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Very Short Introductions #721
Anselm: A Very Short Introduction
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the outstanding philosopher-theologian of the Latin West between Augustine and the thirteenth century. As a public figure, especially as Archbishop of Canterbury, he corresponded with kings and nobles, popes and bishops, in letters that reveal a fascinating personality and flesh out the practical dimensions of his theoretical philosophy. He wrote at a time when a renewed interest in logic encouraged careful and rigorous
argumentation, but before the recovery of Aristotle filled the philosophical discourse with difficult technical jargon, making for writing that is unrivalled for its lucidity and accessibility. He offers the first clear account of what we now call a libertarian view of free will, according to which free
choices cannot be determined by the agent's internal states or by external influences. His famous 'ontological argument' for the existence of God continues to generate discussion, debate, and puzzlement. His understanding of God is rightly regarded as one of the definitive expressions of classical theism or perfect-being theology, which remains influential in philosophy of religion and analytic theology. His account of the Atonement is one that every theologian to this day still grapples with.
ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
argumentation, but before the recovery of Aristotle filled the philosophical discourse with difficult technical jargon, making for writing that is unrivalled for its lucidity and accessibility. He offers the first clear account of what we now call a libertarian view of free will, according to which free
choices cannot be determined by the agent's internal states or by external influences. His famous 'ontological argument' for the existence of God continues to generate discussion, debate, and puzzlement. His understanding of God is rightly regarded as one of the definitive expressions of classical theism or perfect-being theology, which remains influential in philosophy of religion and analytic theology. His account of the Atonement is one that every theologian to this day still grapples with.
ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
136 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 10, 2022
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October 14, 2023
Anselm – A Very Short Introduction by Thomas Williams
https://www.amazon.com/Anselm-Very-Sh...
This may be the best “Very Short Introduction” I have “read.”
As you should know , the “Very Short Introduction” (“VSI”) series offer a fairly short survey on a plethora of topics. The authors are experts in their field who try to dig down to the kernel of the topic. Some succeed; some don’t. I found that this book did a wonderful job of conveying the key points in a way that was eminently accessible for those who may not be trained in Scholasticism.
As you must know , Anselm was the most influential theologian/philosopher between Boethius and Aquinas. This is not to slight Abelard and Albertus Magnus, but Anselm staked out more territory in novel ways after the Consolation of Philosophy presaged the coming Dark Ages until the Angelic Doctor became a one-man theological army. Anselm is famous for his Ontological Argument, which is still being dismissed and defended, as well as his “Incarnation of the Word,” and for a theory of atonement to answer “Why did God become Man?,” the fall of the Devil, and other issues.
Anselm is so well known as a theologian that very few people realize that his real job was (a) running the Church of England, (b) fighting English kings over “lay investiture” and (c) being repeatedly exiled from England because of fighting the English kings. We read the Proslogion or the Cure Deus Homo today, and we get not a hint that Ansel was involved in the defining political issue of his age.
The VSI begins with an opening chapter on St. Anselm’s busy life. St. Anselm was born in Aostia, Italy in 1033. He joined the Benedictine monastery at Bec under Abbott Lanfranc in 1059. He quickly became prior and then abbott. Lanfranc had become Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1092, Lanfranc died and Anselm was tapped by King William Rufus (William the Conqueror’s son) to take over the role as Archbishop of Canterbury over Anselm’s objections.
The significance of these dates and location often goes unremarked, i.e., Ah, yes, 1092 in England….yawn. But let’s have some perspective. When Anselm was born and entered the monastery at Bec, England was an Anglo Saxon kingdom. William the Conqueror was recruiting for soldiers when Anselm was thirty-two. Anselm became head of the English Church only twenty-six years after the Norman Conquest. He was living through tumultuous history.
Not that we get a sense of that from his writings.
This was also the era of the Papal Reform Movement that sought to take back control of local churches from local rulers and end abuses like simony and clerical concubinage. Anselm was a papal partisan…he was an incorruptible papal partisan. He wanted to get along with the king but would not compromise on the issue who got to ordain and invest clerics with clerical offices. As a result, Anselm was invited to leave England three times before his death in 1109.
