“I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. I do not seek to understand that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.”

Known as the father of scholasticism, the author of the famous definition of theology as “faith seeking understanding,” and of the “ontological argument for the existence of God,” Anselm was born at Aosta in northern Italy and entered the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy, in France and became its abbot. In 1093 he was nominated archbishop of Canterbury by King William II of England, an office he held for the last sixteen years of his life. Therefore, today he is called respectively in the three countries, Anselm of Aosta, of Bec and of Canterbury. As a monk, Anselm was a man of faith and prayer but he wanted to go deeper in understanding the Christian message. Already in the monastery his devotion and remarkable intellectual abilities gained him a high reputation as a teacher and spiritual director. There followed many outstanding works, the Monologion, the Proslogion, and a series of philosophical and theological works, and a book on dialectic. As the archbishop of Canterbury Anselm defended the church’s interest in England amid the Investiture Controversy and for this he came into conflict with the English Kings William II and Henry I and was exiled twice. But this did not prevent him from being very productive theologically and continued his writing and produced two great works, De Incarnatione Verbi and Cur Deus Homo (why God became man), his greatest theological work, which expounded the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement, repudiating the current notion of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, that the devil had rights over fallen man which it was a leading purpose of the Cross to satisfy. All these have made him the foremost among the medieval thinkers, both as a philosopher and a theologian. He is considered the most luminous and penetrating intellect between St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. He differed from most of his predecessors in preferring to defend the faith by intellectual reasoning instead of employing scriptural and patristic authorities. “Faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) is the dictum especially associated with him.

Thus the Monologion tried to establish the being of God solely on rational grounds and in the Proslogion this reasoning was given the more systematic form of the “ontological argument.” Anselm here maintained that if we mean by God “that than which nothing greater can be thought” then we cannot think of this entity except as existing; for if it did not exist, it would not be “that than which nothing greater can be thought.” Like St Augustine, Anselm saw in faith the recondition of the right use of reason but yet it remains out duty, so far as we can, to exercise our minds in apprehending revealed truth. “And I do not seek to understand that I may believe but believe that I might understand. For this too I believe since, unless I first believe, I shall not understand” This is Augustine’s famous dictum: “Do not seek to understand in order to believe but believe that thou may understand.” Anselm rephrased it repeatedly and came to the apt formula, “faith seeking understanding,” an active love of God seeking a deeper knowledge of God. Once the faith is held fast, he argued, an attempt must be made to demonstrate its truth by means of reason: “To me, it seems to be negligence if, after confirmation in the faith, we do not study to understand that which we believe.” The whole of his theology is a working out of this programme. He asked questions and sought reasonable explanations regarding the central mysteries of Christianity: the existence of God, the nature of the Trinity, the purpose of the Incarnation, etc. In his life and writings Anselm manifested a balance between faith and reason, between inquiry and acceptance of divine revelation that has remained exemplary for Christians ever since.

Isaac Padinjarekuttu
(Professor of Church History at Oriens Theological College, Shillong)