A Thinking Reed

Category: Theology & Faith

  • 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 his designs; far more is it impossible, on account of the same unfitness, that no man should be exalted to that state for which he was made. Therefore, a satisfaction such as we have above proved necessary for sin, must be found apart from the Christian faith, which no reason can show; or else we must accept the Christian doctrine. (Bk. One, Ch. XXV)

    Let’s put it in more prosaic terms:

    1. If God were to elevate man to eternal happiness with any “stain upon him,” then God would either have repented of his good intent (to make man free from stain of guilt or injustice) or God would be unable to accomplish his intention to make man free from stain.

    2. It is unfitting that God should repent of his intent or be unable to to accomplish his intentions.

    3. Therefore, God would not elevate main with any stain of guilt or injustice.

    4. The only way for man to be elevated to eternal happiness without guilt or injustice is if satisfaction of sin is made.

    5. Man is incapable of offering satisfaction for sin.

    Therefore God must make satisfaction for sin.

    Premise (1) receives support from the following considerations: Suppose, Anselm says, that God intended to bring some human beings to eternal happiness in order to populate his celestial kingdom. This is in order to replace those angels who fell and, perhaps, to make up a foreordained number of rational denizens of the kingdom. If God didn’t do this then “it will follow that God either could not accomplish the good which he begun, or he will repent of having undertaken it; either of which is absurd.”

    But, Anselm asks, “Can you think that man, who has sinned, and never made satisfaction to God for his sin, but only been suffered to go unpunished, may become the equal of an angel who has never sinned?” In other words, if human beings are truly to be co-equal citizens in the kingdom of heaven, they have to be of the same stature as the unfallen angels. But how can a human sinner, who was neither punished nor made satisfaction for his sin, be the equal of a good angel who never disobeyed God? For “truth will not suffer man thus to be raised to an equality with holy beings.” For God to treat sinners as equals with unfallen angels would be a kind of lie.

    Anselm goes on to argue by analogy that a man who had a precious pearl which fell into the mire wouldn’t replace it in its casket without first cleaning it from all defilement. Likewise, how can we say that God would elevate men to heavenly status without their first being cleansed from their guilt and sin?

    Therefore, consider it settled that, without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness, or happiness like that, which he had before he sinned; for man cannot in this way be restored, or become such as he was before he sinned. (Bk. One, Ch. XIX)

    He later asserts that “no unjust person shall be admitted to happiness; for as that happiness is complete in which there is nothing wanting, so it can belong to no one who is not so pure as to have no injustice found in him.”

    Premise (2) is to be taken as something like a self-evident truth, I think. If God repents of his intentions then his is subject to change. If he is unable to acheive his purposes he isn’t omnipotent. Either of these Anselm would regard as inconsistent with the divine nature.

    (3) follows from (1) and (2).

    (4) is a consequence of (3) and of what it means to make satisfaction for sin.

    Anselm has three distinct, though related, arguments for (5). The first is that we already owe everything we have and are to God, so we have no “surplus” from which to draw in order to make satisfaction for sin. As Boso admits, “If in justice I owe God myself and all my powers, even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.”

    The second argument is that any sin, however small, is infinite in gravity, and so nothing a finite creature could do could possible make satisfaction for even a single sin. This is becuase our obligation to God is absolute and “you make no satisfaction unless you restore something greater than the amount of that obligation, which should restrain you from committing the sin.”

    The third argument is that since man’s original task in paradise was to overcome the power of the devil by resisting the devil’s temptations and blandishments, at which he failed. This is what man “stole” from God, threatening to frustrate God’s intentions for him. And the only way to undo this act of disobedience would be a perfect act of obedience in resisting the devils temptations. But no fallen human is capable of this since “a sinful man can by no means do this, for a sinner cannot justify a sinner.”

