Pope St. Leo the Great: The Contemplation of the Lord's Passion

            Anyone who has a true devotion to the passion of the Lord must so contemplate Jesus on the cross with the eyes of his heart that Jesus' flesh is his own.

            Let earth tremble at the torments of its Redeemer, let the rocks of faithless hearts be split, and, now that the mighty obstacles have been shattered, let those leap forth who were weighted down by the tombs of mortality. May signs of the future resurrection appear now in the holy city, that is the Church of God and hearts experience that which our bodies will undergo.

            The victory of the cross is denied to none of the weak; there is no man who cannot be helped by the prayer of Christ. For if his prayer aided the multitudes who raged against him, how much more does it help those who turn to him?

            Ignorance has been taken away, difficulties have been made easier, and the sacred blood of     Christ has extinguished the flaming sword which blocked the way to life. The darkness of the former night has given way to the true light.

            The Christian people are invited to share the riches of paradise, and the road back to the fatherland they lost has been thrown open once more to all who have been reborn, unless anyone closes for himself that way which the faith of the thief was able to open up.

            The activities of this present life must not fill us with anxiety or pride, so that we do not strive with all the powers of our soul to be conformed to our Redeemer in the way that he showed us. He performed and suffered everything necessary for our salvation, so that the power which was in the head [Christ] might also be found in the body.

            Indeed, what man was left deprived of his mercy, except the unbeliever, by that taking of our substance in the divinity, whereby, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us? Who does not share a common nature with Christ if he has accepted him who assumed our humanity, and has been born by that Spirit by which he was begotten? Again, who would not recognize his own infirmities in him? Who would be unable to see that taking food, resting in sleep, being troubled by grief, and weeping in love, are the marks of the form of a servant?

            Because humanity needed to be cured of its ancient wounds and cleansed of the filth of sin, the only begotten Son of God became the son of man too, lacking nothing of the reality of manhood and nothing of the fullness of divinity.

            That belongs to us which lay lifeless in the tomb, rose again on the third day, and ascended above all the heights of heaven to the right hand of the glory of the Father. If we follow the way of his commandments, and are not ashamed to confess how great a price he paid for our salvation, in bodily humility, we too shall come to share in his glory. For what he predicted shall be fulfilled clearly, 'everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven.' 

(Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 15 on the Passion, 3-4)

More Strawson and Evans (from the series "Logic Lane":

Another video with Strawson and Evans. This one is on "Language and Creativity." My thanks to my friend Gaven Kerr from posting this some time ago: 
 
Strawson and Evans II

A Reply to an Objection Against the Agent-Causal Version of Libertarian Free Will

            In the following, I spell out an objection to the agent causality theory of libertarian free will. I then address the objection. But, first, I should say just a little about the theory itself. Proponents of agent causality contend that, pace typical views of causality, causal relata are not always or exclusively just events. It might be the case that the only things that can be caused are events, but this does not imply that all causes must be events. It is also possible, they will insist, that things can sometimes act as causes as well. In particular, agents are such things that can act as causes. Take a case in which someone moves his hand. In this such case, an event in your brain, e, sends a signal to your muscles telling them to move in such and such a way. Moreover, e is not caused by any other events, because it is caused by something that is not an event, i.e., the person moving his hand. As it applies to free will, the basic motivation behind the theory is not hard to figure out. Proponents of the view want to argue that agents, in the sense of free agents, act such as to cause e, but are not caused to cause e. That is, free agents are directly responsible for causing e.

            Now, the objection I have in mind is this: imagine the following case. Yasmine asks Imran to pass the salt, and Imran immediately responds and does so. If there is such a phenomenon as agent causation, this, surely will count as an example of it, i.e., an example of a case in which Imran causes his own action. But it also seems clear that in this case there is an event outside of the agent that also causes the relevant action. For Yasmine's asking Imran to pass the salt seems like an event; it is most certainly not a thing, and thus not possibly an agent.

            My preliminary to my response to this objection is that it is not immediately clear that 'cause' is used in the exact same sense in the case (a) in which Yasmine asks Imran to pass the salt and in the case (b) in which Imran passes the salt to Yasmine. In any case, it is clear that the proponent of agent causality would want to claim that

(EC) For any persons x and y and any time t and any act a, if x can act upon y at t in such a way as to causally influence y to do a at t, then x is a cause of y's doing a at t. 

