SOURCE: Van Fleteren, Frederick. “Augustine and Anselm: Faith and Reason.” In Faith Seeking Understanding: Learning and the Catholic Tradition, edited by George C. Berthold, pp. 57-66. Manchester, N.H.: Saint Anselm College Press, 1991.

[In the following essay, Van Fleteren highlights some features of the theological relationship between Anselm and St. Augustine.]

It would be but an elaboration of the obvious to prove that the thought of Anselm was greatly influenced by Augustine. Anselm's own description of his thought, fides quaerens intellectum, owes much to the credo ut intelligam of Augustine and indeed is an excellent description of Augustine's project in the De trinitate. The similarities between Augustine and Anselm are partially explainable by the fact that, from Augustine's own time to Anselm's and in large part until the present day, Augustine has defined the mainstream of Christian, and indeed Catholic, thinking. Augustine was not in the mainstream; he defined the mainstream.¹ Further, a fund of philosophical cum theological teaching, common to all thinkers, existed. This common fund stemmed ultimately from Pythagoras and was enhanced greatly through the Academy of Plato. Augustine, and others, made significant contributions to it until the time of Anselm. Many of the teachings found in both Anselm and Augustine are part of this common fund. That Augustine influenced Anselm at least in these ways is beyond dispute.

Contemporary scholars would, however, like to go beyond a mere noting of common theme. Ideally, they would like to establish a direct literary dependence of Anselm upon Augustine and determine what works of Augustine Anselm had read. And it is precisely here that difficulties begin to arise. Anselm, like many other authors of late antiquity and the early medieval period, only infrequently acknowledges direct positive dependence on an earlier author. The use of other authors was deemed a compliment both to the earlier author and to the reader. Acknowledgement was not necessary.² Further, Anselm did not directly borrow entire literary passages from Augustine or other authors whereby direct philological parallelism could be established. Rather, he had imbibed the thought of his master, interpreted it, and made it his own. What then is the contemporary scholar, enamored of nineteenth-century historical principles, to do?

One recent attempt to show the influence of the Augustinian corpus on Anselm has concentrated on thematic development. Professor Klaus Kienzler has shown the similarity in themes in the Confessiones and the Soliloquia, on the one hand, and the Proslogion on the other.³ It is likely that the same could be done for other works. Another avenue of approach has been to establish the list of Augustinian works which were present in the monastic library in Bec.⁴ Such independent evidence would be at least confirmatory of what internal evidence would lead us to suspect. Nevertheless, the results of these investigations have been relatively meager.

Direct references to Augustine in Anselm's corpus are sparse but instructive in establishing dependence. Augustine's name appears eight times in six passages in the works of Anselm. All of the references are to the De trinitate and concern the Monologion or Proslogion. In the prologue to the former, Anselm writes:

Reviewing this work often, I could not find that I said anything in it which was not in harmony with the writings of the catholic fathers and especially St. Augustine. Wherefore, if it seems to anyone that I have published anything in this small work which either is too new or is not true, I ask that he not immediately cry out that I am a presumer of novelties or an asserter of falsehood, but that he first read diligently the books of the famous teacher Augustine De trinitate, and then judge my small work according to them.⁵

This is not the only time that Anselm refers to Augustine in connection with the Monologion. Indeed, Anselm seems to have viewed the work as a brief summation of some arguments found in the De trinitate. Often Anselm turns to Augustine to support his use of Trinitarian terminology or to show the differences between the Greeks and Latins on this matter. Augustine's name would of course have been enough to end any dispute.

How closely Anselm's intellectual project in the Monologion and Proslogion, fides quaerens intellectum, follows Augustine's credo ut intelligam needs little demonstration. Anselm's remark that he was attempting to follow the thought of Augustine in his intellectual project is by and large justifiable.⁶ Both Augustine and Anselm are trying to achieve an understanding of the mysteries of faith through philosophy. Both use the philosophical cum theological tradition as it has come down to them to achieve this understanding. In several passages, both Augustine and Anselm use the identical text from the book of Isaiah, Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis as the scriptural basis for their project.⁷ In particular, it is the De trinitate which provides the background against which we should judge Anselm's views on faith and reason. Anselm's descriptive title of the Monologion as Exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei and the Proslogion as Fides quaerens intellectum would both be apt descriptive titles for the De trinitate.

