Thesis advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman / Thesis advisor: Dominic F. Doyle / Thesis (STL) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

Thesis advisor: Jean-Luc Solère / This dissertation pursues a philosophical analysis of the epistemic claims of the discipline of theology--a intellectual discipline whose unique identity was being crafted in the high and late Middle Ages. In particular, this study focuses on how the theologian can both rely on "faith" and "authority" while also claiming to acquire a kind of knowledge that the simple believer does not have. The prologue to Sentences Commentary of the Augustinian, Gregory of Rimini, is the focal point of the dissertation, since the "prologue" is the typical place for theologians to philosophically reflect on the nature of their discipline. However, Rimini will be considered carefully in light of his fourteenth-century context. The study will look specifically at those thinkers Rimini directly engages with: namely, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Peter Aureoli, William of Ockham and Adam Wodeham. But, in light of Rimini's status as an Augustinian hermit, the study will also be attentive to the tradition of Augustinian theologians that precede Rimini; most notably, this is Giles of Rome, star pupil of Aquinas and the intellectual father of the Augustinian Order. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis is a comparative analysis of Ibn Taymiyya of Damascus and Gregory of Rimini within their respective religious and philosophical traditions. Ibn Taymiyya and Gregory of Rimini rejected the use of Aristotelian logic in the valorization of divine revelation in Islam and Christianity respectively. The translation movements, in Baghdad and then in Toledo, ensured the transmission of Greek scientific and philosophical works to both the Islamic world during the 'Abbasid Caliphate and the Catholic Christian European milieu beginning in the eleventh century. By the fourteenth century both the Islamic and the Catholic European religious traditions had a long history of assimilating Aristotle's Organon. Ibn Taymiyya and Gregory of Rimini rejected the notion, adopted by the kalam and scholastic traditions respectively, that logical demonstration could be used to validate religious doctrine as taught in the Qur'an and the Bible. Ibn Taymiyya rejected demonstration completely but Gregory accepted its qualified use.