    Here Boso objects that it seems unjust to demand of someone something (e.g. satisfaction for sin) that he is unable to provide. As Kant later said, “ought implies can.” But Anselm’s reply is that mankinds predicament, its damaged nature which is unable not to sin, is its own fault:

    Therefore, as it is a crime in man not to have that power which he received to avoid sin, it is also a crime to have that inability by which he can neither do right and avoid sin, nor restore the debt which he owes on account of his sin. For it is by his own free action that he loses that power, and falls into this inability. For not to have the power which one ought to have, is the same thing as to have the inability which one ought not to have. (Bk. One, Ch. XXIV)

    Anselm seems to be following Augustine here in holding that the guilt of our first parents’ sin, which resulted in a human nature damaged and unable to avoid (much less make recompense for) sin, is imputed to all their descendents. I personally don’t find this any less problematic here than in Augustine. However, even if we hold people responsible only for the sins they voluntarily commit, Anselm’s other arguments about our inability to make satisfaction for our various sins don’t seem seem to depend on this kind of inherited guilt. That is, we could think of it as each one of us “recapitulating” the Fall individually.

    From all this it follows that (to quote again the conclusion to the argument above):

    a satisfaction such as we have above proved necessary for sin, must be found apart from the Christian faith, which no reason can show; or else we must accept the Christian doctrine.

    I think (1) is the premise most of us are likely to balk at. Especially in the Lutheran tradition the righteousness of God is held to be displayed precisely in the justifying of sinners. This God who descends to have fellowship with sinners and outcasts is taken to be the very essence of the Gospel. Anselm’s insistence that no one can enjoy the presence of God without first being cleansed of sin and guilt seems to put conditions on God’s salvific will.

    However, it can be said in Anselm’s defense that God’s holiness can’t abide the presence of sin and that God won’t let his purposes for creation be thwarted by sin. Also, we do seem to sense the need for a cleansing of some sort. C.S. Lewis writes in defense of the idea of purgatory that we would feel a ceratin “unfittingness” being admitted to our Father’s house covered in filth and clothed with rags. Moreover, the Lutheran and Reformed traditions do emphasize the idea that there is an expiatory aspect to Christ’s work; God loves us while we were yet sinners in that Christ died for us. There is a cost to God’s saving work, but the cost is borne by God himself.

  • 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 to replace the number of angels who fell. But I now think there’s more to be gotten out of this line of thought than I’d originally thought.

    Anselm considers two possible views. The first is that there was a specific number of angels that God intended to live in heaven with him, and that his only reason for elevating some human beings to eternal life was to replace the number of angels who defected. The other possibility is that God had always intended to bring a certain number of angels and a certain number of human beings to blessedness, but that, after the fall of some angels, he had to save more human beings in order to make up the deficit. It’s axiomatic for Anselm that God has some specific number in mind: “There is no question that intelligent nature, which finds its happiness, both now and forever, in the contemplation of God, was foreseen by him in a certain reasonable and complete number, so that there would be an unfitness in its being either less or greater.”

    Anselm favors the view that God had always intended to save some humans, but that more than originally forseen will be saved in order to make up the deficit of angels:

    [I]f the perfection of the created universe is to be understood as consisting, not so much in the number of beings, as in the number of natures; it follows that human nature was either made to consummate this perfection, or that it was superfluous, which we should not dare affirm of the nature of the smallest reptile. Wherefore, then, it was made for itself, and not merely to restore the number of beings possessing another nature. From which it is plain that, even had no angel fallen, men would yet have had their place in the celestial kingdom. And hence it follows that there was not a perfect number of angels, even before a part fell; otherwise, of necessity some men or angels must fall, because it would be impossible that any should continue beyond the perfect number. (Bk. One, Chapter XVIII)

    God’s celestial kingdom would not be complete, Anselm argues, unless each nature, or at least each rational nature, was represented. Again we see that God’s purposes for creation are the context in which we need to understand Atonement according to Anselm. Leaving aside whether there is a specific number of beings that must populate heaven (though Anselm’s reasons for holding this are better than might be suspected), it shows that he conceives God as having purposes for (at least some of) his (rational) creatures: to bring them into a life of eternal communion with the divine Self. Rational nature, whether human or angelic, “finds its happiness, both now and forever, in the contemplation of God.”

    This suggests why God can’t be satisfied, so to speak, with merely punishing sin. God, on Anselm’s account, is not simply about balancing the books. He is about bringing creatures to the proper fulfillment; anything less would be a frustration of his purposes for creation. Admittedly Anselm’s juridical language can at times obscure this point. But seen in the larger context of his understanding of God and creation, I think we start to get a picture that has more continuity with certain patristic motifs such as “recapitulation.” God is interested in getting the human project back on track so that human nature can be elevated to its proper end.

