Anselm on God: the Ontological Argument

in this lecture we're looking at Anselm and his argument for the existence of God and in our last lecture we were discussing how the lives of LAN from Quebec and Anselm were intertwined we discussed how there is this methodological dispute over the proper use of reason over against Authority in the 11th century of the church well the lives of LAN Franck in Anselm were really intertwined all the way until the end of Anselm's life in fact in terms of church appointment the to hold to the most significant posts within the northern European Church during this time it was in 1060 that Anselm becomes a monk they are the abbey of BEC well just three years later LAN Franck is moved and he takes up a post elsewhere and it was at this point that antem himself becomes prior there in the abbey of bec the parallels don't really stop there though LAN track will eventually go on to be the Archbishop of Canterbury again one of the more important posts in all of Northern Europe he would then die in 1089 and after about four years when the King William Rufus let the post lay open and took the money for himself finally in 1093 antem himself is appointed as the successor to LAN Frank as the Archbishop of Canterbury in many ways the parallel of their life is really vital because it at least serves as an analogy to the way in which their approach to theology was so very similar in our last lecture of course we talked about how on the one hand you had the rationalists those who believe that if there is a tension or a conflict between authority and the use of reason they believe that reason was going to win out and on the other hand there were those who believed that if the same conflict was present that the issue of authority was so great be its scriptural Authority or the church's authority that it would eventually lead to really the cessation of reason as the guiding principle for resolving the conflict and we said that LAN Franck was somewhere in between that he believed and he taught that faith and reason were locked in a dialectical relationship the two worked simultaneously to resolve conflict in theology and to bring problems to a conclusion well Ansel comes from this exact same position in some of many ways becomes the real kata fire of the basis of this perspective he believes that there is a dialectic that is based first and foremost on faith on the revelation of God in the scriptures and in a manner of speaking only those who have eyes to see and ears to hear are going to be able to approach the problem of theological issues from the context of faith which is received on authority still Anselm like LAN frog believed that God has given us minds to think and that when exercise properly within their own jurisdictions and within their own bounds our minds can and should attempt to reason within the context of this faith but what we're going to look at now is Anselm's argument for the existence of God it's sometimes known as the ontological argument for the existence of God and we need to say right now Anselm's argument here is both loved and hated depending on the philosopher depending on the generation of those who hear it in 1720 the Pope at the time declared Anselm to be a doctor of the church now a doctor of the church is a very specific title that's not given out very often and it's only given to those whose teachings are considered to be both healthy and part of the establishment of the Catholic Church itself and so within the Catholic Church Anselm is highly regarded and considered one of the doctors within Protestant circles and some has had highs and lows again depending on those who find his arguments to be compelling well what were his arguments how did they come about well as Anselm took over the Priory there in BEC he was appointed at a very young age and he was appointed at such a young age because his learning and his ability to deal with rich and deep philosophical issues set him apart from those who were around him in other words aunt Selma is not a late comer to the success of his intellectual disciplines he is put forward at a very young age and as the story goes as his first biographer tells us Anselm's teachings on the existence of God or on theology itself were so well regarded by those at Beck that he began to get something of a name for himself even outside of the abbey and at least Ansem tells us it was at the behest of his students that it began to write some of his arguments down now on the issue of philosophy and on the proof of God's existence and some actually wrote two books and the presence of both of these books signal something of mania within Anselm and some tells us that he spent the majority of his life seeking a single argument for God's existence he wanted a comprehensive theory or comprehensive argument that put to rest the question of can our minds reason their way to God on the context of their own Authority or on their own reasoning and we're going to say something about what Anton was trying to do here in a minute but he wrote two books the first was the monologue Ian then the monologue Ian was again his first attempt and some wrote down his arguments for God's existence he completed it he was joyous and happy about it and then it all seemed to unravel and some found himself immediately working on another book on a second book the monologue and he felt was simply insufficient as an argument for God's existence but he eventually came up with though in 1078 when he published the prog in the follow-up to the monologue ian is an some finally came to a conclusion of an argument that he believed was the definitive proof for the establishment of a rational basis for God's existence so in 1078 the prog in is published in Anselm would go on thereafter to be hailed as one of the first great philosophical theologians in the course of Western history now a few things need to be said about this book and about what in some believes he's doing before we actually get into this argument first and foremost it needs to be pointed out immediately what Anson was doing when he's arguing for the existence of God is he is not approaching the argument in the way that modern apologists approach the subject he is not attempting to come up with an argument for God's existence