Bryn Mawr College

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An angelic digression : the significance of 1.16-18 in the Cur Deus Homo
(2012) Kuper, Charles Nestor
The aim of this thesis is to give a new reading of sections 1.16-18 of Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo (published in 1098) that argues against the almost unanimous opinion of previous interpreters that this passage was a quaint medieval digression. This thesis, which is divided into two sections, argues in Section 1 that there is good evidence within the text of the Cur Deus Homo that Anselm saw his arguments given in 1.16-18 as proving an essential premise for the major argument of the dialogue, that is, that it must be proved that God must save humankind before it can be proved how God saved humankind. In Section 2, this thesis, moving beyond the text of the Cur Deus Homo, analyzes Anselm’s utilization of syllogistic logic in his dialogue De Grammtico and investigates the mathematical sources of inspiration for Anselm’s concept of the perfectus numerus in 1.16-18. This thesis concludes that Anselm’s argument in 1.16-18 is modeled upon the mathematical concept of the perfectus numerus, which is found in Boethius’ De Institutione Arithmetica among other places, in order to provide the work’s incredulous target audience with a theological argument that is not the subject of belief but a sort of mathematical certainty.