Abstract
This article examines the influence of Augustine’s De Trinitate 9–14 on the concept of foolishness that Anselm develops in the Monologion and Proslogion. Building on Augustine’s understanding of the soul as trinitarian image, I argue that Anselm effectively extends the implications of Augustine’s theological anthropology in such a way that foolishness appears as a denial of the necessary teleological implications of this same trinitarian psychology.
In De Trinitate, Augustine deploys a theologically conditioned epistemology of knowing, remembering, and loving that would become ubiquitous for many Western thinkers, including Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109). 1 For both Anselm and Augustine, the same psychology of human knowing that provides an image of the triune Creator also illuminates, ultimately, the process in which the human desire to know God is fulfilled. Conversely, both authors appeal to similar understandings of human foolishness to construct counternarratives that show how human failures undermine this same psychological dynamic and its progression toward fulfillment. For Anselm, the theme of foolishness plays an especially pronounced role in his Proslogion, where the character of the fool is consistently positioned as a counterpoint to Anselm’s argument for God’s existence. 2
In this article, I will examine the relationship between Augustine’s presentation of foolishness in De Trinitate, and Anselm’s approach to this same concept in his Monologion and Proslogion. 3 That a connection of some kind exists between these texts is uncontroversial: Anselm himself goes so far as to suggest that his reader should judge the content of his work against the standard of De Trinitate, and existing scholarship from F. B. A. Asiedu, Lydia Schumacher, and others has argued that Anselm is reliant on these themes from De Trinitate. 4 However, I argue that Anselm develops Augustine’s use of the “fool” by arguing that the fool fails to assent intellectually to that which is, or should be, undeniable.
In the first section of this article, I will argue that the character of the “fool” that is introduced in book 14 of De Trinitate personifies the failure of cupiditas within the context of Augustine’s trinitarian epistemology. In this regard, Augustine positions the concept of foolishness as a negation that stands in opposition to the restoration of the soul as image of the divine Trinity and undermines the soul’s desire for God that motivates this same process of restoration. In this understanding, foolishness represents the absence of the wisdom that marks the soul that has been restored in charity and therefore knows and loves God fruitfully.
In the second half of this article, I will examine the role of foolishness in Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion. Concerning Anselm’s relationship to Augustine on this subject, I agree with Lydia Schumacher and others that Augustine’s De Trinitate provides essential context for understanding Anselm’s approach to knowing God and to the sanctification of the person as image. 5 As I will argue in the first section, Augustine presents foolishness as a negation of these central themes of his own trinitarian psychology. However, although Augustine’s use of foolishness in the context of his description of the soul’s search for God provides important context for understanding Anselm’s use of foolishness, I will argue that Anselm’s appropriation of this Augustinian concept also includes a significant degree of adaptation: rather than the absence of that wisdom that is associated with the perfection of charity, Anselm casts foolishness as a failure of intellectual ascent that negates a truth claim that is in fact rationally necessary. In the broader context of Anselm’s own trinitarian psychology, the fool’s negation stands as a resistance to the necessary implications of human love and desire.
Augustine on Foolishness and the Fulfillment of Desire
In the penultimate book of De Trinitate (14), Augustine describes a form of enjoyment that results from knowing, remembering, and loving God. For Augustine, the soul is made wise by knowing and loving in this way—refusal to do so can only be characterized as foolish. 6 The association of enjoyment and wisdom made by Augustine in this context reflects the satiation of knowing and loving that Augustine begins to describe earlier in De Trinitate. Accordingly, Augustine’s fool is the one who resists this trajectory. 7
Because of the difficulty (indeed, the impossibility) of grasping the nature of divine love, Augustine begins, in book 9, with the act of human love, distinguishing three things that are fundamental to it: the lover, that which he loves, and love itself. 8 Even the case of authentic love of self involves love of love itself, so that one’s self and one’s own love are loved. 9 Although a kind of trinity can be discerned here—in the mind’s self-knowledge and self-love—it does not partake of anything unchanging or divine. 10 For Augustine, an ordering within this psychological structure of human loving will emerge, in which the trajectory of knowing and loving reach beyond the self and even beyond our temporal love of neighbor, and toward the form of those truths which are above the eye of the mind. 11 When we know things according to their form, these truths are spoken as a word within us. 12 For Augustine, this inner word is conceived by love, in such a way that love itself forms the context for this inner understanding.
Not all loves are equal, however. While some forms of love are occupied with changeable creatures, love may also be directed to the unchangeable Creator. 13 Having previously referred to the act of love with the more generic amare, 14 Augustine introduces a distinction in his typology of love that is of critical significance. Love of God is not simply an intensified version of creaturely love. On the contrary, Augustine employs distinct terminology to distinguish the two: love of unchanging things is referred to as caritas, while that of changeable things is cupiditas. 15 Though the former case represents the fulfillment of trinitarian psychology, the latter represents its distortion. When love is properly ordered as caritas, it yields an enjoyment of all things—ourselves and our neighbor—in God. 16 For Augustine, the inner word is born when, considering what we know, we love (amare) that thought. Pleasure in this sense is derived either illicitly with regard to sinful enjoyment of a created thing in itself (cupiditas), or, more legitimately, in the context of rightly ordered actions. 17 The word conceived in the mind, therefore, will reflect the kind of love we have. Love itself functions as a medium (medius) in which the mind and the word are united. 18 In the case of earthly love (cupiditas), however, a division within the inner word emerges. In this form of earthly love, desire and possession are not perfectly united: if one desires to possess an earthly thing or a carnal pleasure (such as food), a distinction quickly ensues between the desire itself and the eventual attainment and enjoyment of the object. Unlike this form of illicit desire, however, when spiritual things are loved, the word conceived by the mind is the same as that which is born by love. 19 Whenever something is known by the mind, a kind of image (similitudo) of the thing known comes to be within the memory. 20 In this similitude, we have an image of the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united in simple and relational unity, are imaged in the rational soul. 21 The authentic ordering proper to the human person as an image of the divine Trinity emerges from this licit desire with the birth of the inner word as a true similitude, existing between the rational creature and the Creator.
