scholastic method arrived at its highest constructive energy. In the Sentences one excerpted opinion was given and another possibly divergent, and at the end an adjustment was presented. This comparative formlessness attains in the Summa a serried syllogistic structure. Thomas, who finally perfects it, presents his connected and successive topics divided into quaestiones, which are subdivided into articuli, whose titles give the point to be discussed. He states first, and frequently in his own syllogistic terms, the successive negative arguments; and then the counter-proposition, which usually is a citation from Scripture or from Augustine. Then with clear logic he constructs the true positive conclusion in accordance with the authority which he has last adduced. He then refutes each of the adverse arguments in turn.
Thus the method of the Sentences is rendered dialectically organic; and with the perfecting of the form of quaestio and articulus, and the logical linking of successive topics, the whole composition, from a congeries, becomes a structure, organic likewise, a veritable Summa, and a Summa of a science which has unity and consistency. This science is sacra doctrina, theologia. Moreover, as compared with the Sentences, the contents of the Summa are enormously enlarged. For between the time of the Lombard and that of Thomas, there has come the whole of Aristotle, and what is more, the mastery of the whole of Aristotle, which Thomas incorporates in a complete and organic statement of the Christian scheme of salvation.[1]
- ↑ Two extracts, one from the Sentences and one from the Summa, touching the same matter, will illustrate the stage in the scholastic process reached by Peter Lombard, about the year 1150, and that attained by Thomas Aquinas a hundred years later.
The Lombard's Four Books of Sentences are divided into Distinctiones, with sub-titles to the latter. Distinctio xlvi. of the first Book l>ears the general title: "The opinion (sententia) declaring that the will of God which is himself, cannot be frustrated, seems to be opposed by some opinions." The first subdivision of the text begins: "Here the question rises. For it is said by the authorities above adduced [the preceding Distinctio had discussed " The will of God which is His essence, one and eternal "] that the will of God, which is himself, and is called His good pleasure (beneplacitum) cannot be frustrated, because by that will fecit quaecumque voluit in caelo el in terra, which – witness the Apostle – nihil resistit. [I leave the Scriptural quotations in Latin, so as to mark them.] It is queried, therefore, how one should understand what the Apostle says concerning the Lord, 1 Tim. 2: Qui vult omnes homines salvos fieri. For since all are not saved, but many are damned, that which God wills to take place,
