From Augustine to Anselm: The Influence of de Trinitate on the Monologion 2503540864, 9782503540863

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CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements A Note on Translation . . . Abbreviations . . . . .

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. xi-xiii . xv-xvi . xvii-xviii

Introduction

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1–33

1. The Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate . . . 1. Introduction 2. The Monologion: Between Lanfranc and Augustine 3. The Content and the Form: Beyond Monastic Lectio 4. Augustine’s De trinitate and Medieval Theological Formation 5. De trinitate 15 and the Method of the Monologion 6. Conclusion

37–91

2. Anselm’s Greek Formula: A Pseudo-Augustinian Gloss 1. Introduction 2. Anselm, Boethius, and Individuation 3. The Monologion, Letter 83, and the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi 4. Persons and Substances: Three What? 5. A Common Nature and the Problem of Individuation 6. Augustinus Testatur: Letter 204 7. Conclusion: Anselm’s Pseudo-Augustine

93–147

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Part One: Approaching the Monologion

Part Two: A Reading of the Monologion 3. Anselm’s Three Ways . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction 2. An Invitation to Inquiry: Reason as Guide 3. The Good: Beyond Utility and Intrinsic Worth

151–208

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contents

4. The Nature of Existence and the Degrees of Dignity 5. Excursus: Anselm’s Three Ways and Aquinas’s Five Ways 6. Conclusion 4. De nihilo nihil: The Craftsman and the Supreme Utter- 209–262 ance 1. Introduction 2. Plato, Augustine, and Anselm’s “Creator” 3. Creatio ex nihilo and the Craftsman 4. De nihilo nihil and the Semantics of “Nothing” 5. The Supreme Nature and its Utterance 6. Concepts and Primary Substances 7. Conclusion 5. Creator Spiritus Simpliciter . . . . . 1. Introduction 2. On Predication: Substances and Relations 3. Truth, Eternity, and Timelessness 4. The Ratio of Time and Place 5. Boethius, Anselm, and Eternity 6. Spiritus Simpliciter 7. Conclusion

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263–301

6. Trinity and Mind . . . . . . . . . 1. Introduction 2. Trinitarian Simplicity: To Speak of the Ineffable 3. Trinity, Imperfection, and the Human Mind 4. Trinity and Reason 5. Imitation, Dissimilarity, and Equivocation 6. The Mind and Its Utterance 7. Sex, Gender, and Trinitarian Difference 8. A Common Nature: Reconsiderations 9. Anselm’s Trinitarian Analogies 10. Conclusion

303–384

7. The Criterion of Rationality: On Faith, the Ineffable, and the Love of the Good 1. Introduction

385–440

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2. De trinitate Book 13: The Book of Faith 3. Anselm’s Defense of His Method: A Preliminary Assessment 4. Language, the Limits of Reason, and the Understanding of Faith 5. The Mind, the Soul, and the Criterion of Rationality 6. Love, the Will, and the Indifferent Soul 7. On Naming God: The Trinitarian Good 8. Conclusion

Conclusion .

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441–453

Epilogue

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455–460

Bibliography

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461–485

Indexes

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487–497

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Anselm’s Monologion did not have the most auspicious early reception. Its first reviewer, Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Anselm’s former teacher, disapproved and suggested a change in its methodology and style. Anselm himself did not help the fortunes of the Monologion by giving it what can only be described as a bad review in the preface to its shorter and more evocative sequel, the Proslogion. Anselm’s expression of his own disappointment about the interconnected nature of the Monologion’s arguments, coupled with the analytic style of the work, has meant that few students of Anselm’s thought actually read the Monologion. I tried to avoid the Monologion as much as possible, but came to the conclusion that I could not, but not merely because of its style. As Anselm’s first major theological work, it is unquestionable that this is where one ought to begin any study of Anselm as a theological or philosophical thinker; which is to say, Anselm’s intellectual biography is not possible without understanding its arguments and why Anselm was so persuaded by them. This book is the second volume in a three-part project on Anselm’s theological and philosophical biography. The first part of the project, a study of Anselm’s career at Bec, tells the story of Anselm’s arrival at Bec as a student at Lanfranc’s school and his subsequent transformation of the intellectual life at Bec after succeeding Lanfranc as the Prior of Bec only four years after Anselm’s enrollment there. That study pays particular attention to Anselm’s relationship to Lanfranc and the differences that obtained between them, the kinds of intellectual practices Anselm encouraged, and how those practices shaped Bec during Anselm’s long tenure. The work also considers what became of Anselm’s legacy at Bec. This current study deals exclusively with the Monologion. I offer an interpretation of the Monologion in order to explore the nature of Anselm’s relationship to the ancient and early medieval Christian tradition, and in particular his relationship to Augustine of Hippo, or “blessed Augustine,” as Anselm referred to him. This book is also the first full-length study of the Monologion that examines

XII

preface and acknowledgements

the influence of Augustine’s De trinitate on the Monologion. Subsequent to this, I shall take up the works that Anselm wrote after the Monologion and offer an interpretation of that corpus to delineate further not only the influence of the Monologion on those works, but also Anselm’s continued appropriation of Augustine’s thought: from the Proslogion, which immediately followed the Monologion, to the De concordia of his last years. What follows is a reading and an interpretation of the Monologion that resists all the inducements to read it as a prelude to the Proslogion. My study is not meant to replace an actual reading of the Monologion. That experience is one worth having, since no interpretation or paraphrase can capture the feeling of wading through Anselm’s analytic arguments. To think that Anselm conceived the Monologion as a model meditation for his fellow monks, and that he expected them (and his other readers) to work through his arguments as an exercise in contemplating the divine nature, is a sobering thought. Unlike Anselm, I cannot claim that I have provided here anything like an exercise in contemplating the divine nature. What is more, I have concentrated a lot of attention on Anselm’s handling of objections, so I might even be deemed to be undermining Anselm’s objective. And yet, this seems to me unavoidable, since Anselm expresses great confidence in answering objections both sensible and fatuous. What I provide here, then, is a critical companion to the Monologion and Anselm’s first formulations of his philosophical theology. Anyone who has been engaged in the field of Anselm studies quickly recognizes the importance of the work of R. W. Southern. It was my first reading of Southern’s view of the Monologion and his assessment of Anselm’s relationship to Augustine that set me on the journey that has culminated in this book. I remain in Southern’s debt even as I offer an alternative interpretation to the one he proposed about Anselm’s relationship to Augustine and the nature of Anselm’s theological method. I have also been helped greatly by the excellent resources of recent studies on Anselm and the intellectual culture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. And I hope I have indicated in the course of my discussion the sense of my indebtedness. Two scholars deserve special mention for reading through an earlier version of the manuscript, Frederick Van Fleteren of the

preface and acknowledgements

XIII

International Anselm Committee and Phillip Cary of Eastern University, who made a number of helpful suggestions for improving the manuscript. I should also not fail to mention the anonymous reviewers for Brepols for their comments. And last but not least, I would like to thank my research assistant, Leonard Wills of Emory University, for his invaluable work on the manuscript. Needless to say, the deficiencies that remain are entirely mine. The book is dedicated to two benefactors: Dr. J. A. Odoom of Amstelveen, The Netherlands, and Mr. James Rushton of Birmingham, Alabama.

A NOTE ON TRANSLATION For Anselm’s letters, I have used The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols., translated and annotated by Walter Fröhlich (Kalamazoo, MI.: Cistercian Publications, 1990–1994). For the Monologion, I have consulted, adopted, adapted and sometimes amended any of the following four translations: Saint Anselm: Basic Writings, translated by S. N. Deane (LaSalle, IL.: Open Court Classics, 1962), pp. 81–190; Thomas Williams, Monologion and Proslogion with the Replies of Gaunilo and Anselm (Indianapolis, IN.: Hackett Publishers, 1996); Jasper Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation of St. Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion (Minneapolis, MN.: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1986); Simon Harrison: “Monologion” in Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited with an introduction by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 5–81. On a few occasions I provide my own rendition of the text. I indicate these in the footnotes. For Augustine’s De trinitate, I have used in a few instances Stephen McKenna’s translation, Saint Augustine: The Trinity. The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963). Most of the time, I have followed Edmund Hill’s translation, Saint Augustine: The Trinity. The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1991). As the reader will note, I often add the phrase “slightly amended,” in connection with the translations. What I mean by the phrase is that I have changed a few of the words in the translation. The following examples will illustrate what I mean. Hill often translates the word essentia as “being.” Given how the word “being” functions in Western metaphysics, I prefer the less loaded, “essence,” and reserve “being” for ens or esse. Similarly, where Jasper Hopkins translates locutio as “expression,” I prefer “utterance.” These minor word changes are the basis for my repeated references to “slightly amended.” When the changes involve more than a few words I simply say, “amended.”

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a note on translation

On Latin orthography, I have followed the convention for the Corpus Christianorum series, which means that I have used consonantal “u” throughout, and have altered all the sources that I have cited accordingly.

ABBREVIATIONS ACW

Ancient Christian Writers. New York/Mahwah, NJ.: Paulist Press, 1946– .

AHDLMA

Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litéraire du moyen âge.

AS I

Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal I. Edited by Marjorie Chibnall, Gillian Evans, and D. P. Henry. London: Kraus International, 1983.

AS II

Anselm Studies: An Occasional Journal II. Edited by Joseph C. Schnaubelt, Thomas A. Losoncy, and Frederick Van Fleteren. London: Kraus International, 1988.

AS III

Anselm Studies III. Twenty-Five Years (1969–1994) of Anselm Studies: Review and Critique of Recent Scholarly Views. Edited by Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt. Lewiston, NY.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996

CA

Collectanea Augustiniana. New York and Amsterdam: Peter Lang, 1990– .

CCCM

Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis

CCM III

Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum, T. III. Decreta Lanfranci Monachis Canturiensibus Transmissa. Ed., David Knowles. Sieburg, Franciscus Schmitt, 1967.

CCSL

Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina

CSEL

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

FC

The Fathers of the Church. Washington, DC.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947– .

Fröhlich, Letters The Letters of Anselm of Canterbury, 3 vols. Translated and annotated with an introduction by Walter Fröhlich. Cistercian Studies Series 96, 97, 142. Kalamazoo, MI.: Cistercian Publications, 1990–1994. GC

The Works of Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster. Edited by Anna Sapir Abulafia and G. R. Evans. London: Oxford Unversity Press, published for the British Academy. 1986.

XVIII

abbreviations

HN

Eadmeri Historia Novorum in Anglia. Edited by M. Rule. London, 1884, repr. 1965; translated by G. Bosanquet. London, 1964.

LCC

Library of Christian Classics. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953–66.

MARS

Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies

Memorials

Memorials of St. Anselm. Edited by R. W. Southern and F. S. Schmitt. London: The British Academy / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.

OV

The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols. Edited and translated by Marjorie Chibnall. Oxford Medieval Texts, Oxford, 1969–1980.

PG

Patrologia Graeca

PL

Patrologia Latina

RTAM

Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale

S

Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia, 6 vols. Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1938–61.

SB I

Spicilegium Beccense, I, Congrès international du IXe centenaire de l’arrivée d’Anselme au Bec. Paris: Vrin, 1959.

SB II

Spicilegium Beccense, II, Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe–XIIe siècles. Actes du colloque international du C.N.R.S. Etudes anselmiennes. IVe session, Le Bec, 11–16 juillet 1982. Paris 1984.

SC

Sources chrétiennes

ST

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

VA

The Life of St. Anselm Archbishop of Canterbury by Eadmer. Edited with introduction, notes and translation by R. W. Southern. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.

VB

Vita Bosonis (PL 150, cols. 723–32)

VH

Vita Herluini. In Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster, edited by J. Armitage Robinson, 87–110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911.

VL

Vita Lanfranci (PL 150, cols. 29–58)

INTRODUCTION It is difficult to imagine any major Western medieval thinker escaping the influence of Augustine, given the number of medieval manuscripts of Augustine’s works spread throughout Europe.1 At the same time, the exact nature of Augustine’s influence on particular figures in the medieval Western tradition is not always

1 On the general history of the manuscript evidence of Augustine’s major works (Confessiones, De trinitate, De civitate Dei, Enarrationes in Psalmos) disseminated throughout the Middle Ages see André Wilmart, “La tradition des grandes ouvrages de Saint Augustin,” in Miscellanea Agostiniana. Testi e Studi. Volume 2. Studi Agostiniani (Rome: Tipografia Pliglotta Vaticana 1931), pp. 257–315. On the extensive listings of Augustine manuscripts from medieval libraries see Manfred Oberleitner, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band I/1 Italien: Werkverzeichnis (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1969); idem, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band I/2 Italien: Werkverzeichnis nach Bibliotheken (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1970); Franz Römer, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung der werke des Heiligen Augustinus. Band II/1 Gross Britannien und Irland: Werkverzeichnis (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1972); idem, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung der werke des Heiligen Augustinus. Band II/2 Gross Britannien und Irland: Verseichnis nach Bbibliotheken (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1972); idem, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band III Polen, Anhang: Die Skandinavishen Staaten Dänemark - Finnland - Schweden (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1973); Johannes Divjak, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band IV Spanien und Portugal: Werkverzeichnis nach Bibliotheken (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1974); Rainer Kurz, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band V/1 Bundesrepublik Deutschland und West Berlin Verzeichnis (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1979); idem, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band V/2 Bundesrepublik Deutschland und West Berlin Verzeichnis Nach Bibliotheken (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1979); Dorothea Weber, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band VI/1 Österireich Werkverzeichnis (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1993); idem, Die Handschriftliche Überlieferung Der Werke Des Heiligen Augustinus, Band VI/2 Österireich Werkverzeichnis (Wien: Der Österreichischen Akademie Der Wissenschaften, 1993).

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INTRODUCTION

easy to delineate.2 In the works of someone like Anselm, who claims Augustine’s influence, it can easily be taken for granted. One recent symposium on Augustine and Anselm highlights this.3 Although the proceedings of the conference demonstrated various points of affinity between Augustine and Anselm and other areas of dependence of the latter on the former, it left relatively untouched the question of how Anselm understood the nature and scope of Augustine’s influence on him; and as a corollary, the extent to which Anselm’s distinctive view of the place of dialectic (or logic) in theology is influenced by Augustine. One way to approach these questions is to examine Anselm’s first major theological work, the Monologion. Few among Anselm’s contemporaries seem to have read the Monologion, and fewer still among his later interpreters have taken it seriously enough to study it. And while its sequel, the Proslogion, has captivated readers and elicited a great deal of philosophical commentary especially within the last century, we have only the testament of a sole critic, Gaunilo of Marmoutier (near Tours), to offer us a glimpse of how someone outside Anselm’s immediate circle read his Proslogion soon after it was written. Friendly in his criticism, Gaunilo’s decision to put those criticisms into written form bequeathed to the later tradition a rare sample of the nature of theological and philosophical criticism within the monastic culture of the late eleventh century. The Monologion elicited nothing of this textual bequest, though it certainly engendered criticism, provoking at least one controversy with Archbishop Lanfranc, Anselm’s former teacher, and a memorable response from Anselm in Letter 77. Because we do not possess Lanfranc’s objections to the Monologion in textual form it is difficult to discern the exact terms in which he formulated those objections, which in turn undercuts our ability to appreciate fully the nature of Anselm’s response to Lanfranc. What about other potential critics? Why weren’t any forthcoming, even though Anselm seemed to hint at such critics in 2

See the detailed and highly suggestive articles in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols., edited by Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill 1997). 3 Anselm Studies II. Proceedings of the Fifth International Saint Anselm Conference: St Anselm and St. Augustine, Episcopi Ad Saecula. Edited by Joseph C. Schnaubelt, Thomas A. Losoncy, Frederick Van Fleteren and Jill A. Frederick (New York: Kraus International Publications, 1988).

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Letter 83 to Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian in Poitiers? And, why of all people, didn’t Abbot Rainald, himself a master, living in an environment tinged with anxiety about Berengar of Tours and the Eucharistic controversy, alert Anselm to the potentially damaging problem in the preface to the Monologion on Christian language about the Trinity? Without a work like Gaunilo’s Pro Insipiente, which spurred Anselm to write a Responsio, one can only guess what Anselm’s eleventh-century readers made of the Monologion. The evidence of Lanfranc’s initial criticism is highly suggestive. The same can be said of Archbishop Hugh of Lyon’s approval of the work, coming a few years after Anselm had written the Proslogion. But neither Lanfranc’s objections nor Hugh’s approval helps us to gain any sense of what other readers among Anselm’s contemporaries made of the Monologion. It is also intriguing that although Gaunilo would have known of the Monologion’s existence from the preface to the Proslogion, he seems not to have been interested in it. Gaunilo’s interest in attending to the unum argumentum of the Proslogion rather than the interconnected chain of arguments in the Monologion (which he may or may not have had a copy of) reflects a tendency that continues among Anselm’s interpreters. This proclivity often overlooks the fact that the Monologion continued to be important in its own right for Anselm. He made references to it in his later works. While Anselm’s interpreters have demonstrated their preference for the Proslogion, the Monologion has not entirely escaped recent scholarly attention. Two important works by Paul Gilbert and Italo Sciuto have done much to correct this historical imbalance. And a recent study by Chung-Mi Hwangbo provides evidence that it is still of theological and philosophical relevance.4 Besides these three monographs, other studies have appeared as part of larger 4 Paul Gilbert, Dire L’ineffable: Lecture de ‘Monologion’ de S. Anselme (Paris: Lethielleux, 1984); Italo Sciuto, La ragione della fede: Il Monologion e il programma filosofico di Anselmo d’Aosta (Genova: Marietti, 1991); and Chung-Mi Hwangbo, Urteilskraft und Gotteserkenntnis: Zur Argumentationsstruktur im Monologion des Anselm von Canterbury (Freiburg / Munich: Karl Alber, 2007). Hwangbo refers to Paul Gilbert’s article, “Id est summum omnium quae sunt,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, 82 (1984), pp. 199–223, but not the book of the same year. I have also not found any references to Italo Sciuto’s book in Hwangbo’s work.

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INTRODUCTION

inquiries dealing with Anselm or focused on particular sections of the Monologion.5 It should be noted, however, that the majority of these studies are mostly focused on the first four chapters of the Monologion, so the greater bulk of the work has received scant attention and very little scholarly commentary. While Kurt Flasch, Paul Gilbert, F. S. Schmitt, Italo Sciuto, Paul Vignaux, and others point to the first four chapters (M 1–4) as the methodological center of the Monologion, Chung-Mi Hwangbo turns to chapter 15 (M 15) and to the phrase, “whatever it is altogether better to be than not to be” (quidquid melius omnino ipsum quam non ipsum).6 Hwangbo proposes an interpretation that almost defies Anselm’s own characterization of his project and the centrality of the arguments in the first four chapters of the Monologion. According to Hwangbo, quidquid melius omnino ipsum quam non ipsum is the framework that explains the argumentative structure of the Monologion. It is intriguing that Anselm should have postponed articulating this until after he had set forth the metaphysi-

5 The most relevant for my purposes are the following: Paul Vignaux, “Structure et sens du Monologion.” Revue des sciences philosophique et théologique, 31 (1947), pp. 193–212; idem, “La méthode de saint Anselme dans le Monologion et le Proslogion.” Aquinas, 8 (1965), pp. 110–118; idem, “Nécessité des raisons dans le Monologion,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologique, 64 (1980), pp. 3–25; Wayne Hankey, “The Place of Psychological Images of the Trinity in the Arguments of Augustine’s De trinitate, Anselm’s Monologion, and Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae,” Dionysius, 3 (1979), pp. 99–110; Stephen Gersh, “Anselm of Canterbury,” in A History of Twelfth Century Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 255–278; and the analysis of the Monologion in G. R. Evans’s Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), as well as the general conspectus offered by Jasper Hopkins’s A Companion to St. Anselm (Minneapolis, MN.: University of Minnesota Press, 1972). Another study which deals with the Monologion but does not offer a complete analysis of the whole work is Gregory Schufreider’s Confessions of A Rational Mystic: Anselm’s Early Writings (West Lafayette, Indiana: Perdue University Press, 1993). See also in particular Klaus Kienzler, Glauben und Denken bei Anselm von Canterbury (Freiburg: Herder, 1981), pp. 71–134; 158–175; as well as Helmut K. Kohlenberger, “Konsequenzen and Inkonsequenzen der Trinitätslehre in Anselms Monologion,” Analecta Anselmiana, 5 (1973), pp. 149–78. 6 See, for example, Kurt Flasch, “Die philosophische Ansatz des Anselm von Canterbury in Monologion und sein Verhältnis zum Augustinischen Neuplatonismus,” Analecta Anselmiana, 2 (1970), pp. 15–43; and F. S. Schmitt, “Anselm und der (Neu-)Platonismus,” Analecta Anselmiana I, (1969), pp, 39–71.

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cal structure of his thought in M 1–4. Still, Hwangbo’s emphasis on M 15 is distinctive. The phrase quidquid melius omnino ipsum quam non ipsum clearly lies behind the Proslogion’s aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest: “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” However, in the context of M 15, it serves a heuristic function questioning how we can speak appropriately about the supreme nature. It is similar in some ways to Anselm’s comments about the logic of comparison in the opening chapters. For Anselm, the fact that we often compare things as more or less “this” or “that” shows that some things are clearly better than others, and therefore there must be something that is the best of all. If, then, the supreme nature possesses the greatest dignity, it ought to be spoken of always in terms of what it is better to be than not to be. This is the upshot of Anselm’s use of the phrase. My approach to the Monologion is similar to Sciuto’s, but with one major difference. Sciuto’s work appeared at about the same time as Saint Anselm: A Portrait in A Landscape, R. W. Southern’s final testament of his lifelong study of Anselm, which revises and consolidates his interpretation of Anselm since his much earlier Saint Anselm and His Biographer.7 Southern’s final statement on Anselm’s early intellectual development, the role of Lanfranc in that history, the relationship between Augustine and Anselm, and what role the Monologion plays in all these issues constitute the essential starting point for any assessment of Anselm’s theological and philosophical development. Because every student of Anselm is indebted to Southern, the lines of interpretation he details in his final work on Anselm require our attention. Although it is rarely given its full weight in interpretations of Anselm’s achievement, no outline of the history of Anselm’s intellectual development can afford to overlook Anselm’s claim of the Monologion’s relationship to Augustine’s De trinitate. It should not be mentioned cursorily as if it mattered little to our understanding of Anselm’s thought; nor should it be taken for granted without much further explication. All too often Anselm’s interpreters do both. Southern’s final testament tends in this direction as well,

7 R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm and His Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963).

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and in the process seems to put in doubt this central claim of Anselm’s. It may be asked why the author of a work devoted to meditating on the divine nature, written in the eleventh century, with thirtyfive of its eighty chapters devoted to proving the Christian doctrine of the Trinity,8 should be thought unreliable and disingenuous when he insists that his work depends on Augustine’s De trinitate. If nothing else the extensive copying of Augustine’s works, including De trinitate, in the medieval centuries and the general nature of Augustine’s authority during those centuries, should incline Anselm’s interpreters towards erring on the side of the truthfulness of his claim. And if there are serious doubts, because anyone could claim Augustine’s influence without the scantest textual foundation, then Anselm’s insistence that De trinitate is the inspiration and source of the arguments for his Monologion requires special consideration.9 It should not be dismissed as perfunctory, treated as mere commonplace, nor underestimated. It offers the opportunity to examine exactly how an important medieval thinker like Anselm, on the cusp of the explosion of learning in the early twelfth century, made use of a specific theological resource in a climate of controversy that was in many ways not the most conducive to the kind of inquiry he attempted. In addition, the fact that Anselm turned to De trinitate at a time when Lanfranc and most of the important writers among his older contemporaries were writing on the Eucharistic controversy is a possible indication of Anselm’s desire to strike out in a new direction.10 8

Incidentally, Chung-Mi Hwangbo’s Urteilskraft und Gotteserkenntnis: Zur Argumentationsstruktur im Monologion des Anselm von Canterbury, pp. 291–292, provides comment on chapters 39–63, part of the section of the Monologion (M 29–63) where Anselm discusses the Trinity. 9 It may be of interest that an important recent collection of essays on Augustine’s De trinitate does not include a piece on Anselm in a section devoted to the medieval reception of the work, although it includes two essays on Thomas Aquinas. See Johannes Brachtendorf (ed.), Gott und sein Bild: Augustins De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwärtiger Forschung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000). 10 The most comprehensive history of the controversy and the conflict between Lanfranc and Berengar is to be found in Jean de Montclos, Lanfranc et Berengar: La controversie eucharistique du XIe siècle (Louvain, 1971). The much earlier study by A. J. Macdonald, Berengar and The Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, 1930) is still worth consulting; as well as Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Mod-

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In another study,11 I have described the intellectual culture that Anselm created at Bec after the departure of Lanfranc in 1063 only four years after Anselm’s arrival, and how it turned out that in the early 1070s Anselm’s fellow monks came to expect that he could write a work like the Monologion. Some of this was made possible by the recommendations in Chapter 48 of the Rule of St. Benedict regarding the yearly readings of individual monks that commenced every Lent. With the evidence of a sample of Augustine’s works which appear in a catalog of one of these yearly readings, it is possible to construct a picture of how an individual Benedictine monk could pursue a personal course of study to provide the background for a work such as the Monologion.12 Consequently, I argue that Anselm’s personal education in the years leading up to the Monologion involved at least two things: first, a deep immersion in Augustine’s De trinitate; and second, an appreciation and use of dialectic in theological discourse that was significantly different from Lanfranc. Both provide the background for Anselm’s claim about the Monologion’s dependence on De trinitate, his use of propositional logic and analytic argumentation in the Monologion, and his assertion regarding one of his critics (probably Lanfranc) that the critic in question did not know Augustine’s thought or the use of the language of substance in Trinitarian theology as well as the critic presumed. The reason for my particular focus on the Monologion to the exclusion of its sequel, the Proslogion, is simply this: even though the Proslogion supersedes the Monologion it does not replace it. Compared to the thirty-five of the eighty chapters of the Monologion that prove the doctrine of the Trinity, only one of the twenty-six chapters of the Proslogion deals with the subject, and not so much as to present a proof as merely to assert the doctrine. Moreover, the mood of the Proslogion differs significantly from the els of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 272–325; and more recently, Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 118–141; and Charles M. Radding and Francis Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078–1079 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 1–31. 11 F. B. A. Asiedu, Insignificant Man: Anselm of Bec (forthcoming). 12 André Wilmart, “Le convent et la bibliothèque de Cluny vers le milieu du XIe siècle,” Revue Mabillon, 11 (1921), pp. 89–124.

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INTRODUCTION

Monologion, and is much closer to the mood of Anselm’s prayers and meditations. This difference could be stated minimally as the difference between the classroom and the chapel. And so while both the Monologion and the Proslogion speak of contemplating God, the exercises implied by the analytic arguments of the former require more competence in dialectic than the latter, in spite of the central role that the so-called “ontological” argument plays in the Proslogion. Thirdly, while Anselm rarely uses the word deus in the Monologion, it is profuse in the Proslogion, where he spends much of his time describing and praising the various attributes of God. And fourthly, scriptural quotations abound in the Proslogion, a far cry from the approach in the Monologion that Anselm describes as sola ratione. All of this is to say that the Proslogion is not designed to do the analytic work and the meditation on the Trinity that the Monologion proposes. Even the proof that Anselm mounts in the first four chapters of the Monologion about the existence of the one supreme nature cannot be reduced to the “ontological” argument in the Proslogion, although that was the aim of Anselm’s search for that “one argument” (unum argumentum). Anselm certainly expressed disappointment about the interconnected chain of arguments that make up the Monologion. He, nevertheless, continued to return to the Monologion as background for some of his later works, and sometimes encouraged his readers to go back to the Monologion, as he does, for example, in his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, written nearly two decades later. The Monologion functions programmatically in Anselm’s thought. So it is not only the Proslogion that depends on the Monologion but other later works as well. It is, as I have suggested, Anselm’s first attempt at trying to shape the theological sensibilities of his contemporaries, so exercised by the Eucharistic controversy, beyond what he had already done with some of his earliest prayers and meditations.13 But can we say with Anselmian confidence that almost all of the instigation for his theological originality in the Monologion comes from Augustine and De trinitate? Most recently, and partly inspired by Southern, G. E. M. Gasper has revived the subject of Anselm’s theological sources by putting 13 For works written in relation to the Eucharistic controversy among Anselm’s contemporaries, see Jean de Montclos, Lanfranc et Bérengar, pp. 28–29.

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into question Anselm’s insistence on the near-exclusive Augustinian influence on his thought, shifting the focus away from Augustine to Anselm’s possible Greek sources.14 Anselm’s claim of Augustine’s De trinitate as the foundational text for his theological formation and the inspiration and source for some of the central arguments of the Monologion is therefore in doubt. And the fact that Gasper proposes an alternative history of Anselm’s theological development when we still do not possess a clear sense of Anselm’s selfproclaimed Augustinian tutelage is significant. Gasper’s monograph is not designed to test Anselm’s claim, even as he proposes an alternative. And at no point does Gasper consider this as somehow a defect in his proposal. Alternatively, Stephen Gersh’s earlier article, “Anselm of Canterbury,” provides in relatively short compass a summary of how the arguments of the Monologion draw upon specific themes and discussions in Augustine’s De trinitate.15 Gersh asks, at one point, the following question: “If Augustine is the principal influence upon this book, whose central theme is an investigation of the nature of God by means of reason, is he also the source for the notion of reason contained there?”16 Gersh answers in the affirmative. Part of his justification is that there are two senses of reason employed in the Monologion: the theological and the psychological. By “the psychological sense” Gersh means reason simply described as an aspect of the human soul, and by “the theological sense” he means reason conceived as an aspect of the divine nature. As “we peruse the text,” Gersh writes, “we quickly discover that the senses of reason which have been categorized as theological and psychological are paramount here, and these senses are undeniably the most prominent although not the exclusive ones in De trinitate and other works of Augustine.” “If this is the case,” he asserts, “then we can learn much about the structure and purpose of the eleventh-century treatise by comparing it with its predecessor on specific points.”17 What I hope to provide in my discussion is some delineation of this: comparing the Monologion with De trinitate on 14 G. E. M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and His Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 15 Stephen Gersh, “Anselm of Canterbury.” 16 Ibid., pp. 262–263. 17 Ibid., p. 263.

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specific points, with De trinitate Book 15 as an important hermeneutical key to the Monologion. In the course of this I shall also touch on some other recent interpretations of certain aspects of the Monologion. I do this selectively. The point of this is to show the relevance of the Monologion to some contemporary discussions and why some of the arguments of Anselm’s model meditation on the divine nature still bear serious consideration. Given the absence of documentary evidence of readers’ responses to the Monologion, one can only surmise as to how Anselm’s contemporaries made their way through its many arguments. But even before a reader could make his way through the work, he needed some sense of what type of text the Monologion is. Did he have anything like it in his possession? Had he encountered something of this sort in the monastic library? Did he need any training in the logica uetus to prepare him for what Anselm had in store? Or would it have been enough to know the elementary rules of syllogistic argument and logical inference as contained in a work like Anselm’s De Grammatico in order to follow the arguments of the Monologion? Alternatively, was the Monologion some new creation hitherto unknown, spouting novelties that bordered on falsehoods? Or was it all so familiar that the reader could see that Anselm had taken what was the common stock-in-trade of the study of dialectic and transformed it into a program of inquiry that joined both theological and philosophical sensibilities in one seamless whole? One of the few studies that has been interested in Anselm’s Monologion enough to appreciate its place in medieval intellectual history is Brian Stock’s highly influential The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and the Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Stock’s interpretation of the place of the Monologion in the literary and educational culture of the eleventh century is the most comprehensive attempt at describing the genre of the Monologion that we possess. And it suggests an approach to the Monologion that tries to answer some of the questions that would have confronted anyone who encountered the work without knowing Anselm’s dialectical tendencies. Stock’s construal of the making of the Monologion, his conception of its genre, and his understanding of Anselm’s expectations of the work should help focus attention on the links between the Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate. It will become clear that, in spite of its highly syllogistic form, the question of the Monologion’s genre cannot be

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divorced from Augustine’s De trinitate. Stock hardly mentions De trinitate, however. The link between the Monologion and De trinitate may also explain why the Monologion sits so awkwardly in an eleventh-century environment dominated by the Eucharistic controversy. Stock begins his discussion of the Monologion’s unique place in eleventh-century thought and literary culture by questioning M. Grabmann’s almost century-old description of Anselm as the “father of scholasticism,” a moniker that continues to be used of Anselm in spite of its limitations.18 Stock argues that Anselm embraced both “monastic” and “scholastic” ways of thinking because Anselm “fervently believed in prayer, mysticism, and supreme values; yet he pursued logic, factuality, and the resolution of opposed views.”19 Stock remarks that the qualities of an individual thinker like Anselm cannot be reduced to “a combination of cultural forces active at the time they wrote.” And yet, “Anselm returns so often to basic problems involving written language that they can be considered an undercurrent to his more overtly theological concerns.”20 About the Monologion itself Stock writes that Anselm makes a number of observations about the oral and the written which are programmatic. Stock proceeds as follows: “We may make the change as he sees it a little more specific. He previously discussed the themes of the meditation in ordinary language (usitato sermone colloquendo). While retaining these qualities as interior reflections, he now wishes to record them in writing (meditatio exemplo describem). In the term exemplum he suggests a copy, a transcript, or, in a special sense, a proof.”21 Stock describes Anselm as “writing down a ‘meditation’ which formally existed only in verbal form.”22 Anselm describes the origin of his work as emerging out of conversations he used to have with his confreres. The point is that behind his written words lie a whole series of conversations during which he provided responses to the many questions posed by his students 18

Steven P. Marrone, “Medieval Philosophy in Context,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. S. McGrade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 10–50. 19 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 329–300. 20 Ibid., p. 311. 21 Ibid., p. 332. 22 Ibid., p. 331.

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INTRODUCTION

and the other confreres at Bec. Those conversations stand behind the text of the Monologion. Certainly, a conversation among the brothers would be a verbal experience. But should we speak of it as a meditation in verbal form? Anselm uses exemplum to suggest a model that others can follow. Does it also mean that exemplum is a copy, so that one can refer to the Monologion as a transcript? To say that what he used to discuss with his brethren is a transcript of Anselm’s interior reflections also sounds peculiar. The way Anselm describes what he was required to do seems rather basic: “We have heard these arguments in conversation. Now write it out in a plain style in a straightforward manner so that we will have a model of how we should meditate on the rationality of what we believe.” Something along these lines fits the nature of the request perfectly. If we are permitted to speak of interior reflections at all, they are nothing more than Anselm’s expressed posture of arguing like a person reflecting on things that he had not thought of before. Other than that he was expected to give his fellow monks a model meditation reflecting the kinds of arguments he had been presenting to them in conversation. If Anselm had written the Monologion as a dialogue the way he wrote De Grammatico, for example, we would not think of “interior reflections,” since a dialogue entails within its form a conversational structure. More important than whether the meditation is a transcript of interior reflections is how a model meditation differs from a manual of instruction that Anselm could have provided his students. Stock proposes that Anselm’s statement of intentions be read on two levels. The first has to do with “the relationship of the completed text to its reading audience;” the second, with Anselm’s “own process of literary production.”23 “In composing the Monologion,” Stock argues, “Anselm effectively replaced a living audience with a reading public… The written product was intended to be of practical use, and therefore, presumably, subject to further discussion.”24 This differentiation is fascinating, but it is also unclear what the difference is between a living audience and a reading public, if not the distinction between speech and writing, oral communication and written discourse. 23 24

Ibid., p. 333. Ibid.

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Other than Anselm’s students and confreres at Bec, not many would have known before the Monologion the kind of dialectical and analytic theology Anselm was capable of. They may also not have seen theological discourse in this form before. They could not presuppose an already settled set of convictions disseminated to them during conversations with the author. For the monks at Bec the arguments presented in the Monologion were not entirely novel. They had heard some of them before during regular conversations with Anselm. What was new for them was the permanence of the text containing the arguments. Stock qualifies his position, somewhat, and in so doing seems to alter aspects of his earlier description of the Monologion. Stock maintains that the Monologion “as a text comprised a statement of principles rather than a recorded interchange between a master and his students. Moreover, the monastic audience was assumed in part at least to be less erudite than the author.” So, the work “can therefore be assumed to have been designed to bridge the gap between the more and less learned monk.”25 This brings up Stock’s earlier argument that the Monologion is a transcript, a copy, even a proof,26 containing a record of Anselm’s personal reflections. But the notion of a statement of principles seems to detract from the work as a series of well-argued chapters. There are arguments, objections, counterarguments, and so on. The work has a dialogical structure even though it is not in the form of a dialogue. The objections could very easily have been put in the mouth of an interlocutor. And Anselm more than once does something like this when he uses the impersonal, “someone might say” (dicitur), in framing an objection. Perhaps what Stock means by “bridging the gap” between the less and more erudite is that the more erudite could already undertake the kind of inquiry attested in the Monologion whereas the less erudite needed this manual as an example to follow. And then there is Lanfranc. Lanfranc could hardly be considered a less erudite person, and yet he found the Monologion problematic. If Lanfranc can be taken as a guide, then “the more learned” could be just as baffled by Anselm’s method as anyone. Lanfranc was no longer at Bec, but he belonged to the community that consisted of 25 26

Ibid. Ibid., p. 332.

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INTRODUCTION

Bec and its daughter houses.27 And so was Maurice, the most solicitous of all of the monks who demanded the work. Maurice was at Canterbury with Lanfranc when Anselm completed the work. So the readership involved a wider world beyond Bec. In constructing the social world of the text consideration needs to be given to the respective roles played by Lanfranc and Maurice, the latter as the implied reader of the Monologion and the former as its first critic.28 Stock, however, makes no reference to Lanfranc’s disagreement with Anselm over the Monologion in his discussion about the nature of the Monologion and what kind of text it is. Nor does he mention Maurice, who was the one person Anselm would have had in mind as a reader of the Monologion, even though Stock’s major focus is on how Anselm must have imagined his work in relation to its putative audience. If we also take note of the Monologion as a point of departure for De veritate and the latter as indication of the difficulty of the Monologion for some of Anselm’s readers, then we have to construct a more complex framework to appreciate Anselm’s expectations and the ease or difficulty his readers encountered. It should be acknowledged at a minimum that the Monologion could be as unsettling to the learned as to the unlearned. In Letter 83 Anselm makes clear to Abbot Rainald that the last person he wants as a reader for the Monologion is someone untrained in dialectic, someone talkative and quarrelsome who would be desirous of criticizing what he does not understand. Anselm wished to have readers who would be competent and patient enough to appreciate the stated objective of the work before venturing to be critics. So in its most basic sense, Anselm knew from Maurice and the other monks who had requested the work just what type of reader he wanted for the Monologion. He became more convinced of the nature of his achievement in the aftermath of the controversy with Lanfranc and the reception by Hugh of Lyon. If Anselm had entertained serious doubts about his intended objective, he would have altered the nature of the work to meet Lanfranc’s criticism. But Anselm did not modify the work, and for very specific reasons to do with his methodology and his 27

See Sally N. Vaughn, The Abbey of Bec, 23–41; idem, Anselm of Bec and Robert of Meulan: The Innocence of the Dove and the Wisdom of the Serpent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 19–105. 28 See Anselm, Epistola 72, 74, and 77.

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conviction that nothing he had presented in the Monologion went against the Catholic fathers or the arguments of Augustine in De trinitate. In light of Stock’s own later attempt to describe the nature of reading consciousness in the Western tradition and Augustine’s influence on it, Stock’s omission here raises a few questions, since in his later study on Augustine the reader, he makes much of Augustine’s De trinitate.29 M. B. Pranger, following upon Stock’s portrait of Augustine the reader, juxtaposes Anselm’s claims about the Monologion and De trinitate with Anselm’s description of his project. According to Pranger, the Monologion “is not a reading of and a subsequent rumination on Scripture as a means to come closer to God. It is rather to be called a meditation on a meditation, a reading of a reading.” So “it goes without saying that this introduction of an extratextual layer into the meditation, which further claims to produce a seamless reproduction of Augustine’s thought, leaves the present reader altogether puzzled as to the status of the sola ratione.”30 Noticeably, while so many of Anselm’s interpreters simply dismiss the connection and its relevance to interpreting the Monologion, Pranger expresses puzzlement. In spite of Pranger’s statement about a “meditation on a meditation,” he also sees a conflict between the Monologion’s claim and its supposed dependence on Augustine. But he reminds us that “before we can resolve the questions raised by the apparent conflict of interest between Anselm’s sola ratione and his fidelity to Augustine’s De trinitate, we should test Anselm’s claim to be faithful to Augustine and examine whether the Monologion can indeed be seen as a seamless imitation of De trinitate.”31 Even if the Monologion turns out not to be a “seamless imitation of Augustine’s thought,” Pranger’s words underscore the simple fact that before anyone can pronounce on the nature of the Monologion’s textuality one must come to terms with its relationship to De trinitate. Stock’s description of the nature of the Monologion and his analysis of its compositional history depend on a number of theoretical 29 Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader: Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and the Ethics of Interpretation (Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press, 1996). 30 M. B. Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 163. 31 Ibid., p. 166.

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claims that are at odds with Anselm’s stated intentions in the preface to the Monologion. Stock, for example, proposes two audiences: one real and public, the other fictive and internal to Anselm’s own mind. This is meant to supplement the earlier view about Anselm writing for the less erudite monks; it is also intended to frame how Anselm imagined his reading public. Stock writes: To put the matter another way, there are two types of audiences, one real, one fictive… The audience within his mind is in principle oral, the wider public is presumed to be dependant on writing. Through the latter, Anselm becomes one of the first authors to conceive of a reading public in the modern sense. Indeed, the assumption of an abstract audience helps to guide the presentation of his thoughts as the Monologion progresses.32

The notion of Anselm’s originality as “one of the first authors to conceive of a reading public in the modern sense” is an intriguing one, especially because the Monologion was not the first work Anselm wrote for a “reading public.” Nor was it the first thing he ever produced for others as a model for their own practices. Anselm had already done this with his prayers and meditations written before the Monologion. He made this point in Letter 10 to princess Adelaide, the daughter of William the Conqueror to whom Anselm wrote one of his earliest extant letters (c. 1071). Anselm mentioned in that letter that along with some “flowers of the psalms” (flores psalmorum) he was sending along seven prayers, one of which was more a meditation than a prayer, an allusion to his Meditatio 1 (a meditation to stir up the fear of God in the heart). He then encouraged princess Adelaide to use the prayers as a model for her spiritual practices. In Letter 28 to his friend Gundulf Anselm speaks of having written a great prayer to Mary at the repeated request of another brother, and then finding himself dissatisfied once he had sent the first prayer along. Not only had he composed a second prayer to Mary, he had now composed a third and was submitting it to Gundulf for his assessment, because he was equally dissatisfied with the second. Anselm was not yet an abbot when he wrote this letter to Gundulf. He may even have written it much earlier, and it probably antedates the Monologion or is contemporary with it. The letters to Adelaide and Gundulf, as

32

Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, p. 333.

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well as Letter 70 from Abbot Durand of La Chaise-Dieu show that before the Monologion Anselm had a readership outside Bec, and that this audience knew Anselm as a devotional poet. Moreover, as Letter 55 makes abundantly clear, a collection of these prayers existed as an identifiable body of Anselm’s writings. Anselm also knew that reading was not quite the same as conversation. The tradition of monastic lectio, to which he belonged, often described the practice of meditative reading as “chewing over a text” (as a kind of gastronomical experience).33 Anselm would have had an instinctive sense of the difference between the transitory nature of a speaker’s words and the material fixity of a text. That is precisely the point he underscores in the preface when he talks about writing the Monologion and how others were copying it in order to commit it to posterity. His fellow monks wanted a fixed text they could return to again and again. Anselm committed some of his prayers to writing for this very reason. As the master of studies at Bec and the one responsible for the education of his fellow monks, Anselm did not have to imagine a fictive audience. Most writers try to anticipate how their written works will be read, unless of course the author writes so well that the writing reads itself.34 And how a work is read belongs to the phenomenology of writing and reading consciousness. But if one already has a readership, as Anselm had at Bec, one would not have to imagine what that readership would do with the work. Stock’s inference that the so-called fictive audience is in principle oral is problematic, as is the expression, “audience within the mind,” which he adopts to make the distinction between the oral and the written. Like many writers in the literary Christian circles of late antique and early medieval monastic culture, Anselm could assume without argument that there was a “reading public,” if one wants to speak in these terms. Furthermore, in Anselm’s case, as I have mentioned, he already had a reading public before he wrote the Monologion. So the notion that “an abstract audience helps to guide the presentation of his thoughts as the Monologion progresses” may 33 See Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study in Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), pp. 12–19; pp. 71–73. 34 I take this idea from Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition. (New York: Continuum, 1990).

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need correction. Anselm’s earliest writings and letters do not figure in Stock’s construction of the kind of writing and reading culture to which Anselm belonged at Bec. Although Stock invokes the conception of literature as production,35 he does not consider how Anselm’s practices in the scriptorium at Bec, practices mentioned by his first biographer Eadmer, affected, influenced, or attest to Anselm’s conception of education, instruction, literacy, and the notion of literature. Although Stock does not present it as such, his conception of how Anselm transfers what he had in his mind onto the written page for it to become the Monologion reads like Anselm’s description of the craftsman and his art. Of course, Anselm himself does not describe the art of writing and the manner in which he composed the Monologion to be in any way like the conception a craftsman or a painter forms in his mind before actually executing that image in a recognizable physical form. This probably explains why even though Stock comments on Anselm’s description of how a craftsman’s creation compares to what the craftsman has in mind before he creates,36 he does not relate Anselm’s description of the craftsman to his own description of Anselm’s production of the Monologion. In any case, the distinction between the oral nature of what the “fictive dialoguer” receives from Anselm and the written, textual nature of the Monologion meant for a “real” reading poses a problem, as Stock acknowledges that “Anselm nowhere explicitly refers to the contrast between the oral and the written.” Stock still goes on to insist that the Monologion is based on an “oral meditative dialogue” by shifting his focus to the role of reason in theology. But he does not believe that this detracts in any way from his description of the Monologion. He writes that Anselm’s “defense of reason’s role in theology is heavily influenced by his notion of written language.” And adds that: Indeed, intima locutio could more accurately be called a contextualization than a rationalization. Not only is his literary product a written example of oral meditative dialogue. His ratio is also modeled along the lines of words in sentences. Just as the biblical text leads the uninitiated into the secrets of divinity, so Reason now

35 36

Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, p. 333. Ibid., pp. 339–340.

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guides his inquisitive mind into the untravelled pathways of formal theology.37

Stock considers Anselm’s “oral meditative dialogue” put into written form an anticipation of the scholastic questio “in which the spoken dialectic of the two parties is transformed into a written presentation of opposed positions.”38 This appears to reprise Grabmann’s description of Anselm as the father of scholasticism.39 The justification Stock provides does not resolve the difficulties in his description of the Monologion’s genre. And while Stock refers to some of the relevant Anselmian texts, as he discusses both De veritate and De Grammatico,40 what is incontestable is that De Grammatico and the De veritate both attest to Anselm’s concern with meaning and how it is expressed in speech, texts, and acts.41 What may also be problematic is that Stock follows a highly controversial view by D. P. Henry that Anselm prefers a technical philosophical language to ordinary language in the De Grammatico.42 As for the reception of the Monologion and Stock’s understanding of its general appeal, it might be useful to consider the scope of Anselm’s impact by examining one instance in which the Monologion is not even mentioned by someone who knew Anselm quite well. The contemporary who offers this counterpoint is Guibert of Nogent. Guibert describes his interactions with Anselm in such a way as to impress the reader of his autobiography with a sense of his easy familiarity with Anselm. Guibert even mentions that his mother too was known to Anselm, and comments on other events so as to give the impression of extended contacts with Anselm. Guibert highlights Anselm’s role in his education, or more precisely in his moral or spiritual interpretation of scripture to order his life. Anselm plays the role of Guibert’s spiritual director. Guibert describes how Anselm helped him approach biblical texts by point-

37

Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, p. 343. Ibid. 39 Ibid., p. 329. 40 Ibid., pp. 325ff. 41 See more recently P. King, “Anselm’s Philosophy of Language,” in The Cambridge Companion to Saint Anselm, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–110. 42 For example, Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy, pp. 358–359. 38

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ing him to Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job. In spite of the general esteem in which he held Anselm of Bec, and despite the role he accords Anselm in his approach to interpreting scripture, Guibert had his sights set elsewhere when he described the general state of the liberal arts among his contemporaries. He looked toward the masters of Laon, mentioning Masters Anselm and Ralph of Laon in the most glowing terms as the very representation of the liberal arts in France. Guibert does not make any allusions about Anselm of Bec in this regard, although he had known Anselm since his time as Prior of Bec. Guibert writes that Anselm used to visit his monastery at Saint-Germer de Fly both before and after Anselm became abbot. It is surprising that Guibert does not even hint at Anselm’s mastery of logic or dialectic; and just as extraordinary that he does not mention the Monologion or any of Anselm’s works. Guibert seemed to have his own interests, and Anselm appears to have guided him along the paths to which Guibert himself felt inclined. So in spite of Anselm’s role in encouraging Guibert in his scriptural studies, showing him how to apply his studies to the moral life, Anselm probably did not suggest the Monologion to Guibert as an exemplary text to aid in his practice of meditating on the rationality of faith. Or if he did Guibert is silent about it. This latter prospect seems rather unlikely for a couple of reasons. First, if Guibert had received any of Anselm’s works, he would have mentioned them, since Guibert was intent on showing how Anselm had invited him into his friendship even though Guibert was a mere lad when he first encountered the then Prior of Bec. Secondly, Guibert was keen on touting the glories of Masters Ralph and Anselm of Loan as the most estimable teachers of his day, and it is doubtful he would have been reticent about Anselm’s accomplishments if he had encountered the Monologion or the Proslogion for that matter. Certainly, Hugh of Lyon thought much of Anselm when the Monologion and Proslogion came into his hands, and there is no reason to think Guibert would have been less impressed. Jay Rubenstein’s recent work on Guibert also demonstrates the depth of Anselm’s influence on Guibert’s thought, including Guibert’s affinity for Anselm’s Trinitarian language. It is telling in this regard that Guibert appears not to have known Anselm’s Trinitarian arguments in the Monologion, so that when Rubenstein discusses Guibert’s terminology he turns to the sayings

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gathered in the Memorials of St. Anselm for possible attestation as to where Guibert’s language matches Anselm’s. The point of all this is that someone like Guibert who knew Anselm personally over an extended period of time, and who also claims to have been influenced by him, could still be in the dark about one of Anselm’s most important works. One of Anselm’s younger contemporaries, the Norman historian Orderic Vitalis, lists among Anselm’s works, “De trinitate, De ueritate, De libero arbitrio, De casu diaboli, et Cur Deus homo.”43 Orderic’s list is incomplete and he also has two of the works on his list improperly titled. The particular order in which he lists them suggests that Orderic’s De trinitate is the Monologion and his De libero arbitrio is De libertate arbitrii.44 The three works that follow Orderic’s mention of De trinitate are the ones Anselm collectively called the Tres Tractatus (the Three Treatises). The three works also depend on the Monologion, in that the first takes chapter 18 of the Monologion as its point of departure. Although there is at least one twelfth century manuscript that describes Anselm’s Epistola de incarnatione Verbi as his De fide trinitatis ad Vrbanum Papam,45 it is unlikely that Orderic meant the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi and not the Monologion. Furthermore, Anselm mentions at the very end of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi that he has treated the subject of the Trinity in more expansive detail in the Monologion following the arguments of Augustine’s De trinitate. So if any of his contemporaries had missed the reference to Augustine’s De trinitate in the preface to the Monologion, they would not miss it when they read the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. The only reason they would call the latter his De trinitate is if they ignored the Monologion completely and also overlooked the fact that the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi serves as a kind of postscript to the Monologion on the subject of the incarnation, which Anselm acknowledges he left out of the Monologion. And I might add, the title De fide trinitatis ad Vrbanum Papam is descriptive of the content of the Epis-

43

OV 2, 296. Cf. Richard Sharpe, “Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century,” Journal of Medieval Latin, 19 (2009), pp. 1–87; reference is to p. 61. 45 Ibid., p. 34, n. 85. 44

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tola de incarnatione Verbi and should not be glossed simply as “De trinitate” in the way Orderic begins his list.46 It is interesting that Orderic uses in two instances the respective titles of Augustine’s works for Anselm’s works. The case of De libero arbitrio for De libertate arbitrii is perhaps unintentional and unexceptional. But the former is distinctive because it labels the work so differently from what Anselm called it in his various attempts to give it a proper name: from Monoloquium, to Exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei, to finally Monologion. From Orderic’s statement we can also surmise that it was more likely that even those who knew of the existence of the Monologion did not necessarily know of its arguments, only that the work was about the Trinity. This kind of neglect is different from the prospect that few could take up Anselm’s challenge that they ought to know Augustine’s De trinitate well in order to be able to judge the Monologion. Anselm aided in the comparative neglect of the Monologion because of the background he provides in the preface to the Proslogion about the origins of the latter work. Anselm’s reference to his own dissatisfaction with the interconnected chain of arguments in the Monologion as the impetus for his great discovery of the “one argument” (the so-called ontological argument) and the writing of the Proslogion gives permission unwittingly to whoever might want to overlook the Monologion in preference for the Proslogion. Most of his medieval interpreters who knew of the two works would easily have sought refuge in the Proslogion’s brevity and evocative language. His most recent interpreters have behaved accordingly. The upshot of this is that situating Anselm’s Monologion within the literary and theological culture of the late eleventh century proves to be much more problematic than Stock’s analysis suggests. In spite of its importance in Anselm’s biography, its usefulness to those who requested it, and the few hardy souls outside of Bec who may actually have read it, the Monologion was probably not well known nor widely read for it to contribute to the history of literacy in the eleventh century. What then can be said for Anselm’s achievement other than the fact that the Monologion is the precursor to the Proslogion, the work on which so much of his later reputation hangs? The answer here may lie in something 46 See, alternatively, Richard Sharpe, “Anselm as Author: Publishing in the Late Eleventh Century,” p. 65.

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that I have already alluded to: the different theological program the Monologion announces in an environment of theological controversy centered on Eucharistic thought that had dominated the eleventh century since the Roman council of 1050. For those who came across its analytic arguments, the Monologion offered an entirely new theological program, both in content and form. In my complementary study that I alluded to earlier, I have described Anselm’s love of learning and how coming to Bec to pursue his studies with Lanfranc turned out quite different from what Anselm had first imagined. I argue in that work that with Lanfranc’s departure Anselm’s new libertas allowed him to pursue his studies in a way that best suited his temperament. For Anselm this meant that his love of dialectic could be an integral part of his spiritual exercises.47 And although the Monologion rarely gets mentioned as a work on spiritual exercises it requires us to broaden our conception of spiritual disciplines. Anselm’s highly syllogistic approach places propositional logic at the center of his notion of contemplation in the Monologion, as is expressed in the descriptive title, exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei. For example, the meditative practices entailed in working through the arguments of the Monologion suggest something quite different from the practices underwritten by Anselm’s prayers and meditations. Which is why although the Proslogion receives its impetus from the Monologion, the latter is much closer in form to Anselm’s later dialogues, which make up the Three Treatises, than to the Proslogion. My reading of the Monologion is not meant to replace a direct reading of the work itself. I proceed with four objectives. First, I will read Anselm’s Monologion with Augustine’s De trinitate in mind. This means that I will show how Anselm appropriates Augustine’s work and also how he sometimes proposes different interpretations than Augustine’s when the subject under consideration is not directly addressed in De trinitate. The reason for doing this is to test Anselm’s charge to his potential critics that they first read De trinitate diligently and then judge the Monologion by it. Second, my reading will be a critical reading, and will not paraphrase the Monologion. This means that I will raise questions about Anselm’s arguments in order to ascertain whether Anselm handles 47

VA 15.

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the objections to his arguments as well as he claims. I take this approach because those who requested the Monologion imposed an important obligation on Anselm regarding objections to his arguments. They demanded that Anselm not overlook any objections, not even the silliest. My intention is to test how well Anselm fulfilled this requirement. It will be critical for my purposes to ascertain how Anselm sets up the various objections and how he handles them. This will affect the tone of my presentation, because I may end up posing more questions about Anselm’s answers to objections than providing answers to those objections. Third, I shall address on a few occasions some of Anselm’s most recent interpreters whose arguments about certain chapters of the Monologion deal with the relationship between Anselm and Augustine and the nature of Anselm’s method. My forays in this regard will be highly selective, which is to say that the reader should not expect a full engagement at every turn with contemporary interpretations of Anselm’s entire corpus but only those interpretations that specifically address the Monologion and the respective chapters of the Monologion. And fourth, throughout my reading, I shall provide just enough background about the kind of intellectual resources that would have been available to Anselm’s fellow monks and his putative readers of so-called average intelligence in late eleventh-century Normandy. This means that I will not situate Anselm’s arguments in a grand narrative of ancient and early medieval philosophical reflection. I shall only mention or allude to texts that likely shaped the Monologion’s first readers. On occasion, I shall compare Anselm to some twelfth-century thinkers to highlight the distinctiveness of his approach. My reading may be idiosyncratic at times, given the themes that I highlight and the objections I elect for consideration. I trust, however, that by doing this, even if selectively, I will be able to capture some of the sentiments and the puzzlement of Anselm’s early readers as they worked their way through Anselm’s interconnected chain of arguments. It is important to keep in mind that the intellectual ambience at Bec at the time of Anselm’s writing of the Monologion can only be described indirectly. First, from the standpoint of the Monologion itself; second, from the evidence of antecedent sources behind Anselm’s De Grammatico, the exercise in disputation that Anselm wrote for his fellow monks as an introduction to dialectic (logic);

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and third, the evidence provided by Lanfranc’s commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, a work that was completed before Anselm arrived at Bec in 1059, and to which Anselm makes references in his letters in the period before the Monologion. The earliest version of Lanfranc’s commentary on the Pauline epistles which was at Bec when Anselm arrived there point to Lanfranc’s use of Cicero’s Topica.48 This complements Lanfranc’s annotations on Cicero’s De inuentione and other notes on the Rhetorica Ad Herennium.49 There is little or no evidence in the commentary on Paul that Lanfranc used the texts of the logica uetus, comprising of Aristotle’s De interpretatione, the Categoriae, Porphyry’s Isagoge (or Introduction to Aristotle’s Categoriae), and Boethius’s commentaries: one on Aristotle’s Categoriae, and two each on Porphyry’s Isagoge and Aristotle’s De interpretatione. If Lanfranc knew the works of the logica uetus, his commentary on Paul is indifferent to them and does not employ them, even though later interpolations into manuscripts of the commentary add a lot of material to make it appear as if Lanfranc used dialectical terminology in the commentary.50 Anselm’s De Grammatico, on the other hand, points to Anselm’s knowledge of the logica uetus. Anselm mentions Aristotle specifically on five different occasions in De Grammatico. He mentions Aristotle’s Categoriae twice, and points to the De interpretatione on at least one occasion when he refers to “the treatise” Aristotle wrote on a specific topic (chapter 13). Anselm takes it for granted that his readers at Bec are familiar with both Aristotle’s Categoriae and the De interpretatione. And even though Anselm does not mention Boethius or Porphyry in De Grammatico, it is likely he was familiar with Porphyry’s Isagoge and some of Boethius’s commentaries.51 The Monologion itself bears witness to Anselm’s knowledge 48 Ann Collins, Teacher in Faith and Virtue: Lanfranc of Bec’s Commentary on Saint Paul. Commentaria. Sacred Texts and Their Commentaries: Jewish, Christian, and Islamic I (Leiden: Brill, 2007), p. 97. 49 Margaret Gibson, “Lanfranc’s Notes On Patristic Texts,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 22 (1971), pp. 435–50; and R. W. Hunt, “Studies in Priscian in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies, I (1943), pp. 194–231. 50 Ann Collins, Teacher in Faith and Virtue, pp. 53–54; pp. 76–85 51 See most recently Peter Boschung, From A Topical Point of View: Dialectic in Anselm of Canterbury’s De Grammatico (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

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of Plato’s Timaeus in the version provided by Calcidius, Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, and Book IV of Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra, the Contra Eutychen. What is significant is that most of the logical works that were present at Bec when Anselm wrote the Monologion were either not there when Anselm arrived in 1059 or are not attested in Lanfranc’s commentary at Bec. They do not appear to have been part of the instruction Anselm received from Lanfranc between 1059 and 1063, when Lanfranc left Bec for Caen. The presence of the works on logic points to Anselm’s reshaping of the intellectual environment at Bec. The final words of De Grammatico speak to this directly. Anselm expected his fellow monks to be able to think clearly and engage in dialectical argumentation: all prerequisites for reading the Monologion. Hence the final words of the De Grammatico that even if others are able to present arguments that challenge the conclusions of the De Grammatico, the work still provides the reader (or the student in the dialogue) an exercise in the art of disputation. Anselm subsequently states that in the Monologion he writes as one disputing with himself. I shall pursue my discussion here of the Monologion in two parts. The first part will involve two studies that variously attempt to assess how we should approach the Monologion. Both have something to contribute to our understanding of the Monologion’s relationship to Augustine’s De trinitate. I begin with R. W. Southern’s attempt to place the Monologion in Anselm’s intellectual itinerary. Southern offers an interpretation that tries to weigh the respective influences of Augustine and Lanfranc in Anselm’s development leading up to and including the Monologion. I will review Southern’s assessment of Lanfranc’s role in Anselm’s education, Augustine’s influence in Anselm’s intellectual development, and the impact of both on the Monologion. While Southern underscores Augustine’s unquestionable influence on Anselm, he is also ambivalent about it and comes close to questioning the veracity of Anselm’s claim that the Monologion is dependent on Augustine’s De trinitate. At the same time, Southern reiterates, by paraphrasing in a somewhat ironic way, Anselm’s charge to his potential critics to repeat the experience that led him to the kinds of arguments that he makes in the Monologion.

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After the review of Southern’s arguments, I turn next to Anselm’s statement of intentions about the Monologion. Given the nature of its reception both by his contemporaries and its relative neglect subsequently, the Monologion presents its interpreters and potential critics with a few challenges about what to make of the work. Unlike some of Anselm’s interpreters who are often hard-pressed about his statement of intention, I follow Anselm’s advice about the work’s lineage and its connections to Augustine’s De trinitate, stated in the preface of the Monologion, and suggest how this might be pursued. I try to follow Anselm’s charge to his would-be critic to first study Augustine’s De trinitate diligently and then judge the Monologion by it. This mostly-overlooked admonition remains one of the most important ways of approaching the Monologion and I offer some initial comments as to why a careful look at De trinitate Book 15 suggests a preliminary working outline of how to proceed. In a nutshell, Chapter 1 makes the case for Anselm’s dependence on Augustine and the inextricable link between the Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate. I do not intend this to be a claim that one cannot understand Anselm’s arguments in the Monologion if one has not read De trinitate. Anselm did not expect every one of his readers to know De trinitate in order to understand him. In fact, one of the requirements imposed upon him, he claims, is that the work ought to stand on its own without any appeal to authorities. Presupposing De trinitate as a prerequisite or appealing to it would have amounted to an appeal to authority. The reader who approaches the Monologion as a manual for his own meditation on the divine essence like the monks of Bec does not have to know anything about Augustine’s De trinitate to use the Monologion. A critic, on the other hand, cannot begin to assess Anselm’s achievement in the Monologion without reference to Augustine’s De trinitate. Simply put, one cannot appreciate what is distinctive about Anselm’s contribution to eleventh-century theology and Trinitarian thought without knowing what similarities and differences obtain between the Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate. Because so much rides on Anselm’s claim of Augustinian dependence and his various attempts to preclude objections to the novelty of his approach, it comes as a surprise that, immediately after mentioning Augustine’s De trinitate in the preface in an attempt to preempt criticism, Anselm makes an assertion that has the poten-

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tial of eliciting some of the most damaging criticism of his work. To explore this problem, I take up in Chapter 2 Anselm’s use of the phrase, “three substances in one person,” which I call Anselm’s Greek formula. Anselm presents this formula as an appropriate way of speaking about the Trinity. I include in my inquiry chapter 79 of the Monologion (M 79), with its discussion of the language of person and substance, and examine extensively Anselm’s attribution of this particular phrase to Augustine and whether both the argument in M 79 and the attribution to Augustine are as Augustinian as Anselm claims. To put it gently, Anselm’s Greek formula and his later claim to have found it in Augustine’s De trinitate cast a shadow over his appeals to Augustine’s authority, and raise questions about his appropriation of Augustine’s authority and the supposedly Augustinian basis of the Monologion. In addition, my discussion also raises the question whether Anselm’s position on Trinitarian language is nominalist. This too has an Augustinian angle. The central issue here is whether the word “Trinity” is a name that signifies something “three-in-one” but does not reveal much understanding about how the three are one, or even what the three are. To call Anselm a nominalist will occasion disbelief, since Anselm is often described as opposing the nominalism of Roscelin of Compiègne (c. 1050 – c. 1125). But this characterization needs to be rethought in light of recent work by Yukio Iwakuma, Constant Mews, John Marenbon, Peter King, and others about the distinctions which eleventh-century writers make centering on the use of uoces (sounds, words) and of what or who they meant by “vocalists.” It seems more appropriate to say that, in objecting to Roscelin and “false dialecticians,” Anselm was arguing against vocalism and not what became known as nominalism in the twelfth century, although the two are related. I argue that in agreement with Augustine’s views in De trinitate, Anselm believes that language about the supreme nature (or God) will always be inadequate. Anselm concedes that he would much rather say “I do not know what” (nescio quid) than to venture to say what the three in the Trinity are. It is in this sense too that I describe Anselm as a “nominalist.” Anselm’s Augustinian nominalism has little to do with the problem of universals as such, but it is relevant to Anselm’s problems with the vocalists. There may already be some intimation of this in Anselm’s De Grammatico where he deals with the differences among contemporary grammar-

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ians and dialecticians. Whether this makes Anselm inconsistent I leave to the reader’s judgment. For his part, Anselm distinguishes between the incapacity of language to fully represent reality and skepticism about being able to name and signify existent things. I suggest that Anselm’s Augustinian nominalism was probably the catalyst towards the invention of his Greek formula. I describe Anselm’s Greek formula as a pseudo-Augustinian gloss. How did this come about? First, Augustine’s language about “person” and “substance” in De trinitate encouraged Anselm’s own skepticism about the propriety of using these two words to speak about the Trinity. And second, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Anselm was convinced that he had derived the formula from Augustine’s De trinitate, although the exact expression does not appear in De trinitate. This means that Anselm’s claim about Augustinian dependence cannot be taken at face value. It needs to be probed to see the exact contours of that dependence. But there can be little doubt that Anselm’s Augustinian nominalism diffuses the potential problem inherent in the Trinitarian phrase, “three substances in one person.” After these two methodological studies, I take up my reading of the Monologion, which constitutes part two of the work. My reading of the Monologion is divided into five chapters, and traces the outlines of Anselm’s arguments according to the following scheme: M 1–4; M 5–14; M 15–28; M 29–63; and M 64–78. The initial set of arguments in M 1–4 lay out a metaphysical construct about the one supreme nature which Anselm spends M 5–28 explicating, before entering the more specifically Trinitarian part of his argumentation with the section from M 29 through M 63. After two important chapters devoted to defending the intelligibility of his inquiries and the reasonableness of his method (M 64–65), Anselm presents a description of the itinerary of the soul and the way towards beatitude in M 66–78. These later chapters evoke the mood of Anselm’s devotional poetry and provide the rationale for Anselm’s invitation at the beginning of M 1 to potential fellow travelers and other reluctant inquirers. Chapter 79 (M 79), which I discuss in connection with Anselm’s Greek formula, together with the concluding chapter 80 (M 80), stand as two appendices to the main body of the work.

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My discussion in Chapter 3 attends to the initial set of arguments in the first four chapters of the Monologion to assess just how Augustinian they are. In addition to laying out his argument for the existence of one supreme nature in these early chapters, Anselm also provides certain methodological clues as to how he wants the work to be interpreted. He states his expectations of his readers and the expressed goal of his investigations. M 1–4 form the centerpiece of the project, and could easily be described as Anselm’s “Meditations on First Philosophy,” to borrow the title of René Descartes’ well-known meditations by that name. Much closer in spirit to Anselm’s concerns are the arguments presented in Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, which postdate Anselm’s Monologion by almost two centuries. I shall venture a comparison between what I refer to as “Anselm’s Three Ways” and the famous Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas as an excursus to illuminate Anselm’s view. This is a comparison that I think is long overdue, hence my attempting it here. Although it goes beyond the historical context of the Monologion, it should help us appreciate Anselm’s achievement especially given R. W. Southern’s comments about Anselm’s method in relation to Aquinas. Anselm’s Three Ways center on the following themes: 1) The conception of the good; 2) The nature of existence; and 3) The degrees of dignity among existent things. I try to argue that Anselm’s Three Ways of proving that there is one supreme nature, the supreme good, who creates and sustains all that exists by his goodness, may offer a much more coherent approach than Aquinas’s Five Ways for proving the existence of God. We will see the impress of Augustine’s De trinitate and why Anselm begins with the argument from the good as the easiest and most accessible way of proving the existence of God. Anselm’s Three Ways also show him to be deeply committed to a metaphysical outlook whose outlines are Augustinian: not only with his emphasis on the good, but also with the distinction between those things that exist per se and those that exist per aliud, and of the various grades of existence depending on how existent things are related to the good. Chapter 4 takes up Anselm’s arguments in M 5–14. My discussion begins with a comment on the phrase de nihilo nihil (nothing comes from nothing), and goes on to show how Anselm responds to the settled convictions entailed in the phrase by proposing a version of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Anselm holds a

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distinctive view: ex nihilo means just that, “out of nothing.” This means that the supreme essence did not create anything through pre-existent matter, or matter that was created before all other things, or through any other instrumental cause. Anselm’s doctrine seems to oppose not only the language found in the opening chapters of Genesis but also the well-established tradition in Christian thought on creatio ex nihilo as involving the creation of matter and all other material things through it. I suggest that Anselm’s position is influenced by his knowledge of certain aspects of the Platonic view of creation in the Timaeus and that Anselm may have been responding to the version of the Timaeus transmitted to the Middle Ages by Calcidius, which contains a materialist strain he was determined to oppose. The subject of creatio ex nihilo in the Monologion also offers an insight as to how Anselm addresses a theme that is not explicitly dealt with in any significant sense in Augustine’s De trinitate. This opens a window into Anselm’s ingenuity, and also raises a few questions about Anselm’s Augustinian credentials. Did Anselm know Augustine’s view on creation in its fullest expression, and if he did, why would he hold a position that is far stricter and more problematic than Augustine’s? This potential difference notwithstanding, Anselm is on sure Augustinian footing when he insists that the supreme nature creates ex nihilo by his utterance, an utterance that is consubstantial with his essence. So while he departs from Augustine with his strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, he holds fast to the insight that sustains Augustine’s Trinitarian thought, namely the divine utterance that creates all things. The discussion in Chapter 5 follows Anselm’s arguments in M 15–28. Anselm looks back to Book 5 of De trinitate where Augustine begins his analysis of the problem of predication as it relates to God. For Anselm this is an obvious starting point in inquiring into human speech about the ineffable. It provides the opportunity to consider what kind of language is appropriate when speaking about the supreme nature. After explaining the problem of predication, Anselm considers how the supreme nature exists, and in particular the supreme nature’s relation to time and place. The chapter ends with Anselm’s designation of the supreme nature as creator-spirit (creator spiritus). This new designation of the supreme essence prepares the way for Anselm’s subsequent discussion of the

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plurality in the supreme nature and the notion of the Trinity in M 29–63, which is the focus of my deliberations in Chapter 6. Determined as he is not to be confounded by reason, Anselm offers in his by now patented analytic style different arguments for explaining Trinitarian language and other elements of Trinitarian thought. He follows Augustine’s notion of a Trinitarian conception of the human mind and rehearses Augustine’s central arguments. My discussion in Chapter 6 concludes with a review of how Anselm’s triad of memory, understanding, and love reformulates Augustine’s triad of memory, understanding, and will, and how Anselm’s reformulation is often misrepresented as a departure from Augustine. In M 64–65 Anselm offers another justification of his method comparable to the one in M 1–4. This serves as the opening for my discussion in Chapter 7, from which point I proceed to explain Anselm’s view of the good as the criterion of rationality. The connection between the good and human rationality helps Anselm to link his argument for the existence of the good (M 1–4) with his description of the itinerary of the soul (M 66–78). It also allows Anselm to describe the final end of each soul as both the result of rational or irrational choice (as the case may be) and of divine justice, and to insist that each soul receives its just reward. Anselm commends the good to the desiring soul that does not despise the true end for which it was made. Anselm’s deliberations in M 66–78 make abundantly clear that the objective of the Monologion is to direct the soul’s attention towards its truest destiny. The exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei is therefore not merely an analytic exercise, but a spiritual pedagogy. So whatever may be gained in the interconnected chain of arguments is subservient to the more fundamental goal of contemplating the good, the one supreme nature. Incidentally, the themes raised in this section of the Monologion are the very ones that frame Anselm’s contemplation in the Proslogion, with its meditations on the justice, goodness, and mercy of God, from the evocative opening prayer to its concluding chapter. This part of the Monologion is also more scriptural, raising questions about Anselm’s claims about not appealing to scripture. The last chapter of the Monologion (M 80) underscores how much Anselm conceived of the work as a spiritual regimen intended to aid the reader in his

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contemplation of the divine nature; an exercitatio mentis, as elaborated in Augustine’s De trinitate. I should like to reiterate that the inextricable link between De trinitate and the Monologion is part of a much larger theme involving Anselm’s appropriation of Augustine’s thought throughout his career. Given this enduring legacy of Augustinian meditations in his works from the Monologion (1075/76) to De concordia (1107/08) it makes little sense to ignore Anselm’s claim about the importance of De trinitate for the Monologion; and even less sense to presume that Anselm did not mean it when he said that one had to read De trinitate diligently in order to judge the Monologion’s achievement. If anyone doubts it, they simply have to repeat the experience, as Southern suggested. This study, then, demonstrates the following. Anselm’s claim about Augustinian dependence should not be taken for granted nor dismissed as mere cover for his own inventiveness, and that his use of Augustine’s De trinitate involves a deep familiarity with Augustine’s arguments. Anselm’s dependence on Augustine’s De trinitate and his understanding of the exercitatio mentis, as Augustine describes it in De trinitate Book 15, means that he approaches the problem of the relationship between dialectic and theology quite differently from how Lanfranc and some of his contemporaries did. As such the Monologion holds a unique place in the intellectual history of the eleventh century quite apart from its relationship to the Proslogion. So, in spite of the ambivalence that some of Anselm’s recent interpreters have shown towards his claim of Augustinian influence, the best way to approach the origins of the Monologion’s arguments and its conception of meditating on the divine nature is to begin with Augustine’s De trinitate. At the risk of overstating the case, the Monologion remains one of the most original readings and interpretations of Augustine’s De trinitate in the medieval centuries. If that is not always obvious to Anselm’s interpreters, it is probably because Anselm’s interpreters do not always follow through on his admonition to read Augustine’s De trinitate first and judge the Monologion by it.

PART I APPROACHING THE MONOLOGION

Chapter One The Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate

1. Introduction The Monologion marks a significant shift in the focus of theological thought in the latter half of the eleventh century. For more than two decades before the Monologion, the focus of theological thought had been the Eucharistic controversy and a series of condemnations of Berengar of Tours at Rome (1050 and 1059), Vercelli (1050), Brionne (1050), Lisieux (1064) and Poitiers (1075).1 In addition to these condemnations, the controversy was a major subject of discussion at other councils in Anjou, Normandy, and in the Kingdom of France.2 The controversy received its final resolution at the Lenten council at Rome in 1079.3 Along the way Lanfranc emerged as one of the most important controversialists of his generation, with his De corpore et sanguine Domini, written while he was at Caen (1063–1070), as his crowning achievement. The condemnation of Berengar of Tours at the Council of Lisieux in 10644 is particularly significant for our assessment of Anselm, his relationship to Lanfranc, and the significance of the Monologion in that relationship, as well as the possible links between Anselm’s theological interests, the Eucharistic controversy, and Lanfranc’s De corpore et sanguine Domini. The Council of Lisieux gives us 1

For a most recent review see Charles M. Radding and Francis Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078–1079, pp. 1–31. 2 For the full list see Jean de Montclos, Lanfranc et Bérengar, pp. 562–563. 3 For a brief overview of the papacy’s concern and involvement in the controversy, see H. E. J. Cowdrey, “The Papacy and the Berengarian Controversy,” in Auctoritas und Ratio: Studien zu Berengar von Tours, edited by Peter Granz, R. B. C. Huygens, and Friedrich Niewohner (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 109–138. 4 Léopold Delisle, “Canons du concile tenu à Lisieux en 1064,” Journal des Savants, (1901), pp. 516–21. Cf. Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France 11 (Paris, 1876), col. 529 A–C.

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reason to believe that Anselm’s silence about the Eucharistic controversy was deliberate and his choice of subject matter for the Monologion no mere happenstance. First, this particular condemnation of Berengar’s teaching took place not in Rome, northern Italy (Vercelli), Anjou (Angers) or Tours but in Normandy, only about 20 miles west-southwest of Bec; and second, it took place under the aegis of Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen,5 the person to whom Lanfranc had taken Anselm in 1060 as the latter pondered his future about whether he wanted to become a monk. It also happened a year after Lanfranc’s departure from Bec and Anselm’s appointment as the Prior of Bec. The community at Bec would have received a summons inviting its abbot to the council. In attendance were the suffragan bishops, abbots, and Duke William, who had a stated policy of using ecclesiastical councils to effect the reformation of religious life and the church in Normandy.6 Anselm probably attended on behalf of the aged Herluin,7 and if he did not attend, he would certainly have been apprised of what transpired at the council. So Anselm could not possibly be ignorant of this event. He could conceivably have been ignorant or pled ignorance of the much earlier condemnation of Berengar at the 1055 council called by Maurilius at Rouen that promulgated a decree on the Eucharist that was explicit in its opposition to Berengar’s teaching.8 If Anselm had no knowledge of Lanfranc’s role in the Eucharistic controversy before his arrival at Bec in 1059, he would have some knowledge of it after the council at Lisieux in 1064. Lanfranc almost certainly completed his De corpore et sanguine Domini after Lisieux,9 as it would have been mentioned at that council if Lanfranc had already written it and 5 R. Somerville, “The Case Against Berengar of Tours – A New Text,” Studi Gregoriani, 9 (1972), pp. 55–75; reference is to p. 62. 6 William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi 1.51–52. The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, edited and translated by R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 82–87. Cf. H. E. J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 30–31. 7 VA 40. 8 The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, edited and translated by R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 57–58. Cf. Vita beati Maurilii (PL 148, cols. 1382D – 83B). 9 See A. J. MacDonald, Berengar and the Reform of Sacramental Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, 1930), p. 155, n. 2, for the various dates offered for the composition of Lanfranc’s De corpore et sanguine Domini.

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if any of the bishops and abbots in Normandy had known of its existence. An older contemporary of Anselm’s, William of Poitiers, himself a native of Normandy and panegyrist of Duke William, praised the duke’s virtues in fostering Christian devotion, pointing out Duke William’s determination in combating false teachers. In obvious reference to Berengar of Tours and the Eucharistic controversy, William of Poitiers writes that Duke William held in the highest reverence “that Host of salvation, the blood of our Lord, holding in strong faith to that which true doctrine has ordained, that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar and consecrated by the word and hand of the priest according to the holy canon, are the true flesh and blood of the Redeemer.” This is probably not surprising given Lanfranc’s views on the subject and the fact that he was one of Duke William’s most trusted advisers. If we are to believe William of Poitiers, Duke William’s determination in upholding this true doctrine (uera doctrina) was uncompromising. And he adduces universal testimony that, “it is certainly not unknown with what zeal he pursued and endeavoured to drive out of his land the wicked error of those who thought otherwise.”10 Could the Duke’s determination have played a part in Anselm’s silence on the topic and his choice of subject matter for his first major theological work? The first canon of the Council of Lisieux addresses two doctrines fundamental to the self-understanding of the church in Normandy: de fide sancte et indiuiduae Trinitatis, necnon de corpore et sanguine Domini. The latter doctrine, the Eucharistic teaching about the “body and blood of the Lord” was the more worrying of the two to those gathered at Lisieux. Anselm stayed clear of that doctrine but turned his attention to the other by offering a model meditation on the divine nature that included a substantial section on the doctrine of the Trinity. Anselm’s ascetic and deafening silence about the Eucharistic controversy both before and after the writing of the Monologion demonstrates his calculated indifference to the controversy. If he had ventured to write on the Eucharistic controversy there is no telling what would have become of Anselm 10 William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi 1.49 (The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, edited and translated by R. H. C. Davis and M. Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 81.

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as a philosophical theologian and dialectician. In choosing to write de fide sancte et indiuiduae Trinitatis, Anselm seemed to be saying that the most fundamental teachings of Christianity were to be found in contemplating the divine nature and the Trinity not in theological controversy about the Eucharist; and that if he were to insist upon what constituted “true doctrine,” he would have to insist on the conclusions of his arguments in the Monologion. Another way of construing Anselm’s attitude towards the Eucharistic controversy and theological discourse in the later eleventh century is to observe that in the decade or so after the Council of Lisieux two masters affiliated with Bec produced two important treatises that looked in opposite directions. Lanfranc would publish his De corpore et sanguine Domini sometime before 1070 and Anselm would be at work on his Monologion, which he would submit to Lanfranc for approval in 1075. Lanfranc’s De corpore et sanguine Domini looks back to the Eucharistic controversy and Berengar of Tours. The mood of the work is forensic. The authorities are central to Lanfranc’s case. Anselm’s Monologion charts a different course, with an analytic style of theological argumentation predicated on eschewing any appeal to scripture. And yet Anselm insists that this new theological dispensation is not without the authority of blessed Augustine and his De trinitate. By explaining the Monologion’s achievement as the result of his deep familiarity with Augustine’s De trinitate, Anselm also imposed an obligation on all his readers. The imposition is all the more provocative because the style of the Monologion is so unlike the De trinitate that any reader acquainted with both works could ask almost incredulously, “what has the Monologion to do with Augustine’s De trinitate?” How could the Monologion be an Augustinian project? If there is no congruence in style, is there one of content? Or is it simply a matter of inspiration? Or worse yet, could Anselm be bluffing? The suspicion is not unwarranted. R. W. Southern, who has done more than anyone else in advancing the study of Anselm in the last century, comes close to such a suspicion. But it is suspicion borne of Southern’s understanding of Anselm’s general dependence on Augustine on the one hand and his independence of mind on the other. Southern elucidates Anselm’s theological method by comparing it to prevailing approaches to theology and dialectic in the late eleventh century, and in the process underscores Anselm’s affinities with Augustine. In Southern’s masterful portrait, Anselm

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emerges as a confident and independent thinker charting his own course, “following the model of Augustine.”11 Southern’s portrait stops just short of when he would have needed to fill in the Augustinian hues, which raises a question as to what it means for Anselm to be “following the model of Augustine,” especially when it comes to a work like the Monologion, the first of Anselm’s theological productions. I shall first review Southern’s attempts at explaining Augustine’s influence on Anselm and will suggest that Southern’s ambivalence about Augustine’s influence is unnecessary. I shall also argue that Southern’s skepticism about Anselm’s claims about his Augustinian lineage underestimates the value of reading the Monologion in conjunction with De trinitate. By insisting on such a comparative project as philosophical and not part of the biographer’s task, Southern understates the significance of such a comparative study for our understanding of Anselm’s development as a thinker. What I should like to clarify by the end of this chapter is that the Monologion belongs to the larger history of medieval theological formation, and is a testament to a theological formation shaped primarily by Augustine’s De trinitate.

2. The Monologion: Anselm Between Lanfranc and Augustine When Southern relates Anselm’s “Augustinian model” to the larger problem of dialectic in the eleventh century, he appears uncertain about what to make of Anselm’s analytic approach to theology. Southern maintains that fundamentally Anselm’s method “was not a dialectical method, though he made use of dialectic.”12 Southern explains Anselm’s “non-dialectical method” this way: There is never in his works a moment of poise between two opposites, with the final solution emerging from confrontation. He reached his conclusions in private, and used the literary device of debate, not to arrive at his conclusions, but to sharpen the formulation of his answers. Everywhere he aimed at precision of language, of argument, of definition: but only when prolonged meditation had already brought him to see the truth with instantaneous clar-

11 12

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 114. Ibid.

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ity. Thereafter, his task as a teacher was gently and persistently to lead his pupil to accept the conclusion which he himself had already reached.13

Southern continues that if Anselm “had a moment of hesitation between two conflicting conclusions, we are not allowed to see it; in all his writings, he appears on the field already a victor, ready to explain, perhaps to demonstrate, but not to fight.”14 This description overlooks one of the characteristics of the Monologion: Anselm’s consideration of objections, of which there are plenty in the Monologion. Secondly, Southern’s thumbnail sketch goes against an older tradition of thinking of Anselm as a protoscholastic who anticipated some of the dialectical methods found in the scholastics of the thirteenth century. Southern presses the point, noting that in Anselm’s early works there is nothing like the influence of “the scholastic paraphernalia of pro and contra” in helping to form Anselm’s conclusions. Southern adds that for Anselm “the points about which the schools would argue had been settled long before the argument began.”15 That is certainly the case with respect to the form of the Monologion, although it is less so in a later dialogue like the Cur Deus Homo. But even among the scholastics – the Summa Theologiae is a good example – the form of the text does not mean that Thomas Aquinas had not already made up his mind about his arguments and his conclusions before he put together the presentation of his arguments. Obviously, there is an air of openness in something like the Summa Theologiae, to the extent that objections are laid out and responses offered to meet each objection. The difference between Anselm’s Monologion and the section of the Summa Theologiae dealing with the Trinity, for instance, may be more a question of style rather than dialectical method. Anselm does not lay out the objections the way Aquinas does. But objections to his arguments are dealt with concurrently with the arguments. There may be as much, if not more, indifference to theological objection in Aquinas as one finds in Anselm. Aquinas’s doctrine of the two sources of truth which he states in the opening question of the Summa Theologiae, for example, suggests an approach to theology 13 14 15

Ibid., pp. 114–115. Ibid., p. 115. Ibid.

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that brackets off certain forms of inquiry from others or alternatively marshals arguments to counter them. The thirteenth century scholastics also had different literary forms for pursuing a number of different inquiries, which means that how Thomas Aquinas handles objections in his quodlibetal questions may not be the same as the form he adopts for the same subject either in a quaestio disputata or in the Summa Theologiae.16 Anselm created his own literary forms: the Monologion’s analytic style differs markedly from the Proslogion’s combination of analytic argument and devotional poetry. Whereas he entertains countless objections in the Monologion, the Proslogion has no room for them. And, as we shall see, his attitude to his potential readers varies. While the proverbial fool who says in his heart that there is no God is the foil of his arguments in the Proslogion, the implied reader of the Monologion is supposed to be any person of average intelligence. Anselm’s notion of the person of average intelligence assumes that such an individual has at least an elementary grasp of propositional logic. This constitutes one aspect of the originality of the Monologion. Southern’s conception of Anselm’s originality comes with some qualifications: first, with regard to its dependence on Augustine and second, in connection with the Proslogion. In both cases, Southern stresses Anselm’s intellectual independence and complicates Anselm’s Augustinian dependence. “The distinction is important,” he maintains. The Monologion was a highly original work in form, but in substance it had the authority of Augustine behind it. In it Anselm speaks with the confidence of a man with all the best cards in his hand, and a manual which instructs him how to play them. Hence in its opening words there is a youthful confidence, as if it were the easiest thing in the world to prove, even to those of mediocre intelligence, that those things which we believe about God are necessarily true. But in the Proslogion he was on his own, and he 16

John Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (1150–1350): An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 24–49; see also Eileen Sweeny, “Literary Forms of Medieval Philosophy,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2002). Cf. Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg, “Medieval Philosophical Literature,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 11–42.

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stretched out to the furthest limits of his powers. At the end, he trembled with the awe of a new discovery. The Proslogion was his greatest achievement, but it could not have come into existence if the Monologion had not shown the way.17

The manual in question from which Anselm had to instruct himself on how to proceed with the Monologion is Augustine’s De trinitate. Southern speaks of a “youthful confidence” and of Anselm’s years of silence and study as the wellspring of this new period which gave birth to the Monologion and the Proslogion. Southern also implies that Anselm’s dependence on De trinitate constrained his originality when he wrote the Monologion. That genius finally came into its fullest bloom with the Proslogion. In other words, because Anselm had to follow Augustine, the Monologion is a less original work than the Proslogion where Anselm struck out on his own without having to follow Augustine. So even Anselm’s claim of Augustinian influence tends to work against Augustine. There is no question that the Proslogion captures Anselm’s genius, but it is not clear that unburdening himself of Augustine’s influence is what freed him to produce the Proslogion. What is more, Southern’s claim that unburdening himself of Augustine’s influence provided the occasion for Anselm’s originality in the Proslogion directly undercuts the relationship between the Proslogion and the Monologion. Southern’s claim directly contradicts Anselm’s representations of the two works. As late as the writing of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, Anselm continued to argue the inextricable link between the two. It is unclear where Southern wants to draw the line between Augustine and Anselm and how much Anselm’s new method owes to Augustine. Southern sees the impetus coming from somewhere else. This is apparent even as he comments on Lanfranc’s disagreement with Anselm over the Monologion: To Lanfranc, the whole theological method appeared misguided, freeing the subject from the authorities which were the proper guides both to the questions to be asked and the answers to be given. But the younger men were ready for free and natural debate: they laid down that nothing was to be taboo. It seems that, despite the disclaimer, the ‘conditions’ they laid down for the manner of argument were prompted at least as much by Anselm’s own prac17

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 118.

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tice as by their desires. But in outlining this radical programme of inquiry, Anselm was not speaking as a searcher of new truths, but as a conservative, who reached old conclusions by new methods, encouraged by pupils whom he had himself inflamed with intellectual zest.18

Southern adds that “in the course of time young men began to come to Bec for answers to their speculative difficulties: they all wanted old truths made intelligible.”19 Southern sees traces of this in the De Grammatico, which he dates to 1060–63. Southern also mentions that the Monologion “was quite unlike any other contemporary treatise, and substantially unlike anything of any earlier period.” Everything Southern says about open inquiry, speculative difficulties, and so forth rings of innovation.20 In any case, Anselm’s “conservative innovation” – if this is an adequate description of Southern’s view – seemed very wrongheaded to Lanfranc. Southern claims that Anselm must have known that his method went beyond those of the schools of the later eleventh century which were coming into their own, “in which the long process of organized accumulation, arrangement, and examination of sources had already begun.” Southern maintains that Anselm “set his face against all this.”21 What is most interesting about this interpretation is that when he completed the Monologion Anselm may not have been that cognizant of the particular schools that Southern alludes to. In 1075-76 one could hardly say that these schools had reached their prominence. The school at Laon, the most celebrated school in the last quarter of the eleventh century and in the first quarter of the twelfth century, was still barely noticeable.22 When Anselm’s friend Avesgot, the monk of St. Peter Catura near Solesme, wrote Letter 19 in the early 1060s to Anselm, chiding him for hiding his learning, he made no references to other masters. 18

Ibid., p. 119. Ibid. 20 Ibid., pp. 119–120. 21 Ibid., pp. 120. 22 For Abelard’s testimony of Laon’s influence and his own ability to contest that influence, see Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum, edited by Jacques Monfrin (Paris: J. Vrin, 1974 [4th edition]); M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, pp. 67–94; John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 12–13; Cf. Guibert of Nogent, De uita sua (PL 156, cols. 837-962); and John of Salisbury, Metalogicon (CCCM 98). 19

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Avesgot judged Anselm against Lanfranc and Guitmund of Aversa. Even if one doubts the extent of Avesgot’s knowledge of intellectual culture at this time, from his standpoint, Lanfranc and Guitmud were the best representatives of the liberal arts at this time in Normandy and in the north of France. When he completed the Monologion, Anselm himself believed rightly or wrongly that there was no one more capable than Lanfranc to judge the work, and so he sent a copy to be reviewed by his former teacher. Even in the De Grammatico where he mentions the contemporary grammarians and dialecticians, Anselm presents himself as part of a collective effort. He does not place himself in direct opposition to them nor does he style himself as contending against their methods. Two decades after the Monologion the story would be different. Anselm would claim to have anticipated and outflanked the false dialecticians, as he states in Epistola de incarnatione Verbi (1092–1094) in connection with allegations attributed to Roscelin of Compiègne. But this is not the place to pursue this line of inquiry. Suffice it to say that if Anselm had the emergent schools in mind he might have sought a very different way of disseminating the Monologion. He surely would have had to do more than warn Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers, not to lend it to anyone who would be quarrelsome or contentious. And its fortunes most certainly would not have turned on the unexpected acceptance of his work by Archbishop Hugh of Lyon. The Monologion belonged to a very circumscribed world of potential readers. What was most distinctive about Anselm’s posture in relation to Lanfranc’s criticism was his unwillingness to alter the work, a position that was both uncompromising and prescient. For while the dispute was mostly private (except for the few monks at Bec and Canterbury who knew of it), Anselm believed that the issues at stake were more fundamental than a squabble between two masters, or a difference of opinion between a mentor and his student. Anselm’s language in the preface speaks about an approach to theological dialectic which could appear too novel (nimis nouum) to some of his contemporaries or possibly discordant with the truth (a ueritate dissentiat) among the uninitiated. Still, this was the method and the program he was willing to defend in the face of Lanfranc’s criticism. We should, therefore, think of Anselm’s defense of his method as, in part, a plea for the indispensable role of dialectic in theological inquiry of the sort that Lanfranc seemed to fear. The

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method also pointed clearly in the direction of “blessed Augustine.” It was almost as if in objecting to the Monologion, Lanfranc had forgotten his own complimentary words in De corpore et sanguine Domini regarding Augustine’s praise of dialectic in the De doctrina christiana.23 For Anselm, the issues at stake went far beyond Lanfranc. Southern intimates this when he writes that “the examination of the philosophical cogency of this work and its successor must be left to philosophers,” and that it is the “concern of historians to examine their external form, the influences which helped to shape them, the materials, method of argument, the audience, and the future consequences of what is written.”24 Southern spells out in greater specificity what the historian can say about the Monologion, and the Proslogion for that matter. The juxtaposition of the two works, while inevitable, always tends towards diminishing the former, an almost inexorable consequence of the brevity and elegance of the Proslogion. Separating the philosophical content of both works from the task Southern assigns the historian aids this comparative devaluation of the Monologion. Southern again presents Anselm’s difference from Augustine in both approving and disapproving terms. “If pressed,” Southern argues, “he could say as he did to Lanfranc, that it was all in Augustine, but he did not claim the authority of Augustine for his method, or for the way he used it. Augustine was the source; but the activity had to come from within, and it was self-authenticating, or it was nothing.”25 For comparison Southern turns to Hugh of St. Victor, who wrote his Didascalicon some twenty years after Anselm’s death. Southern sees in Hugh’s description of meditation (meditatio) something both closer to and further from Anselm’s method. Southern quotes the following passage from Didascalicon 3.10: Meditation is frequent and mature thought about the cause, origin, nature and usefulness of everything. It has its origin in careful reading, but it is bound by none of the rules or constraints of reading. It rejoices to run freely in an open space which offers free opportunity for contemplating the truth. It investigates and penetrates, now the causes, now the nature of things, until nothing is 23 24 25

Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini 7.4 (PL 150, col. 417AB). R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 121. Ibid., p. 122.

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left doubtful or obscure. The foundation of doctrine, therefore, lies in reading; its completion in meditation.26

According to Southern, this attests to Anselm’s sense of freedom about meditation, while also showing Anselm’s difference in two important ways. Hugh of St. Victor’s meditation depends on the reading of authoritative texts and so depends on the monastic lectio. Anselm, on the other hand, conceives of meditation as beginning with the mind and its concepts, self-knowledge, or sense impressions. The mention of self-knowledge should immediately bring to mind Augustine’s De trinitate and its inquiries into the Trinitarian nature of the human mind. The second difference, according to Southern, is that Anselm’s “meditation is more strictly controlled” than Hugh of St. Victor’s because Anselm “follows the thread of an argument with the utmost rigour.”27 Most of Anselm’s other works showcase his dialectical skills, but they do not all have the unrelenting and seemingly unending syllogistics of the Monologion. So while the Monologion is committed to pursuing its arguments rigorously, its commitment to propositional logic and analytic argument is not unique among Anselm’s works. Southern does not appeal to Augustine’s De trinitate in this context when he discusses what is distinctive about Anselmian meditatio. Recall Pranger’s phrase: “a meditation on a meditation.” And what of the practices of meditation in Anselm and Hugh of St. Victor? I ask this not to question what Anselm and Hugh may have in common or what it is that differentiates them. The important question is how those two respective practices are related to or different from Augustine’s approach to meditation or contemplation in De trinitate. We know that Augustine’s De trinitate was an important influence on at least one member of the school of St. Victor. In his attempt to follow the pattern of Augustinian meditatio on the Trinity, Richard of St. Victor derived his inspiration from both Augustine and Anselm. So it is not difficult to detect the influence of both Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Monologion in Richard’s work on the Trinity.28 A discussion of meditation in Anselm and 26

Ibid. Ibid. 28 Jean Ribaillier, Richard de Saint-Victor: De Trinitate. Textes Philosophique du Moyen Age VI. Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin (Paris, 1958). 27

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Hugh of St. Victor that also involves Richard of St. Victor would provide a comparative study of the Monologion, the Didascalicon, and Richard’s treatise on the Trinity as a way of probing the links between Augustine’s De trinitate and the other three works. Hugh and Richard of St. Victor represent two strands in the tradition of contemplation nurtured among members of the fraternity at St. Victor.29 Comparing them to Anselm affords us the opportunity to assess how distinctive Anselm’s conception is in relation to that community of self-described Augustinians in the twelfth century, since Southern mentions on more than one occasion that while there is a congruity of style between Anselm and Augustine there is also a great deal of difference. Take, for example, the following as it relates to the subject of Augustinian and Anselmian meditatio: Meditation for Augustine, and for Anselm following in his footsteps, is the mental activity which forms a bridge between knowledge of earthly objects and knowledge of the being and attributes of God. The programme of ascent to God through a succession of mental activities, from images to cogitation, from cogitation to meditation, from meditation to contemplation, is Augustine’s. The whole sequence of activities brings the soul to the threshold of that eternal vision of God which is the goal of every rational nature.30

The last sentence of this passage reads very much like a section of M 80, the final chapter of the Monologion. For anyone acquainted with both Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Monologion, it is difficult to read what Southern states here without thinking of both works. Still Southern hesitates: qualifications follow, ending with the assertion that “Anselm could have found all of this in Augustine. To say that he did find it in Augustine is of course beyond the evidence, for Anselm (who alone could know) never wrote a history of his mind.”31 Immediately following upon this, Southern writes:

29

See Dale M. Coulter, Per Visibilia ad Invisibilia: Theological Method in Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), Bibliotheca Victorina XVIII (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 125–171; and Nico Den Bok, Communicating the Most High: A Systematic Study of Person and Trinity in the Theology of Richard of St. Victor (+1173), Bibliotheca Victorina VII (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996). 30 R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 77–79. 31 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

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But when we consider the similarities of speech and argument, and of assumptions and methods, together with Anselm’s almost indignant claim that any reader of his great work of meditation, the Monologion, would recognize that it was all in Augustine, the line of descent seems clear enough. And we can also say with some assurance that the prolonged study of Augustine, which made this possible, can only have taken place during his years of silence from 1063–1070.32

Southern is in two minds. He somehow doubts that “it was all in Augustine,” hence his reference to Anselm’s “almost indignant claim.” He is prepared to accept the line of descent, but not more. This may explain why, for all his recognition of Anselm’s debts to Augustine, Southern is unwilling to grant that, in fact, not only the inspiration but the justification for the method of the Monologion could all be there in Augustine. Southern’s view of what constitutes the “assumptions and methods” of the Monologion that can be found in Augustine’s De trinitate is therefore unclear. And why limit the influence of Augustine to the silent years from 1063– 1070, between Lanfranc’s departure to Caen and the publication of Anselm’s first letters? If Eadmer is to be believed, Anselm pursued his patristic and biblical studies with constancy. It is not necessary to separate his appropriation of Augustine from Lanfranc’s influence in those early years.33 Undoubtedly, Anselm was on his own when Lanfranc left Bec, but to place his Augustinian acquisitions in the period between 1063 and 1070 seems arbitrary. It is far more likely that Anselm was engaged in his reading of Augustine’s De trinitate up to the writing of the Monologion, and he may have begun reading Augustine as early as his first year at Bec, well before Lanfranc’s departure for Caen. Interestingly, Southern at one point dubs his own words “crude,” for separating Anselm’s early years into the period of being influenced by Lanfranc (1059–1063) and the period of Augustine’s influence on him (1063–1070): What took place was not an appropriating of another man’s ideas. It was a most subtle and rare process of assimilation in which Anselm’s own personality grew as a result of the presence of these major influences in his life. But whereas everything in Anselm’s 32 33

Ibid., pp. 78–79. Cf. R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 80.

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personality promoted a continuing divergence from Lanfranc, nearly everything in him provoked a continuing propinquity to Augustine, offset by disparities almost equally great.34

This puts an Augustinian impress on virtually everything Anselm does as a thinker, if it is as subtle and as rare a process of assimilation as Southern maintains. So, in the final analysis, in spite of Southern’s qualification that Anselm’s “continued propinquity to Augustine” was “offset by disparities almost equally great” Anselm should be permitted a close affinity in the one instance where he insists on it.35 It is not insignificant that Southern prefaces his remarks about the influence of Augustine on Anselm with an acknowledgment of a great limitation in his attempts to delineate that influence. He notes that a “thorough review of the relationship between the thought of Augustine and Anselm would be beyond the capacity and beyond the limits” of a biographical study of Anselm.36 This limitation, no doubt, affects Southern’s analysis of the depth and breadth of that influence. In the case of the Monologion, the unwillingness to give due consideration to Anselm’s claims of dependence, affinity, and concordance detracts from Anselm’s originality.37 Although Southern believes Anselm to have been somewhat disingenuous in claiming Augustinian lineage for the Monologion in the face of Lanfranc’s criticism, there is much in what Southern says about Anselm and Augustine to lead one to doubt that Anselm was simply misleading his readers. Still, Southern protests: because what Anselm provided Lanfranc in defense of his method was a general statement that, in a sense, said nothing. Southern’s doubts remain: “We too must be content with this degree of enlightenment. Yet, like Lanfranc, we surely have some grounds for complaint. It is not even quite clear what he means by canonica dicta.” Further along, Southern adduces that “the most likely explanation is that following Augustine in his use of a similar phrase,” Anselm too was speaking like Augustine does in De ciuitate Dei 18.36 and so he meant by canonica dicta “scrip-

34 35 36 37

Ibid. Cf. Ibid., pp. 80–87. Ibid., p. 71. Cf. Ibid., p. 72.

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tural texts and their authoritative interpreters.”38 In which case, Anselm’s defense that everything he had written could be defended by canonica dicta or from the words of blessed Augustine (Epistola 77) depended in part on the authoritative interpretation of scriptural texts. An alternative interpretation, judging from Letter 77 and the preface to the Monologion, is that by canonica dicta Anselm means established Christian doctrine: those things which Christians believe about God and his creation (M 1). And what of the Augustinian claim? Did it also have to be read in such vague terms? Even if there are few exact parallel phrases from Augustine’s De trinitate in the Monologion,39 it would not constitute a rebuttal of Anselm’s statement about the nature of his work and its dependence on the De trinitate. It makes proving that dependence a difficult task, but it does not preclude it. That is the challenge that Anselm himself posed to his potential critics, a challenge that remains. And it may not be enough to insist on Anselm’s freedom of thought while also questioning his claim of Augustinian influences. The following passage from Southern signposts both the promise and the difficulties: He could not stop to disentangle his own words from those of Augustine. If we insist on knowing more, we must repeat his experience. We can find starting points and comparable phrases, but not exact quotations, and any attempt to find them puts us on the wrong track altogether. That is why he did not, and could not, provide what Lanfranc wanted. All that can be usefully done by way of general introduction is to list the symptoms of their deep congruities, and of the almost equally deep contrasts of thought and feeling between him and Augustine, which reflected their different personalities and historical situations.40

If Southern is correct that Anselm could not possibly disentangle his words from Augustine’s, then Southern’s ambivalence about Anselm’s claim of Augustinian dependence is misplaced. The most telling statement in this passage is Southern’s contention that “if we insist on knowing more, we must repeat his experience.” Without pressing the point too much, Anselm can be read as making this very demand. This is his challenge to his critics, placed in the form 38 39 40

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 73.

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of an invitation in the preface to the Monologion. Anselm demands that anyone who would be a critic of the Monologion should first read the De trinitate, and not just in a cursory fashion. Only then, when the said critic has become acquainted with Augustine’s work will that person be in a position to judge the Monologion. Anselm’s request points in the same direction as Southern’s belief that if we want to know more we must repeat Anselm’s experience. This is the least problematic way to approach Anselm’s Monologion. If nothing else, it takes Anselm’s experience as a reader and interpreter of Augustine’s De trinitate seriously. And it also imposes on the interpreter of Anselm’s thought a framework for coming to terms with one of his most insistent claims, a framework too often disregarded by some of his best interpreters. Here is Anselm in his own words. This is what he wrote to Archbishop Lanfranc in Letter 77, after a couple of earlier exchanges with the monk Maurice and the Archbishop. Anselm describes his objective in the Monologion this way: With regard to the things which are mentioned in that little work and which you advise with wholesome and wise counsel should be very meticulously weighed in the balance of the mind and discussed with those learned in the holy books [of the Bible], and should be fortified by divine authority when reason fails: this I have done as well as I could, both before and after your amiable paternal admonition. This was my intention throughout the whole disputation, whatever its quality, that in it I should never state anything at all in it unless I saw that it could readily be defended by canonical writings or by the words of blessed Augustine. And now, whenever I reconsider what I said, I cannot conceive of having said anything else myself. No reasoning of mine could convince me, however necessary it seemed, to venture to speak first about the things you included in your letter about that little work of mine, and certain other things which you did not include. For blessed Augustine with his profound arguments so proves these same points in his book De trinitate that, discerning the same things with my own limited reasoning, I might speak, trusting in his authority.41

41 Anselm, Epistola 77 (S 3, p. 199; Fröhlich, Letters 1, p. 206): De illis quidem, quae in illo opusculo dicta sunt, quae salubri sapientique consilio monetis in statera mentis sollertius appendenda et cum eruditis in sacris codicibus conferenda, et ubi ratio deficit, diuinis auctoritatibus accingenda: hoc et post paternam amabilemque uestram admonitionem et ante feci, quantum potui. Nam haec mea fuit intentio per totam illam qualemcumque disputationem, ut omnino nihil ibi

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In defending himself against Lanfranc, Anselm also alludes to a number of important facts. First, that Lanfranc had expressed himself in a letter that had a number of objections. And second, some of those objections were contained in the letter and others were perhaps implied or mentioned by a courier. In his characterization of Lanfranc’s main criticism, Anselm puts the emphasis on “fortifying arguments by divine authority when reason fails.” Anselm then goes on to say that he has done this, both before and after Lanfranc’s criticism, and that it had always been his intention not to say anything that could not “readily be defended by canonical writings or by the words of blessed Augustine.” What does this mean? In one sense it claims no more than a general agreement of thought. However, the second half of the passage above makes a more specific claim, qualified by Anselm’s characteristic self-deprecation. And this is where Anselm links the Monologion to Augustine’s De trinitate explicitly. “For blessed Augustine with his profound arguments so proves these same points in his book De trinitate that, discerning the same things with my own limited reasoning, I might speak, trusting in his authority.” What I should like to underline here is the last phrase: “trusting in his authority.” “Trusting in his authority,” does not commit Anselm to saying that he has repeated Augustine’s arguments or that every argument he has made in the Monologion can be found in Augustine. But he commits himself in the earlier part of the statement to the claim that he has been “proving the same points” as Augustine. The point Anselm seems to be making is that even if the exact arguments he makes are not found in Augustine, he has Augustine’s authority behind the Monologion. This has a number of implications. First, that in the Monologion Anselm does not intend to argue anything that would undermine the authorities that Lanfranc would like Anselm to appeal to “when reason fails.”

assererem, nisi quod aut canonicis aut beati AUGUSTINI dictis incunctanter posse defendi uiderem; et nunc quotienscumque ea quae dixi retracto, nihil aliud me asseruisse percipere possum. Etenim ea quae ex eodem opusculo uestris litteris inseruistis et quaedam alia quae non inseruistis, nulla mihi ratiocinatio mea, quantumlibet uideretur necessaria, persuasisset, ut primus dicere praesumerem. Ea enim ipsa sic beatus AUGUSTINUS in libro De trinitate suis magnis disputationibus probat, ut eadem quasi mea breuiori ratiocinatione inueniens eius confisus auctoritate dicerem.

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And second, the difference between Anselm and Lanfranc is almost purely a methodological one. The rest of Letter 77 contains a revealing combination of Anselm’s self-proclaimed distrust of his own learning and his confidence in Lanfranc’s wisdom, as Anselm expressed his wish for Lanfranc’s approval of the work. The preface to the Monologion presupposes this background but also offers a slightly less controversial account of the Monologion’s method. As Anselm tells it, his brothers at Bec asked him to compose a treatise that would argue sola ratione without any appeals to authority. This basic methodological requirement appears consistent with his defense in Letter 77, and is consistent with his claim that the Monologion has the authority of Augustine’s De trinitate behind it. Eschewing the use of authority in making arguments does not exclude another kind of authority behind the work. Lanfranc seemed to insist that if the appeal to authority isn’t found in the text of the Monologion itself, then the Monologion tends to undermine the authorities, so to speak. At the same time, in suggesting that authority ought to be invoked where or when reason fails (ubi ratio deficit), Lanfranc clearly states a principle that is far reaching. Here the difference widens. I will demonstrate just how Anselm could not “disentangle his own words from those of Augustine.” I will overlook Southern’s doubts, and instead take up his admonition to “repeat the experience” – which restates Anselm’s challenge to his potential critics. I will proceed first with the two prefaces that Anselm wrote for the Monologion and the Proslogion respectively in order to reassert Anselm’s voice and his statement of intentions. From these two sources it will be possible to establish the parameters that Anselm set for how anyone should approach the Monologion. From that point on I will describe how Anselm came to understand the nature of his audience and how the final form of the Monologion assumes at least five or six different kinds of readers for the work. Before concluding my discussion in this chapter, I will offer some reflections on the role of Augustine’s De trinitate in medieval theological formation and the uniqueness of Anselm’s assimilation and appropriation of it.