To understand the similitudo that exists between the rational creature and the Creator as mere static similarity is radically insufficient, however, because Augustine does not view licit and illicit desire as psychological equivalents. For Augustine, licit desire represents a form of human flourishing that is defined by divine similitude and ordered towards union with its trinitarian exemplar. Rather than an equal alternative, illicit desire emerges in Augustine’s presentation as a kind of textual counterpoint to underscore the nature of authentic human fulfillment. This fulfillment emerges only when human psychology, stamped by a trinitarian structure, is ordered by an explicit relationship with the divine Trinity. That is, when properly employed, the faculties of knowledge and will are ordered towards the One in whose image they are made—and love, along with the word it brings forth, is meant for enjoyment. The likeness of God (similitudo) within the soul is perfected through knowing and loving God: by knowing God, we become like Him, because His image is held in knowledge and memory. Although we do not become God’s equals, we become better ourselves by knowing Him, and particularly by loving Him—loving our knowledge of Him gives birth to a word, in which our knowledge of Him becomes a kind of likeness (similitudo). 22
In De Trinitate, the language of trinitarian similitude is the explicit context in which this trajectory of desire and enjoyment functions. Although a certain trinitarian structure may be discerned in a strictly psychological sense, Augustine makes it clear that, even though we can see a kind of trinity in its act of self-love, the human soul does not fulfill this likeness simply through its own existence. 23 In book 14, for example, Augustine argues that it is the soul’s capacity to remember, understand, and love the one who has made it that makes it the image of God in the full sense. He argues that this trinity is most fully present in the soul when the soul contemplates itself. 24 Far from a form of self-worship, it is the soul’s ordering as image that allows this self-contemplation to become a mode of union with God. 25 In the context of book 14, the counter-narrative of illicit desire that Augustine first developed under the heading of cupiditas comes to be personified by Augustine as a fool: for Augustine, the fool is the one who does not love according to the pattern of authentic caritas. 26 Foolishness in this sense is not only the absence of wisdom as intellectual knowledge; it is a kind of resistance to the natural ordering of human psychology which, as image, tends to its end in love. 27 Alluding to the Book of Wisdom, Augustine distinguishes between the wisdom of God and the wisdom of this age. 28 Recalling the distinction between the false love of concupiscence and authentic love of charity, Augustine argues that likeness only emerges in the soul with clarity in authentic love (caritas), which is directed towards eternal things. According to this pattern, love of God fills the soul with true wisdom. By knowing and loving itself as a likeness of the Trinity, the soul is drawn, as a natural consequence, to know and love God. 29 For Augustine, therefore, the trinitarian image or likeness found naturally within the human soul is possessed of a dynamism that is directed towards knowing and loving God in charity. 30 When this image within the rational creature follows the natural unfolding of its own likeness, it comes to know God and to enjoy His eternal wisdom in charity.
In the first chapter of book 15 of De Trinitate, we find that Augustine begins his conclusion to the entire work by stating that it is his purpose to exercise (exercere) the reader in knowing God as Trinity, in whose image we are made. 31 Here, Augustine argues that the Trinity is demonstrated to believers not only by the authority of Scripture, but also, to a certain extent, by reason, in so far as this is possible. 32 Once we understand this ratio in the context of faith and image, however, it becomes clear that its necessary end lies in charity. To this end, J. F. Worthen has argued that, while the description of the soul found in De Trinitate 8–14 may be voiced in universal terms, Augustine’s desire to exercise the soul of his reader that appears at the beginning of book 15 is an invitation to particularize this universal narrative in the life of the individual who engages the text. Although certainly not presented by Augustine as a philosophical proof, for Worthen the ordered structure of De Trinitate 8–14 does invite the exercise of the soul’s ratio as an image of the Trinity. 33 If Worthen’s argument is correct, the invitation to be personally exercised by the contents of De Trinitate is ordered towards the ascent of the person in wisdom. When God forms the object of this trajectory, the true nature of wisdom emerges more clearly as a fulfillment that stands distinct from the knowledge of created things, and that takes place through Christ. 34 Although trinitarian image can be attributed to the human person in many senses, this trinitarian image reveals itself most fully when the person participates in divine wisdom. 35 Echoing this, Rowan Williams and Khalid Anatolios argue that the trajectory of ratio in De Trinitate is better understood as a “quest” for God as the object of love than a proof of a truth claim. 36
In the second chapter of book 15, the notion that the logic of quest best describes the ascent of the human person to God is reinforced by Augustine’s description of desire as the impetus that drives this search for God. Although God is indeed incomprehensible, Augustine asserts that it is in seeking Him that we find the delight indicated by Psalm 105: “Let hearts that seek the Lord rejoice! Seek out the Lord and his might; constantly seek his face” (Ps. 105:3b–4 NABRE, used throughout). 37 As John Cavadini notes, Augustine’s use of this text indicates that faith itself involves a search for God that is never exhausted by strictly noetic categories. 38 Rather, it is a search for God that can never be entirely completed, but instead only serves to deepen our desire. Augustine complements the psalmist’s injunction to “seek” and “rejoice” with the words of Sirach: “Those who eat of me will hunger still, and those who drink of me will thirst for more” (Sir. 24:21). 39 In this understanding, we seek this greatest of goods in order that it may be found with greater sweetness (dulcius), and we find it in order to seek it more ardently (avidius). 40 Augustine describes this search by alluding to First Corinthians: “At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). 41 For Augustine, the inner word spoken within the rational soul is a mirror (speculum) or an enigma (aenigma) that is a likeness (similitudo) of the Word spoken eternally within the Trinity. In De Trinitate 15.19, Augustine argues that this inner word, which exists prior to the exterior sign of any spoken language, becomes a key that has the power to open the eyes of the soul to the trinitarian pattern of creation, and even to the presence of the Trinity itself in all its inexhaustible mystery. 42 If this desire is understood as the animating principle for Augustine’s theology of caritas, the fool’s misdirection of desire in cupiditas must result in something more than simple emotional frustration or logical fallacy; as understood in the context of De Trinitate, the fool’s lack of wisdom represents a failure to know and love God as the source of created things.
