Bible Students

A Short Exploration of the Life and Thoughts of Abbot Anselm and Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

This paper aims to chronicle the life and major intellectual contributions of two of the most influential Christian thinkers of church history, Abbot Anselm and Thomas Aquinas. A brief section will be dedicated to the lives of these famous thinkers, in order to understand the circumstances of their writings. The philosophical contributions will also be surveyed with explanation of their significance. Finally, the conclusion will give some reflective thoughts about the innovation of these two philosophers. 

Introduction

Abbot Anselm and Thomas Aquinas are two of the most influential and interesting figures in church history. These two have colored the apologetic and philosophical landscape even today. One can hardly open a book on Christian apologetics without coming into contact with Anselm’s ontological argument or Aquinas’ contingency argument. The following sections will take a brief look at the lives of these two great men, who both lived around the turn of the last millennium. 

Abbot Anselm

The Life of Anselm

Abbot Anselm was born into a godly household, with an especially godly mother. Abbot Anselm arrived on the theological scene in 1092 as a monk. He became head of the monastery at age 30. When the archbishop of Canterbury died, the king of England requested Anselm for the position. Anselm protested. When the king’s request was ratified, Anselm greatly opposed the transition in dramatic fashion. However, he held this position for the rest of his life. He had been a Saint Benedict monk, and many of his teachings reflect this school of thought. He was a public figure, who addressed both those of authority and the layman in his writings. 

As a child, Anselm desired to enter a monastery, but eventually lost interest. When he became older, he broke irrevocably with his family and went to Bec to study with Lanfrank, an advisor of the Duke of Normandy. Lanfrank was a teacher of the philosophical school of dialectic. Anselm arrived when dialectic revival was in full throttle. His devotion was so great, he nearly fell into hero worship of Lanfrank. The monastic life shaped Anselm’s theological world. For Anselm, there was freedom in obedience. Through reason, Anselm could experience truth as if he was receiving it firsthand. Monks did not typically write in the way Anselm did, and even his mentor Lanfrank disapproved of his methods, eventually resulting in Anselm growing apart from Lanfrank. He believed the truths of Scripture could be communicated without directly citing Scripture. Additionally, one of his most important theological beliefs was that friendship was a key aspect of heaven, as God is the source of all goodness, joy, and friendship. 

Now, dialectic is the practice of exploring a topic for oneself. This permeates all of Anselm’s works, even his famous Monologion, his prayer exploring the character of God. He believed God was supreme reason. The archbishop of Canterbary was the authority of England, not the king, making this a prestigious position. The king, William II, and his archbishop, Anselm, never saw each other again after their parting on poor terms. The Pope wanted Anselm to be an apologist and polemicist against heresies, specifically from the eastern church. Eventually, Anselm ran into trouble with the Pope. The Pope excommunicated any who involved money with buying or honoring ecclesiological positions. Anselm was one of those, being elected by William II. When king Henry succeeded William II, Anselm visited Henry. Henry persuaded Anselm to go to the Pope to oppose the excommunication against lay investiture. The pope accepted the compromise by allowing homage to those who were involved in ministry previously through investitures. In 1109, Anselm died. 

The Nature of God

One of Anselm’s most important quests was to discover what it means for God to be God. He believed one could look for God only after one made a sketch of God, in order to know what to be looking for. Two of his major works were the Monologion and the Proslogion. The Monologion was a prayer for the reader to dwell on, where Anselm attempted to find God from the position of the unbeliever. The Proslogion is an exploration of God through love, seeking to understand what is already believed by the believer.

Anselm defined God as something which is unsurpassable in greatness. Even if something can not be fully understood, it can still be conceived, as in the case of God. One can conceive of an inconceivable greatness without fully understanding the depth of the inconceivable greatness. 

God must be the greatest and most worthy thing in the universe. The thing that is God must be omnipotent and omniscient, eternal, immutable, and permanent. This is because it is greater to be these things than to be finite in these attributes. The supreme substance, God, can not be constrained by physical laws. Another greatest attribute is simplicity, which claims that God has no divisible parts or attributes. God is His attributes (love, goodness, justice). Additionally, asciety claims that God is what He is from Himself, not taking being or any other attribute from another or greater source. God’s attributes all imply eachother. God can not undergo changes, due to His atemporality. He does not experience emotions in the same way we do, as God is unable to change. However, God is merciful and just, for the one who is merciful and just is better than the one who is either one or the other. When He is just, He gives others their due. When He is merciful, He gives Himself His due. Anselm does not know why God chooses some over others, and does not know if it can be known why. 

