Introduction
INTRODUCTION
In 1056 the 23-year-old Anselm left his native Aosta, in what is now Northern Italy, to escape his increasingly hostile father.At the time he could hardly have foreseen that he would become the person we know as Saint Anselm, a man of striking spiritual depth and the greatest philosopher-theologian of Western Christianity in the eight hundred years between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.Apart from a short-lived bout of religious fervor in his teens,
Anselm had not at that point shown any great yearning for the monastic life.
After leaving home, he wandered more or less aimlessly through Burgundy and France, probably trying out the teaching available from the entrepreneurial teacher-scholars who were so much a feature of that place and time.
In 1059 he came to Normandy,where his interest was captured by the Benedictine abbey at Bec, whose famous school was under the direction of Lanfranc, the abbey's prior. Lanfranc was a scholar and teacher of wide reputation, and under his leadership the school at Bec had become an important center of learning, especially in dialectic. In 1060 Anselm decided to become a monk himself. He threw himself into monastic life with his whole heart, excelling not only as a teacher, but also as a spiritual guide. His intellectual and spiritual gifts brought him rapid advancement, and when Lanfranc was appointed abbot of Caen in 1063,Anselm was elected to succeed him as prior.
Anselm's earliest major work, the Monologion (1075–76),1 reflects his concern for the spiritual and intellectual development of the monks in his charge. It is, as he explains in the prologue, a guide or template for his monks to follow in reflecting on what Anselm calls "the reason of faith." By "the reason of faith"
(ratio fidei) Anselm means the intrinsically rational character of Christian doctrines in virtue of which they form a coherent and rationally defensible system. The doctrines of the Christian faith are intrinsically rational, Anselm believes, because they concern the nature and activity of God, who is himself supreme reason and exemplifies supreme wisdom in everything he does.And because human beings are rational by nature, we can grasp the reason of faith.
Anselm's monks had insisted that this guide to the reason of faith be purely rational. In other words,Anselm was not to rely on scriptural or other authority but on argument alone. When Anselm submitted the Monologion for the approval of his old master Lanfranc, by then the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Lanfranc complained about the lack of any appeals to authority. Anselm assured his former superior that there was nothing in the Monologion that could
1 The dates of Anselm's works, which are to some extent conjectural, are taken from R.W.
Southern, Anselm:A Portrait in Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). vii
INTRODUCTION
viii not be found in Scripture or in Augustine, but he made no changes in the work itself, and he never submitted another work for Lanfranc's approval.
Anselm never wavered in his belief that it is legitimate for Christians to explore the reason of faith without relying on authority.
When Anselm looked back over the Monologion he was struck by how complicated a chain of argument it involved. So he began to look for an easier way to reach the conclusions he had argued for in the Monologion: a "single argument" (really, a single form or pattern of argument) that would prove everything he wanted to prove. Anselm's search for this master argument became something of an obsession with him; in fact, he tells us that he began to see it as a temptation and tried (unsuccessfully, as it turned out) to stop thinking about it.
The master argument finally came to him, and in the Proslogion (1077–78) he wrote up the argument and showed how it could be used to generate a wide range of conclusions about God. Unlike the Monologion, in which Anselm adopted the role of someone trying to figure out by reason what he should believe, the Proslogion is written from the perspective of someone who already believes in God and is seeking to understand what he believes. The style of the two works is also quite different.The Monologion is straightforward, unadorned argumentation; the Proslogion is a passionate address to God in the style of Anselm's prayers and meditations. In spite of these differences in perspective and style, however, Anselm assures us that the Monologion and the Proslogion have the same aim: he wrote them both "mainly so that what we hold by faith concerning the divine nature and persons, leaving aside the Incarnation, could be proved by necessary reasons, independently of the authority of Scripture" (On the Incarnation of the Word 6).
The central argument of the Proslogion is found in Chapters 2 through 4, in which Anselm attempts to show that the Psalmist's "fool," who has "said in his heart,'There is no God'" (81–82), can be convinced by reason alone that God does indeed exist.Almost immediately Anselm's argument found a sharp critic in an otherwise unknown monk named Gaunilo of Marmoutiers.Anselm was so pleased with Gaunilo's "Reply on Behalf of the Fool," and with the opportunity it gave him to clarify and extend his reasoning in the Proslogion, that he wrote a reply to Gaunilo and insisted that the exchange with Gaunilo be included whenever anyone copied the Proslogion.
