ABSTRACT
Aristotle argues in the Posterior Analytics that every sphere of knowledge is a distinct disciplina with its own first principles and rules. In the case of philosophy and theology the boundaries were repeatedly in dispute in the early Christian and mediaeval worlds, and there proved in practice to be many topics of importance to both disciplines. After the fifth and sixth centuries, Christianity tended to have the best minds in both Greek East and Latin West, and Christian scholars who did philosophy did not think of themselves first and foremost as ‘philosophers’. The most original philosophical thought was in fact often Christian and theological, and that made it increasingly artificial to distinguish between the two disciplines.
