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Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works
 
 
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Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works [Paperback]

St. Anselm (Author), Brian Davies (Editor), G. R. Evans (Editor)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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"An excellent edition that will offer students an easy entrance to the fascinating field of Medieval Theology."--L. Russ Bush, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary


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`For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand.' Does God exist? Can we know anything about God's nature? Have we any reason to think that the Christian religion is true? What is truth, anyway? Do human beings have freedom of choice? Can they have such freedom in a world created by God? These questions, and others, were ones which Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109) took very seriously. He was utterly convinced of the truth of the Christian religion, but he was also determined to try to make sense of his Christian faith. Recognizing that the Christian God is incomprehensible, he also believed that Christianity is not simply something to be swallowed with mouth open and eyes shut. For Anselm, the doctrines of Christianity are an invitation to question, to think, and to learn. Anselm is studied today because his rigour of thought and clarity of writing place him among the greatest of theologians and philosophers. This translation provides readers with their first opportunity to read all of his most important works within the covers of a single volume.
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To Lanfranc, worthy of reverence and love, his master, father and teacher, Archbishop of Canterbury, primate of the English, most deservedly worthy, for his faithful service to the mother church catholic, to be, by her, embraced. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, Jan 3 2012
This review is from: Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Paperback)
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4.0 out of 5 stars Important for understanding how we got where we are, Jan 24 2002
By 
Edwin Tait (Huntington, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Paperback)
Anselm of Canterbury is one of the most important theologians in the history of the Western Church. That means that his ideas most likely have influenced the way you think about the world, whether you realize it or not. It also means that the ideas he taught have reached us in a very garbled form. Take his doctrine of the "atonement," for instance (you can read it in "Why God Became Man" in this volume). Anselm taught that by sinning humans have failed to give God the "honor" due him as our creator and as a supremely great and good and beautiful being. This creates a "debt" that must be paid back. We can't pay it, because even if we were perfectly good (which we can't be), that would only be our due anyway. It wouldn't pay back the original "debt" incurred by Adam and Eve. That debt is so great that only God himself could pay it. Yet the debt had to be paid by a human being. So God became human and paid the debt on our behalf.

This notion lies behind hundreds of evangelical and fundamentalist sermons which you can hear in churches throughout this country every Sunday. It also is partly responsible for the notion of God a lot of nonreligious people reject--a cosmic tyrant who demands perfect obedience and threatens us with punishment if we don't comply.

Yet Anselm actually _never_ taught that Jesus was "punished" on our behalf. On the contrary, the debt was paid precisely so that no punishment would be necessary. Jesus' death on the cross was not a sadistic punishment exacted by an angry God, but was the culmination of his absolute obedience to God's will. It was that obedience, completed in his sacrificial death, that paid "the debt we could not owe."

For Anselm, and for Christians generally, honoring God is the highest and most joyful thing we can do. It is the most truly human and humanizing activity imaginable. This is tied to Anselm's notion of God (expressed in his "Proslogion," also in this volume). For Anselm, God is the being than which nothing greater can be imagined. This isn't primarily about an omnipotent being who can make us do things. It's about a being so unimaginably glorious that the greatest happiness anyone can know is just to be in his presence. To turn away from a being like that (knowing what we're doing, which most of us don't) is to be something less than we could be. Obviously this is a bit of a modern interpretation of Anselm, but I don't think it contradicts him.

I do think, though, that there are better ways to think about the Atonement than Anselm's. Earlier Christians had spoken of Jesus' death and resurrection primarily as a victory over death and the devil--what the baptismal vows in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer call the "forces that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God." Anselm didn't like this notion, because he thought it limited God's power and gave the devil some sort of independent existence (and in some versions even legal "rights"). But I think that that understanding of Jesus' saving work is probably truer to the Bible and Christian tradition than Anselm's.

But even if--indeed especially if--you disagree with Anselm, he's worth reading. He and the "scholastic" theologians who followed him helped shape Christian thinking in the West for the past thousand years. They are partly responsible for the fact that Western Christians--Catholics and Protestants--think so differently from the Orthodox.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Good Classic Christian Reading, April 15 2000
By 
Jeffrey A. Swanson (Shelby, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works (Paperback)
Anselm was a very important author for Medieval Christianity. He contributed the Ontological argument for the existence (or should I say subsitence) of God, as well as formulating verbally the substitutionary atonement of Christ. This book provides these as well as a host of other rich classical Christian thoughts. It is difficult reading, but excellent in that it makes one think, believer or non-believer, in the metaphysical realities of life. I would have to say a must for anyone interested in the development of Christian thinking, as well as Philosophical development.
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