Aristotle, Augustine, & Anselm

Overall I was surprised while reading Descartes' Meditations, not only because of its heavy (and in my opinion loosely proved) emphasis on the existence of God, but also because the arguments that he sets out for the reader on the dilemma of error are almost identical to those of St. Augustine and St. Anselm.  Descartes' assertion that error is the result of a "privation or lack" is a direct reference to the works of earlier Philosophers, but even so, he fails to follow through with his arguments in the satisfying way that the others do. Perhaps my uneasiness is the result of an appreciation for the obvious agenda of saints like Augustine and Anselm, and conversely a suspicion as to why a mathematician would be so effusive about God.

I expected Descartes to break from the Ancients dramatically in terms of his Meditations, which in many ways he seems to do, but to me his explanation of God can make the most sense, not when compared to the work of the saints, but compared to Aristotle. Because the word God conjures pre-conceived images and bias, I find it more helpful to view Descartes' framework in terms of Aristotle's idea of thought-thinking-itself. In this model Descartes' absolute certainty of the existence of God and suspicion of the corporeal may be resolved much more neatly.