Augustine's over-all project does not change that much over the years. From the beginning in Cassiciacum, it was the role of philosophy to give understanding to the Christian mysteries. A much studied passage from the Contra Academicos points this out:

No one doubts that we are led to learning by the twin weight of authority and reason. I am certain never to depart from the authority of Christ for I do not find a stronger. What must be pursued by the most subtle reasoning—I have been so affected that I desire with impatience to grasp what is true not only by belief but also by understanding—I am confident provisionally that I shall find it with the Platonists, a project that is not repugnant to our sacred writings.⁸

Augustine is but a Christian neophyte at this time. Yet his project is clear. He wishes to understand the mysteries of faith, a project which is in accord with the scriptures. Faith was to provide the subject matter, philosophy the understanding. This project remains fundamentally the same in the De trinitate. A classic statement of it occurs in De trinitate IX:

An intention of one seeking is most prudent until that is apprehended toward which we tend and are extended. But that intention is right which sets out from faith. A certain faith in some way is the beginning of knowledge; a certain knowledge is only perfected after this life when we shall see face to face (1 Cor. 12:12). Therefore, let us be so wise that we may know that the disposition to seek the truth is safer than to presume unknown things as if they were known. Therefore let us seek as one who will find; and thus let us find as one who will seek. For when man has been consummated, then he begins (Sir. 18:6). Concerning things to be believed let us not doubt with infidelity; concerning things to be understood, let us not affirm with rashness; in the former authority is to be held; in the latter truth is to be sought.⁹

The scriptural foundation for this project, as in many other fathers of the church, is Matthew 7:7: Quaerite et invenietis.¹⁰ Faith provides the matter of the search; reason provides the understanding. Fides quaerit; intellectus invenit.

If these were the only similarities of methodology between Augustine and Anselm, there would be little point in establishing a relationship. Although Augustine may have been the first to attempt on a large scale an understanding of the faith, any Christian intellectual could be said to be attempting an intellectus fidei. Augustine's synthesis, if such it might be called, stands out since it was the outstanding attempt at an understanding of the faith through the use of philosophy until the thirteenth century. However, there is much more to the relationship between Augustine and Anselm. An important text for understanding the methodology of Anselm and its relation to that of Augustine occurs in the Epistola de incarnatione verbi:

That God is one, unique, individual, and simple nature and three persons has been argued by the unshakeable reasons of the holy fathers and especially St. Augustine after the apostles and the evangelists. If anyone would deign to read my two small works, namely the Monologion and Proslogion, which were done especially for this purpose, that what we hold by faith concerning the divine nature and its persons outside of the incarnation, is able to be proved by necessary reasons without the authority of scripture; if anyone, I say, wishes to read these works, I think that he will find there concerning this matter what he can not disapprove or wish to condemn. If in these works I have placed something which either I have not read somewhere else or I have not remembered that I have read—not as if by teaching what our teachers did not know or correcting what they did not say well, but perhaps by saying what they were silent about, which nevertheless is not out of harmony with it or is comformable to it—in order to respond in behalf of our faith against those who, unwilling to believe what they do not understand ridicule those who believe, or to help the religious desire of those who humbly seek to understand what they firmly believe, I do not think that I ought to be reproved for this.¹¹

In this passage, two aspects of Anselm's intellectus fidei are relevant to a discussion of his relationship to Augustine. The first is that Anselm views his work in the Monologion and Proslogion as providing an understanding of the nature and persons of God outside of the incarnation by necessary reasons without the authority of Scripture. Olivier duRoy has maintained that such methodology is peculiarly Augustinian.¹² In the Confessiones VII, when Augustine describes his intellectual conversion after the reading the libri Platonicorum, he tells us that he found there a teaching on the Trinity, but no teaching on the incarnation.¹³ Augustine understood God becoming man against the Neoplatonic, and especially Porphyrian, background of a way of salvation. Nevertheless, an understanding of the Trinitarian Godhead he was to take from Neoplatonism, the understanding of the incarnation as a way of salvation from the scriptures. And, in duRoy's view, this methodological point of Augustine's intellectual conversion was to have a major effect on his early works and was to remain with him the remainder of his life, so that even in the De trinitate, the incarnation does not provide an understanding of the Trinity. And, in duRoy's view, this methodology has had an enormous impact on later theology so that in Anselm and Aquinas, for example, the incarnation does not provide a means to the understanding of the Trinity. And, again in duRoy's view, this influence was not necessarily for the good.

