Faced with the need for some kind of satisfaction for sin, Anselm deduces that “If it be necessary, therefore, as it appears, that the heavenly kingdom be made up of men, and this cannot be effected unless the aforesaid satisfaction be made, which none but God can make and none but man ought to make, it is necessary for the God-man to make it” (Bk. Two, Ch. VI). No fallen human being can possibly make satisfaction for sin; only God can do so. And yet, it’s appropriate that a human being be the one who makes satisfaction, since “as Adam and his whole race, had he not sinned, would have stood firm without the support of any other being, so, after the fall, the same race must rise and be exalted by means of itself” (Bk. Two, Ch. VIII).
Anselm affirms the traditional Chalcedonean definition of Christ’s two natures: he is fully God and fully man. The two natures aren’t mixed and they do not compose some tertium quid neither fully God nor fully human. “For God will not do it, because he has no debt to pay; and man will not do it, because he cannot. Therefore, in order that the God-man may perform this, it is necessary that the same being should perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement” (Bk. Two, Ch. VII).
But how, exactly, does Anselm think that the God-man makes atonement for sin? We have seen that Anselm thinks that any rational creature, by its very nature, owes God perfect obedience. Humanity has failed at this, and as a consequence we now owe God our death. However, the God-man, while he owes God obedience as all rational creatures do, doesn’t owe God his death, because he hasn’t sinned. “For, if Adam would not have died had he not committed sin, much less should this man suffer death, in whom there can be no sin, for he is God” (Bk. Two, Ch. X).
The God-man, then, in voluntarily giving up his life, renders to God something which was not owed, and this gift outweighs the debt of human sin. To show this, Anselm asks Boso to engage in a thought experiment. Imagine, he says, that the God-man was standing before you and that you were told that the entire created universe would be destroyed if you didn’t kill him. Would it be right to do it? He further tells Boso to suppose that if he didn’t kill the God-man “all the sins of the world will be heaped upon you.”
Boso replies: ” I would far rather bear all other sins, not only those of this world, past and future, but also all others that can be conceived of, than this alone. And I think I ought to say this, not only with regard to killing him, but even as to the slightest injury which could be inflicted on him” on the grounds that a “sin committed upon his person exceeds beyond comparison all the sins which can be thought of, that do not affect his person.”
Anselm praises Boso for his answer and adds that “sins are as hateful as they are evil, and that life is only amiable in proportion as it is good. And, therefore, it follows that that life [i.e. the life of the God-man] is more lovely than sins are odious.” So, for the God-man to lay down his life is to offer a git that “surpasses all the sins of men.”
Recall that Anselm has said earlier that Christ was not killed by God, but that his life of perfect obedience in a sinful world led to his death. So, in what sense does he lay down his life? Anselm’s view is that death isn’t natural to human nature, but only occurs as a result of sin. So the God-man, being sinless, wouldn’t naturally have died. However, he could voluntarily give up his life and did so precisely to offer that priceless gift that “taketh away the sin of the world.”
I imagine that for us this strikes a bit of a false note. Contemporary theology has so strongly emphasized the humanity of Jesus that it sounds strange, to say the least, to say that he was somehow naturally immune to death. It seems to make more sense to say that if, somehow, Jesus hadn’t been killed by the religious and political authorities of his day he still would’ve died eventually of natural causes. Knowing what we know about human nature we no longer think of death as unnnatural, but as part of the natural process by which living things come into and pass out of being. As part of the process of life, death seems necessary.
Maybe Anselm could accept the foregoing and point out that it still wasn’t necessary for Christ to die a violent, shameful death. That is, he chose to throw his lot in with sinners, to be found among them, to be tortured as one of them, and finally killed. Might not this gift be understood to contain the saving power Anselm describes as his voluntarily laying down his life? It might be said that even if incarnation necessarily entails mortality, the Son of God, being sinless, couldn’t possibly have owed God this kind of death. And indeed, it’s this identification with sinners that gives the story of Jesus’ life and death so much of its power, it seems to me.
Of course, even given all this, we might still wonder how this gift is applied to us? How does the God-man’s life of perfect obedience, culminating in his freely offered death, reconcile us with God?
Anselm’s argument goes like this:
The Son of God’s gift of himself, his obedience, his life, and his death, is a gift that “surpasses all the sins of men,” and this unsurpassable gift earns for the Son a reward from the Father.
But, how “can a reward be bestowed on one who needs nothing, and to whom no gift or release can be made?” In other words, everything that belongs to the Father also belongs to the Son, so he has no need of reward. Yet “if a reward so large and so deserved is not given to him or any one else, then it will almost appear as if the Son had done this great work in vain.” Therefore, the reward “must be bestowed upon some one else, for it cannot be upon him.”
And what, Anselm asks, could be more proper than that the reward be bestowed “upon those for whose salvation, as right reason teaches, he became man; and for whose sake, as we have already said, he left an example of suffering death to preserve holiness?” Namely, human beings, who “weighed down by so heavy a debt, and wasting through poverty, in the depth of their miseries, he should remit the debt incurred by their sins, and give them what their transgressions had forfeited.”
The interesting thing here is that Anselm makes no mention of faith or works as necessary conditions for reaping the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice. And, if his gift of himself is so surpassing in beauty and goodness that it outweighs the entire world’s sin, why not embrace universalism? Obviously Anselm doesn’t draw this conclusion, and indeed he specifically says that there are human beings who will not be saved, but if the gift really does blot out all the sins of the world, it’s hard to see on what grounds he shouldn’t draw this conclusion. After all, if God the Son asks that the merits of his death be applied to his brethren, what grounds, apart from some inscrutable will, would there be for applying it to some and denying it to others. After all, ex hypothesi, we are all completely unable to atone for our own sins.
As Holy Week is drawing to a close I think I’m going to make this the last post on this topic. There are other topics Anselm discusses which might make worthy tangents, such as an argument for something like the Immaculate Conception, as well as his discussion of in what sense Christ is an example for us. But I’ll put that off for another time.
My goal hasn’t been to argue that Anselm provides the correct account of the Atonement (assuming we’re even capable of such a thing). But I hope I have given some indication that his thought is more complex, interesting, and even appealing than it’s often given credit for. Far from being an arbitrary tyrant, Anselm’s God is defined by his goodness, which upholds the order and beauty of the universe, and, when we had fallen into sin, finds a way to restore us to himself while maintaining that beauty and blotting out the evil of sin. The God-man is the incarnate expression of the love of God the Son for God the Father, whereby he gives himself back to the Father in a trinitarian movement that, in George Lindbeck’s words, “irradiat[es] the universe and mak[es] it a far, far better place than it would ever have been without Christ’s coming and inevitable death.”
A Thinking Reed 