Happy Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

Today, January 28, is the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Roman Rite according to the calendar of Paul VI. This is the collect from the Mass for the feast:

Deus, qui beátum Thomam sanctitátis zelo ac sacræ doctrínæ stúdio conspícuum effecísti, da nobis, qu æsumus, et quæ dócuit intelléctu conspícere, et quæ gessit imitatióne complére.

Happy feast day!

Thomas on the Exorcisms of King Solomon

I'm working on an NEH grant project, annotating the first complete translation of Book IV of Thomas's Commentary on the Sentences.  I recently came across an odd passage and wanted to know if readers might have any clue where Thomas picked up his knowledge of this extra-biblical aspect of King Solomon:

"Sed contra, exorcismi Salomonis habebant aliquem effectum ad pellendos daemones. Ergo multo fortius exorcismi ecclesiae." (In IV Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 3, qa. 2, sc 2)

There is one other reference, as far as I can tell: De Potentia, q. 6, a. 10, obj. 3:

"It is related of Solomon that he performed certain exercises and thereby compelled the demons to quit bodies that were obsessed by them. Therefore demons can be compelled by adjuration."

To which he replies:

"If Solomon performed these exorcisms when he was in a state of grace, they could derive the power to compel the demons from the power of God. But if it was after he had turned to the worship of idols, so that we have to understand that he performed them by magic arts, these exorcisms had no power to compel the demons, except in the manner explained above."

There is a pseudepigraphical work (usually dated between the 1st to 5th cent. AD) called The Testament of Solomon which refers to the king commanding demons to help him build the Temple, but it's hard for me to imagine Thomas knowing this work, and his comments don't seem to fit with it.

Any suggestions?

John Lamont on anti-Thomism

John Lamont has a provocative piece at Rorate Caeli on the anti-Thomism of the nouvelle théologie. It is somewhat geared toward a popular audience but I believe Thomists, Aquinas scholars, and historians of 20th century Catholic theology (among others) will find it interesting. Lamont returns to some of the themes that he dealt with in a 2008 article he wrote for The Thomist entitled "Determining the Content and Degree of Authority of Church Teachings."

There are three points in particular that Lamont addresses (both in The Thomist article and in the new piece) that I think deserve wider discussion: (1) the truth/falsity of the theses of the "neomodernism" of the nouvelle théologie; (2) the validity (or lack thereof) of the nouvel théologiens' critique of Thomism; (3) the positive/negative influence of the nouvelle théologie on contemporary Catholic thought. All three, of course, require not only historical but also speculative consideration.

Scholastic metaphysics: an interview with Edward Feser on his new book

This past spring Edward Feser's latest book, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, was published by Editiones Scholasticae. We recently talked with Ed about his new book.

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Thomistica.net: Could you tell us something about the genesis of your book and what your aims are in it?

Feser: One of the aims of the book is to provide, for readers with a background in contemporary analytic philosophy, an exposition and defense of Scholastic (and especially Thomistic) approaches to causation, substance, essence, teleology, identity, persistence, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics.  Another aim is to provide, for readers with a background in Scholastic thought, an introduction to the many ideas and arguments in contemporary analytic philosophy which recapitulate themes in Scholastic metaphysics.  So, the book argues for the continuing relevance and defensibility of Scholastic ideas by revealing how much common conceptual ground already exists between Scholastics and analytic philosophers.

I did a bit of this in earlier work, such as the second chapter of my book Aquinas, but the subject really demanded a book-length treatment.  There is also the consideration that many of the most important arguments for the contemporary relevance of various Scholastic metaphysical ideas are scattered in various books and journal articles by a diverse group of writers -- “analytical Thomists,” Thomists and other Scholastics of a more traditional stripe, scholars who approach the subject from more of a historical perspective, older Neo-Scholastic authors of now out-of-print manuals, and so forth.  There is an urgent need for a convenient resource that gathers the main ideas all together and presents them systematically for philosophers, theologians, and other readers interested in Scholastic metaphysics and its contemporary relevance.  So the book aims to provide that.