This is a very short part of this Very Short Introduction. The bulk of the book involves a survey of Anselm’s writings. Suffice it to say, that I have dedicated myself to reading that writing lest I miss out on an important element of Christian thinking.
The author (Williams) does a great job of making complicated theological ideas accessible. Here is his take on Anselm’s understanding of “divine simplicity.”
Divine simplicity is such a counterintuitive doctrine that it is worth looking carefully at why Anselm is committed to it. Why does unsurpassable greatness require a lack of metaphysical composition? One argument Anselm gives is that any composite can be broken up, at least in thought, and clearly what can be broken up is inferior to what cannot be broken up. This argument might well seem like a mere restatement of the general preference for unity over multiplicity, and so it might be less than convincing to someone who doesn’t quite see why divine unity has to be (or even intelligibly can be) carried quite so far as to deny any metaphysical distinctions in God.
Anselm has a more powerful consideration available, however, in what philosophers nowadays call divine aseity. ‘Aseity’ is derived from the Latin a se, ‘from himself’ (though no medieval philosopher writing in Latin actually uses the word aseitas—it is odd that it was left to later writers to coin a faux-Latin word for a concept that was so important to medieval Latin writers). The idea is that whatever God is, he is from himself. He does not depend on anything outside himself to be what he is. Now it is easy to see why aseity must characterize a being of unsurpassable greatness: it is greater, better, nobler to be independent than dependent, to have in oneself the fount and source of all that one is, rather than depending on something outside oneself to exist or to be what one is.
Once we understand aseity, it is easy to see why God cannot be a composite in any way. A composite depends on its components if it is to exist and to be what it is. If God has parts—attributes distinct from each other or from God himself—then he depends on something other than himself to be what he is. So God does not have wisdom or power or justice; God is wisdom and power and justice, which are all one in God, because they are God, and God is one.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (pp. 25-26). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
A study of Anselm underscores the Scholastic belief in the power of human reason. Williams explains Anselm’s ontological argument ,the response of Guanillo , and Anselm’s response to Guanillo. What cements Anselm’s position as a champion of reason is his order that any publication of his argument must also contain Guanillo’s response. It would be nice if modern scholars would honor their critics in a similar fashion.
Anselm also writes in a decidedly Catholic vein in his discussion of the fall of the angels. Williams summarizes a part of the argument thus:
But if the angel has both wills—both affections—he has the power to make a choice that isn’t a necessary outgrowth of the nature and powers God gave him, but instead an act that genuinely belongs to the angel as its initiator or agent. In the situation of the primal choice, all the angels have both the affection for justice and the affection for happiness. They can exercise their will-as-instrument by forgoing advantage (‘that something more’) for the sake of justice; they can also exercise their will by choosing advantage and thereby abandoning justice. Nothing about what God does—creating them as they are, revealing to them what they know, placing them in the circumstances in which they find themselves—makes the difference between the angels who remain steadfast and the angels who fall. It is the angels themselves who make the difference by freely willing one way or the other.
So it does turn out after all that the angels can answer St Paul’s question, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’, with ‘Our free choice of justice over advantage’ (or vice versa) rather than the ‘Nothing’ that Paul expects. Anselm sees as clearly as anyone before or since, and much more clearly than most, that if the answer really is ‘Nothing’—if absolutely everything belonging to a creature, including every choice, is received from God—there will be no real responsibility or agency on the part of any creature. All creaturely choices will be ‘the work and gift of God’.
Anselm is here making a radical break with the Augustinian tradition, which insisted that everything that is good, including our own good choices, is from God; we can mar the good we receive, but we cannot bring about any good in ourselves by our own powers.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 77). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
Anselm also offered a “satisfaction theory of atonement.” Williams explains:
Anselm’s theory of atonement can be summed up in a single sentence:
The voluntary self-offering of the infinitely precious life of the God-man repairs the infinite breach that sin had opened up between God and humanity and thereby restores the possibility of eternal happiness that God intended for humanity in creation.
