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Quod Vere Sit Deus: Why Anselm Thought that God Truly Exists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
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‘Behold, one night during Matins, the grace of God shone in his heart and the matter became clear to his understanding, filling his whole heart with an immense joy and jubilation’.
What became clear to him? Almost all students of theology, and many students of philosophy, know that there is an argument for God’s existence called ‘the Ontological Argument’. Where is this argument to be found? The usual answer given is that it was first advanced by St Anselm (c. 1033—1109) in his Proslogion. Is the argument a good one? The usual answer is that it is not, and that Immanuel Kant (1724—1804) effectively showed why. In my opinion, however, these answers are wrong. In what follows I shall try to explain why this is so. The effort is worth while because it is important to know what Anselm did argue, and also because, as it seems to me, what he has to offer is much more cogent than what is normally attributed to him.
We can begin by noting the nature of the argument attributed to Anselm by those who see him as the father of the Ontological Argument. It runs like this:
(1) ‘God’ by definition is ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’.
(2) If God did not exist he would not be ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’, for it is greater to exist than not to exist.
(3) By definition, then, ‘that than which nothing greater can be thought’ exists. It would be contradictory to say ‘That than which nothing greater can be thought does not exist’.
(4) God, therefore, exists.
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- Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Eeadmer, Vita Anselmi, I, xix.
2 What follows owes much to some suggestions of Professor Elizabeth Anscombe. See her ‘Why Anselm’s Proof in the Proslogion is not an Ontological Argument’, The Thoreau Quarterly 17 (1985).
3 For a recent rendition of Anselm along these lines, cf. Michael, Peterson, William, Hasker, Bruce, Reichenbach and David, Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of religion (New York and Oxford, 1991), pp. 70 ffGoogle Scholar.
4 Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York, 1958). p. 282. What I take Kant to be driving at here is, I think, correct. In the language of Frege, ‘— exist(s)’ is not a first level predicate. Cf. my ‘Does God Create Existence?’, International Philosophical Quarterly (June 1990).
5 Critique of Pure Reason, p. 280.
6 René, Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 46 fGoogle Scholar.
7 It is sometimes said that Anselm is not arguing for the existence of God since he already believes in God to start with and since the Proslogion is cast in the form of a prayer. It is true that Anselm believed in God before writing the Proslogion. And it is true that the Proslogion is cast in the form of a prayer. But it is also true that the text of the Proslogion shows that Anselm conceived of himself a. showing that God is and that he is as we believe him to be.
8 Cf. Reply to Gaunilo: ‘I am astonished that you urge this (objection) against me. for 1 was concerned to prove something which was in doubt, and for me it was sufficient that I should first show that it was understood and existed in the mind in some way or other, leaving it to be determined subsequently whether it was in the mind alone as unreal things are, or in reality also as true things are’. I quote from St Anselm’s Proslogion, trans. M.J. Charlesworth (Oxford, 1965), p. 183.
9 Echoes of Anselm’s definition can be found in St. Augustine (cf. De Doctrina Christiana I, vii). But the nearest verbal parallel to Anselm’s formula comes in Seneca, who says that God’s ‘magnitude is that than which nothing greater can be thought’. Cf. L. Annaei Senecae Naturalium Questionum libri viii, ed. Alfred Gercke (Stuttgart, 1907), p. 5. In the Proslogion and elsewhere Anselm speaks not only of ‘aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit’ but of ‘id quo maius cogitari nequit/non potest/non possit’. ‘aliquid quo maius cogitari non valet/potest/possit’ and ‘id quo maius cogitari non potest’. But the variations can hardly be significant.
10 Charlesworth. p. 117.
11 The text now in question is usually translated in accordance with my (I). Why so? I can only guess that it is because printed editions of Anselm’s Proslogion place a comma between ‘et in re’ and ‘quod maius est’. But the manuscripts of Anselm’s Proslogion give no warrant for the notion of a comma in this place. We have to read Anselm as writing ‘. . . potest cogitari esse et in re quod maius est’.
12 Cf. Southern, R.W., Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1991). p. 130Google Scholar: ‘If this argument (sc. Proslogion 2) is sound, we can go a step further. The argument has forced an intelligent listener to agree that Cod exists both in the mind and outside the mind. But many other things exist both in the mind and outside the mind: for instance, the pen I am holding exists both in my mind and outside my mind. It exists in re and in mente; but it does not necessarily exist in re because it exists in mente’. My own analogy should not be taken to imply that Anselm would be happy with the formula ‘God is a person’. Many modern philosophers of religion are happy with this formula. Anselm never employs it. and he would surely have rejected it.
13 That there are different purposes lying behind Proslogion 2 and Proslogion 3 is argued by Henry, D.P. in Medieval Logic and Metaphysics (London, 1972), pp. 105ffGoogle Scholar.
14 Charlesworth. p. 119.
15 This information comes from Anselm’s biographer Eadmer. Cf. Vita Anselmi I, xix.
16 Charlesworth, pp. 163ff.
17 I am grateful to Professor Elizabeth Anscombe and Dr. G.R. Evans for comments on an earlier version of the present article.
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