Thanks for posting this thread. I took at look at him on wiki and I am very interested and will definitely read his ‘sentences’ as soon as I can
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Lombard
Here are some quotes I found very interesting:
“…his most famous work by far was
Libri Quatuor Sententiarum, or the
Four Books of Sentences, which became the standard textbook of theology at the medieval universities.
[15] From the 1220s until the 16th century, no work of Christian literature, except for the
Bible itself, was commented upon more frequently. All the major medieval thinkers, from
Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas to
William of Ockham and
Gabriel Biel, were influenced by it. Even the young
Martin Luther still wrote glosses on the
Sentences, and
John Calvin quoted from it over 100 times in his
Institutes.”
“Peter Lombard’s most famous and most controversial doctrine in the
Sentences was his identification of
charity with the
Holy Spirit in Book I, distinction 17. According to this doctrine, when the Christian loves God and his neighbour, this love literally is God; he becomes divine and is taken up into the life of the Trinity. This idea was never declared unorthodox, but few theologians have been prepared to follow Peter Lombard in his audacious teaching. Compare
Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical
[Deus Caritas Est](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(name removed by moderator)), 2006”
Seems he was a man that was way ahead of his time! Although can’t see why ‘few theologians’ followed him in this as St John was renowned for his constant repetition, especially in his old age, that God is Love. I believe that he uttered those words continually when he was carried to meetings etc in his old age, in fact it seems the other disciples thought him a bit odd to harp on about it so much, especially after having written the Gospel etc…
