Saint Anselm

Saint Anselm (circa 1033-1109), theologian, philosopher, and church leader, who proposed an argument for God's existence that is still being debated.

Anselm was born of a well-to-do family at Aosta, in northern Italy; in 1060 he joined the Benedictine monastery at Bec, in Normandy (Normandie), where the English prelate Lanfranc was prior. Some time later, after Lanfranc was called to England to become archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm was elected abbot of Bec. During these years he acquired a reputation for learning and piety, and his monks urged him to write out the meditations that were the basis of his instructions to them. Thus, he composed the Monologium (Soliloquy, 1077) in which—reflecting the influence of St. Augustine—he spoke of God as the highest being and investigated God's attributes. Encouraged by its reception, in 1078 he continued his project of faith seeking understanding, completing the Proslogium (Discourse), the second chapter of which presents the original statement of what in the 18th century became known as the ontological argument.

Anselm argued that even those who doubt the existence of God would have to have some understanding of what they were doubting: Namely, they would understand God to be a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Given that it is greater to exist outside the mind rather than just in the mind, a doubter who denied God's existence would be making a contradiction because he or she would be saying that it is possible to think of something greater than a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Hence, by definition God exists necessarily.

The basic criticism of Anselm's argument is that one cannot infer the extramental existence of anything by analyzing its definition. In Anselm's own time a fellow monk, Gaunilo of Marmoutier, challenged his argument, as did the later philosophers Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant. Nonetheless, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and some contemporary philosophers have offered similar arguments.

In 1093 Anselm was called to succeed Lanfranc as the archbishop of Canterbury. As archbishop, Anselm entered into a time of great strife with King William II, the successor of William the Conqueror, over the church's independence of the king's control (see Investiture Controversy). In and out of England, in exile in Italy, Anselm led a life of conflict with the secular powers. Despite these power struggles, he continued his theological speculations, writing Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man), a study of the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ as a way of atoning for sin (see Atonement).

In 1100, when Henry I succeeded to the English throne, Anselm returned to Canterbury. Controversy with the king continued over investiture, with another period of exile for Anselm. Anselm returned to Canterbury in 1106, where he died on April 21, 1109. He was canonized in 1163 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720. His feast day is April 21.