Table Of ContentANSELM’S DOCTRINE
OF FREEDOM AND THE WILL
G. STANLEY KANE
Texts and Studies in Religion
Volume 10
The Edwin Mellen Press
New York and Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Kane, G. Stanley,
Anselm's doctrine of freedom and the will.
(Texts and studies in religion ; v. 10)
Bibliography: p.
1. Free will and determinism. 2. Anselm, Saint,
Abp. of Canterbury, 1033-1109. I. Title. II. Series.
BJ1461.K36 123'.5 81-16939
ISBN 0-88946-914-8 AACR2
Texts and Studies in Religion ISBN 0-88946-976-1
Copyright (c) 1981, The Edwin Mellen Press
All rights reserved. For information contact:
The Edwin Mellen Press
P.O. Box 4 50
Lewiston, New York 14092
Printed in the United States of America
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION....................................... 1
CHAPTER TWO: WILL: THE BASIC FACULTY....................... 13
I. The Threefold Sense of "Will".................... 15
II. The Basic Character of the Faculty.............. 21
III. Soul and Will: Has Anselm a Faculty
Psychology?........................................ 2 5
IV. The General Function and Purpose of
the Will........................................... 36
A. Its Immediate Function...................... 36
B. Its Ultimate Purpose........................ 47
CHAPTER THREE: THE AFFECTIONS OF THE WILL.................. 61
I. The Nature of the Affections..................... 62
A. As Aptitudines............................... 62
B. As Dispositions to Will..................... 63
II. General Function and Purpose..................... 69
A. Immediate Function........................... 69
B. Ultimate Purpose............................. 74
III. The Two Affections................................. 91
A. Their Differences..... ..... ................ 91
B. Their Relation............................... 99
CHAPTER FOUR: VOLITIONS.......................................109
CHAPTER FIVE: FREEDOM......................................... 119
I. Voluntas and Aibitrium............................ 119
II. The Search for Definition.........................121
III. Freedom Defined.....................................123
IV. The Permanence of Freedom.........................129
V. The Strength of Freedom........................... 134
VI. The Significance of Anselm's
Definition of Freedom..............................152
VII. Freedom and the Will............................... 156
CHAPTER SIX: FREEDOM AND GRACE............................... 159
I. The Problem of Grace and Freedom................. 160
II. The Implications for Understanding the
Definition of Freedom..............................17 0
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF
ANSELM'S DOCTRINE..............................181
NOTES............................................................. 191
BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................... 215
MKJKWniEBCfflJENSg
Some of the material included in this book has ap
peared in earlier versions elsewhere. In chapter one I
have used material from my article, "'Fides Quaerens In-
tel1ectum1 in Anselm's Thought," which appeared in Scottish
Journal of Theology; in chapters one and five I have used
material from "Anselm's Definition of Freedom," which ap
peared in Religious Studies; and in chapter four I have
drawn on "Elements of Ethical Theory in the Thought of Saint
Anselm," published in Studies in Medieval Culture. I am
grateful to the editors of these journals for their permis
sion to use this material.
Except where indicated otherwise, I have used the fol
lowing translations. For De Grammatico and Anselm's Philo
sophical Fragments (De Potestate et Impotentia, Possibilitate
et Impossibilitate, Necessitate et Libertate), I have used
D. P. Henry's translation. For Cur Deus Homo, I have used
E. R. Fairweather's translation. For all other treatises I
have used the translations of Jasper Hopkins and Herbert
Richardson. Occasionally I have slightly altered these
translations.
Much of the final writing of this work was done during
the Spring semester of 1980, while I was on leave from regu
lar duties at Miami University. Acknowledgment is grate
fully made for this leave.
I wish to convey special thanks to Bill Wortman, Hu
manities Librarian at Miami University's King Library, for
his generous and proficient help in supplying bibliographic
information and tracking down hard-to-locate sources.
CDH Cur Deus Homo
DC De Concordia Praescientiae et Praedestinationis
et Gratiae Dei cum Libero Arbi trio
DCD De Casu Diaboli
DCV De Conceptu Virginali et Originali Peccato
DLA De Libertate Arbitrii
DV De Veritate
NUW F. S. Schmitt's study and text of Ein neues
unvollendetes Werk des hi. Anselm von
Canterbury: De Potestate et Impotentia,
Possibilitate et Impossibilitate, Necessitate
et Libertate
CHAP&SEK 0N£
Anselm of Canterbury has for a long time been a major
name in both philosophy and theology. Yet except among a
rather small group of specialists he has been known primarily
for only a small part of his intellectual work. Most stu
dents of philosophy and theology know of his Monologion,
Proslogion (and the debate this occasioned with Gaunilo) and
Cut Deus Homo, which are also the works of his that have been
most frequently translated into the modern languages. And a
considerable literature has grown up analyzing and inter
preting the teachings of these treatises. Relatively few
philosophers and theologians have been aware of what Anselm
wrote in other treatises, in which he deals extensively with
such major problems as truth, justice, the Trinity, the In
carnation, evil and free will. As a result Anselm has gen
erally come to be identified primarily with only a few major
points in his thinking: a doctrine of the nature and exist
ence of God, including especially the ontological argument,
grounded on the notion of God as the greatest conceivable
being; a special concept of the relation of faith and reason
in the apprehension of Christian truth; and a distinctive
doctrine of the Atonement.