Monologion
Although Anselm does not always reveal his source material, at the outset of the Monologion Anselm explicitly acknowledges his debt to Augustine’s De Trinitate, asking that his work be judged against the standard of Augustine’s text. 43 Examining the textual connections between the Monologion and De Trinitate, Asiedu has argued that the fifteenth and final book of De Trinitate serves as a special source for Anselm’s Monologion, providing a structure for understanding Anselm’s work as a whole. 44 Recalling Augustine’s understanding of the soul as a mirror in De Trinitate 15.19, we can see an implicit parallel with Anselm’s treatment of the soul as divine image in Monologion 67, where he describes the mind as its own mirror (speculum) which enables it to see (speculari) that image (imago) which it cannot see (videre) “face to face.” 45 St. Paul’s image of seeing through a mirror darkly functions for both Anselm and Augustine as an epistemological model for the rational soul’s access to the Trinity; in both cases, it is desire that strains through this veil to possess God in love and understanding. Although more immediately accessible to the mind through the senses, created reality is ultimately intended to yield to a vision of that which is eternal. Like Augustine, Anselm argues that among all created things only the rational mind is capable of loving (amare), remembering (memorare), and knowing (intelligere) itself. This unique capacity makes it a true image (vera imago) of the essence of the ineffable Trinity, which remembers, knows, and loves itself. 46 In Monologion 68, Anselm argues that because of the makeup of the rational soul, it is called by its nature to give voluntary expression to the potential for the trinitarian image within itself by remembering, knowing, and loving God as the highest good, in which all other goods are contained. 47 Rational existence, with its ability to judge between good and bad and to choose among gradations of goodness, is made to love the essence of God, as the supreme good above all other goods. 48 Similarly, for Augustine it is the fool who does not allow himself to be drawn, through his own act of knowing, remembering and loving himself, to also love the one in whose image he is made. 49
Building on these Augustinian themes in Monologion 70, Anselm explicitly connects the love (amare) of God with the concept of desire (desiderare). Although Anselm does not mention cupiditas in this context, desire functions in such a way that the teleological orientation of the soul remains directed toward God as highest good. Recalling the role of desire in De Trinitate 15, Anselm argues that the supreme good requires desire from us as much as love. 50 Love of justice, truth, blessedness, and incorruptibility implies an appetite or desire (appetere) to enjoy these same things. Only the supreme Good can satisfy this love and desire, and God, because He desires to be loved, rewards the rational creature’s love and desire only with Himself. 51 Anselm explicitly states that the love and desire of the rational creature has a certain unavoidable trajectory to it: “Every rational creature that strives, as it ought, to love and desire supreme happiness will, at some point, behold and enjoy it. So that what it ‘now’ sees ‘through a glass darkly,’ as it were, it will then see ‘face to face’ . . . it is foolish to doubt it.” 52 Augustine’s trajectory of caritas, which is ordered to the love and enjoyment of God alone and enjoys His similitude in wisdom, is implicitly invoked here by Anselm’s trajectory of love (amare) and desire (desiderare). Despite these similarities, however, a slight difference of inflection emerges in Anslem’s articulation of foolishness in this trinitarian context. In Monologion 70, Anselm emphasizes the certainty of this trajectory of love and desire. If properly and willfully employed, the love and desire proper to rational nature will lead necessarily to beholding and enjoying God. 53 For Anselm, the concept of foolishness describes an intellectual doubt that questions the eventual finality of love and desire in beatitude. By contrast, in De Trinitate 14.15, foolishness undermines the trajectory of desire in a more general sense, not limited to strictly noetic categories: although the fool remembers, understands, and loves, he has not been made wise by knowing and loving God. 54
At least two dissimilarities emerge between De Trinitate 14.15 and Monologion 70 at this juncture. In De Trinitate 14.15, the absence of wisdom impoverishes all three mental faculties of memory, intellect, and will, each of which constitute integral aspects of Augustine’s theological anthropology of image. 55 While each of these faculties are active in the Monologion, the concept of foolishness that Anselm employs in Monologion 70 is more immediately concerned with the error of intellectual doubt, and does not explicitly contradict the operation of the other two. In fact, what makes doubt “foolish” in this case for Anselm is the very fact that authentic desire and love are already operative in a fruitful manner. In this context, foolishness portrays a more particular defect in the act of understanding, in which the implications of this same authentic love and desire are not acknowledged. 56 Second, while the fool’s doubt in Monologion 70 explicitly concerns the future reality of eternal life with God, the failure of the fool in De Trinitate 14.15 to participate in divine wisdom affects the fool’s participation in the reality of sanctification in the present as well. Although Anselm’s theology of sanctification is no less robust than Augustine’s, his use of foolishness in relation to this reality is more specifically concerned with an intellectual doubt about a certain future truth.
Proslogion
Although the Proslogion may appear to lack the Monologion’s structural and conceptual dependence on De Trinitate, it would be a mistake to assume that Augustine’s influence is absent. Anselm himself describes the Proslogion as an expansion and reworking of his previous work in the Monologion. 57 Although both the Proslogion and the Monologion approach the Trinity through the exercise of reason, in the prologue of the Proslogion Anselm contrasts these two works on a structural level: while the Monologion could be understood as a kind of examination of the act of faith composed of many arguments, the Proslogion is centered on a single, self-sufficient argument. 58 Because of its structural centrality, this single argument provides the textual context in which something like Augustine’s exercise of the soul emerges. 59 As he did with the many arguments made in the Monologion, Anselm makes it clear in the Proslogion that this argument remains decisively shaped by his understanding of the act of faith. At the outset, Anselm encourages his reader to engage in a kind of contemplative search for God by retreating to the inner recesses of the soul, and removing oneself from all concerns and anxieties that do not lead to Him. Using the words of Psalm 27, Anselm states the object of his search: “I seek Your countenance, O Lord, your countenance I seek.” 60 For Anselm, this text leads him to an expression of prayerful desire, asking the Lord “to teach [his] heart where and how to seek You, where and how to find You.” 61 Thus, Anselm begins the Proslogion by asking for the means to seek and to find the Lord, through a pairing of desire and satisfaction that will accompany the soul on its journey out of the darkness of the fall. The text from Psalm 27 that inspires this journey is reminiscent of a similar text from Psalm 105 that we have seen Augustine invoke at the close of De Trinitate: “Seek out the Lord and his might; constantly seek his face” (Ps. 105:3b–4). 62 As we saw, this biblical text is emblematic of what Rowan Williams and others have called the “logic of quest” that characterizes Augustine’s ascent of ratio in caritas. 63 Despite the differences between the Monologion and the Proslogion, Worthen rightly argues that these final chapters in De Trinitate continue to provide the Augustinian context for Anselm’s project. Although Anselm remains focused on constructing a single argument in the Proslogion, the dialogic structure of this single argument in this text portrays explicitly the exercise of the soul as image that is described by Augustine in the second half of De Trinitate. 64
Defining God as “something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought,” 65 Anselm builds his argument for God from within human understanding. 66 If approached as an exercise of Augustinian ratio, Anselm’s argument is more than simply a syllogistic proof for the existence of an idea. 67 Nevertheless, like the Monologion, the Proslogion represents a development, rather than a simple re-presentation, of Augustine’s trinitarian psychology. In both the Monologion and the Proslogion, Anselm works to construct a grammar of necessity from within the conceptual framework of Augustine’s trinitarian psychology.