  • God, animals, and rights

    Brandon has a very good post in response to the post below on animal rights. He argues for a view of rights that is grounded in justice and explicitly connected with our status as creatures of God (all of us, that is). He notes that this can be done in a quasi-Lockean manner, seeing all rights as ultimately derived from God, or in terms of natural piety based on relationship and benefits received:

    It is along these two lines, I think, that we can establish the claim that animals have at least a weak form of right. They have rights in virtue of being good creatures of God, and in virtue of being our benefactors, in however weak a sense. The problem with basing animal rights on interests is that the only interests that can establish rights are just rights, so an interest-based account, if it is to work at all, simply reduces to a justice-based one.

    I agree with pretty much all of this. In fact, it’s similar in significant ways to the case that Andrew Linzey has made for animal rights in his Animal Theology and Animal Gospel. Linzey taks about “theos-rights” – that is, the rights of God with respect to his creatures. “When we speak of animal rights we conceptualise what is objectively owed to animals as a matter of justice by virtue of their Creator’s right.”

    I think Brandon may be right that an interst-based account, as an account of why some creatures are in the “moral club” so to speak, reduces to a justice based one as he’s laid it out. Interests by themselves don’t show that they must be respected. You need some principles of justice such as equality and desert. Still, having interests – that is, having the capacity for one’s experiential welfare to be affected – seems like a sufficient indication that a creature deserves to be given some moral consideration (I agree with Brandon that it may not be necessary, and that it’s possible, and indeed likely, that inanimate creation has moral claims). It’s often, if not primarily, with respect to experiential welfare that we apply our principles of justice. I think this is why some kind of interest-based account can play a role in filling out the contents of rights. Given that animals are good creations of God, wouldn’t some description of their vital interests be necessary in order to give content to what it means to respect them as creatures of God? An animal has a vital interest in, say, not being confined or killed in virtue of the kind of creature that it is and what it means for that creature’s life to go better or worse for it. And respecting that creature’s nature strikes me as an essential component of what it means to treat it as a good creature of God.

  • 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 confusion in that he seems to say both that sin robs God of his honor and that God’s honor can’t in any way be diminished.

    In Book One, Chapter XV he addresses this directly:

    Nothing can be added to or taken from the honor of God. For this honor which belongs to him is in no way subject to injury or change. But as the individual creature preserves, naturally or by reason, the condition belonging, and, as it were, allotted to him, he is said to obey and honor God; and to this, rational nature, which possesses intelligence, is especially bound. And when the being chooses what he ought, he honors God; not by bestowing anything upon him, but because he brings himself freely under God’s will and disposal, and maintains his own condition in the universe, and the beauty of the universe itself, as far as in him lies. But when he does not choose what he ought, he dishonors God, as far as the being himself is concerned, because he does not submit himself freely to God’s disposal. And he disturbs the order and beauty of the universe, as relates to himself, although he cannot injure nor tarnish the power and majesty of God. … And so, though man or evil angel refuse to submit to the Divine will and appointment, yet he cannot escape it; for if he wishes to fly from a will that commands, he falls into the power of a will that punishes. And if you ask whither he goes, it is only under the permission of that will; and even this wayward choice or action of his becomes subservient, under infinite wisdom, to the order and beauty of the universe before spoken of. For when it is understood that God brings good out of many forms of evil, then the satisfaction for sin freely given, or if this be not given, the exaction of punishment, hold their own place and orderly beauty in the same universe. For if Divine wisdom were not to insist upon things, when wickedness tries to disturb the right appointment, there would be, in the very universe which God ought to control, an unseemliness springing from the violation of the beauty of arrangement, and God would appear to be deficient in his management. And these two things are not only unfitting, but consequently impossible; so that satisfaction or punishment must needs follow every sin.

    God’s honor is intergrally related to his creation and ordering of the universe. Considered in himself, God can’t be harmed or benefited by anything we do. This is the much-disputed doctrine of divine impassibility. Nothing can add to or take away from God’s perfection and blessedness.

    But – sin can and does deface creation. Sin is ugly in that it disrupts the order and beauty of the universe. The beauty of creation consists of each being fulfilling its purpose and contributing to the harmony of the whole. To reject that purpose is to disrupt that harmony. We might also say that sin is a lie – it speaks untruth about creation. If I sin against a fellow creature I am saying something untrue about its worth.

