Henry of Ghent on Anselm's Proslogion Argument
In Summa theologiae 1a.2.1, St. Thomas Aquinas asked “whether that God exists is self-evident” and argued that it is not. His response is generally taken as a rejection of St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion. In his Summa quaestionum ordinarium (hereafter SQO) 22, H...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
2009
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 2009, Volume: 64, Pages: 213-228 |
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Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In Summa theologiae 1a.2.1, St. Thomas Aquinas asked “whether that God exists is self-evident” and argued that it is not. His response is generally taken as a rejection of St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God in the Proslogion. In his Summa quaestionum ordinarium (hereafter SQO) 22, Henry of Ghent asks as his second question: “whether that God exists is naturally self-evident to a human being,” and like St. Thomas, he argues that the proposition that God exists is not self-evident. Neither Thomas nor Henry mentions the Archbishop of Canterbury in these questions, although they both use expressions that are clearly borrowed from the argument in the Proslogion. Moreover, both Thomas and Henry also cite in the arguments to the contrary St. John Damascene's statement in De fide orthodoxa that “the knowledge that God exists is naturally implanted in all,” as well as Aristotle's definition from the Posterior Analytics of what it means for a proposition to be self-evident. Henry, however, regards the Proslogion argument quite favorably and examines it at length in SQO 30.2 in an article on the immutability of God in which he asks whether God can be thought not to exist and argues that God cannot be thought not to exist, at least if one has a proper concept of God. Hence, Henry holds both that God cannot be thought not to exist and that the proposition that God exists is not naturally self-evident to a human being, and that would seem to be contradictory or at least to require some careful distinctions. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900002300 |