Anselm’s Monologion

Anselm of Canterbury wrote two short works on the existence and nature of God. These are not the sort of books one might usually think of when it comes to theology proper. The first was called the Monologion (1076) and the second the Proslogion (1078). The very first words of the first book relay his motive for writing:

Some of my brethren have often and earnestly asked me to write down, as a kind of model meditation, some of the things I have said, in everyday language, on the subject of mediating upon the essence of the divine; and on some other subjects bound up with such mediation.1

The latter work was more to satisfy his own curiosity, but he was nonetheless equally moved to share what he thought would edify others.2

Many have made out of Anselm—and especially with regard to these two works—either a rationalist or a fideist, the former because of his famed demonstration for the existence of God, the latter because it is all couched in a prayerful address and takes as its point of departure the maxim Credo ut intelligam.

Bruce Demarest is typical of a late Evangelical view, seeing Anselm’s project as closer to rationalism: “Anselm subtly departed from Augustine by attempting a more extensive philosophical explication of theism … [and] this represents a transitional link between the faith perspective of Augustine and the rationalism of the later Scholasticism.”3 A moderated agreement with this idea of “ambition” of “independent argument,” is also shared by the likes of Paul Helm,4 while the nineteenth century French biographer of Anselm, Bouchitté, simply called his approach “Christian rationalism.”5 This assessment is understandable at some level. The same attempt to see what we can know by reasoning things out is famously at the heart of his work on Christ, Cur Deus Homo? and the impression of “reason alone” seems evident if we return to his story about his fellow monks’ request:

They specified … the following form for this written meditation: nothing whatsoever to be argued on the basis of the authority of Scripture, but the constraints of reason concisely to prove, and the clarity of truth clearly to show, in the plain style, with everyday arguments, and down-to-earth dialectic, the conclusions of distinct investigations.6

On a prima facie reading of such excerpts, these writings involve a theology of rational demonstration. It seldom occurs to the historical theologians to ask whether the “rational” nature of a thing stands in antithesis to a proper “spiritual” posture. It is instructive that the Apostles used the word λογικός in a way that the alternative renders “reasonable” and “spiritual” both make perfect sense in the context.7 Doubtless it may be replied that faith and reason just are two different approaches of that spiritual dimension of our being to the reality of God. I grant the point, but the burden of proof still remains to show how a mind like Anselm’s may not prayerfully prove or demonstrate with devotion.

Three twentieth century giants of the history of philosophy weighed in on the question. F. C. Copleston is most thorough in saying:

If by rationalism one means an attitude of mind which denies revelation and faith, St. Anselm was certainly no rationalist, since he accepted the primacy of faith and the fact of authority and only went on to understand the data of faith. If, however, one is going to extend the term ‘rationalism’ to cover the attitude of mind which leads to the attempt to prove mysteries, not because the mysteries are not accepted by faith or would be rejected if one could not prove them, but because one desires to understand all that one believes, without having first clearly defined the ways in which different truths are accessible to us, then one might, of course, call the thought of St. Anselm ‘rationalism’ or an approximation of rationalism. But it would show an entire misunderstanding of Anselm’s attitude, were one to supposed that he was prepared to reject the doctrine of the Trinity, for example, if he was unable to find rationes necessariae for it: he believed the doctrine first of all, and only then did he attempt to understand it.8

Étienne Gilson spoke to where Anselm drew the line between legitimate inquiry and mystery.

To prove by logically necessary reasons that God exists, that he is one single God in three Persons, and that the incarnation of the Word was necessary to save mankind, is not to understand the secrets of divine nature or the mystery of a God made man for our salvation. To understand a mystery would be much more than to understand its necessity.9

Armand Maurer understood Anselm here to highlight a certain level of maturity: “But once a Christian is firmly established in faith, he can legitimately try to understand what he believes.”10 At any rate, the question is largely anachronistic: not only because the terms “rationalism” and “fideism” did not exist in the late eleventh century, but because Anselm did not write within a context in which such methods were settled into systems or schools. He was indeed at the head of that tradition called “scholastic,” but there is no good reason not to take him at his word for the genesis of his writings about God. The monks asked him for an intellectual favor, and these two little books are his promise made good.

We will want to ask two questions throughout our reading of these works. First, did Anselm begin by faith or by reason—or, we might say, from theology or philosophy? Second, is the form of his demonstration a priori, that is, from self-evident axioms or presuppositions, or else is it a posteriori, that is, conclusions that follow from experience or observation of things in the world? Helm treats the two questions together. He distinguishes between Anselm’s personal starting point versus the formal starting point of his demonstration. “By faith he accepts the existence of this God on the authority of the Christian revelation … But, as he tells us, he wishes to gain understanding of the nature of God.”11

It is still a matter of debate which of these starting points explained his famous definition of God. But this is the true meaning of “Faith seeking understanding.” It is not that faith is the straightjacket of reason, allowing it only to ask questions which are not settled by dogma. Even of the deeper nature of the doctrine reason inquires. It is that the will to continue inquiry is precisely that: a personal commitment to believe that which the mind perceives or even sensory experience. This is not without controversy, but Anselm is the bridge between Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in what Helm describes as the “faith seeking understanding” tradition.

