In his well-known
article "Anselm on the Cost of Salvation,"[1]
Brian Leftow represents an argument that Anselm's student Boso presents on
behalf of certain "unbelievers" who reject the Incarnation on the
grounds of its unfittingness. That representation may be illustrated as
follows: first, let P stand for "God saves humanity without becoming
incarnate and dying for our sins, and his saving us in this way does not result
in an unacceptable balance of good and evil in the world." Now:
(1) God is perfectly wise. (premise)
(2) If God is perfectly wise, he pays no
unjustified, avoidable costs to save humanity. (premise)
(3) Therefore, God pays no unjustified, avoidable
costs to save humanity. (1, 2, MP)
(4) God is omnipotent. (premise)
(5) If God is omnipotent, then (if P is possible,
God can bring it about that P). (premise)
(6) Therefore, if P is possible, God can bring it
about that P. (4, 5, MP)
(7) P is possible. (premise)
(8) Therefore, God can bring it about that P.
(9) If God can bring it about that P, then (if God
becomes incarnate or atones, he pays an unjustified, avoidable cost to save
humanity). (premise)
(10) Therefore, if God becomes incarnate or atones,
he pays an unjustified, avoidable cost to save humanity. (8, 9, MP)
(11) Therefore, God does not become incarnate or
atone. (3, 10, MT)
Now, according to
Leftow, the most promising approach for Anselm or anyone sympathetic to his
concerns with respect to CDH is to argue against either premise (7) or premise
(9).
Leftow believes, moreover, that Anselm finally settles
for arguing against (9) rather than (7). His reason for this is that in order
to show that (7) is false, Anselm would have to argue that the following two
claims are necessarily false.
(LC): If God offers humanity salvation, he does so
via some lesser compensation for sin.
(NC): If God offers humanity salvation, he does so
without any compensation for sin.
Anselm's reply to the
first possibility, according to Leftow, is to argue that God cannot allow
humans some lesser form of compensation because this would spoil God's plan for
humanity, in which God had originally planned to make humans the equal of
angels in being subject only to himself.[2]
However, Leftow notes, on this account it is merely contingent that God does not offer humanity a lesser form of
compensation for sin. Hence, on this account, it is still possible that (7) obtains. Leftow also seems to take the line of
reasoning Anselm offers against LC as his reasoning against NC, which, if God
cannot allow humans lesser compensation because they need to have a certain
character to be the equal of the angels, it also makes sense that he would take
this as a case against NC. So, Leftow concludes, Anselm must argue against (9).
Leftow then proceeds to give two reasons for doubting (9), one of which he
claims is Anselm's.
The reason Leftow ascribes to Anselm is that although God
could have saved humanity in some other
way (in terms of absolute possibility), the way in which God chose was not unjustified, and this was because the
Incarnation was satisfactory in terms of its poetic beauty or fittingness. Here, Leftow invokes CDH
2.11 in which Anselm appeals to such criteria for showing that God's decision
to become incarnate was neither unjustified nor foolish:[3]
If a man sinned through pleasure, is it not fitting
that he should give recompense through pain? And if it was in the easiest
possible way that man was defeated by the devil, so as to dishonour God by his
sinning, is it not justice that man, in giving recompense for sin, should, for
the honour of God, defeat the devil with the greatest possible difficulty? Is
it not fitting that man, who, by sinning, removed himself as far as he possibly
could away from God, should, as recompense to God, make a gift of himself in an
act of the greatest possible self-giving?[4]
By appealing to the
criteria of fittingness or beauty, therefore, Leftow thinks Anselm can block
(9), and thereby defeat the argument Boso presents. For, even if some other
means are available by which God can offer man salvation, God does not pay an
unjustified cost in becoming incarnate and dying upon a cross for the sake of
mortal man.
But as Visser and Williams have argued, Leftow's claim
that Anselm relies on beauty or fittingness as a means of blocking the argument
against the Incarnation might be less direct. According to Visser and Williams,
Anselm does not rely on fittingness or beauty as rational support for the
Incarnation until after he has given an argument for its truth.[5]
And, here, the point of bringing such criteria to the table, they claim, is not
to give philosophical support for the Incarnation, but to show its
attractiveness once the case for its being true has been made.[6] In support for this last claim, they cite a
long passage in which Boso insists that Anselm should not rely on fittingness
or other aesthetics concerns for justifying the Incarnation until after he has made his case by argument
alone.
