ABSTRACT
Interest in Anselm’s argument had waned by the end of the fifteenth century, whilst the great debates of the sixteenth century were concerned with the nature of Christian faith and the means of salvation, rather than the existence of God. The weight placed upon the principles of ‘sola scriptura’, ‘sola fide’ and ‘solus Christus’ by the ‘reformers’ meant that it became difficult, if not impossible, to accept the Anselmian principles of sola ratione and remoto Christo. Luther himself possessed a copy of Anselm’s works, which he glossed in his own hand (1513-1516).1 However, he appears to have had no interest in the Proslogion, and it does not merit a single comment. Nevertheless, the ongoing scholastic tradition continued to address Aquinas’s objection to the argument that God’s existence is per se notum, and, however mistakenly, to address Anselm’s argument from this perspective. Thus, the commentator on Aquinas and opponent of Luther, Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1449-1534), expands on Aquinas’s objections, making the important point that for something to be per se means that it excludes another, middle term,2 but like Aquinas fails to see that therefore Anselm’s demonstration of God’s existence can in no way be classified as a proof of God’s self-evidence. As we saw in Chapter 5, X functions as a middle term in the proof of God. The minor premise, God is X, is demonstrated by establishing the identity of the attributes of God and X in the main body of the Proslogion. The proof of the proposition, ‘X exists’ (the major premise), is achieved by a reductio demonstration (in two stages, that X exists, that the existence of X is undeniable). At no point is there a claim that God or X is per se notum.
