Thursday, January 21, 2010

Augustine and Anselm

This sounds suspiciously like St. Anselm’s ontological argument:

For never yet was, nor will be, a soul able to conceive of anything better than You, who art the highest and best good. But whereas most truly and certainly that which is incorruptible is to be preferred to the corruptible (like as I myself did now prefer it), then, if Thou were not incorruptible, I could in my thoughts have reached unto something better than my God. [Confessions VII.4]

It’s not too hard to see from this that St. Augustine influenced St. Anselm.

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