    So, if God were to let sin go unpunished or without satisfaction being made, he would be letting his intentions for creation be frustrated. He would be letting sin have the last word. But God can’t do this because of his goodness. Like what a feudal lord is supposed to do, God upholds the order and beauty of his realm. If he were to let his intentions for creation be frustrated by sin he would be less than fully good or less than fully powerful. To counteract sin God must do something so beautiful that it blots out the ugliness of sin. He must speak the truth about sin and about creation that contradicts the lie.

    Anselm points out that one way or another God’s will prevails. Either creatures render their due obedience to God, or make satisfaction for their sin, or are punished for their sin. But under no circumstances does sin get the last word. However, given that there is sin, Anselm thinks that there are good reasons for God to prefer satisfaction to punishment. This sets Anselm’s account of atonement apart from later views which understand Jesus as having taken our punishment on himself. In fact, he’ll go on to argue that God must make satisfaction rather than extract punishment if his purposes for creation are to be fulfilled, which, I think, has interesting implications.

  • 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 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.

  • 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 should be subject to the will of God.” Therefore, when a rational creatrue fails to subject herself to the will of God she is guilty of sin:

    This is the debt which man and angel owe to God, and no one who pays this debt commits sin; but every one who does not pay it sins. This is justice, or uprightness of will, which makes a being just or upright in heart, that is, in will; and this is the sole and complete debt of honor which we owe to God, and which God requires of us. For it is such a will only, when it can be exercised, that does works pleasing to God; and when this will cannot be exercised, it is pleasing of itself alone, since without it no work is acceptable. (Book One, Chapter XI)

    It’s not clear from this chapter alone how Anselm understands the relationship between obeying the will of God and human happiness. Is it rational to obey the will of God simply because it’s God’s will, or is God’s will for us integrally connected to our own happiness and flourishing? Anselm says elsewhere that God creates rational beings so that they can attain to eternal happiness and blessedness, so it seems likely that he will say that God’s will for us is geared toward our attainment of that goal. In other words, in failing to subject ourselves to God’s will, we aren’t simply dishonoring God, but we’re frustrating our own created purpose. I think this is important to keep in mind in order to better understand Anselm’s view on God’s honor and satisfaction which have been subject to much criticism.

  • 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 exhibiting “cosmic child abuse” and encouraging an abusive mentality in Christians.

    Contrary to some accounts of his views, though, Anselm specifically denies that God willed the death of Jesus in any direct sense. Boso asks:

    [H]ow will it ever be made out a just or reasonable thing that God should treat or suffer to be treated in such a manner, that man whom the Father called his beloved Son in whom he was well pleased, and whom the Son made himself? For what justice is there in his suffering death for the sinner, who was the most just of all men? What man, if he condemned the innocent to free the guilty, would not himself be judged worthy of condemnation? And so the matter seems to return to the same incongruity which is mentioned above. For if he could not save sinners in any other way than by condemning the just, where is his omnipotence? If, however, he could, but did not wish to, how shall we sustain his wisdom and justice? (Book One, Ch. VIII)

    First of all, Anselm denies that the Son went to his death against his will, since “the Father did not compel him to suffer death, or even allow him to be slain, against his will, but of his own accord he endured death for the salvation of men.” But Boso replies that the Son nevertheless fulfilled his Father’s will in going to his death, so mustn’t we say that the Father willed the death of the Son?

    Anselm goes on to distinguish the Son’s obedience from the consequences of that obedience. His mission, as it were, was “that, in word and in life, he invariably maintained truth and justice,” viz. what every human being owes to God. And it was on account of this that he was put to death. God doesn’t directly will the death of the Son; he wills that the Son should come into the world and lead a perfect human life. But, of course, God knew that this would lead to his death. His death, as it were, was a foreseeable but inintended outcome of his life of perfect obedience.