reasoning as it were from atheism into theism or into try fee is amour the Trinitarian doctrines he is not beginning with the assumption that he has no faith and that he does not believe in God the fact that this escapes people so very often is really troubling for historians the book itself the process is actually written as a prayer the whole thing begins with this opening paragraph that calls for the reader actually in this case it's Anselm himself he's referring to himself really in the third person but he calls on himself to slow down to rest in God and to think about him something of the life of leisure sought by all these intellectuals in the Middle Ages the entire book in fact is based on Psalm 50 to where it says that the fool says in his heart that there is no God an ant's how therefore is basing everything is going to say all the arguments for the existence of God on this idea that from Scripture from the context of faith he reads that the fool says there is no God and he kind of flips that verse on its head and he says well I don't want to be a fool I am a man of faith and the entire context of my life therefore is to work out and to meditate upon the very existence of God the book itself within an Tom's day actually was better known by the phrase faith seeking understanding the red thread in other words that runs throughout the entire to the book is that an saan believes that he as a man of faith basing his idea off of Psalm 52 is going to then attempt to not be a fool and argue and debate and think and ponder and all these wonderful things he thinks about the existence of God so it's very important that you understand that the process and is not meant to be an apologetics work in and of itself rather the entire focus of it is to strengthen the faith of the one who already has it and this reality is actually signaled by the fact that the book is not simply an argument for God's existence the other focal point of this book is a long meditative reflection on what we call the attributes of God questions about his goodness justice mercy God's ah sanity and so on and so forth so again Ansem was doing something different here than simply trying to reason his way to God having kicked the ladder of faith away rather he sees himself as sitting within the context of faith and he wants to reckon with God with his mind well the argument that and some comes up with in fact at least by large we think this is the first such argument of this kind for the existence of God this argument is often referred to as the quote ontological argument for the existence of God now when I was a philosophy student I always got annoyed when the professor would not stop and define what all this jargon meant so we're going to do that first before we actually get into an Tom's argument what were the vocabularies in the context of the world he was dealing with well an ontological argument in this case is something of a misnomer when we talk about ontology what we often mean is what is the being of something what is its essence on tossin Greek this means being or essence of course we're arguing not about what it's accidental properties are but rather what it means to be the very thing that we're talking about just to put some concrete examples under this if I were to talk about what it means to be human that in and of itself has the question of ontology built into it what does it mean to be something what does it mean to be this human this person now if I were going to be talking about the accidental properties as they're called it would be discussing things like what does it mean to be a tall man or a short man tall and short are accidental that is to say one could be a human whether or not you're tall or short you can be either or accidental properties in other words are the things that we consider to be non-essential to what it means to be something so when Anson was talking about the existence of God in we'd call this the ontological argument what he's arguing about is who is God in and of himself now what's going on here in an Tom's mind is he is applying roughly speaking a platonic perspective on the theory of knowledge perhaps your call from our lecture on Plato that he had a conception of knowledge in which all the things we see around us in this world are not the essence or the reality of things in and of themselves when we come across a chair or we come across a person when we come across specific things Plato argued that the reason we can recognize one thing as being a cheer and then next to it we can see an entirely different chair different shape different fabric different material different color different everything and yet we still call them both chair for Plato that was almost mystical because for him there was out there in the world of being out and something he called the world of forms some great concept of chair itself and so for Plato we don't have to really go up and do experiments on individual chairs to come to the conclusion that their chairs we just simply recognize them because we have some mystical insight some connection to this world of the forms we recognize chair when we see it now that platonic move is going to come home to roost here in Anselm because Anselm is going to talk about God's being in a more platonic way that is to say he's going to use what we call a priori concepts now let's define this again a priori the really easiest way to remember this is it functions like a geometric proof or it functions another math analogy the way we know what a triangle is if I were to say what is the triangle well the definition of a triangle is something with three sides you don't have to get up and go figure out what a triangle is if you know that the definition of a triangle is something with three sides then you'll recognize it anytime you see it you don't have to be a scientist in other words to go figure out what a triangle is someone says a triangle is something with three sides when do you recognize then a triangle well I recognize it because it has three sides in other words a priori arguments reason from basic principles to something else it doesn't go from experiment or experience or us testing something and then coming to a conclusion after we experiment or test it again in my mind this idea of geometry