Priestly Work of Christ

Sven reckons i should put some of my essays on here. I think it is a bit like repeats on telly. But any way here goes

(c)Richard McIntosh

i.e. dont copy this essay and pass it off as your own!!!!

Is the Anselmic view of atonement necessary and is it sufficient for the elucidation of the priestly sacrifice of Christ?

Word Count: 3242

Epoch making works of theology are most often the product of a great argument, a titanic struggle between two theological opposites, the Reformation and Nicea being standard examples. However, Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo is a book no less significant than The Institutes or Contra Arianos. Although no major controversy was a catalyst for this work on the atonement, it stands monumentally and overshadows all theology that follows; as such, all western attempts at the doctrine of the atonement stand in direct relation to Anselm’s work, whether affirmatively or critically. This paper will seek to discover how necessary and sufficient Anselm’s model of the atonement is to Christian theology by first assessing Anselm’s account of Christ’s work with reference to the two ‘satisfactions’ to God’s honour of punishment and repayment. Secondly, Anselm’s articulation of the priestly work will be compared with that of the epistle to the Hebrews, which is the New Testament work most closely focused on the priestly work of Christ.

Anselm’s Theological Method

The point of departure for Anselm’s exploration of the doctrine of the atonement and the rationality of the Christian faith is his question:
By what logic or necessity did God become man, and by his death, as we believe and profess, restore life to the world, when he could have done this through the agency of some other person, angelic or human, or simply by willing it?

Thus, Anselm seeks to survey the rationality of the Christian faith. This phrasing has led to the charge that Anselm is attempting to prove the atonement a priori . However, this can be shown to be false when Anselm’s theological method, set out in his equally famous work the Proslogion, is considered. Here he famously states (following Augustine of Hippo): “For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand.” Thus Anselm following his own method is not seeking to prove Christianity a priori, rather he is a posterion attempting to show Christianity’s inner rationality. As Karl Barth notes regarding Anselm’s necessity for the God-man,
For him [Anselm] necessitas is not a last word either noetically( in the recognition of the object of faith) or ontically ( in this object’s recognition to faith’s recognition). But the last word is had by and is the veritas itself, God, for whom and over whose will there is no necessity.
The Beauty of Holiness - the aim of creation

The goal of creation and its relation to humanity is significant for Anselm as it undergirds his whole thesis. He explains humanity’s original role as the honouring of God through obedience which maintains the beauty of the universe. This honouring of God is the creature loving God the highest good for the sake of being the highest good. In this relationship humankind would be ‘blessedly happy’. For Anselm this central theme of beauty is caught up in the orientation of creation, including humanity, towards God’s honour. Creation exists for God. God as lord of creation seeks to maintain this orientation. Thus, creation’s beauty is to exist in a manner that honours the creator and the creator maintains this relationship.

This could sound rather dreary however this obedience is caught up with the happyiness of humankind

Sin: the non-fulfilment of Creation

Once Anselm has established the goal of creation, it is possible to see the exact relation of sin to this goal. The heinousness of sin is that through disobedience humanity does not honour God and hence mars the beauty of creation. This is problematic as “… there is nothing in the universal order more intolerable than that a creature should take away from the Creator the honour due to him, and not repay what he takes away.”

The sheer weight of sin is expressed by Anselm by arguing that it is more important not to take one glance against the will of God, even at the expense of the destruction of an infinity of universes. All these points cohere for Anselm, in that sin is a failure of the creature to reach its purpose, which he expresses in terms of negative aesthetics.

At this point it is important to heed Colin Gunton, who notes that the dishonouring of God does not take away from God’s honour, which would be to deny God’s impassibility. Likewise, Stephen Holmes succinctly states, “Sin does not lessen God’s honour, it lessens the honour done to him by Creation….” Even Gustaf Aulén, one of Anselm’s fiercest critics, admits that redemption for Anselm is a matter of the doctrine of Creation rather the doctrine God.

Satisfaction and punishment : fulfilment of Creation’s aim
Having setting out the crisis of creation, Anselm allows his literary pupil Boso to ask why God could not simply remit the sin merely by compassion alone. Anselm answers that to do so is for God to leave his creation unregulated, acting as if the sin had never happened. This would mean that the aim of creation to be beautiful, and as such honour God, is nullified. Furthermore, if sin is unregulated it is subject to no law and hence has a freedom that is only proper to God. Thus, Anselm concludes that, “It is a necessary consequence, therefore, that either the honour which has been taken away should be repaid, or punishment should follow.” It must be noted that these are two alternative solutions to the marring of creation: either the honour should be repaid or punishment should follow. This paper will now consider how Anselm envisages these two ‘satisfactions’ to God’s honour.

Briefly returning to the question of why God could not merely forgive sins, the early twentieth century New Testament scholar James Denny gives perhaps the best answer: “But what Anselm means is that sin makes a real difference to God, and that even in forgiving God treats that difference as real, and cannot do otherwise.” Furthermore, Denny’s fellow Scot H. R. Mackintosh encapsulated this point by calling the Cross is the cost of forgiveness. As such there is no true forgiveness that is mere forgiveness.

