Anselm’s Ontological Argument
Can God’s existence be proven by rational argument? St. Anselm (1033-1109) thought so. So, he developed what is know as the Ontological Argument—an argument dealing with the nature of being. St. Anselm, was an Italian philosopher who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury. He imagined himself arguing the point with a fool who denies that God exists. The argument, written in 1077-1078, rests on two basic premises. First, that God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought”, and second, that existence is greater than non-existence.
The Ontological Argument goes like this:
Anselm: Do you agree that if God existed, he would be the greatest thing that there could be—that than which nothing greater can be thought?
The Fool: Yes.
Anselm: And do you agree that “that which nothing greater can be thought” exists in your mind?
The Fool: Yes, in my mind—but not in reality
Anselm: But would you agree that something that exists in reality as well as in your mind is greater than something that exists in your mind alone?
The Fool: Yes, I suppose so—an ice cream in my hand is better than one that’s just in my imagination.
Anselm: So if “that than which nothing greater can be thought” exists only in the mind, it is less great than if it existed also in reality.
The Fool: That’s true. The being that really exists would be greater.
Anselm: So now you are saying that there is something greater than “that which nothing greater exists?
The Fool: That doesn’t even make sense.
Anselm: Exactly. And the only way around this contradiction is to admit that God (“that than which nothing greater exists”) does exist both in thought and reality.
Ever since the ontological argument was presented, there have been some philosophers, such as Renee Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, who agreed with argument and others, such as Immanuel Kant, who took up the Fool’s side.
St. Aquinas: There must be an ultimate standard
St. Thomas Aquinas argued the same point as Anselm, but with a little different twist, in one of his five primary rational arguments used to defend the existence of the Christian God. In his fourth argument, he says that in order to speak of “goodness” or “power”, we must have an absolute standard against which to judge those terms. There must be some other thing from which they ultimately derive that characteristic.
A primary difference between Anselm and Aquinas is that Anselm argues from the reasoning of the human mind to the existence of God, whereas Aquinas seems to argue from the source–namely God, who is the perfect standard–to the human mind, which has an innate understanding of that standard as its reference point for making valid judgments.
People may have different opinions about the validity of the ontological arguments for proving the existence of God. But there’s no question that an eternal being, who is necessary to cause the universe to come into existence, is a convincing proof of God’s existence. We’ll discuss this cosmological argument in my next blog post.
Discover more about God and our relationship to Him
For a listing of other posts about God’s existence and His nature, go to our Posts Directory web page. These posts are listed by major topic for your convenience.
But, if you’re now ready to know what your relationship is before God, Ask yourself two very important questions. First, are you sure that you’ll go to heaven when you die? Secondly, are you certain why God should let you into heaven? If you don’t know for sure, you can settle that matter today. Visit my post, How to Begin Your Life Over Again and you’ll know where and how you’ll spend eternity.
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