Anselm's Proslogion as a Theology of Prayer: Complementary to Kant's Moral Lawgiver Argument

The traditional use of Anselm’s ontological argument as an apologetic is a misappropriation. Anselm’s Proslogion is a work about the spiritual discipline of prayer as an active recollection of the imago Dei, the realization of which is constitutive of divine understanding. For divine understanding to be predicated on prayer means faith and reason are fundamentally linked. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the parallels between this reading of Anselm and Kant’s moral lawgiver apologetic.