The New Theology: St. Anselm's Doctrine of Atonement

Upon these metaphors and analogies, concepts were built, first in theology and then in law.

It was in the same crucial century of the Papal Revolution, roughly from 1050 to 1150, that great systematizers of Christian doctrine,

-174- theologians in the modern sense, emerged in western Europe for the first time: St.

Of course, these men built on the works of previous thinkers, including the church fathers, especially St. Augustine (345-430), and a few outstanding Western writers of the intervening period. However, they transformed those works in a fundamental way. ²² For the previous thinkers, including St. Augustine, "theology" had meant divine wisdom, prayerful reflection on the meaning of Holy Scripture, or, more precisely, the mystical intuition of God and his attributes; to a lesser extent it had meant the interpretation of decrees of church councils and of bishops, especially concerning the sacraments. Theology in the new sense, that is, as a rational and objective analysis and synthesis of the articles of faith and of the evidence of their validity, began with the writings of St. Anselm, especially his ontological proof of the existence of God (written about 1078) and his demonstration "by reason alone" of the necessity of the incarnation (written about 1097). The new theology received an important impulse a generation later from Abelard's use of the dialectical method of reconciling contradictions in authoritative texts; thereby it became possible to explain the paradoxes of Christian faith in a manner intended to be convincing to reason and yet consistent with revelation.

The revolution in theology that accompanied the revolution in legal science rested on an analytical division between reason and faith and, in particular, on the belief that it was possible to demonstrate by reason alone what had been discovered by faith through divine revelation. This was the premise of St. Anselm's proof of the existence of God, the Proslogion, which he subtitled fides quaerens intellectum ("faith seeking understanding"), and in which he proclaimed what became the great motto of his age: Credo ut intelligam ("I believe in order that I may understand"). ²³ For Anselm, "to understand" meant to understand with the intellect, to know the reasons for, to be able to prove. Rational demonstration was considered important both for its own sake and as a means of persuading the nonbeliever, but above all as a means of maintaining the consistency, and hence the validity, of Christian dogma.

It has been argued -- by Karl Barth, for example -- that in Anselm's view rational proof meant a proof peculiar to the object of faith; and

175- therefore for the believer to address unbelievers rationally was to address them as if they shared the same theological beliefs. This interpretation neglects the fact that Anselm applied the same criteria of proof to the existence of God, or to the necessity of his incarnation in Christ, that were applied at the time __ by him and by others __ to other phenomena of experience. The ratio applied by Anselm to the divine mysteries was not, in fact, peculiar to those mysteries. It was the ratio of feudal legal concepts of satisfaction of honor and of canonist legal concepts of punishment for crime.

In dealing scientifically, so to speak, with what had hitherto been considered to be divine mysteries, knowable only when reason was wholly integrated with intuition, experience, and faith, the "rationalists" of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were driven to the objectification of general categories of thought. This was the time not only of the realists, who believed that truth, justice, humanity, righteousness, sin, and other universals had an independent existence, but also of the nominalists, who, although they insisted that universals exist only in the mind, nevertheless were compelled by the very terms of the argument to deal with them as if they had an objective existence. For the nominalists, justice and sin, for example, were categories created by the mind, mere ideas, and not external realities; nevertheless, they were capable of being studied by the mind with the same rationality, and in that sense objectivity, as other phenomena. The nominalists did not say, as the Eastern Church said, and as had been said prior to the eleventh century in the West, that justice and sin were not to be understood as universals at all, but rather as manifestations of the struggle between God and the devil for the soul of every man. In the East sin was personified, not conceptualized. Earlier Western theology, too, though it had adhered in general to the Platonic view of the objectivc existence of ideas, had nevertheless been unable to separate universal sin -- except by a personification -- from the particular sinners in whom it was found. Sin was not considered to be an entity but rather a relationship between man and God. Moreover, Man with a capital "M" -- Adam -- was not considered to be dissociable from individual men and women. Neither humanity nor sin was seen as an objective universal reality that existed apart from its concrete manifestations.

Anselm, on the contrary, was concerned in his writings to convert the mysteries of Christian faith into a logic understandable and convincing to a religiously neutral intellect. His proof of the existence of God was essentially a proof that the very thought processes of man presuppose the existence of an absolute goodness. His later and much more daring effort to prove the necessity of the incarnation went even farther: it sought

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to demonstrate by logic that the very destiny of man is a reflection of the moral and legal structure of the universe.

In Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man) Anselm set out to prove "by necessary reasons" and "by reason alone," apart from revelation -Christo remoto ("Christ aside") -- that the sacrifice of the Son of God was the only possible means by which atonement could be made for human sinfulness. ²⁴ The argument, in the briefest possible terms, went like this: God created man for eternal blessedness. This blessedness requires that man freely submit his will to God. Man, however, chose to disobey God, and his sin of disobedience is transmitted by inheritance to everyone. Justice requires either that man be punished in accordance with his sin, or else that he make satisfaction for the dishonoring of God. As for punishment, none would be adequate; at the very least, man would have to forfeit the blessedness for which he was created, yet that would only frustrate God's purpose once again. As for satisfaction, there is nothing man can offer to God that would be valuable enough to restore his honor. Thus man cannot, though he ought to, atone for his sin. God can (since he can do anything), but he ought not to. Since only God can and only man ought to make an offering which would constitute satisfaction, it must be made by a God-Man. Therefore the God-Man, Jesus Christ, is necessary, who both can and ought to sacrifice himself and so pay the price of sin, reconcile man to God, and restore creation to its original purpose.

Anselm's theory of the atonement, although never officially adopted by the church, became the predominant view in the West, not only from the twelfth to the fifteenth century but also (with modifications) in later times, and not only in Roman Catholic but also (with modifications) in Protestant thought. Moreover, it was this theory that first gave Western theology its distinctive character and its distinctive connection with Western jurisprudence.

The theory, whether or not it was consciously intended as such, was in fact an explanation of the contemporaneous liturgical development: the exaltation of the sacrament of the eucharist as the primary Christian sacrament and the interpretation of the eucharist as an experience of the real presence of the crucified Christ.

Once again, this new doctrine of atonement may be contrasted with Eastern Christian doctrine and liturgy, which is essentially similar to that which had prevailed in the West prior to the Papal Revolution. For the Eastern Church the crucifixion had then and still has no significance apart from the resurrection. The atonement is seen as part of a continuum of incarnation-crucifixion-resurrection: liturgically, the resurrection is a central part even of the celebration of the last supper. The Christian "dies and rises with Christ." Christ is seen primarily as the conqueror of death. In the Roman Catholic theology of St. Anselm, on

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the other hand, and in the Roman Catholic liturgy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, redemption was identified chiefly with the crucifixion. 25 The resurrection was explained as a necessary sequence to the crucifixion. Christ was seen primarily as the conqueror of sin.

The striking difference between these closely interrelated conceptions of Christ's mission was manifested in religious art. Since the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Roman Catholic religious art has emphasized Christ on the cross, and the stations of the cross. In contrast, the icons of the Eastern Church have typically shown the resurrected Christ "trampling down the devil and his host, raising Adam and Eve, and freeing the patriarchs from bondage." ²⁶ Similarly, Western portrayals of Christ prior to the eleventh century, even when showing him on the cross, had almost invariably portrayed him as a triumphant figure, a heavenly ruler as well as a redeemer.

Moreover, Eastern Christian art has reflected the theology of the Eastern Church, and also the theology of the West between the sixth and tenth centuries, in its emphasis on transcendence (or "otherworldliness," as it is called in the West). This is a theology centered in heaven, in man's "ascent to the infinite," in man's deification. The emphasis is on God the Father, the Creator. Christ has shown mankind the way to him. The icons reflect this. But Western theology of the eleventh and twelfth centuries shifted the emphasis to the second person of the Trinity, to the incarnation of God in this world, to God the Redeemer. God's humanity in Christ took the center of the stage. This was reflected in the papal amendment of the Nicene Creed by the proclamation that the Holy Spirit "proceeds" not only "from the Father" but also "from the Son" (filioque). ²⁸ God the Father, representing the whole of creation, the cosmic order, is incarnate in God the Son, who represents mankind. By the filioque clause, God the Holy Spirit, who is identified in the Nicene Creed with the church, was said to have his source not only in the First Person but also in the Second Person of the Trinity -- not only in creation but also in incarnation and redemption.

Thus the church came to be seen less as the communion of saints in heaven and more as the community of sinners on earth. Rationalism itself was an expression of the belief in the incarnation of divine mysteries in human concepts and theories. God was seen to be not only transcendent but also immanent. This was reflected in the more "realistic" paintings of the Holy Family as well as in the Gothic architecture which was the great artistic symbol of the new age in the West.

It was not transcendence as such, and not immanence as such, that was linked with the rationalization and systematization of law and legality in the West, but rather incarnation, which was understood as the process by which the transcendent becomes immanent. It is no accident

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that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, all three of which postulate both a radical separation and a radical interconnection between God and man, also postulate that God is a judge and lawgiver and that man is governed by divine law. Nevertheless, the distinctive features of the Western concepts of human law that emerged in the eleventh and twelfth centuries________________ as contrasted not only with Judaic

and Islamic concepts but also with those of Eastern Christianity_______ are related to the greater Western

emphasis on incarnation as the central reality of the universe. This released an enormous energy for the redemption of the world; yet it split the legal from the spiritual, the political from the ideological. Anselm's conception of the atonement was a perfect myth for the new theology. Its emphasis was on the humanity of the Son of God, who suffered death as a propitiation for sin and thereby made it right for God to forgive and at the same time gave man the capacity to accept forgiveness and hence to be redeemed.