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3. The Content and the Form: Beyond Monastic Lectio On some occasions, Anselm’s contemporaries referred to the Monologion as his De trinitate. This may not have been entirely serendipitous. Whether those same contemporaries would have made the explicit connection between Anselm’s Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate without Anselm’s preface is not something easily ascertained. Unless one is unwilling to accept Anselm’s attribution of his dependence on Augustine’s De trinitate, based on the suspicion that Anselm had been less than forthcoming about his method, one is bound to accept it as it stands. The only way of proving Anselm right or wrong is to undertake what he imposed on his critic. For now, then, an analysis of the respective prefaces of the Monologion and the Proslogion. This is important because most of Anselm’s contemporaries would not have been privy to the entire episode involving his disagreement with Lanfranc and his letters surrounding Lanfranc’s reaction. Nor would they have had any knowledge of his letter to Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers; or for that matter his correspondence with Archbishop Hugh of Lyon. It turns out to have been a masterly stroke on Anselm’s part to have explained in the Proslogion what had gone into his naming the Monologion and the Proslogion as such. And to have no less a figure as Hugh of Lyon, the papal legate, as the auctoritas behind them both, was worth mentioning. While the Proslogion clearly displaced the Monologion, the preface to the Proslogion offers a great advertisement to the Monologion as the work that started it all, and Hugh of Lyon as Anselm’s greatest patron. Not only had Hugh suggested that Anselm affix his name to the “little works,” as Anselm called them, Hugh also lent an imprimatur to the works. Significantly, Anselm did not have to defend his agreement with “blessed Augustine” and De trinitate or the consensus of canonica dicta. So there is no mention of Augustine or the fathers in the preface to the Proslogion. This allows Anselm’s description of how he came up with his unum argumentum for the Proslogion to stand out in its grand brilliance. This also gives an impression, rightly or wrongly, that there were no written sources for the Proslogion. And yet, by mentioning the links between the Proslogion and the Monologion, Anselm alludes to the possibility

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that what lies behind the Monologion may have played a role in the writing of the Proslogion as well. It is probably not a coincidence that the phrase that Anselm uses as the caption for the opening chapter of the Proslogion speaks of excitatio mentis ad contemplandum deum. The phrase echoes both the language of contemplatio dei with which Augustine begins De trinitate (e.g. 1.8.16–17) and the practices he commends in his use of exere when he speaks about exercising the mind of the reader (lector) at the beginning of the final book (De trintiate 15.1.1). Augustine’s view of contemplation involves exercising the mind in the training of virtue (exerceretur uirtus fidelium), as he says, for example, in De trinitate 13.16.20; and the practice of discriminating thought on the part of the reader (lectoris exerceretur intentio), as he explains it in De trinitate 15.3.5. Anselm’s Monologion exemplify all these elements of Augustinian contemplatio in its understanding of meditatio as excitatio mentis ad contemplandum deum. Returning to the preface of the Proslogion, we can gather the following facts about the Monologion. First, that Anselm wrote the work as a model (exemplum) of meditating on the rational basis of faith. Second, that it consists of a chain of many arguments (concatenatione contextum argumentorum). Third, that he was not entirely satisfied with the result. Not because it did not accomplish what he set out to do, but because, by following through on the conditions imposed on him, he had produced a chain of interconnected arguments that made for a much more difficult work than he would have liked. Fourth, that even after writing its sequel, the Proslogion, Anselm did not consider either of them worthy of being called a book (dignum libri nomine) or something to which the name of the author ought to be fixed. But he provided titles for them: what was simply “An Example of Meditating on the Substance of Faith” (exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei) became the Monologion and what was previously “Faith Seeking Understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) became the Proslogion. The descriptive titles were self-explanatory, and were supposed to serve as invitations to any potential readers. Fifth, the works circulated under these titles, and it was under these titles that Hugh of Lyon read them, and then subsequently directed Anselm by his apostolic authority (ex Apostolica praecepit auctoritate) to prefix his name to the works. Anselm claims that others had enjoined this too. And so to make affixing his name more fitting, Anselm changed the

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descriptive titles and renamed them Monologion and Proslogion respectively: the first, a soliloquy, the second an allocution (or address). Anselm could now rightly claim that he had two important works to his credit, not only because of those who had already copied the works, but more importantly, from Hugh’s response. The preface to the Proslogion gives enough detail as to sanction the Monologion as a work worthy of its author’s name. What is somewhat unusual, if we are to believe Anselm, is that he intended to consign both works to the same anonymous fate. In which case, both the Monologion and the Proslogion would have circulated presumably without Anselm’s name. Hugh’s intervention merely speeded up a process that probably would have happened anyway. Once Anselm became abbot, and certainly with his later elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury, the works would have ceased being anonymous. Anselm was probably exercising caution in not affixing his name to both works, perhaps anxious that certain unlearned readers and unnamed incompetent critics might censure what they did not understand. Some of this is clearly evident in Letter 83 to Abbot Rainald. He expressly warns Abbot Rainald not to show the work to any one intent on controversy, who would be inclined to criticize what they do not understand: “I urgently entreat your holiness to show this little work not to people who are prattlers or contentious but instead those who are sensible and discreet.”42 And if “anyone should happen to criticize anything in it in such a way” that Abbot Rainald deems it worthy of an answer, then by all means: “I beg you to inform me charitably by letter, yours or his, of the reason by which he sustains his criticism. Thus having preserved both the peace of charity and the love of truth either I may be corrected by his criticism or he by my reply.” 43 Southern also commends to our attention that the request from Hugh of Lyon for copies of the Monologion and the Proslogion may have been more sinister than it looks, and that Hugh may have 42 Anselm, Epistola 83 (S 3, p. 208; Fröhlich, Letters 1, p. 218): Quapropter uestram uehementer efflagito sanctitatem, ut idem opusculum non uerbosis et litigiosis hominibus, sed rationabilibus et quietis ostendat. 43 Anselm, Epistola 83 (S 3, p. 208; Fröhlich, Letters 1, p. 218): Quod si contigerit ut aliquis sic aliquid ibi reprehendat, ut eius ratio digna uobis cui responderi debeat uideatur: rogo ut mihi quid quave ratione reprehendat, caritative aut eius aut uestris litteris mandetis. Quatenus, caritatis pace et amore ueritatis utrimque servato, aut me illius reprehensio aut illum mea corrigat responsio.

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made the request in order to censure the works.44 If this had been the motive behind Hugh’s correspondence Anselm does not give any hint of it. In any case, Anselm’s language in Letter 100 about the writings that Hugh ordered him to send (quod iussistis) underscores Anselm’s recognition of Hugh’s ecclesial authority as well as Anselm’s obedience to a command. When one turns to the preface of the Monologion itself, Anselm supplies more than what the reader might want to know. Anselm states the work’s origin, and sets a number of strictures on how it ought to be approached. Both the Monologion and Proslogion have chapter titles, however, it is only with respect to the Monologion that Anselm gives directions as to how the chapter titles ought to be treated and why. Anyone who received the Monologion and the Proslogion together would be struck by the stylistic differences in the two prefaces to the respective works. From the first line of the preface to the Monologion one senses something different. Anselm mounts an apology: a defense of his method and a challenge to potential critics. First, Anselm describes the origin of the work in a request made by “certain brothers” (quidam fratres); second, he mentions his reluctance in undertaking the work and his expectations of the final product; and third, he describes his reconsideration of the work. While I have had occasion to comment on these issues, it is now time to assess what the preface tells us about Anselm’s objectives and his method. Anselm refers to a request made by his fellow monks at Bec that he describes as “frequent and earnest” (saepe studioseque). The request seemed simple enough; the parameters more specific. Nothing in the work was to be proved by appealing to the “authority of scripture” (auctoritas scripturae); and Anselm was not to disregard any objection, no matter how simple (simplex) or almost foolish (paene fatua) it might be. The style had to be “plain” (planus), the arguments common (uulgaris argumentum), and the disputation simple (simplex disputatio). His conclusions were to be based on the necessity of reason (rationis necessitas). They were to be brief (breuiter), proved by the clarity of truth (ueritatis claritas) and shown to be unquestionable (patenter). The monks insisted on individual investigations with their own conclusions leading up to a larger argument. This invariably 44

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, p. 286; as well p. 286, n. 10.

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explains why the Monologion is divided into short chapters, each focused on a well-defined topic. Anselm makes his arguments in the shortest possible span and moves quickly to develop other topics in relation to what he has just argued. This plan gives the Monologion its special characteristic as a series of interconnected arguments. Having given a description of the requirements imposed upon him, Anselm turns to explain the difficulties he encountered in producing the work. He demurred, and claims to have resisted the obligation because he considered it onerous. He eventually took up the composition willingly not only because the brothers impressed upon him that they wanted the model meditation for their own use (usu sibi), but also because of the genuinely good intentions that motivated their request. Their commendable sincerity moved him to undertake the task they had assigned him. Motivated by “their love” (eorum caritatem), he was able to accomplish what he thought difficult. Anselm claims to have had rather low expectations of the work. First, that it would only be read by those who requested it, and second, that he had hoped that after a while the brothers would get tired of the finished product; and more precisely, that the work would “be overwhelmed with contempt as something worthless” (uilem rem). But this seems contrived. There is more than a hint of self-deprecation when Anselm follows talk of “his intellectual weakness” (ingenii mei imbecillitatem) with the wish that the work would be overwhelmed with contempt after the brothers had become acquainted with it. Are we to believe that the success of the work was because it did not fulfill Anselm’s expectations of its unworthiness? This strains credulity. Anselm claims that, much to his astonishment, more people were copying the work than those who had asked for it, and that each person making a copy of the treatise was involved in a process of commending it to a long remembrance. Beyond his expectations, the Monologion had been greeted with neither indifference nor disregard. Lanfranc is not mentioned, but he might as well be. The entire second half of the preface has Lanfranc’s impress on it. Anselm’s defensiveness intrudes upon his description of his expectations of the Monologion. His reference to “continued reconsiderations” (retractans) of the work sit awkwardly with his claim that some of the monks of Bec were copying it and were thus engaged in com-

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mending it to a “long remembrance” (in longium memoriae). Why did Anselm need to reconsider the treatise, when it had already been well received by his fellow monks at Bec and was being copied by some who had not even been among those who requested it? Anselm states that he did this repeatedly to assure himself that he had not written anything that would be cause for alarm, maintaining that he had not been able to find anything in it that did not agree (non cohaereat) with the catholic fathers (catholicorum patrum) and especially with the writings of blessed Augustine (beati Augustini). Anselm then makes a plea: if it appears to anyone that he has set forth either something altogether new (nimis nouum) or that he has departed from the truth (a ueritate), he would like whoever it is not to denounce him immediately as someone who presumptuously teaches a novelty (nouitatum) or is a purveyor of something false (falsitas). Anselm could have stopped here. If he had done so, he would have left his fate to the proclivities of any potential critic. He would then be counting on the restraint of someone bent on criticism. This would have been imprudent. And so to potential critics, he makes one final request, but one that, as I have argued previously, usually goes unheeded. Anselm charged any potential critic to first “examine carefully” (diligente perspiciat) the books of Augustine’s De trinitate and only then attempt to judge Anselm’s “little work” (opusculum) on the basis of Augustine’s work. An unsuspecting critic would soon find out what an arduous task it would be not only to read the De trinitate, but to read it with enough care to be able to judge the Monologion. The critic might also discover that Anselm was probably not exaggerating when he spoke of his unwillingness to undertake the writing of the Monologion because of the “difficulty of the task” (rei difficultatem). Compared to the sheer bulk of Augustine’s De trinitate the Monologion is in every way a little treatise. But its size belies the difficulties inherent in producing a work of such syllogistic argumentation. Anselm explains the difficulties as the result of two apparently contradictory requirements: the parameters set for him as to the nature of the work and the goal that the final product be of such a nature as to be of practical use to those who requested it. So, in spite of its brevity compared to the De trinitate, the Monologion makes for much more difficult reading. Still anyone who could wade through Augustine’s De trinitate

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would have found the Monologion manageable, if a tad intolerable in its analytic style. This too may have conspired against Anselm, and may have dissuaded a number of potential critics, since it is much too easy to disregard the work on account of its style. With the charge to potential critics dispensed, Anselm returns to the form of the text that the reader would encounter. He explains that he has taken on the role or persona (sub persona) of someone who disputes and investigates by thinking alone to himself (secum sola cogitatione) about things that he had not previously given serious consideration. The literary mode is one of a soliloquy, which is precisely how Anselm describes the Monologion in the preface to the Proslogion. It is the form that Anselm thought most adequate, because the arguments contained in his investigations were supposed to serve as a model meditation for others who would attempt to think about the divine essence on their own by learning and imitating how Anselm had gone about it. A dialogue would not have served this purpose as well as a soliloquy, but it would have been easier to read. This was not something new for Anselm. He had already done something similar with his earliest prayers and his first Meditatio. He gave instructions on how they were to be used for the reader’s benefit. For example, to Princess Adelaide to whom he sent a collection of his earliest prayers and meditations, Anselm instructed her that she could start reading the prayers in the middle, if that would be more conducive to moving her towards contemplation and devotion. Anselm would have similar instructions for Countess Mathilda of Tuscany much later on. The Monologion was not written in the style of Anselm’s devotional poetry or his prayers. But it shares with his earliest Meditation the desire to move the soul towards a contemplation of the divine essence (or God) and other things related to it. For the nonbeliever addressed in the opening chapter, that individual who did not already believe what Christians believe about the supreme nature or did not know that such a nature existed, Anselm expected that the investigations in the Monologion would lead that person towards a love of the good. Anselm elaborates on what such a devotion entails, describing both its rational basis and its ethical implications in the concluding chapters of the Monologion. In the concluding chapters, he mentions the word “deus” for the first time since the opening chapter of the Monologion.

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Anselm concludes his preface with a word of caution and a reminder to those copying the Monologion to be dutiful in setting the preface before the list of chapter headings that precede the opening chapter. This way, he believes, the reader would know from the outset “with what intent and in what manner the disputation has been conducted.”45 This warning is intended to preempt undue criticism. A reader who had read the preface first before tackling the rest of the Monologion was less likely to become a critic: he would not be so quick to judge Anselm when he finds something in the work that is contrary to his own views (quid contra suam opinionem). We will see in the next chapter that far from preempting criticism, some of what was contained in the preface invited it. Who then were Anselm’s potential critics, and what did they miss or overlook about the Monologion? By the time Anselm wrote Letter 100 to Hugh of Lyon he could easily imagine six, perhaps seven types of readers for the Monologion: first, the group of monks at Bec who had made the request that he write the Monologion; second, the several others who were also copying it and bequeathing the work to posterity; third, the monk Maurice who, of all those who made the request, was the most solicitous and who received probably the earliest usable draft of the Monologion at about the same time as Lanfranc; fourth, Lanfranc himself, to whom Anselm sent the work for review and commendation; fifth, Hugh of Lyon whose reception had been beyond anything Anselm could have expected or imagined; and sixth, ecclesiastics like Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers; and seven, anonymous readers who might be tempted to play the role of critic and controversialist. The first three types belong together as fellow monks who were desirous of using the Monologion for their own practice in meditating on the divine essence. The second group, comprising Archbishop Lanfranc, Archbishop Hugh of Lyon, and Abbot Rainald were Anselm’s ecclesiastical colleagues and superiors. They could sanction the work. The last category, the anonymous reader, was probably the most unpredictable and potentially the most troubling. Anselm’s preface sought to preempt criticism from such quarters, even if he could not totally preclude it.

45

Jasper Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 51.

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This set of readers constitutes Anselm’s audience. If he had not conceived of such a broad audience when he first wrote the Monologion, he had come to recognize this by the time he affixed his name to both the Monologion and the Proslogion. By then, Anselm could not pretend to be writing for only a few of his fellow monks at Bec and Canterbury. His reading public was a varied one, even if most of them shared the same basic monastic sensibilities. In approaching the Monologion one must imagine what each one of these types of readers would bring to their reading and use of the Monologion and how they would go about making their own the analytic arguments and philosophical theology expressed in the work. If Anselm were pressed to identify one person he had most in mind when writing the work, he would most likely say Maurice. And from all indications Maurice was an able student and a better student of dialectic than the image we get of the Student in Anselm’s De Grammatico, for example. We can assume, then, that for Maurice the Monologion’s arguments would not have been inaccessible. Whether others less equipped than Anselm’s “person of moderate intelligence” (M 1) would have felt the same way, it is difficult to say. We may also wonder whether Maurice knew Augustine enough to appreciate Anselm’s claim of dependence; except of course in this case we are dealing with an expectant reader and not a potential critic. This brings up an issue about Anselm’s theological formation that came to the fore earlier in the review of Southern’s assessment of Augustine’s influence on Anselm in the years between the departure of Lanfranc in 1063 and the writing of the Monologion in 1075-76. Southern was at great pains to define Anselm’s affinities with Augustine in such a way as to also suggest certain inimitable differences. Southern shows in a short catalog of comparable phrases from Augustine’s Confessiones and Anselm’s Proslogion the resonances between Augustine and Anselm in a manner that is richly allusive. While the phrases in question give the impression that Anselm must have been influenced by the Confessiones in writing the Proslogion, it is nearly impossible to say with any certitude that Anselm found inspiration from the Confessiones in writing the Proslogion. Why say this? What has this to do with the Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate? For one thing, Anselm never suggests anything remotely like it. Without any textual evidence, the notion that the Proslogion is

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undoubtedly influenced by Augustine’s Confessiones is mere conjecture. Repeated references to the link between the Confessiones and the Proslogion give it a mark of certitude. But it is probably mistaken. And for another, it cannot be considered credible without a serious assessment of Anselm’s repeated references to Augustine’s De trinitate. To put it simply, it would be strange for Anselm to have been influenced by the Confessiones in writing the Proslogion and have him refer repeatedly to the De trinitate as his most favorite Augustinian text and the work that exercised the most influence on the thinking behind the Monologion (and by extension, the Proslogion). In order to validate the claim that the Confessiones influenced Anselm, it needs to be demonstrated first exactly how “blessed Augustine” and his De trinitate function in Anselm’s philosophical and theological makeup and in the writing of the Monologion.46 Only then can the possible influence of the Confessiones on the Proslogion be accounted for, since the Proslogion is so inextricably tied to the Monologion. Alternatively, it is not inconceivable that in the process of pursuing these inquiries, De trinitate might turn out to be the source for so much of what is assumed to be the influence of the Confessiones on the Proslogion. That is the subject for another study. For now I should like to consider the place of Augustine’s De trinitate in medieval theological formation, and how typical or unusual Anselm’s knowledge of De trinitate might have been.

4. Augustine’s De trinitate and Medieval Theological Formation I mention this to make the following point. The challenge Anselm posed to any would-be critic was not one that many of his contemporaries could have undertaken with ease. And while the manuscript evidence scattered all over Europe attests to a wide reading community for Augustine’s De trinitate, it does not tell us how many individuals could claim the kind of familiarity that Montague Brown, “Faith and Reason in Anselm: Two Models,” The Saint Anselm Journal, 2 (2004), pp. 10–21, splits the difference by arguing that Anselm employs two different methods in the Monologion and Prolsogion which depend on Augustine’s De trinitate and Confessiones respectively. 46

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Anselm had of Augustine’s work; or whether many potential readers of the Monologion could read De trinitate with care as to be able to judge Anselm’s arguments accordingly.47 Before the writing of the Monologion, Anselm had been reading and studying the arguments of De trinitate for some time. While there is no evidence that he studied De trinitate with Lanfranc during his first four years at Bec (1059–1063), it is probable that he began to read De trinitate not long after Lanfranc left Bec for Caen, when Anselm spoke of his new libertas in pursuing his own studies. That would mean a theological impress that had been formed over a period of twelve years (1063–1075). Of course, Anselm was not the only one who had attempted a “De trinitate” in the early medieval centuries following upon Augustine’s much celebrated work. Boethius’s De trinitate (in his Opuscula Sacra) and Alcuin’s De fide sanctae et indiuiduae Trinitatis easily come to mind. Together with Anselm’s Monologion, these works tell only part of the story of the “medieval De trinitate.” They approach the subject fully conscious that to most well-educated medieval minds the topic had already been exhausted by Augustine. Boethius, for one, prefaced his De trinitate with the assurance to his readers that he was offering his brief work after long study of Augustine’s masterpiece. To Symmachus, to whom the preface is addressed, Boethius has this to say: “You must however examine whether the seeds sown in my mind by St. Augustine’s writings have borne fruit.” And then Boethius invites Symmachus to join him in beginning the inquiry.48 Boethius does not set himself the task of composing anything like Augustine’s De trinitate. His objective is to address a specific question. Still, he thought it prudent to immerse himself in Augustine’s De trinitate. Boethius’s treatise would not have met the requirement imposed upon Anselm by his fellow monks at Bec. Boethius’s invitation to Symmachus to judge 47 On the manuscript evidence see Michael Gorman, The Manuscript Tradition of the Words of St. Augustine (Firenze: Sizmel – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2001); on De trinitate in particular see his article on the manuscript tradition of Augustine’s major works reprinted from Studia Eph. Augustinianum, 24 (1987), pp. 381–412. Cf. Chapter 1, n. 1, on catalogs listing manuscripts of Augustine’s works in European libraries from the collection from the Vienna Academy. 48 Boethius, Opuscula sacra I. Boethius, Theological Tractates and Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classics (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1918 [1968]), p. 5.

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how the seeds of Augustine’s thought have borne fruit in him is also a friendly invitation to criticism. Anselm’s admonition to his reader/critic, however, is couched in the form of a wager or even a dare. Anselm dares the critic to prove him wrong. Alcuin offers another model. His use of Augustine’s De trinitate follows in the tradition of mining Augustine for arguments to solve matters of doctrinal dispute. In Alcuin’s case, he mines Augustine’s De trinitate for passages that would serve his purposes in his De fide sanctae et indiuiduae Trinitatis.49 The Monologion is certainly not like Alcuin’s De fide because it does not quote Augustine’s De trinitate; and it is also not like Boethius’s De trinitate because of the limited scope of the latter. But it offers a series of arguments that Boethius would have appreciated, with its display of propositional logic, much of it gained from Anselm’s schooling in the logica uetus of Aristotle transmitted by Boethius. Another side of the story about the “medieval De trinitate” is one that we can glimpse through someone who objected to the veneration of Augustine’s work. The moment is the early twelfth century. The person is Rupert of Deutz. Rupert was so incensed by what he believed to be the undue veneration given to Augustine’s De trinitate that he set out to prove that Augustine had not said the last word on the subject and that someone like him could write a work on the Trinity that could challenge Augustine’s dominance.50 Rupert would end up producing a massive work that could certainly outweigh Augustine’s De trinitate by its size, if not by its subtlety of argument. The later history of Rupert’s massive work tends to support the sentiment of his contemporaries, in that while Augustine’s De trinitate continues to be a subject of discussion even today, few know of Rupert’s tome. There is a comparable story that could be told about Abelard, though its tone would vary considerably from Rupert’s. It is intriguing to consider how Abelard’s various attempts at improving on Trinitarian doctrine

49

John Cavadini, “The Sources and Theology of Alcuin’s ‘De fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis,’” Traditio, 46 (1991), p. 123–146. 50 John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 215–220.

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often ended up creating more difficulties than the views he sought to correct.51 Another comparison may be helpful. Take the kind of intellectual culture that was engendered by the presence of a work like the Sententiae of Peter Lombard once it became a staple of the university curriculum in the thirteenth century.52 It provided a standard text for theological formation. Everyone going through the university curriculum in theology had to come to terms with it in order to graduate as a bachelor of the Sententiae. Prior to this there was no set curriculum or text for theological formation. In fact, while the curriculum on logic may have had a set collection of texts from the Aristotelian-Boethian tradition which were later supplanted by other Aristotelian texts, there wasn’t anything like this in theology until Peter Lombard’s Sententiae. The closest one could come to something verging on a list came in the recommendations of the Rule of St. Benedict about the kind of patristic texts that should be read in chapter or for personal edification (Chapter 73) or Cassiodorus’s suggestions for reading material in Book 1 of his Institutiones diuinarum et saecularium litterarum.53 The recommendation in the Rule of St. Benedict is broad enough to make for idiosyncratic tendencies. Each monk could design his own education by the kinds of material he chose to read from year to year as suited his abilities and interests. Augustine’s De trinitate was for Anselm what Peter Lombard’s Sententiae would be to the student of theology in the universities of the thirteenth century. In addition, Anselm could claim familiarity with Augustine’s De trinitate that even Peter Lombard could not claim, judging from the nature of the Lombard’s citations and allusions to Augustine’s Trinitarian thought. As Rosemann notes,54 51 John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, pp. 54–61; pp. 150– 159; M. T. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, pp. 109–118; Constant Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 101–122; pp. 131–140. 52 See Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1994); Philip W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 53 For a recent edition see, Cassiodorus: Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning and On the Soul, translated by James W. Halporn with an introduction by Mark Vessey (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2004), pp. 104–233. 54 Philipp W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard, p. 52.

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Peter Lombard may not have known the De trinitate directly. He seems to have gained his knowledge of it from other sources, possibly other sentence collections like Abelard’s Sic et Non. One contemporary claimed uncharitably that Abelard’s Sic et Non was always before Peter Lombard as he composed his Sententiae.55 So, more than a century and a half after the Monologion someone like Peter Lombard gained most of his knowledge of Augustine’s Trinitarian thought indirectly from sentence collections. That says a great deal about Anselm’s possible uniqueness, not only that he knew De trinitate, but that he had mastered it and could produce a work so dependant on it and yet so original in style. This is not to say that De trinitate was the only work that Anselm studied or that there were no other influences on his thought.56 But I am suggesting that Anselm’s references to Augustine and De trinitate’s fine arguments should not be read as standard laudatory or hagiographic embellishment. The more one reads the Monologion in light of De trinitate the more one sees the depth of Anselm’s understanding and the extent of his assimilation of it. And it may not be an overstatement to say that the Monologion is one of the most important readings of Augustine’s De trinitate in the medieval centuries. Any medieval reader who had the benefit of Augustine’s prefatory letter to Bishop Aurelius of Carthage would quickly gain some insight into the nature of Augustine’s masterpiece. As he recounts it, Augustine had stopped working on De trinitate when he discovered that the work had been “lifted” from his possession in an unpolished and unfinished state. The reader soon finds out that Augustine conceived of his work as an inquiry that “proceeds in a closely-knit development from the first of them to the last.” He was deeply disappointed, then, that the work had been pirated and made public when he had not corrected and edited the completed books to his satisfaction. The notion of a closely-knit development from first to last brings to mind Anselm’s description of the Mono-

55 Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise, p. 232. Cf. Clanchy, Abelard: A Medieval Life, p. 38; p. 88. 56 See the recent argument by Giles E. M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and His Theological Inheritance, who claims Greek patristic influence on Anselm against the standard view of the Augustinian nature of Anselm’s thought.

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logion as an interconnected chain of arguments, one building upon the other. Augustine complains to Aurelius: “Some people have the first four books, or rather five, without their prefaces, and the twelfth book without its considerable concluding section.” Augustine’s main worry is that he wanted more time to make his exposition more lucid, since the subject matter is difficult and few have the capacity for it. He reluctantly published the work because of the requests of many brethren and also because of Aurelius’s own command. We can see an antecedent here of Anselm’s explanation of why he gave in eventually to the entreaties of his fellow monks that he produce a work for them as a model meditation on the divine nature. Augustine did not want to have too much of a discrepancy between the pirated copies and the version he was finally making public. And so he asks that the prefatory letter be placed before the books of De trinitate but be kept separate.57 This would give anyone approaching the work some sense of the circumstances under which Augustine had produced it. Recall Anselm’s recommendation that the preface and chapter headings be placed ahead of the main body of the Monologion so that the reader would know in advance what was in store. What Augustine also does in De trinitate is to provide various introductions to the individual books. Eight of the fifteen books (2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, and 15) have prefaces. On these occasions, Augustine often addresses the reader directly about the principles guiding the work and the hermeneutical position required of the reader, stating on some occasions his expectations of how he would like to be read. In so doing, Augustine removes a major difficulty for anyone who might encounter so prolix and involved a work as the De trinitate. Augustine demarcates clearly how the books relate to each other and reiterates this in the concluding Book 15.58 57 Augustine, Epistula 169 (CSEL 44, p. 613); Prefatory letter to Augustine’s De trinitate (Edmund Hill translation, p. 63). 58 On the modern debates surrounding Augustine’s De trinitate and his Trinitarian thought see the important work by Roland Kany, Augustins Trinitätsdenken. Bilanz, Kritik und Weiterführung der modernen Forschung zu De trinitate (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Chrstientum, 22, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007). For representative works by some of the central characters in the debate see the following: Francois Bourassa, “Theologie trinitaire chez saint Augustin,” Gregorianum, 58 (1977), pp. 675–725; Johannes Brachtendorf,

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Roughly, the books of De trinitate can be divided into two parts. This has been a customary rubric, namely that Books 1–7 form the first part and Books 8–15 the second part, since Augustine states in the opening paragraphs of Book 8 that he is now turning his attention to a more “inward way” to try to understand the Trinity. This more inward way contains Augustine’s various explorations into the phenomenology of the human mind and his inquiry into a Trinitarian conception of the mind (as opposed to the commonly asserted notion of a so-called psychological conception of the Trinity). As one reads De trinitate, the basic two-fold division quickly yields to what is closer to a four-fold division, again based on Augustine’s comments about his objectives. A better framework devolves on the following division: Books 1–4; 5–7; 8–12; 13–15. “Prius esse cogitare quem credere: A Natural Understanding of ‘Trinity’ in St. Augustine?” Augustinian Studies, 29 (1988), pp. 36–46; Johannes Brachtendorf, ed. Gott und sien Bild. Augustinus De Trinitate im Spiegel gegenwärtiger Forschung (Paderborn: Schöningh); Alfred Schindler, Wort und Analogie in Augustins trinitätslehre (Tübingen, 1965); Michael Schmaus, Die psychologische trinitätslehre des heiligen Augustinius (Münster: Aschendorff, 1967: reprint of 1927 first edition); Basil Studer, “History and Faith in Augustine’s De Trinitate,” Augustinian Studies, 28 (1997), pp. 7–50; idem, Augustins ‘De Trinitate,’ Eine Einführung (Paderborn: Shöningh, 2005); and idem, “Augustins De Trinitate, eine christliche Botschaft,” Augustinianum, 45 (2005), pp. 501–517. See also Michel R. Barnes, “The Arians of Book V, and the Genre of De Trinitate,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 44 (1993), pp. 185–195; idem, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies, 56 (1995), pp. 237–50; idem, “De Regnon Reconsidered,” Augustinian Studies, 26 (1995), pp. 51–79; idem, “The Fourth Century as Trinitarian Canon” in Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, edited by Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 47–67; idem, “Exegesis and Polemic in Augustine’s De Trinitate I,” Augustinian Studies, 30 (1999), pp. 43–59; idem, “Re-reading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 145–176; idem, “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: Mt. 5.8 in Augustine’s Trinitarian Theology of 400,” Modern Theology, (2003), pp. 329–55; and the following by Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII–XV,” Augustinian Studies, 29 (1998), pp. 111–139; idem, “Remember that you are Catholic” (serm. 52,2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God,” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 8 (2000), pp. 39–82. Cf. Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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The first section is easily discernable from his comments in the preface to Book 5 that he is taking a new turn: “From now on .…” And because Augustine gives indication of his inward turn at the beginning of Book 8, this serves as the beginning of the third section. Book 12 completes his investigation of the various trinities or triads, and he devotes all of Book 13 to a commendation of the Christian faith (as he tells the reader again in De trinitate 15.5). The end of Book 12, then, provides a natural break, leading to the final section of the work. With the commendation in Book 13 behind him, Augustine revisits the Trinitarian analogies in Book 14. He reiterates, clarifies, and elaborates on his exposition and what was left unsaid in Books 12 and 13; he then summarizes in Book 15 – the longest of all the books of De trinitate – everything he has done in the previous fourteen books.59 Of the four sections outlined, the one that would have been the least useful for Anselm’s purposes is the first, Books 1–4, since it is devoted to an exposition of the doctrine based on scripture and Christian confession. For someone attempting to articulate the doctrine without appeal to scripture, the other three sections would be the most natural place to look, even though some of those sections contain arguments that also use scripture, as for example, in Books 13, 14, and 15. In these instances Augustine makes clear that he is commending the faith, so that Books 13 and 15 clearly do something different from the patterns one finds in Books 8–12. The significance of Book 15 cannot be overestimated. It contains a

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On different ways of thinking about the structure of De trinitate, see Goulven Madec, “Inquisitione proficiente. Pour une lecture ‘saine’ du De Trinitate d’Augustin,” in Gott und sein Bild, ed., Johannes Brachtendorf, pp, 53–78. Cf. John Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De Trinitate,” Augustinian Studies, 23 (1992), pp. 103–123; idem, “The Quest for Truth in Augustine’s De Trinitate,” Theological Studies, 58 (1997), pp. 429–440; Lewis Ayres, “The Christological Context of Augustine’s De Trinitate XIII: Toward Relocating Books VIII–XV,” Augustinian Studies, 29 (1998), pp. pp. 111–139; Isabelle Bochet, “The Hymn to the One in Augustine’s De Trinitate IV,” Augustinian Studies, 38 (2007), pp. 41–60. See also Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 6–39; and Edmund Hill, “Introduction,” in Augustine: The Trinity (New York: New City Press, 1991), pp. 18–59; idem, “Augustine’s Method in the De Trinitate: A Model for Text Books and Catechisms,” in Gott und sein Bild, ed., Johannes Brachtendorf, pp. 29–38.

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conspectus of Augustine’s thinking about meditating on the divine nature. Is this not the framework of the Monologion? But long before the reader becomes acquainted with Book 15 he would have learned from the earlier books what Augustine describes as his compact with his readers. In the opening pages of Book 1 of De trinitate Augustine speaks directly to his readers, and after a lengthy presentation of his expectations, states to “whoever reads this” (quisquis haec legit) the following: “where he is equally certain (pariter certus est), let him proceed directly with me, where he is as hesitant (pariter haesitat), let him seek with me, where he knows he is in error, let him return to me (redeat ad me); where I am in error, let him call me back (reuocet me).”60 This way, as the reader and Augustine proceed on the road of charity (caritatis uiam), they will be advancing toward their object, following the scriptural admonition: seek his face always (quaerite faciem eius semper). Augustine enters into this covenant (placitum), this sacred and secure (pium atque tutum) compact, coram domino deo nostro: “for nowhere else is an error more perilous, or the inquiry more laborious, or the discovery more fruitful.”61 Anselm would no doubt agree. In Book 3, the reader would come upon another passage in De trinitate 3.1.2. where Augustine elaborates on the compact. What Augustine wants is not only a pious reader (pium lectorem) but also an open-minded or liberal critic (liberorem correctorem), as he calls him. This is peculiarly my desire for this work, treating as it does of so tremendous a subject, in which one wishes as many discoverers of truth could be found as there are contradictors. But the last thing I want is a reader who is a doting partisan, or a critic who is his own. The reader will not, I trust, be fonder of me than the Catholic faith, nor the critic of himself than of Catholic truth.62 60

Augustine, De trinitate 1.3.5 (CCSL 50, p. 32) : Proinde quisquis haec legit ubi pariter certus est, pergat mecum; ubi pariter haesitat, quaerat mecum; ubi errorem suum cognoscit, redeat ad me; ubi meum, reuocet me. 61 Augustine, De trinitate 1.3.5 (CCSL 50, p. 32) : quia neque periculosius alicubi erratur, nec laboriosius aliquid quaeritur, nec fructuosius aliquid inuenitur. 62 Augustine, De trinitate 3.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 128; Edmund Hill translation, p. 128. Italics mine): Sane cum in omnibus litteris meis non solum pium lectorem sed etiam liberum correctorem desiderem, multo maxime in his ubi ipsa magnitudo quaestionis utinam tam multos inuentores habere posset quam multos contradictores habet. Verumtamen sicut lectorem meum nolo esse mihi deditum, ita correctorem nolo sibi. Ille me non amet amplius quam catholicam fidem; ille se non amet amplius quam catholicam ueritatem.

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Augustine sets forth his expectations. Fundamentally, he subordinates everything he writes to “the Catholic faith,” “Catholic truth,” and the authority of scripture. And he imposes certain obligations on his readers, both dotting partisans and critics. To the first I say: ‘Do not show my works the same deference as the canonical scriptures. Whatever you find in scripture that you used not to believe, why, believe it instantly. But whatever you find in my works that you did not hitherto regard as certain, then unless I have really convinced you that it is certain, continue to have your doubts about it.’ To the second I say: ‘Do not criticize what I write by the standard of your own prejudices or contrariness, but by the divine text or incontrovertible reason. If you find any truth in it, then it does not belong to me just by being there, but rather to both of us by being understood and loved by us both. If you catch me out in anything that is not true, then I must own it for making the mistake; but from now on by being more careful, we can both repudiate its ownership.63

Augustine distinguishes between “the doting partisan,” – the reader (lector) who is bound to Augustine (mihi deditum) – and the critic (corrector) who is bound to himself. He commends neither. The open-minded critic, on the other hand, is one who is so bound to the quest that he would be able to separate truth from falsehood, the useful from the disadvantageous. Such a reader would not judge by his own prejudice (opinio) or contention (contentio) but either by scripture (diuina lectio) or incontrovertible reason (inconcussa ratio). Augustine clearly prefers the inquirers (inuentores) to the contrarians or “contradictors” (contradictores). Anselm appears bound by this compact, for in setting aside scripture and authority, he follows the distinction between scriptural authority and incontrovertible reason found in Augustine’s words.

63 Augustine, De trinitate 3.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 128; Edmund Hill translation, p. 128): Sicut illi dico: Noli meis litteris quasi scripturis canonicis inseruire, sed in illis et quod non credebas cum inueneris incunctanter crede, in istis autem quod certum non habebas nisi certum intellexeris noli firme retinere; ita illi dico: Noli meas litteras ex tua opinione uel contentione sed ex diuina lectione uel inconcussa ratione corrigere; si quid in eis ueri comprehenderis, exsistendo non est meum at intellegendo et amando et tuum sit et meum; si quid autem falsi conuiceris, errando fuerit meum sed iam cauendo nec tuum sit nec meum.

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Augustine, for one, rarely uses the phrase necesse est in De trinitate,64 although in much of his argumentation he makes claims about necessary reasons and positions that are beyond doubt, and so on. Anselm’s sola ratione and his repeated use of necesse est throughout the Monologion exemplify Augustine’s insistence on inconcussa ratio. Augustine’s words in De trinitate 15 also direct the inquirer’s attention to the importance of gaining an understanding of the divine nature through reason if at all possible and not by appeal to authority. Furthermore, by mentioning that he does not want anyone to revere his works like they should the scriptures, Augustine frees his readers to disagree with him and to be unencumbered by his authority, however much they may wish to defer to him. In his own words, he asks that he be followed only if he has convinced the reader by persuasive reasoning and if he has not contradicted the scriptures. So for any true student of Augustine, being Augustinian does not mean merely repeating Augustine. One is allowed to agree and to disagree just as the compact requires. And as long as one’s disagreements follow sound reasoning and do not contradict scripture, the student will prove himself to be the kind of reader Augustine wants for his De trinitate and all his other writings. Furthermore, Augustine’s plea that one ought to seek to understand through reason and not merely by repeating authority is liberating for an inquiring mind like Anselm. The remarkable thing, however, is that in the end Anselm’s arguments remain very close to Augustine’s.

5. De trinitate Book 15 and the Method of the Monologion When I speak of method here, I have in mind the inspiration, the spirit, and the nature of theological rationality that Anselm presents in the Monologion. That method emerges from his reading of De trinitate, even if the style of the Monologion seems to suggest something else at first blush. To begin with, the patient reader, who makes his way through the arguments of the first fourteen books of De trinitate, arrives at Book 15 only to be told that what had been promised, or appeared to be in sight, is far off. The vision 64 See, for example, De trinitate 8.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 269); De trinitate 8.4.7 (CCSL 50, p. 275); De trinitate 8.10.12 (CCSL 50, p. 288).

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at the end of the inquiry is not God, but some understanding of God as Trinity gained from contemplating the things that God has created, especially the human mind. Retracing his steps, Augustine gives a summary of the work and its accomplishments, with an emphasis on what he has tried to do to exercise the mind of the reader: an exercitatio mentis that easily translates into Anselm’s exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei. Augustine writes: In pursuance of our plan to train the reader (exercere lectorem), in the things that have been made (Rom. 1:20), for getting to know him by whom they were made, we came eventually to his image. This is man insofar as he excels other animals, that is, in his reason or understanding and in whatever else can be said about the rational or intellectual soul that may belong to what is called mind or consciousness. … If we then go on to look for something above this nature, and look for something true, there is God, a nature namely that is not created but creator.65

The critical statement is what follows immediately. But we should also not miss the emphasis on Paul’s words from Romans 1:20, that the things that have been made or created lead the mind to the one who created them. Much of what Anselm argues in the Monologion takes Romans 1:20 as its organizing principle. So even when Anselm does not appeal to scripture, his reasoning assumes it, because it is unmistakably shaped by scripture either directly or indirectly through Augustine’s arguments. Augustine here puts the stress on the importance of understanding and not just believing that there is a Trinity merely because scripture says so. Whether this nature is a Trinity (trinitas) we ought to demonstrate, not merely by faith on the authority of divine scripture, but also to understanding, if we can, by some evidence of reason. Why I say, “if we can” will appear well enough as our investigation of the subject proceeds.66 65 Augustine, De trinitate 15.1.1 (CCSL 50a, p. 460; Edmund Hill translation, p. 395): Volentes in rebus quae factae sunt ad cognoscendum eum a quo factae sunt exercere lectorem iam peruenimus ad eius imaginem quod est homo in eo quo caeteris animalibus antecellit, id est ratione uel intellegentia, et quidquid aliud de anima rationali uel intellectuali dici potest quod pertineat ad eam rem quae mens uocatur uel animus… Supra hanc ergo naturam si quaerimus aliquid et uerum quaerimus, deus est, natura scilicet non creata, sed creatrix. 66 Augustine, De trinitate 15.1.1 (CCSL 50a, p. 460; Edmund Hill translation, p. 395): Quae utrum sit trinitas non solum credentibus diuinae scripturae

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Augustine’s distinction between “understanding by some kind of reason” (intellegentibus aliqua ratione) and “faith on the authority of divine scripture” (credentibus diviniae scripturae auctoritate) underwrites two paths towards the same goal. The previous fourteen books of De trinitate followed those paths, sometimes separately, sometimes together, but always distinctly. Significantly, Augustine speaks about two kinds of demonstration as well: one based on the authority of scripture, and the other based on the evidence of reason. And he implies that the latter may be more important. It is better to understand through the demonstration of reason, “if we can,” than by faith through the authority of scripture. This is the warrant for Anselm’s method in the Monologion: to demonstrate by some evidence of reason, if we can, that the one supreme nature is a Trinity. Augustine’s De trinitate is in part an attempt to demonstrate to the understanding in order to strengthen the faith of Christians who believe that God is Trinity. And so he states: “The God himself we are looking for will help us, I confidently hope, to get some fruit from our labors and to understand the meaning of the text in the holy psalm, Let the heart of those who seek the Lord rejoice; seek the Lord and be strengthened; seek his face always” (Ps. 105:3).67 He is painfully aware that what is promised is out of reach. But there is strength and consolation in the seeking itself. As he puts it a few lines later, “He does not say ‘Let the heart of those who find,’ but ‘of those who seek the Lord rejoice’” (Non enim ait: laetetur cor ‘inuenientium’ sed quaerentium dominum). Much of this recapitulates what Augustine did throughout the previous fourteen books of De trinitate. He turns to the prophet Isaiah: “Seek the Lord and as soon as you find him call upon him, and when he draws near to you let the godless man forsake his ways and the wicked man his thoughts” (Is. 55:6). And he asks, “if he can be found when he is sought, why does it say seek his auctoritate, uerum etiam intellegentibus aliqua si possumus ratione iam demonstrare debemus. Cur autem ‘si possumus’ dixerim resipsa cum quaeri disputando coeperit melius indicabit. 67 Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.2 (CCSL 50a, pp. 460–461; Edmund Hill translation, p. 395): Deus quippe ipse quem quaerimus adiuuabit, ut spero, ne sit infructuosus labor noster et intellegamus quemadmodum dictum sit in psalmo sancto: Laetetur cor quaerentium dominum. Quaerite dominum et confirmamini, quaerite faciem eius semper.

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face always? Does he perhaps have to be sought even when he has been found?”68 If what is sought is something incomprehensible, then there is no end in sight, or so it seems. It is sought in order to be found all the more delightfully, and it is found in order to be sought all the more avidly. This is how we might take the words of Wisdom in the book of Ecclesiasticus: Those who eat me will be hungry still and those who drink me will be thirsty still (Sir. 24.29). They eat and drink because they find, and because they are hungry and thirsty they go on seeking.69

That is why “faith seeks, understanding finds” (fides quaerit, intellectus inuenit). But what understanding finds is not the fullness of what is promised by faith. Augustine now introduces his signature phrase from the pre-Vulgate version of Isaiah 7:9: “Unless you believe you will not understand” (nisi credideritis, non intellegetis). Augustine continues: “understanding still goes on seeking the one it has found.”70 So reason’s labor is never finished, because as Romans 1.20 has it, the invisible things are known from what has been created; the invisible is discerned by understanding through the visible things of creation. Augustine goes on to quote an extended passage from the Wisdom of Solomon to justify his efforts, “in case any of the faithful should reckon I have been wasting time for nothing in searching creation for signs of that supreme trinity we are looking 68

Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.2 (CCSL 50a, p. 461; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 395–396): Videtur enim quod semper quaeritur numquam inueniri, et quomodo iam laetabitur et non potius contristabitur cor quaerentium si non potuerint inuenire quod quaerunt? Non enim ait: Laetetur cor ‘inuenientium’ sed quaerentium dominum. Et tamen deum dominum inueniri posse dum quaeritur testatur Esaias propheta cum dicit: Quaerite dominum et mox ut inueneritis inuocate eum, et cum appropinquauerit uobis derelinquat impius uias suas et uir iniquus cogitationes suas. Si ergo quaesitus inueniri potest, cur dictum est: Quaerite faciem eius semper?An et inuentus forte quaerendus est? 69 Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.2 (CCSL 50a, p. 461; Edmund Hill translation, p. 396): Nam et quaeritur ut inueniatur dulcius et inuenitur ut quaeratur auidius. Secundum hoc accipi potest quod dictum est in libro ecclesiastico dicere sapientiam: Qui me manducant adhuc esurient et qui bibunt me adhuc sitient. Manducant enim et bibunt quia inueniunt, et quia esuriunt ac sitiunt adhuc quaerunt. 70 Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.2 (CCSL 50a, pp. 461–462; Edmund Hill translation, p. 396): Fides quaerit, intellectus inuenit; propter quod ait propheta: Nisi credideritis, non intellegetis. Et rursus intellectus eum quem inuenit adhuc quaerit: Deus enim respexit super filios hominum sicut in psalmo sacro canitur, ut uideret si est intellegens aut requirens deum. Ad hoc ergo debet esse homo intellegens ut requirat deum.

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for when we are looking for God, going step by step (modo gradatim) through various trinities of different sorts until we eventually arrive at that mind of man.”71 The passage from Wisdom 13:1–5 compels the seeker to do just what Augustine claims to have been doing. For it “rebukes” those who refuse to discern God from the things that are made: [Those who] from the good things that are seen were unable to know him who is, and did not recognize the craftsman by looking at his works, but thought that either fire or wind or whirling air or the circuit of the stars or the violence of the waters or the luminaries of heaven are the gods that rule the world. If they thought them gods because they were ravished by their species, let them know how much better is their Lord; it was the begetter of beauty who created them. Or if they were amazed at their might and their activity, they should understand from these how much stronger is he who established them. For from the greatness of the species and of the creature the creator of these things can knowably be seen.72

This passage serves as the conclusion to Augustine’s prefatory comments preceding his summary of the contents of the previous fourteen books of De trinitate. When Augustine restates his objective, it is as if he is beginning the quest for God all over again. It is not, after all, only the authority of the divine books which asserts that God is; the universal nature of things which surrounds us, to which we too belong, proclaims that it has a most excellent founder, who has given us a mind and natural reason by which to see that living beings are to be preferred to non-living, ones endowed with sense to non-sentient ones, intelligent ones to non-intelligent, immortal ones to mortal, powerful to non-powerful ones, 71 Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.3 (CCSL 50a, p. 462; Edmund Hill translation, p. 396): Haec de libro sapientiae propterea posui ne me fidelium quispiam frustra et inaniter existimet in creatura prius per quasdam sui generis trinitates quodam modo gradatim donec ad mentem hominis peruenirem quaesisse indicia summae illius trinitatis quam quaerimus cum deum quaerimus. 72 Augustine, De trinitate 15.2.3 (CCSL 50a, p. 462; Edmund Hill translation, p. 396, slightly amended): de his quae uidentur bona non potuerunt scire eum qui est neque operibus attenuentes agnouerunt artificem, sed aut ignem aut spiritum aut citatum aerem aut gyrum stellarum aut uiolentiam aquarum aut luminaria caeli rectores orbis terrarum deos putatterunt. Quorum quidem si specie delectati haec deos putauerunt, sciant quanto dominator eorum melior est, speciei enim generator creauit ea. A ut si uirtutem et operationem eorum mirati sunt, intellegant ab his quanto qui haec constituit fortior est. A magnitudine enim speciei et creaturae cognoscibiliter poterit horum creator uideri.

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just to non-just ones, beautiful to ugly, good to bad, things that cannot decay to things that can, changeless to changeable things, invisible to visible, non-bodily to bodily, happy to unhappy. And so, since we rank the creator without a shadow of doubt above created things, we have to admit that he supremely lives, and senses and understands all things, and cannot die, decay or change; and that he is not a body but the most powerful, just and beautiful, the best and happiest spirit of all.73

This is supposed to be evident to the human mind, and as such admits no counterargument. We should not lose sight of Augustine’s words here when we encounter Anselm’s later assertions in the Monologion that the conclusions of the arguments in the Monologion are invulnerable to counterarguments. Augustine maintains that everything that he has said “and anything else that in a similarly human way of speaking may be regarded as suitable (digne) to say about God, fits both the whole trinity which the one God is and each of the persons in this trinity.”74 Augustine does not think anyone would dare say that the Trinity “does not live, or does not sense or understand anything, or that any of those who are asserted to be equal in that nature is mortal corruptible or changeable or corporeal.”75 He asks also whether anyone can “deny that any of 73 Augustine, De trinitate 15.4.6 (CCSL 50a, pp. 467–468; Edmund Hill translation, p. 399): Neque enim diuinorum librorum tantummodo auctoritas esse deum praedicat, sed omnis quae nos circumstat, ad quam nos etiam pertinemus, uniuersa ipsa rerum natura proclamat habere se praestantissimum conditorem qui nobis mentem rationemque naturalem dedit qua uiuentia non uiuentibus, sensu praedita non sentientibus, intellegentia non intellegentibus, immortalia mortalibus, impotentibus potentia, iniustis iusta, speciosa deformibus, bona malis, incorruptibilia corruptibilibus, immutabilia mutabilibus, inuisibilia uisibilibus, incorporalia corporalibus, beata miseris praeferenda uideamus. Ac per hoc quoniam rebus creatis creatorem sine dubitatione praeponimus, oportet ut eum et summe uiuere et cuncta sentire atque intellegere, et mori, corrumpi mutarique non posse; nec corpus esse sed spiritum omnium potentissimum, iustissimum, speciosissimum, optimum beatissimumque fateamur. 74 Augustine, De trinitate 15.5.7 (CCSL 50a, p. 468; Edmund Hill translation, p. 399): Sed haec omnia quae dixi et quaecumque alia simili more locutionis humanae digne de deo dici uidentur et uniuersae trinitati qui est unus deus et personis singulis in eadem trinitate conueniunt. 75 Augustine, De trinitate 15.5.7 (CCSL 50a, p. 468; Edmund Hill translation, p. 399): Quis enim uel unum deum, quod est ipsa trinitas, uel patrem uel filium uel spiritum sanctum audeat dicere aut non uiuentem aut nihil sentientem uel intellegentem, aut in ea natura qua inter se praedicantur aequales quemquam eorum esse mortalem siue corruptibilem siue mutabilem siue corporeum?

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them there in the divine sphere is most powerful, just and beautiful, superlatively good and happy?”76 But if all these attributes, most beautiful, most just, most blessed, etc., can be applied properly to the Trinity, how do they reveal the Trinity? How does the Trinity disclose itself in these attributes? And how does the mind contemplate the Trinity? Augustine proposes a reduction of all the attributes to a smaller number which encapsulates them all. Augustine begins with twelve attributes in three groups of four: (1) eternal, immortal, incorruptible, unchangeable; (2) living, wise, powerful, beautiful; and (3) just, good, blessed, and spirit. He reduces these to eternal, wise, and blessed (De trinitate 15.6.9). He then proposes another reduction; this time suggesting wisdom as the supreme attribute from which one derives the Trinity, since scripture sometimes speaks of Christ as the power and wisdom of God (I Cor. 1:24). How, he asks, can this be done? “What manner of argument is left then, indeed what force or power of intellect, what liveliness of reason, what needle-sharp thought can show how this one thing ‘wisdom,’ not to mention the other which God is called, is also a trinity?”77 He is not interested in whether we believe that wisdom is Trinity, for that is not in doubt among believers. What concerns him is whether “we can see intellectually” or understand what we believe. Augustine’s “what manner of argument” captures the mood of the many arguments Anselm proposes in the Monologion. And so when Augustine goes from asking “what manner of argument” to underscoring the fundamental importance of the argument from the good in De trinitate 8 for his entire project of intellectually apprehending the Trinity, we have that basic Augustinian starting point for understanding God the Trinity. It should be no surprise, then, that Anselm presents the argument from the good as the easiest way of demonstrating to anyone that there is one supreme all sufficient good who created all things and sustains them. This 76 Augustine, De trinitate 15.5.7 (CCSL 50a, p. 468; Edmund Hill translation, p. 399–400): Aut quisquam ibi neget aliquem potentissimum, iustissimum, speciosissimum, optimum, beatissimum? Si ergo haec atque huiusmodi omnia et ipsa trinitas et in ea singuli dici possunt, ubi aut quomodo trinitas apparebit? 77 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.9 (CCSL 50a, p. 472; Edmund Hill translation, p. 401): Quis itaque disputandi modus, quaenam tandem uis intellegendi atque potentia, quae uiuacitas rationis, quae acies cogitationis ostendet, ut alia iam taceam, hoc unum quod sapientia dicitur deus quomodo sit trinitas?

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is the first argument Anselm makes in the Monologion. Here is Augustine: If we try to recall where it was in these books that a trinity first began to appear to our understanding (nostro intellectui), it will occur to us that it was in the eighth book. There we attempted (temptauimus) as best we could to raise (erigere) the attention of the mind (mentis intentionem) by our discussion to understand that supremely eminent and unchangeable nature which our mind is not (mens non est). We observed it as both not being far away from us and yet being above us, not spacially [sic] (non loco) but in its august and marvelous eminence, and in such a way that it also seemed to be with or in use by the presence of its light.78

Augustine goes on to say that the mind cannot behold the Trinity because it is too bright for the eye of the mind to behold. The mind sees and is blinded at the same time. [We] could not hold the gaze of the mind fixed on looking for one in that dazzling brilliance; all we were able to perceive was that there is no mass there in which we would have to believe that the size of two or three is something more than that of one. But when we came to charity (ad caritatem), which is called God in holy scripture the glimmering of a trinity began to appear, namely lover and what is loved and love. However, that inexpressible light beat back our gaze and somehow convinced us that the weakness of our mind could not yet be attuned to it. So to relax our concentration we turned ourselves back in reflection, between the beginning and the completion of our search, to what could be called the familiar consideration of our own mind insofar as man has been made to the image of God. And from then on we lingered over the creature which we ourselves are from the ninth to the fourteenth book in order to descry if we could the invisible things of God by understanding them through those that have been made.79 78 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 472; Edmund Hill translation, p. 401): Si enim recolamus ubi nostro intellectui coeperit in his libris trinitas apparere, octauus occurrit. Ibi quippe ut potuimus disputando erigere temptauimus mentis intentionem ad intellegendam illam praestantissimam immutabilemque naturam quod nostra mens non est. Quam tamen sic intuebamur ut nec longe a nobis esset et supra nos esset, non loco sed ipsa sui uenerabili mirabilique praestantia ita utapud nos esse suo praesenti lumine uideretur. 79 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 472–73: Edmund Hill translation, p. 402): In qua tamen nobis adhuc nulla trinitas apparebat quia non ad eam quaerendam in fulgore illo firmam mentis aciem tenebamus; tantum quia non erat aliqua moles ubi credi oporteret magnitudinem duorum uel trium plus

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The achievement of De trinitate 9–14, then, is a limited one. The understanding is driven back to reflection, blinded by “that dazzling brilliance” which is God. On Augustine’s terms, reflection (or meditation) is the safe house for those whose concentration is lacking. “So here we are, after exercising (exercitata) our understanding as much as was necessary, and perhaps more than was necessary in these lower things, wishing and not being able to raise (erigere) ourselves to a sight of that supreme trinity which is God.”80 But it is not for nothing. To be sure, we plainly see some evident trinities, either ones produced outside from bodily things, or ones we see when things that have been sensed outside are thought about; or when things that spring up in the consciousness like faith, like the virtues which are arts of living, are perceived directly by reason and grasped by knowledge; or when the mind itself, by which we know whatever we can say we truly know, is known by itself or thinks about itself; or when it observes something eternal and unchangeable which it itself is not.81

But do these exemplars, if in fact they are exemplars, amount to an apprehension of the Trinity? Augustine himself gives expression to this anxiety. esse quam unius cernebamus utcumque. Sed ubi uentum est ad caritatem quae in sancta scriptura deus dicta est eluxit paululum trinitas, id est amans et quod amatur et amor. Sed quia lux illa ineffabilis nostrum reuerberabat obtutum et ei nondum posse contemperari nostrae mentis quod am modo conuincebatur infirmitas, ad ipsius nostrae mentis secundum quam factus est homo ad imaginem dei uelut familiariorem considerationem reficiendae laborantis intentionis causa inter coeptum dispositumque refleximus, et inde in creatura quod nos sumus ut inuisibilia dei per ea quae facta sunt conspicere intellecta possemus immorati sumus a nono usque ad quartum decimum librum. 80 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 473; Edmund Hill translation, p. 402): Et ecce iam quantum necesse fuerat aut forte plus quam necesse fuerat exercitata in inferioribus intellegentia ad summam trinitatem quae deus est conspiciendam nos erigere uolumus nec ualemus. 81 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 473; Edmund Hill translation, p. 402): Num enim sicut certissimas uidemus trinitates, siue quae forinsecus de rebus corporalibus fiunt, siue cum ea ipsa quae forinsecus sensa sunt cogitantur; siue cum illa quae oriuntur in animo nec pertinent ad corporis sensus sicut fides, sicut uirtutes quae sunt artes agendae uitae manifesta ratione cernuntur et scientia continentur; siue cum mens ipsa qua nouimus quidquid nosse nos ueraciter dicimus sibi cognita est uel se cogitat; siue cum aliquid quod ipsa non est, aeternum atque incommutabile conspicit;

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But just because we see these evident trinities, since they happen in us or are in us when we remember and behold and will these things, does it mean that we also see God as trinity in the same way, since there too we intellectually observe one as uttering, and his Word (that is the Father and the Son) and the charity common to them both proceeding thence, namely the Holy Spirit? Or is it that we see rather than believe these trinities which belong to our senses or our consciousness, while we believe rather than see that God is a trinity?82

Augustine answers his own questions in hypothetical terms, but points to Books 8 and 14 as containing the substance of his replies to the implied objections. Augustine argues that, if we believe rather than understand the Trinity, then either we do not perceive (conspicimus) any of his invisible attributes (or things) by understanding them through the things that exist, or that if we perceive some of them, we do not perceive the Trinity.83 And, then, he adds that both Books 8 and 14 provide ways of understanding the things that are created that persuade us to believe that there is a Trinity. He points to two main arguments. First, the argument from the good in Book 8 which proves that there is an unchangeable good that we are not, and second, the conclusion from Book 14 confirming this unchangeable good as the source of wisdom, which we have from God.84 Almost as if following Augustine’s instigation about the importance of Books 8 and 14, Anselm begins and ends the Monologion with themes from Books 8 and 14 respectively: The early chapters of the Monologion with the argument from the good in Book 8, as we noted; and the later chapters 82

Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 473; Edmund Hill translation, p. 402): num ergo sicut in his omnibus certissimas uidemus trinitates quia in nobis fiunt uel in nobis sunt, cum ista meminimus, aspicimus, uolumus ita uidemus etiam trinitatem deum quia et illic intellegendo conspicimus tamquam dicentem et uerbum eius, id est patrem et filium, atque inde procedentem caritatem utrique communem, sanctum scilicet spiritum? An trinitates istas ad sensus nostros uel animum pertinentes uidemus potius quam credimus, deum uero esse trinitatem credimus potius quam uidemus? 83 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 473). 84 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 474): Conspicere autem nos immutabile bonum quod nos non sumus fiber octauus ostendit, et quartus decimus cum de sapientia quae homini ex deo est loqueremur admonuit. Cur itaque ibi non agnoscimus trinitatem? An haec sapientia quae deus dicitur non se intellegit, non se diligit? Quis hoc dixerit? Aut quis est qui non uideat ubi nulla scientia est nullo modo esse sapientiam?

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of the Monologion about the itinerary of the soul, its choices, and its just rewards that Augustine discusses in Book 14. Anselm’s language rehearses much of what Augustine writes about the true wisdom that calls the soul from its fall and error to return to its original and true home. But if wisdom is from God, Augustine wonders, why do we not recognize the Trinity when we speak of wisdom? Is it because this wisdom that is called God does not understand itself or love itself? “Who would ever say such a thing?” He asks, alarmed. “Or does anybody fail to see that where there is no knowledge there cannot possibly be any wisdom? Or is it to be supposed that the wisdom which God is knows other things and does not know itself, or loves other things and does not love itself?” He answers that “it would be folly and impiety to say or believe such a thing. So there we have a trinity, namely wisdom and its knowledge of itself and its love of itself. We found a similar trinity in man, namely the mind, and the knowledge it knows of itself with, and the love it loves itself with.”85 Anselm employs this type of argument, which seems more assertion than valid argumentation, on a number of occasions in the Monologion where the declaration that something is absurd proves its opposite as incontestable. Augustine cleverly manages to derive the Trinity from wisdom. It is not nearly as persuasive as the triad of the lover, the beloved, and love. The pattern of wisdom, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself, is based on the notion of the human being as a rational animal who knows wisdom, is conscious of its knowledge of itself, and loves itself. The point is to distinguish in what sense wisdom as Trinity differs from the human being as a triad of wisdom, knowledge, and love, when the ancients define a human being as a rational mortal animal or as a rational substance made of body and soul. The soul, the body alone, or rationality by itself does not constitute a human being. Each one represents an aspect of the human being, it cannot represent the whole. So the comparison between a trinity based on these three aspects of a human being and a trinity 85 Augustine, De trinitate 15.6.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 473–474; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 402–403): Quod si ita est, profecto aut inuisibilia eius per ea quae facta sunt nulla intellecta conspicimus, aut si ulla conspicimus, non in eis conspicimus trinitatem, et est illic quod conspiciamus, est quod etiam non conspectum credere debeamus.

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in God cannot be more than a “way of speaking.” “Can we possibly say that a trinity is in God in such a way that it is something of God’s, and is not itself just God?” This is Augustine’s question. The individual person is said to be in the image of God, not because of all that pertains to a person’s nature, but only that part which pertains to his mind, that rational part of that nature which is the image of the Trinity. But the Trinity itself, of which the human being, as human being, is an image, is simply God. So Augustine adds a qualification to clarify why the term “person” should not be used of the Trinity as a principle of individuation in the way we think of human persons. There is nothing belonging to God’s nature that does not belong to the Trinity. The three persons (tres personae) are one essence or nature (sunt unius essentiae), but not as if each of the three persons were a separate individual (singulus quisque homo una persona). This will be important for Anselm’s reflections in M 79, where he writes about the propriety of predicating the word persona to the respective members of the Trinity. Augustine reminds the diligent reader of the great dissimilarity that obtains between the human mind and the Trinity. For how the human mind knows, loves, remembers, understands, etc., does not represent how the Trinity knows, loves, remembers, understands, etc. This is a theme Anselm repeats in the Monologion and which he captures in the chapter heading of M 11 with the statement that there is a great deal of dissimilarity in this similarity (multa sit in hac similitudine dissimilitudo). If the Son alone there does the understanding for himself and the Father and the Holy Spirit, we are back at that absurdity of the Father not being wise with himself but with the Son, and of wisdom not begetting wisdom, but of the Father being called wise with the wisdom he has begotten. For where there is no understanding there cannot be any wisdom, and if the Father does not do his understanding for himself, but the Son does it for the Father, it follows that it is the Son who makes the Father wise. And if for God to be is the same as to be wise, it is not the Son who has being (essentia) from the Father (which is the true position) but rather the Father that has being (essentia) from the Son, which is the height of absurdity and falsehood. We discussed, showed up, and rejected this absurdity with complete finality in the seventh book.86 86 Augustine, De trinitate 15.7.12 (CCSL 50a, p. 476; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 403–404): Si enim solus ibi filius intellegit et sibi et patri et spiritui

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If the patient reader has forgotten how difficult it is to gain a vision of God, Augustine offers yet another reminder. He turns to a brief meditation on time at De trinitate 15.7.13 as a prelude to his comments on the Pauline passage from I Corinthians 13:13: “We see through a mirror in an enigma, but then we shall see face to face.” Augustine offers assurances too. We know that certain things happen in our minds, but when we try to give expression to them they elude us. If we have difficulty explaining what happens in our own minds, we should not expect to be able to know the mind of God let alone explain what the Trinity is in itself. We shall see that Anselm says something similar in M 64 and M 65 when he offers a defense of his method. It is a relief in this kind of difficulty and frustration to cry out to the living God, ‘Your knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is mighty and I cannot attain it.’ From myself indeed I understand how wonderful and incomprehensible is your knowledge with which you have made me, seeing that I am not even able to comprehend myself whom you have made; and yet a fire burns up in my meditation, causing me to seek your face always.87

Ultimately, Paul’s language in I Corinthians 13:12 grounds Augustine’s understanding of how the human mind can both know and not know that God is trinity by examining the nature of speech and its relationship to thought. We see only dimly in a mirror. If anyone then can understand how a word can be, not only before it is spoken aloud but even before the images of its sounds are turned over in thought – this is the word that belongs to no language, that is to none of what are called the languages of the nations, of sancto, ad illam reditur absurditatem ut pater non sit sapiens de se ipso sed de filio, nec sapientia sapientiam genuerit sed ea sapientia pater dicatur sapiens esse quam genuit. Vbi enim non est intellegentia nec sapientia potest esse, ac per hoc si pater non intellegit ipse sibi sed filius intellegit patri, profecto filius patrem sapientem facit. Et si hoc est deo esse quod sapere et ea illi essentia est quae sapientia, non filius a patre, quod uerum est, sed a filio potius habet pater essentiam, quod absurdissimum atque falsissimum est. Hanc absurditatem nos in libro septimo discussisse, conuicisse, abiecisse certissimum est. 87 Augustine, De trinitate 15.7.13 (CCSL 50a, pp. 478–479; Edmund Hill translation, p. 405): In hac igitur difficultate et angustiis libet exclamare ad deum uiuum: Mirificata est scientia tua ex me, inualuit, et non potero ad illam. Ex me quippe intellego quam sit mirabilis et incomprehensibilis scientia tua qua me fecisti quando nec me ipsum comprehendere ualeo quem fecisti, et tamen in meditatione mea exardescit ignis ut quaeram faciem tuam semper.

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which ours is Latin; if anyone, I say, can understand this, he can already see through this mirror and in this enigma some likeness of that Word of which it is said, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ For when we utter something true, that is when we utter what we know, a word is necessarily born from the knowledge we hold in the memory, a word which is absolutely the same kind of thing as the knowledge it is born from. It is the thought formed from the thing we know that is the word which we utter in the heart, a word that is neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language; but when it is necessary to convey the knowledge in the language of those we are speaking to, some sign is adopted to signify this word. And usually a sound, sometimes, also a gesture is presented, the one to their ears the other to their eyes, in order that bodily signs may make the word we carry in our minds known to their bodily senses. What after all is gesticulating but a way of speaking visibly?88

There is a chain that links what is true to what is understood to the word borne of that knowledge to the verbalization of that word in speech. Human language preserves an inviolable connection between thought and speech and in this way offers an important approach to understanding the opening line of the Gospel of John. For Augustine, as it will be for Anselm, this is the most useful model of divine identity and plurality. Thus in a certain fashion our word becomes a bodily sound by assuming that in which it is manifested to the senses of men, just as the Word of God became flesh by assuming that in which it too could be manifested to the senses of men. And just as our word 88 Augustine, De trinitate 15.10.19 (CCSL 50a, pp. 485–486; Edmund Hill translation, p. 409; slightly amended): Quisquis igitur potest intellegere uerbum non solum antequam sonet, uerum etiam antequam sonorum eius imagines cogitatione uoluantur (hoc est enim quod ad nullam pertinet linguam, earum scilicet quae linguae appellantur gentium quarum nostra latina est), quisquis, inquam, hoe intellegere potest iam potest uidere per hoc speculum atque in hoc aenigmate aliquam uerbi illius similitudinem de quo dictum est: In principio erat uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum. Necesse est enim cum uerum loquimur, id est quod scimus loquimur, ex ipsa scientia quam memoria tenemus nascatur uerbum quod eiusmodi sit omnino cuiusmodi est illa scientia de qua nascitur. Formata quippe cogitatio ab ea re quam scimus uerbum est quod in corde dicimus, quod nec graecum est nec latinum nec linguae alicuius alterius, sed cum id opus est in eorum quibus loquimur perferre notitiam aliquod signum quo significetur assumitur. Et plerumque sonus, aliquando etiam nutus, ille auribus, ille oculis exhibetur ut per signa corporalia etiam corporis sensibus uerbum quod mente gerimus innotescat. Nam et innuere quid est nisi quodam modo uisibiliter dicere?

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becomes sound without being changed into sound, so the Word of God became flesh, but it is unthinkable that it should have been changed into flesh. It is by assuming it, not be being consumed by it, that both our word becomes sound and that Word became flesh. Therefore if you wish to arrive at some kind of likeness of the Word of God, however unlike it may be in many ways, do not look at that word of ours which sounds in the ears, neither when it is uttered vocally nor when it is thought of silently.89

Augustine insists that we must examine the inner word of a human being, that inner word of a rational animal, in order to find some likeness of the Word of God. The Word of God is like that “word which is neither uttered in sound nor thought of in the likeness of sound which necessarily belongs to some language, but which precedes all the signs that signify it and is begotten of the knowledge abiding in the consciousness (in animo), when this knowledge is uttered inwardly (intus) just exactly as it is (sicuti est), but as it can been seen or heard through the body.”90 It is in this way that the likeness found in the image of God (the human mind) comes close to capturing the likeness represented by that image “in which God the Son is declared to be substantially like the Father in all respects.”91 Augustine mentions two other ways

89 Augustine, De trinitate 15.11. 20 (CCSL 50a, p. 487). (Edmund Hill translation, pp. 409–410): Ita enim uerbum nostrum uox quodam modo corporis fit assumendo eam in qua manifestetur sensibus hominum sicut uerbum dei caro factum est assumendo eam in qua et ipsum manifestaretur sensibus hominum. Et sicut uerbum nostrum fit uox nec mutatur in uocem, ita uerbum dei caro quidem factum est, sed absit ut mutaretur in carnem. Assumendo quippe illam, non in eam se consumendo, et hoc nostrum uox fit et illud caro factum est. Quapropter qui cupit ad qualemcumque similitudinem dei uerbi quamuis per multa dissimilem peruenire non intueatur uerbum nostrum quod sonat in auribus nec quando uoce profertur nec quando silentio cogitatur. 90 Augustine, De trinitate 15.11. 20 (CCSL 50a, p. 488; Edmund Hill translation, p. 410): quod neque prolatiuum est in sono neque cogitatiuum in similitudine soni quod alicuius linguae esse necesse sit, sed quod omnia quibus significatur signa praecedit et gignitur de scientia quae manes in animo quando eadem scientia intus dicitur sicuti est. Simillima est enim uisio cogitationis uisioni scientiae. Nam quando per sonum dicitur uel per aliquod corporale signum, non dicitur sicuti est sed sicut potest uideri audiriue per corpus. 91 Augustine, De trinitate 15.11. 20 (CCSL 50a, p. 488). (Edmund Hill translation, p. 410): Sic accedit quantum potest ista similitudo imaginis factae ad illam similitudinem imaginis natae qua deus filius patri per omnia substantialiter similis praedicatur.

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in which the likeness to the Word of God can be conceived. One is the relation between word and action. Again, mining the prologue of the Gospel of John as his foundational text, Augustine points out that the Gospel establishes a link between God’s Word and his acts, for it states in John 1:3 that God made all things through his “only-begotten Word.” In this way also we recognize how a human being does not act without first conceiving the act in the heart. John 1:3 proves Sirach 37:16: “The beginning of every work is a word. So the word is begotten in action.” Moreover, and this is the second “likeness,” there is always a word (i.e. inner word) which precedes action, but there can always be a work without action. Consequently, there would still be a Word of God even without an act of creation. The plurality within the divine nature is therefore not based on the work of creation. This preserves the being of God as wholly self-existing and sustaining, lacking nothing. These meditations on the divine word and the divine utterance that brings all things into being are the basis for much of what Anselm argues about creation, existence, and the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence. This is the standpoint from which Anselm begins the opening chapter of the Monologion, as I indicated a moment ago when I mentioned that Romans 1:20 lies at the heart of Anselm’s thought.

6. Conclusion We have had occasion in this chapter to consider R. W. Southern’s assessment of the relationship between Anselm’s Monologion and Augustine’s De trinitate. In the course of our review of Southern’s comments, I have argued that Southern’s ambivalence about Anselm’s Monologion and the deep roots it has in De trinitate is unnecessary. I have suggested also that Southern’s admonition to repeat the experience that Anselm must have undergone is the best way to understand the links between the Monologion and the De trinitate. I noted in the process that Augustine’s explanation of his project in De trinitate 15 provides a clue to understanding how someone like Anselm would have gone about the work that became the Monologion. And I have shown that Augustine’s plea that one should endeavor to understand the Trinity as much as

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possible through reason and not merely by an appeal to authority is essential to Anselm’s method in the Monologion. Augustine also implies by his admonition about understanding the Trinity by some kind of reason and not by an appeal to authority that the ways of reason and authority are not mutually exclusive, even if the paths differ. Both presuppose some kind of faith. The search for reasons that Augustine undertakes in De trinitate is only possible for those who believe. At the same time, Augustine’s interactions with the philosophical traditions of late antiquity in Books 13 and 14, for example, make the case that to know God the Trinity is truly to arrive at what the philosophers long for. Anselm writes the Monologion too from this perspective. When he speaks of sola ratione, he speaks of reason that is already chastened by faith, because it recognizes as a basic dictum that the things that are made reveal their maker, a creator on whom all things that exist depend and from whom they derive their well-being (M 1). At the same time, Anselm’s analytic style suggests that logic (or dialectic) is a necessary and useful aid towards understanding what is believed. My use of De trinitate 15 as an interpretive clue for the Monologion is meant to suggest the outlines of Anselm’s approach to theological meditatio. My brief exposition of some of the methodological themes in De trinitate 15, therefore, gives us every reason to be skeptical of Southern’s ambivalence about the influence of Augustine’s De trinitate on Anselm’s Monologion. The same could be said for the indifference of many of Anselm’s interpreters in taking up Anselm’s charge to his potential critics. By not taking up that challenge, Anselm’s interpreters both medieval and modern have missed one of the few instances in which the Augustinian imprint of the Monologion is at its most vulnerable. And like Anselm’s medieval readers, few of his modern interpreters have challenged Anselm’s assertion in the preface about the Greeks and their alleged Trinitarian formula, “three substances, in one person.” This provocative claim, perhaps the most troubling aspect of Anselm’s Augustinian inheritance, is the subject of the chapter that follows. And it remains for our reading of the Monologion to demonstrate how much Anselm ranges over the whole of De trinitate for his arguments.

Chapter Two Anselm’s Greek Formula: A Pseudo-Augustinian Gloss

1. Introduction One striking feature of the preface to the Monologion is the attention Anselm draws to the similarities and differences between the Greek East and the Latin West on matters of Trinitarian language and doctrine. Anselm mentions a difference in terminology, but insists that it is a difference that is unremarkable, because both the Greeks and the Latins believe the same thing. The terms in which Anselm makes this claim also point to a problem in the Monologion, which has the potential of exacerbating the very difficulties Anselm wanted to defuse in his prefatory remarks. If Anselm wanted to preclude charges of innovation and error, this was probably not the best way to do it, for he writes that when he speaks of the Trinity as “three substances” he is following the Greeks (secutus Graecos), who confess that the Trinity is “three substances in one person” (tres substantias in una persona). With an almost creedal tone to his use of “confessing,” confitentur, Anselm attributes “three substances in one person” to the Greeks as their version of the Latin formula “three persons in one substance” (tres personas in una substantia), on the supposition that the Greeks signify by “substance” what Latins mean by “person.” Anselm does not say what the Greeks mean when they speak of “person,” nor does he own up to saying that he himself speaks of the unity in the Trinity as “one person.” So far all that Anselm claims for himself is that he speaks of the Trinity as “three substances.” For anyone with any sense of the antecedent tradition, the phrase “three substances in one person” (tres substantias in una persona), which I refer to as Anselm’s Greek formula, is intolerable, and Anselm’s attribution of it to the Greeks inexplicable, since it would most certainly be understood among them as heretical. In the first place, the phrase sounds discordant as a Trinitarian expression, and second, Anselm does not mention any witnesses to

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it from the so-called Greeks. Among his contemporaries in Normandy, there was very little doubt as to what constituted appropriate language for speaking about “the holy and undivided Trinity” and about “the body and blood of the Lord.” The first canon of the Council of Lisieux in 1064 intimates this. By the time of the Council of Rouen in 1072, Lanfranc had written his De corpore et sanguine Domini. The assembled bishops and abbots had no need to worry about the “body and blood of the Lord.” There seemed to be no anxiety about the Berengarian controversy. According to Orderic Vitalis, the assembled prelates included Odo of Bayeux, Hugh of Lisieux, Robert of Séez, Michael of Avranches, Gilbert of Évreux, and Archbishop John of Rouen. They confessed their faith after debating “the doctrine of the holy and undivided Trinity, which they approved, confirmed and professed to believe with their whole hearts, according to the definitions of the holy councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, and Chalcedon.”1 There is nothing in the canons of the ancient councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, and Chalcedon to sanction Anselm’s Greek formula. If any one of these prelates had chanced on Anselm’s formulation he would have wondered on what grounds Anselm was prepared to countenance such an innovation. And if Anselm had been present at Rouen in 1072, one would have to suspect that Anselm had something sinister up his sleeve. Wonder would have turned into something else.2 Moreover, while the Greek formula makes its first appearance in the preface to the Monologion, it does not actually appear in the body of the Monologion. Instead, it resurfaces somewhat allusively in Anselm’s deliberations in chapter 79 (M 79), where Anselm takes up the subject that the reader first encounters in the preface about the language of “person” and “substance” in relation to the Trinity. Anselm pursues the discussion in M 79 under the following heading: “what three the supreme essence can in some way be said to be” (quid tres summa essentia quodammodo dici possit). This encourages the reader to revisit the theme broached in the preface. This means that one cannot make sense of what Anselm says in the preface about his Greek formula without his discussion in M 79. But it does not end here. 1 2

OV 2, 287. OV 2, 293.

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Outside of the Monologion, Anselm repeats his Greek formula on three other occasions: in Letter 83 to Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers, written after the completion of the Monologion (c. 1076) and before the completion of the Proslogion (c. 1078); in the final chapter of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi (c. 1094); and in Letter 204 to the Prior and monks of St. Albans (some 30 miles northwest of London in Hertford), written nearly two decades after the Monologion. The evidence falls into two clusters: a period close to the Monologion and its immediate aftermath in Letter 83 (c. 1075–1077); and a period nearly two decades later dealing with the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi and Letter 204 (c. 1094–1097). Whenever Anselm mentions the formula he always mentions Augustine. But he does not always mention that he derived the formula from Augustine’s De trinitate, except in Letter 204 where Anselm makes an explicit claim to Augustinian origin in a memorable phrase with juridical overtones: “blessed Augustine testifies in the book De trinitate” (testatur beatus Augustinus in libro De trinitate). Whether Anselm’s statement is a claim about Augustinian authorship of the formula or a much less specific kind of inspiration is not immediately evident. The two, of course, are poles apart. There are a number of difficulties associated with Anselm’s use of the formula, his claim of Augustine’s testimony, and his analysis of the propriety of using the words “substance” (substantia) and “person” (persona) to speak about God, the Trinity. A preliminary assessment yields the following conclusion: In spite of Anselm’s claim in Letter 204 that Augustine’s De trinitate provides testimony for the phrase, his Greek formula appears to be his own derivation. There are a few others, like the Cistercian Isaac of Stella, who attest to it subsequent to Anselm, but not before him. So exactly how Anselm came to speak of “three substances in one person” as a Trinitarian expression and why he attributed this expression to the Greeks by way of Augustine is a question worth pondering. I have already mentioned that Anselm himself does not necessarily insist on speaking of the unity in the Trinity as “one person,” at least not in the preface to the Monologion. However, his later claim of Augustinian origin commits him to saying two things: first, that the phrase is entirely acceptable, and second, that Augustine bears witness that the Greeks speak this way, without saying anything

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erroneous or heterodox. This presupposes that Augustine either quotes the Greeks or paraphrases his Greek sources this way. To understand Anselm’s claim it will be necessary to examine the various contexts in which he states the phrase and what possible inspiration De trinitate may have provided for Anselm’s conviction about the Augustinian origin of the phrase. There are two possibilities. First, that Anselm found the phrase verbatim in Augustine and therefore is reproducing just what is stated and attested in Augustine. Or second, the ideas that go into making the phrase an acceptable way of describing the so-called Greek position are all to be found in Augustine, and that Anselm merely makes explicit what is implicit in Augustine’s De trinitate. If it is the former, then Anselm has the basis for insisting on Augustine’s testimony, if the latter, then the sort of testimony that Anselm elicits is more indirect than his words imply. As for the claim in Letter 204, it may turn out, as it seems at first blush, that Anselm’s attribution of his Greek formula to Augustine is an aberration, given that he does not make any such claim in the three other instances where he mentions the Greek formula. What do I mean? That the attribution is simply a mistake and nothing more. If it is an error, one then has to provide some kind of explanation as to why Anselm mentioned Augustine’s testimony to begin with and how he could have made this error about a text that he apparently knew so well.3 Right or wrong, we cannot simply overlook the statement about Augustine’s testimony in Letter 204 as a “passing reference” or a quaint exaggeration on Anselm’s part.4 Moreover, in Letter 204 he mentions that the Greeks say “three substances in one person in the Lord” (dicant in domino unam personam, tres substantias), before he adds the memorable, “blessed Augustine testifies in his book De trinitate.” The phrase “one person in the Lord” is distinctively Christological, and does not signify the Trinity, as such. This raises a further question. Is Anselm speaking only about the person of Christ, and therefore not making a Trinitarian assertion? Or must we read his “three substances in one person in the Lord” as a Trinitarian formula in the way that he speaks in the 3

I offer an alternative interpretation of Anselm on this question than that provided by Giles E. M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance, pp. 127–143. 4 Ibid., pp. 136–137.

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preface to the Monologion? Better yet, can we separate Anselm’s unam personam, tres substantias from his dicant in domino? Why attempt this? Because Anselm links his assertion in Letter 204 to the Greeks. This immediately brings to mind his earlier statements in the Monologion about “three substances in one person.” If it is a Trinitarian expression in the preface to the Monologion, then it must be assumed to be a Trinitarian expression here in Letter 204, unless of course, dicant in domino is a great qualifier that changes everything. In which case, Anselm would be making an entirely different claim to the one he makes in the preface to the Monologion. On this reading, he would be saying that the Greeks also speak about the person of Jesus Christ as one person in three substances. If that is the case, then Letter 204 has nothing to do with the language of the Trinity. The only problem is that Anselm does not explain what those three substances are. In addition, because he puts so much emphasis on speaking about three substances in the Trinity in the preface to the Monologion, Anselm leaves himself open to the charge that he is in fact speaking about the Trinity when he uses the phrase “three substances” in Letter 204. This is the standpoint from which I shall proceed. Anselm’s statement in the preface to the Monologion could also be read as an overreaction, since Anselm does not argue directly for the phrase “three substances in one person” in M 79 where he returns to the subject. What he does say is that because there are not several substances (subsisting things, if you will, like three individual persons) in the supreme essence there are not three persons in that essence the way we think of three human beings. This is a negative doctrine, rather than a positive statement. While it does not insist that one should speak of the supreme essence as one person, it seems to provide a rationale for its legitimacy. Equally, Anselm’s assertiveness about the formula in the preface seems to be addressing a problem or an anxiety that is hardly detectable in M 79. This makes his appeal to the Greeks even more curious. But which came first, M 79 or the preface? Ordinarily one would assume that Anselm wrote the preface after he had completed the entire work. Anselm had the habit of correcting his works, and we will have occasion to observe how Anselm made corrections to earlier redactions of the Monologion to remove ambiguities and some-

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times to insert new material.5 Whether M 79 was written later, almost as an appendix to the entire argument, inserted just before the concluding chapter 80, is difficult to say. What is striking is that Anselm does not use his Greek formula in M 79, even though he could have, but preferred instead to mention it in the preface. His statement in the preface is also qualified in a way that puts all the emphasis on his use of the word “substance.” Why doesn’t Anselm address this in the sections of the Monologion where he discusses the problem of predicating substance and accidents to the supreme nature and the Trinity? Why mention it in the preface and leave it out at the important moments where it would have mattered? In addition, M 79 uses for its argument a definition that is of Boethian origin as to what constitutes a person: a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. This definition by its very nature makes “person” interchangeable with “substance.” This does not mean that Anselm is necessarily following Boethian arguments in M 79, only that there may be a Boethian influence, whether direct or indirect. This will have to be accounted for as we try to explain how Anselm parses the distinction between “person” and “substance.” Echoing Augustine’s arguments in the De trinitate 5 & 7, Anselm’s language about substances and accidents in the latter half of M 79 reiterates his arguments in other parts of the Monologion. And so, in order to understand how Anselm came by his Greek formula, it will be essential later on to return to Augustine’s De trinitate to compare it with the possible sources in Boethius. But more important than either the Boethian definition of person or the language of substances and accidents is Anselm’s use of nescio quid at the beginning of M 79, a common enough phrase, but one that an astute or diligent reader of Augustine’s De trinitate would pick out as no mere commonplace. When it comes to Trinitarian language, and especially when words like “person,” “substance,” and “accidents” are under discussion, Augustine’s use of nescio quid has a deflationary effect on certain forms of speech about the Trinity. It suggests an attitude that is clearly agnostic as to the meaningfulness of language used to express the Trinity, 5 F. S. Schmitt, “Les corrections de S. Anselme à son Monologion,” Revue Bénédictine, 50 (1938), pp. 194–205.

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so much so that Augustine comes to think of the word “trinity” as a name that signifies “the-three-in-one,” but a name that does not explain how the three are one. Significantly, Anselm also uses the phrase nescio quid at some point in his deliberations. One has to consider, then, Anselm’s nescio quid and the kind of Trinitarian nominalism it represents. To suggest that Anselm has a nominalist impulse about Trinitarian language may seem out of place. After all, he has a reputation for his opposition to Roscelin of Compiègne, generally considered a representative figure of late eleventh-century nominalism.6 What I have in mind is this: Anselm himself insists in M 64 and M 65 that whatever language one uses about the supreme essence will be dependent on similitudes based on the things we know. So any name adopted to signify the Trinity will be a name that does not reveal what the thing is in itself. Another way of saying this, to use Anselm’s language from another part of the Monologion, is to say that there is no natural word for the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence. The objective is to ascertain whether M 79 has to be read along these lines, and to what extent Anselm’s sensibilities are based on Augustine’s De trinitate as he claims. In order to be able to sort out what possible Boethian influence may have intervened between Anselm and his appropriations from Augustine’s De trinitate, I will proceed as follows. I shall begin with a discussion of Anselm, Boethius, and the problem of individuation. Once it is clear what Anselm may or may not have taken from Boethius, I will turn to Augustine’s De trinitate for an extended discussion of Augustine’s observations about the use of “substance” and “person” in speaking about the Trinity. We will come upon Augustine’s “I do not know what” (nescio quid), which will send us on our inquiry as to whether Anselm’s “nominalist” sensibilities in M 79 are shaped by Augustine’s De trinitate. Only then will I turn to Anselm’s claim of Augustinian testimony for the so-called Greek formula. What should emerge after this exercise is

6 See Yukio Iwakuma, “The Realism of Anselm and His Contemporaries,” in Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury, edited by D. E. Luscombe and G. R. Evans (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996); idem, “Vocalists, or Early Nominalists,” Traditio, 47 (1992), pp. 37–111; and C. J. Mews, “Nominalism and Theology before Abelard: New Light on Roscelin of Compiègne,” Vivarium, 30 (1992), pp. 4–33.

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some sense of how much Anselm may or may not have assimilated Augustine, and what this adds to our understanding of his claims about Augustinian dependence.

2. Anselm, Boethius, and Individuation Previously, I mentioned that the preface to the Monologion is unintelligible without the recognition of previous criticism, most notably the objections of Lanfranc. M 79 clearly has the appearance of a chapter that either would have elicited criticism or was written to preclude possible criticism, especially given its strange placement in the Monologion. It stands apart not only from the main section of the work where Anselm deals with the language of predication and the use of the word “substance” in relation to the supreme essence, but also from the train of the argument of the entire treatise. It has all the looks of a late addition as a penultimate chapter, inserted at the end of the treatise. Anselm begins M 79 with the assertion that it is clearly expedient for every human being to believe in a certain ineffable being (credat in quandam ineffabilem). He describes this being as ineffable oneness: a trinity in unity (trinam unitatem) and a unity in trinity (unam trinitatem). It is one by virtue of one essence (unam essentiam) and “three by virtue of what I do not know” (propter tres nescio quid). Nescio quid bespeaks agnosticism. It may be the clearest sign that Anselm is following a train of thought initiated by Augustine in De trinitate 7. Augustine answered nescio quid to the question, tres quid? Anselm, for his part, defends his position this way: “For although I can speak of a trinity because of the Father, the Son, and their Spirit, who are three, nevertheless I cannot in a single word name that by virtue of which they are three.”7 Anselm is not sure that one can say they are a trinity by virtue of three persons or a unity by virtue of one substance. For they must not be thought to be three persons, because in cases where there are more persons than one, they all exist so indepen7

M 79 (S 1, p. 85; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 209): Licet enim possim dicere trinitatem propter patrem et filium et utriusque spiritum qui sunt tres: non tamen possum proferre uno nomine propter quid tres, uelut si dicerem propter tres personas, sicut dicerem unitatem propter unam substantiam.

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dently of one another that there must be as many substances as there are persons – something which we recognize in the case of a plurality of men, who are as many individual substances as they are persons. Therefore, just as there are not many substances in the supreme essence, so there are not many persons.8

This seems relatively straightforward. Anselm’s objective is to preclude any thought that the notion of three persons in the Trinity is to be imagined like three individual human beings who subsist independently of each other. So to the extent that there are not many substances in the supreme nature there are not many persons, as individuated subsistent beings. What becomes of the language of three persons in one substance or essence? What becomes of Trinitarian formulas? Anselm observes that anyone venturing a formula for the Trinity does so only in an approximate sense. It is simply not possible to insist on any kind of “realism,” as if one could find any language that is appropriate to the subject. There is no appropriate word that can signify what the three are. If anyone is asked what the three are, the best response would be to say simply, “Father, Son and their Spirit.” That takes care of the problem of trying to find a word that can name all three. If, on the other hand, one is forced to name their plurality, then it is best to speak of “this wonderful Trinity” (illam admirabilem trinitatem) as one essence or nature and three persons or substances (unam essentiam uel naturam et tres personas siue substantias). In this manner, just as “essence” and “nature” are interchangeable, so also “person” and “substance.” The latter two words are chosen because they specify plurality in the supreme essence, “since ‘person’ is predicated only of an individual rational nature and ‘substance’ is predicated mainly of individual things, which, especially are a plurality.”9 8 M 79 (S 1, p. 85; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 209): Non enim putandae sunt tres personae, quia omnes plures personae sic subsistunt separatim ab inuicem, ut tot necesse sit esse substantias quot sunt personae; quod in pluribus hominibus, qui quot personae tot indiuiduae substantiae sunt cognoscitur. Quare in summa essentia sicut non sunt plures substantiae, ita nec plures personae. 9 M 79 (S 1, p. 86; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 209): Nam haec duo nomina aptius eliguntur ad significandam pluralitatem in summa essentia, quia persona non dicitur nisi de indiuidua rationali natura, et substantia principaliter dicitur de indiuiduis quae maxime in pluralitate consistunt.

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And because individuals are subject to accidents, they are properly called substances, whereas the supreme essence is not subject to accidents and cannot properly be called a substance, except when substance (substantia) is used in the same sense as essence (essentia). So the supreme essence can be called one essence (una essentia) and three persons or three substances (tres personae siue tres substantiae). Why, then, does Anselm feel the need to speak of “three substances in one person?” He avoids it completely in M 79. And if all he means to claim is that he speaks of three substances, why involve the Greeks? After all, “one essence and three persons” is the equivalent of “one essence and three substances” if the Greeks mean by substance what Latins mean by person. Anselm hints at another aspect of his Greek formula in the supposition in the middle of M 79 that there are not many persons in the supreme essence: ita nec plures personae. This directly undercuts the Latin expression, raising the question, if not three persons then what are the three? But if one responds by saying three substances, and then adds that this is what the Greeks also say with the additional proviso that they mean by substance what Latins mean by person, then nothing has been achieved. One is merely going around in circles. If, on the other hand, one were to put the two assertions together: there are not many persons in the supreme essence (= one person in the supreme essence) and there are three substances in the Trinity (which Anselm proposes in the preface to the Monologion) one would have, “three substances in one person.” So even though he argues in M 79 and elsewhere that there are not many substances or essences in the supreme essence, he is keen to point out in the preface that when he says that there are many substances he is to be understood as following something like the formula, three substances in one person. The problem, of course, is that such a formula does not exist in the Greek tradition, and Anselm himself makes no attempt in the preface to the Monologion to provide a source. If any of Anselm’s readers were that well acquainted with Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra or some of its arguments, they would find Anselm’s delineation of his views in the preface and in M 79 deeply troubling, even if they accepted the legitimacy of the inquiry. Boethius expresses serious concerns about the use of “substance” and “person” in speaking about God, and he does so partly

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under the inspiration or instigation of Augustine’s De trinitate.10 Boethius claims to have written his De trinitate after immersing himself in Augustine’s De trinitate and he may have derived some of his Trinitarian tendencies from Augustine. As Henry Chadwick puts it, “Boethius has behind him Augustine’s unconcealed dislike of the formula ‘three persons’, language that had been established in western usage since theology first spoke Latin in the pages of Tertullian.”11 Later on Chadwick writes that, for Boethius: God is essence or ousia, the very source of all being; subsistence, since he subsists and that is to say he is self-sufficient; he needs nothing to subsist; he is also hypostasis since he exists (substat). So we may say there is one ousia, i.e. essence or subsistence, of Deity, but three hypostases, that is ‘substantiae’. If this scheme or terminology were followed, we would say that the Trinity is one essence, three ‘substances’ or persons.12

Chadwick’s paraphrase comes from chapter three of Contra Eutychen, the fifth and last book of Boethius’s Opuscula Sacra. To get to this point, Boethius starts out in Contra Eutychen II, adopting the language of primary and secondary substances from Aristotle’s Categoriae in his attempt to provide a proper definition of person, which Boethius says is a matter of great perplexity (maxime dubitari). At the beginning of Contra Eutychen III Boethius’s presents his definition of person: an “individual substance of a rational nature” (naturae rationabiles indiuidua substantia). From here on, it remains for Boethius to bring together substance and person as they apply to God and the Trinity. But does Boethius apply these terms to human beings and God indiscriminately? He maintains that a thing subsists (subsistit) when it does not require accidents in order to be, but that thing has substance (substat) which supplies to other things, accidents to wit, a substrate enabling them to be; for it ‘substands’(stat) those things so long as it is subjected to accidents. Thus genera and species have only subsistence (subsistent), for accidents do not attach to genera and species. But particulars (indiuidua) have not only subsistence (subsistent) but substance

10 11 12

Henry Chadwick, Boethius, p. 196. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, p. 196. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 196–197.

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(substant), for they, no more than genera, depend on accidents to be by supplying them with a substrate.13

For the Greek terms ousiosis, ousiosthai, hypostatsis, and hypostathai, Boethius has the following corresponding Latin terms: substantia, substare, subsistentia and subsistere. Following Cicero, Boethius goes on to explain that ousia is essence (essentia), ousiosis subsistence (subsistentia), hypostasis substance (substantia) and prosopon person (persona). In the case of the human being Boethius states that because the human being is a certain essence (hominis quidem essentia) he can line up the respective Greek/Latin terms as appropriate ways of speaking about a human being. The human being has ousia (essentia) because it exists; it is ousiosis (subsistentia) because it is not an accident of any subject; it is a hypostasis (substantia) because it is subject to all the things which are themselves not substances; and a human being is a person because it is a rational individual. Boethius’s explanation of why it is a hypostasis might seem obscure to some, but there is no obscurantism in the language of individuation and the notion of personhood. What happens when Boethius turns to God? If the human being has a “certain” ousia or essentia, God is ousia or essentia. God is that from which all things receive their esse. He is ousiosis because he subsists in such a way as to need nothing (subsistit enim nullo indigens). This is what hypostathai means, because he subsists as such (substat enim). If this sounds tautological and repetitive, that is the intended effect. From this standpoint one proceeds to say that there is one ousia or ousiosis, that is, one essence or substance, but three hypostasis or substances in the Godhead (deitas). It is highly instructive that while the Greek Trinitarian tradition and Boethius make much of the word hypostasis and its cognates, the word hardly appears at all in the Monologion even though Anselm would have known of it from Augustine’s De trinitate. The 13

Boethius, Contra Eutychen III (Theological Tractates, Loeb Edition, p. 89, slightly amended): Subsistit enim quod ipsum accidentibus, ut possit esse, non indiget. Substat autem id quod aliis accidentibus subiectum quoddam, ut esse ualeant, subministrat; sub illis enim stat, dum subiectum est accidentibus. Itaque genera uel species subsistunt tantum; neque enim accidentia generibus speciebusue contingunt. Indiuidua uero non modo subsistunt uerum etiam substant, nam neque ipsa indigent accidentibus ut sint.

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moment “substance” (= hypostasis) is set on both sides of the Trinitarian equation, for both the “one” and the “three,” it opens the door to the kind of confusion present in Anselm’s Greek formula. Here is Boethius: And indeed, following this use, some have spoken of the one essence of the Trinity as three substances and three persons. For without the approbation of Church usage, three substances in God might seem indeed the right term to apply to him when speaking of substance, not because he is like other things which are supported by a substrate. Rather He underlies all other things like a substrate, just as he excels above all things, so He is the foundation and support of things, supplying them all with ousiosthai or subsistence.14

As far as Boethius is concerned, church usage (ecclesiasticus loquendi usus) excludes “three substances,”15 even though “substance,” in the way Boethius understands it, would be appropriate. Obviously, Boethius does not intend to suggest that “three substances” would be appropriate if it implies something like “three Gods.” His central point is that if one has a choice between “person” and “substance,” the latter would be more appropriate because the Godhead (deitas) truly subsists like nothing else. Augustine makes the argument in De trinitate 5 & 7, and Anselm in M 79. M 79 appears to mimic Augustine’s argument in De trinitate and possibly Boethius’s argument just cited from Contra Eutychen. One would think, then, that in light of M 79 Anselm would not commit the unpardonable error of using both “person” and “substance” to stand for both unity and plurality. But this is exactly what he does in the preface to the Monologion. Notice that even for Boethius the common way in which people are said to speak of the Trinity is “one nature or essence, three persons or substances.” Anselm’s transformation turns “one nature” or “one essence” into “one person.” This is not to be found in the Opuscula Sacra. In fact, the formula strains Anselm’s own language and strikes the theologi14 Boethius, Contra Eutychen III (Translation based on Theological Tractates, Loeb Edition, p. 91). Et quidem secundum hunc modum dixere unam trinitatis essentiam, tres substantias tresque personas. Nisi enim tres in deo substantias ecclesiasticus loquendi usus excluderet, uideretur idcirco de deo dici substantia, non quod ipse caeteris rebus quasi subiectum supponeretur sed quod idem omnibus uti praeesset ita etiam quasi principium subesset rebus, dum eis omnibus *ousiosthai* uel subsistere subministrat. 15 Cf. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, p. 197.

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cal ear as strange and beguiling; unless, of course, one insists on “person” as such a term of uniqueness that it too is an appropriate term for the essence of the supreme nature. This could be taken as the basis for Anselm’s assertion in M 79 that, “just as there is not more than one substance in the supreme essence, so also there is not more than one person.”

3. The Monologion, Letter 83, and the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi Significantly, Anselm does not mention in Letter 83, written shortly after the Monologion, how he came by the formula. In both the Monologion and Letter 83 Anselm makes no claim that Augustine’s De trinitate is the source of the formula. However, he does mention Augustine’s De trinitate in the immediate context of his contention in both the preface to the Monologion and in Letter 83 that what he says about persons and substances in relation to God agrees with the arguments of blessed Augustine. Did Anselm expect his readers to make the inference that his Greek formula was from De trinitate because he always mentions De trinitate in connection with the formula? But why leave it to conjecture when Anselm expresses such anxiety about his work falling into the wrong hands? Wouldn’t a more explicit reference preempt controversy? Why did Anselm come to think of Augustine’s De trinitate as the source of the expression, even as he expressed concerns in M 79 and elsewhere about the use of “substance” and “person” in speaking about God? And why wait for nearly two decades before claiming in Letter 204 that he derived the expression from Augustine’s De trinitate? Or is the late attribution of the formula to Augustine itself the problem, since the exact phrase, “three substances in one person” does not appear anywhere in De trinitate as a formula used by the Greeks? In the preface to the Monologion, Anselm assumes that the Greeks (in a manner slightly different from the Latins) permit some latitude in speaking about the Trinity. And after explaining why the formula is defensible, he goes on to say that “whatever I said there is put forth in the role of someone who, by thought alone, disputes and investigates within himself things that he had not previously realized, just as I knew that they whose request I was aiming to

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fulfill wanted me to do.” This merely repeats Anselm’s description of the nature of the Monologion as a kind of soliloquy. But it sounds peculiar as an explanation of how he came to the formulation. The apology seems to suggest that the formula “three substances in one person” has a purely pedagogical function: to teach those who may not have thought about it before what is possible to say or not to say about the Trinity. But why do Latin-speaking Christians who already profess “three persons, one substance” need his Greek formula? Certainly, if his fellow Latin readers are used to the Latin expression, “three persons in one substance” the phrase “three substances” would be jarring in itself, even if one did not add “in one person.” The two phrases together sounds discordant to an ear accustomed to the Latin formula. It smacks of an innovation that is both unnecessary and perilous, if in fact it does nothing more than restate the Latin formula with a supposedly Greek twist. In spite of Anselm’s defense, and also because of it, his Greek formula as he presents it in the preface to the Monologion would not lessen the anxieties of anyone who would have been perplexed by it. And if Anselm expresses fears about coming across to some readers as introducing novelties or asserting falsehoods either because he is too novel or diverges from the truth, he does nothing to improve on the prospects. That he continued to express this anxiety in Letter 83 about potential readers who might become self-styled critics because of finding in the Monologion something they have never heard of, while also insisting on his Greek formula, implies that he had absolute certainty about his claims. Oddly enough, his insistence in the preface to the Monologion that any putative critic ought to compare his work to Augustine’s De trinitate does nothing to preempt objections against the formula unless, of course, Anselm believes that anyone who reads De trinitate carefully will come away convinced as he is that he is following the Greeks and that, as he would later allege in Letter 204, the formula is attested in Augustine’s De trinitate. Letter 83 also presents the possible Augustinian impress of Anselm’s Greek formula in somewhat ambiguous language. After making a reference to readers who might not be able to appreciate the Monologion and would therefore criticize him without understanding him, Anselm alludes to one critic of the recent past, an allusion that probably points in the direction of Lanfranc. The tone of Anselm’s language seems a little harsh if in fact Lanfranc

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is the implied critic. I repeat Anselm’s words here for its relevance to M 79. Anselm states as follows: I have already suffered not a little from such hasty criticism because of what I said, following blessed Augustine, about the persons and substance of God. They now realize that they criticized rashly and in the event are glad to know something they were not previously aware of. They did not know that, strictly speaking, it cannot be said that in God there are three persons any more than that there are three substances; for the same reason, for want of a word literally expressing that plurality which is understood in the Most Holy Trinity, the Latins say that we must believe that there are three persons in one substance, whereas the Greeks, no less faithfully, hold that there are three substances in one person.16

Notice the clear reference to following “blessed Augustine, about the persons and substance of God.” And yet Anselm makes no claim one way or the other that his Greek formula is to be found in Augustine. Letter 83 repeats some of the details about the formula found in the preface to the Monologion. The only great advance is that Anselm makes more explicit that his language of “persons” and “substance” takes after Augustine. Between the preface to the Monologion and Letter 83 all we can say is that Anselm follows the Greeks on “substance” and also follows Augustine in speaking about “persons” and “substance” with reference to God. We could deduce from this that from Anselm’s standpoint, both the Greeks and Augustine are agreed on “substance” and “persons;” the former, dealing with the unity, and the latter with the plurality of the Trinity. The formula throws everything up in the air, so to speak. If one takes Anselm’s claim that the formula is not an erroneous way of speaking about the Trinity, it would mean that Augustine too approves the formula. Anselm also gives the impression that he has been able to convince whoever raised the objection about the phrase he attributes to the Greeks. This claim to have convinced his critic also establishes an additional warrant for using the phrase. If the implied critic is Lanfranc it opens up an interesting vista into how we assess Anselm’s repetition of the formula. It proves that his critic could not mount a challenge against Anselm’s claims, meaning that Anselm had more command of both his sources and the arguments 16

Fröhlich, Letters 1, p. 218.

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to be able to defend a novelty against an important critic. And having persuaded such a critic, Anselm obviously felt confident to assert himself in the preface to the Monologion. I shall return to this at a later point. After Lanfranc, the most serious criticism Anselm encountered to some of what he had argued in the Monologion came much later in the insinuations supposedly cast in his direction by Roscelin of Compiègne, the objections which compelled Anselm to write his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. Although the centerpiece of Roscelin’s alleged criticism appears to have been the language of unity and plurality in the Trinity, the use of persona and substantia feature in Anselm’s response, as well as the more general question of the problem of individuation. Discussing this will take us beyond the scope of this current work. For my immediate purposes, the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi offers other important details. First, Anselm mentions the heresy of Sabellianism in chapter 3 of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. And he expressly argues against speaking of the three persons of the Trinity as numerically one. The uncharitable critic might retort that this is what Anselm’s Greek formula insinuates, although Anselm would probably respond that the formula already addresses the plurality in the unity, and hence its use of “person” should not be equated with Sabellian modalism. Second, Anselm mentions both the Monologion and the Proslogion in chapter 6, pointing out that both works contain arguments which would be of interest to someone concerned with the position he is trying to defend in the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. Third, Anselm’s comments in the final chapter of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi echo his previous statements both in the preface to the Monologion and in M 79 concerning the use of “substance” and “person” in speaking about the Trinity. Fourth, Anselm makes an explicit reference to his Greek formula, saying that the Greeks call “the one person three substances.” The emphatic way in which Anselm makes this assertion leads one to wonder. Once more, Anselm mentions Augustine’s De trinitate as the inspiration for his Monologion. It is clear from all this that Anselm’s view of the Greeks is somehow linked to Augustine’s De trinitate. So there is a very strong possibility that Anselm has conflated certain things he has read in Augustine’s De trinitate into this notion of the Greeks. The likelihood is strengthened by the simple fact that there is no Greek source that bears witness to

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Anselm’s formula. What does Augustine suggest in De trinitate to support Anselm’s claim? My earlier remarks about Anselm’s reference to the implied critic in Letter 83 raises questions about identifying that critic as Lanfranc, in part because Anselm’s description of the critic seems harsh and uncharitable. My misgivings turn partly on what the critic apparently did not know but had come to acknowledge, based on Anselm’s work. At first blush, it seems unlikely that Lanfranc did not know the basic elements of Trinitarian theology. But in making such a supposition, one assumes much about Lanfranc’s knowledge of the patristic tradition, and in particular his acquaintance with Augustine’s De trinitate. This should not be taken for granted. The mere fact that Lanfranc cites a number of Augustinian sources in his De corpore et sanguine Domini is not itself indicative that he knew the texts in question so well.17 It was entirely possible to gain one’s knowledge of patristic sources from florilegia, and I have argued elsewhere that Lanfranc’s knowledge of Augustine as attested by the De corpore et sanguine Domini may have been dependent on a florilegium. In any case, there is no evidence to suggest that Lanfranc was deeply familiar with Augustine’s De trinitate when Anselm presented the Monologion to him for review. The matter in dispute between Anselm and his critic was quite specific, and no one could question Anselm’s competence and his familiarity with the arguments of Augustine’s De trinitate unless they were themselves well acquainted with the work. This applies to Lanfranc as well. So, unless Lanfranc knew in some detail the specific outlines and themes of Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate Book 7, he could not possibly challenge Anselm on Augustine’s views about “substance” and “person.” On the other hand, someone could question Anselm’s competence with regard to his attribution of the phrase “three substances in one person” to the Greeks. On this point, Anselm was vulnerable, since the phrase is almost unattested anywhere outside of Anselm’s own works prior to the twelfth century. Why no one challenged Anselm on this is fascinating on two counts: first because Anselm had misrepresented Augustine; and second, that the Greeks (whatever Greek sources

17

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 55–58.

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were available to Anselm and his contemporaries) did not speak like this on the Trinity. Again recall the earlier discussion about Anselm’s words in Letter 83 about his putative critic. Anselm’s words move quickly from the critic to the correction of the critic that had taken place. It is put in the past, so that we are to understand that the critic now realizes his error and has come to accept Anselm’s language about, what I should like to refer to as, the useful inadequacy of the terms “person” and “substance.” The emphasis here is on what can be said “strictly speaking” (dici proprie) and what is permissible under ordinary usage, as if making a distinction between what is philosophical permissible and what ordinary language can sustain. Everything in Letter 83, following upon Anselm’s “strictly speaking,” is a close summation of Augustine’s arguments, with one exception, which appears in the second part. This is where Anselm commits his error, his misstatement in the so-called Greek formula. The irony is that in correcting the error of his critic Anselm commits his own. One is tempted to think that Anselm sought to find some kind of parallel construction, almost in the form of a mathematical equation, so that the Greeks and the Latins would be using the same words with different numbers (one or three) on either side of the terms: three substances, one person = one substance, three persons. Notice that in his statements Anselm almost never repeats exactly what Augustine states even when Anselm is restating the Latin expression. Whereas Augustine almost always says “three persons, one essence or substance,” so as to avoid the confusion about substances and persons as Latins and Greeks understand them, Anselm states the Latin formula as simply “three persons, one substance.” It is handy and for that reason also makes the parallel with the Greek formula almost irresistible. In the process, Anselm changes the Greek expression “one essence, three substances” as Augustine has it in De trinitate to “one person, three substances.” If Anselm does not always repeat exactly what Augustine states when he is referring to the Latin formula, we should probably not be too surprised that Anselm reformulates what he thought the Greeks supposedly said. Or is Anselm being somewhat careless in reproducing what he thinks or believes he recalls from the De trinitate? It is difficult to say, especially for someone who declares in no uncertain terms in the preface to the Monologion that he would like

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to be judged only by a reader who has read the De trinitate carefully and can compare his arguments with Augustine’s. There may be yet another possibility. I suggest this only as a hypothesis.

4. Persons and Substances: Three What? From now on I will be attempting to say things that cannot altogether be said as they are thought by a man – or at least as they are thought by me. In any case, when we think about God the trinity we are aware that our thoughts are quite inadequate to their object, and incapable of grasping him as he is; even by men of the caliber of the apostle Paul he can only be seen, as it says, like a puzzling reflection in a mirror (I Cor. 13:12).18

Augustine sets the following parameters in the opening chapter of De trinitate Book 5. Paul’s per speculum in aenigmate suggests both the possibility of knowing (or seeing) and the limits to that knowledge (or sight). Augustine goes on to remind his readers that “we will find it easier to excuse one another if we know, or at least firmly believe and maintain, that whatever we say about that unchanging and invisible nature, that supreme and all-sufficient life, cannot be measured by the standard of things visible, changeable, mortal and deficient.”19 And if as mere mortals we find it difficult to gain true understanding (scientia) of the things we learn through our bodily senses of what we ourselves are inwardly (interiore homine), that should not be an excuse to give up yearning to know something of the divine and ineffable truth that is above us, provided we are equipped for the task by divine grace and are not inflated by an arrogant confidence in our intellectual powers. After warning his reader about how not to think about God, Augustine 18 Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 207; Edmund Hill translation, p. 189): Hinc iam exordiens ea dicere quae dici ut cogitantur uel ab homine aliquo uel certe a nobis non omni modo possunt, quamuis et ipsa nostra cogitatio cum de deo trinitate cogitamus longe se illi de quo cogitat imparem sentiat neque ut est eum capiat sed, ut scriptum est etiam a tantis quantus Paulus apostolus hic erat, per speculum in aenigmate uideatur. 19 Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 207; Edmund Hill translation, p. 189): Facilius autem nobis inuicem ignoscimus si nouerimus aut certe credendo firmum tenuerimus ea quae de natura incommutabili et inuisibili summeque uiuente ac sibi sufficiente dicuntur non ex consuetudine uisibilium atque mutabilium et mortalium uel egenarum rerum esse metienda.