One troubling attribute of God, especially of late, is His omnipotence. Can God create something so heavy He could not move it? In short, no. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to do all things (which is contradictory), but the possession of all power. It is the ability to do all things which are proper objects of power. Additionally, God could not lie, since lying is not a proper thing, but the absence of a thing, that being truth. Evil, as well, is not a proper object of creation, but a lack of goodness, which is a proper object of creation. 

God is not temporal, so there is no first or now with God. God knows all of the future from the beginning, so there is no real open future. However, the one who makes a decision in time still holds the responsibility to make that decision. Things do not happen because God has seen them, but rather God sees things happen because they are what will take place given the free will of Creatures. 

Anselm’s Ontological Argument

Arguments for God should only be an expression of a desire to rest in God as He is made more fully known in faith. Anselm wanted an argument that could give an argument for the existence of God without using any other argument, which resulted in his ontological argument. If he could show the need for a self-explaining being, he could demonstrate that it must exist, and explain the existence of God. This is known as a contingent being, and it would have contingent qualities which are necessary to its existence. God has no accidental qualities. Anselm would need to look at the sketch of God he made in order to see if there is a God who matches the sketch. The argument Anselm settled on was the concept of a greatest conceivable being. The argument goes like this: 

If that which a greater can not be thought only exists in the mind, then a greater can be conceived, which exists in reality. Therefore, the greatest being must truly exist. Whatever is understood exists in the understood, and can be thought to exist in reality, which is greater. 

A popular argument against this is the proposition of a nonsensical greatest conceivable island. Likely the best objection to Anselm is that existence is not an attribute. If something can be thought to exist, is there really any reason it must be able to exist, especially in the case of a greatest thing? Does a real being (perhaps, the greatest finite being) need to compete with a hypothetical greater being? Anselm responded to some of the contemporary objections in the following way:

If a perfect being is possible, it exists. A perfect being is possible. Therefore, a perfect being exists. This is the modal ontological argument.

Ontological arguments are controversial, to say the least. Many have agreed with Anselm throughout the ages, and many Christians have raised objections to his line of argumentation. 

Creator and Creation

Surprisingly, Anselm does not make an argument that it is better for God to be a creator or Trinity. It would be natural for a wholly greatest being to be a creator, who wanted to share His goodness. Does the greatest being need to create, or choose to create? God must create on His own free choice. However, in what way does the Supreme cause other things to exist? 

Efficient causation is the execution of an action with a result. God does not require pre-existent things to exercise His power. God wills and it is so. God’s act of creation is an efficient cause. One rule of creating something is that there must be a rule or understanding of the thing in the mind or reason of God beforehand. Therefore, creation was not from nothing, because it was in the mind of God. God’s utterance of creation is a reflection of who He is. He does not think things apart from Himself, but in Himself. Divine creation through the Word is understood through the prologue of John. Before any creation was the Word of God, and all things were made through this. The Word was God. God makes creation through God. However, the Word was with God. How are they two? The Word is the supreme Spirit, but is with the supreme Spirit. The Word is uttered, the Spirit (God, not to be confused with the Holy Spirit) is the utterer. This is an irreflexive relation. The Word is supremely simple, and the Word which is uttered to create is one. The first cause of offspring is male, and so the divine parent is a Father, and the like offspring (utterance) is like Him, known as a Son. 

The Word is the blueprint of all creatures, even though creatures are wildly less than the Creator. A painting, in like manner, is much less than the painter, though is a reflection of the painter. The reality of the creature is in the Creator. Different creatures imitate the Creator in different ways. Statements are true when they reflect reality because this is what a statement ought to do. Truth in an action when it does what it ought to do. Fire has the power to heat because of the One who gives this power. The flesh of Christ ought to have been punctured, because that is its nature being the flesh of Christ. The ought of creation is to reflect the Creator, though not perfectly, and in different degrees. 

Free Will

What is free will, and how does it relate to virtue? A virtuous action can only be done in free will, otherwise it is not a virtuous action. There are three types of actions: Miracles, done only by God’s will, actions which are received by creatures from God which are not of free will, and willful actions not from God’s will or the nature of the creature. This third type of action will be focused on. 

Praise is given for free will actions which are done virtuously. Doing right is not enough, but it must require the right motivation. Justice comes from knowing what is right and doing what is right for the right reasons. One must do the just thing for the sake of justice itself. Only rational beings can be called just or unjust. The aqbility to sin must not be a part of free choice because God can not sin but He does have free choice. The power to make free choices is required for sin. 

