Theopedia

Anselm of Canterbury

For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.

Anselm, Proslogion1

Overview

Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) was a Benedictine monk, philosopher, and archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 until his death.2 He is remembered above all for two short, dense books: the Proslogion, which contains his famous ontological argument for the existence of God,3 and Cur Deus Homo (“Why God Became Man”), which gave the church its first fully reasoned account of Christ’s atonement as a satisfaction of divine justice.4 Later theology, Reformed included, still engages both arguments directly.

Life and Ministry

Anselm was born around 1033 in Aosta, then part of the Kingdom of Burgundy, to a Lombard noble father and a mother from a locally prominent family.5 After his mother’s death and a falling-out with his father, he left home at twenty-three and spent several years travelling through Burgundy and France before arriving in Normandy in 1059, where he entered the Benedictine abbey of Bec as a novice under its prior, Lanfranc.5 He succeeded Lanfranc as prior in 1063 and was elected abbot in 1078; under his leadership Bec became one of Europe’s leading centers of learning, and it was there that Anselm wrote the Monologion, the Proslogion, and several shorter treatises.5

Anselm was appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 1093, succeeding Lanfranc a second time, and was consecrated that December.5 His tenure was marked by two periods of exile, both provoked by disputes with the English crown over lay investiture and the church’s independence from royal control: the first, under William II, lasted from 1097 to William’s death in 1100; the second, under Henry I, ran from 1105 to 1107 and ended with the Concordat of London, in which Henry gave up his claim to invest bishops.5 Anselm died at Canterbury on April 21, 1109.5

A well-known anecdote, relayed by church historian Philip Schaff, describes Anselm as a boy climbing the Alps in a dream to dine with God, forgetting the errand that sent him up the mountain once he reached the King’s table. Parkison observes that “in a very real way, Anselm spent the rest of his life trying to get back to that table.”6

Theological Contribution

The ontological argument

The Proslogion’s argument begins from a single definition: God is “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.” Anselm reasons that such a being cannot exist “in the understanding alone,” since a being that also exists in reality would be greater still; the very idea of the greatest conceivable being therefore requires that it exist in reality, not merely as a thought.7 Anselm states the conclusion as a direct address to God rather than a bare syllogism: “Why, then, has the fool said in his heart, there is no God… since it is so evident, to a rational mind, that you do exist in the highest degree of all?”7 A. A. Hodge summarizes the same reasoning: humanity has “the idea of an infinitely perfect being,” and since real existence is a necessary element of infinite perfection, an infinitely perfect being must exist, or else the idea itself would lack that element of perfection.2

Parkison argues that reducing the Proslogion to this single proof misses Anselm’s actual purpose. Anselm pauses his own argument midway through, at chapter fourteen, to ask, “Have you found, O my soul, what you were seeking?” and answers that he has not yet reached what he set out to find.1 The book’s real center of gravity, on this reading, is not the logical proof itself but Anselm’s longing to see God, carried in his repeated prayer: “Come then, Lord my God, teach my heart where and how to seek You, where and how to find You.”1

The satisfaction of Christ

Cur Deus Homo argues that sin dishonors God, that God’s justice requires this dishonor be repaid, and that only a being both fully God and fully man could offer a satisfaction adequate to an offense against infinite honor. Anselm sets out his own case in four propositions: humanity had to be redeemed; redemption could not occur without satisfaction; that satisfaction had to be made by the God-man; and the fitting way for it to be made was through Christ’s suffering.8 Bavinck credits Anselm with a decisive shift in how the church understood what Christ’s death accomplishes: earlier writers such as Tertullian and Augustine had already stressed a juridical, satisfaction-shaped element in Christ’s sacrifice, but Anselm was “the first to understand, and to understand most clearly, that the redemption accomplished by Christ was a deliverance, not primarily from the consequences of sin, from death and Satan’s power, but above all from sin itself and sin’s guilt.”9 Bavinck contrasts this with two rivals Anselm’s own theory answered: Duns Scotus, who treated the atonement’s value as resting on an arbitrary divine acceptance rather than the work’s own worth, and Peter Abelard, who found in Christ’s death only a moral example.9

Historical Significance

A. A. Hodge credits Cur Deus Homo with putting satisfaction language “in a scientific form” for the first time, and states that it “formed the basis of the Soteriological doctrines of all the creeds and classical theological literature of all the historical churches since his time.”4 Bavinck likewise judges that “in its essential constituents, Anselm’s teaching achieved permanent significance in later theology,” even as the Reformation later reframed the doctrine around Christ’s active as well as passive obedience and organized his work under the threefold office of prophet, priest, and king.9

The ontological argument had a longer, more contested afterlife. Thomas Aquinas rejected it in the Summa Theologiae (2.2),7 yet the argument persisted: Descartes defended a version of it against the objection that an idea of a perfect being proves God’s existence no more than an idea of a winged horse proves Pegasus is real,7 and Leibniz, granting the argument’s basic shape, judged it needed a further proof that a being with every perfection is even possible.7

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Samuel G. Parkison, To Gaze upon God: The Beatific Vision in Doctrine, Tradition, and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), chap. 3, “A Cloud of Witnesses, Part One: Pre-Reformation Historical Witness,” 60-102. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 29. ↩ ↩2

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 7, “Knowing God.” ↩

  4. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 25, “Atonement,” 401-425. ↩ ↩2

  5. Wikipedia, s.v. “Anselm of Canterbury,” accessed August 29, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anselm_of_Canterbury. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. Parkison, To Gaze upon God, 77-78, citing Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church. ↩

  7. Louis Markos, From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024), “Preface: A Platonist Learns to Love Aristotle,” 3-41. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  8. Charles Hodge, “Chapter VII. Satisfaction of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 478-542. ↩

  9. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 15, “The Servant Savior: Christ’s Humiliation.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3