RTS Papers / Summer 2017
Substance and Signs in the Sentences of Peter Lombard
Last things
What will the resurrection and the Last Day be like? The interesting thing about Peter’s answer is how relevant it would have been to our modern prophecy charts. Dispensationalism, for example, insists that all prophecy of the future be taken “literally,” but when Peter addresses the last trumpet, the voice of the archangel, the books being opened, and the bodies of both the righteous and the wicked rising, the modern expert on eschatology may find himself backtracking.
The trumpet indeed is a sign, “because it will manifest” [IV.234], and the voice of the archangel is either Christ’s or else some other angel or group of angels. The time of coming “in the middle of the night” is also a sign of the unexpected nature of it. These are true interpretations of signs.
Peter does not do as well, it would seem, on Ephesians 4:13, which speaks of the “stature of Christ” [IV.238-39]. Here the authorities used this as one verse to answer the question of what age or size we will be when raised. Answer: We will be that of Christ. This is a missed sign, unless of course he is trying to be obscure. In that place Paul was speaking of the maturity of the body of Christ as a whole. It is better when Augustine gives differing answers to whether the elect and reprobate will retain their bodily deformities in the eternal state. The elect will have restored bodies. As for the reprobate it is not worth pondering. Why? It is because those bodies are fit to be damned.
Then there is the final judgment itself. He admits that much remains a mystery. The judgment is seen to be shared by Christ with the saints and the full numbers of the seats representing the total number of the elect judging, the twelve tribes representing the full number of the nations judged.
Christ shall appear even to judge in the form of a servant “so that the wicked may see whom they have pierced” [IV.261]. If this is true, this appearance functions as a sign. The sight of the divine essence of the Son is viewed only in terms of the Beatific Vision and so cannot be enjoyed by the reprobate. The heavenly lights, which served as signs from the beginning of creation, do so again in the end. The prophecy is that the sun and moon will be darkened; or, the sun shall be changed to darkness and the moon to blood. This is why people have invested eschatological meaning into blood moons and even solar eclipses. But we may ask whether the sign here is metaphorical. It seems to Peter that they are, and especially when considering whether the sun and moon will be there in the new heavens and new earth. Although it is inconclusive to him.
Will there literally be mansions in heaven? Do all wish to be blessed? Will there be an inequality in our experience of God? All three questions are asked in Distinction 49. There will certainly be a scale, or degrees, of blessing for those in heaven, as well as of misery for those in hell. He derives this from Chrysostom’s treatment of the many mansions [IV.266; John Chrysostom, Ad Theodorum lapsum, I]. So the coin in the parable of the laborers is viewed as being a currency in common. And that is eternal life per se. Yet each will be paid in different amounts, so there is also diversity. The coin didn’t just have two sides, but two senses, and each a sign. And behind this the mansions were also seen as a sign.
But this question of the pursuit of blessedness helps summarize the whole doctrine: “It is not that there is anyone who does not wish for it, but that not all know it.” And this creates a dilemma: “How is it then that all love what not all know? Who can love what he does not know?” [IV.114] It is taken as axiomatic that all human beings seek to be happy. All want happiness and all do all they do in order to obtain it. How then can Augustine (and Peter) assume this and yet deny that all yearn to be blessed?
To tie the last loose end on the thesis it is this: that men in their brokenness distort that original reason and no longer fix their use and enjoyment to the proper signs. So Augustine said, “that no one can love something of whose nature and quality he is wholly ignorant … All the blessed have what they will, although not all who have what they will are necessarily blessed … And so no one is blessed, except for him who has all that he wills and wills nothing improperly” [IV.268; Augustine, De Trinitate, bk 13 c5 n8].
CONCLUSION
It has not been the purpose of this essay to defend the whole of Lombard’s theology. Much is objectionable. At the core of that which should be rejected is that notion of sacramental grace which is said to work ex opere operato. Such teachings are made more explicit in Book IV, yet elements of them run through his doctrines of sin and virtue and sexuality and the purity of Mary. Criticism of these was not my focus because, being very comfortable within the Reformed tradition, plenty has already been said.
The main purpose has been to draw out what is valuable, and, in fact, what has been lost to most of modern theology. And what is most instructive to my mind is the importance of doctrinal order derived from, to put it in metaphysical terms, the objective order of things.
Having already read Augustine’s work On Christian Doctrine there was the advantage to seeing how res and signa and verbum could be conceived of things more pervasive than the sacraments. In one sense Augustine was trying to do something much broader than Lombard. He was writing to show how to properly interpret and then teach the Scriptures. It was natural that the moment Peter’s roadmap revealed itself to my reading there could be an over-interpretation of his application of this Augustinian distinction. If this paper was at least partly guilty of this, it seems to me to have been a worthy cause. On the whole I do not think it was a stretch.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Peter Lombard. The Sentences, Book 1: The Mystery of the Trinity. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007
______________. The Sentences, Book 2: On Creation. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008
______________. The Sentences, Book 3: On the Incarnation of the Word. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008
______________. The Sentences, Book 4: On the Doctrine of Signs. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010
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