Lesser Feasts

Edward Arthur Walton, "The Field Loring" (c. 1903) I'm back home after a lovely week with my family, during which I wrote not a word, so there's no excerpt this time. But having started weekly updates (really for my own sake, to keep me accountable, but it's nice that they get a few readers), I feel obligated to confess publicly that I have left unwritten those words that I ought to have written. Rather than trying to catch up this week, which is probably not possible, I'll just readjust my schedule and plan to finish up the book when I'm in Scotland. That's assuming I decide to go to Scotland, given the current travel restrictions. I suppose I might as well write in a flat in Edinburgh's New Town as here: it's not as if I'll be spending that much time outside anyway in the heat and humidity of Florida. If I could get my self-isolation out of the way in time for the walking tour of the Isle of Skye that I've booked, I would feel pretty

  Edward Arthur Walton, "A shepherd and his flock at sunset" 1882 I suppose it's time for my first semi-dispirited update. I'm a bit behind now, probably by about a week. This week has been busy, and it didn't help that I came down with a slight cold yesterday. (The primary symptom is grumpiness, but it's still not conducive to work.) I'm also preaching this weekend, so my focus has to be elsewhere between now and Sunday. Still, it wasn't an entirely unproductive week, even on the book -- I do have an except, as usual. Plus I finished polishing all the additional translations for Anselm: The Complete Treatises  and uploaded them here , where they will be available until the book is published in September 2022. On Wednesday I got some recording done for the Noonday Prayer podcast, which will return in Advent, and then (just to show that I have not entirely forgotten the name of this blog) I celebrated the Feast of Joseph Butler. I've been watching t

"The Shepherd," Edward Arthur Walton (1860-1922) I'm not entirely sure whether I've chosen this image because (1) we get the anointing of David in the lectionary tomorrow, (2) it's in an exhibition of the Glasgow Boys that I might get to see if travel works out for me this summer, or (3) I've loved it ever since I saw it last year in Edinburgh. Probably all of those reasons. Anyway, the discipline of a weekly update forces me to acknowledge that I am now very slightly behind schedule -- just 800 words -- but still pleased with how things are going. I knew this chapter, which is trying to lay out Anselm's accounts of creation, the Trinity, and truth in a way that shows their interconnections, would be on the harder side. This week's excerpt is the beginning of Chapter 4, "How things got started." The conception of a being than which a greater cannot be thought is a powerful one: it generates an impressive list of divine attributes, unifies the

  From a manuscript of Anselm's Prayer to Saint Peter In addition to writing Anselm: A Very Short Introduction  this summer, I'm revising translations for a volume of Anselm's complete treatises, plus selected letters and prayers and the Meditation on Human Redemption. Sr Benedicta Ward's translation of the prayers  is excellent as prose but awfully free, and she doesn't do much to preserve Anselm's characteristic style and rhetorical devices. My draft of selected prayers is still just that, a draft, but I'm happy with the approach I've taken. I like Anselm's prologue to the prayers, which shows a keen awareness of how they should, and should not, be used: The prayers and meditations that follow were written to arouse the minds of readers to love or fear God, or to examine themselves. So they should not be read in the midst of commotion, but in tranquility; not quickly and in a hurry, but a little bit at a time, with attentive and deliberate meditat

  Anselm hands over a work to Matilda of Tuscany I end my third week very slightly ahead of schedule, just beginning a new chapter, which deals with creation and assorted related issues (including the Trinity, as it turns out). This chapter is one of two that I don't basically have written in my head already--the other being the introductory chapter on Anselm's life, work, and contexts--so the next week or so may be rough going. But I'm encouraged by the progress I've made so far. The excerpt I've appended is some basic but important stuff about the nature of God's causality. It originally included a digression about Humean vs non-Humean views of causality, including a hilarious (to philosophers) anecdote about two former colleagues of mine. I finally settled on the view that (a) "hilarious (to philosophers)" = "not remotely hilarious" and (b) only someone already corrupted by philosophy would entertain a Humean view of causation, so why make

The Anselm window at Canterbury Cathedral I've stuffed this bit into a text box because it interrupts the flow of my argument but I don't think I can get away with not addressing it:   On my interpretation of Anselm’s argument, it will turn out that Anselm doesn’t actually rely on the premise that existence is a perfection; but the discussion of this premise is such a traditional part of accounts of Anselm that I feel bound not to pass over it in silence. The standard objection to this premise is expressed in Kant’s slogan that “exists is not a predicate” or “existence is not a perfection.” The idea is that, contrary to the assumption Gaunilo thinks Anselm is making, existence in reality is not greater than existence in the understanding. Existence is not like wisdom or good looks or the ability to play the piano; it’s not a feature that makes a thing better than it would otherwise be.             To see why someone would take this objection seriously, imagine this scenario (