Anselm
was born in 1033 near Aosta, in those days a Burgundian town on the frontier
with Lombardy. Little is known of his early life. He left home at twenty-three,
and after three years of apparently aimless travelling through Burgundy and
France, he came to Normandy in 1059. Once he was in Normandy, Anselm's interest
was captured by the Benedictine abbey at Bec, whose famous school was under the
direction of Lanfranc, the abbey's prior. Lanfranc was a scholar and teacher of
wide reputation, and under his leadership the school at Bec had become an
important center of learning, especially in dialectic. In 1060 Anselm entered
the abbey as a novice. His intellectual and spiritual gifts brought him rapid
advancement, and when Lanfranc was appointed abbot of Caen in 1063, Anselm was
elected to succeed him as prior. He was elected abbot in 1078 upon the death of
Herluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec. Under Anselm's leadership the
reputation of Bec as an intellectual center grew, and Anselm managed to write a
good deal of philosophy and theology in addition to his teaching,
administrative duties, and extensive correspondence as an adviser and
counsellor to rulers and nobles all over Europe and beyond. His works while at
Bec include the Monologion (1075–76), the Proslogion (1077–78),
and his four philosophical dialogues: De grammatico (1059–60), De
veritate, and De libertate arbitrii, and De casu diaboli
(1080–86).
In
1093 Anselm was enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury. The previous Archbishop,
Anselm's old master Lanfranc, had died four years earlier, but the King,
William Rufus, had left the see vacant in order to plunder the archiepiscopal
revenues. Anselm was understandably reluctant to undertake the primacy of the
Church of England under a ruler as ruthless and venal as William, and his
tenure as Archbishop proved to be as turbulent and vexatious as he must have
feared. William was intent on maintaining royal authority over ecclesiastical
affairs and would not be dictated to by Archbishop or Pope or anyone else. So,
for example, when Anselm went to Rome in 1097 without the King's permission,
William would not allow him to return. When William was killed in 1100, his
successor, Henry I, invited Anselm to return to his see. But Henry was as
intent as William had been on maintaining royal jurisdiction over the Church,
and Anselm found himself in exile again from 1103 to 1107. Despite these
distractions and troubles, Anselm continued to write. His works as Archbishop
of Canterbury include the Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi (1094), Cur
Deus Homo (1095–98), De conceptu virginali (1099), De processione
Spiritus Sancti (1102), the Epistola de sacrificio azymi et fermentati
(1106–7), De sacramentis ecclesiae (1106–7), and De concordia
(1107–8). Anselm died on 21 April 1109. He was canonized in 1494 and named a
Doctor of the Church in 1720.
Anselm's
motto is “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum).
This motto lends itself to at least two misunderstandings. First, many
philosophers have taken it to mean that Anselm hopes to replace faith
with understanding. If one takes ‘faith’ to mean roughly ‘belief on the basis
of testimony’ and ‘understanding’ to mean ‘belief on the basis of philosophical
insight’, one is likely to regard faith as an epistemically substandard
position; any self-respecting philosopher would surely want to leave faith
behind as quickly as possible. The theistic proofs are then interpreted as the
means by which we come to have philosophical insight into things we previously
believed solely on testimony. But as argued in Williams 1996 (xiii-xiv), Anselm
is not hoping to replace faith with understanding. Faith for Anselm is more a
volitional state than an epistemic state: it is love for God and a drive to act
as God wills. In fact, Anselm describes the sort of faith that “merely believes
what it ought to believe” as “dead” (M 78). (For the abbreviations used
in references, see the Bibliography below.) So “faith seeking understanding”
means something like “an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God.”
Other
philosophers have noted that “faith seeking understanding” begins with “faith,”
not with doubt or suspension of belief. Hence, they argue, the theistic
arguments proposed by faith seeking understanding are not really meant to
convince unbelievers; they are intended solely for the edification of those who
already believe. This too is a misreading of Anselm's motto. For although
the theistic proofs are borne of an active love of God seeking a deeper
knowledge of the beloved, the proofs themselves are intended to be convincing
even to unbelievers. Thus Anselm opens the Monologion with these words:
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 exist 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. (M 1)
And
in the Proslogion Anselm sets out to convince “the fool,” that is, the
person who “has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’ ” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1).
