From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm’s Proslogion Argument for the Existence of God by Richard Campbell (review)

616 BOOK REVIEWS sins. Question 15 treats of blindness of mind and dullness of sense, and sees them as opposed to the Gift of Understanding. As the Gift is held to be necessary for salvation, so the privation of it in either way is a sin. And St. Thomas predictably is able to justify Gregory the Great's position that these failings arise from sins of the flesh. The section concludes with a more or less perfunctory investigation as to the appropriateness of the commandments of the Old Law relative to faith and its attendant Gifts. While it is almost inevitable that there will be printing or typographical errors in works of this sort, my impression is that there has been improvement in this department in the more recent publications of this series. However , one notable error appears on page 9 in this volume, where the English text is bungled, omitting a rather important idea of the Latin: sed quaedam alia ad fidem ordinata etiam hoc modo intelligi possunt. Apart from this, the Introduction is as brief as can be (half a page) and the notes are both exceptionally sparse and brief. This criticism has to weigh all the more inasmuch as there is a complete lack of appendices. Still the volume is an integral part of the series and in that respect carries its own weight, and does it substantially. Mount St. Mary's Seminary Emmitsburg, Maryland REV. ROBERT ZYLLA, 0. s. c. From Belief to Understanding: A Study of Anselm's Proslogion Argument for the Existence of God. By RICHARD CAMPBELL. Australian National University Press, 1976. Pp. QQ7. Over the past few decades there has been a renaissance in Anselm studies, both articles and books, in Europe and America. The recognition of the power and depth of Anselm's thought has been responsible for this outburst. And the overwhelming point of much of this study has had to do with one of the most famous arguments, if not the most famous argument, in the history of western philosophical and theological thought. This is the argument for the existence of God found in the beginning of the Proslogion. There has been a wide variety of analyses and assessments of Anselm's proposal. Some have seen serious weakness in Proslogion II, particularly concerning the status of existence. Some have seen Proslogion I-IV as an unfolding of faith seeking understanding, not an argument for God's existence. Still others have seen such gross fallacies, particularly in Proslogion II, that any analysis is so much paper and ink wasted. A dominant motif in our century has been to make a distinction between BOOK REVIEWS 617 two arguments in Proslogion II and III and though accepting the fallaciousness of the first, many have found the second not only free from the weaknesses of the first but a cogent and valid argument in its own right. Other examinations have found a third argument that supersedes both one and two. Obviously, all of these claims cannot be true, and there seems to be some urgency for yet another interpretation Recent writers have seen a unity of Proslogion II and III which reveals a profound complexity. Campbell's book From Belief to Understanding is an attempt to begin with this latter phase of interpretation. Of course, each interpreter has his or her own theological and philosophical assumptions. Yet one responsibility of any interpreter is to do historical justice to the thinker under question. Campbell claims that " only those understand Plato who philosophize with him " and his aim is to do just that with Anselm (p. 1). Campbell's approach is more historical than philosophical or theological, and his criticisms are largely aimed at the misunderstandings and misinterpretations of other interpreters. His explicit purpose is to give a "new interpretation " of Anselm's argument that will " sweep aside these misconceptions " and will " make it possible to grasp exactly what Anselm's argument is and how it could have appeared plausible to one with as acute a mind as he undoubtedly had" (p. 5). We now turn to Campbell's interpretation. I Campbell claims that the first thing we must do is to get the " dialectical structure...