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Anselm's pursuit of joy. A commentary on the Proslogion. By Gavin R. Ortlund. Pp. xviii + 245 incl. 3 figs. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020. $75. 978 0813 23275 1
Gavin Ortlund's book is not a commentary in the strictest scholarly sense, i.e. a line-by-line analysis of the text. However, it does engage with the text in a clear and often insightful manner. The work is divided into five chapters plus an introduction and conclusion. Prior to the discussion of the text, the first two chapters are concerned with ‘method’ and ‘reception’. In chapter i, ‘The method of the Proslogion: getting beyond “The problem of Anselm”’, Ortlund discusses the question of Anselm's perceived rationalism and the relation between faith and reason in Anselm. In chapter ii, ‘The interpretation of the Proslogion: historical reception and contemporary trends’, he is keen to point us to some recent French and German scholarship that he believes has been under-appreciated amongst English-speaking scholars, singling out the work of Paul Gilbert, Yves Cattin, Georgi Kapriev and Siegfried Karl for further discussion. That said, he does not do this at the expense of engaging with a wider body of Anselmian literature. The text proper is discussed in the chapters that follow: chapter iii, ‘The purpose of the Proslogion: excitatio and argumentum in chapters 1-4’; chapter iv, ‘The structure of the Proslogion: spirals upward from chapter 5 to chapter 22’; and Chapter v, ‘The climax of the Proslogion: the Visio...