Having
clarified what Anselm takes himself to be doing in his theistic proofs, we can
now examine the proofs themselves. In the first chapter of the Monologion
Anselm argues that there must be some one thing that is supremely good, through
which all good things have their goodness. For whenever we say that different
things are F in different degrees, we must understand them as being F
through F-ness; F-ness itself is the same in each of them. Thus,
for example, all more or less just things “must be more or less just through
justice, which is not different in diverse things” (M 1). Now we speak
of things as being good in different degrees. So by the principle just
stated, these things must be good through some one thing. Clearly that thing is
itself a great good, since it is the source of the goodness of all other
things. Moreover, that thing is good through itself; after all, if all
good things are good through that thing, it follows trivially that that thing,
being good, is good through itself. Things that are good through another (i.e.,
things whose goodness derives from something other than themselves) cannot be
equal to or greater than the good thing that is good through itself, and so
that which is good through itself is supremely good. Anselm concludes,
“Now that which is supremely good is also supremely great. There is, therefore,
some one thing that is supremely good and supremely great—in other words,
supreme among all existing things” (M 1). In chapter 2 he applies the
principle of chapter 1 in order to derive (again) the conclusion that there is
something supremely great.
In
chapter 3 Anselm argues that all existing things exist through some one thing.
Every existing thing, he begins, exists either through something or through
nothing. But of course nothing exists through nothing, so every existing thing
exists through something. There is, then, either some one thing through which
all existing things exist, or there is more than one such thing. If there is
more than one, either (i) they all exist through some one thing, or (ii) each
of them exists through itself, or (iii) they exist through each other. (iii)
makes no sense. If (ii) is true, then “there is surely some one power or nature
of self-existing that they have in order to exist through themselves” (M
3); in that case, “all things exist more truly through that one thing than
through the several things that cannot exist without that one thing” (M
3). So (ii) collapses into (i), and there is some one thing through which all
things exist. That one thing, of course, exists through itself, and so it is
greater than all the other things. It is therefore “best and greatest and
supreme among all existing things” (M 3).
In
chapter 4 Anselm begins with the premise that things “are not all of equal
dignity; rather, some of them are on different and unequal levels” (M
4). For example, a horse is better than wood, and a human being is more
excellent than a horse. Now it is absurd to think that there is no limit to how
high these levels can go, “so that there is no level so high that an even
higher level cannot be found” (M 4). The only question is how many
beings occupy that highest level of all. Is there just one, or are there more
than one? Suppose there are more than one. By hypothesis, they must all be
equals. If they are equals, they are equals through the same thing. That thing
is either identical with them or distinct from them. If it is identical with
them, then they are not in fact many, but one, since they are all identical with
some one thing. On the other hand, if that thing is distinct from them, then
they do not occupy the highest level after all. Instead, that thing is greater
than they are. Either way, there can be only one being occupying the highest
level of all.
Anselm
concludes the first four chapters by summarizing his results:
Therefore, there is a certain nature
or substance or essence who through himself is good and great and through
himself is what he is; through whom exists whatever truly is good or great or
anything at all; and who is the supreme good, the supreme great thing, the
supreme being or subsistent, that is, supreme among all existing things. (M
4)
He
then goes on (in chapters 5–65) to derive the attributes that must belong to
the being who fits this description. But before we look at Anselm's
understanding of the divine attributes, we should turn to the famous proof in
the Proslogion.
Looking
back on the sixty-five chapters of complicated argument in the Monologion,
Anselm found himself wishing for a simpler way to establish all the conclusions
he wanted to prove. As he tells us in the preface to the Proslogion, he
wanted to find
a single argument that needed
nothing but itself alone for proof, that would by itself be enough to show that
God really exists; that he is the supreme good, who depends on nothing else,
but on whom all things depend for their being and for their well-being; and
whatever we believe about the divine nature. (P, preface)
That
“single argument” is the one that appears in chapter 2 of the Proslogion.
(We owe the curiously unhelpful name “ontological argument” to Kant. The
medievals simply called it “Anselm's” argument [ratio Anselmi].)