The logic of punishment

Anselm explains the logic of punishment in this way that “…by subjecting him to torment, and in this way he shows that he is his Lord, something which the man himself refuses to admit voluntarily. Thus, punishment deals with sin's disordering of creation by a reorientation towards its original intention, the honour of God. Through the torment of punishment the sinner is shown to be under the divine governance and by this means, God is honoured as the sovereign of creation.

The impossibility of punishment and the necessity of satisfaction

In punishment, God's sovereignty over creation is reasserted against human sin, causing an involuntary honouring of God. However, this is not the whole divine intention for humanity which was created for obedience. Anselm defines obedience in this manner: “For absolute and true obedience is that which occurs when a rational being, not under compulsion but voluntarily, keeps to a desire which has been received from God.” Thus punishment is problematic as it means that God’s intention of voluntary obedience is not fulfilled. This means that, though punishment can go part way to satisfying God’s honour, it does not actually complete God’s design for humanity. Thus, unlike some further developments of Anselm’s theology, notably various popular forms of penal substitution in which the sinner is saved from the justice of God by the mercy of God, it is the justice of God as commitment to his original intention for humankind which is the motive for God’s salvific act. This is illustrated by Anselm’s much criticised connection of God to a feudal lord. As noted by Holmes, “…the lord vassal relation was not just about the obedience owed by the vassal, but about the lord’s responsibility to maintain order and uphold justice.”

God’s intention for the happiness through obedience of human beings stands alongside Gods’ desire that they should fill up the place left by fallen angels. This speculation by Anselm on the vacant places of fallen angels is jarring to modern ears. Anselm’s purpose appears to be to limit the application of Christ’s work to those who will take up the empty places. This would be a development of the Augustinian doctrine of election. However, as Holmes notes, even if we disagree with his premise regarding humankind completing the number in the heavenly city, it underlies God’s basic concern as the preservation of order in creation.

Christ’s Work: Satisfaction

In book II of Cur Deus Homo Anselm seeks to locate the exact nature of the ‘repayment’ model satisfaction that is to be made and more importantly who can make it. Following from his earlier line of argument that satisfaction must make the creation honouring of God by means of voluntarily obedience. With respect to the ‘who’ question, Anselm shows how Christ is the only one who can fulfil this function. His succinctly stated argument is that only mankind should pay the debt owed by sin, but only God can pay it. Hence the necessity of the God-man. As can be seen this leads neatly to the Christ of Chalcedon.

What then was the nature of the satisfaction which Christ made?

After arguing that Christ, as God-man, is the only one who can make satisfaction, Anselm attempts to explain why the Cross is the necessary means of atonement. He explains firstly that Christ as human owes God his obedience. Consequently this means that Christ must give God something more than the plain obedience that being human entails. Anselm asserts that, in response Christ, by his death, offers to God something that he does not by nature owe him. He reasons that, as death is the curse of sin, Christ’s personal sinlessness infers lack of requirement to die. Thus, by means of Christ’s death he offers to God something in addition to the plain obedience owed. At this point it would be possible to misconstrue Anselm’s thesis and contest that Christ commits some form of noble suicide or else that Father forced the death upon him. Anselm avoids these problems by his nuanced approach to the obedience of Christ,
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 perniciously that as result he incurred death.

As noted above, it is the level of obedience which gives atoning value to Christ’s act. Calvin is in agreement with Anselm when he says, “[a]nd truly in death itself his willing obedience is the important thing because a sacrifice not offered voluntarily would not have furthered righteousness.” Thus, in and through the quality of his obedience, Christ gives to God more than is required of him; he gives the gift of himself. Anselm movingly expresses it thus, “…he gave his life, so precious; no his very self; he gave his person - think of it - in all its greatness, in an act of his own, supremely great, volition.” In dying Christ takes away the ugliness of the fallen universe by making it the place of the supremely beautiful act; Christ offers to God an even greater honour from humanity than humanity itself would have done had it not fallen.

2. Is Anselm’s model really necessary and sufficient?

In examining the central tenets of Anselm’s atonement theology, this paper will now seek to show the necessity of his model and its success in describing the priestly work of Christ. This question of necessity is whether Anselm’s model provides an ability to express aspects of Christian truth which would otherwise be inexpressible. This raises the question of which criteria would be appropriate to judge the necessity of Anselm’s view. Barth once famously remarked that the best theology needs no advocates but rather proves itself. Thus, the only judge of the necessity of Anselm’s view for Christian theology is its fidelity to the Gospel, as mediated by the witness of scripture and tradition (incarnation and Trinity). One manner in which this can be shown is the heuristic power of Anselm’s model with respect to the gospel; that is, the model should aid a richer understanding rather than a rejection of both scripture and tradition in ways that would not be expected before it was proposed. Anselm’s model demonstrates this ability by showing the rationality of the Chalcedonian standard in a way that is different from the Fathers. In this respect, it is possible to judge Anselm’s model as successful, though not necessarily sufficient, with respect to Christian tradition. However, in his preface Anselm himself may no claim to have dealt with the truth of the atonement completely. Thus, it would be naive to expect his model to be sufficient with regard to Christ’s priestly work.

