Reason, Community and Religious Tradition

Anselm's Argument and the Friars

Scott Matthews

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781138702561
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351806961
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2001: Reason, Community and Religious Tradition examines key questions about the relationship of rationality to its contexts by tracing the early history of the so-called 'ontological' argument. The book follows Anselm's Proslogion from its origins in the private, devotional context of an eleventh-century monastery to its reception in the public and adversarial contexts of the friars' schools in the thirteenth century. Using unpublished manuscript evidence from the Dominican and Franciscan schools at Oxford, Paris and Bologna in the thirteenth century, Matthews argues that the debate over Anselm's argument embodied the broader religious differences between the Franciscan and Dominican communities. By comparing the most famous figures of the period with their lesser-known contemporaries, Matthews argues that the Friars thought as communities and developed as traditions as they developed their arguments. This book will interest anyone concerned with the nature of rationality, and its relationship to communities and traditions, and what this entails for rational debate across cultural divides. In particular, it offers a fresh perspective on traditional approaches to the rationality of religion and religious belief.

Chapter 1

Anselm and Tradition

That Anselm (c. 1033–1109) was living as a monk when he composed the Proslogion often goes unmentioned by commentators on the argument. To understand the role of argument in his monastery at Bec in Normandy in the eleventh century it is necessary to realise that ‘reason’, when it was considered at all in this period, was considered in terms supplied by Scripture and by the broader Christian tradition. Reason was not an autonomous instrument of the individual regarded as solely or even chiefly competent for leading the mind/soul to the apprehension of truth. Rather, if reason were to be defined at all, it would be in terms of the soul’s very inadequacy for attaining a vision of truth by itself. God is Reason in the truest sense, and human beings are rational to the extent that they were created in God’s image. The Fall, however, ensured that God was cut off from human vision, and that the image of God within the soul was deformed. Henceforth, human beings would have some apprehension of God through the divine self-revelation in Scripture.

Monastic life, according to the Rule of St Benedict was conceived as a journey of obedience that effected the return of the soul to the state that it had lost through disobedience. Integral to this process was the life of the gospel, and in particular, the reading and comprehension of God’s self-revelation. Christ was the logos, the Word made flesh. To be Christ-like involved not so much an imitation of the life of Christ as depicted in the gospels, as an internalisation of the divine Word through meditation on Scripture. In a context where all reading was oral, meditation was truly a ‘rumination’ on the words of the sacred text:

To meditate is to attach oneself closely to the sentence being recited and weigh all its words in order to sound the depths of their full meaning. It means assimilating the content of a text by means of a kind of mastication which releases its full flavour. It means, as St Augustine, St Gregory, John of Fécamp and others say… to taste it with the palatum cordis (palate of the heart) or in the ore cordis (mouth of the heart).¹

Moreover, meditation involved memorisation. Being effected by oral repetition, memorisation was ‘muscular’ and ‘aural’ as well as visual. The sacred text, says Leclercq, was ‘inscribed in the body and in the soul’.² In the life of the monk, the Word is made flesh once more. The monk became a living text, an embodied revelation and to that extent, a restored image of God.

Memory, Understanding and Will

It is in the context of divine reading and the restoration of the image of God within the soul that Anselm’s meditation and prayer, the Monologion (1077) and the Proslogion (1078) are to be understood. To an extent, Anselm is going beyond traditional forms of monastic meditation, where repetition and non-rational internalisation of the Scripture was as important as any rational understanding of its words. However, just as human beings are rational to the extent that they are made in the image of God, so the restoration of this image may itself be effected through an exercise of the soul through the understanding. The process of ‘faith seeking understanding’ is an extension of devotional meditation, for it involves the attempt to apprehend the face of God within Scripture – to regain the rational apprehension of God lost at the fall.