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describes what can be thought about God. He begins with substance, accidents, and the problems of predication. From the very outset the differences and similarities between Latin and Greek expressions about God are front and center. For Augustine, “there is at least no doubt that God is substantia, or perhaps a better word would be essentia; at any rate what the Greeks call ousia. Just as we get the word ‘sapientia’ from ‘sapere,’ and ‘scientia’ from ‘scire,’ so we have ‘essentia’ from ‘esse.’” And he asks: “who can be said to exist more than he who said to his servant Moses ‘I am who I am’ (Ego sum qui sum) and say to the sons of Israel ‘He who is, sent me to you’ (Qui est, misit me ad uos)?”20 So far, then, God is substantia or essentia. He is also true esse. It remains now for Augustine to find the other necessary elements to construct a simple syllogism which ends with a valid inference about the nature of God’s essentia. The important task is to distinguish how other things that also have substantia or essentia differ from God. Enter the notion of accidents in substances. This is all that Augustine needs from Aristotle’s Categoriae. Other things that are called substantia or essentia are susceptible to accidents (accidentiae) by which they are changed or modified in some way, great or small. Not so with God. God’s substantia or essentia is alone unchangeable. Only God can truly be said to be (esse), and is appropriately called essentia, because that which is subject to change does not keep its essentia. So not only that which cannot change, but that which absolutely does not change, can be said without qualification to exist truly (uerissime dicatur esse). Substantia (or ousia) and essentia are both linked to esse in the truest sense of the word. Augustine next adds that while God is not subject to accidents, because there is nothing changeable in him, God can be spoken of, as indeed scripture sometimes speaks of God, in a way that is not according to his substance. If this is granted, then the question becomes how “non-substance” language about God is to be

20 Augustine, De trinitate 5.2.3 (CCSL 50, 207–208): Est tamen sine dubitatione substantia uel si melius hoc appellatur essentia, quam graeci *ousian* uocant. Sicut enim ab eo quod est sapere dicta est sapientia et ab eo quod est scire dicta est scientia, ita ab eo quod est esse dicta est essentia. Et quis magis est quam ille qui dixit famulo suo: Ego sum qui sum et: Dices filiis Israhel: Qui est misit me ad uos?

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understood, and exactly what it says about God. The central point that Augustine wishes to make is that whatever is said of the supreme nature in reference to itself is said according to substance and whatever is said in connection to something else is said not according to substance (non substantialiter) but according to relation (relatiue).21 This takes care of whatever is attributed to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit variously and what is attributed to God as Trinity. Consequently, “whatever God is with reference to itself is both said three times over about each of the persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and at the same time is said in the singular and not the plural about the Trinity.”22 The attendant explanation takes Augustine back to the language of the Greeks. For it is not one thing for God to be (esse) and something else for him to be great (magnus), but to be (esse) is for him the same thing as to be great. That is why it is not appropriate to speak of “three greatnesses” (tres magnitudines) any more than “three essences” (tres essentiae), but rather “one essence” (una essentia) and “one greatness” (una magnitudo). And by essence (essentia) Augustine means nothing more than what the Greeks call ousia, which in Latin usage is called substance (substantia). Then comes the complication about what Augustine knows or doesn’t know about Greek language concerning the Trinity. But already we can detect where Anselm might have derived some of the inspiration for his arguments in the Monologion and in Letters 83 and 204. Augustine points out that the Greeks also have another word alongside ousia that they use in speaking about the substance or nature of God: hypostasis. But he admits to not having a clue what exactly the Greeks mean to differentiate by it. Whatever the Greeks have in mind is lost on him. Augustine states simply: “I do not know what” (nescio quid) as to the distinction they wish to make between ousia and hypostasis. What Augustine is certain of is that most of those who write about these matters in Latin, who understand what the Greeks are up to, use the expression mia ousia, tres hypostasis, which means for those Latin speakers “one 21

Augustine, De trintiate 5.8.9 (CCSL 50, p. 215). Augustine, De trinitate 5.7.8 (CCSL 50, p. 216; Edmund Hill translation, p. 195): Quidquid ergo ad se ipsum dicitur deus et de singulis personis ter dicitur patre et filio et spiritu sancto, et simul de ipsa trinitate non pluraliter sed singulariter dicitur. 22

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essence, three substances” (una essentia, tres substantiae). This is where the difficulties begin to emerge. Anselm, though, would have had enough warning against using hypostasis without much else other than what Augustine provides here. Undoubtedly, if Anselm had the benefit of the Contra Eutychen of Boethius and the other books of the Opuscula Sacra, he may have fared better, although even that is not guaranteed. In any case, Augustine’s uncertainty about hypostasis militated against Anselm’s adoption of it. Fortunately or unfortunately, Augustine has been taken to task recently by some for not understanding the fine points of Greek or Cappadocian thought on the Trinity and for leading the West in a direction away from a social conception of the divine nature. This much is the basis for Colin Gunton’s sometimes trenchant and misleading criticism.23 Others have provided more detailed studies and offered a much more salutary picture of how Augustine appropriated and understood the antecedent pro-Nicene tradition.24 It should be pointed out that Augustine never set out to misrepresent what he had acquired or how difficult it was for him to engage the Greek theologians. He says this explicitly in De trinitate Book 3. He asks his readers to bear in mind that the writings he has read on these subjects have not been sufficiently translated into Latin or are not available or at any rate difficult to find. Moreover, he is not that familiar with Greek and cannot under23 Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh, Scotland: T & T Clark, 1991). Cf. Richard Cross, “Quid tres? On What Precisely Augustine Professes Not to Understand in De Trinitate 5 and 7,” Harvard Theological Review, 100 (2007), pp. 215–32. 24 See the detailed studies of Lewis Ayres, for example, his “The Christological Context of De trinitate XIII: Towards Relocating Books VIII–XV.” Augustinian Studies, 29 (1998), pp. 111–139; and “Remember that you are Catholic” (serm. 52,2): Augustine on the Unity of the Triune God.” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 8 (2000), pp. 39–82; See also his Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. In a similar vein, see Michel R. Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology.” Theological Studies, 56 (1995), pp. 237–50; idem, “De Regnon Reconsidered.” Augustinian Studies, 26 (1995), pp. 51–79; idem, “The Fourth Century as Trinitarian Canon,” in Christian Origins: Theology, Rhetoric and Community, edited by Lewis Ayres and Gareth Jones (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 47–67; idem, “Re-reading Augustine’s Theology of the Trinity,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 145–176.

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stand what has been written in that language on the subject. He has to use those translations that are available to him as best as he can (De trinitate 3.1.1.). If he expresses some confusion about ousia and hypostasis, that should not be surprising at all. It would have been cavalier for him to suppose that he understood the fine theological and metaphysical distinctions in a language he had not much liked in his youth, a language which remained a difficulty for him in his later years.25 The confusion may also not have been due entirely to Augustine’s poor or minimal competence in either the Greek language or his ignorance of Greek theology. There is some evidence of terminological elasticity among the Greek theologians themselves and in the antecedent tradition Augustine was trying to understand.26 J. T. Lienhard, for example, has argued that even the expression mia ousia, treis hypostaseis is not as easily attested in the Greek literature as has been assumed.27 Augustine understood enough of what was entailed in the expression to follow the Latin commentators in saying “one essence, three substances,” and then to make the distinction that what the Greeks mean by “substance” is what the Latins mean by “person;” and that because Latins are accustomed to using essentia and substantia interchangeably, the Latins could never say “one essence, three substances” (unam essentiam tres substantias) but rather “one essence or substance, three persons” (unam essentiam uel substantiam, tres personas). This begins to get us closer to Anselm. But there is a wrinkle or two. Doesn’t Augustine’s contention that Latins could never say “one essence, three substances” preclude the “three substances in one person” of Anselm’s Greek formula? Doesn’t the disanalogy between “person” and “essence” make this impossible on any reading? And if Augustine’s words seem to rule out Anselm’s Greek formula how could Anselm claim Augustinian influence or testimony for it? Can Augustine be saved from Anselm, and Anselm from himself? Can

25

Augustine, Confessiones 1.13.20; 1.14.23 See, for example, Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy, pp. 187–221. 27 See J. T. Lienhard, “Ousia and Hypostasis: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Theology of ‘One Hypostasis’,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Doctrine of the Trinity, edited by S. T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 99–121. 26

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Anselm be extricated from what seems like a gross misrepresentation? In the first place, Augustine is unambiguous about the fact that the problem is how one answers the question, “three what” (tres quid)? Second, Augustine also indicates that the question tres quid comes up immediately after one has given an answer to the effect that “the three are one,” not “the three is one,” as Sabellius answered. Augustine mentions Sabellius to warn that extreme care is required in speaking about the unity and plurality in the Trinity. Any carelessness leads one into untold difficulties. As far as we have been able to judge, Anselm stays away from any distinctly Sabellian expressions. He never says “the three persons of the Trinity is one” or, in this case, “the three substances of the Trinity is one.” Yet his comments in M 79 could easily be construed as such by an unsympathetic critic, especially when Anselm contends that there is not more than one person in the supreme essence. His comments in the first half of M 79 seem to stray but in the latter half of the chapter he offers a correction. He states that, because the supreme essence is a being subject to no accidents, with respect to whom substantia is the same as essentia, it can be said by necessity (necessitates) that the supreme and unified Trinity or threefold Unity (summa et una trinitas siue trina unitas) can be called, without fault (irreprehensibiliter), one essence and three persons or substances (una essentia et tres personae siue tres substantiae). This is the basic Augustinian position, and there is no mistaking Anselm’s agreement with Augustine and what he describes as the language of Latin Trinitarian thought. But are Anselm’s words of caution about predicting person and substance of the unity (una, unitas) Augustine’s too? They may very well be. For Augustine seems to think that so much of what gives warrant to the response “three persons,” when asked “three what?” is that human language finds itself without the proper words fitting to the reality. So, in order not to be silent, we say “three persons,” not in any way to indicate precisely what the three are but because that is the best we can do. This is not the same thing as saying that it is merely a convention, but it comes close to it. It is one thing to say we use “person” merely as a matter of convention, it is quite another thing to say that “three persons” is the closest we can come to signifying the plurality that is entailed in the unity of the “three whatever.” In other words, “three persons” fills the seman-

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tic content of “three something.” And if Anselm or Augustine are pressed by the question tres quid? it is not unlikely that either one of them would say, ‘three I-do-not-know-what.’ We have already seen Anselm say something like this in M 79. Interestingly, we find some such language in Augustine’s De trinitate. For an account of this possibility we turn to De trinitate Book 7. In the midst of his comments in De trinitate Book 7 about how to apply predicates to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit respectively and what it means to speak of God as one, Augustine returns to some of his discussion in Book 5 about the differences and similarities between Latins and Greeks on the language of Trinitarian thought. He reiterates his earlier view: And so, for the sake of talking about inexpressible matters, that we may somehow express what we are completely unable to express, our Greek colleagues talk about one essence, three substances, while we Latins talk of one essence or substance, three persons, because, as I have mentioned before, in our language, that is Latin, ‘essence’ and ‘substance’ do not usually mean anything different. And provided that one can understand what is said at least in a puzzle (aenigmate), it has been agreed to say it like that, simply in order to be able to say something when asked ‘Three what’.28

For Augustine, it is a matter of faith that there are three “something,” since three are confessed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However, a difficulty emerges when one is asked what these three are. And according to Augustine, “we apply ourselves to finding some name (nomen) of species or genus (speciale uel generale) which will comprise these three,” but unfortunately, “no such name occurs to our minds, because the total transcendence of the godhead quite surpasses the capacity of ordinary speech.” Still, Augustine believes that “God can be thought about more truly than can be talked about,” and, moreover, God more truly exists than can be thought about. The inadequacy of human speech is therefore not the most fundamental problem, although it compounds the 28

Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.7 (CCSL 50, p. 255; Edmund Hill translation, p. 224, amended): Itaque loquendi causa de ineffabilibus ut fari aliquo modo possemus quod effari nullo modo possumus dictum est a nostris graecis una essentia, tres substantiae, a latinis autem una essentia uel substantia, tres personae quia sicut iam diximus non aliter in sermone nostro, id est latino, essentia quam substantia soles intellegi. Et dum intellegatur saltem in aenigmate quod dicitur placuit ita dici ut diceretur aliquid cum quaereretur quid tria sint …

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problem. Speech depends on thought, and thought on the mind’s capacity, and both on what exists or can be imagined to exist. What then of not being able to find a name for that which truly exists? For Augustine, this is in the nature of the thing in question, which eventually lends itself to a nominalist view about the name for the three-in-one. We can barely think that which truly exists. If thought is incapable of conceiving it, speech can hardly express it. Language can do no more than search for some kind of sign to try to indicate what those three are. Since the three do not fall under any species or genera we know, whatever term is adopted will be inadequate whether it is a species term or a genus term. This is the epistemological justification for the kind of agnosticism that Anselm expresses about using “person” or “substance” to speak about God. Augustine underwrites this agnosticism, but he does not provide the exact words for the provocative thesis that the Greeks speak of “three substances in one person.” The language of genera and species allows Augustine, however, to explore a number of possible responses to the question, ‘three what?’ In the process Augustine sheds some light on why Anselm felt confident to say in M 79 that insofar as there is not more than one substance in the supreme essence, there is not more than one person (nec plures personae). The easiest way to signify anything is to use its proper name. Next to that there may be three options. First, to use a name that corresponds to its species. Second, to adopt a name that refers to its genus. And third, to use a still more generic name that corresponds to a higher genus, something like a higher universal category. To a great extent the word “Trinity” serves as a proper name. And yet what it signifies, namely “something three,” is not so self-evident, because when the question is asked, “three what (tres quid)?” no one seems to know how to answer it. So “Trinity” is a proper name that in many ways fails to properly name its subject. For if one does not know the thing for which there is a proper name like “Trinity,” then such a name signifies something but reveals little, it does not disclose the nature of the thing named. One needs to know the nature of the thing, what kind it belongs to, and how it differs from other things. Suffice it to say that if the thing under consideration is God, then, the difficulties are compounded by the mere fact that one is constrained to speak about God in terms of other things that belong to genus and species.

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But this is precisely the approach that Augustine takes as a way of probing how to answer the question, ”three what?” For, as he puts it, the moment we hear the question, “three what?” we try to find some species- or genus- name that will make up the three, and yet no such name comes to mind. And if no such name comes to mind, does it mean we simply do not know what these three are? Can anyone name God, the Trinity, in such a way that it can say something intelligible about the three? If human speech about God is twice removed from God’s existence (being) and once removed from the human thought which tries to conceive it, does it not mean that any name proposed for the “three” will be no more than a signifier that functions as an empty sign? Or does one say Trinity to signify that they are three and that they share something in common and no more than that? All these questions have behind them the use of “substance” and “person” as appropriate signifiers of the plurality of the Trinity. Augustine attempts to clarify this by turning to how we signify human beings. Take the biblical characters Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As Augustine puts it, if we are asked, “three what?” in this case, we have no difficulty saying three men or three human beings. If we say three men, we are using their species-name. If we were to say “three animals,” understanding “man” as a rational mortal animal, then we would be using a genus-name. Or we could say “three souls,” as Scripture oftentimes does, using the word ‘soul’ to represent the whole human being who is body and soul. This type of naming could be repeated when considering other animals (Augustine’s examples are horses, oxen, and dogs). And again we would adopt a name specifying either species or genus to meet the prerequisites of what we needed to signify. On occasion, we might even have to adopt an even higher genus, by saying something like “creatures” or “substances.” All this is to show that beyond using a proper name as a signifier, one always resorts to some kind of group-name, for lack of a better word. All such names depend on the things being named having something in common (commune habeant), but with one proviso. If a group of things can be designated by one species-name they can also be designated by one genus-name. But the same does not work the other way. If they can be designated by one genus-name, it does not follow that they can be designated by one species. They have something in common

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by belonging to the same species, but not the same genus. Can all this be applied to the question “three what?” Doesn’t the language of species and genera create more difficulties for anyone trying to answer the question about what the three are in the Trinity? Augustine may not be alone in taking this path. In fact, the route may have been paved for him by the polemical context of both Latin and Greek Trinitarian thought in the fourth century. The Cappadocian fathers, among the most philosophically astute of their contemporaries, could not entirely escape the tendency of using such language to speak about the Trinity. J. N. D. Kelly writes that “to explain how the one substance can be simultaneously present in three Persons they appeal to the analogy of a universal and a particular.”29 For Basil the Great, ousia is to hypostasis what universal is to particular, in which case, “each of the divine hypostasis is the ousia or essence of the Godhead determined by its appropriate particularizing characteristic (idiotes; idioma), or identifying particularity, just as each individual man represents the universal ‘man’ determined by certain characteristics which mark him off from other men.”30 As Kelly adds elsewhere, for the Cappadocians, and for Gregory of Nyssa in particular, number is not the most important clue to understanding the Godhead. And, for Basil, while Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are referred to as persons, “they cannot be added together.”31 Consequently, to ask “three what?” is to pose an improper question, if we understand what is involved in the Trinity. And yet the question suggests itself. Interestingly, adopting language about universals and particulars allows the question to reassert itself. What is the universal and what makes the particular? Recall the initial impetus for Augustine’s foray into the language of genera and species. In Book 5 of De trinitate Augustine mentions the differences between Greek and Latin expressions about the Trinity as involving no real difference in doctrine or understanding even if the phrases used by either side to encapsulate their respec29

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, p. 265. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, p. 265. On Basil, see as well, Lucian Turcescu, “Prosopon and Hypostasis in Basil of Caesarea’s “Against Eunomius” and the Epistles,” Vigiliae Christianae, 51 (1997), pp. 374–395. See also David G. Robertson, “Stoic and Aristotelian Notions of Substance in Basil of Caesarea,” Vigiliae Christianae, 52 (1998), pp. 393–417. 31 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, p. 268. 30

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tive positions is a little different than the others’. Both expressions, the Latin “one essence or substance, three persons,” and the Greek “one essence, three substances” simultaneously emphasize plurality and singularity. So the Trinity is both “one and many”; one and three. To insist at one and the same time that it means both triplicity and unity presupposes something that is either shared or common to the three. Invariably, the question “three what?” requires some description as to what the three have in common; and along with it some explanation as to why such a commonality is not the kind that belongs to genera and species.

5. A Common Nature and the Problem of Individuation What do Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have in common (quid commune habeant)? Augustine asks. Augustine reiterates much from previous books of De trinitate: They do not have in common what is meant by Father, so that they are three fathers to each other, as friends who are so called with reference to each other can be called three friends, which they are toward each other. But that is not the case here, because here only the Father is father, nor is he father of two but only of his only Son. Nor are they three Sons, since the Father is not son nor is the Holy Spirit. Nor are there three Holy Spirits, because neither the Father nor the Son is holy spirit in that name’s proper signification, by which it signifies gift of God. So three what, then?32

We are back to where we started. And the question as to what they share or have in common becomes paramount. “If three persons, then what is meant by person is common to all three. So this is either their specific or their generic name, if we consider normal habits of speech. But where there is no diversity of nature, several things that can be named together generically can also be

32

Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.7 (CCSL 50, p. 257; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 225–226): Non enim commune illis est id quod pater est ut inuicem sibi sint patres, sicut amici cum relatiue ad alterutrum dicantur, possunt dici tres amici quod inuicem sibi sunt; non autem hoc ibi quia tantum pater ibi pater, nec duorum pater sed unici filu. Nec tres filii cum pater ibi non sit filius nec spiritus sanctus. Nec tres spiritus sancti quia et spiritus sanctus propria significatione qua etiam donum dei dicitur nec pater nec filius. Quid igitur tres?

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named together specifically.”33 But if there is a difference in nature then the same things cannot be designated by both a species-name and a genus-name. So if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have the same substance (eiusdem substantia) as Augustine frequently states,34 then all three can share both a specific name as well as a generic one. So where there is no diversity of essence (nulla est essentia diuersitas), meaning that the three have the same essence (essentia) or nature (natura), there ought to be a species-name that would suffice for signifying each of the three. But according to Augustine, such a name does not exist, “none can be found” (non invenitur). From Augustine’s standpoint, “person” is a genus-name, since an individual human being can be called a person. So to a certain extent the word “person” is used to designate the three in the absence of a species-name. It is the next best thing, even though there is a world of difference (tantum intersit), a chasm, so to speak, between a human being and God. To use the human notion of person to speak, by analogy, of God, in response to the question “three what?” is tolerable at best. Such language as Augustine deploys here easily prepares the ground for Anselm’s later language about the seeming unintelligibility of using the word “persons” to speak about the three in the Trinity. If “person” is a genus-name can it tell us much about what is specific to each of the three? Here is Augustine on the subject: If we call them three persons because what is meant by person is common to them – otherwise they could certainly not be called this, just as they are not called three sons because what is meant by son is not common to them – why can we not also call them three Gods? Clearly it is because the Father is a person and the Son is a person and the Holy Spirit is a person that we can say three persons. But the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, so why not three Gods? If on the other hand these three are together one God because of their inexpressible mutuality, why are they not one person for the same reason?35 33 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.7 (CCSL 50, p. 257; Edmund Hill translation, p. 226): Si enim tres personae, commune est eis id quod persona est. Ergo speciale hoc aut generale nomen est eis si consuetudinem loquendi respicimus. 34 Cf. R. Teske, “Augustine’s Use of ‘Substantia’ in Speaking about God.” The Modern Schoolman, 62 (1985), pp. 147–163. 35 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.8 (CCSL 50, pp. 257–258; Edmund Hill translation, p. 226): Deinde in ipso generali uocabulo si propterea dicimus tres personas quia commune est eis id quod persona est (alioquin nullo modo possunt ita

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“Why are they not one person for the same reason?” This is undoubtedly the most direct provocation towards Anselm’s Greek formula. Was Anselm answering Augustine’s question when he proposed the Greek formula? Recall Anselm’s words in Letter 83 about his potential critic who did not know that when it comes to Trinitarian language there are strictly speaking not three substances any more than there are three persons. Notice Augustine’s tone as well. At a minimum, Augustine highlights the incongruity and incoherence in the language used for the Trinity. If it is unacceptable to say “three Gods,” then perhaps “three persons” is equally problematic: “we should not be able to call them three persons, although we call each one of them person, any more than we call them three Gods, although we call each one of them God, whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”36 Augustine asks pointedly: is this because scripture does not say three Gods? But then he adds that scripture is equally silent in designating them “three persons.” Without explicit authorization, the phrase “three persons” seems to receive its warrant from a combination of biblical allusion, linguistic inexactness, and convention. While the absence of “three persons” in the biblical tradition is relatively unproblematic, the idea that the use of “person” for the “three” in the Trinity is a matter of convention strikes a discordant note in a tradition of thought engendered by polemic and controversy. Is Augustine saying that one can dispense with the language of “three persons” and still keep intact the doctrine of “three in one?” Maybe. But Augustine is not so bold as to attempt to reformulate it. It is impossible to think of Anselm’s comments in M 79, however, without suspecting that Anselm derives inspiration for

dici, quemadmodum non dicuntur tres filii quia non commune est eis id quod est filius), cur non etiam tres deos dicimus? Certe enim quia pater persona et filius persona et spiritus sanctus persona, ideo tres personae. Quia ergo pater deus et filius deus et spiritus sanctus deus, cur non tres dii? Aut quoniam propter ineffabilem coniunctionem haec tria simul unus deus, cur non etiam una persona ut ita non possimus dicere tres personas. 36 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.8 (CCSL 50, p. 258; Edmund Hill translation p. 226): quamuis singulam quamque appellemus personam, quemadmodum non possumus dicere tres deos, quamuis singulum quemque appellemus deum siue patrem siue filium siue spiritum sanctum? An quia scriptura non dicit tres deos? quamuis singulum quemque appellemus deum siue patrem siue filium siue spiritum sanctum?

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his insistence on the approximate nature of the linguistic usage as regards the Trinity from Augustine’s words in De trinitate. In addition, Anselm’s justification of his argumentation and language about the ineffable in M 64 ad M 65 take this Augustinian background for granted. There is both some consolation and possible confusion in Augustine’s words. He writes: Perhaps because scripture calls these three neither one person nor three persons – we read of the person of the Lord (II Cor 2:10), but not of the Lord called person – we are allowed to talk about three persons as the needs of discussion and argument require; not because scripture says it, but because it does not gainsay it. Whereas if we were to say three Gods scripture would gainsay us, saying Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God (Dt 6:4).37

For the moment, it may not be untimely to ask whether Augustine’s citation of Deuteronomy 6:4 probably features in Anselm’s language about “three substances in one person in the Lord” in Letter 204. The parenthetical note about not calling the Lord, “person,” skews Augustine’s comments unnecessarily. It is a tad pedantic, since the phrase “person of the Lord” signifies the Lord as a human being, a person, unless Augustine wants to insist that it is a mere figure of speech. That would be unusual since much of the language about God in scripture is either analogical or metaphorical. Augustine’s most critical idea here is the principle that language that is not explicitly precluded by scripture may be employed, provided it does not contradict what may be either explicit or implicit in scripture. So, if scripture states unambiguously that God is One, then it is unacceptable to say that God is Three or 37

Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.8 (CCSL 50, p. 258; Edmund Hill translation, p. 226): Aut quoniam propter ineffabilem coniunctionem haec tria simul unus deus, cur non etiam una persona ut ita non possimus dicere tres personas, quamuis singulam quamque appellemus personam, quemadmodum non possumus dicere tres deos, quamuis singulum quemque appellemus deum siue patrem siue filium siuespiritum sanctum? An quia scriptura non dicit tres deos? Sed nec tres personas alicubi scripturam commemorare inuenimus. An quia nec tres nec unam personam scriptura dicit haec tria (legimus enim personam domini, non personam dominum), propterea licuit loquendi et disputandi necessitate tres personas dicere non quia scriptura dicit, sed quia scriptura non contradicit, si autem diceremus tres deos, contradiceret scriptura dicens: Audi, Israhel: Dominus deus tuus, deus unus est?

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that there are three Gods. But if scripture does not expressly rule out three persons in God, then the expression is acceptable. Its acceptance, however, should not be deemed as sacrosanct, since we do not know precisely what we mean when the word “person” is applied to God. Is it substantive, as belonging to the very nature of God? Or is it merely metaphorical, used “as if” it were the case? Does this mean that “person” is not an ontological category when speaking of God? And if it is by analogy, why do we not use other words to designate the three? Why don’t we say with equal justification, “three essences” (tres essentiae), since scripture neither forbids it nor contains it? Does the language of scripture establish a strict regulative principle that is useful in this case, or is such an approach merely expedient? Augustine is not sure how to answer the last question, although he seems to think that the principle is not strong enough to rule out other forms of speech, however disorienting they may be to the theologically astute. If essentia is a species-name common to all three, why are they not called three essentiae just as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are three men (tres homines), because man (homo) is the species-name common to them? Or if essence is not a specific name but a generic one, so that man and beast and tree and star and angel are called essences, why should these three not be called three beings as three horses are called three animals, or three bay trees three trees, or three stones three bodies? Or if it is because of the unity of the [Trinity] that we do not say three essences but one essence, why is this same unity not a good reason for our saying not three substances or three persons, but one substance or one person? For just as the name essence is common to them, so that each of them is called essence, so is the name substance or person common to them.38

38 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.8 (CCSL 50, pp. 258–259; Edmund Hill translation, p. 226, slightly amended): Nam essentia si speciale nomen est commune tribus, cur non dicantur tres essentiae sicut Abraham, Isaac et Iacob, tres homines, quia homo speciale nomen est commune omnibus hominibus? Si autem speciale nomen non est essentia sed generale quia homo et pecus et arbor et sidus et angelus dicitur essentia, cur non dicuntur istae tres essentiae sicut tres equi dicuntur tria animalia et tres lauri dicuntur tres arbores et tres lapides tria corpora? Aut si propter unitatem trinitatis non dicuntur tres essentiae sed una essentia, cur non propter eandem unitatem non dicuntur tres substantiae uel tres personae, sed una substantia et una persona? Quam enim est illis commune nomen essentiae

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We may be back where we started. But there is a difference worth noting. At the very end of the passage just quoted Augustine sets up a couplet. There is also the attestation that if “essence” is common to them so is “substance” and “person.” It has all the makings of Anselm’s equation and the Greek formula: three substances or three persons; one substance or one person. Augustine reminds his reader, in case the reader has forgotten, that “what, of course, we have been saying about persons in our way of talking must be understood about substances in the Greek way of talking. They say tres substantiae, una essentiae, just us we say tres personae, unam essentiam aut substantiam.”39 1. tres substantiae : una essentiae 2. tres personae : unam essentiam aut substantiam

If we replace essentiae with personae in the Greek formulation (1) as Augustine gives it, one would have Anselm’s Greek formula. If “person” is interchangeable on the treble side of the equation with “substance,” why is it not applicable on the unitary side with “substance?” Augustine rules out “person” for the unitary side of the formulation, even though he also argues that “essence,” “substance,” and “person” is shared in common by all three in the Trinity. If “essence” is interchangeable with “substance,” why not “person?” Some such consideration seems to have precipitated Anselm’s formula. Furthermore, Augustine’s reminder about how the Greek expression is to be understood is precisely what Anselm reiterates in the preface to the Monologion and subsequently in Letters 83 and 204. Anselm appears to invoke in both M 79 and Letter 204 the inescapable sentiment of a puzzle that defies solution. The mood is also present in Augustine’s De trinitate. Augustine asks, somewhat quizzically, “What are we left with then (quid igitur restat)? His answer both surprises and intrigues: “Perhaps we just have to admit that these various usages were developed by the sheer necessity of sayita ut singulus quisque dicatur essentia, tam illis commune est uel substantiae uel personae uocabulum. 39 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.8 (CCSL 50, p. 259; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 226–227): Quod enim de personis secundum nostram, hoc de substantius secundum graecorum consuetudinem ea quae diximus oportet intellegi. Sic enim dicunt illi tres substantias, unam essentiam, quemadmodum nos dicimus tres personas, unam essentiam uel substantiam.

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ing something, when the fullest possible argument was called for against the traps and errors of the heretics.”40 Who are the heretics in view? Those Augustine calls the Arians in Books 7 and 5, who are better identified as homoians, according to Michel Barnes?41 Or is this just Augustine’s way of capturing his notion that heretics often bring out the best in the Church by compelling its teachers to speak about what the Church believes? Augustine acknowledges that the problem is much more intractable than merely seeking an answer for the objections or banter of heretics. It is language itself which creates the problem of speech about the Trinity, to say nothing of the arithmetic that states that three is one and one is three: 1+1+1=1. Furthermore, as Augustine has mentioned previously, human speech also labors under the differences between conceiving a thought or an idea and being able to express that thought. So the objections of the heretics merely provide the occasion for showing how inept human language is when it comes to speaking about God. To exist as God does, to be conceived by the human mind, and to be spoken of in words adequate to represent God’s existence strain the very limits of language, thought, and imagination. Augustine would rather concede all these points than propose arguments that are question begging. Which is why he does not shy away from acknowledging that the main reason why an answer is given when asked “three what?” is so that those who ask would not be confirmed in their heresy or perplexed in their faith, as the case may be: Human inadequacy was trying by speech to bring to the notice of men what it held about the Lord God its creator, according to its capacity, in the inner sanctum of the mind, whether this is held by devout faith or by the least amount of understanding. It was afraid of saying three essences (tres essentiae), in case it should be taken as meaning any diversity in that supreme and ultimate equality. On the other hand it could not say that there are not three ‘somethings’ (tria quaedam), because Sabellius fell into heresy by saying precisely that. For it is known with complete certainty from the 40 Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.9 (CCSL 50, p. 259; Edmund Hill translation, p. 227): An ut fateamur loquendi necessitate part a haec uocabula cum opus ess et copiosa disputatione aduersus insidias uel errores haereticorum? 41 Michel Barnes, “The Arians of Book V and the Genre of De Trinitate.” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 44 (1993), pp. 185–95.

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scriptures and is thus to be devoutly believed, and the mind’s eye can also achieve a faint but undoubted glimpse (indubitata perceptione) of the truth, that the Father is and the Son is and the Holy Spirit is, and that the Son is not the same as the Father is, nor is the Holy Spirit the same as the Father of the Son. So human inadequacy searched for a word to express three what (quid tria), and it said substances (substantias) or persons (personas). By three names it did not wish to give any idea of diversity, but it wished to avoid any idea of singleness; so that as well as understanding unity in God, whereby there is said to be one essence (una essentia), we might also understand trinity (trinitas), whereby there are also said to be three substances or persons.42

There is a lot of repetition here: the reason? The more it is repeated the more it becomes easier for people to understand. Augustine says so much in the preamble to De trinitate Book 8 when he restates the conclusions of Book 7 that the more often we repeat and discuss them the more familiar the knowledge of them will be. Book 7 ends with Augustine repeating what he means by substance; how the subsisting of God is unique; and why to use the word “subsisting” of God is merely a manner of speech, a convention.43 He concludes this extended and rambling discussion by restating why it does not seem appropriate to speak of the Trinity as “one person.”44 This conclusion sets Anselm’s Greek formula in double opposition to Augustine. There is little or no ambiguity in Augustine about the impropriety of using the phrase “one person” to speak of the Trinity. If Anselm knows Augustine’s comments about “substance,” “subsisting,” and “person,” why does 42

Augustine, De trinitate 7.4.9 (CCSL 50, p. 259; Edmund Hill translation, p. 227, slightly amended): Cum enim conaretur humana inopia loquendo proferre ad hominum sensus quod in secretario mentis pro captu tenet de domino deo creatore suo siue per piam fidem siue per qualemcumque intellegentiam, timuit dicere tres essentias ne intellegeretur in illa summa aequalitate ulla diuersitas. Rursus non esse tria quaedam non poterat dicere, quod Sabellius quia dixit in haeresim lapsus est. Certissime quippe et de scripturis cognoscitur quod pie credendum est, et aspectu mentis indubitata perceptione perstringitur et patrem esse et filium esse et spiritum sanctum nec eundem filium esse qui pater est nec spiritum sanctum eundem patrem esse uel filium. Quaesiuit quid tria diceret et dixit substantias siue personas, quibus nominibus non diuersitatem intellegi uoluit sed singularitatem noluit ut non solum ibi unitas intellegatur ex eo quod dicitur una essentia, sed et trinitas ex eo quod dicuntur tres substantiae uel personae. 43 Augustine, De trinitate 7.5.10. 44 Augustine, De trinitate 7.6.11.

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Anselm make the provocative claims about the Greek formula? Does Anselm blame the Greeks for something he invents? And does he use Augustine’s authority to shield himself at the same time? Or is it simply a misstatement, a misattribution based on a misunderstanding of the Greeks as represented by Augustine in De trinitate? Let us look at the notion of God’s subsistence and the language of substance (as opposed to person). If it is the same for God to be as to subsist, how can we say that there are three substances? If we cannot say three beings or essences, why are we allowed to say three substances? Certainly, if we have in mind that the Greeks mean by substance what the Latins mean by persons, then there is no problem as such. So why does Augustine raise it? Because, if the Greeks mean by “substance” what Latins mean by “person” what they signify by saying “three substances” is that the three are individual subsistent things. This implies that substance is being used to designate relations and not what God is in essence. So it would be better not to have used the word “substance” at all, according to Augustine, since we get essentia out of esse, just as we get substantia out of subsistere. And what subsists more than God, if it is proper to use that word at all? Besides, to speak of “the three” subsisting lends itself easily to construing “the three” as subjects that can take on accidental qualities since bodies that subsist usually have other qualities “in the subject.” Augustine revisits themes broached in Book 5 about attributing accidents to God. Augustine’s point also seems to be partly influenced by Aristotle’s Categoriae,45 and it is this: properly speaking only bodies that are subject to change and are not simple should be called substances. Augustine finds himself in the unique but almost untenable position of insinuating that the Greeks are mistaken in using “substance” to speak of God, even though he also admits to not knowing the distinction the Greeks wish to make in using ousia and hypostasis. It would have been less controversial to speak in such a way so as not to run into these problems. It probably would have been better to say that because, for God, “to subsist” (subsistere) is the same as “to be,” the Trinity has to be thought of as one substance 45 Augustine mentions his familiarity with Aristotle’s Categoriae in Confessiones 4.16.28.

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(una substantia), because it is one essence (una essentia). So it is more appropriate to say with the Latins that there are “three persons” instead of “three substances.” This shows an obvious preference on Augustine’s part for Latin usage over Greek usage. Incidentally, Anselm will also state his preference for Latin usage in his two later works, the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi and the De processione Spiritus Sancti. Self-conscious that he is weighing in on the side to which he belongs, Augustine, nevertheless, wonders why the Greeks do not use another word instead of hypostasis, a word that would erase some of the inherent difficulties just mentioned. Why not prosopon for each of the three, which would easily communicate that they are three persons just like the Latins are used to saying? Augustine’s answer, possibly borne more out of ignorance than a real understanding of Greek language or custom, is that the Greeks somehow prefer hypostasis to prosopon because he imagines it fits their language use better. No sooner has he delineated on the problems attending the use of “substance” as opposed to using “person” than Augustine turns to point out just what may be wrong with adopting “person” too. Augustine is concerned that the Latin use of “person” leads to other forms of incongruity, because “person” is a term of individuation. Since it is not one thing for God to be and something else for God to be person, to use person in reference to anything other than what God is per se misappropriates the word in its application to God. It is as if when one says that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are persons one is speaking or thinking of them like three friends or three neighbors. But is Augustine right about this? Isn’t the analogy flawed to begin with? Is the term or name “person” as it is applied to God truly a genus-name as Augustine claims, or is it a genus-name only by analogy with what human persons are? The word “person,” after all, signifies nothing “common” about human beings except as a denotation for a particular human being. And when different human beings are called persons generically we learn nothing more about what they have in common than we already know of them as human beings. By insisting too much on “person” as a genus-name Augustine deepens the problem of predication and attribution. Nevertheless, Augustine makes it abundantly clear that there is such difference between human beings and God that the use of the word “person” to name both God and humans could not be considered similar in any meaningful sense.

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So it is merely a place-holder. Augustine is on much safer ground when he insists that the use of person over substance is preferable and less troublesome, though it does not get less complicated if one supposes that “person” is a species-name and not a genus-name. So the only reason, it seems, why we do not call these three together one person, as we call them one essence or one God, but say three persons while we never say three Gods or three essences, is that we want to keep at least one word for signifying what we mean by trinity, so that we are not simply reduced to silence when asked three what, after we have confessed that there are three.46

And so the word that best expresses the three is “persons.” But could some other word do, besides “Gods” or “essences?” Does Augustine want to insist on the regulative principle that what scripture does not expressly forbid is proper as the basis for any language about God? Or is Augustine’s position simply a mediating one between linguistic precision, one the one hand, and the acknowledgment of linguistic inadequacy on the other? Augustine could easily be accused of nominalism, but only if one shows no interest in the fundamental questions which motivate his inquiries. If the questions Augustine raises in De trinitate Book 7 are deemed unnecessary, a muddying of the waters, then his willingness to entertain them and to provide some answers to them may be deemed pedantic. If, on the other hand, these questions have their force, and one is not too quick to dismiss them, then Augustine’s response to the question “three what?” must be taken seriously. If anyone finds disquieting the answer, “three-I-do-not-know-what,” then they should be prepared to go further than Augustine in proposing an alternative. One cannot take the easy way out by merely asserting that both the Latins and the Greeks have provided precise Trinitarian formulations and that should be the end of it. Anselm tries to do better, by clarifying that the name used in speaking about the supreme Trinity is not as important as the thing itself or the mind’s conception of the thing. So whether one 46 Augustine, De trinitate 7.6.11 (CCSL 50, p. 262; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 228–229, slightly amended): Cur ergo non haec tria simul unam personam dicimus sicut unam essentiam et unum deum, sed dicimus tres personas, cum tres deos aut tres essentiae non dicamus, nisi quia uolumus uel unum aliquod uocabulum seruire huic significationi qua intellegitur trinitas ne omnino taceremus interrogati quid tres, cum tres esse fateremur?

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uses “person” or “substance” makes little difference, since in any case, the substance or person of the Trinity is not like a human substance or person or anything that human beings know. But Anselm seems to have ended up with a worse solution than Augustine’s nominalist “non-solution” by proposing his Greek formula as a historical verity. Augustine is unequivocal that what lies at the heart of the problem is the idea of individuation implied in saying either “three persons” or “three substances.”47 Other problems emerge if one tries to circumvent the difficulties by suggesting that both “substance” and “person” do not signify species but something singular and individual. In short, using terms that designate genera, species, or individuals to speak of the three will not suffice to remove the difficulties. With every potential solution comes new problems. Augustine thinks there is one approach that can ameliorate some of the problems. He suggests thinking of what the three have in common as one nature (natura), so that instead of using the language of species and genera one can speak of a common nature in three representations. Augustine takes consolation in the fact that before the ancients adopted essentia and substantia in Latin they used the word natura. And so this might not be such a bad way of settling a conundrum. But this too is not without its difficulties because of the material associations implied when one speaks of a common nature out of which things are made. This usually means being made out of the same “stuff.” And this can hardly be fitting language about God. So, next to saying that they are “three something,” it is better is to say they are “three persons,” with the qualification that “person” is being used in a way unlike anything human beings understand by person as separate, individuated, subsisting being. This seems to be the point of Anselm’s own nescio quid in M 79.

47

See Bernard J. Lonergan, William F. J. Ryan, and Bernard J. Tyrrell, The Second Collection (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), p. 25, where Lonergan suggests that Augustine takes “person” and “substance” as merely heuristic.

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6. Augustinus Testatur: Letter 204 While Anselm’s earlier statements in the Monologion, Letter 83, and the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi about following Augustine’s view on “substance” and “person” appear somewhat vague and allusive, his statement in Letter 204 is emphatic. It is direct and explicit: “St. Augustine testifies that the Greeks speak of one person and three substances in the Lord in his book De trinitate.”48 Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Augustine ever uses the expression “one person and three substances” or “one person and three substances in the Lord” in De trinitate or attributes anything like it to the Greeks. If anything, Augustine is adamant that “one person” cannot and should not be used of the Trinity. We already saw this in our discussion of Augustine on person and substance in De trinitate. Why, then, does Anselm claim Augustine’s text as the witness for it? Testatur reads like a deposition Anselm is willing to make under oath. Could it mean anything less than that Augustine’s De trinitate provides textual witness for the formula? Is there a way around this? That depends in part on how one is prepared to construe Anselm’s language about Augustine’s testimony. One may also wonder if Anselm has not conflated what he has learned from De trinitate about what the Greeks say about “substance” with what Augustine says about “person” and “substance.” In Letter 83, for example, Anselm admits to saying things that people have not heard before, and he is willing to acknowledge that the Monologion contains novelties. The preface to the Monologion, however, does not necessarily admit that Anselm had uttered novelties or taught any untruths, even as he tries to forestall criticism. At the same time, Anselm’s caveat in the preface can be read as a possible admission that the phrase “one person, three substances” is not something people are accustomed to hearing. The oddity is why he insists on it in the preface when he had not actually argued for it specifically in the Monologion itself, and why he repeats it in Letter 83. And why attribute this to the Greeks? After all, it is not the Greeks who have to defend themselves to Anselm’s audience. This makes more tantalizing the following prospect: Anselm’s argu48 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 97; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 143): Quod autem Graeci dicant in domino unam personam, tres substantias, testatur beatus AUGUSTINUS in libro De trinitate.

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ment in M 79 follows certain lines of inquiry that he found already present in Augustine’s De trinitate, which entails an approach to the language of Trinitarian thought that tends in a nominalist direction. Letter 204 yields something else. The question that was posed to Anselm by the monks of St. Albans that elicited Anselm’s response in Letter 204 did not directly turn on the problem that led Anselm to make his statement about Augustine’s testimony. The question was fundamentally Christological, and secondarily lexical (or linguistic). Anselm begins thus: The brothers whom your love sent to me reported to me that a certain doubt has arisen among you with some disagreement because sometimes you find in the writings of the catholic Fathers that God and man are united in one substance in Christ and sometimes that two substances, the divine and the human, are one person in Christ. It appears to be a contradiction that human and divine nature (natura) can be one substance (una substantia) as one person (una persona) and at the same time two substances (duae substantiae) in the same person (eadem persona).49

It is not difficult to appreciate what the problem is. The confusion seems rather basic. In one instance we have two natures in one substance; and in the other instance, two substances in one person. Much that lies behind the disagreement and doubt centers on the use of substantia. The word is used as a synonym for natura so that one can say that the divine nature is one substance and that human nature is yet another substance. In a slightly different context, the person, Jesus Christ, is also one substance in so far as he is one person, but he is believed to be of two natures: human and divine. So we have two substances, two natures, in one person. Anselm’s task is to direct the attention of the monks of St. Albans to the two different senses in which the word “substance” is being used. This is not that different from one such exercise he conducts in De Grammatico with the hapless Student. 49

Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 96; Fröhlich, Letters 2, pp. 141–142): Fratres a uestra dilectione ad me directi retulerunt mihi quandam dubitationem inter uos ortam esse cum aliqua dissensione, inde quia in catholicorum patrum scriptis aliquando inuenitis deum et hominem in Christo conuenire in unam substantiam; aliquando duas substantias, diuinam scilicet et humanam, unam esse personam in Christo. Videtur enim repugnare quod et una substantia sit humana et diuina natura, sicuti est una persona, et duae substantiae sint in eadem persona.

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Anselm proceeds. “If what they say is correctly understood, that in Christ several natures are one substance, and that several substances are one person, nothing contradictory can be seen there.”50 Two natures, divine and human, make one subsisting being: Jesus Christ. At the same time, several substances, namely the two natures, divine and human, make one person. In the former, “substance” refers to the individual human being who is Christ; in the latter, “substance” refers to the two natures that make up Christ. If the monks have a difficulty it is because they seem to be at a loss as to why this difference in the use of substantia, and why this inconsistency is enshrined in the words of the fathers (in catholicorum patris scriptis). It would certainly have been helpful for Anselm to cite the fathers in question. For Anselm, however, the problem is not peculiarly a problem for the fathers. It is inherent in the very nature of the thing they are trying to describe and the sheer inadequacy of finding the proper words to speak about the unity and plurality that is entailed in Christian thinking about God as Trinity. So while the monks of St. Albans find the Christological problem vexing, Anselm reminds them that it is easier by far compared to language about the Trinity. Here too the difficulty of speaking of one and many, or the singular and the plural, makes the use of substantia another intractable problem. In painstaking fashion, Anselm goes over the many ways in which the unity and the plurality are signified when speaking about God the Trinity. “We believe and profess the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit to be one God,” Anselm states: When therefore we say ‘God’ we only understand and say ‘one’ (unum), but when we say ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ we say and believe in several (plures). Concerning God we have the absolute certainty that we should say ‘one God’ (deus unum) in the singular (singulariter), and not more than one (nec non plures), for it is written: Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one.51 50 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 96; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 142): Sed si bene intelligatur quomodo dicant unam esse substantiam plures naturas in Christo, aut plures substantias unam personam, nihil ibi repugnans cognoscetur esse. 51 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 96; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 142): Cum ergo dicimus deum, non nisi unum dicimus et intelligimus. Cum uero dicimus patrem et filium et spiritum sanctum, plures dicimus et credimus. Sed de deo habemus auctoritatem quia debemus dicere deum unum singulariter et non plures, quemadmodum scriptum est: »Audi, Israel, dominus deus tuus deus unus est«.

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Furthermore, says Anselm, there is no instance in Scripture where the three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called by one name that signifies plurality: “we find no mention in any prophet, apostle or evangelist that names (nominent) them severally in a single name (uno nomine) by which they signify plurality which we understand in them. For nowhere do they say that they are three persons, or three substances or three almighties, or anything of that kind.”52 One is reminded here of Augustine’s words to the same effect. The absence of scriptural warrant leads Anselm to a latitudinarian position as to what kind of term or name appropriately signifies plurality. For Anselm, the custom of the fathers is something of a necessity. It was necessary for them to choose a name that could name (nominare) the three in the plural (pluraliter). The Greeks used the term ‘substance’, the Latins the term ‘persons’; but what we understand by ‘person’, this and nothing else they understand by ‘substance’. Therefore, as we say that in God three persons are in one substance, so they say that three substances are in one person, thereby understanding or believing nothing from us.53

Anselm’s explanation turns on the lack of an appropriate term or name (nomen) by which the Greeks could give expression to the plurality or three-ness in God, ostensibly because they have not the proper terms (nomina) to signify the three. Like Augustine, Anselm also pronounces confidently about what the Greek language does not furnish in the way of an appropriate word for Trinitarian plurality. So the Greeks say three substances (tres substantias) where Latins say three persons (tres personae) and so the fathers have perpetuated this, using two terms to express the plurality they perceive in God. The important thing, as Anselm sees it, is to keep strictly to the two expressions so that one does not 52 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 96; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 142): De illis uero tribus, patre scilicet, filio et spiritu sancto, non inuenimus in propheta aut apostolo aut euangelista, ut uno nomine nominent eos pluraliter, quo significent illam pluralitatem quam in illis intelligimus. Nusquam enim dicunt tres personas eos esse aut tres substantias aut tres omnipotentes aut aliquid huiusmodi. 53 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 96; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 142): Graeci quidem nomen substantiae, Latini uero nomen personae; sed ut omnino quod nos ibi intelligimus per personam, hoc ipsi et non aliud intelligant per substantiam. Sicut ergo nos dicimus in deo unam substantiam esse tres personas, ita illi dicunt unam personam esse tres substantias, nihil a nobis diverse intelligentes aut credentes.

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confuse one with the other. As long as this “agreement in difference” is kept in view, there is no contradiction. But is this that similar to the Christological problem with which he began? Anselm continues: So the Greeks say that the Word (uerbum), that is the Son of God (filius dei), is a different substance (alia substantia) from the Father and not different from him who took on human nature (ab homine assumptio). Therefore, when we find in the writings of the catholic Fathers that several natures are one substance in Christ and elsewhere find that several substances are one person, we do not accept the same meaning for the term ‘substance’. But when we say one ‘substance’ we understand the same as by the term ‘person’; and when we say that several ‘substances’ are one ‘person’ in him, we express by the term ‘substance’ what they [the Greeks] express by the term ‘nature’. By this consideration, which makes the faith of the Greeks and the Latins one, they sometimes call the ‘person’ ‘substance’, which the Latins rarely do.54

So far there is no “three substances in one person.” Anselm identifies different aspects of the problem: First, the Greeks say that the word (uerbum), which they say is a different substance from the Father, is incarnate in the one who took human form. For Anselm, then, the Greeks speak of the uerbum (or logos of John 1:1) as a substance. And second, there are some differences among the fathers, where several natures are called substances, and several substances are called one person. Obviously, when people speak like this, they are using the word substance in a multivocal sense. They do not always mean the same thing. And Anselm points out what Augustine also argues, that when “they say several substances are in one person” it is better to say that there are several natures in one person. The one person and several substances refer to the one who took on human nature, namely Jesus Christ. If Anselm had 54 Anselm, Epistola 204 (S 4, p. 97; Fröhlich, Letters 2, p. 143): ita Graeci dicunt quia uerbum, id est filius dei, alia substantia est a patre, et non alia ab homine assumpto. Quando ergo inuenimus in catholicorum patrum scriptis plures naturas esse unam substantiam in Christo, et quando inuenimus plures substantias esse unam personam: non eundem sensum in nomine substantiae accipimus. Sed cum dicimus unam substantiam, id ipsum intelligimus quod per nomen personae; cum uero dicimus plures esse substantias in eo personam unam, hoc significamus per nomen substantiae quod per nomen naturae. Hac igitur consideratione, qua una est fides Graecorum et Latinorum, aliquando nominant personam substantiam, quamuis hoc raro Latini faciant.

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stopped at this point, he would have clarified for the monks of St. Albans why they need not be troubled. He could have been even more helpful by saying that the several substances in one person are the two natures of Christ, one human one divine. He could even have referred back to the word as a third substance, without having to explain how that is related to the divine and human natures of Christ. The reason Anselm seems incapable of this transition is because he makes the equation of substance (Greek) and nature (Latin), which makes it impossible to speak of the word (uerbum) as a substance. Consequently, when Anselm appends his testimonial about Augustine’s De trinitate and his Greek formula, “and what the Greeks say three substances in one person in the Lord, blessed Augustine testifies to in his book De trinitate,” it sounds like a Trinitarian expression and not a Christological one. Never mind that the focus in this part of his letter has nothing to do with Trinitarian language. Without saying explicitly what those three substances are in one person, Anselm’s language will be read as a Trinitarian expression, and as comparable to his Greek formula. The only possible defense would be that in domino unam personam, tres substantias, three substances in one person in the Lord, differs from his Greek formula, and so should not be read as such. But even if it is read as a Christological statement, where in De trinitate does Augustine testify that the Greeks say this very thing about Jesus: three substances in one person in Christ? It is almost as if Anselm mixes the Christological “one person in the Lord” who is of two natures with the Trinitarian “three substances” of the Greeks (=three persons, for Latins). The following comparison from the Cistercian abbot Isaac of Stella might be helpful. He is one of a few in the twelfth century who uses some form of Anselm’s Greek formula, as I have been calling it. In his Sermon IX, In dominica I post octauos epiphaniae I, he speaks in terms that conjoin the Christological and the Trinitarian.55 He begins with the one person of the Son of God (una persona Dei Filius) and the one son of man (hominis filius) in three substances (in tribus substantis) and subsisting in two natures (duabus subsistit naturis), and then goes on to speak of an eternal divine Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit, one God (unus Deus). He appends the following: 55

PL 194, col. 1722C.

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“In nova hominis trinitate, caro, anima, uerbum, unus homo. Ibi tres personae, una substantia: hic tres substantiae,una persona. Ibi naturalis unitas, diuersitas personalis. Ibi totae tres personae coaeternae et coaequales; hic totae tres substantiae diuersae et inaequales.” Notice how he speaks of a new Trinitarian human being, as it were, made of flesh, soul, word, one man (unus homo). These are the three substances of the “una persona.” And then he turns to elaborate on what obtains here and what exists there. He speaks of a unity of nature and a diversity of persons “there,” coeternal and coequal; while here there are three different and unequal substances in that one man (unus homo). One could not accuse Isaac of Stella of getting his Trinitarian language wrong. However, it is not difficult to see how easily the language of substance and person get confused when both the two natures of Christ and the three-ness of the Trinity are jointly under consideration. Isaac of Stella’s three substances and one person speak of what is “here,” namely Jesus Christ. It sounds the same as Anselm’s “three substances in one person in the Lord” of Letter 204. At the same time, Anselm mentions in Letter 204 that the Latin use of “substance” in the expression “several substances are in one person,” with regard to the two natures in Christ, corresponds to what the Greeks might mean by “nature” (natura). Anselm could not possibly say that there are three natures in Jesus Christ under any circumstances, which means that the three substances in one person in the Lord has to be read as Trinitarian and not Christological. This should bring to mind Augustine’s preference for “nature” as a way of circumventing the problems posed by hypostasis, and Augustine’s inability to distinguish it from ousia. For the monks of St. Albans, the problem seemed more pedestrian: the fluid semantic range of the word “substance,” and how it could be used of both Trinitarian language and the so-called hypostatic union of the divine and human nature in Christ. Combining the two themes compounds the difficulty, namely the plurality and unity in the Trinity and the duality in the Son who took on human nature, as he states in the very last sentence of the letter that the “Word is one with the Father and yet not one, and one with the human nature he took on and yet not one” (uerbum unum sit cum patre et non unus, et cum homine assumpto unus et non unum). This is part of what leads Anselm to propose that neither “substance” nor “person” provides an appropriate term or name for signifying

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the plurality in unity that is in God. This much is the content of his argument in Letter 83 against that implied critic who did not realize that strictly speaking one could not speak of God as three persons any more than one could speak of God as three substances. But if “three persons” is intolerable, how does “one person” improve matters? Consider the following: If the distinguishing characteristic of a person is that a person is an individual subsistent separate from any other subsistent being, then the sense in which “person” refers to God or Father, Son and Holy Spirit is unlike what human beings know “person” to be. To preserve this notion of person, Anselm proposes something more radical to the monks at St. Albans: If there is one substance in the supreme essence, then as long as person refers to an individual subsistent, there has to be “one person” in the supreme essence. But this appears to make nonsense any Trinitarian formula that would contain both “person” and “substance.” Isn’t Anselm opening himself up to the charge of reviving an ancient heresy in the form of a new modalism? If it was wrong for Sabellius to say in the third century that the Godhead was a single person or individual (prosopon) why shouldn’t Anselm be wrong as well?56 Let us take Anselm at his word and proceed to think through what it might mean to say that the supreme essence is one person. Could we then take the triads describing the Trinitarian nature of the human mind as the best analogue of what the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit are? On this construal the three-in-one would be just as Anselm, following Augustine, describes it: memory, understanding, will/love. The Trinitarian image of the mens rationalis truly reflects what the Trinity is, since a person is an individual substance of a rational nature. Part of the objective of indicating the impropriety of either “substance” or “person” is to refocus attention on the Trinitarian image of the mind. If any of the monks of St. Albans asks what it means to use the name or term “person” to refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it suffices to say that one simply does not know what is involved. They will have no other option than to adopt Augustine and Anselm’s nescio quid. Anselm does not give them a choice, or at least he does not think there are any real alternatives to what he has pro56

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, p. 121–123.

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posed. In short, Anselm’s argument in Letter 204 is no different from his contention in Letter 83 and the Monologion, although he risked less confusion in those previous texts by not mentioning his Greek formula and its supposed Augustinian origin.

7. Conclusion: Anselm’s Pseudo-Augustine Given all that we have seen so far, is it possible that Anselm wrote Letter 204 without the benefit of his sources and so let slip an allusion that he took to be fact and testament? It is conceivable, but nearly impossible to prove. I ask this because Letter 204 is nearly contemporaneous with the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. And in spite of the fact that Anselm mentions his Greek formula in the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, and the inspiration of Augustine’s De trinitate for the Monologion, he does not claim Augustine’s testimony for his formula. By the time Anselm wrote Letter 204 to the monks of St. Albans, Anselm was already archbishop of Canterbury. His first completed work as archbishop was the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi (c. 1094), his response to certain allegations made by Roscelin of Compiègne. There is a question whether Anselm’s attribution to Augustine of the formula may have been influenced by the climate of controversy out of which the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi emerged. After all, in the dedication to Pope Urban II, Anselm proposes a carefully-crafted argument about the nature of doctrinal and teaching authority in the Church. In this context, Anselm places the method he describes as sola ratione, first advertised in the Monologion, under the authority of the Christian past and within the juridical and ecclesiastical mandate of the papacy. Given the uncharacteristic nature of his claims about the Greek formula, it is not inconceivable that, in making the subsequent appeal to Augustine’s specific witness for it, Anselm may have been trying to deflect potential criticism. The swirl of controversy surrounding Anselm and Roscelin in the not-too-distant past cannot rule this out entirely. To say this, of course, is to offer a conjecture. The interpretation I have been proposing throughout my discussion in this chapter is simply that Anselm made a mistake in his attribution of the Greek formula to Augustine’s De trinitate. At the same time, the impetus for it derives from Augustine’s nominal-

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ist tendencies in the discussion of “substance” and “person” in De trinitate Books 5 and 7. This suggests that Anselm’s late assertion that Augustine’s De trinitate is the source of the Greek formula is probably not a deliberate attempt to mislead or deceive. Nor was it an expedient to circumvent problems entailed in Anselm’s much earlier formulations in the Monologion and in Letter 83 where he had not claimed Augustine’s authority for it. The false attribution devolves out of Anselm’s well-placed confidence in being able to speak without reserve about a work he knew so well, so that he could say what he said in Letter 204 without the slightest sense that he was mistaken or that he was misleading the monks of St. Albans. That he may have been relying on his memory is supported by the fact that the phrase “three substances in one person in the Lord,” which he employs in the same context as the false attribution to De trinitate, is somewhat unusual for Anselm. He rarely uses it to speak about the Trinity. What is more, the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi already deals with the topics that perplexed the monks at St. Albans. And yet Anselm makes no reference to it in Letter 204 as containing an answer to their difficulties. For example, in Epistola de incarnatione Verbi 6, Anselm alludes to the arguments of the fathers and blessed Augustine who, following the evangelist and the apostles, make it plain that God is una et sola et individua et simplex sit natura et tres personae. He then mentions the Monologion and the Proslogion as two of his previous works which contain arguments that show that without the authority of scripture what is held by faith about the divine nature and the divine persons (apart from the incarnation) can be proved equally by reason. The phrase, “apart from the incarnation,” redescribes both the Monologion and the Proslogion. It calls attention to the fact that neither work addresses the subject of Christology in any substantive sense, even though the former in particular focuses on the Trinity. But more important than the reference to the Monologion and the Proslogion, is Anselm uses nescio quid in Epistola de incarnatione Verbi 5, a chapter before the section containing the reference to Augustine I just commented upon. Augustine’s nescio quid in De trinitate creates the conditions for Anselm’s own nescio quid in Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. So why not mention the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to the monks of St. Albans, since Letter 204 ends on the theme that neither Greeks

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nor Latins know what the three are in the Trinity? And why does he not mention the Monologion either, directing them to M 79 as containing the full answer to the problem he had interjected into the one they had presented to him? To be sure, M 79 would probably have confused his readers. Instead of clarifying for them what they had asked, it would undoubtedly have compounded their difficulties. At the same time, if Anselm was willing to direct readers of the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to both the Monologion and the Proslogion, he should not have been reticent in mentioning the former to the monks of St. Albans, when they were in such need of instruction. Whatever the case, Anselm appears not to have thought it worthwhile to mention these earlier works in Letter 204. He did not help his correspondents, however, by claiming an Augustinian origin for a phrase that was very much his own coinage. I indicated earlier that if Lanfranc was the first critic of Anselm’s use of the Greek formula, and if Anselm had been able to persuade him of it, then it would explain why Anselm felt confident in asserting the Greek formula after the Monologion. And since no one else challenged him about such a novel expression, he remained secure in his belief that his ascription to the Greeks was correct. There is no evidence that Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers, the recipient of Letter 83, objected to Anselm’s novelty. This is remarkable in itself. Far from being challenged about his error, the response of someone like Hugh of Lyon to both the Monologion and the Proslogion convinced Anselm that his arguments were sound and that his Greek formula was unproblematic. After all, it was part of the advertisement for the Monologion in its preface. Anselm felt no anxieties about repeating the phrase. In the absence of criticism and with no objections to his repeated use of it, it settled in his thinking as a faithful rendition of the Greekspeaking tradition on Trinitarian language. Significantly, throughout his many arguments in the Monologion Anselm follows very consistently Augustine’s practice by using the words essence (essentia), nature (natura), and substance (substantia) interchangeably when speaking of the supreme nature, essence or substance. At no point prior to M 79 does Anselm give any indication that persona is an appropriate word for the nature, essence, or substance of the supreme essence. So, on his own terms, the use of “person” as an equivalent for substance in M 79 is unex-

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pected. If he is merely repeating what the Greeks say, then he is not responsible for it. Part of this claim may derive its impetus from the manner in which Boethius crafts his definition of persona: the individual substance of a rational nature. If Anselm had any idea how Boethius had gone about defining what we mean by “nature” in Contra Eutythen I & II he may very well have felt justified in speaking of “person” as essence or nature. At one point Boethius maintains that “nature is a substrate of person, and that person cannot be predicated apart from nature.” He goes on to say that because persona cannot exist apart from a nature (natura) and person does not come into being among accidents, person applies appropriately to substances: that is, essences and natures. This seems to be the logic behind M 79. Let us return to Augustine’s discussion in De trinitate 7.4.8. At one point in his deliberations, Augustine asks: “Why is the same unity not a good reason for our saying not three substances or three persons, but one substance or one person?”57 In this way of framing the problem, we can detect the two Trinitarian phrases mentioned by Anselm in the preface to the Monologion and ask why it is that those expressions are not appropriate. What Augustine presents as a question, presupposing a negative answer, appears in Anselm as an assertion that is as much a positive affirmation as a canonical one. M 79 reads like a catena of phrases from Augustine’s comments in De trinitate and Boethius’s thinking in Contra Eutychen. The preface to the Monologion, on the other hand, employs the words “substance” and “person” as interchangeable, and thereby departs from both Augustine and Boethius’s conclusions. In appealing to Augustine as the source of the Greek formula, Anselm is in error about the letter of Augustine’s text, but not its spirit, since the content of the argument he proposes in his defense is entirely 57 Augustine, De trinitate 7.8. I have amended Edmund Hill’s translation to bring out the real force in the italicized part of the second sentence. There is a possible problem here in the second sentence in the way it is normally translated. “If they are not called three essences, but one essence, on account of the unity of the Trinity, why are they called not three substances or three persons, but one substance and one person, on account of the unity of the Trinity” (Stephen McKenna translation, p. 233). Cf. Edmund Hill: “If it is because of the unity of the triad that we do not say three beings but one being, why is this same unity not a good reason for our not saying three substances or three persons, but one substance or one person?” (p. 226).

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in agreement with Augustine’s words in De trinitate Books 5 and 7. If Anselm sounds nominalist in his views on the propriety of using “person” in Trinitarian language here in the Monologion we can be certain that he has Augustine as a precursor. This is the nature of Anselm’s novelty. If his apology in the preface to the Monologion is meant to preempt and to preclude criticism, it does not. It invites the very criticism that Anselm wants to fend off, precisely because Anselm insists on such a novel phrase, while not seeming to realize how disconcerting or confounding it might be to some of his medieval readers. What probably saved Anselm from further criticism was to have insisted that any potential critic had to know Augustine’s De trinitate well to be able to judge the Monologion. This limited the company of potential critics. Anselm’s confidence in stating his Greek formula so boldly in the preface to the Monologion and his repetition of the formula on other occasions means that Anselm was convinced that he was not departing from the writings of the Catholic fathers (catholicorum partum), blessed Augustine (maxime beati Augustini) or the Greeks (Graecos). If Anselm is to be believed that after frequently considering the Monologion he found no reason to change his mind on this, we have little reason to think he thought he had erred in making this claim about the Greeks. What I have argued is that the much later claim is less credible than the earlier appeal to Augustine’s influence. To reiterate: Anselm’s fastidiousness about his Greek formula and his statement about finding it in De trinitate should not be accorded the certainty that Anselm’s words in Letter 204 demand. But why he thought that the exact phrase he attributes to the Greek was in fact from Augustine’s De trinitate is interesting, though not difficult to surmise. Augustine’s peregrinations on the subject of “persons,” “substances” and what three there are in the Trinity lead eventually to the words, “I do not know what” (nescio quid). Anselm does likewise. He follows the spirit of Augustine, but not the letter of his text. The exact language of Anselm’s Greek formula does not exist in Augustine’s De trinitate, but the thinking behind the phrase does. And yet for all of Anselm’s dexterity he had clearly erred in attributing to Augustine and to the Greeks a formulation that would have unsettled many minds. While such an error on Anselm’s part could lead to serious doubts about his claims about Augustinian inspiration and influence, our examination of the pos-

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sible sources of this error lead to the opposite conclusion. That is to say, only a deep familiarity with Augustine’s De trinitate would have led someone to make the kind of mistake that Anselm made. In a rare moment, Anselm claims Augustinian testimony for a dangerous innovation that makes a unique contribution to the pseudoAugustinian tradition in the Middle Ages. From here on, my assessment of the Monologion takes a different turn. The five chapters that follow take up a reading of the Monologion seriatim. As I mentioned in the introduction, this reading will be a critical reading. However, it is not meant as a full-scale commentary on the Monologion. I will pay particular attention to Anselm’s objections and the way he handles them and assess his use of Augustine’s De trinitate. And on occasion I will make comparisons between Anselm and some medieval and modern commentators on his work.

PART II A READING OF THE MONOLOGION

Chapter Three Anselm’s Three Ways

1. Introduction The first four chapters of the Monologion set the basic framework for Anselm’s arguments. To appreciate Anselm’s thinking and the nature of his arguments in this opening section of the Monologion we must ask the following question: how do you prove that there is a supreme nature (or being) and that this one nature is the source of all that exists and all that is good? If you are Anselm, you try to show that there is a natural hierarchy in the order of existent things; and that this hierarchy suggests that there must be one nature that is better than all the others and beyond which there is no other. Otherwise there would be a universe of infinite unbounded natures. This is the note on which Anselm ends his first set of arguments. The argument with which he begins, the one he claims is the easiest to make, is an argument from the good as a quality that inheres in a thing or as an attribution made of something because it is useful. Although he does not quite answer how a mere attribution indicates that such a claim to goodness necessarily implies some connection to an original good, Anselm insists that all good things are good through the one supreme nature, who is goodness itself. Anselm includes in his conception of goodness not only things that are good intrinsically but also those that are considered good by appellation or attribution. This burdens his argument and creates difficulties that he does not entirely overcome. Still, his central contention is that the variety of goods point to an original good that is good not because it participates in goodness but because it is goodness itself. This is Anselm’s fundamental argument. It is the first in a set of three that I describe as Anselm’s Three Ways. Anselm’s second argument is based on the nature of existence, together with the claim that whatever exists by itself is better than

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anything that exists through something else; which is to say that what is self-generated is superior in existence to anything that depends on something else for its own existence. And so if all the things that exist have come into being because of something else, then that through which they have come into being has a better existence than them. Anselm argues that because there is comparative differentiation among the things that exist, some more or less this or that, the highest nature must be beyond the language and the logic of comparison. Anselm’s third argument adds to the previous two the observation that, because there is a hierarchy that obtains among existent things, the different grades of existence point to the existence of one super-eminent being, nature, or essence. All of Anselm’s three arguments presuppose the idea of creation, without which he cannot even begin with goodness, its relation to the one nature that is sui generis, and the different levels of dignity exemplified by existent things. In this chapter I offer an assessment of Anselm’s use of the argument from the good, the centerpiece for his proof of the existence of the one supreme nature. As we shall see, Anselm’s argument can be found in Book 8 of Augustine’s De trinitate. And so it will be important to consider how Augustine presents the argument in De trinitate 8 and how Anselm uses it. The latter part of my discussion in this chapter will also involve a comparative study of Anselm’s Three Ways and Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways partly because R. W. Southern uses Aquinas as a foil for Anselm; and also because Anselm and Aquinas each claim that in choosing their respective arguments they have taken the easiest path to proving the existence of the one supreme nature (or God). This excursus should help clarify how Anselm’s views compare with both Augustine and Aquinas, since Anselm is often presented as the greatest philosophical thinker between Augustine and Aquinas. I argue that, in spite of some inherent problems, Anselm’s Three Ways is more persuasive than Aquinas’s Five Ways. I also suggest that Aquinas’s criticism of Anselm rests in part on his possible ignorance of Anselm’s Three Ways. It should become evident in the course of this chapter that Anselm had a high estimation of his capacity for coming up with arguments to explain or give rationality to received Christian doctrine. We can see this from the very beginning of the Monologion in Anselm’s invitation to inquiry and his brief apologia for his method.

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2. An Invitation to Inquiry: Reason as Guide Anselm begins the Monologion with a declaration of intent. It contains an expression of his convictions, the basis from which he proceeds with his investigations. The declaration is this: If anyone does not know, either because he has not heard or because he does not believe, that there is one nature supreme among all existing things, who alone is self-sufficient in his eternal happiness, who through his omnipotent goodness grants and brings it about that all other things exists or have any sort of well-being, and a great many other things that we must believe about God or his creation, I think he could at least convince himself of most of these things by reason alone, if he is even moderately intelligent.1

There are two types of readers envisaged here. The first are those who, like Anselm and his confreres who demanded the work, already believe a good deal of what is about to be proved. The second group of readers consists of those Anselm describes as “not knowing:” either because they have not heard (non audiendo) or because they simply do not believe (non credendo) what they have heard. Neither type of ignoramus is excluded from the present inquiry, if the person is of moderate intelligence (mediocris ingenii est). The ignorant can unlearn their ignorance. That is the promise. What makes Anselm so sure of this? He suggests the following. First, that there are many ways of proving his claims, although he does not tell us what all those many ways are. But more importantly, he maintains that there is one way that is the easiest for someone who does not already know what Anselm knows, and because he wants to disabuse the ignoramus of his ignorance, his first argument will follow the “easy way.” Notice here that the so-called ignoramus in the opening paragraph is a somewhat less damnable characterization of the unbeliever (or nonbeliever) than the proverbial fool who acts as the foil for Anselm’s subsequent

1

M 1 (S 1, p. 12 ; Williams translation, p. 10) : Si quis unam naturam, summam omnium quae sunt, solam sibi in aeterna sua beatitudine sufficientem, omnibusque rebus aliis hoc ipsum quod aliquid sunt aut quod aliquomodo bene sunt, per omnipotentem bonitatem suam dantem et facientem, aliaque perplura quae de deo siue de eius creatura necessarie credimus, aut non audiendo aut non credendo ignorat: puto quia ea ipsa ex magna parte, si uel mediocris ingenii est, potest ipse sibi saltem sola ratione persuadere.

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argument in the Proslogion, the fool who says in his heart that there is no God. Anselm’s confidence rests on a simple idea. That is, “everyone seeks to enjoy only those things that he thinks good.” From this it is not difficult to extrapolate. Or in Anselm’s words, to readily (in promptu est) turn the eye of the mind every now and then (aliquando) to inquire into the thing by which these things are good, the very things one would not desire (non appetit) unless one judged them to be good.2 Anselm continues that, with reason (ratio) leading and the inquirer following in its steps, the unbelieving ignoramus will rationally progress toward those things about which he is irrationally ignorant (irrationabiliter ignorat). Anselm’s characterization of irrationality is almost comical. Why call it irrational ignorance, if they haven’t heard or do not know? The idea that someone in eleventh-century medieval society had not heard anything about the Christian religion would probably have struck Anselm as unimaginable. His use of the term “irrational ignorance” implies a kind of unpardonable ignorance. Anselm’s basic contention is that anyone can begin with a subjective conception of the good as the basis of desire. From there the person can proceed to inquire about the ultimate source of all goodness. The inquirer’s prior ignorance, which was irrational because he had not bothered to consider the source of his “enjoyments,” would be turned into a new rational understanding that the source of all goodness is the supreme self-sufficient good. Anselm appears to be choosing his words carefully. He is deliberate in his initial description of desire as motivated by “the good that one seeks to enjoy.” He could simply have said that desire always presupposes the perception of something good irrespective of how one defines or conceptualizes that good. In this sense, everyone desires what is good. But he specifically wants to use a much lesser form of desire and enjoyment that almost everyone acknowledges. This allows him to say that no one is excluded from moving from this most basic conception of desiring the good to a metaphysical reflection about the source of all goodness. Anselm assumes that everyone naturally wants to know that good from which all things derive their goodness.

2 M 1 (S 1, p. 12; Deane translation, p. 84): Etenim cum omnes frui solis iis appetant quae bona putant:

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After his opening statement about the subjective good, the allsufficient good, and the sufficiency of reason in conducting the inquirer to a point where he can be disabused of his irrational ignorance, Anselm turns to his own arguments. The reader probably expects Anselm to insist on the incontestable nature of his arguments and the nature of his investigations, since he has just finished giving assurances about what reason alone (sola ratione) can accomplish for the ignorant and the moderately intelligent. Instead, Anselm becomes defensive. He breaks his train of thought and offers a caveat. Anselm writes that, if he says anything that a greater authority (major auctoritas) does not teach (non monstret), he wants to be understood in the following way: when he claims that his conclusions are necessary it is not because they are absolutely necessary (omnino necessarium), but only that they appear necessary for the time being (interim). Anselm’s highly qualified “it is said to be able to appear necessary for the time being” is carefully phrased to preempt criticism. It anticipates the possible objection that Anselm proposes arguments that others have not made or that the views he propounds cannot be found among the auctoritates. The caveat intrudes into the sequence of Anselm’s argument. It probably owes its origin to Lanfranc’s initial criticism of the Monologion. The manuscript tradition supports this, as F. S. Schmitt points out with respect to Ms. Paris. Lat. 13413, one of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Monologion.3 It clearly shows a version of the Monologion that has at this point in M 1 a lacuna of this passage in its entirety. There is another lacuna before this one, at the point where Anselm states that while there are many ways of proving the existence of the one supreme nature he will propose the one he thinks most accessible. The omitted statement anticipates a different kind of objection than the second more extensive lacuna, which addresses Anselm’s general methodology and offers a concession about the finality of his arguments. The caveat about the finality of Anselm’s arguments uses language that one can detect in Anselm’s letters surrounding his disagreement with Lanfranc. Here Anselm subordinates his so-called “necessary conclusions” to an unspecified “greater authority,” who 3 F. S. Schmitt, “Les corrections de S. Anselme à son Monologion.» Revue Bénédictine, 50 (1938), pp. 194–205.

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might have better arguments than the ones Anselm presents. He qualifies his own arguments and deductions by presenting them as provisional. The statement is crafted to disarm a potential critic from insinuating that Anselm has been presumptuous in attempting to argue so confidently about matters too difficult to understand. Recall Lanfranc’s ubi ratio deficit. Anselm will make a similar statement in the Cur Deus Homo almost two decades later. By then he had learned the usefulness of such warnings. At the same time, his openness to further argument here in the Monologion may not be as unusual as it appears if Anselm had indeed written the De Grammatico before the Monologion, as I have suggested previously. In the concluding words put in the mouth of the Teacher at the end of De Grammatico, the Student is encouraged to be openminded about the possibility that someone else could offer better and more persuasive arguments than the position argued in the dialogue. In any case, Anselm acknowledges here, almost as a concession, that what is compelling to him may not necessarily be compelling to others. And it did not matter whether he had better analytic tools than his critics. There is another piece of textual evidence from Ms. Paris Lat. 13413 that shows Anselm’s sensitivity on this point.4 F. S. Schmitt calls attention to the fact that in place of quod non catholicorum patrum et maxime beati Augustini scriptis cohaereat, the text has quod non in catholicorum patrum et maxime beati Augustini scriptis inueniatur aut illis cohaereat. So, instead of saying that in reconsidering the work “I have been unable to find anything which is inconsistent with or cannot be found in the writings of the catholic fathers and in the writings of blessed Augustine,” the later redaction says that “I have been unable to find anything which is inconsistent with the writings of the catholic fathers and in the writings of blessed Augustine.” The older recension makes a more direct claim about Anselm’s dependence on Augustine and the catholic fathers: inueniatur aut illis cohaereat clearly implies that Anselm discovered his arguments in Augustine and the catholic fathers. Leaving this out gives the impression that Anselm was no longer willing to claim such close dependence. Or that Anselm now realized that his Monologion contained innovations. He seems to acknowledge this much in the preface where he 4

Ibid., pp. 198–199.

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again repeats his dependence on Augustine. This militates against the view suggested by Italo Sciuto that Anselm “suppresses” the word inueniatur in order to loosen the links with Augustine.5 Scuito’s interpretation suggests that Anselm no longer wanted to claim that his arguments could be found in Augustine’s De trinitate. Anselm never moves away from his claim of Augustinian dependence. Notice that Anselm drops the in before catholicorum patrum as well. So if it is about suppressing the nature of his dependence, then it includes the “catholic fathers” too. Leaving out inueniatur aut illis seems designed to preclude criticism. It makes it less likely for a critic to insinuate that Anselm claimed to have discovered his arguments in exactly the same form as they are in Augustine and the catholic fathers. So what the “suppression” achieves is that it allows Anselm to make a more general claim of agreement with Augustine and the catholic fathers. But it does not prevent him from insisting that the Monologion is based on Augustine’s De trinitate. He does just that later in the preface when he challenges any potential critic to read De trinitate carefully before trying to judge the Monologion. As we proceed we will discover how Anselm enters into age-old debates within the philosophical and theological traditions of the Latins. And for one not inclined to naming the few sources that he had, Anselm still manages to intrigue by the breadth of the objections he proposes to the case he tries to make. A most noteworthy example appears immediately after his caveat in M 1. His arguments bear some resemblance to the ancient debate about Plato’s theory of Forms and Aristotle’s objection to that theory.6

5

Italo Sciuto, La ragione della fede, p. 44. On the metaphysics and epistemology entailed in Plato’s theory of Forms see, for example, Nicholas P. White, “Plato’s Metaphysical Epistemology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, edited by Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 277–310; as well as the older study by G. E. L Owen, “A Proof in the Peri Ideôn,” in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 77 (1957), pp. 103–11 [Reprinted in G. E. L. Owen, Logic, Science, and Dialectic: Collected Papers in Greek Philosophy, edited by Martha Nussbaum (Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press, 1986, pp. 165–179]. On Aristotle, see Jonathan Barnes, “Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, edited by Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 66–108; and Julia Annas, “Forms and First Principles,” Phronesis, 19 (1974), pp. 257–83; idem, “Aristotle on Substance, Accidents and Plato’s Forms,” Phro6

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3. The Good: Beyond Utility and Intrinsic Worth Anselm begins with the idea that everyone enjoys what he perceives to be good. However, Anselm is more interested in how that helps to construct an argument about the origin of all goodness. He acknowledges that an objection already presents itself right from the beginning, namely, since there are different goods there must be a different source for every kind of goodness that we perceive. Another objection would be to say that each good thing is the source of its own goodness. Anselm believes the inquiry has to be framed differently. In what remains of the first chapter, Anselm argues that all good things have one ultimate source of their goodness and that nothing good is good through itself, unless it is the ultimate good. In terms of the ancient dispute between the Platonic theory of the forms of the Good and the Aristotelian objection to that theory in the opening chapter of the Ethica Nicomachea (1096a–1097a), for example, Anselm’s position is undoubtedly Platonic, but with an important difference. Anselm acknowledges what might be deemed the basic premise of the Aristotelian insistence on the diversity of goods. For Anselm, this is a serious objection that cannot be gainsaid. He insists, however, that the diversity of goods conceals and reveals an important reality. Far from undermining the idea of a single original good, it supports it. Why? Because in speaking about diverse goods, there is an acknowledgment that some things are more or less good. And this “more or less” is itself an indication of an inherent “good” that is discernible variously in different things. So Anselm maintains that when we make comparisons by saying that such-and-such is more or less or equally something, the basis of comparison is understood to be the same in those different things. If it were not we would not make the comparison. This should be clear to anyone who is willing to give that matter any consideration, he believes. That “something” which remains constant in the diversity of the things that are being compared implies that the logic of comparison always presupposes an invariable standard for the comparison. Exactly how that standard is

nesis, 22 (1977), pp. 146–60; and in particular, Gail Fine, On Ideas: Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato’s Theory of Forms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

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conceptualized or how we maintain the logic of comparison is not the issue, only that it is there. But hasn’t Anselm smoothed over an important difference? What about the polyvalence of the word “good”? That in fact when we speak of something being good we might be speaking sometimes metaphorically; and that when we make comparisons among different kinds of good we compare them in an approximate sense? Isn’t this part of the reason why sometimes we speak of some things as being more or less good? Anselm does not seem to think so. He points to our conception of justice. He insists that we think of goodness in much the same way that we think of justice. Anything that is considered just equally, or “more or less” just, is just in comparison with other just things, and therefore must be understood to be just through one standard of justice, which does not differ in those diverse things. He is insistent that all just things (and attributions) participate in justice. But there are difficulties with comparing our perceptions of goodness with justice, unless one wants to speak of something like a Platonic form of justice (or goodness).7 In the first place, it is difficult to sustain the view that justice is something that inheres in things as things. After all, no one would speak of a just stone or a just horse, unless by some strange metaphorical transference. But one can speak of a good stone or a good horse. Justice is a quality or attribute unlike goodness in all its diverse forms. Second, if there is a diversity of goods, then it follows that the comparison of goods, more or less or equally, may not always involve legitimate comparisons. Our use of the word “good” is in part a function of its vagueness and polyvalence. As Anselm himself acknowledges, the same quality can be good in one thing and bad in another. In which case, the quality in question cannot be inherently good. Furthermore, because there are a number of goods attributable to any given thing, it is clear that we use different standards to determine different goods. Anselm tries to obviate these objections by insisting that “goodness” can be reduced to two kinds based on either utility (utile) 7

On participation and predication see, for example, R. E. Allen, “Participation and Predication in Plato’s Middle Dialogues,” Philosophical Review, 69 (1960), pp. 147–164. On the different senses in which Plato sometime speaks of the forms see Gail Fine, On Ideas, pp. 24–30.

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or intrinsic worth (honestum). Using the example of a horse and a thief, Anselm observes that certain qualities that make a horse a good horse would not be appreciated in a thief. For while a swift horse might be considered good, a thief with the same characteristic is a bad thing, and no one in his right mind would think this good. This misrepresents the situation. For both the horse and the thief, one could argue that speed is good: a fast thief is a “good” thief, since he can steal and get away with it, even if the thief is not considered good on account of his chosen occupation. Those who appreciate the skills of the thief would obviously not see his speed as something “bad.” If there is no intrinsic worth in swiftness, there is at least some utility for the thief being fast. The real point of difference is not the utility of being fast, but the status of being a thief. Whether or not the speed with which the thief does his deed and gets away is “good” depends not only on the nature of thievery – which is bad, but also on the fact that thievery serves bad ends. Anselm wants to insist that most people would not find the skill of the thief useful, in which case his speed is necessarily a bad thing, because we use the word to describe what is perceived rightly to be useful or of intrinsic value. Health is good, and so is beauty, but certainly not the swiftness of a thief. Anselm wants to take out of consideration any misperception of utility in order to rule out the thief’s swiftness as something good. But how does this meet the objection that there are a diversity of goods and therefore possibly no single source of goodness? After all, even if all good things are good because they are either useful or possess some intrinsic worth, that says nothing about whether all those useful things or valuable things derive their usefulness or their intrinsic value from the same single source of goodness. Anselm’s argument might work for the notion of goodness as intrinsic worth. It does not work that well with the notion of goodness as utility, especially if utility is defined from the standpoint of the person for whom the thing is useful. Furthermore, Anselm’s notion of “more or less” overlooks how comparisons vary within the same class of things and across different kinds. He uses an appellative notion of goodness as the criterion of comparison. Anselm makes no attempt to define or explain what makes goodness based on utility similar to goodness based on intrinsic value. If one were to pose the question to Anselm

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whether “good” is a quality or a substance in the way that he discusses grammaticus in De Grammatico it would be obvious that Anselm’s approach here is less persuasive. From the standpoint of Anselm’s De Grammatico, M 1 contains two appellative uses of the word “good,” one of which appears to signify “substance” (intrinsic worth) and the other “quality” (usefulness). The reduction of goodness to intrinsic worth and utility is in many ways a categorization that cannot sustain the argument that diverse goods are good because of one single source of good. For even if one insists that the polyvalent uses of the word “good” can be reduced to two (utility and intrinsic worth), it is equally patent that there are other uses of the word “good” that go beyond utility and intrinsic worth. And what of the substantive/qualitative distinction? Isn’t there a difference between saying that what is “substantially good” derives its goodness from that which brings it into being (that which gives it its substance) and saying that what is qualitatively good derives its goodness from that which is good per se? Is it not more precise to say that what is intrinsically good is good because of its nature rather than to say that it is good because of the good per se? The difference is, to a large extent, the difference between a conception of the good that tends towards a Platonic form of goodness and an alternative conception that focuses on the nature of the thing. One can speak of “natures” without having to appeal to something like a Platonic form. Alternatively, one could propose a quasi-Aristotelian conception of the good by speaking of the good as substance and vice-versa. Anselm does not use the language of substance in this sense, but his appropriation of the utile/honestum distinction accomplishes something similar. The utile/honestum distinction provides an important metaphysical element to Anselm’s argument. He divides all things into those that exist for themselves and those that serve other ends or exist on account of something else. Goodness is no different: some things are good on their own account while others are good through something else. The former corresponds to intrinsic worth, the latter to utility. Anselm’s confidence in the solidity of his argument is questionable, because he does not address the appellative uses of the word “good” here in the Monologion as his arguments in De Grammatico would demand. He insists that the argument cannot be refuted in any way; consequently, it must be the case (necesse est) that every

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useful and every intrinsically valuable thing, if they are truly good things (si uere bona sunt) must be good through that very same thing (per idipsum), whatever that might be (quidquid illud sit), through which it is necessary that all good things exist.8 Anselm then asks rhetorically: who doubts that this thing through which all good things exist is itself a great good? The question is quite different from the one he posed at the beginning of the inquiry about diverse goods. Earlier it was about whether all good things could be good through one thing as the source of their goodness or through something else. Now Anselm shifts the focus to ask whether all things that are “truly good” exist through that which is the good itself. This second inquiry lends itself to a much easier argument than the one Anselm proffers about different goods and the one good because it is based on existence as a more fundamental (ontological) good than other kinds of goodness. Why Anselm waited to the very end to introduce the theme of existence is unclear. It is probably because it is the centerpiece of his third argument, which I refer to as his Second Way. And while it is second, it ought to precede the argument from the good both logically and ontologically. Structurally, beginning with the nature of existence, moving to the degrees of dignity among existent things, and ending with the argument from the good is a more logical approach than starting with the diversity of goods, since existence is foundational. What is more, once the notion of the different degrees of dignity is introduced, the question as to why different goods possess any goodness either intrinsically or because of their utility needs little argument. Anselm could then present the human desire for various goods as the intimation of an ultimate good, and as the goal (telos) of human experience. This is an argument that Anselm will make in M 64–78. Obviously, the sequence that I am proposing is not the one that Anselm adopts, which undoubtedly makes for some repetition, since it is not possible to speak of good things being good through whatever it is that makes them good without presupposing that the good (whatever it is) exists in the first place, and that those other goods that derive their goodness from it also exist. Anselm gives a foretaste of this as he concludes M 1 with the assertion that what is good through itself is supremely good, supremely 8

Jasper Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 63.

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great, and the highest of all existing things (id est summum omnium quae sunt).9 To be fair, Anselm begins his investigations not with what is logically or ontologically prior, but with what argument he considers the easiest to make, the argument that will gain the attention and assent of the person of moderate intelligence. But notice the qualifier: “if they are truly good” (si uere bona). This takes us back to the opening declaration: to the idea of creation and to the one supreme nature as the source of all things that exist and the goodness they possess. The claim at this point that this argument cannot be refuted in any way seems presumptuous. Even if one accepts the notion that there is such a thing as being “genuinely good,” Anselm has so far not explained exactly what that is. So while he claims to have presented an irrefutable argument about the singular origin of the diversity of goods, the more credible aspect of his argument is the part of his declaration that has hitherto been absent from his comments, namely existence as the work of a creator. It is only when one accepts creation as the source of all things that exist and as an inherent good that one can make the case that a single source of goodness underlies the diversity of all good things. Otherwise, the good per se appears as if conjured out of thin air. And so with the supposition that there is a single, self-same (idipsum) good that imparts its goodness to other good things, Anselm concludes the opening chapter of the Monologion by speaking of the two ways in which something may be said to be good: either through itself or through something else. He then proceeds to link this discussion of the two ways of existing to the idea of greatness. For that which is good through something else is obviously neither greater than nor equal to that which is good through itself. We can interpret Anselm as proposing three different arguments about the good thus far. First, there are different kinds of good things, but all of them derive their goodness from one source. Second, what is intrinsically good and not just good because it is useful receives its goodness from that which brings it into being. And third, that which is good in itself is better than that which is good through something else. The first argument is mere assertion, and tends toward a Platonic theory of forms; the second argument is 9 Cf. Paul Gilbert, “Id est summum omnium quae sunt,” Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 54 (May 1984), pp. 199–223.

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defensible, if linked to a theory of natures and existence as a good; and the third seems incontestable on the supposition that what is self-constituted is better than what is made by another, and therefore what is good of its own accord is better than that which receives its goodness from something else. This third argument was commonplace in the logic of comparison among those familiar with Cicero’s Topica. So, for example, in Book VI of Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica (18.68–18.71; 382/1161), he notes that God is better than all other things because he is self-sufficient and needs nothing, whereas other things need him. Anselm could have dropped the first and still made the argument for a self-sufficient supreme nature by joining the second with the third argument. By insisting on the first one, he seems to move from subjectivity to ontology and metaphysics. Anselm’s comments about the good, the diversity of goods, and the ways in which something may be said to be good fall on the Platonic side of the ancient dispute. Anselm did not know the ancient Platonic sources and Aristotle’s objections in the Ethica Nicomachea. But Anselm’s familiarity with Porphyry’s Isagoge (his introduction to Aristotle’s Categoriae) through Boethius’s translations and commentaries on the Isagoge means that Anselm took for granted some elements of the Platonically-inspired account of universals, particulars, and differentiae contained in Porphyry’s Isagoge.10 Besides Porphyry’s Isagoge and Boethius’s logical works, Anselm also had the more familiar Platonic impressions and resonances found in Augustine, some of it mediated through the account of the good in De trinitate. In choosing to speak about the two kinds of goodness by differentiating between utile and honestum, Anselm employs a distinction that appears much earlier in Augustine’s corpus, and is only hinted at in the De trinitate 9.13 and 10.13. De trinitate itself does not present the distinction explicitly, but the metaphysics of the good outlined in De trinitate Books 8 and 9 assumes it. The distinction first appears in Augustine in Question 30 of De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII. There Augustine takes the familiar distinction between utile (useful) and honestum (honorable) found in any number of Ciceronian texts (among them De officiis) and 10 See, for example, D. P. Henry, “Predicables and Categories,” in CHLMP, pp. 143–157.

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proceeds to formulate a new pair: uti (use) and frui (enjoyment): “Just as there is a difference between the good (honestum) and the useful (utile), so there is one between what is to be enjoyed and what is to be used,” Augustine writes. “For although the fact that everything good is useful and everything useful is good can be logically defended, nonetheless what is desired for itself is more appropriately and more customarily called good, whereas what is to be referred to something else is called useful.”11 We can already see in Augustine the distinction between what is good per se and what is good per aliud. He continues: Hence, we now speak in keeping with this distinction, while maintaining that the good and the useful are in no respect opposed to one another. For they are occasionally thought, in an ignorant and popular way, to be mutually opposed. And so we are said to enjoy a thing from which we derive pleasure, while we use a thing which we refer to that which pleasure is derived. Every human waywardness, then, which we also call vice, comes from wishing to use what should be enjoyed and enjoying what should be used. Likewise, everything that is rightly ordered, which is also named virtue, comes from enjoying what should be enjoyed and using what should be used. Now good things are to be enjoyed while useful things are to be used.12

So everything has its proper place in a right order. This then provides the foundation for his reconfiguration of the Ciceronian commonplaces in his subsequent comments: I call goodness (honestatem) an intelligible beauty, which we appropriately say is spiritual, but usefulness (utilitatem) I call divine

11 Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, q. 30 (CCSL 44A, p. 38; Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, p. 43): ut inter honestum et utile interest, ita et inter fruendum et utendum. quamquam enim omne honestum utile et omne utile honestum esse subtiliter defendi queat, tamen quia magis proprie atque usitatius honestum dicitur quod propter se ipsum expetendum est. 12 Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, q. 30 (CCSL 44A, p. 38; Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, p. 43): illud sane custodientes ut honestum et utile nullo modo sibimet aduersentur. aduersari enim haec sibi aliquando imperite ac uulgariter existimantur. frui ergo dicimur ea re de qua capimus uoluptatem; utimur ea quam referimus ad id unde capienda uoluptas est. omnis itaque humana peruersio est, quod etiam uitium uocatur, fruendis uti uelle atque utendis frui; et rursus omnis ordinatio, quae uirtus etiam nominatur, fruendis frui et utendis uti. fruendum est autem honestis, utendum uero utilibus.

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providence. Consequently, although there are many visible things that are beautiful, which are less appropriately denoted as good, nonetheless beauty itself, on account of which whatever is beautiful is beautiful, is in no way visible. Similarly, many visible things are useful, but usefulness itself, on account of which whatever benefits us is beneficial, which we call divine providence, is not visible. It should of course be understood that everything bodily is contained in the term “visible.” It is proper, then, to enjoy beautiful things that are invisible – namely, good things; but whether it is proper to enjoy all these things is another matter, although perhaps only what should be enjoyed is rightly called good. But all useful things should be used as each person has need of them. And even the beasts, in fact, do not think it so very absurd to enjoy food and a certain degree of bodily pleasure. But only a being possessed of reason can make use of something, for to know to what a thing is to be referred has not been given to those deprived of reason nor even to reasonable beings that are foolish. Nor can someone use a thing if he does not know to what it should be referred, neither can he know unless he is wise. Hence those who do not use things well are customarily and more precisely said to abuse them, for that which is badly used is of no benefit to a person, and what is of no benefit is not really useful. But whatever is useful is useful in the using, and thus no one uses something unless it is useful. Therefore, whoever uses something badly does not use it.13

13 Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, q. 30 (CCSL 44A, p. 38–39; Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, p. 44): honestatem uoco intellegibilem pulchritudinem, quam spiritalem nos proprie dicimus, utilitatem autem diuinam prouidentiam. quapropter quamquam sint multa pulchra uisibilia, quae minus proprie honesta appellantur, ipsa tamen pulchritudo, ex qua pulchra sunt quaecumque pulchra sunt, nullo modo est uisibilis. item multa utilia uisibilia, sed ipsa utilitas, ex qua nobis prosunt quaecumque prosunt, quam diuinam prouidentiam dicimus, uisibilis non est. notum sit sane uisibilium nomine omnia corporalia contineri. oportet ergo frui pulchris inuisibilibus, id est honestis; utrum autem omnibus, alia quaestio est, quamquam fortasse honesta nonnisi quibus fruendum est dici deceat. utilibus autem utendum est omnibus, ut quoquo eorum opus est. et frui quidem cibo et qualibet corporali uoluptate non adeo absurde existimantur et bestiae; uti autem aliqua re non potest nisi animal quod rationis est particeps. scire namque quo quidque referendum sit, non datum est rationis expertibus neque ipsis rationalibus stultis. nec uti quisque potest ea re quae quo referenda sit nescit; nec quisquam potest scire nisi sapiens. quare abuti rectius dici solent qui non bene utuntur. non enim cuiquam prodest id quo male utitur; et quod non prodest non utique utile est. utile autem quidquid est utendo est utile; ita nemo utitur nisi utili. non ergo utitur, quisquis male utitur.

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It is worth quoting Augustine in full in this context because the passage easily lends itself to misunderstanding. Augustine spells out his reconfiguration and its implications: Consequently, a person’s reason, which is called virtue once it is perfected, uses itself first of all in order to understand God, so that it may enjoy him by whom also it was created. It uses other rational beings, too, for companionship, and irrational beings for advancement. Its own life, as well, it refers to the enjoyment of God, for that is how it is blessed. And therefore it uses itself.14

What is to be used, then, in this sense is anything that is not an end in itself as an object of final beatitude or perfection. This is how we get to De doctrina christiana’s use and enjoyment; and the use of other things (and people) for God’s sake. That Augustine could employ such language as using others for God verges on scandal to some of his recent readers.15 However, that charge rests on not appreciating the terms Augustine’s sets for the ordering of love. Augustine continues: It certainly lays the foundations for unhappiness, by way of pride, if it is referred to itself and not to God. It also uses bodies – some of them given life for the sake of kindness (for thus it uses its own body), some to be accepted or rejected for the sake of good health, some to be endured for the sake of patience, some to be regulated for the sake of justice, some to be reflected upon as an instance of truth; even what it abstains from it uses for the sake of temperance. Thus it uses everything, things both tangible and intangible; there is no third possibility. But everything it uses it judges; God alone it does not judge, because it judges everything else according to God. Neither does it use him, but it enjoys him. For God is not to be referred to anything else, since everything that must be referred to something else is lower than that to which it must be referred, and nothing is higher than God – not in terms of place 14 Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, q. 30 (CCSL 44A, p. 39; Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, p. 44): perfecta igitur hominis ratio, quae uirtus uocatur, utitur primo se ipsa ad intellegendum deum, ut eo fruatur a quo etiam facta est; utitur etiam ceteris rationalibus animantibus ad societatem, inrationalibus ad eminentiam. uitam etiam suam ad id refert, ut fruatur deo; ita enim beata est. ergo et se ipsa utitur. 15 See, for example, Oliver O’Donovan, The Problem of Self-Love in Saint Augustine (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980), as well as his “‘Usus and ‘Frutio’ in Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana I,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 33 (1982), pp. 361–397.

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but on account of the excellence of its nature. Everything that has been created, then, has been created for the use of human beings, because reason uses with judgment everything that has been given to human beings. Before the Fall he did not, to be sure, use things that had to be endured, nor does he use them after the Fall unless he has been converted, and although he uses them before the body’s death, he does so nonetheless already as much as possible as God’s friend, because he is his willing servant.16

In Cicero utile and honestum are not set in opposition, so one can translate utile as a “useful good” and honestum as an “honorable good.” Something about these two kinds of good can be found also in Book 2 of Ambrose of Milan’s De officiis ministrorum. In a few instances some writers imply a contrast with the juxtaposition, as in Lactantius’s De uero cultu 6.5. The two senses of goodness appear also in John Cassian, who uses utile et honestum to speak about the double good that is the monastic life (Collationes 2.12.). Cassian’s Collationes was recommended to Benedictine monks for their regular reading and edification. Needless to say, the double good entailed in utile et honestum was a common rubric.17 What is the difference between Augustine and Cicero? Whereas Cicero sets his discussion within a political context, especially in Book 2 of De officiis, and discusses the useful and the beneficial (good or expedient) in relation to a political career or the public 16 Augustine, De diuersis quaestionibus octaginta tribus, q. 30 (CCSL 44A, p. 39–40; Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, p. 44–45): quae profecto inchoat miseriam per superbiam, si ad se ipsam, non ad deum referatur. utitur etiam corporibus quibusdam uiuificandis ad beneficientiam – sic enim utitur suo corpore – quibusdam assumendis uel respuendis ad ualitudinem, quibusdam tolerandis ad patientiam, quibusdam ordinandis ad iustitiam, quibusdam considerandis ad aliquod ueritatis documentum; utitur etiam his a quibus se abstinet ad temperantiam. ita omnibus et sensis et non sensis utitur; nec aliquid tertium est. iudicat autem de omnibus quibus utitur; de solo deo non iudicat, quia secundum deum de ceteris iudicat. nec eo utitur, sed fruitur; neque enim ad aliquid aliud deus referendus est, quoniam omne quod ad aliud referendum est inferius est quam id ad quod referendum est, nec est aliquid deo superius, non loco sed excellentia suae naturae. omnia ergo quae facta sunt, in usum hominis facta sunt, quia omnibus utitur iudicando ratio, quae homini data est. et ante lapsum quidem non utebatur tolerandis, nec post lapsum utitur nisi conuersus, et quamquam ante mortem corporis, iam tamen quantum potest dei amicus, quia libenter seruus. 17 For near contemporaries of Anselm, see Cardinal Humbert Silva Candida, Adversus Simoniacos 3.21 (PL 143, col. 1175A); and Ivo of Chartres, Epistola 209 (PL 162, col. 214B).

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good; Augustine seeks something more fundamental. Cicero begins with political life and then tries to link the virtues to what is useful and beneficial; and so offers a moral theory at second hand, when he discusses honestum in Book 3 of De officiis. Augustine begins with a metaphysical conception of all things and how they are ordered. Cicero too says the two – the useful and the beneficial cover everything – but his everything is politics.18 From there Augustine offers an ethical theory that is comprehensive, using the same terms at the beginning but altering them at the end. Augustine goes on to make the distinction between use and enjoyment by directing enjoyment to the love of all things eternal (which he equates with intelligible beauty) and use to all things earthly. This is a distinction that is not far removed from Anselm’s description of the one good and the many goods that derive their goodness from it. The much-copied De doctrina christiana19 could have influenced Anselm. Augustine takes his earlier statements in De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII and delineates the distinction between use and enjoyment with greater precision. The De doctrina christiana, however, does not forefront the per se / per aliud distinction in the way De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII does. Anselm himself expresses the per se / per aliud distinction in De Grammatico. He uses it to describe the two ways in which a name may be said to refer to

18 For commentary, see Andrew Roy Dyck, A Commentary on Cicero’s De officiis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). He provides an extensive commentary on Book 3 in pp. 483ff.; see also Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1985); in vol. 1, pp. 148ff., Colish provides a discussion of honestum in Book 3 of De officiis. She says at p. 150 that Cicero rejects the Stoic view of honestum and brings it into line with something more manageable by linking it with virtue and social utility (p. 151). For the continued fascination with Cicero’s distinctions and their philosophical or practical utility or lack thereof, see the recent article by Gary Remer, “Rhetoric as a Balancing of Ends: Cicero and Machiavelli,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 42 (2009), pp. 1–28. Remer points out the political context, and Cicero’s attempts at reconciling honestum and utile. See also Neal Wood, Cicero’s Social and Political Thought (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 176–205. 19 For the early medieval life of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana see Edward D. English, ed., Reading and Wisdom: The De doctrina Christiana of Augustine in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995).

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something. A proper name refers to a thing per se, but any other kind of name does so per aliud, that is, through signification (e.g., De Grammatico 14 & 15). This linguistic distinction between per se and per aliud signification in De Grammatico parallels the distinction between per se and per aliud goodness here in the Monologion. Hence my raising the question earlier about Anselm’s indifference to the appellative uses of the word “good.” And then there is De trinitate Book 8. Augustine proposes the argument from the good in De trinitate Book 8 in the form of a challenge to reasoning or contemplative consciousness. It is an argument which he states in the opening paragraph of his De natura boni contra Manichaeos. From Augustine’s standpoint, the multitude of earthly things which clamor for the mind’s attention act like fetters that impede the soul’s progress towards understanding the divine nature. The different goods are an obstacle, and do not help the soul toward the unchanging good. They are in the way. Hence his admonition: “Behold, and again see if you can.”20 Augustine mentions a number of good things, from lovely mountains, to pastoral fields, to good health and wonderful colors, to the sun, moon and stars, etc., and then stops to ask: “why be taken by this and that good, when there is an ultimate good?” But why should I still add more? This good and that good; take away this and that, and see good itself if you can; so you will see God who is good not by another good, but is the good of every good. For in all these good things, either those which I have enumerated, or any others which are seen or thought, we would be unable to call one better than the other, if we judge in accordance with the truth, if the idea of good itself had not been impressed upon us, according to which we approve of something as good, and also prefer one good to another. Thus God is to be loved, not as this or that good, but as good itself. For the good of the soul that is to be sought is not that over which one flies by judging, but that to which one adheres by loving, and what is this but God? Not that good soul, nor the good angel, nor the good heaven, but the good good.21

20

Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 271): Ecce iterum uide si potes. Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 272 ; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 248): Quid plura et plura? Bonum hoc et bonum illud. Tolle hoc et illud, et uide ipsum bonum si poses; ita deum uidebis, non alio bono bonum, sed bonum 21

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The first half of this passage can be discerned in the opening chapter of the Monologion. The latter half will become evident when we examine the last section of the Monologion. To prevent any misunderstanding of the view that he puts forth in the paragraph just quoted, Augustine reiterates his point in a subsequent paragraph that makes the case even more emphatically. There are no changeable goods unless there is one unchangeable good. When you hear then of this good and that good which may not even be good in other respects, and if it were possible to put aside those goods which are good by a participation in the good, and to see the good itself of which they are good by participation – for when you hear of this or that good, you also understand the good itself at the same time – if, therefore, I repeat, you could put these goods aside and perceive the good itself, you would see God. And if you cling to Him by love, you will be at once blessed.22

Whereas Augustine uses the word “participation” (participatione) to speak about the way in which other things share in the divine nature, Anselm does not. But the absence of the word at this point in the Monologion belies the fact that Anselm’s metaphysics is a metaphysics of participation, the per se / per aliud distinction encapsulates it. He will eventually use the word in M 16 in the following context. He argues against attributing such things as “justice,” and “goodness” as qualities to the supreme nature, as if the supreme nature “participates” in them as something other than its very self. He notes that if this were the case, then the supreme nature would be just, good, great, etc., through something else (per aliud) and not in itself (per se).

omnis boni. Neque enim in his omnibus bonis uel quae commemoraui uel quae alla cernuntur siue cogitantur diceremus aliud alio melius cum uere iudicamus nisi esset nobis im, pressa notio ipsius boni secundum quod et probaremus aliquid et aliud alii praeponeremus. Sic amandus est deus, non hoc et illud bonum, sed ipsum bonum; quaerendum enim bonum animae, non cuu superuolitet iudicando, sed cui haereat amando, et quid hoc nisi deus? Non bonus animus aut bonus angelus aut bonum caelum, sed bonum bonum. 22 Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.5 (CCSL 50, p. 273; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 249): Cum itaque audis bonum hoc et bonum illud quae possum alias dici etiam non bona, si potueris sine illis quae participatione boni bona sunt perspicere ipsum bonum cuius participatione bona sunt (simul enim et ipsum intellegis, cum audis hoc aut illud bonum), si ergo potueris illis detractis per se ipsum perspicere bonum, perspexeris deum. Et si amore inhaeseris, continuo beatificaberis.

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If there is a difference between what we have seen in Anselm so far and what Augustine presents in De trinitate 8.3 it is in the form. De trinitate 8.3 is suggestive and hortatory, while M 1–4 is formal, syllogistic, and didactic. However, there are places in De trinitate 8.3 that read very much like Anselm’s arguments: “For surely among all these good things I have listed and whatever others can be observed or thought of,” Augustine writes, “we would not say that one is better than another when we make a true judgment unless we had impressed on us some notion of good itself by which we both approve of a thing, and also prefer one thing to another.”23 Recall Anselm’s argument about the one good that informs our notion of goodness. And then consider also the following passage, which Augustine uses to explain what we mean when we think of a good soul: Perhaps, it will be easier to perceive what I want to say if we put it like this: When I hear it said, for example, ‘a good soul,’ just as there are two words used, so I understand two things from these words, one by which it is a soul, another by which it is good. And of course in order to be a soul it did not do anything itself; it was not already there to do anything in order to come into existence. But in order to be a good soul I see that it must deliberately choose to do something. Not of course that simply being a soul is not something good – how else could it be said, and very truly said, to be better than the body? But the reason it is not yet called a good soul is that it still remains for it to act by deliberate choice in order to acquire excellence. If it neglects to do this it is justly blamed and rightly said to be not a good soul; for it diverges from one who does so act, and as this one is praiseworthy, so it follows that the one who does not act is blameworthy. But when it does act with this intention and becomes a good soul, it cannot in fact achieve this unless it turns to something which it is not itself. And where is it to turn to in order to become a good soul but to the good, when this is what it loves and reaches for and obtains? And if again it turns away from it and becomes bad (non bonus) by the very fact of turning way from good, it will have nowhere to turn

23 Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 272; Edmund Hill translation, p. 244): Neque enim in his omnibus bonis uel quae commemoraui uel quae alla cernuntur siue cogitantur diceremus aliud alio melius cum uere iudicamus nisi esset nobis im, pressa notio ipsius boni secundum quod et probaremus aliquid et aliud alii praeponeremus.

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to again if it wishes to reform, unless that good which it has turned away from remains in itself (maneat in se).24

The description of the good soul in this passage and how the soul justly earns its final reward will be found in the final chapters of the Monologion (M 67–78) in almost the same words in which Augustine speaks. So the fundamental ideas are the same: there is one unchangeable good through which every changeable good has its being or existence; and it is only through this good that the soul becomes good. So even if Anselm does not use the word “participation,” it should be understood that the conclusion of the opening chapter of the Monologion contains a doctrine of participation. It is what Anselm offers in response to the rhetorical, “who would doubt that this thing, through which all goods exist, is itself a great good?” To which he adds: “Therefore, he is good through himself, since every good exists through him. It follows, therefore that all other things are good through something other than what they themselves are, and he alone is good through himself. Now no good that exists through another is equal to or greater than that good who alone is good through himself. And so only he who alone is good through himself is supremely good.”25 Anselm goes on to say that what is supremely good is also supremely great, for

24

Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 272–273; Edmund Hill translation, p. 244, amended): Sic enim forte facilius aduertitur quid uelim dicere. Cum enim audio uerbi gratia quod dicitur animus bonus, sicut duo uerba sunt ita ex eis uerbis duo quaedam intellego, aliud quo animus est, aliud quo bonus. Et quidem ut animus esset non egit ipse ahqmd; non enim iam erat qui ageret ut esset. Vt autem sit bonus animus uideo agendum esse uoluntate, non quia idipsum quo animus est non est aliquid boni (nam unde iam dicitur et uerissime dicitur corpore melior?) sed ideo nondum dicitur bonus animus quia restat ei actio uoluntatis qua sit praestantior. Quam si neglexerit, iure culpatur recteque dicitur non bonus animus; distat enim ab eo qui hoc agit, et quia ille laudabilis, profecto iste qui hoc non agit uituperabilis est. Cum uero agit hoc studio et fit bonus animus, nisi se ad aliquid conuertat quod ipse non est non potest hoc assequi. Quo se autem conuertit ut fiat bonus animus nisi ad bonum, cum hoc amat et appetit et adipiscitur? Vnde se si rursus auertat fiatque non bonus, hoc ipso quod se auertit a bono, nisi maneat in se illud bonum unde se auertit, non est quo se iterum si uoluerit emendare conuertat. 25 M 1 (S 1, p. 15; Williams translation, p. 11): lllud igitur est bonum per seipsum, quondam omne bonum est per ipsum. Ergo consequitur, ut omnia alia bona sint per aliud quam quod ipsa sunt, et ipsum solum per seipsum. At nullum bonum, quod per aliud est, aequale aut maius est eo bono, quod per se est bonum. Illud itaque solum est summe bonum, quod solum est per se bonum.

