History of Philosophy
Lecture 11
Augustine and Anselm
By David Kelsey
The History of Christianity
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The History of Christianity:
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Based on the life, death and coming to life again of Jesus Christ
A modification of Jewish heritage…
The old testament establishes that there is one true God
• Predicts the coming to be of a Jewish messiah
• Isaiah:
– That God will send someone who will act decisively to establish God’s kingdom of
righteousness among men
– the coming to be of a messiah, a suffering servant…
Jesus:
• 4 B.C. - 30 A.D.
• Said to be the son of God and Messiah
• Believed to be anointed by God as savior of humanity
• Convicted for blasphemy and is subsequently crucified.
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The first Christian church…
380 A.D: Christianity is made the official religion of the Roman empire
380-today: Christianity spreads throughout the world.
Christianity
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Christianity:
– What Christianity isn’t:
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Not philosophy but prophecy
Not discussion, but proclamation
Not let us examine, but “Thus says the lord”
Not questioning but accepting
– Christian Beliefs:
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There is one God who is not made by men
God is immaterial & is eternal…
He is omni-benevolent and omnipotent…
God alone is worthy of worship and reverence
God is the creator of the entire visible universe
God is good and made the visible world good, but sin persists…
God will save us from our sinfulness through Jesus…
Through faith and belief in Jesus Christ, man will gain eternal happiness…
Augustine
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Augustine:
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354-430 A.D.
Born in Northern Africa to a Pagan
father, Patricius, and Christian
mother, Monica.
In his youth studied literature,
rhetoric and law
Baptized in 387 A.D.
Ordained bishop of Hippo in 391
A.D.
Canonized in 1303 A.D.
Wrote his Confessions in 397 A.D.,
a reflective look at his own life
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Augustine’s view
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Augustine:
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Held that unless you believe you will not understand
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In faith, aims to both understand that God is and what God is
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We will examine only some of his views on God and man
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An argument for God’s existence:
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1. God is by definition that to whom there is nothing superior.
2. Truth exists and is superior to us.
3. If nothing is superior to truth, then God is truth and God exists.
4. If there is something superior even to truth, then God is that thing and God exists.
5. God exists.
More on Augustine’s
Truth argument
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Understanding and Evaluating Augustine’s truth argument:
Premise 1: God is that to whom there is nothing superior.
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Questions?
Premise 2: Truth exists and is superior to us
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This seems to be Augustine’s argument for premise 2:
1. Truths exist. For example, mathematical truths.
2. But such truths are eternal, incorruptible and common to all who think them.
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3. So truth itself is eternal, incorruptible and common to all who think.
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Just consider 7 + 3 = 10.
We acknowledge truth…
4. The eternal, incorruptible and inviolable are superior to the corruptible, temporal and violable.
5. Man is temporal and corruptible.
So 6. Truth is superior to us
Thoughts on this argument?
What about Premise 3 of the truth argument: If nothing is superior to truth, then God is truth
and God exists.
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Questions?
The Great Chain of Being
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The Great Chain of Being:
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God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing.
• The world is entirely dependent upon God.
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Reality is partitioned in graded steps, which are infinitely close to each other.
• Being and nothingness are mixed in all degrees in all things.
• God has the most being, then the angels, then rational creatures, then more
primitive life forms such as dogs, insects, etc., then to inanimate matter, I.e.
rocks…
– Consider a cat…
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There is a direct correlation between being and goodness.
• The more being something has, the more good it has. So God who has the most
being, is completely good. The created world is less good than God, but still
good.
Evil is the privation of good
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Natural evil does not exist:
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Natural evil does not depend on free choices of rational agents.
Natural evil can exist only where there is good.
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Whatever is, is good
But being and nothingness are mixed in all degrees in all things.
So if there is evil in something, this is because it has some part in nothingness, as well as in
being.
So evil is the privation of good:
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Evil is just a lack of the being something should have
Example: A disease or wound
Augustine on Time
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Augustine on Time:
– There arises an apparent puzzle from 2 held Christian beliefs:
• God is eternal and unchangeable
• The created world is the realm of change and impermanence.
• So just when did the fleeting world come from eternal God?
– Augustine solves the puzzle by positing that God is not located in time at all.
• Time was created along with the world.
• God exists in a never ending present, at once before all past time and after all
future time
• Time has no meaning apart from our rational minds.
• The future, the present and the past…
• But God exists outside time in a never ending present….
• For God, all time is known at once, in a single moment.
Augustine on Moral evil
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Augustine on Moral Evil:
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Sin is the result of disordered love. It is loving more what is of lower value and loving
less what is of higher value.
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For example, loving $ so much you are willing to harm someone for it…
Augustine says much more on sin, faith and salvation but we will move forward to the
philosophy of Anselm and Aquinas…
Saint Anselm
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Saint Anselm of Canterbury lived from 1033-1109.
He was a monk and later Archbishop of Canterbury.
Wanted to see how far argument and reason could substantiate the central
doctrines of Christianity.
He invented the ontological argument for the existence of God.
A priori vs.
A posteriori arguments
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A Posteriori Arguments:
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A priori arguments:
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An a posteriori argument has at least one premise which is contingent. It has at least one premise
that is a question of fact.
Examples: the Cosmological and Teleological arguments for the existence of God
Have absolutely no premises that are a question of fact.
Composed entirely of a priori claims.
An a priori claim: true or false in virtue of the meaning of it’s words alone.
