Project MUSE®: Saint Anselm Journal - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Saint Anselm Journal.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 14 (2018) through current issueLatest Articles: Saint Anselm JournalTWOProject MUSE®Saint Anselm Journal1545-33672689-6230Latest articles in Saint Anselm Journal. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Learning How to Think About God: Divine Simplicity and the Acquisition of Theological Concepts
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974103
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One focus of this lecture is a particular theological insight that Saint Thomas Aquinas believes can be discovered by rational argument, apart from faith. It is that God has no composition, no distinction or division or parts. Although we can refer to God’s life, his wisdom, his power, his justice, his mercy, these are not, in God, different aspects or parts of him or even things that God has or diverse ways that he is but they are God himself. According to this teaching, God properly speaking doesn’t even have a divine nature, but is his very divine nature, and indeed is his very being. This makes God very different from any created thing, in which we find such distinctions between the thing, its powers, its
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallLearning How to Think About God: Divine Simplicity and the Acquisition of Theological Concepts2025-11-04text/htmlen-USLearning How to Think About God: Divine Simplicity and the Acquisition of Theological Concepts2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®527502026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04Anselm on the Beauty of the One God in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974104
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Anselm had drawn on a rich tradition of reflection on beauty (pulchritudo) and its criteria to develop his own, rather innovative, account of the rectitude (rectus), order (ordo), and fittingness (convenientia) which rendered the world into something beautiful, and he did so with particular attention to the role Christ played in the restoration of the rectitude, order, and fittingness of the world in spite of the presence of sin which had marred its beauty.1 He had also explicitly affirmed the beauty of its Creator, the One God in Three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but he largely disregarded the criteria of rectitude, order, and fittingness in his account of divine beauty in favor of a distinct set of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallAnselm on the Beauty of the One God in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit2025-11-04text/htmlen-USAnselm on the Beauty of the One God in Three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®789342026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04Saint Anselm on Individual and Community
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974105
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The human being1 is both an individual and a member of many communities. Overemphasizing either aspect can lead to unwelcome consequences. Extreme individualism may result in one seeing oneself as the master of one’s fate and the captain of one’s soul until reality rudely demonstrates the silliness of that self-estimation. But extreme communitarianism, seeing the human being as merely a member of some community—a cog in the corporate machine or a servant of the Party there to advance the common good—has dehumanizing, dangerous, often deadly results. (For want of a better word, I will use the term “communitarian” for views emphasizing the individual’s membership in one or another group, but I do not intend the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallSaint Anselm on Individual and Community2025-11-04text/htmlen-USSaint Anselm on Individual and Community2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®469382026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04Ut per eorum virtutem . . . dignus sim corpori tuo: Saint Anselm’s Prayer before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974106
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The Roman Sacramentary contains two prayer options for the celebrant of the Mass to recite privately before receiving Holy Communion. According to Joseph Jungmann, the first prayer, Domine Iesu Christe, dates from the ninth century Sacramentary of Amiens and has been part of the Mass since the tenth century. The second, Preceptio Corporis et Sangunis tui, Jungmann states, “is met already in the tenth century, in two books stemming from the northeast portion of the Carolingian domain.”1 While variations of these two prayers as well as other additional private priestly prayers arose over time and were added to some sacramentaries, it was these two, and primarily the first, that gained the ascendancy and were known
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallUt per eorum virtutem . . . dignus sim corpori tuo: Saint Anselm’s Prayer before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ2025-11-04text/htmlen-USUt per eorum virtutem . . . dignus sim corpori tuo: Saint Anselm’s Prayer before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®449682026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04The Painter and the Fool: A Reappraisal of Anselm’s Fool
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974107
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In the so-called “Ontological Argument”1 in the second chapter of the Proslogion Anselm gives the example of a painter to show how his declaration about God exists in the mind of the fool. My purpose in this paper is to provide a reappraisal of the fool in light of the painter example. My argument is that the fool is not simply anyone who does not believe in God. Rather, the fool is a particular category of persons who were enlightened enough to recognize what God is. Thus, his rejection of “God” is seen by Anselm as a moral failing.First, some methodological notes. Unfortunately, the Proslogion2 has become a toxic text in theology and spirituality because of its reputation as a failed philosophical attempt at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallThe Painter and the Fool: A Reappraisal of Anselm’s Fool2025-11-04text/htmlen-USThe Painter and the Fool: A Reappraisal of Anselm’s Fool2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®1071102026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04Participation in God’s Simplicity: The Moral Implications of Divine Simplicity in Anselm’s Theology
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974108
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In recent years, a growing wave of scholars has raised a myriad of philosophical objections to the classical doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS), which states that no composition of physical, temporal, or metaphysical parts (e.g., compositions of substance, properties, and accidents) exists in God. Some, like Plantinga, argue that all divine attributes being identical to God would make God an abstract property rather than a personal being.1 Others, like Hughes, believe that God’s lack of composition of attributes destroys God’s freedom.2 Still others, like Moreland and Craig, think the doctrine is blatantly illogical and contradictory for suggesting that divine attributes we observe as distinct in God’s actions ad
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallParticipation in God’s Simplicity: The Moral Implications of Divine Simplicity in Anselm’s Theology2025-11-04text/htmlen-USParticipation in God’s Simplicity: The Moral Implications of Divine Simplicity in Anselm’s Theology2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®937252026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04Embryology and Theology in Anselm of Canterbury’s De conceptu virginali
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/974109
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Anselm of Canterbury’s De conceptu virginali et de originale peccato (1099/1100) is generally given short shrift, when studied at all, as a mere postscript to his Cur Deus homo. It has attracted the attention of scholars who defend, or oppose, later Catholic Mariology, and of historians of the medieval English liturgy, who note Anselm’s objection to non-standard Anglo-Saxon Marian feasts and the effort to redefine her nativity as an Immaculate Conception. This paper adds to the understanding of Anselm’s position his awareness of the embryology known in his day, both the legacy of ancient medicine and the theological implications drawn from it by previous and current Christian writers. Scholars hoping to recruit
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/767/image/coversmallEmbryology and Theology in Anselm of Canterbury’s De conceptu virginali2025-11-04text/htmlen-USEmbryology and Theology in Anselm of Canterbury’s De conceptu virginali2025-11-042025TWOProject MUSE®845182026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002025-11-04