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it is supreme among all existing things. In which case, he alone is supreme who is good through himself. This and nothing else is the definition of greatness. So it follows that only the supreme good, the self-same good, is most excellent and supremely great. This notion of greatness will be important for the rest of the Monologion and for Anselm’s later proof in the Proslogion. The argument from greatness supplements the argument from the good. So instead of considering it as a separate argument, I take it as a modified version of the argument from the good. Anselm concludes M 2 that “because something cannot be supremely great unless it is supremely good, it is necessary that something be the greatest and the best, that is, the highest of all things that exist.”26 This completes Anselm’s discussion of the First Way: the argument from the good. The Second Way depends on the nature of existence and the Third Way on degrees of dignity among existent things; they take up M 3 and M 4 respectively.

4. The Nature of Existence and the Degrees of Dignity The central contention of M 3 is that all things exist through the same thing. This is supposed to follow from the conclusions of M 1 and M 2: first, that all good things are good through the same thing; and second, that all great things are great through the same thing. But as I mentioned before, this is to proceed backwards. Goodness presupposes existence. Structurally, that is how Augustine proceeds in De trinitate Book 8. Also, the argument from goodness is a variant of the argument from “degrees of dignity,” which is what underlines the argument from “natures.” So Anselm’s arguments can be reduced to two basic ones. First, the argument from existence: that “nothing exists from nothing,” and that whatever exists must derive its existence from one ultimate source, the supreme self-existent. And second, all things that exist in nature reflect different degrees of dignity (or goodness) in their natures or in their utility (or usefulness).

26 M 2 (S 1, p. 15; based on Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 65): Et quondam non potest esse summe magnum nisi id quod est summe bonum, necesse est aliquid esse maximum et optimum, id est summum omnium quae sunt.

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The argument from existence has the same outline as the previous argument about different goods being good through one good; only this time the theme is existence. He sets up the argument in M 3 by first stating what appears to be a commonplace: everything that exists must exist either through something or nothing (aut est per aliquid aut per nihil), to which he adds: “but nothing exists from nothing” (sed nihil est de nihil). In M 8, he will be more explicit that this is a popular saying, “as the common saying goes, nothing comes from nothing” (sicut uox omnium sit quia de nihilo nihil). His main concern here is to deflate two ideas: first, that existent things are self-generated or create themselves; and second, that there are multiple sources of origin for the things that exist. In relation to the first, he is willing to argue that if they are each self-generated, then that power of self-generation through which they each come into existence is that which gives each of them existence, and so would be the source of origin for all of them. With regard to the second, Anselm is even willing to consider the seemingly absurd notion that the things that exist come into existence through each other. If they come into being through each other, it means that they each derive existence from other things that depend on them for their existence. This seems absurd. Interestingly, Anselm does not consider the objection of why the power of self-generation must be construed as the same for all things if each is self-generated and all existent things are unrelated. Why? Because Anselm assumes that they must be related somehow. If they come into existence through something they have in common, then that which they have in common is their source of origin. The only viable notions, then, are the possibility of different (and unrelated) sources of origin for the things that exist or one source of origin for all things that exist. Anselm’s arguments have the structure of a reductio: he begins with a number of propositions and proceeds to exclude one proposition after the other for their absurdity until only one remains. “And so, since truth altogether rules out the possibility that there are several things through which all things exist, there must be one thing through which all existing things exist.”27 Anselm offers 27 M 3 (S 1, p. 16; Williams translation, p. 13): Cum itaque ueritas omnimodo excludat plura esse per quae cuncta sint, necesse est unum illud esse, per quod sunt cuncta quae sunt.

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no real argument as to why there cannot be different origins for the different things that exist. The assertion that “truth” rules out such a possibility is a metaphysical presumption, not an argument. It is presented as a self-evident axiom, a maximal proposition, if we are using the terminology of Cicero’s Topica or Boethius’s commentaries on Cicero’s Topica and De Topicis Differentiis. As Boethius puts it, some propositions are known per se, and no proof can be found for these. Others, although the mind of the hearer approves them and assents to them, can nevertheless be proved by other, more fundamental propositions. Those for which there is no proof are called maximal and principal, because it is necessary that these prove those which do not deny that they can be demonstrated.28

Anselm’s Monologion contains a number of maximal propositions: they are presented as self-evident. However, Boethius’s description here suggests the possibility that some of these maximal propositions are simply difficult to proof and that they are needed as premises for other demonstrations. So it may not necessarily be because they are self-evident and cannot be questioned. Boethius, however, in his attempt to assure the reader seems to raise a question about what is more known and therefore assures belief in what is less known: Since these propositions produce appropriate belief in themselves by nature, they not only need no argument from without for belief but also are generally the starting point for the proof of other things. Therefore, propositions known per se, than which nothing is more known, are called indemonstrable, maximal, and principal. There are others which, although the judgment of the hearer may assent to them, nevertheless have something naturally more known which provides belief for them from without if some question arises about them. These others are called demonstrable, lesser, and secondary.29

Anselm assumes that his self-evident axioms need no demonstration from without, so to speak, and that they produce belief in his hearers. In Anselm’s case, it is almost as if what is obscure and difficult to understand is considered more known than what is demonstrable. On another note, it is interesting that Anselm uses at 28 29

Boethius ‘s De topicis differentiis, I, 1176C, Stump, p. 33. Ibid.

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various times essence (essentia), substance (substantia) and nature (natura) in describing the supreme good. Essentia and substantia can create difficulties for Trinitarian language, as Anselm’s words about the Greek formula shows. Anselm proceeds for the better half of the Monologion using the three words interchangeably, but tends to prefer “nature” and “essence” to “substance,” perhaps because it is easier to talk about the “nature” or “essence” of existent or created things than their “substances.” Augustine had a keen sense of this problem and tried to explain himself by saying that a substance is “that through which something is said to exist” or “that without which something does not exist,” to paraphrase him from a few of his sermons. These locutions have the advantage of showing that nothing exists without having “substance.” But they do not tell us what “substance” is.30 Here in M 3 and M 4 Anselm speaks about “the natures of things” (naturae rerum) not about their substances. (There is something similar in De trinitate 15.4.6 where Augustine speaks about the universal nature of things.) And since no one can fail to see that there is remarkable variation among existent things it is selfevident that they are not all of equal dignity (dignitas paritate). There is, for example, no doubt that a horse is better than wood or that a human being is better than a horse. Anyone who has doubts about this should not even be called a human being (non est dicendus homo), as far as Anselm is concerned. To his previous arguments in M 1 & 2, Anselm now adds a new argument based on this hierarchy of dignity within nature (or among natures). This is so obvious, Anselm insists, that “reason” (ratio) – doing what “truth” did in the previous chapter – persuades (persuadet) any thinking person that there must be one nature that is so preeminent (supereminere) that it has no superior (non superiorem). According to Anselm, if there is no such super-eminent nature, an upper limit to all natures, then there is an infinite (est infinita) “number of natures,” so to speak. Anselm adopts a conception of infinity here based on number or magnitude. Before commenting on the infinite natures that Anselm so fears, it is worth pointing out a few themes that Anselm treats together 30 There is a long history of this problem going back to Aristotle. Better then to speak of natures rather than substances (see Augustine’s De moribus ecclesiae catholicae and his De natura boni).

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but need to be kept apart. First, one can maintain that there are many natures together with one super-eminent nature without having to insist that the super-eminent nature is the origin of all the lesser natures (in terms of their dignity). Admittedly, such a conception provides a more naturalistic account of nature than the one Anselm prefers. Second, and this follows on the first point, the mere existence of a hierarchy does not explain where the natures come from, if the various natures are not related in some generative sense. Third, Anselm assumes that all existent things are related, if not physically or biologically, at least by their origin. Anselm claims that reason finds the possibility of an infinite hierarchy absurd: everyone thinks it absurd that there should be an infinite scale of differentiation among natures. Anselm introduces an idea here that turns out to be a leap in the argument. It is as if Anselm wanted to make an argument about infinite regress but couches it in the language of infinite differentiation or degrees of dignity. For Anselm, there must of necessity be a nature that has the most dignity and is inferior to no other. If, however, the different grades or levels of distinction are of such a kind (huiusmodi graduum distinctio) as to be endless or infinite (sic est inifinita), so that for every nature or kind there is another which supercedes it, then there is a problem. So his opposition to infinite natures is that it threatens the idea of one super-eminent nature. It is a naturalistic objection that he will not tolerate. Could his argument about different degrees of dignity stand without his opposition to infinite natures? After all, the main point of the argument hangs on the different degrees of dignity exhibited by different natures. This is supposed to attest to the fact that there is a hierarchy among existent or created things. That says nothing about how wide or far the difference may be among all the numerically distinct natures. This is different too from what degree of difference obtains between the most superior nature and everything else. It certainly does not explain why a limitless number of natures among created things must mean that there cannot be one nature that is superior and altogether different in nature from created things. Since Anselm assumes that the one nature that is above all else is unlike all that exist, his appeal to a finite limit to the natures of created things is unnecessary. He argues in such a way as to make a finite number of created natures a necessary condition for his

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proof of the one supreme nature. Furthermore, as I have already indicated, Anselm does not spell out whether this means that the supreme nature is “infinite.” Perhaps he does not have to.31 Anselm will eventually speak of the eternity or ubiquity of the supreme nature. But the infinity of the supreme nature seems less interesting to him at this point in the Monologion than the supreme nature’s boundlessness. So he speaks of infinite degrees of difference leading to a notion that the number of created natures is limitless (nullo fine). Incidentally, in De Grammatico 21 Anselm uses infinity in its most common sense as something that goes on without end (et hoc infinite; in infinitum). This creates an even more interesting problem. For, if it is boundlessness that Anselm worries about, then perhaps it is not the infinity of natures that should be of concern. He should be more concerned about spatio-temporal finitude as opposed to the numerical finitude that is implied in his objection to an infinite number (magnitude) of natures. Compared to the Aristotelian deduction of the unmoved mover, Anselm’s deduction requires a number of problematic assumptions. Aristotle’s derivation of the unmoved mover in the Metaphysica depends almost entirely on the notion of infinite regress. Anselm’s argument, on the other hand, begins with the notion of infinite natures, frets about the supposed infinite degrees of difference that will obtain among natures if there is not one super-eminent nature, and only mentions the possibility of something like an infinite regress in association with the infinite degrees of difference. Why he adopts this strategy is unclear. The rest of his argumentation does not depend on it. One possibility is that Anselm has read from some source the Aristotelian argument from the Metaphysica and misrepresented it. But this is doubtful. Aristotle’s Categoriae might offer another clue. Porphyry’s Isagoge does have an argument about natures that may have contributed to Anselm’s thinking here, although 31 Augustine does not often mention infinity as a divine attribute, which led Leo Sweeney to ask why in his “Divine Attributes in De doctrina Christiana: Why Does Augustine not List ‘Infinity’?” in De Doctrina Christiana: A Classic of Western Culture, edited by Duane Arnold and Pamela Bright (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 195–204. However, see also his Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 365ff.; and his earlier “Lombard, Augustine, and Infinity,” Manuscripta, 2 (1958), pp. 24–40; the reference is to pp. 26–31.

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what Porphyry and others mean when they use infinity in relation to “natures” is to say something like: “such and such is infinite because they cannot all be known or accounted for.” So, for example, human beings are infinite because they are constantly being generated.32 This is definitely not the sense in which Anselm means it. Anselm’s view seems to be tied to the notion of “more or less” which he uses here in the Monologion, which one finds also in Isagoge 7.1–8. The argument then might be restated this way: If there are infinite natures, then there would be such a degree of difference between natures that it would be impossible to speak of these natures as being either more or less than each other. On this reading, it would not be possible to construct a so-called Porphyrian tree with respective natures ranked in an ordered hierarchy of genera and species with differentiae. But even this reading is at best a conjecture. Anselm could have left out the so-called infinite degrees of difference without losing anything in his argument. His insistence on the idea suggests that it is not something he appeals to because it is an answer to one of those silly objections he was enjoined by his fellow monks not to overlook. In the first place, Anselm begins by talking about the universe of things, and provides examples to suggest that the “natures” in the term naturae rerum excludes the supreme self-existent mentioned in his opening declaration. Secondly, Anselm now speaks about different levels of dignity that include that supreme self-existent. The significant point is that Anselm seems to think that a hierarchy of natural things must be a finite hierarchy. It would have been straightforward for Anselm to say that when we observe nature we see that there are different degrees of dignity among natures and that these levels of dignity suggest, like the different kinds of goods, one nature whose dignity is supreme above all else. Instead, he proposes an almost unintelligible notion of infinite degrees of nature that, far from clarifying the logic of his argument, obfuscates. Anselm’s hierarchy implies a scale of existence. He wants to line up all existent things on this chain, let us call it Anselm’s “chain of existence” or his “scale of natures” (preferring this to a chain

32 Jonathan Barnes, ed., Porphyry: Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), pp. 126–128; pp. 133–135.

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of being).33 If all things that exist, including the most preeminent nature, can be placed on this scale, then an infinite number of natures makes no sense. But suppose instead of proposing a hierarchy of existent things under their respective natures, Anselm had followed his opening statement and insisted on two realms of existence, one belonging to a nature (as he speaks of in M 1) that is sui generis, above all else that exists, and another realm of existence that belongs to the things that the one supreme nature creates, namely the realm of phenomenal experience. Anselm could easily have gone on to say that an infinite number of natures could exist as a kind of infinite plurality among what the supreme nature creates. He would then have to accept that there could be infinite differentiation. If he concedes this, he would have to give up the notion of a hierarchy of natures. He would have to settle for differentiation and degrees of dignity without hierarchy. If he still wants to preserve some kind of hierarchical order, it would not be a hierarchy that includes everything, from the least dignified thing to the supreme nature on one scale of existence. None of this would be inconsistent with the metaphysical outlook stated in M 1. Alternatively, Anselm could have used a Porphyrian Tree with its scheme of natures divided into various genera and species.34 He would have avoided the notion of infinite degrees of difference. This would have left intact his substantive claim about a hierarchy in nature based on the respective dignity of each nature. In any case, it should be clear by now that Anselm arrives at the same conclusion as his two previous arguments about goodness and existence; this time from the point of view of the so-called “nature of things.” If the argument from the good is too formal, and the one based on existence too metaphysical, the argument from naturae rerum is basically phenomenological, with the proviso that the one nature that is super-eminent lies beyond the phenomena referred to as naturae rerum.

33 Cf. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936). 34 Eleonore Stump, “Differentia and the Porphyrian Tree,” in Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, translated with notes and essays on the text by Eleonore Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 237–261; reference is to p. 241.

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Anselm could also have adopted the view presented in the pseudo-Augustinian De decem categoriis, assuming he knew it. Lanfranc is known to have commented upon it. De decem categoriis contains a scheme that describes all existent things as belonging to one of four stages (gradus): the highest existence (ousia) stands above all things that exist and comprehends everything; all other things belong variously to the three stages. Cowdrey agrees with Gibson that this provides the background for Anselm’s later definition of God in the Proslogion as “that than which nothing greater can be thought.”35 It is a tantalizing possibility, given the manner in which the Carolingian commentators cited by Gibson comment on the notion of the four stages attributed to Eriugena (John the Scot): “the uncreated creator; the created creator; the created and uncreating; the uncreated and uncreating.”36 This four-fold scheme set the limits on what is possible, and thereby removes any prospect for an infinite hierarchy. One wonders why Anselm did not use a text that Lanfranc clearly knew. And also why Anselm would be indifferent to it here in the Monologion where it would have resolved a problem, but turned to it when he wrote the Proslogion shortly thereafter, as Gibson and Cowdrey suggest. It is not improbable that Anselm turned to this notion of the “all comprehending ousia” in De decem categoriis after the Monologion as a way to resolve the problem broached in the latter. But this requires us to believe that his attempted solution in the Monologion displeased him, or that the De decem categoriis was the inspiration for the Proslogion, even though there were other texts that furnished versions of the formula, “that than which nothing greater can be thought.”37 In fact, in spite of Gibson’s claim, it

35

Margaret Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, pp. 42–43; H. E. J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc, p. 50. 36 Eriugena, De diuisione naturae (Periphyseon Book 1), cited by Margaret Gibson, Lanfranc of Bec, p. 42, n. 3. 37 Stephen Gersh, “Anselm of Canterbury,” pp. 273–274. For now I remain skeptical that De decem categoriis provides the clue to the Proslogion. Even though De decem categoriis speaks of the all comprehending ousia as extra quam nec inueniri aliquid nec cogitari potest and Anselm’s Proslogion proposes the formula aliquid nihil maius cogitari potest, it is not proof that Anselm is using the former. What is more, there are other Augustinian sources that seem much closer to the Proslogion than the De decem categoriis, which is not to say it could not have influenced Anselm.

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is highly doubtful that Anselm appropriated the language of De decem categoriiis for his Proslogion, and that he did this so soon after the Monologion, which gives no indication of it. Furthermore, Anselm seems strangely unfamiliar with the contents of Lanfranc’s De corpore et sanguine Domini, which contains Lanfranc’s use of the language of the De decem categoriis about the incomparable ousia. In an interesting twist, Anselm argues that the super-eminent nature may share its essence if there are others like it. This is a most unexpected turn. It anticipates the Trinitarian discussion yet to come: Now either the nature that is like this is the only one, or there are several like him and equal to him. Suppose they are several and equals. They cannot be equals through different things, but rather through the same thing. Now that one thing through which they are equally great is either the very thing that they are – i.e., their essence – or something other than what they are. Now if it is nothing other than their essence, then just as their essences are not several but one, so also the natures are not several but one. For I am here understanding nature to be the same as essence. On the other hand, if that through which those several natures are so great is other than that which they themselves are, they are certainly less than that through which they are great.38

Anselm weaves his way towards a Trinitarian conception by speaking of the possibility of a super-eminent nature that is plural: either equal to some “other,” or sharing the same essence or nature with that “other.” In the much earlier argument Anselm ruled out multiple sources of origin for the diversity of goods. To suggest now that there could be more than one source (even if they are co-equal) as a possible single origin of all things sounds like a contradiction. The earlier

38 M 4 (S 1, p. 17; Williams translation, p. 14): Haec uero natura quae talis est, aut sola est aut plures eiusmodi et aequales sunt. Verum si plures sunt et aequales: cum aequales esse non possint per diuersa quaedam sed per idem aliquid, illud unum per quod aequaliter tam magnae sunt, aut est idipsum quod ipsae sunt, id est ipsa earum essentia, aut aliud quam quod ipsae sunt. Sed si nihil est aliud quam ipsa earum essentia: sicut earum essentiae non sunt plures sed una, ita et naturae non sunt plures sed una. Idem namque naturam hic intelligo quod essentiam. Si uero id, per quod plures ipsae naturae tam magnae sunt, aliud est quam quod ipsee sunt, pro certo minores sunt quam id, per quod magnae sunt.

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contention did not countenance such a possibility. Notice also that in the previous argument about the hierarchy of natures the focus of the argument was to prove that the one super-eminent nature had no superior and that all things were inferior to it. Again, one could object that Anselm makes room for an idea that he has conjured up. Anselm’s use of the word “nature” is instructive. Ordinarily, when we speak of nature we mean some kind of physical entity or body, so that the nature of a thing is tied to how the thing appears to us or how it behaves. “Essence” usually means something like character or the inherent quality of the thing. There is also the connotation that the “essence” is non-physical. Of course, when we speak of someone or something having a certain nature we also mean its tendency or special characteristic, and in doing so we verge on the notion of essence as a defining characteristic. When Anselm speaks of the universe of natures, he clearly has both a bodily conception and the idea of essence in mind. We should assume from the examples he employs that Anselm believes that there is such a thing as being a horse by nature, which is physical, bodily, and also a quality that exemplifies what it means to be a horse. To have a nature, then, is to have a set of properties that one shares with other things that are of the same kind (genera, species, etc.). In the concluding paragraph of M 4 Anselm sums up the entirety of his argument in a mouthful that contains the three different arguments that he has presented about the good, existence, and the hierarchy of natures. There is a certain nature (natura) or substance (substantia) or essence (essentia) who through itself is good and great and through itself is what it is; and through whom is whatever truly (uere) is good or great or anything; and who is the supreme good, the supreme great thing, the supreme being (ens) or the supreme subsistent (subsistens), that is, supreme among all existing things.39

Anselm’s use of natura, substantia, essentia, ens, and subsistens in this passage is revealing. Of particular importance is his choice of 39 M 4 (S 1, pp. 17–18; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 69; amended): Quare est quaedam natura uel substantia uel essentia, quae per se est bona et magna, et per se est hoc quod est, et per quam est, quidquid uere aut bonum aut magnum aut aliquid est, et quae est summum bonum, summum magnum, summum ens siue subsistens, id est summum omnium quae sunt.

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ens (being) and subsistens (subsistence). He rarely uses them in the rest of his argument in the Monologion. The three terms, esse, ens, and subsistens offer Anselm the possibility to distinguish just what sort of existence or existing he has in mind. He almost always means something like “being” or “existence” when he uses esse, ens, or subsistens. That is not the case with essentia. It ought to be translated as “essence” or “nature,” not “being,” unless absolutely necessary, given all the loaded meanings attaching to “being” in Western metaphysics and philosophy. Anselm’s terminology reflects Augustine’s usage in De trinitate. His choices seem mostly stylistic. For example, he uses summa natura, summa essentia, and summa substantia throughout a good part of the Monologion to speak of the supreme good. The main turning point comes in M 27–29 where he makes the argument for the supreme nature (essence or substance) as spirit. From this point onwards phrases like spiritus, summus spiritus, ipse spiritus, idem spiritus become common. Once he has established the theme, Anselm reverts to another set of terms, first mentioned in M 16: summa spiritus, summa sapientia, summa uita, etc. Most noticeable throughout all this is the conspicuous absence of the word deus. It makes its first appearance in the opening stages of M 1, falls out of the investigation for much of the Monologion, and is introduced once more at the very end in M 80. M 1 and M 80 form the fitting bookends for the entire inquiry with the former as the preamble and the latter as its conclusion. In M 80, Anselm does not say that his arguments are good as far as they go or credible for the moment. He presents them as certain, unquestionable, and unimpeachable. This contrasts with the caveat at the beginning here in M 1 that his arguments are to be considered provisional and therefore subject to a greater authority. The arguments of M 1–4 clearly establish a metaphysical outlook, one that Anselm believed would persuade not just the unlearned but the ignorant nonbeliever to believe what Christians believe. But exactly what sort of metaphysics does Anselm present? Does it require us to define him as a Platonist as is often done?40 Are the affinities between his metaphysics and Platonism 40

It is a common rubric found in general descriptions of Anselm’s thought; for a nuanced view see Gareth Matthews, “Anselm, Augustine, and Platonism” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 61–83. See also David Brown, “Anselm on Atonement,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, pp. 287–289.

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the residual effects of Augustine’s De trinitate on him? It may be helpful to keep in mind Henry Chadwick’s words about the simultaneous influence of Augustine and Platonism in Boethius. Chadwick writes that he “found more affinity with Augustine than has been generally recognized, and therefore conclude with a portrait of Boethius simultaneously more deeply Neoplatonic and more deeply Augustinian than has been acknowledged.”41 So there is enough Platonism of a non-Augustinian variety in Boethius to have influenced early medieval readers of his works. And there is enough Augustinianism in Boethius to engender an Augustinian sensibility in some of his readers. It is also true that the latter half of the eleventh century did not witness the kind of fluorescence of commentary on some parts of the Boethian corpus as the early to mid-twelfth century did.42 Anselm’s education in the logica uetus also exposed him to some aspects of Porphyry’s Platonism that are found in the Isagoge and Boethius’s commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry’s works. At the same time, one gets a sense from the mention of Plato in De Grammatico chapter 20 and the other references to Aristotle in the same work that Anselm was far more conscious of Aristotle as a historical person, philosopher, and dialectician than he was of Plato. This does not mean that he could not be a Platonist, only that the designation is not one he would have found meaningful. Recall the manner in which Anselm proposes the Three Ways: that the argument from the good is the easiest one available for convincing an ignoramus that there is one supreme nature who created all things and sustains them by his goodness. It is not possible to speak like this without some inherent notion of participation or shared essences: that all things that exist participate in the supreme essence, because they derive their existence from that 41 Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. v. 42 On Boethius’s De trinitate, see David Bradshaw, “The Opuscula Sacra: Boethius and Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, edited by John Marenbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 105–128. On the early medieval fortunes of Boethius’s De trinitate see Christophe Erismann, “The Medieval Fortunes of the Opuscula Sacra,” in The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, pp. 155–177; and N. M. Häring, Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971).

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super-eminent nature and are intrinsically good or useful because they receive goodness from the primal good. This is precisely the argument from the good that Augustine adverts to in De trinitate Book 8. Is this what constitutes Anselm’s Platonism? How is it possible, then, to separate Anselm from Augustine on this score? A number of proposals have been offered. One view argues that in spite of what Anselm states explicitly about the relationship between the Monologion and De trinitate, Anselm is in fact setting out on a course that is anti-Augustinian. That is the position taken by F. S. Schmitt.43 Schmitt makes the bold assertion that far from following Augustine’s tracks Anselm sets out to de-Platonize Augustine in the first four chapters of the Monologion. According to Schmitt, Anselm deliberately chooses or avoids language that would lend to his discussion any overtly Platonic resonances about participating in the Good. Schmitt’s position is that by not mentioning participation in M 1 Anselm is rejecting the view of participation articulated by Augustine in De trinitate 8.3, where Augustine clearly states that all things participate in the supreme good.44 Much of what we have seen so far turns this objection on its head. In a rejoinder that appeared shortly after Schmitt’s essay, Kurt Flasch pointed out that Schmitt had largely misconstrued what he perceived as Anselm’s attempt to deplatonize Augustine.45 Flasch went out of his way to show that not only was Augustine’s idea of participation indebted to the Platonists of antiquity, but that Anselm’s discussion of the good and the supreme nature shares in those very ideas that could be found in various sources in Augustine. The broad sweep of Flasch’s discussion has the advantage of demonstrating the limitations of Schmitt’s approach, but it gives the impression rightly or wrongly that Anselm was somehow self-conscious about the alleged Platonism in his thought. While Flasch clarifies how some of Anselm’s ideas stand in relation to Augustine and the much earlier tradi43 F. S. Schmitt, “Anselm und der (Neu-)Platonismus,” Analecta Anselmiana, 1 (1969), pp. 39–71. 44 Jasper Hopkins, Anselm of Canterbury, vol. 4: Hermeneutical and Textual Problems in the Complete Treatises of St. Anselm (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1976), p. 45. 45 Kurt Flasch, “Die philosophische Ansatz des Anselm von Canterbury in Monologion und sein Verhältnis zum Augustinischen Neuplatonismus,“ Analecta Anselmiana, 2 (1970), pp. 1–43; see especially pp. 19–25.

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tion, the focus on Platonism creates its own limitations. So, for example, Flasch pays much attention to Anselm’s use of the idea of the good from De trinitate 8, but does not consider how some of Anselm’s other arguments in the Monologion oppose certain Platonic views that we can be certain Anselm knew. In the wake of the issues raised by Schmitt and Flasch, Jasper Hopkins proposed what is probably the most intriguing interpretation of the differences between Anselm and Augustine under consideration. Hopkins does not see the point of the so-called deplatonizing of Augustine that Schmitt argues. For Hopkins, Anselm could not be deplatonizing Augustine even if this is the proper reading of M 1, since Augustine does not hold Plato’s view about participation. Hopkins maintains that Anselm speaks in other parts of the Monologion (chapters 9, 16, 25, etc.) about participation in a way that runs counter to Schmitt’s view. Furthermore, Hopkins points out that Anselm’s discussion of substance, accidents, and predication in M 16 and M 25, for example, argue against making too much of the word participatio as indicative of Anselm’s supposed attempt to distance himself from Augustine’s Platonism. Hopkins believes, however, that Schmitt is correct in suspecting certain differences between Anselm and Augustine on the idea of participation, but thinks that Schmitt locates the differences at the wrong points. Hopkins suggests that Schmitt would have been closer to the truth by considering the different ways in which Augustine and Anselm speak of participation. The difference, as Hopkins sees it, is that Augustine moves from considerations of many good things participating in goodness to the notion that all things participate in God, whereas Anselm never makes such a case in M 1, which Hopkins contends, is neutral with respect to Neoplatonism. Hopkins contends that Anselm “never moves immediately from the statement that good things participate in the quality of goodness to the statement that good things participate in the Supreme Good, viz., God. Unlike Augustine Anselm does not blend the two levels.”46 He continues: “Nowhere does he say, as Augustine does in Eighty-Three Different Questions, that the good in which all other goods participate is supremely good. Nowhere does he state, as Augustine does in De trinitate 8.3, that God is the good of every good. Instead in Proslogion 25, he is careful to speak of the ‘one 46

Jasper Hopkins, Anselm of Canterbury, vol. 4, p. 76.

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Good in which are all goods’ and of ‘the simple Good which itself is every good.’”47 Hopkins insists on a number of distinctions and divisions that do not accord with Anselm’s language and Augustine’s thought, since much of what is entailed in Augustine’s language about the good and the participation of all existing things in that good in De trinitate 8.3 is encapsulated in the opening declaration of Anselm’s Monologion. Hopkins complicates the discussion by insisting that the doctrine of participation is inextricably linked to the Neoplatonic doctrine of emanation. And this latter doctrine is at odds with the Christian dogma of creation ex nihilo, which Augustine defends. So in avoiding the language of participation, Anselm is primarily distancing himself from the theory of emanations. And in maintaining that the whole creation is (in varying degrees) similar to the Supreme Being, he is safeguarding that reliability of our knowledge of God’s nature and is anticipating what was later to be called the doctrine of analogia entis. Finally, in affirming that some beings exist more than others, he is assenting to Augustine’s view that God is verum esse.48

The suggestion that Anselm avoids the word participation so as not to lend any credence to the idea of emanation is problematic because Anselm uses language which cannot be interpreted in any other way except as expressing a doctrine of participation. For example, Anselm insists that any theory about the origin of the world other than a doctrine of creation ex nihilo is suspect. We shall see this shortly. In fact, much of the early and medieval Christian interpretation of the opening books of Genesis and the development of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo almost all assume some notion of participation, some of this partly influenced by Platonic or Neoplatonic sources, and others merely derived from the language about creation and the good in Genesis 1–2. If one adopts the approach suggested by Hopkins, much of the tradition prior to Anselm would have to be interpreted as self-contradictory, since most of those thinkers speak about participation and creation ex nihilo. Anselm displays none of the anxieties Hopkins presumes to have been part of Anselm’s alleged reasons for not using the word “participation.” More importantly, it is remarkable how much

47 48

Ibid. Ibid., p. 79.

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Anselm anticipates the later tradition and how well his arguments stand comparison to those of later thinkers.

5. Excursus: Anselm’s Three Ways and Aquinas’s Five Ways We have examined Anselm’s Three Ways about the good, the nature of existence, and the degrees of dignity obtaining among existent things, in the first part of this chapter. We shall now compare Anselm’s Three Ways with the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas, found in the opening chapters of the Summa Theologiae (Part 1, Question 2, article 3). While Aquinas’s Five Ways are well known, one rarely hears of Anselm’s Three Ways, though it has a claim to as much recognition as Aquinas’s arguments and may be more compelling. Both Anselm and Aquinas claim that the approach they adopt is the easiest way one can demonstrate the existence of God or the supreme nature. For Anselm, as we have seen, it is the idea of the good (bonum). For Aquinas it is the idea of motion or movement (motus) with the attendant idea of change (potential or actual). And so Aquinas’s First Way begins with the simple observation that it is evident to our senses that some things are in motion (or have been changed or moved).49 49

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q 2. Art. 3 (The First Way): Prima autem et manifestior uia est, quae sumitur ex parte motus. Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moueri in hoc mundo. Omne autem quod mouetur, ab alio mouetur. Nihil enim mouetur, nisi secundum quod est in potentia ad illud ad quod mouetur, mouet autem aliquid secundum quod est actu. Mouere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum, de potentia autem non potest aliquid reduci in actum, nisi per aliquod ens in actu, sicut calidum in actu, ut ignis, facit lignum, quod est calidum in potentia, esse actu calidum, et per hoc mouet et alterat ipsum. Non autem est possibile ut idem sit simul in actu et potentia secundum idem, sed solum secundum diuersa, quod enim est calidum in actu, non potest simul esse calidum in potentia, sed est simul frigidum in potentia. Impossibile est ergo quod, secundum idem et eodem modo, aliquid sit movens et motum, uel quod moueat seipsum. Omne ergo quod mouetur, oportet ab alio moueri. Si ergo id a quo mouetur, moueatur, oportet et ipsum ab alio moueri et illud ab alio. Hic autem non est procedere in infinitum, quia sic non esset aliquod primum mouens; et per consequens nec aliquod aliud mouens, quia mouentia secunda non mouent nisi per hoc quod sunt mota a primo mouente, sicut baculus non mouet nisi per hoc quod est motus a manu. Ergo necesse est devenire ad aliquod primum mouens, quod a nullo mouetur, et hoc omnes intelligunt Deum.

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The argument seems simple enough: those things that are in motion are put into motion by something inherent within them or by something else. What is in motion aims toward an end for which it has the potential, and it actualizes this potential by reaching the desired end. Nothing can act on what has the potential to be moved unless that agent has the actuality desired by what is in potency. But the same thing cannot be both potential and actual. So whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. And whatever causes something else to be moved or to change must itself be put in motion by another. But this cannot go on ad infinitum, therefore, there has to be a first mover which is unmoved. And that unmoved mover is God. Aquinas considers this demonstration unimpeachable and the easiest of proofs for the existence of God, in part because it depends on what most people will acknowledge as certain as a matter of sense experience: it is evident to our senses that some things are in motion or are undergoing change. But it says nothing about those things that are not in motion, so to speak. Moreover, if the motion under view here is primarily about bodies being acted upon by force, then Aquinas would have left out much that belongs to the universe of existent things. His examples about act and potentiality suggest that Aquinas has in view different kinds of physical changes. For he uses fire, wood, and the transference of heat from fire to wood as a way of explaining actuality and potency. And for describing causality, Aquinas observes that if a hand does not move a stick, the stick will not move anything else. Aquinas repeats Aristotle’s view of the unmoved mover with little or no alteration. The difference between Aquinas and what Aristotle says in the Physica (7.1–9; 8.1–23) and the Metaphysica (12.5–8) is that Aquinas more explicitly calls the unmoved mover God.50 For both Aristotle and Aquinas it is the idea of an infinite regress that sets the regulative principle for the notion of the unmoved mover. Aquinas’s argument does not necessarily need the idea of motion, it is not essential to it. What it needs is the idea 50 On this theme see Lloyd P. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy (Routledge, 1990). On Aristotle and motion, see Aryeh Kosman, “Aristotle’s Definition of Motion,” Phronesis, 14 (1969), pp. 40–62. More recently on these themes, see Simon Oliver, Philosophy, God and Motion (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 30–45; pp. 80–118.

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of causality, since what is really at stake is an infinite chain of causes. Anselm’s use of the notion of the good also poses the problem of an infinite regress, though his maneuver requires a number of steps that Aquinas does not consider, not the least of which is the problem of how to link all things that are in motion with the one unmoved mover. Aquinas does not give any indication that this is a problem. First, he begins with the claim that some things are in motion. It is a minimalist claim, since it is equally obvious that some things are not in motion. Second, even if those things that are in motion are in potency, and therefore subject to change, we still do not have an argument as to why they have to be in motion. Third, the necessity of the unmoved mover is merely asserted. So unless actuality is the state that is necessary for things in potency to attain, there is no reason to argue that those things need to be in motion. The demonstration rests on the limiting condition that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes. Aquinas’s argument gets better when one looks at Objection 2 and Aquinas’s response to it. The objection supposes that existent things can be accounted for without positing God, either by appealing to nature, on the one hand, or human will and reason, on the other. On this supposition things come into existence because of the ingenuity of human beings or because of nature. Aquinas replies that there has to be a higher agent ostensibly because nature is subject to change: “Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will, since these can change and fail; for all things that are changeable and capable of defect must be traced back to an immovable and self-necessary first principle, as was shown in the body of the Article.”51 Aquinas’s argument is inherently circular, and hardly meets the central point of the objection. The objection considers the possibility that nature could work for a determinate end without the direction of a higher agent. Aquinas assumes he has to prove that a higher agent must exist that is unchangeable to supervene what is changeable. This fails as a demonstration on Aquinas’s own terms. In addition, Aquinas does not address the problem as to how all movement or 51

ST 1.1.2., reply to objection 2.

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change in human will, reason, and nature are due to one super agent. So, on a number of levels Aquinas’s First Way leaves much unanswered, especially about the one super-agent and the many. Anselm’s argument in his First Way, the argument from the good, is more cognizant of the problem of the diversity of goods and the one good. In order to make the transition from the diversity of goods to the one superabundant good, Anselm too resorts to an argument that is more assertion than demonstration, although it turns out to be more defensible than Aquinas’s. Rather than an argument based on the senses or on physics, Anselm adopts an approach based on aesthetic and moral judgment about goodness for an account of the good that is partly linguistic, but inherently metaphysical. It is linguistic because it depends on the appellative, “ordinary language” uses of the word “good,” and metaphysical, because it posits the possibility and necessity of an original good from which all things good receive their “goodness.” Anselm then lays claim to this as the self-sufficient supreme good and creator. Both Anselm and Aquinas do not entirely overcome the internal problems in their respective arguments. Aquinas’s argument from motion barely pulls through with the notion of infinite regress, and Anselm’s argument from the good stumbles somewhat on how all the diversity of goods must have one source for their goodness. In both cases, the arguments are salvaged because of an oversight, which may be deliberate or just simply inadvertent: the terms of the arguments are changed in the middle of the argument. Aquinas ignores those things that are not in motion, and the brevity of his presentation does not clarify whether he intends all the elements of Aristotle’s theory of motion or only those parts having to do with the unmoved mover as Aristotle presents it in the Physica and the Metaphysica. Even if one accepts Gilson’s interpretation which links Aquinas to a very detailed use of the whole Aristotelian conception of physical motion and the movement of bio-organism, one still has to wonder why Aquinas’s notion does not hold together, so that Gilson has to come up with strategies for saving the First Way from itself. Gilson notes: “The interpreter of St. Thomas has to make his choice. The first efficient cause cannot cause the existence of the effects which other causes produce if it does not first

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cause the existence of those causes.”52 This may explain in part why Aquinas introduces the principle of causality in each one of the Five Ways. In a similar vein, Anselm’s argument from the good strains to sidestep the polyvalent uses of the word “good” and sometimes overlooks why a simple transition cannot be made from semantics to metaphysics, without appealing to existence itself as a primal good. In spite of this difficulty, Anselm’s Three Ways prove much more sustainable than Aquinas’s Five Ways. To appreciate this we will need to assess the remainder of Aquinas’s Five Ways before concluding our discussion on Anselm. What should be obvious is that all of Aquinas’s Five Ways depend directly or indirectly on the idea of causality. So they can be read as different versions of the same argument. I will discuss the Second, Third, and Fifth Ways before turning to the Fourth, which stands somewhat apart from the rest in its use of the idea of causality. The Second Way is the most obvious, since it is premised on the notion of efficient causality.53 The supposition is basic: nothing can be its own efficient cause; which is to say that nothing can make itself. If it were otherwise, something could exist prior to itself, which is an absurdity. (This is a point Anselm makes at another place in the Monologion.) What is unusual is that Aquinas sees the need to turn again to the infinity of causes as the contrary to fact condition upon which to make his argument that one has to posit God as first cause. Aquinas could have used both the temporal aspect of the axiom about efficient causality and the impossibility of something existing prior to its existence to prove that there must of necessity be an efficient cause for whatever exists. To 52 E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956 [1944]), p. 80. 53 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q 2. Art. 3 (The Second Way): Secunda uia est ex ratione causae efficientis. Inuenimus enim in istis sensibilibus esse ordinem causarum efficientium, nec tamen inuenitur, nec est possibile, quod aliquid sit causa efficiens sui ipsius; quia sic esset prius seipso, quod est impossibile. Non autem est possibile quod in causis efficientibus procedatur in infinitum. Quia in omnibus causis efficientibus ordinatis, primum est causa medii, et medium est causa ultimi, siue media sint plura siue unum tantum, remota autem causa, remouetur effectus, ergo, si non fuerit primum in causis efficientibus, non erit ultimum nec medium. Sed si procedatur in infinitum in causis efficientibus, non erit prima causa efficiens, et sic non erit nec effectus ultimus, nec causae efficientes mediae, quod patet esse falsum. Ergo est necesse ponere aliquam causam efficientem primam, quam omnes Deum nominant.

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Aquinas’s mind this would have left unaddressed the connection between individual efficient causes. So he sees the need to posit a first cause among all efficient causes. But this too, like the introduction of the idea of infinite regress in his First Way, is an axiom that is merely asserted, and therefore weakens the demonstrative force of his argument. Aquinas’s Third Way rearranges the deck.54 It translates the language of act and potency into the language of possibility and necessity by speaking of what is possible to be or not to be, since that is a unique characteristic of all things that are generated and are subject to corruption. If it is possible for something not to be then at some time that thing is nothing. It does not exist. Potential existence or the possibility of existing entails temporality. But if all things that exist are of this sort then there would have been a time when nothing whatsoever existed. This is impossible: a condition contrary to fact. So there must be something that is not just possible to be, but actually is, a being whose existence is necessary in a kind of timeless or a-temporal sense. Aquinas does not specify the being at this point. Aquinas observes that a necessary being may have existence from itself or another. This is a purely logical premise without any specific metaphysical content; it makes no claim one way or the other as to whether it makes sense to speak of an atemporally necessary being existing from itself or from another. If the necessary being is caused by another, then again there will be an infinite regress of causes involving other beings. So there must be a necessary being whose existence is self-caused. 54

Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q 2. Art. 3 (The Third Way): Tertia uia est sumpta ex possibili et necessario, quae talis est. Inuenimus enim in rebus quaedam quae sunt possibilia esse et non esse, cum quaedam inueniantur generari et corrumpi, et per consequens possibilia esse et non esse. Impossibile est autem omnia quae sunt, talia esse, quia quod possibile est non esse, quandoque non est. Si igitur omnia sunt possibilia non esse, aliquando nihil fuit in rebus. Sed si hoc est uerum, etiam nunc nihil esset, quia quod non est, non incipit esse nisi per aliquid quod est; si igitur nihil fuit ens, impossibile fuit quod aliquid inciperet esse, et sic modo nihil esset, quod patet esse falsum. Non ergo omnia entia sunt possibilia, sed oportet aliquid esse necessarium in rebus. Omne autem necessarium uel habet causam suae necessitatis aliunde, uel non habet. Non est autem possibile quod procedatur in infinitum in necessariis quae habent causam suae necessitatis, sicut nec in causis efficientibus, ut probatum est. Ergo necesse est ponere aliquid quod sit per se necessarium, non habens causam necessitatis aliunde, sed quod est causa necessitatis aliis, quod omnes dicunt Deum.

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This is God. As Aquinas’s allusion to his previous argument from efficient causality implies, the Third Way is not all that different from the argument from efficient causality, although it is better structured and more persuasive because of its use of the language of possibility and necessity. In any case, Aquinas did not need the premise that a necessary being is either self-caused or caused by another. He could simply have pursued the temporal aspect of the argument. It would have obviated the need for the premise about self-causation which is far more problematic than saying that the first cause is self-moved. The Fifth Way turns on causality as well; this time with the idea of an intelligent agent as the most reasonable agent to move things that lack intelligence.55 The premise comes from what Aquinas calls the governance of the world (ex gubernatione rerum). Since all natural bodies act toward an end, “always, or nearly always,” for the same end, whatever lacks intelligence cannot reach its desired end, unless it is acted upon by an agent with knowledge and intelligence. Consequently, there must be an intelligent being who directs these unintelligent natural bodies to their desired end. This is God. Again it is about movement or motion, change, and desired ends. Aquinas’s Fourth Way stands out because while it too appeals to causality, it comes closest in tone to Anselm’s approach in the Monologion. It focuses on what Aquinas calls the “gradation to be found in things” (ex gradibus qui in rebus inueniuntur). It also combines a number of elements that Anselm treats separately in his Three Ways: the argument from the good and the degrees of dignity among existent things. Aquinas states as follows:56 55 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q 2. Art. 3 (The Fifth Way): Quinta uia sumitur ex gubernatione rerum. Videmus enim quod aliqua quae cognitione carent, scilicet corpora naturalia, operantur propter finem, quod apparet ex hoc quod semper aut frequentius eodem modo operantur, ut consequantur id quod est optimum; unde patet quod non a casu, sed ex intentione perveniunt ad finem. Ea autem quae non habent cognitionem, non tendunt in finem nisi directa ab aliquo cognoscente et intelligente, sicut sagitta a sagittante. Ergo est aliquid intelligens, a quo omnes res naturales ordinantur ad finem, et hoc dicimus Deum. 56 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1. Q 2. Art. 3 (The Fourth Way): Quarta uia sumitur ex gradibus qui in rebus inueniuntur. Inuenitur enim in rebus aliquid magis et minus bonum, et uerum, et nobile, et sic de aliis huiusmodi. Sed magis et minus dicuntur de diuersis secundum quod appropinquant diuersimode ad aliquid quod maxime est, sicut magis calidum est, quod magis appropinquat maxime calido. Est igitur aliquid quod est uerissimum, et optimum, et nobilissimum, et

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Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble, and the like. But ‘more’ and ‘less’ are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest, and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum in heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.57

By choosing Aristotle’s Metaphysica II, Aquinas appropriates an Aristotelian text that is more Platonic in tone than other texts that would be deemed critical of Platonic metaphysics and the theory of forms.58 This is worth noting because when Anselm speaks in some of the same terms that Aquinas does, Anselm’s interpreters take it as evidence of Anselm’s Platonism, though it does not necessarily have to be read as such. The Platonic tone of Aquinas’s Fourth Way has been a problem for some of Aquinas’s interpreters, Etienne Gilson, Anthony Kenny, and John Wippel among them. We have already seen Gilson’s apology for the First Way. Gilson also has a distinctive position about the Five Ways in general and, along with Kenny and Wippel, may be taken as representative of three attitudes about the Five Ways, and about the Fourth Way in particular. Gilson, who is perhaps the most enthusiastic of Aquinas’s recent interpreters, finds the Fourth Way not only salutary but a great contribuper consequens maxime ens, nam quae sunt maxime uera, sunt maxime entia, ut dicitur II metaphys. Quod autem dicitur maxime tale in aliquo genere, est causa omnium quae sunt illius generis, sicut ignis, qui est maxime calidus, est causa omnium calidorum, ut in eodem libro dicitur. Ergo est aliquid quod omnibus entibus est causa esse, et bonitatis, et cuiuslibet perfectionis, et hoc dicimus Deum. 57 The Fourth Way: ST 1. Q 2. Art. 3. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Questions on God, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 26. 58 Cf. John F. Wippel, “Metaphysics,” in Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 85–127; the reference is to p. 115.

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tion to Aquinas’s overall project in the Five Ways. Gilson thinks it useful to inquire into the sources of Aquinas’s Five Ways in Aristotle and Aquinas’s earlier works, most notably the De ente et essentia and the Summa Contra Gentiles. However, after an exhaustive inquiry, Gilson suggests that the Five Ways do not present so unproblematic a framework as Thomas Aquinas thinks, but all in all, he finds the arguments defensible. On the Fourth Way, Gilson writes: Obviously, the fourth way openly relies upon the validity of the Platonic and Augustinian notion of participation. But we shall see that, taken in a new sense, exemplarism is one of the essential elements of St. Thomas’s thought. He maintains that the lower degrees of perfection and being suppose a being in which perfections and being meet in their highest degree. He also maintains that to possess a perfection incompletely and to possess it from a cause are synonymous.59

Gilson goes on to say that all the proofs offered by Aquinas in the Five Ways depend on sense experience as a valid starting point to raise the mind towards an understanding of God. This is why the conception of a universe, hierarchized according to the degrees of being and perfection, is involved right from the beginning of the proof of the existence of God by the prime mover or by the efficient cause. If therefore this new demonstration were to be considered as essentially Platonic, it would be necessary, in sound logic, to concede that the earlier demonstrations are so too.60

In other words, Gilson is willing to accept that the entire structure of the Five Ways could be read as Platonic, and while he speaks in a somewhat exasperated mood, the point should not be missed. That is to say, the very idea of a hierarchy of beings, graded from the lowest to the highest cannot escape a Platonic metaphysical outlook, in spite of the fact that Aquinas’s physics and biology are deeply indebted to Aristotle. Gilson’s reference to Augustine’s Platonism as an influence on Aquinas may be overstated, since much of Aquinas’s Platonism comes from Pseudo-Dionysius’s De caelesti hierarchia and De divinis nominibus.61 59

Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, pp. 74. Ibid. 61 See Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005 [1992 Leiden: Brill]); and 60

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Gilson’s acknowledgment of the Platonic cast to Aquinas’s Fourth Way does little to illuminate it. Anthony Kenny takes a rather different approach. Unlike Gilson, Kenny turns to a number of Plato’s texts to try to show just how the Fourth Way squares with Plato’s theory of forms. Why this approach? Because while admirers of Aquinas are divided in their attitude to it, all agree that the Fourth Way comes closest to Platonism.62 But is Plato’s theory of forms the best way to understand Aquinas’s Fourth Way, especially given Aquinas’s own criticism of the Platonic theory? Kenny concedes in a footnote that his account is “partly controversial.”63 On Aquinas’s attitude towards the Platonic theory of forms, Kenny argues that this is somewhat ambiguous. “It is difficult to define.” Kenny maintains: On the one hand, he frequently takes up an explicitly anti-Platonic stance; on the other, he sometimes seems to make an implicit appeal to the theory. Plato, he said, was mistaken in positing separate Ideas of natural species, such as an absolute man and an absolute horse. Sometimes, however, he speaks as if two men, such as Peter and Paul, have one and the same humanity (e.g. ST Ia 3 art 5); elsewhere he explains that the essence or form signified by the name ‘human’, namely humanity, is really divided in different individuals, so that the unity of human nature is not real but notional, the humanity of Peter being numerically distinct from the humanity of Paul.64

Kenny calls Aquinas’s theory of individuation “Platonism at the second remove.” In the end he prefers to speak of Aquinas’s Platonism as “vestigial” with the Fourth Way as its greatest expression.65 It is both its strength and weakness, especially when Aquinas calls God ipsum esse subsistens. Kenny contends that this is pure absurdity: The objections, therefore, which have been made during the centuries to Plato’s theory of Ideas apply to Aquinas’ theory of God as subsistent being. But this is not all that is wrong with the theory Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 62 Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980 [1969]), p. 71. 63 Ibid., p. 71, n. 1. 64 Ibid., p. 77. 65 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

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… The notion of Ipsum Esse Subsistens, therefore, so far from being a profound metaphysical analysis of the divine nature, turns out to be the Platonic Idea of a predicate which is at best uninformative and at worst unintelligible.66

Those who would find comfort in the Fourth Way must surely be disappointed. Kenny’s criticism notwithstanding, it is not clear that he has fully disposed of Aquinas’s appeal to goodness. For, as Kenny himself notes in reference to Summa Theologiae Ia 6, 4c – the passage “which contains his explicit repudiation of Platonism,” – Aquinas “goes on to explain that the individual goodnessess [sic] of things are all likenesses of the divine goodness.” This, Kenny insists, is no different from Plato’s conception of “particular goods and the Idea of the Good.”67 Most commentators would agree. The critical question, then, is not why Aquinas has a hierarchical view of the universe and of a conception of the good that is not unlike Plato’s. The real question is whether it is appropriate to submit Aquinas’s arguments in the Fourth Way to a doctrinaire Platonism. Besides, what role does the problem of individuation play in the Fourth Way so as to make it so untenable? Is it directly or indirectly implicated in Aquinas’s argument? Kenny is even more insistent in reprising his objections to Aquinas in his most recent Aquinas on Being. According to Kenny, the very idea of a gradation of being with one form of existence as the highest is problematic through and through. Does this mean that Anselm’s Third Way suffers the same fate as Aquinas’s Fourth Way? Probably, but not entirely. Against Aquinas, Kenny has this to say: Even if we waive difficulties about the gradations from which the Fourth Way takes its start, there is a problem about the notion of approaching a maximum. We may ask whether the maximum is supposed to be something ideal or actual. Is the maximum of heat, for instance the hottest possible thing, or the hottest actual thing? Is the maximum of goodness the best possible thing, or the best actual thing? Suppose we take it as the best possible thing: then no doubt it is plausible to identify it with God. The existence of degrees of goodness, however, does not seem to show the actual existence of any best possible thing, any more than degrees of size show that there exists a largest possible thing. If on the other hand, we take 66 67

Ibid., p. 95. Ibid., p. 79.

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that maximum of goodness to be the best actual thing, then the existence of things of varying degrees of goodness will show that there are one or more de facto best things; but why must this be God, rather than some superlatively good human being?68

The last statement leaves one wondering whether Kenny really believes that a superlatively good human being could in fact be the best possible good there is. And, as for Aquinas, why should he be interested in the mere potential of a maximum of goodness when he has just argued that what is merely in potency is less good than what is in fact? And for Anselm, who begins with the conception of a nature that creates and sustains all else, why would a potential good be better than an actual good? The larger part of Kenny’s objection are precluded by the terms of Aquinas’s argument about potency and actuality, though the problem entailed in Aquinas’s notion of maximal being (or existence) remains. John Wippel’s most recent study of the Five Ways offers a few clues.69 Wippel wonders if the Five Ways were meant to be considered separately from the rest of the Summa Theologiae, and he finds it questionable that some interpreters think that the Five Ways ought to stand on their own apart from the rest of Aquinas’s metaphysics.70 Wippel’s cautionary stance is commendable. At the same time, Aquinas himself presents the Five Ways in all their brevity as self-standing demonstrations. So on Aquinas’s own terms the Five Ways should be able to stand on their own. As such they can be evaluated for their soundness as arguments, although one has to concede that their brevity also means that there will be areas of dispute which can only be clarified by looking at other sources in Aquinas’s extensive output. Wippel’s assessment of the Fourth Way acknowledges its Platonic and Neoplatonic inspiration. Wippel also recognizes a number of difficulties with the Fourth Way, not the least of which is Aquinas’s notion of the degrees of dignity or nobility (nobilitas) and whether Aquinas means to single out by this expression a characteristic other than ontological goodness or onto68 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 140. 69 John Wippel, “The Five Ways,” in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: Critical Essays, edited by Brian Davies (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), pp. 45–110. 70 Ibid., p. 89, n. 2.

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logical truth.71 Wippel wonders whether Aquinas “wishes to restrict the starting point of the fourth way to gradation in transcendental perfections such as truth and goodness?” Or whether Aquinas has a less restrictive conception in view which is more easily “recognizable in varying degrees in the world about us.”72 Wippel opts for the transcendental perfections of truth and goodness because Aquinas does not refer to perfections that are not transcendental in stating his argument.73 But this appears too restrictive a reading of Aquinas’s description of the degrees of dignity, which appear to include other forms of dignity that may not be transcendental perfections. Aquinas speaks of the gradation found in things, and merely iterates: good, true, noble, etc. “Gradation found in things” is as broad a conception as one could imagine, so one should expect at the very least that Aquinas has in mind all the transcendental perfections, not just goodness and truth. And, furthermore, he may have other attributes in mind as well beyond the transcendentals. The potential problem with the transcendentals is probably the lesser of the difficulties attending Aquinas’s Fourth Way. Wippel thinks Aquinas’s examples are less than satisfying, and finds questionable Aquinas appeal to Aristotle to speak of fire as the perfection of heat, the hottest thing which causes all other things to be hot. As Wippel puts it “it is unnecessary for us to assume that something enjoys a maximum degree of heat in order to be aware that one kettle is hotter than another.”74 Surely, Aquinas’s example is counterintuitive, even for those schooled on medieval physics, unless of course what he has in mind is that unless “heat” has reached a state of “perfection” or “purity” so that it can be transferred, the kettle will not get hotter; which is why Aquinas seems to think that the knowledge of a perfect form is implied in the existence of the “more or less” of “hotness.” Because we know that there are varying degrees of heat, we can easily assume that there is a maximal form. The more difficult aspect of Aquinas’s description is the transition from the maximal form to the conception that this constitutes the genus of a species, on the supposition that the 71

Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., 67. 73 Jan Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 159–359. 74 John Wippel, “The Five Ways,” p. 67. 72

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highest in any species is its genus. As a matter of taxonomy this is dubious. In the end, Wippel finds that only a doctrine of participation can save Aquinas’s argument. According to Wippel, this supplies “the missing justification.” So on the basis of the metaphysics of participation a species participates in its genus; and something can participate in another thing without sharing the essence of the higher being in which it participates.75 This takes us back to Gilson and Kenny. Like Gilson and Kenny, Wippel ends up turning to a theory of participation as the only way to save Aquinas’s arguments in the Fourth Way, although Wippel still has questions about the persuasiveness of it all. We may recall the earlier discussion of Anselm’s arguments in M 1–4 and the debate as to whether Anselm’s arguments depend on a theory of participation. It is clear that a universal theory of existence can be described as a theory of participation if it entails a hierarchy of natures or beings, degrees of existence and dignity, and a conception of things sharing certain characteristics, forms, or ideas in such a way that an inextricable link obtains between the perfect form and its imperfect replicas. I have made a point of this comparison between Anselm and Aquinas for two reasons. First, Aquinas’s various attempts at proving the existence of God are some of the most elaborate and sustained discussions on the subject. And second, because Aquinas has something of a reputation as one of Anselm’s more severe critics when it comes to the argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion, although Aquinas does not seem to be aware of Anselm’s Three Ways, as I refer to them. Aquinas objects to Anselm’s argument in the Proslogion in the Summa Contra Gentiles I.10–11, which he completed probably in 1259.76 He reiterates his objection in Summa Theologiae 1a.2.1, and 2. Given the way Aquinas structures his own arguments and the similarities between some of his thinking in the Fourth Way and Anselm’s Monologion 1–4 it is doubtful he would have left M 1–4 without comment if he knew them. Moreover, if he knew M 1–4 it would be odd for Aquinas to address Anselm’s arguments from the Proslogion and subject them to criticism in both the Summa Contra Gentiles 75

Ibid., p. 69–71. Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 256. 76

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and the Summa Theologiae but fail to mention the Monologion’s arguments in either work. For someone known for his extensive references to antecedent texts, Aquinas’s only reference to the Monologion appears in his commentary on the Sententiae of Peter Lombard, written in his early twenties between 1253 and 1256,77 where he alludes to Anselm’s discussion of nihil in M 8. The nature of the reference gives the impression that Aquinas is dependent on a sententia for his knowledge of the passage from the Monologion. In fact, Aquinas’s representation of Anselm’s arguments from the Proslogion a few years (c. 1259) after the reference to the Monologion also raises questions as to whether he appreciated the full scope of what Anselm tried to do there.78 It certainly shows no awareness of Anselm’s Three Ways as stated in the Monologion. And as Anton Pegis puts it, “to read the Proslogion in isolation from the Monologion is worse than a useless exercise,”79 which is not to say Aquinas’s interpretation of Anselm’s arguments in the Proslogion is worthless. Aquinas’s critique of Anselm is probably based on little knowledge of Anselm’s thought. Kenny points out that Aquinas misses Anselm’s reductio ad absurdum which is so central to the argument of the Proslogion when Aquinas contends against Anselm that “that than which nothing greater can be thought” can exist in the mind and not in fact.80 Aquinas’s engagement with Anselm’s thought would have been greatly helped by some knowledge of the Three Ways as Anselm presents them in the Monologion for one simple reason. Anselm’s Three Ways accomplishes with greater clarity and argumentative force what Aquinas tries to do with his Five Ways. The verdict would be different if one were to compare Anselm’s Three Ways with Aquinas’s more elaborate attempts in the Summa Contra Gentiles. The benefit of focusing on the Five Ways in the Summa 77

Ibid. Ibid., p. 57–60. We can appreciate even better Aquinas’s misreading of Anselm when we see what others like Alexander of Hales and John Duns Scotus made of Anselm’s views. See on Scotus, Allan B. Wolter, The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1990); and Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 29–39. 79 Anton C. Pegis, “Four Medieval Ways to God,” The Monist, 54 (1970), p. 322. 80 Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being, p. 133–134. 78

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Theologiae is that it is Aquinas’s most mature statement on the subject. For economy and perspicacity, one could easily reduce Aquinas’s Five Ways to two: this would involve an emphasis on the modalities of possibility and necessity by adopting the Third Ways’ argument from possibility and necessity together with the Fourth Ways’ argument from the necessity of a maximally existent being.81 This is the center of Aquinas’s proposal, and it makes for a much better argument than the diffuse nature of the Five Ways as Aquinas presents them. Restructured in this fashion Aquinas’s two arguments compare well with Anselm’s and could integrate Anselm’s treble emphasis: on the nature of the good, existence per se and per aliud, and the degrees of dignity among the universe of things. Gilson acknowledges that the heart of Aquinas’s Five Ways is to construct a chain of beings involving all beings. To say that an existing thing requires an extrinsic cause of its existence is to say that it does not contain it in itself. From this point of view, the proofs of the existence of God consist in constructing a chain of causes which binds all beings which are by another to the one being who is by itself. Beings by another, which have not in themselves the wherewithal to exist, are those same beings whose essence, we are saying, is distinct from their existence, as opposed to being by itself whose very essence is to exist. We can say, therefore, that all the Thomistic proofs for the existence of God amount, in the last analysis, to a search, beyond existences which are not self-sufficient, for an existence which is self-sufficient and which, because it is so, can be the first cause of all others.82

Except for the part about the distinction between essence and existence, which Aquinas first formulates in his De ente et essentia, a distinction whose contours continues to baffle Thomistic scholars,83 this description of what the Five Ways accomplish is 81 On the question of necessity and creation see, for example, Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation: Aquinas’s Natural Theology in Summa contra gentiles II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 130–141. 82 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, translated by L. K. Shook (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994 [1956]), pp. 80–81. 83 See Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, 2nd ed., translated by A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983); F. Van Steengerghen, Le problème de l’existence de Dieu dans les écrits de S. Thomas d’Aquin (Louvian-la-Neuve: Editions de l’Institut Superieur de Philosophie,

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precisely what Anselm does in M 1–4. This is why Aquinas’s critique of Anselm and Gilson’s defense of that criticism misses the point of the real comparative usefulness of Anselm’s approach in the Monologion. After all, Anselm’s opening declaration in M 1 frames the ensuing investigations in precisely the terms that Gilson states as the objective and achievement of Aquinas’s Five Ways. Anselm accomplishes that objective without the special difficulties attaching to the theory of motion and the notion of intelligent agency that Aquinas’s arguments require. If simplicity is the virtue that both Anselm and Aquinas attach to their respective arguments from the good and motion, then Anselm not only anticipates Aquinas but does him better. As Anselm puts it in the opening statement of the Monologion, there is a self-sufficient nature who, not only brings into being all that exists but sustains them so that they may fare well. This nature is the Supreme Good, who is the God of Christian belief. And by attending to the nature of goodness, the nature of existence, and the degrees of dignity obtaining among existent things one arrives at a conception of the one good. Towards the end of M 1, Anselm reiterates the metaphysics of creation stated in his opening declaration as the basis for the idea of the good. That is why although he begins with the argument from the good as the easiest way to persuade the ignorant inquirer, it is the argument from existence that grounds the entire project. All things are good “more or less” because they are created by the Good and that is why we recognize different degrees of goodness in the diversity of created things. It is quite another thing to say that the diversity of goods implied in the polyvalent uses of the word “good” suggests a single original Good. As we discussed earlier, the former argument makes existence itself a good. Such an argument is not necessarily Platonic. The latter argument, on the other hand, seems unquestionably Platonic, because it appeals to something like a Platonic theory of the form of the good. And yet Anselm’s theory remains markedly anti-Platonic as he goes on to speak about how the supreme good exists and how it creates all existent things.

1980); and John F. Wippel’s “Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, edited by Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 85–127; reference is to pp 99–107.

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Anselm’s “whatever that is” (quidquid illud est) through which all things that are genuinely good are good, is none other than the creator mentioned at the beginning of the Monologion. So when he asks, “who would doubt that this thing, through which all goods are good, is itself a great good?” there is no objection, at least not from anyone who accepts the opening declaration and approves of the arguments that follow. Recall Anselm’s qualifier about the things that are “genuinely good.” Whether something is genuinely good depends, as Anselm has intimated, on how it stands in relation to the Good, beyond mere existence. Without the metaphysics of creation the entire project falters. The chapters that follow immediately upon M 1–4 address the subject of creation.

6. Conclusion Our discussion of M 1–4 highlights two important aspects of Anselm’s project: first, Anselm’s methodology; and second, the content and the form of his arguments. Although he gives prominence to the phrase, sola ratione, Anselm’s most distinctive claim is his contention that anyone of average intelligence who follows the lead of reason will arrive at the same conclusions he does. So why then does Anselm offer a caveat that his conclusions are provisional, and that he does not present them as incontestable but only true for the time being? And why does this claim stand in near contradiction to the one he proffers in M 64 that none of his conclusions admit counterargument? If Anselm is not blatantly contradicting himself, then he is at least offering a concession in M 1–4 that he takes away in M 64, if the linear progression of the text reflects its compositional history. If, however, the concession in M 1–4 was inserted or written after M 64 then it is meant to preclude criticism, by taking the edge off what Anselm says later in M 64. On this account it could be taken as partly disingenuous. Anselm never wavers in his conviction that his arguments are persuasive. We see this in the way he employs certain axioms as self-evident, needing no proof, but fundamental for establishing the foundations of the arguments he makes. As for the content, I have indicated in some of my discussion that there are problems with some of his arguments, and that the problems are mostly of two types. The first case involves Anselm’s conflation of two types

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of good. He does not distinguish clearly between the appellative uses of the word “good” and the use of the word as an indication of an inherent quality of goodness or of value. In fact, the views he expresses in De Grammatico about the different kinds of signification are not fully respected in his discussion of the uses of the word “good.” For, to speak appellatively of something good, is surely not quite the same as signifying either per se or per aliud that something is good, and that is also not quite the same as signifying wholly that something is good.84 The other type of problem is when Anselm simply refuses to entertain a possibility that somehow does not fit the argument he wants to construct, as when he insists that there must be a finite number of natures otherwise there cannot be one super-eminent nature. All the same, there is coherence to his Three Ways, especially when we compare them with Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways. And although Aquinas is deeply committed to a metaphysics of creation, as Norman Kretzmann’s studies have shown, the Five Ways do not represent that metaphysics nearly as well as Anselm’s Three Ways. As I have argued, Anselm’s Three Ways depend on an idea of creation; so that even though he begins with the argument from the good, it is the idea of creation that grounds the three arguments and the topics under which he discusses them: the nature of existence, the degrees of dignity among existent things, and the plurality of goods.85

84 See Peter King, “Anselm’s Philosophy of Language,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–110; reference is to pp. 92–94. 85 Cf. Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 59–71.

Chapter Four De Nihilo Nihil: The Craftsman and the Supreme Utterance

1. Introduction Anselm’s first readers at Bec, some of whom knew the compositional history of the Monologion, had no doubt about Anselm’s sources and the Augustinian basis of his work. Because Anselm claims the inspiration of Augustine’s De trinitate, his fellow monks and other medieval readers would have assumed that Anselm’s doctrines were Augustine’s as well. However, about a decade and a half after the Monologion he made a rare admission or at least that is how it appears. In his review of the Monologion and Proslogion in chapter 6 of his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, he writes that in those two works he may have expressed himself in ways that the fathers did not. And while he still insists that he has not taught anything contrary to the established teachings of the church, he acknowledges that his works contain novelties that do not have parallels in the fathers. He does not think this should be a cause for reproach, because he is not claiming to be saying something the fathers did not know, but only things about which they were silent. I shall not attempt to parse the difference that Anselm insists upon when he distinguishes between what is unsaid (that about which they are silent) and what they did not know. In any event, Anselm’s admission of novelty is not about verbal or stylistic differences but about theological content that adds to the tradition(s) of the fathers. We have already seen Anselm address this theme in the preface to the Monologion. There he admonishes his readers not to judge him too quickly if they find what they consider to be novelties in the work. He then advises the reader or potential critic to first read Augustine’s De trinitate diligently before judging the Monologion. He implies by his charge to potential critics that they will find support for his teaching in De trinitate. And it is in this context that he first mentions his Greek formula that was the subject of Chapter 2. As I noted in

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my discussion in Chapter 2 the Greek formula was Anselm’s own invention, even though he attributed to the Greek patristic tradition. And yet, remarkably no one from among his contemporaries challenged him on it. This silence on the part of his contemporaries meant that Anselm continued for the better part of his career with little doubt that his inventions were tolerable, if not wholly acceptable. So whatever one makes of his protestations about his inventiveness in the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, we cannot doubt Anselm’s sense of his own unique contribution to the Christian tradition in areas where, in his own words, the fathers had been silent. We have at least one instance in the Monologion where Anselm addresses a fundamental theme about which Augustine is mostly silent in De trinitate: the idea of creation. That Augustine does not address the doctrine of creation directly in De trinitate does not mean that De trinitate is not permeated by it. I have already mentioned in the previous chapter how much Romans 1:20 – the notion that the things that exist reveal something about their maker, the creator of all things – functions as the bedrock for Augustine. Augustine uses the verse as shorthand for his view of creation because it expresses uniquely the relationship between creator and creation, the very theme on which Anselm begins the Monologion. Augustine also cites the verse on a few occasions in De trinitate (2.15.25; 4.16.21; 6.10.12; 13.19.24; 15.1.1; 15.2.3). And it is the verse with which he begins the final Book 15 that we discussed in Chapter 1 as providing some of the impetus for Anselm’s Monologion and its methodology. Augustine also employs Romans 11:36, “for from him and through him and in him are all things,” as yet another foundational text for creation and how it is sustained by the creator (1.6.12; 2.15.25; 3.4.9; 5.8.9; 6.5.7; 6.10.12; 14.12.16). This theme is also important for Anselm. He mentions it in the first paragraph of M 1 and devotes a number of paragraphs to it in M 5–14 when he speaks about how the creator creates all things. In fact, one can read Anselm’s interpretation and analyses of the prepositions ex, per, and in as commentary on Romans 11:36. The chapter heading for M 14 contains the verse. And when we consider how Romans 1:20 underlies his thought, we could argue that a good deal of what Anselm argues in M 1–14 is shaped by these two passages from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and the language

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about the divine word and creative utterance in John 1:1–3 to which Augustine adverts in De trinitate. Anselm’s remarks on creation clearly take him beyond the specific teachings found in De trinitate, since Augustine does not elaborate in any extensive way on the subject, even as he alludes to it in his deliberations and mentions these biblical texts. This provides us the rare opportunity to ask whether Anselm’s explanation of the doctrine bears any resemblance to Augustine’s thought on creatio ex nihilo elsewhere and to what extent Anselm’s doctrine counts as yet one more innovation on his part. Anselm, as we will soon find out, proposed his own particular version of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. Anselm’s insistence on his version of the doctrine, then, calls attention to the daring (or recklessness) that one detects in his attributing to Augustine his strange and risky Trinitarian innovation, the Greek formula, “three substances in one person.” It will be part of the objective of this chapter to show, first, how far Anselm’s conception of creatio ex nihilo is from Augustine’s and what difference it makes to his account of creation and the supreme nature’s existence in M 5–14; and secondly, how genuinely Augustinian other aspects of Anselm’s doctrine of creation are, especially those parts that depend on some of Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate. The outline of Anselm’s argumentation in M 5–14 is framed by the following topics. If it has been proved that a supreme nature exists (M 1–4), then the following questions demand attention: How does this nature exist? How is this nature’s existence different from or similar to other things that exist? How did the other things that exist come into existence? And how is the way the supreme nature makes or creates existent things different from or similar to how existent things make other things? These are the central questions that shape Anselm’s investigations in M 5–14. Anselm’s objective here is to underscore the uniqueness of the supreme nature’s creative act and how it stands comparison to the creative acts of a human craftsman. His great achievement is his contention that the supreme nature creates without any instrument or assistance, either through pre-existent matter or matter that is created simultaneously with the things the supreme nature creates. For Anselm, the supreme nature creates ex nihilo all existent things. Anselm agrees with Augustine when he maintains that the supreme nature creates all things by his utterance. Anselm, however, never raises

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the question nor tries to answer the question as to where matter comes from. And it is in this respect that his view of creatio ex nihilo differs so markedly from Augustine and with much of the antecedent ancient Christian tradition on the doctrine of creation. In his landmark study, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, Richard Sorabji writes in answer to the question whether the universe had a beginning that, “with only a few possible exceptions, such a view was denied by everybody in European antiquity outside the Judeo-Christian tradition.” He adds: “that tradition’s belief that God could have given a beginning to the material universe would have seemed to most Greeks an absurdity. But some clarifications are needed as to just what the Greeks denied.”1 Sorabji provides these clarifications, and along the way also points out that one of the important arguments against the universe having a beginning was the notion that “nothing can come from nothing.” Fundamentally, this was a principle meant to exclude “something’s beginning without its being the case that there was anything previously there out of which it came.”2 Almost serendipitously, as if engaged in this inveterate discussion about the origins of the physical universe, Anselm frames his arguments in M 5–14 around the phrase, “nothing comes from nothing.” Those of Anselm’s contemporaries who heard this statement in common parlance would have thought little of it. It could be interpreted as nothing more than a vulgar description of a theory of causality, with the attendant notion that everything that exists has an origin and does not simply come into being without an agent other than itself; just as Sorabji characterizes the ancient Greek understanding of the phrase. But it is precisely this simple articulation of a theory of causality that renders the expression so problematic, if commonplace. The statement also has the potential of contradicting and putting into doubt a central tenet of Christian tradition, creatio ex nihilo, a tradition that centers on attempts to interpret the opening verses of Genesis 1. How does one reconcile the belief that “nothing comes from nothing” with the notion that the one supreme nature creates out of nothing? 1

Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum: Theories in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 193. 2 Ibid., p. 245.

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Some of Anselm’s arguments seem to go over the same ground as Aristotle’s description of ancient Greek sensibilities in his Physica. Aristotle writes about how earlier philosophers had been misled in trying to think through how something could be made from nothing, and seems to indicate that the notion that “nothing comes out of nothing” was a commonplace among the philosophers. The first people to philosophize about the nature and truth of things got so to speak side-tracked or driven off course by inexperience, and said that nothing comes to be or passes away, because whatever comes to be must do so either out of something which is, or out of something which is not, and neither is possible. What is cannot come to be, since it is already, and nothing can come to be out of what is not, since there must be something underlying. And thus inflating the consequences of this, they deny a plurality of things altogether, and say that there is nothing but ‘what is, itself.’3

On his own behalf Aristotle offers the following doctrine: “We too say that nothing comes to be simply out of what is not; but that things do come to be in a way out of what is not, namely by the virtue of concurrence. A thing can come to be out of the lack, which in itself is something which is not, and is not a constituent. This, however, makes people stare, and it is thought impossible that anything should come to be in this way, out of what is not.”4 As Aristotle describes it, the argument struck ancient Greek minds as an oddity, and it is likely that Anselm’s version, procured without any direct assistance from Aristotle, would have struck medieval minds as equally odd. Boethius also mentions the idea of ex nihilo nihil fit in Book 4, “On Differentia,” in his commentary on Porphyry;5 and in his translation of Aristotle’s Sophisticis elenchis Book 1.4 where he has ex nihilo nihil fieri.6 So, whenever Anselm mentions de nihilo nihil he invokes both an ancient and medieval commonplace: ex nihilo nihil fit. Anselm had one advantage over Aristotle, as well as an attendant difficulty. Whereas Aristotle and others could take refuge in matter as an instrumental (or material) cause in the cre3 Aristotle, Physica 1.8 [191a]. Jonathan Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1984). 4 Aristotle, Physica 1.8 [191b]. Ibid. 5 Boethius, In Isagogen Porphyrii Comm. ed. prima 1.1 (PL 64, col. 125D). 6 PL 64, col. 1013A.

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ation of all things,7 Anselm was determined not to. Furthermore, Anselm seems to have made up his mind that only a strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo would suffice. As we will see shortly, he does not abide what other Christian thinkers took for granted, namely, that the creator created all things in the universe from unformed matter which he created prior to or simultaneous with creating everything else. This insistence on a strict theory of creation ex nihilo gives Anselm’s language at the end of M 7 and M 8 a more peculiar tone than even Aristotle’s. If the ancient Greeks gaped in bewilderment at Aristotle’s argument “by the virtue of concurrence” that something can come out of nothing, some of Anselm’s medieval contemporaries would have been astonished that such an argument was possible in the version Anselm formulates. If any of Anselm’s readers were intrepid enough to include the supreme nature in the category of things that have a cause by suggesting in some way that the supreme nature does not exist out of “nothing” or that it comes into being because of another agent, then much of Anselm’s argument in M 1–4 would have been lost on them. Anselm anticipates some such objection: by the end of M 4 he dispels the notion that the supreme nature exists in any way like the other things that exist through it. But this still leaves unexplained how those things come into being and how they exist once they come into being. In this chapter we will examine how Anselm goes about arguing for the supreme essence as creator, how that essence creates ex nihilo, and why we ought to think of the act of creation as like and unlike the creative act of a craftsman. Anselm had the benefit of writing for monastic readers who would have had at least one of the following in their background: first, the opening chapters of the book of Genesis and its language about creation. Second, the tradition of biblical commentary based on those chapters. Third, liturgical texts, some of which often spoke eloquently and evocatively about God, creator of all things, that were central to the lives of monastic readers.8 And fourth, the 7

Cf. Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, pp. 246–247. Besides the creed, hymns like Ambrose’s Deus, Creator Omnium (Augustine, Confessiones 4.10.15; 9.12.32; 10.34.51; 11.27.35) would make the point repeatedly in the liturgical experiences of people who participated in the rituals of the church. The cycle of readings of the Psalter in the opus dei recommended by the Rule of Saint Benedict also include verses that celebrate the theme. 8

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tradition of Plato’s Timaeus in the medieval centuries in the translation and commentary of Calcidius. Significantly, while Plato’s Timaeus speaks of the creator, the demiurgos, as a craftsman, Genesis does not. However, the demiurgos of Plato’s Timaeus would have resonated with many medieval minds. The image of the craftsman or the artisan (artifex) was a fixture in medieval society, and many a monastic community owed their very existence and subsistence to the labors and ingenuity of craftsmen. Anselm not only adopts the image of the craftsman, who creates, makes, and forms whatever he produces by working on some material thing (materia), but also goes on to show how much unlike a craftsman the supreme nature is. And more importantly, Anselm argues for creatio ex nihilo in contradistinction to the Platonic idea of creation in the Timaeus, as he proposes his own interpretation of the proverb, “nothing comes from nothing.”

2. Plato’s Timaeus, Augustine, and Anselm’s “Creator” Something of what Anselm was up against can be discerned in Augustine’s comments about the creed in his De fide et symbolo, a work which exercised great influence in the middle ages. In explaining the creed, Augustine notes that most people simply get stuck because they compare God as creator to the way an artisan creates things: they base their arguments on the ordinary carnal observations of smiths (fabri), builders (structori), and other workmen (opifices) who “cannot put their art into effect without the aid of material already at hand.”9 Augustine has in mind here those who claim that there was something that God did not create but which God used to help him create all things. And Augustine maintains that such a view denies that God is omnipotent, if in fact God uses something which he himself did not first bring into existence. For any medieval person who had been in the habit of saying the creed, this would be problematic at best and untenable at worst. To say with the Apostle’s Creed that “I believe in God the father almighty creator of heaven and earth” (Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, creatorem caeli et terrae), or with the Nicene Creed that “I believe 9 Augustine, De fide et symbolo 2.2 (PL 40, col. 183; Augustine: Early Writings, LCC, p. 354).

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in one God, father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible” (Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae, uisibilium omnium et inuisibilium), is to claim that all things (heaven and earth, the visible and invisible) come into being because of an omnipotent creator. The creeds make no mention of all things coming into being ex nihilo, and so leave open the possibility that different minds might think differently about just what God’s omnipotence means when one speaks about creation. But a generation or two after Anselm, Peter Lombard felt compelled to make much of the distinction between creating and making, in part because of the inroads that some of his contemporaries had made by adapting aspects of Plato’s Timaeus to their interpretations of Genesis. Peter Lombard’s language about craftsmen, artisans, and the creator is not very far from Augustine’s. His sensitivity to an interpretation of Genesis inspired by the Timaeus shows how prescient Anselm may have been, but it also demonstrates how Anselm’s position varies from Augustine’s. Peter Lombard, for one, had no doubts that in making the distinction between “creating” and “making” he is following Augustine’s views, expressed in his various interpretations of the opening chapters of Genesis.10 In chapter 2 of Distinction 1 of Book 2 of Peter Lombard’s Sententiae, he writes that “to create” is “to make something from nothing,” but “to make” means to fashion “something not only from nothing, but also from matter.” So even a man or an angel can make something, which is why a man or an angel may be called a “maker” (factor) or an “artisan” (artifex), but to create belongs exclusively to God alone. God is, therefore, a “creator” (creator) and a “worker” (opifex) and “maker” (factor); and properly retains the name Creator while sharing the others with creatures. He goes on to say that Scripture uses creator and maker interchangeably of God, but that does not mean that one should think of God making in the way human beings make things. In the previous chapter, Peter Lombard mentioned his objective of “crushing the error of certain men” who maintain that there were “more beginnings without a beginning.” He specifically mentions Plato as one of the chief culprits, who estimated that there were 10 Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos; De Genesis ad litteram liber imperfectus; De Genesi ad litteram.

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three first principles, namely God, the Exemplar, and matter, all of them uncreated, each without beginning (principium); and God as a quasi-craftsman, not a creator. Anselm does not adopt the distinction between “making” and “creating” that Peter Lombard borrows from Augustine, but the goal of Anselm’s particular doctrine is to meet the same challenge posed by Peter Lombard’s Platonist contemporaries. There is analytic simplicity in Anselm’s arguments that make up his strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, even if in the end he leaves the question about matter unanswered. For Augustine, anyone who acknowledges that the world was made by an omnipotent God is bound to admit also that the world was made out of nothing. If God is omnipotent there is nothing of which he is not the creator, although there is nothing so explicit in the account of creation in Genesis 1 to which Augustine is indebted. As Sorabji remarks in a personal note, the early verses of Genesis do not demand such an interpretation: “Personally, I should have thought that the opening of Genesis strongly suggests a beginning of the material universe. It makes no difference that it (naturally) does not specify whether it is formless matter or the ordered universe, including its matter, that begins: in either case we should in effect have an absolute beginning of the material universe.”11 Augustine’s conception of creatio ex nihilo does not exclude formless matter. Take out Augustine’s use of deus, replace it with supreme nature, and we have Anselm’s argument as it is summed up in M 4. If one presses Augustine for further elaboration, he sets out in his explanation the themes that appear in the arguments Anselm makes in M 5–14, though Anselm is far more radical in his position on creatio ex nihilo than Augustine. Even if he did make something out of something else, as he made man out of clay, he did not make it out of something which he had not himself made. For he made the earth out of nothing, and clay comes from the earth. If he made the heaven and the earth, that is, the world and all it contains, out of some matter – as it is written: “Thou didst create the world out of invisible, or even, as some copies read, formless matter” (Wisdom 11.17) – we must by no means believe that the matter out of which the world was made, however formless or invisible, could have existed as it was

11

Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, p. 194.

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by itself, as if it were coeternal (coaeternam) and of the same age (coaeuam) with God.12

In the remainder of the passage that I am quoting from Augustine, I have replaced deus (God) with summa natura to give some sense of how it would read if Anselm were repeating Augustine’s words: “Only from the omnipotent [supreme nature] did it receive whatever measure of its being it had, and whatever potentiality it had to receive other different forms. For it is by the gift of the [supreme nature] that any formed thing (res formata) not only has its existence but even is capable of receiving form (formabilis).”13 The difference between what is formed (formatum) and what is capable of being formed (formabile) is simply that one is already formed and the other has the capacity for it. Both, however, are created by the supreme nature who alone gives form to things and also gives them their capacity for being formed: “For from him and in him is the unchangeable form (species) which is the highest form of all (omnium speciosissima).”14 For Augustine, this is what it means to believe that God made all things (omnia deum fecisse) out of nothing (de nihilo). “For if the world was made out of matter, matter itself was made of nothing” simply because of God’s gift and determination. This formulation would satisfy Anselm’s strict doctrine. But there is more to Augustine’s doctrine and less to Anselm’s strictures. For Augustine, everything that exists, including matter, is from God (read “supreme nature” for Anselm), who Augustine now describes in an almost untranslatable phrase as the “primal capacity” (prima capacitas), from whom all things receive their forms. Why go through all this? Augustine explains that this is meant to obviate two problems: “We have said this in order that no one should suppose that Scripture contradicts itself when it says, in one place, that God made all things of nothing (de nihilo), and in another, that the world was made of formless matter (de informi materia).”15 While the part about formless matter could be read either as an interpretation of Genesis 1 or more directly borrowed from Wis12 Augustine, De fide et symbolo 2.2 (Augustine: Early Writings, LCC, p. 354). 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., LCC, pp. 354–355. 15 Ibid., LCC, p. 355.

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dom 11:17–18 or possibly even Sirach 24:8, some might wonder just where Augustine derives the text from Scripture which says God made all things out of nothing. The most likely source is the deuterocanonical 2 Maccabees 7:28 which Augustine takes as scripture.16 Although he rarely cites Maccabees as such, he refers to the story of the martyrs in the book of Maccabees often enough. In fact, on most occasions when Augustine speaks of creatio ex nihilo, the inspiration for his comments seem far from the Maccabean context, and he adopts language that is almost all his own, as his important statements on creation in the Confessiones show. If any of Anselm’s putative readers knew Augustine’s De fide et symbolo and had also read the Confessiones and could recall Augustine’s discussion in Book 12 about creation and matter, they would easily have anticipated some of Anselm’s arguments. But they would also have known how subtle Augustine’s arguments are in the Confessiones compared to his much briefer comments in De fide et symbolo and how the language of form, formlessness, matter, and nothingness posed problems for Augustine’s own ability to think about creatio ex nihilo.17 For Augustine, “formless matter” stands somewhere between “nothingness” and “absolute nothingness.” He adopts a number of different locutions, saying at one point that he might call it a “nothing something” (nihil aliquid) or, if he were permitted to say it, something that “is and is not” (est non est).18 In Confessiones 12.8.8 he even proposes: “almost nothing” or “nearly nothing” (prope nihil). And so he is not disinclined to speaking of creation as involving a first stage from or out of nothing and a second stage from “almost nothing,” meaning the creative act from “formless matter;” while also insisting that both stages occur simultaneously, a point that would exercise a number of medieval thinkers especially in the twelfth century as they sought to reconcile Augustine with Plato’s Timaeus.19 Augustine’s commentaries on Genesis contain various attempts at explaining this. What is more, Augustine is unapologetic about the myriad of questions

16

See Augustine, De doctrina christiana 2.18.13. Augustine, Confessiones 12.5.5–6.6. 18 Augustine, Confessiones 12.6.6. 19 Charlotte Gross, “Twelfth-Century Concepts of Time: Three Reinterpretations of Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation Simul,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 23 (1985), pp. 325–338. 17

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surrounding these early chapters of Genesis. He acknowledges that there are more questions than answers about exactly how God creates all the material and non-material things (for example, angels) of the universe. For Augustine, then, even if one believes in creatio ex nihilo, there are multiple interpretations and approaches to the opening chapters of Genesis. Augustine’s latitude stands in sharp contrast to Anselm’s sense of analytic clarity and his manner of explicating the language of creatio ex nihilo. If Anselm knew Augustine’s various interpretations of Genesis, and did not care to mention them in a work in which he claims Augustinian inspiration, his particular take on creatio ex nihilo would constitute an important difference from Augustine. That difference would have to be read as an implicit criticism of Augustine. But did Anselm know Augustine’s views?

3. Creatio Ex Nihilo and the Craftsman (M 5–7) M 5 has the following caption: “That just as the supreme essence exists through himself (per se) and other things exist through him (per illam) so also he exists from himself (ex se) just as everything else exists from him (ex illa).” With this Anselm introduces yet another distinction that does not seem so necessary at first, until Anselm mentions the craftsman, the artificer (artifex), who produces something out of an image or an idea in his mind and out of some material “stuff” from which he forms (or makes) the thing he creates. The distinction turns on two prepositions: ex and per. Anselm intends to use the image of the craftsman to sustain his argument about how things that exist both exist from the supreme nature and also through the supreme nature. For now he merely proposes that ex (from / out of) and per (through) can be used interchangeably, since whatever exists from something also exists through that something and vice-versa. In the case of the craftsman and the material (or matter) from which he creates his work, the logic is simple. It allows one to speak of the material cause of whatever exists as the penultimate cause and the craftsman as the efficient cause: “whatever exists from some matter and through a craftsman can also be said to exist through the matter and from the craftsman, since it has its existence through both and from both – that is, by both – although it does not exist through the

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matter and from the matter in the same way that it exists through the craftsman and from the craftsman.”20 What does it say, though, about the supreme nature and matter (materia), the “stuff,” from which and through which things are constituted? This is where Anselm’s discussion takes a decided turn towards an engagement with Platonism, usually missing in various accounts of Anselm’s presumed Platonism.21 Anselm makes the observation that the expressions “to exist through something” and “to exist from something” admit of different senses. Anselm mentions three: “For whatever is said to exist through something seems to exist either through an efficient cause (per efficiens) or through some matter (per materiam) or through some other aid, as it were through an instrument (per instrumentum).”22 The first two causes are clear cut, the third requires some explanation. It holds out some other means besides an efficient or material cause as an aid to the process of creation. But why is this necessary, if in fact, all things exist proximately through their natures and ultimately through the supreme essence? To begin with, Anselm wants to distinguish the existence of the supreme nature from these three ways. Once he has done that he tries to make the case for how all existent things exist through and from the supreme nature. He then asks whether there can be any other cause to their existence other than the supreme nature (the efficient cause) and matter (their material cause). Now the premise: whatever exists through any of the three ways just mentioned exists through something else (per aliud est) and is therefore both posterior to (posterius) and less (minus) than that through 20 M 5 (S 1, p. 18; Williams translation, p. 15): ex eo ipso, quemadmodum quod est ex materia et per artificem, potest etiam dici esse per materiam et ex artifice, quondam per utrumque et ex utroque, id est ab utroque habet ut sit, quamuis aliter sit per materiam et ex materia, quam per artificem et ex artifice. 21 See Kurt Flasch, Flasch, K. “Die philosophische Ansatz des Anselm von Canterbury in Monologion und sein Verhältnis zum Augustinischen Neuplatonismus,“ Analecta Anselmiana, 2 (1970), pp. 15–43; and F. S. Schmitt, “Anselm und der (Neu-)Platonismus,” Analecta Anselmiana, I (1969), pp. 39–71; as well as Gareth B. Matthews, “Anselm, Augustine, and Platonism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 61–83. 22 M 6 (S 1, p. 19; Williams translation, p. 16, amended): Quod enim dicitur esse per aliquid, uidetur esse aut per efficiens aut per materiam aut per aliquod aliud adiumentum, uelut per instrumentum.

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which it exists. Since the supreme nature (summa natura) does not exist through something else, it is not posterior to another, nor less than anything. It follows that the supreme nature does not exist in any of these three ways. Actually, the argument need not be made at all. Anselm raises the objection anyway, because it gives the impression that the supreme nature exists through or from “nothing.” At the same time, it plays into an old tradition of reflection on the meaning of “nothing” as both a predicate and an attribute of non-existence. Augustine does something like this in De magistro when he considers the various ways in which the word “nothing” signifies both non-existence and negation. There is also the well-known Carolingian debate about nihil.23 The objection sounds ludicrous, but Anselm must address it. He acknowledges this much, that “although on the basis of what has already been established by the light of reason about the supreme substance (summa substantia) I think that these things can in no way apply to him, nonetheless, I shall not neglect to put together a proof of this.” 24 Recall my earlier point about the place of objections in the Monologion and why Anselm’s consideration of objections attest to the dialogical aspect of the Monologion’s form that Southern overlooks in his assessment of Anselm’s openness to counterargument. Anselm continues: For since this meditation of mine has suddenly brought me to this important and interesting point, I do not wish to pass over any objection, however simple and almost foolish (simplicem paeneque fatuam), that occurs to me in the course of my disputation. Thus by leaving nothing doubtful (ambiguuam) in what went before, I can proceed with greater certainty to what follows; and further, if I should want to persuade anyone of what I have been thinking, even someone who is slow to understand can easily agree with what he has heard once every obstacle, however small, has been removed.25 23 On both Augustine and the Carolingian debate, see Marcia L. Colish, “Carolingian Debates over Nihil and Tenebrae: A Study in Theological Method,” Speculum, 59 (1984), pp. 757–795. 24 M 6 (S 1, p. 19; Williams translation, p. 16): Quae licet ex iis, quae rationis luce de summa iam animaduerti substantia, putem nullatenus in illam posse cadere, non tamen negligam huius rei probationem contexere. 25 M 6 (S 1, p. 19; Williams translation, p. 16): Quoniam namque ad magnum et delectabile quiddam me subito perduxit haec mea meditatio, nullam uel simplicem paeneque fatuam obiectionem disputanti mihi occurrentem negligendo uolo

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We meet once again the figure of that slow-witted individual who, by following Anselm’s many twists and turns, will come to understand by being persuaded by Anselm’s arguments because not even the smallest objection has been left unexamined. This is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the Monologion: no room for doubt or ambiguity. What Anselm considers false he will name as such; if he deems something foolish, absurd, or unthinkable, he will not resist pointing it out; and on a number of occasions he will assert the exceptional rationality of his arguments. And what could be more absurd than that the supreme nature exists out of “nothing.” Absurd or not, the mere mention of “nothing” or “nothingness” in conjunction with the theme of existence puts Anselm and his readers on notice, given all that has gone on before. Sooner or later Anselm will have to expatiate upon creatio ex nihilo. In the meantime, Anselm is intent on resolving the alltoo-simple and foolish objection about the supreme nature existing from or through nothing. That the supreme nature could exist through nothing by way of some other nature is even more absurd, Anselm reckons. If he exists “from nothing through something” (per aliquid … ex nihilo), the cause of his existence would have to be considered a great good (magnum bonum) for having produced so great a good (tanti boni fuit). But certainly no good thing can be thought of as having existed prior to that good without which no other good exists. Since it is not even conceivable that anything else has existence prior to the supreme nature, still less conceivable is that the supreme nature would have its existence through something else. The conclusion is unavoidable: “although the supreme substance does not exist through some efficient cause or from some matter, and although he was not helped by any causes in order that he might be brought into being, nonetheless, he does not in any sense exist through or from nothing, since he is through himself and from himself whatever he is.”26

praeterire. Quatenus et ego nihil ambiguum in praecedentibus relinquens certior ualeam ad sequentia procedere, et si cui forte quod speculor persuadere uoluero, omni uel modico remoto obstaculo quilibet tardus intellectus ad audita facile possit accedere. 26 M 6 (S 1, p. 20; Williams translation, p. 17): Licet igitur summa substantia non sit per aliquid efficiens aut ex aliqua materia nec aliquibus sit adiuta causis

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If these objections seem foolish, there is another one in tow, but one that also gets to the heart of the intelligibility of so much of what Anselm has been proposing: How do we understand the notion that the supreme nature exists through and from himself, if in fact, he does not come into being through “anything”? Anselm appropriates the language of the creeds. “Light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made.”27 But even without the creed as a direct source, Augustine had used language reminiscent of the creed in speaking about the relationship between the Father and Son in Trinitarian doctrine in De trinitate 7.2–6, for example: light from light, wisdom from wisdom, etc. Augustine’s De fide et symbolo 6 also mentions the ancient motif of a radiating light that does not lose its “being.” Anselm reprises this ancient understanding, and makes explicit what is assumed in the creedal formula. So Anselm writes: “It seems that perhaps (forte) this can be understood only in the same sense in which it is said that light shines, or is shining, through itself and from itself.” That “it is said” alludes to either common speech, universal attestation, or more probably the effects of the doctrinal and creedal tradition. For as he explains it: “light” (lux) is to “to shine” (lucere) and “shining” (lucens) what “essence” (essentia) is to “to be” (esse) and “being” (ens). As with some things Anselmian, it is easy to miss the suggestive element in this argument. The analogy between light and essence is not meant to be exact but merely illustrative, though it has a long historical tradition and the creed behind it. It is not difficult for anyone who can appreciate the nature of light shining through itself to gain some sense of how the supreme essence exists or subsists through itself. At least this is Anselm’s claim. With this in the background, Anselm tries to preclude any possible objection about how the supreme nature exists through and from itself. He then turns his attention to the most pressing question of all: how do all existent things exist through and from the supreme nature? Did the supreme essence make them all or did he make them through something, in this case matter (materia)? At ut ad esse perduceretur: nullatenus tamen est per nihil aut ex nihilo, quia per seipsam et ex seipsa est quidquid est. 27 The language borrows from creedal formulations and early Christian debates about Trinitarian doctrine. See Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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this point in the discussion Anselm thinks it unnecessary to ask if the supreme nature made them through an intermediary in some secondary way (secundo loco) by helping something else to bring them into being. Anselm eliminated this possibility in the preceding discussion. If all things exist through and from the supreme nature they must exist through and from that nature in a primary way (principaliter), Anselm insists. He resists any suggestion that things exist in and through the supreme nature derivatively, in a secondary sense. A potential engagement with the Platonic tradition of the Timaeus seems almost certain at this point. Anselm frames the basic question and provides his preliminary response: And so I think I should first ask whether all things that exist through another exist from some matter (ex aliqua materia). Now I have no doubt that the whole mass of this world (omnem mundi molem) with its parts, as we see it formed, consists of earth, water, air, and fire. These four elements can in some way be understood apart from the forms that we observe in formed things (in rebus formatis), in such a way that the unformed or even confused nature of the elements is seen to be the matter of all the bodies that are made distinct by their own forms (suis formis). As I say, I have no doubt about that. But I ask where this thing of which I have spoken, that matter of the mass of the world, comes from. For if it in turn comes from some other matter, then that is more truly the matter (materia) of the physical universe (corporae uniuersitatis).28

Two important points need to be kept in view. First and foremost, it is clear that the subject under consideration is matter, and exactly how the supreme nature is related to the physical universe through it; and second, the mention of the four elements (earth, water, air, and fire), so familiar in discussions of ancient and medieval physics. What may be significant about this reference to the four elements is not that Anselm mentions them but why he mentions them. Anselm wants to assure his readers that he too accepts 28 M 7 (S 1, pp. 20–21; Williams translation, p. 18): Primum itaque mihi quaerendum esse puto, utrum uniuersitas rerum, quae per aliud sunt, sit ex aliqua materia. Non autem dubito omnem hanc mundi molem cum partibus suis sicut uidemus formatam, constare ex terra et aqua et aere et igne, quae scilicet quattuor elementa aliquomodo intelligi possunt sine his formis quas conspicimus in rebus formatis, ut eorum informis aut etiam confusa natura uideatur esse materia omnium corporum suis formis discretorum; non inquam hoc dubito sed quaero, unde haec ipsa quam dixi mundanae molis materia sit. Nam si huius materiae est aliqua materia, illa uerius est corporeae uniuersitatis materia.

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the ancient tradition without qualification. Hence the repetition of his “I have no doubt” (non dubito), both at the beginning and at the end of the passage. More to the point, it seems to signal what Anselm is about to do. For no one who had any acquaintance with the Timaeus would have had any doubts about how central the four elements are to Plato’s account of creation, the description of nature, and the origins of the physical universe. Not only because these four elements are essential to the physics of the Timaeus, but because Plato links them to the theory of Forms. If Anselm is to speak about how the mass of the world is formed, if he is to speak about matter and the supreme essence, and he intends to oppose the Platonic theory offered in the Timaeus, he would have to do so carefully, especially if he has no new physics, so to speak, to counter the ancient tradition found in the Timaeus. “I have no doubt about that.” This takes care of the four elements, but without argument. But about matter and where it comes from, Anselm has some doubt, and it is doubt about the Timaeus. Why insist on this, when Anselm does not name the Timaeus? Not naming his sources is not unusual for Anselm. More importantly, Calcidius’s translation and commentary of the Timaeus is attested throughout the early medieval period into the twelfth century.29 The eleventh century saw an important transformation not only in the reception of Plato and Calcidius but of the uses and interpretations of the Timaeus. Anna Somfai has shown that of the twenty-three manuscripts of the eleventh century, eleven of those manuscripts were produced in the north of France.30 In addition, we know from a lone surviving reference in one of Lanfranc’s notes on patristic texts that Lanfranc had Calcidius’s translation of the Timaeus as a source for his note. The note is to a passage in Augustine’s De ciuitate Dei where Augustine mentions the alternative translation of the Timaeus by Cicero, a translation to which Augustine makes reference a number of times in De ciuitate Dei. Lanfranc compares the Ciceronian text alluded to by Augustine with Calcidius. This is 29

See Tulio Gregory, “The Platonic Inheritance,” and Charles Burnett, “Scientific Speculations,” in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, edited by Peter Dronke (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 54–81 and pp. 151–176 respectively. The reference to the latter is to pp. 168–172. 30 Anna Somfai, “The Eleventh-Century Shift in the Reception of Plato’s Timaeus and Calcidius’s Commentary,” Journal of the Warburg Courtauld Institutes, 65 (2002), pp. 1–21.

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our surest indication that Lanfranc had some familiarity with Calcidius’s translation and was not willing to settle for Cicero’s version. The note is early enough that it gives some indication that Calcidius’ translation of the Timaeus was either present at Bec when Anselm arrived or familiar enough within Lanfranc’s circle at Bec for Lanfranc to quote it. Anselm moved in an environment where people knew the basic cosmology, physics, and theology of the Timaeus in such a way that Anselm’s comments would resonate. Anselm could assume this familiarity among the audience made up of his fellow monks at Bec who had imposed on him the obligation of producing the Monologion. The force of the question that follows immediately on Anselm’s second protestation of not having any doubt about the four elements should not be lost either: “But I ask where this thing of which I have spoken, the matter of the mass of the world, comes from. For if it in turn comes from some other matter, then that is more truly the matter of the physical universe.”31 Two different kinds of matter are envisaged here. First, the matter of the mass of the world, the “stuff,” so to speak of what the physical universe is made of. And second, the matter which possibly lies behind it, that “some other matter.” Few readers with any idea of the Timaeus would read or hear this without immediately thinking of the pre-existent matter or the four elements which the demiurge uses to create the world. If one knew the commentary provided by Calcidius and its extended digression on matter (de silua), so much the better. But one did not have to know that in speaking about the matter of the physical universe and pre-existent matter Anselm was alluding to a tradition shaped by the Timaeus. That is not the essential point. What is crucial is that by the time Anselm is done with his argumentation the problems posed by the Timaeus would no longer threaten Christian minds, or so it seems. Obviously, if one has any inkling of the description of pre-existent matter in the Timaeus, then everything that follows upon Anselm’s posing of the question becomes patently clear. And all the more so, given the preceding discussion about “nothing.”

31 M 7 (S 1, p. 21): sed quaero, unde haec ipsa quam dixi mundanae molis materia sit. Nam si huius materiae est aliqua materia, illa uerius est corporeae uniuersitatis materia.

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Up to this point, Anselm has been speaking of all things that exist in the physical universe (uniuersitas rerum) and about the bodies (corporae) of these things. He now introduces another element in the discussion that threatens to revise just about everything. He asks whether they are visible or invisible. One might be tempted to think that for Anselm there are visible and invisible things that have some kind of form and are made of some matter. But such is the nature of his procedure in the Monologion that he can actually introduce a somewhat incongruent idea on his way to dismissing what arguments he deems absurd without necessarily suggesting whether or not the supposition implied is one he agrees or disagrees with. For the moment, he seems to press the point that even if there are visible and invisible things that exist from some matter (est aliqua materia) they cannot be said to exist unless they exist in one of three ways: 1) From some other matter other than the supreme nature. 2) From the thing itself. And 3) from some third essence which is neither the supreme nature nor the thing in question. (2) is false because anything that exists from matter exists from something else that is prior to it. “And since nothing is other than itself or posterior to itself, it follows that nothing exists from itself materially.” (1) is ruled out, because it is not possible to think that something can exist without “he who is supreme among all things.” Consequently, (3) must also be false. If, then, all things “material” (both visible and invisible) come into existence solely through the supreme nature, does it mean that the supreme nature is “material?” Anselm’s language loses some of its clarity when he speaks about “any other matter other than the supreme nature” (ex alia materia quam ex summa natura). It gives the impression that the natura of the summa natura is also some kind of materia. Let us pursue the language further, for Anselm seems not at all embarrassed by it. He does say within the same paragraph that, “that which is in no way something is not the matter of anything” (quod nullo modo aliquid est, nullius rei materia est). Anselm appears to use “matter” and “nature” interchangeably in speaking of something existing through its own matter (read “nature”) or existing through the nature (read “substance”) of the supreme essence or the matter (or nature) of something else. This equivocal use of “matter” and “nature” leads to the question whether the supreme nature loses something of its nature by having other things come into existence through it. Hence, “if

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something less than the supreme nature can exist from the matter of the supreme nature (ex summae naturae materia), the supreme good can be changed and corrupted – which it is impious to say. Therefore, since everything that is other than the supreme good is less than he is, it is impossible for anything else to be from him in this way.”32 An impious conclusion suggests that the objection is formulated to preclude the very point Anselm has been arguing. The impiety is our indication that the argument’s premises may be flawed as well. Matter is subject to corruption, and corruption implies change. If a lesser nature should exist through the “matter” of the supreme essence, it would subject the supreme nature to corruption and change, and make it less good. This is incongruent (inconueniens). So the idea that some lesser nature (minor natura) exists materially (materialiter) from the supreme nature is wrong to begin with, so whatever exists cannot exist ultimately from matter: “Since, therefore, it has been established that the essence of those things that exist through another does not exist from the supreme essence as its matter, nor from itself, nor from some other thing, it is evident that it exists from no matter.”33 This is a reductio founded on a strange equivalence, where the essence of existent things is the basis for them not existing from matter. Anselm now moves to a discussion of the essence of those things (eorum essentiam) that exist through something else (per aliud sunt). But we can anticipate why Anselm eventually insists that ex nihilo precludes creation from any sort of matter whether it is pre-existent matter, or matter created prior to all other material things, or matter that is created simultaneously with the creation of formed things. This presupposes that the uniuersitas rerum have non-material essences. Anselm performs a handy maneuver to move from the nature of the things to their essences so as to be able to speak of the essences lacking any materiality (nulla materia est). This may be too clever, however, since the objection could be made that in much of the preceding discussion, Anselm spoke 32

M 7 (S 1, p. 21; Williams translation, p. 19): At si ex summae naturae materia potest esse aliquid minus ipsa, summum bonum mutari et corrumpi potest; quod nefas est dicere. Quapropter quoniam omne quod aliud est quam ipsa, minus est ipsa, impossibile est aliquid aliud hoc modo esse ex ipsa. 33 M 7 (S 1, p. 21; Williams translation, p. 19): Cum igitur eorum essentiam, quae per aliud sunt, constet non esse uelut ex materia ex summa essentia, nec ex se nec ex alio: manifestum est quia ex nulla materia est.

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about the material origins of “these things.” So by adopting the language of essences at this point Anselm is merely circumventing his own argument. In other words, if one speaks about essences, one has skipped how those essences become materialized. But a retort is already at hand. Recall the equivocation between materia and natura that I mentioned a moment ago. Notice, also, that Anselm uses “nature” and “essence” as synonyms when speaking of the supreme nature, and enjoins that same flexible usage when speaking about uniuersitas rerum. When Anselm comes to speak of the essences of these things not existing from any matter (est ex nulla materia), he merely reaches for the pre-eminent signification, “essence” or “nature” and disregards “matter.” To an unsympathetic reader this may be questionable. After all, the notion that an essence does not exist from matter makes sense insofar as essences are non-corporeal: which is to say that, while the thing in question might have a material form or expression, its essence, its “essential nature,” is not material. But to say that an essence exists without the existence of the thing of which it is the essence verges towards a Platonic form. And, while it might make sense to say from a Platonic standpoint that “a nature does not come from matter,” because natures are essences, it still seems implausible to think that a nature as such exists without the corresponding physical things that express that nature. Anselm’s main objective, though, is to be able to argue that the supreme nature creates everything that exists out of nothing, without anything pre-existent. That is the final word of M 7: “the supreme essence alone, through himself, produced so great a mass of things – so numerous a multitude, so beautifully formed, so orderly in its variety, so fitting in its diversity – from nothing.”34 The concluding words of M 7 speak not of the creation of essences. Rather they speak of the creation of a great mass of things (tantam rerum molem) in all their diversity. At the same time, the premise of the argument is based on essences. It is as the maker of natures and essences that the supreme nature creates from nothing. Still, the conclusion that the supreme nature creates a great mass of things in all their diversity does not follow so unmistakably from the preceding assertions about all those things that exist through something else. And it certainly would not fol34

M 7 (S 1, p. 22). (Williams translation, p. 20).

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low inexorably from speaking about things to speaking about their essences as not being made from any matter. If existent things cannot exist without matter, it is not clear why their essences are not somehow also bound with their materiality. Yet Anselm proceeds to build on precisely this point. Anselm concludes: Since it is perfectly obvious that the essence of all things that exist, other than the supreme essence, was made by that same supreme essence, and that it does not exist from any matter, there is undoubtedly nothing more evident than this: the supreme essence alone, through himself, produced so great a mass of things – so numerous in multitude, so beautifully formed, so orderly in its variety, so fitting in its diversity – from nothing.35

This is the grand finale whose second half we have already encountered. Notice again the transition from things to their “essences.” But if it is as creator of essences that the supreme nature creates from nothing, then Anselm has merely shifted the posts further back. What is more, the conclusion turns on the creation of “essences,” and yet, Anselm uses the singular “essence” for the essence of all things that exist. I have used the plural “essences” because of Anselm’s tendency of switching back and forth between essence and nature. But a question looms. Does Anselm mean to say that there is one essence for all created things? Or is this merely stylistic: easier to say the essence of all created things than the essences of all things? I am inclined to think it stylistic, since earlier on he was keen to point out the degrees of dignity which attach to different natures. Anselm also went out of his way to argue against the notion of infinite degrees of dignity because that would somehow make it difficult to insist on a supreme nature superior to those “infinite” natures. There is something of that sense here too in M 7 in connection with Anselm’s language about essence and matter. This is reflected in the almost imperceptible manner in which he moves back and forth between essence and matter, on the one hand, and matter and nothing, on the other hand. If one is keeping score on the Platonic allusion that commenced the whole discourse, one would have 35

M 7 (S 1, p. 22; Williams translation, p. 20): procul dubio nihil apertius quam quia illa summa essentia tantam rerum molem, tam numerosam multitudinem, tam fomnose formatam, tam ordinate uariatam, tam conuenienter diuersam sola per seipsam produxit ex nihilo.

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to say that Anselm has traveled quite a distance from his protestations about having no doubt that all things that exist, “the whole mass of the world with its parts” (omnem hanc mundi molem cum partibus suis), are formed from the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. His comments so far seem almost irreconcilable with this understanding of the four elements as the basic constituents of all things of the physical universe (uniuersitas materia). Where do the natures of created things and the forms of these four elements meet? Is the essence of all created things to be found in the forms of these four elements? After all, in posing the much earlier question, “that matter of the mass of the world, where does it come from?” Anselm sought to obviate any counterarguments about matter and the four elements by going behind the elements themselves. In answering the more primary question, “where does the matter come from?” Anselm seems to have quelled any suggestions that his doctrine is at odds with the ancient tradition. The attendant notion that the forms of the four elements lie hidden, or at least, are not observed in the visible or physical representations of things may preclude a number of objections. But it is not clear that it meets the potential rejoinder that Anselm’s Creator is at odds with ancient physics. Interestingly, Anselm does not return to the four elements once he has made his case for his strict version of creatio ex nihilo. And so to “nothing” we go. There is an additional problem. Previously in M 5 Anselm made a distinction between two prepositions. He argued in the case of the craftsman (artifex) that whatever he makes exists through (per) him. And because the craftsman is also the originator of what he makes, whatever he makes exists out of (ex) the material from which he makes it. In the case of the supreme essence “through” and “out of” are interchangeable, unless there is some intermediary, whether some matter or some instrument, which provides some assistance to the supreme essence in his creative act. This difference, soon to be worked out in M 10, lies at the heart of Anselm’s insistence that absolutely nothing stands in between the supreme essence and what it creates: neither matter nor any other instrument aids the supreme nature. How the matter of the universe of things (rerum uniuersitas) enters Anselm’s metaphysical outlook remains unexplained. By insisting also on the creation of essences or the essence of all the things that are, Anselm sidesteps the problem. But it does not go away.