For it seems obvious that many things in the world act upon other things in such a way as to causally influence these things in various ways, and in causally influencing the thing in question, they are said to be causes of the effects which the thing brings about. In the present case, the proponent of agent causality would have to say that the agent x acts upon y by producing an event, e, that causes y to do a. Here, it is not enough simply to say that x causes y to do a, because the intermediary through which x causes y to do a is e. And if e does not cause y to do a, it is not the case that x causes y to do a. But, clearly, one wants to say that x causes y to do a; so one must say that e causes y to do a. 

            So, here, there are two responses, I think, that the proponent of agent causality could make. First, he could insist that at least some causal relata are such that they take place directly between things, i.e., in this case, x acts directly on y at t such as to cause y to do a. Now this response does not strike me as an implausible one, and, ideally, it is probably the one I favor. It seems clear, however, that not all philosophers would accept the stronger principle this reformulation implies, so, without the time to defend this move in depth, I will here work towards a more modest strategy. This leads me to the second potential response a proponent of agent causality could make, which is to argue that the critic's claim that the event, e, is a cause of y's doing a relies on an equivocation.

            Towards beginning to work towards this second response, one thing to point out is that it is clearly not true that x's causing y to do a is a determining cause of y's doing a. Taking into consideration one factor that philosophers consider relevant in assessing whether something is a determining cause, one should note that (1) it is not the case that x's causing y to do a does not entail, with a proposition that is true at t, that y does a. Nor is x's causing y to do a sufficient with the laws of nature and the previous states of the universe prior to the present time t, to cause y to do a. So the sense of 'cause,' as it is used in the example, seems clearly different than that which would pose potential difficulties for y's freedom with respect to whether y does a at t. But, of course, the objection was not that e's causing y at t inhibited y's freedom; it was that e's causing y to do a at t should not be true at all. What should be true is that y causes a full stop, with no further causal relata entering into the picture.

            But, as I suggested, the proponent of agent causality should here insist that there is an equivocation between 'cause' in each of the two cases, between e's causing y to cause a and y's causing a, as an agent. What sense, then, if this is true, is e a cause of y's causing a? Here, a plausible suggestion is that e causally influences y such that y causes a. Causal influence can here be taken in one of three senses:

(a) x's causally influencing y through an event, e, at a time t is necessary for y's doing a.

(b) x's causally influencing y through an event, e, at a time t is sufficient for y's doing a.

(c) x's causally influencing y through an event, e, at a time t is neither necessary nor sufficient for y's doing a.

In a situation like (a), x's causally influencing y through e at t is necessary in the sense of being a necessary condition for y's doing a at t. Examples of what a might include in (a) are the following: x's giving b a boost to reach something y could not reach at t without x's help; x gives y a piece of information at some time t that y requires for doing a at t; x asks y to do a at t such that y could not have done a at t in the absence of x's asking him.

            The last option here, of course, is supposed to represent the kind of case in which Yasmine asks Imran to pass the salt. A moment's reflection, however, will reveal that Yasmine's asking Imran to pass her the salt cannot be a necessary condition for Imran's passing the salt. For, though it would be admittedly bizarre, Imran might decide that Yasmine's food needs more salt, and accordingly, and without her request, passes her the salt. Perhaps, more plausibly, Imran realizes that Yasmine has not included any salt in her food -- perhaps she simply forgets. Being the gentleman that he is, Imran accordingly passes Yasmine the salt. For, for at least the sort of case directly under consideration, it is not true that Yasmine's asking Imran to pass the salt is a necessary condition for his passing it.

            In a situation like (b), x's causally influencing y, through an event, e, at a time t is by itself a sufficient condition for b's doing a at t. This would include such activities as x's hypnotizing y at some time prior to t and then commanding y to do a at t. Or, alternatively, it might include x's using a machine by which x effectively assumes control of b's body, and thus of all of b's bodily actions. Or, perhaps, it might include x's uttering a specific word in y's presence with the full knowledge that if x affects y thusly at t, y will do a at t. In any of these cases, it is obvious, y is in no way free with respect to his doing at at t. But this seems to satisfy the condition I discussed earlier in which a's action joined with the truth of the proposition:

(LF): if x makes is true at some time t that y does a at t, then y does a at t,

seems to logically entail that y does a at t. But this does not, obviously, give an accurate account of what takes place with respect to Yasmine's requesting of Imran that he pass her the salt. For it is clearly not true that Yasmine's requesting of Imran that he pass her the salt is not a sufficient cause of Imran's passing Yasmine the salt. No theory should have this consequence if one is to regard it as a plausible account of free agency; nor is there anything that compels the proponent of agent causality to say that Yasmine's asking Imran to pass the salt is a sufficient condition of his passing her the salt.

