Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (115 page)

29. Abelard and Héloise

1. McCallum,
Abelard's Christian Theology,
31.

2. Thomas Gilby, O.P., "Abelard,"
Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
vol. 1, 4.

3. Quoted by John F. Benton, "Peter Abelard," in
Dictionary of the Middle Ages,
vol. 1, 18.

4. McCallum,
Abelard's Christian Theology,
32.

5. Quoted by Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 107. See also Eligii M. Buytaert, O.F.M., ed.,
Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica,
vol. 1,
Commentaria in Epistolam Pauli ad Romanos
(Turnholti, Belgium: Typographi Brepols Editores Pontificii, 1969), 117.

6. Romans 3:9, 25.

7. Quoted by Evans,
St. Bernard,
155. See also Buytaert,
Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica,
vol. 1, 117–18. For another view of the idea of Christ as example, see Irenaeus's
Against Heresies.

8. Adams,
Mont St. Michel and Chartres,
287.

9. Abelard,
Abelard's Adversities,
25. Here is another translation of the same line: "She had a rather lovely face, and was unrivaled in her breadth of literary culture." Gilson,
Héloise and Abelard,
5.

10. Abelard,
Abelard's Adversities,
26.

11. Ibid., 35.

12. Quoted by Gilson,
Héloise and Abelard,
83.

13. "Probs of Héloise," 13,
Patrología Latina, Paris 1878–90,
PL 178,696. Quoted by Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 255.

14. Pelikan,
Jesus Through the Centuries,
106.

15. McCallum,
Abelard's Christian Theology,
20.

16. Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 255. It was the Anglican theologian John Macquarrie who drew my attention to the relevance to this question of the parable of the Prodigal Son: "Lest we be tempted to construct too elaborate a theory of atonement, or to suppose that some particularly complex historical happening was necessary for God to be able to accept men, we should call to mind Christ's own parable of the prodigal who finds the father willing to receive him (Luke 15:11–32), though there is no special machinery to make possible a reconciliation ... It is necessary indeed that some particular historical event should bring to light in a signal way 'the mystery hidden for ages and generations' (Col. 1:26), but no historical event changes God's attitude, or makes him from a wrathful God into a gracious God, or allows his reconciling work to get started—such thoughts are utterly to be rejected." Macquarrie,
Christian Theology,
283.

17. Anselm,
Cur Deus Homo,
bk. 2, ch. 20, 174.

18. McCallum,
Abelard's Christian Theology,
101.

19. That would come with the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and then—"Outside this Church there is no salvation"—with
Unam Sanctam,
the papal bull issued by Boniface VIII in 1302.

20. Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 255.

21. Armstrong,
History of God,
203.

22. McCallum,
Abelard's Christian Theology,
20. He quotes ). G. Sikes, who says, "Abelard alone believed that through the operation of their reason, men, before the Incarnation, accepted the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and so were numbered among the blessed." The word "alone" may overstate it, since "Hebrew saints" were seen as in some way blessed by figures like Augustine and Justin Martyr.

23. Abelard, "Dialogue Between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian,"
Patrologia Latina
178, 1617–18. Quoted by Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
143.

24. Evans,
St. Bernard,
158.

25. "Epistle 191.1," quoted by Armstrong,
History of God,
203.

26. Letter 239, to Pope Innocent,
The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux,
trans. Bruno Scott James (Stroud, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 318.

