THE JOY OF THOUGHT

Today is the Feast of St Anselm of Canterbury, the first to offer an ontological proof of the existence of God. What I found particularly pleasing was that this proof, so far from being an outmoded relic of medieval primitivity, was picked up and elaborated by one of the 20th century's greatest mathematicians, Kurt Gödel. As a Bear of Very Little Brain, I have never been any good at either philosophy or mathematics -- to my great regret, since I understand just enough to glimpse the extraordinary beauty that expert practitioners find in both. However, in the explanation given here, I think I can just follow it, and find it deeply pleasing.

I have cited Benedict XVI a number of times in this blog. I'm an Anglican, not a Roman, Catholic, but Benedict has always impressed me greatly by the quality of his thought and by the fact that he has always directed that thought to the relation of faith and reason in our time -- a problem far more important than the interminable arguments about sexuality and reproduction that seem to obsess churches these days. St Anselm might well be adopted as the patron saint of such endeavours.

In the little daily publication I subscribe to, Prions en Eglise, the admirable Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau recently wrote that in this Eastertide where we read Acts and the Gospel of John, we might fruitfully ponder the language we use to one another as Christians. What, she said, do we talk about among ourselves? What, in other words, do we use our minds on? I once frequented a small charismatic community of considerable devotion and spirituality; but I left them, saying to their leader that they seemed to regard God as having created every part of them except their intelligence.

In Spenser's Faerie Queene the Red Cross Knight, stumbling Patron of Holiness, in mortal combat with the serpent Error, is urged by Una, his companion, to "add faith unto your force!" We might suitably adapt this as an injunction to add thought unto our faith, at the highest level we can manage.