To better understand the free actions of beings, angels can be brought into the discussion. Medieval thinkers were obsessed with angels. The case of the fall of angels avoids the complexities of the human condition. Angels act like a frictionless surface in physics. If creatures have received all good actions from God, how are we responsible for good and evil? Did God simply not give the (fallen) angels the condition to follow Him? Did God not preserve their will? God did not give perseverance to the angels because the angels fell. God offered the gift of perseverance to all angels. The fallen angels must have wanted something advantageous, apart from justice. They must have abandoned this gift of perseverance for something which looked advantageous. So, do the angels bring about their actions by themselves apart from the will of God? It was the angels who willed their own condition because they willed to choose the thing they should not have. If every choice is received from God, then there is no responsibility of evil deeds. However, as seen above, creatures do choose things apart from the gift of God’s goodness. 

God is the source of the good things by being the source of good essence and giving the free will for that choice. Now, the angels who did not fall have all happiness and so temptation can not tempt for any other good thing for they have all they could want. They will never fall, but by free will. They know God, and choose not to fall, because He is better than any sin they could desire. Moral responsibility is only a thing when the person can make the free choice.

The Atonement

Now, in speaking about necessary events, it is good to discuss the atonement. The choice of angels is an account of how choices are actually free and can be held responsible. If God is to be true to Himself, He must rescue humankind from its fall, otherwise humankind was made for nothing. Humans can not restore the debt, as their life is only at most the sum of the cost, and can not pay what is needed to have a positive (as opposed to neutral) relationship with God. The work of Christ is the “at-one-ment” which brought mankind to God. Should the Most High stoop to such low things as beatings? Does God act irrationally, if He could act in fiat to restore humanity? Is there a part of God which needs atonement?

God’s justice requires payment, even to Himself. Reconciliation between God and humanity could only take place through a being who is both human and God. Only humanity owed the debt to God. Only God was able to pay the debt. Humanity could not pay the debt, but God did not owe it. Jesus took both of those into Himself. As the God-man, He could both pay the debt and had the debt to pay (being positionally the head of mankind as the second Adam). It is God who must save humanity. If humans fall into sin, God must save them to be true to Himself. Reconciliation requires satisfaction. Humans have an obligation to do what they are meant to do. When they do not, there is dissatisfaction in their being and in their relationship to God, dishonoring God. Taking from God (unsatisfaction) is dishonoring to God. God would be unjust without differentiating between the just and unjust. Every sin is infinitely serious, and so the one who pays the price must have the capacity of infinite payment and the headship of humankind. The being must be one. God does not owe the debt, and the man can not pay it. 

Only one who is human owes it, and only one who is God can pay it. The God-man must do something He is not obligated to do, in this case die. Rational creatures were created in order to enjoy the goodness of God. If those creatures could not, then God’s plan is incomplete and purposeless. On the penal substitution view, Jesus takes the punishment. In Anselm’s view, Jesus makes satisfaction. Christ’s sacrifice has infinite value because His life has infinite value. The atonement view of the time was the ransom theory, which believed God paid Satan with the sacrifice of Christ. 

Conclusion

Aquinas was one of the most impactful theologians of church history, as seen by his ground-breaking philosophical thoughts. He was very Platonic, but also very orthodox. So orthodox, in fact, that he is regarded as a doctor of the Catholic church. A specific theologian who followed soon after anselm was Thomas Aquinas, who built on the ideas of Anselm. While Anselm is best-known today due to his ontological argument, his views have acted as the theological foundation for much of the many reformations of thought to follow. 

Thomas Aquinas

The Life of Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas was born in 1224, and was one of the most impactful philosophers in Catholicism. To his contemporaries, especially at the monastery he attended, he was known as the Dumb Ox, though later was acknowledged as one of the greatest thinkers of all time. Aquinas taught in Paris and died around 49, after having some sort of revelation about God. After that incident, he saw all of his work as a bleak shadow of God’s true being, and desired only to go and be with the Lord. Soon after, he did just that.

If Anselm was Platonic, Aquinas was Aristotelian. He believed philosophical speculation could bring understanding of God, even without using the Scriptures. Notably, while building on much of Anselm’s work, he rejected Anselm’s ontological arguments. Aquinas believed one could understand the cause (of, say, the universe) by examining its effects.