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In the first place, Anselm himself mentions the four elements and the matter of the physical universe and argues that these elements (earth, air, fire and water) can in some way be separated in thought from the forms that we observe (conspicimus) in formed things (in rebus formatis). That in itself does not seem problematic, though it is not exactly clear what this procedure entails if Anselm is not referring to conceptions or ideas of earth, air, fire, and water, as opposed to their visible manifestations. How does one observe, say, the form of fire in formed things? If he had any knowledge of Augustine’s commentaries of Genesis he might have found some suggestive remarks in this regard. Some of Anselm’s younger contemporaries who shaped twelfth-century debates about nature and creation, like William of Conches (c. 1085–1154) and Thierry of Chartres made some attempts at divining this process, and in so doing attest to their own uncertainties about a process about which Anselm seemed most certain.36 In the case of Bernard of Chartres, after valiant attempts at reconciling Plato’s Timaeus to Genesis during his career as a master, Bernard seems to have given up on all his intellectual labors across a whole range of topics ranging from his account of creation according the principles of physics to his mathematical approach to explaining the Trinity.37 In about 1150, as Southern describes it, “he abandoned his studies altogether, gave his books to the cathedral at Chartres, dropped his title of ‘doctor’ and became once more a learner in the silence of a monastic solitude.”38 Thierry’s confidence seems to have waned. Not so with Anselm three quarters of a century earlier. Let us assume for the moment that the procedure Anselm hypothesizes is not entirely impossible, and that we can indeed think the elements apart from their so-called forms in formed things. However, to do this in such a way that we are convinced that “the unformed or even confused nature (informis aut etiam confuse natura) of the elements (earth, air, fire, and water) is seen as (uideatur) the matter of all the bodies (corporae) that are made

36 William of Conches, Glosae super Platonem, ed. E. Jeaneau (Paris, 1965); and N. M. Häring, Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School (Toronto, 1971). 37 R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, Vol 2: The Heroic Age (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 79–89. 38 Ibid., p. 88.

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distinct by their own forms (suis formis)” seems a tall order. This is the second part that renders Anselm’s “I have no doubt about it” (non dubito) almost incredible. Certainly, one can see these forms in unformed or confused matter, if one is thinking of earth and water, and perhaps air. But surely, to move from this to the assertion that all things in the physical universe possess the forms of earth, air, fire, and water, is not so inexorable or evident. It is doubtful if Anselm’s fellow monks would have been so persuaded without much more argument, unless Anselm’s authority carried more weight than his arguments. Anselm’s confidence stands in some contrast to some of his contemporaries. William of Conches, probably the most celebrated Platonist of the early twelfth-century thinkers in the north of France, was less assured about the four elements as the basic constituents of matter, despite his fondness for Plato’s Timaeus and his willingness to defend the cosmology and theology of the Timaeus as compatible with Genesis. William, at least, was willing to raise the question about how the four elements could possibly constitute all things. And if William could have his doubts or reservations, we should not presume that Anselm’s fellow monks at Bec would have been without any such doubts. Perhaps, Anselm’s language about what can “in someway be understood” (aliquomodo intelligi possunt) is the key. This probably concedes that the procedure he is commending is far from obvious. So his point is not that it is easy to construe or that it is self-evident or even that it necessarily follows, but that it can in a certain fashion be understood that the four elements can be conceived apart from the forms we observe in formed things. Now, since formed things have their distinct forms, we are supposed to understand by some work of intellection how we can think these four elements as the building blocks of all formed things. But the question still remains: if all the matter of the universe is constituted by these four elements, how does Anselm carry through his insistence that the supreme essence makes all things, the great mass of things (tantum rerum molem), out of nothing (produxit ex nihilo) entirely from himself (per seipsum), without creating matter in the first place or some species of those four elements that can give form to created things? Throughout all of this Anselm has maintained a strict opposition between creation out of nothing (ex nihilo) and creation

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through matter (per materiam). Anselm never mentions the idea of the simultaneous creation of matter and formed things. His fundamental premise is that if the supreme nature created matter prior to the act of creating “the great mass of things,” it would have to be understood as helping the supreme essence in the act of creating, as an instrument and aid. Matter would then provide what is lacking in the creator. This would undermine the view that the supreme nature alone, without assistance, creates all things that exist. It also puts into question Anselm’s understanding of creatio ex nihilo. Anselm’s view, if not extreme, is at least categorical, one not taken by other Christian writers before him.39 It also threatens to undermine the very language of the opening chapters of Genesis, where we read that prior to the act of creation the earth was “formless.” If Anselm’s creatio ex nihilo excludes the mediated instrumentality of created unformed matter, then Anselm has much to explain. There may be a textual problem here. The text of the Latin Vulgate has terra autem erat inanis et uacua where the Old Latin of say an Augustine would have terra autem inuisibile et incomposita. Thinking of “formlessness,” using the language of incomposita, lends itself to richer philosophical commentary than “emptiness.” Inanis suggests the notion of space and void, and thus parallels uacua well, but it does not easily bring to mind the notion of formlessness or unformed (informis) matter.

4. De Nihilo Nihil and the Semantics of “Nothing” (M 8–9) Because of his insistence on “nothing,” Anselm turns to tackle an important problem with an ancient lineage: the semantics of “nothing.” Anselm’s approach to the topic appears at first sight to be merely a repetition of earlier insights. A closer look, how39 For the earliest Christian articulations of the doctrine through Iraeneus the standard work is Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of ‘Creation out of Nothing’ in Early Christian Thought. Translated by A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994). For the later period, especially as it relates to the Cappadocian Fathers, see Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 95ff. For much earlier ancient attempts at creationism see David Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

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ever, reveals that Anselm probably did not know some of these antecedents, and that if he knew them he did not use them in the way that one would have expected. A case in point is John Scottus Eriugena’s discussion of being and nothingness in Book 3 of his Periphyseon. Eriugena begins with a notion of ex nihilo that is fundamentally different from Anselm’s conception of ex nihilo as meaning no pre-existing matter. For Eriugena, to speak of creatio ex nihilo is to say that creation comes from nothing because God is non-being (nothing), since God is beyond what is knowable or sensed. As Donald Duclow puts it succinctly, Eriugena uses nihil as a name for God because nihil implies the transcendence of being. For Eriugena, creation ex nihilo means simply creation ex deo.40 Also, the five modes of nothing that Eriugena proposes are quite different from the semantics of nothing that Anselm presents here in the Monologion. So although Anselm’s discussion of “nothing” in M 8 is “highly reminiscent of Eriugena’s Periphyseon Book III,”41 Anselm’s three ways of speaking about “nothing” argues against Eriugena’s position. Anselm is very explicit in saying that “from nothing” can never be said of something that has actually been made, which is the exact opposite of Eriugena’s explanation of creatio ex nihilo. If Anselm learned his view of “nothing” from Eriugena, he makes rather poor use of it.42 It has also been suggested that perhaps Anselm is borrowing from an earlier Carolingian debate about the semantics of “nothing” or “nothingness,” best known through a treatise by Fredegesius on nihil and tenebrae.43 Or that Anselm is following Augustine’s discussion of the signification of nihil in the De magistro. While both sources seem likely, it could also be that Anselm is merely following up on a problem that presents itself because there is an accepted tradition about the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. And since Anselm had attended to creatio ex nihilo in M 6 and M 7, and 40 Donald F. Duclow, “Divine Nothingness and Self-Creation in John Scotus Eriugena,” The Journal of Religion, 57 (1977), pp. 109–123. The reference is to pp. 110–113. 41 Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena: A Study in Idealism in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 273. Cf. p. 228–240. See also Deirdre Carabine, John Scottus Eriugena (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 48–50. 42 Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scotus Eriugena, pp. 217–226. 43 See Marcia L. Colish, “Carolingian Debates on Nihil and Tenebrae.”

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proffered a particular version of it, he is now bound to consider the semantics of nothing. It is in this context that Anselm mentions the popular adage that we have already discussed, “nothing comes from nothing” (de nihilo nihil). Without putting too fine a point on it, it is the use of the phrase in common parlance and its possible misuse in understanding the Christian doctrine of creation that motivates Anselm’s discussion. As we have already noted, in its most basic sense de nihilo nihil could be the medieval version of “there is no smoke without fire.” More seriously, it could be adopted by the philosophically inclined to encapsulate a metaphysical principle, namely that nothing exists without a cause, or that every effect has a cause. All these possibilities make Anselm’s mention of the phrase no mere happenstance. After disabusing his fellow monks of “how not to think about nothing” Anselm goes on to discuss the supreme nature’s creative utterance “out of which” everything comes into existence “out of nothing.” Significantly, the weaknesses in his arguments about de nihilo nihil do not necessarily undermine what he has to say about the supreme nature’s utterance, since that part depends on the nature of speech and the analogy between the supreme nature’s thought and utterance and the relationship between human thought and speech. For someone who delights in logical puzzles the semantic problems associated with the word “nothing” is not an unwelcome digression. In M 8, Anselm tries to unravel the difficulties associated with “nothing” on the way towards arguing that, when he says that the supreme essence creates out of nothing, he means that the creator brings into being that which previously did not exist; and also that anything the supreme essence creates becomes nothing when it loses any connection with it. The entire discussion is framed by two contentions implied in the assertion that “nothing comes from nothing”: First, no-thing that exists comes out of nowhere. It has its cause in something other than itself. And second – and this is the more peculiar way of taking the expression – whatever is considered “nothing,” whether it is non-existent or useless or vacuous comes out of “nothing.” Between these two constructions there are at least two different senses in which Anselm understands the use of the word nihil. First, nihil functions as a negation of whatever word or proposition it qualifies. Not “Y”, where Y is a word or phrase. So “nothing good” means there is no good. Second, nihil can function as a substantive adjective or a

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noun, in which case it can also be a predicate nominative. Nothing is the matter. Nothing is good, etc. Nothing can also be an attributive adjective. So “Y is nothing” can mean either Y is nothing that exists, or Y is worthless or not-anything-to-think of. Anselm’s comments about nihil exploit all these different ways of using the word. The curious thing for Anselm is the way in which nihil can function as an empty sign. For this is where the problem of “nothing” lies in the idea of creatio ex nihilo. This is where it becomes pronounced. As I indicated previously, Calcidius’s translation and commentary on Plato’s Timaeus was at Bec. Lanfranc had commented on this work, and it would have been familiar to the monks like Maurice who had asked for Anselm to write the Monologion. To those monks, Calcidius’s work on Plato’s Timaeus would be part of the cultural and intellectual background they took for granted when they came to Anselm’s Monologion. It would not have been necessary for Anselm to advertise that at such and such a point one needed to recall what they had learned from Calcidius’s Timaeus to appreciate Anselm’s arguments. We may go even further to suggest that Lanfranc’s comments on Calcidius and on the Timaeus provided an occasion for the young Anselm and his fellow monks at Bec to recognize the potential challenge that this venerable text posed for Christian thought. And by arguing his case about creatio ex nihilo in a way that took full cognizance of the tradition shaped by Calcidius’s translation and commentary, Anselm was now either re-affirming or re-making the Beccan tradition in a very deliberate way, as to remove any doubts as to how one needed to approach Plato as Calcidius presented the Timaeus. Those who knew both Lanfranc and Anselm’s teaching at Bec would have known exactly where Anselm was moving away from Lanfranc. If, on the other hand, Anselm’s discussion agreed with what they knew of Lanfranc’s teaching then it would be nothing more than confirmation of what Lanfranc had already done. And so as the saying goes: “nothing comes from nothing.” Could Anselm have borrowed the phrase from Calcidius too? I have not been able to confirm that Calcidius uses the phrase de nihilo nihil anywhere in his commentary on the Timaeus.44 There are, however, 44 On Calcidius here I am indebted to J. C. M. Van Winden’s Calcidius on Matter: His Doctrine and Sources. A chapter in the history of Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1965).

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some passages in Calcidius’s discussion of matter (de silua) that have striking similarities to some of the arguments in Anselm.45 Any serious engagement of this question of Anselm and Calcidius will take me off track, however. In the context of my current discussion what needs to be appreciated is that Calcidius lies in the background. It is most likely that the general understanding of creation presented in the Timaeus and elaborated by Calcidius’s commentary provides the context for Anselm’s specific notion of creatio ex nihilo. But Anselm goes a step further. In M 8, Anselm intends to demythologize and demystify the adage, “nothing comes from nothing.” By the time Anselm is finished with his demythologizing, the phrase no longer threatens Christian understanding, for Anselm believes he has offered arguments that take the sting out of the phrase. His argument leaves the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo intact, with no concessions to Plato’s Timaeus or Calcidius’s materialist interpretation of creation out of pre-existent matter. Anselm renders de nihilo nihil a mere semantic puzzle. Hence, Anselm’s pun at the beginning of M 8 that “something” occurs to him about this “nothing.” But there is great cost to Anselm’s analytic clarity. Anselm does not explain how the four elements become the matter of existent things. Before going any further, another point about Calcidius and early medieval Platonism. Tullio Gregory provides a comprehensive discussion of what the twelfth century made of Calcidius and the difficulties twelfth-century thinkers faced in commenting on him.46 It is clear from the material Gregory surveys that twelfth-century thinkers were exercised by issues that may not have been current in the 1070s. But even if Calcidius was read and commented upon, even marginally, Calcidius’s text would still have presented to the later eleventh-century thinkers some of the same issues that troubled those of the next century. And we can surmise from William of Conches and Theirry of Chartres, for example, that Anselm and his students and fellow monks faced similar challenges. The specificity of the line of argument Anselm employs leaves little doubt that he had a particular doctrine that he intended to rebut. And some of that line of argumentation seemed to be directly opposed to what

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J. C. M. Van Winden, Calcidius on Matter, pp. 138–141. Tullio Gregory, “The Platonic Inheritance.”

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others, including Tullio Gregory, have described as Augustine’s exemplarist doctrine of creation. According to Gregory, in Augustine’s scheme the divine mind meditates on a divine model to create.47 Gregory joins Augustine to the Platonists, ostensibly because the Timaeus also has the demiurge: who creates based on a pattern or model. There is no doubt that Augustine appropriates the language of the Platonic Forms and Ideas, saying that they are in the divine mind. But Augustine’s usage reflects both Platonic views on the intelligible realm and the New Testament on the kingdom of God and heaven. It is evident in Augustine’s earliest works like the De ordine, the Contra Academicos, and De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXVIII that his early association of the intelligible realm of Platonism and heaven is what underlines his use of the Forms and Ideas as being in the divine mind. When it comes to creation Augustine is decidedly unproblematic, at least, as far as it concerns any residual Platonism. For Augustine, creation is a single divine act that overflows because of what he calls the rationes seminales in created natures which become the generative principle that also continue to create new things.48 And because the rationes seminales are originally created by God, whatever is generated later is referred back to the original rationes. If Tullio Gregory is correct, then Augustine appears to be saying that God creates by his word, through the Idea or Form in the mind of God, and that is why this is like the craftsman. In which case, Augustine’s “Creator” is like a craftsman just as the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus. Two things: First, it is not clear from which Augustinian sources Gregory derives his interpretation of Augustine.49 And second, we should be very hesitant in assuming that merely because Augustine speaks of the Forms or Ideas in the divine mind, he must necessarily also have a conception of the creator like the demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus. For, as we shall see shortly, the two notions can be held quite independently of

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Tullio Gregory, “The Platonic Inheritance,” p. 72. Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram 6.14.25–6.18.29; 9.17.32. See on this subject Rowan Williams, “Creation,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 251–254. 49 Tullio Gregory, “The Platonic Inheritance,” p. 72. 48

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each other, even though they seem so inexorably bound together in Plato’s cosmogony. Take the following passage from the Confessiones as Augustine addresses his God: How did you make heaven and earth, and what machine did you use for so vast an operation? You were not like a craftsman who makes one physical object out of another by an act of personal choice in his mind, which has the power to impose the form which by an inner eye it can see within itself. This capacity it has only because you have so made it. He imposes form on what already exists and possesses being, such as earth or stone or wood or gold or any material of that sort. And these materials exist only because you had first made them. By your creation the craftsman has a body, a mind by which he commands its members, material out of which he makes something, a skill by which he masters his art and sees inwardly what he is making outwardly. From your creation come the bodily senses which he uses to translate his mental concept into the material objects he is making, and to report back to the mind what has been made, so that the mind within may deliberate with the truth presiding over it to consider whether the word has been well done. All these praise you, the creator of everything. But how do you make them? The way, God, in which you made heaven and earth was not that you made them either in heaven or on earth. Nor did you make the universe within the framework of the universe. There was nowhere for it to be made before it was brought into existence. Nor did you have any tool in your hand to make heaven and earth. How could you obtain anything you had not made as a tool for making something? What is it for something to be unless it is because you are? Therefore you spoke and they were made, and by your word you made them (Ps. 32:9,6).50

The displacement of the craftsman for the creator who creates by his word or utterance is paradigmatic. It accomplishes two things at once. First, it counteracts the idea of creation as like the work of a craftsman who needs a model to create. That is the description found in the Timaeus. And second, it proposes an entirely different model that better expresses the notion of creating out of nothing, with the added benefit that if Augustine wants to divest the creative act of any material causality or instrumentality, he can argue that the eternal word which is God’s creative word is non-material and does not need matter. It creates matter and all 50 St. Augustine, Confessions 11.5.7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 224-225.

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else simultaneously. Later on in Confessiones 11 and 12, Augustine states that precisely because the creative act is an eternal utterance, God creates all things eternally and simultaneously outside of time. Whatever else Augustine says about unformed matter in his attempts to explain the opening lines of Genesis 1 is supposed to be subsumed under this much more fundamental notion of simultaneous and eternal creation. This is the direction too in which Anselm’s disavowal of the analogy of the craftsman leads, minus the conception of simultaneous creation. Anselm will argue that while the creator can be compared in some ways to a craftsman (artifex, faber, etc.) the creator is also so unlike the craftsman as to render any notion of even a working analogy nothing more than a badly hewn imitation. That is the point Anselm will have proved by M 14, with M 11 constituting the critical passage. Needless to say, Anselm’s position is closer to Augustine’s than Augustine’s is to the Timaeus. And like Augustine’s, Anselm’s view is fundamentally at odds with the Timaeus. The Timaeus not only boasts of creation from material causes and the forms, but also of a creator who is not the beginning and end of all things, but who depends on something external to itself to create, a creator who might even be said to have derived its “intelligence” from elsewhere. In Anselm’s mind such a creator would be somewhat comic. We should also not miss the humor in Anselm’s mention of de nihilo nihil in his digression in M 8 on his way to solving the problem about this “something” (aliquid) that occurs to him about “nothing” (nihil), as he tortuously assesses all the different senses in which one could understand nihil. Anselm wonders whether “nothing” is “something,” and could be an efficient cause: “how could that which is ‘nothing’, i.e. has no existence (nullum esse), facilitate in any way the coming into being of something else?”51 Recall how Anselm spoke about the different causes in M 7. The idea that something, let us call it “P,” might help or aid (adiuuit) the creator, is the key here. But, at the same time, if in fact there is no material “P” that helps or aids the creator in creating whatever the creator makes, how can anyone be persuaded that the material things that exist come into existence from a state of 51 M 8: Quomodo … id quod nullum habebat esse, adiuuit aliquid, ut perueniret ad esse?

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“non-existence?” Anselm pressed this very point in M 7 by insisting that matter is neither instrumental nor a help to the creator. And yet, Anselm could have conceded the point by accepting that the supreme nature created all things with unformed matter that he created before or simultaneously with everything else. He would still have been able to hold his position against the creation account defended by Calcidius in his commentary on the Timaeus. Anselm would, then, have precluded part of the objection he is now trying to address. With Anselm’s stricter account of creatio ex nihilo, he is still left with the question of where matter comes from. The only option Anselm has is the one he proposes. 1) God creates out of “nonexistence.”52 And (2) because God creates out of “non-existence,” “non-existence” is an efficient cause. But the consequent is really an absurdity, playing on the notion of causality and Anselm’s use of nihil (non-existence) as a substantive. The absurdity could be dismissed rather easily except for the semantic problem it attaches itself to, namely, “what does nihil signify?” Anselm has been assuming all along that nihil signifies “non-existence.” But now he means to take on the semantic problem: nihil signifies (significat) either something (aliquid) or it does not signify (non-significat) anything (aliquid). So either it means “something” or it is an empty sign. If nihil implies aliquid then whatever was made from nihil was made from aliquid. The entire paragraph bristles with inanities, and it bears quoting to show the extent Anselm will go to address all the supposedly silly objections medieval minds might have when they think of the phrase, de nihilo nihil. From this it seems to follow that whatever exists was made from something, since it was made either from something or from nothing. Therefore, whether nothing is something or is not something, it seems to follow that whatever was made was made from something. But if this is admitted to be true, it contradicts everything that was settled above. Hence, since what was nothing will be something, what was in the greatest degree something will be nothing. After all, having found that there is a substance existing most greatly of all things, I proceeded by argument to the claim that all things were made by him in such a way that there was nothing 52 For an intriguing new interpretation of Anselm on creation and nothing, see Ben Novak, “Anselm on Nothing,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 48 (2008), pp. 305–320.

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from which they were made. Therefore, if that from which they were made – which I had thought was nothing – is in fact something, then whatever I thought I had discovered about the supreme being is nothing.53

On one level, this seems unnecessarily pedantic. Anselm could have stopped after M 7 without bothering to raise “this something that occurred to him” about nihil. For those persuaded by his arguments in M 7 and in the preceding chapters this would have been enough. Still, Anselm has promised not to pass over any objections. It is difficult to believe that Anselm did not think these objections among the most dubious and fatuous. He goes out of his way to consider them by making the word nihil function in all sorts of odd locutions, premises, warrants, and conclusions. And when all is said and done, he announces that nihil can be construed in a number of senses that obviate the objections just considered. Anselm proposes three ways (tribus modis) of understanding nihil. We have already seen how ex nihilo can mean “from nothing” as if “nothing” is a “something.” This verges toward the instrumental use of “something” to create or make another thing, which is the problem under consideration. In the first way, ex nihilo can mean that the thing in question has not yet been made. Anselm provides here the example of someone speaking silently. When the question is asked as to what the silent person is talking about, the answer is “about nothing” (de nihilo). The “nothing” here, says Anselm, means no more than that the person is not talking at all. In order words, the “talking” does not exist. But this seems odd. If the person is speaking silently then there is no outward expression of speech but presumably there is inward speaking. What does not exist is the outward expression. So the answer cannot be that the person is talking about nothing, when it asked, “what is the silent 53 M 8 (S 1, pp. 22–23). (Williams translation, pp. 20–21). Unde uidetur consequi ut quidquid fit, fiat ex aliquo. Aut enim fit de aliquo, aut de nihilo. Siue igitur nihil sit aliquid, siue nihil non sit aliquid, consequi uidetur ut quidquid factum est, factum sit ex aliquo. Quod si uerum esse ponitur, omnibus quae supra disposita sunt, opponitur. Unde quoniam quod erat nihil, aliquid erit: id quod maxime erat aliquid, nihil erit. Ex eo namque quod quandam substantiam maxime omnium existentem inueneram, ad hoc ut omnia alia sic facta essent ab ea, ut nihil esset unde facta essent, ratiocinando perueneram. Quare si illud unde facta sunt, quod putabam esse nihil, est aliquid: quidquid inuentum aestimabam de summa essentia, est nihil.

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person talking about?” If the respondent in fact knows that the person is speaking silently, then what the respondent should say is that the “silent person speaking” is speaking to himself or herself about something. If Anselm wants to insist that this still means speaking of nothing, then what he should have said is that the silent person speaking says nothing outwardly. What is “nothing” or non-existent about his speaking is that it is not yet outwardly expressed. Anselm remarks that this is also like asking someone about something whose origin they do not know, or about something that does not exist, or even about something like how the supreme essence exists in himself. If the person should say “from nothing,” to the question “what is it made from?” then ex nihilo signifies that the thing in question has not yet been made or does not exist. Anselm contends that this cannot be applied to anything that has in fact been made. Anselm presents other examples that are just as problematic. If one answers “from nothing” when asked what something is made from, then one would be saying, following Anselm’s examples, that the thing in question was not created or made. Something either simply exists or it does not exist. There is no in-between. Presumably, this works even in the case of the supreme essence. But how this sense of “from nothing” works for what has not been made or is not in existence is strange at best. Couldn’t one argue, following Anselm’s logic, that the supreme essence has the singular attribute of being something that does not exist in a tangible sense but can be conceived or thought to exist? Admittedly, this construal is vulnerable to Anselm’s later argument in the Proslogion. But here in the Monologion Anselm creates some confusion. He heightens the peculiarities entailed in his use of “from nothing.” It is one thing to say that the supreme essence is not a created entity, in which case, to say that the supreme essence is made from nothing means just that: it is not made from anything whatsoever. It is quite another thing to propose that “from nothing” can also apply to things that don’t exist. If they do not exist, they are simply nothing. So a less tortuous locution would be to say that the thing in question does not exist, not that it is “from nothing.” Anselm’s examples are not that illuminating. They entail two very different ways of saying that something is not made or created, or does not exist: Y does not exist because it is not something made or created (e.g. the supreme essence); or Y does not exist because it has not

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yet been made or has not yet come into existence (something that does not exist). The second way of understanding ex nihilo in M 8 that Anselm suggests entails saying that “nothing” is “something.” Although it can be uttered, the expression is absurd: that “nothing” is a kind of “something.” We have already been around this issue in the preceding discussion. This sense of nihil is always false. The third way brings us closer to Anselm’s own position. To say that something is made from nothing, ex nihilo, is simply to say that the said thing has been made or created out of “thin air,” so to speak. It has been made, but not from some “stuff” or matter that previously existed. This is what I have alluded to previously as Anselm’s strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. This third way of construing ex nihilo also contrasts sharply with the second. For whereas the second way is merely semantic and tends toward absurdity, namely that “nothing” is a kind of “something,’ the third way is metaphysical: “nothing” really does mean “nothing” or non-existence. By this point it should be clear that the objections, if they have any weight at all, are quite trivial. And as Anselm indicates, the objections are concerned with the problem of causality, because as he says at the beginning of M 8, every cause contributes something to its end. Needless to say, Anselm’s examples are unconvincing and at times misleading. The example of the “silent person talking” is a case in point. The very notion of a “silent person talking” hardly merits the claim the Anselm wants to make with it. And yet Anselm uses it to try to show how a locution about “nothing” can mean “non-existence.” He employs a similar example again to support his third way of understanding ex nihilo: that “nothing” really does mean “nothing.” He mentions that when we say that someone is upset without cause (sine causa) we often say that such a person is upset “about nothing” (de nihilo). And this too, he tells us, means that the person is upset not from anything, in much the same way that the supreme essence is said to be made from nothing. But this construction is implausible at best. Anselm seems to miss the point. When we say that someone is upset about nothing we mean that the reason why they are upset is not worth being upset about. It is not to claim that the cause of their distress is non-existent. Anselm probably recognizes that he is claiming more than is warranted when he introduces this example with “it seems” (videtur). Anselm

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clearly overstates the case. It is not very different in quality from the previous example of the “silent person talking.” In this case, as in the previous example, Anselm forces the issue. While he may have a credible argument, his examples derail his arguments. They are not as clear-cut as Anselm himself supposes. If we keep in mind that he sometimes qualifies some of his most problematic examples “it seems,” “perhaps,” and similar expressions, then it is not impossible to surmise that the examples may not carry as much weight with Anselm as they may appear from the way he argues. What is intriguing here in M 8 is how Anselm uses examples that have the phrase de nihilo to make the case for that which is ex nihilo. Something is said (loquitur, dicitur) about nothing (de nihilo), and from that Anselm wants to argue that it proves that the state of affairs being described supports the notion of ex nihilo. One could oppose Anselm’s arguments by countering that when people use locutions involving de nihilo (about nothing) they rarely mean ex nihilo (from nothing) and that Anselm is stretching the limits of ordinary speech to make his point. He is certainly on much firmer ground when he focuses not on locutions containing de nihilo but on the temporal aspect of existence: namely, the state of affairs that obtains before and after something is said to come into existence ex nihilo. For even though he claims that same logical clarity for his examples about de nihilo and his previous conclusions about the supreme essence being made from nothing, he winds down on the following note: Nonetheless, it would also be logical and free from any absurdity to say that the things that were made by the creating substance were made from nothing in the sense in which we often say that someone has come from poverty to wealth or from sickness to health – that is, he who once was poor is now rich, which he was not before, and he who once was sick is now healthy, which he was not before. So if it is said that the creating essence made all things from nothing, or that all things were made by him from nothing, these statements can quite sensibly be understood in this sense – that is, that things that once were nothing are now something.54 54 M 8 (S 1, p. 23; Williams translation, pp. 21–22): Quamuis non inconuenienter et sine omni repugnantia ea quae facta sunt a creatrice substantia, dici possint esse facta ex nihilo, eo modo quo dici solet diues ex paupere, et recepisse quis sanitatem ex aegritudine. Id est: qui prius pauper erat, nunc est diues, quod antea non erat; et qui prius habebat aegritudinem, nunc habet sanitatem, quam

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Some of Anselm’s language here is highly reminiscent of Aristotle’s Physica Book 1.8 (191a). One might be inclined to think Anselm was simply following certain Aristotelian lines indicated in the Physica, if we did not already know that Aristotle’s Physica was not a book with which Anselm was acquainted. Anselm, like Aristotle, speaks of someone coming from poverty to wealth or from sickness to health, and then suggests that when we speak like this we speak as if the things that come into being came from nothing, since poverty can no more create wealth than sickness health. Curiously, Anselm has found a way to move from speaking about ex nihilo to using examples which imply that when we say de nihilo we mean ex nihilo, to finally using the phrase de nihilo to mean exactly ex nihilo. He writes in the last sentence of M 8 that when someone makes another man rich who was once poor we say “Look! That man made him from nothing” (ecce fecit ille istum de nihilo) or “He was made from nothing by that man” (factus est iste ab illo de nihilo). The man who was once regarded as nothing (quasi nihilum) is now something. From what he was not, the poor man has now become truly something (uere aliquid). Hence, wealth comes from poverty. The semantic puzzle posed at the beginning of M 8 finds its better resolution in the temporality of creation and existence. “Nothing comes from nothing” because all things that are created come into being in time or at certain times. The discussion in M 8 continues in M 9, with Anselm focusing now on how things are “nothing” before they are made. The image of the craftsman re-emerges. Anselm introduced this theme in M 5 before his presentation of creatio ex nihilo in M 6–7. M 8 took up the semantics of “nothing,” with M 9 forming the bookend. Anselm then delineates on how the creator/supreme essence is like and unlike the craftsman. At this point, the only claim made is that both the supreme essence and the craftsman must have something in mind (in ratione) in order to make anything. M 9 rests on the premise that no one can make anything without having a pattern (exemplum) in the sense of a form, likeness, or rule (forma, similitudo, regula) in his mind as a guide (or model) for what is about to be made. The supreme nature antea non habebat. Hoc igitur modo non inconuenienter intelligi potest, si dicitur creatrix essentia uniuersa fecisse de nihilo, siue quod uniuersa per illam facta sint de nihilo; id est: quae prius nihil erant, nunc sunt aliquid.

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has something like this very thing in his mind (erat in ratione). So anything that is made by the supreme nature first exists in ratione summae naturae in terms of what it is to be (quod), what kind of thing (qualia) it is to be and how (quomodo) it is to be. Anselm is compelled to follow this line of argument in an attempt to explain that the “nothing” from which the supreme essence creates is not empty (or emptiness), and that there is some “cause” which, while not instrumental as an aid nor as something “existing,” or pre-existent, is nevertheless the origin of what and how the supreme nature creates. The previous conclusion holds. Created things were nothing before they were made, but they were “not nothing” in respect of the reason of their maker (quantum ad rationem facientis) through whom (per quam) and according to which (secundum quam) they were made. Recall Romans 11:36. Because they exist in some fashion in the reason of the supreme nature, they are “not nothing,” but because they do not yet exist phenomenally they are “nothing.” So the supreme essence is like the craftsman in having in ratione something like the thing he makes. This image of the supreme essence as artifex or faber is a critique of the doctrine of the Timaeus available to medieval thinkers, as well as a point of agreement that the world is made or created. But unlike the description of creation in the Timaeus, there is no intermediary between that which exists in the ratio of the supreme essence and the things he creates. M 10 elaborates on what M 9 presents in introductory form. And after both M 9 and M 10 have stressed the similarities between the creator and the craftsman, M 11 reinstates their fundamental differences. For Anselm, then, the supreme nature is both like and unlike a craftsman, as befitting an original and an image. This scheme is central to all of Anselm’s argumentation and the many analogies he uses throughout the Monologion. In the opening chapter of the Monologion Anselm implies this in how he conceptualizes the nature of being and existence. The distinction between things that are per se and those that are per aliud encapsulates the theme. This also underlines the implicit notion of participation that appears in M 1 when Anselm speaks of the creator who imparts both existence and goodness to everything that exists. He will reiterate this point in M 14 to conclude the first two main sections of the Monologion (M 1–4 and M 5–14). On our way to that conclusion, we must now consider the pivotal chapter 10.

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5. The Supreme Nature and Its Utterance (M 10–14) In one of the most important chapters in the Monologion, Anselm elaborates on the idea that the ratio from which the supreme essence creates is like a speech or word, an utterance, and that this word (uox, locutio, uerbum) – whichever one chooses – has to be consubstantial with the supreme essence. Although the argument derives ultimately from the opening verses of the Gospel of John, it bears Augustine’s imprint. It is without question the primary expression of Augustine’s conception of the Trinity modeled after the inextricable links between language, thought, and action. Anselm begins M 10 by asking what else existed in his reason (eius ratione) before the things he created? Specifically: “what is that form of things (forma rerum) that existed in his reason before the things to be created, other than an utterance (locutio) of those things in his reason, just as, when a craftsman (faber) is going to make some work of his art, he first says (dicit) it within himself (intra se) by a conception of his mind (mentis conceptione)?”55 Anselm explains that when he speaks of an “’utterance of the mind or reason” (mentis siue rationis locutio) he does not “mean what happens when one thinks (cogitantur) of the words (uoces) that signify things, but what happens when the things themselves (res ipsae) (no matter whether they are yet to exist or already exist) are examined within the mind (in mente conspiciuntur) by the gaze of thought (acie cogitationis).”56 Although the question Anselm intends to answer is about what exists in the mind of the supreme essence before he creates, the model Anselm uses is the craftsman and what he creates. And like the craftsman the supreme essence’s act of creating is given a temporal aspect; it is in relation to a time before and after a conception in his mind (eius ratione). As Anselm explains the analogy, he maintains that the expression or utterance in the mind of a craftsman that precedes his creative act is not to be understood as 55

M 10 (S 1, p. 24; Williams translation, p. 23): Illa autem rerum forma, quae in eius ratione res creandas praecedebat: quid aliud est quam rerum quaedam in ipsa ratione locutio, ueluti cum faber facturus aliquod suae artis opus prius illud intra se dicit mentis conceptione? 56 M 10 (S 1, p. 24). (Williams translation, p. 23): Mentis autem siue rationis locutionem hic intelligo, non cum uoces rerum significatiuae cogitantur sed cum res ipsae uel futurae uel iam existentes acie cogitationis in mente conspiciuntur.

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a verbal sign. They are not words that signify what he is about to create, but the things themselves. And he adds that the utterance is what takes place when the things are examined with the gaze of thought. In an odd juxtaposition Anselm links a verbal metaphor with a visionary one: the inner utterance with the gaze of thought. And if the craftsman’s creative act is the model which helps us to think rightly about the way the supreme essence has something in its reason before it creates, then one would be inclined to think that the creative act of the supreme essence depends on something like a prior, temporal act of thought. But this is precisely what Anselm wants to disavow. The lexicon Anselm employs to speak about what goes on between the conception of a thought (idea or a thing) and the outward expression of it in the form of the thing created by a craftsman requires careful consideration. Anselm establishes a carefully constructed link between what obtains in the mind and how it is expressed outwardly. He describes a special relationship between what is said (dicit) or thought (cogitantur) of the words (uoces) that signify things, the things themselves (rerum ipse), and the gaze of the mind (acie cogitationis). All of these are linked to the “form of things” (rerum forma) existing in the mind of the craftsman before he first says or utters what he will create. Anselm assumes a kind of “language of thought.” So what is spoken in the mind is the thing conceived as the mind gazes upon it. The inner locutio always precedes the act of creating: speaking outwardly what is said inwardly. So until the craftsman has “said” that inner “utterance” there is no creating as such. Still another way of construing this is to say that the utterance is a cognitive grasp of the res ipsae. This is the “locution” which takes place within the mind (in mente; in ipsa ratione). At the end of M 10 Anselm describes this locutio in ipsa ratione as a uerbum, and in so doing intensifies the verbal allusion. Anselm’s choice of uerbum also plays on the range of meaning that it acquires in Medieval Latin from word, to speech, to saying, to sermon, etc. In many ways this choice also shows that Anselm’s ontology is deeply indebted to the biblical tradition, as well as to Augustine’s elaboration of that tradition in De trinitate, which focus so much on the divine word in the opening chapter of the Gospel of John. To help his readers think through this ontology Anselm appeals to ordinary experience and common usage (frequenti usi). Anselm

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observes that we can signify the same thing in three ways (tripliciter loqui). Each of the three ways involves saying something either silently or vocally (so that others can hear). When we say something vocally we use perceptible signs. This is the first way. The second and third ways involve using inward signs either by saying them or thinking them inwardly to ourselves. But according to Anselm, we either use a corporeal image or a concept (an understanding of reason) when we think them. The goal of this exercise about the three types of utterance is to make one simple point, namely that some signs are conventional and some signs are natural. But the distinction can easily be lost in the manner in which Anselm goes about making the point. First of all, after introducing the comparison between the supreme essence and the craftsman Anselm leaves it aside for the rest of M 10 before picking it up again at the beginning of M 11. In between he tries to explain the three types of utterance by using how one thinks of a human being (homo). But the example turns out not to be as illuminating as Anselm supposes. Anselm presents how he thinks about homo in relation to the three types of utterance this way: First, by saying the word homo. Second, when he thinks homo silently to himself. And third, when he thinks of the sensible form of a particular human being or when he thinks of the universal essence, the “rational, mortal animal.” On the face of it, this seems to correspond to the three types of utterance he suggested. But there is a problem. It is not at all clear that saying the word homo when I am thinking of Aristotle fits the claim that I am saying the same thing in three different ways. Thinking of the sensible appearance of a particular person is to think of a particular human being not the generic universal “human being.” So when Anselm goes on to say that each of the three ways of speaking corresponds to its own word (uerbum), he seems to be right and wrong at the same time, since he takes “word” to be the mental grasp of the thing corresponding to the utterance. The distinction he makes is between the first two kinds of utterance and the third. Only the third kind of utterance is of such a nature that the inner word has some connection to the thing as such, namely the particular human being or his universal essence. So, only the third kind of utterance is the same for all people no matter their culture or language.

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Not surprisingly, Anselm picks out the third kind of utterance as the closest to the kind of utterance that the supreme essence makes: when a word is said inwardly either by a corporeal image or an understanding of the reason.57 According to Anselm, the inner words that correspond to these kinds of utterances “when they are about things that are not unknown” are to be called natural (naturalia) because they are the same for all human beings. Ostensibly, when different people from different cultures, using different languages, think a particular thing that is not unknown to them, the inner uerbum that is sui generis to the thing in question is the same for all people. This explains why Anselm maintains that “all other words were invented on account of these natural words,” because the universal essences of things are the basis upon which words are made. “Therefore, where there are natural words, no other word is necessary to know a thing; and where natural words are impossible, no other word will serve to make a thing known. And it makes good sense to say that words are truer the more similar they are to, and the more distinctly they signify, the things of which they are words.”58 Anselm has shifted the focus of his arguments from the inner/ outer dimensions of speech and thought (the inner conception of a word and its outward expression) to natural and conventional signification. He concedes the conventionality of most signs and signifiers in De Grammatico, and like most of his medieval contemporaries who learned part of their theory of signification from Aristotle’s De interpretatione (or Peri Hermeneias) (I, 16a 3–9) in the two commentaries of Boethius, Anselm knew full well the complex relationship between words and their signification and the relationship between language, words, thoughts, and things.59 So why the emphasis on natural words? Simply this: if most signs are conventional, as Anselm acknowledges in De Grammatico, and if most words are truer the more they resemble or signify the things 57

Cf. Stephen Gersh, “Anselm of Canterbury,” p. 267. M 10 (S 1, p. 25; Williams translation, p. 23): Et quoniam alia omnia uerba propter haec sunt inuenta: ubi ista sunt, nullum aliud uerbum est necessarium ad rem cognoscendam; et ubi ista esse non possunt, nullum aliud est utile ad rem ostendendam. Possunt etiam non absurde dici tanto ueriora, quanto magis rebus quarum sunt uerba similia sunt et eas expressius signant. 59 See John Magee, Boethius on Signification and Mind (Leiden: Brill, 1989); see also C. W. A Whitaker, Aristotle’s De interpretatione: Contradiction and Dialectic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 2–25. 58

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they signify, then only natural words can be said to be true to the things they signify. All other words are mere approximations, at best. This prepares the way for Anselm to argue for the utterance of the supreme essence as unlike any other kind of creative act that a craftsman would be associated with. The model of craftsman as creator is a foil and, in the final analysis, shows how dissimilar the craftsman is from the creator who alone creates by his unique utterance. The craftsman, after all, can create only based on things he knows about and through the use of other materials available to him. The craftsman cannot create ex nihilo. While making this argument Anselm proposes an example of a natural word: the vowel “a.” The vowel “a”, like other things whose names we use to signify them, is similar to the thing it signifies. This example is problematic in one very important sense: the letter “a” is not a sound as such. It is a sign in the alphabet. If we are referring to the phoneme that also has the same sign, that is another thing altogether. Anselm overlooks this. Instead he argues that “no other word seems as similar to the thing of which it is a word, or expresses it in the same way, as the likeness that is expressed in the gaze of the mind of someone thinking the thing itself.”60 I am not sure what exactly comes to mind when one thinks the letter “a” as opposed to the phoneme “a.” Be that as it may, Anselm surely could have removed this potential ambiguity by using onomatopoeia. That way the sound of the word would be identical with the word. This seems to have been his intent anyway. (Moreover, it would have been most apposite, given that Anselm speaks of inner locutions and the things that are said inwardly by imperceptible signs, images, or thoughts.) Still, his point is that the most proper (or primal) word for a thing would be a word which corresponds to the inner word conceived by the mind, if such a word exists. Anselm gestures towards an ontological dissimilarity between words and things because no utterance comes so close to a thing like the sound “a” comes to letter “a.” Since no other word in anyone’s mind has this quality, it stands to reason that such an utterance existed in the mind of the supreme essence before the 60 M 10 (S 1, p. 25; Williams translation, p. 24): … nullum aliud uerbum sic uidetur rei simile cuius est uerbum, aut sic eam exprimit, quomodo illa similitudo, quae in acie mentis rem ipsam cogitantis exprimitur.

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things he created came to exist. The supreme essence becomes the craftsman. And yet, by the very nature of its inner utterance the supreme essence is in every way unlike the craftsman. Only the supreme essence can have a “conception” that is truly identical with the thing itself. The development of Anselm’s argument from the three types of utterance to the example of the letter “a” and eventually to the utterance of things that existed in the mind of the supreme essence before the things come to exist is not a smooth one. He could easily have left out the example of “a” and lost nothing of the argument. It should be noted also that Anselm does not say that the utterance existed before the supreme essence created anything – for in the case of the supreme essence, as he will argue later, to conceive the thing is to create it. So when Anselm makes the transition from the example of the letter “a” to the final assertion that only the supreme essence conceives an inner word that is identical to the things that come into existence, he prefaces his remark not with his often unambiguous “it follows necessarily” (necesse est) but with the less strident non immerito. That is to say, it is not without reason or merit that such and such is the case. Non immerito may suggest a less forceful tone than say non dubito or necesse est. And if one is alert to the kind of verbal and linguistic markers Anselm often employs, it is possible to discern a lower kind of certitude in Anselm at this point. Anselm found much of this material in Augustine’s De trinitate already set in an ontology that required little revision. Take the following passage from De trinitate 9.7.12. It comes in the context of Augustine’s description of how the human mind forms or apprehends its objects. The passage follows on a discussion in which Augustine talks about what he does when he thinks about Carthage and Alexandria. Carthage, the city of his formative years, is a place with which he is deeply acquainted. Alexandria is a different story. It is a city he has never visited, although he has heard about it. In explaining the differences between how he thinks about Carthage and Alexandria, Augustine discusses variously how the mind conceives and imagines what it knows and what it does not know. At one point he says the following: Thus it is that in that eternal truth according to which all temporal things were made we observe with the eye of the mind the form

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according to which we are and according to which we do anything with true and right reason, either in ourselves or in bodies. And by this form we conceive true knowledge of things which we have with us as a kind of word (uerbum) that we beget by uttering inwardly, and that does not depart from use when it is born.61

Augustine goes on to explain what obtains between speaker and hearer, and ends with the assertion that “nobody voluntarily does anything that he has not previously uttered as a word in his heart.”62 If we look at the process that Augustine describes or the conception he has here of how the mind speaks its objects inwardly, it very much reflects what Anselm describes in M 10. Augustine speaks of “eternal truth” (aeterna ueritate). This serves as the form or pattern (formam) by which all temporal things are created. Then he speaks of the “eye of the mind” (uisu mentis) by which we behold or apprehend whatever it is that we conceive “with true and right reason;” then the form, namely the eternal truths with which we grasp the true knowledge of things. What is said inwardly is that inner word (uerbo intus) that Anselm also describes in M 10 as uerba sui generis. While the lexicon varies and Anselm’s diction is not exactly Augustine’s, the ideas behind the words are the same. For Augustine’s uerbo intus we have Anselm’s uerba sui generis; for Augustine’s uisu mentis we have Anselm’s acies cogitationis in mente conspiciuntur; for Augustine’s aspicio, Anselm’s conspiciuntur, etc. Both begin and end at the same place. Augustine’s “nobody voluntarily does anything that he has not previously uttered as a word in his heart” says it all. There is always an inner utterance (in corde prius dixerit) before the outer verbalization or action, and that inner utterance is linked to a uisu mentis by which we apprehend whatever it is that we perceive, conceptualize, understand, and know: the inner utterance is a token or commemoration (quondam commemorationem sensibilem). We speak it and hear it in our souls (in animo audientis), as it were. 61 Augustine, De trinitate 9.7.12 (CCSL 50, p. 304; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 277–278): In illa igitur aeterna ueritate ex qua temporalia facta sunt omnia formam secundum quam sumus et secundum quam uel in nobis uel in corporibus uera et recta ratione aliquid operamur uisu mentis aspicimus, atque inde conceptam rerum ueracem notitiam tamquam uerbum apud nos habemus et dicendo intus gignimus, nec a nobis nascendo discedit. 62 Augustine, De trinitate 9.7.12 (CCSL 50, p. 304; Edmund Hill translation, p. 278): Nemo enim aliquid uolens facit quod non in corde suo prius dixerit.

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Augustine rehearses these themes in De trinitate Book 15 from where Anselm derives the inspiration for the Monologion. As with so much else in the Monologion, certain passages in De trinitate set the framework for a good deal of what Anselm says here in M 10 and the chapters that immediately follow, as Anselm argues for the dissimilarity between the supreme essence and the craftsman. If Anselm had missed the description in De trinitate 9.7.12 about the inner and outer word, he would not miss it in De trinitate 15.10.19ff. If anyone can understand how a word can be, not only before it is spoken aloud but even before the images of its sounds are turned over in thought – this is the word that belongs to no language, that is to none of what are called the languages of the nations, of which ours is Latin; if anyone, I say can understand this, he can already see through this mirror and in this enigma some likeness of that Word of which it is said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (Jn 1:1). For when we utter something true, that is when we utter what we know, a word is necessarily born from the knowledge which we hold in memory, a word which is absolutely the same kind of thing as the knowledge it is born from. It is the thought formed from the thing we know that is the word which we utter in the heart, a word that is neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language; but when it is necessary to convey the knowledge in the language of those we are speaking to, some sign is adopted to signify this word.63

Augustine juxtaposes the description of inner and outer speech with the language of the opening words of the Gospel of John. They interpret each other. Augustine goes on to provide a justification for the use of uerbum for the word that is uttered inwardly. Since 63 Augustine, De trinitate 15.10.19 (CCSL 50a, pp. 485–486). (Edmund Hill translation, p. 409): Quisquis igitur potest intellegere uerbum non solum antequam sonet, uerum etiam antequam sonorum eius imagines cogitatione uoluantur (hoc est enim quod ad nullam pertinet linguam, earum scilicet quae linguae appellantur gentium quarum nostra latina est), quisquis, inquam, hoe intellegere potest iam potest uidere per hoc speculum atque in hoc aenigmate aliquam uerbi illius similitudinem de quo dictum est: In principio erat uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum. Necesse est enim cum uerum loquimur, id est quod scimus loquimur, ex ipsa scientia quam memoria tenemus nascatur uerbum quod eiusmodi sit omnino cuiusmodi est illa scientia de qua nascitur. Formata quippe cogitatio ab ea re quam scimus uerbum est quod in corde dicimus, quod nec graecum est nec latinum nec linguae alicuius alterius, sed cum id opus est in eorum quibus loquimur perferre notitiam aliquod signum quo significetur assumitur.

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the vocal sounds of our speech are signs of what we are thinking of, the word we speak outwardly is the sign of the inner word, and this inner word deserves to be called uerbum: “For the one that is uttered by the mouth of the flesh is really the sound of a ‘word’, and it is called ‘word’ too because of the one which assumes it in order to be manifested outwardly. Thus in a certain fashion our word becomes a bodily sound by assuming that in which it is manifested to the senses of men, just as the Word of God became flesh by assuming that in which it too could be manifested to the sense of men.”64 There is little doubt that Trinitarian doctrine provides part of the justification for the description that Augustine offers here of the inner and outer utterances. Much of this is basic to Anselm’s own commentary at M 10. But since Anselm has yet to draw out the Christological implications of his argument he leaves out of his current description of the inner uerbum any references to the Trinity. They will appear in his account in later chapters. After all the effort Augustine makes to present the similarity between our inner words and the inner word of God, he must then insist on their fundamental dissimilarity. As he puts it: “we should not be reluctant to observe also how unlike it is, as far as we are able to state it.”65 It is to this world of dissimilarity that Anselm also calls his readers in M 11. The craftsman conceives in his mind like the creator, but “nevertheless,” says Anselm, “I see much dissimilarity in this comparison.” After all, the supreme substance collected nothing at all from any other source from which he would either assemble within himself the form of the things he was going to make or bring it about that the things themselves exist. The craftsman, by contrast, cannot even imagine a physical object and thus conceive it in his mind unless he has somehow already come to know the object, either as a whole all at once or part by part through various things; nor can

64 Augustine, De trinitate 15.11.20 (CCSL 50a, pp. 486–487; Edmund Hill translation, pp. 409–410): Nam illud quod profertur carnis ore uox uerbi est, uerbumque et ipsum dicitur propter illud a quo ut foris appareret assumptum est. Ita enim uerbum nostrum uox quodam modo corporis fit assumendo eam in qua manifestetur sensibus hominum sicut uerbum dei caro factum est assumendo eam in qua et ipsum manifestaretur sensibus hominum. 65 Augustine, De trinitate 15.15.24 (CCSL 50a, p. 497; Edmund Hill translation, p. 415): … quantum sit etiam dissimile sicut a nobis dici potuerit non pigeat intueri.

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he complete the work that he has conceived in his mind if he lacks either the material or something without which the planned work cannot be made. For although a man could invent an animal the likes of which never existed, either by thinking it or by painting it, he could do this only by putting together parts stored in his memory from things he knew at another time.66

If any of his readers are tempted to believe the account of the demiurge in the Timaeus, Anselm puts paid to the notion that the demiurge is an adequate representation of the creator he has been describing. For the demiurge looks far too much like a craftsman (which is how he is described anyway) or a human painter than a self-generating creator. Besides, the Platonic theology of the Timaeus makes no apologies for this lesser creator, so better to leave it where it belongs. The true creator of all things is the “first and sole cause” (prima et sola causa) of all things. This “artisan” (artifex) brings into existence by his utterance. Anselm’s emphasis on the “utterance” grounds the metaphysics of creation and the ontology of divine being that is essential to all that obtains in Anselm’s theology. Furthermore, Augustine’s words about the Word in De trinitate 9 and 15 prepare the way for Anselm’s later Trinitarian pronouncements. Chapters 12 through 14 of the Monologion conclude Anselm’s presentation of the supreme essence as the creator and sustainer (creans et fouens) of all things, who exists everywhere (ubique) through all and in all (per omnia et in omnibus) (M 14). Consequently, Anselm confidently declares at the opening of M 12 that a number of conclusions have been established with certainty by the teaching of reason (certum ratione docente). They are as follows: 1) Whatever the supreme essence made was not made through something or anything other than himself. 2) Whatever the supreme essence made he made through his innermost utter66 M 11 (S 1, p. 26; Williams translation, pp. 24–25): Illa namque nihil omnino aliunde assumpsit, unde uel eorum quae factura erat formam in seipsa compingeret, uel ea ipsa hoc quod sunt perficeret. Faber uero penitus nec mente potest aliquid corporeum imaginando concipere, nisi id quod aut totum simul aut per partes ex aliquibus rebus aliquomodo iam didicit; nec opus mente conceptum perficere, si desit aut materia aut aliquid sine quo opus praecogitatum fieri non possit. Quamquam enim homo tale aliquod animal possit cogitando siue pingendo quale nusquam sit confingere: nequaquam tamen hoc facere ualet, nisi componendo in eo partes, quas ex rebus alias cognitis in memoriam attraxit.

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ance. 3) The utterance of the supreme essence is nothing other than the supreme essence. Anselm arranges these in the form of a syllogism, with 1) as the premise, 2) as the warrant of the argument, and 3) as the inference. To say, of course, that the utterance of the supreme essence is nothing other than the supreme essence gives the impression that the supreme essence creates itself. This may be far from Anselm’s intent at this point, but the notion of a self-generating being is not far from the surface. Anselm will take it up more directly in M 30. The more serious problem is this: if what the supreme essence utters is himself, what does this say about what he creates? And does it not amount to creating something superfluous? Obviously, Anselm would not want to say that whatever the supreme essence creates is himself, since the things that he creates are other than himself. The catch is in the premise: whatever he made he made it through himself. It will be left for Anselm to describe in M 15–29 how the supreme essence exists and how his existence gives being to other things. Anselm offers a recapitulation as well as a preview in M 13. On occasion Anselm’s chapter headings contain the premise of his argument. In the case of M 13, the chapter heading sums up the argument in its entirety: “That, just as all things were made through the supreme essence, so also they remain in existence through him.” M 13 continues with Anselm interchanging “essence” with “nature.” Anselm contends that “only an irrational mind could doubt that all created things remain and continue in existence, as long as they do exist, because they are sustained by the very same being who made them from nothing, so that they exist in the first place.”67 So as Anselm has it “nothing remains in existence except through his conserving presence (seruatricem praesentiam).” In characteristic fashion, Anselm’s language takes on attributes of the unequivocal, as he claims to have established beyond doubt conclusions that only a mad man, someone of irrational mind (irrationabili mente), would question.

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M 13 (S 1, p. 27; Williams translation, p. 26): Constat ergo per summam naturam esse factum, quidquid non est idem illi. Dubium autem non nisi irrationabili menti esse potest, quod cuncta quae facta sunt, eodem ipso sustinente uigent et perseuerant esse quamdiu sunt, quo faciente de nihilo habent esse quod sunt.

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7. Conclusion I began this chapter by calling attention once more to Anselm’s innovations, this time about the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. We had occasion to see how Anselm’s notion of creation sets him apart from Augustine because Anselm insists on a strict doctrine that excludes any considerations of any role that matter plays in creation, though he continued to maintain that the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air are the basic building blocks of all created material things. I pointed out that some of Anselm’s sensibilities and his arguments are shaped by the old saying, “nothing comes from nothing,” and elaborated on the theme, so central to both Augustine and Anselm, that the supreme nature brings into existence all the things that exist through an utterance that is nothing other than itself. I also suggested that Anselm’s anti-materialist account of creatio ex nihilo was partly influenced by Calcidius’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus, and that this early medieval tradition lies in the background of Anselm’s articulations. Ostensibly, anyone committed to the creation account of Plato’s Timaeus could conceivably say as Anselm does that the things that exist have one creator and that they have their goodness from that creator. So presumably any early medieval reader who was convinced by the theory of creation in Plato’s Timaeus could say some of the same things that Anselm presents about the good, the nature of existence, and the degrees of dignity among existent things in M 1–4. What they could not say, however, is that their conception of the divine artificer is like Anselm’s supreme good. I borrow here from David Sedley, who writes that according to Timaeus, “the divine craftsman undoubtedly looked to an external Form, rather than settle for copying some existing, generated entity (28c5–29b1).”68 And furthermore, the Timaeus’s “postulation of preexisting matter, rather than creation ex nihilo, not only reflects the time-honored axiom of Greek cosmology that creation out of nothing is a conceptual impossibility, but also conveniently explains why the Demiurge should have felt compelled to make a world in the first place, namely out of a desire to impose order on

68

David Sedley, Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity, p. 108.

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this disorderly stuff.”69 Anselm’s arguments demonstrate in what way his creator is not like the demiurgos of the Timaeus, a divine craftsman who needs to observe the Platonic forms in order to create; and also why the Timaeus bequeathed to the early middle ages by Calcidius was not acceptable because of Calcidius’s defense of the pre-existent matter of the Timaeus. For Anselm, the craftsman of the Timaeus is anything but divine, if he needs to observe forms outside of himself in order to create. Anselm’s creator creates without the aid of anything external to itself. Its utterance creates all things out of nothing. Anselm’s discussion in M 5–14 is his commentary on the old adage that nothing comes from nothing (sicut uox omnium est quia de nihilo nihil). And the commentary is deeply influenced by Paul’s language in Romans 1:20 and Romans 11:36: that we can discern the invisible attributes of the creator from the things he has made, and that all things exist from him and through him and in him. Because of its apparent monism and the potentially pantheistic implications of some of what he argues here in M 5–14, Anselm will spend M 15–28 describing how the supreme nature exists in simplicity, is uniquely self-sufficient, and unlike any other existent thing, while also elaborating on how the supreme nature brings all things into being by one utterance that is consubstantial with itself. We have also seen that in Anselm’s attempt to present a notion of a natural word, he proposed an idea about how a concept can bring to mind an individual thing, even though the concept is merely a definition of the kind to which the thing belongs, or its universal essence. I took the occasion to show that in this particular instance Anselm again innovates rather unsuccessfully, even as he goes beyond what Augustine presents in De trinitate. In fact, the idea Anselm presented is not one he needed to make the case that he thought he needed to make.

69

Ibid., p. 117.

Chapter Five Creator Spiritus Simpliciter

1. Introduction The chapter heading for M 15 announces its theme, and signals a turning point in Anselm’s investigations in the Monologion: “What can and what cannot be said about him substantially.” In the previous fourteen chapters Anselm offers arguments to prove that a supreme nature exists and that this being is the source of all other existent things; and that it is also of such a nature as to be unlike anything else that exists. Now Anselm must consider whether it is possible for anyone to say anything meaningful about such a unique nature if it is unlike anything else that exists. Can our thinking, language, and speaking say or signify anything about the supreme nature’s substance? Can we say anything about what the supreme nature is in itself? Anselm demurs from the outset in M 15 that he would be surprised if he could find from among the names (nomen) or words (uerbum) we apply to the things the supreme nature has created out of nothing a word that he could predicate of the supreme nature to express something about the supreme nature’s substance. This prospect, of course, does not mean that he has to give up. He is bound to inquire whether reason will lead him otherwise than he suspects. The brief exercise that follows, then, is not so much an attempt to prove that such a word can be found, although that is the stated objective. Rather it is to show why such a word does not exist. In other words, what follows is an exercise that Anselm believes is destined to fail. However, it is a productive and educative failure that also allows Anselm to articulate exactly how he believes one ought to think and speak meaningfully about the supreme nature. Anselm’s arguments in M 15–28 follow along several tracks. The argumentation in M 15 and M 16 about predication serves as a preface to Anselm’s much more involved discussion about how the

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supreme nature exists in M 18–24. And after establishing how the supreme nature exists in relation to time and place in M 18–24, Anselm picks up the subject of predication in order to restate his initial position more forcefully in M 25–26 before summing up in M 27–28 with perhaps his most anti-climactic conclusion yet: that the supreme nature is spirit (spiritus). I say anti-climactic because some of this is already entailed in his argument about creatio ex nihilo and his use of the language of Romans 1:20 and Romans 11:36. If existent things reveal their invisible creator, then it is not likely that invisible creator is a bodily substance. His declaration that the supreme nature is spirit makes explicit what is implicit from the very opening sentence of the Monologion. And it is in this context too that Anselm introduces the language of simplicity in his discussion of the supreme nature, who is, as he puts it, spiritus simpliciter. My discussion in this chapter will attend to Anselm’s arguments about the propriety of predicating words or names to the supreme nature; whether such predication says anything meaningfully about the supreme nature’s substance; and will consider as well how he describes the existence of the supreme nature in relation to time and place; and what all these themes contribute to our understanding of the simplicity of the supreme nature. It should be no surprise that Anselm’s comments about the supreme nature and the language of predication reprise Augustine’s discussion in Book 5 of De trinitate, which almost certainly provides the background for Anselm’s assertions. In our assessment of the origins of Anselm’s Greek formula in Chapter 2, we came across aspects of Augustine’s explorations in Books 5 and 7 of De trinitate. I shall not repeat that discussion here except to say that Anselm’s thinking about persona and substantia and their use in Trinitarian formulations are deeply influenced by Augustine’s, and that some of Augustine’s nominalist language about finding an appropriate word for the “three” in the Trinity shaped Anselm’s own sense of the use of persona and substantia in relation to “threein-one.” So a word about the mood Augustine sets in De trinitate Book 5 before proceeding with Anselm’s arguments about what can be said substantialiter about the supreme nature. In De trinitate Book 5, Augustine takes great pains to impress upon his reader the need to have a clear understanding of what is at stake so as not to be confused about the language of substance

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and relation when speaking about God. Anselm seems to heed this advice for the most part throughout his argumentation in the Monologion as we shall see shortly in his arguments here. He only gives up on this caution in his formulation of the Greek formula, and even then Anselm defended himself by saying that he found support for his formulation in Augustine and the Greeks. Given the problems inherent in the Greek formula, and Anselm’s current subject, it may be wise to recall exactly what Augustine enjoined on his readers, not only in the opening paragraphs of Book 1, but what he reiterates in Book 5 of De trinitate. In the first paragraph of Book 5, Augustine renews a compact with his readers, as he lays out his approach to the language of substance and accidents as predicated of God. Augustine writes that: From now on I will be attempting to say things that cannot altogether be said as they are thought by a man – or at least as they are thought by me. In any case, when we think about God the trinity we are aware that our thoughts are quite inadequate to their object, and incapable of grasping him as he is; even by men of the caliber of the apostle Paul he can only be seen, as it says per speculum in aenigmate (I Cor 13:12). Now since we ought to think about the Lord our God always, and can never think about him as he deserves; since at all times we should be praising him and blessing him, and yet no words of ours are capable of expressing him, I begin by asking him to help me understand and explain what I have in mind and to pardon any blunders I may make. For I am keenly aware not only of my will but of my weakness. And I also ask my readers to forgive me, wherever they notice that I am trying and failing to say something which they understand better, or which they are prevented from understanding because I express myself so badly; just as I will forgive them when they are not able to understand on account of their tardiness.1 1 Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 206; Edmund Hill translation, p. 189, slightly amended): Hinc iam exordiens ea dicere quae dici ut cogitantur uel ab homine aliquo uel certe a nobis non omni modo possunt, quamuis et ipsa nostra cogitatio cum de deo trinitate cogitamus longe se illi de quo cogitat imparem sentiat neque ut est eum capiat sed, ut scriptum est etiam a tantis quantus Paulus apostolus hic erat, per speculum in aenigmate uideatur, primum ab ipso domino deo nostro de quo semper cogitare debemus et de quo digne cogitare non possumus, cui laudando reddenda est omni tempore benedictio et cui enuntiando nulla competit dictio, et adiutorium ad intellegenda atque explicanda quae intendo et ueniam precor sicubi offendo. Memor enim sum non solum uoluntatis uerum etiam infirmita-

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Augustine makes a case based on the difference between what the supreme essence is in itself and what human thought and language can think and say about that essence. Borrowing from I Corinthians 13:12, Augustine describes an epistemological chasm: Whatever is thought or said is said or thought per speculum in aenigmate. This is the note on which Augustine will conclude the entire project in De trinitate. For Anselm, as for most of Augustine’s readers, this early statement of the theme at the opening of Book 5 takes on added significance as Augustine proceeds to describe the supreme essence. He argues that there will be less contention and room for dissension if there is basic agreement on a few points. “We will find it easier to excuse one another,” Augustine writes, “if we know, or at least firmly believe and maintain, that whatever we say about that unchanging and invisible nature, that supreme and all-sufficient life, cannot be measured by the standard of things visible, changeable, mortal and deficient.”2 If there is no agreement here, then there is no point going any further. Augustine mentions that we generally have great difficulty arriving at true knowledge of many things we know through our senses. Yet, we do not give up trying to know more about them or their natures. Why then should we despair about knowing God simply because God is something whose very essence is infinitely beyond our grasp. If anything, the little we know should be reason enough for us to want to know or understand more. Augustine commends the following as a starting point: Thus we should understand God, if we can and as far as we can, to be good without quality, great without quantity, creative without need or necessity, presiding without position, holding all things together without possession, wholly everywhere without place, everlasting without time, making changeable things without any change in himself, and being affected by nothing. Whoever thinks tis meae. Ab his etiam qui ista lecturi sunt ut ignoscant peto ubi me magis uoluisse quam potuisse dicere aduerterint quod uel ipsi melius intellegunt uel propter mei eloquii difficultatem non intellegunt, sicut ego eis ignosco ubi propter suam tarditatem intellegere non possunt. 2 Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 206; Edmund Hill translation, p. 189): Facilius autem nobis inuicem ignoscimus si nouerimus aut certe credendo firmum tenuerimus ea quae de natura incommutabili et inuisibili summeque uiuente ac sibi sufficiente dicuntur non ex consuetudine uisibilium atque mutabilium et mortalium uel egenarum rerum esse metienda.

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of God like that may not yet be able to discover altogether what he is, but is at least piously on his guard against thinking about him anything that he is not.3

This is not exactly a way of negation, a uia negatiua, but rather one of amplitude and limitlessness. God possesses to the highest degree and in a unique way whatever it is worth being: sine qualitate; sine quantitate; sine indigentia; sine loco; sine tempore; sine mutatione; nihilque patientem. The negations entailed here are contradistinctions. Each one of the categories mentioned is negated in an absolute sense. There is no mention of the category of substance, however. For it is to that category that Augustine turns in order to speak about God. As he puts it: “There is no doubt that God is substance, or perhaps essence (essentia) would be a better word; what the Greeks call ousia.”4 Anselm, as we have seen, has this already built into his arguments in M 1–14. The supreme nature is supreme essence, supreme substance. He begins M 15 too on a comparative note that is also designed to be absolute, that the supreme essence is whatever it is absolutely better to be than not to be (M 15). So no word predicated of the supreme essence can mean the same thing as it is normally predicated of other things.

2. On Predication: Substances and Relations (M 15–17) Augustine’s argument about substance, accidents, and predicating substance and relative terms of God can be summarized using the words of the Maurist editors. Their caption for De trinitate 5.6 reads: In Deo nihil secundum accidens dicitur, sed secundam sub-

3

Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.2 (CCSL 50, p. 207; Edmund Hill translation, p. 190, slightly amended): Quod ergo non inuenimus in meliore nostro non debemus in illo quaerere quod longe melius est meliore nostro, ut sic intellegamus deum si possumus, quantum possumus, sine qualitate bonum, sine quantitate magnum, sine indigentia creatorem, sine situ praesentem, sine habitu omnia continentem, sine loco ubique totum, sine tempore sempiternum, sine ulla sui mutatione mutabilia facientem nihilque patientem. Quisquis deum ita cogitat etsi nondum potest omni modo inuenire quid sit, pie tamen cauet quantum potest aliquid de illo sentire quod non sit. 4 Augustine, De trinitate 5.2.3 (CCSL 50, p. 207): Est tamen sine dubitatione substantia uel si melius hoc appellatur essentia, quam graeci *ousian* uocant. Cf. Stephen McKenna translation, p. 177.

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stantiam aut secundum relationem (with regards to God nothing is said according to accidents, but according to either substance or relation).5 Two distinctions are involved: the distinction between substances and accidents, on the one hand; and the distinction between substances and relations (whether something predicated by relation is or is not predicated substantially), on the other. Previously, Augustine had mentioned that “if we know, or at least firmly believe and maintain, that whatever we say about that unchanging and invisible nature, that supreme and all-sufficient life, cannot be measured by the standard of things visible, changeable, mortal and deficient,”6 we would be well on our way to a proper understanding of God. Anything that subsists (or exists) and is subject to change can have its nature, essence or being altered. The possibility if becoming what one is not belongs to all things except God, who cannot cease to be. Augustine quotes Exodus 3:14, “I am who I am, and tell the sons of Israel, He who is sent me to you.” For him, this is cardinal truth. God is that which truly exists. Now other things that we call essences or substances admit of accidents, by which they are modified and changed to a great or small extent. But God cannot be modified or changed in any way, and therefore the substance or essence which is God is alone unchangeable, and therefore pertains to it most truly and supremely to be, from which comes the name ‘essence’ (essentia nominata). For anything that changes does not keep its essence (ipsum esse), and anything that can change even though it does not, is able to not be what it was; and thus only that which not only does not but absolutely cannot change deserves without qualification to be said really and truly to be (uerissime esse).7

5

PL 42, col. 910. Augustine, De trinitate 5.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 206; Edmund Hill translation, p. 189). 7 Augustine, De trinitate 5.2.3 (CCSL 50, p. 208; Edmund Hill translation, p. 190, slightly amended): Sed aliae quae dicuntur essentiae siue substantiae capiunt accidentias quibus in eis fiat uel magna uel quantacumque mutatio; deo autem aliquid eiusmodi accidere non potest. Et ideo sola est incommutabilis substantia uel essentia quae deus est, cui profecto ipsum esse unde essentia nominata est maxime ac uerissime competit. Quod enim mutatur non seruat ipsum esse, et quod mutari potest etiamsi non muteturpotest quod fuerat non esse, ac per hoc illud solum quod non tantum non mutatur uerum etiam mutari omnino non potest sine scrupulo occurrit quod uerissime dicatur esse. 6

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Augustine continues: “It is about these things which cannot be expressed as they are thought and cannot be thought as they are that we must now begin to reply to the critics of our faith.”8 Aristotle could not count as one of Augustine’s critics. But Augustine mentions in his Confessiones that the language of Aristotle’s Categoriae is likely to mislead because he includes substance among the ten categories, and therefore might give the impression that even so excellent a nature has a substance like other bodily things. Anselm, for his part, had written his De Grammatico as an introduction to dialectic, and with Aristotle’s Categoriae in view, probably without knowing the role it played in Augustine’s education. Augustine’s earlier experience in assuming that the category of substance was applicable to God most certainly influenced his sentiments about the care needed in specifying appropriate language about God. At a time when he did not know or believe there were such things as spiritual substances,9 he had accepted the categories for their adequacy. He would later learn from the “books of the Platonists” (libri platonicorum) that there were such things as spiritual substances. This saved Augustine from what he came to understand as Aristotle’s materialism. By the time of his writing the De trinitate Augustine had long come to believe in that invisible substance that is God. In De trinitate 5.8.9ff., Augustine considers the propriety of using any of the other Aristotelian categories in speaking about God. It is easy to see why “quantity,” “quality,” “being affected,” “having,” “doing,” and “being relative” are inappropriate when predicated of God, but what about “time,” “place,” and “position?” For Augustine, they are just as absurd. Augustine himself considers a list of four: he adds “possession” (having) to time, place, and position and gives them special consideration. Augustine is influenced in part by a number of biblical passages that speak about God in these terms. He responds by saying that the language is metaphorical. Not surprisingly, in M 18–24, Anselm will go out of his way to give prominence to a discussion of time and place in his description of how the supreme essence exists, and insist that when we 8

Augustine, De trinitate 5.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 208; Edmund Hill translation, p. 190): Quamobrem ut iam etiam de his quae nec dicuntur ut cogitantur nec cogitantur ut sunt respondere incipiamus fidei nostrae aduersariis … 9 See Augustine, Confessiones 7.5.7.

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predicate time, place, possession, or position to God we speak per similitudines. Anselm tries to explain how such language should be understood. As I indicated earlier, Anselm does not think there is any word that can tell us anything about the substance of the supreme nature. Nothing can be said about the supreme nature’s essence using nouns and verbs that are predicated of the things the supreme nature has created from nothing. They cannot say anything about his substance. This is Anselm’s positive doctrine. Nevertheless, he has to show where reason leads or what reason will discover. Mind you, he is not convinced that reason will come up with a different conclusion. But he has to undertake the exercise. And this is where one can get terribly off track about what takes place in M 15. Are there any relative terms that are predicated of created things that can be predicated of the supreme nature’s substance? The answer is “no.” Why? In the first place, if the relative term is predicated of something the term is used relationally and does not pick out the essence or substance of the created thing. If it cannot say anything about the substance of a created thing, how can it say something about the substance of the supreme nature? Hence Anselm’s central contention: predicating any word or name of the supreme nature means that a word that is applied relatively (dicitur relatiue) to anything that has been created by the supreme nature cannot say (or signify) anything about the substance of the supreme nature. To speak relatively implies speaking or signifying in a non-substantial sense; such speaking only signifies relationally. So, it stands to reason that there is no relational or relative term that can be applied both to created things and to the supreme nature that can say anything about the supreme nature’s substance. So if the relative term says something relatively about the supreme nature that is the best it can do. If the supreme nature is called “greater,” “supreme,” or whatever in relation to other things, it is so in relation to those things. However, if those things did not exist the comparisons cannot even be made. If these predications had something to say about the supreme nature’s substance then the non-existence of the things it is related to would affect the supreme nature’s substance. And yet, if we take away the notion of it being supreme the supreme nature does not stop being what it is. It is not greater or less than what it is.

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Are there, then, substantive words that can be applied both to created things and to the supreme nature in such a way that they can say something about the supreme nature’s substance? Anselm mentions at this point that other words can be used in a non-relative sense (or substantively) because they imply that their negation is what it is not good to be. That is to say, the word either signifies what it is better to be than not to be; or its negation signifies what it is better not to be than to be: for example, wise and not-wise, true and not-true, just and not-just; or as the case may be not-gold and gold, since in the case of say a human being it is better that the human being is not made of gold than that he is. There are some things that it is better to be than not to be and there are other things that it is better not to be than to be. So the issue is whether to be or not to be some thing. And it is always more fitting for the supreme nature to be whatever it is better to be than not to be. The supreme nature has to be whatever it is better to be than not to be (quidquid omnino melius est quam non ipsum),10 because it would be blasphemous (nefas) to think that it is something that it would be somehow better not to be. Anselm acknowledges, however, in the form of an objection that words like “just,” “wise,” “great,” etc., when predicated of the supreme nature give the impression that the supreme nature participates in justice, wisdom, greatness, etc. In which case, justice, wisdom, greatness, and the like have to be thought of as qualities or attributes of the supreme nature. He rejects this as contrary to the truth that has already been established, that as far as the supreme nature is concerned his nature is justice, wisdom, greatness, etc. No name, word, or attribute is predicated of his nature as if by participation. The supreme nature is all his attributes. Anselm even goes so far as to say that in the case of the supreme nature justice means wisdom, it means greatness etc. Why, because

10 This phrase is the centerpiece of the intriguing argument proposed by Chung-Mi Hwangbo in his Urteilskraft und Gotteserkenntnis: Zur Argumentationsstruktur im Monologion des Anselm von Canterbury (Freiburg / Munich: Karl Alber, 2007). Cf. Brian Leftow, “Anselm’s Perfect Being Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambrdge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 132–156; reference is to pp. 132–139; and Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 98.

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to the question, “what is it?” one can say “justice,” “wisdom,” or “greatness,” and one would not be wrong. The attributes function as names. Augustine is explicit on this point when he calls the attributes of God names (De trinitate 15.5.8). Anselm follows suit. As names the attributes signify or point to the supreme nature, even though in a primary sense they are supposed to be characteristics of the supreme nature. So, in Anselm’s formulation, when the supreme nature is said to be “justice” or “essence” each signifies the same thing that the others do (idem significant quod alia) whether all are considered at once or individually (uel omnia simul uel singula). For whatever is predicated essentially (essentialiter) is one (unum est), whatever the supreme substance is “he is in one way and in one consideration” (uno modo, uno consideratione). What exactly does it mean to say that because what is predicated of the supreme substance essentially is one, whatever the supreme substance is it must exist in one way? Anselm’s point seems to be this: since the supreme substance is essentially one, whatever is predicated of that substance essentially is predicated of something that is unitary in such a way that the many attributions all amount to signifying the one thing. Moreover, the supreme essence is not like a human being who is in one respect or another rational, bodily, colored, etc. The supreme essence is wholly what it is. So if the supreme nature is in some respect to be essentially “anything,” that “anything” or “whatever” (quidquid) must be the whole of what the supreme essence is (hoc est totum quod ipsa est). The supreme essence exists simply and is not subject to anything like other things that are subject to qualities, quantities, etc. Aristotle’s ten categories do not apply, for those categories apply to things that are composite as the Categoriae teaches. Anselm could have preempted all these arguments about the one and the many by insisting on the composite/non-composite distinction between what exists simply (simpliciter) and what does not. The lengthy title of M 17 says as much: that he is so simple that whatever can be predicated of its essence are one and the same; and something can be predicated substantively of the supreme essence only with respect to what it really is in itself (quod ita sit simplex ut omnia quae de eius essentia dici possunt, unum idemque in illa sint, et nihil de ea dici possit substantialiter nisi in eo quod quid est). It remains now to explain how this simple nature exists,

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if in fact none of Aristotle’s ten categories apply properly to it. That is the subject of M 18–24. I shall put off for now how Anselm presents the case for divine simplicity and focus instead on what he says about time and eternity. Once we have seen what he says about time and eternity we will be in a better position to appreciate what he says about divine simplicity.

3. Truth, Eternity, and Timelessness (M 18–19) M 18 holds an important place in Anselm’s thought not only because it is the point of departure for his later work, De ueritate, but also because it plays such an important role in Anselm’s description of the supreme essence and its relationship to time. When someone like Anselm, who claims Augustine’s influence, mentions time, it is likely to prompt his modern readers and interpreters to inquire whether Anselm’s conception is similar to or different from Augustine’s celebrated reflections on the subject. As Augustine famously put it in the Confessiones 11.14.17, he is sure he knows what time is provided no one asks him. Remarkably Augustine goes on for many paragraphs in the Confessiones trying to describe time and its relation to eternity and the life of the soul. Anselm’s view of time betrays almost no engagement with Augustine’s elaborations in the Confessiones. But there is much in Anselm’s arguments here in the Monologion that show the twin influences of Augustine’s view of eternity in De trinitate and some of Boethius’s language about time, eternity, and duration. Some of Anselm’s most recent interpreters have found his thinking germane to some contemporary discussions about time and eternity. Nelson Pike, for example, discusses Anselm’s view under the caption, “The Justification of the Doctrine of Timelessness.”11 Pike’s focus is on the Proslogion formula, “that than which nothing greater can be thought” and how this attests to the idea of eternity and timelessness. Although Pike deals with M 15 in the course of his analysis of Anselm’s conception of timelessness, he does not consider the critical passages in M 18–24. Brian Leftow considers Anselm as part of a broader investigation, and in the 11 Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), p. 130–166.

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process adopts a position on God’s timelessness that derives part of its inspiration from Anselm.12 Leftow discusses a number of passages from the Monologion, including M 16 and M 22–24.13 Leftow does not discuss M 18 even though M 18 is the place where Anselm begins to deal with the theme of God and time, a theme that occupies Leftow later on in his commentary on Anselm.14 Leftow also seems uninterested in the connection Anselm draws between the eternity (or eternality) of God and truth. It is a short distance from Anselm’s conception of truth to the realist account underlying Leftow’s work. Leftow’s view depends on the conviction that a realist account of truth is to be preferred to an antirealist one: which is to say that truth “consists in something like correspondence with a reality independent of all verification and beliefjustifying procedures (save when the truth in question concerns verification and belief-justifying procedures).”15 Leftow sets aside Anselm’s account of truth and instead follows Anselm’s discussion of “justice” in M 16 to make the claim that God is eternal in the same way that God is “justice” itself, since God is substantially whatever attribute is predicated of God, all at once with all the other attributes.16 In an article written jointly with D. E. Luscombe,17 John Marenbon focuses some attention on M 18 in his explanation of Anselm’s contribution to medieval debate on time, divine temporality, and eternity. Marenbon concludes that for Anselm God “is sufficiently different from temporal things to be able to live his life simultaneously, but without being timeless.”18 How does Anselm get to this point? Marenbon begins with several definitions of what medieval thinkers might have in mind when they call God “eternal.”19 The first notion they might have is perpetuity, what Marenbon des12 Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991). 13 Ibid., pp. 203–209; pp. 189–199. 14 Ibid., pp. 199–203. 15 Ibid., p. 37. 16 Ibid., pp. 203–209. 17 John Marenbon and D. E. Luscombe, “Two Medieval Ideas: Eternity and Hierarchy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. S. McGrade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 51–72. 18 Ibid., p. 55. 19 Ibid., p. 51.

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ignates “P-eternity.” The second notion would be “O-eternity,” which means that God is “altogether outside and unmeasurable by time.” There are three different versions of P-eternity: first, Pieternity, when something lacks a beginning; second, Pii-eternity, when something lacks an end; and third, Piii-eternity, when something lacks both a beginning and an end. For contemporary philosophers, O-eternity and P-eternity are mutually exclusive, since O-eternity is an extrinsic idea meaning that God is outside of time and therefore can be thought of as being without time. We may call this timelessness. Some medieval philosophers and theologians, however, thought that God could be eternal in both senses. That is to say, God could be both outside of time and perpetual. So they ended up saying that God is O-eternal because he is P-eternal. In this respect O-eternity would have to mean something other than timelessness. Obviously not all the three kinds of P-eternity would be fitting for God. As Marenbon notes, there were clearly areas of asymmetry, since angels, human souls, and the punishment of the dead were considered to entail beginnings but not endings.20 Not having a beginning was also considered to be a special problem for anything created; and the special metaphysical status of having no beginning or end was ascribed to God. On Anselm specifically, Marenbon believes that “he sets out the problem of God’s eternity far more explicitly than Boethius” with whom Marenbon begins his brief survey. Marenbon writes that Boethius sets up a contrast between what had been argued by philosophers before him about a world without beginning or end versus a God whose eternity is defined as “the whole, perfect and simultaneous possession of unending life.”21 The paradigmatic passages are found in Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae (V, prose 6.2–12) and his De trinitate IV. Although the Consolatio Philosophiae was one of the most well known works of the Middle Ages, we cannot presume its influence on Anselm’s arguments, except in one instance in which Anselm uses language that resembles the final prose passage of the Consolatio. The language of eternity in Boethius’s De trinitate is less specific and, at times, even different from what Anselm seems inclined to. So it is not clear what Anselm would have gained from knowing the formula in Boethius’s De 20 21

Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 53.

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trinitate that eternity is the simultaneous possession of life. Moreover, Anselm could have found some such language in Augustine’s De trinitate 15.5.7 which contains language and argumentation that could well have served Anselm’s purposes without Boethius. Augustine speaks about God’s way of being as simultaneous: there is no succession, no temporality, no change, no composition, etc. Augustine uses the language of eternity, immortality, incorruptibility, and the unchangeable. And he also makes clear that he is speaking about life, namely the life that God possesses all at once without beginning or end, without a past, present, or future. He alludes to 1 Timothy 6:16 that to God alone belongs true immortality. So if the special contribution of the Boethian formula is that God possesses his life (or being) simultaneously, the idea is already present in Augustine’s De trinitate, which also served as the major resource for Boethius’s De trinitate. Augustine expands on the idea in De trinitate 15.5.8ff., and underscores how this conception of the life of God ties in with all of God’s attributes. Even Boethius’s notion of the “infinity of time,” which Marenbon highlights,22 lies within Augustine’s purview.23 Although Anselm does not dwell on infinity as such, his contention that God exists at no time is a different way of speaking of something like “infinite time,” if that makes any sense. And there is little doubt that Anselm’s understanding of the supreme nature’s eternity entails an idea of infinite duration, or in Marenbon’s language, P-eternity. In M 18, M 20 and M 21 Anselm proposes two ways of speaking about the supreme nature and time: “with time” or “in time.” He will end up with a definitive, “God exists at no time.” Marenbon acknowledges that this preserves divine simplicity. He notes that Anselm prefers to speak of the supreme nature existing “with time” instead of existing “in time,” because the latter suggests time as a constraint (M 22). However, he concludes that “Anselm believes, then, that God’s Piii-eternity helps to explain how, though not timeless, he can be O-eternal.”24 In other words, because God has no beginning or end, God is outside time and is not measured by 22

Ibid. See Leo Sweeney, Divine Infinity in Greek and Medieval Thought (New York: Peter Lang, 1992), pp. 365ff. 24 John Marenbon and D. E. Luscombe, “Two Medieval Ideas: Eternity and Hierarchy,” p. 54. 23

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time. But the expression that God is eternal though not timeless can be confusing. It can give the impression that time is somehow co-extensive or rather co-eternal with God. It also brings up the question as to how something can be both eternal and not timeless, as if constrained by time. Ostensibly if the three kinds of P-eternity are in view, then each presents a special kind of eternity. But it is the case that the third kind of P-eternity that is uniquely God’s kind of eternity is not bound by time. In which case, rather than speak of being both eternal and not timeless, it should rather be that God is both eternal (in the O-eternity and Piii-eternity sense) and timeless, because Piii-eternity implies no beginning or end, which is a different kind of relationship with time than both Pi-eternity and Pii-eternity. To reiterate: Anselm contends in M 18 that he has provided sufficient arguments in the preceding chapters of the Monologion to state without reservation that the supreme nature is without beginning or end. He then poses the objection that if the supreme nature has a beginning, the supreme nature must have it from or through himself, from or through something else, or from or through nothing. This way of framing it goes back to the very early chapters: M 1–6. What is new in Anselm’s formulation is the view that whatever has a beginning is different from that from which it has its beginning. In addition to the notion of mutability, this makes the very idea of an initium for the supreme nature a contradiction. So although the supreme nature exists from himself and through himself (ex se et per se) he does not have a beginning (initium); and if he has an end it would mean that he is neither supremely immortal nor incorruptible (summe immortalis et summe incorruptibilis). Correlatively, if the supreme nature has a finite end, it would have to come to that end either willingly or unwillingly. On either account he would not be supreme, and would cease to be that true and simple good (uerum et simplex bonum) that Anselm has described. This takes up the objection about beginnings and endings and intimates the link between divine simplicity and eternity. Now to the problem of time and temporality: Simply put, to have a beginning or an end is to lack true eternity (non est uera aeternitas). For Anselm, this is beyond dispute, the idea has been found to be impregnable (inexpugnabiliter inuentum est). Anselm invites anyone who doubts this to undertake a thought experiment. Anselm does not ask that his reader try to think of how something

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like the supreme nature could have a beginning or end. Instead, he directs the reader to consider how it began to be true or not to be true that something existed in the past. If neither of these assertions can be true without the prior existence of truth, then it is impossible to think that truth has a beginning. Anselm joins two arguments: First, the argument about whether truth is eternal, the so-called realist account of truth; and, second, the truth semantics of the statement about whether something had existed in the past. Anselm concludes M 18 as follows: Finally, if truth had a beginning or will have an end, before it came into being it was then true that there was no truth, and after it has ceased to exist, it will then be true that there is no truth. Now nothing can be true apart from truth. So truth existed before truth existed, and truth will exist after truth has ceased to exist – which is an absolute absurdity. So, whether truth is said to have a beginning or end or is understood not to have a beginning or end, truth cannot be confined by any beginning or end. Therefore, the same thing follows with respect to the supreme nature, since he is himself the supreme truth.25

Notice that Anselm concludes by saying that because truth cannot have a beginning or end the supreme nature cannot have a beginning or end as well, because the supreme nature is supreme truth. Augustine first presented this argument in Soliloquia 2.2.2 where he maintains that truth cannot possibly perish even if the world perishes, since nothing true can exist without the existence of truth itself.26 The language is clearly Platonic. Elsewhere in Soliloquia 2.18.32 Augustine speaks of God’s immortality as a sure sign of God being Truth itself, a point he highlights in his opening prayer. Augustine reprises the argument for the eternality of truth in De trinitate in a form that we have already encountered in 25 M 18 (S 1, 33; Williams translation, p. 33): Denique si ueritas habuit principium uel habebit finem: antequam ipsa inciperet, uerum erat tunc quia non erat ueritas; et postquam finita erit, uerum erit tunc quia non erit ueritas. Atqui uerum non potest esse sine ueritate. Erat igitur ueritas, antequam esset ueritas; et erit ueritas, postquam finita erit ueritas; quod inconuenientissimum est. Siue igitur dicatur ueritas habere, siue intelligatur non habere principium uel finem: nullo claudi potest ueritas principio uel fine. Quare idem sequitur de summa natura, quia ipsa summa ueritas est. 26 The form of this argument is somewhat different from Richard Sorabji’s discussion of the timelessness of truth in his Time, Creation, and the Continuum (Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 132–135.

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our discussion of Anselm’s description of the inner utterance that constitutes the uerbum of what is thought or said inwardly by the human mind (M 10). In a number of instances in De trinitate (4.1.2; 8.1.2–8.2.3; 9.7.12; 15.12.21–22) Augustine speaks of the eternality of truth, that God is truth, and that this eternal truth is what makes possible all that we know to be true. Augustine sometimes simply refers to “Truth” when he is addressing God or speaking about God in the Confessiones; and on occasion he uses “Truth” as the name for Jesus Christ under the influence of the Johannine “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Similarly, Anselm, in his letters and here in the Monologion speaks that if the truth is to be told, God is Truth and the Truth is God. And to each belongs eternity, which, as we shall see shortly, Anselm will describe as being the very nature of God per se. For his eternity is nothing other than himself (M 21).

4. The Ratio of Time and Place (M 20–24) As he begins M 20 he mentions humorously that he can feel the murmur or rumblings (summurmurare) of a contradiction compelling him to investigate more fully where and when (ubi et quando) the supreme nature exists. I indicated earlier that in his discussion of predication and the Aristotelian categories in De trinitate 5.9 Augustine gave special consideration to time, place, position, and possession (having) and how these four categories are to be understood in connection with the supreme nature. Anselm now elects two of these four, “time” and “place” (the when and the where), for special attention. In an important sense, one cannot consider time without considering place, at least as far as material things are concerned. So the coupling of time and place in Anselm’s discussion partly suggests an attempt to consider whether these terms can be used in connection with the supreme nature. Anselm is also following one of the loci in Aristotle and Cicero’s works on the topics. Anselm has already argued in M 14 that all things exist from, through, and in the supreme nature (Romans 11:36). He reformulates this in M 18 to say that the creator exists everywhere, is in everything, and everything is sustained by it. From these he states three propositions: 1. The creating nature exists everywhere and is in all things. (M 14)

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2. The creating nature did not come into existence, nor will he cease to exist. (M 18) 3. The creating nature always was and is and will be. (M 18) The third follows from the second. The contradiction Anselm senses comes primarily from the first assertion. For it appears that if the supreme nature is in all things because everything exists from, through, and in him then the supreme nature is localized, and is either partly or wholly bound by time and place. Anselm divides this query into three parts: a) Does it exist in every place or time; b) does it exist in a limited sense in some place; or c) does it exist in no place at all. When Anselm insists on the couplet “time and place,” his language can be confusing: everywhere and always; merely somewhere and sometimes; or nowhere and never. It would be less difficult if Anselm considered the problem of existing in time separately from that of existing in some place. Eventually, he will have to adopt this tack (M 21). He is also aware that there are more permutations of the everywhere, always, sometimes, and never than the ones he has suggested thus far, but he thinks them absurd. The most absurd of them all is to think that “he who exists supremely and most truly, exists nowhere and never” (M 20). This cuts down on the list of permutations drastically. No need, then, to wonder about the supreme nature not existing at least somewhere or at some time. If it exists in a delimited or limited way (si determinate est in aliquo loco uel tempore) the consequence is surely false (falsum est), since on this account not everything would exist through him, and by him (M 20). Since a delimited existence is ruled out the supreme nature exists “everywhere and always” (sit ubique et semper), and so is “in everyplace and at every time” (in omni loco uel tempore). One of the challenges remaining is to delineate how such an existence (not delimited in anyway) is related to the universe of things that Anselm mentioned earlier in the treatise. It raises the question how it is possible for the supreme nature to exist in every place and at every time. Is it in parts or as a whole? And if not in parts or as a whole, then in what sense is the supreme nature in omni loco uel tempore? An interesting aspect of Anselm’s discussion so far is that he has not turned to one important differential that would have altered the nature of his argument from the very beginning, a differential that most self-respecting Platonists would have turned to long before this moment: the notion of spiritual substances. Time and

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place cease to be useful or relevant categories once the notion of a spiritual substance is introduced. This is what saved the young Augustine from the burden of thinking of God like a material substance under the influence of Aristotle’s Categoriae, which he took to be saying that all things that exist can be categorized according to the ten categories. Augustine’s materialist view wreaked havoc on his mind before the books of the Platonists intervened. Anselm so far shows no real awareness of this pre-history of the Aristotelian categories in Augustine’s biography. (In fact, Anselm betrays almost no evidence of his acquaintance with Augustine’s Confessiones, which is not to say he did not know of it, only that if he knew the Confessiones he provides little evidence in his works to that effect.) Incidentally, Anselm’s insistence on a strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, with its uncompromising anti-materialism, would have been a perfect fit for thinking of the substance of the supreme nature as a spiritual substance, and thereby precluding any talk of material assistance in the creative act of the supreme essence. In due course, Anselm will intimate some such notion, when he discusses the supreme essence as supreme spirit. But even then he will not speak of spiritual substance. Anselm’s description of the supreme essence as spirit in M 27 introduces “spirit” almost as an afterthought to his discussion of substance, whereas Augustine intimates that “spirit” seems to signify God’s substance more than any of the other name (De trinitate 15.4.7–8). The discussion about parts and wholes brings up all kinds of oddities. Anselm argues at the very outset of M 21 that the supreme nature does not exist in parts. So he cannot exist in part everywhere and always (partim est ubique et semper). In which case, he can only exist in whole wherever and whenever. Anselm then suggests that there are two ways of speaking about existing in “whole everywhere and always” (tota est ubique et semper). The first would be to exist in such a way that the whole of it exists at one and the same time (semel) in all places and times, and the whole of it exists in particular places (in singulis) by parts (per partes). The second would be that he exists as a whole in particular or individual places. The first concedes that “times” and “places” circumscribe the existence of things. The second supposes that the supreme nature is whole everywhere and at every time. At one level the distinction between the two alternatives is a logical distinction that concedes the obvious. Either something exists as a

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whole wherever it exists or it exists in parts. So in the case of “place” the “parts” and “whole” argument is self-evident. With regard to time, a subtle distinction intrudes. We can speak of succession and simultaneity as a kind of “parts” and “whole.” Anselm also mentions what he calls “the reasoning of place and of time” (ratio loci ac ratio temporis) as the basis for some of the contradictions in his arguments. The phrase hints at the idea of a law which regulates how one argues or makes arguments about times and places, and sounds very much like one of the topics (topica) that feature in both Aristotle and Cicero’s works on the topics. While Aristotle’s Topica was not available to Anselm, Cicero’s Topica could have been, as well as Boethius’s In Ciceronis Topica. The latter would have been an unlikely source, however, even if Anselm had had a copy of it, since the distinction hardly emerges in its pages. Another work by Boethius, indebted to both Aristotle’s and Cicero’s discussion of the topics, Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, is a more probable source for Anselm’s choice of “places” and “times” and his reference to the so-called “law of place and the law of time.” Anselm’s ratio of place and time appears to be an allusion to the concept of a universal proposition which Boethius calls a “maximal proposition,” an axiom whose universality is considered beyond dispute, and whose truth-value does not have to be proved.27 On occasion Boethius states the topic after he has given his maximal proposition, as for example: “The maximal proposition: where the matter is lacking, what is made (efficitur) from the matter is also lacking. The Topic: from matter.”28 Or “The maximal proposition: that whose end is good is itself also good. The Topic: from the end.”29

27 Boethius’s De topicis differentiis, translated with notes and essays on the text, by Eleonore Stump (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978). 28 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book II (PL 64, col. 1189D; Stump, p. 53): Maxima propositio, ubi materia deest, et quod ex materia efficitur, desit. Locus a materia. 29 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book II (PL 64, col. 1189D; Stump, p. 53): Maxima propositio: cuius finis bonus est, ipsum quoque bonum est. Locus a fine.

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Boethius also mentions a maximal proposition about parts and whole: “what inheres in the individual parts must inhere in the whole.”30 At one point he states: One can take parts and whole into account not only in substances but also in mode, times, quantities, and place. What we call always is a temporal whole; what we call sometimes is a temporal part. Again, if something is put forth without qualification, it is a whole with regard to mode; if something is put forth with a qualification, it is a part with regard to mode. Similarly, if we talk about everything, we talk about a whole with regard to quantity; if we pick out something from quantity, we present a part of quantity. In the same way also with regard to place: that which is everywhere is a whole; what is somewhere, a part.31

As an example of whole and parts with reference to time Boethius states: “If God is always, he is also now.” And for whole and parts with regard to place, “If God is everywhere, he is also here.” The tone of Anselm’s analysis, if not the phraseology, is reminiscent of Boethius’s language in De topicis differentiis. Anselm’s argumentation also shares the same thought patterns as Boethius’s and his ratio loci ac ratio tempore reads like one of Boethius’s maximal propositions. The ratio sets the terms for what is logically defensible. In the case of the supreme nature, that ratio of place and time reaches a dead end if one pursues the discussion by considering the two jointly as Anselm has been doing. Existing at the same time or at different times is not quite the same thing as existing wholly in each and every place. Dividing the discussion between existence with respect to time and existence with respect to place does not resolve all the difficulties surrounding simultaneity, succession, whole, and parts. It is nearly impossible to find a way of speaking about something exist-

30 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book II (PL 64, col. 1188D; Stump, p. 52): Quod enim singulis partibus inest, id toti inesse necesse est. 31 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book II (PL 64, cols. 1189A–B; Stump, p. 52): Licet autem non solum in substantiis, uerum etiam in modo, in temporibus, in quantitatibus, in loco, totum partesque respicere. Id enim quod dicimus, semper in tempore totum est. Id quod dicimus, aliquando in tempore pars est. Rursus si simpliciter aliquid proponamus, in modo totum est; si cum adiectione, aliqua pars fit modo. Item si omnia dicamus in quantitate, totum dicimus. Si aliquid a quantitate excerpsimus, quantitatis ponimus partem. Eodem modo et in loco quod ubique est, notum est quod alicubi, pars.

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ing in two different places without temporal modifiers. As soon as Anselm mentions one place and another, he is bound to qualify the second (other) place with a temporal modifier. Here is how Anselm speaks about the supreme nature existing wholly all at one time (simul) or at different times (per diuersa tempora). So, if he exists as a whole in individual places, individual wholes exist in individual places. For just as one place is distinct from another place, in such a way that they are individual places, what exists as a whole in one place is distinct from what at the same time exists as a whole in another place, in such a way that they are individual wholes. For if something exists as a whole in a given place, there is nothing of that thing that does not exist in that place. Now if there is nothing of a thing that does not exist in a given place, then there is nothing of that thing that exists at the same time outside the place.32

The conclusion follows inexorably, and yet it turns into a paradox: “So if something exists as a whole in a given place, how can that whole exist at the same time in some other place, if nothing of it can exist in any other place?”33 The answer that Anselm eventually gives to this query is that the supreme nature cannot exist wholly in one moment of time and in one single place (uno tempore in singulis locis). Nor can the supreme nature exist whole in each place at different times. So if he cannot exist wholly and simultaneously he cannot exist in any other way, it seems. But this also appears to point in the opposite direction, namely that if he cannot exist in each place as a whole at the same time or at different times, then he does not exist wholly in every single place. Anselm speaks of the supreme essence as if it were some physical, bodily object, with the potential attribute of being able to exist everywhere and at all times. This is intentional. The representation is, of course, part of the objection he intends to reject. He takes 32 M 21 (S 1, p. 36; Williams translation, p. 37): Si igitur tote est simul in singulis locis, per singula loca sunt singulae totae. Sicut enim locus a loco distinguitur, ut singula loca sint, ita id quod totum est in uno loco, ab eo quod eodem tempore totum est in alio loco distinguitur, ut singula tote sint. Nam quod totum est in aliquo loco, nihil eius est quod non sit in ipso loco. At de quo nihil est quod non sit in aliquo loco, nihil est de eo quod sit eodem tempore extra eundem locum. 33 M 21 (S 1, p. 37; Williams translation, p. 37): Quod igitur totum est in aliquo loco: quomodo totum quoque est simul in alio loco, si nihil de eo potest esse in alio loco?

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seriously that some of his readers may be inclined to think of the supreme nature (or God) like a bodily object. Anselm could find in De trinitate ample material about “how not to think about God” or “how not to think about the supreme nature.” Augustine warns against those who tend to think of God as a physical or bodily entity. The very first chapter of De trinitate highlights this. Augustine identifies three kinds of people: 1) Those who transfer their ideas of corporeal things to incorporeal and spiritual substances in order to explain the latter by the former; 2) Those who think of God, if they think at all, according to the nature and affections of the human soul; And 3) those who wish to transcend the whole of creation, and who have some sense of the spiritual nature of God but who are bound to their own preconceived notions. The first group of people thinks of God like a body; the second thinks of God as a spiritual creature like the soul; and the third thinks of God as neither body nor soul, but holds false opinions about him. Certainly, to exist in a particular place or at a certain time, whether in whole or in parts, suggests an object that is probably bodily, creaturely, and perhaps not a spiritual “anything.” If the object in question is a spiritual “something,” then it could possibly transcend all this talk of time and place, if it were something better than the soul. There is simply no way (nullo modo) in which something can exist wholly in every single place, if it cannot do so simultaneously (eodem tempore) or at different times (diuersis temporibus). One way to read the discussion in M 20–22 about how the supreme nature exists is to read it in part as an attempt to preclude the kinds of false thinking or beliefs about the supreme nature that the three classes of people identified by Augustine in De trinitate 1.1 are likely to hold. And time, if not place, changes everything. For it is the peculiar characteristic of every bodily creature that its life is temporal. There is always a beginning and there is an end. That which has no beginning or end must possess its life in a way unlike anything that human beings know. M 18 makes that argument. Now Anselm must explain how the supreme nature’s life is uera aeternitas against the backdrop of all this language about existing in parts or whole, always and simultaneously. The central question is this: how can anything exist as a whole at each discrete time and all at once (totum simul et singularibus temporibus) if all those times (ipsa tempora) are not simultaneous (non simul)? Does time exist in

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such a way that it can be separated into parts and whole? And if it does, how can anything that exists as a whole at each time and at once exist at all? Alternatively, if the nature under consideration exists in such a way that it has a past, a present, and a future, then its lifetime would exist in parts like the lifetime of a human being that has a past, a present, and a future. So if the supreme nature exists successively, then eternity cannot be attributed to it. Or the supreme nature’s eternity would have to be understood in a way similar to a creature bound by time and is mutable because it has a past and a future. Successive existence entails a notion of mutability, since there appears to be some change associated with not existing as a whole simultaneously at all times. But this may not be as problematic as it seems. Mere existence at different times does not necessarily imply mutability in nature or essence, only that whatever exists in this way is subject to time. Of course, if the subject is a human being, it is impossible to conceive of the human being existing at different times without being mutable. For the life of a human being is circumscribed or delimited by time. True eternity, as the phrase implies, has to be indifferent to time to make any sense at all. If the supreme nature’s lifetime (aetas) is produced by means of the movement of times (per temporum cursus) in the way that a human being’s lifetime is shaped by the course of time, the supreme nature would have a past, a present, and a future along with those times (cum ipsis temporibus). And so Anselm asks rhetorically in M 21: “what is his lifetime, or the period of his existence, other than his eternity?” Anselm turns the discussion back to a joint consideration of time and place, and claims now to have proved two diametrically opposite assertions: First, that because the supreme nature cannot exist in a delimited way at any place or time, he exists nowhere and never (nullo loco uel tempore); and second, because he exists through himself and has no beginning or end (sine principio et sine fine), he must exist everywhere and always (esse ubique et semper). Recall Boethius’s maximal propositions. Here we have a being who is not subject to the ratio of place and time, a being who exists always and everywhere. M 22 tries to resolve the supposed contradiction between time and place on the one hand, and existing everywhere and always, on the other. To preempt: one could raise the question whether there are any contradictions here at all. After all, the first conclusion is

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qualified by the limitation of place and time. And while the second conclusion speaks of no limitation at all, the two assertions address two very different modes of existence. The first assertion might be deemed to contain a false inference based on a false premise: it sets a limit to something that is supposedly not limited in any way. If the supreme nature cannot exist in a delimited way, it does not follow that he exists nowhere and never. The proper inference is that he cannot exist in a delimited way everywhere and always. It might help to remember that Anselm often proposes arguments that he knows are flawed so as to be able to unravel them at a later stage in the Monologion. Take the following: Perhaps the supreme nature exists in place or time in a way that does not prevent him from existing as a whole all at once in individual places or times, but so that there are not several wholes, but only one whole, and so that his life, which is nothing other than true eternity, is not divided into past, present, and future. For this law of place and time seems to constrain only those things that exist in place or time in such a way that they do not transcend (non excedant) the expanse of space (loci spatium) or the duration of time (temporis diuturnitatem). Of such things, therefore, it is most truthfully asserted that one and the same whole cannot exist as a whole all at once at different places and times; but that conclusion does not apply with any necessity to things that are not of that sort.34

There is no other argument needed. Something has a place only if its quantity or magnitude is bound, circumscribed, or restricted by a place that contains it. It is subject to time if and only if it is bounded by or measured by time. So if something’s size (amplitudo) or duration (diuturnitas) has no limit, boundary, or finishing point (meta), whether spatial (a loco) or temporal (a tempore), then it is said truly to have no place or time. A nature that is not bound or constrained by time or place is not constrained by 34 M 22 (S 1, p. 39; Williams translation, p. 40): Fortasse quodam modo est summa natura in loco uel tempore, quo non prohibetur sic esse simul tota in singulis locis uel temporibus, ut tamen non sint plures totae sed una sola tota, nec eius aetas, quae non est nisi uera aeternitas, non sit dictributa in praeteritum, praesens et futurum. Non enim uidentur hac lege loci ac temporis cogi nisi ea quae sic sunt in loco uel tempore, ut loci spatium aut temporis diuturnitatem non excedant. Quare sicut de iis quae huiusmodi sunt, unum idemque totum simul non posse esse totum in diuersis locis et temporibus omni ueritate asseritur, ita in iis quae huiusmodi non sunt, id ipsum nulla necessitate concluditur.

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the law of place or time. Anselm could have made this argument much earlier. It would have forestalled the many other arguments he made along the way. While that would have been economical, it would not have served his purposes, since part of the objective is to explore different and sundry objections as a way of helping the reader think his way through the subject at hand. The somewhat tortuous analytical forays might unnerve some of Anselm’s medieval readers, but it is all in the nature of the task Anselm sets himself. When he does offer a precise statement of his views as the one just quoted, Anselm is very succinct. That sense of the dramatic, or the penchant for the precise argument, is a quality easily discerned in his Proslogion. But already in the Monologion Anselm provides a number of instances of such carefully constructed arguments that unravel thorny problems that he himself spends a good deal of time trying to disambiguate. And after exhausting the socalled “law of place and time” in connection with the supreme nature, he can say without any sense of irony: Does not every reasonable way of looking at this utterly exclude the possibility that the creating substance, supreme among all things – who is necessarily alien to and free from the nature and law of all the things that he himself made from nothing – is enclosed in the confines of any place or time, since instead his power, which is nothing other than his essence, encloses all the things he made from containing them under himself? And how is it anything but shameless folly to say that any place circumscribes the size of the supreme truth, or that any time bounds his duration, since absolutely no greatness or smallness of extension in place or time applies to him?35

35 M 22 (S 1, pp. 39–40; Williams translation, p. 40–41): Quaenam autem rationalis consideratio omnimoda ratione non excludat, ut creatricem summamque omnium substantiam, quam necesse est alienam esse et liberam a natura et iure omnium quae ipsa de nihilo fecit, ulla loci cohibitio uel temporis includat, cum potius eius potentia, quae nihil est aliud quam eius essentia, cuncta a se facta sub secontinendo concludat? Quomodo quoque non est impudentis imprudentiae dicere quod summae ueritatis aut locus circumscribat quantitatem aut tempus metiatur diuturnitatem, quae nullam penitus localis uel temporalis distentionis magnitudinem suscipit uel paruitatem?

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Shameless folly indeed: which is to say that this is what he could have argued at the very beginning, except it would have deprived his fellow monks of all those objections they wanted answered. Anselm now speaks more explicitly about prohibitions and permissions: Ratio becomes lex. He alters his phraseology from ratio loco uel ratio tempore to lege locorum aut temporum. And he can speak of the law of place and time as not in any way prohibiting the supreme essence from being present (praesens) as a whole in every place and time. There is no past, present, or future to his nature, so that his eternity has a past, present, and future when it was, is, and will be. Anselm here introduces language that contains a subtle shift in terminology. Up to this point, he has rarely used language about presence (praesens, praesentis, etc.), but in a relatively short span, he talks about being present as a whole (loco uel tempori praesens est), being simultaneously and similarly present (simul et similiter praesens esse), and the temporally present (a praesenti tempore). Admittedly, some of the need for this language is suggested by the tensed nature of duration: of the past, present, and future, and the tensed aspect of time and temporality. But Anselm had earlier discussed any number of these themes without using the language of presence or being present to speak about the existence of the supreme essence. The use of the language of presence may also serve to underscore how “unbounded” the existence of the supreme nature is, so that instead of speaking about the existence of the supreme nature, one could speak of the presence of the supreme nature in all that he creates and sustains. That goes a long way towards divesting the supreme nature’s existence of any connotations of being restricted by time or place. The presence of the supreme nature cannot be confined (nullo modo … claudit) in place or time, and so the supreme nature must be present everywhere and always: whole and all at once in each time and place. What applies to localized or temporal natures (de localibus siue temporalibus naturis) does not apply to it, on account of the dissimilarity of these things (dissimilitudo rerum). Our customary way of speaking (consuetudo loquendi) is precisely that: customary ways of saying things about both the supreme nature and other things which are so dissimilar to it that the meaning we ascribe to them with regard to time and place barely help us understand what we are saying about the supreme essence. If we are to use ordinary language in a way that would permit us to

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speak meaningfully about the presence of the supreme nature, we might have to employ locutions such as “with a place” or “with a time” rather than “in a place” or “in or at a time.” The idea here is that the supreme essence exists or is present along with time but is neither contained by time nor restricted by place. Anything that exists requires its presence to exist, and in that sense, exists along with it. The supposed contradiction between the supreme nature existing in every place and time or existing in no place or time is both a semantic riddle and a metaphysical puzzle. One might even be inclined to think it more semantic than metaphysical. For, if the supreme nature exists in such a way as to be unlike other things that are circumscribed and bounded by time and place, then language that purports to speak of the supreme nature in ways that imply such boundaries and limitations are almost meaningless. They are useful at best, but without any ability to say really how the supreme nature “truly exists.” Without a past, present, or future; without a temporal present, as fleeting as that which human beings experience, all temporal language about the supreme nature lose verisimilitude. The word “always” (semper), when applied to the supreme nature, may still have its limitations, even if we mean by it “all of time” (totum tempus). The durational aspect of totum tempus seems to be Anselm’s concern here. For to say that, “he exists always,” appears to make him subject to time. Better to think of him existing always as signifying his eternity, which is his very essence.