All these are beautiful notions, and are to be
viewed like pictures. But if there is nothing solid underlying them, they do
not seem to unbelievers to provide sufficient grounds why we should believe
that God wished to suffer the things of which we are speaking ... What has to
be demonstrated, therefore, is the logical soundness of the truth, that is:
cogent reason which proves that God ought to have, or could have, humbled
himself for the purposes which we proclaim. Then, in order that the physical
reality of the truth, so to speak, may shine forth all the more, these
appropriatenesses may be set out as pictorial representations of this physical
reality.[7]
As Visser and Williams note, Anselm does not quibble with Boso's insistence but seems to concede
to it.
Moreover, there is some reason to think that Anselm has
an alternative response against LC and NC than the one Leftow has argued that
Anselm actually provides. Leftow objects, one should recall, to the claim that
Anselm argues that it is necessary that, by his goodness,[8]
"God complete whatever he has begun in human beings" (CDH, 2.4). Here,
Leftow's claim is based on the idea that to affirm that God's goodness made it
necessary that God completes whatever God begins in humanity, Anselm would have
to rule out the possibility that either (LC) if God offers humanity salvation,
he does so via some lesser compensation for sin or (NC) if God offers humanity
salvation, he does so without any compensation for sin. And Leftow argues that
Anselm thinks LC is possibly true (and thus only possibly false), so he
acknowledges that God can possibly bring it about that humanity is offered
salvation without God's becoming incarnate.
Indeed, Anselm does seem to argue against LC in a manner
which implies that LC is only contingently false, by contending that humans are
necessary to populate the heavens, following the fall of the bad angels, and
that these humans must necessarily possess the same character as the good
angels. But he also gives another argument that, if true, implies that LC is
necessarily false. His argument that I have in mind is this: Anselm claims that
if humans sin against God, humans cannot in their sinful state, make good on
the reparation they owe God.[9]
The reason for their inability, he claims, is due to the fact that everything
they could possibly give to God as payment of their debt are things that they
already owe him. Thus, if there is no means by which man can pay off his debt,
there is no lesser, i.e., moderate, option by which God could offer atonement.
But this does not yet, of course, address the question why God cannot simply
remit the debt that man owes him.
Atonement without Satisfaction?
To the suggestion that God simply pardons the sin without
reparation, Anselm offers the following line of reasoning. One might call the
argument he gives the universal order argument. The major premise of Anselm's
syllogism is that "there is nothing more intolerable in the whole
universal creation that a creature should take away honor from the Creator and
fail to repay what he takes away."[10]
The minor premise is that "therefore, nothing is more unjust than that a
creature should take away honor from the Creator without giving it back."[11]
Assuming the syllogism is valid, then, the conclusion, of course, is that
"therefore, nothing is more unjust than that a creature should take away
honor from the Creator without giving it back."[12]
One minor difficulty for assessing the validity of Anselm's syllogism is that
it is not immediately clear from the context what he means by
"intolerable." He cannot mean "intolerable" in the sense of
fittingness or a certain poetic beauty, since he has already agreed not to
appeal to such things in arguing against "unbelievers." The other
serious alternative for "intolerable" is "injustice," and
this seems not only a sensible suggestion, but necessary if one is to connect
the major premise and minor premise. For, if God is a being of unequaled
dignity, an offense against God will count, a
fortiori, as an equaled offense or insult and thereby an unequaled
injustice.
However, this argument, although it seems convincing,
completely fails to address the question why God would require recompense at
all. For why couldn't God, being a being of unequaled mercy as well as justice,
simply forgo the requirement for satisfaction for humanity's sin? In this
regard, Anselm offers several other attempts to address the question, but most
of them do not seem successful. One reply that has already received some
attention is that in which Anselm argues that God intended to use Adam's race replace the
angels who fell from the heavens from their disobedience. In this case, these
humans would need to be virtuous in character -- the equal of the good angels who
maintained obedience to God. But this argument, as Leftow has already noted,
will imply that (LC) is only contingently false, and thus it cannot feature in
any attempt to argue that LC is necessarily false.
