Nisi credidero, non intelligam: Questioning Probative Intent in Anselm’s Proslogion

A great deal of scholarship has been devoted to the arguments in chapters two and three of Anselm’s Proslogion—at times to the total or near exclusion of the remainder of the work. Even Karl Barth (1960), who asked us to consider those early chapters within the broader context of Anselm’s greater theological scheme, focused an entire book to that end on Pros. 2-4. The section most notably argued for as Anselm’s attempt to prove God’s existence is Pros. 2. In that chapter, given the heading “That God truly exists” (Quod vere sit deus), Anselm develops a notion about God commonly referred to in modern times as an ontological argument for—or a proof of—God’s existence. He begins at our conception of God as a being than which no greater can be conceived. From there, he inquires whether such a being exists in the mind only or in the mind and reality. By judging that it is greater to exist in reality than in the mind alone, Anselm concludes that in order to be that than which no greater can be conceived, God must exist in reality as well as in the mind. It is reasonable but unfortunate that a discussion of this kind should, for many, overshadow the preponderance of inquiry in the Proslogion as a whole—particularly if Anselm’s intent in authoring the discussion is misunderstood by mainstream interpretations, as I take it to be.

I will argue that reading Anselm’s aim in the Proslogion foremost as probare is a mistake. Instead, I offer that we achieve greater fidelity by reading the aim in Pros. 1-26 as intelligere, and the reasoning in Pros. 2 as an important constituent of that scheme, not an independent probative claim. I will proceed as follows. In section one, I will explore reasons for doubting whether Anselm or anyone in possession of faith in God would have need of or interest in a proof of God’s existence. In section two, I will clear the way for an alternative reading of Anselm’s intent in Pros. 2 by addressing what seems to be textual evidence contradicting my claim; specifically, I will address the common practice of ascribing probative intent early in the preface in authoritative translations. I will also open the door to an alternative sense of the heading of Pros. 2, Quod vere sit deus and Anselm’s use of vere esse. In section three, I will offer two compelling alternative intentions for reasoning about the manner—not the fact—of God’s being: 1) striving to achieve greater consonance between an understanding of God and God’s true nature, and 2) striving to come closer to God by learning how to participate more fully in His mode of being. Finally, I will conclude that since Anselm had no use for a proof of God’s existence but a compelling interest in understanding the manner of God’s being, reading the Proslogion and Pros. 2 in the latter sense aligns with greater fidelity to the apparent aim of Anselm’s overall scheme.

I: Reasons for Questioning Probative Intent

Anselm structured this work as he ultimately titled it—an address to another. More precisely, he wrote it as a prayer, a direct address to God from one seeking to raise himself to His contemplation. In addition to this faithful mode of writing, the presence of faith in the address and the author’s possession of it prior to the celebrated reasoning in Pros. 2-3 are further evidenced by the author’s prayer to God in Pros. 1 and his explicit testimony thereafter: “And indeed I do not seek to understand, so that I may believe, but I believe, so that I may understand” (Pros. 1.34/Logan, 2009, p. 32). As such, Anselm’s work in Pros. 2-3 does not merely follow an expression of faith but is enclosed in an expression of faith.

Faith in God presumes the existence of God. It seems fundamental to any commonsense notion of faith that it is not touched by arguments one way or the other concerning probative evidence of the object of that faith. Accordingly, it strikes me as unintelligible to suggest that the intended end of a faithful inquiry into God’s being is to prove His already presumed existence. To be clear, I am not arguing that the faithful have no interest in seeking to better understand the object of their faith, as Anselm explicitly admits to attempting, only that it is unintelligible that the object and impact of a faithful inquiry’s end would be probative. Barth (1960) touches on this distinction: for the faithful, “the rei veritasremains fixed whatever its relation to the intellectus ad eam capiendam” (p. 18).

Additionally, given its nature as an address, there is a sense in which God’s existence has already been located in the work prior to the so-called proof: as a presence to the little man in prayer. Werlin (1995) addresses this, noting that “God is not merely the subject of a discourse, but the object of an address” (p. 47). I am struck with further unintelligibility here trying to reason toward someone attempting to demonstrate for demonstration’s sake the existence of the being to whom they have already spent adequate time directing speech and requests—that is, a being whom the author already takes to be present to him.