Granted, this statement expresses his account without employing the metaphors that Anselm uses in developing it. But it does so without the loss of anything essential to the view, and indeed it thereby opens up possibilities for contemporary thinkers to express the same view using metaphors and imagery that might speak more compellingly today.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 92). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
By this time, the reader should have a sense of Anselm and this VSI.
I intend to dive in further.
https://www.amazon.com/Anselm-Very-Sh...
This may be the best “Very Short Introduction” I have “read.”
As you should know , the “Very Short Introduction” (“VSI”) series offer a fairly short survey on a plethora of topics. The authors are experts in their field who try to dig down to the kernel of the topic. Some succeed; some don’t. I found that this book did a wonderful job of conveying the key points in a way that was eminently accessible for those who may not be trained in Scholasticism.
As you must know , Anselm was the most influential theologian/philosopher between Boethius and Aquinas. This is not to slight Abelard and Albertus Magnus, but Anselm staked out more territory in novel ways after the Consolation of Philosophy presaged the coming Dark Ages until the Angelic Doctor became a one-man theological army. Anselm is famous for his Ontological Argument, which is still being dismissed and defended, as well as his “Incarnation of the Word,” and for a theory of atonement to answer “Why did God become Man?,” the fall of the Devil, and other issues.
Anselm is so well known as a theologian that very few people realize that his real job was (a) running the Church of England, (b) fighting English kings over “lay investiture” and (c) being repeatedly exiled from England because of fighting the English kings. We read the Proslogion or the Cure Deus Homo today, and we get not a hint that Ansel was involved in the defining political issue of his age.
The VSI begins with an opening chapter on St. Anselm’s busy life. St. Anselm was born in Aostia, Italy in 1033. He joined the Benedictine monastery at Bec under Abbott Lanfranc in 1059. He quickly became prior and then abbott. Lanfranc had become Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1092, Lanfranc died and Anselm was tapped by King William Rufus (William the Conqueror’s son) to take over the role as Archbishop of Canterbury over Anselm’s objections.
The significance of these dates and location often goes unremarked, i.e., Ah, yes, 1092 in England….yawn. But let’s have some perspective. When Anselm was born and entered the monastery at Bec, England was an Anglo Saxon kingdom. William the Conqueror was recruiting for soldiers when Anselm was thirty-two. Anselm became head of the English Church only twenty-six years after the Norman Conquest. He was living through tumultuous history.
Not that we get a sense of that from his writings.
This was also the era of the Papal Reform Movement that sought to take back control of local churches from local rulers and end abuses like simony and clerical concubinage. Anselm was a papal partisan…he was an incorruptible papal partisan. He wanted to get along with the king but would not compromise on the issue who got to ordain and invest clerics with clerical offices. As a result, Anselm was invited to leave England three times before his death in 1109.
This is a very short part of this Very Short Introduction. The bulk of the book involves a survey of Anselm’s writings. Suffice it to say, that I have dedicated myself to reading that writing lest I miss out on an important element of Christian thinking.
The author (Williams) does a great job of making complicated theological ideas accessible. Here is his take on Anselm’s understanding of “divine simplicity.”
Divine simplicity is such a counterintuitive doctrine that it is worth looking carefully at why Anselm is committed to it. Why does unsurpassable greatness require a lack of metaphysical composition? One argument Anselm gives is that any composite can be broken up, at least in thought, and clearly what can be broken up is inferior to what cannot be broken up. This argument might well seem like a mere restatement of the general preference for unity over multiplicity, and so it might be less than convincing to someone who doesn’t quite see why divine unity has to be (or even intelligibly can be) carried quite so far as to deny any metaphysical distinctions in God.
Anselm has a more powerful consideration available, however, in what philosophers nowadays call divine aseity. ‘Aseity’ is derived from the Latin a se, ‘from himself’ (though no medieval philosopher writing in Latin actually uses the word aseitas—it is odd that it was left to later writers to coin a faux-Latin word for a concept that was so important to medieval Latin writers). The idea is that whatever God is, he is from himself. He does not depend on anything outside himself to be what he is. Now it is easy to see why aseity must characterize a being of unsurpassable greatness: it is greater, better, nobler to be independent than dependent, to have in oneself the fount and source of all that one is, rather than depending on something outside oneself to exist or to be what one is.
