For the Feast of Saint Anselm

In honor of my favorite Archbishop of Canterbury, who died 799 years ago today, I offer a few of my favorite passages.

A prayer for growth in the knowledge and love of God
(Proslogion 26, ca. 1078)

O God, I pray that I will know and love you that I might rejoice in you.
   And if I cannot do so fully in this life,
      I pray that I might grow day by day
      until my joy comes to fullness.

Let the knowledge of you grow in me here, and there let it be full.
   Let your love grow in me here, and there let it be full,
      so that my joy here is great in hope,
      and my joy there is full in reality.

O Lord, by your Son you command us—or rather, you counsel us—to ask,
   and you promise that we will receive,
      that our joy may be full.
Lord, I ask what you counsel us through our "Wonderful Counselor."
   Let me receive what you promise through your truth,
      that my joy may be full.
   O truthful God, I ask that I may receive,
      that my joy may be full.

Until then, let my mind ponder on it,
   my tongue speak of it.
Let my heart love it and my mouth proclaim it.
Let my soul hunger for it,
   my flesh thirst for it,
   my whole being long for it,
      until I "enter into the joy of my Lord,"
      who is God, Three in One, "blessed for ever. Amen."

On faith and reason
(Letter to Fulk, Bishop of Beauvais, ca.. 1092)

It is utterly foolish and silly to fall into wavering and doubt about what has been most firmly established on the solid rock, simply on account of one person who does not understand it. Our faith should be defended by reason against the impious, not against those who profess to rejoice in the name of Christian. It is just to demand from professing Christians that they hold unshaken the pledge made in baptism, whereas unbelievers should be shown rationally how irrationally they scorn us. For a Christian ought to progress through faith to understanding, not reach faith through understanding–or, if he cannot understand, leave faith behind. Now if he can achieve understanding, he rejoices; but if he cannot, he stands in awe of what he cannot grasp.

On the irreducible difference between time and eternity
(De concordia 1.5, ca. 1108)

In eternity it is not the case that something was or will be, but only that it is; nonetheless–and without any inconsistency–in time something was or will be. And in just the same way, something that in eternity cannot be changed is proved, without any inconsistency, to be changeable in time until it exists, thanks to free will. Now although in eternity there is only a present, it is not a temporal present like ours, but an eternal present that encompasses all times. Just as every place, and those things that are in any place, are contained in the present time, so too every time, and those things that are at any time, are enclosed all at once in the eternal present.

Against a voluntarist divine command ethics
(Cur Deus Homo 1.12, ca. 1096)

Boso: You have taken away the contradiction I thought was involved. But there is another point on which I would like to have your response. God is so free that he is subject to no law and to no one’s judgment; he is so kind that nothing kinder can be conceived. Moreover, nothing is right or fitting except what he wills. Given all that, it seems surprising for us to say that he in no way wills to forgive harm done to himself, or that it is not fitting for him to do so, considering that we often ask his mercy even for harm we have done to others.

Anselm: What you say about God’s freedom and will and kindness is true. But we need to understand these things reasonably, so that we do not appear to contradict God’s dignity. Freedom, after all, is only for what is expedient or fitting; and what acts in a way that is unfitting for God should not be called kindness. Now as for the claim that what God wills is just and what he does not will is not just, we should not take this to mean that if God wills something unsuitable, it is just, simply because God wills it. If God wills to lie, it does not follow that it is just to lie. What follows is that he isn’t God. For there is no way that a will can will to lie unless truth has been corrupted in it — or rather, unless it has become corrupted by abandoning truth. So saying "If God wills to lie" is equivalent to saying "If God’s nature is such that he wills to lie"; it therefore does not follow that lying is just.