Note 211 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

On a survey of Abailard’s theological teachings, a modern reader is apt to see the spirit of moral reason most clearly in one set forth in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, to the effect that Jesus was not incarnate to redeem men from damnation, but solely to instruct them by precept and example, and that he suffered and died only to show his charity towards men. The thesis was implicit if not explicit in the teaching of Pelagius; and for both men it meant the effort to purify their creed from the barbaric taint of the principle of sacrifice. In our own day, revived by such theologians as the English Maurice, it seems likely to gain ground, as an accommodation to the embarrassed moral sense of educated believers. But it is heresy if heresy ever was, besides being a blow at the heart of Catholic sacerdotalism; and Abailard on condemnation retracted it as he did his other Pelagian errors. Retractation, however, is publication; and to have been sentenced to retract such teaching in the twelfth century is to leave on posterity an impression of moral originality perhaps as important as the fame of a metaphysician. In any case, it is a careful judge who thus finally estimates him: “When he is often designated as the rationalist among the schoolmen, he deserves the title not only on account of the doctrine of the Trinity, which approaches Sabellianism in spite of all his polemics against it, and not only on account of his critical attempts, but also on account of his ethics, in which he actually completely agrees in the principal point with many modern rationalists.”211 And it is latterly his singular fate to be valued at once by many sympathetic Catholics, who hold him finally vindicated alike in life and doctrine, and by many freethinkers.