Aquinas believed the fundamentals of the faith were revealed through revelation, but the rest would require reason in the part of the individual. He believed God’s existence was self evident. He could be known through five arguments: First, He is the first mover. Second, He is the first cause. Third, He is the contingent cause of the universe’s being. Fourth, He is the maximal good, and so all gradation is relative to the absolute, which is God. Fifth, things move toward an end, and so must be directed toward that end by a first director. 

Aquinas’ Ethics

Aquinas asked the important question, “What is it to be a good person and please God?” A good person is a virtuous person. To Aquinas, there are seven main virtues, three of which are theological, and four moral. The three theological are love, hope and faith, and the four moral are wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. A virtue is a good quality of the mind, which allows you to live rightly, and is something someone can not use wrongly. How can there be a virtue that someone could not use poorly? A virtue is something the Lord gives. God gives these virtues all at once to the Christian at conversion, though in a little amount. Virtues are a consequence of relationship with God, specifically the love of God, and no one can do wrong with love of God.

All the virtues are second-personal in nature, meaning they are given by the Spirit. When a person comes to faith, the Spirit comes to dwell in the individual. Complete union with God and man is only realized in heaven, but the Spirit helps to make that connection on earth. The whole justification of the individual comes in a moment, being indwelled by the Spirit, and given the virtues. All of the virtues are infused simultaneously with love and the Spirit, and this makes God available to know love and enjoy. God reveals Himself to the person who loves and believes God. One can not fully comprehend God, but apprehend, enjoying Him in some sense though not completely containing Him. The Spirit is given with a promise, that the individual would become the child of God. The Spirit is the uniting love between God and man. The Spirit allows us to know all things through becoming friends of God and receiving the mysteries of God. The spiritual life is perfected by the virtues.

Now, how are the gifts of the Spirit different from the virtues? The Spirit gives gifts which are similar to the virtues. They are piety, fear of the Lord, fortitude, wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge. The first three gifts are gifts of the will, the last four are gifts of the mind. The gifts are given only in part when one becomes a believer, but the Spirit gives us these gifts to help the virtues stick. The person of faith has the Spirit and the Spirit makes the person ready to obey. In the presence of their beloved (the Lord through the Spirit) the believer can obey God better. Whoever knows God loves well. The gifts and the virtues are almost perfect mirrors of each other. For example, when temperance is a gift of the Spirit, it becomes fear of the Lord. Justice is good, but piety is giving what is due to those who one owes honor. At the top of the list is God, who is owed the most honor. As a gift, it helps one to understand that the Lord’s love is with them. Courage is the conviction that when one dies they will go to be with the Lord. What can make one frightened if He is with them? The person of grace has the virtues, Spirit, and gifts of the Spirit.

Almsdeeds

What are almsdeeds? Almsdeeds are an extension of Aquinas’ view of justice. Justice is not only applicable in a court of law, but in everyday life. To be just is to preserve equality among individuals. If one man overcharges another, he is unjust. This is the same sort of sin as gossip, for they are taking the honor from the individual and returning nothing of profit. Distributive justice is being given what is deserved. Those who put in more deserve more, and so equality is based on what the individual is doing. These things are not optional.

There are seven kinds of almsdeeds: Feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the unclothed, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, ransoming captives, and burying the dead. Feeding and giving drink could be literally giving these things, or lobbying the government to do it, making sure the vulnerable can have the things they need. If the temperature falls, one could give people clothes and blankets. Anyone could work with the city to make sure there are shelters. All people were made by the Lord, and so even the homeless are the children of God. It is the Lord’s purpose that the world should shelter all people. For visiting sick, ransoming captives, and burying the dead, people need social contact, even when they do evil. Christians are to take care of those who are dying. Bodies and minds have needs which Christians should give. It is a matter of justice. There are also seven spiritual almsdeeds: Instructing the ignorant, counseling doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, correcting the incorrect, forgiving tresspasses, bearing with those who trouble, and praying for others. Instructing the ignorant is by helping others who do not know how to do something. 

No one has a right to forgiveness, but all have a requirement to forgive. To forgive is to help the wrongdoer do better, whether that requires discipline or not. Christians like to gossip without telling the bad guy what they’re doing wrong because it is costly. This is an injustice. What do Christians have to give? Everything is given by God, and must be given back.

Magnanimity

Magnanimity is being sold out for God. The magnanimous man can do great things for the wrong motivation, to make people look at him, rather than just doing good. The virtue of magnanimity is next to courage, as it is spending money in order to love others. Magnanimity can be confused with pride, so one should understand the deadly sins before understanding magnanimity. 