Another reply that Anselm gives is that God cannot simply
forgive sins because he must punish them.
To forgive a sin in this way is nothing other than
to refrain from inflicting punishment. And if no satisfaction is given, the way
to regulate sin correctly is none other than to punish it. If, therefore, it is
not punished, it is forgiven without its having been regulated.[13]
Anselm does not
immediately provide an argument for his claim that if no satisfaction is given,
the proper way to regulate a sin is to punish it. However, he does provide a
second argument that can be seen as support for this claim. His second argument
is that if God does not punish a sinner, the sinner's position will be similar
to the non-sinner's before God.[14]
But, arguably, this is a non-sequitur.
For, rather than punishing the sinner, God could simply reward the non-sinner
for his obedience and refuse to reward the sinner at all, in which case their
status would not be similar.
But perhaps there is a way of salvaging Anselm's
argument, replacing the claim that an unpunished sin would make a sinner
similar to a non-sinner before God with the claim that God's refusing to punish
the sinner would (a) put the sinner in a position of greater freedom than a
non-sinner and (b) makes sinfulness "resemble God" inasmuch as the
sinner would be subject to no law. But "subject to no law" in (b) is
ambiguous. It could mean simply "subject to no punishment" or it
could also mean "subject to no code of conduct for one's behavior."
Taken in the second sense, it seems obviously false, because the sinner is
still subject to a code of conduct for behavior (i.e., God's) in the sense that
it is still what the sinner ought to
follow in his behavior, even if he is not punished
for not following it. Taken in the first sense, moreover, it is hard to see
what precisely is wrong with a sinners' resembling God in this sense such that it
deserves punishment. And even if one concedes for the sake of argument that God
should not allow sinners' behavior to go unregulated because it makes them
similar to God, it is not clear why God could not rectify the situation by some
other means, e.g., simply not rewarding them, as he rewards those who remain
steadfast in their obedience, rather than actually punishing the sinners.
But even if Anselm's arguments fail to establish the
propriety of God's punishing sinners, it also seems that Anselm may be
overstating his case. For all he needs to show is that God cannot offer sinners
salvation in some way other than becoming incarnate, as LC tries, on the
contrary, to establish. The conclusion that God could not, without treating
them similarly, reward both sinners and non-sinners is sufficient for
establishing this claim. For, on their own, sinners cannot make recompense for
their sins, and thus, since God cannot reward them, he can either (a) leave
them as they are or (b) enact some plan to effect their rescue. But, if one
claims that God's infinite wisdom does not permit him to leave unfinished
something that he has begun -- in this case his creating the human race with
the purpose of offering them the opportunity for sharing in God's own life --
God will necessarily choose (b). Thus, having taken stock of some
possible replies Anselm could make from things he actually says, it seems he
can plausibly argue that both LC and NC are necessarily false. Against NC,
Anselm can contend that this implies treating a sinner and a non-sinner in a similar
manner, and this does not befit God. Against LC, he can argue that there is no
intermediary form of compensation that humans can give to God, because humans
do not have anything that they do not already owe to God. And because God
cannot simply pardon them without some
compensation, there is no intermediary means by which humans could satisfy
their debt to God.[15]
Possibilities for Anselm's Strategy
There are thus more options available to Anselm than
Leftow's interpretation seems to suggest. For, if the reasoning I have provided
on Anselm's behalf is sound, and my reading of him as endorsing these arguments
from other parts of CDH is correct, Anselm will have a solid case against
premise (7). But this is not all. For, in addition to attacking (7), Anselm can
also turn on (9), as Leftow recommends, and argue that while the costs involved
in God's becoming incarnate are real, they are not unjustified. Helpfully,
Visser and Williams represent Anselm's argument against (9) as follows:
(p1) Necessarily, if human beings fall into sin, God
offers them reconciliation.
(p2) Necessarily, if God does not become incarnate
and die, God does not offer reconciliation to human beings.
(p3) Necessarily, if human beings sin, God becomes
incarnate.[16]
In this connection, one
can note that the reasoning that Anselm can give against both LC and NC he can
also give in favor of (p1), so for the rest of this paper, I will take the case for (p1) as having been established. In the remainder of this paper, I will trace out
the case that Anselm makes for (p2).