            That leaves the remaining situation one has to consider as (c). And in (c), x causally influences y, through an event, e, such that it is true that x causes y to do a at t, but x's causing y to do a at t, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of y's doing a at t. But in what sense, then, is it true that x causes y to do a? One way in which is seems possible to say that 'x causes y to do a' is true in the sense of (c) is that, in affecting y through e, x gives y a reason in virtue of which y does a at t. In this sense, I submit, there is nothing that would force one to say that x acts on y, through e, in the sense of x's causing y to act is anything like the sense of 'cause' involved in either sense (a) or sense (b). x's giving y a reason to do a at t, in other words, is just not the sort of cause that satisfies either (a) or (b). For, as most philosophers I think will agree, a genuine cause in the sense that one generally uses the term will include either (a) or (b). In no case, I submit, will it include (c), unless one uses 'cause' in a very broad sense to include something like 'explanation.'

            And it does seem that reasons for acting count as causes in the broad sense of a cause. Here, perhaps, one might bring Aristotle's distinction between causes in the sense of explanations to the fore. 'Cause' as I have in mind here would seem to fit nicely with what Aristotle would term a 'final cause'  in the sense of the object that an agent wills in acting for some good. I find this distinction between causes in Aristotle's sense here to be helpful, but I don't think anything of ultimate importance hinges on it with respect to what I want to argue here. So, again, lacking causal efficacy in the sense of either (a) or (b), there is a definite sense in which a cause in the sense of (c) is not a cause in the same sense in which (a) and (b) are causes. Yasmine's asking Imran to pass the salt is neither necessary, in the sense of being a necessary causal condition, nor a sufficient cause of Imran's passing the salt. And, in this sense, 'reason' in the sense of a 'reason for acting' seems to fit the bill well for something that does not fall into either category of (a) or (b).

            Granting that this is right, however, there still seems one last obstacle to the proposal I want to make. Typically, proponents of agent of causality have wanted to affirm that an agent's wiling a is sufficient for the agent's doing a. But this faces an obvious objection. If an agent's willing a is sufficient for the agent's doing a, then there is not anything that could obstruct the agent from doing a if it was in his power to will a. And this is clearly false. Nor is it enough for the proponent of agent causality to amend the account by stipulating that the agent's willing a is typically sufficient for the agent's doing a, as this simply translates to the claim that the agent's willing a is not sufficient for the agent's doing a.

            One possibility here is that, borrowing from J.L. Mackie's more general account of causality, the proponent of agent causality can say that the agent's willing a is a necessary condition that, with all other necessary conditions for the agent's doing a at t, is sufficient for the agent's doing a at t. And this last suggestion seems to me prima facie plausible. But taking this account seriously, one would have to revise one's judgment and then treat e's causally affecting y as a necessary condition for y's doing a at t. Does this, then, not concede that e is a cause of y's doing a in the sense of (a)?

            I do not believe so. All that is needed for the proponent of agent causality to say is that there is some reason that is a necessary cause for y's doing a at t. That the reason turns out to be Jasmine's asking Imran to pass her the salt is incidental to Imran's passing her the salt. That is, it is still not a necessary condition for Imran's passing her the salt, and so the original judgment I made about the event in which Jasmine asks Imran to pass her the salt can still be classified under (3) and not (1) So, having argued thus, I conclude there is a good case to be made that the sense in which 'cause' is being used with respect to the original objection that Yasmine's asking Imran to pass the salt rests on an equivocation between 'cause' in the sense of (a) or (b) and a distinct sense of 'cause' in the sense of (c). And, as I have spelled it out and I hope have made clear, the two senses are distinct.           

P.F. Strawson and Gareth Evans on Truth

Two very good "old-school" analytic philosophers on truth: 

Strawson and Evans on Truth.

Wainwright and Alston on 'Mystery' in the Philosophy of Religion

        "For my thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord." (Isaiah 55:8)

            Here's a quote I ran into earlier today from William J. Wainwright in his essay "Theology and Mystery," from The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, (pg. 80). I don't have any immediate reflections on this quote or this topic in general that would be worth writing down. But I will say that this is something that's been on my heart for some time. And the concern Wainwright and Alston share is one that I've been somewhat sympathetic to for for a good while, now:

"The most important reason for mystery, however, may be this. William Alston begins his recent 'Two Cheers for Mystery,' by observing that 'contemporary Anglo-American analytic philosophy of religion exhibits 'a considerable degree of confidence in its ability 'to determine what God is like; how to construe his basic attributes; and what his purpose, plans, standards, and values and so on are.' No one 'thinks we can attain a comprehensive knowledge of God's nature and doings. But on many points, there seems to be a widespread confidence in our ability to determine exactly how things are with God.' And, of course, the more confident one is, the less one will see any need for according the concept of mystery a central place in one's reflections on God. But what if failing to do so distorts these reflections ..."