Because aspects of Augustine’s psychology of image are woven into the teleological fabric of Anselm’s single argument in the Proslogion, these Augustinian themes emerge as an important backdrop for the one argument that stands at the textual core of Anselm’s text, thus giving the work as a whole an implicitly Augustinian hue. 68 As in the Monologion, Anselm builds implicitly on Augustine’s trinitarian psychology in the first chapter of the Proslogion, describing the human person as created in the divine image for the expressed purpose of remembering (memorare), thinking of (cogitare), and loving (amare) God. 69 Like Augustine, Anselm uses the concept of divine image to describe the soul as existing for union with God. 70 Anselm is quick to show that the reality of fallen humanity lives in a state of disunity, however, in which the image within has become defaced and worn down by sin and vice. The effect of this disunity is not merely a decomposition of the image itself, but a loss of psychic functionality: crippled in this way, the soul can no longer accomplish the purpose for which it was created without the help of divine aid. 71 This post-lapsarian psychology stresses the debilitating effects of sin with respect to the original purpose of the human person; the effacing of the divine image does more than weaken the creature’s ability to recognize the mark of its creator within itself and to identify Him as its proper end in a purely intellectual sense. 72 In addition, the loss of image directly affects the soul’s ability to function correctly and so to act towards the attainment of the end for which it was made, which is God Himself. In the Proslogion, much of Anselm’s theology of sanctification is tied to the rehabilitation of the soul as image. As in the Monologion, Anselm begins his reflections with a focus on the faculty of understanding. Like the Monologion, Anselm’s treatment of understanding in the Proslogion is not isolated from the rehabilitation of the whole person in grace. As a prelude to his single argument, Anselm uses the concept of desire to emphasize the connection between the faculty of understanding and the human need for sanctification: although he recognizes that his understanding will never be sufficient, Anselm asserts that he desires to understand the truth that he loves and believes. 73 As in the Monologion, Anselm’s interest in understanding is framed from the outset by a love that is already actively stirring in the one who desires to understand what they believe. For Anselm, what the soul desires is an act of understanding that springs from and complements belief: “I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that ‘unless I believe, I shall not understand’ [Isa. 7:9].” 74 In keeping with the important role he attributed to love and desire in the Monologion, Anselm’s description of the psychological debilitation of fallen humanity in the Proslogion highlights the importance of desire in the rehabilitation of trinitarian image. Because Anselm’s single argument in the Proslogion is tied to the restoration of this image, reforming the divine image will not only lead to the psychological restoration of the person, but will reestablish the same person in relationship face to face with the one whom now we perceive only darkly, as in a mirror. Anselm’s use of desire in this context recalls the moral dimension of imago that Augustine expresses in De Trinitate, where the right ordering of love leads to participation in divine wisdom. In his single argument for God’s existence, Anselm argues that the beginning stages of this participation in divine wisdom are found in the faculty of the understanding: when the concept “something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought” is heard and received in the understanding, it must necessarily lead the soul out of itself and into the objective reality of God’s existence, even if the hearer does not immediately recognize these implications. 75 Later in his subsequent dialogue with “the fool” personified as Gaunilo, Anselm will continue to argue that the fool’s error is in the understanding, emphasizing that if the notion of God as supreme reality is thought with true understanding, it cannot be understood not to exist. 76 In the Monologion, the Augustinian fool is the one who doubted that the teleology of desire and love terminates in beatitude. In both the Monologion and Proslogion, Anselm uses foolishness to illustrate the necessity of certain truth claims. Although this doubt concerned the truth value of a claim about the future in the Monologion, in the Proslogion this foolish doubt of what is certainly true has been recast in a more immediate and immanent frame: in the Proslogion, the fool doubts the existence of God in his own heart. 77 Despite these differences, however, Anselm’s conceptual understanding of foolishness as a denial of necessary truth remains consistent across both texts. Additionally, in both the Monologion and the Proslogion, the certainty and necessity that foolishness denies is rendered intelligible by the wider context of the person’s search for God in desire. As the wider textual structure of the Proslogion indicates, what motivates the question of God’s existence is the presence of this same desire. As realities already present in the one who searches for God, love and belief frame Anselm’s single argument in the Proslogion.
Although Anselm frames foolishness in noetic terms in a way that distances him from Augustine’s notion of foolishness to a certain degree, it would be incorrect to assume that the realities of love and desire that frame Anselm’s search for God do not also affect his understanding of the fool’s denials in some way. Because of the wider theological assumptions at work in the Proslogion, the fool’s denial of God’s existence in his heart appears not merely as a logical contradiction confined to the intellect, but as an implicit contradiction of the analogical implications of the verbum cordis of faith, which is a similitude of the Word. The emphasis on desire which emerged in the Monologion allows Anselm to draw attention to a teleology already present in Augustine’s psychology of trinitarian similitude; in the Proslogion, desire assumes a central role in two tasks that are intrinsically linked to each other: the search for God, and the recovery of the image within the human person. Thus, in Proslogion 1, the desire of the post-lapsarian soul is explicitly linked to the restoration of the divine image within itself, and the wayfarer’s belief in God anticipates the fulfillment experienced in union. 78 Later, Anselm frames this right ordering of desire around the pursuit of the highest good. 79 Anselm anticipates—with desire—the enjoyment of God who is this one simple good, arguing that if “delightful things” on earth can give us such pleasure, how much more pleasure will we derive from their source? 80 This recalls the Augustinian and Pauline language of the Monologion, where the mirror of the soul as image allows one to see beyond created things and to grasp something of the supreme goodness of the divine essence. 81 All other desires that fall short of this supreme enjoyment and highest good cannot be had unless we allow ourselves to be inclined towards it alone. For Augustine, the inclination of the soul to love and enjoy God (and created things only for His sake) reflects a right ordering of the soul that eschews illicit love of created things (cupiditas). Anselm builds on this view, indicating that the fulfillment of desire results in an act of love which brings about the full psychological activation of the divine image within the person. It is the soul as image of the Trinity that is capable of knowing and loving God. For Anselm, this union is the result of correctly ordered desire, the presence of which indicates a restoration of the soul’s proper functionality, in which the smoke of sin that obscured the image has been definitively removed. 82
Conclusion
To what extent can Augustine’s trinitarian psychology support the notion of foolishness as a denial of necessity? Although Augustine does suggest that reason can be used to explore the Trinity to a certain extent, he never frames this in the language of necessity or logical demonstration. Nevertheless, in his failure to know and love God as Trinity, Augustine’s fool is unaware of something essential to the nature of reality itself; despite the fool’s ignorance, both the existence of the Trinity itself and the soul’s identity as trinitarian image remain unchanged. Although Augustine never refers to this foolishness as “illogical,” it is clear that he views knowing God in caritas as a fulfillment of the ratio of the soul as image. Although Anselm’s approach is theologically conditioned in similar ways, in the end his claim is stronger than Augustine’s—in addition to insisting that the perspective of the fool is objectively untrue, for Anselm the very premises contained in the fool’s error can be used to compel the fool to consent to the truth by the force of reason. Understood within the context of a trinitarian psychology that recalls Augustine’s, Anselm’s view of foolishness implies not only a particular focus on the faculty of the intellect but a slightly different understanding of the function of certainty as well. Rather than a reproduction of Augustine, therefore, what we have in Anselm seems to be an extension of certain conceptual structures already present in Augustine’s trinitarian psychology. Beginning in the Monologion, we see a thematic amplification of Augustine’s dichotomy between wisdom and foolishness, in which Anselm focuses on the act of the intellect and emphasizes the necessity of the teleology of word, image, and caritas that he finds in Augustine. In the Proslogion, this necessity is distilled into the form of a demonstrative argument. Despite these adaptations, however, for Anselm the concepts of image and desire draw deeply on the theological anthropology of De Trinitate, giving Anselm’s notion of reason itself a theological and trinitarian character. 83 Within this Augustinian context, therefore, the impossibility of the Anselmian fool’s denial is rendered most intelligible when the fool himself is understood to be an image of what he denies.
