Anselm: Basic Writings (Hackett Classics)

A friend and I decided we needed some theological grounding from something other than our century and from outside the Protestant mainstream, so we decided to give Anselm a try, based on a recommendation that I read online. I wasn't really prepared for what we were getting into, but am glad we ventured down this path. Anselm hasn't been easy reading for me, even though I tend to prefer challenging writing styles. It can be difficult slogging, but I have been really happy with the insights that he provides when I take the time to understand it (for me, anyway, this isn't something to just pick up and read for a few minutes -- it requires an investment). It seems like the compiler/translator/editor has done a really good job. His footnotes and glossary are really helpful: Anselm uses terms in a way that would have been familiar to his readers, but our use of those terms would be different now. We aren't even half way through the Monologian (the first work included in this book), but are looking forward to the other ways in which Anselm will challenge our ways of thinking. It's good to get outside of your comfort zone.

This is the best version of Anselm available. It is used in academic circles, but it also easy to read. The english is fluid, and is apparently close to the original (though I've never read the original, personally). Anselm is fantastic, and a really important thinker to wrestle with for a variety of issues. This is a must read for the theologian and/or philosopher.

Great book. If you like Philosophy, are Catholic, or like Theology this book should be in your library. Good translation.

Good price

In this translation of Anselm's works, Hackett publishing produce a beautiful, clear and well-presented set of some of Anselm's key doctrinal and meditative theological writings. Included in this set of writings are Anselm's famous 'Monologion' and 'Proslogion', his famous work on the doctrine of salvation 'Cur Deus Homo' (why God became man), as well as some of his minor doctrinal works and philosophical fragments. A review is too short a space to describe Anselm's beautiful and complex theological system that dominated Western Christian thought for over a thousand years and still resonates powerfully in much of Christian belief and liturgy. Anyone familiar with the prayers in the Roman liturgy, or the collects in the Anglican books of prayer, will see the spirit of St Anselm resonating very strongly. St Anselm was even recently praised to a very high degree by Pope Benedict, who clearly felt himself at home in Anselm's contemplative way of doing theology. Anselm, like other classical theists, has come under some attack in recent times. These critiques range across a broad front, from those who criticise his famous ontological argument for God's existence to his defence of what might be called 'classical theism', a conception of God as the Supreme Being, and a Being that is uncaring, unchanging, 'male', immutable and completely unresponsive to human suffering. Other attacks include a criticism of his account of human salvation as requiring a reparation to God in the form of Christ's sacrifice to atone for human sin, restore the affront to God's honour caused by sin, and to restore human beings to fellowship with God. Such a theory seems to require a kind of 'penal substitution' to an angry God, or reduces salvation to a commercial transaction. While Anselm's theology is not perfect, it is coherent and beautiful in many ways, and as with Augustine and Aquinas, many objections turn on misreadings of his theology. Scholars have abundantly shown Anselm's concept of God does not mean God is uncaring, angry or lacking in mercy and compassion, or that Anselm is a pure rationalist with no room for a sense of darkness and mystery about God. Anselm's language is deeply poetic and moving at times, and even more so in his devotional works, which unfortunately are often not translated with his doctrinal works (see Benedicta Ward's 'Anselm - Meditations and Prayers' by Penguin). Anselm's account of the incarnation, sin and atonement actually both take the seriousness of sin and the infinite love of God into account, and is surprisingly relevant to modern problems like the destruction of creation caused by sinful human activity (as Joan Nuth has beautifully shown in a paper comparing his work to Julian of Norwich). Anselm's medieval juristic theology and its concept of harmony and order are not exactly applicable to a more complex and less simplistic world that is the one contemporary Christians have to face. Even so, Anselm's Benedictine sense of harmony, stability, beauty, proportion and wonder before the mystery of God, the liturgy and the incarnation are all still highly relevant today, as is the powerful appeal of his ideas. For better or worse this great Benedictine scholar and monk has been a formative influence in Western church history and Western Christianity and for such a clear, logical and elegant thinker, he is worth reading, even after almost a thousand years have passed between our time and his.

I will not spend any time describing the philosophical or theological merit of Anselm's work. I'll simply list what I think are three important features of this text that one might not be aware of. First, all of the texts in this book are translated by the same person, Thomas Williams (a leading scholar on Anselm). This makes it, in my opinion, superior to the Oxford World Classics version of Anselm's work, which has translations from multiple translators of mixed quality, which can cause confusion because different translators do not always translate the same word the same way. Second, Williams also provides an extremely helpful glossary that explains the various usage of Anselm's technical terms. If you are unsure what Anselm means by a particular term or phrase, Williams probably has an explanation of it! Finally, this book is mislabeled; it should not be called Anselm's "Basic Works," but Anselm's "Nearly Complete Works," since it contains almost all of Anselm's work, with the exception of one work on language (called the De Grammatico) and various prayers, sermons, and the like.

Good. I've got it because it was one of the textbooks I needed.

Though a paperback edition, the book stood up well to re-reading and some fairly heavy annotations. Anyone interested in studying the history of theology (and wishes to save a bit of money), should consider this one.

While the target readership for this collection are probably students studying Theological History or philosophy in the Middle Ages, it will be enjoyed by perhaps more lay readers. Anselm, born an Italian, became a Benedictine monk at Bec under Lanfranc in 1060, and three years later became its prior when Lanfranc moved to Caen. Anselm’s first major work ‘Monologian” is a guide for his monks for reflection on what Anselm called the ‘reason of Faith.’ Lanfranc who was sent a copy was not happy with the lack of references to (scriptural) authority. This struck a chord with me as a reader because there was the convention of citing scripture, in exactly the same way that modern evangelicals do, which I do sometimes find problematic because what I really want to hear/read is the argument, and the practice is not just confined to Christianity. Anyway, in the much shorter re-write, the Proslogian, Anselm returns to convention, with the opening chapter concerned with ‘rousing the mind to the contemplation of God.’ For Anselm, the ‘reason of faith’ means that Scripture will raise rational questions, and it is not sufficient to put everything in a box marked ‘faith’, or in fact ignore it. As might be implied by the titles, Monologion and Prosligian, raises questions about the way we talk about scriptural and theological matters, is as important as accuracy and clarity, as the subjects themselves. Anselm who ended up as Archbishop of Canterbury, also had problems with the English Norman kings, that perhaps culminated with the death of Beckett. ‘But since we do not have free choice in all matters, it is important to investigate the extent and the nature of that freedom of choice that we believe human beings always possess. For choice is not the same thing as the freedom by which choice is called free…’ (On the Harmony. p.368) The selection here covers Anselm’s oeuvre. It is not a book to read quickly, in fact the ‘logion’ pieces where are intended as a template for reflection, need to read reflectively, and they can be read like that because the writing is very clear.