In 1078 Anselm was elected abbot upon the death of Herluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec. Even as prior Anselm had been in over his head. He was bad at handling money, easily flustered when things did not go his way, and inept at getting others to do what he wanted. Though he found his new duties as abbot even more burdensome than the old ones, he did at least manage to keep writing. In 1080–86 he composed three philosophical dialogues:
On Truth, On Freedom of Choice, and On the Fall of the Devil.Anselm described
INTRODUCTION
ix them in his preface as "treatises pertaining to the study of Holy Scripture," but they are not scriptural commentaries in the usual sense. Instead, they are devoted to elucidating scriptural language through rational argument.
For example, On Truth begins by noticing that we speak of God as Truth.We derive such language from Scripture: Jesus identifies himself as the Truth in John 14:6, and 1 John 5:6 identifies the Spirit as Truth.2 If we are to understand this scriptural language, we have to figure out what it could mean to speak of God as Truth. Is this our ordinary use of 'truth', as when we speak of the truth of a statement or an opinion? And if it is, how can the Truth that is
God be connected with the truth that statements and opinions have? Furthermore, Jesus speaks of "doing the truth" in John 3:21, so there must also be truth in actions. But what could that be? And how is it connected to the truth of statements, on the one hand, and the Truth that is God, on the other? In the same vein, one important line of argument in On Freedom of Choice is intended to elucidate the scriptural claim that "one who commits sin is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). For it would seem that if we can be enslaved by sin, we are weaker than sin or somehow subject to its power.And then what becomes of freedom and moral responsibility? Here again, in order to understand what
Scripture is saying, we are driven to ask philosophical questions.
The three dialogues were Anselm's last major works as Abbot of Bec. He continued to serve as abbot until 1093, when he was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury over his own vehement objections. Though some observers at the time thought his professions of reluctance were insincere (a suspicion that has been shared by a handful of scholars in more recent years), it seems altogether plausible that he genuinely did not want to be archbishop. The position would mean even more administrative responsibility, which he greatly disliked; it would take him even further away from the normal monastic life that he had come to love so fervently; and—worst of all—it would mean contending with England's venal and ruthless king,William II.Anselm's struggles with the king proved to be as vexatious as he must have feared.
Around this time Anselm was drawn into a theological controversy over Trinitarian doctrine. Roscelin of Compiègne, a renowned teacher who would later tangle with Peter Abelard as well, had raised a problem for the doctrine of the Trinity. He argued that either the three Persons of the Trinity are three distinct things, like three human beings, or else the Father and the Holy Spirit were incarnate along with the Son. Roscelin chose the first option; worse yet, he claimed that Anselm and Lanfranc had taught the same thing. To refute
Roscelin's position Anselm wrote a letter On the Incarnation of the Word. The 2 In Anselm's translation of the Bible, however, this verse says that the Spirit testifies that Christ is the Truth.
INTRODUCTION
x first version was an open letter, addressed to the whole Christian world.
Anselm tells us that he left that version unfinished because he had heard that Roscelin recanted his position. But then Roscelin recanted his recantation, and Anselm revised and extended his earlier attack. The final version of the letter (1094), which is included in this volume, was addressed to Pope Urban
II. To the revised version of his solution of Roscelin's dilemma Anselm added a discussion of the proper approach to theological disputation, as well as arguments about why it was most fitting for the Son to be incarnate, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit.
Not long after Anselm became archbishop, he began a work that would explore the reason of the one central part of the Christian faith he had yet to investigate: the Incarnation. His aim was to show that even if we knew nothing of an historical Christ, we would be able to show by reason alone that in order to heal the breach that sin has made between God and humanity, God would have to become incarnate and offer his own life. So he called the work Cur
Deus Homo: "Why God Became a Human Being."