    God did not, therefore, compel Christ to die; but he suffered death of his own will, not yielding up his life as an act of obedience, but on account of his obedience in maintaining holiness; for he held out so firmly in this obedience that he met death on account of it. It may, indeed be said, that the Father commanded him to die, when he enjoined that upon him on account of which he met death. It was in this sense, then, that “as the Father gave him the commandment, so he did, and the cup which He gave to him, he drank; and he was made obedient to the Father, even unto death;” and thus “he learned obedience from the things which he suffered,” that is, how far obedience should be maintained. (Book One, Ch. IX)

    The gift that the Son gives isn’t his death per se, but his life of perfect obedience, the life that no other human being can offer. Still, it can be said that God wills the death of the Son in an indirect sense, as a necessary outcome of his mission:

    So the Father desired the death of the Son, because he was not willing that the world should be saved in any other way, except by man’s doing so great a thing as that which I have mentioned. And this, since none other could accomplish it, availed as much with the Son, who so earnestly desired the salvation of man, as if the Father had commanded him to die; and, therefore, “as the Father gave him commandment, so he did, and the cup which the Father gave to him he drank, being obedient even unto death.” (Book One, Ch. IX)

    Of course, even if we concede that the death of the Son wasn’t directly willed by God in the sense that he was appeased by it or required it, it still seems unjust to send an innocent man (much less the Son of God!) to his ceratin death if the same good could be obtained in any other way. This seems to be why Anselm needs a strong sense of the necessity of the Incarnation; if there was any other way for God to save us, then the price of the death of the Son, whether directly intended or not, would seem too high.

  • A Marian witness

    As today is the (transferred) Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the talk given by Bishop Steven Charleston on Marian devotion at our parish adult education forum yesterday.

    First of all, Bp. Charleston seemed like a really interesting person. He’s a Choctaw Indian who was born in rural Oklahoma and raised a Southern Baptist. In his teens he joined the Episcopal Church, later becoming a priest and then Bishop of Alaska. He’s been very involved in Native American ministry among other things, and currently serves as dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School in nearby Cambridge, MA. He came across as a very down-to-earth guy who wore his position lightly, and had a rather quiet but direct demeanor. (He was also yesterday’s guest preacher and preached a very straightforward – and short! – sermon).

    Anyway, I guess I had originally been expecting a kind of theological disquisition on Marian devotion, but Bp. Charleston’s talk was much more along the lines of an evangelical-style testimony or witness! He spoke of his own very vivid experience of the comforting presence and intercession of Mary and how he’s become something of an “evangelist” for devotion to the BVM in the Episcopal Church. I guess that’s what happens when you mix a Southern Baptist upbringing with Anglo-Catholic theology and piety!

    He also spoke movingly of Mary as a kind of salt-of-the-earth working woman, not as the rather frail figure we see in some representations, of seeing her in the faces of Mexican women working in market stalls, or of careworn mothers on the subway. He talked about his efforts to introduce Marian devotion into the very low-church ethos of his Alaskan diocese, and said that, by the time he left several parishes had installed statues of Mary.

    I actually liked this talk better than I probably would’ve if it’d been the kind of theological discussion I was expecting. Like I wrote a while ago, as important as the theology is, there’s something uniquely compelling aobut lived experience (again, assuming that it’s consistent with sound theology). So I found Bp. Charleston’s witness to be very powerful. Proudly brandishing his Rosary, he encouraged us all to mediate on how we might make room for Mary in our own spiritual lives and to share that with others.

    During the brief Q&A period I asked him what he says to people who contend that devotion to Mary risks overshadowing devotion to the Trinity. He said that, first and foremost, Mary only finds her proper place in the story of Christ; she’s not some sort of goddess figure who stands on her own. She prays with us and for us, but this is always oriented toward God. Secondly, he said that God allows us to approach him in a variety of ways, depending on our particular needs at the time. He mentioned asking for St. Francis’s prayers in his work on environmental issues as an example.

    I can see how one might interpret this as setting up “mediators” between us and God in addition to Christ, and it seems clear that, in practice, devotion to the saints has sometimes taken that form. But maybe a better way of thinking about it is that each saint, in his or her uniqueness, shows forth a part or aspect of God in a unique way, like a prisim which refracts white light into a rainbow of colors. Maybe, in asking a particular saint to pray for us, we’re trying to “plug in” to that aspect of God that they refract particuarly clearly.

  • 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 under the dominion of the devil and that Satan had acquired lordship over us. However, despite exercises this authority over humankind, Satan overstepped his bounds in killing Christ, because Satan had no rights over Christ since the latter hadn’t sinned. Thus, in illegitimately killing him, Satan forfeits his rights over the rest of us. I think it was Augustine who compared Christ to the bait on a fishhook: Satan snaps up the human being Jesus, but the divinity concealed within proves to be his undoing. A version of this theory seems to be at work in the depiction of Aslan’s death in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In betraying his siblings, Edmund has effectively made his life forfeit to the White Witch. But Aslan, agreeing to be slain in Edmund’s place deceives the Witch, who is unaware of the “deeper magic” and the fact that death will ultimately be unable to hold Aslan.

