Abstract

This chapter examines Book III of the Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences. The purpose of this chapter is not a historical study of the controversies that surrounded the Book of Sentences before it became the standard textbook of theology in the Christian West, but to examine the strange doctrine that seemed to have marred the Christology of the Sentences. It explains how several contemporary authors have followed Baltzer in his judgment concerning the flawed structure of Book III of the Sentences. It is especially the inclusion of the virtues in Christology that has met with the disapproval of historians of theology. Pope Alexander III condemned Peter's Christology by calling it vicious doctrine. Despite the condemnation, Lombard's Christology did not detract from the esteem in which the Lombard's theology was held.