Christopher has a terrific post on St. Anselm and atonement theory. As longtime readers might know, I’m definitely in the St. Anselm-as-unfairly-maligned camp. Among other things, his view of atonement is not the same as what is commonly referred to as “penal substitution”: Anselm explicitly denies in Cur Deus Homo that God punishes Jesus in our stead. His entire scheme, in fact, is based on the notion of satisfaction as an alternative to punishment.

That being said (and here I’m riffing on a comment I made over at Christopher’s), one place where I do have trouble with St. Anselm is in his suggestion that Christ had to die as a form of reparation for our sin. As I read Cur Deus Homo, anyway, Anselm’s view is that, since all human beings (including Jesus) owe God total obedience and love, Jesus’ death was the only “surplus” he had to offer. This is because Jesus was sinless and wouldn’t naturally have died, according to Anselm; which is what makes his death a gift. So, it’s Jesus’ death, in its infinite value, that makes up for our sin. While not a penal view, as such, it does seem to be open to similar criticisms (i.e., picturing God as demanding his pound of flesh before he can be merciful).

What I suspect is that there’s a tension between that more transactional view and the “re-creative” Anselm-inspired view that Christopher outlines and which I’m quite sympathetic to. You can definitely read Anselm in a way that sees the work of Christ as a kind of restoration job on human nature, one that we participate in through faith and the sacraments. But I’m not sure how easily this sits alongside the more transactional view–which is also present–of God needing Christ’s freely offered death to forgive our sins.