In Cardinal Newman's notebook which contains the "Proof of Theism" on which Adrian Boekraad and Henry Tristram centred their book The Argument from Conscience to the Existence of God, there is a list of six arguments for the existence of God. 1 The fifth item reads -cryptically -"St. Anselm's argument. (Qu. that our thinking implies the fact.)"
The entry arouses curiosity both because Newman, as a thinker, seems distant from Anselm and because Anselm is usually read as supposing that the idea of God implies the existence of God and not that thinMng implies the existence of God or any other fact.
Yet, if Newman's remark is given a meaning in the context in which we find it, it contains, I think, ingredients for an interesting argument for the existence of God. It is this which interests me here.
I make no pretence of being able to draw the whole argument from Newman's notes and, of course, no pretence of being able to locate the finished argument in Anselm's writings. But some historical reflection will help to extract the context in which the argument becomes meaningful and I shall argue that, in the end, Newman's entry does make an association of ideas which is not absurd in a reflection on Anselm.
To begin with Newman: Newman, for all "that he is difficult to classify either as a philosopher or a theologian has usually been seen as a moderate, inclined to anchor as much as possible in experience, rather given to common sense -close, in many ways to John Locke for whom he had a genuine affection and respect. 2 And one might surely think that Newman would not feel similarly at home with Anselm. And yet, in a latter addressed to Pope Leo XIII, he speaks of Anselm with respect. 3 Nor is the entry in Newman's list of useful arguments for the existence of God entirely forlorn.
One other item in the list, the "argument from archetypal perfection" might share some logical typology with Anselm's argument as might in reality Bossuet's argument, also listed, which hangs on the ontological status of the moral law. 4 But we might explain Newman's fondness for those arguments on the ground that he thought the chief argument was, after all, the argument from conscience and the