In bringing together the conflicting opinions of the fathers on all the chief points of Christian dogmatics, it may be admitted that Abelard's aim was simply to make these contradictions the starting point of an inquiry which should determine in each case the true position and via media of Christian theology.
In the literature as it survives many different branches of writing are represented - homilies in prose and verse, hymns, exposition and commentary, liturgy, apocryphal legends, historical romance, hagiography and martyrology, monastic history and biography, general history, dogmatics, philosophy and science, ecclesiastical law, &c. But the whole is dominated by the theological and ecclesiastical interest.
His contributions to theological literature included treatises on Christian ethics and dogmatics, on moral philosophy, on baptism, and a sketch of the life of Jakob Boehme, who exercised so marked an influence on the mind of the great English theologian of the 18th century, William Law.
In 1829 he went to Halle as professor to teach church history, dogmatics and symbolics, but in 1836 he accepted a chair at Heidelberg.
In the "Apologie de Raymund Sabunde," he has apparently amused himself with gathering together, in the shape of quotations as well as of reflections, all that can be said against certainty in aesthetics as well as in dogmatics.