Footnotes
1.
Luigi Gioia has shown the value of a theological approach to Augustine’s epistemology. Luigi Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Other scholars have also made important contributions that contribute to a theological understanding of Augustine’s De Trinitate. See John C. Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De trinitate,” Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 103–23, https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies1992234; Michel René Barnes, “Augustine in Contemporary Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 56 (1995): 237–50, https://doi.org/10.1177/004056399505600202, and “Rereading Augustine on the Trinity,” in The Trinity: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth Century Trinitarian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), and Augustine and the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Rowan Williams, “De Trinitate,” in Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 845–51, and On Augustine (New York: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2016); Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011). Independent of Anselm’s connection with Augustine, recent Anselmian scholarship by Eileen Sweeney and others has stressed the importance of a theological reading of Anselm. Eileen Sweeney, Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2012), “Anselm’s Proslogion: The Desire for the Word,” The Saint Anselm Journal 1 (2003): 17–31, and “The Rhetoric of Prayer and Argument in Anselm,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 38 (2005): 355–78, https://doi.org/10.1353/par.2006.0004. For other examples of this trend in Anselm scholarship, see Marilyn McCord Adams, “Anselm on Faith and Reason,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 32–60; Brian Davies, “Anselm and the Ontological Argument,” in The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, 157–78; Sandra Visser and Thomas Williams, “The Proslogion Argument for the Existence of God,” in Anselm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 73–93. See also Travis E. Ables, “The Word in Which All Things Are Spoken: Augustine, Anselm, and Bonaventure on Christology and the Metaphysics of Exemplarity,” Theological Studies 76 (2015): 280–97 at 281n2, 
.
2.
See Proslogion 1–2. In the following, Anselm’s Proslogion and Monologion will be cited from S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, Opera Omnia, vol. 1, ed. Franciscus Schmitt (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1946).
3.
Robert Herrera has already shown the conceptual similarity that exists between Anselm’s concept of foolishness in the Proslogion and a different Augustinian text, the De utilitate credendi. Robert A. Herrera, “The Foolishness of the De utilitate credendi: A Parallel to Anselm’s insipiens?,” Analecta Anselmiana 5 (1976): 133–40. Herrera has also argued that Anselm’s concept of foolishness builds on Augustine’s ideas about purification, although he does not reference De Trin. 9–14 in his argument. Herrera, “Augustine’s Concept of Purification and the Fool of the Proslogion,” Anselm Studies 2 (1988): 253–59. Without mentioning De Trinitate, Gareth Matthews also notes some parallels between Anselm’s fool in the Proslogion and Augustine’s concept of reason in the Soliloquies (see Soliloquies 1.2.7). Gareth B. Matthews, “Inner Dialogue in Augustine and Anselm,” Poetics Today 28 (2007): 297, . In this present article, I study foolishness in both the Monologion and the Proslogion, in comparison with the role of this same concept in the second half of Augustine’s De Trinitate.
4.
See F. B. A. Asiedu, From Augustine to Anselm: The Influence of De Trinitate on the Monologion, Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia series 62 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 76–90. Lydia Schumacher, Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 66–84. See also Ables, “The Word in Which All Things Are Spoken,” 280–97. Frederick Van Fleteren, “The Influence of Augustine’s De Trinitate on Anselm’s Monologion,” in Saint Anselm—A Thinker for Yesterday and Today, ed. Coloman Viola and Frederick Van Fleteren (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2002), 411–43. J. F. Worthen, “Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Proslogion: ‘Exercere Lectorem,’” in Collectanea Augustiniana—Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 517–29. For more parallels between Augustine and Anselm, see David Hogg and Jeremy Thompson, “Anselm of Canterbury,” in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Giles Gasper shows that, in addition to Augustine, Anselm was also influenced by a broad array of other sources, including some Greek patristic authors. Giles E.M. Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004).
5.
Schumacher, Divine Illumination, 20, 66–84; Ian Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion: The History of Anselm’s Argument and Its Significance Today (Burlington: Ashgate, 2009), 197.
6.
“haec igitur trinitas mentis non propterea dei est imago quia sui meminit mens et intellegit ac diligit se, sed quia potest etiam meminisse et intellegere et amare a quo facta est. quod cum facit sapiens ipsa fit. si autem non facit, etiam cum sui meminit seque intellegit ac diligit, stulta est. meminerit itaque dei sui ad cuius imaginem facta est eumque intellegat atque diligat. quod ut breuius dicam, colat deum non factum cuius ab eo capax facta est et cuius esse particeps potest; propter quod scriptum est: « ecce dei cultus est sapientia », et non sua luce sed summae illius lucis participatione sapiens erit, atque ubi aeterna, ibi beata regnabit.” Trin. 14.15. CCL 50A, 442.1–443.11.
7.
Trin. 14.15. CCL 50A, 442.1–443.11. See text in note 6.
8.
Trin. 9.2 CCL 50A, 294.5.
9.
“mens igitur cum amat se ipsam duo quaedam ostendit, mentem et amorem. quid est autem amare se nisi praesto sibi esse uelle ad fruendum se? et cum tantum se uult esse quantum est, par menti uoluntas est et amanti amor aequalis. et si aliqua substantia est amor, non est utique corpus sed spiritus, nec mens corpus sed spiritus est. neque tamen amor et mens duo spiritus sed unus spiritus, nec essentiae duae sed una; et tamen duo quaedam unum sunt, amans et amor, siue sic dicas, quod amatur et amor.” Trin. 9.2. CCL 50A, 295.21–29.
10.
Trin. 9.9. CCL 50A, 301.1–18.
