Sic et Non
12th century theological text by Peter Abelard
Sic et Non, an early (c. 1121) scholastic text whose title translates from Medieval Latin as "Yes and No", was written by Peter Abelard. In the work, Abelard juxtaposes apparently contradictory quotations from the Church Fathers on many of the traditional topics of Christian theology. In the Prologue, Abelard outlines rules for reconciling these contradictions, the most important of which is noting the multiple significations of a single word. However, Abelard does not himself apply these rules in the body of the Sic et Non, which has led scholars to conclude that the work was meant as an exercise book for students in applying dialectic (logic) to theology.
Content
In Sic et Non, Abelard presents 158 questions that present a theological assertion and allows its negation.
The first five questions are:
Must human faith be completed by reason, or not?
Does faith deal only with unseen things, or not?
Is there any knowledge of things unseen, or not?
May one believe only in God alone, or not?
“Sic et Non” enters the record as 12th century theological text by Peter Abelard. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what 12th, century and theological can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1227813. VIAF identifies the subject as 6763147270522035700005. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1121.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sic et Non” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.