Influential figures during the medieval period, 800-1400

St. Anselm

One of the more influential Christian leaders and thinkers of the Medieval era was St. Anselm of Canterbury, a man who helped shape philosophical thought for his era and who also developed the intellectual life of England in the twelfth century.

Anselm was born in 1033 near Aosta, which in those days was a Burgundian town on the frontier with Lombardy. His early life is largely unknown, but he left home when he was 23 and spent some time wandering aimlessly through Burgundy and France, arriving in Normandy in 1059. There, his interest was captured by the Benedictine abbey at Bec, where a famous school under the direction of Lanfranc could be found. Lanfranc was the abbey's prior and was also a scholar and teacher of wide reputation. He had made the school at Bec into an important center of learning, especially in dialectic. In 1060, Anselm entered the abbey as a novice, and he advanced rapidly because of his intellectual and spiritual. In 1063, Lanfranc was appointed abbot of Caen, and Anselm was elected to succeed him as prior. Anselm was then elected abbot in 1078 upon the death of Herluin, the founder and first abbot of Bec. Anselm increased the reputation of Bec as an intellectual center, and he also managed to write a good deal of philosophy and theology in addition to his teaching, administrative duties, and extensive correspondence, given that he served as an adviser and counselor to rulers and nobles all over Europe. In 1093, Anselm became the Archbishop of Canterbury, following his old master Lanfranc, had died four years earlier. Anselm was reluctant to undertake the primacy of the Church of England under then king William, known for plundering the church funds,

Anselm's time as Archbishop was indeed turbulent as William was intent on maintaining royal authority over ecclesiastical affairs and refused to be dictated to by Archbishop or Pope or anyone else. In one case, when Anselm went to Rome in 1097 without the King's permission, William would not allow him to return. William was killed in 1100, after which his successor, Henry I, invited Anselm to return to his see. Still, Henry was just as dedicated to maintaining royal jurisdiction over the Church, and Anselm was again in exile from 1103 to 1107. Through all these troubles, Anselm continued to write. Anselm died in 1109 and was canonized in 1494 and named a Doctor of the Church in 1720 (Williams paras. 1-2).

W.H. Kent writes that about the influence of Anselm as follows:

The sweet influence of his spiritual teaching was felt far and wide, and its fruits were seen in many lands. His stand for the freedom of the Church in a crisis of medieval history had far-reaching effects long after his own time. As a writer and a thinker he may claim yet higher rank, and his influence on the course of philosophy and Catholic theology was even deeper and more enduring if he stands on the one hand with Gregory VII, and Innocent III, and Thomas Becket; on the other he may claim a place beside Athanasius, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas. His merits in the field of theology have received official recognition; he has been declared a Doctor of the Church by Clement XI, 1720, and in the office read on his feast day (21 April) it is said that his works are a pattern for all theologians (Kent para. 8).

However, Kent also notes that Anselm's contribution may not b e fully appreciated by students of divinity today because much of his work "has been hidden by the fabric reared on his foundations" (Kent para. 8). His teachings would be appreciated more after various changes had been made and when scholars examined the history of theology. His contributions were particularly important in the discussion of the ontological argument for the existence of God.

Anselm's contribution to the argument has been controversial, as can be seen from the following assessment by one who sees Anselm as having developed an important concept:

Unless Anselm made (as so many, but not this writer, believe he made) a mere mistake, empirical theism and empirical atheism are alike logical blunders. If belief in the divine existence even makes sense, unbelief does not, and if unbelief makes sense, belief does not. The issue between them is not one of fact or contingent truth but of meaning. One side or the other is confused. Obviously this result, if correct, is of great importance for philosophy and religion. (Hartshorne 4)

Ontology is the branch of philosophy dealing with being or existence, and central to the ontological argument is the concept of existence. Anselm argues that the existence of God is built into the very concept of God, and he uses a form of argument called reductio ad absurdum -- reduction to absurdity - as he attempts to show that the position of the fool -- the non-believer who says "There is no God" -- is incoherent and leads to absurdity (Stairs para. 1). Anselm claims that his argument is an a priori proof of the existence of God, beginning with premises "premises that do not depend on experience for their justification and then proceeds by purely logical means to the conclusion that God exists. His aim is to refute the fool who says in his heart that there is no God" ("Anselm's Ontological Argument" para. 1).

Another area where Anselm made a major contribution was in the consideration of free will. Anselm wrote about both free will and grace and is considered the first philosopher to attempt a systematic analysis of the topics. In terms of grace, he accepts the position that grace is necessary for salvation and that it is also unmerited, an idea that would be accepted later by groups like the Puritans in America (Rogers 66). As one analyst points out, "Anselm defines free will as 'the ability to keep uprightness of will for the sake of uprightness itself' rather than as the ability to sin or not sin" (Tyvoll para. 1)

Definitions of free will are set forth by the Teacher in his conversation with the student in Anselm's De Libertate Arbitrii. Anselm writes, "The ability to keep uprightness-of-will for the sake of this uprightness itself is the complete definition of freedom of choice" (Anselm 124). Free will in this regarded is synonymous with freedom of choice. Free will, in other words, is meaningless unless and until it is exercised in choice.

Anselm is not concerned with the frivolous exercise of an individual's free will but rather with those choices which affect the individual spiritually, those decisions which either align him with God's will or which turn him away from God's will and lead him to sin. Sin in this view is the exercise of free will separate from the influence of what Anselm comes to call the "justice" of God. There is thus a steady development of Anselm's philosophy from the first definition of free will to the last clarification of this aspect of free will as related to justice (Anselm 222).

