A Vindication of Desire: St Anselm, with C. S. Lewis

Despite different starting points, in the cloister and the world respectively, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) enjoyed a mutual interest in the concept and experience of spiritual desire. Inspired by Lewis’ famous sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’ (1941), but principally guided by Anselm’s reflections, this essay argues that desire exists in a dynamic relationship with love and that, as a journey of desire, the Christian life is extremely challenging, since it is a journey into mystery and towards moral perfection, but also contains and ultimately fulfils God’s promise of eternal joy. It is hoped that one by-product of this exploration may be to accord greater recognition to Anselm as a spiritual, even mystical, theologian, recognising him in Jean Leclercq’s description of an earlier monastic leader, Gregory the Great (d. 604), as a ‘doctor of desire’.

Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm of Canterbury (b. 1033–d. 1109) is the most enduringly influential philosopher-theologian of the Latin West between Augustine and the 13th century. Best known among philosophers for his “ontological” argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion and among theologians for his account of the Atonement in Cur Deus Homo, he is regarded as the quintessential “classical theist,” and his accounts of the divine nature and attributes, of freedom and the fall, and of human redemption continue to attract attention. This article provides an annotated list of Anselm’s complete works as well as selected English translations and secondary literature.

Understanding the Phenomenon of Evil in Christianity and Islam: An Experience of Historical and Philosophical Comparison of the Concepts of Al-Farabi, Anselm and Thomas Aquinas

The treatment of the phenomenon of evil in Christianity and Islam on the example of philosophical heritage of Muslim theologian Al-Farabi and the pillars of Christian philosophy of Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas is compared. It is proved that medieval philosophers sought to understand the problem of evil and how man should reconcile the existence of God with the existence of evil.

Schelling’s Criticism of Ontological Argument and Interpretation of Kant’s Doctrine of the Ideal of Reason

To reconstruct a critique of the ontological proof of the existence of God in Schelling’s philosophy I examine his interpretation of the ontological argument by Anselm of Canterbury and Descartes as well as Schelling’s assessment of the critique of the Kantian ontological proof of the existence of God. I propose a reconstruction of Schelling’s account of undoubted being which cannot be deduced from the concept of the totality of all that is possible and therefore must come before any thought. He interprets reason as having an ecstatic nature which posits precedent undoubted being. This enables Schelling to formulate his own version of the thesis on the unity of being and thought, whereby being comes first and thought is only second. Against this background I analyse Schelling’s interpretation of the Kantian account of the ideal of reason. Schelling, on the one hand, agrees with Kant that being is not a real predicate, hence real existence cannot be deduced from essence in the sense of “what.” But, on the other hand, in contrast to Kant, he believes that real existence of the individual absolute must be assumed, which would be the subject for all possible predicates and whose being is ecstatically posited by reason as being external to itself. I raise the question of the relevance of Schelling’s thought for modern ontology, above all in overcoming ontotheology. Proceeding from the works of J. F. Courtine and L. Tengelyi I single out two aspects of Schelling’s doctrine that are relevant to my subject: (1) the priority of existence over essence in God’s being and (2) the fundamental irreducibility of God to a necessarily existent being, i.e. God’s freedom. It is evident that, in his interpretation of Kant, Schelling somewhat simplifies his train of thought and leaves it unclear how Kant links the concepts of necessary being and the supremely perfect being. It is also evident that Schelling’s concepts of “contingency,” “contingent necessity,” “the whole experience” need further study.

Prayer and the Art of Literature in Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion

This article reads the Proslogion of the medieval theologian Anselm of Canterbury as a drama of seeking and finding God. It guides the reader through a process of rhetorical inventio, with all of its attendant risks, pleasures, and discontents. The text opens a space or gap of desire, speaking in the voice of the soul who seeks anxiously to find (invenire) God but turns up only absence. The “I” who speaks and addresses itself to itself and to God learns not to close that gap but to inhabit it, affectively and intellectually, just as the monastic rhetor must, when he directs his inventive activity to God.

Anselm’s apories

This article deals with the analyse of “Proslogion” of Anselm of Canterbury and examines the apophatic aspects of “unum argumentum”. In the conclusion it shows a number of specific apories that characterize Anselm’s thought. It makes a suggestion about the role of the “fool” from 14th Psalm in the elaboration of this argument.

The Covenant of Works and Christology

This chapter examines James Ussher’s covenantal framework in reference to Christology. He emphasized Christ as the solution to Adam’s failure in the covenant of works. Ussher drew on ancient and medieval doctrines of Christological recapitulation from Irenaeus of Lyons and Anselm of Canterbury as he explained Christ’s work. Ussher reframed Christological recapitulation in connection to the covenant of works, which further demonstrates the underlying catholicity of the covenant of works and shows how Ussher, like other Reformed theologians, used the covenant of works to integrate their understanding of other essential points of the Christian faith.

Toward a New Account of the Fall, Informed by Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas

This article argues that the doctrine of the Fall into sin is necessary to avoid compromising Scriptural teaching on the universality of sin or the goodness of creation. A new theory of the Fall, indebted to Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and the author’s monograph Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution, is proposed, on which the Fall is comparable to the loss of a gifted inheritance.

Deepened Monotheism. Philosophical Reasoning on the Trinity in Western Early Medieval and Classic Arabic Theology

SummaryChristian theologians can explain the Trinitarian faith today in dialogue with Islamic thinkers as “deepened monotheism”. Therefore it is important to widen the systematic-theological discourse in an ecumenical and transcultural perspective and to retrieve resources from Western and non-Western traditions of Trinitarian thought (I).In this paper I will first work out historically that the Trinitarian creed of Nicea and Constantinople was originally an ecumenical but non-Western creed (II). Afterwards, I investigate the philosophical-theological reflection on the Trinity by Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) in the context of early interreligious encounters in the Latin West. Based on biblical, augustinian and Greek sources, he developed an approach to understand the mystery of the Trinity by rational arguments as “deepened monotheism” (III). Then I will proceed to explore the philosophical-theological dialogues on the Trinity from the Arabic philosopher and Syrian-orthodox theologian Yaḥyā ibn ‘Adī (893–974). Much earlier he developed rational arguments for the Triunity of God with reference to Aristotle. Thereby he answers to anti-trinitarian arguments from Islamic thinkers like al-Kindī and al-Warrāq. He intends that the Trinitarian faith of Christian minorities can thereby be understood and tolerated by Islamic thinkers as rationally founded “deepened monotheism” (IV).In the end I will evaluate what these classics from the Western and non-western traditions of Trinitarian thought contribute to explicate the doctrine of the Trinity today in a pluralistic religious context as “deepened monotheism” (V).