27. Letter 241, to Cardinal Ivo,
Letters of St. Bernard,
321.

28. Gilson,
Héloise and Abelard,
88.

29. Armstrong,
History of God,
203.

30. Ibid.

31. Letter 239, to Pope Innocent,
Letters of St. Bernard,
318.

32. Gilson,
Héloise and Abelard,
106.

33. Quoted by Gilson,
Héloise and Abelard,
106–8. Here is Abelard's creed:
I believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, God in one nature, the true God in whom the Trinity of Persons in no way affects the unity of substance. 1 believe that the Son is the equal of the Father in all things, in eternity, in power, in will, in operation. I do not hold with Arius who with a perverse spirit, or rather seduced by a diabolical spirit, introduces grades into the Trinity, maintaining that the Father is greater, the Son less great though forgetting the precept of faith: "Thou shalt not mount by degrees to my altar" (Exod. 20:26). For to place a before and after in the Trinity is to mount the altar of God by degrees. I attest that the Holy Ghost is equal and consubstantial in all things with the Father and the Son, for it is He whom I often call in my books by the name of Goodness. I condemn Sabellius who held that the Person of the Father is the same as that of the Son, and believed that the Father suffered the Passion, whence the name Patripassians. I believe also that the Son of God became the Son of Man in such a way that the one only person
consists
and subsists in two natures; that the same Son of God satisfied all the exigencies of the human condition which He assumed, even death itself, and that He revived and ascended into Heaven whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I affirm, finally, that all sins are remitted by baptism; that we need grace to begin good and to accomplish it; and that those who have fallen are restored by penance. Need I speak of the resurrection of the flesh? I shall call myself a Christian in vain if I did not believe that I should one day rise again.
This is the faith in which I live and from which my hope derives its strength. In this refuge I do not fear the noise of Scyfla; I laugh at the whirlpool of Charybdis; nor do I fear the mortal chant of the Sirens. Let the tempest come; it will not shake me! The winds may blow, but I shall not be moved. The rock of my foundation is sure.

34. Letter 241, to Cardinal Ivo,
Letters of St. Bernard,
321.

35. Benton, "Peter Abelard," 19.

36. Abelard, "Letters," 5,
Patrologia Latina,
PL 178, col. 212 AC, quoted by Gilson,
Heloise and Abelard,
85.

37. Abelard,
Abelard's Adversities,
35. After they had castrated him, Abelard writes, "They immediately fled but two of them were caught and had their eyes put out and were castrated."

38. Heloise, "Letters," 2,
Patrologia Latina,
PL 178, 186–87, in Gilson,
Heloise and Abelard,
92.

39. Evans,
St. Bernard,
167.

40. Quoted by Gilson,
Heloise and Abelard,
85.

41. Kung,
Christianity,
396.

42. Ibid., 398.

43. David Berger, quoted by Chazan,
In the Year 1096,
142.

44. Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
74.

45. Kung,
Christianity,
394. The "two-sword" theory of church-state power is usually said to have originated with Pope Gelasius I (493–496).

46. Bernard of Clairvaux,
Five Books on Consideration,
bk. 4, ch. 7, 118.

30.
Thomas Aquinas: Reason Against the Jews

1. Gilbert,
Atlas of Jewish History,
34.

2. I learned of this distinction from Weaver, "Rooted Hearts/Playful Minds," 67.

3. Kung,
Great Christian Thinkers,
113.

4. For further discussion of this legacy, see Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
24.

5. David Berger, "The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages," in Cohen,
Essential Papers,
491.

6. Bernard, "Sermo," 60,
Patrologia Latina,
PL 183, 1068, cited by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
77.

7. O'Meara,
Thomas Aquinas,
22.

8.
Summa Contra Gentiles,
1.2, quoted by Küng,
Great Christian Thinkers,
112.

9. O'Meara,
Thomas Aquinas,
3.

10. Kung,
Great Christian Thinkers,
120.

11. Kung,
Christianity,
416.

12. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
125.

13. Chazan,
Daggers of Faith,
38.

14. Richards, Sec,
Dissidence, and Damnation,
97.

15. For a criticism of Christian ignorance of a living Judaism, see Van Buren,
Theology of the Jewish-Christian Reality,
pt. 2.

16. Küng,
Christianity,
407.

17. Richards, Set,
Dissidence, and Damnation,
95.

18. Quoted by M. Cohen,
Under Crescent and Cross,
39. See also J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews, 66;
Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
108.

19. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
74.

20. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
112. See also J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
67.

