Peter Lombard

Master of the Sentences · Paris · c. 1100–1160

Peter Lombard was a pupil of Peter Abelard and taught at Paris. His great work, the Four Books of Sentences, gathered the sayings of the fathers and medieval teachers into an ordered statement of Christian doctrine. Some questioned his teaching on Christ and the Trinity, but the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 declared his works orthodox.1

Timothy George notes that the Sentences “became the standard textbook for advanced theological study during the next four centuries.” Students of theology lectured on them; Luther himself was authorized to lecture on the first two books.2

Lombard improved on Hugh of St. Victor’s definition of a sacrament, describing it as:

a sign of the grace of God and a form of invisible grace, so that it bears its image and exists as its cause.3 Peter LombardSentences

His Legacy

The early church had acknowledged only baptism and the Eucharist as sacraments; others were added in the twelfth century, and in the fourth book of the Sentences, as Sam Storms writes, the seven “were given a final endorsement”: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, marriage, ordination, and extreme unction. They received official sanction at the Council of Florence (1439) and again at Trent. The Reformers reduced the sacraments to the two that Christ instituted, baptism and the Lord’s Supper.4

Medieval Theologians

Notes

  1. Michael J. Vlach, “Historical Theology I: A.D. 100–1600” (course notes, TH 507, The Master’s Seminary, Fall 2007), “Peter Lombard”; Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, rev. ed. (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), introduction. Summarized. ↩
  2. George, Theology of the Reformers, introduction and chapter on Martin Luther. ↩
  3. Vlach, “Historical Theology I,” “Sacraments,” following Alister McGrath. ↩
  4. Sam Storms, Studies in Roman Catholicism (n.p., n.d.), on the sacraments. ↩