II: Clearing the Way for an Alternative Reading

Thus far, I have given a reason or two for doubting whether Anselm intended for the Proslogion to be taken as a proof of God’s existence. Two tasks remain: 1) present an alternative reading of Anselm’s intent—that is, what he is doing if not presenting a proof—and 2) address what seems to be clear textual evidence against my claim in Anselm’s own words in the preface and elsewhere. In this section, I will clear the way for presenting (1) by first responding to (2).

2.1: Interpreting Anselm’s use of “Astruendum”

It is reasonable to expect that a claim of the sort I am making here is vulnerable to a simple retort: if Anselm’s possession of faith and faith’s general nature grants him neither need nor use of a proof of God’s existence, then why does he seem so clearly to present one? Admittedly, my claim that illustrating a proof of God’s existence was not front of mind for Anselm in writing the Proslogion seems difficult to demonstrate given his seemingly explicit reference in the preface to an instigating discovery of that sort and the manner in which he frames Pros. 2 in particular. Authoritative translations, such as Charlesworth (1979) below, directly ascribe probative intent to Anselm’s own pen in the preface:

I began to wonder if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove [emphasis added] that God really exists, that He is the supreme good needing no other and is He whom all things have need of for their being and well-being” (Pros. 0.2; p. 103).

Where Charlesworth interprets Anselm’s use of astruendum above as “to prove,” Deane (1939) opts for “to demonstrate,” and Werlin (1995) opts for “to affirm.” Those all seem to indicate an aim that is at least consonant or synonymous with proving God’s existence.

I include Werlin’s (1995) interpretation alongside those translators because he offers a detailed analysis and alternative reading of their more or less mainstream translations. First, he notes that while the use of astruere and its gerund were often employed in a cognitive sense in medieval texts, the lemma astruo and its forms in classical Latin were limited to the sense of “to build” or “to construct” and other uses of the sort (p. 81-82). Later cognitive uses by Christian authors, Werlin observes, seem to stem from an accidental misinterpretation conflating it with affirmare—though this apparently accidental new use is not altogether straightforward or consistent in medieval texts. He demonstrates this by offering several instances of the verb from Augustine’s Confessions to Anselm’s De Grammatico and Cur Deus Homo,suggesting that the thinkers danced between those classical and medieval uses of astruo and its forms, applying it variably in the senses of “to affirm, to build up, and to assert” from one text to the next (p. 87). In many of those cases, as in the focal case of the preface to the Proslogion, Werlin concludes that it remains possible that the author intended his use of the verb in the classical sense of “to build up.” He concludes this because, while “to prove” remains a possible reading, swapping it for “to build up” presents no immediate or glaring contradictions and, arguably, cannot be ruled out. That vague possibility alone is not independently conclusive of my main claim to Anselm’s aim, but it opens the door to the possibility of my alternative interpretation and weakens the potential objection that Anselm explicitly admitted his probative intent in the preface.

2.2: Interpreting Anselm’s use of “Vere Esse”

Something needs to be said at this point as to why we should think that “to build up” is preferable to “to prove” in the preface. Werlin (1995) was helpful to this end as well by directing my inquiry to another Anselm, the theologian Anselm Stolz, whose embattled claim of this kind is premised largely on an alternative interpretation of the heading for Pros. 2, Quod vere sit deus. On Stolz’s reading, Anselm was not making a distinction between existence and non-existence but between different forms of being: true being, which he ascribes to God, against all other forms of being.John Rist (1973), in revisiting Stolz’s work, notes the Greek foundation for this claim in the distinction by Victorinus that “There are existents which ‘exist’ and existents which ‘truly exist’ (Ipsorum autem quae sunt, alia sunt vere quae sunt, alia quae sunt…)” (p. 110). While Rist acknowledges that Anselm would not have known Victorinus, he points to the similar and more accessible Augustinian distinction between “being” and “real being” (p. 110). The heart of this notion is that the phrase “real being” connotes a unique form of being. The phrase does not address whether a being exists but the manner in which a being exists—i.e., so truly as to be distinct from all lesser beings. Since God’s being does not come to Him from another, he is considered in this sense to be being itself. So, the claim goes, when Anselm describes God as truly being, he is using the word truly not merely to emphasize the fact of God’s being but to describe the manner of His being.