works best I don't know about you but having to memorize all those theorems all those principles of geometry that you then apply every time you come across a problem in math always used to irk me but what were we doing well we were memorizing the a priori or the definitions the foundational principles of geometry then if you go measure things you can figure out what the answer is based off of those principles well what am was going to do with his arguments for the existence of God is he's going to apply this platonic backdrop this platonic foundation you might say with this concept of a priori knowledge to the question of does God exist so if you find this argument that he makes weird you have to understand what he thinks he's doing so often in the modern world we don't really reason this way in terms of our philosophical knowledge the scientists have programmed us all to believe but the way you know something is you experience it you test it you measure it now in the sciences they don't believe only that you know things from sensory experience but too often what ends up happening is people believe well if you want to know who God is you have to talk about how you've experienced them only there is a lack of privilege in the modern world in other words at least in modern evangelicalism or Protestantism with these kinds of a priori arguments in ASL today these are perfectly fine arguments now as we'll see in a minute not everyone accepts them even in Angela's own day so if in the end when I finish describing what hansom has to say about the ontological argument if you ultimately find the argument inconclusive or problematic you wouldn't be the first that's okay it's not because you're stupid that you don't get this but rather in the historical framework you got to put yourself within the mind of Anselm to figure out what he thinks he's doing or you reject possibly what it is he has done okay so we have the Platonic idea here is the idea that there are things outside of our minds that are more true than the things in our minds and we have the Platonic idea that the things we experience in this world are but half-remembered concepts of the very true thing out there in the world of the forms now Ansem was on a full plate inist but these are more or less the conclusions that he has derived from his platonic perspective on things so you have those two principles from Platonism then within this he has this again a priori desire to prove God's existence again much in the same way that we would talk about a triangle being simply three sides and you don't need to measure a triangle to figure out if that definition is true the definition precludes that it already is true whether you measure it or not so when an sum comes to the question does God exist and he begins with Psalm 52 and this idea that the fool says in his heart that there is no God an psalms basic argument is going to drive these three concepts together and the slogan you might call it that anthem comes up with for God's existence is that God is quote that than which nothing greater can be thought and what an sum does is he starts to reflect on the idea that in our minds we have this idea that there is God and that he is great now the argument that he puts forward is if God only exists in the mind and if the definition of God is that he is that then which nothing greater could be thought then he has to actually exist outside of the mind as well now this is usually when people sort of go cross-eyed they feel as if he's made some logical jump here so he says we begin with the side together that God is that then which nothing greater can be thought and then he goes well if it's in your mind it's got to be in existence outside of the mind as well well that would be crazy again if you don't bring in to bear the Platonic ideas here and again the more triangle argument if you want to call it that just as a triangle is in our mind the thing that has three sides but a triangle doesn't exist in our minds rather the definition of it exists in our minds but the reality of what it is to be a triangle is not simply located in our mind even if I want to believe that a triangle does not have three sides well the definition of a triangle is something of three sides so I can't even change the categories because again a priori the definition of a triangle is something with three sides that's really what enzyme was saying here our definition of God is that then which nothing greater can be thought from the context of faith we know that God is supreme he is the great one he is the omnipotent one there is nothing greater than God put it that way well what Anselm then decides he concludes is that this can't simply exist in our mind because the very definition of it is not located only in our mind rather the context of faith teaches us that this is who God is and God's existence outside of our mind is itself greater than the definition as we hold it in our minds eye so he argues quote even the fool then is forced to agree that something then which nothing greater can be thought exists in the mind it does we have that definition of God in our mind and anthem continues he understands this when he hears it and therefore what is understood meaning what has grasped what is known is in the mind he goes on and surely that then which nothing greater can be thought cannot exist in the mind alone for he says if it exists only in the mind it can be thought to exist in reality also which is greater now those couple of sentences if you were to just pick them up on any old day and not know the Platonic a priori arguments going on behind this might not make a great deal of sense but what Anton was saying is our very definition of God is that which is greater than all things nothing is greater than God and therefore he says the fact that it is in my mind means that it can't simply be part of my mind the very definition of who God is means God's definition who he is is not only located in my mind perhaps another way of looking at this is what Anton is saying within the context of faith is that we don't have to kid ourselves into believing that we somehow made up God from a Platonic argument which is again where he's coming from we can know that if we're believing that there is a God and if we have received