medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dennis Martin" <[log in to unmask]>
> I might add that before blaming Anselm for a false juridicism etc. one
> ought at least to read Richard Southern's _Saint Anselm: A Portrait in a
> Landscape_ on Cur Deus--"justice" (righteousnesss) as order, harmony,
> beauty, not merely as a courtroom concept. Eastern polemics against
> Anselm and the West also fail to take adequate account of, say,
> Athanasius's language in _De incarnatione_.
Reading "De Incarnatione" I have never thought that Athanasius is building a
case for the Atonement theory. He seems to focus on the usual Eastern
themes of deliverance from death and the devil and not from the divine
justice which required the sacrifice of a divine being to effect deliverance
from God the Father 'quis voluist immolatione placari.'
"The Word perceived that corruption could not be got rid of, otherwise than
through death..."
"...yet He Himself, as the Word, being immortal and the Father's Son, was
such as could not die. For this reason, therefore, He assumed a body capable
of death, in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all,
might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all, and, itself remaining
incorruptible through His indwelling, might thereafter put an end to
corruption for all others as well, by the grace of the
resurrection.
"It was by surrendering to death the body which He had taken, as an offering
and sacrifice free from every stain, that He forthwith abolished death for
His human brethren by the offering of the equivalent."
--St. Athanasios, "On the Incarnation."
From Frederice Matthewes-Green:
Many of my correspondents don't know this history [of the notions of
soteriology in the Early Middle Ages and earlier] and insist instead that
the Blood Atonement theory is the earliest. It just isn't so. They believe
this because they find evidence for it in the Scriptures, but as I've said,
this is a matter of your favorite Scriptures lighting up for you, in accord
with how you've been taught.
The appearance in history of the Blood Atonement, or Substitutionary,
theory can actually be located pretty precisely, in the work "Cur Deus
Homo?" ("Why Did God Become Man?") by Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury, in the
11th century. Anselm's idea is foreshadowed in some earlier writers, like
Tertullian, but it was not the general view.
The general view of the early church was not as crisp, as thorough, as
Anselm's. And this is why Catholic and Protestant theologians have seen
Anselm's theory as a great advance. Henry Bettenson, in his anthology
"Documents of the Christian Church," calls "Cur Deus Homo," "one of the few
books that can truly be called epoch-making."
Catholic and Protestants have never claimed that Anselm's Blood-Atonement
theory is the earliest; they've said it is the best. It was a breakthrough.
That implies something else came before.
Anselm's theory, as we know, is that our sins create an overwhelming offense
against God's honor, a debt. God cannot merely excuse this offense and wipe
the debt away, because it constitutes an objective wrong in the universe;
justice would be knocked out of balance. There must be punishment.
Anselm: "Let us consider whether God could properly remit sin by mercy alone
without satisfaction. So to remit sin would be simply to abstain from
punishing it. And since the only possible way of correcting sin, for which
no satisfaction has been made, is to punish it, not to punish it is to remit
it uncorrected. But God cannot properly leave anything uncorrected in his
kingdom. Moreover, to remit sin unpunished would be treating the sinful and
sinless alike, which would be incongruous to God's nature. And incongruity
is injustice. It is necessary, therefore, that either the honor taken away
should be repaid, or punishment should be inflicted."
He goes on to say that "no sinner can make" complete satisfaction for sin.
"None can make this satisfaction except God. And none ought to make it
except man...One must make it who is both God and man."
Because Christ did not deserve to suffer for us, but paid the debt
voluntarily, he "ought not to be without reward...If the Son chose to make
over the claim he had on God to man, could the Father justly forbid him
doing so, or refuse to man what the Son willed to give him?"
I think most of you will recognize this. It is the standard view of
traditional Catholics and Protestants.
During the Enlightenment theologians began to criticize this theory as
legalistic, as too rooted in the Old Testament and not enough in the New, as
portraying a God who hardly seems to be one of love. They began to develop
an alternative theory which was little concerned with punishment of sin;
instead, Christ's sacrifice was meant to move and inspire, so that we
voluntarily return to God, and God is moved to reconcile with us. This
theory is called "exemplary" because Jesus is the example rather than the
sacrifice. It's proponents claimed to root their view in Abelard, a younger
critic of Anselm. The big debate in the 19th century cast these two views as
"objective" and "subjective."
Because of this, conservative Christians in the West are disposed to see any
attack on the Substitutionary theory as a move toward liberalism.
That is not so. There is a whole third viewpoint, which prevailed throughout
the first millennium, and continues outside Western Christianity
today.
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