I am not so sure that duRoy's view is entirely correct. First of all, I believe that Augustine read the Neo-platonists through the prism of Christianity. Certainly the preaching of Ambrose, the ambiance of the so-called Milanese Circle, and perhaps the religious teaching of Monica brought Augustine a perspective from which he viewed the Platonists. And I am sure that duRoy would agree with this. It is certainly true that in the Confessiones and Augustine's early works, his triadic, if not to say Trinitarian, thought is based upon ancient philosophy, primarily Neo-platonism, understood through the prism of Christianity. It is further true that he viewed the incarnation as a way of salvation and at times tends to see Christianity as Platonism for the masses. Nevertheless, I do not think that it is wholly accurate to say that in the De trinitate Augustine's understanding of the Trinity is entirely devoid of scriptural and incarnational understanding. Indeed, the locus classicus for finding Augustine's teaching on the incarnation is in fact the De trinitate. It is true, however, that in his search for images of the Trinity in creation Augustine is more dependent on ancient philosophy than on the Scriptures. It is even possible that this is as it should be. In any event there is no doubt that this tendency in Augustine becomes a methodology in Anselm.

The second point of this passage in the Epistola de incarnatione verbi which I should like to discuss is Anselm's search for “necessary reasons.” This is not the only time this or a like phrase is used in his works.¹⁴Rationes necessariae and other like phrases are also found in his treatment of the incarnation. Anselm tried to prove the necessity of the incarnation on the part of God for man's salvation, remoto Christo as Anselm himself puts it.¹⁵ But, in the Epistola de incarnatione verbi the phrase is connected with the Monologion and the Proslogion and the discussions of the existence and nature of God found there. Here the words “necessary reasons” seem equivalent to “without the authority of Scripture.” In those works, both the unity and the trinity of the Godhead are mentioned.¹⁶

Anselm is much more optimistic than his mentor in the De trinitate about man's ability to reach knowledge of God in this life. In this work—and Anselm is aware of it—Augustine maintains repeatedly that knowledge of God is available to man in this life only per speculum et in aenigmate. Augustine explains this Pauline phrase in terms of the figures of speech of classical Latin with which he, as a rhetor, was familiar.

This is one entire phrase which is said: Videmus nunc per speculum et in aenigmate. Next, insofar as it seems to me, just as he wished image to be understood by the word mirror, so he wished by the word aenigma a similitude, albeit an obscure one, difficult to perceive, to be understood. … Therefore by the words mirror and aenigma some similitudes signified by the Apostle can be understood which are accommodated to understanding God in the way that he can be. …”¹⁷

Augustine came to be rather pessimistic concerning man's ability to reach any knowledge of the triune God in this life, though, of course, he did not reject the human possibility of such knowledge entirely. This pessimism is perhaps the principal reason why the writing of the De trinitate took some twenty years.

Such pessimism was not always the case with Augustine. From the time of his conversion in 386 until well into the next decade, Augustine maintained that man could attain, with the help of God, a direct vision of God in this life.¹⁸ Augustine was influenced in this direction by his reading of Plotinus' Ennead on Beauty and Porphyry's De regressu animae. And when man would attain this vision, he would also attain a full understanding of the Christian mysteries.¹⁹ At this time, although Augustine saw major differences between Platonism and Christianity on the possibility of the incarnation, he was optimistic concerning their similarities. During the middle of the last decade of the fourth century, Augustine was called upon to examine and explain Paul's Epistle to the Romans and Epistle to the Galatians in detail. The themes of salvation through grace attainable fully only in the next life are of paramount importance in each of these Epistles. During this period Augustine came decisively to realize that man could attain the vision of God only in the next life and that salvation was attainable only through the grace of God. Of course, Augustine was still interested in the degree of knowledge that man could attain concerning God in this life. Augustine's—and might we say man's—final answer to this question is contained in the De trinitate.

The use of the term “necessary reasons” by Anselm still bothers us. The term has been traced back to Marius Victorinus. Anselm's optimism concerning finding these “necessary reasons” is more reminiscent of the early Augustine than the older bishop. If I am correct that the De trinitate, and not the earlier works, forms the Augustinian background to Anselm's thought, then Anselm's project bespeaks a greater optimism than that of his master. It is even possible that Anselm did not realize the difference between the early and late Augustine on this point.

In the Cur deus homo and elsewhere, Anselm argues to the necessity of the incarnation from its suitability.²⁰ He argues many times that, because the incarnation was the most suitable means for God to justify man, it was necessary that it happen. Not that Anselm is unaware of the problem which necessity works on the Godhead. He is well aware that necessity would place a limitation on God and this he does not want to do. In the course of the Cur deus homo Anselm distinguishes an absolute necessity from a conditioned necessity and tries to show that it is under this second type of necessity that God is necessitated.²¹ A complete discussion of necessity in Anselm's works would take us too far afield. Yet, enough has been said to show in what area a problem exists.