With reference to free will, Anselm states that God has given this as a gift to man, and with it God has given as well a sense of how to use that free will so the individual can keep that will aligned with the will of God and with His plan for goodness, uprightness, justice, and so on. For free will to be truly free, man must have the liberty to exercise it separate from God's control. At the same time, if God gives this free will as a gift to man, as Anselm says He has done, and also gives him no internal guidance with respect to how to use this free will, God would be giving a lost child a compass and no directions on how to use it to find his way home. Free will, then, is only partially free. On the other hand, without this internal guidance, this sense of right and wrong, free will would merely result in complete chaos in the world of human beings. Free will is therefore a relative liberty, shaped and defined by the guidance that God provides.

Anselm argue that although man is able to use his free will in order to sin, in order to disalign his will from the will of God, man is not able to cut himself off entirely from the knowledge that he is sinning. He therefore has to make the evil choice, to choose that he is suffering, and to choose that he is separate from the will of God, and so on. For Anselm, this is a necessary quality of the free will, for it the sinner were able forevermore to cut himself off from the will of God by completely immersing himself in sin, then he would no longer have free will: Though they were able to serve sin, sin was not able to master them" (Anselm 106).

Anselm returns to reexamine the essence of the definition of free will again and again. This essence is based on his belief that free will an the freedom of choice which is the exercise of free will are rooted in "uprightness":

If freedom-of-choice had not been given to rational nature in order for it to keep uprightness-of-will for the same of this uprightness itself, then freedom would not have been conducive to justice, since it is evident that justice is uprightness-of-will for the sake of this uprightness itself. (Anselm 110)

It appears that Anselm is ultimately equating free will with uprightness-of-will, for he argues that there is nothing -- even God -- which can separate the will from its essential uprightness:

Indeed, although He can reduce to nothing an entire substance which He has created from nothing, He is not able to separate uprightness from a will which has it... If God were to remove (the oft-mentioned) uprightness from someone, he would not will him to will what He wills him to will. (Anselm 119)

Anselm begins from the proposition that God is good, upright, just, and that nothing can flow from Him which does not have these qualities. Free will is a gift to man from God and is therefore inherently a good thing. Even God cannot undo the goodness which is at the heart of free will, His own gift. In terms of the relationship between divine grace and free will, Anselm writes that divine grace is a power which transcends free will:.".. Divine Scripture sometimes speaks in such a way that only grace -- and not at all free choice -- seems to avail to salvation" (Anselm 199). On the other hand, Anselm cites a number of passages from Scripture indicating that "our entire salvation were dependent upon our free will" (Anselm 199).

Anselm's intent is to counter those who would argue that either our salvation depends entirely on our free will or our salvation depends entirely on divine grace:

My intention will be to show that free choice coexists with grace and cooperates with it in many respects -- just as we found it to be compatible with foreknowledge and with predestination. (Anselm 200)

Anselm approaches his subject to applying the workings of human reason to the mysteries of God's will. In his time, the activities of philosophers and theologians were beginning to meld together, and Anselm was one of the Christian thinkers who believed that such a melding was a good thing. He was not attempting so much as to discover the truth from scratch; rather, he was trying to take the received truth from the Bible and to apply reason to those truths in order to turn them into rational realities rather than mysteries of a divine realm accessible only through faith. To accomplish this, Anselm can be expected at every turn to have some rational explanation which would allow man to see himself as both bound to God's will and yet able to exercise some sort of free will at the same time. Such free will must flow from God in order to be a force for good in man's life. At the same time, it is clear that man must be shown to have some sort of independent liberty in the enterprise at hand if he is to be seen as something other than a slave to God's will. Indeed, if man is seen as such a slave, then all is predestined, all is predetermined, and there is nothing outside of that well-laid-out and unchangeable plan.

Anselm's philosophy is "predetermined" at least to the extent that he will at no point throw up his hands and admit that he simply does not know the answer to any question which is put to him about free will, divine grace, predestination, and so on. Anselm's philosophy must be understood in the context in which it is presented, and in this way Anselm shows a predisposition toward each of the matters with which he deals and toward the theoretical analysis he performs in order to support his conclusions.

For example, there would be little benefit for Anselm to consider that there is no relationship between divine grace and free will, or that there is no cooperation between the two. Remember, Anselm was not merely engaging in a leisurely philosophical pursuit in order to entertain the idea that Christianity was a rational discourse. Rational philosophy was first seen as a threat to Christianity, but Augustine and Aquinas and Anselm used philosophy as another tool to convince others that Christianity was true and should be followed as a way of life. Therefore, it would not do for Anselm to admit that he simply did not know the answer to any questions about God, for this would throw the questioner into doubt about the truth of Christianity. It also would not do to separate philosophically the free will of man and the grace of God, for that would leave the listener or reader with a terrible sense of alienation and isolation from God. At the same time, there were apparent contradictions between the various elements of the question (free will, predestination, divine grace, foreknowledge) which had to be resolved in order to put the minds and hearts of the questioning individual at ease. Of course, Anselm did not have all the answers to questions about God and man, and he was often thrown back on his faith, which may lead to circular definition, as in the following: "Absurdly, there is no doubt that the will wills rightly only because it is upright" (Anselm 201).