The book is in that way somewhat like the old Neo-Scholastic manuals, though of course more up to date in the sense that it engages heavily with the literature in contemporary analytic philosophy.  My friend Bill Vallicella has already taken to referring to the book as “Feser’s manual,” and I’m happy to own the label.

But I should, I suppose, add that I use the term “metaphysics” a little more broadly than some Aristotelians and Thomists do.  Thomists in recent decades have distinguished those questions that are strictly metaphysical from those that fall within the philosophy of nature, though they recognize that there is some overlap.  They are right to make this distinction, but unfortunately it is lost on a lot of contemporary analytic philosophers, who tend to use the term “metaphysics” in a way that often includes topics that the Thomist would see as part of the philosophy of nature (such as the hylemorphic structure of material substances).

To make the book as useful as possible for furthering discussion between analytic philosophers and Scholastics, I have to some extent made allowances for this broader usage in the choice of topics I cover in the book.  But only to an extent.  I plan to follow this book up with a book on Aristotelian philosophy of nature that covers issues that I judged were too far from general metaphysics to be properly treated in the present book -- topics concerning the general structure of time and space, chemical and biological kinds, and so forth.

Thomistica.net: Who is the audience of Scholastic Metaphysics?

Feser: Well, for one thing, and as I’ve indicated, the book is of course aimed at both analytic philosophers and Scholastics interested in questions of fundamental metaphysics.  But I hope it will also find an audience among philosophers interested in natural theology, philosophy of mind, and other sub-disciplines within philosophy, even ethics.  Certainly the key arguments in all these areas made by Thomists and other Scholastics cannot properly be understood or evaluated without an understanding and evaluation of the underlying metaphysics.  Hence you cannot understand Thomistic arguments for God’s existence without an understanding of the theory of act and potency and the other aspects of Scholastic thinking about the nature of causality.  You cannot understand Thomistic arguments concerning the mind-body problem and other aspects of philosophical anthropology without an understanding of hylemorphism.  You cannot understand traditional natural law arguments without an understanding of how Scholastic writers understand teleology (as opposed to the caricatures of their understanding of teleology, which is all that many people are familiar with).  And so forth.

So, while the book doesn’t really say much about these specific sub-disciplines, it is clearly relevant to them.  Indeed, I like to think it would be of interest to anyone concerned with questions about the most general structure of reality and questions about ultimate explanation  -- which includes scientists as well as philosophers -- because that is, of course, what metaphysics is all about.  Metaphysics is the most fundamental of all disciplines.  That is the traditional view, anyway, and it is one I try to vindicate in the book.

Thomistica.net: At one time volumes of scholastic metaphysics were published quite regularly. Now they appear only rarely. The decline seems to have begun in the late 1960s. What do you think are the reasons for this decline?

Feser: That’s a large question, of course.  In part it is linked to the general collapse of traditional theology, philosophy, and catechesis within the Catholic Church and Catholic higher education over the last 40 or 50 years.  Scholastic metaphysics got swept away along with the rest of it.  In part it has to do with the alleged foibles of the textbooks that were so widely in use in the period prior to Vatican II.  The usual complaint against them is that they are dry, merely repeat each other, are somehow untrue to authentic Thomism, etc.   Accusations of “Wolffian rationalism,” “sawdust Thomism,” and other such epithets are routinely flung at them.

I think this is mostly nonsense.  Naturally, like any body of literature, not all the old manuals are of equal quality.  Like anything human, they have their imperfections.  But the standard objections are just ridiculously overstated, and there is some truly excellent and useful work to be found in many of those old books from the late nineteenth centuries through to the early 1960s.  I think we are much the poorer for having let it all slip down the memory hole.  Indeed, we’re paying a heavy price for it.  If you want to know why theology is in such a mess today and secularism in such a position of strength, I would say that it has in large part to do with the fact that Catholic intellectuals have largely lost the intellectual muscle that Scholasticism used to provide.

