Anselm's Ontological Argument on the Existence of God...

Anselm's Ontological Argument on the Existence of God...

The last couple of days,had some really interesting conversations with my good friend wenhao about theology, philosophy and well life in generally. Personally to me not often one can actually dwell and contemplate into such deep topics easily... but due to the interesting conflicting ideas that both of us have yet still maintaining the same core value at the end of the day, it brings out really active interesting discussions in our conversations...

Personally its nice to hear opinionated views from someone away from the usual school of thoughts you normally get in your own local church system. And the reasons why our ideas are always conflicting each other is bcoz as fundamentally as our own christian theology differs itself...e.g. he subscribes to the Calvinism doctrine,whereas i'm more in favour of the Armenian doctrine, and it follows from how we actually do & lead our life in general,mainly in our christian life, e.g styles of approach to ways of ministering, having a service,worship and even the extend of prayer......

And bcoz of this interesting conflicting ideas we have yet still maintaining our core value of knowing that we serve under this absolute unchanging God to us, the act of us talking abt it and sharing our personal views actually make us know our Faith even more, despite us knowing that we will never get a conclusion bcoz we can never resolve this forever going debate, however we both know at the end of the day who God really is to us, and his Sovereign character to us!

Interestingly we continue in our discussion abt theology is bcoz of the fact that we know that the act of talking it out, actually makes one ponder and contemplate on certain real life issues that maybe thrown to you, and in a practical way its good to be at least knowledgeable in such theology as personally i see it as our theology of God will lead to how we communicate our Faith and act out our Faith... And we need to live it consistently with our own theology of God... as i never subscribe to the term of walking in blind faith.... but of course thru out all this...at the end of the day our theology of God still needs to be constant with the WORD,with Sound doctrine being applied will produce Fruits that is clearly seen to be from God!

Anyway a side reading if your interested.... This topic of Anselm's argument was brought up during our converstaion on the Existence of God...if your into such deep theology..do read up on this interesting except...

Below is an extract....
of his arguement taken after the reading of ...

"the Fool has said in his heart, there is no God?..."Psalm 14:1

But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak - a being than which nothing greater can be conceived - understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.

This begins and ends straightforwardly. The fool understands the definition of God but denies that God exists. The first hint of strangeness comes in what seems to be a parenthetical remark: "what he understands is in his understanding". Anselm apparently proposes to treat the understanding or the mind as if it were a place, and to speak of things existing "in the understanding". Anselm's assumption here is that if I understand claims about God, then we may say that God exists in my understanding or in my mind.

For it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, another to understand that the object exists. For when a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding be he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

" If something exists in the understanding alone, but can be conceived to exist in reality, then that thing can be conceived to be greater than it actually is"

Personally in my own words, i came to a conclusion that God is just a totally different category from our own human mind,as we can NEVER COMPREHEND this great absolute being in the limitation of our own human mind...this shows how INDESCRIBABLE our ALMIGHTY LORD IS! Amazing right! =)

(an extract of a page of his writings..)

For a paraphrase and more clearer view of his Ontological Argument click the link below...
Click here for full link to Anselm's Argument