Monologium, on the Being of God
English translation by Sidney Norton Deane (1878–1943), Chicago: Open Court, 1903. Original text: Migne, Patrologia Latina 158, 141-224.
Each chapter's argument is given as the chapter heading (the Latin rubrics are omitted from the Latin text). Chapters numbered as in Deane and Migne (79).
- pref Preface
- 1 Chapter I. There is a being which is best, and greatest, and highest of all existing beings.
- 2 Chapter II. The same subject continued.
- 3 Chapter III. There is a certain Nature through which whatever is exists, and which exists through itself, and is the highest of all existing beings.
- 4 Chapter IV. The same subject continued.
- 5 Chapter V. Just as this Nature exists through itself, and other beings through it, so it derives existence from itself, and other beings from it.
- 6 Chapter VI. This Nature was not brought into existence with the help of any external cause, yet it does not exist through nothing, or derive existence from nothing. — How existence through self, and derived from self, is conceivable.
- 7 Chapter VII. In what way all other beings exist through this Nature and derive existence from it.
- 8 Chapter VIII. How it is to be understood that this Nature created all things from nothing.
- 9 Chapter IX. Those things which were created from nothing had an existence before their creation in the thought of the Creator.
- 10 Chapter X. This thought is a kind of expression of the objects created (locution rerum), like the expression which an artisan forms in his mind for what he intends to make.
- 11 Chapter XI. The analogy, however, between the expression of the Creator and the expression of the artisan is very incomplete.
- 12 Chapter XII. This expression of the supreme Being is the supreme Being.
- 13 Chapter XIII. As all things were created through the supreme Being, so all live through it.
- 14 Chapter XIV. This Being is in all things, and throughout all; and all derive existence from it and exist through and in it.
- 15 Chapter XV. What can or cannot be stated concerning the substance of this Being.
- 16 Chapter XVI. For this Being it is the same to be just that it is to be justice; and so with regard to attributes that can be expressed in the same way: and none of these shows of what character, or how great, but what this Being is.
- 17 Chapter XVII. It is simple in such a way that all things that can be said of its essence are one and the same in it: and nothing can be said of its substance except in terms of what it is.
- 18 Chapter XVIII. It is without beginning and without end.
- 19 Chapter XIX. In what sense nothing existed before or will exist after this Being.
- 20 Chapter XX. It exists in every place and at every time.
- 21 Chapter XXI. It exists in no place or time.
- 22 Chapter XXII. How it exists in every place and time, and in none.
- 23 Chapter XXIII. How it is better conceived to exist everywhere than in every place.
- 24 Chapter XXIV. How it is better understood to exist always than at every time.
- 25 Chapter XXV. It cannot suffer change by any accidents [Accidents, as Anselm uses the term, are facts external to the essence of a being, which may yet be conceived to produce changes in a mutable being.]
- 26 Chapter XXVI. How this Being is said to be substance: it transcends all substance and is individually whatever it is.
- 27 Chapter XXVII. It is not included among substances as commonly treated, yet it is a substance and an indivisible spirit.
- 28 Chapter XXVIII. This Spirit exists simply, and created beings are not comparable with him.
- 29 Chapter XXIX. His expression is identical with himself, and consubstantial with him, since there are not two spirits, but one.
- 30 Chapter XXX. This expression does not consist of more words than one, but is one Word.
- 31 Chapter XXXI. This Word itself is not the likeness of created beings, but the reality of their being, while created beings are a kind of likeness of reality. — What natures are greater and more excellent than others.
- 32 Chapter XXXII. The supreme Spirit expresses himself by a coeternal Word.
- 33 Chapter XXXIII. He utters himself and what he creates by a single consubstantial Word.
- 34 Chapter XXXIV. How he can express the created world by his Word.
- 35 Chapter XXXV. Whatever has been created is in his Word and knowledge, life and truth.
- 36 Chapter XXXVI. In how incomprehensible a way he expresses or knows the objects created by him.
- 37 Chapter XXXVII. Whatever his relation to his creatures, this relation his Word also sustains: yet both do not simultaneously sustain this relation as more than one being.
- 38 Chapter XXXVIII. It cannot be explained why they are two, although they must be so.
- 39 Chapter XXXIX. This Word derives existence from the supreme Spirit by birth.
- 40 Chapter XL. He is most truly a parent, and that Word his offspring.
- 41 Chapter XLI. He most truly begets, and it is most truly begotten.
- 42 Chapter XLII. It is the property of the one to be most truly progenitor and Father, and of the other to be the begotten and Son.
- 43 Chapter XLIII. Consideration of the common attributes of both and the individual properties of each.
- 44 Chapter XLIV. How one is the essence of the other.
- 45 Chapter XLV. The Son may more appropriately be called the essence of the Father, than the Father the essence of the Son: and in like manner the Son is the virtue, wisdom, etc., of the Father.
- 46 Chapter XLVI. How some of these truths which are thus expounded may also be conceived of in another way.
- 47 Chapter XLVII. The Son is the intelligence of intelligence and the Truth of truth.
- 48 Chapter XLVIII. How the Son is the intelligence or wisdom of memory or the memory of the Father and of memory.
- 49 Chapter XLIX. The supreme Spirit loves himself.
- 50 Chapter L. The same love proceeds equally from Father and Son.
- 51 Chapter LI. Each loves himself and the other with equal love.
- 52 Chapter LII. This love is as great as the supreme Spirit himself.
- 53 Chapter LIII. This love is identical with the supreme Spirit, and yet it is itself with the Father and the Son one spirit.
- 54 Chapter LIV. It proceeds as a whole from the Father, and as a whole from the Son, and yet does not exist except as one love.
- 55 Chapter LV. This love is not their Son.
- 56 Chapter LVI. Only the Father begets and is unbegotten; only the son is begotten; only love neither begotten nor unbegotten.
- 57 Chapter LVII. This love is uncreated and creator, as are Father and Son; and yet it is with them not three, but one uncreated and creative being. And it may be called the Spirit of Father and Son.
- 58 Chapter LVIII. As the Son is the essence or wisdom of the Father in the sense that he has the same essence or wisdom that the Father has: so likewise the Spirit is the essence and wisdom etc. of Father and Son.
- 59 Chapter LIX. The Father and the Son and their Spirit exist equally the one in the other.
- 60 Chapter LX. To none of these is another necessary that he may remember, conceive, or love: since each taken by himself is memory and intelligence and love and all that is necessarily inherent in the supreme Being.
- 61 Chapter LXI. Yet there are not three, but one Father and one Son and one Spirit.
- 62 Chapter LXII. How it seems that of these three more sons than one are born.
- 63 Chapter LXIII. How among them there is only one Son of one Father, that is, one Word, and that from the Father alone.
- 64 Chapter LXIV. Though this truth is inexplicable, it demands belief.
- 65 Chapter LXV. How real truth may be reached in the discussion of an ineffable subject.
- 66 Chapter LXVI. Through the rational mind is the nearest approach to the supreme Being.
- 67 Chapter LXVII. The mind itself is the mirror and image of that Being.
- 68 Chapter LXVIII. The rational creature was created in order that it might love this Being.
- 69 Chapter LXIX. The soul that ever loves this Essence lives at some time in true blessedness.
- 70 Chapter LXX. This Being gives itself in return to the creature that loves it, that that creature may be eternally blessed.
- 71 Chapter LXXI. The soul that despises this being will be eternally miserable.
- 72 Chapter LXXII. Every human soul is immortal. And it is either forever miserable, or at some time truly blessed.
- 73 Chapter LXXIII. No soul is unjustly deprived of the supreme good, and every effort must be directed toward that good.
- 74 Chapter LXXIV. The supreme Being is to be hoped for.
- 75 Chapter LXXV. We must believe in this Being, that is, by believing we must reach out for it.
- 76 Chapter LXXVI. We should believe in Father and Son and in their Spirit equally, and in each separately, and in the three at once.
- 77 Chapter LXXVII. What is living, and what dead faith.
- 78 Chapter LXXVIII. The supreme Being may in some sort be called Three.
- 79 Chapter LXXIX. This Essence itself is God, who alone is lord and ruler of all.