The Text of the Monologion

Anselm begins the first book in this way:

Of all the things that exist, there is one nature that is supreme. It alone is self-sufficient in its eternal happiness, yet through its all-powerful goodness it creates and gives to all other things their very existence and their goodness.12

This is no apologetic in itself. If it was, he would have a great deal of explaining to do. He recognizes as much, and suggests that any honest inquirer could arrive at these truths “in several ways,” while he himself opts for the route taken to be “the most readily available.”13 In a word: Goodness. But what does this term mean, and how can many things be called “good” except that there is a good that depends not on any other? It cannot be good for something else, but good in itself. For one thing, “nothing that is good through something other than itself is equal to or greater than that good which is good through itself.”14

In short, Anselm’s realism comes into play here. Goodness is considered as a metaphysical universal. Such goodness must be that which is good in every good and so be the same essence in all. He does the same thing with the very idea of being: all particulars, by degree, participating in Being itself. It may be objected that there are many universals, just as it is often objected that there are many first causes—that there is no need to seek a single unity to all things.

Anselm was aware of this and reduced our possibilities to three: 1. All things exist through one thing; 2. Each thing exists through itself. 3. All things exist mutually through each other. The second model is burdened to show what is the power-to-exist in itself, though he does not yet elaborate why this is more of a burden than in the case of the aseity of God. The third is irrational because this involves “the notion that something could exist through that to which it gives existence.”15 That brings us back to the conclusion, with being—a being that had already been suggested about goodness, namely,

But what exists through something other than itself, is less than that through which all other things exist, and which alone exists through itself. Therefore, that which exists through itself, exists most of all.16

From here he concludes the same of the ultimate existence not only of that which is, but that which is good and that which is great. He further reasons that it would be senseless to suppose an infinity of degrees in greatness.17 And that which is the ground of degrees in all that admits of degree must be one, since, if there are many which are equal in infinite degree, then they “cannot be equal through different things, but are equal through one thing.”18 In other words, equality (not to mention infinity) would be the universal in relation to which all these are particulars.

Is this argument from degrees of x to a perfect an a priori or an a posteriori argument? Copleston suggests the latter in the same basic way as the fourth way of Thomas,19 and on this I agree. One is starting with more or less good things (or great things) in the world, and moving on from there to the necessity of a Best and Greatest against which these are measured. Gilson hints that such a natural theology can be fruitful for showing truths about the divine attributes as well as existence: “Once the existence of God has been proven by any one of these proofs, it is easy to deduce his principal attributes. Since God is that which cannot not exist, he is Being par excellence, that is, the plentitude of entity.”20 Unfortunately, Gilson did not draw out specifics.

However, Anselm does not leave us to guess. The very line of reasoning lands in what theologians call divine aseity. While “the supreme nature exists through itself … [all] other things exist through it.”21 Of course, Anselm must clarify what this “through itself” means, but the relevant point is that he has passed over from natural theology to theology proper.  Since the “mode” of God’s existence uses such language, Anselm makes a leap across the doctrine to that of another: creation ex nihilo. How could all things come to be without a material cause? They could not be taken from the divine essence, as God cannot change and they cannot be. For any reader who cannot see the dilemma Anselm is attempting to overcome, its clearest expression is in the question about all things: “Was the supreme nature their maker or their material?”22 It is plain that it cannot be both.

For others, the focus of the dilemma is on the maxim of Parmenides: Ex nihilo nihil fit. Is this not where we abandon Anselm’s line of inquiry, at least for a moment, to insert that biblical truth that, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (Heb. 11:3). I do not doubt that Anselm would agree to apply that text to this problem; but a promise is a promise, and his monks desired to know the rational sense of it.

He returns to aseity as the answer to even this. Whatever else matter is, it either qualifies as that which exists through itself, or not; but there is no more question on whether the supreme nature must indeed exist through itself. Matter simply does not meet the demands of aseity, whether considered in the most minute phenomenon, or taken as a whole. Such changes and is “made less good.” Whether one accepts the seeming aesthetic or moral evaluation of “good” to material change or not, the point stands at least in the sense that all material phenomena changes such that it is not what it was before, nor will it be what it is now—nor (if we want to borrow from Augustine’s reflections in the Confessions about time) is there really any “now” at all which is measurable.23

As to the intelligibility of ex nihilo here, Anselm uses the expressions “sad about nothing” and “making a rich man out of a poor man” and “recovering one’s health out of sickness,” as perfectly reasonable instances of the same sort of idea.24 While there was no material cause, there was indeed a formal cause. As the craftsman has an idea of what he will make and then can tell you about it, the sound waves being an effect of the latter, a kind that can be sensed, so, in a far greater way, the divine mind is its own efficient cause and formal cause of all that is made.