21. O'Meara,
Thomas Aquinas,
29.

22. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
63. See also M. Cohen,
Under Crescent and Cross,
39. The first known ordered destruction of Jewish "books," recorded in 1 Maccabees 1:56, dates to the second century
B.C.E.,
when the Syrian king sought to stamp out Jewish religion. "Any books of the Law that came to light were torn up and burned. Whenever anyone was discovered possessing a copy of the covenant or practicing the Law, the king's decrees sentenced him to death." The Nazis targeted Jewish books almost as ruthlessly as they did Jews. Assessing the destruction of nearly five hundred mainly Jewish libraries in Nazi-controlled Europe, one historian concluded that five million or more Jewish books were destroyed. This does not include books in the households of the six million Jews who were murdered. Friedman, "Fate of the Jewish Book," 82.

23. Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
22.

24. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
63.

25. Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
22.

26. Quoted by Cohn,
This Immortal People,
75.

31.
One Road

1.
USA Today,
September 29, 1997.

2.
Newsweek,
October 6, 1997, 64.

3. Conversation with Thomas Stransky, C.S.P., November 1996. Father Stransky is the rector emeritus of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem and a veteran of the Catholic-Jewish dialogue.

4. When a Jewish organization recognized the cardinal archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger (ne Aron Lustiger), for contributing to Catholic-Jewish understanding, the American head of the Anti-Defamation League denounced honoring him "because he converted out." We referred to Lustiger earlier in connection with Elie Wiesel's uneasiness about "fulfilled Jew." Lustiger had become a Catholic as a boy hiding with a French family during World War II. His mother died in Auschwitz. Lustiger had offered crucial support to the Jewish position on the convent at Auschwitz, and he had led the French bishops to confess their silence during the Holocaust as a
faute,
a sin. Yet such are the wounds opened in Jews by conversion that he is still regarded by many simply as an apostate.

5. John 14:5–6.

6. Alessandra Stanley, "Uneasy Relations: The Cross and the Crescent,"
New York Times,
March 19, 2000.

7. On January 2, 1997, the Sri Lankan theologian Tissa Balasuriya was excommunicated for heresy, an event to which we will return. His condemned views primarily concerned adaptations of Christian doctrine to an Asian context and his experience of dialogue with Asian religions. More than a year later, the excommunication was lifted. Another example was the French Jesuit Jacques Dupuis, who fell under suspicion of heresy because of his book
Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism.
In September 2000 the Vatican published its latest assault on religious pluralism,
Dominus Iesus.

8. Boniface VIII,
Unam Sanctum,
in
Medieval Sourcebook,
www.fordham.edu/halsal/source/b8-unam.html
.

9.
Contra Errores Graecorum,
2.36, cited by Küng,
Christianity,
427.

10. Boniface VIII,
Unam Sanctam.

11. O'Meara,
Thomas Aquinas,
21.

12. Küng,
Christianity,
427.

13. In rejecting Feeney's interpretation of Boniface VIII's dictum, the Church had a problem: how
not
to repudiate the pope's teaching even while moving away from it. The Vatican accomplished this, as Richard McBrien explains, by "distinguishing between those who 'really' (in Latin,
in re)
belong to the Church by explicit faith and Baptism, and those who belong to the Church 'by desire'
(in voto)"
This latter group includes those who would join the Church if only they knew the truth of its claims. Richard P. McBrien,
HarperCollins Encyclopedia of Catholicism,
522.

14. Bunson,
The Pope Encyclopedia,
52.

15. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
255.

16. Perhaps "roundly denounced" overstates the matter. In "Memory and Reconciliation," the Vatican background statement to the papal act of repentance in March 2000, the Church, implicitly referring to the Inquisition, expressed sorrow for "the use of force in the service of the truth." But at the actual ceremony of repentance in St. Peter's Basilica, Cardinal Ratzinger, whose Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had replaced the Inquisition, confessed only to the use of "methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth." In both cases, the nature of the "truth" defended by regrettable means seems not to have been examined.