1 Quotations from the Cur Deus Homo are taken from the translation of Eugene, R. Fairweather in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956). 100–183Google Scholar. References are indicated parenthetically in the text by book and chapter numbers. Citations of the Latin are from the text in Pourquoi Dieu s’est fait homme, René, Roques, ed., Sources Chrétiennes, no. 91 (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1963)Google Scholar.

2 For the treatment of Anselm’s approach by medievals, see Patout Burns, J., “The Concept of Satisfaction in Medieval Redemption Theory,” Theological Studies 36 (1975): 285–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Relevant here is an observation of Georg Plasger (Die Not-Wendigkeit der Gerechtigkeit: Eine Interpretation zu “Cur Deus Homo” von Anselm von Canterbury, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, no. 38 [Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 1993], 72): As a consequence of the “dialogische Charakter” of the work, “[e]s ist nicht möglisch, Sätze und Thesen aus dem Zusammenhang herauszunehmen und isoliert zu betrachten.”

4 John, McIntyre, St. Anselm and His Critics: A Re-Interpretation of the Cur Deus Homo (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1954). 61Google Scholar. Lest someone fail fully to grasp the scope he intends for this conclusion, McIntyre adds, “We shall not delay long to indicate what St. Anselm says on man’s relation to the Devil as a result of his sinning. ... It is generally agreed that in a few swift strokes [in I.7] St. Anselm destroys a view of the control of the Devil over man in his sin which had been held from the second century almost to the twelfth” (70). (See also, e.g., Eugene R. Fairweather, “Iustitia Dei’ as the ‘Ratio’ of the Incarnation.” in Congrès International du IXe Centenaire de l’arrivée d’Amselme au Bec, Spicilegium Beccense, no. 1 [Le Bec-Hellouin: Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec, 1959], 329; Jasper Hopkins, A Companion to the Study of St. Anselm (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1972], 188–89.) This is not to say that McIntyre is unaware of the implications of the dialogue form, since he even goes on to suggest—despite an admission that “[t]here is no textual evidence to suggest that [the] attribution [of the speech in I.7 to Boso] is wrong”—that “[s]ince Boso’s rôle up to this point in the book, and in fact throughout, is to raise objections and ‘Anselm’s’ to answer them, it would not be incorrect to divide the speech, assigning the introduction to Boso and the refutation to ‘Anselm.’” In contrast to this approach, I assume that the speech is in fact Boso’s but conclude that the status of objection. rather than answer, should be ascribed to it as a whole. Again, this will be still more fully substantiated upon consideration of some of Anselm’s later speeches.

5 Gerald O’Collins (Interpreting Jesus [London: Geoffrey Chapman, 19831, 138, 145–57) points out that the Judeo-Christian tradition holds the effects of sin to include “contamination”; and he associates the model of redemption as “expiation” (which model he attributes to Anselm, among others) with this effect of sin. I think this analysis is very much in keeping with Anselm’s understanding of the matter, given Anselm’s association of “washing” and “satisfaction.”

6 McIntyre (St. Anselm and His Critics, 77–82) misses the significance of this. He makes reference to the association of satisfaction with God's honor in I.11, but then “jumps” to I.20 and treats this and the following chapters as answers to the question “of whether anyone can make the satisfaction to God which He demands” (77). When he returns to the argument of I.19, he treats it with what precedes as “a ‘secondary ground’ for the necessity of salvation” (81), concluding, “This argument is in the spirit of the times and it need not delay us further” (82). This is in keeping with the relationship of I.19 neither to what precedes it (as I have already indicated) nor to what follows it.

7 McIntyre. St. Anselm and His Critics, 73–74.

8 Plasger observes that in I.7, Boso “fordert ... Anselm schon auf, eine Antwort zu geben, die gegen die bisherigen Überzeugungen nicht mit dem Recht des Teufels argumentien” (Die Not-Wendigkit der Gerechtigkeit, 75). With regard to the rest of the dialogue, however, Plasger contends that “[i]m Zusammenhang mit der Darstellung der Bedeutung der Sünde nimmt Anselm diesen Einwurf auf und überbietet ihn sogar noch” (n. 184). I argue that Anselm’s discussion of the meaning of sin must be read in light of his examination of satisfaction later in Book I, such as I have discussed, and that this must involve factoring the devil back into the calculus of justice in the manner I have explained.

9 A prominent exponent of this criticism is Gustaf Aulén. Aulén charges that Anselm’s theory reflects “the legalism of the medieval outlook” (Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement [trans. A. G. Heben; London: S.P.C.K., 1931], 108).

10 The same confusion is reflected in a concern of Karl Rahner about attempts to “make clear the connection between the incarnate Logos and his function as the mediator of salvation.” According to Rahner. “Western theology” has “established this connection” by “understanding the Incarnation as the establishment of a divine-human subject who, by obediently accepting the death for which he was destined, can offer God in his holiness expiation and satisfaction for the guilt of mankind. But a connection that is [so] conceived ... will make use of the solution that adopts the categories of German legalistic thinking in the theory of satisfaction” (Jesus, Man, and the Church, trans. Margaret Kohl. vol. 17 of Theological Investigations [New York: Crossroad. 1981], 29–30).