On November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed it to be “a dogma divinely revealed that the immaculate Mother of God, the Ever-Virgin Mary, when the course of her earthly life was run, was assumed in body and in soul to heavenly glory.” Unlike some earlier definitions of dogma, the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin did not provoke any widespread controversy within the Roman Catholic communion about the substance of the doctrine. It had been generally believed by the people and taught by the theologians for a long time, and petitions signed by millions of the faithful had been importuning successive popes throughout this century and before to define it as binding de fide upon the entire Church.

In Contra Celsum Origen briefly states his approach to constructing a theological system. He says, “… anyone who constructs a Christian philosophy will need to argue the truth of his doctrines with proofs of all kinds, taken both from the divine scriptures and from rational arguments (logois akolouthias). ” Origen here specifies a twofold basis for theology—Scripture and rational argument. He often speaks explicitly of these two in his system. For example, in De principiis II.v.3 he says that he has refuted the heretics by arguments drawn from the authority of Scriptures (ex auctoritate … scripturarum) but it will not be unfitting if he discusses the matter from the standpoint of rational argument (ex ratione … consequentiae=akolouthia). And again at the end of the preface of De principiis, this programmatic statement occurs: Anyone desiring to construct a system out of the articles of faith just listed will do so “… with the aid of such illustrations and declarations as he shall find in the holy scriptures and of such conclusions as he shall ascertain to follow logically from them when rightly understood.”

The accretions and modifications of time often disguise the origin of familiar contemporary institutions. Furthermore Medieval institutions must frequently be studied in regard to their development rather than in terms of their function at any one time. Thus this paper will deal with certain aspects of development in conciliar history and will examine the relation of this development to the early history of the university.

More than seventy-five years ago, Ludwig Keller (1849–1915), German archivist and historian, wrote to the young Mennonite immigrant to the United States, John Horsch (1867–1941), to propose that

just as in the “Evangelical Alliance” Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, etc., meet from time to time, the Mennonites of the various branches could join with the Quakers, Schwenkfelders, … Dunkers, several branches of the General Baptists, the Hutterian Brethren, several wings of the Presbyterians, etc., in brief all the parties that grew out of old Anabaptism, in an “Old-Evangelical Alliance” [Alt-evangelischen Bunde].

This, with Edwards, is established, that mind cannot conceive a state of perfect nothing. Something, somewhere, there must be; for if we say that there is absolutely nothing, we talk nonsense, inasmuch as we imply a disjunction where there is none. “Either being or absolute nothing is no disjunction, no more than whether a triangle is a triangle or not a triangle. There is no other way but only for there to be existence. There is no such thing as absolute nothing.” Some being, therefore, some place necessarily and eternally is. And if at some place then in all places, since it is no less meaningless to affirm that nothing is in some one place than it is to say that nothing is at all. “So that we see this necessary, eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent.” But if omnipresent then not solid, for solidity is nothing but resistance to other solidities, all of which we can with ease conceive as not existing, whereas this omnipresent being “is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being.” What is this being, then, that no amount of mental effort can deny? It is, says Edwards, space.

In the eighteenth century the Moravian Brethren founded on the coast of Labrador a mission to the Eskimos which is now approaching its bicentenary. Although supported by the British government, the mission owed its success largely to the zeal of the Moravians themselves, together with the prudent wisdom of the policies they developed to deal with a native people formerly regarded as savage and lawless by all Europeans who came in contact with them.

The decline of Calvinist orthodoxy worked an intellectual revolution in the minds of several million Americans during the period between the eighteen twenties and the eighteen forties. The social ferment of that generation produced a variety of effects including social perfectionism, theological liberalism, millennial sects, and new waves of revivalism. To multitudes of men and women a new earth seemed as close as a new heaven. Working hand in hand with the theological rebellion which insisted on the possibility of universal salvation and the actuality of great freedom for the will, social circumstance provided an environment rich in economic abundance and freedom for social experiment. America seemed so close to social perfection, religious salvation so near for so many, the inner and outer human worlds so plastic and pregnant with possibility, that the pursuit of either piety or social reformation promised spectacular results. The Mormons and other new sects with evangelical and millennial overtones absorbed many advocates of “the newness,” but an important minority regarded the old and the new sects as almost equally intolerable. It was not easy for these unchurched rebels to find a niche in American society; they inherited religious sensibilities which made them feel uncomfortable with both militantly secular social reformers and the scattered theological rebels who clung to the label of “Deist” or “Agnostic.”