QUAE ET QUANTA BONA SINT FRUENTIBUS EO.
The Good That Satisfies Every Desire
The one who enjoys the supreme good will possess everything they will and lack nothing, receiving goods of body and soul beyond all human imagining.
Oh, the one who will enjoy this good—what will they have, and what will they not have! Surely whatever they will will be, and what they refuse will not be. For there, surely, there will be goods of body and soul such as the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.✦1
Seek the One Good That Contains All
Anselm chides the restless soul for scattering its desires and calls it to love and desire the single good in which every good is found.
Why, then, do you wander through so many things, little one, seeking the goods of your soul and your body? Love the one good in which all goods are found, and that is enough. Desire the single good that is every good, and that is enough. What do you love, my flesh? What do you desire, my soul? There it is — there is whatever you love, whatever you desire.
Every Delight Fulfilled in God
Scripture's promises of beauty, strength, eternal life, fullness, joy, melody, and pure pleasure are all fulfilled in the beatific good.
If beauty delights you: "the righteous will shine like the sun."✦ If swiftness or strength, or a body's freedom that nothing can resist: "they will be like the angels of God," because "a natural body is sown, and a spiritual body is raised," by power, certainly, not by nature.✦✦ If a long and wholesome life: there is sound eternity and lasting health, because "the righteous will live forever" and "the salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord." If fullness: they will be filled "when the glory" of God "appears." If drunkenness: "they will be drunk with the abundance" of God's "house."✦ If melody: there choirs of angels sing without end to God. If any pleasure that is not impure but pure: God "will make them drink from the torrent of his delight."✦
Wisdom, Love, and Perfect Harmony
In the blessed state God reveals himself as wisdom, perfect mutual love unites all, and every will is harmonized into the one divine will.
If wisdom: the wisdom of God himself will show them himself. If friendship: they will love God more than themselves, and one another as themselves, and God will love them more than they love themselves; because they will love him and themselves and one another through him, and he will love himself and them through himself. If harmony: all of them will share one will, because they will have no will except the will of God alone.
Power, Sonship, and Divine Inheritance
The blessed will share God's power over their own wills and be called sons of God and co-heirs with Christ.
If power: they will be all-powerful over their own will, as God is over his. For just as God will be able to do whatever he wills through himself, so they will be able to do whatever they will through him: because just as they will will nothing other than what he wills, so he will will whatever they will; and what he wills cannot fail to be. If honor and riches: God will set his good and faithful servants over much — indeed, they will be called, and will be, 'sons of God' and gods; and where his Son is, there they will also be, 'heirs indeed of God, but co-heirs with Christ.'✦
Security That Cannot Be Lost
The blessed enjoy complete assurance that their good can never be taken from them, neither by their own will, nor against their will by God, nor by any other power.
If there is true security, then they can be absolutely certain — completely and without exception — that this, or rather this good, will never be lacking to them; just as they are certain they won't lose it by their own will, that God their lover won't take it away from his lovers against their will, and that nothing is powerful enough, apart from God himself, to set God and his lovers at odds and separate them.
Joy Too Great for the Heart
Anselm marvels at the greatness of joy in such a good and questions whether even the human heart can contain it.
What kind of joy — or how great a joy — is there, where there is such and so great a good? The human heart — a heart in need, a heart that has known hardships, or rather one overwhelmed by hardships — how much would you rejoice if you had an abundance of all these things?2 Ask your deepest self whether it is even capable of grasping its own joy at so great a happiness.3
Joy Multiplied by Perfect Love
Because perfect love rejoices equally for others as for oneself, each blessed person's joy is multiplied without limit across the whole communion of saints and angels.
But surely, if there were someone else you loved entirely as you love yourself, and that person had the same blessedness, your joy would be doubled, because you would rejoice for that person no less than for yourself. If, again, two or three, or many more, had the same blessedness, you would rejoice just as much for each of them as you would for yourself, if you loved each of them as you love yourself. Therefore, in that perfect love of the innumerable blessed — angels and human beings — where no one will love another less than himself, each one will rejoice for each of the others just as much as for himself.
Joy That Surpasses All Containment
Since each rejoices for God's happiness far more than their own, their love and joy will overflow all capacity yet never be fully contained.
So if the human heart can barely hold its own joy at so great a good of its own, how could it possibly be capable of so many, and such great, joys? And certainly, since each person rejoices as much over someone else's good as they love that person: just as in that perfect happiness each one will love God beyond all comparison more than themselves and everyone else combined, so too will they rejoice, beyond all reckoning, more over God's happiness than over their own and that of everyone else together.4 But if they love God with all their heart, all their mind, all their soul—yet so that all their heart, all their mind, all their soul still falls short of the worth of loving—then surely they will rejoice with all their heart, all their mind, all their soul, yet so that all their heart, all their mind, all their soul still cannot contain the fullness of that joy.
Read the original Latin
O qui hoc bono fruetur: quid illi erit, et quid illi non erit! Certe quidquid volet erit, et quod nolet non erit. Ibi quippe erunt bona corporis et animae, qualia "nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec cor hominis" cogitavit.
