Wisdom of Saints: St Anselm of Canterbury

The Feast of Anselm, Doctor, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1109

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant Anselm, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 St Anselm is sometimes called the proto-scholastic and the Father of Scholasticism, the first of the scholastic theologians who sought to use reason to understand theology. His work would pave the way for St Thomas Aquinas, whose work was considered to be the pinnacle of medieval scholasticism. While scholasticism has its detractors as it can sometimes lead to extrapolating too far and conclusions in error when attempting to explain divine mysteries, the scholastic movement left a lasting impression on theology in the West, and St Anselm himself made many notable contributions to the scholastic movement.

St Anselm was born in what is modern Italy in the early 1030s. His mother, Ermengerga, taught him piety and a love of learning in his early years. Interestingly, some of these early stories were preserved by a biographer of St Anselm who was able to record some of St Anselm’s early memories. At a young age he entered a nearby Benedictine monastery in order to begin his education. His mother passed away and after a period of mourning, St Anselm began to travel around to different monasteries throughout Europe. He resolved to leave in large part because his father treated him quite harshly, pushing him to leave home. Eventually settling at the Benedictine monastery at Bec in Normandy, St Anselm sought to learn from one of the monks there, Lanfranc, due to his reputation for his spirituality and intellectualism.

St Anselm quickly applied himself under Lanfranc and became Lanfranc’s chief disciple, even sharing in his teaching responsibilities. It was at this time that St Anselm first began to contemplate taking a monastic habit and joining the abbey at Bec. His biographer records that he felt some trepidation over this, fearing his reasons for seeking the habit, so he consulted with Lanfranc and ultimately the local bishop, both of whom encouraged him. He became a monk in 1060, and three years later Lanfranc was appointed Abbot of Caen and St Anselm succeeded him as prior of Bec.

It was during this time as a monk that St Anselm would begin composing some of his most notable works. After serving fifteen years as prior in 1078 he was appointed abbot, a testament to the high regard in which he was held by the other monks of Bec. Finally in 1094 St Anselm was summoned to England, ordained and installed as the Archbishop of Canterbury, owing to his increasing reputation as a theologian, negotiator and stateman.

St Anselm continued to serve as Archbishop of Canterbury, despite the occasional bouts of exile during times of confrontation with various monarchs, until his death in 1109. His biography, The Life of St Anselm, by Eadmer, provides significant insight into his life and his own thoughts—having been interviewed by his biographer and willingly provided details on aspects of his early life missing from many other saints.

While St Anselm had many notable works, it is his theological treatises and his role in the development of scholasticism, the school of though which St Anselm helped to popularize which  sought to apply logic and philosophy to the study and defence of theology. It was St Anselm’s work that laid the foundation for what would become the pinnacle of Christian Scholasticism, St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.

This can be seen in some of his earlier, shorter works, such as Cur Deus Homo, usually rendered into English as Why God Became a Man. This work holds to the dialectical style that would become extremely popular with other Scholastic theologians. In it, St Anselm explores numerous questions relating to the incarnation, beginning with a systematic approach that deals not simply with atonement, but also issues of the fall and issues of sufficiency and necessity relating to God’s intervention. The entire work is presented as a dialogue between St Anselm and his opponent, giving the entire work a very neo-platonic feel, but also helping to make some of the theology more accessible to readers than might otherwise have been the case (excepting of course the reality that those who would have been able to read at the time in which Anselm was writing were a select group already).

Many of St Anselm’s works continue to exist today, famously his ontological argument for God from his Proslogium. In the preface, St Anselm writes that:

I began to ask myself whether there might be found a single argument which would require no other for its proof than itself alone; and alone would suffice to demonstrate that God truly exists, and that there is a supreme good requiring nothing else, which all other things require for their existence and well-being; and whatever we believe regarding the divine Being.

This would become the basis for his famous ontological argument, which would draw criticism and praise from many famous theologians and philosophers of his day and for centuries to come. Proslogion is usually rendered into English by the title Discourses on the Existence of God, however his original intended title was Faith Seeking Understanding, and perhaps more accurately represents the theology of his longest lasting influence.

The basis of much of St Anselm’s work, and its popularity, was that it was not self-referential in the sense of requiring readers to accept all previous dogmatic statements as foundational truths before moving on to new arguments. St Anselm often addressed arguments based only on proofs from natural reason, rather than relying on his own dogmatic beliefs.

In the beginning of his Monologium, St Anselm notes:

If any man, either from ignorance or unbelief, has no knowledge of the existence of one Nature which is the highest of all existing beings, which is also sufficient to itself in its eternal blessedness, and which confers upon and effects in all other beings, through its omnipotent goodness, the very fact of their existence, and the fact that in any way their existence is good; and if he has no knowledge of many other things, which we necessarily believe regarding God and his creatures, he still believes that he can at least convince himself of these truths in great part, even if his mental powers are very ordinary, by the force of reason alone.

This approach mirrors the modern apologetic Mere Christianity by CS Lewis which is viewed as being thoroughly accessible because it similarly does not simply rely on the acceptance of previous dogmatic statements, but rather proceeding from a position of faith seeks to apply reason to achieve understanding.

For St Anselm, while engaged in rigorous philosophical arguments, still he believed that faith must hold a place of primacy to guide reason. A statement of his that has become a modern axiom is, “I believe in order that I may understand.” Reason, to St Anselm, was the servant of faith, which must come first in order to guide reason into understanding.