Anselm presented the arguments of the Monologion in the guise of a mind thinking from scratch about that which it had formerly no knowledge.³ That Anselm attempted to reach the truths which ‘Christians necessarily believe’, by reason without the aid of authorities is sometimes read as an attempt to provide convincing proofs for belief directed to an unbeliever. The ‘practical use’ for which Anselm’s brethren requested the work has to be seen in terms of the enclosed life of the monastic community, however, and not in terms of an anachronistic evangelical mission. Nor is it the case that Anselm was seeking to provide or to find the ‘rational basis for faith’ which the faith of the individual somehow depended upon or even could depend upon.⁴ Rather, if Anselm was concerned with finding the ‘reason of faith’, it was the reason inherent in the reality apprehended by faith. The ‘reason of faith’, is the reason that is internal to the divine truth revealed in Scripture, to which our minds have only limited access. The point of the Monologion is the edification of the soul through the apprehension of the ‘reason’ of faith: the structure of reality itself.

The ignorance of the person seeking truth in the Monologion is not a device to secure the autonomy of reason. Anselm rejects categorically any suggestion that he is working independently of the sacred authorities, by invoking Augustine’s On the Trinity as a precedent for the rational exercise he presents before us. Also, in the prologue, Anselm challenges the reader to find anything in the Monologion that is not already found in the works of the Fathers. Not only is his understanding of reason shaped by tradition, therefore, but his reason is validated in and through tradition. In a context where all truth is found in God, novelty, originality (even independence), are not desirable attributes of the inquirer. In such a context, it is in terms of sacred tradition – the self-revelation of God – that any statement, opinion or argument must be validated. Anything worth saying must already be found within tradition at some level. When the inquirer strays from the authority, he or she will not only be led astray, but he or she will soon cease to be properly rational. For all medieval Christians, the boundaries of the rational were provided by the teachings of the faith.

Anselm’s adoption of ignorance in the Monologion should also be understood in the context of the humility that is the key to obedience within the Rule of St Benedict. The ignorance of the person thinking ‘within himself’ in the Monologion is a form of humility rather than an attempt to usurp independence. It is also, in fact, a kind of heuristic device. The point of the exercise, as in divine reading generally, lay not in the effect that it might have on an unbeliever, but rather the effect that the arguments have on the believer. Anselm’s adoption of the standpoint of ignorance is a device that is analogous to the scepticism of Descartes’ Meditations. Indeed, such devices may be an integral part of the genre. In Anselm’s case, however, the ignorance is used for a project that draws the individual further within tradition, not as a kind of scepticism that would free him or her from it. Since the text involves a transformation of the understanding, however, there is a sense in which the point of the exercise of the Monologion only becomes apparent to someone already well-advanced along its chain of arguments.

The arguments from which the meditation begins reflect Anselm’s two central, platonic assumptions about the nature of existence: participation and hierarchy. Beginning from the senses, Anselm writes, the easiest way for a mind to arrive at a knowledge of the supreme being is by consideration of those goods that it knows in the world. There must be some one good through which all other things are good. The good through itself is the supreme good, since all other things are good through it (c. 1). Anselm applies the same principles to greatness and to existence. All things that are great must be great through some other which is great through itself, and the greatest among all great things, since it is the source of all greatness (c. 2). All existing things exist through one thing that exists through itself (c. 3). Thus, all things exist by means of participation in some other.

In this participational account, the axiological and the ontological are one: the source of existence is also the source of value and esteem. That which exists through itself exists most greatly, and is the source of all great and good things. It is therefore supreme among all existing things (c. 3). Anselm consolidates this participational account of being and goodness, by reference to degrees of value between beings: a horse has more dignity than a tree, a human being more dignity than a horse. There must be an end to that hierarchy of beings and the supreme being is also that through which all other things exist and have their dignity (c. 4). This is the thing through which all others have being and existence, and from which they have being and existence (c. 5). Without this supreme nature, nothing at all would exist; and this thing exists from itself and is inferior to none. Whatever it is, it exists through itself and from itself alone (c. 6).

Hence, when the mind reflects on the source of being and goodness in things, it arrives at a being that is unique, that is the highest in the hierarchy of things, and which alone owes its existence to itself. All things are made from nothing by this supreme essence (cc. 7–9). Moreover, just as all things owe their origin to the creative presence of the supreme being, they also remain in existence through the creative presence of the supreme being (c. 13). It follows that wherever this being does not exist, nothing exists. Therefore, this being exists everywhere, in all things and through all things, transcending, encompassing and penetrating all things:

Therefore, if these things are joined to the things we found earlier: it is the same thing that exists in all things and through all things, and from whom, through whom and in whom all things exist (c. 14).

