At the Origins of Univocity: Anselm’s Five Methods for Defining the Divine Nature with Human Concepts

Moloney, Daniel P.

doi:10.5840/acpaproc202536162

Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

ONLINE FIRST

published on March 8, 2025

Daniel P. Moloney

https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc202536162

At the Origins of Univocity
Anselm’s Five Methods for Defining the Divine Nature with Human Concepts

Scotus’s theory of the univocity of being and other divine attributes is openly indebted to St. Anselm. Anselm has five methods or argumentative strategies that he combines to arrive at a common definition of attributes said of God and creatures, and Scotus references all of them. This paper will examine these methods, showing their interrelation, and how Anselm develops them into a theory of common definitions. This reading explains Anselm’s insistence (in Reply 8) that his Proslogion formula does involve inferences from concepts drawn from creaturely experiences, despite several centuries of interpretation that deny this. Scotus uses these same methods, in ways that Anselm scholars often overlook. The fact that Anselm’s methods are developments of Augustine’s Neoplatonic One-over-many argument in De Trinitate 8.3, and Scotus’s arguments are developments of Anselm’s, suggests that Scotus’s arguments for univocity can be seen in relation to the Platonic tradition, which is not typically done.

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