5. Boethius, Anselm, and Eternity We return once more to Anselm’s description of eternity and to his possible use of the language of Boethius’s Consolatio Philosophiae (V, prose 6). Anselm describes this eternity, the life of the supreme nature, as the enjoyment of “interminable life” (interminabilem uitam), whole, perfectly, and simultaneously (M 24). Anselm’s exact phrase is: Videtur enim eius aeternitas esse interminabilis uita simul perfecte tota existens. Boethius’s words are: Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis uitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. Anselm’s words are too precise, so that it is difficult to believe that his formulation has not been influenced somehow by a tradi-

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tion shaped by Boethius’s words. And for Boethius much of what is entailed in the expression becomes clearer when one compares eternity with the world of time. How does Anselm manage this comparison? Does interminable life mean unlimited (unbounded), unending life (which leaves room for a beginning), or simply eternal life (without beginning or end)? Anselm’s qualification, “whole, perfectly, and simultaneously” (perfecte simul totam), staves off ambiguity. It recalls much of the argumentation of the previous chapters and leaves little doubt that this notion of “interminable life” is anything other than eternity as such: without beginning or end, and outside of time, though in a manner of speaking, existing with time. We may recall Marenbon’s reference to Anselm’s language about “existing with time” and his discussion that Anselm speaks of God being eternal in such a way that, while he possesses his life simultaneously, God is not timeless.36 For Anselm, diuturnitas (duration) always requires time, temporality, and limits (M 22). Anselm sets eternity and the nature of the supreme essence against any idea of duration. Anselm wants to insist that God is “timeless,” because time is something that is created. The supreme nature, then, is both timeless (not bound by time) and “timely” because he exists “with time,” having created other things that are bound by time. However, to be “timely” (with time in the way Anselm expresses it) is better than saying “not timeless.” The supreme nature supervenes all that he has created, and is the only substance (substantia) not made (non facta), and he alone is the Maker (factrix). So even “timelessness” as such, may not be predicated of God without qualification in much the same way that “substance,” while acceptable, still inadequately expresses the supreme nature. In any event, while it is better to be “timeless” than to be in time or bound by time, it is still better to be eternal and to possess one’s life simultaneously, perfectly, whole, and unbounded by time, if this makes any sense. Boethius goes some distance in trying to prove this point in the final prose passage of the Consolatio Philosophiae that we alluded to previously.

36 John Marenbon and D. E. Luscombe, “Two Medieval Ideas: Eternity and Hierarchy,” pp. 54–55.

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[It] is the common judgment (iudicium) of all that live by reason that God is eternal (aeternum). Therefore let us consider what eternity is. For this will clarify for us both his divine nature and his knowledge. Eternity, therefore, is the total and perfect possession all at once (tota simul et perfecta) of an endless life (interminabilis uitae) which is more manifest when compared to temporality (temporalium). For whatever lives in time (in tempore), it being present proceeds from past to future. And there is nothing that is constituted by time (in tempore constitutum) that can embrace all the space of its life (totam uitae suae spatium) at the same time (pariter). But it has not as yet attained tomorrow and yesterday has already perished. And you live no more in this day’s life than in that movable and transitory moment. So whatever is subject to time, although, as Aristotle thought of the world, it never began nor were ever to end, and its life endures with infinite time (cum temporis infinitate tendatur), yet it is not such that it ought to be considered eternal (aeternum esse). For it does not comprehend and embrace all the space of its life together, though that life be infinite, but it has not the future time which is yet to come, and has already lost the past. That then which comprehends and possesses the whole fullness of an endless life, to which neither any part to come is absent, nor of that which is past has escaped, is worthy to be accounted eternal (id aeternum esse). And this is necessary (necesse est), that being well-composed (sui compos) it must always be present to itself (praesens sibi), and have the infinity of movable time (infinitatem mouabilis temporis) present to it. Thus, they are deceived who, hearing that Plato thought that this world had neither beginning in time (initium temporis) nor should ever have any end (nec habiturum esse defectum), think that by this it means that the created world should be coeternal (coaeternum) with its creator.37 37 Boethius, Philosophiae Consolatio 5.6.2–5.6.9 (CCSL 94, p. 101). Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, Loeb Classical Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 401; minor changes based on Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by P. G. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 110–111: Deum igitur aeternum esse cunctorum ratione degentium commune iudicium est. Quid sit igitur aeternitas consideremus, haec enim nobis naturam pariter diuinam scientiamque patefacit. Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis uitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. Quod ex collatione temporalium clarius liquet. Nam quicquid uiuit in tempore id praesens a praeteritis in futura procedit nihilque est in tempore constitutum quod totum uitae suae spatium pariter posit amplecti, sed crastinum quidem nondum apprehendit hesternum uero iam perdidit; in hodierna quoque uita non amplius uiuitis quam in illo mobili transitorioque momento. Quod igitur temporis patitur condicionem, licet illud, sicuti de mundo censuit Aristoteles, nec coeperit umquam esse nec desinat uitaque eius cum tempo-

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The distinction Boethius draws following this passage is that it is one thing to have interminable life or to be carried through life per interminabilem. But it is quite another thing to possess all of one’s life in the present (esse praesentiam), the whole of it without end. The former is what Plato ascribed to the world, the latter is the case only for God as Boethius understands it. So even if one concedes that interminable life might be an attribute of the world, that world is still subject to time, insofar as it cannot possess itself, all of its life in “a present.” It is only to the divine nature that such a reality is possible, and it would be a mistake to imagine that that nature is prior to the created world merely in some length of time. It is rather because of its simple nature (simplex natura) that the divine nature stands in so dissimilar a relation to the world. It is worth noting how Boethius crafts his language partly in objection to Aristotle’s conception of the world and partly to Plato’s. He is critical of the former, but concedes much to the latter. In Anselm’s case, we have already encountered his strong objection to the Platonic notion of creation by an artificer who works like a craftsman using pre-existent materials in his discussion of creatio ex nihilo. And we have also seen Anselm insist on the law of place and time as inconsequential with respect to the supreme nature. We could pick some of the phrases in the passage just quoted and find others in the Monologion that are similar. One word Anselm does not use as much as Boethius is the word infinita. Consequently, there are certain Boethian characterizations of eternity that Anselm does not share, as for example Boethius’s conception of God having infinity of moving time present to himself (infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem). This is a precise formulation. There are other occasions where Boethius is less pre-

ris infinitate tendatur, nondum tamen tale est ut aeternum esse iure credatur. Non enim totum simul infinitae licet uitae spatium comprehendit atque complectitur, sed futura nondum, transacta iam non habet. Quod igitur interminabilis uitae plenitudinem totam pariter comprehendit ac possidet, cui neque futuri quicquam absit nec praeteriti fluxerit, id aeternum esse iure perhibetur idque necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper assistere et infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem. Vnde non recte quidam, qui cum audiunt uisum Platoni mundum hunc nec habuisse initium temporis nec habiturum, esse defectum hoc modo conditori conditum mundum fieri coaeternum putant.

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cise. A case in point is what he says about sempiternity in Book 4 of his De trinitate. Boethius speaks of God as “always” (semper), because “always is with him a term of present time, and there is this great difference between “now” (nunc), which is our present, and the divine present.” He adds that “our present, as if running along, connotes time and sempiternity; God’s present, which is abiding, unmoved, and immoveable, connotes eternity.” He immediately clarifies this by saying that when one adds semper to this name, that is, eternity, “you get the constant, incessant, and thereby perpetual course of our present time, that is, sempiternity (sempiternitas).”38 The perpetual course of time is sempiternity, but not our “now.” Our “now,” the present as human beings experience it, as if it is running along (quasi currens tempus facit), gives us the idea of something being present always. But such an idea cannot be predicated of God essentially. If it is predicated of God at all it is predicated relationally because God exists in an eternal present. It is like speaking of God as both eternal and “not timeless,” as Marenbon suggests for Anselm. Eternal can be construed as a substantive category, while speaking of God as “not timeless” is relative. For God is “not timeless” only by relation to the world and not in his essential nature. Boethius’s comments about sempiternity here appear in the context of a discussion of Aristotle’s categories and the language of predication as it applies to God. For Boethius, duration, succession, and the flow of time are the essential characteristics of temporality. It seems difficult, then, to sustain the view that Boethius proposes any such thing like “atemporal duration” as his conception of eternity. The instigation for proposing “atemporal duration” receives perhaps its strongest impulse from the idea of infinity. If we can say infinite time, then perhaps we can speak of “atemporal duration” as no different from eternity. And yet, duration as such is a concept that is based on time. So “temporal duration” is something of a tautology; and “atemporal duration” almost unintelligible. Speaking of perpetuity does not improve matters much.39

38

Boethius, De trinitate IV (Theological Tractates, Loeb, pp. 21–23). John Marenbon, Medieval Philosophy: An Historical and Philosophical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2007), p. 122–123. 39

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If we keep infinity separate from eternity, then there is no need to speak of atemporal duration. Anselm, when he does mention infinity in the Monologion, uses it when he is describing that strange notion of the so-called infinite degrees of separation among natures in M 1–4. He does not employ infinity to speak about eternity. His description of the supreme nature as possessing its life “whole, perfectly, and simultaneously” (perfecte simul totam) makes the notion of infinity unnecessary to his understanding of the supreme nature’s eternity. Consequently, Anselm would have found “atemporal duration” an odd locution.40 In the passage quoted above from the Consolatio Philosophiae, Boethius too sets duration against eternity. The same holds for the passage from Boethius’s De trinitate 4. Incidentally, when Augustine speaks of time, duration, and creation in De ciuitate Dei 11.6 he speaks of the world and time being created simultaneously, so that we cannot say that the world was created in time, but that it was created with time. When Anselm returns to the categories in M 25–26, he does so with the stated intention of showing their inadequacy. This time Anselm considers separable and inseparable accidents, and asks if such a distinction really makes any difference to predicating something of the supreme essence. If there are accidents the absence or presence of which do not entail any change in substance, is it proper to speak of the supreme essence as having accidents of this sort? Anselm believes that whereas some accidents imply mutability, others do not detract from immutability. The examples he uses to make his arguments seem peculiar, however, even though the conclusion he wants to draw is straightforward enough: that

40

See Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” The Journal of Philosophy, 79 (1981), pp. 429–458; and “Atemporal Duration,” The Journal of Philosophy, 84 (1987), pp. 214–219; also Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity, pp. 112–158; and various responses to Stump and Kretzmann: Delmas Lewis, “Eternity Again: A Reply to Stump and Kretzmann,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 15 (1984), pp. 73–79; Paul Fitzgerald, “Stump and Kretzmann on Time and Eternity,” The Journal of Philosophy, 82 (1985), pp. 260–269; Herbert J. Nelson, “Time(s), Eternity, and Duration,” International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, 22 (1987), pp. 3–19; Katherin A. Rogers, “Eternity Has No Duration,” Religious Studies, 30 (1994), pp. 1–16; Richard Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, p. 120, seems to question the sense of duration that has been read into Boethius’s “always.”

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the supreme essence cannot be included in any common classification of substances, since it does not share a common essence with anything.41 The argument unfolds as follows: M 25 contains a discussion of accidents and mutability (or change) and why there are some accidents that do not imply mutability. M 26 deals with the use of the word “substance” in connection with the supreme nature and why it must signify something different from what that word signifies when predicated of anything else. M 27 extends the argument of M 26 by explaining why the supreme essence does not belong in any common classification of substance because it does not share its nature with any other thing. Anselm, then, goes on to speak of the supreme essence as spirit, to distinguish it from all other things that are either bodily or some composite of body and spirit. Anselm begins M 25 with a series of questions on whether a nature whose essence is his substance can be understood in any way as changeable through accidents. The questions have behind them the Aristotelian discussion of the ten categories, the nature of substance, and how accidents adhere to substances. The central concern seems to be this: if it is possible to have accidents while also being naturally immutable, why would it be a problem to speak of the supreme essence in such a way that we can speak of him by way of accidents without any implication that this detracts from his immutable nature? It is a strange way of formulating the objection. It accepts the possibility that accidents per se do not imply mutability, or at least not the kind of mutability that change the substance of the thing undergoing the change. As examples, Anselm suggests that color cannot change without the thing that contains the color (or participates in the color) undergoing any change. But Anselm does not say whether by change he means here a substantial change or an accidental change, although he introduces the example as if he means a substantial change. The second example he offers deals with relations. Here he mentions a person’s height: he observes that he has no relation when it comes to his height with a person who will be born next year, but once the person is born there will be some relation as to whether he is taller, shorter, or of equal height as the person, without any change on his part even as the new born continues to change or 41

M 27 (S 1, p. 45; Williams translation, p. 46).

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grow in all sorts of ways. Anselm goes on to say that this shows that some accidents imply mutability while some do not destroy immutability. Ostensibly, the example of color change indicates mutability while the example of his relation to the person to be born next year implies immutability, because Anselm takes his height as a fixed quantity. How does this affect the propriety of using accidents to speak about the supreme essence? Anselm answers that just as the supreme essence does not yield anything of his simplicity to anything that causes change, in the same way he does not reject any description of him through accidents that do not touch on his supreme immutability. The qualification made earlier takes on great significance. Anselm previously asked whether the supreme essence could be understood as changeable through accidents. It is a manner of speaking, not as befits his supreme immutability. But, if that is the case, why the examples about color changes and relational changes? What did they add to Anselm’s argument? It is unclear, because in the remainder of M 25, Anselm states without ambiguity that any predication of accidents cannot be truly accidents at all, as far as the supreme essence is concerned, if those accidents involve change. So regardless of how the word “accident” is understood, it cannot mean a change of any kind, if it is applied to the supreme essence. In fact, much of what Anselm argues in M 26 makes the discussion of M 25 almost unnecessary. In M 26 he explains that since substances are subject to accidents, the supreme nature will have to be understood in such a way that his substance is the same as his essence. But this has already been settled. It was the basis of the objection raised in M 25. In M 26 all Anselm adds to the argument is that because the supreme essence is the only thing whose substance is his essence, the application of the word to the supreme essence must have a different signification than it does when applied to any other thing; and that far more than anything else, it truly deserves to be called by the word “substance” because it alone exists in such a way as to need nothing else for its existence. M 25 and M 26 then underscore the different senses in which the words substance and accidents can apply to the supreme nature, with the added emphasis, soon to be elaborated in M 27, that the supreme essence does not share anything in common with anything else. It exists immutably in its supreme simplicity.

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6. Spiritus Simpliciter (M 27–28) Anselm’s description of the supreme essence as spirit (spiritus) is long overdue. I mentioned earlier that an appeal to the notion of spiritual substances could have preempted some of Anselm’s earlier arguments. I also mentioned that by not suggesting the idea of spiritual substances, Anselm missed one of those telltale signs of Neoplatonic influence that clearly marked Augustine’s development. Anselm spends the better half of M 27 explaining how the supreme nature cannot be classified like any other substance: because every substance is classified either as a universal (uniuersalis) because it shares its nature with other things (like being a human being is shared by every individual human being) or as a particular thing (indiuidua) because it is the particular instantiation of a universal. The supreme essence is uniquely itself. However, he does say by the middle of the chapter that the essence of anything that exists is called its substance (rei essentia dici solet substantia). And if this is the case, then it is not improper (non prohibitur) to call the supreme nature substance (substantia). This is the gist of Augustine’s argument in De trinitate 5 & 7 that if anything can be called substance at all, it is God. The advantage of the more generic definition of substance that Anselm adopts here, “the essence of anything that exists” is that it does not commit him to explaining what a non-material substance is; only that if there is something non-material that exists, it has a substance because it has an essence or nature. So by the time Anselm finally mentions spiritus in M 27 he has prepared the reader to accept some notion of a spiritual substance as the most appropriate way of thinking about the supreme nature, even though he does not use the exact phrase. The approach he adopts to getting to this point is intriguing. He begins with a distinction between spirit and everything else that he describes as spirit and body. The former is obviously simple and the latter is composite. Anselm appeals to what everyone is supposed to know: that there is no more dignified essence or nature (dignior essentia) than either the spirit or the body (spiritus aut corpus), and that, of the two, the former is more dignified than the latter. The construction is strangely put. One would have expected Anselm to suggest body and soul, since that is the more

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common way of making a distinction about natures especially when the human being is concerned. So while it may look as if Anselm is presuming the composition of a human being as spirit and body, as well as a universal consensus that of the two parts, spirit is worthier than body, Anselm may be doing something quite different: not the composition of human being as body and soul, but rather the more fundamental notion that if there are essences or natures then spiritual (non-material) natures (or substances) are better than bodily natures (or substances). Anselm repeats here much that has already been argued in earlier chapters. What is new in M 25–27 is that the supreme essence is spirit. If we must look for a rationale for why Anselm retraces these steps, it is to make the point that because the supreme essence has nothing in common with any other thing, and is a substance like no other, spirit describes it better than anything else, since what is spirit is understood to be better than what is a composition of body and spirit, which is also better than what is merely bodily. This is a kind of reverse Porphyrian Tree. To summarize: the supreme essence shares nothing in common with any other thing, and unlike any other thing it cannot be classified as either a universal (uniuersalis) or individual representation (indiuidua) of something as if it shares a common essence (per essentialiam communionem) with something else. It is neither a genus nor a species. Since the essence of anything is its substance, we may go so far as to say that the supreme nature is a spiritual substance. At the end of M 28 Anselm speaks of the Creator Spirit (creator spiritus), who alone truly exists, and who made and sustains all created things, which would not exist without it. The Creator Spirit alone exists absolutely (qui solus absolute est). All other things exists comparatively, and in a sense, do not exist at all (omnia creata non sunt). Although created things do not altogether lack existence (nec tamen omnino non sunt), their existence is no existence at all compared to the Creator Spirit. M 28 concludes in a manner that takes us back to M 1–4, and to the definition of the supreme essence with which Anselm began the Monologion. Anselm underwrites an ontological difference between the supreme nature and everything else in language that speaks about time, place, mutability and the like. All other things are in some respect and at some time non-existent; they are mutable, and there was a time when they were not and there will be a time when they

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will cease to be. Their pasts no longer exist (iam non est), their futures do not yet exist (nondum est); and what they are in “the fleeting, momentary, and scarcely existing present” (labili breuissimoque et uix existente praesenti) hardly exists.42 They cannot exist “simply, completely, and absolutely” (simpliciter et perfecte et absolute esse). They come from non-being or non-existence (de non esse) into being (ad esse) through something other than themselves; and they would return to non-existence (ad non esse) unless they are sustained by something other than themselves. It would not have taken much for Anselm to elaborate on the theme of esse / nonesse, and provide a kind of technical vocabulary for a metaphysics of being. Much of it would be unnecessary, of course, because Anselm prefers the per se / per aliud distinction as the most fundamental category of differentiation. So even here, as he speaks about things moving from non-existence into existence and back again, he underscores the distinction between those things that exist per se and those that exist per aliud. The supreme nature exists solus absolute in all its uniqueness, creating all things out of nothing, while other things exist by hardly existing in their fleeting, momentary present. As we weave through Anselm’s arguments and assertions in M 27–28, it is easy to overlook how his nomination of the supreme nature as “spirit” completes the description of the supreme nature’s simplicity that he first introduced in M 17.43

7. Conclusion We began this chapter with Anselm’s question about whether we can find any name or word to predicate of the supreme substance that would tell us anything about what the supreme nature is in itself. Anselm stated from the very outset that such a word does not exist, and yet he was bound to try, if only to answer objections to his view. In the process, Anselm went over the prob42

Jasper Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 131. Cf. Siobhan Nash-Marshall, “Properties, Conflation, and Attribution: The Monologion and Divine Simplicity,” The Saint Anselm Journal, 4 (2007), pp. 1–18; Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Absolute Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy, 2 (1985), pp. 353–382; and Gregory B. Sadler, “A Perfectly Simple God and Our Complicated Lives,” The Saint Anselm Journal, 6 (2008), pp. 1–23. 43

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lem of predication that he had inherited from Aristotle and Augustine, and the problem of substances and accidents, and concluded that only the category of substance can be used for the supreme nature, but with qualifications, since the supreme nature is unlike any other substance there is. Following Augustine, Anselm takes words attributed to the supreme nature as names so that they do not reveal what the supreme nature is in itself, although they are not inappropriate on that account. We noted that by proposing the idea that the supreme nature is whatever it is absolutely better to be than not to be, Anselm formulated a conception to safeguard the kinds of appropriate names that can be predicated of the supreme nature. We then came across Anselm’s discussion of the ratio of place and time, a framework that he borrows from Boethius’s notion of maximal propositions. Anselm uses this law of place and time to probe the supreme nature’s relation to time and place, and in the process formulates his notion of omnipresence and eternity. I argued that Anselm’s idea of eternity eschews the language of duration, and therefore is not amenable to the notion of “atemporal duration.” I also suggested that Anselm’s conception of eternity is linked to his view of the supreme nature’s simple substance, which is “spirit.” The derivation of “spirit,” I argued, is almost anti-climactic, as it is assumed from the very beginning of the Monologion: it is implicit in the distinction between those things that exist per se and those that exist per aliud, in Anselm’s metaphysics of creation, in his strict doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, and in his insistence that there is an ontological dissimilarity between the supreme nature and everything else. From this point forward, Anselm’s discussion enters a new phase. If he has had any success in proving what he set about to do in relation to the supreme nature, he must now proceed in a far more deliberate way to prove what is not so obvious: that the one supreme essence, the “creator spirit,” as Anselm now calls it, is a Trinity. Anselm’s primary objective now is to move from the One to the Three. He had said in M 1 that he would follow the lead of reason to prove that there is one supreme self-sufficient nature who is creator and sustainer of all that exists. He also claimed that he would be able to lead the moderately intelligent to make such an affirmation and to be able to prove other things that “faith” teaches, namely, those numerous other things (aliaque

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perplura quae) which we necessarily believe (necessarie credimus) “about God and about his creation” (de deo siue de eius creatura). The arguments he has made through M 28 do not satisfy these requirements, since in a real sense, one has not quite proved what is necessarily believed about God, at least, as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, if one has not given reasons for why God is Trinity. In this respect, the remaining sections of the Monologion pose the greatest difficulty. Ending M 28 on spirit, however, prepares Anselm for the discussion in M 29ff. in a way that is programmatic. It allows him to bring together two important topics, both of which were broached in the preceding discussion. First, the idea of the inner word or uerbum that precedes or stands behind every outward utterance; and second, the idea of creation without help or assistance from anything material.

Chapter Six Trinity and Mind

1. Introduction The chapters that make up the Trinitarian section of the Monologion (M 29–63) contain probably the most intriguing of all Anselm’s arguments. Anselm faces the task of deriving a plurality from the one supreme, simple and unique creator spirit (creator spiritus). And he is required to show that reason leads inexorably to a plurality of three in one, no more, no less. How does Anselm go about it? Anselm follows Augustine closely. His arguments depend on both the opening chapters of the Gospel of John and Augustine’s commentary on those opening chapters, as well as Augustine’s other insights in De trinitate. De trinitate Book 13, for example, contains a short commentary on the opening chapters of the Gospel of John. As we saw previously, to say that one does not appeal to scripture is not to say that one does not reason with scripture. There are any number of ideas and contentions made in M 29–63 that cannot even be mooted without scripture. So Anselm can carry on with the formal repudiation of scriptural authority even as he depends on scripture for the ideas that frame his discourse. In the course of this chapter we shall have occasion to consider how effectively Anselm does this, and what to make of an interpretative posture that to a critical reader seems almost disingenuous. Anselm’s arguments in M 29–63 begin with a claim about an inherent duality within the supreme nature based on the fact that the supreme nature utters a creative word through which he creates all things that exist. This word, Anselm insists, is consubstantial with the supreme nature. To get to a treble from the double (or pair), Anselm picks up from Augustine that the supreme nature must necessarily love itself. Consequently, the love by which it loves itself yields a third member in the supreme nature’s plurality. Could it be more than three? Anselm does not say, only that three is the proper plurality because it is exemplified by the nature of

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love itself, as Augustine argues in De trinitate about the lover, the beloved, and the love that binds them together. Anselm precludes objections to this argument by saying that it would be absurd to think or to say that the supreme nature does not love itself. The triad of the lover, the beloved and the love that binds them is only one of three triads that Anselm appropriates from Augustine. The second is mind (mens), love (amor), and knowledge (notitia); and the third is memory (memoria), understanding (intellegentia / intellectus), and will (uoluntas), as well as its variant memory (memoria), understanding (intellegentia / intellectus), and love (amor).1 As we proceed it will be helpful to keep in mind how pertinent Anselm’s arguments would have been to the concerns of the broad audience that constituted Christian society in Normandy. It may be recalled that in my earlier reference to the councils of Lisieux and Rouen in 1064 and 1072 respectively, I alluded to the doctrine of “the holy and undivided Trinity” as one of the important concerns of those gathered at the councils. I made the point in my introduction too that while the earlier council at Lisieux had been concerned with the Eucharistic controversy as well, Anselm had remained silent about the controversy. I also mentioned Orderic Vitalis’s statement that the participants at the 1072 council at Rouen debated “the holy and undivided Trinity” before going on to affirm their faith in the Trinity “according to the definitions” (secundum instituta) of the councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus I, and Chalcedon. What Orderic does not say is exactly what was entailed in the debate (disputatum).2 It is one thing to have a discussion about the creedal formulations of those councils and to quote scripture in support of those formulations, as Augustine does in relation to the Nicene tradition, for example, in the first four books of De trinitate. It is quite another thing to attempt an intellectual odyssey of the kind that 1 Augustine uses variants of the memoria, intellectus / intellegentia, amor / uoluntas triad at different places in De trinitate: For example, memoria, intellectus, uoluntas (De trinitate 4.20.30; 6.9.11); memoria, intellectus, amor (De trinitate 14.14.19; 15.22.42); memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas (De trinitate 10.11.17; 14.6.8; 14.7.10; 15.3.5; 15.7.12; 15.20.39); He also varies the third term and uses dilectio or caritas in place of amor: memoria, intellegentia, dilectio seu uoluntas (De trinitate 15.7.12 ); memoria, intellegentia, dilectio siue caritas (De trinitate 15.17.18); memoria, intellegentia, dilectio (De trinitate 15.22.42). 2 OV 2, 286.

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Augustine undertakes in De trinitate 5–15. While those attending the council at Rouen in 1072 would have been at home in the first four books of De trinitate, with its extensive citation of scripture, it is not at all clear what they would have thought of the exercitatio mentis of the other parts of De trinitate, and still less of a work inspired by it that eschewed any appeal to scripture and authority. And yet, if the discussions at Rouen about “the holy and undivided Trinity” had been a real debate, it would have involved some considerations not just of the formulations of the ancient ecumenical councils, but perhaps discussion about the reasonableness or rationality of the doctrine. Anselm here provides just such a defense of the reasonableness of the doctrine of the “holy and undivided Trinity.” If Anselm had been present at the council at Rouen in 1072, it would be interesting to know whether he had already formulated some of the arguments he presents in this section of the Monologion. There is little doubt that if ever Anselm had had the opportunity to present to an ecclesiastical assembly some of the arguments that follow in M 29–63, he would have acquitted himself well. After all, he had presented them to his readers at Bec first as part of his conversations and now in a written work, which they had demanded in part to be able to preserve some of the substance of the arguments he used to present in conversation. Anselm’s arguments here would assure his readers or listeners that they had little to fear from the exercitatio mentis recommended by Augustine, and that they did not have to be afraid of dialectical arguments. Reason could be trusted as a sure guide in theological inquiry and argument. This chapter will assess the following: the trustworthiness of reason in leading Anselm and his readers towards a derivation and understanding of the Trinity; whether the dissimilarity between the supreme nature and all other natures undercuts Anselm’s language and arguments about the supreme nature; whether the human mind provides an adequate analogue for the divine nature; and whether the gendered language about Father and Son admits of other alternatives. At the very end, I should like also to explore the question of how closely Anselm’s Trinitarian analogies follow upon Augustine’s. To set the stage for Anselm’s arguments, here is some background from Augustine’s De trinitate.

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2. Trinitarian Simplicity: To Speak of the Ineffable (De trinitate 6–8) What follows here is a sketch of some of the arguments in De trinitate 6–10 in two parts that should help us understand some of the twists and turns in Anselm’s argumentation.3 In De trinitate Book 6, Augustine begins with the question of the equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Augustine spends some time discussing Arians, referring to early and later Arians in an antiArian polemic most likely influenced by Ambrose’s De fide and Hilary of Poitiers’s De trinitate.4 My concern here is not so much with Augustine’s polemic as his commentary on the phrase, “Christ the wisdom and power of God,” from I Corinthians 1:24. Augustine uses the phrase to explore the notion of divine simplicity and the attendant question of the types of names that one can apply to God. His arguments seem reminiscent of those proffered by Hilary of Poitiers and less so those that can be found in Ambrose’s De fide. To start with, Augustine asserts that only an insane person would think that God is without power or wisdom. On the question of divine unity, he sets out with an interpretation of the opening passages of the Gospel of John in De trinitate 6.2.3. He links John 1:1, “in the beginning was the word” (in principio erat uerbum) with John 10:30, “I and the Father are one” (Ego et pater unum sumus); and so states in De trinitate 6.3.4 that if something is said to be one without being specified or without qualification then the oneness is about nature or essence without difference or

3 For recent discussion on the themes in the latter books of De trinitate see, for a philosophical approach, Johannes Brachtendorf, Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach Augustinus: Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in De Trinitate (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2000), pp. 79–193. For a mostly theological counterpoint to Brachtendorf, see Basil Studer, Augustinus De Trinitate: Eine Einführung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005); and Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 4 See Michel R. Barnes, “The Arians of Book V, and the Genre of De Trinitate,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s., 44 (1993), pp. 185–195; Cf. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, pp. 262–267; 366–372.

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disagreement.5 In between he extirpates that the language of the opening passages of the gospel prove conclusively that the Son, the Word, is God. For it proclaims: et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum. And he adds that this is how we know that the Son is deus de deo, lumen de lumine. In De trinitate 6.4.6 he tries to use the virtues as a way of speaking about the multiplicity and unity of the Trinity. To make the case that each of the cardinal virtues requires the others is really to adopt a formal conception of the virtues. By this I mean that one has to insist that a truly virtuous person cannot have just some of the virtues but they must have all of them: prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude (or courage). If, however, we try to describe the virtues, it will be clear that they are different in character. To be just is not the same as being courageous, and we can easily think of people who are just without having courage. The only way to get the virtues to be one, or to end up requiring each other or pointing to each other, is to adopt some kind of irreducible aspect to virtue that is the present in all four. That irreducible aspect then can be presented like the “substance” of the virtues. To get there requires re-configuring or re-interpreting them in such a way as to have them mean the same thing. The move is plainly allegorical so it does not quite work in the way Augustine proposes it. One gets the sense that Augustine is trying out arguments as he tries to find a way of capturing something that is essentially one yet plural. Incidentally, this is not the first time Augustine has tried to reconfigure the virtues. Perhaps his most interesting attempt, and an early one at that, is found in De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.15.25 where he describes the four cardinal virtues as aspects of the love of God, because, according to him, we have to affirm that “virtue is nothing at all but the highest love of God” (nihil omnino esse uirtutem affirmauerim nisi summum amorem dei).6 He, in fact, sets his reconfiguration also within a Trinitarian context, saying at the beginning of De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.14.24 that “we ought to love God, a certain three-in-oneness, Father, Son, and 5

Augustine De trinitate 6.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 232): Cum ergo sic dicitur unum ut non addatur quid unum et plura unum dicantur, eadem natura atque essentia non dissidens neque dissentiens significatur. 6 Augustine, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.15.25 (CSEL 90, p. 29).

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Holy Spirit,” (deum ergo diligere debemus trinam quandam unitatem, patrem et filium et spiritum sanctum) as he adds that this three-inoneness is to be called nothing except the self-same being (quod nihil aliud dicam esse nisi idipsum esse).7 There are a number of significant themes here, all of them joined seamlessly in Augustine’s thinking: loving God, the Trinity, the simplicity of the divine nature, the self-same. And to top it all off, he adds the words of Paul from Romans 11:36: from whom are all things, through whom are all things, and in whom are all things, to him be the glory. The set of ideas that precipitate Augustine’s reconfiguration of the virtues as the love of God re-appear in De trinitate. Curiously, in his new attempt in De trinitate to represent the virtues as like the Trinity in both plurality and unity he seems to have forgotten his previous description of those same virtues as the highest love of God. On the question of simplicity Augustine seems to be on solid ground. For Augustine, to be simple in existence is to possess all that one is. Divine simplicity means that God is all that God is: God is simple because God’s existence implies God’s substance, power, wisdom, truth, etc. It is not even proper to say that simplicity is aseity: that God exists from himself. This is sometimes presented as the foundational doctrine of divine simplicity. However, it is not the primary sense in which Augustine speaks about simplicity. Augustine’s notion of simplicity has everything to do with his view of time and eternity. And it is only when we read his statements about simplicity in relation to what he says about eternity that we can fully appreciate this. This is not the place to pursue that inquiry. However, we should not fail to see that when Boethius says that eternity is to possess all of one’s life at once and always; that is what simplicity is. This is the proper sense in which to read Augustine’s notion of divine simplicity. That is to say, God possesses all God’s perfection (which is nothing more than what God is) merely because God is. Perfection here is not to be understand in the later Thomistic sense of God’s perfections, where each perfection is just one of the attributes of God. It is not a property of God. It is merely a way of speaking. Augustine’s notion of simplicity is also not a negative doctrine, something God is not: not composite, not corruptible, etc. These 7

Augustine, De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 1.14.24 (CSEL 90, p. 28).

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are secondary ways of explicating the doctrine. That God is simple is unique to God, as far Augustine is concerned, and that simplicity extends to the doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine states repeatedly that there is no Father without the Son and the Holy Spirit. And for the lack of a better phrase, I shall refer to this as “Trinitarian simplicity.” Augustine maintains that this is what God is, and so he keeps repeating it, not because it is easy to understand but because this is what it is, so to speak. So after Augustine explains in De trintiate 6.3.5 and 6.4.6 that the Son is in everything equal to the Father with respect to substance, he can say in De trinitate 6.5.7 that to speak of the unity and equality of substance is to speak of divine simplicity and vice versa. He is always careful to make the qualification that he is speaking in this respect according to substance and not according the Son’s mission as incarnate. Augustine adds that the Holy Spirit is that which joins the Father and the Son (De trinitate 6.4.6): the bond of peace. It is an odd expression, the joining together. It picks up on his earlier language about the communion between Father and Son. Augustine says the Spirit is common to the Father and Son, hence the language about communion (commune), consubstantial (consubstantialis), coeternal (coaeterna). He suggests almost humorously that we could even call it friendship but the most appropriate word is caritas, because after all deus caritas est (I John 4:8, 16); and then at the very end of the passage he uses the variant deus dilectio est. Augustine repeatedly turns to scriptural texts to make the case for Trinitarian simplicity before turning to the analogies or triads of the Trinity in the later books of De trinitate. So even when he quotes a passage like Ephesians 4:3 to speak of the Holy Spirit as the bond of peace, he quickly adds the philosophical and theological commentary that this bond of peace between Father and Son is not by participation but through their own essence. It should not be overlooked that it is only after Augustine has discussed divine simplicity and Trinitarian simplicity that he speaks about parts and wholes and about composite existence as the ontological opposite to simplicity; and about why bodies differ from spiritual creatures and the like. To reiterate: In De trinitate 6 Augustine outlines a doctrine of divine simplicity and Trinitarian simplicity. It is a positive doctrine that motivates his articulations in De trinitate 7 and 8. Augustine’s

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notion of Trinitarian simplicity safeguards the three-in-one as a fundamental datum, which though difficult to understand is nevertheless essential and beyond dispute. He assures his readers that repeating it makes it more familiar, even if it is difficult to understand; so the more it is repeated the less disorienting it is. Augustine mentioned I Corinthians 1:24, “Christ the power and wisdom of God,” as a critical passage that elicits an objection about the unity and plurality within the Godhead. However, he does not provide any sustained discussion of the passage. Like a number of the themes broached in De trinitate 6, he picks it up again in De trinitate 7. It is one of the questions left over. And so he begins De trinitate 7 with two questions: Question 1: whether each of the persons of the Trinity by himself and without the other two can be called God, great, wise, true, omnipotent, just, etc., or anything else that can be said about God, not relatively but in respect to himself. Question 2: whether these terms may not be employed except when the Trinity itself is understood (or meant). Notice in the way Augustine frames the questions how trinitas functions as a name. We should also notice that Augustine includes the word deus in a list of other words or attributes and so underscores the idea that the word is a name. This issue of naming is also present in his criticism of Hilary of Poitiers’s views in De trinitate 6.10.11 where he comments on Hilary’s triad of eternity, form, and use for the Father, the Image, and the Gift respectively. The other thing to keep in mind is the distinction between what is said of each of the Trinity and what is said about the Trinity as a whole. How does this affect the phrase, “Christ the power and wisdom of God?” Is power or wisdom something like an attribute of God that specifically refers to Christ and if that is the case how could Christ be understood to be the same substance as the Father? For on this reckoning the Father would be wise through an attribute that is not consubstantial and therefore would possess his wisdom by participation in such wisdom. This would lead to the Father being wise through the wisdom by which he begets. Notice here that Augustine does not bring into his discussion the passage in Proverbs 8:22 which, according to Hilary of Poitiers, was a favorite of Arians who used it to argue that if wisdom was created at the beginning, then the reference to Christ as wisdom means there was a time when Christ was not. Augustine deals with this in De trinitate 1.24. He presents two testimonies: First, accord-

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ing to the form of God; and second, according to the form of a slave (or servant). For him, Philippians 2:7–8 is the interpretive key. In the form of a servant the Son humbles himself, but not according to his divine substance.8 Augustine wonders why the Father is not the father of his own greatness, goodness, justice, etc.? Why only wisdom and power are referred to the son? Or whether one should say that all the different attributes are inferred or expressed in wisdom and power? In that case, each would refer to the others. This is what Augustine has argued previously. He leaves this point behind and proceeds to ask the same question in a slightly different form. Is the Father wise by himself without reference to the Son? He asks further if the Father is wise by his own wisdom and if the Father is wise in the same way as he utters his word. The first two seem obvious, the third a little peculiar. Why then the third? Because we read from John 1:1–3 that the Father speaks by the word that he begets; a word like no other. It is a word unlike a human word which is spoken and passes away, Augustine insists. And a word that was with God, was God, and by which or through which all things were created. He quotes John 1:1–3. This is a word that is co-equal to himself, by which he expresses himself always (semper) and unchangeably. The Father is himself not the word, just as he is not the Son or the image. Here then Augustine maintains that with John 1:1–13 we have to understand that God there is the Father, the word is the Son, and the Word that creates is the Father’s expression; a word spoken, if you will, always and unchangeably (shall we say eternally?). Why go through all of this? Anselm depends on this. Not only because he makes much of the utterance of the supreme essence, but as Augustine elaborates we shall see why the creative utterance of the supreme essence or God the Father is fundamental to Anselm’s metaphysics of creation. This metaphysical foundation explains much of Anselm’s derivation of the Trinity as the essential nature of the supreme essence. As Augustine puts it: because the Father speaks the word that is co-eternal with him, one can8

The most important work here has long been G. Rémy, Le Christ médiateur dans l’oeuvre de saint Augustin, 2 vols., (Lille-Paris: Université de Lille, 1979). See also Goulven Madec, La patrie et la voie. Le Christ dans la vie et la pensée de saint Augustin, (Paris: Desclée, 1989).

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not think of the Father alone without thinking of the word at the same time (simul). In other words, according to John 1:1–13, there is never the Father without the Word. This is the Trinitarian simplicity that Augustine argued in De trinitate 6. Does this mean then that the Father is wise in the same way as he speaks the word that is wisdom and power? It is almost as if wisdom and power are a kind of synecdoche for expressing the nature of this eternal expression of the Father that is the Son (or the word). Augustine says this is not the case. That they do not exist apart from each other does not mean that the Father alone is not powerful or wise by himself, etc. Rather each is great, powerful, etc., by that by which he is God. So in our understanding we should hold as primary the idea of goodness. The Father is not the deity (deitas) by himself. The Father is deity with the other two. Hence the Son is also the essence of the Father, since it is not one thing to be and another thing to be God. Another way of expressing this is to say that God is substance, and there is no substance without the relations within the Godhead. In fact, it is a little easier to use the language of deity than using Father and God, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes differently. So if the Godhead is the substance, then one can speak simply of the equality within the Godhead. And Godhead always means Trinity; not one without the others. When Augustine again picks up I Corinthians 1:24, he focuses his attention on the limitations of human speech and language when we try to speak about the ineffable. This is exactly what Anselm will advert to in M 64 and M 65. Augustine, for his part, elaborates on the pitfalls of trying to explain a passage like I Corinthians 1:24. Augustine mentions the following pitfalls: First, in interpreting the passage one might suggest that Christ is not the power of God and in so doing contradict the apostle. Or one might say Christ is the power of God, but the Father is not the Father of his own wisdom, power, etc. He has already dealt with this. The second approach would be to say that with respect to the Father it is one thing to be and another to be wise, powerful, etc. This would imply that the Father is not a simple nature; or one might propose that the Father is not anything with respect to his own substance and that being Father is only in relation to the Son and not to his substance. To all these possibilities Augustine responds by reiterating what he said earlier. There is only one divine substance; and

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there is never one without the other members of the Trinity. All are one substance (De trinitate 7.1.2). So the Father and the Son are together one essence (De trinitate 7.2.3): wisdom from wisdom, essence from essence. All of this will appear in M 29 – M 63. With so much of his discussion of De trinitate 7 behind him, Augustine begins De trinitate Book 8 with a confessional statement. And so in the preface he states as follows: In this Trinity, as we have said elsewhere, those names, which are predicated relatively the one to the other, are properly spoken of as belonging to each person in particular, as Father and Son, and the Gift of both, the Holy Spirit; for the Father is not the Trinity, nor the Son the Trinity, nor the Gift the Trinity. But when they are spoken of singly with respect to themselves, then they are not spoken of as three in the plural number but as one, the Trinity itself. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; the Father is good, the Son is good, the Holy Spirit is good; and the Father is omnipotent, the Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent; but yet there are not three gods, nor three goods, nor three omnipotents, but one God, one good, and one omnipotent, the Trinity itself. And the same applies to everything else that may be said of them, not in relation of one to the other, but individually in respect to themselves.9

Here is the affirmation or confession of the central paradox of Trinitarian doctrine as Augustine understands it: that the three are one, that each is not wholly the Trinity, but all together is the Trinity. And while each is God, they are not three Gods. And so Augustine adds: These things are said according to essence, for in them to be is the same as to be great, to be good, to be wise, and whatever else is predicated of each person therein with respect to themselves or of the Trinity itself. And, therefore, they are called three persons or 9 Augustine, De trinitate 8.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 268; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 243): Diximus alibi ea dici proprie in illa trinitate distincte ad singulas personas pertinentia quae relatiue dicuntur ad inuicem sicut pater et filius et utriusque donum spiritus sanctus, non enim pater trinitas aut filius trinitas aut trinitas donum. Quod uero ad se dicuntur singuli non dici pluraliter tres sed unum ipsam trinitatem sicut deus pater, deus filius deus spiritus sanctus; et bonus pater, bonus filius, bonus spiritus sanctus; et omnipotens pater, omnipotens filius, omnipotens spiritus sanctus; nec tamen tres dii aut tres boni aut tres omnipotentes, sed unus deus, bonus, omnipotens, ipsa trinitas, et quidquid aliud non ad inuicem relatiue sed ad se singuli dicuntur.

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three substances, not that any diversity of essence is to be understood, but so that we may be able to answer by some one word when anyone asks three what or what three things.10

He assures the reader that so great is the equality in the Trinity that whatever each of the three may be is not less than that Trinity. And as pertains to the divinity, the Father is not greater than the Son; neither is the Son greater than the Holy Spirit, nor the Father greater than the Holy Spirit. Augustine maintains that these are the things the church confesses and affirms, and the more often they are repeated and discussed, the more they will become familiar. In De trinitate 8.1.2, Augustine moves from a discussion of greatness to truth and the three ways in which people generally think about God. I have already alluded to this in our previous discussion. Augustine’s focus here is on the difficulty of apprehending and holding on to a vision of the divine. Behold and see if you can, he intones. He points out that even though we love the good we are so far from grasping the ultimate Good. And so: why should he still add more when all the many goods available to us leave us still panting and yearning (De trinitate 8.3.4)? For our purposes, the first few passages from Book 8 confirm what De trinitate 7 has done; and why the confession or affirmation of faith speaks of Trinity and not three Gods. If one takes the language of this confession, even without a sermon on the creed itself, one can read this as a creed; at once clear and bewildering; since the logic of three being one, three things each being God and the three not being three Gods is perplexing. All of this, of course, merely picks up from where Book 7 leaves off. In one sense the summary here in Book 8 is less clarifying than the way Augustine expressed himself in Book 7 when he says that there is not the Father without the Son; and so on. That manner of speaking is actually less confusing than the language of three Gods not being three Gods. 10 Augustine, De trinitate 8.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 268; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 243): Hoc enim secundum essentiam dicuntur quia hoc est ibi esse quod magnum esse, quod bonum, quod sapientem esse, et quidquid aliud ad se unaquaeque ibi persona uel ipsa trinitas dicitur. Ideoque dici tres personas uel tres substantias non ut aliqua intellegatur diuersitas essentiae sed ut uel uno aliquo uocabulo responderi possit cum dicitur quid tres uel quid tria.

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And it may be helpful to consider in this regard why the notion of God’s nature as simple (simplex) functions so centrally in Augustine and in Anselm. Augustine mentions in De trinitate 7 and 8 that God’s nature is simple and that is why in the case of God or the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be is to be good, wise, etc. Although Augustine also speaks about divine simplicity in connection with the fact that God’s nature is non-composite, not made of parts, and that God is immutable, the primary mode of his conception of simplicity is the basic idea that existence implies all that God is: wise, good, etc., as I mentioned a moment ago. All other things that exist lack this. For every created thing there is a difference between existence as such and being good, just, etc. Or to put it another way, because God’s existence entails all of God’s perfection, God is simple; for every other existent thing, existence does not entail perfection; and even if it did it would be perfection derived from that which brings it into being.

3. Trinity, Imperfection, and the Human Mind (De trinitate 9–10) With Books 6 through 8 behind him, Augustine is confident that he can go even further to inquire into other trinities to illuminate the doctrine. And so he begins Book 9 with “We are indeed seeking a Trinitatem, but not any trinitas at all, but that Trinitatem quae deus est, and the true, the supreme, and the only God.” He continues: “keep waiting, therefore, whosever you are, who hear these words. For we are still seeking, and no one rightly blames him for engaging in such a search, provided only that he remains firmly rooted in the faith, while he seeks that which is so difficult to know or express.”11 We should pause here to mention Augustine’s observation that there are many trinities; but only one that is God.

11 Augustine, De trinitate 9.1.1 (CCSL 50, p. 292; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 269): Trinitatem certe quaerimus, non quamlibet sed illam trinitatem quae deus est, uerusque ac summus et solus deus. Exspecta ergo, quisquis haec audis; adhuc enim quaerimus, et talia quaerentem nemo iuste reprehendit si tamen in fide firmissimus quaerat quod aut nosse aut eloqui difficillimum est. Affirmantem uero cito iusteque reprehendit quisquis melius uel uidet uel docet.

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Someone like Anselm, whose theological formation depended in part on a deep familiarity with De trinitate, could approach an inquiry about the Trinitarian nature of the divine essence with a great deal of confidence about what could be achieved by reason and argument, without appealing to scripture. There is a sleight of hand involved, of course, since Augustine’s reasoning is so deeply suffused with scripture that when Anselm says he is not appealing to scripture but has the authority of Augustine’s arguments behind him, he almost forgets that so much of Augustine’s thinking even in the parts of De trinitate that are apparently non-scriptural are still framed by scriptural texts, and sometimes explicitly. On his way towards the derivation that there is a trinity in the lover, the beloved and the love that binds them, Augustine asks whether the most excellent love is proper to the Holy Spirit. He asks this in part under the inspiration of I John 4:16: deus caritas est. And so in De trinitate 9.2.2 he elaborates that human love is an imperfect image of love. He points out that in all love there is the person that loves, what is loved, and the love itself. If I love only myself, there are only two not three aspects in this kind of loving, so one might be inclined to say that there is no trinity here but merely a pair, since the lover and the beloved are the same. What matters to Augustine is the mind or the activities of the rational soul. And since the mind loves itself, it must love something that is not bodily since the mind is not a body but spirit. This seems unnecessary, although Augustine seems to think it important for making the point that when the mind loves itself, it loves something that is not the body, but something that is superior in nature to the body, namely the intellectual soul. But if such is the case, is there really any difference between the mind knowing itself and its love of itself? Does the claim of the mind knowing itself not read like something solipsistic? In De trintiate 9.3.3 Augustine states categorically that the mind cannot love itself unless it knows itself. For one cannot love what one does not know. He presents self-love, then, as a limiting case. At the same time, self-love is revealing if we consider what precedes love, namely that one must know what one loves. So Augustine drops the triad of lover, the beloved, and the love that binds them, and opts for another, the mind, knowledge, and love (mens, notitia, amor) as a better expression of a trinity in the human being. He then reiterates his point about the dissimilarity between

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the Trinity and the human mind that in a human being knowledge and love are imperfect. However, if they could be perfect, which is to say, if the mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love were equal, then they would be able to reflect the Trinity as it is: all three equal and undivided though distinct (De trinitate 9.4.4). The significance of all this for Augustine is that the Trinitarian image that he finds in the human being is at best an imperfect analogue of the Trinitarian simplicity of the divine nature. Whereas in the simplicity of the divine nature, love is knowledge, and is goodness, etc., such cannot be the case for the mind. The mind (mens) cannot know itself (noverit se) unless it loves itself (amare se ipsum). This is the basic idea that drives almost all of Augustine’s Trinitarian speculations and analogies. And a mind that does not know itself cannot know another mind. It is important to distinguish here between the mind’s awareness of itself (self-knowledge) from the mind’s comprehension or understanding of what it knows, understands, remembers, etc. According to Augustine, it is not like the eyes that can see other things but cannot see itself. The kind of seeing or knowing of which the mind is capable does not mean that the mind fully understands what is contained in the mind. Augustine’s theory of perception helps here.12 We see through the eyes rays refracted that touch whatever we see. We cannot direct those refracted rays onto the eyes themselves, except when we are looking into a mirror. Augustine expresses some hesitation about the obscurity of the subject and whether this is in fact how the eyes produce vision. Whatever may be the nature of the power (uis) by which we see through the eyes we do not see the power itself but we see it in the mind (mente) and if possible (si fieri potest) comprehend it in the mind (hoc mente). The mind gathers knowledge of corporeal things through the senses; and gathers knowledge of incorporeal things through itself. It is able to gain knowledge of incorporeal things through itself because it is itself incorporeal. Notice the difference between this kind of argument and the previous one about the mind not being body but spirit. Once the description is provided about the mind, its knowledge, and its love, the basic outlines of Augustine’s Trinitarian account 12 See Gerard O’Daly, Augustine’s Philosophy of Mind (London: Duckworth, 1987), pp. 80–102.

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of the human mind needs little embellishment. From the mind’s love and knowledge of itself (mens, amor eius, notitia eius), Augustine presents mens, notitia, amor as a trinity. As he puts it: mens et amor et notitia eius tria quaedam sunt; they are a “certain three.” And these tria are unum, and when they are perfect, they are equal. At the end of De trinitate 9.4.4 Augustine uses the language of the inexorable in his discussion of the three. Recte igitur diximus haec tria cum perefecta sunt essent consequeitur aequalia. As he develops his argument further in De trintiate 9.4.5, Augustine speaks about how knowledge and love exist in the soul (in animare existere). And in an interesting expression, he speaks about how love and knowledge are folded in the soul. His task, as he describes it, is to unfold or unwrap what the soul has within it, since love and knowledge do not exist in the soul as in a subject in the way that color, shape, quantity or quality exists in a body. So he must unravel what exists in the soul substantially and essentially. Augustine’s imagery is intended to suggest that the soul cannot be without its love and knowledge of itself any more than it can be without existence (or its substance). And yet, to the extent that the mind (mens) can also love something else beside itself by the same love that it loves itself, it shows that its love is unique. It is not limited by and to its own self-love. Love and knowledge, then, are related but each is substantially its own. Augustine points out that this is not like two friends who are two men substantially but friends relatively (amici relatiue). Expanding on the idea of the two friends, Augustine surmises that the lover and the love and the knower and the knowledge could be analogous to the two friends; and yet mind (mens) and spirit (spiritus) are not relative terms; they are substantive. In any case, while the two friends can be separated, the lover and the love, the knower and the understanding, cannot be separated. All of which is to say that the mind cannot lose its connection to what it loves and knows. After a most unusual comparison with water, wine, and honey, Augustine gets to the point. In one of the few instances in De trinitate where Augustine uses the phrase necesse est, a phrase that resounds in the ears of any reader of the Monologion, he contends that the three – the mind, love, and knowledge – must necessarily be (necesse est) of one and the same substance. “In these three (in illis tribus) when the mind knows itself and loves itself (se nouit mens et amans se) a trinity

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(trinitas) remains: and there is no confusion through any commingling, although each is a substance in itself, and all are found mutually in all, whether each one in the pair or the pair in each one.” 13 This is Augustine’s way of expressing how love and knowledge are folded in the soul: the mens ipsa, its knowledge (noscens, nota, noscabilis), and its love (amans, amata, amabilis). The three are inseparable. As he puts it: “These three therefore are in a marvelous manner inseparable from one another, and yet each is a substance and all together are one substance (omnia una substantia) or essence, while the terms themselves express mutual relationship (relatiue dicatur ad inuicem).”14 At the end of De trinitate 9.7.12 Augustine asserts: “For no one willingly does anything which he has not spoken previously in his heart” (Nemo enim aliquid uolens facit quod non in corde suo prius dixerit). This is Augustine’s conclusion to a long passage about how we will what we will: “there is nothing that we do through the members of our body, in our words and actions by which the conduct of men is approved or disapproved, that is not perceived by the word that has been brought forth within us.”15 This underlying notion is what shapes much of what Augustine describes about love, knowledge, and human action. Note that Augustine has nothing here about imagining a concept. To be fair this is not his concern here. He is interested in showing that action is always preceded by the prior inner word that authorizes and sanctions it. Here is the model that is related to the craftsman and the utterance of the supreme essence as Anselm has it in the Monologion. As Augustine explains: the word that is spoken previously in the 13 Augustine, De trinitate 9.5.8 (CCSL 50, p. 110; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 277): At in illis tribus cum se nouit mens et amat se, manes trinitas, mens, amor, notitia; et nulla commixtione confunditur quamuis et singula sint in se ipsis et inuicem tota in totis, siue singula in binis siue bina in singulis, itaque omnia in omnibus. 14 Augustine, De trinitate 9.5.8 (CCSL 50, p. 110; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 278): Miro itaque modo tria ista inseparabilia sunt a semetipsis, et tamen eorum singulum quidque substantia est et simul omnia una substantia uel essentia cum et relatiue dicantur ad inuicem. 15 Augustine, De trinitate 9.7.12 (CCSL 50, p. 304; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 282): Nihil itaque agimus per membra corporis in factis dictisque nostris quibus uel approbantur uel improbantur mores hominum quod non uerbo apud nos intus edito praeuenimus. Nemo enim aliquid uolens facit quod non in corde suo prius dixerit.

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heart is conceived in love. It is a strange way of putting it, since it has to contend with the objection that not all the things we do are done in love or are good. Augustine’s first interest is to say that both what the Creator makes and what creatures do are conceived in love; but while he can defend the Creator can he really defend creatures? Augustine moves quickly to point out that he mentions love because action is motivated either by cupiditas or caritas: the former wrongly ordered and the latter directed towards the Creator. He adds that love joins word to mind. “Love, therefore, as a means, joins one word with the mind from which it is born; and as a third it binds itself with them in an incorporeal embrace, without any confusion.”16 Augustine has a better description and analysis elsewhere of why the word that is born is one and the same as the one who begets it; but he does not use that argument for what he could have used it for. Here in De trinitate 9.9.14 he comments that “the word that has been conceived and born is one and the same when the will rests in the knowledge of itself, this happens in the love of spiritual things.”17 This is another way of saying what he maintained previously, that since human love and knowledge are imperfect there is not a “true” trinity of the mind, its love, and its knowledge. However, when the mind loves spiritual things, when it truly loves spiritual things, then the word within, the desire and longing that motives action, is one and the same as the knowledge it possesses. Augustine, thus, finds a way to link the imperfect trinity of the human mind to something verging on a true trinity. The difference lies in whether the mind loves spiritual things. In De trinitate 9.10.15 Augustine considers an objection that reads like one of the many objections Anselm considers in the Monologion. Is all knowledge, then, a word? Or is knowledge only that which is loved? Remember how he mentioned love as prior to the word that leads to action but left untouched what it meant for acts that were not loving. Now Augustine asks, what does 16

Augustine, De trinitate 9.8.13 (CCSL 50, p. 304; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 282): Verbum ergo nostrum et mentem de qua gignitur quasi medius amor coniungit seque cum eis tertium complexu incorporeo sine ulla confusione constringit. 17 Augustine, De trinitate 9.9.14 (CCSL 50, p. 305; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 283): conceptum autem uerbum et natum idipsum est cum uoluntas in ipsa notitia conquiescit, quod fit in amore spiritalium.

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love have to do with all our knowledge, and by extension all our actions? He admits that we know a lot of things we hate, and such knowledge is not likely to have been motivated by love. Augustine gets subtle. He makes a distinction between what we know and what we conceive. We speak words; and everything we know is a word impressed on our minds. Our disapproval of what we hate is a word we approve of; and it is pleasing to us. This is Augustine’s way of saying that, strangely, we love our disappointment, because the disapproving word is an affirmation for us. It is similar to his use of the idea of privation in relation to knowledge in De trinitate 9.11.16. Augustine also distinguishes between the types of knowledge we possess and the qualitative difference between the objects of our knowledge and their respective ontologies. All knowledge is according to species: so all knowledge is similar to that by which it knows. So whether we approve or disapprove of what we know, the mind always possesses a certain likeness of the species it knows. How does this apply to God? We know God but we are not equal to God; so we may wonder, what is the species by which we know God? We are like God because we know God, be we do not know God as God knows himself. And moreover, God is not a body like so many of the other things we know including our own selves. We learn of bodies through our bodily senses by forming impressions of them in our minds through likenesses since the bodies themselves are not in our minds. If we take the image for the object we would be in error, even though in as much as they exist in the mind, the image of the bodily object is better than the bodily species because it is in a better nature; because the mind is a living substance. When we know God, something similar seems to be the case. But in this case, it works in the opposite direction, because the image of God we have in our minds is in a lesser nature than the object, God. Augustine then presents two types of knowledge on the way to proposing a third. First, the knowledge of bodily things in the mind where the receptacle that contains the knowledge is superior to the things known; and second, the knowledge of God, where the receptacle is inferior to the thing known. In between these two types is a third kind: the mind’s knowledge of itself. When it knows and loves perfectly its word of itself is on par with the mind. It is not the knowledge of a lower essence like a body, nor

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of a higher essence like God, “therefore, knowledge is both its image and its word, because it is an expression of that mind and is equaled to it by knowing, and because what is begotten is equal to its begetter.”18 This is the most succinct statement as to why the expression or locutio of the supreme essence is consubstantial with itself. Although it may not look like it at first glance, the kinds of objections Augustine poses to his arguments in the course of his deliberations in De trinitate have a similar cast to some of the objections Anselm poses to himself in the Monologion. For example, Augustine poses the following questions in De trinitate 9.12.17: If knowledge is both word and image, what about love? Why is it also not begotten? And if begotten, why does the mind not beget both knowledge and love if it is all part of the most exalted Trinity? Why, then, is the Holy Spirit also not begotten, and an image? Augustine’s response is to turn to what scripture says; and specifically what Jesus says: “What Truth has said.” And since Truth has said it, no Christian doubts that the Son is the Word of God and the Holy Spirit is love. It remains to reiterate what has been said. We cannot know something if it is not knowable. And everything we know begets knowledge of itself in us. So knowledge is possible for the one who knows from the object known. When the mind knows itself it is in a unique place. For both knower and known are the same. Love, on the other hand, is different, Augustine argues. It is self-generated. The mind is the origin of its own love by which it loves itself. So its love is not begotten of the mind like knowledge. This seems unusual and perhaps too subtle: is not the mind an object of its own love in much the same way that the mind is the object of its own self-knowledge? Moreover, if, as he argued before, the mind knows itself and therefore loves itself, because you cannot love what you do not know, why is love self-generated if it is moved by self-knowledge? Now Augustine says love is self-generated but knowledge involves a search. Is he not confusing the knowledge of other things (knowledge that is sought) with self-knowledge, which is a kind of recognition or self-awareness? 18 Augustine, De trinitate 9.11.16 (CCSL 50, p. 308; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 286): Ideoque et imago et uerbum est quia de illa exprimitur cum cognoscendo eidem coaequatur, et est gignenti aequale quod genitum est.

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“Why do we not say, therefore, that it has begotten its own love, as we say that by knowing itself it has begotten its own knowledge? Is this perhaps to show clearly that this is the origin of love from which it proceeds?”19 This is the mind he is speaking of. The point seems to be this: love precedes knowledge, it lies behind everything. Or rather, desire or yearning comes before knowledge. Inquiry is motivated by a desire to discover (appetitus inueniendi). But why call this love? Augustine avers that although the seeking does not seem to be love by which that which is known is loved “yet it is something of the same kind” (tamen ex eodem genere quiddam est) as love. He elaborates in the paragraph that follows: For it can already be called will, since everyone who seeks wishes to find; and if what he seeks belongs to the order of knowledge, then everyone who seeks wishes to know. And if he wishes it ardently and earnestly, he is said to study, a term we generally use for those who pursue and acquire any branch of learning. A kind of desire, therefore precedes the birth in the mind, and by means of it, that is, by our seeking and finding what we wish to know, an offspring, namely knowledge itself is born. Therefore, that desire by which knowledge is conceived and born cannot be rightly called a birth and offspring; and this same desire by which one yearns for the knowing of the thing becomes love of the thing when the thing is known, while it holds and embraces the beloved offspring, that is, knowledge, and unites it to its begetter.20

Augustine concludes: “And so there is a certain image of the Trinity (imago trinitatis). The mind itself (ipsa mens), its knowledge, which is its offspring (proles eius) and love as a third (amor

19 Augustine, De trinitate 9.12.18 (CCSL 50, p. 309; Stephen McKenn translation, p. 288): Cur itaque amando se non genuisse dicatur amorem suum sicut cognoscendo se genuit notitiam suam? An eo quidem manifeste ostenditur hoc amoris esse principium unde procedit? 20 Augustine, De trinitate 9.12.18 (CCSL 50, p. 310; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 289: slightly amended): Nam uoluntas iam dici potest quia omnis qui quaerit inuenire uult, et si id quaeritur quod ad notitiam pertineat, omnis qui quaerit nosse uult. Quod si ardenter atque instanter uult, studere dicitur, quod maxime in assequendis atque adipiscendis quibusque doctrinis dici solet. Partum ergo mentis antecedit appetites quidam quo id quod nosse uolumus quaerendo et inueniendo nascitur proles ipsa notitia, ac per hoc appetitus ille quo concipitur pariturque notitia partus et proles recte dici non potest. Idemque appetitus quo inhiatur rei cognoscendae fit amor cognitae dum tenet atque amplectitur placitam prolem, id est notitiam gignentique coniungit.

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tertius); these three are one and one substance (tria unum atque una substantia). The offspring is not less, while the mind knows itself as much as it is; nor is the love less, while the mind loves itself as much as it knows and as much as it is.”21 In De trinitate 10 Augustine deals more thoroughly with the same questions – about the mind, its love, and its knowledge; and desiring or seeking as a kind of love – he considered in De trinitate 9. Recall, however, his central dictum: there is no human act (of will) that is not preceded by a prior word that is uttered inwardly. So, in De trinitate 10.11.17, for example, Augustine probes memory, understanding (knowledge), and will. And this, after considering how the mind seeks and understands itself (De trinitate 10.8.11); and how it remembers, understands, and wills (De trinitate 10.10.13). Augustine uses the example of a young man and his studies. He observes that the more the young man remembers the more he understands; and the more eager and praiseworthy his talents. Augustine then adds that since a mind is also praised for its goodness (notice how he uses the notion of goodness to make a turn in the discussion) we must also be interested in what it wills. One could say Augustine need not have taken this turn. After all, if it is just about education and the advancement of studies, why should one care about goodness? But this is precisely the point. We are dealing with the excellence of the mind. A mind cannot be great if it lacks goodness. And one cannot consider goodness without considering the will. Anselm’s discourse about the soul willing the good as a criterion of rationality derives some of its impetus from here. We can even read Anselm’s language about the rational mind loving the good from Augustine’s words here in De trinitate 10.11.17. “For a mind that loves fervently is only to be praised when that which it loves deserves to be fervently loved” (enim laudandus est animus uehementer amans cum id quod amat uehementer amandum est).

21 Augustine, De trinitate 9.12.18 (CCSL 50, p. 310; Stephen McKenna translation, p. 289): Et est quaedam imago trinitatis, ipsa mens et notitia eius, quod est proles eius ac de se ipsa uerbum eius, et amor tertius, et haec tria unum atque una substantia. Nec minor proles dum tantam se nouit mens quanta est, nec minor amor dum tantum se diligit quantum nouit et quanta est.

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So when we consider talent, learning, and the use to which the learning is put, our focus should be on what is remembered, understood, and willed. Augustine speaks about use to underscore the ends to which every soul is directed. The goal of learning helps us appreciate not only the use to which we put our learning, but also the will that directs the soul towards its ends. And we should not lose sight of the inseparability of will and love (De trinitate 10.11.18): “Since these three, the memory, the undersanding, and the will, are, therefore, not three lives but one life, not three minds but one mind, it follows that they are certainly not three substances, but one” (Haec igitur tria, memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas, quoniam non sunt tres uitae sed una uita, nec tres mentes sed una mens, consequenter utique nec tres substantiae sunt sed una substantia).

4. Trinity and Reason (M 29–30) Anselm begins M 29 by mentioning a constraint imposed upon him by reason, his trusted conductor. He claims that it is an imposition he cannot avoid. He writes: But having examined these things which have presently occurred to me (as I am following the guidance of reason) concerning the properties of the Supreme Nature, I now think it is useful to consider as best as I can, the Supreme Nature’s Utterance (eius locutione), through which all things were made. For although all the points which I was able to notice earlier concerning this Utterance possess the inflexible strength of reason (rationis robur inflexibile teneant), the fact that this Utterance is proved to be the same thing (idipsum) as the supreme spirit imposes a certain requirement upon me to discuss this Utterance the more carefully.22

The problem is this: how is the utterance of the supreme spirit the same as the supreme spirit? Exactly what notion of sameness 22

M 29 (S 1, p. 47; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 133, slightly amended): Iam uero iis quae de proprietatibus huius summae naturae ad praesens mihi ducem rationem sequenti occurrerunt perspectis, opportunum existimo, ut de eius locutione, per quam facta sunt omnia, si quid possum considerem. Etenim cum omnia quae de illa supra potui animaduertere, rationis robur inflexibile teneant, illud me maxime cogit de illa diligentius discutere, quia idipsum quod ipse summus spiritus est probatur esse.

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is Anselm employing here? And if the utterance is not the same as the supreme spirit, is the utterance something made and therefore less than the supreme spirit? Although the word is common enough, Anselm’s choice of idipsum is not cursory. Although it is adequate to translate it as “the same thing,” the translation probably misses the force of Anselm’s point and the particular inflection that Augustine gives the word when used in connection with the supreme nature, the Trinity. In this present context, it is essential to employ the language of the “self-same” as the nearest to what Augustine has in mind when he speaks of an utterance emanating from the supreme nature as idipsum.23 This is how Augustine uses it in De trinitate. And we can assume Anselm’s affinity for this. The utterance of the supreme spirit is idipsum because whatever the spirit utters is of the same substance as the spirit. To paraphrase Anselm’s expression from M 28: it is of the same essence as the spirit. This is the short form of Anselm’s answer. The longer version requires Anselm to address a series of potentially conflicting propositions: 1) that the supreme spirit makes all things through itself; and 2) whatever exists has been made through the utterance of the supreme spirit. These two axioms seem to lead to the conclusion that the utterance of the supreme spirit is the same as the supreme spirit. But does it? Could not the utterance be an instrument through which the supreme spirit makes whatever it makes? And if so, would that make the supreme spirit any less supreme? Does it make any difference to say that it creates through itself or through its utterance, unless the utterance is proved to be idipsum? Anselm approaches these difficulties in two ways: first, by way of the analogy of the craftsman; and second, on account of a description of the relationship between speech, thought, and act (creating). The craftsman creates based on a model that he conceives in his mind much the same way that the word one speaks derives from an antecedent or anterior word that is conceived in the mind.

23 Augustine on idipsum; see, for example, De trinitate 2.18.35; 3.2.8. For the earliest use of idipsum in Augustine see De moribus ecclesiae catholiciae 1.14.24. An important recent article is Jean-Luc Marion’s “Idipsum: The Name of God According to Augustine,” in Orthodox Readings of Augustine, edited by Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), pp. 167–189.

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This suggests that the craftsmen depends solely or entirely on the image within his mind, and needs nothing outside of himself for his creation; except of course, in the case of a real artisan, something material provides the instrument or “stuff” from which he crafts his creation. At this point the analogy breaks down, as the supreme spirit has no need of such material assistance. This leads to Anselm’s second approach. Nothing at all (nihil omnino) exists except “the creating spirit” (creantem spiritus) and “its creation” (eius creaturam). The utterance through which the creating spirit creates has no independent existence, since it does not exist apart from the supreme spirit. What is more, all things that are made come into being later than (posterius est) that through which they are made. While Anselm’s introduction of temporal modifiers in trying to ground his argument about the self-sameness of the utterance of the supreme essence is not unexpected, it is still somewhat peculiar. Anselm maintains that the utterance cannot belong to the world of created things, because it is that through which all created things come into being, including time. And for this reason it cannot be constrained by time or be subject to time. It merely stands to reason that the utterance of the supreme spirit is “selfsame” as the supreme spirit. It could be neither prior nor posterior to the supreme spirit. Anselm uses an elegant phrase: “nothing exists later than itself” (nihil est posterius seipso). Anselm does not suggest here what a Neoplatonic sensibility might engender, namely that the utterance emanates from the supreme spirit. He will have occasion to allude to the language of emanation or “flowing out,” so to speak, when he comes to consider the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. For now he employs the designation, creator-spirit, or supreme spirit for the supreme nature in its simplicity. Anselm tends to use language which calls attention to the uniqueness of this simple nature: a nature that can be “nothing other than” what it is. Anselm, nevertheless, conflates the argument based on the craftsman with the argument about existent things coming into being through an utterance. It would have been easier for Anselm to say, as he does in M 28, that when we speak of the utterance of the supreme spirit we speak only by analogy to human speech. But why doesn’t Anselm let it go at that? It is crucial to making the transition from the singularity of the supreme nature or

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creator-spirit to a plurality in that nature, essence, or substance. Also, Anselm has behind him the biblical tradition from John 1: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In fact, one could argue that without the prologue of the Gospel of John and the tradition of Trinitarian reflection based on it, the transition from one supreme nature to a plurality in that nature would probably not have suggested itself to Augustine, Anselm, nor to other ancient and medieval Christians. Once the idea of the uerbum is conceptualized in the Gospels it is almost inexorable that later thinkers would find it paradigmatic. This is what one finds in Augustine’s homilies on the Gospel of John, as well as his interpretations and analyses of the Word throughout De trinitate. Likewise, when Anselm argues that the utterance can be understood to be “nothing but the understanding of the supreme spirit by which the spirit understands all things” that he has made, he pays homage to the teaching on creation and the Word found in the opening verses of the Gospel of John. “Can be understood,” again appropriates the language of analogy. This time Anselm places the emphasis on “the understanding” of the supreme spirit, because he anticipates two triads: the mind, its self-understanding, and self-love; and memory, understanding, and will. The supreme spirit’s utterance (sua locutio) can be construed as its understanding (sua intelligentia) because, like the craftsman who possesses an image before he creates, or like human speech which produces an outward sign after the form of an inner utterance, the utterance of the supreme spirit is the outward expression of its inner understanding. So spirit is mind. And the mind or soul (mens, ratio) understands or, better yet, knows inwardly what it produces as an outward utterance. But there are questions: if spoken language is the outward expression of internal speech, is this not a somewhat unusual way of establishing a link between an utterance which is supposedly self-same with the nature that utters it and the inner understanding or knowledge that is possessed by that being that conceives and makes the utterance? Is Anselm once again not claiming a distinction that makes sense with regards to human speech, even though it may be unintelligible with regard to the supreme spirit? As if conscious of this, Anselm asks rhetorically: “For what else is it for the spirit to speak of a thing (in this way of speaking) than for it to understand (intelligere)?” But what exactly is “this way

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of speaking?” Is it not merely an analogy, or is it a metaphor? At no point so far has Anselm equated speaking (locutio) with understanding, except when he says in M 10 that the internal locution is linked to a uerbum mentis which is also related to how something is understood (not merely an image). Anselm’s point seems to be this: To speak of a thing (rerum loqui) in this way of speaking (aliquam hoc loquendi modo) involves what one understands or knows about the thing in question. The utterance of the supreme spirit is unique because it is a creative utterance like no other, an illocutionary act which brings into being all existent things. It merely stands to reason that the supreme spirit knows or understands fully the things he creates because he creates them uniquely out of nothing. Anselm demands some latitude from his readers. Anselm’s “in this way of speaking” appears to smooth over an important distinction between a command and a speech, or between different types of locutions at the very least. Anselm tries to anticipate some of the potential problems by suggesting that unlike a human (which has been the presumed model) the supreme spirit “never fails to utter what it understands.” But this has the potential of suggesting another objection based on necessity. For to say that the supreme spirit never fails to utter or express what it understands (non semper dicit quod intelligit) comes close to saying that the supreme spirit’s “utterance” is unavoidable. On Anselm’s own terms this would amount to saying that the supreme spirit “speaks” always (all the time), and by some kind of necessity. But what would the utterance consist of? Anselm does not immediately say. One can anticipate how Anselm would answer: something along the lines that the supreme spirit continues its speech through what it has created (cf. Romans 1:20). If Anselm said something like this, it would imply that there is both a temporal aspect and an a-temporal aspect to this incessant speech. After all, Anselm has already enlightened his reader in that apt phrase that nothing comes into being later than itself. And what has been created has a temporal aspect, whereas the speech of the supreme spirit may be deemed supra-temporal or a-temporal. If one is to think of the utterance of the supreme spirit as present and incessant, then the utterance has to be more than what is expressed through what has been created. We will have to wait to M 32 to see what Anselm does with all of this. Anselm takes the connection he has proposed and proceeds to make a number of inferences, drawing on earlier conclusions. If the

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supreme nature is simple and is none other than (non est aliud) its understanding then, in as much as it is the same thing as its wisdom, it is the same as its understanding. One might object that Anselm has not added anything to our understanding of what he is trying to propose. He reiterates the idea that, for the supreme nature, an attribute is a substantial category. On the other hand, the claim that the utterance of the supreme spirit is the same as the supreme spirit appears to threaten the oneness (unum) of the supreme spirit. To save this uniqueness or individuality (indiuiduam), Anselm introduces the term “consubstantial” (consubstantialis) to underline the notion that the two, spirit and utterance, are one. The utterance is so consubstantial with the supreme spirit that the spirit is not two but one (non sint duo, sed unus spiritus). If the reader accepts this inference, then M 30 follows invariably. Anselm does not have to hold in doubt nor does he have to wonder whether the word that is the utterance is one or many words. Why? Because in using the analogy of the inner word that is spoken prior to its external expression (M 10) Anselm had recourse to a solution that is now made more explicit. If the speech of the supreme spirit is consubstantial with that spirit then it is through this one speech that all things are made or have been made. This brings us back to the question about the supreme spirit who speaks all the time or cannot avoid speaking. If it is one utterance which is spoken to create all things, how can the spirit keep speaking this word? Anselm skirts the issue. Instead he chooses a different problem, and not necessarily an easier one, but one that is perhaps less controversial: “the one and the many.” It does not depend on the one utterance that speaks all things into being and continues to speak. Anselm goes to some lengths to explain why the one is related to the many, as if he might have had some knowledge of Plato’s Parmenides. Although it is highly doubtful that Anselm had direct knowledge of the Parmenides, we can be sure that the themes broached in the Parmenides would have reached Anselm from various discussions of unity and plurality found in both Augustine and Boethius. The “Hymn to the One” in De trinitate 4.7.11–4.8.12 comes to mind.24 Also Boethius’s logical works could 24 Isabelle Bochet, “The Hymn to the One in Augustine’s De trinitate IV,” Augustinian Studies, 38 (2007), pp. 41–60. Cf. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, pp. 203–211, on the good and the one.

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have supplied Anselm with the basic presuppositions for thinking these thoughts, if he had not been motivated by his own reflections to consider them. As Anselm construes it, the problem of “the one and the many” can be approached from the standpoint of the inner word of thought and what thought generates by way of the understanding and vice-versa. Anselm intends to leave no ambiguity as to the relationship between the one word and the many things it creates. And so Anselm presents a discussion based on the creative nature of thought and its semiotic relation to the objects of thought. “For all such words by which we naturally speak of objects … are likenesses and images of those objects for which they are words.”25 Not only does every thought involve an image or a likeness but every image or likeness is true in proportion, by some kind of imitation (imitatur), more or less (magis uel minor), of the thing of which it is a likeness (rem cuius est similitudo). If one wants to make a case based on this notion of image and likeness, one would have to say that the inner utterance mimics as much as it is able the thing of which it is a representation. This is an argument that moves from the thing as it exists in fact (res) to the inner utterance or understanding of the thing. The same cannot be said for creation, since the word that creates brings into being what does not yet exist. So when Anselm asks, “what ought to be believed about the word by which all things are spoken and through which all things are made?” the answer should not be that the word is similar to the thing it makes, as if that word depended on the things made for its own being. Anselm does not reach for this immediately. Instead he proposes three possibilities: 1) If it is a true likeness of mutable things, then the inner word cannot be consubstantial with the supreme essence. This is false. 2) If the inner word is not in every way a true (non omnino uera) likeness but only a likeness in some respect (qualiscum), then the word of the supreme truth (uerbum summae ueritas) is not altogether true. This, Anselm maintains, is absurd (absurdum est). 3) Next, Anselm proposes that if the inner word has no likeness to mutable things, then it is questionable how mutable things can be created 25 M 31 (S 1, p. 48): Etenim omnia huiusmodi uerba quibus res quaslibet mente dicimus, id est cogitamus: similitudines et imagines sunt rerum quarum uerba sunt.

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according to the form or pattern (ad exemplum) of the inner word. It may be helpful to address these objections by separating the second from the rest. In the first place, it is not at all clear what Anselm means by having the inner word be true in every way in its likeness to what it creates, if in fact what is created is mutable but the inner word is the con-substantial inner word of the supreme essence. Secondly, to speak of similitude is to admit of degrees of similarity. So to speak of a likeness is not necessarily to speak of sameness. Besides, if there is any likeness, then as Anselm argued shortly before, whatever that likeness is must be considered true in a certain sense, but only in a certain sense. This does not require selfsameness, which makes the first possibility also irrelevant. What remains is the third, since this turns on the question of how the mutable can be conceived immutably. But even this may prove to be more semantic than substantive, since it rests on a genetic fallacy that like creates like. It presupposes that what is thought or conceived must be of the same nature as that which does the thinking. Such a notion would be absurd in the extreme, if it is applied to human beings. We can always think something that is not like human being or human nature. This simplifies the problem greatly, since the thinking that is involved in the current problem is generative. It has to do with thought that creates that which it thinks. At the same time, the generative principle is supposed to be ontologically unlike what it creates. This creates yet another problem. If, however, one has already defined the supreme spirit as something altogether unlike what it creates, then the problem dissolves on its own. In one sense, the nature of the similitude is what is at stake here. If one opts for the language of “form” one has already decided the nature of what is being sought. So, even though exemplum can be translated by “form” given the philosophical lineage of the word “form,” we should not take it for granted that Anselm is presenting a quasi-Platonic account of the forms, since we have noticed in his much earlier discussion on M 1–4 that his account of the forms of the good straddle the line between the Platonic and the Aristotelian. Anselm’s explanatory model helps in this direction. He suggests the following comparison which he thinks might remove the ambiguity in his presentation of the three objections. Anselm’s approach also helps us understand what he means by saying that

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the word of the supreme Truth may not be altogether true, if it is only a likeness in some respects but not in all others. Here is the example: the real, living person is said to be the true person, but the likeness or image of the “true man” is said to be in a portrait of that man. The thing itself is “true”, and the portrait “a true image” of the thing. But two different senses of “true” are at work here. They are not interchangeable. The first means the thing as such, and the second, dealing with the image, is about a certain likeness. The relationship between the thing and its portrait does not extend to the supreme essence. Only one sense of “true” applies to the relationship between the word and the supreme essence. Consequently, the relationship between the word and created things admits of the “true” only in the second sense: “a certain likeness.” The word formed by the supreme essence is that which has true existence, so even though by comparison to it other things do not really exist in the way that the word is true existence, all other things that exist possess something of true existence by some kind of likeness to the supreme essence. Anselm probably overstates it, but what saves his argument is the phrase, “a kind of likeness.”

5. Imitation, Dissimilarity, and Equivocation (M 31–32) If there is a certain imitation (imitatio aliqua) of the supreme essence in created things, what is the nature of this imitation? What is the likeness? Anselm appears to stop midstream. In the example of the true man and its image in a portrait, we can infer that the image is just that, an image. It is not the thing itself, though it may look like it. And as portraits go, the being or esse of the portrait (an inanimate object) is so unlike the existence of the true man that compared to the latter the portrait has no existence at all. Does Anselm want to say that the true word remains consubstantial with the supreme truth and that what is created is a copy like the portrait whose existence is “non-being” compared to the true or real person who is the basis for the portrait? If Anselm took this tack he would be expressing the notion that created things have no real existence, as such, compared to the utterance of the supreme essence. The risk here is that the true man / portrait analogy cannot be easily transferred to a model that has the

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existent human being as the outward form of the inner speech or word that conceives of the person (cf. M 10). The more apt comparison is the craftsman who conceives something in his mind, and holds it as in internal image before he gives expression to it in what he creates. The portrait, on the other hand, is a likeness that ought to be considered an even less fitting likeness of the real person than the image of that person conceived in the mind of the one who thinks of that person. So the ambiguity remains, though not in the form that Anselm imagines it. And yet Anselm believes he has removed it, because he has been able to show that the kind of imitation he has in mind is not based on identity or essences or even the same degree or mode of existence. Anselm seems to compound the problem. He now suggests that created things exist and are excellent in proportion to their likeness to the supreme nature. But what exactly is this proportion? Does he have in mind something like the various degrees of dignity that he expressed in M 1–4? Or is this likeness of proportion something else? In one sense, Anselm has merely switched the problem around. Instead of having to brood over the likeness which may or may not obtain between the inner word formed by the supreme spirit and the things the supreme spirit creates, Anselm opts for a certain proportionality or propriety of likeness, without having to specify what this is. The strategy seems to be this. If he cannot make an entirely persuasive argument for the supreme nature’s likeness to the things it creates, he can at least insist on a less controversial approach namely, that the things that are created by the supreme nature are more or less like the supreme nature to the extent that they need to be. This seems a clever way around an intractable problem: how does the one serve as an exemplum for the many uniuersitas rerum (M 7)? Anselm’s answer that the many are more or less like the one (unum) is less than satisfactory. He asks the reader to consider two factors. First, as Anselm puts it, the supreme nature cannot become more or less great by virtue of a greater or lesser degree of likeness to its creatures. In other words, the supreme nature cannot depend on the things he creates for his own uniqueness. Fair enough. But even if this be granted, the claim that the many come into being out of the one utterance remains obscure. Second, Anselm moves on from this to discuss how the mind through reason perceives a hierarchy of natures among existent things in a gradation from the least per-

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cipient and vegetative to the most living and rational. Anselm clearly alludes here to the Porphyrian Tree26 and to his own earlier arguments about the degrees of existence in M 1–4. Surely, one can begin with substance as the high point of the Porphyrian Tree and divide it into two branches by using the differentia of corporeality. One could then proceed on the corporeal branch by using successively the differentiae of the animate, the sensitive, the rational, and the mortal to finally arrive at the branch which defines a mortal rational animal, namely a human being. This establishes the hierarchy of natures among existent things that are bodily or material. But this does not improve the argument much, since it does little to support the notion that all the many natures come into being from a single source. All it suggests is that the various bodily things that exist can be arranged in a hierarchy based on differentiae. Anselm probably recognizes this. For right in the middle of his arguments in M 31 his language becomes equivocal and hesitant: “perhaps, or rather not perhaps but certainly” (fortasse – immo non fortasse sed pro certo), he says.27 So, even if it is unquestionable that to any rational mind it is better to be living than inanimate, sentient than merely vegetative, percipient than merely sentient, etc., and that some natures exist or live more or less than others, this hierarchy by itself does not establish that all these different natures must come from one nature from which they receive their exempla, and still less from one utterance which creates them all. When Anselm argues that among created things the most excellent nature bears the greatest likeness of all created things to the supreme essence he is merely employing the language of exemplarity to make the case for likeness. For exactly how this most excellent of created natures lives, senses, perceives, and thinks may not reveal the nature which created it, if the creator is so dissimilar to what it creates. And yet Anselm expects the reader to deduce some kind of imitation or likeness when he speaks of created things bearing a kind of likeness to the word of the supreme truth. If this is supposed to prove the point that mutable things bear some kind of likeness to the immutable word of the supreme spirit, then the 26 See, for example, Eleonore Stump’s essay “Differentia and the Porphyrian Tree,” pp. 236–246, in Stump’s Boethius’s De topicis differentiis. 27 M 31 (S 1, p. 49; Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation, p. 137).

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effort seems to have been lost on the problem. Anselm, however, believes that a close approximation is good enough. And he thinks that a thought experiment which involves the reverse of the Porphyrian Tree does even better in making his case. Take something that exists, Anselm observes: first remove what is rational, then what is sentient, and then what is living, etc., until finally what remains is bare existence. Who does not realize that the last form of existence is less than the first? This again establishes that the more something exists like that essence which “exists supremely and is supremely excellent” (quae summe est et summe praestat) the better it is. So the more excellent created things are the higher degree of essence (gradus essentiae) they express and the more they are seen to approximate the word through which they were created. Anselm proves two things: there is no likeness of created things in the word through which existent things are created, because the word is “true and simple essence” (ueram simplicemque essentiam). At the same time, while existent things do not have “simple and absolute essence or existence” (simplicem absolutamque essentiam), they “possess some vague imitation” (uix aliquam imitationem) of the essence of the word. If this is the conclusion Anselm arrives at why the extensive argumentation beyond the basic commitment that he will leave no objection unattended? One reason is that the arguments help Anselm to establish the many degrees of dissimilarity between the supreme nature and created things. Anselm first demonstrates the various degrees of existence obtaining among existent things and then goes on to show the categorical difference between the supreme nature and all the things he creates. The chasm that separates the simplicity of the supreme essence from the composite nature of all created things prepares the way for Anselm to abandon the language of likeness at just the point when he insists on it. When Anselm picks up the chain of his arguments in M 32, he now uses as the premise of his argument the notion that the inner word of the supreme spirit that is uttered to create all things is not a likeness of the things that are created. M 32 takes up the most problematic version of the objection considered in M 31. Following on the heels of the conclusion that every created thing has a higher degree of excellence to the extent that it is seen to approximate the inner word of the supreme spirit, Anselm now turns to consider how what is so simple can be the

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word of the very things whose likeness it is not. In other words, if it is inappropriate to speak of any likeness between the word of the supreme truth or spirit and the things that are created by that word, how can the inner word of the supreme spirit be the word or utterance that forms created things when every word by which we conceive of an object in our minds bears some resemblance to the object in question? How can it be maintained that the inner word is truly the word that speaks forth created things? After all, according to Anselm, “every word is a word of something” (omne uerbum, alicuius rei uerbum est). Anselm adds that if there were no creature there would exist no word for the creature. But this is not the same thing as saying, as Anselm surely does not want to say, that if there were no creatures there would be no utterance of the supreme spirit. For that would make much of what Anselm has asserted about the utterance of the supreme spirit and how that utterance is consubstantial with the supreme essence nonsense. And yet, there is such a close connection between the utterance of the supreme spirit and creation in much of what Anselm discusses as to leave the impression that they are linked together almost inseparably. Anselm faces the possible objection. He asks, “what then? Are we to conclude, then, that if there were no creature, that word would not exist at all, which is the supreme self-sufficient essence? Or, would the supreme essence itself, perhaps, which is the word, still be the eternal essence, but not the word, if nothing were ever created through that essence? For there can be no word corresponding to that which has not existed, does not exist, and will not exist. But, according to this reasoning, if there were never any essence but the supreme spirit, there would be no word at all in him.28

Anselm continues that if there is no word (uerbum) in the supreme spirit then the spirit could not speak with itself (nihil apud

28

M 32 (S 1, p. 50; S. N. Deane translation, p. 140, amended): An concludendum est quia, si nullo modo esset creatura, nequaquam esset uerbum illud, quod est summa et nullius indigens essentia? Aut fortasse ipsa summa essentia quae uerbum est, essentia quidem esset aeterna sed uerbum non esset, si nihil umquam per illam fieret? Eius enim quod nec fuit nec est nec futurum est, nullum uerbum esse potest. Verum secundum hanc rationem, si numquam ulla praeter summum spiritum esset essentia, nullum omnino esset in illo uerbum.

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se diceret), and if it could not speak to itself it would not understand or conceive anything, since for the spirit to speak (dicere) is to understand (intelligere). And if the supreme spirit could not understand or conceive anything it would be absurd, since this would mean that the supreme wisdom understands nothing. In proposing this last argument, Anselm reaches back to his much earlier argument that the utterance is in fact the understanding of the supreme essence. He could have done this sooner. For what is understood does not necessarily require an outward expression as such. Anselm could have adopted some notion about how the inner word always has within it the potential for outward expression, so that if there is to be an utterance or expression it is either an inner utterance or an outward expression of the inner utterance. Part of the difficulty is that Anselm keeps switching back and forth as to exactly what model or analogy serves his purposes best. Anselm has no doubt that the inextricable link between human speech and the inner conception of thought is a model for the utterance or speech of the supreme essence. But how the inner conception of thought models the supreme utterance seems to vary. Sometimes he describes the utterance as like a purely inward kind of speaking, as a mental word or inner speech; at other times he describes it as an outward, vocal, aural expression that is dependent or connected genetically to an inner, antecedent expression. Ostensibly, a purely inner word without any outward manifestation seems an unlikely way of describing an utterance that also brings other things into existence, since what is done inwardly or silently can hardly be described as creating anything outwardly. Anselm himself notes later on in the passage that the human mind meditates silently with itself (secum sola tacite disputando) when it thinks about something like wisdom. And he uses as an example what he is experiencing in his own mind as he writes these very words. As if unsure of himself, Anselm presents the human mind as a model for the supreme spirit towards the end of M 32 and then corrects himself to say that it is the other way around. That is, it is not the human mind that is a model for the supreme spirit but the latter is a model for the former: “Hence, that spirit, supreme as he is eternal, is thus eternally mindful of himself, and conceives of himself after the likeness of a rational mind; nay, not

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after the likeness of anything; but in the first place that spirit, and the rational mind after its likeness.”29 He turns next to the part of the objection dealing with the supreme spirit and creation. Anselm most certainly overstates the objection when he proposes that if there is no creature then the word would not exist. Is the objection relevant, if one is speaking of what is brought into existence by the word that is uttered by the supreme spirit? After all, so much of what Anselm has discussed about the inner word, its image, etc., has to do with what already exists. If the thing in question does not yet exist, the inner word does not depend on it. If it is about to be created, as in the case of the craftsman and what he creates, then the thing exists potentially. Previously, Anselm had argued that creation takes place ex nihilo, and most recently, that the supreme essence is not like a craftsman. Consequently, if the word of the supreme essence does not have to be a likeness of what it creates, then there seems to be no need to entertain an objection which presupposes a creative utterance like the image possessed by a craftsman. The connection between what is conceived in the mind and the word that is spoken outwardly, between the inner verbum and the outward vox, does not have to be delineated. This also eliminates the need for some kind of exemplarist understanding, since the model of the human mind presupposes that what is created must bear some semblance to the pattern (exemplum) contained in the mind. However, if the human mind is not the model then the connection between the inner word and the outward expression need not be so linked as image is to the original object. In any case, there may be a problem with the human mind as well. A relevant question here is whether the inner word is better described as a concept, an image, or just any kind of likeness? Surely, the idea or model in the mind of the craftsman suggests an imagistic representation and hence supports the view that the model is a likeness. All this could be avoided if Anselm had adopted a conceptual approach, in which case, the possibility of a similitude or an image would be just one such potential “con29

M 32 (S 1, p. 51; S. N. Deane translation, p. 141): Ergo summus ille spiritus sicut est aeternus, ita aeterne sui memor est et intelligit se ad similitudinem mentis rationalis; immo non ad ullius similitudinem sed ille principaliter et mens rationalis ad eius similitudinem.

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cept” and not the only one (cf. M 10). The other possible objection Anselm considers falters for the following reason. If there cannot be a word for what does not exist (past, present, or future), then the word of the supreme spirit is always to be thought of as creative or generative. But, as we have seen, this is not the only way Anselm would like to construe it, since he has argued for the word as the understanding or knowledge of the supreme spirit. Could it be both creative and non-creative? Anselm continues to pose questions, raises objections that seem farfetched, and works his way through manifold objections, all in an effort to show that he is able to address any and all objections that can be leveled against his arguments. So, for example, while Anselm’s conclusion to M 32 is not in doubt, he considers a number of objections that appear to put in doubt this very conclusion. In a long, laboring paragraph, he piles one objection upon another only to assert in the end what is a matter of Christian doctrine, namely that the supreme spirit is co-eternal with its word and that this is the case whether it creates or does not create anything. The conclusion is based on a comparison between the supreme spirit and the human mind. Anselm also asks at one point whether it makes sense for the human mind to be able to possess wisdom and to know itself, on the one hand, and to be in doubt, on the other hand, about the supreme spirit’s wisdom. If the human mind can possess wisdom and know itself even though it is itself not wisdom, is it not more obvious that the supreme spirit is anything but supreme wisdom? And if it is wisdom itself, then it knows itself, understands itself, and needs no other. Wisdom requires selfknowledge and understanding, but it needs nothing else. Whatever it does, it does eternally, and his word is with him eternally. It does not need to create anything. Even the most solicitous of readers could be easily flustered by all these detours, as Anselm attends to arguments which seem to raise additional questions about conclusions already drawn. For example, what becomes of all that Anselm has insisted upon regarding creation, if in fact the supreme essence can be so separated from what he creates? Is creation somehow superfluous to what the supreme essence is and does? Similarly, what becomes of the insistence that the supreme essence is his utterance if that very utterance or expression creates all things? Has not Anselm’s turn to the supreme spirit’s self-knowledge moved the supreme spirit

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further away from what exists in created things? The seemingly endless pastiche of objections in M 32 gives way to an elaborately consistent set of arguments in M 33.

6. The Mind and Its Utterance (M 33–38) If it is asked whether the word by which the supreme nature expresses itself is identical with itself, the answer is “Yes.” If it is asked whether that same word which utters what it creates is identical with itself, again Anselm answers in the affirmative. If it is asked whether the word the supreme spirit utters is of the same substance as the spirit, the answer again is “Yes.” If on the other hand, one should inquire of Anselm whether the word the spirit utters is the same as the word through which it creates, he retorts that there is no reason that identity of substance compels anyone to say that the two utterances are a single word, even though the word by which the spirit expresses itself is most fittingly called its word because it contains a perfect likeness (eius perfectionem tenet similitudinem); which is to say, the word by which the supreme spirit creates does not have to be a perfect likeness. There are therefore two utterances, one for the supreme nature itself, and the other for what it creates. The question, then, is how there can be two utterances but only one word. Anselm turns to the human mind. For we cannot at all deny that when a rational mind understands itself by thinking itself (seipsam cogitando intelligit), an image of the mind is begotten in the mind’s thought – or better, the mind’s thought of itself is its own image (suam imaginem), formed according to a likeness (eius similitudinem) of the mind and formed, as it were, from an ‘impression’ of the mind (impressione formatam). For as best it can the mind tries to express in its thought a likeness of whatever thing it desires to think of truly (whether through imagining a material object or through reason). The more truly it expresses this likeness, the more truly it thinks of the object itself. Indeed, this is noticed more clearly in cases where the mind thinks of something other than itself – especially when it thinks of a material object. For example, when in his absence I think of a man whom I know, the acute gaze of my thought is formed into that kind of image of him (talem imaginem eius) which I brought into my memory through the vision of my eyes. This mental image

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is a work or likeness of this man whom I speak of by thinking of him. Therefore, when a rational mind understands itself by thinking of itself, it has with itself an image of itself begotten from itself – i.e., it has a thought of itself, formed after the likeness of itself (sua similitudinem) and formed from its own ‘impression’ of itself (sua impressione formata), as it were. Yet, only through its reason (non nisi ratione sola) can a mind distinguish (separare) itself from its own image (a sua imagine). And this image of the mind (quae imago) is a word (uerbum) of the mind.30

There is much here to sort out. For Anselm, there are some basic facts about the nature of perception and the human mind, those basic things that cannot be denied, as he puts it. Behind this passage also lie Augustine’s extensive descriptions and analyses in the De trinitate about the human mind, its knowledge of itself, and its love of itself. Proximately, Anselm himself had offered an earlier description in M 8 and M 10 about vision, mental perception, cognition, and the likeness that obtains between the objects of sight and thought, and their respective inner representations in the mind. In this present context, Anselm writes about how the mind forms an image (or a likeness) of whatever it tries to think of. The more truly the mind expresses this likeness of what it thinks the more truly it thinks of the object in question. The mind is also aware of itself and of its image. Its image is not the mind itself, but a likeness. The likeness may be an image (imago), an impression (impressio), or a thought (cogitatio, ratio). This is like what takes place when one tries to remember something by directing the

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M 33 (S 1, p. 52; Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation, pp. 143–145): Nam nulla ratione negari potest, cum mens rationalis seipsam cogitando intelligit, imaginem ipsius nasci in sua cogitatione; immo ipsam cogitationem sui esse suam imaginem ad eius similitudinem tamquam ex eius impressione formatam. Quamcumque enim rem mens seu per corporis imaginationem seu per rationem cupit ueraciter cogitare, eius utique similitudinem quantum ualet in ipsa sua cogitatione conatur exprimere. Quod quanto uerius facit, tanto uerius rem ipsam cogitat. Et hoc quidem, cum cogitat aliquid aliud quod ipsa non est, et maxime cum aliquod cogitat corpus, clarius perspicitur. Cum enim cogito notum mihi hominem absentem, formatur acies cogitationis meae in talem imaginem eius, qualem illam per uisum oculorum in memoriam attraxi. Quae imago in cogitatione uerbum est eiusdem hominis, quem cogitando dico. Habet igitur mens rationalis, cum se cogitando intelligit, secum imaginem suam ex se natam, id est cogitationem sui ad suam similitudinem quasi sua impressione formatam; quamuis ipsa se a sua imagine non nisi ratione sola separare possit. Quae imago eius uerbum eius est.

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“acute gaze of thought” (acies cogitationis). This too involves forming an image or likeness of the thing one is trying to recall. Following upon the passage previously quoted, Anselm goes on to press the analogy between the human mind and the supreme wisdom, a comparison that also acknowledges the limitations of the analogy. He asks rhetorically: “So who would deny that in this way supreme wisdom begets its own consubstantial likeness, i.e. its own word (uerbum suum), when it understands itself through speaking of itself?”31 This reiterates what Anselm has already argued in previous chapters. Anselm adds that “although nothing can be spoken properly or suitably enough of a thing so uniquely excellent, nevertheless the word can (not unsuitably) be called in the manner of a likeness (similitudo) as the image (imago), figure (figura), and representation (caracter) of the supreme Wisdom.”32 The double negative of Anselm’s “not unsuitably” (non inconuenienter), juxtaposed with Anselm’s turn towards the metaphorical in his “speaking in the manner of a likeness” with words like similitudo, imago, figura, and caracter concedes the essential points, without vitiating the basic argument: We can use certain forms of speech to give a representation of the supreme nature. But that is as far as language and images will allow us to go before they become either inadequate or utterly meaningless with respect to so “excellent” a nature. After the extended discussion in M 33 what follows in M 34 seems superfluous. And yet it is necessary: if the word is co-eternal with the supreme wisdom, the creator of all things, why does the word bring into existence things that are not themselves coeternal, if the utterance of the supreme wisdom is nothing other than itself? Simply, why does it create that which is inherently unlike itself through a word that is uniquely its own substance? We may recall Anselm’s comment that the supreme essence speaks both a word to itself and a word to create. But as long as both 31 M 33 (S 1, pp. 52–53; Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation, p. 145, slightly amended): Hoc itaque modo quis neget summam sapientiam, cum se dicendo intelligit, gignere consubstantialem sibi similitudinem suam, id est uerbum suum? 32 M 33 (S 1, p. 53; Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation, p. 145, slightly amended): Quod uerbum, licet de re tam singulariter eminenti proprie aliquid satis conuenienter dici non possit, non tamen inconuenienter sicut similitudo ita et imago et figura et caracter eius dici potest.

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words are said to be one word, Anselm cannot use this duality to answer the objection just posed. Anselm’s response to the objection begins with “perhaps” (fortisan) and ends on an equally concessionary, “one cannot unreasonably” (non irrationabiliter) say such and such. Not much can be argued or asserted here. Notice that when Anselm describes the nature of the supreme wisdom and its image, Anselm states that they could “not unsuitably” (non inconuenienter) be compared to the human mind and the image it generates of its thought. Now he speaks of what “cannot unreasonably” be said about how the supreme wisdom creates. In spite of Anselm’s best efforts, his arguments remain in the realm of the highly speculative. He states that before created things were made they existed in the spirit as what the spirit is. And after they have been made and even after they have perished they continue to exist in the spirit as the spirit’s utterance. It is much like how something is fabricated according to a particular craft, art, or knowledge (ars, disciplina). Augustine speaks about this art or disciplina in De trinitate Book 12. And according to Anselm, what has already been created exists as such in the “art” that belongs to its very nature. This may appear too clever, since the “art” now contains the things that are created in a kind of suspended animation. Beyond the analogy, Anselm’s proposal is quite pedestrian. The basic notion is that mutable beings are created by immutable reason. This explanation obviates one objection, but it leaves untouched the objection with which Anselm began the chapter. It is one thing to say that the things made always exist in the “immutable reason” of its maker, which is what Anselm’s position amounts to as one simply has to replace the reason of the maker with the “art,” but it is quite another thing to give a reason why what is immutable creates through its co-eternal and consubstantial word many things that are mutable. Would it not have been more appropriate for the creator to create all things immutable, even if not co-eternal? This question may seem badly put. But, in fact, by the time Anselm is done with the Monologion he will be arguing for the soul as created but eternal, with a beginning but no end. Paradigmatically, unlike what it creates, the supreme nature is not subject to time (as we saw earlier in our discussion of time and place in relation to the supreme nature). That is why the rest of Anselm’s discussion in M 34 seems somewhat out of place. Equally odd is what follows in M 35, even though much of what

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Anselm says in M 35 could have been accomplished by simply stating that what is created exists in the spirit as its word or image. This brings us back to Anselm’s language of likeness (similitudo): imago, figura, caracter. Jasper Hopkins prefers to translate Anselm’s caracter as “form,” but this seems too specifically loaded with philosophical content, almost as if to suggest that Anselm has a Platonic form in view here. Hopkins may be correct, even though Anselm’s choice of terminology seems to be more linguistically inspired than metaphysical: imago, figura, and caracter are supposed to encapsulate how the human being speaks in certain likenesses. Specifically, it depends on how we name things by speaking: what is “suitably said” (conuenienter dicit) or “not suitably said” (non inconuenienter dicit). If we focus on the imagery, it would be difficult to sustain the notion that Anselm’s caracter is a Platonic form. And yet, Anselm implies in this immediate context and elsewhere something akin to a Platonic form: something that exists in supreme wisdom, to use Anselm’s language. Before anything is created and becomes truly existent it exists as an art or craft (or knowledge) in supreme wisdom. And it continues to exist both while it has existence and even after it perishes. We may recall from M 9 and M 10 that Anselm speaks of forms and the forms of things. He speaks of a model like that which a painter has of what he is about to paint before the painting is made. It is not so much a concept as a replica. Also, when Anselm speaks of the forms of things, he means what is created, visible, tangible, etc. He is not talking about ideas, concepts, etc. So he should probably be understood in the same way when he uses imago, figura, and caracter in M 34–36. But if we insist that caracter is appropriately translated as “form,” then it certainly should not be read as a Platonic form. It may be closer to an Aristotelian conception, as Anselm uses the form-matter distinction in M 7ff. His language also reflects his much earlier use of exemplum when speaking of the craftsman and the image in the mind of craftsman about what he creates. So, for example, Anselm writes in M 10 about the craftsman’s “craft” (sua artis), which is like the form of things (rerum forma), which in the creator’s reason precedes that which he creates. This is what lies behind his comments here in M 34–36. In commenting earlier on M 7, M 9 & M 10 we had occasion to assess Anselm’s notion of signification in his description of three

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kinds of utterance. It was clear from Anselm’s discussion that there was much from De trinitate 9 in the background and content of Anselm’s arguments. Here again in M 34–36 we can see aspects of De trinitate 9.11.16, for example, in Anselm’s comments. When we learn about bodies through our bodily senses a kind of likeness of them occurs in our memory which is their image in the memory. The bodies themselves of course are certainly not in our memory when we think of them but their likenesses, and so when we make a judgment on these instead of on those we make a mistake; that is what a mistake is, judging one thing for another. Yet for all that the image of the body in our memory is better than the reality of the body itself insofar as it is in a better nature, that is, in a living substance such as the mind. By the same token when we know God we are indeed made better ourselves than we were before we knew him, especially when we like this knowledge and appropriately love it and it becomes a word and a kind of likeness of God; yet it remains inferior to God because it is an inferior nature, our mind being a creature, but God being the creator.33

At this point, one might suppose that Anselm is taking a different path from Augustine, since Augustine says that the image of the body in memory is better than the reality of the body itself, because the image exists in the memory which is a far better nature than bodily existence as such. But notice Anselm’s own argument that what is made exists better in the mind of the maker both before it is made and after it has perished, and it is better because it exists as an “art.” So even though Anselm contends that the knowledge we possess of something is only a similitude and not to be compared to what the thing is in its essence, it still exists “better” in memory like an “art” than it does in fact, where it is subject to decay. Incidentally, the main drawback of Augustine’s 33 Augustine, De trinitate 9.11.16 (CCSL 50, p. 307). (Edmund Hill translation, p. 280, slightly amended): Et quemadmodum cum per sensum corporis discimus corpora fit aliqua eorum similitudo in animo nostro quae phantasia memoriae est (non enim omnino ipsa corpora in animo sunt cum ea cogitamus sed eorum similitudines, itaque cum eas pro illis approbamus erramus; error est namque pro alio alteriusapprobatio; melior est tamen imaginatio corporis in animo quam illa species corporis in quantum haec in meliore natura est, id est in substantia uitali sicuti est animus), ita cum deum nouimus, quamuis meliores efficiamur quam eramus antequam nossemus maximeque cum eadem notitia etiam placita digneque amata uerbum est fitque aliqua dei similitudo illa notitia, tamen inferior est quia in inferiore natura est; creatura quippe animus, creator autem deus.

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view is that both the human mind and other existent things are subject to decay. So existence in the mind is only relatively better than the bodies that are perceived through the senses. In any case, the point is not essential to either Augustine’s view nor is its possible refutation necessary to carrying Anselm’s argument. What is important for both Anselm and Augustine is that whatever knowledge the human mind possesses of the supreme spirit is knowledge that is both positive and negative: positive because it is knowledge about the being that most truly exists; and negative because it is at best a similitude based on a most fundamental dissimilarity. Anselm acknowledges this much in M 36. He maintains that what has been established so far is that human knowledge (humana scientia) cannot comprehend (comprehendi non posse), it cannot know (sciat), how the supreme spirit speaks of or knows the things it creates. Anselm presses the point. He insists that existent things exist in a way unlike how the human mind knows or understands them. “For no one doubts that created substances (creatas substantias) exist in themselves much differently from the way they exist in our knowledge (nostra scientia). For in themselves (in seipsis) they exist in virtue of their own essences; but in our knowledge their likeness (similitudines) exist, not their own essences (earum essentiae).”34 This is the basis for Anselm’s assertion that a thing exists more truly by its own essence than its similitude. Human knowledge, then, is a mere similitude of what is. And if it is a similitude of what exists, even of things created, it cannot dare to be anything but a poor similitude when it comes to the supreme spirit. Hence the question he poses to the reader: “how would the human mind comprehend what that kind of speaking and knowledge is which is so vastly superior to and truer than created substances, if our knowledge is so vastly surpassed by these things as their likenesses are different from their essence?”35 The distinction between essence and similitude reappears as a restatement of the 34 M 36 (S 1, pp. 54–55; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 147, amended): Nam nulli dubium creatas substantias multo aliter esse in seipsis quam in nostra scientia. In seipsis namque sunt per ipsam suam essentiam; in nostra uero scientia non sunt earum essentiae sed earum similitudines. 35 M 36 (S 1, p. 55; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 149, amended): quomodo comprehendat humana mens cuiusmodi sit illud dicere, et illa scientia, quae sic longe superioret uerior est creatis substantiis, si nostra scientia tam longe superatur ab illis, quantum earum similitudo distat ab earum essentia.

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distinction between in seipsis and nostra scientia. It is central to Anselm’s theory of knowledge. It lends to Anselm’s discussion a nominalist tendency that is not easily discernable from what else he writes in the Monologion, except at a much later point in the work in relation to Trinitarian language. Anselm believes that we do well to remember how poorly we know and understand created things. We do not know their essences. On the basis of ancient physics, Aristotle’s substance metaphysics, and the theories of matter and forms the essences of created substances would remain obscure to us. How much, then, can we know the way the supreme spirit exists, or how it speaks, or how it understands? A vast gulf separates us. But is Anselm’s argument a sleight of hand? Had he not previously argued that of all created things the human mind is the closest to the supreme spirit by virtue of its nature? On this account our not knowing the essences of created substances might be deemed irrelevant and inconsequential. One could also object that the very fact that we do not know the essences of created things should make anyone suspicious of the claim that the human mind is closest to the supreme spirit by some sort of “natural likeness.” This would put in doubt the claim that even though we do not know things as they are in themselves this has not stopped the human mind from gaining some knowledge of the supreme nature. In another vein, while it is well and good to say that the mind does not know created substances as they exists in themselves (in seipsis), Anselm’s medieval readers, following Anselm’s own claims about the four elements as the basic constituents of things of the physical universe, could claim to know something of the substances of created things. If one were to ask what “being a stone” is like, surely no human being would be able to explain that. But it is unclear if Anselm then wants to say that our knowledge of the stone is therefore only a likeness of its essence, as if somehow that essence is knowable to the stone in a way that it is not knowable to us. If there is such a thing as being essentially a stone, this is not knowledge that is available to the stone, which has a much lower form of existence than the human being. Only a human being, with the capacity for inquiring into the essence of things, can say anything about the “essence” of the stone, so to speak. So the limitation on human knowledge which Anselm points to as a way of preparing his readers for a limited capacity for com-

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prehending the supreme spirit falters somewhat. For the supreme spirit knows its own nature and possesses its own essence in a way very differently from created things, and especially created things that are inanimate. If, in fact, the human mind is the closest thing to the supreme nature then it would have been more interesting if Anselm had used, say, the knowledge of another human being as a comparable example to the knowledge of the supreme spirit. Anselm will do this later on when he deals more directly with Trinitarian language. But he misses the opportunity here to explain how knowing another human being or another human mind might serve as an example of how the human mind knows the supreme spirit. For the moment, Anselm must explain how the supreme spirit and its utterance, the word, do not constitute a plurality of two different essences, even though they remain two distinct things. This is not argued but asserted in the indirect language that Anselm adopts here. As he explains it, although it is very uncommon in regard to created things, it happens to be the case with respect to the supreme spirit and its word. The spirit and the word are one substantially, essentially. And yet, in an almost miraculous way, the supreme spirit cannot be its own word, so the word or image must be differentiated and distinguished individually from the spirit. So they are one: both two and one, individually. But what two they are of is not entirely clear. Whether we speak of them substantially or in relation to created things, we must speak of them always as individual (indiuidua) and always as one (unitas). At the same time, we must recognize their ineffable plurality (ineffabile pluralitas) because while the supreme spirit is not “of the word” the word is “of the supreme spirit.” They are ineffable also because while “necessity” (necessitas) demands that they be two, no one can articulate or express how they are two. One can no more separate the spirit from its image or word than the word from the spirit that gives it forth. So they are necessarily two because of certain properties (proprietas) that distinguish them individually (singula, singulum), and because of these properties they can be both one and different: one exists out of the other and the other is the one that begets the one that exists from it. It is interesting to note that Anselm has changed his terminology in the middle of this discussion. For once, Anselm uses the language of necessity as pointing in the direction of the unintelli-

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gible, and eventually towards the ineffable. Up to this point in the Monologion reason always shows Anselm what is absurd, as well as the conclusions that follow as the ineluctable consequences of his arguments. Now Anselm proposes that reason itself leads to absurdity or to something like it. This breaks new ground, but Anselm does not seem particularly concerned about the shift nor does he think it remarkable enough to compel him to rethink his approach. Alternatively, to insinuate that reason leads to the absurd is to intimate that what seems reasonable (which follows from his premises and arguments) are the obverse of what he commends to his reader. The “reasonable thing,” it would appear, would have been for Anselm to say that in fact there is only one thing: the supreme spirit and that its utterance, its self-generated image or likeness, is an exact image or likeness. So there are not two things, the supreme spirit and its word, but one thing in two representations: the original and its consubstantial image. After all, to make the claim for the supreme spirit’s utterance, Anselm used the model of human speech. Anselm adopted a double analogy that also entailed an inversion. Ordinarily, if one claims some “a” as the image of “A”, one is not supposed to then use something found in “a,” the copy, to serve as a model for the original “A.” But this is what Anselm does. First, Anselm presents the supreme nature as creator, which means he is reflected in created things. The human mind is supposed to be its closest exemplar, and so the mind affords an analogy. The second move is more problematic. Anselm focuses on an activity of the mind and uses it in turn to explain what must be the case in the supreme nature. If we are to accept Anselm’s assertion a few paragraphs ago that the supreme nature creates through its word things that are unlike its nature, then perhaps the emphasis should be on the ontological dissimilarity between the human mind and the supreme spirit. It certainly should not be on the assumed “similarity in difference” which seems to be at work here. In Anselm’s defense, we need to recall that he has already dealt with the notion of dissimilarity in M 11, and he will take it up again later. In this present context he seems to prefer to see more similarity than difference. But even if this is granted, the objection still remains that the image cannot serve as a model for the original, Romans 1:20 and 11:36 notwithstanding. Unless it is an exact replica or copy, all the image can suggest is that it bears some resemblance to the original. And,

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unless we know the original we cannot say exactly what the nature of the resemblance is.