When considered in light of my reasons in the previous section for doubting the probative intent of a faithful inquiry into God’s being, the claims that I forward above from Stolz and Werlin seem to connect and take on a reasonable hue. While it is unreasonable to suggest that faith or the faithful stand to gain from acquiring proof of the fact of God’s being, it is not unreasonable to suggest—as Anselm does in his final line preceding Pros. 2—that the faithful are served by building up or constructing a better understanding of God’s being and of the articles of faith. I will address two powerful reasons for this in the next section.

III: Alternative Theological Purposes for this Philosophical Discourse

As I addressed at the outset, if I am to claim that Anselm’s intent is not probative in nature, I should also offer a compelling alternative intent. As I addressed in section 2.2, there seem to be reasonable grounds for interpreting Anselm’s aim as constructing an understanding of God’s being. So, we can prompt this section with the following question: why would Anselm need to reason further about God’s being if he takes the fact of His being (His existence) on faith? I have two answers. The first reply has to do with a comparison between the Augustinian distinction of inner versus outer words and the distinction between God’s true nature versus our limited inner sense of God’s nature. The second reply has to do with the rational desire of the theist not merely to orient their lives toward their natural end in God but also to live this life in participation with God’s being. I will explore each below.

3.1: Consonance Along the Path of Interiority

The first alternative purpose is inspired by the Augustinian distinction between inner and outer words that Anselm raises in Pros. 4. There, he leverages the psalmist’s Fool to demonstrate a distinction between the ability to understand words in the outer sense—capturing locutions as spoken—while failing to understand the inner sense of those very words. “For in one sense, a thing is thought when the word signifying it is thought; in another sense when the very object which the thing is is understood” (Pros. 4.3; Charlesworth, 1979, p. 119-121). We can reason then that it is not a given that the outer words with which we communicate will match perfectly to the understandings within us that we wish to reproduce in others. In other words, you can say things with conviction but without understanding the object of which you speak (J. Secada, personal communication, February 22, 2024). Still, it reasons that there is value to be gained from seeking to better align our spoken outer words with their inner referents, even if that practice cannot be made perfect.

A similar relationship appears to exist between our inner sense of God and the nature of the being to which they refer; that is, to the limited extent that we must take it as a given that our inner sense of God’s being cannot match perfectly with the reality of God’s being. Differences of kind and degrees of perfection aside, the distinction in the relationship between the two seems analogous in that limited sense. This analogy gains even greater strength if we adopt Anselm’s reasoning that the closest we can come to knowing God’s true being—seeing God’s face, as Anselm puts it—is by turning inward toward our most essential selves, the creatures that God made in His image, the handiwork of God that we are. So, our outer words refer to understandings inside of us; in the case of God, our inner understanding (insofar as we can hope to understand by something more intimate than reason alone in this life) refers to something even deeper inside of us (and more difficult to access).

If we accept that path to interiority and its barriers, then it seems that just as we must take stock of and organize our spoken words to match them more closely with our inner understandings, so must we take stock of and organize our inner understandings to match them more closely with our personal, interior source of knowledge concerning God’s true being. Anselm, by building up his inner understanding of those matters, is working toward that latter end just mentioned, aiming for greater consonance between his inner understanding of God and God’s true being. That appears to be the work of the first half of the Proslgion.

3.2: Participation in God’s Mode of Being

The second alternative purpose for a non-probative Proslogion, a purpose aimed at building up an understanding of the manner of God’s being instead of the plain and already presumed fact of God’s being, is the desire to participate in God’s mode of being. That Anselm had such a desire was asserted by Barth (1960), who claimed that the object of faith for Anselm is not merely “a striving of the human will toward God but a striving of the human will into God and so a participation (albeit in a manner limited by creatureliness) in God’s mode of being” (p. 17). The notion raised in section 2.2 that God truly is—has true or real being—is arrived at not only because of His not receiving being from another but also because, as noted by Davison (2019), “every creature receives its being from God,” placing each creature’s beginning and end in God (p. 26). Moreover, if God is being itself, then our very being is a participation in God. This is summarized neatly in scripture: “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36).

