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THE FOOLISH OF THE DE UTILITATE CREDENDI: A PARALLEL TO ANSELM'S INSIPIENS? by R. A. HERRERA (Seton Hall University, South Orange, N. J.) lt is a commonplace of Anselmian scholarship that the insipiens is essential to the movement of the Proslogion, that he effects a sort of epoché by which faith is, for a time, bracketed, and the argument is expanded into the level of understanding from its theological ground. Without his denial of God's existence, the treatise would have been aborted from the very start and Anselm would have left us, at best, another devotional tract. The Pool, however, makes an extremely hasty exit after having said his piece: he cornes on the scene in the second chapter and is no longer heard from after Proslogion IV. This disappearance has lent itself to some hermeneutic sleuthing which is not the least interesting aspect of Proslogion studies. Does the Pool leave his foolishness by admitting the existence of the necessary being demonstrated by Anselm and undergoing conversion, or does he represent that which in man is irreductible to grace, and is simply left to one sicle in the wake of the believer's ascent to God? There are many interesting possibilities of which the above represent only the extreme positions but which should for this reason be taken into account before the grey area between them is explored. Is Barth correct in his contention that Anselm has no thought of reaching an agreement with an opponent who ignores fear of the Lord, 1 or should Hayen be followed who suggests that the ' Karl BARTH, Engl. trans., A nselm: Fides Quaerens I ntellectum (Cleveland : Meridian Books, 1962), p. 104 ff.