I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that today is the feast day of Archbishop of Canterbury and my favorite medieval philosopher-theologian St. Anselm. He is often referred to as the “founder of scholasticism” and is one of the great doctors of the Church. As Archbishop he was also instrumental in the struggle against lay investiture in England and settling doubts about the filioque harbored by the Greek bishops of Southern Italy.

Not too many other people can lay claim to having come up with two of the most enduring and controversial arguments in philosophical theology. The first is his famous ontological argument for God’s existence whose shelf-life has been surprisingly long. It was criticized in his own day and St. Thomas didn’t seem to think too much of it, but it was revivied by early modern luminaries like Descartes and Leibniz. Kant was widely thought to have finally put it to rest, but recent philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Charles Hartshorne have given it new life.

The second, of course, is his so-called satisfaction account of the Atonement. I’ve defended it from certain misunderstandings before. It’s also recently received a respectful treatment in David Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite, which is especially interesting considering that Anselm has often not fared well at the hands of Eastern Orthodox theologians.

Sometimes overlooked, however, is Anselm’s contribution to piety and the devotional life. He composed many prayers and, according to some scholars was influential in forging a kind of individual piety that became very popular in the Middle Ages. His prayers and meditations served as a means for individual lectio divina, or a meditative form of reading intended to give rise to prayer.