Once we understand aseity, it is easy to see why God cannot be a composite in any way. A composite depends on its components if it is to exist and to be what it is. If God has parts—attributes distinct from each other or from God himself—then he depends on something other than himself to be what he is. So God does not have wisdom or power or justice; God is wisdom and power and justice, which are all one in God, because they are God, and God is one.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (pp. 25-26). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
A study of Anselm underscores the Scholastic belief in the power of human reason. Williams explains Anselm’s ontological argument ,the response of Guanillo , and Anselm’s response to Guanillo. What cements Anselm’s position as a champion of reason is his order that any publication of his argument must also contain Guanillo’s response. It would be nice if modern scholars would honor their critics in a similar fashion.
Anselm also writes in a decidedly Catholic vein in his discussion of the fall of the angels. Williams summarizes a part of the argument thus:
But if the angel has both wills—both affections—he has the power to make a choice that isn’t a necessary outgrowth of the nature and powers God gave him, but instead an act that genuinely belongs to the angel as its initiator or agent. In the situation of the primal choice, all the angels have both the affection for justice and the affection for happiness. They can exercise their will-as-instrument by forgoing advantage (‘that something more’) for the sake of justice; they can also exercise their will by choosing advantage and thereby abandoning justice. Nothing about what God does—creating them as they are, revealing to them what they know, placing them in the circumstances in which they find themselves—makes the difference between the angels who remain steadfast and the angels who fall. It is the angels themselves who make the difference by freely willing one way or the other.
So it does turn out after all that the angels can answer St Paul’s question, ‘What do you have that you did not receive?’, with ‘Our free choice of justice over advantage’ (or vice versa) rather than the ‘Nothing’ that Paul expects. Anselm sees as clearly as anyone before or since, and much more clearly than most, that if the answer really is ‘Nothing’—if absolutely everything belonging to a creature, including every choice, is received from God—there will be no real responsibility or agency on the part of any creature. All creaturely choices will be ‘the work and gift of God’.
Anselm is here making a radical break with the Augustinian tradition, which insisted that everything that is good, including our own good choices, is from God; we can mar the good we receive, but we cannot bring about any good in ourselves by our own powers.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 77). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
Anselm also offered a “satisfaction theory of atonement.” Williams explains:
Anselm’s theory of atonement can be summed up in a single sentence:
The voluntary self-offering of the infinitely precious life of the God-man repairs the infinite breach that sin had opened up between God and humanity and thereby restores the possibility of eternal happiness that God intended for humanity in creation.
Granted, this statement expresses his account without employing the metaphors that Anselm uses in developing it. But it does so without the loss of anything essential to the view, and indeed it thereby opens up possibilities for contemporary thinkers to express the same view using metaphors and imagery that might speak more compellingly today.
Williams, Thomas. Anselm: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (p. 92). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
By this time, the reader should have a sense of Anselm and this VSI.
I intend to dive in further.
December 19, 2024
Leider ist das Buch nicht mehr als eine Einführung in das Denken Anselms. Seine wichtigsten Schriften werden eine nach der anderen auf eine sehr verständliche Weise erklärt. Was ich mir aber erhofft hätte - und eigentlich der Anspruch der Reihe ist -, war auch eine Einführung in seine Zeit, mehr zu seiner Biographie, den Einfluss, den er zu seinen Lebzeiten hatte und darüber hinaus uvm. Eine stichpunktartige Biographie wird dem Buch zwar in der Einleitung vorangestellt, ist aber nicht gut eingebunden in den Rest des Buches.
January 28, 2024
Williams offers philosophical reconstruction more than intellectual history. That’s a dubious choice given Anselm’s ideas are so strange/false from a modern perspective.
May 1, 2023
A great introduction to Anselm by my favourite Anselm scholar.
