In Book One, chapter XII the question is posed “whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of the honor taken from him.” On the face of it, this seems quite a reasonable question. After all, the Heavenly Father portrayed in, say, the teachings and parables of Jesus seems willing to forgive sins without any satisfaction being made for them. Think of the Parable of the Prodigal Son: the father not only forgives his son’s disloyalty and squandering of his inheritance, he runs out to greet him after spying him from afar, not even making penitence and contrition a condition of forgiveness. If this is, as most Christians believe, intended to be a picture of the way God deals with us, doesn’t it fly in the face of Jesus’ teaching to say that God demands satisfaction for sin before we can be forgiven? Moreover, Jesus himself freely forgives people’s sins throughout his ministry without suggesting that it’s conditional upon his sacrificial life and death, much less that they must believe that those events have saving significance in order for their sins to be forgiven. Is the idea of a God who demands satisfaction as a condition for grace not a distortion of the God revealed by Jesus?

Anselm says that to “remit sin in this manner is nothing else than not to punish; and since it is not right to cancel sin without compensation or punishment; if it be not punished, then is it passed by undischarged” and it “is not fitting for God to pass over anything in his kingdom undischarged,” therefore it is “not proper for God thus to pass over sin unpunished.”

What does he mean by saying that it’s not fitting for anything in God’s kingdom to be undischarged? Here we’re starting to get into the notion of God’s honor a little more deeply. Following this argument, Anselm goes on to say that “if sin be passed by unpunished, viz., that with God there will be no difference between the guilty and the not guilty; and this is unbecoming to God” and “Injustice, therefore, if it is cancelled by compassion alone, is more free than justice, which seems very inconsistent. And to these is also added a further incongruity, viz., that it makes injustice like God. For as God is subject to no law, so neither is injustice.”

I think that Anselm is pointing to two important ideas that will help us make better sense of his argument (I hope!). The first is a proper understanding of freedom and goodness as they pertain to God, the second is the order and beauty of creation. I’ll discuss the first here and the second in the next post.

Boso asks why God isn’t free simply to put away the apparent demands of justice that would require that sin be punished. After all,

God is so free as to be subject to no law, and to the judgment of no one, and is so merciful as that nothing more merciful can be conceived; and nothing is right or fit save as he wills; it seems a strange thing for us to say that be is wholly unwilling or unable to put away an injury done to himself, when we are wont to apply to him for indulgence with regard to those offences which we commit against others.

Anselm replies:

What you say of God’s liberty and choice and compassion is true; but we ought so to interpret these things as that they may not seem to interfere with His dignity. For there is no liberty except as regards what is best or fitting; nor should that be called mercy which does anything improper for the Divine character. Moreover, when it is said that what God wishes is just, and that what He does not wish is unjust, we must not understand that if God wished anything improper it would be just, simply because he wished it. For if God wishes to lie, we must not conclude that it is right to lie, but rather that he is not God. For no will can ever wish to lie, unless truth in it is impaired, nay, unless the will itself be impaired by forsaking truth. When, then, it is said: “If God wishes to lie,” the meaning is simply this: “If the nature of God is such as that he wishes to lie;” and, therefore, it does not follow that falsehood is right, except it be understood in the same manner as when we speak of two impossible things: “If this be true, then that follows; because neither this nor that is true;” as if a man should say: “Supposing water to be dry, and fire to be moist;” for neither is the case. Therefore, with regard to these things, to speak the whole truth: If God desires a thing, it is right that he should desire that which involves no unfitness. For if God chooses that it should rain, it is right that it should rain; and if he desires that any man should die, then is it right that he should die. Wherefore, if it be not fitting for God to do anything unjustly, or out of course, it does not belong to his liberty or compassion or will to let the sinner go unpunished who makes no return to God of what the sinner has defrauded him.

Anselm is taking one side of the debate going back at least to Plato’s Euthyphro, namely, whether God (or the gods) will things because they’re good, or are they good because God wills them? In the terminology of a later debate this is the question of voluntarism vs. non-voluntarism. Anselm is clearly a non-voluntarist: God is not free to will what is evil or unjust. Not because God is constrained by something “external” to himself, but becuase the divine nature is such that it is identical with goodness, and that nature, being necessary, can’t be otherwise than it is. This is the classic Christian solution to Plato’s dilemma. So, for God to ignore the dictates of justice would be contrary to the divine nature itself and therefore not just wrong but impossible in the strongest sense.