Anselm's
Support for Premise (p2):
Having offered justification for (p1), an important
element of (p2) naturally follows. The element in question is that Anselm needs
to rule out the possibility that humans can, by their own aid, make restitution
to God for their sins. The simple reason for this, as we have seen, is because
their offense is against God, to whom human beings already owe everything they
have. In consequence, human beings have nothing with which to pay
God that is not already his. But, Anselm argues, with respect to the debt, it
is human beings alone who owe this debt. So humanity has brought upon itself a
debt that it cannot pay.[18]
The next step in Anselm's case for (p2) is to argue that
it is God alone who can pay this debt. In this connection, Anselm seems to begin
to make progress with his argument for (p2) with respect to some arguments he
gives for the conclusion that the debt which Adam's race has incurred against
God is such that no creature can possibly make recompense for it. In discussion
with Boso, Anselm asks Boso to consider
If you were to see yourself in the sight of God, and
someone were to say to you, "look over there," and God were to
interject, "it is totally against my will that you should look,"
consider for yourself in your own heart what contingency there is, in the
totality of things which exist, on account of which you are obliged to take
that look contrary to the will of God.[19]
Boso's response is to
concede the plain point that Anselm wants to make: no contingency would justify
anyone in taking the look, contrary to the will of God. Nor would it change the
outcome, Anselm argues, if the entire universe were laid before one, with the
ultimatum being that the universe be extirpated if one failed to look. The
seemingly clear point behind Anselm's illustration is that an insult against
God, i.e., a sin, constitutes, in turn, an infinite offense.
As for the corresponding debt such an offense generates,
Anselm seems to offer the following principle.
A. It is obvious that God demands recompense in
proportion to the magnitude of the sin.
B. Undeniably.
A. You do not therefore give recompense if you do
not give something greater than the entity on account of which you ought not to
have committed the sin.[20]
In the form he offers
it, however, Anselm's principle seems implausibly strong. For one thing, it
would imply that no one, not even God, could possibly fulfill it, since this
would require God to be greater than himself. Weakening the principle, one
might suggest that one only needs to give something equal to the entity on
account of which one has committed the sin. But even this seems doubtful. What
does it even mean to suggest that someone gives something to another equal to that person? For example, it does not seem that I need to give a
king the gift of another king in order to make recompense to him. Here, I
suggest, one should charitably read Anselm as arguing the much more modest
claim that to make recompense to someone, one must give something equal to that
person's dignity and not something equal to that person.[21]
Taken in this sense, one can contend that if God's dignity is such that it is
infinite, any offense against God will also count as an infinite offense.
The sense in which Anselm intends one to understand God's
dignity seems to be one in which honor plays an important role, and honor, it
seems, is a socially dependent concept. However, the concept of dignity, for
one, is not necessarily tied to any particular system of social relations. (For
example, many ethical systems accept as axiomatic something like inherent human
dignity, or the kind of moral value or worth someone has in virtue of their
status as a human being.) Anselm's concept of honor, moreover, does not seem
quite like a socially bound one when one regards it as interchangeable with the
concept of sin, viz, an offense against God. In this sense, one can also
understand honor or dignity as God's authority, i.e., as the moral authority
God commands in virtue of who he is. A king might (ultimately) derive his authority
to rule -- i.e., his corresponding authority to be obeyed -- from a set of
social rules or conventions that themselves presuppose a network of
interpersonal social ties, but God's authority exists just in virtue of his
moral status, as Creator and sustainer of the cosmos.[22]
Understanding God's dignity in this sense, one might
interpret Anselm as arguing that God deserves recompense in proportion to his
dignity or honor. Here, one might object that one does not judge the required
recompense of an offense just by the dignity of the being who is offended. One
also judges it in accordance to the proportion of the offense. Here, it seems,
Anselm would reply that because the offense is against God, and God is a being
of infinite dignity, any offense against God is an offense that is infinite in
value. But this seems implausibly strong in such a way that it would quickly
lead to absurd results. On this analysis, taking a nickel from the church
offering plate is equally an offense against God as Hitler's overseeing the
Holocaust. And this will not do. But, if this last point is correct, it would
seem the very concept of an infinite offense, in the sense at least that Anselm
wants to use it, will be unserviceable.
