Brandon Vellos
Lecturer Br. Kerfoot
Theology
January 17, 2014
My Life As a Scholar
Scholasticism was a medieval intellectual movement that flourished from A.D. 1200–1500. Based primarily in the teachings of professors at the universities of Paris and Oxford, Scholasticism focused on offering detailed philosophical and rational justifications for religious belief. Scholasticism offered a highly rigorous and complex approach for understanding a broad range of matters. It also attempted to synthesize the ideas of Aristotle and Plato with the truths of Christian theology. Scholasticism is known more for its approach to philosophy and theology than for any fixed set of beliefs.
Anslem of Canterbury is often viewed as the first great exponent of Scholasticism. He originated the ontological argument for God’s existence in which the concept of God itself is proof that God exists. Thomas Aquinas offered a natural theology in which truths about God, including His existence, could be derived from the physical world. The embodiment of medieval scholasticism, Duns Scotus, offered complex discussions concerning being and metaphysics. Peter Lombard developed a series of “sentences” that were memorized by those studying for the priesthood. (Source: http://www.theologicalstudies.org/resource-library/philosophy-dictionary/171-scholasticism)
After evaluating all the medieval catholic lifestyles I have decided that out of all four of them I would have preferred to be a “scholar”. The reason I made this choice is mainly because of my own personal characteristics. The idea of understanding something is very important to me. I believe that by understanding something you can use it more efficiently and you can use the knowledge you gained to discover new things.
During the “scholastic” period, which was 1050 to 1350, the main purpose of scholars was to understand the philosophical views and biblical views on things by the use of “reasoning”. Reasoning...