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‘The love that pierces the heart’: a critical analysis of the concept of sanctification in the writings of St Anselm of Canterbury

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2019

Ruben Angelici
Ruben Angelici*
Affiliation:
Denstone College, Denstone, Uttoxeter ST14 [email protected]
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Abstract

Contemporary analyses of Anselm's objective description of Christ's atonement have often resulted in a trend of interpretation that tends to ignore the relevance of this model to a development and understanding of a western doctrine of Christian sanctification. Through the examination of some overlooked insights offered in Cur Deus homo and their integration with other spiritual writings in Anselm's corpus, the present article attempts to redirect current scholarship towards a more holistic engagement with Anselm's doctrine of atonement, out of which an original doctrine of Christian perfection can be outlined.

Keywords

Anselmatonementperfectionsanctificationscholasticism
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 64 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

1 One has only to think of the efforts initiated by the French ressourcement in the twentieth century, and of the scholarship that this movement has since established. See e.g. Chenu, Marie-Dominique, Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir (Étiolles: Casterman, 1937)Google Scholar; Danielou, Jean, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956)Google Scholar; DeLubac, Henri, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Simmonds, Gemma (London: SCM Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Cf. Boersma, Hans, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (Oxford: OUP, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mettepenningen, Jürgen, Nouvelle Théologie – New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London: T&T Clark, 2010)Google Scholar.

2 See, amongst others, Luscombe, David and Evans, Gillian, Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Rogers, Katherin, The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Deme, Daniel, The Christology of Anselm of Canterbury (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003)Google Scholar; Gasper, Giles E. M., Anselm of Canterbury and his Theological Inheritance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)Google Scholar; Visser, Sandra and Williams, Thomas, Anselm (Oxford: OUP, 2009)Google Scholar.

3 Augustine, Discorsi: su argomenti vari, ed. Paronetto, V. and Quartiroli, A. M.. Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana 34 (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1989)Google Scholar, 371.1.

4 Athanasius, On the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. a religious of CSMV (Cambridge: CUP, 1982), 54.3.

5 Augustine, Discorsi 371.1, and Athanasius, Incarnation 54.3.

6 Anselm, Cur Deus homo, in St. Anselm's Basic Writings: Proslogium, Monologium, Cur Deus homo, Gaunilo's In Behalf of the Fool, trans. S. N. Deane (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962), 2.1.

7 Ibid., 2.4. See also ibid., preface. ‘Human nature was ordained for this purpose, . . . it was necessary that this design for which man was made should be fulfilled’.

8 Ibid., 2.2.

9 See ibid., 2.6–7.

10 See Augustine, The Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding (New York: New City Press, 1997), 1.1. Augustine's idea of restlessness and pursuit of God is reaffirmed by Anselm in ‘To the Holy Cross’, in The Prayers and Meditations of Saint Anselm with the Proslogion, trans. Benedicta Ward (London: Penguin Books, 1973), p. 105.

11 Anselm, Cur Deus homo, preface.

12 Visser and Williams, Anselm, p. 254.

13 See Eadmer's account of how Anselm received in prayer the answer to the question he discusses in Proslogion. Eadmer of Canterbury, The Life of Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. R. W. Southern (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd, 1962), 1.19.

14 Anselm, Prayers, p. 127, ‘To St John the Baptist’ (emphasis added).

15 Anselm, Cur Deus homo, 1.11.

16 Ibid., 1.22.

17 The description of sin as failure to render to God his due (ibid., 1.11) is not intended as an all-encompassing definition. Indeed, Anselm offers also another description, this time in terms of distortion of beauty (ibid., 1.15), which is almost completely ignored by current scholarship, which seems to have lost perception of the divine signification of beauty as perfection.

18 Anselm, Prayers, p. 129, ‘To St John the Baptist’.

19 Ibid., pp. 141–2, ‘To St Paul’.

20 Ibid., pp. 158–9, ‘To St John the Evangelist (1)’.

21 Ibid., p. 165, ‘To St John the Evangelist (2)’.

22 Ibid., p. 156, ‘To St Paul’.

23 Ibid., p. 167, ‘To St John the Evangelist (2)’.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., p. 204, ‘To St Mary Magdalene’.

