Romans 5:7-9

For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

Monday, March 22, 2010

A Comparison of Christ's Atonement in the Medieval Scholastic Period - Theological Comparisons: Anselm - 2


Theological Comparisons
Anselm
In his formulation of God’s purpose in the atonement, Anselm used an idea that nearly every Medieval European could have understood; His ideas were illustrated by the cultural practices in which he found himself imbedded. In his attempt to rationally explain the incarnation of God, Cur Deus Homo, Anselm found himself describing what the atonement meant and why God did it the way that He did. He spoke of our offence against God as being akin to the offence against a nobleman—and in the feudal structure to which they were so very accustomed, they knew all too well that the offence against one of nobility would result in the harshest kind of punishment and required the most laborious type of compensation. It was in this context that Anselm developed his understanding of the atoning work of Christ—or at least attempted to illustrate it. It should be noted that Anselm received some critique for his use of feudal terms to illustrate the glorious atonement of Christ. Some were scandalized that he would speak of God’s honor rather than His holiness, but in the view of this author, the idea presents the same result, especially for us looking back. We see Anselm’s rendering in contrast to others of his day and that being the case, we should easily stomach his use of feudal nomenclature to describe the atonement differently than the “Ransom Theory” before him.
To add nuance to this idea of God’s honor being offended as a vassal might offend his king, listen to Anselm’s own words, “B. What is the debt which we owe God? A. Every inclination of the rational creature ought to be subject to the will of God…One who does not render this honor to God take away from God what belongs to him, and dishonors God, and to do this is sin.”[i] Put positively Anselm’s theory is this, that the offence of man against God was so heinous and God’s holiness is so contrary to it that, the penalty for the offence had to be reconciled, and that reconciliation had therefore to be made by God Himself, hence His own death on a cross. One primary element of Anselm’s theory was that all persons, all humans, Christ included, owed God perfect obedience. Obviously Christ is the only One who will ever fill that demand, but Anselm’s point was that God required something over and above that He required, that Christ would die to fulfill the obligation for the forgiveness of the human race. And Christ would be rewarded with the salvation of His bride. Some extrapolated version of this formula is the current atonement theory that Reformed community and a majority of Evangelicalism regards as orthodox. We call it “penal substitution”, “substitutionary atonement”, or the “Satisfaction Theory”.


[i] Ibid. (119)


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