About This Event
Online | With Ryan M. Hurd | Registration: $125 (Members: $89)
As the father of scholasticism, Anselm of Canterbury is a notable figure mediating between fathers like Augustine and high medievals such as Aquinas; likewise, his theology represents an important transition between patristic and scholastic theology.
A central focus of Anselm’s theology is interpreting holy Scripture–as his biographer wrote, “Seeing with the eye of reason those things in holy Scripture which lay hid in deep obscurity.” And given the needs of developing scholasticism, most important was interpreting scriptural metaphors or “improper locutions”–hence Anselm wrote “treatises pertaining to the study of Holy Writ” (e.g., De veritate) where he developed principles for doing so (akin to Augustine’s De doctrina christiana). Through it all, the goal of Anselm’s theology was acquiring the intelligibility of what we believe on the basis of holy Scripture–hence the now famous fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking its understanding,” which was in fact the original title of one of Anselm’s most famous works, Proslogion.
This series focuses upon a central section of Proslogion (cc 6–11) which represents the core of Anselm’s theology. Therein, Anselm engages the task of rendering intelligible various truths about God involving our salvation–many of which are given to us in holy Scripture under metaphor: how God perceives us and our problems, i.e. how he sees and hears us although he has neither eyes nor ears (c 6); his abilities and also inabilities (such as the inability to suffer) regarding what plagues us (adversities) and perverts us (sin) (c 7); his mercy regarding both (c 8); and finally how various works of mercy, such as sparing us from punishment, interface with divine justice and its need to punish (cc 9–11). All these truths are of course central to holy Scripture, whose primary point is that God saves; thus, from Anselm’s perspective, acquiring their intelligibility is central to faith and its quest for understanding, whereupon we can not only interpret holy Scripture, but also announce its truths to all.
