Sticky Point 3....

[KenBrauckmann]

Ok.. so some guy Anselm starts teaches something that Augustine picks up on and eventually the West starts teaching a juridicial viewpoint for salvation.

Question: where do I find this guy Anselm so I can beat some answers out of him... or maybe just read what he wrote so I can see where the switch was made??

Seems the more I look back at these things the more I 'untwist' what I have been taught....

any help on this? websites? summaries?

[Tonks]

Anselm is about 600 years after Augustine (unless you're stating that he developed Augustine's ideas...)

His Cur Deus Homo (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/anselm/basic_works.viii.html?highlight=anselm#highlight) (Why God Became Man) lays out most of his arguments.

[ETA] All of this comes to a head a few hundred years later with Thomas Aquinas. He probably has the most developed (classical) western theology on the atonement. Aquinas through Augustine via Anselm. This is also a large jumping off point for the various Protestant views as well.

[Macarius]

Yes, Augustine starts the doctrine of Original Sin and dances awefully close to double-predestination. He does so as an over-response to Pelagianism, which was a heresy of his day.

Anselm is trying to do what Athanasius did in the early 4th century: justify the Incarnation in light of what Christ accomplished on the cross. This shift, however, is that Anselm is trying to do so using, exclusively, the metaphor of a feudal court.

So Anselm teaches that God is like a feudal monarch (he would have had, in mind, Henry II of England - the first Plantagenet monarch and an extremely powerful one). When one commits a crime in the land of the King or noble, one is committing a crime against that King or noble. The higher status the noble, the bigger the debt and the more painful the punishment required for retribution.

God is an infinite monarch, therefore the punishment needed for restitution is infinite. Because it was a sin committed by men collectively (thanks to the doctrine of original sin), it had to be a human being who paid the price.

That means we need the suffering and death of an infinite human being. The God-Man Christ is the only one who could fit that bill, and so His suffering and death are the salvation of all.

Abelard, another scholastic theologian, thought this was too simple and didn't account for the complexity of human repentance and the spiritual life (fasting, prayer, alms, sacrament). It is from that discourse that the Catholic Church developed its sense of sin having to layers of penalty: the infinite penalty of original sin paid by Christ, and the temporal penalty of our personal sin paid by us. The degree to which we repent, therefore, and do penance and ascetic labors, is the degree to which we pay our temporal penalty. If we are baptized but have not fully paid this, then we have to go to purgatory to suffer for a while and pay the temporal penalty off in order to enter paradise. Some - the saints - paid off their temporal penalty in excess. The Church retains this additional "payment" and can dole it out if it wants to, just as Christ's ultimate payment can be applied by the Church to others through the sacraments. This doctrine of "paying out" what the saints "banked" in temporal payments is the root of the medieval doctrine of indulgences - if you show by your generosity a true penitential heart then the Church can grant you additional favor in the form of an indulgence, which reduces your time in pergatory.

Martin Luther picked up on how far that seemed to have strayed from the Gospel message of grace - it was too mechanical, too systematic, too dependent on human action, in a way. And in his environment, it had become too corrupt. Indulgences and purgatory were being used abusively to extort money from his contemporary peasants.

Hence "sola fide" - by faith alone. This said that there was no temporal penalty; Christ paid the whole bit Himself and His righteousness is "imputed" to us (or God views us through Christ's righteousness) when we become Christian. This would undermine the need for the entire Catholic schematic of the spiritual life. Combine with sola scriptura and mix together and you've got yourself a reformation.

John Calvin picks up on sola fide, though, and realizes that it faith can be construed as a "work" if we aren't careful - hence Calvinism.

A simpler solution, to the Orthodox Church, is to simply avoid satisfactionalism (Anselm) all together and stick to the basic understanding of the cross as a mystery by which Christ conquered death. No wrath or satisfaction involved. No angry God. God is love. No "payment..." just our own need to repent.

Anyhow, I have to take off.

Hope that helps!
-Macarius

[KenBrauckmann]

ok... so I confused Aquinas and Augustine - please don't tell my mom! :eek:

back to Anselm... so I will try to read that link...

so, Augustine started the juridicial idea and Anselm fleshed it out to the fuedal court/infinite justice idea, right? (trying to keep the 3 A's straight here... :scratch: )

So to pin the juridicial down I drop back to Augustine?

[Protoevangel]

ok... so I confused Aquinas and Augustine - please don't tell my mom! :eek:

back to Anselm... so I will try to read that link...

so, Augustine started the juridicial idea and Anselm fleshed it out to the fuedal court/infinite justice idea, right? (trying to keep the 3 A's straight here... :scratch: )

So to pin the juridicial down I drop back to Augustine?
You know, I hate to confuse you even more, but the juridical metaphor with regards to Salvation goes back even farther than Agustine. All the way back to Holy Scripture, in fact. Paul uses the juridical metaphor. Several of the early Fathers, such as Saint John Chrysostom, use it. What Paul and the early Fathers do not do however, is push that metaphor too far, or focus on it as some "exclusive" metaphor for salvation. That's where the three "A's" come in.

I only bring this up because of your question about "pin the juridicial down". It's not like it was completely absent before Augustine, but he did take it so much farther than anyone before him ever did.

[KenBrauckmann]

ok.. I was wondering about that... Romans definitely makes the whole thing look juridicial, but it does balance out when Paul covers the adoption as joint-heirs...

why did Augustine push so far ...? reaction to Pelagius? (which begs te question of where Pelagius was going with HIS doctrine?)