But it seems Anselm has another and, in my mind, much
more persuasive argument he can give, based on a plausible idea he has already
argued. For, given the fact that a creatures does not sin if and only if it
honors God, it seems true on Anselm's account that only an individual creature
can fulfill that creature's duty in
honoring God. For, considering that every creature in Anselm's cosmos already
gives to God everything it owes to God if and only if it gives everything it
can give, it follows that no creature can give on behalf of another creature
because no creature has any "surplus" duty or honor that it can give
to God on behalf of another creature. And this last point is all Anselm needs
to make his case that only God can give payment for man's offense.
The next point Anselm tries to establish is that the only
one who can make reconciliation for human sins is one who is both man and God.
His reasoning for this move is quite straightforward: only man owes God a debt
that he cannot pay on his own; no one but God can pay this debt; so, it is
necessary that a God-man pay it.
If, therefore, as is agreed, it is necessary that
the heavenly city should have its full complement made up by members of the
human race, and this cannot be the case if the recompense of which we have
spoken is not paid, which no one can pay except God and no one ought to pay
except man: it is necessary that a God-man should pay it.[23]
As Visser and Williams
note, Anselm's speculations concerning God's intention to fill the vacancy left
by the fallen angels with members from Adam's race it not entirely clear,
since, from the point of view of Anselm's argument, it is logically
dispensable.[24]
But his main point, on the other hand, is clear: only God can pay the debt that
man owes to God, and therefore it is necessary that God becomes man. Setting
aside the details for whether a God-man is metaphysically
possible, there is still one obstacle that Anselm's argument needs to overcome.
And that is: why it is necessary that the God-man must die in order to atone for human sins?
There are two conditions Anselm must meet to respond to
this question in a satisfactory manner. First, the merit that the God-man
attains through giving his life must be sufficient for satisfying the debt
incurred by all human sin. Second,
that which the God-man offers to God must be something that the God-man does
not owe to God in virtue of his human nature. Anselm's approach for tackling
the second desideratum is to argue that
human beings die only in consequence of Adam's sin.
A. You do not deny that rational creation was
created righteous, and was so created for the purpose of being happy in the
fact of God's delighted approval?
B. I do not deny this.
A. You will, moreover, not reckon it to be at all
appropriate for God to force a creature -- whom he has created righteous for
the purpose of happiness -- to be pitiably afflicted, in spite of an absence of
guilt?
B. It is evident that, if the man had not sinned,
God ought not to demand death from him.
A. God, therefore, did not force Christ to die,
there being no sin in him. Rather he underwent death of his own accord, not out
of an obedience consisting in the abandonment of his life, but out of an
obedience consisting in his upholding of righteousness so bravely and
pertinaciously that as a result he incurred death.[25]
The point behind
Anselm's claim is that Christ, having no sin in him, was under no obligation to
die, and thus was in the original state of righteousness that Adam and Eve
enjoyed prior to their decision to sin.
As for the first desideratum, Anselm seems to argue that
just as an offense against God causes one to incur an infinite debt, so an act
that goes above and beyond the call of duty from God also provides an infinite
surplus of merit. I have already argued that the idea that a sin against God
produces infinite debt is problematic. Does the same apply for the
corresponding idea of infinite merit on God's part? I do not believe it does.
For one, Anselm is not saying that every act on God's part is such that it
produces infinite merit; in this case, it is only acts that are supererogatory.[26]
In contrast, the correlative concept of sin, as a deficiency in what one owes,
seems incompatible with its existing in an infinite quantity, because it simply
collapses the distinction between various sins for which there seems an obvious
difference. However, given the constraints that Anselm has placed on the
concept of honoring God, there seems only one act that satisfies the definition
for a supererogatory act on God's part. And that is God, as God-man, laying
down his life when he does not owe this to God, since, for any other
conceivable act, it will be such that even Christ owes it to God, in virtue of
his being a man.
