Why Anselm's Ontological Argument Is Better Than You Think

Anselm’s ontological argument basically goes like this:

1) God is defined as the absolute greatest conceivable being.

2) Something that must exist is inherently greater than something that might not exist.

3) If we entertain the idea that the greatest conceivable being (God) might not exist, we open the door to imagining something even greater.

4) However, it becomes illogical to think that there could be something greater than the greatest conceivable being.

5) Therefore, the conclusion is that the greatest conceivable being, God, cannot be thought not to exist and, consequently, must exist.

It’s an argument that’s been widely dismissed by those who don’t know what it’s like to know God, and perhaps even widely misunderstood by those who do. Let me assure you that if you think Anselm’s argument simply means thinking about certain concepts in a way that argues them into existence, then you’re not giving this kind of thinking its due gravitas.

It’s not that the “absolute greatest conceivable being” is conceived, and therefore, because it’s conceived it must exist in the form of God. It’s that the absolute greatest conceivable being, if such a thing exists, has to be something that we mean when we talk about God, because God is the absolute greatest conceivable thing, and His absolute greatness is a property of His being, rather like how oxygen is a property of combustion. If you begin to think what good, better and great mean in relation to an objective standard, we can make progress. In a maths exam, good might be getting all your arithmetic right; better might be getting your algebra right too; and great might mean solving a complex problem that no one else has solved. A plugged-in microwave is better for cooking than one that is unplugged. A chair with four legs is steadier than a chair with one leg missing. A better maths paper, microwave or chair is one that is close to the optimal properties and functions of the object than one that is defective. Good, better and great are part of the thought process that leads us all the way to greatest.

God is not only what we mean when we talk about the absolute greatest conceivable being, we also mean that the absolute greatest conceivable being is a fundamental property of God. The difference is subtle, but essential in examining our morality, our philosophy and our psychology, where there is a hierarchical value structure of better or worse, until we hypothetically conceive of the highest. To conceive of the highest means acknowledging the reality of God at the top, it doesn’t mean we understand it – just as we can conceive of the size of our universe in terms of light years, without being able to comprehend it on such a scale. The “absolute greatest conceivable being” is where we arrive conceptually when we keep trying to climb up higher on our hierarchical value structure, and the three person God is who we meet when we understand that He is at the top of it as the “absolute greatest conceivable being”.

Anselm is more correct than even perhaps he himself realised (although that might be doing him a disservice) – in that, in the hierarchical value structure, there does exist a higher and higher standard that, if we keep going upwards, leads eventually to the notion of perfection – the very quality we understand about God Himself. You may be tempted to say that perfection is an idea we can conceive, but that it doesn’t actually exist in real terms. But this presents a problem of limited vision rather than limited ontological scope – because we know the hierarchical value structure exists in an objective sense, so we are on shaky grounds if we deny that the thing at the very top of it exists.

We can now apply this to existence itself. In the hierarchy of ontological reality, the highest form of existence is something that has a necessary existence, not a contingent existence. A thing that has a necessary existence is also something that we speak of in terms of one of the fundamental properties of God (called Aseity), in that God cannot ‘not’ exist. In our own conceived hierarchical structure, being perfect has a higher objective standing than the set of all imperfect things, and having a necessary existence has a higher objective standing than the set of all contingent things. Both of those attributes are properties of the God who has made Himself known in Christ (as per Psalm 18:30, Psalm 90:2 and Colossians 1:17). To know God is to know He exists; but if we knew Him fully, we’d know why He cannot possibly not exist. 

Further Reading: Exploring The Ontological Argument For God's Existence