Anselm's mindset in the Cur Deus homo concerning necessary reasons is not so far different from the Proslogion argument for the existence of God. In the latter, Anselm argues from the idea of God to his real existence. While this argument obviously owes something to the argument from eternal truth in De libero arbitrio II, iii, 7-xv, 40, it is significantly different from it. Whereas Augustine argues for an immutable ground for eternal truths, Anselm argues from the idea of God to his real existence. Nevertheless, Anselm's reasoning from suitability to real existence is not far removed from a kind of ontological argument for the truths of faith. This mindset almost bespeaks a kind of meliorism by which a good God would be necessitated to act in the most fitting manner. Although Augustine argues the suitability of the incarnation for man's salvation in De trinitate XIII, such reasoning is not Augustine's. It would take another two centuries of thought after Anselm to distinguish more clearly between debet and decet. And it would take the reaction to the Aufklärung to show us more clearly that optimism introduced an unwelcome necessity into the Godhead.

What can account for the differences between Anselm and Augustine in these matters? We can speculate about the Dark Ages and the lack of genuine theological genius until Anselm during that period. We can further speculate concerning the monastic life of reflection and meditation to which Augustine had aspired most of his life, and had realized for various short periods, but which Anselm possessed for over thirty years. Augustine's speculations came out of a rugged experience in his own life and the life around him. Anselm's came out of monastic reflection, the life of the spirit. The rise of the monastic school also played a part in this difference. Theology, if it could be distinguished from philosophy, was beginning to be treated as a formalized scientific pursuit in the time of Anselm. While Augustine laid down the first program for the Christian use of the liberal arts and the De doctrina christiana remains the charter for the Christian intellectual, his thought, steeped in the ancient tradition of rhetoric and occasioned by contemporary problems in the African Church, was a far cry from the contemplative atmosphere of a monastic school. However, his dictis, we must also allow for the difference of individual genius. A thinker is not the mere product of his influences. If Quellenforschung has taught us one thing, it is that the thought of a man is not the sum total of the influences upon him. And so it is with Augustine and Anselm. Though they are in the same stream and one has exerted a powerful influence on the other, their thought remains different.

Both of these intellectual giants offer us food for thought on the matter of faith and reason for the contemporary world. In a world which is so highly specialized that one science finds it difficult to speak to another, that even two scientists within the same field find communication difficult, Augustine and Anselm speak to us concerning the unity of truth. In a time when a kind of Cartesian split between philosophy and theology, between faith and reason, has occurred even on Catholic campuses, Augustine and Anselm speak to us concerning the ultimate unity of the theological and philosophical enterprise. In a world grown increasingly interested in the quantitative and the rational, Augustine and Anselm speak to us of the spiritual and the intuitive. And finally in a world which has become increasingly embarrassed in speaking of God, Augustine and Anselm point out that God—and not man—is at the center of the universe. On this, the hundredth anniversary of a school under the aegis of Anselm and his followers, it is well for us to reflect on these truths.

Notes

1. For this reason, the Catholic Church has been reluctant to condemn even the more extreme predestinationist views of Augustine, given their final formulation in the heat of the Pelagian controversy.

2. Even the scriptures are many times alluded to without direct citation. Both the scriptures and the tradition were so much a part of many writers that direct citation was neither necessary nor indeed possible.

3. K. Kienzler, “Zur philosophisch-theologischen Denkform bei Augustinus und bei Anselm von Canterbury,” Anselm Studies 2, ed. J. Schnaubelt and F. Van Fleteren (New York: Kraus International Publications, 1988):353-387.

4. The existence of such a list was suggested to me by my colleague Professor Thomas Losoncy, of Villanova University and the Augustinian Historical Institute.

5. Monologion, prologue: Schmitt 1,8: Quam ego saepe retractans nihil potui invenire me in ea dixisse, quod non catholicorum patrum et maxime beati AUGUSTINI scriptis cohaereat. Quapropter si cui videbitur, quod in eodem opusculo aliquid protulerim, quod aut nimis novum sit aut a veritate dissentiat: rogo, ne statim me aut praesumptorem novitatum aut falsitatis assertorem exclamet, sed prius libros praefati doctoris AUGUSTINI De trinitate diligenter perspiciat, deinde secundum eos opusculum meum diiudicet.

