Anselm of Canterbury

Do you ever stop to think what you would like on your gravestone when you are dead? It’s a good way of finding out what we really want to be like. I don’t think any of us would like to see phrases like:

“Always selfish and greedy”

“Never had time for anyone else”

“Vindictive and hateful”

When we see a new baby, at a christening who would want to think that the baby would grow up to be a thief, or to have a string of husbands who she cheated on and deserted, or to be a child molester.

We know deep down that we want to be good.

In the 11^th century, Anselm of Canterbury described how being good is possible through ‘goodness’, and how supreme goodness is God. So that desire to be good is actually us wanting to be like God (supreme goodness), to act like God, to be in his image.

St John’s describes in his gospel that God is love. So when we love one another, our love is possible through love, which is through God. We are choosing to act like God, to be part of God.

Each of us has the essence of goodness in us, and the essence of love in us. God is goodness and God is love, so we all have God within us. Sometimes we choose to ignore goodness and love, and instead choose to be selfish, vindictive or hateful. But that is not what we want to be – as we found at the start of this post.

The true Christian religion is about helping us to be what we want to be – good and loving. It is about connecting with that goodness and love within us; God within us. It is about learning from Christ what goodness and love looks like, and trying to imitate him.

And if you want to be good and loving, then that means that you want to be like God. Jesus said that ‘if you have seen me then you have seen God’; Jesus represented supreme goodness and love in human form. So if you want to be good and loving, since Jesus was supremely good and loving, then you want to be like Jesus, and if you want to be like Jesus you can call yourself a Christian.

Christians pray to help make that connection with goodness and love. Here’s an example of a Celtic prayer from Lindisfarne:

Help me dear Lord to care too much

To love too freely

To pray unceasingly

To forgive endlessly

To laugh fearlessly

To question

To live

To be who I am

To be where I am

To be what I am

To hope

To believe

To reach out my hand

That’s a good prayer, isn’t it? It’s about connecting with God within us. It’s asking God to help us be who we want to be.

Do you want to be the sort of person that the prayer describes? You can take a step closer by praying that prayer.

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/an-argument-for-and-definition-of-god/

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-god-of-science/

I have started reading Anselm; interesting stuff. Not sure I’ve really got my head round it yet, but nevertheless let me try to paraphrase my understanding of his argument so far in a modern context:

We are all aware that there are ‘non-material’ things: love, justice, purpose, hope, belief, to name a few. An act of love is carried-out through ‘love’, and an act of justice is carried-out through ‘justice’. If love did not exist then one could not carry-out an act of love. And it is through ‘goodness’ that we are able to carry-out an act of love; without goodness we could not carry-out an act of love, or of justice, or… Apart from goodness, all other non-material things are carried-out through goodness, and therefore goodness is the ultimate non-material thing, or ‘essence’ and it exists through itself.

We can also perceive that some acts are express more love than others; there can be great love, or great justice, or great goodness. And we can imagine that for any great goodness there could be a goodness that is just a little greater … until we reach infinite goodness. And so everything that is good in any way is within that infinite, or supreme goodness.

Everything exists through something, and we have seen that of things immaterial everything exists through supreme goodness. But everything must exist through one thing. If we imagine that there were more than one thing, then either there would be one thing through which the more than one thing were able to exist – which would then be the one thing, or they might exist through a ‘power to exist through oneself’ – which would then be the one thing, or they would exist mutually through each other – which defies reason.

The universe exists, and so it exists through something. Non-material things exist, and they exist through supreme goodness. Therefore either the universe exists through supreme goodness, or supreme goodness exists through the universe. But can supreme goodness exist through the universe? We can conceive that there are other universes, but it is inconceivable that those other universes exist without supreme goodness; being non-material supreme goodness cannot be constrained within a material context. Therefore it is impossible that supreme goodness exists through the universe, but the universe must exist through supreme goodness, and there can only be one supreme goodness – which we define as God.

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/proof-of-god/

https://philhemsley.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-god-of-science/