QUOD SOLUS SIT, QUOD EST ET QUI EST.
God Alone Is What He Is
The Lord alone is what He is and is who He is.
So you alone, Lord, are what you are, and you are who you are.
What Is Not Fully Itself
Composite, changeable, and temporally contingent things are not fully what they are.
For what is one thing as a whole and something else in its parts, and in which something is changeable, is not fully what it is. And what began from nothing, and can be thought of as nothing, and unless it is sustained through something else, falls back into nothing; and what has had a past that now is not, and a future that is not yet: that is not what it truly and absolutely is.
God's Whole and Always Being
God is wholly and always whatever He is at any time or in any way.
But you truly are what you are, because whatever you are at any time or in any way, that you are, wholly and always.
The One Who Simply Is
God properly and simply is, existing only in an unshakeable present without past or future.
And you are the one who properly and simply are, because you have no having-been or about-to-be, but only a present existence, and you cannot be thought not to be at any time.12
The Supreme Good Needing Nothing
God is all perfections yet the one supreme good, self-sufficient and needed by all things.
You are life and light and wisdom and blessedness and eternity, and many goods of this kind — and yet you are nothing but the one supreme good, altogether sufficient to yourself, needing nothing, the one whom all things need in order to exist, and to exist well.34
Read the original Latin
Tu solus ergo, domine, es quod es, et tu es qui es. Nam quod aliud est in toto et aliud in partibus, et in quo aliquid est mutabile, non omnino est quod est. Et quod incepit a non esse et potest cogitari non esse, et nisi per aliud subsistat redit in non esse; et quod habet fuisse quod iam non est, et futurum esse quod nondum est: id non est proprie et absolute. Tu vero es quod es, quia quidquid aliquando aut aliquo modo es, hoc totus et semper es.
Et tu es qui proprie et simpliciter es, quia nec habes fuisse aut futurum esse sed tantum praesens esse, nec potes cogitari aliquando non esse. Et vita es et lux et sapientia et beatitudo et aeternitas et multa huiusmodi bona, et tamen non es nisi unum et summum bonum, tu tibi omnino sufficiens, nullo indigens, quo omnia indigent ut sint, et ut bene sint.
Notes
- 1 ↩'proprie et simpliciter es' — 'properly and simply are': the adverbial pair stresses that God is what God is in an unqualified, non-composite way, without the qualification or composition that marks creatures.
- 2 ↩The clause 'nec habes fuisse aut futurum esse sed tantum praesens esse' is rendered dynamically ('no having-been or about-to-be, but only a present existence') to capture the contrast between God's sheer present being and the creaturely mixture of past and future; a more literal 'you do not have having-been or being-about-to-be, but only present being' is also defensible.
- 3 ↩'et tamen non es nisi unum et summum bonum' — the concessive 'et tamen' ('and yet') signals that the long list of perfections does not compromise God's unity: all these are the one supreme good.
- 4 ↩'quo omnia indigent ut sint, et ut bene sint' — the ablative relative 'quo' has final/result force: all things depend on God both for being and for well-being.
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