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WorkAnselm of Canterbury

Why God Became Man

The book that explained the cross as repayment of a debt of honour, one that only someone both God and man could pay.

by Anselm of Canterbury152 passages held

  • Latin, the original language
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Original title
Cur Deus homo
First published
(aged 65)
Original language
Latin

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Overview

In England, in what its preface calls great trouble of heart, Anselm began this book; he finished it in the province of Capua as a pilgrim. The trouble was William Rufus, the king who had fought him over the rights of the church since his first months as Archbishop of Canterbury. Anselm left England in October 1097 and completed the book in 1098. People had been copying the early parts without his knowledge, so he finished it faster and shorter than he wished. It is a dialogue with Boso, a monk of Bec who had pressed him to write it, and it answers unbelievers who rejected the Christian faith as contrary to reason. The first book sets Christ aside, as though nothing had ever been known of him, and argues by reason alone that no one could be saved without him. Sin takes from God the honour owed to him, and what was taken has to be repaid with something greater than the whole created world; only God has anything so great to give, and only humanity owes it, so the payment can come only from someone who is both. The argument breaks with the older view that Christ's death paid a ransom to the devil, who was thought to have rights over fallen humanity. A generation later Peter Abelard answered that the cross shows God's love rather than settling a debt. Thomas Aquinas built on Anselm's account, and John Calvin's teaching that Christ bore the punishment for sin is usually traced back to it, though Anselm spoke of honour rather than punishment. In 1930 the Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén, in the study published in English as Christus Victor, argued that the book had displaced the Church Fathers' older picture of the cross as a victory over sin, death and the devil.

Key concepts

What does Anselm mean by “satisfaction”?

Satisfaction is repayment for sin that restores the honour taken from God. It has two parts: giving back what was taken, and giving something more for the insult, as someone who injures another must also make up for the pain. Anselm sets it against punishment. Every sin is followed by one or the other, so the question of the book becomes who could ever make satisfaction for humanity.

What is the “honour” owed to God?

The honour owed to God is the whole will of a rational creature subject to God’s will. Anselm calls this the only and complete honour we owe. Whoever withholds it takes from God what is his and dishonours him, and that, he says, is what sinning is. God loses nothing by it in himself; what is disturbed is the right order of the creature toward its maker.

What are “preceding” and “following” necessity?

Anselm distinguishes two kinds of necessity. Preceding necessity causes a thing to be: the heavens turn because they must. Following necessity is produced by the thing itself: if someone is speaking, it is necessary that he speaks, but nothing forces him to. Christ’s death was necessary only in the second way, because it followed from a will that freely chose it and did not change.

Why could an angel not have saved humanity?

Because whoever saved humanity would become its master. If an angel or any other creature redeemed human beings, they would owe their rescue to that creature and be its servants, though they were made to serve God alone and to be equal to the good angels. Only if the redeemer is God himself does humanity regain the standing it would have had without sin.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Sin as a Debt of Honour

Why can God not simply forgive? Anselm’s answer turns forgiveness into a question of what is owed, and of whether anyone could ever pay it.

Every rational creature owes God the subjection of its will, and to withhold it is to rob God of his honour. Returning what was taken is not enough; whoever insults must give back more than he took, as someone who injures another’s health owes something for the pain as well. Either the honour is repaid or punishment follows, because letting sin go unsettled would leave disorder in God’s kingdom. Then Anselm shows the size of the debt. Boso would not cast one glance against God’s will for anything that exists, and repentance and obedience were owed already.

  • sin
  • satisfaction
  • atonement
  • divine justice
  • justice
  • forgiveness
  • punishment
  • redemption

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Only One Who Is Both Can Pay

Why did salvation require a God who became man, rather than a God who simply acted? The book’s answer is a single chain of necessary reasons.

The second book draws the conclusion the first prepared. The payment must be greater than everything that is not God, so only God can make it; it is owed by humanity, so only a human being ought to make it. Hence one who is fully both. Because he owed no death, his freely given life outweighs every sin, and Anselm insists the necessity of his dying was not a compulsion but the kind of necessity that follows from a will that does not change. He even explains why he was born of a woman alone, the one way God had not yet used.

