Anselm of Canterbury

Introduction

Anselm of Canterbury is the most consequential Christian theologian of the eleventh century and the first major figure of Scholasticism. His two foundational philosophical works — the Proslogion (containing the ontological argument for God's existence) and Cur Deus Homo (developing the satisfaction theory of atonement) — shaped Christian philosophical theology for the next millennium. He is also the historical bridge between the older Augustinian-monastic theological tradition and the emerging Scholastic culture of the medieval universities.

Anselm's intellectual program is summarized in his famous formula fides quaerens intellectum — faith seeking understanding. The position is neither pure fideism (faith without reason) nor pure rationalism (reason without faith). The believer begins from faith and uses reason to seek a fuller understanding of what is already believed; reason and faith work together rather than opposing each other.

Life

Anselm was born in 1033 in Aosta, in the kingdom of Burgundy (now northern Italy). He had a difficult relationship with his father and, after his mother's death in his early twenties, left home permanently. After several years of wandering, he arrived around 1059 at the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy, drawn by the reputation of its prior, Lanfranc of Pavia (the leading theologian of the age). He became a monk in 1060, succeeded Lanfranc as prior in 1063, and became abbot of Bec in 1078.

The Bec years were Anselm's most philosophically productive period. The Monologion (1076) and Proslogion (1077–1078) belong to this period, along with several shorter philosophical treatises and an extensive surviving correspondence. The community at Bec was unusually intellectually vital, and Anselm's teaching attracted students from across Europe.

In 1093 Anselm was reluctantly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, succeeding his former teacher Lanfranc. The administrative and political demands of the post he found burdensome; he was twice exiled from England by William II and Henry I in disputes over the investiture controversy. He continued to write theology during his exiles, completing Cur Deus Homo during his first exile (1098). He died in office in 1109.

The problem he worked on

Anselm's intellectual project, across multiple works, is the demonstration that the central Christian doctrines can be understood by reason starting from premises the unbeliever might accept. His method is distinctive: in the Monologion, he set himself the task of arguing for the existence and attributes of God without appeal to scriptural authority; in the Proslogion, he sought a single argument from which everything established in the Monologion could be derived. The famous result was the ontological argument, which proceeds entirely from the concept of God to the conclusion that God must exist.

The larger philosophical-theological project is the integration of inherited Augustinian theology with the emerging logical and dialectical methods of the eleventh century. Where the earlier monastic theological tradition had largely been exegetical, Anselm's work is structurally argumentative: each treatise sets a question, proceeds through rigorous reasoning, and reaches conclusions defended against possible objections.

Contributions

The ontological argument

Anselm's most famous philosophical contribution. The argument, presented in Proslogion II–IV, runs roughly: God is that than which nothing greater can be thought. Even the fool (the unbeliever) who says in his heart there is no God understands this definition; therefore, God exists at least in the fool's understanding. But existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone; if God existed only in the understanding, something greater than God could be conceived (namely, the same being existing in reality), which contradicts the definition. Therefore, God must exist in reality.

The argument is one of the most-discussed in the history of philosophy. Aquinas rejected it (preferring the Five Ways, which proceed from observed effects to causes). Descartes revived it in different form in the Meditations. Kant attacked it in the Critique of Pure Reason (the famous criticism that existence is not a predicate). Alvin Plantinga and Norman Malcolm have defended modal versions in the twentieth century. Whatever its ultimate validity, the argument has been a continuous touchstone for philosophical theology.

The satisfaction theory of atonement

Anselm's Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) develops the satisfaction theory of the atonement: human sin offends the infinite dignity of God; only a sacrifice of infinite worth can satisfy the offense; only the God-Man (one who is both fully divine and fully human) can offer such a sacrifice; therefore the Incarnation and the Cross are required by the structure of justice and human salvation.

The theory replaced the older ransom theory (in which Christ's death was a ransom paid to the devil) as the standard Western Christian account of why the Incarnation was necessary. It shaped medieval and Reformation theology profoundly; modern Protestant doctrines of penal substitutionary atonement are descendants. The framework has been criticized in recent decades (especially in feminist and liberation theology) for what critics see as its juridical and quasi-feudal character; defenders argue that the criticism rests on misreadings.