26 Ibid., pp. 212–3, ‘For Friends’. Cf. p. 97, ‘To Christ’.

27 Ibid., pp. 93, 95, ‘To Christ’. Cf. p. 125, ‘To St Mary (3)’.

28 Ibid., pp. 95, 97–8, ‘To Christ’.

29 Ibid., p. 147, ‘To St Paul’.

30 Ibid., p. 93, ‘To Christ’. Cf. p. 163, ‘To St John the Evangelist (2)’.

31 Ibid., p. 217, ‘For Enemies’.

32 Ibid., p. 147, ‘To St Paul’.

33 Ibid., p. 161, ‘To St John the Evangelist (1)’.

34 Ibid., p. 206, ‘To St Mary Magdalene’.

35 Ibid., p. 201, ‘To St Mary Magdalene’.

36 Ibid., pp. 203–4.

37 Ibid., p. 202.

38 Ibid., p. 131, ‘To St John the Baptist’.

39 Ibid., pp. 131, 133–4; cf. p. 213, ‘For Friends’.

40 See ibid., pp. 212–13, ’For Friends’.

41 Ibid., pp. 108–9, ‘To St Mary (1)’.

42 Ibid., p. 125, ‘To St Mary (3)’.

43 Ibid., p. 105, ‘To the Holy Cross’.

44 Ibid., p. 101, ‘Before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ’.

45 Ibid., p. 116, ‘To St Mary (3)’.

46 Ibid., p. 95, ‘To Christ’. See also Anselm, The Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, trans. Walter Froehlich, 3 vols (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990–4), vol. 1, pp. 151–2, ‘To Frodelina’.

47 Anselm, Prayers, p. 101, ‘Before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ’.

48 Ibid., p. 99.

49 Ibid., p. 94, ‘To Christ’.

50 Ibid., p. 107, ‘To St Mary (1)’.

51 Ibid., p. 167, ‘To St John the Evangelist (2)’.

52 Ibid., p. 133, ‘To St John the Baptist’.

53 Ibid., pp. ii8–9, ‘To St Mary (3)’.

54 DeRougemont, Denis, Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion, rev. edn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 59–60Google Scholar, 62.

55 Anselm, Prayers, p. 94, ‘To Christ’.

56 Anselm, Letters, vol. 1, p. 152, ‘To Frodelina’.

57 Ibid.

58 Anselm, Prayers, p. 119, ‘To St Mary (3)’.

59 E.g. Anselm prays that the Holy Spirit may convince Adelaide to continue in the path towards Christ and love for him (Anselm, Letters, vol. 1, p. 93, ‘To Adelaide’); that he may convince Ernulf to continue in a life of death to sin and living for God (ibid., vol. 2, p. 298, ‘To Ernulf the Prior and the Monks of Canterbury’); that he, through his anointing, may teach and persuade Mathilda to continue to live a salvific life pleasing to God (ibid., p. 301, ‘To Mathilda, Queen of the English’); and that he may guide Robert in God's truth (ibid., vol. 3, p. 261, ‘To Robert, Count of Meulan’).

60 Milbank, John, ‘The Second Difference: A Trinitarianism without Reserve’, Modern Theology 2 (1986), pp. 214–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Williams, Thomas, ‘God who Sows the Seed and Gives the Growth: Anselm's Theology of the Holy Spirit’, Anglican Theological Review 89/4 (2007), p. 620Google Scholar.

62 Anselm, De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), p. 11.

63 Anselm, Letters, vol. 3, p. 213, ‘To the Monk Walter’.

64 Ultimately, Anselm's overall association of the Holy Spirit with the ‘gift of love’ is consistent with his general, trinitarian Augustinianism, as will be evidenced later.

65 Anselm, Prayers, p. 237, ‘Meditation on Human Redemption’.

66 Ibid., p. 101, ‘Before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ’.

67 See ibid., p. 138, ‘To St Peter’: ‘My soul reborn by baptism in Christ’.

68 Ibid., p. 117, ‘To St Mary (3)’. See also p. 128, ‘To St John the Baptist’.

69 Ibid., p. 132, ‘To St John the Baptist’.

70 Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, to which is Added a Selection from his Letters, ed. and trans. John Grant (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1909), p. xii.

