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Thomas Aquinas appeared at one of the most critical times in church history. Science, secularism, and human reason battered Christian theology. Thomas reconciled apparently contradictory forces, enabling the intellectual structure of the church to survive.

Augustine, bishop of Hippo from 395-430, taught that all people are corrupted by original sin and can be saved only by God's grace according to his eternal, elective decree. Though scholars such as John Cassian and Gregory the Great modified his doctrines to make more room for human works, by the early twelfth century, the church accepted the essence of Augustine's theology.

After the vibrant theological thinking of the fifth century, the church turned to the task of evangelizing pagan Europe, channeling its energies into missionary activity rather than theology. By 1000 the church had reached its goal.

At the same time, the advent of the High Middle Ages brought another era of fruitful theological scholarship, beginning with Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109), who defined the doctrine of the atonement.

Then, in the late eleventh century, crusaders brought a challenge from the Middle East that rocked the theological foundations of the Western church. In Muslim libraries, they had discovered Aristotle.

Aristotle did not begin with God and move downward to the material world, as Plato did. He began with the particulars, moving upward in increasing generalizations toward God. He assumed diversity, not unity, and incorporated the whole of existence into his system.

The great Islamic scholar Averroes, born in Cordoba, Spain, in 1126, became the foremost commentator on Aristotle. When a learned young professor in Paris, Peter Abelard, picked up the Aristotelian approach and applied it to the writings of the church fathers, the bomb exploded.

Abelard's book Sic et Non (Yes and No) examined the writings of the early Christian Fathers and showed their discrepancies, contradictions, and disagreements on theological matters. While Abelard did not subject the Bible to the same type of criticism, he certainly opened the door to inquiry into Scripture and all the doctrines of the church.

Abelard's critical approach aroused the ire of the respected scholar Bernard of Clairvaux, who charged Abelard with making faith, which Augustine said was a gift of divine grace, only a matter of opinion. Bernard claimed that Abelard had taken away the certitude of Christian salvation and thus undermined the whole of Christian theology.

With the bitter exchange between these two men, the war was on. Students and professors in medieval universities took sides on the issues, and lively and enthralling debates ensued. But the medieval church tottered on the brink of collapse, for at this point, no one was sure what Christians believed, why they believed it, or how they should define their belief.

Thomas undertook the awesome task of resolving this problem. No one else had dared.

The Aristotelians would not accept the old Augustinian views, lest science and reason be stifled. The Augustinians would not accept the Aristotelian view, lest faith be undermined and salvation become a merely intellectual matter. Thomas set out to bring both sides together in a reasonable synthesis.

His two great works, Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologica, became the most complete statement of belief in all Christian theology to that day, and, to a large degree, to this day. Only Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion approach Thomas's thorough and complete treatment of doctrine.

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