“I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand.”
— Anselm of Canterbury[verifiable: Proslogion, preface (Fides quaerens intellectum); translated by Davies and Evans (1998); phrasing differs across translations]
Commentary
This formula, which appears in the preface to the Proslogion, gives Anselm's method its name and states the priority of faith over reason. Understanding, for him, is not a rival to belief but the fruit of it, so that theological inquiry proceeds from what has been received. R. W. Southern, in Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1990), reads the phrase as the key to the monastic culture of Bec, where reflection on faith was a daily practice. Jasper Hopkins's A Companion to the Study of St Anselm (1972) argues that the formula should be understood alongside Augustine's notion of illumination, which Anselm inherited. Brian Davies and Gillian Evans's translation and introduction (1998) emphasise the prayerful character of the Proslogion, which was written as a meditation rather than a treatise. The formula has been debated by later philosophers as a statement about the relation between religious commitment and rational argument.
Commentary
This formula, which appears in the preface to the Proslogion, gives Anselm's method its name and states the priority of faith over reason. Understanding, for him, is not a rival to belief but the fruit of it, so that theological inquiry proceeds from what has been received. R. W. Southern, in Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1990), reads the phrase as the key to the monastic culture of Bec, where reflection on faith was a daily practice. Jasper Hopkins's A Companion to the Study of St Anselm (1972) argues that the formula should be understood alongside Augustine's notion of illumination, which Anselm inherited. Brian Davies and Gillian Evans's translation and introduction (1998) emphasise the prayerful character of the Proslogion, which was written as a meditation rather than a treatise. The formula has been debated by later philosophers as a statement about the relation between religious commitment and rational argument.