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”.
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