Anthony Flamer
Philosophy 100B Sanson / Normore

A summary and review of a long and boring Catholic Philosophical text

In this paper, we examine St. Anselm’s explanation for the fall of Satan, and Satan’s inability to rise again without a special gift from God; a concept which appears in Anselm’s On the Fall of the Devil. After the recount of Anselm, I will raise a few points of my own which shine light on questionable reasoning in Anselm’s work.
The long, repetitive dialouge On the Fall of the Devil begins with the contention that that everything that men and Angels have, they received from God. Even an Angel’s will itself is not his own – it is given to him by God. Now, an Angel’s will is not so simple as to be self-explanatory. Every Angel as well as every man has two wills: one for happines, and one for justice. He who is given a will for happiness will pursue the road that leads to the greatest amount of benefit and happiness for himself. This will for happiness is preserved by God and also those whom God gave it to, and one cannot lose it on his own account. He who is given a will for justice will pursue all that ought to be, that is, all that God meant ought to be, for that is just and is what the just will always will and pursue to the best of their ability. This will for justice is also preserved by God and also those who God gave it to, so long as they will it. If one only has a will for justice and not for happiness, he will never falter from justice, for it is all he wills and he has no reason to falter from it. However, if one forsakes justice and abandons it for happiness, if he has both wills, he will no longer possess his will for justice, and he will need God to give him back justice again before he can again possess it, since he by his own doing forsook his will to keep it, and he abanonded it. He who is given a will both for justice and happiness will pursue both. However, he with both wills is expected to place his will for justice higher than his will for happiness, and never commit an injustice in order to be happier. It is excusable to forsake an amount of mere happiness and remain at a reasonable happy level, but it is inexcusable to commit injustice, for to commit injustice is to will against the will of God, and that is inexcusable at any level. In this way he who follows both wills, but justice foremost, will be the most just and the most happy man or Angel.
Satan, however, proved unable to endure his own rectitude of will. There was a certain good thing, undefined by Anselm, that God did not give to the Angels, and did not will them to have. Satan willed to have this good, despite the fact that God did not give it to him, so that Satan came to an impass whereby he knew that contradicting God’s will was the apex of injustice, yet gaining this good would mean he would possess the height of happiness, much higher than he had. The temptation was too enticing for Satan to withstand, and he opted to abandon his will for justice in his extreme will for happiness. Satan attempted to possess this good, and in doing so he willed the opposite of God’s will, and committed grave injustice. While some Angel’s followed Satan, many others resisted the temptation, and did not pursue this forbidden good, and remained righteous and just, and preserved their rectitude of will for its own sake. As a consequence for disclaiming justice, God punished Satan heavily. While Satan himself abandoned justice and was already without it, by the time God was done with him, Satan and his followers were stripped of all the good and happiness that they ever possessed, so much that, when put in the backwards, double-negative speech in Anselm’s time, “they were able to will no good of which they were not deprived”.
To add insult to injury, the goody two shoes Angels, who adhered to justice, were given by God that previously forbidden good that Satan had previously pursued. So that then, the righteous Angels remained perfect in their will for justice, and now had ultimate happiness, so that there would be no reason for them to sin and thus it became impossible for them to sin. It was not that the good Angels lacked free will; it was that they then had no motive to sin and abandon justice, as they would have nothing to gain, and already had all they could ever want. Satan, however, by abandoning his will for justice, could not regain it by himself. He only had it originally from God, and there is no way that he could gain a true will for justice through a will for happiness, which was all he had left. He might will for justice so that he could regain his happiness, but that wouldn’t be willing justice for its own sake, and so Satan could only will for happiness, which he had none of. So, the only way that Satan might be saved from this mess would be if God gave him grace, and gave him back a will for justice. So far, it hasn’t happened yet. So much for why Satan fell, and why he cannot rise again without a special gift from God.
I have many problems with Anselm’s theology, but I will limit them here to three. The first has to do with God’s seeming ruthlessness with Satan concerning his foresight and omnipotence. The second is simply about the arbitrariness of Anselm’s concept of justice. The third concerns the lack of explanation in the different choices of the good and evil Angels.
According to Christian / Catholic theology, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and purely good. God knew that Satan and the evil Angels would sin, and yet he still gave them wills that could be tempted, he tempted them, and he let them fall without redemption, and all seemingly for not, for it does not seem it would have been any harm to simply give all Angels infinite good from the start, so that they would never want to sin anyway, and none would need to suffer. Now because these events are so far removed from human experience, they seem justifiable in Anselm, especially to one who simply wants to finish his text and forget about it for the rest of their life. However, I would like to form an analogy which might illustrate on more familiar terms what kind of moral situation this really is.
The Angels were God’s creation and his children, and they resided in heaven. So imagine then, I am with my children, and we’re out on a picnic on a nice day in the woods. God’s word is law, and it is to be obeyed. Similarly, I tell my children that they can play all they wish in the cheery wood, so long as they do as I tell them, and abide by the rules that I lay out. Now there was a special good that God did not wish the Angels to have, although he planned to give it to them after he knew Satan would be tempted by it and fall. On this picnic, I had a couple trays full of chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles with gummy bears, fresh from Mom’s oven, and I knew my son Mikey had an irresistible sweet tooth, especially for Mom’s baking, and that if I put these cupcakes out for a little while, he would surely take one. So I put the cupcakes out on the picnic table, and told all the kids not to take any until I got back from gathering some firewood. Now God knew that Satan would sin, and as soon as Satan did, God punished him more harshly than ever imagined, even though Satan expected that himself, one of God’s special children, might be safe from any horrible punishment. Similarly, rather than actually go get firewood, I go and dump a box full of flesh eating rats into a deep pit I had dug a few days earlier. I hide stealthily in the trees and wait for Mikey to grab a cupcake. Sure enough, while the other kids are playing hide and go seek, Mikey wanders up to the cupcakes with hesitation. Finally, with a rise and fall of his little shoulders in a deep breath, he grabs a cupcake and runs into the forest to savor it in my leave. I immediately jump down from the limp I was crouching on, grab him by the arm and call to the rest of the children. I scold Mikely for doing what I explicitly told him not to do, and that I would punish him for not obeying my rules and following his own will for happiness. I tell the rest of my children how proud I am of them, that they didn’t take a cupcake, and I toss little Mikey down the ten foot deep pit, and immediately there is a large grey rush to his squirming body and dozens of high pitched squeaking voices. I hand out cupcakes to the rest of the kids as we all peer over from the ledge at the top of the pit, as Mikey is being torn apart and eaten alive by the rats, and is screaming at the top of his lungs for help from his Daddy. As myself and the rest of my good children eat our cupcakes joyfully, we go back to the campsite. The death cries of Mikey grow fainter, and gradually come to an end to be replaced by the crackling of the new fire in which we all began roasting our marshmallows in preparation for smores.
Surely that story would disturb any good hearted human being. However, it is not any worse than Satan’s fate. Surely, at least Mikey will not suffer for eternity – just because Satan’s pains are not illustrated so vividly, does not mean they are not just as gruesome. Additionally, this good that is so undefined by Anselm can’t be that evil of a sin, after all it is even given to the Angels after Satan goes for it, which leaves one to ask why it was forbidden in the first place, especially when God knew from his omniscience that the only outcome of it’s forbidding would be the torment of Satan and the angels? And lastly, Satan did not know the extent of his seemingly minor crime, just as Mikey didn’t. Inexorable indeed then, seems the hand of justice that God wielded against Satan, his own beautiful creation. If God acted overzealously and unjustly here, as seems possible, then Anselm is left to explain the unjust actions of a wholly just God.
My next point seems almost natural to bring up after the last, and it is the lack of a clear definition of justice. Anselm certainly defines it, specifically as “preserving rectitude of will for its own sake”. However, rectitude of will is never defined by Anselm much past “what one ought to do”, and only then, is basically said to be what God said ought to be. Philosophers, for millennia, have struggled with the definition and nature of justice, producing many profound ideas and thought. Anselm’s simplicity in his definition of justice is simply not acceptable from a philosopher’s standpoint. First to mind is the problem with Divine Command Theory, which states that “morally right” is exactly what God dictates. If this were true, then right and just would be totally arbitrary, since God would not have to stick to any standard of good outside of his own creation, and any good could be bad or bad good at the whim of God, and he could have no outside reason for choosing as he does. However, there seems to be something else about justice that can be explained reasonably, and doesn’t have to be the arbitrary word of God. In sum, philosophers and people alike typically define justice as a kind of keeping to one’s own, and not overtaking another in their belongings or happiness. In this kind of definition, it doesn’t seem that Satan took anything from anybody nor caused any harm, but only did what God arbitrarily said not to do. The arbitrariness of the law can be illustrated purely by the fact that God un-forbade the forbidden good just after Satan had been punished for seeking it. This seems ridiculous – imagine a federal law repealed just as soon as it was broken, and it’s perpetrator sent to the chair. If God did it for a test, it seems unnecessary, as he could have made it impossible for the Angels to sin by giving them the good from the beginning. And further, an arbitrary test which produces only needless suffering seems far from a typical account of a just act. Yet Anselm’s whole philosophy and theology rests on this simple account of justice. If it falters, so does everything he says.
Lastly, even accepting Anselm’s shaky notion of justice, it is never clarified what it was about Satan that drove him to choose to forsake justice, while the other Angels retained it. A difference in choice must be caused by something, lest it be completely at random. Typically, it would seem that it is caused by either a difference in experience, knowledge, reasoning processes, or values. But if any of these were different in Satan than the other Angels, it would seem to be the fault of God the creator, not of Satan. After the question is dodged for the entire book, at the end Anselm finally answers, saying that Satan willed to chose evil simply “Only because he willed it. For this willing had no other cause.”(Ch27) Even still, if one says that there is a force deep inside which makes the ultimate choice, even differently sometimes when circumstances are even, and Satan made the evil choice, there is still rebuke. There were also many Angels in the same exact circumstances with good forces down deep who chose justice, and if they were possible, and God knew that Satan and others would be evil, God could simply have just created good Angels that he knew would not falter in the evil Angels stead, since that would not have hindered free will, by Anselm’s account. There seems no reason for God to have created Angels that he knew would fall and suffer for eternity. So it seems that God either couldn’t do otherwise out of his lack of omnipotence, didn’t know otherwise out of lack of omniscience, or did it anyway despite his knowledge and ability to do otherwise out of lack of will for there to be no evil, which creating Satan and his evil choice and punishment surely secured.
These points and others unmentioned, combined with the natural, overall unconvincing feeling of Anselm’s argument, leave me inevitably to have to differ strongly with Anselm.

