Anselm of Canterbury Quotes on God
Anselm's Proslogion (c. 1078) sets out the ontological argument: God, defined as that than which nothing greater can be conceived, must necessarily exist, since a God who existed only in the understanding and not in reality would not be that than which nothing greater can be conceived. The argument has been refined, criticized, and reformulated continuously since — by Aquinas (who rejected it), Descartes and Leibniz (who refined it), Kant (who issued the canonical critique that existence is not a real predicate), and Plantinga (who recast it in modal logic). The earlier Monologion supplies the parallel a posteriori arguments from gradations of goodness, and the satisfaction theory of the atonement in Cur Deus Homo extends Anselm's program from natural theology to systematic Christology.
Quotes
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“Faith seeks understanding.”
Fides quaerens intellectum -
Attributed to Anselm of Canterbury:
“I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order that I may understand.”
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Attributed to Anselm of Canterbury:
“God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
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Attributed to Anselm of Canterbury:
“There is no good without God; and no good is without God.”
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“God often works more by the life of the illiterate seeking the things that are God's, than by the ability of the learned seeking the things that are their own.”
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 123. -
“God was conceived of a most pure Virgin … it was fitting that the virgin should be radiant with a purity so great that a greater purity cannot be conceived.”
In Mary for Earth and Heaven: Essays on Mary and Ecumenism , 2002, William McLaughlin, Jill Pinnock, eds., Gracewing, ISBN 0852445563 ISBN 9780852445563 pp . 115-116.