believed in on authority. Occam made as energetic an attack on the "primum movens immobile" (prime immovable mover) and likewise fell back on authority. But with the impossibility of demonstrating the infinite, and of giving life by speculation to the notion of the "necessarium ex se ipso," there disappeared also for Nominalism the conception of the necessity of the inner determinedness of the infinite Being, of whom authority taught. God is not summum esse (supreme being) and summa intelligentia (supreme intelligence) in the sense in which intelligence belongs to the creature, but He is, as measured by the understanding of the creature, the unlimited almighty will, the cause of the world, a cause, however, which could operate quite otherwise from the way in which it does. God is thus the absolutely free will, who simply wills because He wills to, ie., a cognisable ground of the will does not exist. From this point of view the doctrine of God becomes as uncertain as, above all, the doctrine of grace. Occam went so far as to declare monotheism to be only more probable than polytheism; for what can be strictly proved is either only the notion of a single supreme Being, but not His existence, or the existence of relatively supreme beings, but not the one-ness. Accordingly the attributes of God were quite differently treated in the Thomist and in the Scotist schools. In the former they were strictly derived from a necessary principle, but only to be cancelled again in the end, as identical in the one substance, in the latter they were relatively determined; in the formerin accordance with the thesis of the summum esse-a virtual existence of God in the world was assumed, and in the last analysis there was no distinguishing between the existence of God for Himself and His existence for the world, in the latteras the world is a free product of God's will, entirely disjoined from God-only an ideal presence of God is taught. As can easily be seen, the contrast is ultimately determined by different ideas of the position of man and of religion. For the Thomists, the idea is that of dependence on God Himself, who comprehends and sustains all things, for the Scotists the idea is that of independence in relation to God. It certainly meant an important advance upon Thomas when God was strictly con

ceived of by Duns as will and person, and was distinguished from the world; but this advance becomes at once a serious disadvantage when we can no longer depend upon this God, because we are not permitted to think of Him as acting according to the highest categories of moral necessity, and when, accordingly, the rule holds, that the goodness of the creature consists in surrender to the will of God, of which the motives are inscrutable, while its content is clearly given in revelation (so Duns). The view that contemplates God as also arbitrariness, because He is will, becomes ultimately involved in the same difficulties as the view that contemplates Him as the alldetermining substance, for in both cases His essence is shrouded in darkness. But the narrow way that leads to a sure and comforting knowledge of God, the way of faith in God as the Father of Jesus Christ, the Schoolmen would not follow. Therefore their whole doctrine of God, whether it be of a Thomist or of a Scotist cast, cannot be used in dogmatic. For on this point dogmatic must keep to its own field of knowledge, namely, the historic Christ, and must not fear the reproach of “blind faith” (“ Köhlerglaubens," collier's faith,) if it is blind faith that God can be felt and known only from personal life— and, in a way that awakens conviction, only from the personal life of Christ. This does not exclude the truth that Thomistic Mysticism can warmly stir the fancy, and gently delude the understanding as to the baselessness of speculation. How far, as regards the conception of God, medieval thought in Nominalism had drifted from the thought which had once given theological fixity in the Church to the articulus de deo, can best be seen when we compare the doctrine of God of Origen,

1 Werner, l.c., p. 408: "It is a genuinely Scotist thought that the absolute divine will cannot be subjected to the standard of our ethical habits of thought (!)"

2 In contrast with this, Thomas had taught (P. I., Q. 12, Art. 12) that indeed "ex sensibilium cognitione non potest tota dei virtus cognosci et per consequens nec ejus essentia videri," but that both the existence of God and "ea quæ necesse est ei convenire" can be known. Duns and his disciples denied this; but, on the other hand, they asserted that God is more cognisable than the Thomists were willing to grant. The latter denied an adequate (essential) knowledge of God (cognitio quidditativa); the Scotists affirmed it, because it was not a question at all about the knowledge of an infinite intelligence, but about the knowledge of the God who is will, and who has manifested His will.

Gregory of Nyssa, or John of Damascus with that of Duns or Occam. But the whole of dogmatic is dependent on the conception of God; for that conception determines both the view of salvation and the view of reconciliation. Finally, it

must be pointed out, that mediæval theology strongly emphasises the conception of God as judge, though this conception was not introduced by it into speculations as to the nature of God.

2. Stormy debates on the right way of understanding, and the right way of mentally representing the doctrine of the Trinity, had already run their course, when the Mendicant Orders made their appearance in science. The bold attempts to make the mystery more intelligible, whether by approximating to tritheism (Roscellin), or by passing over to Modalism (Abelard), were rejected in the period of Anselm and Bernard (against Gilbert).5 Where Augustine's treatise De trinitate was studied and followed, a fine Modalism introduced itself everywhere, and it was easy for any one who wished to convict another of heresy to bring the reproach of Sabellianism against his opponent who was influenced by Augustine. Even the Lombard was charged with giving too much independence to the divina essentia, and with thus teaching a quaternity, or a species of Sabellianism. The lesson derived in the thirteenth 1 On this, and the acute criticism of the Aristotelian doctrine of God, see Werner, Nachscotistiche Scholastik, p. 216 ff.

2 It is a special merit of Ritschl that in his great work in the department of the history of dogma he has shown everywhere the fundamental importance of the conception of God.