The
proper way to state Anselm's argument is a matter of dispute, and any detailed
statement of the argument will beg interpretative questions. But on a fairly
neutral or consensus reading of the argument (which I shall go on to reject),
Anselm's argument goes like this. God is “that than which nothing greater can be
thought”; in other words, he is a being so great, so full of metaphysical
oomph, that one cannot so much as conceive of a being who would be greater than
God. The Psalmist, however, tells us that “The fool has said in his heart,
‘There is no God’ ” (Psalm 14:1; 53:1). Is it possible to convince the fool
that he is wrong? It is. All we need is the characterization of God as “that
than which nothing greater can be thought.” The fool does at least understand
that definition. But whatever is understood exists in the understanding, just
as the plan of a painting he has yet to execute already exists in the
understanding of the painter. So that than which nothing greater can be thought
exists in the understanding. But if it exists in the understanding, it must also
exist in reality. For it is greater to exist in reality than to exist merely in
the understanding. Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be thought
existed only in the understanding, it would be possible to think of something
greater than it (namely, that same being existing in reality as well). It
follows, then, that if that than which nothing greater can be thought existed
only in the understanding, it would not be that than which nothing greater can
be thought; and that, obviously, is a contradiction. So that than which nothing
greater can be thought must exist in reality, not merely in the understanding.
Versions
of this argument have been defended and criticized by a succession of
philosophers from Anselm's time through the present day. Our concern here is
with Anselm's own version, the criticism he encountered, and his response to
that criticism. A monk named Gaunilo wrote a “Reply on Behalf of the Fool,”
contending that Anselm's argument gave the Psalmist's fool no good reason at
all to believe that that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in
reality. Gaunilo's most famous objection is an argument intended to be exactly
parallel to Anselm's that generates an obviously absurd conclusion. Gaunilo
proposes that instead of “that than which nothing greater can be thought” we
consider “that island than which no greater can be thought.” We understand what
that expression means, so (following Anselm's reasoning) the greatest
conceivable island exists in our understanding. But (again following Anselm's
reasoning) that island must exist in reality as well; for if it did not, we
could imagine a greater island—namely, one that existed in reality—and the
greatest conceivable island would not be the greatest conceivable island after
all. Surely, though, it is absurd to suppose that the greatest conceivable
island actually exists in reality. Gaunilo concludes that Anselm's reasoning is
fallacious.
Gaunilo's
counterargument is so ingenious that it stands out as by far the most
devastating criticism in his catalogue of Anselm's errors. Not surprisingly,
then, interpreters have read Anselm's reply to Gaunilo primarily in order to
find his rejoinder to the Lost Island argument. Sympathetic interpreters (such
as Klima 2000) have offered ways for Anselm to respond, but at least one
commentator (Wolterstorff 1993) argues that Anselm offers no such rejoinder,
precisely because he knew Gaunilo's criticism was unanswerable but could not
bring himself to admit that fact.
A
more careful look at Anselm's reply to Gaunilo, however, shows that Anselm
offered no rejoinder to the Lost Island argument because he rejected Gaunilo's
interpretation of the original argument of the Proslogion. Gaunilo had
understood the argument in the way I stated it above. Anselm understood it
quite differently. In particular, Anselm insists that the original argument did
not rely on any general principle to the effect that a thing is greater when it
exists in reality than when it exists only in the understanding. And since that
is the principle that does the mischief in Gaunilo's counterargument, Anselm
sees no need to respond to the Lost Island argument in particular.
Correctly
understood, Anselm says, the argument of the Proslogion can be
summarized as follows:
- That than which nothing greater can be thought can be thought.
- If that than which nothing greater can be thought can be thought, it exists in reality.
Therefore,
- That than which nothing greater can be thought exists in reality.
Anselm
defends (1) by showing how we can form a conception of that than which nothing
greater can be thought on the basis of our experience and understanding of
those things than which a greater can be thought. For example,
it is clear to every reasonable mind
that by raising our thoughts from lesser goods to greater goods, we are quite
capable of forming an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought on
the basis of that than which a greater can be thought. Who, for example, is
unable to think . . . that if something that has a beginning and end is good,
then something that has a beginning but never ceases to exist is much better?
