supplemental material
I’ve included a link to The Proslogium, as well as a famous essay on the Ontological Argument, called “Is the Ontological Argument Ontological” by Jean-Luc Marion from the book, Flight of the Gods.
reflection
While it might initially appear strange to include a person who provided one of the most famous arguments for the existence of God, Anselm deserves an important place in the development of theological atheism because of his philosophical defense of a reality ‘beyond being’.
Anselm famously outlined three modes of being (each of which supersede the former in their level of greatness),
Being in the mind, but not in reality
Being in reality, and can be grasped by the mind
Being in reality, but cannot be grasped by the mind
By using an argument derived from the definition of the word ‘God’, he claimed that the third form of being is necessarily connected with the idea of God. The word ‘God’ refers to a being ‘that which none greater can be conceived’, and thus the definition requires that one attach the third type of reality to the very idea of God. This is much like having to attach the idea ‘a shape of three sides’ to the word ‘triangle’.
In this way, Anselm provides a basis for the mystical idea of the religious ‘object’, being beyond our ability to grasp. Hence, this helps us to understand why the mystics took negation (atheism) as a vital tool for religious purification.
The Proslogion
Anselm of Canterbury (1033 – 1109) was a Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. He was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by a bull of Pope Clement XI in 1720.
At first it might seem strange to include The Proslogion in Atheism for Lent. After all, this brief work aims at proving the existence of God.
The main argument that makes up the book has been called The Ontological Argument. Yet this very argument actually clarifies and hones one of the mystical tradition’s most powerful arguments against religious conceptions of God.
Following the argument closely, we can begin to understand why many theologians later argued that atheism is closer to the Absolute than traditional theism.