7. Sex, Gender, and Trinitarian Difference (M 39–42) All we know about human speech tells us that the word that is uttered is of a different substance (species, form) than that which is conceived in the mind. Anselm himself had argued this much earlier. So if Anselm were to be asked again how the human mind can help us understand the supreme spirit and its utterance, as one substance but two things, Anselm can only reply that our conception of the supreme spirit and its utterance is a more elevated notion than the analogy provided by the relationship between the human mind and speech. And while the spirit is identical in its essence to its utterance, exactly what makes them two distinct things remains difficult to describe or explain. Behind Anselm’s difficulty lies a series of reflections by Augustine in De trinitate on just what can or cannot be said about the two or three, when speaking about Father, Son, and Spirit in the Trinity. Both Augustine and Anselm insist on difference in sameness: distinct in their individuality or persons, the same in substance or essence. What Anselm will call in M 48 the “distinct characteristic of their individuality” (singular propria singulorum) plays a major role in his understanding of the ineffable. It requires a differentiation between what they have in common and what they have uniquely. However, when one uses language about begetting and having offspring it becomes necessary to indicate exactly what these terms mean, if they are to mean anything other than the ordinary sense in which people understand “offspring” and “begetting.” The difficulties are palpable. Anselm acknowledges that there is no other way of representing what he is arguing than to say that it is the distinct characteristic of one to beget and the other to be begotten. Things do not get any less problematic as Anselm proceeds in M 39. Certainly, the word does not exist “from” the supreme spirit the same way created things made by the supreme spirit do. As Anselm has it, the word exists as “Creator from Creator, as the supreme from the supreme.” One can hear echoes of the creed: “light from light, true God from true God.” At the same time, Anselm appeals to ordinary things to explain just how the one

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supreme spirit begets its word. He observes that because countless items are said, without qualm, to be begotten from those things to which they owe their existence, it makes good sense to speak of the hair on a person’s head as begotten by the head and the fruit produced by a tree as begotten by a tree. Anselm must surely know that these examples are less than satisfactory as the basis for making the kind of argument he wants to make. His argument nearly evaporates when he continues on the supposition that if these examples are not entirely absurd, then more appropriately the supreme spirit can be said to exist from the supreme spirit, like an offspring from a parent, since, after all, the word more perfectly resembles the supreme spirit. This may seem like a credible way out, but it leaves untouched the objection which prompted these considerations in the first place. Besides, there is something of a genetic fallacy implied here. All animate things in nature come into existence by some kind of generative process. We may even speak of natural realism when we use “offspring” in this sense, just as Anselm’s two analogies suggest. We do not have the same posture with respect to the supreme spirit, and so the idea that it is “more appropriate” to speak of the word as the “offspring” of the supreme spirit strains credulity, if we are also supposed to think of this word coming into being like speech. Anselm’s juxtaposition of biological generation and the vocalization of human speech does not serve him well. Anselm offered a more credible argument several chapters before: that the word that is uttered by the supreme spirit is none other than the creative utterance of the supreme spirit. This was enough to carry the argument about the consubstantial nature of the two. It does not require the language about one begetting the other. And it is not merely a question of semantics. Anselm recognizes the incongruity and alludes to it when he states in M 39 that even when we use the language of offspring in ordinary speech we often do so in cases where there is not much resemblance between the origin and its offshoot. And he had this in view when he proposed the examples about the hair from the head and the fruit from the tree. To speak of offspring always supposes biological origin and similarity in nature, but not difference. The conception is inherently genealogical. Both the tree and the head are the sites for growing the fruit and the hair respectively. Anselm does not sup-

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pose something analogous to this when speaking of the supreme spirit. That seems the most obvious surmise. Almost immediately, Anselm turns in a direction that appears counterintuitive, and to a point on which his argument seems the most vulnerable. This seems to be in keeping, though, with his stated aim of taking on all objections he can think of, no matter how silly or outlandish. M 40 begins with both an assurance of what has supposedly been proved and a question deriving directly from that assurance: if it is most fitting to say of the word that it is begotten (nasci) and the word is so much like (simile) that from which it is begotten, why think of the word as something similar to the supreme spirit when in fact they are more alike in a way that a parent and an offspring are not? In the case of parents and offspring, the offspring is born with the help of something else, whereas with the word and the supreme spirit, the latter needs nothing else as an aid to give birth to the word. So why not speak more of an identity, between the word and the spirit, instead of likeness? If there is a parent and an offspring there cannot be identity, except an identity of nature. For Anselm, it is most appropriate to speak of the supreme spirit as “the most true parent” (uerissimum esse parentem) and the word as its “most true offspring” (uerissimam esse prolem), because the spirit begets the word without any help, entirely and completely on its own; the word exists completely and entirely by and through the spirit (M 40). There is “no admixture of dissimilarity” (nulla admixta dissimilitudine). It bears a “complete resemblance in every way” (omnimodam similitudinem). In the end, Anselm expects to reiterate an old position: what they have in common they hold by way of substance, and what differentiates them in their respective individuating properties they hold in relation to each other. Hence one can appropriately be called parent (parens) and the other offspring (proles): the supreme spirit is most truly father, and the word most truly son. This immediately elicits objections based on sex, gender, and difference: why isn’t the parent called mother and the offspring daughter? Why must it be father and son? Anselm ponders. He maintains in M 42 that there is no sexual differentiation (sexus discretio) in either the supreme spirit or the word. And so there appears to be no reason why the spirit and the word could not be referred to as mother and daughter. After all, each is referred to as truth and wisdom, both ueritas and sapientia being grammati-

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cally feminine. Anselm wonders why it isn’t appropriate to call the spirit and its offspring mother and daughter. He thinks it might even be thought to afford a kind of parity by having the grammatically gendered “masculine” spiritus and the “neutral” uerbum being sexually undifferentiated or ambiguous by being referred to as mother and daughter. Anselm supplies a possible reason which seems to introduce standard fare about ancient and medieval notions about the inferiority of the second sex. He asks whether it is because among those natures that have sexual differentiation it is more likely to be the case that “the better sex” (melioris sexus) is characteristically called father and son and “the inferior sex” (minoris) mother and daughter. The language of “better” and “inferior” leaves Anselm open to the charge that he accepts the ancient and medieval theories about gendered difference and feminine inferiority. But he seems also to be offering this for consideration as one of the many objections or counterarguments he must contend with. He qualifies all this by an appeal to nature. He observes that for many creatures the male is stronger and bigger than the female, although the opposite also happens to be case for some specific creatures. Anselm mentions that in some species of birds the female sex is always larger and stronger compared to the male, which is “smaller and weaker” (minor et infirmior). The comparison is based purely on physical strength and size. So the inference might be that in using the language of parent and offspring as they appear among creatures with sexual differentiation we are compelled to adopt what seems to be the most common pattern among sexually differentiated creatures. And this, on the assumption that “better” means “stronger” and vice-versa. The argument is less than satisfactory, and Anselm quickly moves on to propose another argument that is less open to the kind of ambiguity and indeterminacy of the previous one based on physical strength and gender. Anselm turns to the biology of sex and the physiology of reproduction with a metaphysical objective. He is not done appealing to nature or biology in M 42. Anselm mentions what he calls somewhat euphemistically, “the cause of offspring.” He states that as far as procreating is concerned, the father is always the first and principal cause of the offspring (principalis causa prolis). The paternal cause always precedes the maternal. So the earlier supposition about the “better sex” and the size or strength of the male

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and female is irrelevant. If one were to put this in the language of the four Aristotelian causes known to Anselm, one could say with some hesitation that the father, as the primary cause, is both the formal and efficient cause of the offspring, while the mother, as the secondary cause, is the material and teleological cause. And it is for this reason alone that it is most appropriate to call the supreme spirit, Father, and the Word, Son, because the spirit is the first and principal cause of the Word. In fact, Anselm maintains that it would be most inappropriate (nimis incongruum est) to suggest otherwise. To call the spirit mother is to apply the wrong name to the parent “whom no other cause (nulla alia causa) joins or precedes (aut sociatur aut praecedit) for the begetting of offspring.” Even if one contests the physiology of conception presupposed here, one can still appreciate the objective of Anselm’s argument. Ostensibly, the father acts as the efficient cause of the offspring in so far as no other cause is associated with it or precedes insemination. If the mother were to be thought of not merely as a passive receptacle but an equally important “cause,” Anselm’s analogy would fail. Likewise, the mere prospect that there may be two equally determinative causes working in tandem would probably unravel Anselm’s argument. For Anselm’s eleventh-century readers such an objection would have been further from their minds. The astute and moderately intelligent among them could probably appreciate the advance over his previous argument. Beyond Anselm’s immediate medieval audience, his contention can still have some force, if one is prepared to elide the parts about his understanding of conception presumed in this last statement.36 Furthermore, Anselm adds that a son is more like his father than a daughter is like her

36

Anselm seems oblivious to ancient debates about the nature of human conception and what part female “seed” plays in it. While there was complete agreement about male seed from Aristotle and the Hippocratic Collection to Galen in the 2nd century C.E., there was debate about whether there even existed such a thing as female seed without which conception could not take place. See here Aline Rouselle, Porneia: On Desire and the Body in Antiquity, translated by Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), pp. 1–46. See also, The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, edited and translated by M. H. Green (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); idem, M. H. Green, “The Transmission of Ancient Theories of Female Physiology and Disease through the Early Middle Ages,” (unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University, 1985).

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father, all the more reason then that the spirit and the word be called father and son respectively. Anselm does not even bother to explain why the mother-daughter designation would not have satisfied the criteria of likeness, because he has already proved that the spirit is more appropriately called father than mother. So, to the medieval mind wondering about the language of Christian theism and the Trinity, Anselm gives the assurance that the language of father and son is the most appropriate. While the particular rationale Anselm proposes at this stage is not specifically Augustine’s, we can discern in Anselm’s language the spirit of Augustine’s comments in De trinitate 12: whether in fact one should countenance the idea of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the form of a triad of male, female, and their offspring. On this reading, the Father is obviously the male and the Son the offspring of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Under this scheme the Holy Spirit is considered female. Augustine has little patience for the conception and spends much of De trinitate 12 arguing against it. Anselm’s devaluation of the mother-daughter conception of parent and offspring follows in the tradition and spirit of Augustine’s objections in De trinitate 12. So, although it may seem relatively straightforward to say that Anselm has proposed an argument that is not found in Augustine or that Anselm is correcting or altering his Augustinian sources, it may be more appropriate to say that Anselm offers a response to a possible objection that goes beyond Augustine without necessarily devaluing the spirit of Augustine’s fundamental concerns.37 In one sense, his response attempts to lessen the difficulties anticipated by Augustine. In another respect, Anselm’s approach to what we should call the parent and the offspring, the spirit and the word, draws attention to the problem of nominalism. To begin with, Anselm’s approach suggests that some names are better than others. Or, to put it another way, some names do better in precluding more seri-

37 Cf. Frederick Van Fleteren, “The Influence of Augustine’s De Trinitate on Anselm’s Monologion,” in Saint Anselm – A Thinker for Yesterday and Today, edited by Coloman Viola and Frederick Van Fleteren (Lewiston, NY.: Mellen Press, 2002), p. 414 & p. 426. See also John R. Fortin, “The Naming of Father and Son in Saint Anselm’s Monologion 38–42,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 46 (2006), pp. 161–170.

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ous objections than others. So it does matter what something is called, and especially if the word is normally used of something else (or another nature) that bears no comparison with the thing to which the name is now being applied. Secondly, Anselm’s comments also suggest that other names might be more appropriate than what he has proposed. This, of course, says nothing about whether the names bequeathed to him and his contemporaries by the antecedent tradition are the most appropriate. Thirdly, once Anselm concedes that what seems most reasonable is also the least appropriate, he opens the door to serious challenges to the notion of theological rationality he has been advocating throughout the Monologion. As I have indicated previously, for most of the Monologion Anselm insists on his conclusions following inexorably from the premises of his arguments. He dismisses some objections as being beyond the pale of reason, others as simply absurd, and still others as straining the rules of dialectic. In a few short paragraphs in this section of the Monologion, Anselm focuses attention on how something is named. The form by which an idea is expressed takes on particular importance, because an expression can exceed the limits of reason. In which case, what may seem unreasonable in being adopted as a name for something may in fact be appropriate, because it best expresses what is being named. By using the language of appellation (what the thing is called), Anselm redirects attention from what the thing is in itself to how the thing is referred to. The propriety, then, centers as much, if not more, on our ordinary ways of speaking and signifying (usus loquendi). It is surprising then that some argue that Anselm’s dialectic adopts very technical Latin language to carry through his arguments when, in fact, he uses common examples to prove some of his points, with no pretensions that his reader adopt any technical language on logic.38 When Anselm tries to resolve the possible objection about gender-specific language (to speak in contemporary terms) with regard to the supreme spirit, he is able to maintain his position by indicat38

D. P. Henry, The Logic of Saint Anselm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967); idem, Commentary on De Grammatico; cf. Marilyn McCord Adams, “Rereading De grammatico, or Anselm’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories,” Documenti e studi tradizione filosofica medievale, 11 (2000), pp. 83–112.

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ing that whatever he has said applies to how we name the supreme spirit but not to what that nature is in its essence. Anselm’s justification, as we saw previously, is both intriguing and amusing. At the same time, it precludes the kinds of objections current in contemporary discussions about re-tooling theological language about the Trinity.39 Some contend that father-son language is obsolete in part because it sanctions patriarchal and paternalistic language and grants ontological priority to male-ness. Anselm could be criticized this way, although to do so would mean dismissing his arguments for reasons other than their cogency; which is not to say that Anselm does not himself inadvertently lend a hand to the contested tradition. To the extent that he obviates the possibility of mother-daughter language as an appropriate way of naming the progenitor and its offspring, Anselm’s argument opposes a feminine model for the Trinity. Whether this means that he devalues other feminine models and metaphors used in biblical texts is an entirely different question, however. Anselm gives a hint. In the midst of his deliberations about the gender specific nature of mother-daughter and father-son as designations for the supreme spirit and the word, Anselm hypothesizes that perhaps the case for the mother-daughter appellation might be strengthened by the fact that the supreme spirit and the word are both referred to as ueritas and sapientia. So perhaps the mother-daughter conception might not be that intolerable after all. Grammatical gender is, of course, one kind of naming that says next to nothing about what something is in itself. A way out of this predicament would be to suggest something less gendered and perhaps more abstract. Why not opt for the language of CreatorRedeemer-Sustainer? Anselm himself uses some of these terms at different points in the Monologion. He speaks of the creator-spirit, the sustainer, etc. Anselm appears to be in no mood for innovation at this point. His objective is strictly to give reasons for the intelligibility of the received tradition on what he takes to be sound theological, philosophical, and linguistic grounds.

39

See, for example, Gerald O’Collins, “The Holy Trinity: The State of the Question,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1–25.

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8. A Common Nature: Reconsiderations (M 43–48) Even so Anselm reconsiders: he offers a retractatio about what is common to the spirit and the word and what is distinctive about each. He claims that because he has discovered so many distinctive characteristics of both the spirit and the word, he is compelled to reconsider many times over upon so great a mystery. “Such admirable plurality,” he exclaims. Anselm asserts that it is as ineffable (ineffabilis) as it is unavoidable (ineuitabilis). And he finds the exercise involved in further reconsideration delightful because the subject of his inquiry is an impenetrable mystery (impenetrabile secretum). How can such plurality exist in supreme oneness (in summa unitate)? How is this possible? They both exist distinctly, so the fact that they are two things is clear enough, and yet, what each one is remains thoroughly hidden (penitus lateat) because each is both one and the self-same (unum et idipsum). Herein lies the mystery. For the Father and the Son are so distinct that when I speak of both I see that I have spoken of two; yet, what the Father and the Son are is so identical that I do not understand what I have called two. For although the Father, considered distinctly, is completely the supreme spirit and although the Son, considered distinctly, is completely the supreme spirit, nevertheless the spirit who is Father and the spirit who is Son are so one and the same that the Father and the Son are not two spirits but one. Thus, just as the properties which are unique to each do not admit of plurality because they do not belong to both, so what is common to both constitutes an individual oneness even though the whole of it belongs to each.40

The essence of one is the same as the essence of the other. The essence of one is in the other and vice-versa, if such language is 40 M 43 (S 1, pp. 59–60). Hopkins, A New Interpretative Translation, pp. 157–159): Nam sic est alius pater, alius filius, ut cum ambos dixerim, uideam me duos dixisse; et sic est idipsum, quod est et pater et filius, ut non intelligam quid duos dixerim. Quamuis namque singulus pater sit perfecte summus spiritus et singulus filius sit perfecte summus spiritus: sic tamen unum idemque est spirituspater et spiritus filius, ut pater et filius non sint duo spiritus sed unus spiritus. Ut sicut singula propria singulorum non recipiunt pluralitatem quia non sunt duorum, ita id quod commune est amborum, indiuiduam teneat unitatem, quamuis totum sit singulorum.

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permissible, even though what distinguishes them as Father and Son is also unique to each. What is more, one does not take on the individuating property of the other. M 43 continues the theme of sameness – the sameness of nature – as Anselm continues to probe what he calls the impenetrabile secretum. The essence of both the Father and the Son are/is the same: they have that in common, while the individuating properties are what make one the Father and the other the Son. On this basis, to say that one is the essence of the other is not to stray from the truth (non erratur a ueritate), even if it seems to cloud the imagination (M 44). For Anselm, this description commends to the reader the supreme unity and simplicity (summa unitas simplicitaque) of their common nature (communis naturae): supremely simple, not made of parts, non-composite, and completely whole and one. They are both supreme essence, nature, or being, and each is completely the Father and Son, respectively. The Son is not less perfect, less wise, or less anything, because he is begotten from the Father; all the more truly then that both Father and Son are co-eternal. And as if to reprise the feminine-wisdom theme that he precluded as an appropriate form of expression for the supreme spirit, Anselm speaks of both the Father and the Son as wisdom, life, etc: distinct in their unity; singular in distinction, yet not separate (M 44). With phrases like “it is suitable” (conuenienter est) and “it is said most aptly” (aptius dici), Anselm lays less stress on the rigor of his arguments and more on the ingenuously simple: “such and such can be understood this way.” It is a subtle shift, which seems trivial at first. But for someone like Anselm this is both an acknowledgement of the difficulty of the subject under consideration and a triumph of sorts, a triumph founded on the challenges of linguistic propriety and the limits of argument. To say that something can be understood one way but could also be taken another way without being incongruous vouches for a high level of indeterminacy which could put the entire project into question. Anselm acknowledges this indeterminacy about the adequacy of human mental conceptions about the supreme spirit and the weakness of language in capturing or expressing that nature. At the same time, there is never any doubt in Anselm that such a nature truly exists, and that it is the most excellent thing human beings can contemplate. He provides some intimations of this even in the earlier parts of the Monologion that certain things can only be understood in cer-

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tain ways, as the best approximations possible (see, for example, the headings of M 23 and M 24 where he uses intelligi possit). For a reader less certain of the language of attribution as it pertains to the supreme nature or God, Anselm’s latitude in this respect may be unsettling. For while Anselm’s argument about the simplicity of the common nature shared by the supreme spirit and the Son seems relatively unproblematic, it begins to sound terribly confusing when Anselm subordinates the Son to the Father by predicating the attributes of the Father as individuating properties of the Son; so that the Son is the essence of the Father, or as with other attributes, the strength, wisdom, justice, and – as he puts it – “whatever” (quidquid) befits the essence of the supreme spirit. For the inattentive reader there may not be much difference in saying that the Son “can be understood as the wisdom of the Father” and “the Son is the wisdom of the Father.” The former is based on a similitude, the latter on a certain ontology of sameness bordering on identity. Anselm also does not help matters much by describing the Son in M 46 as the perfect understanding, knowledge, and wisdom “of the whole paternal substance” (totius paternae substantiae). One might be tempted to say at this point, in words attributed to Roscelin of Compèigne,41 that while Anselm was a good man, he says many things that are strange. In his defense, it needs to be pointed out that Anselm is not the first to have said this. So the difficulties are not all of Anselm’s making, as a good deal of this is based on the language and metaphysics of substance in Aristotle, Augustine’s Trinitarian thought, and the refraction of both traditions through Boethius. Anselm’s ultimate goal is to arrive at the Trinitarian model of the soul (or mind) proposed by Augustine in the form of memory, understanding, and will, or memory, understanding and love. For the moment, given that he is dealing with two of the three parts of the Trinity, he is intent on speaking about memory and understanding and/or memory and wisdom (M 48). But before we get to Anselm’s fullest treatment of the Trinitarian analogies, a few 41 See Roscelin of Compiègne, Epistola ad Abaelardium, in Der Nominalismus in der Früscholastik: Eine Beitrag zur Geschichte der Universalienfrage im Mittelalter, edited by Joseph Reiners (Münster: Aschendorff, 1910), p. 65, quoted by Constant J. Mews, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 102.

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comments about the apparent difficulty of employing such phrases as Anselm uses in M 46, 47, etc., where the Son is referred to variously as an attribute or “something” of the Father. Such attributive language denotes some kind of relation, while at the same time making a claim to be signifying something about substance, as for example, when Anselm says that the Son is the expression of “the whole paternal substance.” Indeed, it is one of the hallmarks of both Augustine and Anselm’s discussion of terms predicated of the Father and Son that there are some terms that refer to their substance and some that refer to their relations. So what do we make of an attribute, say wisdom, when it is used as a substance term and when it is used in a phrase that suggests a relation, as in “wisdom is the very substance of the Father,” or “the Son is the wisdom of the Father?” Is this merely a way of speaking? If it is not simply a manner of speaking, then either the language is inadequate or it confuses while trying to illuminate. Henry Chadwick highlights something of this very difficulty in his remarks about the use of the term “person” (persona) in Boethius. Chadwick asks whether the term “person” can be predicated individually and substantially if we take Trinity to mean a plurality of persons united in a simplicity of substance.42 Notice that Anselm speaks of something similar, namely “unity and simplicity” in a common nature (M 44). That nature is the substance they share. So whatever attribute is applied to the Father’s substance seems to refer to substance, simpliciter. If, then, one speaks of such an attribute as “of the Father,” with the Son as the subject, then what they both have simpliciter is now spoken of relationally. Chadwick, speaking of Augustine, points out that the situation is confused.43 For it is unclear whether or not relation is integral to the notion of persona. It may be just as well to say that persons always exist in relation to one another, but that “person” itself is primarily a principle of individuation. But one cannot speak of individuation without presupposing relations. It may be plausible to speak of the substance as a common nature, while using an attribute through synecdoche to speak of the same substance in relational terms. Whether this solves the problem entirely is open to question. But, at least, it gets Anselm past the immediate diffi42 43

Henry Chadwick, Boethius, p. 212. Henry Chadwick, Boethius, p. 212.

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culty. It lessens the confusion involved in expressions like “the son is the true wisdom of the father,” or the “son is the understanding of the father,” or “the son is the whole of the paternal substance.” As we saw earlier in our discussion in Chapter 2, Anselm revisits this problem in M 79 by recalling again that the word persona is a term of individuation. What he might have done here that he does not do is to suggest, as I have indicated, that individuation does not obtain without relation. So rather than insist on persona as uniquely a term of individuation, one could argue that when it comes to human beings, persons as individuals will not be individuals as such if they were not already differentiated from other persons. It may be helpful to return to Augustine’s own use of the language of parent and offspring to highlight his influence on Anselm’s thinking about the propriety of the terminology. Although Augustine’s Trinitarian analogies focus on the “inner man” and so deal with the internal operations, functions, and movements of the human mind or soul, Augustine also has recourse to the “outer man” which he describes as the locus of the senses. And just as the inner man yields certain triadic forms like memory, understanding, and will, or memory, understanding, and love, so also the outer man can suggest other triads if one examines the operation of the senses. At one point in his discussion in De trinitate 11.5.9 Augustine adopts the language of parent and offspring. He writes: So it is that sight, [which] is the form which is produced by the sense of the beholder, has its quasi-parent in the form of the body from which it was produced. But this is not the true parent, and so the former is not a true offspring; it is not wholly begotten by it since something else is presented to the visible body for sight to be formed out of it, namely the sense of the one who is seeing.44

We have a quasi-parent and a quasi-offspring because something else, the sense of sight, mediates what is seen. This is a less desirable model than the one based on the inner operations of the human mind. Augustine suggests a slightly better triad based not 44 Augustine, De trinitate 11.5.9 (CCSL 50, pp. 344–345; Edmund Hill translation, p. 311): Visionis igitur illius, id est formae quae fit in sensu cernentis, quasi parens est forma corporis ex qua fit. Sed parens illa non uera, unde necista uera proles est; neque enim omnino inde gignitur quoniam aliquid aliud adhibetur corpori ut ex illo formetur, id est sensus uidentis.

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on sight but on the connection between “inward looking,” the focus of the minds attention on its memory, and what is seen when one turns inward. And yet here too, there is no true parent and true offspring: Here we can say that this look in the memory is the quasi-parent of the one which is produced in the imagination of the thinking subject. There it was in the memory even before we started thinking about it, just as a body was in its place before we started sensing it so that sight resulted. But when we think about the look retained in the memory, this other look is ‘printed off’ in the attention of our thoughts and formed in the act of remembering, and this is a quasi-offspring of the one held in the memory. Not even here, however, do we have true parent and true offspring.45

For a true parent and the true offspring, one must go even more inward, because in this latter case of what is recalled from memory it is difficult to say whether the will “which couples inner sight to memory is not either the parent or the offspring of one or other of them, and what makes it difficult is its likeness and equality in identity of nature and substance.” In what remains of his reflections in De trinitate Book 11, Augustine spends a good deal of time trying to find a triad that would allow him to denote a true parent and its true offspring that comes into being without mediation. Even if Augustine himself does not use the language of parent and offspring in other parts of De trinitate in speaking about the Father and the Son, much of what he provides in De trinitate Book 11 provide the warrants for someone like Anselm to use the language and terminology of true parent / true offspring in speaking of the Father and the Son, since so much of this is assumed in Augustine’s use of “quasi-parent” and “quasi-offspring.” Once more, what seems on the face of it to be a peculiarity in Anselm’s terminology emerges out of Augustine’s language in De trinitate. Another vista opens up when one considers Anselm’s use of memory and understanding in speaking of Father and Son (M 45

Augustine, De trinitate 11.7.11 (CCSL 50, p. 347; Edmund Hill translation, p. 312): illam speciem quae in memoria est quasi parentem dicimus eius quae fit in phantasia cogitantis. Erat enim in memoria et priusquam cogitaretur a nobis sicut erat corpus in loco et priusquam sentiretur ut uisio fieret. Sed cum cogitatur ex illa quam memoria tenet, exprimitur in acie cogitantis et reminiscendo formatur ea species quae quasi proles est eius quam memoria tenet. Sed neque illa uera parens, neque ista uera proles est.

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48), for example. In one instance, Anselm writes that the supreme spirit is memory and the Son is the understanding or wisdom of memory. There is a certain tautology in all this – which seems part of the point, as when Anselm mentions in the chapter heading for M 35 that the Son is “memory of memory.” Anselm is probably at his least argumentative, verging on most occasions on equivocation, when he employs these phrases. He asserts much without argument in M 43–48. M 47 is characteristic: “But if the substance of the Father is understanding, knowledge, wisdom, and truth, it follows that the Son is the Understanding, Knowledge, Wisdom and Truth of the paternal substance, so He is Understanding of Understanding, Knowledge of Knowledge, Wisdom of Wisdom, Truth of Truth.”46 Anselm leaves out “memory” when he proposes this quartet of understanding, knowledge, wisdom, and truth. Why he does so is apparent in M 48: “But what are we to suppose (quid sentiendum est) about memory (de memoria)?” he asks. He goes on to question whether the Son is to be thought of as the “understanding of memory” (intelligentia memoriae), or as either “the memory of the father” (memoria patris) or “the memory of memory” (memoria memoriae). The real question, of course, is whether it makes any difference. Why should so much depend on finding the proper phrase? For Anselm, the challenge rests in part on the analogy of the human mind, the mens rationalis. Whatever terminology is adopted must be appropriate to the operations of the mens rationalis which stands in an analogical relationship with the Trinity. The human mind does not always (at all times) think of itself and does not always remember itself. So when the mind thinks of something it remembers, the thought is “spoken,” as it were, mentally (mente eam dicere) in “the form of a likeness of the thing remembered” (eius similitudinem ex memoria formata). The mind of the supreme spirit, however, always thinks and remembers itself. So when it thinks of itself the “word” it forms is not dependent on an image of itself begotten from memory (uerbum eius nascitur de memoria). 46 M 46 (S 1, p. 63; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 165): At si ipsa substantia patris est intelligentia et scientia et sapientia et ueritas, consequenter colligitur quia sicut filius est intelligentia et scientia et sapientia et ueritas paternae substantiae, ita est intelligentia intelligentiae, scientia scientiae, sapientia sapientiae, ueritas ueritatis.

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To speak of the Son either as “the understanding of memory” or “the memory of the father” is, on this account, closer to the truth, even if it sounds unintelligible; “memory of memory” sounds just as problematic and is less illuminating. Yet, Anselm is convinced this is precisely how one ought to proceed. The co-eternal word is begotten from the eternal memory. If the word is the offspring, then it is apt to call memory the parent (memoria parentis nomen). Again, Anselm employs the language of parent and offspring as the most appropriate terms for Father and Son. Earlier we indicated that Augustine’s language about quasi-parent and quasi-offspring provided some of the background for Anselm’s conviction of the propriety of the parent/offspring terminology. If one wanted more definitive proof, one need only turn to De trinitate 15.21.40–26.45. It is a very clear defense in Augustine’s own words of the use of this kind of language, language which some have surmised – incorrectly, I might add – to be an innovation of some sort in Anselm. Of course, none of this removes the tautology from phrases like “memory of memory” or “understanding of understanding,” except to underscore, as Augustine also does in De trinitate 15.21.40ff., the inexpressible consubstantiality and co-eternality of the Father and Son.

9. Anselm’s Trinitarian Analogies (M 49–63) The level of argumentation improves markedly from M 47 to M 49 when Anselm begins to speak with the third person of the Trinity in mind. It should not have escaped any of Anselm’s alert readers that for the better half of the Monologion Anselm speaks of the supreme nature or essence as the supreme spirit, almost oblivious to the fact that this creates an unnecessary problem of nomenclature, since sooner or later Anselm will have to discuss the third person of the Trinity, namely the Holy Spirit. The discussion of the mutual love of the Father and Son commences in M 49, and leads eventually to Anselm’s designation of their mutual love as “the Spirit,” one of the three persons of the Trinity, in differentiation from the supreme spirit, which is the divine substance that all the three persons have in common. Anselm’s adoption of Augustine’s Trinitarian language reaches its fullest expression at this point. If

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the earlier discussion leading up to M 48 left the reader somewhat bewildered, what follows from M 49 is more reassuring. In his search for Trinitarian analogies in De trinitate Augustine first identifies the three-ness found in the experience of love as perhaps the most easily perceived triad available: the lover, the beloved, and the love that is shared between them. This mutual love, this affection that the lover and the beloved have in common, is like what the Father and the Son also possess in common. Anselm claims to find nothing more delightful (delectabililus) than contemplating this mutual love (M 49). It would be absurd, Anselm insists, if the mens rationalis is able to love both itself and this spirit, while the supreme spirit itself is not able to love itself. “For the remembrance and understanding of any thing whatsoever is in vain, and is altogether useless, unless this thing be loved or condemned to the extent that reason requires. Therefore, the supreme spirit loves itself, even as it remembers and understands itself.”47 A person loves himself because he thinks, conceives, knows and remembers himself. Nothing is loved without it being conceived in thought and remembered. The model here is cognitive and perceptual. So while something cannot be loved unless it is thought of and remembered, it can be thought of and remembered without being loved. Consequently, the love of the supreme spirit proceeds from remembering and understanding itself (se intelligit). Anselm does not use concipio or some cognate of it, even though intelligit could be a synonym for concipio. Perhaps, because it might give the impression that the supreme spirit forms a thought or a conception based on something external to its very nature and substance. So if the memory of the supreme spirit is understood as the Father and the intelligence (intelligentia) by which he understands anything is thought of as the Son, then love proceeds from both the Father and the Son, since it proceeds from both understanding and remembering (or memory). Anselm is well on his way to describing the double procession of the third person of the Trinity. M 50 does just that. The trinity of the lover, the beloved, and the love that they share gives way to the trinity of mind, understand47

M 49 (S1, p. 64; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 167): Otiosa namque et penitus inutilis est memoria et intelligentia cuiuslibet rei, nisi prout ratio exigit res ipsa ametur aut reprobe tur. Amat ergo seipsum summus spiritus, sicut sui meminit et se intelligit.

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ing, and love, which eventually gives way to a trinity of memory, understanding, and love. Anselm maintains that both Father and Son are one “supreme spirit,” yet each separately is also the supreme spirit. It all sounds a little redundant (M 51), and perhaps even problematic. Why not say each is both supreme and spirit, along the lines of saying that they are non-composite and non-material (as he argued for the supreme nature earlier)? That would emphasize their shared, common nature and also underscore their mutuality, equality, and singularity (what Anselm elsewhere calls their individual properties). This appears to be just what Anselm has in mind when he argues in M 52 that the love common to both Father and Son is as great as the supreme spirit; this love is his very essence. This prepares Anselm to be able to argue that the mutual love between Father and Son is nothing more or less than the very substance of the supreme spirit. At M 53 he will need to propose an argument that allows him to move from the binary Father-Son image to a triadic Father-Son-Love image, with the “Love” standing in for the “spirit of the Father and the Son.” Throughout the Monologion, Anselm refrains from using the creedal term, “Holy Spirit” (spiritus sanctus). When he finally introduces the three persons of the Trinity, he writes simply, “Father, Son, and Spirit” (M 59). Since the Love is the same in essence as the supreme spirit, Anselm’s argument about the consubstantiality of the Father, Son, and Love-Spirit is complete (M 57). Anselm does not shy away from saying that Love can be predicated of the substance of the supreme spirit (M 53). In connection with what he has been discussing in M 53, Anselm states in the chapter heading for M 54 “that it proceeds as a whole from the Father and as a whole from the Son, nevertheless it does not exist except as one love (nisi unus amor).”48 The reader who has any recollection of Anselm’s mereology, his deliberations on “parts and wholes” in some of the earlier chapters of the Monologion in relation to the supreme nature’s existence with respect to time and place, will probably suspect how Anselm intends to argue this point. Anselm anticipates, and so opens M 54 with the observation that it ought to be considered carefully (diligenter) whether there are two loves, proceeding from the Father and the Son respec48 M 54 (S 1, p. 66; S. N. Deane translation, p. 162): Quod totus procedat a patre, totus a filio, et tamen non sit nisi unus amor.

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tively; or one love proceeding not as a whole from both Father and Son but partially from each; or whether there is one love which proceeds as a whole from each of them individually and from both together. This third option seems almost unthinkable. But Anselm wants to consider each and every objection. He proposes a solution along the following lines. First, he contends that the supreme spirit’s love does not proceed from the fact that the Father and Son are two but from the fact that they are one. They send forth such a great good (tantum bonum) out of their very essence (ex ipsa sua essentia), which does not admit of plurality (quae pluralitatem non admittit). That being the case, what proceeds from their very essence proceeds as one and the same whole (unus idemque totus) from the Father and the Son together (simul); and certainly not as two wholes (non duo toti). What then? Does this mean that the love in question is like a son of the Father and a son of the Son? Is this love like an offspring, in much the same way that the Son could be spoken of as the offspring of the Father who begets it? Anselm’s response is clever, but it is probably untenable, though he claims that it is the result of contemplation. This is how he puts it: But, as the Word, as soon as it is examined, proves itself most clearly (euidentissime probat) to be the offspring of him from whom it derives existence, by displaying a manifest likeness (promptam imaginem) to its parent; so love plainly denies (negat) that it sustains such a relation, since, so long as it is understood (intelligitur) to proceed from Father and Son, it does not at once show to one who contemplates it so evident a likeness to him from whom it derives existence, although deliberate reasoning teaches us that it is in every respect identical with the Father and Son.49

Furthermore, Anselm insists, if this love is considered an offspring, then one has to suffer the other more intolerable objection as to whether the Father and Son are either mother or father of the offspring, a consideration which seems repugnant to the truth 49

M 55 (S 1, p. 67; S. N. Deane translation, p. 163; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 173, slightly amended): Sed sicut uerbum mox consideratur, se prolem eius esse a quo est, euidentissime probat, promptam praeferendo parentis imaginem: sic amor aperte se prolem negat, quia dum a patre et filio procedere intelligitur, non statim tam perspicuam exhibet se contemplanti eius ex quo est similitudinem; quamuis ipsum considerata ratio doceat omnino idipsum esse quod est pater et filius.

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(ueritati repugnare uidentur). Better then to keep to the notion of their mutual love as unlike an offspring than to attempt a conceptualization that would lead to other absurdities. What could be probed further, however, are the caveats and concessions entailed in Anselm’s main statement above. What does Anselm mean by a consideration that proves itself most clearly (euidentissime probat)? Is this supposed to be self-evident? And why does he speak of how these things appear or show themselves to the one who contemplates (contemplanti) them? And what of deliberate reason (ratio considerata), which on his own account, teaches that the love in question is identical in every way to the Father and the Son? If reason demands that the one contemplating this love think of it as identical to the Father and Son, then a likeness to that from which it derives seems the most self-evident representation that love makes to the contemplating mind. But this is what Anselm claims is not immediately impressed on the mind of the one who contemplates, even though such contemplation ostensibly follows the lead of reason. Unless I have entirely misunderstood him, Anselm leaves much of this without clarification. In the end, he provides arguments to substantiate the position he must defend, though the respective arguments raise more questions about “what seems most clearly evident to the contemplating mind.” The analysis Anselm offers in M 55 is somewhat problematic, though the main point he presses is sustainable, resonant with some of Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate 9.12.17. Augustine argues that love cannot be called an offspring or an image, because love is not begotten like knowledge, which is a kind of discovery. In a rather startling choice of imagery, Augustine writes about the mind as if it were giving birth. He states as follows: So the parturition by the mind is preceded by a kind of appetite which prompts us to inquire and find out about what we want to know, and as a result knowledge itself is brought forth as offspring; and hence the appetite itself by which knowledge is conceived and brought forth cannot appropriately itself be called brood or offspring. The same appetite with which one longs open-mouthed to know a thing becomes love of the thing known when it holds and embraces the acceptable offspring, that is knowledge, and joins it to its begetter.50 50 Augustine, De trinitate 9.12.18 (CCSL 50, p. 310; Edmund Hill translation, p. 282): Partum ergo mentis antecedit appetitus quidam quo id quod nosse

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All three, the mind, its knowledge, and its love, are one substance. Augustine quotes I John 5.8 to prove the point: all these three are one. So when Anselm insists on love proceeding from the essence of the Father and the Son, he means to underscore the “oneness” of all three: Father, Son and Spirit. As he puts it, the love proceeds from their essence. It is not in virtue of their relation to one another as Father and Son, but from what they are as one. This, too, might create a problem. If it is one essence, why speak of a love proceeding from both? Why not simply say that the love proceeds from the essence of the supreme nature? It could be argued that if it proceeds from the essence of the supreme nature it would not make sense to speak of the third person of the Trinity as the mutual love of the first two, since it would be love turned in on itself, namely the essence of them both. Even less helpful is the contention that they certainly “emanate love.” If Father and Son are distinctly (or individually but not separately) supreme spirit, not two but one, then it is the love of the supreme spirit that emanates. Why should that be something else other than the Father and the Son? To put it another way, if there is a third “individual” thing, why isn’t that thing also simply supreme spirit? After all, in M 59 Anselm states that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one supreme essence, while each remains perfectly the supreme essence. The kind of wholeness, uniqueness, and consubstantial equality depicted in M 59 make the argument in M 54 about the Spirit as the mutual love emanating from Father and Son look shaky. In M 59, the essence is common, individually and collectively. But in M 57, for example, Anselm says that the love is common and it is because it is common to the Father and the Son that the love is the Spirit. However, there are other things that they have in common that Anselm does not call “spirit.” The line of questioning I have pursued here is not meant to deflate Augustine’s model of love, the lover and the beloved as an appropriate analogy for the Trinity, only to suggest that as solicitous as Anselm is in considering all kinds of objections, he sometimes overlooks the kinds of objections which could more fundamentally challenge the received uolumus quaerendo et inueniendo nascitur proles ipsa notitia, ac per hoc appetitus ille quo concipitur pariturque notitia partus et proles recte dici non potest. Idemque appetitus quo inhiatur rei cognoscendae fit amor cognitae dum tenet atque amplectitur placitam prolem, id est notitiam gignentique coniungit.

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tradition and his commitment to blessed Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate. Anselm uses a pair of locutions in M 57 to try to ameliorate some of these difficulties: “If it can be expressed this way” (si sic dici potest); “if we may speak this way” (si dici potest). Anselm elicits the sympathy of his reader that what he is about to say is an acceptable way of putting things. If it is granted, he can then press his argument: This love, considered distinctly, is the Supreme Essence, even as are the Father and the Son; and yet the Father and the Son and their Love are not many, but are one Supreme Essence, which alone is not made by anyone but which made all things through itself. Therefore, it follows that (necesse est) just as the Father, considered individually (singulus), is uncreated and creator, and just as the Son, considered individually, is uncreated and creator, so their Love, considered individually, is uncreated and creator. Nevertheless, all three together are not many but one uncreated creator. As such, no one makes or creates or begets (facit siue creat aut gignit) the Father. Only the Father begets, but does not create, the Son. And the Father and the Son together (pariter) neither create nor beget their Love; but in a certain way (quodam modo) – if one can speak this way – breathe out their love (spirant suum amorem).51

Anselm adds that although the “supremely immutable essence” (summe incommunicabilis essentia) does not “breathe” the way human beings do, it is still probably more appropriate to say it breathes out its love than to say that it sends its love (se emittere), which proceeds ineffably from itself, since it does not part with it. Anselm suggests also that if the word of the summa essentia is its son (filius), then its love (amor) can quite appropriately be called its spirit (spiritus eius), if such language is acceptable. And even though this love is essentially spirit (essentialiter ipse sit spiritus), 51 M 57 (S 1, p. 68; My translation adapted from Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 175): Quoniam autem idem amor singulus est summa essentia sicut pater et filius, et tamen simul pater et filius et utriusque amor non plures sed una summa essentia, quae sola a nullo facta non per aliud quam per se omnia fecit: necesse est ut, quemadmodum singulus pater et singulus filius est increatus et creator, ita et amor singulus sit increatus et creator, et tamen omnes tres simul non plures sed unus increatus et unus creator. Patrem itaque nullus facit siue creat aut gignit. Filium uero pater solus non facit sed gignit. Pater autem pariter et filius non faciunt neque gignunt sed quodam modo si sic dici potest spirant suum amorem.

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the Father and the Son are not thought of as anyone’s spirit (alicuius spiritus). Anselm’s position is that the Father is not from anyone else nor is the Son begotten from the Father as if (quasi) by breathing out. But this is to use the conclusion as the premise of the argument. Anselm’s logic breaks down. In the end, Anselm merely repeats a dictum, with a concession that this love “may be considered as the spirit of both, because from both of them, who breathe it (spirante), it marvelously proceeds in a certain indescribable way (inenarrabili modo).”52 To preclude the objection that this piles on more difficulties concerning their common nature, Anselm tries to give a reason why this love should be called “spirit” in the first place. Anselm insists that because this love is common to the Father and the Son it is not without reason that this love should take a certain name as its own something that is common to both the Father and Son, if there is a need (indigentia) which demands such a proper name (proprium nomen). Anselm offers such a name, because it is required: And indeed, if it should be the case that this very love (ipse amore) is called by the name ‘spirit,’ as a kind of (quasi) proper-name, which signifies equally (pariter) the substance of the Father and the Son: it will be useful (non inutiliter) to this end also that by this name it shall be intimated that this love is the self-same (idipsum) of Father and Son, although it has its being (esse) from them (ab illis).53

But is there a problem in saying that “this love,” the very essence or being (idipsum esse) of Father and Son, receives its being (suum esse) from them? Perhaps. For the moment, he offers this proper name or quasi-proper name as a concession. Anselm has all of this behind him when he proposes shortly thereafter in M 59 to demonstrate the equality of the three both in terms of their shared essence and in terms of their individuality. In the first place, all three together are one supreme essence, even though each by itself is also the supreme essence; and the one supreme essence cannot exist apart from itself. This means that it 52

M 57 (S 1, p. 69; My translation). M 57 (S 1, p. 69; My translation): Quod quidem, si fiat, scilicet ut ipse amor nomine ‘spiritus’, quod substantiam pariter patris et filii significat, quasi proprio designetur: ad hoc quoque non inutiliter ualebit, ut per hoc idipsum esse quod est pater et filius, quamuis ab illis esse suum habeat, intimetur. 53

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cannot exist without, outside, or be greater or lesser than itself, which is to say all three must exist both distinctly and equally as one. Hence the second point: the Father as a complete whole exists in the Son and in their mutual Spirit, the Son likewise in the Father and the Spirit, and the Spirit similarly in the Father and the Son. From here on, it remains for Anselm to suggest analogies from the human mind that are appropriate to this Trinity. Anselm devotes M 58–63 to explaining why and how the three persons in the Father, Son, and Spirit can rightly be designated the memory, understanding, and love of the supreme essence. He maintains also that the categories are interchangeable. “Indeed, the supreme spirit understands and loves the whole of its memory; and it remembers and loves the whole of its understanding, and it remembers and understands the whole of its love.”54 Anselm cautions, however, that this mutuality and interchangeability ought to be held carefully, as it is likely to cause confusion. In what sounds like a pun, Anselm writes in M 60 that the truth he has discovered about the supreme spirit who understands and loves the whole of its memory, and remembers and loves the whole of its understanding, etc., ought to be carefully “commended to memory” (memoriae commendandum). He contends that it is necessary that (necesse est) the three persons be understood as memory, understanding, and love with the proviso that the Father does not need either the Son or the Spirit, nor does the Son need either the Father or the Spirit, nor the Spirit need the Father or Son. This, despite the fact that they share a common essence. As long as this is held fastidiously, one is not likely to go wrong in understanding what the Trinity of memory, understanding, and love represent. Anselm spends M 61 reiterating his previous arguments about how there should be one Father, one Son, and one Spirit, and proceeds to M 62 to review how all this affects the eternal speech of the supreme essence. At this point, he introduces a comparison based on the speech of three individual human beings and tries to show how poorly they serve as an analogue for the speech of the supreme essence in its three-ness. He recalls the earlier arguments he made about how human speech is always preceded by a mental image or vision 54 M 59 (S 1, p. 70; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 179): Totam quippe suam memoriam summus spiritus intelligit et amat, et totius intelligentiae meminit et totem amat, et totius amoris meminit et totum intelligit.

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formed in the mind of the speakers and compares this to the lack of such an image in the supreme essence when it utters its speech. The Father, Son, and Spirit are present to each other. Each one does not beget its own word when it speaks or there will be many words and many spirits, etc. The unique singularity of their essence preserves this unique presence (M 63). This line of reasoning has the potential of obliterating the uniqueness of the Son, as the Word begotten of the Father, but Anselm claims to have discerned something “marvelous and inexplicable” (mirum et inexplicabile) to handle the objection. Anselm argues that even though each person speaks equally of the other two, the Word cannot be the word of all three, but only one. Why? Because it cannot be called an image or a son except of the one whose word it is. And to the extent that the Word is not begotten of itself or does not proceed from the Spirit, it must be the word of the Father. Once again, Anselm appears to be using what he has to prove as the basis of the argument. It is entirely circular, and it leads to a tautology. Anselm’s contention that he has discerned something “marvelous and inexplicable” has the feel of a great misapprehension. An uncharitable reader might say that the issue remains manifestly inexplicable and very far from the marvelous discovery Anselm claims. Perhaps it is for this reason that Anselm mounts his great defense of his philosophical and theological method in M 64 and M 65. The chapter title of M 64 reads: “That this, though inexplicable (inexplicabile), must nevertheless be believed (credendum).” One could very easily surmise how someone like Lanfranc would react to Anselm’s many concessions about the inadequacy of argument. Before assessing the Monologion’s achievement in light of M 64 and M 65 in the next chapter, I should like to turn to an assessment of the Trinitarian images in the Monologion and how they stand comparison to the images in Augustine’s De trinitate. In reviewing Anselm’s use of memory, understanding, and love (memoria, intelligentia, amor), what is most striking at first glance is that it appears to be a change of the more dominant image that Augustine employs in De trinitate 10.17–19, namely, memory, understanding, and will (memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas). This apparent disparity has led to a number of assertions and interpretations as to just where the difference lies between Augustine and

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Anselm. Three recent interpretations deserve attention. I shall take them in their turn in reverse chronological order. In an article on “Anselm on the Trinity,” William A. Mann maintains that Anselm and Augustine converge because they both use analogies of memory, understanding and will to speak about the Trinity.55 Anselm, in fact, prefers almost always the triad memoria, intelligentia, amor and almost never uses the triad memoria, intelligentia, uoluntas. It is as if Anselm is at pains to say something different from what Augustine indicates with the third member of the triad. So when Mann writes that, “following Augustine, Anselm models his conception of the Trinity on memory, understanding, and will”56 it would appear as if Mann is misrepresenting Anselm’s position. But as we shall see, Anselm’s memoria, intelligentia, amor can be read as memory, understanding, and will, even though, it is precisely this choice of amor over uolulntas which leads others to suppose that Anselm might in fact be offering an alternative triad in order to demonstrate his difference from Augustine. Jay Rubenstein presents an argument along these lines in connection with Guibert of Nogent, a younger contemporary of Anselm’s who claims to have learned from Anselm some of the ways in which he went about interpreting biblical texts and for his understanding human nature. Rubenstein suggests that Anselm takes a different path to the Trinitarian analogy of the human mind, a path different from what Augustine proposes, and that some of this derives from that very Anselmian psychology which appears to have influenced Guibert so much. Rubenstein cites De trinitate 15.21.41 at one point in his discussion to show that Anselm’s model differs from Augustine’s because Anselm opts for “love” instead of “will.”57 Interestingly, the passage Rubenstein quotes from De trinitate 15.21.41 contains the possible basis for Anselm’s re-statement. The issue turns on whether the Spirit can be called “will” or “love.” Augustine states as follows: “As far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, the only thing I pointed to in this

55 William A. Mann, “Anselm on the Trinity” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, edited by Brian Leftow and Brian Davies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 257–278; the reference is to p. 272. 56 Ibid., p. 273. 57 Jay Rubenstein, Guibert of Nogent: A Portrait of a Medieval Mind (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 41.

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puzzle as seeming to be like him is our will, or love or esteem, which is will at its most effective – because of course our will, which is implanted in us by nature has various moods according as it is involved with, or comes up against, things that either attract or repel us.”58 Notice how Augustine speaks of will, love, or esteem (to follow Hill’s translation). Rubenstein mentions this passage, translating the part I have highlighted as “except our will, or love or delight, which is our stronger will.”59 For Augustine, the term Rubenstein translates as “delight” (dilectionem) often simply means “love.” It occurs in the highlighted phrase uoluntatem nostrum, uel amorem seu dilectionem quae ualentior est uoluntas. Hill mentions in a footnote60 that he normally translates Augustine’s dilectio as “love” except in this instance where he is compelled to vary his words. Here Hill translates it as “esteem” so as to differentiate it from the love or amorem which precedes it. What may be significant is that Augustine uses three words in a series that he considers near synonyms, because they all have to do with willing, loving, choosing, etc. So one could translate Augustine’s dilectio as “discriminating choice” since what Augustine has in view is the act of choosing something of value in a discriminating way, with the proviso that dilectio implies an even stronger sense of “willing.” This seems to be the point of the phrase “which is an even stronger will” (quae ualentior est uoluntas). Augustine provides the warrant for substituting “love” (amor, dilectio) for “will” (uoluntas). So in a sense, Anselm both changes and does not change Augustine’s scheme. He makes a lexical change, but does not alter the substance of what is presented by Augustine. Augustine presents “will,” “love,” or “discriminating choice,” as one of three ways of construing what he calls the mystery (aenigmate) about the Holy Spirit. If any one of the three can serve well as a term for the Holy Spirit, and Augustine goes so far as to say that dilectio is our stronger will, doesn’t this make it obvious to a reader like Anselm that “will” is not only interchangeable with “love,” but that the kind of love that is dilectio is a more appropriate term than uoluntas? Of course, Anselm uses amor and not dilec58

Augustine, De trinitate 15.21.41 (CCSL 50a, p. 518). (Edmund Hill translation, p. 427). 59 Jay Rubenstein, Guibert of Nogent, p. 40. 60 Augustine’s De trinitate (Edmund Hill translation, p. 144, n. 103).

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tio, and so appears to lessen the force of my argument. However, both Augustine and Anselm use amor and dilectio as synonyms.61 Furthermore, Augustine himself proceeds in De trinitate 15.22.42 to say explicitly that the triad of memory, understanding, and love would serve just as well for the Father, Son, and Spirit. Sometimes in De trinitate 15.22.42 he uses variants of amor and at other times he uses variants of dilectio. The supposition, then, that in using memory, understanding, and love, Anselm has somehow departed from Augustine rests on a basic misunderstanding of what actually obtains in De trinitate. More serious questions about Anselm’s dependence on Augustine’s Trinitarian images have been posed by G. R. Evans in an article,62 and again in her book Anselm and Talking about God.63 Evans notes in the earlier article that Anselm deals with memoria and intellectus at some length in the Monologion, and she points out that in M 48 we find “an explicit trinitarian application.”64 She also mentions that the Memorials of St. Anselm contain clearer evidence of the Trinitarian images Anselm seemed to prefer, at least as far as some of his brothers could recall. She observes that in his choices, Anselm appears indifferent to some of Augustine’s schemes, and argues that a “subordinate theme of Augustine’s in the De trinitate, that of mens, notitia, amor, seems to have been less useful to Anselm, although we may detect a trace of it in the Monologion”65 Evans then quotes a passage from M 46, where she detects mens, notitia, and amor in the phrase, si igitur hoc sensu filius dicatur patris intelligentia et sapientia et scientia et cognitio siue notitia (therefore, if one says that the son is the understanding, 61 See, for example, Augustine, De ciuitate Dei 14.17; 15.22. On Augustine’s discussion of love or caritas see the important work of R. Canning, The Unity of Love for God and Neighbour in St. Augustine (Heverlee-Leuven, 1993), as well as the following earlier works: H. Pétré, Caritas. Etude sur le vocabulaire latin de la charité chrétienne (Louven, 1948); John Burnaby, Amor Dei: A Study in the Religion of St. Augustine, 3rd edition. (London, 1960); and D. Dideberg, Saint Augustin et la première épître de saint Jean. Une théologie de l’agapè (Paris, 1974). 62 G. R. Evans, “St. Anselm’s Images of the Trinity,” Journal of Theological Studies, n. s. 27 (1976), pp. 46–57. 63 G. R. Evans, Anselm and Talking About God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 64 G. R. Evans, “St. Anselm’s Images of the Trinity,” p. 50. 65 Ibid.

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wisdom, knowledge, and cognition or awareness of the father …). Evans goes on to claim that “two things are striking about Anselm’s use of Augustine’s images of the Trinity. He does not imitate slavishly, but takes only what is of direct relevance to the task at hand; in the Monologion passages quoted, he appears to have been interested chiefly in certain implications of the terms Augustine employs.” Furthermore, she adds that: in the texts printed in the Memorials the same terms are used in a quite different way in homiletic composition designed to help the monk in his spiritual life. Here the trio memoria, intellectus, uoluntas is preserved intact – possibly almost as a mnemonic device, so that the three terms form a pattern which can easily be retained in the mind. Secondly, this very distinction in method shows how aptly Anselm was able to tailor the images of the Trinity which were available to him to the needs of both monks and scholars.66

We should recall that Anselm speaks in M 63 somewhat humorously about commending the trinitarian triads to his own memory. There is no doubt that Anselm knew his different audiences and was adept at figuring out how to speak to them in his various roles as spiritual director, school master, and abbot; adopting and adapting different modes and genres (letters, prayers, dialogues, etc.). Anselm was always aware of the rhetorical occasion. Still, Evans claims that Augustine’s mens, notitia, amor “seems to have been less useful to Anselm.”67 Anselm’s investigations in the Monologion and the background in De trinitate suggest otherwise. The fact that Anselm does not use mens does not mean his triad memoria, intelligentia, amor does not express in its first term something about mens. Anselm prefaces his discussion of this triad by saying that he is speaking about the mens rationalis. In any case, when Evans quotes M 46 she claims to see a trace of mens, notitia, amor. In addition, virtually everything that Anselm says about memoria is consistent with what Augustine says about both memoria and mens. Besides, Augustine himself, and this Evans intimates, sees the mens, notitia, amor triad as less adequate compared to memoria, intellegentia, and uoluntas. So the difference Evans insists on is more apparent than real. And it is not clear what seems to have been “less useful” to Anselm when 66 67

Ibid., p. 51. Ibid.

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Augustine too takes mens, notitia, amor as less useful than memoria, intellegentia, and uoluntas. Evans acknowledges some of this by prefacing her remarks with the statement that the mens, notitia, amor triad is perhaps a “subordinate theme of Augustine’s in De trinitate.”68 More problematic is the claim that in the Monologion, for example, Anselm is chiefly interested in certain implications of the terms Augustine employs in De trinitate.69 What we have seen thus far demonstrates that Anselm is not merely concerned with “certain implications” of Augustine’s terms. He abbreviates and often summarizes Augustine quite accurately, sacrificing extensive description and prolixity for the precision and brevity of a highly syllogistic and analytic form. Furthermore, the presence of the triad memoria, intellectus, uoluntas in the Memorials should caution us against the tendency of taking the words at face value without appreciating the particular description of the human mind Anselm presents, and the arguments made on the basis of that description. But let us suppose that, in fact, Anselm prefers one version in the Monologion (memory, understanding, and love) and another version in the Memorials (memory, understanding, and will). For Augustine, the difference between mens, notitia, amor and memoria, intellegentia, amor/uoluntas rests on the difference between the mind and its inner life on the one hand (i.e. its self-reflexivity) and the so-called inner-man/outer-man anthropology he learns from the New Testament writings, mostly from Paul. Whenever Augustine uses the memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas triad he has the outer-man in view. Those discussions are inherently linked with the ethical life. So it should not be surprising that Anselm would use this triad in texts that are primarily homiletic. And it should be even less surprising when he is discussing themes that are pastoral and ethical. So the appearance of this triad in the Memorials of St. Anselm is not because Anselm has no use for it in the Monologion. Far from it: a look at M 66–78 shows clearly that the description of the moral life that Anselm proposes and defends is dependent on memoria, intelligentia, and uoluntas.

68 69

Ibid. Ibid.

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If one reads M 68, for example, in light of M 67 it is clear that, for Anselm, to be able to act, will, or actualize the potential of the human mind (or soul) the mind has to be aware of its self (remember), understand, and will properly what is best to be desired. We will have occasion for a fuller assessment of Anselm’s comments shortly and how much they reflect Augustine’s conception of the soul and its acts in remembering, understanding, and willing (and loving). What I say here is consistent with the view expressed by John Rist about the connection between will and love in Augustine’s De trinitate.70 Even so, Lewis Ayres warns that the triads that dominate Augustine’s discussion of the Trinitarian nature of the human soul in the later books of De trinitate are not essential to Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity. Lewis Ayres makes an important point when he argues that the triad, memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas, is not standard Augustinian fare in expressing the doctrine of the Trinity; and that when we peruse the sermons and other writings composed before De trinitate we will not find this triad when Augustine is discussing the doctrine.71 Without getting into a question of the centrality of the triad to Augustine’s teaching of the doctrine, we should note that this is in fact consistent with what Augustine does in De trinitate. That is to say, in the first half of De trinitate, especially in the first four books where Augustine explains the doctrine with a lot of scriptural exegesis, there is little reference to or use made of the triads. They are not necessary to the enterprise he sets himself. Augustine mentions memoria, intellectus, and uoluntas in De trinitate 4.21.30. One has to wait till De trinitate 6.10.11 before he mentions another triad used by Hilary of Poitiers that he subjects to criticism: aeternitas, species, and usus. It is only after Book 7 that Augustine trots out the triads that we have come to associate with his inquiries in De trinitate. So if we do not find the triads in his scriptural exposition of the doctrine in De trinitate itself and in his sermons and other writings, save perhaps his announcement of the 70

John Rist, “Love and Will: Around De Trinitate XV 20,38,” in Gott und sein Bild, edited by Johannes Brachtendorf, pp. 205–216. 71 Lewis Ayres, “‘It’s not for eatin’ – it’s for lookin’ through’: memoria, intellegentia, voluntas and the argument of Augustine’s De Trinitate IX–X,” in The Mystery of the Holy Trinity in the Fathers of the Church, edited by D. Vincent Twomey and Lewis Ayres (Dublin: Four Court Press, 2007), pp. 37–64; reference is to p. 38.

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subject of the Trinity with the triad, esse, nosse, uelle in Confessiones 13.11.12, that is in some ways unremarkable. What may be significant is that from the beginning Augustine had tried to find ways of representing a trinity in human nature or the soul. That he settled on those that appear in the later books of De trinitate is the result of a long search; not a lack of interest or his sense of the value of such an attempt. After all, Cicero was an important intellectual source for him. And Augustine’s quest for some way of speaking about the soul, what it loves, and what it knows can be traced from his very early discussion of the virtues in De moribus ecclesia catholicae as aspects of our love of God. We should then link this with his elaborations of the virtues in De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII and in both the Confessiones and De trinitate. In all these instances Cicero is in the background if not at the center of his arguments. When Augustine quotes Cicero on the virtues in question 31 of De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII he mentions Cicero’s triad of memoria, intellegentia, and prouidentia from De inuentione 2.53–54: that remembering is about the past, understanding is about the present, and foresight or forethought is about anticipating the future, seeing something before it happens. Here he does not offer any critique of Cicero. What is more, Augustine underscores from the very early works from Cassiciacum and in De moribus ecclesiae catholicae that love should be at the center of any re-ordering of the soul. So beatitude or happiness or the ultimate good is all about love, desire, and willing. The absence of the triad, memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas, then, is not testament to their peripheral nature to Augustine’s understanding of an essentially trinitarian nature of the soul. Without overstating it, even the absence of the triad from a work like the Confessiones is not an indication that it is not important to that work. In fact, the Confessiones presents a narrative that employs the Trinitarian anthropology that Augustine later describes in De trinitate. Books 1–10 of the Confessiones are replete with descriptions of memoria, intellegentia, and amor/uoluntas that detail the life of Augustine’s restless, converting, and converted soul. So while the triad is not mentioned, the texture of Augustine’s narrative is not without it. One could even argue that Augustine’s short commentary in De trinitate 14.11.14 on the Ciceronian triad that he found in De inuentione, and had known for most of his career, motivated his own triad of memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas,

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and attests to a long quest to find a way of speaking of the soul as a trinity.72 For Anselm, De trinitate was his foundational text. He accepted Augustine’s rationale about the different turn the work takes at the beginning of Book 5 in its methodology. Anselm does not question the importance of the various triads for Augustine’s project, because Augustine himself had made them central. Augustine presents the triads as a way of gaining some understanding of the Trinity insofar as reason allows. This is Anselm’s preoccupation. So his approach cannot dispense with the triads. Furthermore, he follows Augustine in using the triads to prove or explain the doctrine so as to have them support what is found in scripture and in the creed.

10. Conclusion If Lanfranc and other contemporaries had specific objections to individual passages or sections of the Monologion, chapters 29–63 would likely have contained most of the arguments that would have caused them the greatest anxiety. Anselm’s manner of argumentation is less certain of itself, not because Anselm proffers less analytic arguments, but because he has to qualify himself on a number of occasions in ways that detract considerably from his stated confidence in the power of argument and the use of dialectic. And as we have seen, Anselm himself admits in one moment that reason, his most trusted guide and ally, not only fails him but leads him to absurdity. This almost uncharacteristic acknowledgment undermines Anselm’s unbridled conviction that reason is a most trusted guide in matters so mysterious as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Anselm encounters some of his greatest difficulties in trying to argue that the gendered language of father and son is more appropriate in speaking about the first two persons of the Trinity than mother and daughter. He even concedes that other names besides Father, Son, and Spirit could be adopted, although he seems convinced that mother-daughter language would undermine essential aspects of the nature of the Trinitarian relationship of the one who begets and the one who is begotten. 72

Cf. Ibid., 56–61.

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We have also seen that Anselm reiterates most of the central arguments of Augustine’s Trinitarian conception of the human mind (not a psychological conception as it is often represented). Against some interpretations that suggest that Anselm’s Trinitarian analogies differ from Augustine, I have argued that Anselm’s memoria, intelligentia, amor faithfully reflects Augustine’s memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas, and that Augustine himself sanctions the use of amor in place of uoluntas. Anselm’s Trinitarian arguments are the least innovative of all the arguments he presents in the Monologion. Because this section of the Monologion dealing with the Trinity constitutes the largest segment of the Monologion, it easily supports Anselm’s claim about his dependence on the arguments of “blessed Augustine” in his De trinitate. And it stands to reason why he directs all self-styled critics of his Monologion to read Augustine’s De trinitate carefully before presuming to judge the Monologion.

Chapter Seven The Criterion of Rationality: On Faith, the Ineffable, and the Love of the Good

1. Introduction In the way I have divided the Monologion the final set of arguments begins with M 64 and ends with M 78. Anselm brings his project to a close with two additional chapters, M 79 and M 80. The former presents a digression on the propriety of using the words “substance” and “person” with regard to the Trinity, while the latter is Anselm’s conclusion to the entire project. M 79 addresses a theme that Anselm addressed in earlier chapters of the Monologion on a subject that he first highlights in the preface. Anselm did not have to take up the theme again. That he does so after his arguments in M 66–78, which deal with material not directly related to the subject matter of M 79, is why I suggested earlier in my discussion in Chapter 2 that M 79 appears almost as a postscript, if not an afterthought. Since I have already considered M 79 extensively in Chapter 2, I shall not address it here in this chapter. My focus here will be on M 64 to M 78. Anselm’s arguments of M 64 to M 78 can be divided as follows: After the extensive investigations in the previous sixty-three chapters, Anselm offers a justification and defense of his method in M 64 and 65. In M 66 and 67 he discuss the nature of the soul and why it is most suited for knowing the supreme essence. Anselm describes the soul (or mind) as a mirror and image of the supreme essence, which in part sustains the argument about the soul’s affinity for the supreme essence. So in spite of the fact that the supreme essence is incomprehensible and ineffable, the mind can form some idea of the supreme essence; and the fact that the mind is an image of the supreme essence also guarantees that the mind can form an adequate, if imperfect, conception of the supreme essence. From this point onward Anselm proposes to the reader or the inquiring soul that the soul is at its most rational when it seeks the supreme

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essence in order to fulfill that for which it was created. It is in this context that Anselm discusses faith in M 68 through M 78. Anselm’s discussion of faith involves first, a description of what faith should look like in relation to the ineffable good, the supreme nature, and the creator spirit; and second, a delineation of the inextricable links between faith and rationality, on the one hand, and rationality and the ineffable good, on the other. This second theme provides the basis for Anselm’s subsequent comments as to why the love of the good should be the defining characteristic of any rational soul. This is Anselm’s criterion of rationality: something else has to vouch for reason’s credentials or authenticity. My discussion in this chapter will explore the three parts that make up Anselm’s arguments. The first part will focus on M 64 and 65. Here I shall be interested in assessing Anselm’s defense and justification of his method. I will raise some questions about Anselm’s understanding of the certainties of faith, the conditions of doubt and disbelief, and how his views fare in relation to some of Boethius’s views on the topics in relation to doubt, arguments, and the persuasive force of arguments against matters held in dispute. The second part of my discussion will deal with M 66 and 67. I will explore Anselm’s description of the mind as an image of the supreme essence and consider how closely he stays with Augustinian antecedents in De trinitate. And in the third part of my discussion, focused on M 68 to 78, I shall elaborate on Anselm’s view of the soul and its orientation towards the supreme essence, which lies behind Anselm’s fundamentally moral conception of rationality. We shall also discover along the way that Anselm borrows from Augustine in an important way that is often overlooked, when he picks up the idea of the “good soul” in a passage from De trintiate as a point of departure for his own considerations of the soul’s orientation toward the good.

2. De trinitate Book 13: The Book of Faith Anselm seems to take a cue from Augustine’s discussion of the nature of faith set in the midst of the rational inquiries into the Trinitarian nature of God in De trinitate Book 13. This “book of faith,” as it were, responds to Augustine’s Trinitarian anthropology of the knowing, sensate, and experiencing self described in Books

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11 and 12, with its analysis of the inner and outer man, of what obtains in the mind (or soul) and what pertains to the senses and the body. Augustine takes up the question of faith in Book 13 in order to show how the human being he describes in Books 11 and 12 comes to the knowledge of things divine. We may recall here Anselm’s description of his project in the preface as a meditation on the divine essence (meditanda de diuinitatis essentia). Augustine begins De trinitate Book 13 with a short commentary on the opening chapters of the Gospel of John. After quoting John 1:1–14 in its entirety, Augustine goes on to comment about the pre-existent Word, its incarnation, and its reception among human beings. He does all this to show what faith looks like, not only among those who saw and heard the Word in the flesh, but also what it should look like among those who have not seen the Word in the flesh. According to Augustine, the passage shows how the contemplation of the unchangeable, the eternal, which makes us blessed, is related to the temporal, the bodily, the earthly, the fleeting. Part of Augustine’s task is to answer the question how it is possible to love what one has not seen or something one does not yet know. The short form of his answer is that “faith sees,” whereas unbelief cannot fathom much of anything and remains blind. Both the question and the answer resonate in Anselm’s justification of his method in M 64 and 65. So as a preface to the final chapters of the Monologion here are some of Augustine’s thoughts on the question. Since it is true that all human beings want to be happy, and yearn for this one thing with the most ardent love they are capable of, and yearn for other things simply for the sake of this one thing; and that no one can love something if he simply does not know what it is or what sort of thing it is, and that he cannot know what it is he knows he wants; it follows that all human beings know what the happy life is. All who are happy have what they want, though not all who have what they want are altogether happy; but those who do not have what they want, or have what they have no right to want, are altogether miserable. Thus no one is happy but the one who has everything he wants, and wants nothing wrongly.1 1

Augustine, De trinitate 13.5.8 (CCSL 50a, p. 392–393; Edmund Hill translation, p. 349, amended): Quapropter quoniam uerum est quod omnes homines esse beati uelint idque unum ardentissimo amore appetant et propter hoc caetera quaecumque appetunt, nec quisquam potest amare quod omnino quid uel quale sit

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This passage establishes the basis for Augustine’s discourse on beatitude and the ends of human life in De trinitate Book 13. It is an argument that is fundamental to all his thinking about the moral life and the teleology of human experience. It occurs early in De beata uita in Cassiciacum,2 soon after his conversion; it is reiterated in his De moribus ecclesiae Catholicae, written shortly after his baptism in 387, and is given full expression in Book 10 of the Confessiones (c. 397). What appears here in De trinitate Book 13 is also similar to what he describes in Book 21 of De ciuitate Dei. It is Augustine’s major contribution to the problem of eudaimonia in ancient thought and ethics.3 Augustine often has Cicero as a conversation partner when discussing the topic. De trinitate Book 13 is no different. Augustine is convinced that if someone cannot gain what that person longs for most ardently, then that person is miserable. So it is no trivial matter to know how to get what you want and to want nothing wrongly. The following passage, which picks up from the previous one elaborates on the theme by posing the following question: Given that the happy life consists of knowing how to get what you want and not wanting anything wrongly, why do people generally choose to have everything they want rather than to want rightly what they most truly desire, namely the happy life? Augustine, who had previously dismissed the notion that the happy life consists in gaining what one wants, takes the human race to task: Perhaps it is just that humanity is so depraved; it does not escape them that neither the person who has not got what he wants nor the one who has got what he is wrong to have is happy, but only the one who both has the good things he wants and does not want the bad things; yet when it is not given them to have each of these two things which make up the happy life, they in fact choose the nescit, nec potest nescire quid sit quod uelle se scit, sequitur ut omnes beatam uitam sciant. Omnes autem beati habent quod uolunt, quamuis non omnes qui habent quod uolunt continuo sint beati; continuo autem miseri qui uel non habent quod uolunt uel id habent quod non recte uolunt. Beatus igitur non est nisi qui et habet omnia quae uult et nihil uult male. 2 See, for example, F. B. A. Asiedu, “The Wise Man and the Limits of Virtue in De Beata Vita: Stoic Self-Sufficiency or Augustinian Irony?” Augustiniana, 49 (1999), pp. 215–234. 3 The standard work remains R. Holte, Béatitude et Sagesse: Saint Augustin e la problème de la fin de l’homme dans la philosophie ancienne (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1962).

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one which puts the happy life further out of reach than ever – because the one who gets what he wrongly desires is further away from the happy life than the one who does not get what he desires; when what he should rather choose and prefer is a good will, even without getting the things he wants. For the one who rightly wants whatever he wants is near to being happy, and when he gets them he will be happy. And of course when things do eventually make him happy, it is good things, not bad ones, that do so. He already has one of these good things, one not to be underrated, namely a good will, if he does not desire to enjoy any of the good things human nature has a capacity for by committing or acquiring anything bad; and if he pursues such good things as are possible in this unhappy life with a sagacious, moderate, courageous and just mind, and takes possession of them as they come his way. Then even in evil circumstances he will be good, and when all evil circumstances have come to an end and all good ones have been completed he will be happy.4

The distinctions, divisions, and arguments contained in Augustine’s prose are to be found in Anselm’s analytic arguments in M 68–76; so is the rationale or the argument for the necessity of faith. As Augustine adds to the passage just quoted: It is for this reason that the faith by which we believe God is particularly necessary in this mortal life, so full of delusion and distress and uncertainty. God is the only source to be found of any good things, but especially of those which make a human being good and those which will make him happy; only from him do they come into a human being and attach themselves to the person. And only when one who is faithful and good in these miserable condi4

Augustine, De trinitate 13.6.9 (CCSL 50a, p. 393; Edmund Hill translation, p. 349, amended): An ipsa est prauitas generis humani ut cum eos non lateat nec illum beatum esse qui quod uult non habet nec illum qui quod male uult habet, sed illum qui et habet quaecumque uult bona et nulla uult male, ex his duobus quibus beata uita perficitur quando utrumque non datur, id eligatur potius unde magis a beata uita receditur (longius quippe ab illa est quicumque adipiscitur male concupita quam qui non adipiscitur concupita), cum potius eligi debuerit uoluntas bona atque praeponi etiam non adepta quae appetit? Propinquat enim beato qui bene uult quaecumque uult, et quae adeptus cum fuerit beatus erit. Et utique non mala sed bona beatum faciunt quando faciunt. Quorum bonorum habet aliquid iam idque non parui aestimandum, eam ipsam scilicet uoluntatem bonam, qui de bonis quorum capax est humana natura, non de ullius mali perpetratione uel adeptione gaudere desiderat, et bona qualia et in hac misera uita esse possunt prudenti, temperanti, forti, et iusta mente sectatur et quantum datur assequitur ut etiam in malis sit bonus, et finitis malis omnibus atque impletis bonis omnibus sit beatus.

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tions passes from life to the happy life, will there really and truly be what now cannot possibly be, namely that a human being lives as he would. He will not want to live a bad life in that bliss, nor will he want anything that he lacks, nor will he lack anything that he wants. Whatever he loves will be there, and he will not desire anything that is not there. Everything that will be there will be good, and the most high God will be the most high good, and will be available for the enjoyment of those who love him, and thus total happiness will be forever assured.5

Now compare the chapter headings Anselm provides for M 68–76: that the rational creature was made for loving him; that the soul that always loves him will at some time truly live happily; that he gives himself as a reward to the one who loves him; that one who disdains him will be eternally miserable; that every human soul is immortal; that it is either always miserable or at some time truly happy; that no soul is unjustly deprived of the supreme good, and that it should strive after him with all its might; that one ought to hope for the supreme essence and that one ought to believe in him. The thought world is the same for Anselm as it is for Augustine.

3. Anselm’s Defense of His Method: A Preliminary Assessment A word now about Anselm’s defense of his method in M 64 and 65 and his claim that his conclusions should be accepted even though the subject under consideration is a mystery. At this point I should note that there are two parts to Anselm’s appeal to mystery. Given that he puts the emphasis on what the supreme essence is in and of itself and on its essentially Trinitarian nature, 5

Augustine, De trinitate 13.7.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 394; Edmund Hill translation, p. 350, amended): Ac per hoc in ista mortali uita erroribus aerumnisque plenissima praecipue fides est necessaria qua in deum creditur. Non enim quaecumque bona maximeque illa quibus quisque fit bonus et illa quibus fiet beatus, unde nisi a deo in hominem ueniant et homini accedant inueniri potest. Cum autem ex hac uita ab eo qui in his miseriis fidelis et bonus est uentum fuerit ad beatam, tunc erit uere quod nunc esse nullo modo potest ut sic homo uiuat quomodo uult. Non enim uolet male uiuere in illa felicitate aut uolet aliquid quod deerit aut deerit quod uoluerit. Quidquid amabitur aderit, nec dcsiderabitur quod non aderit. Omne quod ibi erit bonum erit, et summus deus summum bonum erit atque ad fruendum amantibus praesto erit, et quod est omnino beatissimum ita semper fore certum erit.

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one could take Anselm’s defense in this way: namely, that what he has been able to argue about the existence of the supreme essence is beyond dispute, however, what he has proposed about the Trinity remains a mystery. Such a reading, of course, must acknowledge that Anselm does not make this distinction as such, and that in M 64 and 65 he speaks simply of the ineffable nature of the supreme essence. Significantly, Anselm’s defense of his method turns on the relationships between language, thought, and reality. So his appeal to mystery and the ineffable directs attention to the supreme essence as such, and not to the Trinitarian aspects of his arguments as the central problem needing justification. Anselm’s defense of his method here in M 64 and 65 is also somewhat different from the defense he provided at the beginning of the Monologion. In M 1 he simply states that anyone of average intelligence who follows the lead of reason will arrive at the same conclusions that Anselm proposes. The explanation he offers here takes a slightly different tack by addressing the specific problem of speaking about the supreme nature in language that is at best figurative, analogical, or comparative. It should be recalled that Lanfranc’s objection to the Monologion was predicated on a conviction that reason sometimes fails; whereas it appears, from the way Anselm presents his arguments and defends their cogency, that Anselm does not believe that reason fails; or that if reason stumbles, it does so only rarely. So for Anselm, it is not a question of authority coming to the aid of reason in those rare instances where reason falters. Reason acquits itself at every point in the interconnected chain of arguments that make up the Monologion. Again, we should recall that Anselm explains in M 1 how he would like his arguments to be construed. He states that if he says anything that a greater authority does not teach, he wishes to be understood that his conclusions appear necessary (quasi necessarium concludatur) to him on the basis of the arguments he has presented and not that they are altogether necessary (omnino necessarium). This appears to be a concession. However, Anselm’s confidence in the cogency of his arguments and his reasoning throughout the Monologion yields not an inch to this concession, which is why I suggested in my comments in Chapter 3 that Anselm’s caveat in M 1 about his arguments being persuasive for the time being seemed like a tack to preclude criticism. I also indicated then that some of the changes Anselm made to the text

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of the Monologion reflected the impact of Lanfranc’s criticism. His position in M 64 and 65, should be given preference, then, over the apparent concession in M 1. Interestingly, M 64 through M 78, suggest the possibility that Anselm has reconsidered his views, although we do not have evidence in the manuscript tradition to prove this. Why, for example, does Anselm argue as he does in M 64 and 65 about the nature of his method and why does he appeal to a scriptural passage by alluding to Isaiah 53:8 in M 64? And why does he continue to allude to a few other scriptural passages in the later chapters of the Monologion? Has Anselm changed his method? What are these allusions if not appeals to authority, and scriptural authority at that? These appeals seem to concede Lanfranc’s criticism: where reason fails cite authority. M 64 contains a number of assertions. Anselm writes about the subject of his inquiry as a mystery, a mystery so sublime that it defies understanding. Anselm speaks of the inexplicable nature of the supreme essence and how reason cannot comprehend such a nature. This then leads to the question whether anything can be asserted about this nature. Anselm believes that anyone inquiring into something incomprehensible should be satisfied that reason leads him to an understanding that such a nature exists even if reason cannot fathom how such a thing exists. In saying this, Anselm makes an important distinction between the “what” of the thing existing and the “how” of its existence. But didn’t Anselm make a number of claims in earlier chapters about how the supreme nature exists? So if he is saying here that one should be satisfied with knowing that it exists and not be troubled by not knowing how it exists, then Anselm appears to be lowering his expectations or at the very least changing his rigorous requirements and revising his claims. Yet he has one argument ready at hand. Anselm goes on to say that we should not withhold the certainty of faith from beliefs that have been formed on account of arguments whose conclusions have been made from compelling reasons not contradicted by any other arguments merely because the subject under investigation is ultimately incomprehensible to reason. This is a mouthful. Several things are at issue here: First, Anselm insists that his arguments cannot be contradicted. So there are no compelling counterarguments, which means that Anselm has not given any concessions. Second, he maintains that the conclusions

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of his arguments are sufficient enough for believing in those things that he has been arguing for. And third, that those beliefs demand certainty: what he calls the “certainty of faith.” So there are no doubts. Anselm’s contention about arguments, beliefs, and doubts will be interesting when we look at Boethius shortly. But if the arguments are so compelling, why does Anselm exclaim in the language of Isaiah 53:8, “who can explain his generation?” If the arguments are so compelling then even the generation of the Son from the Father in the way that Anselm has argued for it should not lack the force of reason. Why introduce the scriptural allusion at precisely this point when Anselm is providing a defense of his method? Is it merely a rhetorical flourish? After all, if the arguments are so compelling, one does not have to believe, one simply knows that such and such is the case. We may recall his reference in M 1 to the one who does not believe as someone who needs to be disabused of his “irrational ignorance.” Anselm indicated there that he would supply arguments to substantiate what it is that Christians believe. So it has always been about believing, but belief founded on well-formulated arguments. In any case, Anselm could not possibly claim knowledge of so much that he says about the Trinity, which in every sense of the word has to do with “how” the supreme nature exists in itself, and not that it exists. Setting aside for the moment Anselm’s invocation of the passage from Isaiah here in M 64, it may also be questioned whether anyone should take at face value Anselm’s contention that there are no arguments supporting the opposite of the many conclusions he has arrived in his preceding investigations. Anselm’s contention amounts to saying that his conclusions are “absolutely necessary” not simply necessary for the time being. This seems a direct contradiction of M 1 where he was prepared to countenance that if what he argues is not supported by a higher authority then his conclusions should be considered provisional. I have already suggested in my discussion of that caveat that Anselm may have been posturing, and that the view presented here in M 64 is Anselm’s real position. The two views, however, are not mutually exclusive, although insisting on both at the same time strains credulity somewhat. If we take the two positions of M 1 and M 64 at face value, we cannot say with Anselm that his conclusions admit no counterarguments and also leave open the possibility that others would have

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better arguments. We can only hold both positions if we postulate that the better arguments that might be offered in the future will somehow not directly contradict what Anselm has argued here in the Monologion. In which case, Anselm can defer to a later, higher authority, while at the same time insisting on the cogency of his reasoning and the truthfulness of his conclusions. It is something else altogether for his readers to accept in principle that not a single one of his conclusions admits valid counterarguments and that there are no compelling arguments to support conclusions other than the very ones he has discovered. Toivo Holopainen, whose work on dialectic and theology in the eleventh century includes an important chapter on Anselm, seems to take Anselm’s confidence at face value. Holopainen mentions Anselm’s contention here at M 64 without raising any questions about it.6 And while Holopainen acknowledges that he has given “few examples of how Anselm actually argues for his conclusions,” he goes on to make the following claim: For anyone reading the Monologion, however, it should be obvious that the investigations that Anselm presents in the treatise form a united and tight argument that is based on reason alone. Anselm begins in Chs. 1–4 with a notion that he considers to be acceptable to any rational person. In the investigations that follow, he constantly makes use of notions that he considers to be established in the earlier phases of the meditation; any new conclusions that are drawn are presented as necessitated by reason. The unified nature of the investigations in the Monologion is actually a natural concomitant of the rational method used in it. Because Anselm wants to build his argument on reason alone, he has little alternative to constructing his arguments on claims that he has already proved.7

But the method does not in and of itself guarantee that all the arguments and their conclusions admit no counterarguments that could lead to opposite conclusions. So merely to note that Anselm follows this method, as in fact he does, is not to have proved that every one of his conclusions is above reproach. To claim an internally consistent piece of analytic argumentation is not to have established that all the conclusions of an interconnected chain of

6 Toivo Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996), p. 127. 7 Ibid., p. 128.

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arguments are valid or even true. Anselm is allowed his confidence in his conclusions, but it is not one that the reader or a critic should take for granted, especially when a good many of those arguments are centered on proving the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence. Holopainen’s confidence in the force of Anselm’s arguments and conclusions raises a few questions. The first centers on the content of the Monologion in the sixty-three chapters upon which Anselm makes his claim in M 64 that his conclusions admit no counterarguments or opposite conclusions; the second is a historical one. From a historical standpoint, the fact that Lanfranc raised objections about Anselm’s competence and even suggested that Anselm seek others better versed in scripture makes it clear that, for whatever reason, Lanfranc was not entirely convinced about Anselm’s arguments in quite the way that Holopainen is; and that at the very least Lanfranc found some of Anselm’s conclusions not as irrefragable as Anselm contended. More substantive is the simple fact that more than half of the sixty-three chapters of the Monologion are devoted to the doctrine of the Trinity and to proving by arguments that in fact the supreme essence is a Trinity. Even if one concedes that Anselm’s arguments about proving the existence of one supreme nature are as good as he claims, it is somewhat incredulous to say that every one of his proofs about the Trinity is incontestable, even when Anselm himself speaks of the Trinity as a mystery. Holopainen leaves unanswered other questions. If Anselm alludes to scripture in M 64 and insists that the subject under investigation is incomprehensible, has he not done exactly what Lanfranc demanded? Has Anselm not invoked authority where reason appears to fail him? And does this suspicion not deepen when we see Anselm alluding to a few more scriptural texts in the concluding chapters of the Monologion? Holopainen does not consider any of these issues. On another note, Anselm’s scriptural allusions also point to his Augustinian commitments, and probably serve to undercut Lanfranc’s opposition between the authorities and reason. As we shall see, Anselm’s appeal to I Corinthians 13:12 in M 70, for example, is inspired by Augustine’s use of the passage in De trinitate. His allusion to James 2.26 on faith and works in M 78 also follows consistently the turn of his discussion on the moral nature of the soul’s

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quest for beatitude, a theme that supplements his investigations in M 1–63. This focus on the soul’s quest for beatitude also follows Augustine’s peregrinations in De trintiate Book 13, as I have mentioned previously. Anselm’s emphasis on faith in the final chapters of the Monologion makes it difficult to answer the question as to whether these final chapters owe their very tone to Lanfranc’s criticism of Anselm’s method. After all, if Lanfranc insists on appealing to authority where reason fails (ubi ratio deficit), then Anselm’s appeal to faith in this section of the Monologion should have been exactly what Lanfranc should have applauded. Was this the reason why Anselm responded in Letter 77 that as often as he had reviewed the work he could not see that he had done anything inconsistent with what Lanfranc was looking for; and that furthermore, he had not done anything contrary to Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate? One possibility is that Anselm had moderated his tone after Lanfranc’s criticism, and that these remaining chapters reflect that moderation, hence the appeal to scripture in a work that begins with a disavowal of such an approach. In which case, Anselm’s appeal to Isaiah 53:8 is merely an exclamation point, and does not in any way alter the central contention that Anselm’s conclusions in M 1 through M 63 are based on compelling reasons. A less charitable interpretation would involve Anselm in a blatant contradiction. Irrespective of how one reads Anselm’s scriptural allusions, his defense of his method claims more than his many arguments can sustain. After all, Anselm insists on the certainty of faith as the necessary result of his incontrovertible arguments, even for those parts of his investigations that involve Trinitarian themes such as, for example, why the Trinity is made of Father, Son, and Spirit and not some other gendered nomenclature or language of generation. One can easily imagine someone of average intelligence who had either not heard or did not believe in Anselm’s Christianity (M 1) remaining in doubt about many aspects of Anselm’s investigations even after perusing Anselm’s many arguments. And anyone familiar with Boethius’s work on the topics and his formal conception of an argument as a reason that produces belief about something in doubt would have plenty of reason to believe that Anselm had left a lot in doubt even after proffering so many arguments. In

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both In Ciceronis Topica and De topicis diffierentiis Boethius suggests a number of problems about what it is that can be believed on account of arguments and how such belief can be fostered or hindered depending on the hearer or reader. In De topicis differentiis, for example, Boethius makes abundantly clear that an argument must reveal more than the question conceals. “An argument is a reason producing belief regarding something which is in doubt. It must always be more known than the question; for if the things which are not known are proved by things which are known and an argument proves something which is in doubt, then what is adduced to provide belief for the question must be more known than the question.”8 Can Anselm claim that he has revealed more by his arguments and their conclusions than the issues held in doubt? And what of the credibility of his arguments? As Boethius asserts: “Of all arguments, some are readily believable (probabilia) and necessary, some readily believable and not necessary, some necessary but not readily believable, and some neither readily believable nor necessary.”9 To which of these categories should we fit Anselm’s arguments, especially in light of what Boethius goes on to say: Something is readily believable if it seems true to everyone or to most people or to the wise – and of the wise, either to all of them or most of them or to those most famous and distinguished – or to an expert in his own field, for example, to a doctor in the field of medicine or to a pilot in the navigation of ships, or, finally, if it seems true to the person with whom one is having the conversation or who is judging it. In this, the truth or falsity of the argument makes no difference, if only it has the appearance of the truth.10 8 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book I (PL 64, col. 1180C; Stump, p. 39): Argumentum est ratio rei dubiae faciens fidem. Hanc semper notiorem quaestione esse necesse est: nam si ignota notis probantur, argumentum uero rem dubiam probat, necesse est quod ad fidem quaestionis affertur, ipsa sit notius quaestione. 9 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book I (PL 64, col. 1180C; Stump, p. 39): Argumentorum uero omnium alia sunt probabilia et necessaria, alia probabilia et non necessaria, alia sunt necessaria sed non probabilia, alia nec probabilia nec necessaria. 10 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book I (PL 64, col. 1180C–D; Stump, p. 39): Probabile uero est quod uidetur uel omnibus, uel pluribus, uel sapientibus, et his uel omnibus, uel pluribus, uel maxime notis atque praecipuis, uel quod unicuique artifici secundum propriam facultatem, ut de medicina medico, gubernatori de nauibus gubernandis, id praeterea quod uidetur ei cum quo sermo conseritur, uel

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Boethius adds that “something is necessary, if it is as it is said to be and cannot be otherwise.”11 A good deal of the time, Anselm speaks of the necessity of his conclusions in a similar vein. That is to say, his conclusions prove that the things are as they are said to be and cannot be otherwise than Anselm has concluded. Anselm, as we see time and again, does not appeal to the mere appearance of truth but insists on the cogency of his arguments and the validity or truthfulness of his conclusions. There is a probative force to his argumentation, which brings us back to Boethius, the art of argumentation, and the difference between the true, the believable, and the necessary. According to Boethius: The dialectician and the orator occupy themselves with a kind of argument common to them both, for each of them aims at arguments that are readily believable whether they are necessary or not. They employ these two kinds of argument: those that are readily believable and necessary and those that are readily believable and not necessary. The philosopher and demonstrator investigates only truth alone; and it makes no difference whether the arguments are readily believable or not, provided they are necessary. He also uses two kinds of argument: those that are readily believable and necessary, and those that are necessary and not readily believable. So it is clear in what respect the philosopher differs from the orator and the dialectician in their areas of inquiry, namely, for them it consists in readily believability and for him in truth.12

Anselm assumes the role of the philosopher. He maintains repeatedly that his arguments are necessary. At the same time, there are clearly instances where Anselm’s tack is closer to the dialectician’s

ipsi qui iudicat, in quo nihil attinet uerum falsumue sit argumentum, si tantum uerisimilitudinem teneat. 11 Boethius, De topicis diffirentiis Book I (PL 64, col. 1180D; Stump, p.39): Necessarium uero est quod ut dicitur, ita est, atque aliter esse non potest. 12 Boethius, De topicis differentiis Book I (PL 64, col. 1181D–1182A; Stump, p. 39): Quorum quidem dialecticus atque orator in communi argumentorum natura uersatur. Vterque enim siue necessaria, siue minime, probabilia tamen argumenta sequitur. His igitur illae duae species argumenta famulantur, quae sunt probabile ac necessarium, probabile ac non necessarium. Philosophus uero ac demonstrator de sola tantum ueritate pertractat, atque sint probabilia siue non sint, nihil refert, dummodo sint necessaria. Hic quoque his duabus speciebus utitur argumenti, quae sunt probabile ac necessarium, necessarium ac non probabile. Patet igitur in quo philosophus ab oratore ac dialectico in propria consideratione dissideat, in eo scilicet quod illis probabilitatem, huic ueritatem constat esse propositam.

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or the orator’s, as Boethius describes it. In his use of Christian doctrine as the basis for his arguments about the Trinity, for example, Anselm could not possibly claim that all his arguments are based on conceptions knowable outside of the Christian tradition. And if these are the things held in doubt, they could not be the basis upon which to answer those very doubts; and still less of proving something that is believed to be ineffable and incomprehensible. In short, how does one persuade by appealing to the very things that are held in doubt? Anselm proposes an answer in M 65 about how a true conclusion can be arrived at about something that is ineffable. To appreciate the arguments of M 65, we will have to review M 64 in considerable detail. This will involve some repetition, but it should help to clarify Anselm’s position about both the adequacy of reason and its limits. In one important respect, Anselm’s view of reason in M 64 and 65 amounts to a “critique of reason.”

4. Language, the Limits of Reason, and the Understanding of Faith Since the subject under consideration is incomprehensible, is it possible to predicate anything of that subject meaningfully? And how can one be certain that the incomprehensible is in fact a Trinity? And if it is indeed a Trinity how does the ineffable plurality of the Trinity expresses itself in unity or oneness when one ascribes activities to each one of three that make up the Trinity? The difficulty of this problem, its obscurity and resistance to resolution, is what leads Anselm to say at the opening of M 64 that the supreme essence is a mystery so sublime that it transcends the full vision or acute gaze of the human intellect. Anselm believes he has to refrain from trying to explain how the supreme essence is what it is. He is convinced that it is possible to arrive at a certain description of the object about which he has been inquiring without necessarily being able to offer a full account of what it is. This means that he can claim to know that the thing exists but not its true essence or nature. Anselm offers the following rationale: “For it is my opinion that one who is investigating an incomprehensible object ought to be satisfied if his reasoning shall have brought him far enough to recognize that this object most certainly exists, even if the under-

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standing is unable to penetrate how this is so.”13 Reason leads and, while it is unable to penetrate (penetrare nequeat) the mystery, understanding discovers, but only up to a point, because it does not know how the thing really is (quomodo ita sit). One can almost hear in Anselm’s words Augustine’s “faith seeks, understanding finds” (fides quaerit, intellectus inuenit) of De trinitate 15.2.2. Reason can establish that the object under investigation exists, but reason cannot disclose or reveal how the incomprehensible object exists. Or is it rather that Anselm has conflated two very different things here? It is one thing to say that reason cannot disclose how the supreme essence exists in itself, but it is quite another to say that the supreme essence is a Trinity. The two claims rests on different foundations, and seem mutually exclusive. After all, the Trinity expresses what the supreme essence is in itself. So to be able to say that the supreme essence is a Trinity is already to have said a great deal about the essential nature of the supreme essence. Anselm, it is clear, does not include his Trinitarian claims among the things that are not known about the supreme essence. This logic is consistent with virtually every argument Anselm has proposed so far in the Monologion. Anselm insists that those things that are asserted by compelling proofs (probationibus necessariis), with no other reasons opposing (nulla alia repugnante ratione) give the utmost confidence in not lessening one’s belief even if the object of that belief remains incomprehensible. Those things include his conclusions about the Trinity. Anselm goes on to assure the reader that the incomprehensibility of the object’s own natural loftinesss (suae naturalis altitudinis), which defies or resists explanation, should not be grounds for undermining “the certitude of faith” (certitudo fidei). Anselm does not distinguish here in the way some medieval theologians do as to whether he is speaking about the certitude of belief, namely the faith by which one believes, or the content of faith that is believed. However, given his emphasis on finding justification or providing grounds for undermining or strengthening faith, he appears to be speaking of the content of faith that is believed, which in turn supports the faith by which one believes. The conduct of reason throughout 13 M 64 (S 1, p. 75): Sufficere namque debere existimo rem incomprehensibilem indaganti, si ad hoc ratiocinando peruenerit ut eam certissime esse cognoscat, etiamsi penetrare nequeat intellectu quomodo ita sit.

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the Monologion partly presupposes belief, even as Anselm insists that the content of faith that is believed, what it is that Christians believe (M 1), can be proved by reason alone (sola ratione). In the end, the very sublimity of the subject matter requires an admission on the part of reason that it has its limits. Anselm’s proposal amounts to this: reason leads the mind to the incontrovertible conclusion that the supreme essence exists; and that reason can say something about how the supreme essence exists in relation to and in comparison with everything else that exists. At the same time, reason also comes to an appreciation of its own limits by recognizing that it cannot know how the supreme essence exists in itself. The former corresponds roughly to what Augustine describes as scientia, which involves knowledge acquired through the senses mediated by the rational mind, as well as knowledge acquired through ratiocination, as the mind thinks its thoughts. The latter corresponds to what Augustine calls sapientia (wisdom), knowledge of things eternal and permanent, the fullness of which is not open to the inquiring mind or the human soul until its future life with God (De trinitate 12.14.22–12.15.25). It is this distinction, so central to Augustine’s own efforts at gaining a vision of the Trinity, which marks the last book of De trinitate. Anselm does not deviate from this. Although Anselm has a great deal of confidence in reason, his contention in M 64 can be interpreted modestly. That is, if what he has argued about the supreme essence has been asserted by compelling reasons (necessariis sunt rationibus), then the firmness of their certainty (certitudinis eorum) is not in doubt, even if his conclusions cannot be penetrated by the understanding in order to be explained in words (uerbis ualeant explicare). Anselm reminds his reader that his earlier arguments established that the human mind could not know how the supreme wisdom knows the things it made. So human rationality is incapable of understanding how the supreme wisdom knows itself or speaks itself. The human mind cannot know how the supreme essence generates its utterance. It is, then, not out of exasperation, but in profound acknowledgement of its capacity and the profundity of the subject matter that Anselm asks rhetorically, in the language of Isaiah 53:8 in reference to the Word that is generated by the Father: “who shall explain his generation (generationem eius quis enarrabit)?” At a point where Anselm believes he has exhausted the treasury of reason he turns

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liturgical, with an exclamation that would not be lost on anyone who participated in the daily life of the monastic “work of God” (opus dei). The exclamation from Isaiah 53:8 appears to bring all disputation to an end. Yet, Anselm picks up the argument again, this time with his focus on the juxtaposition between the arguments that have been made based on reason and the ineffable object that resists or confounds reason. Anselm poses a couple of questions, all of them predicated on an initial question about whether what has been said about the Father, Son, and Spirit has any credibility or validity if the supreme essence is ineffable. Two of the questions seem to imply two mutually exclusive affirmations: either the supreme essence is ineffable and is therefore incapable of being understood, let alone described; or the supreme essence is not ineffable and therefore reason can say something meaningful and true about it. This binary opposition seems an intractable way to proceed. Neither option can be defended in light of Anselm’s discussion in M 64. Anselm proposes a third possibility. He suggests a promising alternative that it could be explained “to a certain extent (ad quodamtenus).” Which means that “nothing would disprove the truth of our argument; but since it could not be comprehended in its inner essence (or thoroughly)” it would have to be considered ineffable on that account.14 This is a clever tack. For the threshold is lower; or rather Anselm has changed the terms by which an argument should be deemed conclusive. His position here amounts to saying that because his argument has a semblance of truth, and because the subject in question is incomprehensible, the semblance of truth should be accorded the full credit of truth that it has demonstrated that the subject in question is ineffable. This sums up Anselm’s view in M 64. But lurking behind this settled view is the more difficult problem of language. On Anselm’s own terms, there is a difference between what is thought and how it is expressed in language; and furthermore a world of difference between how something exists in fact (in reality) and how it is thought (M 10, M 33, etc.). How, then, can the language Anselm uses to speak of so ineffable an 14 M 65 (S 1, pp. 75–76; S. N. Deane translation, p. 175, amended): An quodamtenus de illa potuit explicari, et ideo nihil prohibet esse uerum quod disputatum est; sed quia penitus non potuit comprehendi: idcirco est ineffabilis?

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essence match the reality, if the reality is also incomprehensible? If Anselm himself has established by arguments that words predicated of both the supreme essence and other existent things necessarily mean different things, how can Anselm or anyone claim to know anything true about the supreme essence from what is thought and said about the supreme essence? Anselm asks whether it would have been possible to think and express himself about the supreme essence without recourse to normal ordinary human speech. And if his words about the supreme essence depend on the ordinary meanings (communis, usitatum) of these words, how can he escape the charge that his words are meaningless? How does he answer the objection that the discoveries he has made are far different from the ineffable substance he has been speaking about? Anselm suggests that the two are not mutually exclusive, although the suggestion comes at a great cost. He does not even speak of a “truth being discovered” but merely of something being discovered in some indefinable way. He asks: “has something been discovered in a certain sense about an incomprehensible thing, and in another sense nothing has been discerned about this thing (An quodam modo inuentum est aliquid de incomprehensibili re, et quodam modo nihil perspectum est de ea)?” The juxtaposition of “in a certain sense” (quodam modo) and “nothing” (nihil) gets to the crux of the issue at stake. Anselm answers this question with a series of reflections that come close to offering a plausible response but ends up raising more questions. He takes his example from the way our ordinary speech sometimes lacks precision either by design or because of the incapacity of language to express what we intend. He gives the example of a riddle (per aenigmata loquimur). Trying to put into words what one intends is problem enough, but the nature of thought itself is a problem. If speech is often imprecise in signifying its object either deliberately or inadvertently, thought can be equally inexact in conceiving what an object is in itself (res ipsa est). We often speak of many things that we do not express properly, Anselm reminds the reader.15 We signify through something else what we cannot or do not want to express properly. Anselm adds that we often see something not properly (uidemus aliquid non proprie) but through a likeness or image (per similitudinem et imaginem), as when we see someone’s face in a mirror 15

M 65 (S 1, p. 76; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 191).

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(in speculo). We both see and do not see (uidemus et non uidemus): we see the face captured by the mirror, but that is merely an image that does its best to capture the reality through some kind of representation or likeness. The face in the mirror is not the face itself; only an image of the face. Anselm thinks something like this is operative when it comes to the supreme nature, as he explains himself in language deeply inflected by Paul’s assertion in I Corinthians 13:12: uidemus enim nunc per speculum in aenigmate. Anselm follows Augustine’s appropriation of Paul’s language of seeing per speculum in aenigmate as both an epistemological principle and a metaphysical argument. This warrants the view that reason is both capable and incapable of understanding that the supreme essence exists and that it is ineffable. Anselm has no anxieties, then, about settling for an approximation. He accepts that the words he uses to speak about the supreme essence do not in any way reveal to him what the supreme essence is in its very nature or unique character (per proprietatem). Rather these words intimate (innuunt) to him the nature of the supreme essence through a certain likeness (per aliquam similitudinem). One could object: how does one know if the likeness is an appropriate likeness? How do we know if it is true or false? If the supreme nature in its very essence remains hidden, and whatever is asserted, proved, or demonstrated about the supreme nature hints only at that nature, what assures us that what is comprehended through a description of its likeness (per aliud designata) is true? Furthermore, Anselm himself mentions that his own habits of thought make it impossible for him to conceive of the supreme nature in any other way than through likenesses. For when he thinks of the meanings of the words (uoces significationes) he employs to speak of the supreme nature, he more readily thinks of how those words apply to created things than to the supreme nature. So what he forms in his mind is certainly much less than (minus) and far removed (longe) from what his own mind suggests to him about the supreme nature. For, neither is the term ‘sapientiae’ sufficient to reveal to me that, through which all things were created from nothing and through which all are preserved from nothingness; nor is the term ‘essentiae’ able to express to me that which, through its unique elevation, is far above all things, and through its natural character greatly transcends all things. So, then, that nature is ineffable, because nothing is able to make it known (intimari) through words just as it

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is; and yet, if through the instruction of reason (ratione docente) a judgment can be formed concerning it, through something else, as it were, in a riddle (in aenigmate), that thought is not false (falsum non est).16

So, either by instruction through reason or by some other way through a similitude, Anselm is assured that both paths lead towards an understanding of the supreme essence. Even if it is through a riddle, it is not false. Anselm establishes a chain from the word that signifies the thing, to its image in the mind, to the thing itself, and finally to its nature or essence: the mental image or inner word bears some similarity to the thing. This is what Anselm argued in M 10, as well as in M 33. As we have seen from Anselm’s words, in the case of the supreme nature the word that signifies the supreme nature and the reality that is borne in the mind may be worlds apart. Anselm’s positive doctrine is semiotic: what he understands points to or signifies the supreme essence. But what he understands is merely a sign; it is not what the supreme nature is in itself, but an indication that it is such and such. This is what reason has accomplished. Anselm probes further. He rehearses earlier arguments. If the supreme nature is so ineffable and above everything that can be compared to it, including reason, how can reason say anything meaningful about it? And if sound reason offers an account of the supreme essence, albeit through images and likeness, how can it be ineffable? Isn’t the image or likeness on a lower scale of existence than the supreme essence? And if the supreme essence is understood through a likeness of something so unlike it, what becomes of the claim of reason to have discovered something true about the supreme nature? The basic premise in all of Anselm’s argumentation is that the supreme nature is so above every other nature that when something is predicated of both the supreme nature and something else, the meanings or significations will not be the same. 16 M 65 (S 1, pp. 76–77; based on S. N. Deane translation, pp. 176–177, and Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 191): Nam nec nomen sapientiae mihi sufficit ostendere illud, per quod omnia facta sunt de nihilo et seruantur a nihilo; nec nomen essentiae mihi ualet exprimere illud, quod per singularem altitudinem longe est supra omnia et per naturalem proprietatem ualde est extra omnia. f;ic igitur illa natura et ineffabilis est, quia per uerba sicuti est nullatenus ualet intimari; et falsum non est, si quid de illa ratione docente per aliud uelut in aenigmate potest aestimari.

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So does this amount to just an elaborate game? Not quite, at least not as Anselm sees it: something true has been discovered about the supreme nature, even if nothing in fact has been learned about its true essence. Anselm reconsiders the problem, but seems to miss the force of the objection. For, at its core, the problem is not whether something can be said through something else (per aliud) somewhat enigmatically. Or even whether one can use a similitude or metaphor to speak about the supreme nature. The objection, if taken seriously, addresses the very possibility of intelligible speech about something whose nature is so unlike anything else that is known that any comparative language entails a certain element of misrepresentation. The objection is both epistemological and metaphysical. It cannot be reduced to the problem of language and metaphorical reference or signification. Anselm knows this, since he has argued at some length for the ontological and metaphysical dissimilarity between the supreme essence and what it creates. Anselm broached this earlier when he discussed how the mind conceives something that is not present to it. The inner word, as he called it, following Augustine’s comments about the uerbum mentis in De trinitate, bears some relation to the existent thing in the form of an image or conception, which depends on a prior image of the thing. But suppose the thing in question is not already known, how does the mind conceive it? Is it through a conception, an idea? And if it is a conception, can the conception be appropriately thought of as a true or adequate representation of the thing in question? Obviously, the mind’s conception of what it has no previous knowledge of is a mental conception or creation of the mind. Anselm, however, points out that even when it comes to things we know, we never really know them as they are in themselves. What, then, of the supreme nature? The inquirer or investigator appears to be at a loss, but Anselm seems convinced that the knowledge of the essence of the supreme nature is no different from our ignorance about the essences of things we do know. He seems to overlook, however, that the proper use of a metaphor or similitude requires knowledge of both what the similitude signifies and the other thing that is the subject of the similitude. Metaphors and similitudes about the supreme nature are at best heuristic. However, a heuristic device is not an unimpeachable argument, even if it has some plausibility. So to claim that the use of metaphors

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in speaking about the supreme nature provides credible knowledge about the supreme nature is to beg one question too many. In any event, the second example Anselm gives about seeing the face of someone through a mirror may not be that helpful. Certainly, one can observe the likeness of another person in or though a mirror. But the only way we can be certain that it is the face we think it is depends on the fact that we already know that face, and are also sure that the mirror actually offers a true reflection and is not a bad mirror. If we follow the ancient and medieval image of a cloudy mirror that Anselm has in mind when he speaks of seeing through a mirror darkly, we might insist that the problem here is one of clarity or distinctiveness. So, while it is alright to say that metaphors provide second order knowledge of the supreme nature, it is an entirely different proposition if the metaphors are bad ones to begin with. In other words, there is no guarantee that the metaphors adopted in speaking of the supreme nature are good, bad, “cloudy,” or just simply inappropriate. Nor it seems are there any criteria for knowing which metaphors or likenesses are appropriate. Anselm, of course, does not consider this a real objection. He believes his earlier arguments have already provided the template for considering just what kinds of metaphors or comparisons are appropriate in speaking of the supreme essence. We could even suggest that Anselm’s proposal in M 15 that the supreme essence is whatever it is altogether better to be than not to be (sit quidquid omnino melius est quam non ipsum) serves as a principle of predication for the supreme essence. In the context of his assertions in M 64 and M 65 it would have been interesting for Anselm to introduce the question of how people form their conceptions of God or the supreme nature. Already at hand in the opening paragraphs of De trinitate Book 8, he would have found Augustine’s description of the three main types of mistaken conceptions people have of God. For Anselm, the goal is to lead his reader to the proper way of thinking and meditating on the rationality of faith; and as he puts it in M 1 to disabuse of the ignoramus of his irrational ignorance. For Augustine, the unknown sign encourages one to inquire, and is a great hermeneutical and epistemological trope: so we seek and in our seeking we discover. This is part of Augustine’s description of the spiritual quest. Anselm will have something to say about this shortly.

