Anselm and the argument for God
The ontological argument written at Bec
Anselm of Bec is a monk in Normandy who has spent years trying to understand his faith. He is not trying to prove God's existence to skeptics — he already believes. He is trying to understand what he believes, to find the rational structure beneath the faith, to do what Augustine called faith seeking understanding.
One night in the scriptorium, working through the problem that has occupied him for months, he finds what he is looking for.
The argument is deceptively simple. God, by definition, is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. But a being that exists only in the mind is lesser than a being that exists also in reality. Therefore if God exists only in the mind, something greater than God can be conceived — namely, the same being existing in reality. But nothing greater than God can be conceived. Therefore God must exist in reality.
The ontological argument, as it comes to be called, has been debated ever since. Kant refutes it. Descartes revives it. Plantinga reformulates it. The argument has been declared definitively dead and definitively alive so many times that it is beginning to seem immortal.
Anselm is not primarily interested in winning arguments. He is interested in understanding — in the faith that thinks, the love that reasons, the mind that has been captured by God and now wants to comprehend what has captured it.
Fides quaerens intellectum: faith seeking understanding. It is his motto and his life's project.
“I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I also believe that unless I believe, I shall not understand.”
— Anselm, Proslogion 1, c. 1078 AD
“and the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is Remaliah's son. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.”
Anselm's method — believing in order to understand — is the opposite of the modern assumption that you must first be convinced before you can commit.
He is not saying that reason is irrelevant. He is saying that the deepest understanding comes from inside the faith, not from a neutral position outside it. The person who commits to the relationship understands the relationship in ways the detached observer never can.
This is true in every deep relationship, not only religious ones. You understand marriage from inside marriage. You understand parenthood from inside parenthood. You understand friendship from inside friendship.
The faith that thinks is not the enemy of intellectual rigor. It is the precondition for the kind of understanding that matters most.
What would it mean to give your full intellectual capacity to understanding what you already believe?