This situation has had some unfortunate effects. It
has, in the first place, led to a partial and hence distorted
understanding of Anselm's contribution to philosophical and
theological thinking. In this respect he stands in sharp
1
2 AttBelm’a Urtcfrttte rtf
Jresdnm and tlje 3DtXl
contrast to medieval thinkers like Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas, who are widely recognized for dealing with a wide
range of philosophical, theological, and practical problems.
This is regrettable, not only because Anselm deals with many
of the same problems that vexed these men, but because his
treatment of them displays considerable power and subtlety
and so deserves more serious scholarly attention than much
of it has been given.
Secondly, a full and balanced understanding of even
some of the better known parts of Anselm's work requires an
acquaintance with what is taught in the lesser known parts.
Much, for example, has been written about Anselm's intellect
ual method and his program of fides guaerens intellectum. But
most of this concentrates on what he says and does in his
better known treatises, ignoring the fact that what he says
and does in some of his other works is also important and is
at points different from what comes through in his better
known works and statements.1 Another example is the teach
ing of the Cur Deus Homo, where Anselm expressly states,
"There is another reason for thinking that we can hardly (if
at all) deal fully with this problem [the Atonement] now.
We should need to know about power and necessity and will
and several other things which are so closely connected that
no one of them can be fully considered without the others."2
Anselm here gives explicit warning that his soteriology can
not be fully understood without knowing his thinking about
matters he deals with elsewhere. Rather few interpreters,
however, have taken this warning to heart. The all-too-
frequent failure to consider Anselm's thinking in light of
the whole of his work has been so common that it has prompted
the comment from John McIntyre that "no major thinker has
suffered so much as St. Anselm from the hit—and—run tactics
of historians of theism and soteriology."3
The past few years have shown signs that this situa
tion is beginning to change. As of the early 1970s, all of
3tt trnduct inn 3
Anselm's treatises had been translated into English,4 with
the translation being based on a critical edition established
and edited several decades earlier by F. S. Schmitt.5 An ex
cellent general introduction to the entire body of Anselm's
thought was published in 1972 by Jasper Hopkins,6 and a some
what more specialized survey of his entire corpus has been
presented by G. R. Evans in Anselm and Talking About God.7
R. W. Southern gives an admirable account of both the life
.8
and the thought of Anselm in Saint Anselm and his Biographer
In addition to these general works, special studies devoted
to particular aspects of Anselm's work have also appeared
recently. Most worthy of note are the rigorous investiga
tions by D. P. Henry into Anselm's views on logic and lan
guage. 9 And since 1969, a periodical publication devoted to
the study and analysis of Anselm's thought, Analecta Ansel-
miana, has been appearing at various intervals.10
Much remains to be done, however, before the full scope
of Anselm's work is generally recognized among philosophers
and theologians. There are still major areas of his thought
that have not received much investigation and analysis. One
of these is the subject of the present inquiry, his doctrine
of the will and freedom. There has been no book-length study
of this subject published at any time in the English language
and only two or three in any modern language. Early in the
present century two small monographs appeared on the subject
in German.11 These volumes, however, are not widely avail
able in North America, and they are, of course, wholly inac
cessible to those without a reading knowledge of German.
In addition to the difficulty of gaining access to
these works, they also suffer from flaws of analysis and in
terpretation. A common tendency among Anselm scholars gen
erally has been to interpret him much more than is warranted
as strictly Augustinian in his thinking. The result has
been that the similarity between Anselm's thought and Augus
tine's has been much exaggerated. One scholar, writing
4 Att0Plm*0 DacirtnE nf
JrEednnt and ttys HJi X1
about Anselm's doctrine of freedom, went so far as to say,
"His whole doctrine is essentially a repetition of Augustin-
ian thought."12 Though this is an extreme statement, many
scholars have endorsed a view very close to the one it
states.13 Both Lohmeyer and Baeumker, the authors of the
monographs just mentioned, fall prey to this tendency, though
in different ways. Lohmeyer gives a Hegelian interpretation
of both Augustine and Anselm and indeed of all medieval phi
losophy. He sees the entire sweep of medieval philosophy as
characterized by a series of overarching antitheses— univer
sal vs. particular, abstract vs. concrete, unity vs. multi
plicity, subjective vs. objective, internal vs. external re
lations, being vs. non-being, etc.— that in his view proceed
from Augustine and that determine the aims, the problems,
and the methods of all subsequent medieval philosophy. An
selm's work, according to Lohmeyer, is a particular instance
of this general approach to the problems of thought. His
monograph seeks to demonstrate that Anselm's work, though it
may not appear so on the surface, has "a deep intention,"11*
namely, to address itself to the resolution of these anti
theses. In the process he interprets Anselm as having taken
over from Augustine his Neoplatonism, the fundamental psy
chological orientation of his metaphysics, and his general
method of intellectual inquiry, without making any essential
changes.
Baeumker's work is much less speculative and more sober
than Lohmeyer's, sticking much more closely to what Anselm
actually had to say— doing so perhaps to a fault, for a ma
jor portion of the book is either a direct translation or a
close paraphrase of Anselm's own words. Nevertheless, he
too fails to catch the spirit and the method of what Anselm
is doing, and again the reason seems to be that he fails to
appreciate the crucial differences between Anselm's work and
Augustine's. He chastises Anselm, for example, for failure
to provide proof that man has free will,15 not recognizing
