| Catherine Keyser: 10/26/98 |
It struck me as I was looking back at the
materials from the beginning of the semester that the
Rule of St. Benedict seems a concrete enactment of the
theories which St. Augustine puts forth in City of
God. In the selections from City of God
which we read, Augustine speaks of goodness as the total
obedience to God and that true peace exists when man is
subject to God and the body is subject to the soul. This
kind of order (man submitting to the rule of God) is much
like the relationship between the monks and the abbot
which is described in the Order of St. Benedict.
The monks are to submit with unhesitant obedience to the
abbot as the abbot is the shepherd of the flock, in a
position analogous to Christ's (according to the Rule).
Thus, St. Benedict's Rule responds to the
prevailing theory of the day. It seems to me that a similar relationship to the relationship between the works of St. Augustine and the Rule of St. Benedict can be seen between the works of Abelard or Thomas Aquinas and the role of Scholasticism in medieval universities. This philosophical foundation, instead of being based on the works of Plato, is based in Aristotle and thus requires questioning of the original philosophical foundation. Then, the idea of adopting Aristotelian logic becomes, unlike the obedience asked by Neoplatonism, an attempt to systematically use reason to ascertain truth. From the attempt to explain theological issues through the lens of this philosophy comes the concrete application of Scholasticism in disputation. Would a comparison of these two relationships (Augustine to St. Benedict, Abelard or Thomas Aquinas to Scholasticism) be a fair comparison? Apologies if I have had difficulties articulating my ideas here; I hadn't thought them through very far and would be interested in any responses. |