11.
Trin. 9.11. CCL 50A, 303.69–79. Rowan Williams, “The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate,” in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. J. T. Lienhard et al. (New York, 1993), 125–31.
12.
Trin. 9.12. CCL 50A, 303.1–6. The words of our outward speech serve this inner word through signs, which resemble only in part the eternal truth which the mind has grasped and understood. All that we do outwardly proceeds from this inner word. Trin. 9.12. CCL 50A, 304.7–14.
13.
“quod uerbum amore concipitur siue creaturae siue creatoris, id est aut naturae mutabilis aut incommutabilis ueritatis.” Trin. 9.13. CCL 50A, 304.15–17. Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 291. “The discussion of the verbum interior . . . [offers] both an account of the life of knowledge in the perfected mens as the continual production of a revealing image of love, and an account of how our searching and desiring is currently distorted.” Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 292.
14.
For texts where Augustine discusses amare, see notes 6, 9, and 15.
15.
“ergo aut cupiditate aut caritate, non quo non sit amanda creatura, sed si ad creatorem refertur ille amor, non iam cupiditas sed caritas erit. tunc enim est cupiditas cum propter se amatur creatura.” Trin. 9.13. CCL 50A, 304.1–4. Michel Barnes comments that for Augustine, “theological language shapes our thinking about God” in a way that avoids materialistic idolatry. Michel René Barnes, “Latin Trinitarian Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed. Peter Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 81–82.
16.
Far from a reflexive turn inwards, authentic love is motivated by what K. Anatolios refers to as a “logic of quest.” Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 242–48, 264. See also Williams, “The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate,” 126–31. Augustine also famously develops this theme of use and enjoyment in De doctrina Christiana. De doct. Lib. 1, c. IV. CCL 32.8. See William Riordan O’Connor, “The ‘Uti-Frui’ Distinction in Augustine’s Ethics,” Augustinian Studies 14 (1983): 45–62, https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies1983141. See also Oliver O’Donovan, “‘Usus’ and ‘Fruitio’ in Augustine, ‘De Doctrina Christiana I,’” The Journal of Theological Studies 33 (1982): 361–97, .
17.
“nascitur autem uerbum cum excogitatum placet aut ad peccandum aut ad recte faciendum. Uerbum ergo nostrum et mentem de qua gignitur quasi medius amor coniungit seque cum eis tertium complexu incorporeo sine ulla confusione constringit.” Trin. 9.13. CCL 50A, 304.11–15.
18.
Trin. 9.13. CCL 50A, 304.11–15.
19.
“conceptum autem uerbum et natum idipsum est cum uoluntas in ipsa notitia conquiescit, quod fit in amore spiritalium. qui enim uerbi gratia perfecte nouit perfecteque amat iustitiam, iam iustus est etiamsi nulla exsistat secundum eam forinsecus per membra corporis operandi necessitas. In amore autem carnalium temporaliumque rerum sicut in ipsis animalium fetibus alius est conceptus uerbi, alius partus.” Trin. 9.14. CCL 50A, 305.1–7.
20.
Trin. 9.16. CCL 50A, 307. See Williams, “De Trinitate,” in Augustine through the Ages, 849a.
21.
See Trin. 14.13. CCL 50A, 441.25–29; 14.14. CCL 50A, 442.25–27. For the relationship between de Trin. 9–10 and de Trin. 14, see Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 305.
22.
“habet ergo animus nonnullam speciei notae similitudinem siue cum ea placet siue cum eius priuatio displicet. Quocirca in quantum deum nouimus similes sumus, sed non ad aequalitatem similes quia nec tantum eum nouimus quantum ipse se . . . ita cum deum nouimus, quamuis meliores efficiamur quam eramus antequam nossemus maximeque cum eadem notitia etiam placita digneque amata uerbum est fitque aliqua dei similitudo illa notitia, tamen inferior est quia in inferiore natura est; creatura quippe animus, creator autem deus.” Trin. 9.16. CCL 50A, 307.1–5, 13–17. This theme is also evident in his Confessions, where Augustine makes much of the distinction between licit and illicit desire, connecting the concepts of licit desire and enjoyment in his own search for God. Margret Miles argues that the contrast between disordered and ordered desires marks Augustine’s search for God in the Confessions, and shows the connection between ordered desires and pleasure. Margaret R. Miles, Desire and Delight: A New Reading of Augustine’s Confessions (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 17–38. See also William Desmond, “Augustine’s Confessions: On Desire, Conversion and Reflection,” Irish Theological Quarterly 47 (1980): 24–33, . Desmond describes the function of desire in the Confessions in the following way: “In the Confessions is disclosed a dramatic life wherein, through its shifting hazards and its points of peace, a man comes to comprehend the full reach of his desire and what its fulfillment requires.” Desmond, 24. See also John C. McCarthy, “Desire, Recollection and Thought: On Augustine’s Confessions I,1,” Communio 14 (1987): 146–57. “The most visible and forceful sort of inchoate knowledge at work in the Confessions is the author’s desire.” McCarthy, “Desire, Recollection and Thought,” 155.
23.
L. Gioia argues that human self-memory, self-knowledge, and self-love (the second of the three triads he identifies in De Trin. 9–14) image the divine Trinity. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 279–80.
24.
See Trin. 14.13. CCL 50A, 441.25–29; 14.14. CCL 50A, 442.25–27. See note 23. “Unless the mens is actively participating in the life of God, the image is imperfect (14.8.11).” Williams, “De Trinitate,” in Augustine through the Ages, 849b.
25.
Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 279.
26.
“haec igitur trinitas mentis non propterea dei est imago quia sui meminit mens et intellegit ac diligit se, sed quia potest etiam meminisse et intellegere et amare a quo facta est. quod cum facit sapiens ipsa fit. si autem non facit, etiam cum sui meminit seque intellegit ac diligit, stulta est. meminerit itaque dei sui ad cuius imaginem facta est eumque intellegat atque diligat. quod ut breuius dicam, colat deum non factum cuius ab eo capax facta est et cuius esse particeps potest; propter quod scriptum est: « ecce dei cultus est sapientia », et non sua luce sed summae illius lucis participatione sapiens erit, atque ubi aeterna, ibi beata regnabit.” Trin. 14.15. CCL 50A, 442.1–443.11. Invoking this text, Lewis Ayres argues that the contrast between wisdom and foolishness that Augustine describes here corresponds to the love of God and the love of corporeal things, respectively. “The mind is perfected as imago Dei not merely when the object of desire is God, but when its act as mind is towards, from and in the divine.” Ayres, Augustine and the Trinity, 307. See also Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 279, 289–91.
27.