For a faithful person seeking greater proximity to the countenance of God, as Anselm presented himself, living in accordance with and participating in God’s mode of being is an intimate means of closing the distance between an understanding of God and a relationship with God. As a result of the fall and the layering-on of earthly preoccupations, the knowledge of how to live in consonance with God’s nature is not immediately present to us; still, with revelation and reflection, we can strive to recall that knowledge to the fore within ourselves and learn how to participate more fully in God. Anselm seems to be engaged in this very pursuit: striving to understand God’s being with the aim of turning toward and finding greater proximity to Him, if not perfectly, then with steady progress until his life’s end is reached. “I pray, O God, that I may know You and love You, so that I may rejoice in You. And if I cannot do so fully in this life may I progress gradually until it comes to fullness” (Pros. 26.7; Charlesworth, 1979, p. 153).

Given that an understanding of God as true being, being itself, is critical to this concept of participating in God, it is perfectly reasonable—if not critical to Anselm’s greater theological project in the Proslogion—to read Anselm’s pursuit in Pros. 2 as distinguishing this form of being. From that distinction of being flows the rest of Anselm’s inquiries, all the way to the last chapter.

At the start of this paper, I offered reasons for questioning whether Anselm or any person with faith in God derived any utility from generating and arguing for a proof of God’s existence. I reasoned that proof of the existence of the object of faith has no bearing on faith and, therefore, does not serve the faithful. Accordingly, I reasoned that Anselm, given his possession of faith and his enclosing of the so-called proof in prayer, did not write Pros. 2 with probative intent. Left at that, my claim is vulnerable to the reasonable objection that authoritative translations of the Proslogion explicitlyascribe probative intent to Anselm’s own hand in the preface by taking astruendem as meaning “to prove” or “to demonstrate.” However, this vulnerability is weakened when we consider other instances of Anselm’s use of forms of astruo that hew closer to the classical Latin sense of the verb as “to construct,” “to build up,” or the like. That Anselm intended something closer to that earlier sense of the word becomes a more reasonable suspicion when we consider alternative readings of “God truly is” as referring to the Augustinian (and older) sense of God as “real being” or “true being.” By recalling Anselm’s repeatedly stated interest in building up his understanding of the object of his faith in order that he may come closer to the countenance of—and strive throughout his life toward greater participation in—God, we can see the picture I have painted come together as one.

Anselm, already in possession of faith in God, sought to build up his understanding of the object and articles of that faith through a single line of reasoning. By starting at the notion of God as truly being in the Augustinian sense, Anselm found the Archimedean point from which he built up each piece of reasoning about God’s being that followed, ultimately creating an arc from his starting point at God’s truly being to his concluding prayers that he may come to participate more fully in God’s being in this life. In this, Anselm needed no proof to aid his belief in God; for in the author’s own words: nisi credidero, non intelligam (Pros. 1.34; Charlesworth, 1979, p. 114).

Barth, K. (1960). Anselm, fides quaerens intellectum: Anselm’s proof of the existence of God in the context of his theological scheme. Pickwick Publications.

Charlesworth, M. J. (1979). St. Anselm’s Proslogion. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj7bdc

Davison, A. (2019). Participation in God. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108629287

Deane, S. N. (1939). Proslogium; Monologium; an appendix in behalf of the Fool by Gaunilon; and Cur Deus Homo (Reprint Edition). Open Court. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA2926402X (Original work published 1903)

Logan, I. (2009). Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: the history of Anselm’s argument and its significance today. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA90389756

Werlin, S. (1995). How faith seeks understanding in Anselm’s Proslogion [PhD Dissertation]. Loyola University Chicago.

Rist, J. Μ. (1973). Notes on Anselm’s aims in the Proslogion. Vivarium, 11(1), 109–118.https://doi.org/10.1163/156853473×00053