The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Pierre Abélard

Platonism, having lent the formula for the Trinity, became the favorite philosophy of many of the Church fathers, and so introduced into Christian thought and life the Platonic dualism, that sharp distinction between the temporal and the eternal which belittles the practical life and glorifies the contemplative.

In the case of God, the dogma-builders were careful to say, essence is one with existence, and therefore in Him the individuals are as real as the universal. On this assumption it was possible to say that the same real substance could exist in three, or indeed in any number of persons. In the early centuries of our era, the two fundamental articles of the Gentile-Christian creed, the Trinity and the Incarnation, neither of them Jewish, were formulated in terms of Platonic philosophy, of which the distinctive tenet is, that the real and eternal is the universal, not the individual. As the whole import and tragedy of his life may be traced back to this man’s teaching, and the relation which it bore to the thought of the time, we must pause to consider these. The boy was accordingly sent to school, under a teacher who at that time was making his mark in the world, - Roscellin, the reputed father of Nominalism.

His knightly father, having in his youth been a student, was anxious to give his family, and especially his favorite Pierre, a liberal education. P IERRE, the eldest son of Bérenger and Lucie (Abélard?) was born at Palais, near Nantes and the frontier of Brittany, in 1079.

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise by Pierre Abélard