Meet Anselm (c. 1100AD), a man who was undoubtedly the greatest influence on atonement theory since the time of the Church Fathers. An article* published a few years ago in Christianity Today appeared to be an attempt to honor Anselm’s contribution. However, it left completely unaddressed the real question, which was whether his contribution was an advancement to our understanding of atonement, or a terrible mistake that has cost the Christian world greatly since its introduction.
For the first thousand years of the Christian era, one of the most common ways of understanding atonement was encapsulated in the terms ransom and redeemed. In short, God had in some manner redeemed humanity from the domain of evil through the death and resurrection of Jesus, so that all who came to Him for life could be set free from the power of the devil. Much of this idea was drawn from the Old Testament story of the exodus, in which God redeemed the children of Israel from Egypt (Ex.6:6). Now to be clear, God did not pay anyone in order to rescue His people. To redeem someone in the Bible was not so much about the price as it was about the process of releasing someone from a prior obligation or from some form of servitude to another. (One could also redeem a piece of property that a relative had sold due to financial difficulty, thus returning the land to its original family). The point of the redemption in the exodus was that God brought His people out of bondage and back to the promised land where they belonged. The closest thing we have to a payment is found in Isaiah 43:3, where God says He gave Egypt as the ransom for His people. Which implies, of course, that God owns the land everywhere, and that He was willing to ruin Egypt in order to rescue His people.
When the New Testament authors went to describe the various aspects of salvation, they sometimes used words like ransom and redeemed to capture the idea that we had been held in bondage by the god of this world, and our Father God rescued us and transferred us into the new Kingdom (Col.1:13). Raiding death and hades and the powers of evil was without a doubt a costly operation, involving the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that is why the term ransom seemed appropriate. But the essence of course was that God was restoring people to their rightful place.
Unfortunately, during the early centuries of the Church, these terms resulted in some debate regarding how this ransom actually worked, involving questions like: “Who exactly paid what to whom?” Did God give Jesus over to the devil in exchange for humanity and then take Him back? What exactly did this transaction look like? These turned out to be fruitless debates, because they tried to make too much of the metaphor, and detracted from the essence of the idea which was all about a rescue from evil.
Enter Anselm, and his novel solution to these debates
In the feudal system of Anselm’s day, serfs who offended their lord were required to be punished unless they were able to offer some form of satisfaction acceptable to the lord, who would then release the serf from the penalty. Drawing an analogy from that practice, Anselm came up with the idea that humanity had deeply offended God through sin, and that unless sufficient satisfaction could be made, humanity must be punished. Unfortunately, no human could make sufficient satisfaction, and that is why Jesus came: to provide the necessary satisfaction to save mankind. We now call this the “Satisfaction Theory of Atonement.”
Now the most obvious problem with his theory is that Anselm did not get it from Scripture; he drew it from the culture of his day. And given that the feudal system was rather inhumane, it should never have been the starting point for any theology.
But far more serious is the total inversion of atonement theory that came with this novel idea. Whereas the prior Ransom Theory had portrayed the cross as the means for rescuing humanity from the power of Satan, Satisfaction Theory stood that idea on its head by declaring that the cross rescued us from the jaws of justice, demanded by God Himself. Apparently it was God who needed the atonement rather than humanity!
A few hundred years later, this theory then evolved into what we now call the Theory of Penal Substitution (PST), which is yet one more step removed from the amazing wonder of rescuing us from evil. In this scenario, satisfaction is no longer an option. Instead, all sin must be punished without exception, and we are told that Jesus was punished instead of us. Which leaves us with a God who needs to be reconciled to humanity instead of the other way around, and our rescue operation has been reduced to a legal transaction in the books of heaven so we can pass the final judgment.
While a full critique of this disaster is beyond the scope of a small article, the truth is that this distortion of atonement has been one of the worst theological errors in history. Ideas have consequences! Among other things, it completely destroys the Biblical concept of forgiveness. But worst of all, this theory has completely side-lined the idea of changing domains, and laid the foundations for a gospel concerned only with the afterlife. It is also why so many people now believe that one can be a Christian their entire life without ever becoming a disciple of Jesus. And frankly, this is just a few of the problems that are created by this terrible theory.
Anselm may have been a brilliant man. He may also have been a very good man. But his theory of atonement came from the Father of Lies!
For a better understanding of how amazing the atonement truly is, and how it is the foundation for a gospel of the exchanged life, see Lamb of God.
* The original article from Christianity is here: https://www.christianitytoday.com/2008/08/anselm/.