  • incarnation
  • christology
  • human nature
  • divine nature
  • necessity
  • divine will
  • free will
  • obedience
  • death
  • salvation

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Reasons, as if Christ Were Unknown

Can the cross be defended to someone who accepts no Scripture? The dialogue tries, and in doing so it discards some of the stories Christians had long told about it.

Unbelievers mocked the Christian faith as foolish and said its reasons were pictures painted on clouds. Anselm answers on their ground: the first book sets Christ aside as if nothing were known of him and argues by reason alone. It clears away the older story that the devil had a right over humanity that Christ’s death bought out, because the devil had no rights against God. It also argues that the number of angels who fell must be made up from human beings, so that saving humanity completes what God set out to make.

  • faith and reason
  • theological method
  • scripture
  • scriptural interpretation
  • angelology
  • angels
  • devil
  • beatitude
  • eschatology
  • divine providence

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Within this work

passages held
152
distinct concepts
167
by passages held, corpus-wide
#409

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “satisfaction” and “sin”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
satisfactionsin19
divine justicesin16
atonementsalvation14
divine justicesatisfaction11
atonementdivine justice10
atonementincarnation10
incarnationsalvation10
atonementsin9
divine justicesalvation8
free willincarnation8
divine willfree will7
atonementfree will6
atonementsatisfaction6
salvationsatisfaction6
atonementdivine will4
incarnationsin4
salvationsin4
divine justicefree will3
divine willincarnation3
divine willsalvation3
divine willsin3
incarnationsatisfaction3
divine justiceincarnation2
divine willsatisfaction2
free willsalvation2
free willsin2
free willsatisfaction1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1076 Monologion

    The earliest of Anselm's books about God and the longest he wrote at Bec, composed in the mid-1070s while he was still prior there.

     LA
  2. 1078 Proslogion

    The book by which Anselm is known: twenty-six short chapters composed at Bec in 1077 and 1078, a year or two after the Monologion.

     LA
  3. 1078 Reply to Gaunilo (Liber apologeticus contra Gaunilonem)

    A treatise Anselm did not choose to write: his answer to a critic of the Proslogion, in which he restates its argument point by point.

     LA
  4. 1080 De Grammatico (De grammatico)

    The odd one out on Anselm's shelf: a short exercise in logic for beginners, of disputed date, which he refused to count among his dialogues on Scripture.

     LA
  5. 1080 On Truth (De veritate)

    The first of three dialogues Anselm wrote at Bec in the 1080s and later arranged as a set, with On Freedom of Choice and On the Fall of the Devil.

     LA
  6. 1085 On Freedom of Choice (De libertate arbitrii)

    Builds on the definition of justice reached in On Truth, and supplies the account of the will that On the Fall of the Devil then tests on the first sin of all.

     LA
  7. 1085 On the Fall of the Devil (De casu diaboli)

    The longest of the three dialogues from Bec and Anselm's fullest account of evil, worked out on the case of the angels who fell.

     LA
  8. 1094 On the Incarnation of the Word (Epistola de incarnatione Verbi)

    A letter turned treatise, begun by the abbot of Bec around 1092 and finished by the Archbishop of Canterbury two years later, addressed to the pope.

     LA
  9. 1098 Why God Became Man (Cur Deus homo) you are here LA
  10. 1099 On the Virgin Conception and Original Sin (De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato)

    A sequel to Why God Became Man, written a year later for Boso, the questioner of that dialogue, to give a second answer to a question it had raised.

     LA
  11. 1102 On the Procession of the Holy Spirit (De processione Spiritus Sancti)

    Given first as a speech at a council and written up four years later: the treatise in which Anselm argues not with a pupil or a critic but with another church.

     LA
  12. 1107 De Concordia (The Compatibility of God's Foreknowledge, Predestination, and Grace with Human Freedom) (De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio)

    Anselm's last completed treatise, written in 1107 and 1108 after his second exile, and his answer to a question the student had raised in On Freedom of Choice more than twenty years before.

     LA
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