Faith Seeking Understanding

Faith Seeking Understanding - St. Anselm

The most striking theme in Anselm's Proslogion, or faith seeking understanding, is the idea that in order to prove God's existence one must first have faith in Him, and only then will one be able to truly understand and appreciate God's existence. Anselm argues for this eloquently, "I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, that unless I believed, I should not understand" (Ch.1 Proslogion). Let us now investigate what Anselm means by this, what led him to his line of reasoning, why we should believe him that this is the right way of going about proving God's existence, and finally, raise some serious objections against his thesis and any possible responses that can be given to them.

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