Faith as the Possibility of Reason in Anselm’s Monologion

Enjoy some thoughts from Dr. McIntosh!

Reluctantly composed at the behest of his fellow monks at the Abbey of Bec, the Monologion is Anselm’s “meditation” or “speaking to oneself” about God’s existence, nature, attributes, and triunity. Although his confreres mandated “that nothing at all in the meditation would be argued on Scriptural authority,” but that all his conclusions should be established by reason alone, Anselm at the same time expresses his conviction that nothing in his work is “inconsistent with the writings of the Catholic Fathers—especially with Blessed Augustine’s writings,” and invites his reader to carefully consider Augustine’s On the Trinity in particular and to judge his own work in light of it. Thus, while the arguments of the Monologion will nowhere formally presuppose or expressly rely for their support upon Scriptural or ecclesiastical authority, it goes without saying for Anselm that conformity with the latter is nevertheless a necessary condition for all theological and philosophical truth. According to Anselm’s method of faith seeking understanding, philosophical reason may not be confinable to the truths of revelation, yet they are the givens of Scripture and tradition, received by faith, that are the possibility of all properly theological reasoning.

The opening chapters of the Monologion are spent establishing God’s existence for the sake of an hypothetical unbeliever who is wholly ignorant of the divine nature. Articulating a methodological pluralism which will recur in later works such as his Cur Deus Homo, Anselm admits that there are in fact “many ways” in which God’s existence might be demonstrated, but that he will pursue the path he deems “most accessible” to the theologically untutored (Monol. 1). As much for Anselm as for Aquinas after him, one should adopt a certain pedagogical pragmatism within apologetics, beginning with man not in some epistemologically idealized state but as we actually find him. And even though Anselm is confident that God’s existence follows as “a necessary consequence” from the kinds of considerations from which he will make his start, he once again offers the caveat that in the course of his argument he may “say something that a greater authority does not teach.” From this possibility he draws the further, curious conclusion that his proofs are to be understood as achieving not an “absolute” but a merely “apparent” and provisional necessity. On Anselm’s “modality of reason,” reason alone may be competent to demonstrate certain truths about God, but its resulting certitude will naturally be limited to the extent to which its conclusion remains alone, unconfirmed by a prior, legitimating authority.

Consistent with his apologetic pragmatism, Anselm’s arguments for God’s existence begin not with those things that are (to borrow an Aquinian distinction) “first in themselves,” but those things that are “first for us,” namely those “good things whose very great variety we perceive by the bodily senses and distinguish by the mind’s reason” (Monol. 1). It is from this actualist starting point of things as they actually impinge upon our senses and our reason (and elicit our desire) that Anselm builds his case for God’s existence. In addition, therefore, to it being the givens of revelation and authority that help inspire, motivate, orient, and in that sense “make possible” the subsequent inquiries and discoveries of reason, philosophical reasoning also finds itself activated by—taking its cues and commands from—things as they actually exist. What God has actually created, including both the way he has made them (e.g., their goodness) and our ways of acting and being acted upon by them, is the prior condition for the possibility of our reasoning about the necessary conditions of their existence.

For more posts from Dr. McIntosh, visit “The Flame Imperishable.”

Interested in reading more about Anselm and his work?  Check out Tyndale’s collection for commentaries, companions, and of course the primary writings themselves.