Faith, Philosophy, and the Nominalist Background to Luther's Defense of the Real Presence
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4456057 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas Osborne (0000-0002-3225-203X), Thomas M Osborne (corresponding author), Thomas B Osborne (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 63-82 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jhi.2002.0006 |
| OpenAlex | W1986598582 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 6 |
Recent scholarship has brought into question the traditional interpretation of Luther as being hostile towards philosophy. 1 Graham White claims that Luther holds a place in the history of logic as a member of the Nominalist tradition. 2 Bruce D. Marshall argues that Luther and Thomas Aquinas fundamentally agree on the relationship between faith and reason. 3 Both scholars recognize that Luther himself stressed the importance of logic and used late medieval philosophical techniques. Although I agree with this scholarship that Luther's thought must not be understood in isolation from late medieval thought, I will argue that Luther uses philosophical ideas in a way which conflicts with that of the scholastic tradition. The focus here is on Luther's understanding of the relationship between faith and reason in the context of Luther's controversy over the Eucharist with the Swiss sacramentarians, among whom Zwingli and Oecolampadius were the most prominent. 4 Although Luther uses philosophical [End Page 63] distinctions to argue against what he thinks are misinterpretations of the Bible, he does not in any explicit and systematic way use philosophy to arrive at a theological understanding of the Eucharist. Luther differs from his scholastic predecessors in that he uses philosophy not to develop theological conclusions but only to attack errors about the Bible, and so the concern here is with Luther's use of Nominalist doctrines about presence in his attack on the sacra-mentarians' belief that Christ cannot be present both at the right hand of God and in the Eucharist at the same time
Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Eucharist · Faith · Nominalism · Scholarship · Theology · History · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,27 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2024 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |