A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Anselm

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 8

    Anselm spends the balance of Book One trying to defend the following argument: [I]f it is unfitting for God to elevate man with any stain upon him, to that for which he made him free from all stain, lest it should seem that God had repented of his good intent, or was unable to accomplish Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 7

    The first time I read this I thought that chapters XVI to XVIII of Book One were kind of a weird tangent. There Anselm discusses at some length whether there was a specific number of rational beings God intended to bring to eternal happiness, and, if so, whether God’s purpose in saving human beings was Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 6 (the brief version)

    I just lost a long post on the next couple of chapters of Cur Deus Homo, so this is the abridged version… The concept of God’s honor is central to Anselm’s scheme, but it has also been severely criticized and (I would argue) often misunderstood. Anselm himself may be partly responsible for some of the Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 5

    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 Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 4

    In chapter XI Anselm turns to the question of sin, since one needs to get clear on that before determining what it means to make satisfaction for sin. Simply put, sin is to fail to render to God what is due him. But what is it that we owe? “Every wish of a rational creature Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 3

    One of the most vexing questions about the death of Christ theologically speaking is whether and in what sense we can say it was willed by God the Father. Was it specifically the death of Jesus that was required to reconcile God and sinners? Looming here is the modern critique of traditional Atonement theory as Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 2

    It’s interesting that in Book One, chapters VI and VII it’s Boso who gets to critique one of the more widespread theories of the Atonement at the time of Anselm’s writing, the so-called Ransom theory favored by several of the Fathers. In a nutshell, the Ransom theory teaches that, by sinning, humankind had put iself Read more

  • Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 1

    As a sort of Lenten-ey thing I’m re-reading St. Anselm‘s Cur Deus Homo, his famous (infamous in some circles) treatise on the reason for the Incarnation and how it effects our salvation. So, I thought I would post a series of notes on things that strike me. This won’t be a systematic exposition, which would Read more