In order to ascertain Anselm’s relation to scripture, this paper will now compare Anselm’s model to the book of Hebrews, which identifies Christ’s priesthood with his self-sacrifice. A superficial analysis would only show that Anselm is concerned with legal realities of salvation rather than the cultic. Furthermore, the lack of emphasis on the priestly work in Christ’s exulted heavenly position compared to Hebrews is striking. At a much deeper level, however, there is a definite congruence between the two. Aúlen complains that Anselm places too much soteriological weight on the humanity of Christ. However, it is at this point that Hebrews is in full agreement with Anselm as a High Priest could only be a representative because he came ’from among his brothers’. Thus, the true and fully weighted humanity of Anselm’s model is entirely in keeping with Christ’s priestly work.

With respect to the atonement F. F. Bruce, commenting on Hebrews 10:10 highlights,
His fulfilment of God’s will to the uttermost involved the “offering” once for all of his body - that body prepared for him in the incarnation…. When ever our author speaks of his body or his blood, it is his incarnate life that is meant, yielded to God in an obedience which was maintained even to death.

Hebrews is in agreement with Anselm’s insistence that the willing obedience of Christ to the point of death is the atoning element of Christ’s work. However, Hebrews’ assertion of sanctification through Christ’s self-offering must imply more than an objective change of the relationship of humanity to God but rather a change of humanity itself. To this extent Aúlen’s complaint is correct: “[t]he doctrine provides for the remission of the punishment due to sins, but not for the taking away of sin itself.” Moreover, Anselm is in apparent variance with Hebrews at the point where the author denotes the Spirit (presumably the Holy Spirit) as the medium by which Christ offers his sacrifice. It is notable that the Spirit is not mentioned as the means by which Christ offers himself in Anselm’s work. If this is the characteristic western neglect on the doctrine of the Spirit, it may explain the lack of ontological change in humanity in Anselm’s doctrine. It should be queried whether a greater role given to the Holy Spirit sanctifying human nature in the life of Christ would enable Anselm to express more clearly the priestly work of Christ.

In addition, the question must be as to whether Anselm’s model is sufficient in respect to the aspect that it deals with, namely satisfaction. This raises the important question as to whether one can consider that it is the honour of God that Christ offered satisfaction to. It is certainly questionable whether Anselm allowed medieval feudal jurisprudence to define the reality to which the satisfaction has been offered. On the other hand it is possible to argue that Anselm is being a good contextual theologian by using culturally appropriate models to describe the reality of salvation. Anselm’s model of the satisfaction has been developed to a very acute and profound way by the Scottish theologian P. T. Forsyth (developing the theme of John McLeod Campbell). Forsyth posits that it was not to God’s honour that Christ offered satisfaction rather to God’s holiness. Christ’s action was a satisfaction of divine holiness under the condition of judgement. Anselm making the chief satisfaction to God’s honour risks making obedience rather than holy love the fundamental relationship of the creature to the creator. By using lord-vassal relationship to describe God’s relationship to humanity may obscure the filial nature the divine-human relation. However, Anselm’s model does rightly maintain that God’s first concern is the assertion of his own divine value. It is also certain that his concerns can certainly be expressed in a way closer to the truth of the matter as Forsyth and Campbell have arguably done, albeit standing on the shoulders of Anselm.

Conclusion

Anselm has made an important and revolutionary addition and clarification of the priestly work of Christ. By his meditation on the inner rationality of the gospel he produced an important model of the priestly work of Christ. Consequently, he avoided problems in later developments of his theology by showing that it is the application of the justice of God, his kingly rule, that saves humanity. In this sense, Anselm’s work can be seen as a meditation on the nature of divine forgiveness. As such Anselm’s model, though not necessarily in Anselm’s form, is not merely necessary but vital for expressing Christian truth regarding the atonement.

Even with a cursory look at the scriptural witness of Hebrews, it is evident that Anselm’s work does not, intentionally, fully explore all Christian meaning regarding the priestly work. Hebrew’s and Anselm are in agreement about Christ’s full humanity and pernicious obedience that constitutes his priestly work. Anselm’s use of a vassal-lord relationship to describe humanity is successful in describing God’s commitment to the preservation of the beauty of creation. It is, however, less apt to describe the nature of Christ’ satisfaction although the essential concern of satisfaction with reference to Christ’s priestly work is essentially correct.

In conclusion, Anselm’s work on the atonement deserves the place of importance that it hold’s in the western tradition. It is unquestionably an important and necessary model for describing Christ’s priestly work. More importantly, however, Anselm describes something deeply and profoundly beautiful.



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