1. Historical background. For over a thousand years Christian theology was predominantly, almost exclusively, biblical. In the 12th century a less biblical theology began with Peter Lombard and the Victorines. By the mid-13th century Bacon was complaining that the Liber Sententiarum had displaced the Liber Historiarum (Petrus Comestor) as a textbook. But to teach theology was still to expound Scripture: “magister theologiae legit sacram paginam”. Such also was St. Thomas’s view, though his compendium or Summa paved the way for an independent science of theology that wa…