Rowan Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity: Reflections on the De Trinitate,” in Collectanea Augustiniana: Melanges T.J. van Bavel (Leuven: Peeters, 1990), 317–32.
28.
See Wisdom 9:14. Trin. 14.14. CCL 50A, 442.10–14. In this regard, see especially Gioia’s chapters 10 and 11 on wisdom and image. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate, 219–98.
29.
Trin. 14.15. CCL 50A, 442.1–443.11.
30.
“The Spirit causes us to abide in God, that is, in the love that is identical with the divine life itself, and so may be called ‘love,’ caritas, since this abiding is the effect of love.” Williams, “De Trinitate,” in Augustine through the Ages, 850a.
31.
“uolentes in rebus quae factae sunt ad cognoscendum eum a quo factae sunt exercere lectorem iam peruenimus ad eius imaginem quod est homo in eo quo ceteris animalibus antecellit, id est ratione uel intellegentia, et quidquid aliud de anima rationali uel intellectuali dici potest quod pertineat ad eam rem quae mens uocatur uel animus.” Trin. 15.1. CCL 50 A, 460.1–6.
32.
“quae utrum sit trinitas non solum credentibus diuinae scripturae auctoritate, uerum etiam intellegentibus aliqua si possumus ratione iam demonstrare debemus.” Trin. 15.1. CCL 50A, 460.11–13. CCL 50A, 460.1–5, 462.13–467.12.
33.
Worthen, “Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Proslogion,” 518–19.
34.
Matthew Drever, Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 143.
35.
Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 319–20; Drever, Image, Identity, and the Forming of the Augustinian Soul, 142.
36.
Williams, “The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate,” 126–31; Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 260–61. See also note 16.
37.
See Trin. 15.2. CCL 50A, 460.3–5.
38.
John Cavadini notes that in De Trinitate, “‘Faith’ is . . . not merely a propaedeutic vision, but as a redirecting of the noetic regard to a decidedly un-noetic realm, and ‘understanding’ becomes the position of the self-constituted by a growth wholly defined in that realm—it becomes, that is, a ‘seeking.’ We come to learn then, by Book 15, why the Psalmist could say, ‘Seek his face evermore.’” Cavadini, “The Structure and Intention of Augustine’s De Trinitate,” 109. Concerning the pedagogy of De Trinitate, see John C. Cavadini, “The Quest for Truth in Augustine’s De Trinitate,” Theological Studies 58 (1997): 429–40, .
39.
See Trin. 15.2. CCL 50A, 461.24–25.
40.
“cur ergo sic quaerit si incomprehensibile comprehendit esse quod quaerit nisi quia cessandum non est quamdiu in ipsa incomprehensibilium rerum inquisitione proficitur, et melior meliorque fit quaerens tam magnum bonum quod et inueniendum quaeritur et quaerendum inuenitur? nam et quaeritur ut inueniatur dulcius et inuenitur ut quaeratur auidius.” Trin. 15.2. CCL 50A, 461.17–23.
41.
See Trin. 15.19. CCL 50A, 485.64–72. Text as in note 44. In a somewhat different context, Augustine also makes use of this Pauline image in his literal commentary on Genesis to describe the difference between perceiving through the corporal senses or even spiritual similitude and seeing face to face. Gen. litt. 12.27.55, CSEL 28.1: 422.19–20. Frederick Van Fleteren traces the use of 1 Cor. 13:12 across Augustine’s works, noting usages in the Confessions, De doctrina, and other texts as well. See Frederick Van Fleteren, “Per Speculum et in Aenigmate: I Corinthians 13:12 in the Writings of St. Augustine,” Augustinian Studies 23 (1992): 69–102, . In the case of De Trinitate, Van Fleteren argues that the usage of this passage in Trin. 15.19 represents Augustine’s mature usage of this passage, in which God and the human person as image are known enigmatically. Van Fleteren, “Per Speculum et in Aenigmate,” 88–91.
42.
“quisquis igitur potest intellegere uerbum non solum antequam sonet, uerum etiam antequam sonorum eius imagines cogitatione uoluantur—hoc est enim quod ad nullam pertinet linguam, earum scilicet quae linguae appellantur gentium quarum nostra Latina est—, quisquis, inquam, hoc intellegere potest iam potest uidere per hoc speculum atque in hoc aenigmate aliquam uerbi illius similitudinem de quo dictum est: «in principio erat uerbum, et uerbum erat apud deum, et deus erat uerbum ».” Trin. 15.19. CCL 50A, 485.64–72. See Asiedu, From Augustine to Anselm, 87–89.
43.
In the Monologion, Anselm cites De Trinitate directly as one of his primary Augustinian sources. Monolog., Prolog. Schmitt, vol. 1, 8 ln. 13–14. See also Brian Davies and G. R. Evans, eds., Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 6.
44.
Asiedu, From Augustine to Anselm, 76–90. John Fortin has also explored some of the connections between Augustine’s De Trinitate and Anselm’s doctrine of the Trinity in the Monologion. John R. Fortin, “The Naming of Father and Son in Saint Anselm’s Monologion 38–42,” International Philosophical Quarterly 46 (2006): 161–70, .
45.
“Aptissime igitur ipsa sibimet esse velut ‹‹speculum›› dici potest, in quo speculetur ut ita dicam imaginem eius, quam ‹‹facie ad faciem›› videre nequit. Nam si mens ipsa sola ex omnibus quae facta sunt, sui memor et intelligens et amans esse potest: non video cur negetur esse in illa vera imago illius essentiae, quae per sui memoriam et intelligentiam et amorem in trinitate ineffabili consistit. Aut certe inde verius esse illius se probat imaginem, quia illius potest esse memor, illam intelligere et amare. In quo enim maior est et illi similior, in eo verior illius esse imago cognoscitur. Omnio autem cogitari non potest rationali creaturae naturaliter esse datum aliquid tam praecipuum tamque simile summae sapientiae, quam hoc quia potest reminisci et intelligere et amare id, quod optimum et maximum est omnium. Nihil igitur aliud est inditum alicui creaturae, quod sic praeferat imaginem creatoris.” Monolog. 67. Schmitt, 77 ln. 27–78. See also Major Works, 73. Anselm’s shift from speculari to videre here seems to highlight Augustine’s own emphasis on the distinction between that which is eternal and invisible and that which is visible and changeable in Trin. 14.15.
46.
Monolog. 67. See text in note 45.
47.
Monolog. 68. Schmitt, 78 ln. 14–79. See also Major Works, 73–74.
48.
Monolog. 68. Schmitt, 78 ln. 14–79.
49.
Trin. 14.15.
50.
