Lombard, Peter (1095/1100–1160)

Peter Lombard’s philosophical views are important given the formative role his Sententiae in IV libris distinctae (Four Books of Sentences) played in the education of university theologians in the high Middle Ages, many of whom were also philosophers. Peter staunchly opposes theologies, cosmologies and anthropologies of a Platonic or Neoplatonic type. While conversant with new trends in logic in his day, he is disinclined to treat theological issues as illustrations of the rules of formal logic or natural philosophy, preferring to view them from a metaphysical perspective. In his doctrine of God he deliberately eschews terminology associated with any one philosophical school. In his anthropology and sacramental theology he shows a marked preference for Aristotelianism. The hospitability of his theology to Aristotelianism and to a philosophical treatment of a range of theological questions made his Sentences elastic enough to accommodate the reception of Greco-Arabic thought and to serve as a pedagogical framework usable by philosophers of every persuasion during the succeeding three centuries.