Bernard prevailed over against Abelard in terms of synodal decisions, but Abelard prevailed insofar as his method became the general method of Scholastic thinking. The question was: Can dialectics produce something new in theology, or is dialectics to be used only for the sake of explaining the given, namely the tradition and the authorities? .
This was the first conflicting couple of trends. The next goes deeper into the Scholastic development itself. I referred to it already when speaking about Augustine, that one man is missing in Augustine’s development, namely Aristotle, and that this had consequences in the High Middle Ages when the Augustinians came into conflict – or at least into contrast – -with the newly arising Aristotelians.
The Augustinians were represented by the Franciscan order, therefore they are often called the Franciscan group; the Aristotelians were represented by the Dominican order, therefore it is often called Dominican theology. Augustinians against Aristotelians: or Franciscans against Dominicans. One of the heads of the Franciscan order was Bonaventura, a cardinal of the Church, opposing Thomas Aquinas, the great Dominican theologian.
This means we have a development of one of the fundamental problems of the philosophy of religion when Augustine and Aristotle – since Augustine is somehow Neoplatonic – when Plato and Aristotle met again and continued their eternal conversation, which will never cease in the history of human thought because they represent points of view which are always valid and which are always in conflict with each other. If you want the more mystical point of view, (cf.) in Plato, Augustine, Bonaventura, the Franciscans; and the more rational, empirical point of view, in the line from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas. This was perhaps the most important couple of trends in the Middle Ages, from the point of view of the foundation of religion and theology. Almost all the problems of our present day philosophy of religion were discussed in this light, which was especially strong in the 13th century, developing in all methods.