3 See Münscher, § 120, Schwane, 1.c. p. 152 ff., Bach, Dogmengesch. Bd. II., Baur, L. v. d. Dreieinigkeit, Bd. II.

4 Application of the Nominalist mode of thought; against him Anselm; see Reuter I., p. 134 f.; Deutsch, Abelard, p. 256 f.

5 There was a disposition to detect even tritheism in Abelard; on his doctrine of the Trinity, see Deutsch, p. 259 ff. Abelard's wish was to reject both the Roscellin conception and strict Sabellianism, yet he does not get beyond a fine Modalism (see Deutsch, p. 280 ff.). It is noteworthy that, like Luther at Worms, he stated in the prologue to his Introductio in theol., that he was ready to be corrected, “cum quis me fidelium vel virtute rationis vel auctoritate scripturæ correxerit" (see Münscher, p. 52).

• Thus it was with Anselm and the Victorinians, especially Richard, who reproduced and expounded the Augustinian analogies of the Trinity (the powers of the human spirit). 7 Joachim of Fiore made it a reproach that the 4th Lateran Council, c. 2, took

century from these experiences was to guard the trinitarian dogma by a still greater mustering of terminological distincions than Augustine had recourse to. The exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity continued to be the high school of logic and dialectic. In Thomism the doctrine still had a relation to the idea of the world, in so far as the hypostasis of the Son was not sharply marked off from the world-idea in God. Thomism was also necessarily obliged to retain its leaning to Modalism, as the conception of God did not at bottom admit of the assumption of distinctions in God, but reduced the distinctions to relations, which themselves again had to be neutralised. The Scotist School, on the other hand, kept the persons sharply asunder. But this school, especially in its later period, could equally well have defended, or yielded submission to, the quaternity, or any other doctrine of God whatever. But before this the whole doctrine had already come to be a mere problem of the schools, having no relation to living faith. The respect that was paid to it as the fundamental dogma of the Church was in flagrant contrast with the incapacity to raise it in theological discussion above the level of a logical mystery. Like Augustine in his day, the medieval theologians let it be seen that they would not have set up this dogma if it had not come to them by tradition, and the decree of the Lateran Council (see page 182, note 7,) which places behind the persons a "res non generans neque genita nec procedens" (a thing not begetting nor begotten nor proceeding) really transforms the persons into mere modalities κar' Tolav (existing for thought), or into jnner processes in God. Or is it still a doctrine of the Trinity, when the immanent thinking and the immanent willing

the Lombard under its protection and decreed: "Nos (i.e., the Pope) sacro et universali concilio approbante credimus et confitemur cum Petro (scil. Lombardo), quod una quædam summa res est, incomprehensibilis quidem et ineffabilis, quæ veraciter est pater et filius et spiritus, tres simul personæ, ac singulatim quælibet earundem. Et ideo in deo trinitas est solummodo, non quaternitas, quia quælibet trium personarum est illa res, videlicet substantia, essentia sive natura divina, quæ sola est universorum principium, præter quod aliud inveniri non potest. Et illa res non est generans neque genita nec procedens, sed est pater qui generat, filius qui gignitur, et spiritus sanctus qui procedit, ut distinctiones sint in personis et unitas in natura."

in God are defined and objectified as generare and spirare (begetting and breathing)? But in Nominalism the treatment of this dogma grew no better. The Thomist School was certainly still regulated by a concrete thought, when it sought to make the Trinity more intelligible by means of analogies; for according to these the finite world, and especially the rational creature, show traces of the divine nature and the divine attributes. But this idea Scotism had set aside, emphasising the threefold personality as revealed fact. Its "subtle investigations," even Schwane confesses,1 "went astray too much into a region of formalism, and came to be a playing with notions."

3. The doctrine of the eternity of the world 2 was universally combated, and the creation from nothing adhered to as an article of faith. But only the Post-Thomist Schoolmen expressed the temporality of the world, and creation out of nothing, in strict formula. Although Thomas rejected the pantheism of the Neoplatonic-Erigenistic mode of thought, there are still to be found in him traces of the idea that creation is the actualising of the divine ideas, that is, their passing into the creaturely form of subsistence. Further, he holds, on the basis of the Areopagite conception of God, that all that is has its existence "by participating in him who alone exists through himself" (participatione ejus, qui solum per se ipsum est). But both thoughts obscure the conception of creation. Hence it is characteristic of Thomas, who elsewhere, as a rule, finds strict necessity, that he refrains from showing that the world's having a beginning is a doctrine necessary for thought; Summa., P. I., Q. 46, Art. 2: "It is to be asserted that the world's not having always existed is held by faith alone, and cannot be proved demonstratively as was asserted also above regarding the mystery of the Trinity . . . that the world had a beginning is

1 L.c., p. 179.

2 See Münscher, § 121, 122, Schwane, pp. 179-226.

3 For a pantheistic view of creation in Thomas an appeal, however, can scarcely be made to the expression frequently employed by him, "emanatio" (processio) creaturarum a deo; for he certainly does not employ the expression in a pantheistic If he says, P. I., Q. 45, Art. I: "emanationem totius entis a causa universali, quæ est deus, designamus nomine creationis," just for that reason he shows in what follows, that "creatio, quæ est emanatio totius esse, est ex non ente, quod est nihil.”

sense.