Sadler's Lectures
Anselm Proslogion - Divine Attributes And God's Being - Sadler's Lectures
This lecture discusses the medieval Christian thinker, monk, and bishop, Anselm of Canterbury's work, the Proslogion, and focuses on his discussion in chapters 5, 11, 12, and 23 focusing on further developing the "one argument" unpacking implications of God as "that that which nothing greater can be thought" (quo maius cogitari non potest). The divine attributes include whatever it is better to be than not to be, for example justice, wisdom, eternity, happiness, truth, among others, and each of them is entirely what God is.
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- Duration:
- 12m
- Broadcast on:
- 24 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Sadler Lectures Podcast. Responding to popular demand, I'm converting my philosophy videos into sound files you can listen to anywhere you can take an MP3. If you like what you hear and want to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. I hope you enjoy this lecture. In St. Anselm's Proslogian, one feature of the work that many readers lose sight of, because the ways in which they conceptually arrange the topics and chapters in relation to each other is that the unum argumentum, the single argument, is not just supposed to prove that God exists or God has being, which is where most people's attention tends to be, but also that God is the supreme good that everything else requires in order to be good and everything else that we believe about God. So that's a lot that's actually packed in there. And we could think about this in terms of what we traditionally call divine attributes, things that we can truly say about God that are not just metaphorical, but tell us what God is. And we can think about the nature of God's being or existence. So Deus Essay, God existing God being, doesn't just mean having existence. It means having all this other stuff that is characteristic of or essential to God. And so we begin in chapter five, right after the three chapters that are often called an ontological argument or ontological arguments. And Anselm is going to widen our scope. So notice that he is using the same formula that is going to run throughout the entire work. God being that than which nothing greater can be thought. And notice as well that we have an alternative formula. Anselm doesn't always use Quomius Kogitare, known protest. Here he is going to substitute Neil Mayus Voliet. Nothing greater can be thought or is able to be thought. And we don't have to worry too much about the change in terminology, but it's worth pointing out there. And so what is the argument or exposition that he's going to unfold here? He says, what are you God, that then which nothing greater can be thought? What are you, if not the greatest of all beings, a sumum omnium, right? Who alone exists through himself and made all the other beings, everything other than himself from nothing. So this is part of traditional Christian theology, creation ex nihilo, and God existing through God's self. And this is actually a recapitulation of things that are being said in Anselm's earlier work, the Monologian. No surprise, given that he said that the prose-logian emerged from considering the complicated structure of arguments and thinking, can I actually reduce them to one argument? This is where he's actually doing that. And he says, going further on, whatever is not this is less than the greatest that can be thought. And so whatever isn't the greatest of all alone existing through himself, making everything else from nothing, whatever isn't this is less than what can be thought. It's less than the greatest thing that can be thought. So that can't be you, God, it can be anything else. And then he goes on and says, what possible good or goodness Bonham would be missing? Deist, lacking is another way, or needing, from the supreme good, Sumo Bonham. If God is indeed the supreme good, anything that is good, God has to have. Or rather, as we're gonna see, God doesn't actually have attributes. God is God's attributes. Those attributes are what they are most in God. And again, echoing the monologian as well. So what would this include? Being just, truthful, verox, happy, beatus, and notice this, whatever it is better to be, than not to be. So anything that we can think of, and we have to do put some thought into this, of course, because in the monologian he uses examples, being made of gold, being made of gold sounds great. But if you're made of gold, you can't really live, and think, and do things. So would it be better for God to be made of gold, than not to be made of gold? No, that's not something that's absolutely better to be, than not to be. And so the divine attributes will be the things, or the, let's say, qualities, that are better to be than not to be. And Anselm gives you a couple examples here. It's better to be just, than to be unjust. It's better to be happy, rather than to be unhappy. And the monologian, better to be wise, than not wise, right? Better to be good than to be bad. We could go on and on and on, with all sorts of other examples. And indeed, Anselm is going to do that, throughout many of the chapters. We'll say, you know, God is eternal, for example, better to be eternal than not to be eternal. And we're going to see, discuss a little bit later on, after we go through some chapters about how God perceives, whether God is just and merciful at the same time, that in chapter 11, Anselm is actually going to conclude, at the very end of this, you are indeed Percipient, sensibilis. You're able to perceive things. Omnipotent, or all powerful, merciful, misery cords, impassable, impossibilities, is just a, you know, transliteration there. Just as you are living, the events, wise, sapiens, good, happy, eternal, and notice again, whatever it is better to be than not to be. So again, we're getting an exposition to some degree of the divine attributes, by drawing them out of God being, that then which nothing greater can be thought. Anselm is using this formula throughout the Prose-Logian to explain what God has to be like. Now, he follows this up in chapter 12, and here we're getting an additional, very interesting, what would we call a dimension, a reflexive dimension here. Again, echoing what happens in the monologian. He says, clearly you are whatever you are, not through anything else, but through yourself. So God is, through God's own very being, pyrte ipsum, in this case, in the second person, rather than pyraleo through another thing. So what does this mean? You are the very life ipsavita, by which qua you live. He goes on, you are the wisdom by which you are wise. And the very goodness, by which you are good to the good and to the wicked. And then there's a anso on, or et cetera, right? Et ita dissimilibus. And the same are going the same, likewise, for similar attributes. So anything that we can think of God, that truly does apply to God, that is a divine attribute. God not only has that attribute, God is that very attribute. So for example, the monologian. God, it doesn't have justice. God is justice itself existing. Eustitia existence. And God is the very thing or attribute by which God has or exhibits that. So the same life, the same wisdom, the same goodness, the same justice, the same eternity. Pick whatever it is that you wish. Now, there's more that could be said about this that we will get to in looking at some of these attributes a little bit more closely in other places. But we want to bring this to a close by looking at what he says in chapter 22, which is titled that he alone is what he is and who he is, right? Quote solosit, quote est, at qui est. And this is kind of important. So two different things. What God is and who God is, right? Quote qui. And so there's a personality being signified there. And Anselm is gonna say God alone is what God is. So what does that mean? Well, being has degrees for somebody like Anselm. This is a common idea within ancient and medieval thought and not everybody's gotten away from this entirely. So God, he's going to say exists or has being. Asselm in strict propter and unqualified simplicity theater sense by comparison to all the other beings that exist. All the things that came from nothing through divine creation, which means that the beings of the world that we take as sort of our reference points for being and existence are in some way by comparison to God deficient, less lacking, not truly existing as God does. And why he says, well, whatever began to exist out of non-existence and can be thought to not exist, returns to non-existence unless it subsists through some other being and that's ultimately God. But you are what you are since whatever you are in any way or at any time, you are holy and always that. We are sometimes just or unjust, living or not living, good or not good, bad, right? God simply is what God is all of the time and totally unqualifiedly. Not in the way that the beings that we're used to looking at and thinking about and taking as our reference points within the world have their being or existence. So every single one of these divine attributes, everything that it is better to be than not to be, God is that and has that in a, again, strict and unqualified sense, not only being, but goodness, justice, eternity, simplicity, anything that we want to think about, all these things that we've talked about so far. So this gives us a glimpse into how Anselm not only conceptualizes God's being and God's attributes, but how the same formula, that then which nothing greater can be thought is used within the scope of the argument to derive that for Ansel. Special thanks to all of my Patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. You can find me on Twitter @philosfer70 on YouTube at the Gregory B. Sadler channel and on Facebook on the Gregory B. Sadler page. Once again, to support my work, go to patreon.com/sadler. Above all, keep studying these great philosophical works. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)