It is amazing how thoughtlessly people repeat the clichés about the manuals, including people who should know better.  More than once I’ve had people tell me, to my face and pretty much in the same breath, both how much they like my work and how bad the old manuals are -- evidently without noting the cognitive dissonance!   I hope my work will contribute in its own small way to reviving respect for and attention to what the manualists were trying to accomplish.

Thomistica.net: How would you compare your book to some of the older ones, like, say, Klubertanz's Introduction to the Philosophy of Being, or even a recent one like Clarke's The One and the Many? What does your book have in common with them? What would you say is different about your book?

Feser: What it has in common with them is that it treats most of the same issues, in the same sort of systematic way, and defends similar conclusions.  It differs in three major ways.  First, and as I have indicated, it interacts heavily with contemporary analytic philosophy.  That is the tradition I was trained in, and I tend to think that, for all its real weaknesses, the analytic tradition is ripe for fruitful engagement with Scholasticism.  Like Scholastic writers, analytic philosophers emphasize conceptual precision, clarity of expression, and rigorous argumentation.  Recent years have also seen a serious revival of interest in metaphysics within analytic philosophy, including an interest in Aristotelian themes in metaphysics.  There are of course other contemporary philosophers bringing the two traditions into conversation -- David Oderberg’s book Real Essentialism is outstanding in this regard -- but much more needs to be done, and my book aims to further that conversation.

Second, there are differences in the way I would understand some common Thomistic ideas.  For example, I’m not as keen on personalism as Fr. Clarke was.  Having said that, I have enormous respect for Fr. Clarke’s work and have profited much from it.

Third, for the most part my book does not deal directly with issues in natural theology, as older Scholastic books on metaphysics tend to.  In part this is because I have treated these issues elsewhere, such as in my book Aquinas.  In part it is because the book is long enough as it is, and to treat topics in natural theology adequately would in any case require a book of its own.  And in part it is because it is important to emphasize that the key ideas and arguments in Scholastic metaphysics are defensible and important whatever one thinks of their application within natural theology.

Thomistica.net: How has your book been received?

Feser: So far, very well.  It’s gotten several good reviews, including one in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  It has twice sold out at Amazon.com, once not long after it was first published, and the other time after several reviews appeared at around the same time.  For a while at Amazon, it was trading the #1 spot in Metaphysics with Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.  Not that I checked it daily or anything.  (And of course, reaching the #1 spot in metaphysics for a few days or weeks doesn’t exactly get you into Stephen King bestseller territory!)

The most vigorous and interesting criticism has come from Scotists who think I haven’t adequately either challenged or defended the standard Thomistic construal of, and criticisms of, Scotist positions on those issues where Thomists and Scotists disagree.  That isn’t surprising, and it’s a good debate to have.  Indeed, if the main debate in contemporary metaphysics were between Thomists and Scotists, we’d be in a very good place indeed!  Though we are, of course, a long way from that ever happening.

From the analytic side, Stephen Mumford has said some very kind things about the book.  He is, by the way, one of several contemporary analytic philosophers whom Thomists and other Scholastics ought to be reading.  His book Laws in Nature and a book he co-wrote with Rani Lill Anjum, Getting Causes from Powers, are particularly recommended to anyone interested in seeing just how fruitful a discussion between Scholastics and analytic philosophers is likely to be.

Vatican Clarification on Filioque

The PCPCU published in 1995 a text on the Filioque entitled “The Filioque: A Clarification”. It has good points. Yet, it is not without reason for criticism. Zizioulas among the Orthodox has criticized it. D. Coffey among the Catholics has criticized it (and quite well and incisively I might add).

I’d like to add a few minor observations.

