Posts Tagged ‘Romans 5:1-11’

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Anselm of Canterbury, Kind-hearted Theologian

Romans 5:1-11, Matthew 11:25-30

Do you ever wonder how you will be remembered after you are gone?  Have you ever given any thought to how you want to be remembered?  Someone has said that what people will remember about us is not so much what we said and did, but how they felt when they were in our presence.

Today we remember one of the Church’s great theologians, Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm was born in northern Italy in 1033.  He was intellectually curious, but also devout.  At the age of 17, he entered the Benedictine abbey of Bec in Normandy and gradually grew in reputation and status until he became its Abbot.  After a long and memorable tenure as Abbot of Bec, Anselm was pressured to become the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was about 60 years old, a position he embraced reluctantly but in which he was very effective.

Anselm is best remembered as a brilliant theologian, and primarily for two important works:

He was an exponent of what was called the “ontological” argument for the existence of God and posited that God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought.”  Since the greatest thing that can be thought must have existence as one of its properties, Anselm argued that God exists and is not dependent upon the material world for verification. Read More