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Assess the Argument Put forward by St. Anselm in the Pros
St Anselm (1033 -1109), a Christian monk and the founder of scholasticism, has been described as “One of the Christian Church’s most original thinkers and the greatest theologian ever to have been Archbishop of Canterbury” (Hick, 1963, p15). In seeking to prove the existence of God, he wrote the Proslogion. The context of Proslogion is in the form of a prayer; Anselm is in a state of meditation and contemplation, seeking to consolidate his belief with a logical proof of God’s existence. The argument put forward in the Proslogion is the ontological argument. Ontological literally means ‘talking about being’ (‘being’ refers to God). It is an a priori argument, based on the logic of thought, as opposed to being drawn from experiences in the world (a posteriori); and is also a deductive argument – thus a valid conclusion can only be drawn if the premises on which it is based are true, to a level of absolute certainty. This is an important factor when assessing the argument.
The first argument put forward by Anselm appears in chapter II of the Proslogion. He begins by concentrating the monotheistic concept of God into the formula, “a being than which no greater can be conceived”. He goes on to sa
Approximate Word count = 1844
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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