Scholasticism and the assimilation of Aristotelian ideas into Christianity sparked a renewed interest to reconcile faith and reason. The ontological argument proceeds from the idea of God to the reality of God. It was first clearly formulated by St. Anselm in his Proslogion. Anselm began with the concept of God as that than which nothing greater can be conceived. To think of such a being as existing only in thought and not also, in reality, involves a contradiction since a being that lacks real existence is not a being than which none greater can be conceived. A yet greater being would be one with the further attribute of existence. Thus the unsurpassable perfect being must exist; otherwise, it would not be unsurpassable perfect. This is among the most discussed and contested arguments in the history of thought.
Evidently, as a logical argument, this seems flawed and many contemporaries – such as Gaunilo of Marmoutiers argued that this could prove the existence of anything. Philosophers after Anslem, notably Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant expressed that while the argument symbolizes a notion of God’s existence it fails to prove the existence itself.
