QUOMODO SIT SENSIBILIS, CUM NON SIT CORPUS.
The Paradox of a Sensate God
Anselm presses the puzzle of how God can be called sensate, all-powerful, and merciful-yet-impassible if God is not a body, since sensation seems to belong only to bodies.
Yet since it is better to be capable of sensing, all-powerful, merciful, and beyond suffering than not to exist at all — how are you capable of sensing if you are not a body, or all-powerful if you are not capable of all things, or at once merciful and beyond suffering? For if only bodily things are capable of sensing, then sensation is directed toward the body and exists in the body — so how are you capable of sensing, since you are not a body but the highest spirit, who is better than any body?
Perceiving Is Knowing
Anselm reframes perception as a form of knowledge, so that God can be said to perceive in whatever way He knows.
But if perceiving is nothing other than knowing, or nothing other than for the sake of knowing — for whoever perceives knows according to the proper character of the senses, as through sight one knows colors, through taste one knows flavors — then it's not unfittingly said that God perceives in whatever way He knows in any way.
Supreme Sensate Knowledge
Anselm concludes that though God is not a body, God is supremely sensate in knowing all things supremely, yet not through bodily sense.
So then, Lord: even though you are not a body, you are truly supreme in that sensate capacity by which you know all things supremely — not in the way a living creature knows by bodily sense.
Read the original Latin
Verum cum melius sit esse sensibilem, omnipotentem, misericordem, impassibilem quam non esse: quomodo es sensibilis, si non es corpus; aut omnipotens, si omnia non poses; aut misericors simul et impassibilis? Nam si sola corporea sunt sensibilia, quondam sensus circa corpus et in corpore sunt: quomodo es sensibilis, cum non sis corpus sed summus spiritus, qui corpore melior est?
Sed si sentire non nisi cognoscere aut non nisi ad cognoscendum est -- qui enim sentit cognoscit secundum sensuum proprietatem, ut per visum colores, per gustum sapores --: non inconvenienter dicitur aliquo modo sentire, quidquid aliquo modo cognoscit.
Ergo domine, quamvis non sis corpus, vere tamen eo modo summe sensibilis es, quo summe omnia cognoscis, non quo animal corporeo sensu cognoscit.
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