First, the document speaks of the conflict between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. This is the usual way in which the conflict is put. And it is understandable. However, it is not accurate.

The conflict is between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches. The Catholic Church is both Eastern and Western in terms of her theology and rites. (Both churches are Eastern and Western geographically.) Thus, we have an important ecclesiological correction to make to this picture. For there is but one true Church of Christ, and that is the Catholic Church. I consider that it is high time for ecumenical niceties to be sobered by realism. We cannot continue not to express the “fullness of the faith”. Part of that fullness is that there is also an exclusiveness. One true religion, etc.

Second, the document claims, “The Holy Spirit, therefore, takes his origin from the Father alone (ek monou tou Patros) in a principal, proper, and immediate manner” [Footnote Thomas Aquinas: ST Ia, q. 36, art. 3, ad 1.] This claim is problematic for two reasons.

We grant that the Holy Spirit proceeds principally from the Father, in the technical sense. That means, the Father is his principal without principal. It is not that the Spirit proceeds “less” from the Son. But that the Son, his principal, is himself from a principal. In short, the teaching here shores up the monarchy of the Father.

But it is odd to say that the HS proceeds from the Father alone in a “proper” manner. Is this opposed to an “improper” manner? Does it mean the term “proceeds” should not be linked to the Son? Does it mean that “proceeds” means only coming from an ultimate principal? Why then should the document include the expression “proceeds (ekporeuetai) from the Father through the Son?” Wouldn’t that be oxymoronic? Or is “proper” simply a redundant synonym for “principal”? These are questions.

Most important, however, is the misreading given to Thomas. The text aims to imply that the Spirit does not proceed “immediately” from the Son. (Or else this “alone” is part of a complex and thus misleading statement. Read as complex, it would mean: “Simply b/c the HS is from the Father alone in a principal way, therefore we can truly say HS is from the Father alone in a principal and immediate manner, although he is not from the Father alone in an immediate manner. Misleading to say the least!)

Thomas’s text is in response to obj. 1. Objection 1 contends: If the HS is “from the Father through the Son” then he is not immediately from the Father, which is false. So, the response is aimed precisely at that statement. Now, even the good Fathers of the English Dominican Providence have a translation that may be seen to ‘tilt’ in the direction the Clarification takes. However, Thomas only states the following in his response: (1) HS is from the Father immediately as from him; and (2) He is from the Father (this is understood in the Latin more clearly) mediately as from the Father through the Son. Thus, Thomas is not denying that the HS is from the S immediately. In fact, his entire theology contends he is from the S immediately.

Atheism and divine transcendence

I have a whimsical little essay on this topic at Crisis Magazine. At the center is what I take to be a Thomistic understanding of creation. It's pitched to a broad audience. But it might be something to refine and develop further in the future. Or it might not. Your comments would be much appreciated either here or at Crisis. 

Thomism, Synods, Heresy and the PRDL

Too much blog reading has caused many acquaintances to fall into hysterical fits concerning Church teaching and contemporary prelates.  Things were far worse in the fourth century and in the time of Honorius I.  It seems to me that people should spend less time on the Web and more time reading works written before 1700.  If you must use the Web, the best short discussions of Church and papal authority I know of are available through downloads that are linked from the Post-Reformation Digital Library.  See Dominic Banez, In II-II, q. 1, art. 10, dub. 2 (in Venice 1587, 183-212); Salmanticenses, Cursus Theologicus, tract. 17, disp. 4, dub. 1 (in Paris, 1879, vol. 11, 247-261).  Incidentally, Banez, pp. 194-196, explains clearly the errors of today's sedevacantists.  Banez is here: http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=651 and the Salmanticenses here: http://www.prdl.org/author_view.php?a_id=2122 .  If you must use the Web, use the PRDL!

On First Principles: That There be Some Informative Ones

Are there any substantive first (i.e. self-evident) principles? Substantive meaning informative: neither tautology nor mere principles of formal logic.

