Anselm on the Fullness of Joy

Greystone Conversations

How will our love finally be perfected? And how will our perfected love relate directly to our final fullness of joy?

Today's Greystone Conversations episode explores Anselm of Canterbury's work Proslogion. But in exploring this great work, Dr. Mark A. Garcia, Greystone President and Fellow of Scripture and Theology, seeks to highlight an often and routinely overlooked part of Anselm's genius. While most philosophically oriented Christians perceive this work as one primarily consisting of, and purposed toward, the so-called "ontological argument" for the existence God, one may see a much more rewarding and proper understanding of Anselm's Proslogion as a work in which Anselm is leading us by the hand to look around us and begin to pay attention to the inherent goodness of so much that we know and experience—leading us by the hand to look around us and press beyond the surface of things to inquire after the greatest and ultimate Good apart from whom nothing can be recognized as good and from whom every good comes.

In other words, there is an Anselm of myth with his work on an argument for God, and an Anselm of history with his work on so much more than that narrow consideration. By considering the latter, one may see anew the significant contribution Anselm can make to something we seldom connect him to: the fervency and final satisfaction of our desire—our holiest desires—and the consequent shape, dynamic, and nature of perfected love. In today's Greystone Conversations, Dr. Garcia seeks to answer, along with Anselm, the great question posed to all Christians throughout the history of the Church: how should our understanding of the end and realization of our love and joy inform and shape how we live now and what we take delight in?

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