Bad Theologians as Bad Artists

Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, part 4

In his argument for the necessity of the Incarnation in the Cur Deus Homo, Anselm describes the subject matter of the present inquiry as “Him who is beautiful in appearance above the sons of men” and so “adorned” with a divine “rationale which exceeds human understanding.” For this reason, he confesses to feeling a certain burden that the form of his own argument should appropriately approximate the beauty of God’s own reasoning manifested in his accomplishing so marvelous a salvation. Anselm’s “fear,” he says, is “that just as I am accustomed to become indignant with untalented artists when I see the Lord Himself portrayed with an uncomely countenance, so it may happen to me that I provoke indignation if I presume to explore such an elegant topic by an inelegant and contemptible discourse.” The incompetent theologian, in other words, is like an inept artist, depicting what is beautiful beyond compare as something ugly and base. Anselm’s interlocutor, Boso, building on Anselm’s metaphor, seeks to allay his concerns by noting that the latter has already given license to those who can “to say these things better,” and reminds him that neither has he forbidden anyone who “does not like your discourse from writing more beautifully” himself. It is at this point that Anselm makes his caveat, stated earlier, that although his purpose is to prove the Incarnation “rationally, it should be accepted as certain only in the sense that it appears to me for the time being to be thus, until God somehow reveals the matter to me more fully” (ch. 2). As the artist-theologian, in sum, Anselm’s task is to represent the beauty and intelligibility of the faith as best he can, all the while continuing to wait in humility and hope for an even greater—both logically and aesthetically—representation of the “deeper rationale” (altiores rationes) yet to be unveiled. For Anselm, the reason the “rational” necessity of the Incarnation is only ever at most an aesthetic or “fitting” necessity is that, given the finitude of human reason, it is for the present always at most a “provisional” or “possible” necessity.