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Wyclif’s Logic and Wyclif’s Exegesis: The Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

G.R. Evans
G.R. Evans*
Affiliation:
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge
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Extract

Wyclif found certain scholars of his time ‘in full cry against the unlogical, imprecise language of the Bible and the liturgy’. No commentaries written in that spirit survive, but traces are abundant in contemporary writings of aggressive talk in the schools and disputatious questioning along these lines. The challenge was not in its essence a new one. It is an episode in a series of encounters which had taken place between secular learning and Christian learning from the beginning; and more recently between grammar and logic and the difficulties presented by the Bible’s language. But it was perhaps new in degree. These critics of Wyclif’s day, it seems, said that the Bible was not logical and found in that a reason to question its truth, rather than to look to their logic for faults, as had been the traditional way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 4: The Bible in the Medieval World , 1985 , pp. 287 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985 

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References

1 Smalley, B., ‘The Bible and Eternity: John Wyclif’s Dilemma’, Studies, p. 408.Google Scholar

2 On Wyclif as a biblical scholar and theologian, see Thompson, S.H., ‘The Philosophical Basis of Wycliffe’s Theology’, Journal of Religion, xi (1931), pp. 86–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guelluy, R., Philosophie et theologie chez Guillaume d’Ockham (Louvain, 1947)Google Scholar; Smalley, Postilla, pp. 186-205; ‘The Biblical Scholar’, in Robert Grosseteste, ed. D.A. Callus (Oxford, 1955), pp. 70-97. On the lack of commentaries carrying the kind of criticism to which Wyclif refers, see Smalley, ‘Bible and Eternity’, p. 403.

3 Ibid.

4 On the date of Wyclif’s Logica, see De Logica, ed. M.H. Dziewicki, 4 vols, WS (1893), i, pp. vi ff. Peter the Chanter seems to have been one of the first to make a systematic collection of problems. See my Alan of Lille (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 23-9 and Appendix II, and ‘A Work of “Terminist Theology”? Peter the Chanter’s De Tropis Loquendi and some Fallacie’, Vivarium, xx (1982), pp. 40-57.

5 Wyclif, Logica, i, p. 1, lines 3-8.

6 Robson, J. A., Wyclif and the Oxford Schools (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 13ffGoogle Scholar, and Weisheipl, J.A., ‘Curriculum of the Faculty of Arts at Oxford in the Early Fourteenth Century’, MSt, xxvi (1964), pp. 143–85Google Scholar, and ‘Developments in the Arts Curriculum’, ibid., xviii (1966), pp. 151-75.

7 Wyclif, Logica, i, p. 69, lines 5-6.

8 On the date of the Sermones Quadraginta, see Wyclif, , Sermones, ed. Loserth, J., 4 vols, WS (1890), iv, p. 5.Google Scholar

9 Robson, Wyclif and the Oxford Schools discusses the affair, p. 97 ff. On terminism, see a convenient discussion and bibliography in CHLMP, pp. 180-6.

10 Robson, Wyclif and (he Oxford Schools, p. 19.

11 For a list of texts now in print, see CHLMP, pp. 893-977. The new series Artistarium (Nijmegen, 1981ff) appeared too late for inclusion in this bibliography.

12 Wyclif, De Universalibus, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 337/565, ff. 1-48.

13 Wyclif, Sermones, XXVIII, iv, p. 236.

14 Ibid., LXI, ii, pp. 453-7.

15 Wyclif, Logica, i, p. 2, lines 1-5.

16 Logica Modemorum, ed. L.M. de Rijk, 2 vols. (Assen, 1967), i, p. 21.

17 William of Sherwood, Syncategoremata, ed. J.R. O’Donnell, MSt, iii (1941), pp. 46-93. passim.

18 Brito, Ralph, Questiones super Priscianum Minorem, 12, ed. Enders, H.W. and Pinborg, J. (Stuttgart, 1980), p. 130.Google Scholar

19 Logica Moiemorum, ii covers aspects of this development.

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24 Wyclif, Opus Evangelicum, ii, 1, i, p. 238.

25 On the Isagoge and its modification of Aristotle’s predicates of definition, property, genus, and accident, see A.H. Armstrong’s article in CHLMP, p. 281.

