In my last post I quoted part of St.
Anselm's ontological proof for the existence of God, his definition
of God as “that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.”1
I think this is a great definition of God, in part because it
provides us with an ideal goal and in part because it seems to
imply that God is a concept. It's quite clear that the human concept
of God has evolved over generations,2
even just the Judeo-Christian concept of God. The vengeful Yahweh of
parts of the Old Testament is certainly not the loving and forgiving
Father of most of the New Testament. Culturally, we have become more
refined, and as we have so our God also has become more refined. It
was once the greatest we could conceive that we should use violence
to spread Christianity; it is now for many of us the greatest that we
can conceive that we use generosity and compassion towards each
other, Christian or not, based on Christ's teachings. In this sense,
God and the church have provided ideal guidance for us via the latest
conception of God. It seems right that God should evolve as we do.
Do we still want an authority figure telling us to kill our children
when they curse at us? Thus, God is a concept—our concept of what
is best under current circumstances.
But Anselm doesn't leave it there. He
is writing an ontological proof for the existence of God, not just a
definition of God. Here's how he continues in his “Proslogion”:
“And certainly that than which
nothing greater can be thought cannot exist only in the
understanding. For if it exists only in the understanding, it is
possible to think of it existing also in reality, and that is
greater. If that than which nothing greater can be thought exists in
the understanding alone, then this thing than which nothing greater
can be thought is something than which a greater can be thought. And
this is clearly impossible. Therefore there can be no doubt at all
that something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in
the understanding and in reality.” (245)
OK! I am not a theologian, by a long
shot, but I know enough of the logical arguments of philosophy that I
can question this reasoning. Let me just focus in on the word
“reality.” Anselm leaves it undefined, and I find little
reference to it in the rest of this work, other than the
acknowledgment of this fallen world we inhabit. But Anselm wrote the
“Proslogion” in Latin. In English, our word “real” comes
from the Latin “res,” meaning “thing” or “fact” (among
other definitions). So, when Anselm refers to reality, presumably he
is referring to the objective world of things we know through our
senses—and to Anselm, this world was a fallen world, a world of
sin. In Christian teaching, we struggle through this fallen world as
best we can in order that we can someday exist in heaven, that ideal
realm. In this struggle it is helpful to have a concept of “that,
than which nothing greater can be conceived.” But does Anselm
really mean to imply that God exists (has being) in our fallen, real
world?
The other thing that confuses me in
Anselm's argument is that he is presenting God as metaphorical—as
existing both as idea and thing. But surely this is Christ's role in
Christianity! Jesus Christ, as his name shows us, is undoubtedly
metaphorical—part spirit, part body; part divine, part human. The
whole point about Christ, it seems to me, is that he is God made
manifest, God incarnated, God in a body. If God was already such a
metaphorical being, why would we need Christ? If we had access to
God as Adam did in the Garden of Eden, to walk with and to speak to,
why would we need Jesus?
Apparently Anselm means to argue that
God exists in some abstract way, not in the reality of this world. I
guess to Anselm he exists in heaven. But we cannot know God or
heaven directly, since we are creatures of this fallen world. We
need(ed) Christ or Mary or some other quasi-human, quasi-divine being
as teacher and intermediary. (Thus was Mary granted an immaculate
conception herself.)
To me, Anselm's attempted ontological
proof of God's existence is simply a paradox. If God is “that,
than which nothing greater can be conceived,” then he cannot exist
in this fallen reality. In Anselm's definition, God makes more sense
as one of Plato's ideals than as a being that can exist in reality.
If God could exist in our reality, then he (as I'm sure Anselm
conceived of him) would be just one more entity in our fallen world,
nothing particularly special. To me, the greatest I can conceive is
definitely NOT real in any common sense of that term. I absolutely
look outside this world for my ideals (to literature, philosophy,
etc.) because I know I cannot find them in this world. That makes a
thought greatest—the fact that it is an aspiration and an ideal,
separate from this fallen world.
There's still a metaphorical
relationship here—between us humans and the ideals we aspire toward
(i.e., God). Many of us admire and emulate Jesus: WWJD? We can, in
a sense, lift ourselves up by our moral bootstraps that way, aspiring
towards God. But this only works if we accept that God is our
conception of the best and greatest, the most ideal--not that he is a
Father that in any way exists in this world and can save us from it.
Then we are responsible for our own ideals and our attempts to live
up to them, and then God can continue to evolve, leading and
inspiring us along the way. Anselm says later in “Proslogion”:
“Lord, you are then not only that
than which nothing greater can be thought; you are something greater
than it is possible to think about. For since it is possible to
think that this could exist, if you are not that thing, then a
greater than you can be thought; and that will not do.” (257)
If God exists in reality, then he must
have some stable form, which limits him. But if God is the greatest
we can conceive, then he can evolve infinitely—and mentally so can
we. “What is now proved was once only imagined.” “Thus men
forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”3
1This
is the most common translation of Anselm's words and the one I
prefer. However, following quotes from Anselm's “Proslogion”
(from which his definition is taken) are from the translation by
Sister Benedicta Ward, SLG, in The Prayers and Meditiations of
Saint Anselm with the Proslogion (Penguin Books, 1973). The
wording of Anselm's definition of God in this translation is: “We
believe that you are that thing than which nothing greater can be
thought” (pg 244). To me, the connotations of the word “conceive”
are more fitting to Anselm's definition than the connotations of the
word “thought.” But this is the book I have, so this is the
book I'll work from.
2See
Robert Wright, The Evolution of God (2009).
3William
Blake, from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.”