Cur ergo per multa vagaris, homuncio, quaerendo bona animae tuae et corporis tui? Ama unum bonum, in quo sunt omnia bona, et sufficit. Desidera simplex bonum, quod est omne bonum, et satis est. Quid enim amas, caro mea, quid desideras, anima mea? Ibi est, ibi est quidquid amatis, quidquid desideratis.
Si delectat pulchritudo: "fulgebunt iusti sicut sol". Si velocitas aut fortitudo, aut libertas corporis cui nihil obsistere possit: "erunt similes angelis dei", quia "seminatur corpus animale, et surget corpus spirituale", potestate utique non natura. Si longa et salubris vita: ibi est sana aeternitas et aeterna sanitas, quia "iusti in perpetuum vivent" et "salus iustorum a domino". Si satietas: satiabuntur "cum apparuerit gloria" dei. Si ebrietas: "inebriabuntur ab ubertate domus" dei. Si melodia: ibi angelorum chori concinunt sine fine deo. Si quaelibet non immunda sed munda voluptas: "torrente voluptatis suae potabit eos" deus.
Si sapientia: ipsa dei sapientia ostendet eis seipsam. Si amicitia: diligent deum plus quam seipsos, et invicem tamquam seipsos, et deus illos plus quam illi seipsos; quia illi illum et se et invicem per illum, et ille se et illos per seipsum. Si concordia: omnibus illis erit una voluntas, quia nulla illis erit nisi sola dei voluntas.
Si potestas: omnipotentes erunt suae voluntatis ut deus suae. Nam sicut poterit deus quod volet per seipsum, ita poterunt illi quod volent per illum; quia sicut illi non aliud volent quam quod ille, ita ille volet quidquid illi volent; et quod ille volet non poterit non esse. Si honor et divitiae: deus suos servos bonos et fideles supra multa constituet, immo "filii dei" et dii "vocabuntur" et erunt; et ubi erit filius eius, ibi erunt et illi, "heredes quidem dei, coheredes autem Christi".
Si vera securitas: certe ita certi erunt numquam et nullatenus ista vel potius istud bonum sibi defuturum, sicut certi erunt se non sua sponte illud amissuros, nec dilectorem deum illud dilectoribus suis invitis ablaturum, nec aliquid deo potentius inuitos deum et illos separaturum.
Gaudium vero quale aut quantum est, ubi tale ac tantum bonum est? Cor humanum, cor indigens, cor expertum aerumnas immo obrutum aerumnis: quantum gauderes, si his omnibus abundares? Interroga intima tua, si capere possint gaudium suum de tanta beatitudine sua.
Sed certe si quis alius, quem omnino sicut teipsum diligeres, eandem beatitudinem haberet, duplicaretur gaudium tuum, quia non minus gauderes pro eo quam pro teipso. Si vero duo vel tres vel multo plures idipsum haberent, tantundem pro singulis quantum pro teipso gauderes, si singulos sicut te ipsum amares. Ergo in illa perfecta caritate innumerabilium beatorum angelorum et hominum, ubi nullus minus diliget alium quam seipsum, non aliter gaudebit quisque pro singulis aliis quam pro seipso.
Si ergo cor hominis de tanto suo bono vix capiet gaudium suum: quomodo capax erit tot et tantorum gaudiorum? Et utique quoniam quantum quisque diligit aliquem, tantum de bono eius gaudet: sicut in illa perfecta felicitate unusquisque plus amabit sine comparatione deum quam se et omnes alios secum, ita plus gaudebit absque existimatione de felicitate dei quam de sua et omnium aliorum secum.
Sed si deum sic diligent toto corde, tota mente, tota anima, ut tamen totum cor, tota mens, tota anima non sufficiat dignitati dilectionis: profecto sic gaudebunt toto corde, tota mente, tota anima, ut totum cor, tota mens, tota anima non sufficiat plenitudini gaudii.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1Cor.2.9 — But as it is written: What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived—all that God has prepared for those who love him.
- ↩Matt.13.43 — Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let the one who has ears, hear.
- ↩Matt.22.30 — For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
- ↩1Cor.15.44 — It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual one.
- ↩Ps.35.9 — Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD; it will exult in his salvation.
- ↩Ps.35.9 — Then my soul will rejoice in the LORD; it will exult in his salvation.
- ↩Rom.8.17 — And if children, then heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Notes
- 1 ↩Quoted span 'nec oculus vidit nec auris audivit nec cor hominis' echoes 1 Cor 2:9; final resolution deferred to Moses stage.
- 2 ↩The repeated 'cor' with asyndetic epithets (indigens, expertum aerumnas, obrutum aerumnis) is rendered with em-dash breaks to preserve the rhetorical accumulation. 'Aerumnas' covers both outward hardship and inward distress; 'hardships' is chosen as the most natural English equivalent, though it may understate the Latin weight.
- 3 ↩'Intima tua' rendered 'your deepest self' rather than 'your inmost things' for naturalness; the phrase addresses the interior person. 'Si capere possint' is an indirect question (whether they can grasp), with 'gaudium suum' as internal accusative — the joy proper to that happiness.
- 4 ↩absque existimatione rendered 'beyond all reckoning' / 'beyond all estimation'; the rare form existimatione could also suggest 'without calculation/without self-interested measuring.' The sense is that the joy is unmeasured and ungrudging, not calculated against personal cost.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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