The Word in Which All Things Are Spoken: Augustine,Anselm,and Bonaventure on Christology and the Metaphysics of Exemplarity

Abstract

The article reconsiders Anselm’s “ontological argument” by contextualizing it within the conjunction of Neoplatonist exemplarist metaphysics and Christology in the Augustinian tradition of trinitarian theology. It explores tensions in Augustine’s theological epistemology and incarnational theology over the relationship of illumination and grace in the knowledge of God. Anselm wrestles with this tension in Monologion and Proslogion, where considerations of divine self-expression and simplicity provide conceptual resources to address it. In Bonaventure’s Itinerarium, Augustinian trinitarianism, Dionysian metaphysics, and the Anselmian “ontological” argument provide the structure for a Franciscan incarnational theology that reframes the Augustinian tension.