arsenal, whence weapons are brought forth, by which the Catholic faith stands firm and protected against their assaults up to this very day, and their errors are in like manner struck and fall.

For it will always be, whatever those men of darkness cry out, it will, I say, always be: Scholastic Theology, the light of the Church, the pillar of faith, the balance of truth, the club of errors, the sword of knots, the thunderbolt of heresies, the torch of mysteries, and Catholic doctrine, a Lydian stone.

This doctrine, already made illustrious by almost innumerable and most learned commentaries, I undertake to make illustrious again, with the torches of the Franciscan Doctors rekindled and doubled, especially those of the most subtle Doctor, as with a new splendor arising, the more confidently because I hear divine Wisdom herself crying out: They that explain me shall have life everlasting.

Lest, however, I should seem to run through the narrow sanctuary of Theology with too free a foot, without greeting the host, I have judged that this immense labor must be begun from a slight delineation of it, as is the custom. Wherefore let it be