An Ontological Intuition

As I never tire of saying, I am not a philosopher or theologian. But to the extent that I understand it, I’ve always thought St. Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God strange, intriguing, and unconvincing. I didn’t know until this morning that Anselm’s is not the only ontological argument, and that they all arrive by different paths at the conclusion that if we can conceive of God he must exist. When I say this seems unconvincing to me I mean in the literal sense that it didn’t convince me and I found it unlikely that it would convince anyone else.

Lately, though, I’ve been meditating on something that may be a sort of intuitive counterpart to the ontological argument: Is it possible to grasp, fully, the idea of God as Christian revelation, theology, and devotion understand him, and not believe in him? I’ve begun to suspect that it is not.