The ontological argument is an a priori argument…
Defining GOD
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According to the Judeao-Christian-Islamic tradition: God is the greatest or
most perfect possible being.
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Thus, God is:
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What can we infer about God from this?
If God is perfect, he has every perfection.
Omnipotent: maximally powerful
Omniscient: maximally knowledgeable
Omnibenevolent: is perfectly good
Omnipresent: is everywhere
What other perfections might there be?
A Reductio
for God’s omnipotence
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An argument that God must be omnipotent:
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Suppose God wasn’t omnipotent.
Then there could be a being more powerful than God.
That would be greater than God.
But God is the greatest of all possible beings.
So God must be omnipotent.
This argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.
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Reductio’s always assume the negation of the conclusion they are out to prove.
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The argument then derives a contradiction
• A contradiction:
– Asserts that something both is and isn’t the case
– cannot possibly be true
– The contradiction above:
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The argument then concludes by asserting what it was to prove
The form of the Reductio
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So here is the form of our reductio:
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1. God isn’t omnipotent.
2. Thus, there could be someone more powerful than God.
3. Thus, there could be someone greater than God.
4. But, by definition, God is the greatest possible being; there couldn’t be someone
greater than God.
5. Thus, there both can and can’t be someone greater than God.
6. Thus, (1) is false: God is omnipotent.
Anselm’s
Ontological Argument
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Anselm’s concept of God:
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Anselm uses the notion of God seen in the Judeao-Christian-Islamic tradition.
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For Anselm: God is ‘something than which nothing greater can be conceived’.
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This is not the same concept as the greatest being we can conceive. Such a concept would be
limited by the way us humans conceive of things….
Anselm is assuming the Great chain of being here.
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If you run up and down the chain you find it easy to conceive of beings both lesser and greater.
Your mind is carried to greater and greater things…
Anselm’s Reductio
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Anselm’s argument is a Reductio Ad Absurdum. The basic form of the
reductio:
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Assume God doesn’t exist
But then God isn’t the being than which nothing greater can be conceived.
But God is the being than which nothing greater can be conceived.
Thus, God exists.
The form of
Anselm’s argument
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Anselm’s argument:
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1. God does not exist.
2. By God is meant that than which nothing greater can be conceived, (or NGC).
3. NGC does not exist (from 1 & 2)
4. So NGC exists in the understanding but not in reality. (from 2 & 3)
5. NGC can be conceived to exist in reality as well as the understanding.
6. If NGC were to exist in reality as well as the understanding, it would be greater.
7. NGC is not NGC (from 4 & 6)
8. NGC cannot exist in the understanding alone. (from 7)
9. NGC must also exist in reality (from 6 & 8)
10. God exists (from 2 & 9)
11. God does not exist and God exists (from 1 & 10)
12. Premise 1 is false (by 1-11 and reductio ad absurdum)
Thus, 13. God exists
Evaluating Anselm’s argument
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Evaluating Anselm’s argument:
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Is Anselm’s argument valid?
Is Anselm’s argument sound?
– Which premises might be false?
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Premise 1…
Premise 2…
Premise 5…
Premise 6…
Denying premise 2
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Denying premise 2:
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Some argue that premise 2 is false.
They say that such a definition of God is incorrect.
Thoughts…
Denying premise 5
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Challenging the fifth premise:
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Can you conceive of God as existing in reality?
Denying premise 6
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Can we deny premise 6:
– We can do this by claiming that existence in reality is not a perfection.
– Thus, a being that existed in both the understanding and in reality is not more prefect
than a being that existed just in the understanding.
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Anselm’s reply would probably go like this: existence entails the ability to use all of
one’s perfections
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Counter: Is existence the kind of thing that can even be a perfection at all?
Defining God into existence
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Defining God into existence:
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Note that this argument attempts to move from the essence of God to God’s existence.
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It moves from our grasp of what God is, to the fact that God is.
Seems to be claiming that the existence of God is self evident…
But can Anselm really define God into existence?
Refutation by
logical analogy
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Refutation by Logical Analogy:
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Many people think that Anselm’s argument just has to be wrong for it just shows too
much.
– Can’t we give an argument of the same form as Anselm’s, but for an
obviously false conclusion.
• Since the new argument isn’t sound, neither is Anselm’s.
• This move is called Refutation by logical analogy.
Gaunilo’s parody
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Here is the argument:
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Assume: 1. The island than which no greater can be conceived (GPI) does not exist.
2. So GPI exists in the understanding but not in reality. (from 1)
3. GPI can be conceived to exist in reality as well as the understanding.
4. If GPI were to exist in reality as well as the understanding, it would be greater.
5. GPI is not GPI (from 2 & 4)
6. GPI cannot exist in the understanding alone. (from 5)
7. GPI must also exist in reality (from 4 & 6)
8. GPI exists (from 7)
9. GPI does not exist and GPI exists (from 1 & 8)
10. Premise 1 is false (by 1-9 and reductio ad absurdum)
Thus, 11. GPI exists
Anselm’s reply
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Anselm’s possible replies to Gaunilo:
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He could give up or bite the bullet.
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Gaunilo’s argument isn’t valid…
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A premise from Gaunilo’s argument is false…
Anselm’s best reply
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Anselm’s reply:
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Can the greatest possible island even exist in reality?
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Although the greatest possible being could have all the perfections to the
greatest degree, could an island really have them?