SOURCE: Campbell, Richard. “Anselm's Theological Method.” Scottish Journal of Theology 32 (1979): 543-48.

In the following excerpt, Campbell asserts that critics of Anselm's ontological argument have misrepresented his point, which is simply to demonstrate “that it cannot be said that God is not.”

The study of Anselm's Proslogion argument on the existence of God which I recently undertook¹ emerged out of a growing conviction that commentator after commentator had been guilty of serious misrepresentation of its structure. Traditionally, Anselm has been taken as presenting in Proslogion 2 the first version ever to be formulated fully of the ‘Ontological Argument’. The reasoning in Proslogion 2 was—and often still is—supposed to proceed from an alleged definition of God as something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought, through inferences designed to show that, unless he exists in reality, he would not be something than which nothing greater can be thought, to the conclusion that God exists.

In more recent...