Anselm, St. (of Canterbury, 1033-1109) The somewhat undisciplined son of a noble landowner in Aosta, Italy, who eventually took monastic vows and became the archbishop of Canterbury.
St. Anselm is one of the earliest and most prominent scholastics of the Middle Ages.
He is best known for defining the ontological argument, a theological proof for the existence of God.
Like most theological proofs, the ontological argument seems self-evident to believers but usually fails to convince unbelievers.
In the Proslogion Anselm writes that God is “something than which nothing greater can be conceived.” To be the very greatest thing imaginable, the thing conceived must also exist in reality and not just in the mind. Therefore, so the argument goes, God is the greatest conceivable being which by necessity exists.
This argument was rejected on purely rational grounds by St. Thomas Aquinas who nevertheless believed in God.
Rene Descartes used a similar ‘ontological argument’ to rescue himself from difficulties arising from his famous “I think, therefore I am” claim.
For Descartes, God would not deceive by presenting the mere illusion of an outer world – as opposed to actually creating an outer world which is perceived by the senses – because God is fundamentally good.
St. Anselm’s view of faith and understanding is noteworthy and, one could say, reverses worldly wisdom. Rather than believing in something because it is comprehensible in the first place, Anselm forwards two important phrases:
- fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding)
- credo ut intelligam (I believe so that I can understand).
The second is based on St. Augustine’s teaching that one should believe in order to understand (crede, ut intelligas). Taken together, these suggest that one must first take a ‘leap of faith’ to better understand spiritual truths.
For many this is an illogical or non-intellectual approach but it may be seen as logical in two ways:
First, when we recognize the limits of worldly reason in understanding ultimate concerns, it arguably makes sense to, at least momentarily, cede logic to faith. Such an approach could possibly reap increased knowledge–and we would never know for certain unless we actually tried it.
Second, when one adopts a faith position, the inherent and indeed greater logic of God’s ways – if actual and true – should become increasingly apparent to our worldly reason as time goes by (see, for example, Isaiah 55:6-9).
If, however, the supposed greater logic of God’s ways does not make itself apparent after adopting a particular faith position, we then – after a reasonable amount of time – would have a logical, perhaps even scientific, reason to reject that faith position.
Put differently, this positions suggests that we try believing first. This either does or does not reap an increased understanding of God’s ways. And one would never know and not be embracing a fully scientific attitude unless one did, in fact, try this approach.
Interestingly, Carl Jung’s father was a Protestant clergyman who stressed that his son Carl should believe and not think. To his father’s dismay Jung replied, “Give me this belief” (C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, revised, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston, New York: Vintage Books, 1961, p. 43).
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