Abelard

This chapter focuses on Peter Abelard, the first thinker, since Augustine and Boethius, for whom the Problem of Paganism was a central concern. Two of his works in particular are among the most remarkable of all medieval treatments of the area. Abelard's first theological work, written c. 1121, was the Theologia Summi Boni (later rewritten as the Theologia Christiana ), gives a golden picture of the wise and virtuous men and women of ancient Greece and Rome, the philosophers especially. Probably just a few years later, Abelard wrote his Collationes , a dialogue, into which he introduces, as the central figure, an ancient philosopher redivivus , unambiguously outside Jewish and Christian revelation. But for Abelard the Problem of Paganism extends beyond these texts, since it is bound up with the aims of the whole theological project which occupied the second of the two stages of his career.