This paper is an attempt to present the context and the essence of the dispute surrounding the understanding of theology as a science ( scientia) in the Aristotelian sense which took place at European universities in the13th-century. The aim of the text is also to indicate selected threads of the dispute, which also seem to be present in today’s metatheological and cultural discussions. Finally, the paper presents a brief presentation of the main strands of the solution to the dispute about the scientific character of theology as proposed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’s metatheological proposal is presented owing to its completeness and coherence in addition to its inspiring and enduring character which perdures to the present day.

The article is an attempt to present the main reasons why the anthropological hylomorphism of St. Thomas Aquinas goes beyond the monism-dualism dichotomy in metaphysical anthropology. It cannot, as is most often done, be classified as a substance dualism of the Cartesian type. It is also not a position that can be included in the group of materialistic monisms, even of the non-reductionist type. Aquinas‘s anthropological hylomorphism seems to be a position that contains both the intuitions of materialistic and dualistic positions in metaphysical anthropology, although not reducible to either of them. On closer examination of positions such as Aquinas‘s anthropological hylomorphism, the question must arise whether the dichotomous and disjunctive division of positions in metaphysical anthropology into materialistic and dualistic is justified and operational.