And that just as the latter is better than the former, so something that has
neither beginning nor end is better still, even if it is always moving from the
past through the present into the future? And that something that in no way
needs or is compelled to change or move is far better even than that, whether
any such thing exists in reality or not? Can such a thing not be thought? Can
anything greater than this be thought? Or rather, is not this an example of
forming an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought on the basis of
those things than which a greater can be thought? So there is in fact a way to
form an idea of that than which a greater cannot be thought. (Anselm's Reply to
Gaunilo 8)
Once
we have formed this idea of that than which nothing greater can be thought,
Anselm says, we can see that such a being has features that cannot belong to a
possible but non-existent object — or, in other words, that (2) is true. For
example, a being that is capable of non-existence is less great than a being
that exists necessarily. If that than which nothing greater can be thought does
not exist, it is obviously capable of non-existence; and if it is capable of
non-existence, then even if it were to exist, it would not be that than which
nothing greater can be thought after all. So if that than which nothing greater
can be thought can be thought — that is, if it is a possible being — it
actually exists. (This reading of the argument of the Proslogion is
developed at length in Williams and Visser 2009, chapter 5.)
Recall
that Anselm's intention in the Proslogion was to offer a single argument
that would establish not only the existence of God but also the various
attributes that Christians believe God possesses. If the argument of chapter 2
proved only the existence of God, leaving the divine attributes to be
established piecemeal as in the Monologion, Anselm would consider the Proslogion
a failure. But in fact the concept of that than which nothing greater can be
thought turns out to be marvelously fertile. God must, for example, be
omnipotent. For if he were not, we could conceive of a being greater than he.
But God is that than which no greater can be thought, so he must be omnipotent.
Similarly, God must be just, self-existent, invulnerable to suffering,
merciful, timelessly eternal, non-physical, non-composite, and so forth. For if
he lacked any of these qualities, he would be less than the greatest
conceivable being, which is impossible.
The
ontological argument thus works as a sort of divine-attribute-generating
machine. Admittedly, though, the appearance of theoretical simplicity is
somewhat misleading. The “single argument” produces conclusions about the
divine attributes only when conjoined with certain beliefs about what is
greater or better. That is, the ontological argument tells us that God has
whatever characteristics it is better or greater to have than to lack, but it
does not tell us which characteristics those are. We must have some independent
way of identifying them before we can plug them into the ontological argument
and generate a full-blown conception of the divine nature. Anselm identifies
these characteristics in part by appeal to intuitions about value, in part by
independent argument. To illustrate Anselm's method, I shall examine his
discussions of God's impassibility, timelessness, and simplicity.
According
to the doctrine of divine impassibility, God is invulnerable to suffering.
Nothing can act upon him; he is in no way passive. He therefore does not feel
emotions, since emotions are states that one undergoes rather than actions one
performs. Anselm does not find it necessary to argue that impassibility
is a perfection; he thinks it is perfectly obvious that “it is better to be . .
. impassible than not” (P 6), just as it is perfectly obvious that it is
better to be just than not-just. His intuitions about value are shaped by the
Platonic-Augustinian tradition of which he was a part. Augustine took from the
Platonists the idea that the really real things, the greatest and best of
beings, are stable, uniform, and unchanging. He says in On Free Choice of
the Will 2.10, “And you surely could not deny that the uncorrupted is
better than the corrupt, the eternal than the temporal, and the invulnerable
than the vulnerable”; his interlocutor replies simply, “Could anyone?” Through
Augustine (and others) these ideas, and the conception of God to which they
naturally lead, became the common view of Christian theologians for well over a
millennium. For Anselm, then, it is obvious that a being who is in no way
passive, who cannot experience anything of which he is not himself the origin,
is better and greater than any being who can be acted upon by something outside
himself. So God, being that than which nothing greater can be thought, is
wholly active; he is impassible.
