Thirteenth-century theologians admitted reason could not prove Christianity’s truth

Evidence

Jaume I’s Aragon became a veritable testing ground for the new Dominican missionary strategy to convert Jews and Muslims: Dominicans learned Hebrew and Arabic, studied the Bible, Talmud, and Koran, and (with the help of royal coercion) forced Jews and Muslims to debate with them and to listen to their sermons. Ramon Martí, in particular, sought to deploy the tools of logic and scholastic theology to decimate the rival religions and prove the truth of Christianity. Yet the missionary efforts of Martí and his associates had only limited success, and increasingly, Christian theologians, like Dominican Thomas Aquinas, affirmed that it was impossible to prove the truth of Christianity through reason alone. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1181

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does the anti-rationalist turn (Aquinas) relate to the parallel rise of the irrational-Muslim trope? Is the infidel’s irrationality a projection of the missionary’s own epistemological retreat?