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Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 10
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,…
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Ratzinger vs. vicarious atonement?
Continuing with the Holy Week theme, Pontifications has posted an excerpt from then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity that seems quite opposed to the traditional idea of vicarious atonement: In the Bible the Cross does not appear as part of a mechanism of injured right; on the contrary, in the Bible the Cross is quite the…
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Denying penal substitution ≠ heresy
This radio talk by Anglican priest Jeffrey John attracted the usual accusations of liberal heresy before it was even actually broadcast, but upon reading the transcript I don’t see anything particularly unorthodox. Granted John takes issue with the theory of penal substitution, but he’s hardly the first to do so, and the universal church hasn’t…
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Notes on Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo: 9
Okay, the argument so far: Anselm has contended that humankind has fallen into sin by failing to render to God the honor due him (i.e. obedience). As a result we threaten to fail to acheive God’s intended purpose for us, namely, being part of the “celestial estate” and consequently we disrupt the order and beauty…
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Animal time travelers
Here’s a NY Times article on some recent research which seems to indicate that at least some animals have a sense of the past and the future. The general trend of research in these areas seems to be toward showing that the mental lives of animals are more complex than has often been thought. This…
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Oakes on Girard, Balthasar, and Atonement
Fr. Edward T. Oakes has a rumination on Rene Girard and the Atonement over at the First Things blog. I’ve only read Girard’s I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, but found it very thought-provoking. However, I think Fr. Oakes is on to something when he points out that Girard can’t make sense of the traditional…
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Children of Men
Warning: spoilers ahoy! When I first read P.D. James’s Children of Men back in January I wondered how in the world they’d managed to make a Hollywood movie out of it. After all, here’s a book where the heroes are a band of Christian terrorists, the villain is an overweening government that subsidizes euthanasia, and…
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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…
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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…
