Educational Background and Theological Foreground: A Study of Correlation between the Medieval System of Higher Education and Medieval Scholastic Theology in the Thirteenth Century

Abstract

The article is a piece of interdisciplinary research: it connects historical-theological studies of medieval Christian thinking and studies in the history of Christian education. It is built around the conviction that the socio-cultural and intellectual context on the one side and the form and content of theology on the other side are always correlated to each other. In other words, the system or type of education that a person goes through influences his mode of thinking and, at last, his theology. The weight and value of this contextual-theological stance are checked and examined within a historical-theological analysis of thirteenth-century university education and the formation of the phenomenon of medieval scholasticism. The study detects and shows the connections between the educational model that was prevalent at the time and the theology that was formulated. Such a thesis is confirmed and illustrated by the test case of Thomas Aquinas and his Summa theologiae. In the end, the conclusion offers a number of brief notes concerning the educational and intellectual value of study for lay Christians and Christian educators of the present day.