26 Bonaventure, In Ioh. vi. 52, Question iii, Opera Omnia, vi, p. 327.

27 Wyclif, , Sermones, XVII, iv, p. 236Google Scholar, lines 29-32.

28 Ibid., XXV, iv, p. 221, line 12. For Wyclif’s discussion of Porphyry, see Logica, i, pp. 8-9.

29 Wyclif, Sermones, XXIV, iv, p. 210, line 5.

30 Ibid., XXV, iv, p. 221, lines 21-5.

31 Ibid., XXX, iv, p. 260, line 4.

32 CHLMP, ch. 4.

33 Aristotle, , Prior Analytics, ed. Tredennick, H. (London, 1973), I. xxvii. 43a.Google Scholar

34 Commentaries on the Posterior Analytics seem to have been made rather slowly.

35 Logica Modernorum, i, p. 15, from a copulata tractatuum parvorum togicalium (1493).

36 On Augustinian sign-theory and its mediaeval development, see Colish, M., The Mirror of Language (Yale, 1968, repr. 1983).Google Scholar

37 Iwakuma, Y., ‘Instantiae’, Cahiers de l’institut moyen âge grec et latin, Copenhague, xxxviii (1981).Google Scholar

38 Wyclif, , De Mandatis Divinis, ed. Matthew, F.D. (London, 1896), p. 3Google Scholar, lines 15 ff.

39 On consequences, see CHLMP, pp. 300-15.

40 Wyclif, De Mandatis Divinis, p. 5, line 25.

41 Ibid., p. 6, line 1.

42 For example, Wyclif deals in his treatise De Christo et Antichristo with the contrarielas of the two lords. Polemical Works, ed. R. Buddensieg, 2 vols., WS (1883).

43 Wyclif, Logica, ii, p. 203.

44 Bonaventure, In Ioh., v. 68, Question i, p. 316.

45 Ibid., vi. 50, Question i, p. 326.

46 Wyclif, Sermones, XXVI, iv, p. 226.1.

47 Wyclif, , De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, ed. Buddensieg, R., 2 vols, WS (1905), ii, p. 67.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., p. 69, line 21.

49 Boethius, , De Interpretatione, ed. Meiser, C. (Leipzig, 1886), p. 129Google Scholar, line 14-p. 132, line 21.

50 See Logica Modemorum, i, pp. 22-39.

51 , W. and Kneale, M., The Development of Logic (Oxford, 1962), p. 227.Google Scholar

52 Adam of Balsham, Ars Disserendi, ed. L. Minio-Paluello (Rome, 1966), p. 107, and see W. and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic, pp. 227-9.

53 See, for example, Ebbesen, S., ‘Simon of Faversham on the Sophistici Elenchi ’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, x (1973), p. 21.Google Scholar

54 Burley, Walter, De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior, ed. Boehner, P. (New York, 1955), pp. 253Google Scholar, line 26-254, line 15.

55 BN, MS 4720A, p. 7, and see John Buridan, ‘The Summulae, Tractatus VII, De Fallaciis’, ed. J. Pinborg (Copenhagen, 1976), p. 139, line 60, for Buridan’s bold moving of stock examples from one category to another.

56 See Hamblin, C.L., Fallacies (London, 1970), pp. 286–92.Google Scholar

57 William of Sherwood, Introductiones in Logicam, ed. M. Grabmann (Munich, 1937). p. 135.

58 Wyclif, Opus Evangelicum, i, p. 41, lines 21-36.

59 Ibid., p. 96, lines 35-8.

60 Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, ii, p. 20, line 22.

61 Wyclif, Opus Evangelicum, i, p. 276, lines 22-3.

62 Ibid., i, p. 281, line 35.

63 Ibid., i, p. 281, line 4.

64 Wyclif, De Veritate Sacrae Scripturae, ii, p. 126.

65 Wyclif, Sermones, XXIV, iii, p. 189.

66 Ibid., LX, i, p. 400.

67 On topics, consequences, obligations, and modal logic, see CHLMP, ch. 5.

68 Wyclif, Sermones, VI, ii, p. 40; VII, ii, p. 47; XXIII, iii, p. 179.

69 Ibid., XXXII, i, p. 218, line 19.

70 Ibid., XXVIII, iii, p. 217.

71 Ibid., VI, ii, p. 37.

72 Ibid., I, iii, p. 1.

73 Ibid., I, i, p. 4, line 16 and p. 7, lines 27-30.