Some argue that there are none, that there can be none: Any given principle is either substantive or self-evident (exclusive disjunct).

The reason given is that in order to be grasped as self-evident, the principle must be so close to the Principle of Contradiction that it is practically a repetition of this principle. All such propositions are easily grasped as being necessarily true, and just as equally uninformative.

Conversely, all statements that are truly informative require, to be understood and affirmed as true, some theoretical framework which renders the principles grasped only within the framework to be hypothetical. Every such proposition is open to possible falsification (or further ratification) as the inquiry continues. Hence, no such proposition could be affirmed to be necessarily true.

I maintain that the above disjunct is not absolute. I suggest the following two arguments demonstrate that it is not absolute. The first is that the affirmation that this disjunct is absolute requires in practice the denial of the truth of the disjunct. The second is that some there are in fact some substantive self-evident principles.

First: If it were true that there are no substantive self-evident principles, one could not affirm with certainty that there is none. This is shown impossible on the very terms of the disjunct.

This proposition itself – Any given principle is either substantive or self-evident – is informative. It is not a practical repetition of the Principle of Contradiction. Therefore, if it were true, no one could affirm it to be true necessarily. Instead, one would have to wait for its further verification, or falsification, in which case one could not lay it down apodictically. Or, conversely, if one grasped that it—an instance of an informative proposition—is necessarily true, one would demonstrate that it—there are no substantive self-evident principles—is false.

Second: There exist seemingly mundane, but to me marvelous, truths of the perennial philosophy which are both informative and necessarily true. For example: Every animal moves itself. Informative because motion and animal are not the same concept, for the living mind (not the computer) thinks the one thing in aspects (and does not merely bundle properties). For example: Every man is risible. Informative because laughing and man are not the same concept. However, in the concept man we have the distinct ideas of rational and animal. Who is rational but of limited intelligence can grasp what is in place and can be befuddled at what is out of place. Who is animal has lungs and a voice box. Thus, who is both rational and animal has wherewithal bodily to express befuddlement: Can laugh. These truths do not yield supercomputers. But they are instances of real insight into a real world. And the discovery of these truths is just that, progress and discovery. It is progress to grasp what “animal” is and what “rational” is. Insights into reality. It is progress to put these insights together rationally. It is progress to come to a conclusion. Therefore, although these statements are analytic, so to speak, yet they exhibit real progress in our knowledge of the real.

Last piece of evidence in this brief: Consider the progression from Q. 2 of the Prima pars through Q. 11 of the same. Deductions that are informative, resting on inductions that are non-hypothetically penetrating.

Kasper and his critics

Back in April I wrote a post on the theological debate over reception of Communion by divorced and civilly remarried Catholics (that is, divorced and civilly remarried Catholics without annulments, who are not abstaining from sexual relations with each other). I presented some comments on this topic by John Rist. This will also be a topic of an upcoming synod in Rome.

Cardinal Walter Kasper is at the center of the debate. He has proposed giving Communion to some Catholics who find themselves in the situation described above (but who have taken certain steps and meet certain criteria). On Thursday he gave an interview with the Italian daily Il Mattino. In the interview he responds to his critics. I have some comments on the interview here.

Review of Amerini on Beginning of Human Life

There is a recent review of Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/48981-aquinas-on-the-beginning-and-end-of-human-life/.  The review author states that the Catholic Church teaches that the human soul is infused at conception, and seems to imply that there is a tight connection between the Church's teaching on abortion and the rejection of delayed animation.  Moreover, the author states that the debate is very heated.  It seems to me that I know several Catholics who believe in delayed animation, and think that the issue has no important ethical consequences.  I myself hold the second view.

I can't find any clear Catholic teaching concerning animation.  Fr. Wallace and Elizabeth Anscombe (see some of the essays in Human Life, Action, and Ethics) seem to be for delayed animation.  Fr. Wallace has some odd views in ethics (see his stuff on nuclear war) but Anscombe is more or less traditional.

