Albert the Great’s Philosophical Theology

Abstract

The thought of Albert the Great belongs to an important stage in the development of scholastics of the 13th century, which was marked by a reinterpretation and adaptation of the ancient and Arab philosophical heritage with its subsequent integration into Christian theology. The article examines some aspects of this process in relation to Albert’s philosophical theology (in particular, in relation to his attempts to synthesize on the basis of various sources a certain general scheme of proving the existence of God), and for this purpose, both his philosophical commentaries on the Aristotle’s treatises and his “Summa theologiae” are considered. As a result, firstly, it was shown that contrary to the widespread modern interpretation, according to which scholastic proofs of the existence of God were considered by their authors not as proofs properly, but as a kind of quasirational “structuring of faith”, Albert considered them as universally valid arguments going back to philosophical exercises of ancient pagan thinkers. Secondly, it was identified the sources of Albert’s philosophical and theological argumentation and the difficulties he encountered when combining various historical approaches to proving the existence of God (in particular, different approaches to proof “from motion” and different interpretations of the Aristotle’s first mover from eighth book of “Physics”). Finally, thirdly, it was assumed that, although the fundamental features of Albert's philosophical theology are largely determined by the essentially eclectic scholastic discourse of the first half of the 13th century, it nevertheless became the basis on which later innovative systems (such as the philosophical theology of Thomas Aquinas) were build.