Notice
that Augustine also found it obvious that the eternal is better than the
temporal. According to Plato's Timaeus, time is a “moving image of
eternity” (37d). It is a shifting and shadowy reflection of the really real. As
later Platonists, including Augustine, develop this idea, temporal beings have
their existence piecemeal; they exist only in this tiny sliver of a now, which
is constantly flowing away from them and passing into nothingness. An eternal
being, by contrast, is (to use my earlier description) stable, uniform, and
unchanging. What it has, it always has; what it is, it always is; what it does,
it always does. So it seems intuitively obvious to Anselm that if God is to be
that than which nothing greater can be thought, he must be eternal. That is, he
must be not merely everlasting, but outside time altogether.
In
addition to this strong intuitive consideration, Anselm at least hints at a
further argument for the claim that it is better to be eternal than temporal.
He opens chapter 13 of the Proslogion by observing, “Everything that is
at all enclosed in a place or time is less than that which is subject to no law
of place or time” (P 13). His idea seems to be that if God were in time
(or in a place), he would be bound by certain constraints inherent in the
nature of time (or place). His discussion in Monologion 22 makes the
problem clear:
This, then, is the condition of
place and time: whatever is enclosed within their boundaries does not escape
being characterized by parts, whether the sort of parts its place receives with
respect to size, or the sort its time suffers with respect to duration; nor can
it in any way be contained as a whole all at once by different places or times.
By contrast, if something is in no way constrained by confinement in a place or
time, no law of places or times forces it into a multiplicity of parts or
prevents it from being present as a whole all at once in several places or
times. (M 22)
So
at least part of the reason for holding that God is timeless is that the nature
of time would impose constraints upon God, and of course it is better to be
subject to no external constraints.
The
other part of the reason, though, is that if God were in place or time he would
have parts. But what is so bad about having parts? This question brings
us naturally to the doctrine of divine simplicity, which is simply the doctrine
that God has no parts of any kind. Even for an Augustinian like Anselm, the
claim that it is better to lack parts than to have them is less than
intuitively compelling, so Anselm offers further arguments for that claim. In
the Proslogion he argues that “whatever is composed of parts is not
completely one. It is in some sense a plurality and not identical with itself,
and it can be broken up either in fact or at least in the understanding” (P
18). The argument in the Monologion goes somewhat differently. “Every
composite,” Anselm argues, “needs the things of which it is composed if it is
to subsist, and it owes its existence to them, since whatever it is, it is
through them, whereas those things are not through it what they are” (M
17). The argument in the Proslogion, then, seeks to relate simplicity to
the intuitive considerations that identify what is greatest and best with what
is stable, uniform, and unchanging; the argument in the Monologion, by
contrast, seeks to show that simplicity is necessary if God is to be—as the
theistic proofs have already established—the ultimate source of his own
goodness and existence.
Anselm's
success in generating a whole host of divine attributes through the ontological
argument does present him with a problem. He must show that the
attributes are consistent with each other—in other words, that it is possible
for one and the same being to have all of them. For example, there seems at
first glance to be a conflict between justice and omnipotence. If God is
perfectly just, he cannot lie. But if God is omnipotent, how can there be
something he cannot do? Anselm's solution is to explain that omnipotence does
not mean the ability to do everything; instead, it means the possession of
unlimited power. Now the so-called “ability” or “power” to lie is not really a
power at all; it is a kind of weakness. Being omnipotent, God has no weakness.
So it turns out that omnipotence actually entails the inability to lie.
Another
apparent contradiction is between God's mercy and his justice. If God is just,
he will surely punish the wicked as they deserve. But because he is merciful,
he spares the wicked. Anselm tries to resolve this apparent contradiction by
appeal to God's goodness. It is better, he says, for God “to be good both to
the good and to the wicked than to be good only to the good, and it is better
to be good to the wicked both in punishing and in sparing them than to be good
only in punishing them” (P 9). So God's supreme goodness requires that
he be both just and merciful. But Anselm is not content to resolve the apparent
tension between justice and mercy by appealing to some other attribute,
goodness, that entails both justice and mercy; he goes on to argue that justice
itself requires mercy. Justice to sinners obviously requires that God punish
them; but God's justice to himself requires that he exercise his supreme
goodness in sparing the wicked. “Thus,” Anselm says to God, “in saving us whom
you might justly destroy . . . you are just, not because you give us our due,
but because you do what is fitting for you who are supremely good” (P
10). In spite of these arguments, Anselm acknowledges that there is a residue
of mystery here:
Thus your mercy is born of your
justice, since it is just for you to be so good that you are good even in
sparing the wicked. And perhaps this is why the one who is supremely just can
will good things for the wicked. But even if one can somehow grasp why you can
will to save the wicked, certainly no reasoning can comprehend why, from those
who are alike in wickedness, you save some rather than others through your
supreme goodness and condemn some rather than others through your supreme
justice. (P 11)
In
other words, the philosopher can trace the conceptual relations among goodness,
justice, and mercy, and show that God not only can but must have all three; but
no human reasoning can hope to show why God displays his justice and mercy in
precisely the ways in which he does.