got a touch on the way as well

dialouge -> dialogue

Is this a joke? I couldn't make it past the first sentence, as it sucks and has two big grammar errors.

semicolons aren't used to join a sentence fragment to a sentence

your conclusion is a little weak too, "because of these points I think this" it's too obvious, you should make the ending expand on your thesis and leave the reader with something exciting to think about

Last edited by Necrophilic on Tue Mar 16, 2004 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total

"In this paper , we examine St. Anselm’s explanation for the fall of Satan, and Satan’s inability to rise again without a special gift from God; a concept which appears in Anselm’s On the Fall of the Devil."

You're doing the lame Stephen Hawking comma (In this paper we examine .. needs no comma). I could be wrong but I don't think a semicolon is what belongs there. It's kind of one of those -- things, though I would seperate it into two sentences.

I don't like opening like that, either. It doesn't really catch the reader's interest. It's sort of like a fancy worded "We're going to talk about ____ in this paper", which you don't really want to do as far as I've always been taught. I would make a more general sentence like (and don't use this, I'm just explaining my point) "The Catholic church has provided an interesting explanation of why Satan was cast out of heaven." Then go on to say something like "St. Anselm recorded this philosophy in [Boring Catholic Book Name], suggesting that Satan left because of his inability to ...". Work your thesis in, etc.

"remain at a reasonable happy level" - I don't like this wording

In the third paragraph you say Satan wanted something good that was undefined by the author, which I guess is OK (I didn't read the book and since the professor did he may think nothing of your wording), but you continue and make it seem as if Satan did some kind of good by his own will as opposed to committed some kind of "sin" by his own will to achieve the "good". "...yet gaining this good would mean he would possess the height of happiness" is what you wrote. I guess this is unclear but I just think you may want to consider rewording it.


4th Paragraph:
"the goody two shoes Angels"
That doesn't fit with the rest of the tone and while I suppose it's an attempt to be comical I find the saying pretty much filled with the gay, Flamer.

End of 4th:
"So far, it hasn’t happened yet."
Redundant

"So much for why Satan fell, and why he cannot rise again without a special gift from God. "
I don't much like this wording.


"Similarly, rather than actually go get firewood, I go and dump a box full of flesh eating rats into a deep pit I had dug a few days earlier."
Rofl hahahahhahahaha same with the rest of the paragraph ahhahaha


"especially when God knew from his omniscience that the only outcome of it’s forbidding would be the torment of Satan and the angels? "
Isn't it supposed to be "its"?


"These points and others unmentioned "
I think that if I put that on an important paper for my class my teacher would be pretty pissed off. Is there some kind of maximum length?

Your 2nd to last paragraph sort of starts concluding with your last paragraph being one sentence. I'm not in college and am not an excellent writer, though I would imagine that you would be better off concluding the point of the 2nd to last paragraph in it and moving the last sentence into the conlcusion to explain again why you can't accept Anselm's argument.

I think that the first few paragraphs where you summarize the book were sort of hard to read and not worded all that great, probably mainly because of the weak philosophy that you had to be careful not to contradict in your own writing(?). Once you started explaining his errors it became much more impressive.

You might just laugh at me and not want to take in any of my feedback, but I enjoyed reading it anyways.

Last edited by ThePanacea on Tue Mar 16, 2004 5:59 pm; edited 2 times in total

The first comma is optional, and the second shouldn't be there.

I really didn't believe your last name was actually flamer... suits you I guess.

I have nothing positive to add.

You fed Mikey to the rats because he took a cupcake that he wasn't supposed to, lol. Yes I know there is symbolism behind this but I just thought it was hilarious.

quote:

---

Originally posted by BanMe
Anthony Flamer
Philosophy 100B Sanson / Normore

A summary and review of a long and boring Catholic Philosophical text:
[Adding colon because you're setting off an explanation]

In this paper[delete comma] we examine St. Anselm’s explanation for the fall of Satan, and Satan’s inability to rise again without a special gift from God; a concept which appears in Anselm’s "On the Fall of the Devil"[Adding quotes]. After the recount of Anselm, I will raise a few points of my own which shine light on questionable reasoning in Anselm’s work.
The long[delete comma] repetitive dialouge , "On the Fall of the Devil" , begins with the contention that [deleted extra that] everything that men and Angels have[delete comma] they received from God. Even an Angel’s will [delete itself] is not his own , [comma works best] it is given to him by God. [Deleted Now, redundant]An Angel’s will is not [deleted so, redundant] simple as to be self-explanatory. Every Angel , as well as every man , has two wills: one for happines, and one for justice. He who is given a will for happiness will pursue the road that leads to the greatest amount of benefit and happiness for himself[I would take out the "for himself", it seems redundant]. This will for happiness is preserved by God and also those whom God gave it to, and one cannot lose it on his own account. [I would rewrite the following sentence: He who is given a will for justice will pursue God's definition of justice to the best of their ability, it should be rewritten because it sucks]He who is given a will for justice will pursue all that ought to be, that is, all that God meant ought to be, for that is just and is what the just will always will and pursue to the best of their ability. This will for justice is also preserved by God and to [deleted also, and replaced it] those [deleted who, redundant] God gave it to[deleted comma]so long as they will it. If one only has a will for justice and not for happiness, he will never falter from justice, for it is all he wills and he has no reason to falter from it. However, if one forsakes justice and abandons it for happiness, if he has both wills,[Confused:He has both wills, but no longer posses a will for justice??]he will no longer possess his will for justice, and he will need God to give him back justice [deleted again, god gave him back justice AGAIN?] before he can [deleted again, redundant] possess it, since he [deleted by his own doing, redundant] forsook his will to keep it, and he abanonded it. He who is given a will both for justice and happiness will pursue both. However, he with both wills is expected to place his will for justice higher than his will for happiness, and never commit an injustice in order to be happier. It is excusable to forsake an amount of mere happiness and remain at a reasonable happy level, but it is inexcusable to commit injustice, [deleted for, redundant] to commit injustice is to will against the will of God, and that is inexcusable at any level. In this way he who follows both wills, but justice foremost, will be the most just and the most happy man or Angel.
Satan[deleted,however is redundant] proved unable to endure his own rectitude of will. There was a certain good thing, undefined by Anselm, that God did not give to the Angels, and did not will them to have. Satan willed to have this good, despite the fact that God did not give it to him, so [deleted that] Satan came to an impass whereby he knew that contradicting God’s will was the apex of injustice, yet gaining this good would mean he would possess the height of happiness, much higher than he had. The temptation was too enticing for Satan to withstand, and he opted to abandon his will for justice in his extreme will for happiness. Satan attempted to possess this good, and in doing so he willed the opposite of God’s will, and committed a grave injustice. While some Angel’s followed Satan, many others resisted the temptation, and did not pursue this forbidden good, and remained righteous and just, and preserved their rectitude of will for its own sake. As a consequence for disclaiming justice, God punished Satan heavily. While Satan himself abandoned justice and was [deleted already] without it, by the time God was done with him, Satan and his followers were stripped of all the good and happiness that they ever possessed, so much that, when put in the backwards, double-negative speech in Anselm’s time, “they were able to will no good of which they were not deprived”.
To add insult to injury, the goody two shoes Angels, who adhered to justice, were given , by God , that previously forbidden good that Satan had previously pursued. [Deleted So that then,]The righteous Angels remained perfect in their will for justice, and now had ultimate happiness, so that there would be no reason for them to sin and [deleted thus] it became impossible for them to sin.[So Satan will for good was a sin? did you state that already? is defying God's will is a sin?] It was not that the good Angels lacked free will; [deleted it was that] they [deleted then] had no motive to sin and abandon justice, as they would have nothing to gain, and [deleted already] had all they could ever want. Satan, however, by abandoning his will for justice, could not regain it by himself. He only had it originally from God, and there is no way that he could gain a true will for justice through a will for happiness, which was all he had left. He might will for justice so that he could regain his happiness, but that wouldn’t be willing justice for its own sake, and so Satan could only will for happiness, which he had none of. So, the only way that Satan might be saved from this mess would be if God gave him grace, and gave him back a will for justice. So far, it hasn’t happened yet. So much for why Satan fell, and why he cannot rise again without a special gift from God.
I have many problems with Anselm’s theology, but I will limit them here to three. The first has to do with God’s seeming ruthlessness with Satan concerning his foresight and omnipotence. The second is simply about the arbitrariness of Anselm’s concept of justice. The third concerns the lack of explanation in the different choices of the good and evil Angels.
According to Christian / Catholic theology, God is omnipotent, omniscient, and purely good. God knew that Satan and the evil Angels would sin, and yet he still gave them wills that could be tempted, he tempted them, and he let them fall without redemption, and all seemingly for not, for it does not seem it would have been any harm to simply give all Angels infinite good from the start, so that they would never want to sin anyway, and none would need to suffer. Now because these events are so far removed from human experience, they seem justifiable in Anselm, especially to one who simply wants to finish his text and forget about it for the rest of their life. However, I would like to form an analogy which might illustrate on more familiar terms what kind of moral situation this really is.
The Angels were God’s creation and his children, and they resided in heaven. So imagine then, I am with my children, and we’re out on a picnic on a nice day in the woods. God’s word is law, and it is to be obeyed. Similarly, I tell my children that they can play all they wish in the cheery wood, so long as they do as I tell them, and abide by the rules that I lay out. Now there was a special good that God did not wish the Angels to have, although he planned to give it to them after he knew Satan would be tempted by it and fall. On this picnic, I had a couple trays full of chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and sprinkles with gummy bears, fresh from Mom’s oven, and I knew my son Mikey had an irresistible sweet tooth, especially for Mom’s baking, and that if I put these cupcakes out for a little while, he would surely take one. So I put the cupcakes out on the picnic table, and told all the kids not to take any until I got back from gathering some firewood. Now God knew that Satan would sin, and as soon as Satan did, God punished him more harshly than ever imagined, even though Satan expected that himself, one of God’s special children, might be safe from any horrible punishment. Similarly, rather than actually go get firewood, I go and dump a box full of flesh eating rats into a deep pit I had dug a few days earlier. I hide stealthily in the trees and wait for Mikey to grab a cupcake. Sure enough, while the other kids are playing hide and go seek, Mikey wanders up to the cupcakes with hesitation. Finally, with a rise and fall of his little shoulders in a deep breath, he grabs a cupcake and runs into the forest to savor it in my leave. I immediately jump down from the limp I was crouching on, grab him by the arm and call to the rest of the children. I scold Mikely for doing what I explicitly told him not to do, and that I would punish him for not obeying my rules and following his own will for happiness. I tell the rest of my children how proud I am of them, that they didn’t take a cupcake, and I toss little Mikey down the ten foot deep pit, and immediately there is a large grey rush to his squirming body and dozens of high pitched squeaking voices. I hand out cupcakes to the rest of the kids as we all peer over from the ledge at the top of the pit, as Mikey is being torn apart and eaten alive by the rats, and is screaming at the top of his lungs for help from his Daddy. As myself and the rest of my good children eat our cupcakes joyfully, we go back to the campsite. The death cries of Mikey grow fainter, and gradually come to an end to be replaced by the crackling of the new fire in which we all began roasting our marshmallows in preparation for smores.
Surely that story would disturb any good hearted human being. However, it is not any worse than Satan’s fate. Surely, at least Mikey will not suffer for eternity – just because Satan’s pains are not illustrated so vividly, does not mean they are not just as gruesome. Additionally, this good that is so undefined by Anselm can’t be that evil of a sin, after all it is even given to the Angels after Satan goes for it, which leaves one to ask why it was forbidden in the first place, especially when God knew from his omniscience that the only outcome of it’s forbidding would be the torment of Satan and the angels? And lastly, Satan did not know the extent of his seemingly minor crime, just as Mikey didn’t. Inexorable indeed then, seems the hand of justice that God wielded against Satan, his own beautiful creation. If God acted overzealously and unjustly here, as seems possible, then Anselm is left to explain the unjust actions of a wholly just God.
My next point seems almost natural to bring up after the last, and it is the lack of a clear definition of justice. Anselm certainly defines it, specifically as “preserving rectitude of will for its own sake”. However, rectitude of will is never defined by Anselm much past “what one ought to do”, and only then, is basically said to be what God said ought to be. Philosophers, for millennia, have struggled with the definition and nature of justice, producing many profound ideas and thought. Anselm’s simplicity in his definition of justice is simply not acceptable from a philosopher’s standpoint. First to mind is the problem with Divine Command Theory, which states that “morally right” is exactly what God dictates. If this were true, then right and just would be totally arbitrary, since God would not have to stick to any standard of good outside of his own creation, and any good could be bad or bad good at the whim of God, and he could have no outside reason for choosing as he does. However, there seems to be something else about justice that can be explained reasonably, and doesn’t have to be the arbitrary word of God. In sum, philosophers and people alike typically define justice as a kind of keeping to one’s own, and not overtaking another in their belongings or happiness. In this kind of definition, it doesn’t seem that Satan took anything from anybody nor caused any harm, but only did what God arbitrarily said not to do. The arbitrariness of the law can be illustrated purely by the fact that God un-forbade the forbidden good just after Satan had been punished for seeking it. This seems ridiculous – imagine a federal law repealed just as soon as it was broken, and it’s perpetrator sent to the chair. If God did it for a test, it seems unnecessary, as he could have made it impossible for the Angels to sin by giving them the good from the beginning. And further, an arbitrary test which produces only needless suffering seems far from a typical account of a just act. Yet Anselm’s whole philosophy and theology rests on this simple account of justice. If it falters, so does everything he says.
Lastly, even accepting Anselm’s shaky notion of justice, it is never clarified what it was about Satan that drove him to choose to forsake justice, while the other Angels retained it. A difference in choice must be caused by something, lest it be completely at random. Typically, it would seem that it is caused by either a difference in experience, knowledge, reasoning processes, or values. But if any of these were different in Satan than the other Angels, it would seem to be the fault of God the creator, not of Satan. After the question is dodged for the entire book, at the end Anselm finally answers, saying that Satan willed to chose evil simply “Only because he willed it. For this willing had no other cause.”(Ch27) Even still, if one says that there is a force deep inside which makes the ultimate choice, even differently sometimes when circumstances are even, and Satan made the evil choice, there is still rebuke. There were also many Angels in the same exact circumstances with good forces down deep who chose justice, and if they were possible, and God knew that Satan and others would be evil, God could simply have just created good Angels that he knew would not falter in the evil Angels stead, since that would not have hindered free will, by Anselm’s account. There seems no reason for God to have created Angels that he knew would fall and suffer for eternity. So it seems that God either couldn’t do otherwise out of his lack of omnipotence, didn’t know otherwise out of lack of omniscience, or did it anyway despite his knowledge and ability to do otherwise out of lack of will for there to be no evil, which creating Satan and his evil choice and punishment surely secured.
These points and others unmentioned, combined with the natural, overall unconvincing feeling of Anselm’s argument, leave me inevitably to have to differ strongly with Anselm.

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Haha, thanks for reading it whoever did, I'm sure it wasn't pleasurable. The only part I'm real proud of is the picnic analogy. If you think I was redundant in the summary, you should have read the book: blech. Sometimes, if you don't restate things, the reader might be confused about a tiny detail, and in philosophy that makes all the difference. Many of the simplistic sylistic elements, such as the lack of an intro, are what College TA's prefer, especially in philosophy. They don't like bullsiht intro's, they know who and what the paper is about, and want to know if you learned what you were supposed to. Oh well, I had just finished it at 6 am at the library and was a little sleep deprived and wanted to show off. Peace.

Let us know what you get on it.

There are a couple points you should consider. First, using "I" is somewhat pointless. The paper has your name at the top and using "I" statements are not necessary. Write principally in the third person and use clear transition statements to make the paper flow. Likewise, statements such as "In this paper" are also redundent. In addition, refrain from repeating words in the same sentence multiple times. Overall I found this very difficult to follow due to gramatical mistakes, repeated words, few transitions, and general lack of structure. This is, I assume, supposed to be a summary of the text you read. The text you are summarizing may be old, boring, erratic and hard to follow. Consequently, your summary should take this into consideration and be the opposite. Your paper should address the essential arguements and conclusions of the original document in language that anyone reading your paper can follow. My best advice to you at this point is scrap the entire thing, determine a structure and outline, avoid "I" statements, and most importantly make sure you understand what you are trying to summarize.