A Beginner’s Guide to “Why God Became Man” (Part 2)

Part 1 of this blog post can be found here.

The terms of this satisfaction emerge in dire tones as Anselm’s treatise turns, in its second part, to his revelation of God’s salvation offered through Christ the God-man. The problem of sin is so stark and so unjustifiable against the backdrop of God’s goodness and his benevolent creation of mankind, that the result is “[...] if no satisfaction is given, the way to regulate sin correctly is none other than to punish it.” Despite such clarity in presenting the crisis afflicting humanity, Anselm introduces the solution as a panacea that seems hopelessly out of reach:  “It is a necessary consequence, therefore, that either the honor which has been taken away should be repaid, or punishment should follow. Otherwise, either God will not be just to himself, or he will be without the power to enforce either of the two options; and it is an abominable sin even to consider this possibility.” Strikingly, even a meditation on the problem of sin may short-change the severity of the problem; even proposing possible solutions may lead one into an act of slighting the honor of God over again. 

Rhetorically, this move heightens both the sense of crisis concerning fallenness, but also underscores the need for external rescue, given the seemingly unavoidable danger in seeking a cure for sin from among mankind. Lest one despair and forget God’s goodwill to restore mankind to the enjoyment by and of God, however, Anselm repeats his earlier anthropological premises at this point. He presents the problem of satisfaction against the backdrop of humanity’s initial purpose, for “God cannot raise up to a state of blessedness anyone who is to any extent bound by indebtedness arising from sin.” The terms of satisfaction require the repayment of a debt that humanity is hopelessly unable to fulfill, while the consequences of that bad debt remain infinite in their degree and unrelenting in their effect. Yet it is precisely into this hopeless plight of human fallenness that the answer comes in the Incarnation of Christ. Anselm casts the mystery of God-made-man in terms of fulfilling mankind’s original purpose of honoring God and enjoying Him forever. 

Anselm situates his discussion of the Incarnation as the rhetorical turning point of the treatise, which nods to what must be termed a poetic symmetry on God’s part in the plan of salvation: “For it was appropriate that, just as death entered the human race through a man’s disobedience, so life should be restored through a man’s obedience; and that, just as the sin which was the cause of our damnation originated from a woman, similarly the originator of our justification and salvation should be born of a woman.” Specifically, Anselm identifies the God-man as the only one capable of making the satisfaction required to inaugurate salvation, as “[...] it is essential that the same one person who will make the recompense should be perfect God and perfect man. For he cannot do this if he is not true God, and he has no obligation to do so if he is not a true man” 

Moreover, Anselm retains fidelity to ancient, conciliar Christology in affirming this God-man as one “[...] in whom the wholeness of both natures is kept intact.” Anselm locates the act of satisfaction in the willing death of this Person, “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.” Such a death was the perfect act of obedience and honor to God because in surrendering to mortality, the God-man submits to something He did not owe and thus makes a total self-gift and an oblation of that which He was not indebted to pay. 

The greatness of the God-man’s work is, in the eyes of the Father, supremely meritorious. As such, He is granted a supreme reward. This reward the God-man then benevolently bestows upon humankind: “those for whose salvation, as the logic of truth teaches us, he made himself a man, and for whom, as we have said, he set an example, by his death, of dying for the sake of righteousness.” In short, the restoration of humanity to its original telos of eternal felicity is accomplished in the supremely meritorious self-gift of the God-man as a theological and anthropological inversion of humanity’s initial fall into sin. 

Anselm’s treatise closes with a transformation of his original point; salvation is a recapitulated creation, an act of creative, poetic symmetry. On the rhetorical level, the discourse that began as faith seeking understanding closes as understanding that engenders deeper faith: “Therefore, in the same way that it is a necessity to acknowledge that the God-man is truthful, likewise no one can fail to acknowledge that all that is contained in those testaments is true.” Anselm’s emphasis on symmetry in his approach to the logic of salvation in his writing underscores the logic and poetry of God in enacting human salvation through the God-man. Structurally, the rhetorical flow of the treatise conducts the reader along a thematic and methodological journey and homecoming. As we read him, we are formed as well as instructed. We are led to engage the work is itself a meditative engagement with the truth the work is communicating. Thus, in arriving at the conclusion, the one observes the fulfillment of an old aphorism; faith seeks understanding and arrives at greater faith.