6. See note above.

7. Isaiah 7:9. Both Augustine and Anselm use an old Latin form of this text not found in the Vulgate.

8. Contra Academicos III,xx,43: Green 71: Nulli autem dubium est gemino pondere nos impelli ad discendum, auctoritatis atque rationis. Mihi autem certum est nusquam prorsus a Christi auctoritate: non enim reperio ualentiorem. Quod autem subtilissima ratione persequendum est, ita enim jam sum affectus, ut quid sit verum, non credendo solum, sed etiam intelligendo apprehendere impatienter desiderem, apud Platonicos me interim quod sacris nostris non repugnet reperturum esse confido.

9. De trinitate IX,i,1: PL XLII, 961: Tutissima est enim quaerentis intentio, donec apprehendere illud quo tendimus et quo extendimur. Sed ea recta intentio est, quae profiscitur a fide. Certa enim fides utcumque inchoat cognitonem: cognitio vero certa non perficietur, nisi post hanc vitam, cum videbimus facie ad faciem. Hoc ergo sapiamus, ut noverimus tutiorem esse affectum vera quaerendi, quam incognita pro cognitis praesumendi. Sic ergo quaeramus tamquam invenituri: et sic inveniamus tamquam quaesituri. Cum enim consummaverit homo, tunc incipit (Si 18:6). De credendis nulla infidelitate dubitemus, de intelligendis nulla temeritate affirmemus: In illis auctoritas tenenda est, in his veritas exquirenda.

10. J. Daniélou, “Recherche et Tradition chez les Peres”, Studia Patristica, XII, 1:3-13.

11. Epistula de incarnatione verbi VI: Schmitt II, 20-21: Quod utique deus una et sola et individua et simplex sit natura et tres personae, sanctorum patrum et maxime beati AUGUSTINI post apostolos et evangelistas inexpugnabilibus rationibus disputatum est. Sed et si quis legere dignabitur duo parva mea opuscula, Monologion scilicet et Proslogion, quae ad hoc maxime facta sunt, ut quod fide tenemus de divina natura et eius personis praeter incarnationem, necessariis rationibus sine scripturae auctoritate probar: possit; si inquam aliquis ea legere voluerit, puto quia et ibi de hoc inveniet quod nec improbare poterit nec contemnere volet. In quibus si aliquid quod alibi aut non legi aut memini me legisse—non quasi docendo quod doctores nostri nescierunt aut corrigendo quod non bene dixerunt, sed dicendo forsitan quod tacuerunt, quod tamen ab illorum dictis non discordet sed illis cohaereat—posui ad respondendum pro fide nostra contra eos, qui nolentes credere quod non intelligunt derident credentes, sive ad adiuvandum religiosum studium eorum qui humiliter quaerunt intelligere quod firmissime credunt: nequaquam ab hoc me redarguendum existimo.

12. duRoy, L'intelligence de la foi en la trinité selon saint Augustin (Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1966), 458ff.; see also his article in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, “Augustine”, vol 2, s.v.

13. Confessiones VII,ix,13: BA 13,608; xxi,27: BA 13, 638-42.

14. Many similar phrases are found, such as oportet esse and necesse est, throughout the works of Anselm.

15. See Cur deus homo, praefatio: Schmitt 1, 42. The proof of the reasonableness of the incarnation is the theme of the entire Cur deus homo.

16. For the existence of one God see Monologion I-VI, Proslogion I-IV. For the existence of a triune God, see Monologion XXXVIII-LXI, Proslogion XXIII.

17. De trinitate XV,ix,16: PL XLII,1069: Una est enim cum tota sic dicitur, Videmus nunc per speculum et in aenigmate; Proinde, quantum mihi videtur, sicut nomine speculi imagine voluit intelligi; ita nomine aenigmatis quamvis similitudinem, tamen obscurum, et ad perspiciendum difficilem … igitur speculi et aenigmatis nomine quaecumque similitudines ab Apostolo significatae intelligi possint, quae accommodatae sunt ad intelligendum Deum, eo modo quo potest.

18. The texts in Augustine are numerous on this point. See for example, Contra Academicos II,ii,4; III, xix,42; De ordine I,viii,23ff., II,v,15; xix,51; Retractationes I,iii,2-4; De moribus ecclesiae catholicae XXXI,66; De quantitate aniae XXXII,76; De vera religione XII,24; De sermone domini in monte I,4,12; Contra Adimantum Manichaeum IX,1. See F. Van Fleteren, “Augustine and the Possibility of the Vision of God in this life”, Studies in Medieval Culture, XI, 9-16.

19. See De ordine II, v, 15; ix, 27; xix, 51.

20. See Cur deus homo, passim, but especially 1, 25; II, 6.

21. See Cur deus homo II, 17.