1. Excellent overviews of On the Incarnation of the Word and On the Pro-
william e. mann namely, that people routinely see the Nile, not just a fragment of it. And, finally, it provides Anselm, I think, with a way of rejecting modalism. If the whole of God is the Father, the whole of God is the Son, and the whole of God is the Holy Spirit, then it follows that the Father is the whole of God, the Son is the whole of God, and the Holy Spirit is the whole of God. Where there is wholeness, there is no room for apportioning roles or functions.
Anselm is fond of the Nile analogy. He suggests that it can help us to understand the doctrine of the Incarnation (De Inc. Verbi 14) and he uses it to argue for the appropriateness of the filioque doctrine
(De Proc. 9). Yet we should bear in mind that when he introduces the analogy, it is designed simply to show how even among spatiotemporal things composed of parts, it is possible to find that "three can be said of one and one of three." If the analogy helps to forestall a charge of modalism, that is to its credit. Anselm hastens to remind us, however, that the analogy, like the other analogies on which he has relied, is just that – an analogy, his best attempt to explicate what must remain inexplicable. The mystery of the Trinity remains a mystery. For now we see in a mirror dimly (Mon. 67), a mirror whose act of reflecting is itself a dim reflection of its maker.4 notes 1.
Excellent overviews of On the Incarnation of the Word and On the Procession of the Holy Spirit can be found in Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press, 1972), chap. 4. All translations of Latin texts in this essay are my own.
See the sources mentioned in William E. Mann, "Augustine on Evil and Original Sin," in Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 40–48.
For another analysis of Anselm's Nile analogy, see Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1989), chap. 5.
An earlier version of this essay benefited from the criticism of Brian Davies and Brian Leftow, hereby gratefully acknowledged.
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