Aquinas on the Distinction Between 'Esse' and Essence: A Brief Reply to Kenny

           In his book Aquinas, while discussing Aquinas's conception of being, Anthony Kenny rightly raises a question concerning one portion of the coherence of Aquinas's account. In particular, his objection has to do with the very idea of the distinction between esse and essence. One may state it as follows. Part of Aquinas's account, that of God conjoining a creature's essence with an individual act of existence raises the question of what exactly it is that God does when he creates something, i.e., when he brings something into being ex nihilo, to use the traditional term.

            It cannot be the case that he actualizes a passive potency in a non-existing essence; for, in this case, there is no 'thing' there for him to actualize. That is, it cannot be

... that long before Adam and Eve were created there already were such things as the essence of Adam and the essence of Eve; and that the creation of Adam and Eve consisted precisely in God's giving existence to these essences, actualizing their potentialities.[1]
 

Moreover, even if one were to concede that it were possible for God to actualize a non-existing potency, whatever this would involve, Kenny could also object that the idea is still incoherent, since there is no actualization, he can claim, without individuation.

            Here, however, Kenny might be too quick in assuming that this is the only way that God, according to Aquinas, could bring about the state of affairs in which some thing goes from non-existing, i.e., being merely potential with respect to existence, to actually existing. For perhaps it makes sense to distinguish between God's bringing it about that the essence of Adam goes from potentially existing to actually existing and God's bringing it about that Adam himself goes from potentially existing to actually existing. Surely, if God can as much as form the concept of Adam, God can bring it about that Adam begins to exist. It is true that in this case God does not conjoin the pre-existing essence of Adam to an individual act of existence, but the reason for this should not be hard to figure out.

            For Aquinas holds that a substance, in the sense of an individual material substance, is individuated by its matter. And if a substance is individuated in this way, the 'essence' of Adam does not and cannot exist in such a way that it preexists its matter. For it is precisely in virtue of its matter that it is made into the very individual thing (of a certain species) that it is. But while the 'essence' of Adam cannot exist without Adam's (the form-matter composite's) first existing, there do not seem to be similar obstacles to one's claiming that the concept of Adam exists such that one can actualize the thing that (if it existed) would correspond to that concept, i.e., Adam.

            One way in which God could bring about Adam's existence would involve God's bringing Adam into existence wholesale. In this case, God simply creates a man with such and such features in such and such a way that this individual matches the concept of Adam that God forms in his mind. Alternatively, God could bring Adam into being by creating an individual human soul or form and conjoining it to an individual piece of matter that is sufficient for forming the characteristics and qualities that God wants Adam to have. One potential worry about this proposal, however, is that God could potentially create two individuals who match the concept of Adam that he forms in his mind: Adam-1 and Adam-2. Both individuals are, one might say, indistinguishable to the naked eye, and their behavior is practically indistinguishable such that only God can tell the two apart. It seems, in this case, that either individual has an equally strong claim to being Adam.

            But what exactly is this last point supposed to show? For it is also true that God could make an exactly similar duplicate of me as I now sit typing at my desk. But it does not follow from this that my duplicate would also be me. Here, one is likely to protest that the question at hand is not whether God's creating a duplicate of me, who already exists, and is thereby already individuated, would in consequence create another person who would have an equally strong claim to be me. The question, rather, was why, given the fact that there is no 'thing' which corresponds to God's concept of Adam prior to the time at which God creates Adam, does Adam-1 have a stronger claim to being Adam than Adam-2?

            My answer to this question is that if God can make actual everything about the concept of Adam that exists in God's mind, then God can make actual the matter in virtue of which his concept of Adam has the features that it has. That is, if it is matter that gives to individuals those features in virtue of which they differ from one another, then the matter that makes Adam the individual that he is is already implicitly contained in God's concept of Adam. And if no two individuals can have exactly the same matter at exactly the same time, this is sufficient for individuating, in Aquinas's terms, two otherwise qualitatively exactly similar persons who exist at the same time.

            But what about two exactly similar persons, in terms of qualitative similarity, who possess the exact same matter at two distinct times? Here, one can set down the details such a situation would involve by imagining the following. First, God could create Adam-1 at a certain time t such that he brings Adam-1 into being by means of creating an individual human form or soul at t, soul-1, let's say, and joins it to a certain individual piece of matter, let's call it matter-1, that is sufficient for producing a certain set of qualities q (what one might call a person's q-set) in the human being who results at t from the union of soul-1 and matter-1 at t. The human being whom God brings into being at t from the creation of soul-1 and matter-1 is Adam-1. Continuing the example, let's assume that Adam-1 goes out of existence, i.e., dies, at a later time t1.