The argument of Cur Deus Homo takes off from the objection that the Christian account of redemption represents God as acting in an irrational and unseemly way. The arguments by which Anselm seeks to defuse this objection are quite complicated and touch on a number of different issues, but there are two main threads that run through all of them. First, if we human beings fall,
God has to offer us reconciliation. Having made us for the sake of happiness, God cannot simply abandon us to wretchedness and sin; to do so would be to allow us to thwart his plan for us. It would make it look as though either God had changed his mind about his purposes for human nature (thus impugning
God's wisdom), or he was unable to bring those purposes to fulfillment (thus impugning God's power).And second, the only way for God to offer this reconciliation is through the voluntary self-offering of a God-man. In other words, far from being irrational, the death of God Incarnate is the only rationally acceptable way for God to effect a reconciliation between himself and us.
Anselm notes in his preface that he was forced to complete Cur Deus Homo in haste:"If I had been allowed freedom from distractions and enough time to work on it, I would have included and added quite a few things that I have left unsaid" (238). Two other works translated here may well represent what was missing from Cur Deus Homo.Anselm's editor, F. S. Schmitt, believed that Anselm would have "included" (or interpolated) the discussions "of power, of necessity, of will, and of certain other things" to which he refers in Cur Deus
Homo 1.1 and "added" (or appended) the treatment of original sin he postponed in Cur Deus Homo 2.17.3 Anselm never put his thoughts on power,
3 See the Schmitt text cited in The Lambeth Fragments.
INTRODUCTION
xi necessity, and will in final form, but sketches of a discussion of those topics are preserved in the Lambeth Fragments. He did, however, supply the missing appendix, a work On the Virginal Conception, and on Original Sin (1099).
Though Anselm had begun Cur Deus Homo in England, he finished it abroad in 1098, having been forced into exile in November 1097 as a result of various disputes with the king. Anselm had asked permission three times to go see the pope to seek his advice. The king refused, and when Anselm left anyway,
William refused to let him return to England.
William died in 1100, and the new king, Henry I, invited Anselm to return to England.Yet it was not long before Henry and Anselm were at odds, and Anselm found himself in exile again from 1103 to 1106.Anselm did not manage to do any significant writing during his second exile, but after his return he completed one more work: De concordia (1107–08), in which he reconciled human free choice with divine foreknowledge, predestination, and grace. By this time Anselm had become seriously ill and was so weak that he had to be carried around on a litter. It was becoming clear that he would not live to write a treatise on the origin of the soul,as he had hoped.On Tuesday of Holy
Week, 21 April 1109, Anselm died peacefully, surrounded by the monks of Canterbury.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Davies, Brian, and Brian Leftow, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Anselm.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Evans, G. R. Anselm and Talking about God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
Holopainen, Toivo. Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century. Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1996.
Hopkins, Jasper. A Companion to the Study of St.Anselm. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972.
Plantinga, Alvin, ed. The Ontological Argument. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965.
Southern, R.W. Anselm:A Portrait in Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Visser, Sandra, and Thomas Williams. Anselm. Great Medieval Thinkers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much of my work on the translations that appear in this volume for the first time was completed on fellowship in the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame.I am grateful to Thomas P.Flint,Michael C.Rea,
INTRODUCTION
xii and Lucie Marsden for doing so much to make the Center an exceptional place to study and work, and to all the participants in the Center's discussion group for their role in renewing my delight in philosophical argument and debate. I am grateful as well to my colleagues in the departments of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of South Florida, who graciously allowed me to take that fellowship in what should have been my first year on campus. My collaboration with Sandra Visser has been especially valuable in forcing me to make sure I understand every last of word of Anselm's writing, and I hereby gladly acknowledge my debt to her for making me a better interpreter and a better translator.
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
The Latin text translated here is the critical edition of F. S. Schmitt in S.
Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt:
Friedrich Fromann Verlag, 1968) and "Ein neues unvollendetes Werk des hl.
Anselm von Canterbury,"Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des
Mittelalters Band 33, Heft 3 (1936), 22–43. I have noted any departures from Schmitt's text in the footnotes.
An asterisk in the text indicates that the word so marked is explained in the Glossary. I have generally marked such terms only on their first occurrence in a chapter and in passages where their use seems especially likely to cause misunderstanding.
Occasionally the same speaker who ends one chapter begins the next. In such cases, the new chapter begins without an indication of the speaker.
When Anselm speaks of "the Apostle," without a proper name, he is referring to Saint Paul.
Biblical citations are given according to the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. In the case of quotations from the Psalms, a citation to the Latin
Vulgate is also given in parentheses.