Proslogion: Prologue
PROSLOGION
Prologue AFTER I HAD published, at the urging of some of my brethren, a short work as a pattern for meditation on the reason of faith, adopting the role of someone who, by reasoning silently within himself, investigates things he does not know, I began to wonder, when I considered that it is constructed out of a chaining together of many arguments, whether it might be possible to find a single argument that needed nothing but itself alone for proof, that would by itself be enough to show that God really exists; that he is the supreme good, who depends on nothing else, but on whom all things depend for their being and for their well-being; and whatever we believe about the divine nature.
And so I often turned my thoughts to this with great diligence. Sometimes I thought I could already grasp what I was looking for, and sometimes it escaped my mind completely. Finally, I gave up hope. I decided to stop looking for something that was impossible to find. But when I tried to stifle that thought altogether, lest by occupying my mind with useless speculation it should keep me from things I could actually accomplish, it began to hound me more and more, although I resisted and fought against it. Then one day, when my violent struggle against its hounding had worn me down, the thing
I had despaired of finding presented itself in the very clash of my thoughts, so that I eagerly embraced the thought I had been taking such pains to drive away.
Therefore, thinking that what I had rejoiced to discover would please a reader if it were written down, I wrote about it and about a number of other things in the work that follows, adopting the role of someone trying to raise his mind to the contemplation of God and seeking to understand what he believes. Since I had judged that neither this work nor the one I mentioned earlier deserved to be called a book, or to bear the name of an author, and yet I did not think they ought to be sent out without so much as a title by which they might induce someone who came across them to read them, I gave each a title. The first I called "A pattern for meditation on the reason of faith"; the second I called "Faith seeking understanding." But since both works had been transcribed under these titles by several readers, I was encouraged by a number of people (especially by Hugo, the Most Reverend Archbishop of Lyons,
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Apostolic Legate to France, who commanded me by his apostolic authority) to put my own name on these works. And so, in order to do so more suitably,
I named the first Monologion, which means a speech made to oneself, and the second Proslogion, which means a speech made to another.
Chapters 1: A rousing of the mind to the contemplation of God 2: That God truly exists 3: That he cannot be thought not to exist
4: How the fool said in his heart what cannot be thought 5: That God is whatever it is better to be than not to be; and that he alone exists through himself, and makes all other things from nothing
6: How God can perceive even though he is not a body 7: In what sense God is omnipotent even though there are many things he cannot do 8: How God is both merciful and impassible
9: How the one who is completely and supremely just spares the wicked and justly has mercy on them 10: How God justly punishes and justly spares the wicked
11: How "all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth," and yet "the Lord is just in all his ways"
12: That God is the very life by which he lives, and so on for similar attributes 13: How he alone is unbounded and eternal, although other spirits are unbounded and eternal
14: How and why God is both seen and not seen by those who seek him 15: That God is greater than can be thought
16: That this is the unapproachable light in which he dwells 17: That in God there is harmony, fragrance, savor, softness, and beauty in his own ineffable way 18: That there are no parts in God or in his eternity, which he himself is
19: That God is not in a place or a time, but all things are in him 20: That he is before and beyond even all eternal things
21: Whether this is "the age of the age" or "the ages of the ages"
22: That he alone is what he is and who he is 23: That this good is equally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and that this is the "one necessary thing," which is the complete, total, and only good
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24: A conjecture as to what sort of good this is, and how great it is 25: What great goods there are for those who enjoy this good
26: Whether this is the "fullness of joy" that the Lord promises