Anselm goes on to consider what can be said about this supreme being. He argues that the supreme being (which he does not call ‘God’ until the final, 80th chapter), can be said to be whatever it is better to be than not to be. The supreme being must therefore be something that has no superior (c. 15). Since the supreme being is not what it is by participation it cannot be composed of attributes. When the supreme being is said to be just, it is not some property of its being that is described – since the supreme being is not composed – but the essence of the supreme being itself (c. 16). It is possible to say what that supreme being is, but not how great or what kind of thing this being is, since all of its attributes are one and the same and only designate the supreme being itself (c. 17).

This being exists always and everywhere, is eternal and omnipresent, and yet is contained in no time or place and is not subject to change (cc. 18–25). Since the supreme being exists in such a unique way, it follows that the supreme being is uniquely whatever it is. In consequence, if any word is applied to the supreme being that is also applied to other beings, it must have a very different meaning when applied to the supreme being (c. 26). Thus, even if in one sense the supreme being has been ‘found’ there is another, deeper sense, in which the supreme being remains hidden.

The sense of the ‘otherness’ of the supreme being – which is present in all things, and is yet absent from, and wholly other than, all things – permeates the remainder of the Monologion. When the mind later tries to understand the nature of the supreme being as a trinity, it looks to itself since the supreme being may only be approached and expressed through some likeness and cannot be understood in itself (cc. 64–65). That which most nearly approaches the supreme being is that which is greater than all other created things: the human mind or soul (mens). It is in trying to understand the supreme being through itself, that the mind discovers its true self as a trinity of remembering, thinking and loving. It cannot think without remembering and willing, nor can it remember without thinking and willing, nor can it will anything without remembering and thinking of that which it wills. It is in this way that the soul is an image of God as trinity: at the same time, one and three. In knowing this, the soul approaches the image of the supreme being:

The more the rational mind tries to know itself, the more efficaciously it ascends to a knowledge of the supreme being; and the more that it neglects to study itself, the more it descends from its reflection (c. 66).

In finding what it is, the soul discovers its purpose in being. Remembering, thinking of, and loving the supreme nature is the purpose for which the soul was created in its image. By remembering, thinking of and loving the supreme good, the soul is renewed in its image:

It is quite obvious that every rational thing exists in order that it might love something more or less… according as its rational discernment judges… Now it cannot love (the supreme being) unless it strives to remember and understand it. It is therefore clear that the rational creature ought to devote all its power and will to remembering and understanding and loving the supreme good, for which purpose it knows it has its very existence (c. 68).

If the human soul is made in the image of the supreme good, and that image may approach the supreme good by remembering, thinking of, and loving it, then the point of the Monologion becomes evident by its end, when Anselm finally calls the supreme being he has been describing ‘God’ (c. 80). With every detail the mind has attained, the more it has come to mirror that which it is reflecting upon. To acquire the reason of faith, is to internalise the logos, making the Word of God flesh within oneself. The Proslogion represents a direct continuation of this project: to renew the image of God within the soul.

In the Proslogion Anselm stresses the importance of ‘faith seeking understanding’, but again he does not refer to scriptural authorities in support of his conclusions. The idea is once again to arrive at an understanding of what is believed on faith by means of reason. Just because he uses reason to find truths that he already believes on faith does not make the Proslogion non-rational or merely ‘theological’. It simply means that what is expected of reason is quite different for Anselm than f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Introduction: Arguments, Texts and Contexts
• 1 Anselm and Tradition
• 2 Encountering God Within: Anselm’s Argument Among the Early Franciscans in Paris
• 3 Other Ways to God: Anselm, the Early Dominicans and the Friars in Oxford
• 4 Bonaventure and the Franciscan Community
• 5 Thomas Aquinas and the Dominican Community
• 6 Contested Traditions
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index