Anselm's definition of a God starts by saying that God is the greatest being we
can possibly think of. When Anselm states this, it essentially means that it is not possible
to think of a being greater than God. Anselm also states that if God is the greatest thinkable
being, he is referring to the fact that it would be impossible to imagine or to create in ones
mind someone or something being better than God. Therefore, it would be impossible to
say that God only exists in ones mind because it is much greater to exist in reality than it is
to exist only in ones mind. Anselm then suggests that God has many attributes which
describe him. Among these being: self-existent, a necessary being, omnipotent,
omniscient, completely just and timelessly eternal. After reading the Proslogion by
Anselm, it gave me a greater understanding of these attributes listed above. Although, they
are all of equal importance, I feel the most prominent of God=s attributes is the fact that
he is self existent. In essence, that means that God depends on nothing else for his
existence, he is uncaused. Therefore, his existence is timelessly-eternal. This means that
God cannot stop existing. On the other hand, contingent beings (such as ourselves) depend
on something else for their existence. One example of this is, that as a child we utterly
depended on our parents for food, clothing, and shelter. Contingent beings therefore can
begin to be or cease to be at anytime. They can, unlike God, be here today and gone
tomorrow.
Anselm uses the definition of God (the ontological argument), in which I have
described above, to prove God=s exis ...