            Here, the soul of Adam-1, according to Aquinas, would continue to live on, and, for the moment, we do not have need to question this suggestion. The matter, matter-1, that originally belongs to Adam-1 will continue to exist qua matter, but it will be changed from Adam-1's body at the time of Adam-1's death by its being joined to a new substantial form such that matter-1 ceases to be living human flesh and becomes something else, i.e., dead human flesh. Now, matter-1 will continue to change from this time on following t1 as it acquires new substantial forms. But let's assume, for simplicity's sake, that during this process the exact matter, in terms of the quantity or amount of matter, that makes up matter-1 stays the same.

            Now, assume that at a later time t2, God creates a new human being, Adam-2, by taking matter-1 and joining it to a new human soul, soul-2. At t2, then, a new human being, Adam-2, comes into existence in virtue of the union of soul-2 and matter-1. Adam-2 will have the same q-set that Adam-1 had in virtue of Adam-1's having matter-1. What, now, makes Adam-1 distinct from Adam-2 such that one can say that Adam-2 is not Adam-1? There are two things, I think. First, the fact that Adam-1 and Adam-2 have two distinct human souls or forms. It is true, in fact, that Adam-1 and Adam-2 have the same q-set in virtue of having the same matter, matter-1. But there is room to question, I think, whether this truly makes them the same individual.

            By the falsity of the identity of indiscernibles, they are not the same person. So, on this basis, one might distinguish between something's being a principle of individuation and something's being a principle of identity. A principle of individuation, one might claim, is that in virtue of which something counts as exactly one individual of a certain type or kind. A principle of identity is that in virtue of which an individual of a given type is the exact individual that it is. While in many cases a principle of individuation will work as a rough guide in terms of figuring out the identity of a given individual, one might protest that it is not sufficient for determining its identity. And in this particular case, it is the individual soul of the person, Adam-1, or at least I submit, in virtue of which Adam-1 is the exact individual that he is. Thus, even if one assumes that Adam-1 and Adam-2 are qualitatively indiscernible, it will not follow that they are the same individuals. 

            But concede for the sake of argument that a principle of individuation is sufficient for also determining identity. Thus, the second idea I have in mind for distinguishing Adam-1 and Adam-2 is that while it is true that they have the same matter, it is not true that they have the same matter at the same times, but only at two distinct times. More accurately, they have the same matter, matter-1, throughout two distinct durations of time, and this, I submit, is sufficient for marking them out as two distinct individuals. But in this case, one might protest, isn't this just an instance of intermittent existence? I do not believe so. Intermittent existence would involve exactly the same individual existing in the following way, say, from times t to t1, beginning to exist at t and ceasing to exist at t2, while "resuming" existence at a later time t3. But if possession of matter, in this case matter-1, throughout a duration of time is sufficient for determining the identity of a single individual, it is also sufficient for distinguishing two individuals that possess the same particular matter at two distinct times.  

            One final point I want to consider before closing concerns the sense in which God brings something from potentially existing to actually existing. For I have yet to address in what exact sense, then, that one can distinguish between a thing's existence and its essence. And I have effectively conceded to Kenny that the idea of God's conjoining a creature's individual essence to an individual act of existence does not make sense.

            To bring out the distinction in the way I think makes sense, one needs to note that there are two distinct senses in which one can say that something is in potency. One might say that something is in potency of a certain type F to a specific actuality of a certain type F. Alternatively, one might say that something is in absolute potency, full stop, such that it does not have any potency at all, because the thing simply does not exist. In this sense, it is incorrect to say that the thing is in potency (first sense), because potency, here, presupposes something which is the subject of the possible change, i.e., it has passive powers, one might say, in virtue of which it is the subject of possible change. But (in this second sense) there is no subject at all, and thus no subject of possible change.

            Here, to make sense of Aquinas's doctrine, I submit that one must understand 'potency' in the second sense in broader terms than merely those suggested by the 'act' 'potency' distinction as it applies to particular substantial forms or to accidental qualities. In particular, I believe one should read Aquinas as meaning potency in a more absolute sense, in terms of existence itself, or with respect to things that lack existence, absolute possibility in the sense of metaphysical possibility. God actualizes a thing's potency to exist, then, by first conceiving of the thing in the sense in which I described him as conceiving of Adam, and then bringing it about that the thing in question begins to exist.

Why a God-man?: A Reading of Anselm's 'Cur Deus Homo'

               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.