QUOD SIT ANTE ET ULTRA OMNIA ETIAM AETERNA.
Filling and Surpassing All Things
God fills and embraces all things, standing before them because he already is before they come to be.
You therefore fill and embrace all things; you are before all things and beyond all things. And indeed you are before all things, because before they came to be, you are.✦
The Question of Transcendence
Anselm raises the puzzle of how God can be beyond things that themselves have no end.
But how are you beyond all things? For how are you beyond those things that will have no end?
Beyond Through Independence and Boundlessness
God is beyond all things because they depend on him while he does not depend on them, and because they can be thought to have an end while he cannot.
Is it because those things can't exist at all without you, yet you're no less even if they return to nothing? In this way, then, you are, in a sense, beyond them. Or is it also because those things can be thought to have an end, while you by no means can? For in this way they do have an end in a certain sense, but you in no sense do. And surely whatever has no end at all stands beyond whatever is bounded in some way.
Beyond Through the Fullness of Eternity
God is always beyond even eternal things because his eternity is entirely present to him, while they do not yet possess what is still to come.
Or do you also pass beyond all things — even eternal ones — in this way: because your eternity and theirs is entirely present to you, since they don't yet possess, from their own eternity, what is still to come, just as they no longer possess what is past? In this way, then, you are always beyond them, since you are always present there — or rather, since that toward which they haven't yet arrived is always present to you.
Read the original Latin
Tu ergo imples et complecteris omnia, tu es ante et ultra omnia. Et quidem ante omnia es, quia antequam fierent tu es. Ultra omnia vero quomodo es? Qualiter enim es ultra ea quae finem non habebunt?
An quia illa sine te nullatenus esse possum, tu autem nullo modo minus es, etiam si illa redeunt in nihilum? Sic enim quodam modo es ultra illa. An etiam quia illa cogitari possum habere finem, tu vero nequaquam? Nam sic illa quidem habent finem quodam modo, tu vero nullo modo. Et certe quod nullo modo habet finem, ultra illud est quod aliquo modo finitur. An hoc quoque modo transis omnia etiam aeterna, quia tua et illorum aeternitas tota tibi praesens est, cum illa nondum habeant de sua aeternitate quod venturum est, sicut iam non habent quod praeteritum est? Sic quippe semper es ultra illa, cum semper ibi sis praesens, seu cum illud semper sit tibi praesens, ad quod illa nondum pervenerunt.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Ps.90.2 — Before the mountains were born, before you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
One chapter of historic wisdom, every day
Chosen Portion delivers works like the Proslogion as short daily readings with a prayer — free on iOS.
Anselm designed the Proslogion to be read slowly as prayer, and the Chosen Portion app serves it exactly that way — one short portion per day.
- Finish the entire Proslogion in 14 days at about 10 minutes a day
- Modern-English rendering of all 27 chapters, no Latin required
- Each reading paired with Anselm's own prayers so study ends in worship