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Anselm’s emphasis on following the lead of reason here in the Monologion tends to underemphasize the hermeneutical structure underlying his investigations. For even the argument from the good with which he begins the Monologion presupposes that our recognition of different goods draw us towards the quest for the ultimate and supreme good. So Anselm’s Three Ways begin with what he says is the easiest way to prove that there is a supreme, self-sufficient being from whom all things exist and through whom all receive their well-being. He does not presuppose that one must already know the supreme essence in the way that Anselm knows it; but he is convinced that no one is prevented from recognizing that there is a super-eminent good that is the source of all that is. The Trinitarian nature of this super-eminent good, however, does not have the same element of the self-evident that Anselm claims for his proof about the one (unum) in the early chapters of the Monologion.17 And yet Anselm is all argument. One recent interpreter thinks Anselm disingenuous. Gregory Schufreider is unimpressed with Anselm’s argumentative style. For example, he refers to Anselm’s strategy of proving the existence of the one supreme nature as a form of “tactical duplicity,” because it takes back with one hand what it gives with another.18 Schufreider sees this clearly at work in M 65. In fact, Schufreider sees much of this duplicity in other parts of the Monologion as well, what he describes elsewhere as a “strategy of violation” in Anselm’s thought.19 Schufreider’s comments on M 65 are consistent with his view that Anselm continually violates certain logical and categorical distinctions in order to carry through his arguments.20 At times, Schufreider himself appears to be violating Anselm’s language, given how much of a Heideggerian sensibility he brings 17 Johannes Brachtendorf, “Prius esse cogitare quem credere: A Natural Understanding of ‘Trinity’ in St. Augustine?” Augustinian Studies, 29 (1988), pp. 36–46, where he argues that we must already know what “trinity” is to be able to understand how to proceed towards it. See, on the other hand, Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, pp. 287–288, n. 235; and also G. Madec, “Inquisitione proficiente. Pur une lecture ‘saine’ du De Trinitate d’Augustin,” in Johannes Brachtendorf, ed., Gott und sien Bild, pp. 53–78. 18 Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, p. 89. 19 Ibid., p. 73. 20 For example, Ibid., pp. 72–73 on M 22.

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to his interpretation of Anselm’s language of essentia, natura, esse, and substantia. Although in the Monologion Anselm uses summa natura, summa essentia, and summa substantia, and rarely speaks of the supreme essence or nature as esse (being), Schufreider translates Anselm’s expressions in such a way that Anselm ends up speaking the language of the “Being of beings,” made so current by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics. This leaves Anselm open to a number of Heideggerian objections that fit into the kind of argument that Schufreider makes against Anselm’s metaphysical project as simply unsustainable and untenable. Alternatively, Jean-Luc Marion offers a counterpoint in his interpretation of Anselm, arguing that Anselm’s project resists the kind of Heideggerian inspired critique of metaphysics that someone like Schufreider proposes.21 But let us suppose that Schufreider is correct in charging Anselm with tactical duplicity. What would that have achieved in this case? And why insist on this, when Anselm has been at pains in explaining how speaking about the supreme nature ought to be different from speaking about all other natures? There is also a substantive objection as to whether Anselm takes back with one hand what he gives with another. From another standpoint, Anselm could be accused of performing something akin to what apophatic theology often does: claim on the one hand that nothing can be said in the language of affirmation about God, and on the other hand, that so-called negative language provides a way into knowing something about God. Anselm’s version would be that language is inadequate, but language still offers an understanding of the supreme nature through likenesses. If this is what Schufrieder implies by Anselm’s tactical duplicity he would have a point. On that account, Schufrieder’s choice of language comes across as merely uncharitable. It probably would have been easier for Anselm to say simply that since one cannot say anything comprehensively about the supreme nature, the only reasonable and meaningful thing to say is that the supreme nature is not what anyone thinks it is. After all, Anselm himself writes that when he uses a word like sapientia to signify something about the supreme nature, he more readily thinks of what that word means in relation to other things, and not what 21 Jean-Luc Marion, Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

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it means in relation to the supreme nature as such. So try as he might to elevate his understanding his mind follows well-trodden paths and returns to earth, so to speak. And if the supreme nature is as far removed and distant from other natures as Anselm insists, then the best he can do is say that the supreme nature is not what we think he is. If Anselm had done this he could then go on to propose any series of negations to make his point about the dissimilarities between other natures and the supreme nature. Anselm opts out of this, and takes another path, perhaps less ambitious, but also less mystifying, and certainly more circumscribed. It is an approach that lacks the more exuberant characteristic tendencies of Pseudo-Dionysius22 and Eriugena23 before him, or Meister Eckhart after him.24 It is notable, then, that Anselm does not appeal in M 64 and 65 to the language of negation. In fact, if he did, he would undermine his entire project. Apophasis is indifferent to dialectic and argument, or at least it appears that way. It is in the very nature of Anselm’s dialectical theology that it proposes a path that apophasis cannot travel. When Anselm comes close to speaking the language of apophasis he alludes to scripture: “who shall explain his generation?” In so doing he underscores his view that there is no language that is adequate to something so mysterious (secretum), so sublime (sublimis), so ineffable (ineffabile), so incomprehensible (incomprehensibile). These are the phrases that frame the discussion that ends in that exclamation about the hidden and the impenetrable. In spite of his confidence in reason, Anselm’s sensibilities reflect the achievement of Augustine’s project in De trinitate. Augustine 22 The elaborate Platonism that characterizes the various treatises of Pseudo-Dionysius is largely absent from Anselm. 23 Although it is sometimes suggested that John Scottus Eriugena influenced Anselm, there is very little evidence of Eriugena’s thought to be found in a work like the Monologion on such basic topics as creatio ex nihilo, causality, the four elements, etc. On Eriugena see Deirdre Carabine, John Scottus Eriugena (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Dermot Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena: A Study of Idealism in the Middle Ages. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); and Willemien Otten, The Anthropology of Johannes Scottus Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 1991). 24 On Eckhart, see in particular, Bernard McGinn, The Mystical Theology of Meister Eckhart: The Man from whom God hid Nothing (New York: Crossroad, 2001).

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never misses the opportunity to say that the knowledge of God is beyond the present experiences of human beings. De trinitate Book 15 ends on a note of expectation, that at some future date, postmortem, the human soul will gain a true vision and understanding of the divine nature. For now, it is all in shadows, everything is an enigma. It is from this standpoint that Anselm also articulates his confidence in the usefulness of argument in bringing the human mind towards some conception and understanding of the supreme nature and his conviction that language reaches its limit, and is unable to convey adequately even a circumscribed knowledge of the supreme essence. For Anselm, the limitations of language and thought are appropriate both to the inquiring subject and the task at hand. Knowledge of the divine nature can only be had through something else: image or similitude. Such an understanding does the way of negation one better: it suggests the adequacy of our knowledge and speech about the ineffable without despairing of the absence of full clarity or unclouded knowledge. Anselm’s confidence in reason is therefore a tempered or chastened confidence: because reason recognizes its own limits. Notice too that Anselm is quite specific in saying that he is discussing what can be said in words about the supreme nature. It is not only about what can be thought, but how what is thought can be expressed in language, meaningfully and truly. Language, for Anselm, stands between existence and essences or the nature of things; between ontology and realism; between what can be said and what the thing is. Language cannot pretend to reveal what the thing is in itself, as long as the understanding is incapable of knowing the essence of the thing. The understanding mind can only mediate how the thing appears to it. So what we have here is not merely a question about language and its capacity to reveal things in the world. Nor about realism, whether what we see is what there is. It is ultimately about ontology, essences, and natures not only of things that exist and are known phenomenally, but what is thought to exist but is not known (as the supreme essence). A modern response to Anselm would be that we know more about material things than Anselm and medieval thinkers could possibly have known. But even then, we may not be a whole lot better, since in describing what it is we know, we too have to use language or at best models (and pictures). This brings us back to the problem of essences, natures, and their unmediated knowl-

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edge. Language and models always imply representation. This is Anselm’s point about both the adequacy and the inadequacy of language about the supreme nature. It is always a representation based on familiar models or metaphors: the likenesses of which Anselm speaks. This is how Anselm approaches a lot of his examples throughout the Monologion. He takes what ordinary usage, metaphors, human and natural examples provide and then proceeds to articulate how an adequate conception of the supreme nature can be formulated using them. From this methodological standpoint, the challenge posed to philosophical theology by language is never a problem about affirmation or negation. It is rather about words and essences: between words as signs, speech, utterance, on the one hand, and essences as what things are in themselves, on the other. To a great extent, Anselm’s philosophical and theological posture is dependent on a view of language that is far more semiotic in its understanding of the mediating function of language than his analytical philosophical and theological style might suggest, as one peruses his highly syllogistic form of inquiry in the Monologion.25 In spite of his spirited defense, Anselm’s assertion is vulnerable to criticism. To say that the supreme nature is ineffable and so words cannot at all express what this nature is means one thing; to add that whatever is said about this nature through something else is not false is to claim something else. Does not the very idea of speaking about so ineffable a nature in similitude, metaphor, and the like, qualify whatever is said as something between the true and the false? Couldn’t one say that what knowledge or understanding is attained in this way is knowledge that is probable or at best plausible, but not necessarily true? Doesn’t Anselm have to concede that perhaps all he has achieved is to have said much about this super-eminent nature in the form of images, pictures, ideas, etc., which may or may not affirm or even give a proper conception of this ineffable nature? Anselm cannot possibly mean that saying “A is like B,” when one only knows what “B” is, amounts to saying anything really meaningful about “A.” Another way of reading M 65 is to construe it along the following lines: We know a lot of things in nature without knowing 25 See Peter King, “Anselm’s Philosophy of Language,” in The Cambridge Companion to Saint Anselm, edited by Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 84–110.

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what they are in themselves. That is to say, we do not know their essences. We only know such things as they present themselves to us. But as they present themselves to us we can see how they are like other things we know. We can, therefore, speak of them as like other things, and what we say about them is not false, even if what we say does not express their true natures. So our language does not capture fully what they are. How does this apply to the supreme nature? This nature is so unlike anything that exists that all our language as far as it concerns this nature is by similitude to other things we know. Language is inadequate from the start, not only because the supreme nature is unlike anything else, but also because it presents itself to us less tangibly than all other things. The question, then, is “why try?” Anselm would respond that there is no other way. Besides, insofar as this nature created all existent things, there is a necessary connection between what exists and the supreme nature. So language manages to suggest something meaningful precisely because it expresses what this nature is like or must be like through what it has created. Recall my earlier comment on M 1–4 that Anselm’s entire project presupposes a metaphysics of creation: which is why Anselm insists that what is said per aliud about the supreme nature is not false, because all existent things are related to the supreme nature as their origin and sustainer.26 How we discern these relations depends much on what we make of the human mind and its capabilities for apprehending the supreme nature.27

5. The Mind, The Soul, and the Criterion of Rationality (M 66–69) With his defense of the adequacy of human speech about the supreme nature behind him, Anselm proceeds to give a reason for why the mind (or the understanding) can claim to possess the knowledge or understanding that it expresses through language. After all, it could be argued that the inadequacy of language is itself the result of a mind that is unable to comprehend something 26 On M 65 see Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 89–92. 27 Cf. Augustine, De trinitate 11.15–16 on the four types of apprehension.

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incomprehensible. In which case, the very notion of the ineffable, the mysterious, the sublime, renders unintelligible the claim to linguistic adequacy, because the mind knows not of what it speaks. Anselm does not frame the objection this way. He begins M 66 with a concession couched in the form of a premise to an argument: since nothing can be known about the supreme nature in terms of what it is in itself (per se) and only through something else, it stands to reason that the nearest approach to it can be made only through something that is like it or at least approaches it in nature. But this sounds incredulous. Anselm seems to believe that he is merely indicating what the exercise in meditation has revealed so far: that the human mind is capable of inquiry of the sort that has yielded creditable arguments and conclusions about what the supreme nature is like; and that this knowledge through likeness has been gained by a part of the human being that is capable of that kind of knowledge. Anselm’s proposal is that the practice of philosophical dialectic that has led him to this point demonstrates that the human mind is closest in nature to what it seeks, hence its ability to inquire after the supreme nature. The capacity to rise to the inquiry sets the mind apart from all other natures. Anselm has assumed all along that the human mind is like the supreme nature. Earlier he spoke about both similarity and difference: 1) how the supreme nature is both like and unlike the craftsman; 2) how the supreme nature is like or unlike a painter; 3) how the utterance of the supreme nature is like and unlike human speech; and 4) how by using human locutions and mental representations we gain knowledge and understanding of the supreme nature through likenesses. Now Anselm wants to invoke a closer similarity than the difference he has been insisting upon. But it is a similarity which also plays on difference in order to make its claim to intelligibility. Since created things are deemed more excellent the more they approximate to the creator, that part of the human being which “assists” the human being towards realizing its proximity to the creator-spirit is to be deemed most excellent among all created things. And what else helps the human mind than the mind itself? “So it is obvious that the more earnestly the rational mind devotes itself to learning (understanding) its own nature the more effectively it rises towards the knowledge of that

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essence.”28 This is a summary of Augustine’s project in the better part of De trinitate Books 8–15. Anselm uses an interesting, if problematic phrase. He speaks of the rational mind (mens rationalis) approximating the supreme nature through “a likeness of natural essence” (per naturalis essentiae propinquat similitudinem). Anselm claims that this has already been established, as he harkens back to his earlier comments in M 31 where the language about “natural essence” is less ambiguous than it reads here in M 66. In M 31 it refers to the nature of the rational mind and not to the nature of the supreme essence: “For, just as that is more excellent in nature which, through its natural essence (per naturalem essentiam), is nearer to what is most excellent, so certainly that nature (illa natura) exists in a greater degree, whose essence (essentia) is more like the supreme essence (summae essentia).29 But is it the same thing? If, in fact, the mind has a capacity for inquiring after the supreme essence does that imply a likeness of “natural essence?” And what exactly is this “likeness of natural essence?” Existing to a higher degree than all created things does not endow the mind’s nature with a likeness to the supreme nature. Still less does it imply necessarily a likeness of natural essence, whatever that means. At best it might be an intuition that perhaps because it is capable of such inquiry it must be somehow suited for communion with that super-eminent nature that is the supreme essence. That capacity, however, does not have to be predicated on likeness of essences. Anselm offers what may be a concession, as he speaks about how something “is perceived by reason,” almost as if he is not willing to say that reason understands or comprehends something about the supreme nature. So he uses percepi in his opening statement in M 66 and not his more customary intelligit (understand) because, after all, the supreme nature transcends human understanding (M 65). Anselm explains: What is perceived is something that is ascertained not in connection with its very nature (per suam proprie28

M 65 (S 1, p. 76; S. N. Deane translation, pp. 177–178): Quid igitur apertius quam quia mens rationalis quanto studiosius ad se discendum intendit, tanto efficacius ad illius cognitionem ascendit. 29 M 31 (S 1, p. 49; S. N. Deane translation, pp. 138–139): Quemadmodum enim illud natura praestantius est, quod per naturalem essentiam propinquius est praestantissimo: ita utique illa natura magis est, cuius essentia similior est summae essentiae.

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tatem) but through something else (per aliud). So one comes closest to the reality of the supreme nature, that which is being sought, through the instrumentality of what most resembles it, namely the human mind. But is this a proper argument? Can it be said truly that the mind approaches the supreme nature through likeness? Or should it rather be the more suggestive notion that because the mind is what brings the inquirer close to some knowledge of the supreme nature, the mind must somehow be close to this nature or have some affinity for this nature? The two approaches may end up at the same point, but one is less certain of itself than the other. And although Anselm opts for characteristic certitude with a self-assured “it is certain” (certum est), his comments show that the alternative way of framing the argument would have been better. One of the reasons for pursuing the line of thought that Anselm chooses is that he wants to be able to say that the image found in the human mind is not merely a simulacra,30 but something so close to the natural essence of the supreme nature as to provide an unshakeable foundation for understanding the supreme nature. For among created things whatever is shown to be more similar to the Supreme Nature must be more excellent by nature. Therefore, by virtue of its greater likeness this more excellent nature more greatly aids the inquiring mind (mentem indagantem) to approach the supreme truth, and by its more excellent created essence (creatam essentiam) teaches more fully (plus docet) what the mind itself ought to think about the creator. Hence without doubt the more it is investigated with respect to a creature (creaturam) that approximates to itself, the more fully the creative essence (creatrix essentia) is known (cognoscitur)… Clearly, then, just as the rational mind (mens rationalis) alone among all creatures is able to mount an investigation of this supreme essence, so also the rational mind alone is that through which the mind is most able to advance toward finding this supreme essence.31

30

Cf. Gregory Schufreider, Confessions of a Rational Mystic, pp. 89–92. M 66 (S 1, p. 77; Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 193): Quidquid enim inter creata constat illi esse similius, id necesse est esse natura praestantius. Quapropter id et per maiorem similitudinem plus iuuat mentem indagantem summae ueritati propinquare, et per excellentiorem creatam essentiam plus docet, quid de creante mens ipsa debeat aestimare. Procul dubio itaque tanto altius creatrix essentia cognoscitur, quanto per s propinquiorem sibi creaturam indagatur. Nam quod omnis essentia, in quantum est, in tantum sit summae similis essentiae, ratio iam supra considerata dubitare non permittit. Patet itaque quia, 31

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This leads eventually to the intriguing idea that the human mind is its own mirror, able to see what the mind is and for that reason able to reflect what the supreme nature is. Hence the chapter heading for M 67: Quod mens ipsa speculum eius et imago eius sit (the mind is the mirror and image of that supreme essence). Anselm begins his commentary in M 67 with the notion that the mind can very aptly (aptissime) be called its own mirror. Anselm appears to be saying that the mind sees its own image as if it were looking through a mirror. In which case, the mind beholds (speculetur) the “image of what it cannot see face to face” through this kind of mirror. This revives the idea of the mind seeing through a glass darkly. But there is something more in store. Anselm seems to be following some suggestive comments by Augustine in De trinitate 10.5, where Augustine asks if the mind is in the same situation as our eyes, which see the eyes of other human beings better than it sees itself. The best our eyes can do to see what the eyes look like is to look into a mirror. Augustine maintains that if this is the permanent state of the human mind, then it ought to give up its quest for the contemplation of non-bodily things, since a similar apparatus like a mirror is not available for the mind to know itself in the way that the eyes see themselves in a mirror. When Anselm states that the mind can very aptly be called its own mirror, he spells out the Augustinian argument that is elaborated in Augustine’s description of the various Trinitarian activities of the mind. That is to say, the mind does not need something else to help it to see itself. The mind is its own mirror, so that by itself and through itself, it is able to contemplate its own nature, and by extension the supreme nature of which it is an image. It is a captivating picture: the mind grasping through its own contemplation of itself the supreme nature of which it is a likeness “somehow.” This mirror offers a likeness of the supreme essence unlike anything else that exists. Could one then apply the language of a darkened or cloudy mirror to the mind in the way that Anselm spoke previously? Anselm seems to think not, at least not to the extent of devaluing what has been gained in the process so far. Anselm wants to insist that the mind’s ability to remember, undersicut sola est mens rationalis inter omnes creaturas, quae ad eius inuestigationem assurgere ualeat, ita nihilominus eadem sola est, per quam maxime ipsamet ad eiusdem inuentionem proficere queat.

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stand, and love the supreme essence proves it to be in a category all its own. Since the human mind alone among created things is capable of remembering, conceiving, and loving itself, Anselm does not see why it should not be considered the “true image of that being which through its memoria, intelligentia, and amor is united in an ineffable Trinity.”32 The more the human mind shows itself to be like that ineffable Trinity, the more truly it is its image. And then Anselm adds an important correction: he claims that it is utterly inconceivable that any rational creature should have been so naturally endowed as such. Why? Because there ought not be a creature or faculty that is so truly the image of the creator. In other words, something created may approximate the ineffable creator, but it cannot be identical to the creator, so there is no faculty that is truly an image of the creator. So Anselm accomplishes two things, the sort of move that Schufreider finds so disingenuous. Anselm insists that, first, the human mind is most truly the image of the ineffable Trinity; and second, that the human mind is not truly an image of the Trinity. But this is in keeping with Anselm’s position on the ontological difference between the supreme nature and what it creates, so that at one and the same time, what is created is both like and unlike the ineffable creator. The emphasis in M 67 is on what is “so truly the image of the creator” (sic praeferat imaginem creatoris). Because it bears the image of the supreme nature somewhat, the rational creature (rationalis creatura) has the burden or responsibility of desiring nothing more earnestly than to be able to express and manifest this image. Anselm contends that this is possible because the mind has a natural potency, and it is through this natural capability or potency (per naturalem potentiam) that the mind is able to both desire and express the image of the supreme nature. In addition, the rational creature has to do this voluntarily, which is what makes it a burden and responsibility: because it has this potential, it must want to express it voluntarily, and not by any compulsion or natural necessity. The capacity is natural, so it must choose willingly. At the same time, there is an “ought”: there is an obligation to which the rational creature must respond. This could easily be taken as a kind of natural necessity. It is a teleological necessity, rather than a necessity of agency that compels it to act against 32

M 67 (S 1, p. 78).

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its will. Anselm goes so far as to say that the rational creature is under some kind of obligation, since it is evident that it ought (debere) to will nothing else more than remembering, understanding, and loving the supreme good. So the human being has two reasons why it is required to seek the summum bonum voluntarily: First, because it owes its very existence to its creator; and second, because it has the capacity to do so. And because something sought voluntarily is more estimable than one that is desired by necessity or compulsion, the rational creature shows the excellence of the quest in pursuing it voluntarily. Not only because what lies within the scope of one’s power is better, but also because those things that can be attained voluntarily are more to be desired than others. At least, this is Anselm’s conviction (M 68). Anselm insists that the nature of the soul’s rationality requires that the soul be related to the good in a particular way. Correlatively, the rational creature is rational only to the extent that it is able to distinguish (discernere) between what is just from what is not just, what is true from what is not true, and what is good from what is not good. The ability to make these discriminating judgments is totally useless (omnino inutile) and superfluous (superuacuum), however, unless the rational creature loves or disapproves of (amet aut reprobet) what it distinguishes according to the judgment of true discernment (uerae discretionis iudicium). Why this extension into the good, first, as a criterion of rationality, and second, as the defining characteristic of true rationality? Why is the rational creature not truly rational unless it follows and desires the good? First, we have here the basic outlines of a moral theory and the place of reason in it. Second, Anselm has been answering this question in many different forms both explicitly and implicitly throughout the Monologion. In its most recent version, Anselm maintains that because the rational creature owes its very existence to the summum bonum, and because it has a capacity for desiring this good, it is under a “voluntary obligation,” so to speak, to desire this good. Anselm takes this approach also because this is the basis upon which the entire series of meditations on the rationality of faith rests. The opening paragraph of M 1 states that the one nature who is self-sufficient is that same nature which brings all things into being and makes them fare well, to some extent (aliquomodo bene sunt), and only to some extent, one might add. Anselm seems

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very deliberate in his choice of words. For Anselm, there are different prospects for the things created by the una natura. This also suggests the possibility that the creatures may have something to do with how well they fare. All of this is not immediately apparent in the words about the all-sustaining good with which Anselm opens the Monologion (M 1). However, by M 68 Anselm is in the process of revealing how the most excellent creature that the supreme nature has created can become blessed, and why this prospect depends on what the rational creature does or does not do. To insist on the good as the goal and the object of what the most excellent that the supreme nature has created can desire is to reiterate the argument from the good with which Anselm began his inquiries in M 1–4. In addition, it allows Anselm to pursue a line of inquiry that underscores the fact that an apprehension of the good is insufficient in itself, if the good is not loved: all of which is consistent with Augustine’s description of the good in De trinitate Book 8, not only as the criterion of judgment but also as the longing of the soul and its truest destiny. Furthermore, if true rationality is inextricably bound to the ability to discriminate between what is good and what is not, then the recognition and love of the good constitutes the very mode of being truly and authentically human. This defines the soul’s origin and its final end. And so Anselm begins M 69: because the human soul (humana anima) is a rational creature, it must have been created for this end, that it might love (ut amet) the supreme essence. The life of the soul tends in one of two directions: one way is to love voluntarily without end (sine fine); the other way is to lose this love at some time either freely or by compulsion (uel sponte uel uiolenter). The former has the advantage of merely iterating the intended goal. The latter is laden with difficulties, not the least of which is the suggestion that the human soul may have been created in order that it might lose its love for the good. This strikes Anselm as a most impious idea (nefas), since it requires one to think that the supreme wisdom created the human soul so that the soul might at some time disregard or perhaps even despise (contemnat) such a great good or lose its love for such a great good by force, even if it wished to keep it. The force of Anselm’s statement puts a great deal of emphasis in how the soul might lose the good that it has been created to attain, even though it desires and wills that good. Does Anselm

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mean to say that the soul disdains such a great good, or merely disregards it by being indifferent?33 The more elastic “disregard” might be preferable to “disdain” at this point. But it also needs to be taken seriously that Anselm wants to establish a contrast between love and desire on the one hand, and their opposites on the other. This is not unimportant in a context where Anselm pushes through a simple equation of loves and just rewards. Indifference may not necessarily be the opposite of persevering love. On either count, the supreme good is represented as desiring an end for the soul which is not a good end. The only inference that seems tolerable is that the supreme wisdom created the human soul so that the soul might love the supreme essence without end (sine fine amet). To put it succinctly: “it was created, then, that it might live forever, if it would always live to do that for which it was created.”34 And it would certainly not be able to live without end unless it always lives (nisi semper uiuat); which is another way of saying that although the human soul is created it “never dies.” It lives forever. Whether Anselm would want to insist that “living always” means “eternity,” is not clear, though such an inference would not be surprising or incongruent in the least. It would imply a conception of eternity that involves a beginning but not an end, unless Anselm believes that human souls exist in some sort of eternal pre-created state before they are actually made human by “in-forming” a body. Such a notion would be unqualifiedly Platonic, and is present in some of Augustine’s works, though Augustine himself does not make a final judgment about it.35 Anselm’s strict conception of creatio ex nihilo might raise difficulties for such an idea of a preexistent “world” of souls waiting to be created as human beings. What he does insist on here in M 69 is that the soul was created that it might live forever, as long as it does what it was created for, namely to love and seek the good. For it is clear that the life 33 Cf. Williams translation, p. 82, n. 68, where he suggests a less forceful sense for contemnare. 34 M 69 (S 1, p. 79): Sic igitur est facta ut semper uiuat, si semper uelit facere ad quod facta est. 35 See G. O’Daly, “Did Augustine Ever Believe in the Soul’s Pre-Existence?” Augustinian Studies, 5 (1974), pp. 227–235 and R. J. O’Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987).

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of the human soul will not be taken away from it as long as it continues to seek and love earnestly (studeat amare) the supreme life (summa uita). Who then bears the responsibility for the unhappy end that attends a soul that arrives at a destination other than the good, the supreme life? If the supreme nature loves every nature that loves it, what leads something that has a nature like the human soul towards something else other than the supreme good? What is it that creates the incommensurability between the objective of the supreme essence in creating the human soul and the end that awaits the soul that loses its love for the good? What kind of life does the soul have? The answer is simple enough. If it keeps to the end for which it was made, it will at some time live happily (beate), truly secure (uera secura) from death itself (ab ipsa morte) and free from every form of trouble (molestia), whether it be fear or suffering (timendo aut patiendo). This is the assurance. Such a soul is neither distressed nor is it burdened by false security. Neither is the soul in doubt about gaining its true end. But notice that Anselm has affirmed the positive side of the two possible futures of the soul without necessarily naming the other side, though it is implicit in what the “happy soul” possesses or is saved from. Anselm hedges too by not making the absence of distress a necessary and everpresent condition for beatitude. He also does not insist on the present realization of the beatitude of which he speaks. To live in fear, or with suffering, or with false security is to live in misery (misere uiuat), and no one who lives under those conditions is to be considered truly blessed. At the same time, Anselm allows the prospect that one can live with misery and still be blessed, because one does not live with them forever. To live with misery and to be insecure from death would be absurd, then, for someone who seeks and loves the one supremely self-sufficient and all-powerful good, who is supreme beatitude (summa beatitudo). Augustine spends most of De trinitate Book 13 outlining the itinerary of the soul and its journey toward beatitude. In one such passage Augustine speaks as follows: It is for this reason that the faith by which we believe in God is particularly necessary in this mortal life, so full of delusion (erroribus) and affliction (aerumna) and uncertainty. God is the only source to be found of any good things, but especially of those which make a man good and those which will make him happy; only from him

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do they come into a man and attach themselves to a man. And only when a man who is faithful and good in these unhappy conditions passes from this life to the happy life, will there really and truly be what now cannot possibly be, namely that a man lives as he would. He will not want to live a bad life in that bliss, nor will he want anything that he lacks, nor will he lack anything that he wants. Whatever he loves will be there, and he will not desire anything that is not there. Everything that is there will be good (bonum erit), and the most high God (summus Deus) will be the most high good (summum bonum), and will be available for the enjoyment of those that love him (amantibus), and thus total happiness will be forever assured.36

It is not difficult to discern Anselm’s understanding of the journey of the soul in these words just quoted. What is more, De trinitate Book 13 contains a description of Augustine’s understanding of the entire course of the human experience, and how the Christian narrative of creation, fall, and redemption answers all the anxieties of the ancient philosophical traditions about beatitude and the longings of even the most virtuous of the ancients. But even if Anselm had not turned to De trinitate Book 13, we know for sure that he began the Monologion with Book 8 in mind, and that in Augustine’s reflections about the good in Book 8 Anselm had already come upon a description of the “good soul.” And if Anselm was ever tempted to forget about the “good soul,” he always had a constant reminder in the nickname given to one of his associates, William “Bona Anima,” who was a monk at Caen under Lanfranc, and also spent some time at Bec before becoming the second abbot of Caen when Lanfranc left to take up the archbishopric of Can-

36

Augustine, De trinitate 13.7.10 (CCSL 50a, p. 394; Edmund Hill translation, p. 350, slightly amended): Ac per hoc in ista mortali uita erroribus aerumnisque plenissima praecipue fides est necessaria qua in deum creditur. Non enim quaecumque bona maximeque illa quibus quisque fit bonus et illa quibus fiet beatus, unde nisi a deo in hominem ueniant et homini accedant inueniri potest. Cum autem ex hac uita ab eo qui in his miseriis fidelis et bonus est uentum fuerit ad beatam, tunc erit uere quod nunc esse nullo modo potest ut sic homo uiuat quomodo uult. Non enim uolet male uiuere in illa felicitate aut uolet aliquid quod deerit aut deerit quod uoluerit. Quidquid amabitur aderit, nec dcsiderabitur quod non aderit. Omne quod ibi erit bonum erit, et summus deus summum bonum erit atque ad fruendum amantibus praesto erit, et quod est omnino beatissimum ita semper fore certum erit.

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terbury.37 William was later elevated Archbishop of Rouen in 1079 not long after Anselm became abbot of Bec. Augustine’s description of the “good soul” (animus bonus) in De trinitate 8.3.4, to which I referred in our discussion in Chapter 3, provided all that Anselm needed to explain how the human soul (humana anima) becomes either blessed or miserable (M 68–71). As Augustine puts it, an act of will is required to make the soul good. So the good soul becomes good by turning to the good, whereas the soul remains bad or is unconverted when it does not turn to the good. Both the good and the bad soul receive their just reward. It is intriguing that in De trinitate 8.3.4 Augustine does not say anything about election and predestination, almost as if the soul turns by merely exercising its will. Augustine states that if there is no “act of the will” (actio uoluntatis), if it is neglected (neglexerit), then the soul is justly blamed (iure culpatur) and rightly said to be a bad soul (dicitur non bonus animus). Augustine’s brief on the “good soul” aligns with Anselm’s conviction that the soul receives its just reward because it lives in accordance with its deliberate choice of will. I quote here again what I quoted in Chapter 3. Here are Augustine’s words on the good soul: Perhaps, it will be easier to perceive what I want to say if we put it like this: When I hear it said, for example, ‘a good soul,’ just as there are two words used, so I understand two things from these words, one by which it is a soul, another by which it is good. And of course in order to be a soul it did not do anything itself; it was not already there to do anything in order to come into existence. But in order to be a good soul I see that it must deliberately choose to do something. Not of course that simply being a soul is not something good – how else could it be said, and very truly said, to be better than the body? But the reason it is not yet called a good soul is that it still remains for it to act by deliberate choice in order to acquire excellence. If it neglects do to this it is justly blamed and rightly said to be not a good soul; for it diverges from one who does so act, and as this one is praiseworthy, so it follows that the one who does not act is blameworthy. But when it does act with this intention and becomes a good soul, it cannot in fact achieve this unless it turns to something which it is not itself. And where is it to turn to in order to become a good soul but to the good, when this is what it loves and reaches for and obtains? And if again it turns away from it and becomes bad (non bonus) by the 37

VL 38.

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very fact of turning way from good, it will have nowhere to turn to again if it wishes to reform, unless that good which it has turned away from remains in itself (maneat in se).38

6. Love, the Will, and the Indifferent Soul (M 70–78) As if answering a query that had been posed to him by one of his confreres, Anselm begins M 70 in a manner that at first blush seems unrelated to the previous chapter. At the end of M 69 Anselm gave the assurance that every soul that seeks its true end – that very end for which it was made – will surely find it, and in finding it will receive eternal beatitude. So a question about rewards, or an objection about meriting a reward from the supreme good, seems either unnecessary or misplaced. But it is an important topic, one that merits consideration. It is a question that had been posed centuries before to Augustine by some monks, and answered by him in his De opere monachorum. In its earlier version, which would not be far from the minds of many medieval monks, the question was couched in the form of the usefulness of monastic vocation itself, especially given the nature of some of Augustine’s arguments about the gratuity of God’s grace.39 In another version, more generic than its peculiarly monastic form, it was framed as 38 Augustine, De trinitate 8.3.4 (CCSL 50, p. 272–273; Edmund Hill translation, p. 244, amended): Sic enim forte facilius aduertitur quid uelim dicere. Cum enim audio uerbi gratia quod dicitur animus bonus, sicut duo uerba sunt ita ex eis uerbis duo quaedam intellego, aliud quo animus est, aliud quo bonus. Et quidem ut animus esset non egit ipse aliquid; non enim iam erat qui ageret ut esset. Vt autem sit bonus animus uideo agendum esse uoluntate, non quia idipsum quo animus est non est aliquid boni (nam unde iam dicitur et uerissime dicitur corpore melior?) sed ideo nondum dicitur bonus animus quia restat ei actio uoluntatis qua sit praestantior. Quam si neglexerit, iure culpatur recteque dicitur non bonus animus; distat enim ab eo qui hoc agit, et quia ille laudabilis, profecto iste qui hoc non agit uituperabilis est. Cum uero agit hoc studio et fit bonus animus, nisi se ad aliquid conuertat quod ipse non est non potest hoc assequi. Quo se autem conuertit ut fiat bonus animus nisi ad bonum, cum hoc amat et appetit et adipiscitur? Vnde se si rursus auertat fiatque non bonus, hoc ipso quod se auertit a bono, nisi maneat in se illud bonum unde se auertit, non est quo se iterum si uoluerit emendare conuertat. 39 On Augustine’s doctrine of grace see G. Bonner, “The Significance of Augustine’s De Gratia Novi Testamenti,” CA (1991), pp. 531–559; and J. Patout Burns, The Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Operative Grace (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1980). The language of merit is perhaps more

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a question about God’s fairness and whether human beings accrue any merit by what they do. Anselm responds emphatically. It cannot at all be considered true that the most just and most powerful (iustissimus et potentissimus) gives no reward (nihil retribuat) to a soul that loves it unceasingly by persevering. It is simply incompatible with supreme justice (summa iustitia): first, the supreme nature already shows itself to be just because even before the soul could love it, and presumably before it could exist, it gave the soul an essence or a nature (essentia) in order that the soul could be a loving being (ut amans esse posset). Anselm wants to insist that the very nature of the soul, its “essential nature,” is that it be amans esse. Anselm could have said what he had in mind in a less convoluted way. The question then is this: has not every soul already been endowed with existence and the love of the good? This is the second part of Anselm’s argument, which repeats what he has already argued in a slightly different manner in M 69 that the supremely powerful good gives existence to the soul in order that the soul would be able to live always and to be able to love. The difference here in M 70 is that Anselm uses this as a premise for his argument about why the end to which the soul is destined ought to be thought of as a reward and not as a mere moral nicety. For, if the supreme nature does not give a reward to a soul that perseveres, then it would not be supremely just. For Anselm, to be just is to be able to differentiate between the good and the “not-good;” the soul that perseveres and the one that does not; and between the soul that loves and one that disregards or possibly despises the supreme good. If there were no discrimination, it would mean that loving the supreme nature or being loved by the supreme justice would be of no advantage or profit. It is that simple. If there is no reward then there is no difference between the soul that loves and perseveres and the one that despises the supreme good. Supreme Justice would not be worth its name. It would be inconsistent (dissonant) with his nature. Anselm does not say it would be absurd. Here he merely underscores the incongruity of a nature that is supremely just, and yet unable to discriminate justly. Happiness, eternal felicity, beatitude: these are the rewards for the persevering and loving soul. But why must this be a reward at all, complicated in Augustine than it is in later monasticism; see the works of John Cassian and the Rule of St. Benedict.

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if this is what the soul was made for in the first place? And what is it that constitutes the reward apart from the notion of eternal beatitude, since already Anselm has argued that eternal beatitude is what awaits the loving soul? Obviously, if one has read through the Monologion to this point, Anselm’s assertion that the desiring soul is rewarded with eternal beatitude ought to suffice. Anselm does not want to leave any doubt as to the true nature of eternal beatitude, and so he spells it out. Anselm rehearses familiar lines: “if to what was nothing (nihilo) he gave rational essence (rationalem essentiam) what will he give to the soul that perseveres in love?” It must be something stupendous. This is the thought that Anselm anticipates in his reader. He continues: “if what waits on love (amori famulatur) is so great, how great is the recompense to love (est quod amori recompensatur)?” The choice of language may be peculiar, since the phrase amori famulatur augers up the image of a servant or slave attending to a master or mistress. Anselm continues: “if what props up love (amoris fulcimentum) is so great, then one should expect something far greater for love’s reward.” And so he asks: “what will be love’s gain or profit (amoris emolumentum)?” Again Anselm’s language is telling. He maintains that the rational creature is useless to itself without the love of the supreme nature (sibi inutilis est sine hoc amore). And he suggests that if while being useless to itself without the love of the supreme nature, the human being is still eminent (eminet) among all creatures, why should it not receive as its reward (praemium) for loving the supreme nature that nature which is the most eminent (supereminet) among all things? “What then would the supreme goodness (summa bonitas) give as a reward except itself (seipsam)?” If the reader were to answer to himself that the reward could be something else other than the supreme goodness itself, Anselm would retort that the reader has been far from alert and has misunderstood virtually everything that he has argued. What else could be more fulfilling to the soul than the supreme good, that nature which among all natures is preeminent and permanent, because he is incorruptible and is justice, truth, and happiness itself? Besides, if the supreme good gives something other than himself as a reward to the persevering soul, then the supreme good would not be loved for its own sake (propter se) but for something else (propter aliud) which would mean that the supreme good wills

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that this “other” be loved, which is an abominable thing to conceive. It is simply blasphemous (nefas). To Anselm’s way of thinking, nothing could be more obvious than that a rational soul which earnestly devotes itself to supreme beatitude, as it should, through love, will at some time receive that supreme beatitude in order to enjoy him (illam ad fruendam). That which it now sees through a glass darkly, it will see face to face (M 70). The soul cannot be tormented by fear, nor can it be deceived by false security (fallaci securitate). This is Anselm’s answer to the fear, torment, and insecurity he mentioned a few chapters ago as the greatest difficulties to mortal life. Furthermore, once it experiences this beatitude the soul cannot keep from loving it (illam poterit non amare). There is nothing powerful enough to separate the supreme beatitude from the human soul against the will of the supreme nature. So any soul that once begins to enjoy (semel frui coeperit) the supreme beatitude will enjoy that beatitude eternally (aeterne beata erit). That is why Anselm thinks it terribly foolish (stultissimum) to raise doubts about whether the soul will enjoy supreme beatitude forever (sine fine). Having dismissed one set of doubts, Anselm now turns to another. If eternal beatitude is for those who persevere in their love for the supreme good, what about those who do not? Anselm is categorical. Eternal misery (aeterna miseria) awaits such souls. Anselm’s logic is simple. He considers it consistent with the previous discussion that whoever disregards or despises the supreme good should be eternally miserable. It is their just reward; they have incurred it. One could object that this seems unnecessary. After all, the supreme nature could punish that soul by simply denying existence to the soul. Why punish the soul with eternal unhappiness when it could simply be annihilated? Anselm raises the objection only to answer with the kind of mathematical precision that he has been proposing in these last few chapters: for the soul to suffer “non-existence” or annihilation would mean that the soul would become what it was before it had any life or before it had incurred any fault at all. And all of this after it has suffered great blame (maxima culpa) by despising the supreme good. There is grave clarity here. Anselm does not give any consideration to the prospect of an intermediary position between love that perseveres and its opposite, that which receives punishment (poena) as a just reward. If one were to suggest that between persevering

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love and its opposite there might be something like indifference, Anselm is deaf to it. He does not consider this as something someone might say, although the strict distinction he proposes elicits this objection. It is not at all illogical to suggest that a rational soul that is indifferent to the supreme good and therefore disregards the supreme good should not be punished in the same way as a rational soul that despises the supreme good. The former could be punished justly with annihilation (or lose of existence), whereas the latter ought to receive a more severe punishment, if Anselm wants to maintain strict proportionality about faults and rewards. Anselm will have none of this. He intends his use of contemnare to carry the most extremely negative sense of the word. The person who despises the supreme good must, as a matter of justice, receive his reward in the form of punishment that is commensurate with the gravity of the fault, namely despising and rejecting such a good. Furthermore, if the soul that despises the supreme good were to die in such a way as to experience nothing (nihil sentiat) or in such a way as to be absolutely nothing (omnino nihil sit), then there would be no difference between a soul that sins and one that does not; there will be no difference between a soul with the greatest fault (maxima culpa) and one without any fault (sine omni culpa). In short, there will be no justice in the nature of the “supremely wise justice” if that nature does not differentiate between what is incapable of doing good but wills no evil and what is capable of the greatest good but wills the greatest evil (maximum malum uult). This is simply intolerable and unfitting (inconueniens). Nothing follows more consistently, nothing more certain (certius), and more believable (credi), than that the human soul was made so that if it despises (contemnat) the supreme essence it would suffer eternal misery. There is no middle way. The loving soul will enjoy an eternal reward, while the soul that despises the supreme good grieves (doleat) in eternal punishment: immutable sufficiency for one, inconsolable need for the other. Anselm thinks any objection here would be egregious. Reason would not allow it (nullatenus hoc admittit ratio). That is how he prefaced his comments about faults, punishments, and the commensurability between them. Alternatively, if the reward or punishment that is received is not commensurate with the good or evil that is willed, then there is no justice, given that the soul has been made with the capacity to will the greatest good. Furthermore, if the punishment or reward were to

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stop at some point, it would mean that the “good soul” does not enjoy the supreme good always and the “bad soul” returns to its pre-existent state. Anselm goes on to claim this as one reason why the soul is to be thought of as immortal. According to Anselm, if the human soul does not have the capacity for immortality, then it cannot enjoy the supreme good endlessly and always. This is an unusual way of proving the soul’s immortality. Franz Brentano found Anselm’s argument intriguing, and described it as strange for slightly different reasons than I suggest here.40 Anselm is certainly arguing backwards that if the soul is not created to be immortal, it cannot love eternally. It can only love something eternal for a duration, which for Anselm, is incongruous. Anselm adds an unexpected comment about infants. They seem to be rational but they do not love nor do they despise that end for which they have been made. Are their soul’s mortal or immortal? It is an odd way of framing what is supposed to preclude the objection that the soul is not immortal. Anselm’s point is that infants have the same souls as other humans, because they have the same nature. So if some human souls are immortal, it ought to be the case that every human soul is immortal. This is probably one of Anselm’s least satisfactory arguments. But when it comes to the souls of infants (animae infantum) some of his medieval readers would have had questions about the socalled rationality of infants, which Anselm himself alludes to when he says that infants are thought to be incapable of either loving or despising the supreme good. So why offer such an argument that has the potential to obfuscate rather than clarify what is implied in the objection? In addition, doesn’t this raise the question of the “indifferent soul,” since Anselm presents the infant as a rational soul which neither loves nor despises the supreme good? Anselm’s more fundamental concern at this point is to establish that the souls of humans are immortal. Compared to his first argument that loving the supreme good eternally provides the necessary condition for establishing that the souls of humans are immortal, his second 40 Franz Brentano, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, edited with introduction by Klaus Hedwig (Hamburg: Meiner, 1980), pp. 18–19. On Brentano’s interpretation of Anselm’s argument, see the recent essay by Susan Krantz Gabriel, “Brentano’s Account of Anselm’s Proof of Immortality in Monologion 68–69,” The Saint Anselm Journal, 2 (2004), pp. 52–59.

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argument does not even appear valid. He tries to set up the argument in the form of a syllogism predicated on the fact that all human beings share the same nature. But even the way he sets up the syllogism seems questionable (M 72). 1. All human souls share the same nature. 2. Some human souls are immortal. 3. Therefore, all human souls are immortal. Putting aside his confidence in his arguments (M 70–71), Anselm has to concede that there is no logic to explain how some receive eternal felicity and others do not. Anselm’s equanimity in this regard is revealing. He insists, and no one could possibly countermand, that there is no way of knowing, still less establishing through disputation where each respective soul ends up. His point is that the question as to whether a particular soul deserves beatitude is not open to argument. This is an important acknowledgment. But it is not the same thing as saying that reason cannot establish the basis upon which beatitude is offered as a reward to the loving soul. Anselm’s posture should be recognizable. All along he has insisted that certain judgments can be made and some conclusions established through the sheer force of argument. At the same time, reason comes up against its own limits. This present context is just one such occasion, where reason demonstrates, on the one hand, that punishments and rewards are justly meted out to respective souls and, on the other hand, that there is no logic to explain which human souls receive which end. It is either very difficult or impossible for any mortal human being to ascertain. It cannot be comprehended, nor can one make much progress through disputation. There are three parts to the puzzle: First, which souls are deemed to so unhesitatingly love the end for which they were made that they deserve to enjoy that end? Second, which souls so despise the end for which they were made that they deserve always to be lacking it or in need of it? And third, given that each soul ends up either eternally happy or eternally miserable, how does any soul which is neither loving nor despising end up in one of these camps? The third category is perhaps the most surprising, since Anselm stayed clear of it in his earlier consideration of final ends. I mentioned that Anselm seemed uninterested in raising the question of what happens to a soul that neither loves nor despises, but is just indifferent to the supreme good. I had indicated earlier that Anselm

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excludes this middle category of “indifference” and seems to use the word contemnare in its more strictly negative sense. In fact, Anselm had been so insistent that he presented two descriptions of the soul which seemed exact opposites: one which is incapable of doing good and does no evil and the other which, while capable of doing great good, wills the greatest evil. The so-called “indifferent soul” fits neither, since it neither loves nor hates (nec amantes nec contementes). The indifferent soul does not will the greatest evil, namely despising the supreme good, nor does it will the greatest good, loving the supreme good. If one takes Anselm’s comments at face value, it would suggest that Anselm now considers three distinct categories of souls: the loving, the indifferent, and the one that despises the supreme good. Oddly, Anselm misses this opportunity to address this most curious problem that he has raised with his suggestion of the “indifferent soul.” Whether or not Anselm means to be read as not believing that such a state exists is debatable. He can certainly be read in a less assured way because he introduces the category of the “indifferent soul” with a note of equivocation, referring to the souls which “apparently” (uidentur) can be called neither loving nor despising. All the same, Anselm never quite addresses the problem. If he did he would have to revisit his entire conception of justice and merited ends. His concluding comments in M 74 give every indication that Anselm is aware of the fundamental issues at stake, as he concludes with a reminder that regardless of how things may seem, what he has argued previously still holds: one ought to hold with certainty (certissime est tenendum) that the supremely just and supremely good creator does not unjustly deprive (iniuste priuetur) any soul of the good for which it was made. When Anselm adds that every human being is supposed to seek this good by loving and desiring it with all his heart, all his soul, and all his mind (Matthew 22:37), he more than intensifies the problem of the indifferent soul. For the second time Anselm appeals to a passage from scripture as an exclamation point when reason encounters the incomprehensible. But this time the problem is far from exceptional. Appealing to the incomprehensible or to mystery does not remove the difficulty that Anselm has created by not addressing a category that he himself recognizes. Even if the status of the indifferent soul is more apparent than real, Anselm should have attended to it. Fur-

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thermore, the disclaimer about what must be believed with certainty and the Hebraic injunction to love with all of one’s heart, soul, and mind do not preclude all the potential objections surrounding the unanswered questions about the indifferent soul. Supposing there to be indifferent souls, it would mean that such souls have been deprived of something basic, namely the capability of desiring the good. To deprive the soul of anything is to act in such a way as to prevent the soul from doing something that it could do. This seems to implicate the supreme nature in the indifferent soul’s inadequacy. Anselm, however, puts the emphasis on both the provision made by the supreme good in creating the soul in the first place and the capacity given to the soul to achieve its true end. Anselm maintains that the soul that loses its true end was and is not deprived of anything. It earns its final end. It fails of its own merit. The focus is squarely on longing and loving. Anselm had always encouraged others to enter the monastic enclosure to facilitate their journey towards eternal beatitude; and if unable to secure it, at least to remove many of the obstacles that stand in the way. Anselm’s refrain had always been the dominical saying, “many are called but few are chosen.” M 74 extends this logic into an area where Anselm also believes logic, reason, or rationality seems to fail, either because it is very difficult or because it is impossible to reason one’s way to a credible conclusion. The impossibility of knowing by what rationale those ends are determined does not obviate what for Anselm is beyond dispute: Everyone is called upon to seek and to strive for the supreme good. There is an admonition with the call (uocatio), and it would be a hollow admonition if the soul despaired of arriving at this end. Anselm states emphatically in M 75 that the hope of attaining eternal beatitude is as necessary as the desire for it. The desire is useful because it helps the soul to seek for the goal; the hope is necessary, because without it the desire is not even conceivable. To any serious medieval Christian reader or a monastic lector Anselm’s words easily bring to mind the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and love (I Corinthians 13). And it is to these virtues that Anselm directs his attention in M 76. It might be helpful to recall that Anselm began the Monologion with the promise that he could provide arguments to help the moderately intelligent person come to understand truths that Chris-

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tians believe about the supreme nature as the source of all that exists and the sustainer of all things. At this stage in his investigations, he is no longer merely insisting on what can be known about the supreme nature but about how the end for which the human soul has been created can be gained. While Anselm acknowledges that reason falters in knowing by what rationale some gain eternal happiness and others do not, he is nevertheless adamant that there is justice in the final end attained by each individual soul. If one cannot gain what one despairs of attaining, still less can one seek something one does not believe in. He who does not believe (non credit) is not able to love or to hope. It is a great advantage, then, for the human soul not only to believe the supreme essence, but also to believe in “all the things without which the supreme essence cannot be loved.” Anselm describes belief as both passive and active: passive because it involves understanding to which one should give assent, as well as certain dispositions; active because it is expressed in striving towards the goal that is the final end of those who believe. This requires the soul to strive (tendere) for the supreme essence through faith (per fidem) and also to believe those things that pertain (pertinent) to faith and striving. Believing is useless, Anselm argues, if there is no striving; striving is impossible, on the other hand, without believing (M 76). The degree to which one believes and strives is an indication of how alive or dead one’s faith is: for the striving is the indicator of how much eternal beatitude is desired and loved; and how much that final end is longed for. Taking his cue from the language of faith from the Epistle of James in the New Testament, Anselm maintains with that epistle that faith without works is dead. From centuries of contemplation and reflection on the works to which monks in particular were very conscious of, Anselm reiterates that a living faith is one that is active and produces effects which attest to its vitality. It cannot be idle (otiosam esse) because it possesses the vital force of love (uitam dilectionis), without which it can do nothing. Anselm speaks of a faith that has an accompaniment, a love which makes possible the exercise of faith in a great number of works (operum exercere frequentia). This love is what he calls in M 78 a companion (comitatur dilectio) to faith. These are theological commonplaces that no one in Anselm’s monastic audience would have failed to see. It is a reassuring way to bring to an end a treatise abounding in so many dialectical strategies which, to

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the uninitiated, might seem an obstacle to the very devotion that Anselm wants to engender. So after all the intricate arguments and seemingly endless deductions, Anselm returns to the most familiar guideposts and signs along the monastic way. The ordo beatitudinis, the path toward eternal happiness, is laid out in broad strokes, with unmistakable clarity. Anselm’s description reaffirms the choice of the monastic life as an enclosure which offers clear passage to anyone who in believing strives to lay hold of that good (credendo tendat ad illam), as he puts it in M 76. There is no prescription here for the “indifferent soul.” The only prescription is for the individual intent on reaching the final eternal beatitude promised to the striving and loving soul (M 76–78). To his monastic audience, this is a promising note on which to end.

7. On Naming God: The Trinitarian Good (M 80) As we have seen, Anselm’s investigations into the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence come to a close in M 63. What he demonstrates in the section of the Monologion that we have been considering in this chapter is that it is only through this one nature that the human soul receives its well-being. To put it another way, the investigations of the previous sixty-three chapters have little value if they do not lead the inquirer towards the recognition of his good in that supreme nature that Anselm claims to have proved in all its Trinitarian goodness and magnificence. If any of Anselm’s immediate monastic readers found his analytic method daunting, they could find solace in these later chapters of the Monologion. In these closing chapters they would find Anselm restating some of the fundamental themes of monastic vocation. And perhaps to their surprise, they would find those themes reconfigured in language that bristles with more confidence about the supreme rationality of monastic renunciation than they might have encountered even in some of Anselm’s conversations, to say nothing of his letters, prayers, and meditations. The sense of anxiety that R. W. Southern, for example, describes as one of the outstanding and characteristic features of Anselm’s spirituality,41 is sublimated if not altogether erased by Anselm’s confidence in 41

R. W. Southern, Saint Anselm: A Portrait, pp. 104–195; pp. 447–452.

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the rationality of the life he commends to the soul that seeks its ultimate good in loving the supreme Trinitarian good. One could well imagine a reader like Abbot Durand of La Chaise Dieu, who wrote so effusively of Anselm’s first Meditatio, finding in the description of the soul’s love of the good in these last chapters a veritable defense of the monastic vocation as the most rational choice of the individual soul buffeted by the tumults of life.42 Likewise, for the monk Maurice, who was central to the evolution of the Monologion, and his confreres Herluin and Gundulf, who were among Anselm’s closest friends, the language in these chapters would remind them of one of the letters they received from Anselm as he was working on the Monologion: By the word of Truth we are all assured that among the many called, few are chosen; but since Truth was silent about this we are ignorant about how few there are. Therefore, anyone who does not already live as one of the few must either amend his way of life and join the few, or he must surely fear condemnation. But indeed anyone who considers himself already among the few should not immediately rely on the certainty of being chosen. In fact, since none of us knows to how small a number the chosen are reduced, nobody therefore knows whether he is already among the few who are chosen, even if he lives like one of the few among the many called.43

There is no security, it seems. However, in these closing chapters Anselm speaks less about the uncertainty of knowing that one is among the few who are chosen and more about his conviction that the soul that loves the good receives its due reward. Interestingly, Augustine’s description of the good soul in De trinitate Book 13 provides a template for Anselm’s analysis of the ends of good and evil. One could even argue that Augustine’s description of the good

42

Anselm, Epistola 70 (S 3, p. 190; Fröhlich, Letters 1, pp. 193–194). Anselm, Epistola 51 (S 3, p. 165; Fröhlich, Letters 1, pp. 160): Quoniam namque inter multos vocatos »pauci« sunt »electi«, certi sumus omnes veritate dicente; sed quam pauci sint, incerti sumus cuncti veritate tacente. Quapropter quicumque nondum vivit ut pauci, aut vitam suam corrigat et inter paucos se colligat, aut cum certitudine reprobationem timeat; qui vero iam sibi videtur de paucis, non statim de securitate electionis confidat. Quippe quoniam nemo nostrum scit in quantam paucitatem redigantur electi, nullus utique novit si iam sit inter paucos electos, licet iam paucorum sit similis inter multos vocatos. 43

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soul is an important clue to understanding Anselm’s moral thought and his theory of human action and agency. It is not difficult to imagine how Anselm’s fellow monks or someone like Archbishop Hugh of Lyon reading through these later chapters of the Monologion would have responded with his emphasis on loving the good as a matter of deliberate choice. No matter how intricate Anselm’s earlier arguments may have been, and notwithstanding the many objections that Anselm considers along the way, the work concludes where Anselm’s vocation begins: it recalls some of Anselm’s devotional poetry with its evocative language about monastic experience. It also sets before the reader an impassioned defense of a life given in devotion to a pursuit of the good. Abbot Rainald of Saint Cyprian, Poitiers would most certainly have been impressed with the range of Anselm’s treatise. Little wonder that Anselm felt secure to entrust him with the Monologion while warning him not to let it fall into the hands of those whose grasp of dialectic was questionable, ostensibly because those who were the most incompetent were likely to be the most uncharitable critics, “prattlers” as he called them. Even Lanfranc, who had been hesitant in expressing his views about the work, and who eventually suggested changes along with his criticism, would surely not have found Anselm’s later chapters in any way problematic. There is much in Anselm’s description of the way of happiness (ordo beatitudinis), his understanding of divine justice, his conception of the final ends of those who love or despise the good that fit Lanfranc’s expressed views about righteousness (iustitia) and the moral life in his commentaries on Paul’s epistles.44 As for the perspicacity of Anselm’s many arguments, it is doubtful whether the so-called person of average intelligence would have grasped all the twists and turns of Anselm’s syllogistic arguments. At the same time, because he puts the emphasis on the love of the good as the criterion of rationality, Anselm directs the reader to the moral life and its inextricable link to the contemplation and the knowledge of God, a connection which his monastic readers would have found reassuring.

44 See Ann Collins, Teacher in Faith and Virtue: Lanfranc of Bec’s Commentary on Saint Paul, pp. 117–156.

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Anselm mentions deus in the opening chapter of the Monologion and afterwards drops the word from his investigations. He now returns to using deus in the final chapter, affirming without any hesitation, as he puts it, that what we call God is “not nothing” (nec nihil); once more calling to mind his various inquiries about nihil, de nihilo nihil, and creatio ex nihilo. He reiterates that it is appropriate to assign the name deus solely (soli) to the one supreme essence. Indeed, everyone who says that there is a god, whether one or many, does not understand this god except as a certain substance which he conceives to be above every nature that is not god (deus non est); a substance that human beings are to worship because of its excellent nature and exhorted to pray to for themselves against threatening adversity (imminentem necessitatem) … For this Spirit alone is the one through whom anything fares well and without whom nothing fares well, and from whom, through whom, and in whom all things exist… from whom alone good fortune (prospero) is to be hoped for (speranda), to whom alone one may flee from adversity (ad aduersis fugiendium), and of whom alone supplication is to be made for anything whatsoever. Truly, then, this not only is God, but is the only God, ineffably three in one (ineffabiliter trinus et unus).45

Anselm argues that even when people think of deus in a polytheistic sense, they still think that it represents a nature that is above 45 M 80 (S 1, pp. 86–87; Based on Hopkins, A New Interpretive Translation, p. 211): Quippe omnis qui deum esse dicit, siue unum siue plures, non intelligit nisi aliquam substantiam, quam censet supra omnem naturam quae deus non est, ab hominibus et uenerandam propter eius eminentem dignitatem et exorandam contra sibi quamlibet imminentem necessitatem. Quid autem tam pro sua dignitate uenerandum et pro qualibet re deprecandum, quam summe bonus et summe potens spiritus, qui dominatur omnibus et regit omnia? Sicut enim constat quia omnia per summe bonam summeque sapientem omnipotentiam eius facta sunt et uigent: ita nimis inconueniens est, si aestimetur quod rebus a se factis ipse non dominetur, siue quod factae ab illo ab alio minus potente minusue bono uel sapiente, aut nulla penitus ratione sed sola casoum inordinate uolubilitate regantur; cum ille solus sit, per quem cuilibet et sine quo nulli bene est et ex quo et per quem et in quo sunt omnia. Cum igitur solus ipse sit non solum bonus creator sed et potentissimus dominus et sapientissimus rector omnium: liquidissimum est hunc solum esse, quem omnis alia natura secundum totum snum posse debet diligendo uenerari et uenerando diligere, de quo solo prospera sunt speranda, ad quem solum ab aduersis fugiendum, cui soli pro quauis re supplicandum. Vere igitur hic est non solum deus sed solus deus ineffabiliter trinus et unus.

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all else, and that those natures over which it is super-eminent, so to speak, are themselves not thought of as deus. It will not do to leave the polytheist secure in his conception of God or the gods, however, and so Anselm proceeds to explain why his Trinitarian monotheism is the most proper conception of that ineffable nature which creates all things and endows them with goodness. Nor does he leave the matter as a purely conceptual or metaphysical problem. It is existential: what human beings can hope for against the adversities or threatening necessities of human experience. The words of the concluding chapter return to the grand themes with which Anselm began the work, with an added emphasis on the supreme nature as the desire and hope of those who long for beatitude. This is, after all, philosophical theology written for monks by someone who believed that there was no more secure path towards beatitude than the monastic way. Maurice and his fellow monks of Bec would not be disappointed. And they owed much of this to Anselm’s reading of Augustine’s De trinitate, a reading that more than substantiates Anselm’s challenge to any potential critics of the Monologion that they should first read De trinitate diligently before attempting to judge Anselm’s work.

8. Conclusion In this chapter we have had occasion to review Anselm’s conception of the life of faith about which he proposed the work that he called an exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei. We began first with his defense of his method and assessed the cogency of his argument that, on the one hand, what he has argued about the ineffable essence admits of no counterargument, and on the other hand, that no language is adequate for saying something about so ineffable a nature. We saw that Anselm describes something like a regulative function of reason, in that reason is able to lead the inquirer to true conclusions, while also indicating its own limits. I tried to suggest that in this way Anselm offers his own critique of reason. I called attention to one major difficulty in Anselm’s argument about knowing something about the supreme essence through the likenesses of created things by suggesting that there is an inherent limitation in using a supposed copy to describe an original if one does not already know what the original looks like. The difficulty

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becomes even more critical in the context of Anselm’s claims about the human mind as an analogue of the supreme essence. In my discussion of Anselm’s language about the similarity and dissimilarity between the supreme essence and the human mind, I tried to underscore the almost insurmountable problem posed by the ontological dissimilarity between human nature and the supreme essence and why Anselm’s arguments still leave much in doubt, in spite of his great confidence in them. We also explored Anselm’s description of the soul’s journey towards beatitude, his conception of rationality, and the love of the good as three intertwined themes in Anselm’s thought. Most significantly, Anselm argues that the soul is only truly rational when it orients itself towards the good, so that it knows not only what its final destination should be, but so that it knows how to discriminate between what is good and what is not-good; and also makes the deliberate choice to love the good, the Trinitarian Good that is the supreme essence. In the midst of these elaborations we encountered one peculiar proof for the immortality of the soul that reveals in its own way one of the flaws that sometimes attend Anselm’s arguments: that the premises of some of his arguments often assume certain axioms or maximal propositions that Anselm does not state. So, in this case, he assumes what has to be proved, that because the soul is made to love the supreme essence who is eternal it necessarily follows that the soul is immortal. Throughout, we have seen how closely Anselm follows Augustinian lines laid out in De trinitate. One of the most revealing instances of this is what we saw with regards to Anselm’s use of Augustine’s description of the good soul. We noticed how Anselm uses the notion of deliberate choice entailed in Augustine’s description to articulate his view about the justice inherent in some souls being rewarded with eternal bliss while other souls are denied and punished. In those few moments where there are no Augustinian antecedents in De trinitate for Anselm’s arguments we get to see how innovative Anselm can be, as the argument about the immortality of the soul shows. I intimated that Anselm was probably never satisfied with this argument, if his late rumination about solving the problem of the soul is anything to go by (VA 142).

CONCLUSION In my assessment of the influence of Augustine’s De trinitate on Anselm’s Monologion I have considered different aspects of Anselm’s dependence on Augustine’s De trinitate. Much of my argument has been framed around the hesitancy or indifference of Anselm’s interpreters to follow up on his challenge that they read De trinitate diligently before judging the Monologion. And I linked this disposition to the neglect that has often surrounded the Monologion among both medieval and modern readers and interpreters of Anselm’s works. I have paid particular attention to R. W. Southern’s ambivalence about the links between De trinitate and the Monologion and mentioned in my introduction that I would repeat the experience as Southern also suggested as the only way of testing Anselm’s claim of Augustinian dependence. In my reading of the Monologion, I have tried to capture the following. First and foremost, I have been testing out Anselm’s claim of Augustinian dependence and demonstrating the different ways in which the arguments in the Monologion follow upon some of Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate. Second, my reading has been a critical reading. In the course of this study I have raised a number of questions about Anselm’s formulation of and handling of objections to his arguments, especially because he presents his ability to deal with even the silliest objections as a special feature of the Monologion. Third, I have included an excursus comparing Anselm and Thomas Aquinas on arguments about the existence of the supreme nature (or God) in part because Southern juxtaposes Anselm and Aquinas; and also because Anselm is often considered the midpoint between Augustine and Aquinas. And fourth, I have considered some current interpretations of certain parts of the Monologion to clarify Anselm’s views and to engage his current critics. I began Chapter 1 on a historical note with a claim that the Monologion marked an important shift in theological thought in the eleventh century. My contention is a simple one: that after more than three decades dominated by the Eucharistic contro-

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versy, Anselm produced his first major theological work as a model meditation on the divine essence only a few years before the final settlement of that controversy, a controversy about which Anselm says almost nothing in his writings. I pointed out that because Lanfranc had been such an important character in the Eucharistic controversy, Anselm’s silence is remarkable by any account. This silence or indifference also makes Lanfranc’s objections to the Monologion no minor event, since Lanfranc seemed to be objecting to the very style of the Monologion, insinuating that its love of dialectical argumentation was inherently problematic if not altogether mistaken. I proposed that Lanfranc’s objections seemed to have been influenced by his experience in the Eucharistic controversy. I have not pursued in this study the disagreement between Anselm and Lanfranc and how the Eucharistic controversy may have influenced it, having addressed them in another work. I do argue here, however, that Anselm’s unwillingness to alter the work in spite of Lanfranc’s criticism further underlines his reference to Augustine’s De trinitate as the background for his many arguments. Along these lines I also raised the question of Anselm’s familiarity with De trinitate and his knowledge of Augustine’s thought as a special kind of theological formation that may not have been common among his contemporaries. So his claim about Augustinian dependence should not be dismissed simply as a bluff or merely perfunctory. It should be taken seriously. This is a point I had already made in the Introduction. It also provided the point of departure for analyzing more carefully R. W. Southern’s attitude about the relationship between the Monologion and De trinitate. I maintained that at best Southern’s attitude is ambivalent. For on the one hand he questions whether we can in fact trace Anselm’s arguments to the De trinitate, but at the same time, proposes ironically that it is only by repeating the experience that one can prove Anselm’s claim. I hinted at that point in my discussion that in fact by repeating the experience we can validate Anselm’s claim. I suggested as a way towards this repetition that we look at De trinitate 15 and Augustine’s overview of his project. And I argued that Augustine’s reflections about understanding the Trinity provide the justification for Anselm’s method. This claim may look at first blush to be unusual and perhaps even wrongheaded given how different the style of the Monologion is from Augustine’s

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De trinitate, however, I demonstrated from Augustine’s language about trying to understand the Trinity rather than merely believing it that De trinitate supports Anselm’s methodology. Augustine encourages his readers to seek to understand the Trinity by reason, not by appealing to scripture or authority. This, I maintain is the basis for Anselm’s description that in the Monologion he pursues his inquiries sola ratione. Augustine’s words provide the warrant for Anselm’s investigations. So, far from being in opposition to Augustine, Anselm’s Monologion is consistent with Augustine’s admonition in De trinitate 15. Or to put it another way: the innovation that is the Monologion is an Augustinian innovation. In my brief discussion of De trinitate 15, we also saw how in the summaries of the various chapters of the work Augustine calls attention to Book 8 as the place where a rational exploration of the Trinity began to take shape. He mentions the argument from the good as the centerpiece of that achievement. And it is no surprise, I argue, that it is on this theme that Anselm begins the Monologion, saying that it is the easiest way of proving the existence of the one supreme nature, the supreme good, who creates all things and through whom all things receive their existence and well-being. After this, I turned to the preface of the Monologion to point out how Anselm almost undercuts his Augustinian claims by stating that one can speak of the Trinity as “three substances in one person,” a formula he claims to be of Greek origin. I called it Anselm’s Greek formula. Anyone with a sense of the antecedent tradition of Trinitarian thought should have challenged Anselm on this. Not only is the formula not attested among the Greeks, it is blatantly heterodox. And yet none among Anselm’s contemporaries seem to have noticed it. I surmise that this is probably testament to the fact that few read the Monologion, or that if they read it all, they did not know Augustine’s De trinitate well enough to contest Anselm’s claim that his arguments depended on Augustine and that no one should critique his work without a thorough familiarity with Augustine’s. I examined the three different occasions Anselm mentioned the Greek formula and his juxtaposition of Augustine and De trinitate in each instance. In my analysis of Anselm’s pronouncements we noticed the differences in his statements from the preface of the Monologion to Letter 83 to the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi

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and then to Letter 204. I emphasized the sudden shift in Anselm’s language in Letter 204, where he states explicitly that Augustine attests to the formula in De trinitate. I then undertook an extended exercise to try to demonstrate how Anselm might have come by the formula. I mentioned that Anselm’s Letter 83 contains a clue about the link between the formula and Augustine in that Anselm mentions in that letter something having to do with the use of the word “substance” in relation to the Trinity. Augustine devotes a good deal of De trinitate Books 5 and 7 to this topic. So I discussed Augustine’s language in these two books and how they provided the warrant for Anselm’s Greek formula. My central point was that although the precise formulation is not to be found in De trinitate the reasoning behind the formulation is presented by Augustine. I indicated that in his expression of not knowing what the three in the Trinity are, Augustine expressed a sentiment that Anselm also accepted as his own, namely if asked what the three are, the response is nescio quid, I do not know what. I highlighted Anselm’s use of the phrase as a telltale sign of his affinity to Augustine. It is in this context too that I tried to substantiate my initial claim of what I refer to as Augustine’s nominalism, a nominalism different from that associated with Anselm’s younger contemporaries like Roseclin of Compiègne and Abelard, but one that takes the word “Trinity” as a name that does not reveal a whole lot about what the three are in the Godhead. As part of my discussion in Chapter 2 I also explored what role Boethius may have played in Anselm’s invention of the Greek formula because in chapter 79 of the Monologion he adopts Boethius’s definition of “person” in his explanation of how one should use “person” or “substance” in relation to the Trinity. I hypothesized that M 79 has the makings of a postscript, given its placement in the Monologion. Much of my discussion in this regard proved that the Boethian influence was marginal, and could not have added much to what Anselm already knew from De trinitate Books 5 and 7. And in the end I concluded that Anselm’s Greek formula should be understood as a pseudo-Augustinian gloss. Anselm mistakenly thought he had found it in De trinitate because so much of the reasoning that give warrant to the formulation can be found in De trinitate.

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With these two chapters behind me, I turned to a reading of the Monologion following its chapters sequentially. My discussion in Chapter 3 take up the first four chapters of the Monologion (M 1–4), delineating what I refer to as Anselm’s Three Ways, his three arguments for the existence of the supreme nature. At the outset of that chapter we reviewed Anselm’s invitation to inquiry as containing a number of methodological claims and one caveat. Anselm first addresses “that someone” who does not know either because he has not heard or does not believe that there is one supreme nature through whom all things exist and through whom they have their well-being. He then adds that such a person would come to the same conclusions that he presents in the Monologion by following the lead of reason, and in this way cure himself of his irrational ignorance. Anselm’s confidence in reason is unshakeable. So it comes as a surprise that shortly thereafter he offers a caveat about the solidity of his arguments by saying that he does not present them as absolutely necessary but only necessary for the time being; and that a higher authority might have better arguments. I took the occasion to point out the seeming contradiction between the confidence Anselm expressed in curing the irrationally ignorant and the caveat that seems to question that confidence as a sign that Anselm had redacted his text partly in response to Lanfranc’s criticism. I mentioned in this regard one manuscript that shows some of this activity. From that point on we proceeded with the arguments of the Monologion setting forth Anselm’s Three Ways: first, his argument from the good; second, the argument from the nature of existence; and third, the argument from the various degrees of dignity that obtain among existent things. In each case, I presented Anselm’s arguments and also raised questions about some of their inherent difficulties. In the case of the argument from the good I mentioned the equivocal senses in which Anselm uses the word “good” and the differences that obtain as a result of this: between using a notion of intrinsic worth, on the one hand, and the idea of utility on the other hand, to construct the notion of the good. I brought into the discussion some of the views of Augustine and the Ciceronian background of some of the language about utile and honestum to point out what was distinctive about Anselm’s position. I then made the case that, while Anselm presents the argument from the good as the easiest way to prove that there is one supreme nature, the argument already

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presupposes an idea of a creator who brings all other things into being. So the other two ways precede metaphysically and logically the First Way. The rest of my discussion in Chapter 3 can be divided into four sections: First, my analysis of the Second Way, and the metaphysical distinction between things that come into being or exist per se and those that exist per aliud. Second, my analysis of the Third Way on the degrees of dignity that obtain among existent things and the strange problem that Anselm presents about infinite degrees of dignity. I noted that Anselm’s notion of infinite degrees of dignity as excluding a notion of one supreme super-eminent nature was untenable. And furthermore, it is not clear what those infinite degrees of dignity are. I suggested in this regard that Anselm’s conception seems to have translated a notion of infinite regress into one about infinite natures. Third, I then mooted the question of Anselm’s Platonism, given some of the commentary on M 1–4, and provided an alternative to the views of F. S. Schmitt, K. Flasch, and J. Hopkins. And fourth, I took up in an excursus a comparison of Anselm’s Three Ways and Thomas Aquinas’s famous Five Ways from the Summa Theologiae. I concluded that Anselm’s Three Ways are more coherent than Aquinas’s Five Ways in spite of some of the problems that I identified earlier in my discussion. The Three Ways set the metaphysical framework for the rest of the Monologion. Chapter 4 treats M 5–14, and considered among other topics Anselm’s doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. I drew attention to the fact that Augustine does not discuss directly the subject of creation in De trinitate. So if the Monologion is dependent on De trinitate Anselm could not claim to have derived his doctrine from De trinitate unless in some indirect or oblique way. For this reason I proposed that we look at Anselm’s doctrine as an occasion to consider how he proceeds on a topic when he is not following De trinitate, and what this reveals about Anselm’s theological and philosophical sensibilities. It turns out that Anselm’s doctrine is a much stricter version of creatio ex nihilo than Augustine articulates elsewhere in his writings. The central difference lies in Anselm’s contention that creatio ex nihilo means that the supreme nature creates everything that exists out of nothing, with nothing else intervening or contributing to the process. Anselm is adamant that matter does not play any part in this, although he does not offer any explanation as to

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where the matter of existent things comes from. All this, even as he is emphatic that all material things are composed of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. According to Anselm, there are only two ways in which creation can be effected. Either the supreme nature creates the universe of existent things out of nothing or the supreme nature is the matter out of which he creates. Anselm allows only these two options and rules out a third, namely that, if the supreme nature creates with the help of some preexistent matter, then it means that the supreme nature employs something as an aid towards his creation. At no point does Anselm consider the possibility that the supreme nature could create matter first and then use that matter to create other things; nor does he consider the notion of the simultaneous creation of matter and everything else that exists, a view articulated by Augustine and shared by others. I suggested that Anselm’s strict anti-materialism was most likely influenced by his desire to rebut the idea presented by Calcidius in his translation and commentary of Plato’s Timaeus that God created the world using pre-existent matter. Anselm was familiar with Calcidius’s commentary because there was a copy at Bec. I prefaced my discussion in Chapter 4 with a consideration of the aphorism, de nihilo nihil, around which Anselm formulates his account. I made the point that the phrase encapsulates a notion of causality that Anselm’s medieval readers would have taken for granted because it was common parlance. And I argued that Anselm’s discussion was intended in part to remove any threat the phrase posed to the idea of creation so central to Christian thought. I also addressed Anselm’s fascination and analysis of the semantics of “nothing.” The final part of my discussion in the chapter addressed the relationship between thought and the object of thought and how inward thought precedes outward expression. Much of this was motivated by Anselm’s attempt to describe what a natural word is and how such a word properly and uniquely represents its object in thought. I pointed out that Anselm’s scheme had one major flaw, namely the notion that one can think a specific thing by thinking the universal essence of the thing, and I spent considerable time demonstrating how this undercuts the analogies Anselm wanted to make between the supreme nature, the craftsman, and the nature of human thought and action: that the supreme nature is related to its creative act like the craftsman

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who creates based on a prior model in his mind, and the inner word that precedes the outward, vocal expression of thought. Anselm’s deliberations in M 5–14 exposed us to one other problem about his method. For in the preface of the Monologion Anselm mentions that he was required not to appeal to scripture. I noted in the course of our discussion in Chapter 4 that to some extent Anselm’s claim about eschewing any appeal to scripture is at the very least mildly disingenuous. For the very language that shapes his arguments about created things and their creator comes out of Pauline language in Romans 1:20 and 11:36, the latter which Anselm adopts in the final words of M 14. So the claim about not appealing to scripture turns out to be a formal conception. Anselm does not quote scripture directly. He does not need to insist that the authority of his quotations should settle arguments. However, so much of his thinking rests on ideas expressed in scripture. Furthermore, in many instances Augustine has used scriptural texts to articulate the arguments that Anselm borrows from. Anselm can go on without any appeal to those scriptures because Augustine has already done it. It may not be inappropriate then to suggest that Anselm’s appeal to Augustine’s authority and the arguments of De trinitate implies as well an appeal to scripture, even though Anselm did not seem to think of it that way. When we combine this with what we saw in our discussion in Chapter 3 about his contention that reason alone should lead a person of moderate intelligence towards his conclusions, one begins to wonder whether Anselm had formed a coherent view of his method. After all, he also asserts that his conclusions are necessary only for the time being but not altogether necessary. For my part, I proposed the following: that the caveat about his conclusions being provisional was something of a pretense; and that the pretense becomes more obvious when we encounter much later on in M 64 and M 65 that Anselm does not think there are any counterarguments to his arguments that would overthrow his conclusions. Chapter 5 took up Anselm’s discussion about how we think, speak, and signify the supreme nature. At the center of the chapter we considered Anselm’s discussion of the language of predication, and whether there are any words or names that can be predicated appropriately (or properly) of the supreme essence. Anselm does not think there are any such words. He builds his arguments upon Augustine’s arguments in De trinitate 5 and 7, just as he wonders

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about the use of the word “substance” in speaking of the supreme essence, a topic we addressed in Chapter 2. Anselm, following Augustine, takes words like “just,” “wise,” “powerful,” etc., that are predicated of the supreme essence, as names. And he distinguishes between words that are predicated relationally and those that are predicated substantially. The second part of the chapter considered Anselm’s arguments about the supreme nature’s relationship to time and place, and what it means for the supreme nature to be supreme if he is delimited by time and place. Here too we came upon another theme that Augustine does not address directly in De trinitate, namely time. Once again we had the opportunity to explore Anselm’s views on a topic for which he could not depend on De trinitate. I noted in passing that Anselm’s view of time seems indifferent to the celebrated passages on the subject in Augustine’s Confessiones, for example. I took the occasion to consider some comparisons between Anselm and Boethius on duration, eternity, and timelessness. The final section of my discussion in this chapter focused on Anselm’s derivation of the supreme essence as spirit, and how this is related to the supreme essence as a simple substance. The chapter concluded with some comments about divine simplicity and its import for Anselm’s project. Chapter 6 addressed chapters 29–63 of the Monologion (M 29–63), which contain Anselm’s arguments about the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence. After a brief introduction, I set out with two sections on Augustine’s inquiries in De trinitate 6–10, under two headings: “Trinitarian Simplicity: To Speak of The Ineffable,” and “Trinity, Imperfection, and the Human Mind.” In these two sections, I provided a sketch of Augustine’s description of Trinitarian simplicity, the Trinitarian nature of the human mind, and why the imperfection of the human mind reflects and does not reflect the Trinitarian nature of the divine nature. This, I considered essential background for understanding Anselm’s own articulations and elaborations in M 29–63. Augustine argues that the members of the Trinity do not exist apart from each other, meaning that there is no Father without the Son and Holy Spirit, and there is no Son without the Father and Holy Spirit and there is no Holy Spirit without Father and Son. Augustine maintains this in tandem with the other idea that God or the Godhead (deitatis) possesses all of its life by its existence. This means that there is no Godhead with-

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out a Trinity. And Augustine also insists that precisely because of this Trinitarian simplicity the three in the Trinity are not three Gods. While he acknowledges that it is not easy to understand, he contends that this is what the scriptures teach and it is what the church affirms. And the more often it is repeated the less disorienting it will be. Anselm takes this background for granted and rehearses many of Augustine’s arguments about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; and about the Trinitarian nature of the human mind. Anselm adopts Augustine’s Trinitarian analogies or triads: beginning first with the triad of the lover, the beloved and the love that binds them, and then moving on to the triad of mind, knowledge, and love (mens, notitia, amor); and finally to variants of memory, understanding, and will / love (memoria, intellegentia / intellectus, uoluntas / amor). Although it has been suggested by some of Anselm’s current interpreters that he does not follow Augustine’s memoria, intellegentia, uoluntas because he uses the triad memoria, intelligentia, amor, I show that in fact the difference is more apparent than real. First, because Augustine himself sanctions replacing uoluntas with amor; and second, Augustine too uses amor, dilectio, and caritas as replacements for uoluntas in the triad memoria, intellegentia/ intellectus, uoluntas in certain sections of De trinitate. So Anselm’s practice could not possibly be a criticism of Augustine. Perhaps the most intriguing part of Chapter 6 is our discussion of Anselm’s views about gender and Trinitarian difference. Anselm appears to go further than Augustine in specifying exactly why father-son language (and imagery?) is better than mother-daughter language in describing the supreme essence and its utterance. We noted that Anselm’s sensibilities were shaped by some ancient and medieval views of human conception, gender, and natural difference. This means that his arguments here are more vulnerable to criticism. Anselm’s extended arguments about the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence ought to be considered an important contribution of the Monologion. For one thing, it takes up the most chapters of the Monologion as Anselm attempts a rational derivation of the Trinitarian nature of the divine essence that he insists is beyond counterargument. And for another, it makes for an interesting comparison with Augustine’s own explorations into the Trinitarian nature of the divine essence and the Trinitarian nature of

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the human mind. Although Anselm’s arguments here may not be the most philosophically interesting compared to the earlier chapters, they are the most central in explicating the “other things” that Christians believe in addition to believing that there is one supreme essence who created all things and through whom they have sustenance and their well-being (M 1). Our discussion on Chapter 7 began with Anselm’s justification of his method in M 64 and M 65. I took pains to point out the differences between Anselm’s justification of his method here and the assertions, protestations, and caveats that he rendered in the opening chapters. I noted that, because Anselm asserts the ineffability of the supreme nature, his argument that one can still say something meaningful and true about this nature straddles a number of difficulties, not least how a nature so ontologically unlike its maker can reflect the nature of its maker, let alone be able to express what that nature is in itself. How can a copy that is not a real copy tell us something about the original? And still less, how can an image that is not even a copy of the original tell us about the original? I argued that Anselm’s insistence that created things bear a certain likeness to the creator is a formal conception, and as such cannot explain how the different likenesses of created things exemplify the one creator. All the same, I concluded that Anselm’s view that reason is an adequate guide in his enterprise is defensible, especially because he presents reason as establishing its own limits. That is to say, reason leads the mind to an understanding or awareness that beyond a certain point it cannot go. So, while it can lead the inquirer towards an understanding of the existence of the supreme nature, and even towards some understanding of the Trinitarian nature of the supreme essence, reason itself comes up against its limits because the subject under investigation is an ineffable substance. From then on we proceeded to examine Anselm’s description of the soul and the nature of beatitude and the role of faith in the soul’s final end. I mentioned that Augustine’s description of faith in De trinitate 13 might have something to do with Anselm’s deliberations here. And after all that Anselm had said about reason and arguments it was now time to explain the faith whose understanding he had set out to support and sustain. Anselm takes the opportunity to describe what faith should look like, something he has

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assumed all along, since he describes the Monologion as an example of meditating on the reasons or understanding of faith. The remaining chapters of the Monologion also allow him to describe the goal of meditating on the divine essence. I took the occasion to point out how Anselm’s argument about the good in M 1–4 is reflected in these later chapters, underscoring that his discussion of the soul’s origin and its itinerary is ineluctably tied to his conception of the good. It is upon this basis that Anselm articulates a notion of rationality that is at once ethical and teleological, namely that the soul is at its most rational when it knows how to discern what is truly good from what is not and when it desires and loves the good itself. We also came across Anselm’s brief but important discussion about the soul’s choices and the just nature of its final end. At this juncture I probed the idea of the indifferent soul which neither loves nor despises the supreme nature, and went on to suggest that Anselm’s teleology provides no place for such a possibility. We also came upon Anselm’s interesting but curious argument for the immortality of the soul, which in the end uses as a premise what in fact needs to be proved, namely whether there is such a thing as a soul. Anselm of course assumes that because there is a soul and it is created to love something eternal, its creator, it must necessarily be immortal. Anselm seemed to overlook that if in fact someone has not heard or does not believe what Anselm believes about a supreme nature through whom all things exist and are good, the notion that human beings must necessarily love the supreme nature is not selfevident. And so it would not follow that the human being must necessarily have an immortal soul. That Anselm took much for granted here is perhaps reflected in the fact that as he lay dying he expressed to his confreres that he wished he had more time to work on the problem of the soul because he did not believe any of his contemporaries could solve it. I concluded Chapter 7 with the final chapter of the Monologion (M 80), with its declaration of Anselm’s belief that the word deus is truly fitting for the one supreme simple nature, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who is the proper object of love for the soul that was created to find its fulfillment in God, its creator. Throughout all my deliberations in the preceding chapters I have tried to suggest the many ways in which Anselm’s arguments would have resonated with his readers, and have provided some

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context for the kinds of intellectual and theological resources they would have brought to their reading of the Monologion. I have indicated at some points what limitations attend Anselm’s arguments because of his own theological and philosophical tendencies and the possibilities available to him because of the arguments in Augustine’s De trinitate.

EPILOGUE At the beginning of the Monologion Anselm promised that anyone of average intelligence could undertake these inquiries and arrive at the same conclusions. In the course of his investigations Anselm also acknowledged that reason has its limitations, and in M 64 and M 65 he offered a vigorous defense of the truthfulness of his conclusions and a justification for why he could still say something meaningful about an ineffable nature using language dependant on existent things that are uniquely dissimilar to that nature. Whatever one makes of Anselm’s confidence, here are some of the highlights of the Monologion: Anselm’s Three Ways (M1–4); his conception of creatio ex nihilo; his description of the utterance through which the supreme nature creates that which is consubstantial with itself; his analysis of the supreme nature’s existence in relation to time and place; his adoption of the notion that the mind is its own mirror and therefore offers a unique analogue to the Trinity; and his insistence that the good is the criterion of rationality and therefore the most proper object of the soul’s desire and devotion. In two important instances he takes positions that are not Augustine’s: first in his misattribution of his Greek formula to Augustine and second, his conception of creatio ex nihilo. Through it all, he exemplifies Augustine’s contention in De trinitate Book 15 that understanding the divine nature and the Trinity by some kind of reason, if we can, is better than accepting it on authority. Anselm also never wavers in his conviction that his arguments are beyond refutation. This is both a strength and a weakness. Anselm’s insistence that a person is not truly rational if that person is not motivated and oriented by the love of the good comes close to turning rationality into a theological virtue. This at once undercuts the autonomy of reason and exalts its role in theological thought. But when Anselm claims in M 64 that not one of his many arguments in the previous sixty-three chapters admits counterargument, it is easy to overlook the fact that thirty-five of those sixty-three chapters are devoted to proving by “rational arguments” the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. To say that this

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doctrine, in the form that Anselm articulates it, admits no counterarguments is to forget early Christian history and the complex process behind the articulation of that doctrine. At the same time, it shines a particular light on Anselm’s claim of Augustine’s De trinitate as the authority behind the Monologion. For Anselm, Augustine’s De trinitate is the fundamental text on Christian thought, insofar as it provides a meditation on the doctrine of God and the Trinity. Lanfranc misunderstood this, and also underestimated what the antecedent tradition in Augustine allows in the way of theological dialectic. And as we have seen, Anselm’s unwillingness to change the Monologion was based on an unshakeable conviction that he was well within an attested tradition of theological inquiry. To change the work would concede a point on which he ought not to concede, because the objections were misplaced. Skepticism about Anselm’s dependence on Augustine’s De trinitate takes for granted Lanfranc’s knowledge of patristic thought, and easily overlooks Lanfranc’s limited appreciation of some of the subtleties of Augustine’s thought. I have tried to demonstrate that anyone who repeats Anselm’s experience is bound to agree with Anselm on almost all the essential points about the inextricable links between Augustine’s De trinitate and the Monologion. It certainly does not mean that one must always look back from the Monologion to De trinitate. The Monologion generated its own history and effects as well, beginning with the Proslogion. And beyond the Proslogion, Anselm returned on more than one occasion to arguments in the Monologion to further some of his later inquiries. The neglect of the Monologion that I have alluded to in the course of this study has the corollary of missing this dimension of Anselm’s career as a whole and what central place the Monologion plays in his later thought. To mention but a few instances: De ueritate, the first of the Tres Tractatus, takes as its point of departure Anselm’s argument in M 18; nearly two decades after, Anselm refers to the Monologion and the Proslogion in his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi as worth retrieving for arguments he has already made to great satisfaction; in his very late De processione Spiritus Sancti Anselm alludes to some of his Trinitarian arguments in the Monologion. So, while the Proslogion is justly celebrated for its “ontological” argument, it is to the Monologion that one must

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return to gain a real sense of how Anselm first conceived the task of philosophical theology.1 There remains an important question, however, about the kind of theological rationality Anselm displays in the Monologion and his much later appeals to authority in his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, a work he sent to Pope Urban II. It is worth asking whether during the nearly two decades that separate the Monologion from the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi Anselm changed his mind about his confidence in the Monologion. His appeal to the authority of the pope as an arbiter of Christian teaching raises at least one question about the viability of proceeding sola ratione in any theological inquiry. All the same, his approach in the Monologion, his constant search for rational arguments to support settled Christian doctrines, is consistent with the view he reiterates in the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi. In any event, the responses he received from those who asked him to write the Monologion encouraged Anselm to believe that he had met their requirements and produced something beneficial. Whether their use of the Monologion met Anselm’s expectations we cannot know for sure, except that when he addresses himself to questions held over from the Monologion in the De ueritate, for example, he bears witness to the challenges posed to some of his readers by the arguments of the Monologion. Some of these difficulties probably lay behind his own dissatisfaction with the interconnected nature of the Monologion’s arguments, the disquiet that provided the impetus for his great discovery of the unum argumentum of the Proslogion. Orderic Vitalis wrote effusively that at Bec even the rustics were considered philosophers. Perhaps he may not have been exaggerating, if, in fact, a wider group of Anselm’s fellow monks were engaged in the activity of reading and copying the Monologion for themselves, committing it to posterity, as Anselm claimed. The rustics had to be far more capable than the hapless student portrayed in Anselm’s De Grammatico to be able to endure Anselm’s 1

See a recent work by Markus Enders, Wahrheit und Notwendigkeit: Die Theorie der Wahrheit bei Anselm von Canterbury im Gesamtzusammenhang seines Denkens und unter besonderer Berücksichtigung seiner antiken Quellen (Aristoteles, Cicero, Augustinus, Boethius). Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des mittelalters 64 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); and Bernd Goebel, Rectitudo: Wahrheit und Freiheit bei Anselm von Canterbury: Eine Philosophische Untersuchung seines Denkansatzes (Aschendorff: Munster, 2001).

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analytical approach in the Monologion. Anselm could content himself that he had different readers outside of Bec for whom the Monologion would serve a very useful purpose. He could count on Abbot Rainald of St. Cyprian, Poitiers, himself a master, to appreciate what he had accomplished. And how could Anselm forget Hugh of Lyon’s reception and what effect it had on him? We may even entertain the possibility that Lanfranc changed his mind about the Monologion. And while the later history of reception of the Monologion has not been kind to Anselm, that says little about Anselm’s unique contribution in the late eleventh century in trying to change the mood of theological discourse. I have also suggested in the course of this study of “a meditation on a meditation,” to use M. B. Pranger’s words, that part of the neglect of the Monologion may have been Anselm’s own doing: first, Anselm’s challenge to his potential critics to study Augustine’s De trinitate diligently in order to be able to judge the Monologion by it; and second, Anselm’s description of the Proslogion as the work which supersedes the Monologion, thereby granting permission to many of his readers to ignore the Monologion in preference for the Proslogion. I also noted in relation to Anselm’s charge to his critics that the absence of criticism may be an indication of how few among Anselm’s contemporaries knew Augustine’s De trinitate well enough to do as Anselm requested. But perhaps most astonishing of all is the fact that hardly anyone seems to have mentioned the troubling nature of Anselm’s Trinitarian assertion encapsulated in his Greek formula that one could speak of the Trinity as three substances in one person. Not even Abbot Rainald, living in that sensitive and controversialist environment in Poitiers, seems to have raised this objection. This probably means one of three things. First, those who read the Monologion were convinced of Anselm’s arguments in defense of the phrase. Second, those who had qualms about it could find deep resonances between what Anselm argued and what Augustine had presented in De trinitate. Or third, very few came across the problem because few had actually read the Monologion. Of the three possibilities the third seems most likely. As I bring this study to a close, I should like to recall Anselm’s words in his own defense as he responded to Lanfranc’s initial criticism of the Monologion: No reasoning of mine could convince me, however necessary it seemed, to venture to speak first about the things you included in

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your letter about that little work of mine, and certain other things which you did not include. For blessed Augustine with his profound arguments so proves these same points in his book De trinitate that, discerning the same things with my own limited reasoning, I might speak trusting in his authority. I say this not to defend any of the things I said to you but to demonstrate that I did not presume to state them on my own but took them over from someone else.2

Notice how different in spirit this is from the words that Descartes will use centuries later in explaining his affinities to Augustine. In his letter to Mesland dated May 1644 Descartes writes: I am grateful to you for pointing out the places in St. Augustine which can be used to give authority to my views. Some other friends of mine had already done so, and I am pleased that my thoughts agree with those of such a great and holy man. For I am not the kind of person who wants his views to appear novel; on the contrary, I make my views conform with those of others so far as truth permits me.3

No one needed to point out to Anselm the places in St. Augustine where he could find support for his arguments. Anselm could uphold both his novelty and his great dependence on Augustine without pretense or contradiction in most cases, because he knew that some of the arguments of “blessed Augustine” in De trinitate sanctioned his quest for finding “some kind of reason” to explain the Christian doctrine of God and the Trinity in the hope of strengthening the faith of many. The exemplum meditandi de ratione fide of the Monologion is analogous to the exercitatio mentis of De trinitate. In the works that followed after the Monologion, Anselm continued this dialogue with Augustine’s texts, elaborating and transforming some of the ideas he found in Augustine into his own distinctive style. The Monologion is the first installment of a lifelong appropriation of Augustine’s thought that can be tracked in all of Anselm’s major writings: from the Monologion’s sequel, the Proslogion to his last work, De concordia. I quote now Anselm’s words from chapter 6 of his Epistola de incarnatione Verbi to which I alluded previously in this study. 2

Fröhlich, Letters 1, p. 206. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 3, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch, and Anthony Kenny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 232. 3

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Describing his method in both the Monologion and the Proslogion, he writes: I may have posited in these works things that I have not read, or do not remember having read elsewhere. (I have not written as if to teach what our teachers did not know or to correct what they did not say well, but perhaps to say things about which they were silent, things that agree rather than disagree with their statements.) If I have said anything new, I by no means think that I should be gainsaid for that reason.4

Coming two decades after the Monologion, these words sound a different note than the charge to critics in the preface. But they are still linked to the “irrefutable arguments of the holy Fathers and especially blessed Augustine.” While there is an acknowledgment here that the use of the Christian past is far from simple, Anselm does not change his view that his arguments are beyond reproach. He is convinced that anyone who reads either his Monologion or Proslogion will find in them arguments they would not be able to disprove or make light of. But there is a concession too in Anselm’s language about things he had not read or does not remember reading. This may be a way of resolving the one obvious error in the Monologion, namely his pseudo-Augustinian gloss about his Greek formula and its supposed attestation in De trinitate. Let me end by recalling Anselm’s deafening silence about the Eucharistic controversy, and my assertion that his writing of the Monologion was a deliberate attempt to shift the focus of contemporary theological discourse. Anselm wanted to change the subject because he perceived a much more fundamental set of problems afflicting his contemporaries than the Eucharistic controversy. Hence the statement he makes in chapter one of the Monologion about the person who either has not heard or does not believe the things that Anselm believes about God; and his repetition of that theme in the major works that follow: Proslogion, Epistola de incarnatione Verbi and Cur Deus Homo. The goal in all these works is to persuade the unbeliever or the ignoramus and to strengthen the faith of the believer with good arguments.

4 Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, edited by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 246.

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INDEXES

Index of Ancient and Medieval Authors Index of Modern Authors Index of Places

INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL AUTHORS

This index does not include any entries for Anselm and Augustine, as they occur on almost every page. I have also not included entries for De trinitate and Monologion. However, I have included entries on other works by Anselm and Augustine.

Abelard

45n, 67, 68n, 69, 69n, 99n, 361n, 444

Alcuin of York

66, 67, 67n

Ambrose of Milan

168, 214n, 306

Anselm of Bec / Canterbury De concordia 33, 459 De Grammatico 10, 12, 19, 24, 25, 25n, 26, 28, 45, 46, 64, 135, 156, 161, 169, 170, 179, 186, 208, 253, 269, 357n, 457 De ueritate 14, 19 Epistola de incarnatione Verbi 8, 21, 44, 46, 106, 109, 131, 134, 142, 143, 144, 209, 210, 443, 456, 457, 459, 460 Proslogion XI, XII, XV, 2, 3, 4n, 5, 7, 8, 20, 22, 23, 32, 33, 43, 44, 47, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 62, 64, 65, 95, 109, 143, 144, 154, 174, 182, 182n, 183, 188, 203, 204, 209, 245, 273, 288, 456, 457, 458, 459, 460 Tres Tractatus 21, 456 Anselm of Laon

20

Aquinas, Thomas

XVIII,

4n, 6n, 30, 42, 43, 152, 190, 190n, 191, 192, 193, 194, 194n, 195, 195n, 196, 196n, 197, 197n, 198, 198n, 199, 200, 201, 201n, 202, 202n, 203, 203n, 204, 204n, 205, 205n, 206, 206n, 208, 441, 446 De ente et essentia 198, 205 Summa Contra Gentiles 198, 203, 203n, 204, 205n Summa Theologiae XVIII, 4n, 42, 43, 190, 190n, 194n, 195n, 196n, 197n, 200, 201, 201n, 203, 204, 204-205, 446

Aristotle

25, 67, 103, 113, 130, 130n, 157, 157n, 158n, 164, 177n, 179, 186, 191, 191n, 193, 197, 198, 202, 213, 213n, 214, 248, 252, 253, 253n, 269, 272, 273, 279, 281, 282, 292, 293, 294, 301, 326n, 348, 355n, 357n, 361 Categoriae 25, 103, 113, 130, 130n, 164, 179, 269, 272, 281 De interpretatione 25, 253, 253n Ethica Nicomachea 158, 164 Metaphysica 179, 191, 193, 197 Physica 191, 193, 213, 213n, 248 Sophisticis elenchis 213 Topica 282

490

INDEXES

Augustine Confessiones

1n, 64, 65, 65n, 116n, 130n, 214n, 219, 219n, 241, 241n, 269, 269n, 273, 279, 281, 382, 388, 449 De beata uita 388, 388n De ciuitate Dei 51, 226, 295, 378n, 388 De diuersis quaestionibus LXXXIII 164, 165n, 166n, 167n, 168n, 169, 240, 382 De doctrina christiana 165, 167, 169, 169n, 179n, 219n De fide et symbolo 215, 215n, 218n, 219, 224 De Genesi ad litteram 216n, 240n De Genesi contra manichaeos 216n De magistro 222, 236 De moribus ecclesiae catholicae 177n, 307, 307n, 308n, 326n, 382, 388 Soliloquia 278

Pseudo-Augustine De decem categoriis 182, 182n, 183 Avesgot

45, 46

Basil of Caesarea

121, 121n

Berengar of Tours

3, 37, 37n, 38n, 39, 40

Bernard of Chartres 233 Boethius 25, 26, 66, 66n, 67, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 103n, 104, 105, 105n, 115, 145, 164, 176, 176n, 181, 186, 186n, 213, 213n, 233n, 253, 253n, 273, 275, 276, 282, 282n, 283, 283n, 286, 290, 291, 292, 292n, 293, 294, 294n, 295, 295n, 301, 308, 330, 330n, 335n, 361, 362, 362n, 385, 393, 396, 397, 397n, 398, 398n, 399, 444, 449, 457n Consolatio Philosophiae 275, 290, 291, 292, 292n, 295 Contra Eutychen 26, 103, 104n, 105, 105n, 115, 145 De Trinitate 186n De Topicis Differentiis 26, 176, 176n, 181n, 282, 282n, 283, 283n, 335n, 397, 397n, 398n In Ciceronis Topica 397 In Isagogen Porphyrii 213 Opuscula Sacra 26, 66, 66n, 102, 103, 105, 115, 186 Calcidius

26, 31, 215, 226, 226n, 227, 238, 238n, 239, 239n, 243, 261, 262, 447, 467, 481, 483

Cassiodorus

68, 68n

Cicero

XI, 25, 104, 164, 168, 169, 169n, 176, 226, 227, 279, 282, 382, 388, 397, 457n, 467, 478, 482 25, 383 164, 168, 169, 169n 25, 164, 176, 282

De inuentione De officiis Topica

Durand (La Chaise Dieu) 17, 436

INDEX OF ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL AUTHORS

Eckhart, Meister

410, 410n

Eriugena Periphyseon

236, 410 182n, 236

Fredegesius

236

491

Gregory the Great 20 Gregory of Nyssa

121

Guibert of Nogent 19, 20, 24, 45n, 376, 376n, 377 Guitmund of Aversa 46 Hilary of Poitiers

306, 310, 381

Hugh of Lisieux

94

Hugh of Lyon

3, 14, 20, 46, 47, 56, 57, 58, 59, 63, 144, 437, 458

Hugh of Silva Candida 168n Hugh of St. Victor 48, 49 Isaac of Stella

95, 139, 140

Ivo of Chartres

168n

Lanfranc

XI, XVII, XVIII, 2, 3, 5, 6, 6n, 7, 8n, 13, 14, 23, 25, 25n, 26, 33, 37, 37n, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 47n, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 60, 63, 64, 66, 94, 100, 107, 109, 110, 144, 155, 156, 182, 182n, 183, 226, 227, 238, 375, 383, 391, 392, 395, 396, 423, 437, 437n, 442, 445, 456, 458

Lombard, Peter

68, 68n, 69, 204, 216, 217

Maurice

14, 53, 63, 64, 238, 436, 439

Maurilius of Rouen 38 Plato Parmenides Timaeus

26, 157, 157n, 158n, 159n, 186, 188, 199, 200, 215, 216, 219, 226, 226n, 233, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 261, 292, 293, 330, 447 330 26, 31, 215, 216, 219, 225, 226, 226n, 227, 233, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 249, 259, 261, 262, 447

Porphyry

25, 164, 179, 180, 180n, 186, 213

Pseudo-Dionysius

198, 198n, 199n, 410, 410n

Rainald of St. Cyprian 3, 14, 46, 56, 58, 63, 95, 144, 437, 458 Roscelin of Compiègne 28, 46, 99, 99n, 109, 160, 361, 361n Rupert of Deutz

67, 67n

492

INDEXES

Thierry of Chartres 186n, 233, 233n, 239 Urban II (Pope)

142, 457

Vitalis, Orderic

XVIII,

21, 94, 304, 457

William “Bona Anima” 423, 424 William of Conches 233, 233n, 234, 239 William (Duke of Normandy) 16, 38, 39 William of Poitiers 38n, 39, 39n

INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS Adams, M. M. Aersten, J. Allen, G. E Annas, J. Arnold, D. Asiedu, F. B. A. Ayres, L.

357n 202n 159n 157n 179n 7n, 388n 71n, 72n, 115, 116n, 224, 306, 381, 318n

Barnes, J. Barnes, M. R. Bochet, I. Bonner, G. Boschung, P. Bourassa, F. Brachtendorf, J. Brentano, F. Brown, M. Burns, J. P.

157n, 180n, 213n 71n, 115n, 128, 128n 72n, 330n 425n 25n 70n 6n, 70n, 71n, 72n, 306n, 381n, 408n 430, 430n 65n 425n

Carabine, D. Cavadini, J. Chadwick, H. Chibnall, M. Colish, M. L. Collins, A. Coulter, D. Cowdrey, H. E. J. Cross, R.

236n, 410n 67n, 72n 103, 103n, 105n, 186, 186n, 330n, 362, 362n XVII, XVIII, 38n, 39n 68n, 69n, 236n 25n, 437n 49n 37n, 38n, 182, 182n 115n, 204n

Davies, B.

De Montlos, J. Descartes, R. Deslisle, L. Divjak, J. Dronke, P. Duclow, D. Dyck, A. R.

XV, 19n, 197n, 201n, 208n, 221n, 271n, 376n, 412n, 460n XV, 154n, 337n, 339n, 368n, 369n, 402n, 405n, 415n 6n, 8n, 37n 30, 459 37n 1n 4n, 226n 236, 236n 169n

Enders, M. English, E. D. Erismann, C.

457n 169n 186n

Deane, S. N.

494

INDEXES

Evans, G. R.

XV, XVII,

Fine, G. Fitzgerald, P. Flasch, K. Fröhlich, W.

158n, 159n 295n 4, 4n, 187, 187n, 188, 221n, 446 XV, XVII, 53n, 58n, 108n, 134n, 135n, 136n, 137n, 138n, 436n, 459n

Gabriel, S. K. Gasper, G. E. M. Gersh, S. Gerson, L. P. Gibson, M. Gilbert, P. Gilson, E.

430n 8, 9, 9n, 69n, 96n 4n, 9, 182n, 253n 191n 25n, 182, 182n 3, 3n, 4, 163n 193, 194n, 197, 198, 198n, 199, 203, 205, 205n, 206 71n, 72n, 306n, 408n 457n 66n 11, 19 37n 355n 226n, 239, 239n, 240, 240n 219n 115n

Gioia, L. Goebel, B. Gorman, M. M. Grabmann, M. Granz, P. Green, M. H. Gregory, T. Gross, C. Gunton, C. Häring, N. M. Heidegger, M. Henry, D. P. Hill, E.

99n, 378, 378n, 379, 380, 460n

Huygens, R. B. C. Hwangbo, C-M.

186n, 233n 408, 409 VII, 19, 164n, 357n XV, 70n, 72n, 73n, 74n, 76n, 77n, 78n, 79n, 80n, 81n, 82n, 83n, 84n, 85n, 86n, 87n, 88n, 89n, 112n, 114n, 118n, 122n, 123n, 124n, 125n, 126n, 127n, 128n, 129n, 132n, 145n, 172n, 173n, 256n, 257n, 258n, 265n, 266n, 267n, 268n, 269n, 346n, 363n, 364n, 370n, 377, 377n, 387n, 389n, 390, 423n, 425n 394, 394n, 395 XV, 4n, 63n 100n, 101n, 162n, 174n, 184n, 187n, 188, 188n, 189, 300n, 325n, 335n, 342n, 343n, 345, 347n, 359n, 365n, 367n, 369n, 372n, 374n, 403n, 405n, 416n, 438n, 446n 37n 3, 3n, 4, 271n

Iwakuma, Y.

28, 99n

Kany, R. Kelly, J. N. D. Kenny, A.

70n 121, 121n, 141n 43n, 197, 199, 199n, 200, 201, 201n, 203, 204, 204n, 459n

Holopainen, T. Hopkins, J.

INDEX OF MODERN AUTHORS

495

Kienzler, K. King, P. Kohlenberger, H. K. Kretzmann, N. Kurz, R.

4n 19n, 28, 208n, 412n 4n 43n, 197n, 203n, 205n, 206n, 295n, 300n 1n

Leclercq, J. Leftow, B.

17n 19n, 197n, 208n, 221n, 271n, 273, 274, 274n, 295, 376n, 412n 295n 116, 116n 133n 181n 99n, 274, 274n, 276n, 291n

Lewis, D. Lienhard, J. T. Lonergan, B. Lovejoy, A. O. Luscombe, D. E. Macdonald, A. J. Madec, G. Magee, J. Mann, W. Marenbon, J.

Mews, C. J. Moran, D.

6n, 38n 72n, 311n, 408n 253n 376, 376n 28, 43n, 45n, 68n, 186n, 274, 274n, 275, 276, 276n, 291n, 294, 294n 409, 409n 11n 185n, 221n 235n 410n 11n, 274n XV, 145n, 170n, 171n, 267n, 313n, 314n, 315n, 319n, 320n, 322n, 323n, 324n 28, 68n, 69n, 361n 286n, 410n

Nash-Marshall, S. Newton, F. Novak, B.

300n 7n, 37n 243n

Oberleitner, M. Oliver, S. O’Rouke, F. Otten, W. Owen, G. E. L.

1n 191n 198n 410n 157n

Pegis, A. Pelikan, J. Pike, N. Pranger, M. B.

204, 204n 235n 273, 273n 15, 15n

Radding, C. Remer, G.

7n, 37n 169n

Marion, J-L. Marrone, S. P. Matthews, G. B. May, G. McGinn, B. McGrade, A. S. McKenna, S.

496

INDEXES

Rémy, G. Rist, J. Rodgers, K. Romer, F. Rosemann, P. Rouselle, A. Rubenstein, J.

311n 381, 381n 295n 1n 68, 68n 355n 20, 376, 376n, 377, 377n

Sadler, G. B. Schindler, A. Schmaus, M. Schmitt, F. S.

Sweeney, L.

300n 71n 71n XVII, XVIII, 4, 4n, 98n, 155, 155n, 156, 187, 187n, 188, 221n, 446 4n, 408, 408n, 409, 413n, 416n, 418, 409 3, 3n, 4, 5, 157, 157n 235n, 261, 261n 226, 226n, 228 212, 212n, 214n, 217, 217n, 278, 295 XII, XVIII, 5, 5n, 8, 26, 27, 30, 33, 40, 41, 41n, 42, 44, 44n, 45, 47, 47n, 48, 49, 49n, 50, 50n, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59n, 64, 90, 91, 110n, 152, 222, 233, 233n, 435, 435n, 441, 442 6n, 10, 11, 11n, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15n, 16, 16n, 17, 18, 18n, 19, 19n, 22, 482 71n, 306n 176n, 181n, 197n, 206n, 282n, 283n, 295n, 300, 335n, 397n, 398n 179n, 276n

Teske, R. Turcescu, L.

123n 121n

Van Engen, J. Van Fleteren, F. Van Winden, J. C. M. Vaughn, S. Vignaux, P. Viola, C. Visser, S.

67n XII, XVII, 2n, 356n 238n, 239n 14n 4, 4n 356n 208n, 271n

Weber, D. Whitaker, C. W. A. White, N. P. Williams, R. Williams, T.

1n 253n 157n 240 XV, 153n, 172n, 175n, 183n, 208n, 221n, 222n, 223n, 225n, 229n, 230n, 231n, 244n, 247n, 250n, 253n, 254n, 259n, 260, 271n, 278n, 284n, 287n, 288n, 296n, 421n 1n, 7n 197, 197n, 201, 201n, 202, 202n, 203, 206n

Schufreider, G. Sciuto, I. Sedley, D. Somfai, A. Sorabji, R. Southern, R. W.

Stock, B. Studer, B. Stump, E.

Wilmart, A. Wippel, J.

INDEX OF PLACES Anjou

37, 38

Bec

XI, XVII,

Brionne

7, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 38, 40, 45, 46, 50, 55, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 99, 182, 209, 227, 234, 238, 305, 423, 424, 439, 447, 457, 458 37

Caen Canterbury

XI, XV, XVII, XVIII,

Chartres

26, 37, 50, 66, 423 3n, 4n, 6n, 9, 9n, 14, 46, 58, 64, 69n, 96n, 99n, 142n, 182n, 187n, 188n, 221n, 253n, 271n, 457, 460n 168n, 186n, 233, 233n, 239

Laon Lisieux

45, 45n 37, 37n, 38, 39, 40, 94, 304

Normandy

24, 37, 38, 39, 46, 94, 304

Poitiers

3, 37, 46, 56, 63, 95, 144, 437, 458

Rome Rouen

37, 38 38, 94, 304, 305, 424

Saint Albans Saint Cyprian, Poitiers

95, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144 3, 46, 56, 63, 95, 144, 437, 458

Tours

2, 3, 37, 38,

Vercelli

37, 38