I also can't see the direct connection between this issue and the licitness of abortion, unless maybe you knew the exact moment of animation and you thought that abortion is OK unless it is a clear case of homicide.

I have seen respectable theologians in the seventeenth-century argue that the abortion before animation might be licit in case of danger to the mother's life, but it seems to me that DS 1184 (Ann. 1679) prohibits it, although the danger seems to be from someone else and not from the foetus: ""Licet procurare abortum ante animationem foetus, ne puella deprehsa gravida occidatur aut infametur."  I can't really see why it would be OK even apart from animation.  It is obviously unlike a case of removing a cancer or an infected organ or limb.

At any rate, does anyone know of magisterial texts?  I can't seem to find any online.

Anselm's "ontological argument": faith or reason?

[I posted the following for our AMU philosophy blog yesterday but I thought that it might also be of interest to some of our readers here at Thomistica, so I re-post it here..]

It is sometimes alleged that Anselm's argument for God's existence in Ch. 2 of the Proslogion -- often called his "ontological argument" -- is not a purely rational argument but in some way depends on his Christian faith. It seems to me, however, that it does not depend on faith in any formal way. In this post I will suggest some reasons why someone might think differently and then argue that none of these reasons show that Anselm's argument formally depends on faith.

But before I do that, let me comment on a couple related issues. First, some people say that Anselm does not have only one argument for God's existence in the Proslogion but two. M.J. Charlesworth, for example, thinks that in Ch. 3 there is an argument that is logically independent of the argument in Ch. 2. I have no quarrel with that view but do not intend to take a position on it here. I only wish to consider the Ch. 2 argument. Second, Aquinas and others argue (for a variety of reasons) that Anselm's argument for God's existence in Ch. 2 is unsound. I too am skeptical of its soundness. But I am not interested in that question here.

I should also add that when I speak (perhaps infelicitously) of a "purely rational argument" in contrast to an argument that depends on faith (i.e., requires premises that can only be known through faith), I do not mean to imply that arguments that depend on faith are necessarily irrational. By a "purely rational argument" I simply mean an argument that only accepts premises from what reason can know by its own investigation of things without the aid of revelation.

So, let's move on to some reasons why people might think that Anselm's Ch. 2 argument depends on his Christian faith:

1. There is the prayer to God in Ch. 1. Rational arguments do not typically include prayers to God.

2. At the conclusion of Ch. 1 Anselm says:  "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, -- that unless I believed, I should not understand." Obviously, he is starting from faith and not trying to prove rationally anything held by faith. He is merely trying to understand what he believes.

3. At the beginning of Ch. 2 Anselm writes: "And so, Lord, do you, who do give understanding to faith, give me, so far as you know it to be profitable, to understand that you are as we believe; and that you are that which we believe." It would appear that Anselm is asking for God's assistance in his argument. But an argument made with God's assistance is an argument that depends on faith. 

4. Anselm follows the previous sentence ( "And so, Lord, do you, who do give understanding to faith...") with: “And indeed, we believe that you are a being than which nothing greater can be thought.” And Anselm will go on to argue that God exists in they way that he is believed to be (i.e., as something than which nothing greater can be thought). So, Anselm is going to argue that God exists under a certain description. That description comes from faith. Anselm's argument, then, depends on faith.

At best the the above arguments show a material dependence but not a formal dependence of the Ch. 2 argument on faith...

Ad 1. As a Christian, it is not surprising that Anselm should begin his reflection on divinity with a prayer. But this does not entail that the prayer is a formal part of his argument. I see no part of the prayer that supplies a proposition that is necessary for the conclusion Anselm reaches at the end of Ch. 2. Suppose a mathematician prayed before he worked out a math problem. Should we assume that the prayer is a formal part of his solution to the problem?