Fides quaerens intellectum

The methodological principle that has organized much of Christian philosophical theology. Faith provides the data; reason works to understand that data. The principle resists both fideism (which would dispense with reason) and rationalism (which would dispense with faith). The principle's most famous formulation is in the Proslogion: I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand (credo ut intelligam).

The principle shaped the entire subsequent Scholastic tradition. Aquinas adopted it explicitly; later medieval theologians proceeded on similar methodological commitments. Karl Barth's Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (1931) was the foundational text of his theological method and shaped the dialectical theology of the twentieth century.

Key works

• Monologion (1076). The early systematic treatise on the existence and attributes of God, argued without appeal to scripture.
• Proslogion (1077–1078). The shorter follow-up containing the ontological argument.
• De Veritate (On Truth). Short treatise on the nature of truth as rectitude.
• De Libertate Arbitrii (On Free Will).
• De Casu Diaboli (On the Fall of the Devil).
• Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) (1098). The treatise on the atonement.
• De Conceptu Virginali (On the Virginal Conception).
• De Processione Spiritus Sancti (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit).
• Extensive correspondence (over 400 surviving letters).

Influences and influenced

Influenced by: Augustine (the foundational theological authority; Anselm's Augustinianism is unusually thoroughgoing for his period); the older Latin patristic tradition; the developing logical tradition of the eleventh century (Boethius's translations of Aristotle's logical works); Lanfranc of Pavia (his immediate teacher).

Influenced: the entire subsequent Scholastic tradition. Aquinas engaged Anselm seriously even where rejecting specific arguments (the ontological argument); Bonaventure and the Augustinian Franciscans were closer to Anselm's general approach; Duns Scotus produced his own version of the ontological argument; Descartes revived ontological argumentation in the seventeenth century; Hegel made the argument central to his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion; Karl Barth's recovery of Anselm in the early twentieth century shaped the dialectical theology of the period; contemporary analytic philosophy of religion (Plantinga, Malcolm, Hartshorne) has produced an extensive literature on modal ontological arguments.

Reception

Anselm's reception was immediate and substantial. The Proslogion's ontological argument provoked the first major scholarly response within Anselm's own lifetime: Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, a Benedictine monk, wrote a critical reply (the Liber pro Insipiente, On Behalf of the Fool) arguing that the same form of argument could be used to prove the existence of a perfect lost island, which is absurd. Anselm replied to Gaunilo in the Responsio; the exchange is one of the earliest extended philosophical controversies in medieval Latin literature.

In the high Middle Ages, Anselm was widely cited and engaged but his specific arguments did not always carry the day. Aquinas rejected the ontological argument, preferring the empirical Five Ways. The Franciscan-Augustinian tradition was generally more sympathetic to Anselmian arguments than the Dominican-Aristotelian tradition. The satisfaction theory of atonement, however, became standard Western doctrine.

The modern reception has been varied. Descartes's version of the ontological argument in the Meditations renewed interest in it; Kant's criticism (existence is not a real predicate) appeared to settle the question for nearly a century; Hegel's defense and the twentieth-century modal versions (Malcolm, Plantinga) reopened it. The contemporary literature on the ontological argument remains substantial.

Continuing engagement

Major recent scholarly work on Anselm includes Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams's Anselm (Oxford, 2009), Eileen Sweeney's Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (2012), and Brian Davies and Brian Leftow's The Cambridge Companion to Anselm (2004). The standard scholarly Latin edition is F.S. Schmitt's six-volume Opera Omnia (1938–1961); the Oxford World's Classics translations by Davies and G.R. Evans (1998) provide the standard English. Active scholarly debates concern the precise structure of the ontological argument, the relation between Anselm's monastic and Scholastic dimensions, the contemporary status of the satisfaction theory of atonement, and Anselm's place in the longer development of medieval philosophical theology.

Further reading

• Scholasticism — the tradition he initiated
• Christian Theology — the tradition
• Augustine — the foundational predecessor
• Aquinas — the great Scholastic successor who rejected the ontological argument
• Five Ways — the Thomist alternative to the ontological argument
• Free Will — the topic of De Libertate Arbitrii

The first great Scholastic theologian. The author of the ontological argument and the satisfaction theory of atonement.