Thomas on friendship. More than this, we have sought to draw attention to some elements of a genuine monastic theology that have indeed been muted, if not even altogether lost, in the wake of the ascendancy of scholasticism and its continuous dominance of the Church’s professional theological enterprise until the present. Without, then, we trust, giving short shrift to the genuine benefits of the basic formalities of the academic dissertation, we have aimed at the same time for a modest transcendence of those long established boundaries. It is for the reader to judge whether, and to what extent, we have succeeded in our endeavor.
1. Augustine, Confessions, II, 2. For allusions by our own two authors, see Aelred of Rievaulx, SC I.25.71, SA Prologus.1, and Thomas Aquinas, Sent. distinction 27, question 2, article 1.
2. Deus caritas est. 1 Jn. 4:8 (Vulgate).
3. The monastic and scholastic milieux are, however, carved out of the much larger common culture of high medieval educated Western Europe, in consequence of which it is possible to overdraw the differences between these two sub-cultural units. On this point, see the sections entitled: “Common Culture” and “Cautionary Paragraph ” from chapter 1 and “Conclusions, Challenges, Possible Avenues for Further Exploration” from chapter 4.
4. See especially the conclusion of the section entitled: “Differences between Monastic and Scholastic Theology” in chapter 1, below.
5. See the section on “Sources” in chapter 1, below.
6. See sections “Aelred: How Typical; How Understanding” and “Thomas: How Typical; How Understanding” in chapter 1, below.
7. See the section “Why Their Accounts of Friendship” in chapter 1, below.
8. See the sections in chapter 2 and 3 on “Contemporary Scholarship,” below.
9. See section “Aelred’s Sources” in chapter 2 and “Thomas’s Sources” in chapter 3, below.
10. See the section entitled “Aelred’s ‘Synthesis’ and Original Position” in chapter 2, below.
11. See the section “Aelred’s Friendly Exegesis” in chapter 2, below.
12. See the section “Conclusion: Aelred’s Monastic Theology of Friendship” in chapter 2, below.
13. See the section “Thomas’s Synthesis and Original Position” in chapter 3, below.
14. See the section “Rousselot’s ‘Problem of Love’ and Vansteenberghe’s ‘Amitié’” in chapter 3, below.
15. See the section “Thomas’s Sources” in chapter 3.
16. See the section “Thomas’s Synthesis and Original Position” in chapter 3, below.
17. See the section “Thomas’s Exegesis: Lectio utilis?” in chapter 3, below.
18. See the section “”Conclusion: Thomas’s Scholastic Theology of Friendship” in chapter 3, below.
19. See the section “Content of the Two Accounts Compared” in chapter 4, below.
20. See the section “Form of the Two Accounts Compared” in chapter 4, below.
21. See the section “The Analogy of Friendship” in chapter 4, below.
22. See the sections “Aelred and Monastic Friendship” and “Thomas and Scholastic Friendship” in chapter 4, below.
23. See the section “Challenges: Evaluations of the Two Analogies and Beyond” in chapter 4, below.
24. See the section “Speculative Suggestion for Further Inquiry” in chapter 4, below.
25. Cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s classical treatment of this complex process in Truth and Method, especially 171–379.
1
Differences between the More Experiential Approach of Monastic Theology and the More Conceptual Approach of Scholastic Theology
Contemporary Scholarship
In service of our comparison between the particular theological accounts of friendship given by St. Aelred of Rievaulx and St. Thomas Aquinas, a preliminary description of the relationship between monastic and scholastic theological approaches per se will provide the most helpful point of departure. In this preparatory chapter, our preeminent guide will be the great twentieth-century Benedictine scholar, Jean Leclercq. The conclusions of Leclercq’s extensive and profound researches will be supplemented principally by the work of R. W. Southern, Beryl Smalley, David Knowles and Ivan Illich.
Common Culture
Between the birth of Aelred of Rievaulx in 1110 and the death of Thomas Aquinas in 1274, a substantial homogeneity of culture obtained throughout Western Europe. David Knowles comments that “For three hundred years, from 1050 to 1350, and above all in the century between 1070 and 1170, the whole of educated Western Europe formed a single undifferentiated cultural unit.”26 Jean Leclercq, who tends to insist on the non-monolithic character of medieval life and culture, nevertheless confirms Knowles’s assertion in a somewhat peculiar way when he argues that, “jusqu’alors [xiie siècle], toute la culture médiévale porte l’empreinte monastique, et qu’en ce sens et dans cette mesure elle est une culture monastique.”27 To the extent, then, that medieval culture, at least up until the twelfth century, can be said to be monastic, it necessarily maintains a certain uniformity of character. Moreover, as Knowles’s chronologically broader claim suggests, such a deeply ingrained uniformity of Christian worldview and practice was by no means easily shed, even through Aquinas’s lifetime and well beyond. In The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Leclercq is furthermore earnestly concerned to stress the fundamental unicity of the Church’s theology, however