“Etenim idem ipsum bonum quod sic se amari exegit, non minus se ab amante desiderari cogit. Nam quis sic amet iustitiam, veritatem, beatitudinem, incorruptibilitatem, ut iis frui non appetat? Quid ergo summa bonitas retribuet amanti et desideranti se, nisi seipsam? Nam quidquid aliud tribuat, non retribuit, quia nec compensatur amori nec consolatur amantem nec satiat desiderantem. Aut si se vult amari et desiderari, ut aliud retribuat: non se vult amari et desiderari propter se sed propter aliud, et sic non se vult amari sed aliud; quod cogitare nefas est.” Monolog. 70. Schmitt, 80 ln. 21–29.
51.
Monolog. 70. Schmitt, 80 ln. 21–29.
52.
Monolog. 70. Trans. in Major Works, 76. “omnis anima rationalis, si quemadmodum debet studeat amando desiderare summam beatitudinem, aliquando illam ad fruendum precipiat. Ut quod «nunc» videt quasi «per speculum et in aenigmate, tunc» videat «facie ad faciem». . . dubitare stultissimum est.” Monolog. 70. Schmitt, 80 ln. 29–81.
53.
Monolog. 70. Schmitt, 80 ln. 21–81.
54.
Trin. 14.15. CCL 50A, 442.1–443.11.
55.
See Williams, “Sapientia and the Trinity,” 319, and “De Trinitate,” in Augustine through the Ages, 846b.
56.
Monolog. 70. Schmitt, 80 ln. 21–81.
57.
See Proslog. Prooemium. Schmitt, 93 ln. 1–10.
58.
Proslog. Prooemium. Schmitt, 93 ln. 1–10. “[The Monologion is] an example of meditation on the meaning of faith from the point of view of one seeking, through silent reasoning within himself, things he knows not—reflecting that this was made up of a connected chain of many arguments, I began to wonder if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself.” Proslogion, Preface. Major Works, 82.
59.
Worthen, “Augustine’s De trinitate and Anslem’s Proslogion,” 519–20.
60.
Ps. 27(26):8. Proslogion, 1. Text as in The Major Works, 84. “Come,” says my heart, ‘seek his face’; your face, LORD, do I seek!” Ps. 27:8.
61.
Proslogion, 1, The Major Works, 84–85.
62.
See Trin. 15.2. CCL 50A, 460.3–5.
63.
See notes 16 and 38. Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 242–48, 264. See also Williams, “The Paradoxes of Self-Knowledge in the De Trinitate,” 126–31.
64.
“What Augustine’s De trinitate contains implicitly, Anselm’s Proslogion displays openly.” Worthen, “Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Proslogion,” 519–20.
65.
“aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest.” Proslog., 2. Schmitt, 101 ln. 8. Translation as in Major Works, 87.
66.
Concerning possible Augustinian sources for this approach, J. Burton Fulmer has noted the similarities between Anselm’s argument and Augustine’s own language in Confessions 7.4.6. See J. Burton Fulmer, “Anselm and the Apophatic: ‘Something Greater than Can Be Thought,’” New Black Friars 89 (2008): 183, .
67.
Herrera, “The Foolishness of the De utilitate credendi,” 136–37.
68.
Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, 197. See note 83.
69.
“Fateor, domine, et gratias ago, quia creasti in me hanc imaginem tuam, ut tui memor te cogitem, te amem. Sed sic est abolita attritione vitiorum, sic est offuscata fumo peccatorum, ut non possit facere ad quod facta est, nisi tu renoves et reformes eam. Non tento, domine, penetrare altitudinem tuam, quia nullatenus comparo illi intellectum meum; sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et amat cor meum. Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo: quia ‹‹nisi credidero, non intelligam››.” Proslog. 1. Schmitt, ln. 12–19.
70.
Proslog. 1. Schmitt, ln. 12–19. See note 69.
71.
Proslog. 1. Text as in note 69.
72.
Proslog. 1. Text as in note 69.
73.
Proslog. 1. Text as in note 69.
74.
Proslog. 1. Trans. as in Major Works, 87. Eileen Sweeney argues Anselm’s arguments for God’s existence in both the Monologion and Proslogion are fundamentally structured by Anselm’s prayers, such that both prayer and argument seek union with God in parallel ways. Sweeney, “The Rhetoric of Prayer and Argument in Anselm,” 355; Anselm of Canterbury and the Desire for the Word (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 110–74.
75.
“Ergo, Domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi, ut quantum scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus. Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia «dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est deus»? Sed certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico: aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest, intelligit quod audit; et quod intelligit in intellectu eius est, etiam si non intelligat illud esse. Aliud enim est rem esse in intellectu, aliud intelligere rem esse.” Proslog. 2. Schmitt, 101 ln. 3–10.
76.
Reply to Gaunilo, 3–4. The Major Works, 114–15.
77.
See Proslog. 2. Schmitt, 101 ln. 3–10. Text as in note 78. Other Augustinian parallels between Anselm’s argument for God’s existence in Proslog. 2 as “something than which nothing greater can be conceived” can be found in De doct. 1.7; Lib. arb. 2.6.14; Confess. 7.4.6; and Mor. 2.11.24. David Hogg and Jeremy Thompson, “Anselm of Canterbury,” in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine. On necessity in De Trinitate and the Proslogion, see Worthen, “Augustine’s De trinitate and Anselm’s Proslogion,” 520–21.
78.
“sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et amat cor meum.” Proslog. 1. Schmitt, 100 ln. 17 (emphasis mine). See full text in note 69.
79.
“Ama unum bonum, in quo sunt omnia bona, et sufficit. Desidera simplex bonum, quod est omne bonum, et satis est. Quid enim amas, caro mea, quid desideras, anima mea? Ibi est, ibi est quidquid amatis, quidquid desideratis.” Proslog., 25. Schmitt, 118 ln. 16–19 (emphasis mine). Trans. as in Major Works, 101.
80.
Proslog. 24. Schmitt, 118 ln. 5–9.
81.
Monolog. 67, Trin. 15.19.
82.
“Doce me quaerere te, et ostende te quaerenti; quia nec quaerere te possum nisi tu doceas, nec invenire nisi te ostendas. Quaeram te desiderando, desiderem quaerendo. Inveniam amando, amem inveniendo.” Proslog. 1. Schmitt, 100 ln. 8–11. “Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You; let me find You in loving You; let me love You in finding You.” Proslog. 1. Text as in The Major Works, 86–87. See also note 69.
83.
I. Logan emphasizes the need to appreciate that Anselm’s concept of ratio itself is necessarily shaped by the concept of imago Dei. Logan, Reading Anselm’s Proslogion, 197.