Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, with Selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations. Christian Thomasius
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the elements that are left over from the good light of nature and which he purged and sanctified. Thus, when he began to dispute with the sects of the Epicureans and the Stoics in Athens and could adapt himself well to people, becoming, as he himself says, all things to all people, he did not need the philosophical wisdom of the schools, but only proclaimed the gospel of Jesus and the resurrection to them [the sects], regardless
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of how incoherent it seemed to them. And since he spoke publicly (in the Areopagus89) on the square where executions took place, he did have a great opportunity to start talking on, for example, being as such, the divine nature, or the condition of the world, just like the philosophers who came up with these topics and could conduct nit-picking arguments over them with each other. Yet he did not do it but set aside all such art and artful words and began from a point that seemed the worst possible and made them ignorant idiots: that is, from the altar of the unknown God. He then moved on to the foundation of the word of God, without considering it worth examining or refuting their theology and idolatry in detail, or disputing de natura deorum, that is, the nature of God and his properties in metaphysical terms. Instead he began with the article of the Creation and the right knowledge and reverence for God that followed from this: he accused them of idolatry and ignorance. And, leaving aside all their countless and subtle books, he put forward the single testimony of a poet which confirmed Creation, namely, that humans were a divine race or came from God. Thus he left their whole philosophy and subtlety aside, admonished them only to convert by holding up to their eyes the threat of the last judgment and the glorious opportunity, which the judge of the world (Christ risen from the dead) offered through faith.90 Thus it is evident how this incomparable Apostle or messenger of God, who was directly instructed by heaven, taught Christianity even among the most learned people of that age (these were in Athens which had the most famous school of philosophy). He did this without philosophical art and did not use any tools provided by the learning common at that time, unless he found something in a well-known book that conformed to the article of faith concerning Creation. One also finds that he first taught from the Old Testament in the Jewish schools and then used this to prove that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah prophesied in it. He directed his two dearest and best disciples and followers (who became wonderful and holy bishops), that is, Timothy and Titus, to Scripture and to reading and repeating it diligently, just as he warned them to abstain from worldly cleverness and school quarrels.91 He warned Christians in general of this, as he did in these words to the Colossians: “Beware lest
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anyone spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”92
See also chapter 8, §1, page 531: “Very erudite people have already observed that as soon as the philosophers or the learned pagans adopted Christianity and introduced their doctrines and manner of teaching into the church, the quarrels of the schools, of which Saint Paul had warned, increased. Most of the heresies emerged from these, for the same learned men brought their previously held opinions into the church and wanted to judge of the articles of faith according to the rules and modes to which each was accustomed.” And §2, pages 534ff.:
When, however, the old books of the pagan philosophers fell into the hands of the clerics, especially the monks, then Scholastic Theology broke loose, doing more harm than good. It seems to me as if the good monks and priests who first laid their hands on these books were driven by great curiosity and at first made a big secret out of it. They also wanted to be seen to be able to speak and chatter of other things than holy Scripture and the Fathers or the legends and saints’ histories, which is what they almost exclusively fed the laity, both high and low. Their action would have been Christian and good if they had burned the recovered pagan books immediately, rather than using them… . For unfortunately it seems that they learned to grasp the meaning of God’s word with the help of these arts. They acted like someone who wants to furnish a palace according to the example of some random old farmhouse. And if one compares the dignity of holy Scripture with worldly wisdom, then they have mixed gold with copper and lead, pure wine with murky water, by beginning to measure and examine articles of faith according to the standards of philosophy. Then they wanted to know how to talk about God, Christ, the holy sacraments according to the praedicamenta and the predicabilia, then substance, accident, quality, quantity, act, potential, moral cause, abstract, concrete, and other such terms, far more nit-picking than those the pagan philosophers had ever produced, and with invented barbaric expressions that had to be applied to the mysteries of faith, which then had to be examined and weighed according to them. Among other countless terms and their distinction were otherness, thisness, identity, individuation, whatness, supposite, whereness, voluntariness, eminently,
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formally, entitatively, concomitantly, radically, intentionally, primary and secondary, numeric, precise, reduplicative, and many other similar ones… . And since this art has taken over almost the entire clerical estate, it was no longer possible to subdue it. Instead it became as necessary as some others, for once one had gone beyond God’s word it was necessary to disprove the errors which developed from this with equal subtlety. This developed in the manner described in the learned proverb concerning the northeasterly wind, which they call Caecius, which tends to produce great waves it cannot disperse… . And so scholastic theology became a system which nobody could ever finish learning. On the contrary, the quarrels increased to such an extent and arguments were conducted with so much deceit that it was almost impossible to distinguish any longer the true and well-founded opinion or at least rarely possible to form a definite conclusion about it.
See also the additions to chapter 7, §2, page 299:
Johann Gerhard in his Theological Method,93 final chapter, makes the following comment on the Scholastics: the blessed Luther took the well-founded and salutary decision to ban Scholastic theology, which he called ignorance of the truth and inane fallacy, from our schools, and where one tried to re-introduce it, it was as if one wanted to have acorns instead of bread as food. For, he said, the Scholastics had confused philosophy and theology concerning the principles of disputation. Hence Erasmus compared Scholastic theology, especially as it was practiced at the Sorbonne in Paris, to the centaurs, who according to the poets were half human and half horse.94
Thus you will not be surprised that in chapter 3, §61, I reject that term eminenter, which the Scholastics use in discussing the divine attributes, because you see that the illustrious Seckendorff in the passages cited above reckoned this, too, among the barbaric terms and distinctions.
§52. In chapter 4, §§35ff. I believe I showed through genuine arguments that it is possible, without damaging Christian religion, to use a fiction concerning something that God has revealed to us as being different. And
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in order that the argument not be conducted in vain, I defined in §38 what I meant by a fiction, namely, the first part of a hypothetical proposition which neither affirms nor denies anything, but which only infers the second part as a consequence from this fiction. This description is appropriate for the incident that gave rise to this controversy. When the illustrious Pufendorf was about to publish his work on natural law, he assumed that one had to abstract from the state of innocence and, when arguing with a pagan, assume the present state of man. On this basis, that is, the hypothesis of the pagan who knows no other state, the pagan must be persuaded of the truth of the natural precepts, however he conceives the origin of humanity. But this is nothing else than to infer a necessary connection between the second part—that is, the precepts of natural law—and the first part of the hypothetical proposition, which the pagan considers true, but the doctor of natural law neither affirms nor denies. The argument that among others is usually advanced against Pufendorf’s doctrine is that a Christian must not invent anything. I could not contradict this opinion any more strongly than by showing that a fiction defined in that sense is not contrary to religion and, moreover, differs from a lie, which I define in book 2, chapter 7. Yet, if someone refused to be satisfied by my argument, I would ask him, before he picks a fight with me, to propose his own definition of a fiction and to show that I have