In
On Freedom of Choice (De libertate arbitrii) Anselm defines
freedom of choice as “the power to preserve rectitude of will for its own sake”
(DLA 3). He explores the notion of rectitude of will most thoroughly in On
Truth (De veritate), so in order to understand the definition of
freedom of choice, we must look first at Anselm's discussion of truth. Truth is
a much broader notion for Anselm than for us; he speaks of truth not only in
statements and opinions but also in the will, actions, the senses, and even the
essences of things. In every case, he argues, truth consists in correctness or
“rectitude.” Rectitude, in turn, is understood teleologically; a thing is
correct whenever it is or does whatever it ought, or was designed, to be or do.
For example, statements are made for the purpose of “signifying that what-is
is” (DV 2). A statement therefore is correct (has rectitude) when, and
only when, it signifies that what-is is. So Anselm holds a correspondence
theory of truth, but it is a somewhat unusual correspondence theory. Statements
are true when they correspond to reality, but only because corresponding to
reality is what statements are for. That is, statements (like anything
else) are true when they do what they were designed to do; and what they were
designed to do, as it happens, is to correspond to reality.
Truth
in the will also turns out to be rectitude, again understood teleologically.
Rectitude of will means willing what one ought to will or (in other words)
willing that for the sake of which one was given a will. So, just as the truth
or rectitude of a statement is the statement's doing what statements were made
to do, the truth or rectitude of a will is the will's doing what wills were
made to do. In DV 12 Anselm connects rectitude of will to both justice
and moral evaluation. In a broad sense of ‘just’, whatever is as it ought to be
is just. Thus, an animal is just when it blindly follows its appetites, because
that is what animals were meant to do. But in the narrower sense of ‘just’, in
which justice is what deserves moral approval and injustice is what deserves
reproach, justice is best defined as “rectitude of will preserved for its own
sake” (DV 12). Such rectitude requires that agents perceive the
rectitude of their actions and will them for the sake of that rectitude. Anselm
takes the second requirement to exclude both coercion and “being bribed by an
extraneous reward” (DV 12). For an agent who is coerced into doing what
is right is not willing rectitude for its own sake; and similarly, an agent who
must be bribed to do what is right is willing rectitude for the sake of the
bribe, not for the sake of rectitude.
Since,
as we have already seen, Anselm will define freedom as “the power to preserve
rectitude of will for its own sake,” the arguments of On Truth imply
that freedom is also the capacity for justice and the capacity for moral
praiseworthiness. Now it is both necessary and sufficient for justice, and thus
for praiseworthiness, that an agent wills what is right, knowing it to be
right, because it is right. That an agent wills what is right because it is
right entails that he is neither compelled nor bribed to perform the act.
Freedom, then, must be neither more nor less than the power to perform acts of
that sort.
Thus
Anselm takes it to be obvious that freedom is a power for something: its
purpose is to preserve rectitude of will for its own sake. God and the good
angels cannot sin, but they are still free, because they can (and do) preserve
rectitude of will for its own sake. In fact, they are freer than those who can
sin: “someone who has what is fitting and expedient in such a way that he
cannot lose it is freer than someone who has it in such a way that he can lose
it and be seduced into what is unfitting and inexpedient” (DLA 1). It
obviously follows, as Anselm points out, that freedom of choice neither is nor
entails the power to sin; God and the good angels have freedom of choice, but
they are incapable of sinning.
