Anselm, it is said, gave us not one but two ontological arguments in his Proslogium and Responsio. The first of these, starting from the definition of God as "the being, than which nothing greater can be conceived," reasons to the conclusion that God exists, while the second reasons from the same definition to the conclusion that God's existence is necessary. The distinction between the two arguments is of some importance. The first argument has been in disrepute at least since the time of Kant, and finds few defenders today. The "second ontological argument," on the other hand, has a small but articulate band of supporters (including Hartshorne, Malcolm, and Plantinga ~) who assert that it constitutes a valid and sound proof of God's existence.
Anselm perhaps never clearly realized that he was dealing with two distinct arguments, but this is not decisive with regard to the philosophical significance of the arguments. For it is conceivable that Anselm was both less and more successful than he thought: less successful, in that the argument of l'roslogium 2 is hopelessly flawed, but more successful in that along with it he also, without clearly realizing it, presented another, independent argument which succeeds where the original argument fails. This is conceivable, but is it the case? Is the second ontological argument sound? Indeed, what precisely is' the second ontological argument? The present paper might possibly be summarized in the claim that there just is no second ontological argument; the thing does not exist. But that would be putting it too harshly. What I do want to claim, however, is that everything which has been said under the heading of the second ontological argument is completely and fairly summarized in the following statement:
(SOA) "God necessarily exists" has riot been proved false.
My "reduction" of tile second ontological argument to (SOA) will proceed in three stages. In the first section of this paper, 1 introduce a simple two-step argument which, 1 will argue, is equivalent to the second ontological argument in all of its current forms. In the second section, I reduce the two-step argument to the