Anthony owed a debt to Saint Augustine as a theologian, however he was very unique and original. He knew how to join the light of intelligence and the affection of the heart, the research into speculation with the exercise of virtue, and study with prayer, as his seraphic Father intended.

This method, so wisely introduced in the schools of the saint, was later recognised by Saint Bonaventura as part of the Franciscan Order.

Having reached truth through faith, Anthony, on the heels of Augustine and Anselm, incessantly used reason to "understand," to grasp the beloved truth by means of faith (fides quaerens intellectum). Believing, in the saint's opinion, is not a nirvanic abandonment, but it is the acceptance of an on-going dialectic dialogue between faith and reason, between man and God.

Anthony, the theologian, remains Anthony with deep rational needs, and is even the best Anthony. On the one hand, the need for a logical rationality leads one to the pure gratuity of the grace that reveals and saves man; on the other hand, Anthony's rationality is expressed in enthusiasm, admiration, and emotion, in the most genuine tradition of monastic theology and of Saint Bernard.

Anthony's mystical speculation is, as the saint himself defines it, a conversation or subtle speculation on heavenly truths, translated in desire and aspiration for God; the act that allows the just man to lift himself up towards the horizon of God's reality. Not a philosophical God, but the God of the true history of man, suspended between sin and grace, between salvation and perdition, between love and hate; but in whom grace, salvation and love are the things that truly count and have weight.

Anthony loved to meditate on God, not for a purely intellectual exercise. The cry "Video Dominum meum," which he used as the motto for his life, attests to this. God is the ideal that he stretched toward throughout his whole life.