The major philosophical issue of the time was the nature of universals. This concerns the meaning of a word. What in the real world does a word refer to? This is easy with proper nouns (names): George, for example, refers to this person here, me myself. But what about other, more general words? What does cat refer to? This was by no means a new issue, but the scholars of the middle ages began without the benefit of nice Greek sources!

St. Anselm of Canterbury(1033-1109) was a neoPlatonist, and he is best known for his efforts at coming up with a logical proof of God’s existence -- the famous ontological proof: Since we can think of a perfect being, he must exist, since perfection implies existence.

In regards to the question of universals, he was a proponent of realism. This is not to be confused with the modern sense of realism as being in touch with reality. Realism was Plato’s perspective: There is a real universal or ideal (somewhere) to which a word refers. This usually fits in well with Christianity. If humanity is real beyond being just the collection of individual human beings, we can talk about a human nature, including, for example, the idea of original sin. If there were no such thing as humanity, if each person were a law unto him or herself, then we could hardly lay the sins of Adam and Eve on anyone but Adam and Eve!

Likewise, if God is a real universal, then there is no logical incongruity about saying he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all at once.

Mind you, the argument isn’t without problems. For example, the ultimate universal -- All -- is then logically greater than God, because All must include God and creation! But Christianity says that God and creation are separate and fundamentally different.

Anselm’s motto was Augustine’s “I believe in order that I may understand” (credo ut intelligam): Faith is an absolute requirement, and is the standard for all thinking. Truth is revealed by God, so submit yourself to the church.