There are seven deadly sins, pride, envy, wrath, sloth, averace, gluttony, and lust. They are ordered from most to least evil. Love of God is the heart of the whole ethics, and so something in these is attracting people away from God gradually. In lust, one loves something that still looks like God, then loving creation (gluttony), then what one can get for themself (envy), and sloth which is the whiny holding back and being with oneself only. The last three are the big bad ones. Wrath is hating others for their sins, envy is wanting things only for oneself, and pride is looking into oneself and loving oneself and one’s honor. 

Magnanimity can look like pride, but is a virtue and not sin. There are three kinds of pride. The first kind of pride is looking at excellence one does not have. The second kind of pride is viewing one’s excellence as being self-made. Finally, one who thinks they have an excellence they do have, and that God gave it to them, but being glad that others don’t have it so that one can look down on others commits the third kind of pride. The Magnanimous person spends themself, what God has given to them. Anyone can have this honor, and the greatest goods can not be diminished by sharing them. 

Aquinas’ Metaphysics

The secular view of the world has two assumptions: All things are reducible to the fundamental physical matter, nothing more than the parts that compose it. Second, there is only the causation between the elementary particles because the whole can not control the parts, only the parts control the whole. Aquinas rejects both of these. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The whole composite produces causality, and causes the elementary particles to move. This is a top down causality. Matter does not cause the brain to work and function, but a will causes this. The organization of a thing, the form, is what gives the causality. The form gives certain causal powers which the parts do not. The structure of a water molecule is an analogy, as the whole has causality different from the individual atoms. The human has causality different than the parts. The organization, the form, must be involved in the metaphysics of the world.

God’s Simplicity

For Aquinas, the foundation of the universe is God. He is the source, the ultimate reality. God has created and sustains the universe. This ultimate reality, God, is simple in nature. This is one of the most difficult to understand attributes of God, and the most easy to skew. This does not make Him incomprehensible, but it does complicate matters. 

God’s simplicity simply means He does not “have” attributes, but is His attributes and is the source of these attributes for all other things. There is no source of the attributes outside of His character. In the biblical texts, God is both love and loving. Love can not be loving, only a person can be loving, but a person is not a universal like love. Simplicity is understood as God being love. God is being itself, the foundation of reality. Reality has being, and receives that being from God. Being itself is not a being. A universal is not a concrete particular. God is not a universal, but like a concrete particular and a universal. God can be being and also have personal relationship with people. God’s nature is very hard to understand because of this. 

In some way, light is both a wave and a particle. There can be nothing that is both at the same time, but light is described that way, sometimes described one way and sometimes another. The same is true for God. God is being itself, and is a being. God is goodness and is good, and is love and is loving. One can not fully understand it, just like one can not fully understand the state of light. Some things in metaphysics are equivalent to something under a different description. God’s characteristics are the same thing under different circumstances. God’s being is His goodness, which is His love, which is His justice. For something to be good is to be God’s nature.

Conclusion

Thomas Aquinas is one of the most influential minds of Christian history. His views on God as the prime mover and God’s simplicity continues to permeate Christian apologetics to this day. One can hardly view the Christian apologetic or philosophical scenes without coming into contact with Thomistic ideas. For this reason, Thomas Aquinas is one of the most influential and permanent thinkers of all of church history. 

Conclusion

The impact of Anselm and Aquinas is unmistakably some of the most important and influential work in Christian history. These two men believed God was knowable through the rational senses He placed in humanity and believed especially that Christians, with aid from the Spirit, could understand God through natural revelation. The use of apologetics will not bring people to God apart from the Spirit’s work. However, the use of reason and apologetics is helpful for creating a case for God once one already knows Him. In other words, reason has a difficult time convincing the one who has rejected God, because God is self-evident. So then, what should reason be used for?

Reason, as explored above, is the avenue of understanding God after coming to faith in Him. One who knows God and loves Him can know Him better through reason. The examination of God’s creation can lead to a greater understanding of the Creator. In short, the use of reason in the life of a believer is essential to their spiritual development, as it requires reason to attempt to understand the character of the God of the universe. To love God and understand Him is the chief mission of the Christian, and reason gives aid to this effort.

Bibliography

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Learn25 Audio. Thomas Aquinas: Understanding the Universal Teacher’s Greatest Ideas. Read by Eleanor Stump. Silver Spring, MD: Learn25 Audio, 2016. Scribd audio ed., 4hr.
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