e Middle Ages
philosophy and science were regarded as the Handmaids of
Theology. All was dedicated to, as nothing could be more
important than, a knowledge of God. So we have, in contrast
with ecstatic visions of God, the plodding analysis of the
scholastics, the subtle and clean-cut logic by which such men
as Saint Anselm sought to give form, clarity, and ultimacy
to their sense of the reality of God. There has possibly
nowhere in the history of thought been subtler and more
thoroughgoing analysis than some of the mediaeval schoolmen
lavished upon the clarification and demonstration of the
concept of God. The necessity for reasoning upon one's sense
of the reality of the divine, as it was felt by many mediaeval
schoolmen, is thus stated by one historian:

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury ... is the true type of the
schoolman; firmly convinced of the truth of the dogmas and yet
possessed of a strong philosophical impulse, he seeks to prove to
reason what has to be accepted on authority. He bravely includes
in his attempt to rationalize the faith not only such general
propositions as the existence of God, but the entire church scheme of
salvation, the Trinity, and Incarnation, and the Redemption of man. We
must believe the Catholic doctrine--that is beyond cavil--but we
should also try to understand what we believe, understand _why_ it is
true.[1]

[Footnote 1: Thilly: _History of Philosophy_, p. 169.]

But theology has public as well as purely private importance.
It must not be forgotten that religion is a social habit
as well as a personal activity. From primitive life down to
our own day, religion has been intimately associated with the
other social activities of a people, and has indeed been one of
the chief institutions of moral and social control. Ethical
standards have been until very recent times in the history of
Christian Europe almost exclusively derived from religion.
Where the religious experience is of such crucial importance, it
has been necessary to give it a fixed form and content which
might be used to initiate the young and the outsider.

Theology, though essentially a product of reflection upon
the religious experience itself, tends to incorporate extra-religious
material into its system. In its demonstration of the
divine order and of man's relationship to the divine, it incorporates
both science and history. Science becomes for it the
manifestation of the divine arrangements of the universe;