Conclusion
Thus, one is on good grounds, I conclude, for regarding (p2) as true. From this, of course, it follows that (p3) is true, assuming, as I have and have given some reason to show, that there are no difficulties with (p1). So, barring no further objections, one might provisionally conclude that Anselm's task of showing the Incarnation as a necessary means of atoning for the sins of mankind as a success (or, more modestly, at least not an obvious failure). Moreover, one interesting
feature of Anselm's CDH that I hope to have illustrated in this essay is that
just because Anselm gives one reason or explanation for a certain point he
wants to make, it might not necessarily be the best thing he has to say on that
point. Part of this dynamic has to do, perhaps, with the sort of dialogue
format in which CDH in written. But whatever the explanation, I want to make
clear that Anselm has much stronger philosophical resources at his disposal for
tackling specific questions than many commentators have seemed to believe.
Moreover, contrary
(perhaps) to even Anselm's own intentions, the concept of punishment and the
seemingly odd ruminations on God's plan to replace the fallen angels with
humanity that have attracted much attention to CDH are shown to be absolutely
inessential to Anselm's main argument. This carries some advantages. First, it
shows that Anselm's response has no necessary connection at all with later
atonement theories based on penal substitution. Second, it removes the air of
cold calculation from the persona of God as Anselm discusses him in CDC, with
respect to Anselm's speculations on God's original plan for the human race.
Thirdly, it allows into focus (though it does not make necessary) alternative
reasons for God's decision to offer atonement to Adam's race that might have
seemed incompatible with the other two explanations Anselm gives for it.
[1] Brian Leftow, "Anselm on
the Cost of Salvation," in Medieval
Philosophy and Theology 6 (1997), pg. 75.
[2] Leftow, 79.
[3] Leftow, 91.
[4] St. Anselm, 2.11.
[5] Visser and Williams, 219.
[6] Ibid.
[7] St. Anselm, 1.4.
[8] Sandra Visser and Thomas
Williams, Anselm. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 215-216.
[9] St. Anselm, 1.20.
[10] St. Anselm, 286.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] St. Anselm, 1.12.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Another point that Anselm might
offer in support of his attack against LC and NC is that God cannot offer
redemption and/or salvation to sinners because this would imply he permits them
to enjoy blessedness without their deserving this, a point which he actually
argues at one point (Anselm, 2.12). While I do not consider this a bad
approach, it would require Anselm to defend a number of points that not
everyone would likely find persuasive. One such claim is that God cannot simply
make human beings righteous despite their choices to the contrary because this
would violate their free will or autonomy. While this is not (I think) an
implausible line of response, it would not be persuasive to someone who thought
that free will was not an unconditional good or a sine qua non good for God's creating being good, and would
therefore likely end in a deadlock.
[16] Visser and Williams, 223.
[17] St. Anselm, "Why God Became
Man," translated by Janet Fairweather, in Anselm of Canterbury: The Complete Works. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 1.11.
[18] With respect to the whole of
humanity being implicated in Adam's sin, one interesting lacuna in Anselm's
argument is that he does not offer strong support for the claim. He does
address the topic in other works he wrote, so perhaps he thought this sufficient,
considering his present focus on the atonement. Nonetheless, the complete
absence of its mention reveals much, perhaps, in the gulf between contemporary
readers and those in Anselm's presumed audience.
[19] St. Anselm, 1.21.
[20] Ibid.
[21] It does not seem implausible,
moreover, to think that this is the point Anselm was trying to make. Perhaps it
was lost in the effort at translating it into English, or, alternatively, it
did not come out on paper as he intended.
[22] In this sense, God's honor or
authority would seem to fit much more closely the corresponding concept of a
right than an honor in the conventional sense in which it is understood. Just
as one has a right to be treated a certain way, e.g., not abused or mistreated,
simply in virtue of one's dignity as a person, so, too, does God have the right
too obeyed simply in virtue of being God.
[23] St. Anselm, 2.6.
[24] Visser and Williams, 222.
[25] St. Anselm, 1.9.
[26] Anselm does not address the
question whether God's becoming incarnate is a sine qua non condition of God's
performing supererogatory acts, but perhaps there is good reason for thinking
this is the case. For, as he is using the concept of something being
supererogatory, Anselm seems to have in mind something that goes beyond duties. Anselm seems to affirm
that God does not have duties, moreover, when he objects to God's forgiving
sins without satisfaction or punishment, on the grounds that it would make
sinners like God. Presumably, they would be like God in not having duties, among
other things. And if this line of reasoning is correct, it would imply that God
cannot perform supererogatory acts in the sense Anselm has in mind, unless God
is incarnate.
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