    What Anselm/Boso takes issue with is the idea that the devil has rights over humankind such that God couldn’t release us from bondage to Satan merely by fiat:

    I do not see the force of that argument, which we are wont to make use of, that God, in order to save men, was bound, as it were, to try a contest with the devil in justice, before he did in strength, so that, when the devil should put to death that being in whom there was nothing worthy of death, and who was God, he should justly lose his power over sinners; and that, if it were not so, God would have used undue force against the devil, since the devil had a rightful ownership of man, for the devil had not seized man with violence, but man had freely surrendered to him. (Book One, Ch VII)

    Anselm/Boso doesn’t deny that Satan has a certain de facto power over humanity. After the fall we are certainly in Satan’s thrall and subject to his torments. What is denied, however, is that Satan has a de jure authority over us. The devil tempted humanity by means of treachery, so he can’t have acquired legitimate authority over us.

    It’s allowed that God may justly permit the devil to be the agent of our punishment, but it doesn’t follow that Satan acts justly. “For man merited punishment, and there was no more suitable way for him to be punished than by that being to whom he had given his consent to sin. But the infliction of punishment was nothing meritorious in the devil; on the other hand, he was even more unrighteous in this, because he was not led to it by a love of justice, but urged on by a malicious impulse.” This is similar to the way in which, in the OT, God permits Israel to undergo certain hardships as a means of chastisement, without the agents of that chastisement (typically other nations) being just in themselves. God can use their malicious intentions as the agents of his justice. But they in no way have the right to do what they’re doing, just as Satan has no rights over us.

    Thus, as a matter of justice, God is in no way obliged to respect Satan’s supposed rights. Therefore the Ransom theory, while getting at part of the truth – that, in Christ, God frees us from the power of the devil – can’t be the whole story.

  • 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 be beyond my powers, but more like some ruminations informed by the text.

    The work takes place in the form of a dialogue between Anselm and Boso, his interlocutor who poses objections to the Christian docrtine of Incarnation and Atonement. The idea is to present reasons which, independently of revelation, show our need for atonement and how it can only be effected by God becoming man. The purpose is both to turn away the objections of “infidels” and to reach a greater understanding of Christian truth.

    The first objection mentioned by Boso is that it’s unbecoming for God to become human, and that “we do injustice and dishonor to God when we affirm that he descended into the womb of a virgin, that he was born of woman, that he grew on the nourishment of milk and the food of men; and, passing over many other things which seem incompatible with Deity, that he endured fatigue, hunger, thirst, stripes and crucifixion among thieves.”

    In response, Anselm immediately introduces the concept of “fittingness,” which, along with the related notion of “beauty,” plays an important role in his argument:

    We do no injustice or dishonor to God, but give him thanks with all the heart, praising and proclaiming the ineffable height of his compassion. For the more astonishing a thing it is and beyond expectation, that he has restored us from so great and deserved ills in which we were, to so great and unmerited blessings which we had forfeited; by so much the more has he shown his more exceeding love and tenderness towards us. For did they but carefully consider how fitly in this way human redemption is secured, they would not ridicule our simplicity, but would rather join with us in praising the wise beneficence of God. For, as death came upon the human race by the disobedience of man, it was fitting that by man’s obedience life should be restored. And, as sin, the cause of our condemnation, had its origin from a woman, so ought the author of our righteousness and salvation to be born of a woman. And so also was it proper that the devil, who, being man’s tempter, had conquered him in eating of the tree, should be vanquished by man in the suffering of the tree which man bore. Many other things also, if we carefully examine them, give a certain indescribable beauty to our redemption as thus procured. (Book One, Chapter III, emphasis added)

    Fittingness and beauty seem integral to Anselm’s understanding of how God orders and governs creation, which will become clearer later. For the present I think it’s helpful to note that, contrary to some caricatures of Anselm’s position, God’s love is the motive for the Incarnation. There may be some popular presentations of the Atonement which picture a vindictive God appeased by the killing of his innocent Son, but Anselm is clear that God’s love for us is demonstrated in the act of Atonement, not secured by it.