this from the context of faith and if Psalm 52 tells us that the fool says there is no God well the very definition of who this God is can't simply be in our mind it can't simply be a figment of our mind he says it has to exist in reality okay is everyone convinced now of course not everyone will be convinced to this argument and there's a lot of reasons for this not everyone shares the Platonic basis of where Anton was coming from and even if people have a modified platonic view of how we come to knowledge they will not always accept where Anselm takes this well you're not alone if you feel that this is not the best argument or if it's an inconclusive argument even in Anselm zone life after he published the profs log in there was another monk command by the name of Guan Yi lo who actually issued a pretty scathing retort to this argument in terms of the history philosophy this argument goes down is one of the most clever little digs at what someone believes is a bad argument quani Lowe argues that based on the concepts and the principles that Anton was using well then why would we not then think of an island that then which nothing greater can be thought of and he called this the happy Island or the blessed Island he says there's something in my mind an island that day in which nothing greater can be thought the best island possible therefore he argues it has to exist in terms of argumentation this is what we call a reductio ad absurdum which is just fancy jargon for he take someone's argument all the way to its logical or illogical conclusion and then you read that conclusion back into the original premise glen ela argues if that's your argument for god i have an island timeshare for you on an island that day in which nothing greater can be thought now antim isn't deterred by this he actually finds it to be a helpful clarification in Psalms response is but simply that God is of a different category than an island but again he's a plate inist in this sense describing an island in this way is illogical God rather is the perfect being he is the one who was outside of time and creation so the description of him is of a different category and some ends up arguing then any description of an island or anything else now some have seen in this that aunt Selma's special pleading he's saying well this argument works from my argument but any rejection of it because it sounds crazy in other spheres of life well those don't count but again and some from the context of where he's coming from arguing these a priori arguments arguing these geometric arguments as I've called them here is he believes dealing with a different category he's not dealing with anything in this world rather from the context of this world he is trying to say how can I say that I know that God exists Meital experienced him he is perfect and he is far away and therefore he says blah Neela's criticism does not destroy his ontological proof for the existence of God now I want to say one more thing about the Prophet in terms of its application before we conclude the ontological argument for Anselm is not unto itself the only thing he cares about rather for him the issue is how we then describe what we know about God how we come to that knowledge of God and what he does for the rest of the process Audion is yes a sustained meditation on what we call the attributes of God now all we mean by the attributes of God is simply the ways we describe God biblical language and other language is God good well if you say yes well the goodness of God is one of his attributes is he all powerful is he all-knowing if you say yes to both of those things congratulations you're discussing the attributes of God well one of the things that Anselm gives to theology and it's something that you and I do pretty often if we're describing God is he realizes that if we hold God up to an objective standard that is outside of himself then we've actually play something either over against God or above God so using this sort of basic method this Platonic ideal in the ontological argument as we call it today and so begins to reflect on things like God's goodness and as justice and is omnipotent set cetera and we're Ansem comes down on this is you realize is that at some point a standard like goodness has to itself have a source there has to be to put it overly simply a goodness greater than which nothing can be good just as God is by definition that than which nothing greater can be thought and where and some lands on this and the arguments and the debate that he gives to the rest of the medieval world is on the one hand he says goodness is not some standard that God lives up to either God Himself is goodness he is the very source of goodness all other standards of goodness are measured according to him same thing with justice the definition of God is that he is a just and a merciful God therefore proclaiming that God is being unjust or unmerciful is a contradiction of terms God is justice therefore we can't describe him as being unjust and we say this all the time God is goodness he is good we don't challenge that the definition of God is the very source of goodness itself so to say is God ever evil is by definition impossible almost the same as saying is there a four-sided triangle well in the end Ansem applies the dialectic of faith seeking understanding that he believes in order that he might know and he comes up with one of the most interesting and the most provocative debates and descriptions for the very existence of God but the only way to understand that as we've said in this lecture is to understand the man his context and his intellectual instincts and though throughout the centuries even until today people have loved or hated the ontological argument in the end its legacy in terms of shaping the way people talk about God means that Anselm is one of the most important figures in the history of the church you

Channel: Ryan Reeves

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Keywords: Anselm Of Canterbury (Author), God (Deity), Philosophy (Field Of Study), Medieval Philosophy (Literature Subject), Landfranc of Bec, Ontology (Field Of Study), Ontological Argument, Apologetics

Id: hnL9x7DmLVo

Length: 27min 20sec (1640 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2015