Anselmian Classical Theism

Abstract

Anselm of Canterbury famously held that God must be “that than which no greater can be conceived.” His classical theism is driven by the attempt to unpack this claim. I take classical theism to be roughly the understanding of the divine which was standard among Christian theologians and philosophers in the late classical and medieval period. Of course, this long timeframe encompasses many different views of the nature of God, but there is some general agreement on what should and should not be said. Anselm embraces the Augustinian worldview, but adopts an analytic approach such that he is sometimes called the “Father of Scholasticism.” His description of God entails a methodology: if any attribute one might try to apply to God involves the least suspicion of limitation, it is to be rejected. Anselm is careful to distinguish between what we can “conceive”—think without contradiction—and what we can “comprehend,” that is what we can imagine or picture to ourselves. He holds that our understanding of the divine nature must not be circumscribed by the limitations of the human imagination. This methodology informs Anselm's interpretation of Scripture; for example, divine goodness requires that God does not cause Pharaoh to sin. And it informs his worldview: God is the absolute author of all that is not Himself. Therefore, Anselm must reject many ways of framing the issues in contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. For example, in Anselm's universe, there are no “possible worlds” existing as Platonic abstracta independent of the nature and will of God. And this approach settles metaphysical questions; for example, God must both know future free human choices and not determine them. So, human agents must have libertarian freedom, although the proper definition of freedom focuses on the aseity of willing. And the best theory of time to adopt is isotemporalism: all of time exists equally and is immediately present to God. I will focus especially on how this methodology structures Anselm's understanding of divine eternity.