71 Anselm, Prayers, p. 90, ‘Letter of Anselm to the Countess Mathilda of Tuscany’.

72 Anselm, Letters, vol. 1, pp. 131–2, pp. 149–50, ‘To Albert, the Physician’.

73 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 132, ‘To Albert, the Physician’.

74 Ibid., p. 76, ‘To Odo and Lanzo’.

75 Ibid.

76 Matt 20:16; 22:14.

77 See Anselm, Cur Deus homo 1.16–18.

78 Anselm, Letters, vol. 1, pp. 76–7, ‘To Odo and Lanzo’.

79 Ibid., pp. 159–60, ‘To the Monks Herluin, Gundulf, and Maurice’.

80 Ibid., p. 77, ‘To Odo and Lanzo’.

81 Anselm, Prayers, p. 94, ‘To Christ’.

82 Augustine, Confessions 1.6–7.

83 Anselm, Prayers, p. 93, ‘To Christ’.

84 Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, trans. G. P. Goold, 7 vols. (London: William Heinemann, 1988), 14.28.

85 Augustine, Confessions 1.1.

86 Anselm, Prayers, p. 105, ‘To the Holy Cross’.

87 Augustine, ‘Nozze e concupiscienza’, in Matrimonio e verginità, trans. M. Palmieri, V. Tarulli, and N. Cipriani. Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana 7/1 (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1978), 2.3.9.

88 Anselm, Prayers, p. 101, ‘Before Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ’.

89 Augustine, City 14.28.

90 Anselm, Prayers, p. 108, ‘To St Mary (1)’.

91 Ibid., p. 105, ‘To the Holy Cross’.

92 Dante, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry F. Cary (London: George Bell & Sons, 1910), Inferno V.103–5.

93 DeRougemont, Love, 82–3.

94 ‘Amors par force vos demeine!’ Henri Béroul, The Romance of Tristan, ed. A. Ewert (Bristol: Bristol Classic Press, 1991), v. 2296.

95 Anselm, Letters, vol. 1, p. 75, ‘To Odo and Lanzo’.

96 Noble, Thomas A., Holy Trinity: Holy People. The Theology of Christian Perfecting (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2013), p. 144Google Scholar.

97 Ibid., pp. 144–5.

98 Merton, Thomas, The Last of the Fathers: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and the Encyclical Letter, Doctor Mellifluus (London: Hollis & Carter, 1954), p. 57Google Scholar.

99 Winter, Michael, The Atonement (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1995), pp. 66–7Google Scholar. Yet, satisfaction is for Anselm necessary to divine reconciliation (as it is for Athanasius in Incarnation 7), not because God is expecting something that may provoke his grace, but because sin is an objective reality and not merely a subjective illusion, which could be undone by a simple act of human contrition and divine forgiveness. See Anselm, Cur Deus homo 1.12.

100 Grande dizionario enciclopedico, ed. Pietro Fedele et al., 28 vols. (Turin: Unione Tipografica Editoriale Torinese, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 893–4.

101 In fundamental harmony with Winter's appraisal, if Zini's analysis were correct, the human effort, far from being a response of love triggered by God's grace, would represent the causative agent of the descent of God's grace. On the contrary, at the beginning of his Proslogion, Anselm provides the very key to understand his theology: ‘I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, / but I believe so that I may understand; / and what is more, / I believe that unless I do believe I shall not understand’. Anselm, Proslogion, 1.1, p. 244.

102 Visser and Williams, Anselm, pp. 13–14. For a radically different interpretation, see Gasper, Anselm of Canterbury, pp. 107–8.

103 Visser and Williams, Anselm, pp. 24–5 (emphasis added).

104 Anselm, ‘Anselm's Apologetic in Reply to Gaunilo’, in St Anselm's Basic Writings, 1.1.

105 Anselm, Cur Deus homo 2.6.

106 Anselm, Prayers, p. 206, ‘To St Mary Magdalene’.