Let me summarize the proof. If God, a being greater than which cannot be conceived, does not exist then He cannot come into existence. For if He did He would either have been caused to come into existence or have happened to come into existence, and in either case He would be a limited being, which by our conception of Him He is not. Since He cannot come into existence, if He does not exist His existence is impossible. If He does exist He cannot come into existence (for the reasons given), nor can He cease to exist, for nothing could cause Him to cease to exist nor could it just happen that He ceased to exist. So if God exists His existence is necessary. Thus God’s existence is either impossible or necessary. It can be the former only if the concept of such a thing is self-contradictory or in some way logically absurd. Assuming that this is not so, it follows that He necessarily exists (Norman Malcolm, "Anselm’s Ontological Arguments," Philosophical Review, 69 (1960), 49-50).

For those unfamiliar with Anselm (1033-1109), he was an archbishop of Canterbury who is remembered for this argu-ment and is credited for originating it. To restate it, God is a being "than which none greater can be conceived" and such a being who existed only in thought would not be such a being. Later philosophers who defended this argument include Rene Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz. Those philosophers who are known for their attack of Anselm’s argument include David Hume and Immanuel Kant. In the 20th century Anselm’s line of thinking was defended by Alvin Plantinga (see the July 1996 Bulletin which focused on "Alvin Plantinga’s Impact on Christian Apologetics"), Norman Malcolm (mentined above), and Charles Hartshorne. Some of the 20th century versions of Anselm’s ontological argument have stressed the idea that "necessary existence" is an essential property of God. Others favor the argument because it does not depend on religious experience or feelings, since these are readily claimed by adherents of other religious faiths whose deities are quite obviously not the biblical God.

The reason modern philosophers have emphasized the idea of God’s necessary existence or being in Anselm’s argument is because this is crucial to the argument. A "necessary" being is a being whose existence is no mere accident or the contingent result of some cause, but whose very nature it is to exist necessarily.

Anselm’s argument appears simple enough, but it is actually far from simple. Most people who first hear or read it are tempted to dismiss it rather quickly as being nothing but an interesting riddle. However, great thinkers in every century since Anselm have defended it, the most recent being Alvin Plantinga, who in his writings has worked out a variation of Anselm’s argument in great detail.

Logic, both formal and informal, places much emphasis upon reason. Historically, evangelical believers have viewed faith and reason as allies and not as enemies. In other words, they do not allow reason to take the primary place of faith, hope, and love. There is an old medieval formula that speaks of "faith seeking understanding" and another that states "I believe in order that I may understand" (cf. with our comments in the October 2004 Bulletin dealing with "Why Doesn’t God Make His Existence More Obvious?").

But as we have alluded to above about placing too much emphasis on personal religious experience, believers trained in Socratic logic are always careful to distinguish between objective rationality and subjective rationality. Truth is objective, but we human beings usually are not. Further, we live in a fallen world where people’s exercise of "reason" is often expressed in various forms of irrationality. Because this is the case, an argument that is in itself perfectly rational and valid may fall on ears that have been deafened by prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, incomprehension or some ideology. Indeed, this often happens in the larger church between different theological traditions.

Anyone who has carefully studied the polls taken by Gallup and Barna knows that most people today, Christians included, choose what they believe not by looking at the evidence, but by looking at such things as ideological labels (i.e., "liberal," "conservative," "Democrat," "Republican," "Calvinist," etc.), or by determining which group of people with whom they want to be associated, or, more often than we might imagine, by vague feelings and associations (theological and psychological) evoked by an idea within their consciousness, rather than by objec-tively looking at and studying an idea, concept, or doctrine and the reality it points to outside their consciousness.