The next question that emerges for him is how to predicate anything of God, since He alone is properly substance. The first problem is that nothing said by way of relation can be properly attributed to substance.25 If anything to which God is related defines God, then God depends on something less than Himself, indeed something which was not. As with being, so with the specific attributes, to say “God is just” is to maintain that God is just through Himself, which is coextensive with “just through justice itself.” It is not merely to possess justice, but to be justice.26 All of this centers on divine simplicity.

A composite requires, for its existence, its components and owes its being what it is to them. It is what it is through them. They, however, are not what they are through it. A composite, therefore, just is not supreme … Since, then, the supreme nature is not composite at all, and yet really is all those good things, it is necessary that all those good things are not many but one.27

This essence is therefore not the same as mere quantity or even quality, either of which would place it in a class with others. While many other observations could be made about the rest of this book, I will mention only a few.

His very concise argument that truth must be eternal is worth considering:

Further, try to think of an answer to this: ‘X is going to happen in the future’; assuming this to be true, when does it start being true? When was it ever false? ‘X is going to have happened.’ Again, assuming this statement is true, when will it cease being true? There is no conceivable time ‘when’. Add to this the fact that neither statement can be true without truth. Conclusion: Truth has no conceivable beginning or end.28

Second, all questions that begin with the dilemma of God being “in” or “at” or “being” in such a way as a creature is present or knows or acts upon, begin their conception of being, presence, knowledge, or action as an act of deprivation of being—less of an act, in fact. Anselm says, “The creator of all substances, the supreme substance, is necessarily free from the natures and laws of everything it has created from nothing.”29

Third, whereas before Anselm considered the coherence of creation ex nihilo, he later wants to show that the “verbalization” of the supreme substance must be one with God. There are only two possible classes of reality: Creator and creature. Since it cannot be both creature and one with the Creator, and since this act of “verbalizing” cannot imply two spirits but must remain one, this is not many words, but one Word.30 He finds an analogy to the way that our words are more ours to the degree that they conform to the idea of which they are a representation.

But what about the Word which says everything and through which everything was made? Is it, or is it not, a likeness of things made through it? For if it were a true likeness of mutable things, it would not be consubstantial with supreme immutability. Which would be false. But if it were not a completely true likeness (of mutable things), then the word of supreme truth would not be completely true. Which is absurd. And if it were not a likeness of mutable things at all, how could it be the model by which they were made? … The truth of what exists is in the Word, and imitation of the supreme essence in created things. Thus it is not the Word … that suffers increase or decrease in accordance with the degrees of its similarity to creation, but the other way round.31

The implications for what is proper and common to the persons of the Trinity follow Augustine, yet stated in an accessible way here. This unpacking of what is unique in the begottenness of the Son as Idea, and procession of the Spirit as Love, takes up the bulk of what remains. In conclusion, also with Augustine, he speaks of the rational part of man being the most excellent in us, its chief end to contemplate God.

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1. Anselm of Canterbury, Prologue to Monologion in The Major Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 5. NB: All quotations of Anselm from the two books will be from this volume but labeled according to the original work.

2. cf. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, Introduction to Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, vii-viii.

3. Bruce Demarest, General Revelation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), 31.

4. Paul Helm, Faith & Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 104.

5. Louis Fermin Hervé Bouchitté, Le Rationalisme Chrétien a La Fin Du Xie Siècle: Ou, Monologium Et Proslogium De Saint Anselme, Sur L’essence Divine (Paris: 1842).

6. Anselm, Monologion, Prologue [5].

7. Romans 12:1 and 1 Peter 2:2

8. F. C. Copleston, History of Philosophy, II,1:179

9. Étienne Gilson, Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1955), 130.

10. Armand Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1982), 49.

11. Helm, Faith & Understanding, 105.

12. Anselm, Monologion, 1 [11].

13. Anselm, Monologion, 1 [11].

14. Anselm, Monologion, 1 [12].

15. Anselm, Monologion, 3 [14].

16. Anselm, Monologion, 3 [14].

17. Anselm, Monologion, 4 [15].

18. Anselm, Monologion, 4 [15].

19. Copleston, History of Philosophy, II,1:180.

20. Gilson, Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 134.

21. Anselm, Monologion, 5 [16].

22. Anselm, Monologion, 7 [19].

23. cf. Augustine, Confessions, XI.21.27

24. Anselm, Monologion, 8 [22].

25. Anselm, Monologion, 15 [26-27].

26. Anselm, Monologion, 16 [29].

27. Anselm, Monologion, 17 [30].

28. Anselm, Monologion, 18 [31-32].

29. Anselm, Monologion, 22 [38].

30. Anselm, Monologion, 30 [46].

31. Anselm, Monologion, 31 [46].