But
if free choice is the power to hold on to what is fitting and expedient, and it
is not the power to sin, does it make any sense to say that the first human
beings and the rebel angels sinned through free choice? Anselm's reply to this
question is both subtle and plausible. In order to be able to preserve
rectitude of will for its own sake, an agent must be able to perform an action
that has its ultimate origin in the agent him- or herself rather than in some
external source. (For convenience I will refer to that power as “the power for
self-initiated action.”) Any being that has freedom of choice, therefore, will
thereby have the power for self-initiated action. The first human beings and
the rebel angels sinned through an exercise of their power for self-initiated
action, and so it is appropriate to say that they sinned through free
choice. Nonetheless, free choice does not entail the power to sin. For
free choice can be perfected by something else, as yet unspecified, that
renders it incapable of sinning.
In
On the Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli) Anselm extends his
account of freedom and sin by discussing the first sin of the angels. In order
for the angels to have the power to preserve rectitude of will for its own
sake, they had to have both a will for justice and a will for happiness. If God
had given them only a will for happiness, they would have been necessitated to
will whatever they thought would make them happy. Their willing of happiness
would have had its ultimate origin in God and not in the angels themselves. So
they would not have had the power for self-initiated action, which means that
they would not have had free choice. The same thing would have been true, mutatis
mutandis, if God had given them only the will for justice.
Since
God gave them both wills, however, they had the power for self-initiated
action. Whether they chose to subject their wills for happiness to the demands
of justice or to ignore the demands of justice in the interest of happiness,
that choice had its ultimate origin in the angels; it was not received from
God. The rebel angels chose to abandon justice in an attempt to gain happiness
for themselves, whereas the good angels chose to persevere in justice even if
it meant less happiness. God punished the rebel angels by taking away their
happiness; he rewarded the good angels by granting them all the happiness they
could possibly want. For this reason, the good angels are no longer able to
sin. Since there is no further happiness left for them to will, their will for
happiness can no longer entice them to overstep the bounds of justice. Thus
Anselm finally explains what it is that perfects free choice so that it becomes
unable to sin.
Like
the fallen angels, the first human beings willed happiness in preference to
justice. By doing so they abandoned the will for justice and became unable to
will justice for its own sake. Apart from divine grace, then, fallen human
beings cannot help but sin. Anselm claims that we are still free, because we
continue to be such that if we had rectitude of will, we could preserve it for
its own sake; but we cannot exercise our freedom, since we no longer
have the rectitude of will to preserve. (Whether fallen human beings also
retain the power for self-initiated action apart from divine grace is a tricky
question, and one I do not propose to answer here.)
So
the restoration of human beings to the justice they were intended to enjoy
requires divine grace. But even more is needed than God's restoration of the
will for justice. In Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became A Human Being)
Anselm famously attempts to show on purely rational grounds that the debt
incurred by human sin could be suitably discharged, and the affront to God's
infinite dignity could be suitably rectified, only if one who was both fully
divine and fully human took it upon himself to offer his own life on our
behalf.
Reference
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- Schmitt, Franciscus Salesius, 1968. S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Friedrich Fromann Verlag.
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- Klima, Gyula, 2000. “Saint Anselm's Proof: A Problem of Reference, Intentional Identity and Mutual Understanding”, in G. Hintikka (ed.), Medieval Philosophy and Modern Times (Proceedings of “Medieval and Modern Philosophy of Religion”, Boston University, August 25–27, 1992), Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 69–88. [Preprint available online]
- Leftow, Brian, 1997. “Anselm on the Cost of Salvation,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 6: 73–92.
- Oppenheimer, P., and Zalta, E., 1991. “On the Logic of the Ontological Argument”, Philosophical Perspectives 5: 509–529; reprinted in The Philosopher's Annual: 1991, XIV (1993): 255–275.
- Plantinga, Alvin (ed.), 1965. The Ontological Argument, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.
- Southern, R. W., 1990. Saint Anselm: A Portrait in Landscape, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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- Williams, Thomas, and Sandra Visser, 2009. Anselm (Great Medieval Thinkers), New York: Oxford University Press.
- Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 1993. “In Defense of Gaunilo's Defense of the Fool,” in C. Stephen Evans and Merold Westphal (eds.), Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
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