Ad 2. Again as a Christian, faith has a priority for Anselm. Christians believe in God and believe things about God not merely on the basis of having understood or proved them. Faith is a supernatural gift that imparts real apodictic knowledge of God. And if Anselm does not believe the truths taught by revelation – that is, if he does not take them to have any bearing on reality – then, indeed, he will not understand them. Still, none of this prevents Christians from seeing whether some of what they believe might not also be knowable by reason according to its native power. You might tell me, for example, that the square root of 2 is an irrational number and I might sincerely believe you. Even so, I could still try to prove this for myself.

Ad 3. Let us suppose this (as far as we know) counterfactual: God dictated the argument in Ch. 2 to Anselm. Would that necessarily make the argument beyond reason’s grasp? No. To use my previous example again, suppose that you have proved for yourself that the square root of 2 is an irrational number and then suppose that after you have worked out the proof several times God announces to you: “The square root of 2 is an irrational number” and then proceeds to explain the proof to you. But you already knew all of this without God teaching you. If the divine revelation of a truth were sufficient to make that truth inaccessible to reason alone, you could never have known about 2’s square root before God vouchsafed it to you, and yet you did know it before that.

Ad 4. While Christians may believe that God can be correctly described as that than which nothing greater can be thought, this fact by itself would not carry with it the impossibility of rationally demonstrating this truth. We could only settle the matter by actually attempting a rational demonstration.

But let's look at Anselm's argument itself. Here is the relevant part of Ch. 2:

And indeed, [Lord,] we believe that you are a being than which nothing greater can be thought. Or is there no such nature, since the fool has said in his heart, there is no God? (Psalm 14:1). But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak – a being than which nothing greater can be thought – understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist. For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but be does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it. Hence, even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be thought. For, when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that than which nothing greater can be thought cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be thought to exist in reality; which is greater. Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be thought, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be thought, is one, than which a greater can be thought. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be thought, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

 We could sum up the argument thus:

(i) God is that than which nothing greater can be thought.

(ii) Even the fool, who denies God, can have an understanding of that than which nothing greater can be thought.

(iii) Thus, that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in his understanding.

(iv) But it is greater to exist in reality than in the understanding alone.

(v) If that than which nothing greater can be thought existed in the understanding alone, something greater than it would exist, i.e., what exists in reality and not in the understanding alone.

(vi) But that is impossible (i.e., it is impossible for there to be something greater than that than which nothing greater can be thought).

∴ (vii) That than which nothing greater can be thought – God – must exist in reality.

Clearly, there is nothing in Anselm’s text nor in my summary of the argument that formally depends on faith in Christian revelation. To object that the second premise depends on Psalm 14 is idle because the dependence is only material. We do not need Scripture to tell us that people either do or could deny God’s existence. And, in any case, the argument only requires that someone can have an understanding of that than which nothing greater can be thought. It does not require that someone who denies God’s existence have this understanding.

Does Anselm anywhere tell us whether he thinks the Ch. 2 argument depends on faith? Let's remember that Anselm takes the Proslogion to be a continuation of the Monologion. In the preface to the Monologion he tells us that his monks asked him to compose arguments about God that did not depend on the authority of Scripture but on rational necessity. Then in the preface to the Proslogion Anselm explains that he is still trying to carry out this project. Hence, Anselm himself insists that he is not making any appeal to faith. And he will reaffirm this over a decade later when he observes in the De incarnatione Verbi that the Monologion and Proslogion were written "especially in order to show that what we hold by faith regarding the divine nature and its persons -- excluding the topic of incarnation -- can be proven by compelling reasons apart from appeal to the authority of Scripture" (Ch. 6).

So, why did I invent reasons why people might think that Anselm's ontological argument depends on faith instead of looking at the actual reasons that some of Anselm's interpreters give? This is a fair question. I think that the above exercise is useful for thinking through what is going on in Anselm's argument. But if I have time in the future, I will look at why some real people believe the argument depends on faith.