August 11, 2024
Probably the best book in the VSI series I have read so far. These books continue to pack a punch in that each book is short, but the selected authors are very much experts in the subject of each book and write in a dense manner. I read this book as I continue in my study of medieval philosophy/theology. There is great content in this book for those interested in biography, philosophy of religion, and theology (Williams’s treatment of Anselm’s atonement theology is especially a highlight of the book as he compellingly contends that Anselm is not a proponent of PSA). Concerning philosophy of religion, Williams explores Anselm’s doctrine of God and how one must articulate the idea of God before one can consider the rationality of God’s existence (“Looking at God” before “Looking for God). This is a distinct approach to the apologetic task than what you find in much literature today, but I like it. Williams shows Anselm’s burden to demonstrate the rationality or reasonableness of the faith without even appealing to the Christian story. Indeed, Cur Deus Homo is an appeal to reason for incarnation and atonement without an appeal to Scripture or tradition. C. S. Lewis also conducted such an appeal in “Mere Christianity.” Overall, this book is very helpful for understanding one of the key issues of medieval theology: the relationship between faith and reason. This relationship, along with the debate over Christ’s presence in the Supper, is a hallmark of medieval theology. I highly recommend!
June 29, 2023
I've read only a couple "Very Short Introduction" books. I feel like they are as good or limited as the author, without a lot of editorial top-down control. If that's the case, you couldn't pick a better author than Thomas Williams for this introduction. Clear and concise, "Anselm" Williams crafts a suitably scholarly presentation that is nonetheless compelling! The reader feels they are getting a glimpse of the real figure, his tumultuous life and prodigious work, a seminally influential thinker of the Middle Ages.
Unavoidably dense at times--the ontological argument has no "for dummies" versions--this introduction leads the reader to explore Anselm's primary writings. I immediately took up "Cur Deus Homo," which seems to me more understandable than previous reading attempts.
Not everyone will be interested in Anselm. For those who are, don't miss this short ("very short") intro! You will come away with a better sense of his singular significance. You might even find him a fit guide to ways of thinking otherwise foreign to the modern mind.
Unavoidably dense at times--the ontological argument has no "for dummies" versions--this introduction leads the reader to explore Anselm's primary writings. I immediately took up "Cur Deus Homo," which seems to me more understandable than previous reading attempts.
Not everyone will be interested in Anselm. For those who are, don't miss this short ("very short") intro! You will come away with a better sense of his singular significance. You might even find him a fit guide to ways of thinking otherwise foreign to the modern mind.
July 19, 2025
"A Very Short Introduction" in terms of pages, but a longer read for the one intent on grasping the philosophy of Archbishop Anselm (1033-1109). The first chapter is the book I thought I was purchasing--a short biography of Anselm's life--and the remaining six chapters cover an introduction to his philosophical writings.
In order to understand and comprehend what was being shared I found myself reading and rereading large portions of the narrative, which led to a longer read than I expected. I think I have a good handle on his philosophical (not theological) understandings of God, but I don't want to be tested on it. I think this book will require an additional read for the sake of clarity. It feels like an easy read with Williams' writing style, but for most of us it will require effort due to its subject matter. Due to this dichotomy, I awarded the book four stars.
In order to understand and comprehend what was being shared I found myself reading and rereading large portions of the narrative, which led to a longer read than I expected. I think I have a good handle on his philosophical (not theological) understandings of God, but I don't want to be tested on it. I think this book will require an additional read for the sake of clarity. It feels like an easy read with Williams' writing style, but for most of us it will require effort due to its subject matter. Due to this dichotomy, I awarded the book four stars.
June 16, 2023
Don't expect a riveting biography but enjoy a somewhat simple explanation of Anselm's philosophy about basic tenets of Catholicism/Christianity. I appreciated Williams's Looking at God chapter.
August 22, 2024
This is a very clear exposition of a very complex (and very important) thinker.
September 13, 2024
A very good short introduction to Anselm.
B. Grizenko
B. Grizenko
February 8, 2023
In 2022 I took a Master’s course on Anselm in Seminary. I had read Williams’ other book with Sandra Visser , which is also outstanding. This book beautiful captures much of who Anselm is and what he wrote and thought. I highly recommend this work for someone just entering the world of Anselm of Canterbury.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews