Anselm Quotes

For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe-that unless I believe I shall not understand.

Threatening the High Warlock. Better and better. Maybe we should head down to vampire clan headquarters and punch Anselm Nightshade in the face.

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

Lord, give me what you have made me want; I praise and thank you for the desire that you have inspired; perfect what you have begun, and grant me what you have made me long for.

Come now, insignificant man, fly for a moment from your affairs, escape for a little while from the tumult of your thoughts. Put aside now your weighty cares and leave your wearisome toils. Abandon yourself for a little to God and rest for a little in Him.

slow it is a slow business to grow a few words to say love

We do not simply decide to believe, having been convinced by factual evidence. We first grasp the truth, being enabled by the Holy Spirit, and then the external evidence for the truth suddenly takes on new significance. Thus we ‘understand’ by faith. Anselm said, ‘I believe in order that I may understand’ whereas Abelard said, ‘I seek to understand in order that I may believe.

God has made nothing more valuable than rational existence capable of enjoying him;

God is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.

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.

Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce ‘proofs’ of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors — Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm's proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes' — but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions.

And what we say - that what He willeth is right and what He doth not not will is wrong, is not so to be understood, as if, should God will something inconsistent, it would be right because He willed it. For it does not follow that if God would lie it would be right to lie, but rather that he were not God.

each morning we’re born again of yesterday nothing remains what’s left began today

How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality--how did it happen that, from all of this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus? How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities?

Anselm was nothing like Darlington now. He was a tan in a suit. He was a wealthy grifter looking for an edge and willing to use her to get it. He was one more thief rummaging through artifacts in a country not his own. He was the Lethe Alex understood, not the Lethe Darlington had loved.

A bitter laugh escaped her. "You didn't offer to help me until you knew I has something you wanted. You were using me and I was happy to whore for you for the right price, so let's not pretend there was something noble in that transaction." Anselm's lip curled. "You don't belong here. You never have. Crass. Uncouth. Uneducated. You are a blight on Lethe.

If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine out of 10 times.

The current human rights movement in Africa - with the possible exception of the women's rights movement and faith-based social justice initiatives - appears almost by design to exclude the participation of the people whose welfare it purports to advance.' - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand.

The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather it's energy not in rational study of past theological points but in the pursuit to make sense of our concrete and lived experiences of Jesus who finds us in a hole, knocks us from our horse, or comes to our daughter in her sleep.

Vous avez cru jusqu'à ce jour qu'il y avait des tyrans ! Eh bien vous vous êtes trompés, il n'y a que des esclaves : là où nul n'obéit, personne ne commande.

And if there was eternity, or even the idea of it, then perhaps Anselm was right; all things were possible.

Heretic!” Anselm seethed. “Whore!” Now Alex laughed. “I’ve been called worse in line at Rite Aid.

The definition of God as infinite Love was a particularly important theme for [John Duns] Scotus. He disagreed with Anselm, who understood the Incarnation as a necessary payment for sin. He also disagreed with Thomas [Aquinas], who argued that the Incarnation, though willed by God from eternity, was made necessary by the existence of sin. For Scotus the Incarnation was willed through eternity as an expression of God's love, and hence God's desire for consummated union with creation. Our redemption by the cross, though caused by sin, was likewise an expression of God's love and compassion, rather than as an appeasement of God's anger or a form of compensation for God's injured majesty. Scotus believed that...knowledge of God's love should evoke a loving response on the part of humanity. 'I am of the opinion that God wished to redeem us in this fashion principally in order to draw us to his love.' Through our own loving self-gift, he argued, we join with Christ 'in becoming co-lovers of the Holy Trinity.

Grief is sometimes like a sharp-toothed demon that gets hold of our hearts. But its grip weakens with time, and one day you will be free of it.” “Then I will wait,” I said, and as Osgar nodded, I thought of the tongue-lashing I would have had from Anselm for the same.

Había amado a Frank, todavía lo amaba y amaba a Jamie más que a mi propia vida. Pero restringida por los límites del tiempo y la carne, no podía tener a ambos. ¿y mas allá quizás? ¿había un lugar donde el tiempo no existía o se detenía?. Anselm creía que si. Un sitio donde todo era posible y nada era necesario.

Meditation turns from its purgatory role to recognize in self-knowledge and in the mind's images of the external world the general essences in which all things have their being.

Los posmodernos, al aparentar que iban aún más allá de la teoría situacionista, en verdad la convirtieron en lo contrario de lo que era.

the angels are separated between those who adhering to justice enjoy all the goods they wish and those who having abandoned justice lack any good they desire

Oh, mizeră soartă a omului care L-a pierdut pe Cel pentru care a fost făcut.

Teach me to seek You, and reveal Yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek You if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself.

El que no es consciente de su lengua, no encuentra su identidad. La lengua es un importante lugar de encuentro de la identidad.

Descartes’s argument turns out to be a reworking of Anselm’s Ontological Proof. When we doubt, the limitations and finite nature of the ego are revealed. Yet we could not arrive at the idea of “imperfection” if we did not have a prior conception of “perfection.” Like Anselm, Descartes concluded that a perfection that did not exist would be a contradiction in terms.

As the psychologist Victor Frankl once pointed out, true knowledge is always knowledge plus – that is, knowledge that understands that it is always penetrated by unknowing. The result is that God is not defined as the greatest conceivable being or as that which is greater than conception, but rather, as Anselm argued, God is the one who is conceived as inconceivable.

El estancamiento y la falta de perspectivas del arte moderno corresponden al estancamiento y a la falta de perspectivas de la sociedad de la mercancía que ha agotado todos sus recursos.

It is possible to conceive, Anselm said, of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Even an atheist can conceive of such a superlative being, though he would deny its existence in the real world. But, goes the argument, a being that doesn't exist in the real world is, by that very fact, less than perfect. Therefore we have a contradiction and, hey presto, God exists!

You have free choice; so have all the others in this world. And history, I believe, is a cumulation of all those actions. Some individuals are chosen by God to affect the destinies of many. Perhaps you are one of those. Perhaps not. I do not know why you are here. You do not know. It is likely that neither of us will ever know. Sometimes I don’t even know why I am here! - Father Anselm

Nous sommes certainement tous tombés dans celui dans lequel nous avons tous péché! Celui qui possédait si facilement tant de bonheur évanoui maintenant, l'a pour lui et pour nous malheureusement perdu. En lui nous en avons tous été privés, et désormais lorsque nous voulons chercher, nous ignorons la voie qu'il faut suivre ; lorsque nous cherchons, nous ne trouvons pas; et lorsque nous trouvons, ce n'est déjà plus ce que nous cherchions.

Oramai devi essere a buon punto" Olimpia decide di non parlare dell'incontro con Fantini. Racconterà quello che era vero fino a due giorni prima. Questo non è mentire, è solo una verità non aggiornata. "Praticamente ho finito. Sto affrontando gli ultimi sei mesi della vita di Lea, da quando sposta la scuola dal centro alla periferia". "Ma perchè non chiedi ad Anselm di farti la copertina?" Uno che vende a 5/6 milioni di dollari una tela di sicuto gliela fa per amicizia. A casa sua sono pazzi, megalomani.

For we affirm that the Divine nature is beyond doubt impassible, and that God cannot at all be brought down from his exaltation, nor toil in anything which he wishes to effect. But we say that the Lord Jesus Christ is very God and very man, one person in two natures, and two natures in one person. When, therefore, we speak of God as enduring any humiliation or infirmity, we do not refer to the majesty of that nature, which cannot suffer; but to the feebleness of the human constitution which he assumed. And so there remains no ground of objection against our faith. For in this way we intend no debasement of the Divine nature, but we teach that one person is both Divine and human. In the incarnation of God there is no lowering of the Deity; but the nature of man we believe to be exalted.

Why, O my soul, did you fail to be there, to be stabbed by a sword of bitter grief, that you could not endure the piercing of your Saviour’s side by a spear? Why could you not bear to see the nails violate the hands and feet of your Creator?’16 This prayer, written some time around AD 1070, was not just to the God who reigned in glory on high, but to the condemned criminal he had been when he suffered his humiliating death. Its author, a brilliant scholar from northern Italy by the name of Anselm, was a man of noble birth: a correspondent of countesses, an associate of kings.

Certainement tu es la sagesse, la vérité ; tu es la bonté, le bonheur, l'éternité; tu es tout ce qui constitue le vrai bien. Toutes ces choses sont nombreuses, mon intelligence étroite et captive ne peut voir tant d'objets d'un seul coup, et jouir de tous à la fois. Comment donc, Seigneur, es-tu tous ces objets? Sont-ils tes diverses parties, ou chacun d'eux n'est-il pas tout entier ton essence? Car, tout ce qui est composé de parties n'est pas véritablement un. Il est, en quelque manière, plusieurs et différent de lui-même ; il peut être désuni et dans le fait et par la pensée, conditions étrangères à ta nature, au-dessus de laquelle on ne saurait rien concevoir. Il n'y a donc point de parties en toi, Seigneur ! Tu n'es pas multiple ; mais tu es tellement un et si complètement semblable à toi-même, que tu ne diffères en aucun point de ta propre nature. Bien plus, tu es l'unité véritable et absolue, indivisible même par la pensée. Ainsi donc, la vie, la sagesse, et toutes les autres vertus que nous avons énumérées, ne sont pas des parties de ton être, mais toutes ensemble ne font qu'un, et chacune est, tout entière, et ton essence et l'essence des autres.

Later writers who took up the ontological argument again all fell, at least in principle, into Anselm’s error. Kant’s reasoning should be final. We will therefore briefly outline it. He says: The concept of an absolutely necessary being is a concept of pure reason, that is, a mere idea the objective reality of which is very far from being proved by the fact that reason requires it. … But the unconditioned necessity of judgments is not the same as an absolute necessity of things. The absolute necessity of the judgment is only a conditioned necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the judgment.29

Cuando no se produce ya para el valor de uso sino únicamente para el valor de cambio, cuando el trabajo no sirve para satisfacer ninguna necesidad concreta sino solamente para fabricar unos objetos cualesquiera para venderlos en el mercado (lo que Marx llamó "trabajo abstracto"), entonces la abstracción, lo puramente cuantitativo, el predominio de la forma, y concretamente de la forma-mercancía, sobre cualquier contenido, determinan la entera vida social. El valor de cambio, la simple cantidad de trabajo social que se ha incorporado a una mercancía, es el triunfo de la cantidad, de la abstracción de toda cualidad.

One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation. Many of us have had at least part of that horror thrust on us at one time or other in our childhood. For many reasons I never went to Sunday School, so I was spared having a lot of peculiar teaching to unlearn. It’s only lately that I’ve discovered that it was no less a person than St. Anselm who saw the atonement in terms of appeasement of an angry God, from which follows immediately the heresy that Jesus came to save us from God the Father.

The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom with poetry, strength, beauty, and intelligence. Whence came all this? From the ancient world, which had exhausted its vital powers? From moldy parchments? But did Plato really write his dialogues with the same keen enjoyment with which Marsilio Ficino annotated them? And did the Romans, when reading the Greeks, really experience the same emotions as Petrarch, when, for ignorance of Greek, he could only move his precious manuscripts from place to place, kiss them now and then, and gaze sadly at their incomprehensible text? All these manuscripts, in convenient and accurate editions, lie before us too: why don't they lead us to a "renascence" among us? Why didn't the Greeks bring about a "renascence" in Rome? And why didn't Greco-Roman literature produce anything similar to the Italian Renaissance in Gaul and Africa from the second to the fourth century? The secret of the Renaissance of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries does not lie in ancient literature: this literature was only the spade that threw the soil off the treasures buried underneath; the secret lies in the treasures themselves; in the fact that between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, under the influence of the strict ascetic ideal of mortifying the flesh and restraining the impulses of his spirit, man only stored up his energies and expended nothing. During this great thousand-year silence his soul matured for The Divine Comedy; during this forced closing of eyes to the world - an interesting, albeit sinful world-Galileo was maturing, Copernicus, and the school of careful experimentation founded by Bacon; during the struggle with the Moors the talents of Velasquez and Murillo were forged; and in the prayers of the thousand years leading up to the sixteenth century the Madonna images of that century were drawn, images to which we are able to pray but which no one is able to imitate. ("On Symbolists And Decadents")

Bellegarrigue revient en France en février 1848, la veille des événements qui vont mener au renversement du régime monarchique de Louis-Philippe. Il participera à la révolte mais il demeurera très critique, pour ne pas dire sceptique, face à l'avenir de la révolution. Ainsi, à un jeune ouvrier en armes qu'il rencontre près de l'hôtel de ville et qui lui lance avec enthousiasme: "Cette fois-ci, on ne nous la volera pas notre victoire!" Bellegarrigue rétorque: "Ah, mon ami, la victoire, on vous l'a déjà volée. N'avez-vous pas nommé un gouvernement provisoire ?

It looked as though knowing that you were right meant nothing; they all knew they were right. Weeks had no intention of undermining the boy's faith, but he was deeply interested in religion, and found it an absorbing topic of conversation. He had described his own views accurately when he said that he very earnestly disbelieved in almost everything that other people believed. Once Philip asked him a question, which he had heard his uncle put when the conversation at the vicarage had fallen upon some mildly rationalistic work which was then exciting discussion in the newspapers. "But why should you be right and all those fellows like St. Anselm and St. Augustine be wrong?" "You mean that they were very clever and learned men, while you have grave doubts whether I am either?" asked Weeks. "Yes," answered Philip uncertainly, for put in that way his question seemed impertinent. "St. Augustine believed that the earth was flat and that the sun turned round it." "I don't know what that proves." "Why, it proves that you believe with your generation. Your saints lived in an age of faith, when it was practically impossible to disbelieve what to us is positively incredible." "Then how d'you know that we have the truth now?" "I don't." Philip thought this over for a moment, then he said: "I don't see why the things we believe absolutely now shouldn't be just as wrong as what they believed in the past." "Neither do I." "Then how can you believe anything at all?" "I don't know." Philip asked Weeks what he thought of Hayward's religion. "Men have always formed gods in their own image," said Weeks. "He believes in the picturesque." Philip paused for a little while, then he said: "I don't see why one should believe in God at all.

But why, an impatient critic will immediately object, should our forgiveness depend on Christ’s death? Why does God not simply forgive us, without the necessity of the cross? ‘God will pardon me’, Heinrich Heine protested. ‘That’s his métier [his job, his speciality].’4 After all, the objector might continue, if we sin against each other, we are required to forgive each other. So why should God not practise what he preaches? Why should he not be as generous as he expects us to be? Two answers need to be given to these questions. The first was given at the end of the eleventh century by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. He wrote in his magnificent book Why God Became Man: ‘You have not yet considered the seriousness of sin.’5 The second answer might be: ‘You have not yet considered the majesty of God.’ To draw an analogy between our forgiveness of each other and God’s forgiveness of us is very superficial. We are not God but private individuals, while he is the maker of heaven and earth, Creator of the very laws we break. Our sins are not purely personal injuries but a wilful rebellion against him. It is when we begin to see the gravity of sin and the majesty of God that our questions change. No longer do we ask why God finds it difficult to forgive sins, but how he finds it possible. As one writer has put it, ‘forgiveness is to man the plainest of duties; to God it is the profoundest of problems’.6 Why may forgiveness be described as a ‘problem’ to God? Because of who he is in his innermost being. Of course he is love (1 John 4:8, 16), but his love is not sentimental love; it is holy love. How then could God punish sin (as in justice he must) without contradicting his love? Or how could God pardon sin (as in love he yearned to do) without compromising his justice? How, confronted by human evil, could God be true to himself as holy love? How could he act simultaneously to express his holiness and his love? This is the divine dilemma that God resolved on the cross. For on the cross, when Jesus died, God himself in Christ bore the judgment we deserved, in order to bring us the forgiveness we do not deserve. The full penalty of sin was borne – not, however, by us, but by God in Christ. On the cross divine love and justice were reconciled.

Agent Tanner sagte, dass die NSA sich etwas einfallen lasseb will. Anselm und Hannah haben sich eben spontan entschlossen, auf Weltreise zu gehen. Postkarten, E-mails, ja, sogar Telefonate von unterwegs sind kein Problem.

V prvom rade sú to naše myšlienkové vzorce, nie udalosti, ktoré nás vedú k nespokojnosti, či spokojnosti.

For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe that “Unless I believe, I shall not understand.” —ANSELM OF CANTERBURY1

This is Jeremy, he doesn’t talk much.

Every Hawker of reason from Anselm of Caterbury to Jacques Rancière makes language her trampoline into the sublime with the leaping that gets her high enough viewed alternatively as a suffocating discourse on art a regime for identifying art the condemnation of Pelagianism the constitution of an indistinct sphere vicious circles in arguments the endless work of mourning the Word of God the right, the true, the aesthetic utopia, the totalitarian utopia, all utopias after all is said and done you’re helpless and sleeping -aliquid quo maius cogitari non potest-

MAIS si par ton éternité, tu as été, tu es et tu seras; et si avoir été n'est pas devoir être, si être n'est ni devoir être ni avoir été, comment ton éternité est-elle toujours tout entière? Serait-ce que rien d'elle n'a passé de manière à n'être plus, et que rien de ce qui doit s'en écouler un jour ne peut être regardé comme n'étant pas encore? Tu n'as donc point été hier, tu n'es point aujourd'hui, tu ne seras pas demain ; mais hier, aujourd'hui, demain, tu es; bien plus encore, tu n'es pas hier, aujourd'hui, demain, mais tu es simplement, et en dehors de toute condition de temps. Hier, aujourd'hui, demain n'existent que dans le temps, et toi, quoiqu'il n'y ait rien sans ton essence, tu n'es cependant ni dans le lieu ni dans le temps ; mais toutes choses sont en toi, rien ne te contient et tu contiens tout.

Indeed, Anselm, who is often seen as a key thinker in claiming that God is conceivable, writes that when gazing upon the Lord, the eye is darkened, noting that: Surely it is both darkened in itself and dazzled by you. Indeed it is both obscured by its own littleness and overwhelmed by your vastness.

For Anselm there are three levels of existence. The first, and lowest, level is that which exists only in the mind (for instance, a unicorn). The second refers to those things that exist both in the mind and in reality (such as a horse). The third level is that which exists in reality but which cannot be contained in the mind (i.e. God). It is this third level of existence that has often been overlooked by the Church, and yet it is here that we find God.

Man’s exile is ignorance; his home is knowledge,” said the twelfth-century Bishop Honorius of Autun. And Saint Anselm of Canterbury: “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand.

Philosophizing in medieval Latin Europe began in the eighth century, in the royal court of Charlemagne, then moved in the later ninth century to the great monasteries, such as St. Amand and Corbie in northern France, Fleury and Tours on the Loire, Reichenau in Germany, Bobbio in northern Italy, and St. Gallen in present-day Switzerland. It began to flourish, from the late tenth century, in urban cathedral schools with such figures as Gerbert at Rheims, Fulbert at Chartres, Anselm of Laon at the cathedral school there, and William of Champeaux at Paris. From the 1120s, Paris became the preeminent center

Anselm conceives of God as something than which nothing greater or more perfect can be conceived. Since this idea arises in our minds it certainly has an intellectual existence. But does it have an existence outside of our minds? Anselm argued that it must, for otherwise we fall into a contradiction. For we could imagine something greater than that which nothing greater can be conceived; that is the mental conception we have together, plus the added attribute of real existence.

[God] cannot be corrupted, or lie, or cause what is true to be false (as for example, to cause what has been done to not have been done), or many other such things.

Eu nu caut să înțeleg pentru a crede, ci eu cred pentru a înțelege.

This good and kind person-embodied what St. Anselm meant when he talked of theology as fides quarens intellectum: how God can draw us to understand the transcendent through reason, and how leaning and erudition can coexist with humility and love.

It would seem that on hearing Abélard’s lecture, Anselm of Laon became “wildly jealous,” circumstances that Abélard assigned to every conceivable cause except the one that he had set in motion. “Since the beginning of the human race,” Abélard observed with some asperity in his autobiography, Historia Calamitatum (A History of My Misfortunes), women have “brought the noblest men to ruin.

whereas the Franks fought at a disadvantage in every respect, because of the weight of their armor and the unevenness of the ground. Eggihard, the King's steward; Anselm, Count Palatine; and Roland, Governor of the March of Brittany, with very many others, fell in this engagement.

Most readers of this section of the book will smile at this point, realising that a seemingly sophisticated philosophical argument is clearly invalidated by the context within which Lewis sets it. Yet Lewis has borrowed this from Plato—while using Anselm of Canterbury and René Descartes as intermediaries—thus allowing classical wisdom to make an essentially Christian point. Lewis is clearly aware that Plato has been viewed through a series of interpretative lenses—those of Plotinus, Augustine, and the Renaissance being particularly familiar to him. Readers of Lewis’s Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, and Spenser’s Images of Life will be aware that Lewis frequently highlights how extensively Plato and later Neoplatonists influenced Christian literary writers of both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Lewis’s achievement is to work Platonic themes and images into children’s literature in such a natural way that few, if any, of its young readers are aware of Narnia’s implicit philosophical tutorials, or its grounding in an earlier world of thought. It is all part of Lewis’s tactic of expanding minds by exposing them to such ideas in a highly accessible and imaginative form.

Thou art not capable of all things? or, if Thou canst not be corrupted and canst not lie..how art thou capable of all things? Ore else to be capable of these things is not power but impotence. For he who is capable of of those things is capable of what is not for his good, and of what he might not to do and the more capable of them he is, the more power have adversity and perversity against him, and the less has himself against these.

Thou art not capable of all things? or, if Thou canst not be corrupted and canst not lie..how art thou capable of all things? Or else to be capable of these things is not power but impotence. For he who is capable of of those things is capable of what is not for his good, and of what he might not to do and the more capable of them he is, the more power have adversity and perversity against him, and the less has himself against these.

La gratitud es el pensamiento del corazón.

Cicerón tachó a la ingratitud de olvido.

Humildad tiene que ver también con «humor». El humilde tiene humor. Se puede reír de sí mismo. Toma distancia de sí. Puede mirarse tranquilo a sí mismo porque se permite ser como es: un ser humano de la tierra y un ser humano del cielo, una persona con faltas y debilidades y, al mismo tiempo, digna de amor y valiosa.

el deseo nos mantiene vivos. Alimenta nuestra alma.

Si l'on se contentait de l'écouter il semblait admirable, mais si on le questionnait, il se révélait nul. De loin son arbre tout feuillu attirait les yeux mais quand on le regardait de plus près et avec plus de soin, on s'apercevait qu'il n'y avait point de fruit. Abélard critiquant Anselme de Cantorbéry.

There are many rules a priest can’t break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot harm the sacred trust his parish has put in him. Rules that seem obvious. Rules that I remember as I knot my cincture. Rules that I vow to live by as I pull on my chasuble and adjust my stole. I’ve always been good at following rules. Until she came. My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I’m twenty-nine years old. I have a bachelor’s degree in classical languages and a Master of Divinity degree. I’ve been at my parish since I was ordained three years back, and I love it here. Several months ago, I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again. I am a priest and this is my confession.

We may think about God as something absolute that nothing bigger is possible to conceive, following St. Anselm’s arguments or other ontological arguments from Aquinas to Descartes and others. If we put aside all the objections to the ontological arguments, the main question remains: How did that something, being the biggest or smallest, come into existence? This way, we move into the absurd territory of “infinite regress.” This paradox is possible to resolve by getting rid of paradigms and by accepting the fact that the Nothing, regardless of being nothing, has an equally important role or a “dimension,” conditionally speaking, as Something has, even if it is the Biggest, Absolute Being, or God. Nothing is also uncreated, unborn; it always was.

But theology, which St. Anselm aptly described as “faith seeking understanding,” was not an end in itself for Paul. As important as it is to know and understand what God has brought about through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, it is even more important that theology should lead to transformed lives. This is what we can learn from Paul. As much as anyone, he appreciated the role the Holy Spirit plays in the ongoing drama of salvation. In

According to St. Anselm (1033/4—1109), God is a "being than which no greater can be conceived." As we can see here, this is a reformulated idea of St. Augustine, who thought similarly centuries earlier, not to mention ancient Greek philosophers.

2. The Ontological Argument Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of “God”). It is greater to exist than not to exist. If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of something greater than God (from 2). To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3). It is inconceivable that God not exist (from 4). God exists. This argument, first articulated by Saint Anselm (1033–1109), the Archbishop of Canterbury, is unlike any other, proceeding purely on the conceptual level. Everyone agrees that the mere existence of a concept does not entail that there are examples of that concept; after all, we can know what a unicorn is and at the same time say, “Unicorns don’t exist.” The claim of The Ontological Argument is that the concept of God is the one exception to this generalization. The very concept of God, when defined correctly, entails that there is something that satisfies that concept. Although most people suspect that there is something wrong with this argument, it’s not so easy to figure out what it is. FLAW: It was Immanuel Kant who pinpointed the fallacy in The Ontological Argument—it is to treat “existence” as a property, like “being fat” or “having ten fingers.” The Ontological Argument relies on a bit of wordplay, assuming that “existence” is just another property, but logically it is completely different. If you really could treat “existence” as just part of the definition of the concept of God, then you could just as easily build it into the definition of any other concept. We could, with the wave of our verbal magic wand, define a trunicorn as “a horse that (a) has a single horn on its head, and (b) exists.” So, if you think about a trunicorn, you’re thinking about something that must, by definition, exist; therefore, trunicorns exist. This is clearly absurd: we could use this line of reasoning to prove that any figment of our imagination exists.

Por eso necesitamos adquirir otra vez la vitalidad y apertura del niño. No podemos permanecer infantiles, porque entonces no avanzaríamos en el proceso de nuestro desarrollo. El arte de vivir consiste por una parte en hacernos progresivamente más maduros y más adultos, pero por otra parte en conservar vivo en nosotros el niño interior.

Ahora depende solo de mí la manera de reaccionar ante lo que he llegado a ser y ante lo que pueda hacer con lo que soy.

Bendice nuestros diálogos, para que gracias a ellos nos acerquemos y nos comprendamos cada vez más los unos a los otros.

A mark of true Christianity will be its intellectual vigour and its search for meaning in every aspect of life. True Christianity will always be critical, questioning and continually developing in its understanding of God and of human life. The subject matter for religion is every human experience. In Christian understanding, God is immanent, that is, God is present in all things, and creation itself is a sign, and an effective sign, of God’s presence - a sacrament. That is why there has been such an emphasis on scholarship and learning in the Christian tradition. Faith, as St Anselm wrote, ‘seeks understanding’, for it is the nature of true faith to trust that God is at work in everything and that there is no question which falls outside the scope of religious inquiry. When faith in God weakens, the critical element will also weaken, and there will be more warning against false doctrines than encouragement to develop our understanding. If the critical element is not fostered, Christians will remain infantile in their religious belief and practice, which will have little or no relation to everyday life and behaviour.

La última etapa del camino tiene que hacerla cada uno a solas. Son muchos los que se angustian especialmente al pensar que a la hora de la muerte quizá ya no tengan ninguna persona de confianza que los asista y acompañe en la última etapa del camino de su vida. Algunos tienen sencillamente miedo a quedarse quizá completamente solos en su hora final. No es fácil disipar estos miedos. Es cierto: la soledad es la «compañía inevitable» en el momento de morir. Todos pasamos inevitablemente solos por la puerta de la muerte, aunque en ese momento haya quienes nos asistan y sostengan nuestras manos. Pero la tradición cristiana nos enseña también que no quedamos solos en ese momento aun en el caso de no estar acompañados de parientes o amigos. Tenemos siempre un ángel a nuestro lado que nos acompaña al cruzar el umbral de la muerte y nos presenta ante Dios. Debemos tener esta confianza: nuestro ángel está a nuestro lado. No quedaremos solos ni siquiera al morir.

etiolated skin.’ Anselm blew smoke.

DISCIPULUS. Placet mihi quod dicis. Quippe utile puto hoc cognoscere. MAGISER. Recte putas.

Quindi, con il tempo, è probabile che tu recuperi alcune funzioni al di sotto della vita. Ma quando uscirai dall'ospedale sarai su una sedia a rotelle." "Si sa per quanto tempo dovrò usarla?" "I medici dicono..." Rebecca dovette fare uno sforzo per non piangere. "Devi prepararti alla possibilità che il danno sia permanente." Bernd distolse lo sguardo. "Sono un paralitico." "Ma siamo liberti. Siamo a Berlino Ovest. Siamo scappati." "Scappati verso una sedia a rotelle." "Non vederla in questo modo." "Cosa accidenti farò?" "Ci ho pensato." Rebecca assunse un tono deciso e sicuro, più di quanto si sentisse lei. "Mi sposerai e riprenderai a insegnare." "E'improbabile." "Ho già telefonato ad Anselm Weber. Come ricorderai. è preside di una scuola di Amburgo. Ha lavoro per tutti e due, a cominciare da settembre." "Un insegnante in sedia a rotelle?" "Che differenza fa? Sarai comunque in grado di spiegare la fisica in modo tale che la capisca anche lo studente più ottuso. Non ti servono le gambe per quello." "Tu non vuoi sposare un paralitico." "No. Però voglio sposare te. E lo farò." "Non puoi sposare un uomo che sotto la cintola non funziona più" disse Bernd amareggiato.

Therefore, unless we are ready to renounce God and the Scripture, we must say with Anselm, "Why then did 'the Fool say in his heart, there is no God'…unless because he was stupid and a fool?

For by the just judgment of God it was decreed, and, as it were, confirmed by writing, that, since man had sinned, he should not henceforth of himself have the power to avoid sin or the punishment of sin; for the spirit is out-going and not returning (est enim spiritus vadens et non rediens); and he who sins ought not to escape with impunity, unless pity spare the sinner, and deliver and restore him. Wherefore we ought not to believe that, on account of this writing, there can be found any justice on the part of the devil in his tormenting man. In fine, as there is never any injustice in a good angel, so in an evil angel there can be no justice at all. There was no reason, therefore, as respects the devil, why God should not make use of his own power against him for the liberation of man.

One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation. Many of us have had a least part of that horror thrust on us at one time or other inour childhood. For many reasons I never went to Sunday School, so I was spared having a lot of peculiar teaching to unlearn. It's only lately that I've discovered that it was no less a person than St. Anselm who saw the atonement in terms of appeasement of an angry God, from which follows immediately the heresy that Jesus came to save us from God the Father.

Let me seek Thee in longing," pleaded Anselm, "let me long for Thee in seeking; let me find Thee in love, and love Thee in finding." Love

For someone to be perfect, they must be real, however imperfect they are.

A los hijos no les hace ninguna gracia el estrés que el padre o la madre traen de su trabajo. Lo que desean y necesitan es su presencia. Desean que sus padres les dediquen tiempo.

Juana does not side exactly with either of the two medieval answers to the question of the purpose of the incarnation. She does not, with Anselm, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas, understand the incarnation as primarily remedial, chosen by God to undo the effects of sin by way of redemption. Juana comes closer to John Duns Scotus's idea: the purpose of the incarnation is that humankind should give God the highest possible glory. Yet her view cannot be identified simply with this. Rather, the purpose of the incarnation—identical to that of creation—is the ultimate union of two kinds of divine beauty: the beauty of the eternal Word and the beauty that has been given to creatures.

Anselm's “God” is that than which nothing higher can be conceived (see Chapter 16 for more on this important point). Therein lies his problem: we immediately realize that the moment we conceive of the highness of some conception of “God,” not only can we conceive of something higher, as “highness” implies a metric at least in principle, but the “God” we have conceived of is lower than almost every conceivable conception. This is true if “God” is rendered as finite in “highness,” and it is true if “God” is rendered as infinite in “highness.” There is no escaping the simple reality that Anselm's conception of “God,” upon which his ontological “proof” rests, is fatally flawed at the definition.

«Un corazón inquieto es la base del peregrinar. En el ser humano habita un ansia». SAN AGUSTÍN

El ser humano es esencialmente alguien que está en camino. Se mueve. No permanece parado.

Lo único importante es la disposición de escucha para saber qué es lo que ocupa y mueve al otro.

Uno y otro deben estar aprendiendo hasta

Anselm must have been out of his mind to think that the question ‘Does God exist?’ is a question about a predicate. His ontological argument, and Descartes’ ontological argument, and all of the other ontological arguments are worthless except for playing linguistic games. Let’s not play linguistic games. Let’s be reasonable. Let’s look to science. There was no need for Aquinas to make four cosmological arguments if he had one good one, which he didn’t. As for the teleological argument, listen. Order emerged from the chaos that followed the Big Bang because gravitational tug of wars gradually balanced, and Earth’s millions of animal and plant species seem to be perfectly designed for their environments because evolution occurred via mutation and natural selection. So the argument that there must exist a supreme orderer or a supreme designer is invalid.

The Anselmian call for "faith seeking understanding" may start and gather its energy not in rational study of past theological points but in the pursuit to make sense of our concrete and lived experiences of Jesus who finds us in a hole, knocks us from our horse, or comes to our daughter in her sleep.