SIN— FINAL CHAPTER

            Gary Anderson concludes his study of the history of the concept of sin with a discussion of Anselm’s treatment (11-12century) of the subject in a classic work Cur Deus Homo?  Or Why the God-Man or perhaps better translated Why God became a Human Being. As Anderson rightly points out, the concept of sin as a debt created by Adam a huge deficit, permeates this book and Anselm’s treatment of the subject.  Anderson informs us that no theologian of the era better integrates his theology of the atonement with a theory about sin as a debt that needs paying.  Anselm’s treatment of the subject has often raised the question—Does God the Father really demand the death of his own Son as a means of repaying a debt??   Many theologians naturally have found this suggestion unacceptable in many ways, not least because it seems to paint a picture of the Father as a ruthless and petty accountant.  Not surprisingly, many have objected saying that Anselm’s view does not reflect a Biblical position. Anderson disagrees.  He finds Anselm’s view profoundly argument.

            The argument of Anselm runs as follows: 1) humans have been made to enjoy the blessings God provides, and all they owe in return is obedience to God. When they refuse to obey or even disobey, they fall into debt to God but 2) since the ‘earth is the Lord’s’  they have no currency with which to pay for their sin, so 3) the situation from a purely human viewpoint is hopeless, unless there is divine intervention, and since there is a good God, there is such intervention. But God’s problem is that only God has the means to pay off this sin debt, but at the same time it must be a human being who does the paying. The only possible solution— God becomes a human being and pays off the debt, however 4) a mere sinless life of Christ, a life of perfect obedience will only fulfill what the Son of Man as a human owes God, it will not in itself benefit anyone else, so Christ must perform some over the top supererogatory work that will provide a credit for human beings, wiping out their debt of sin. 5) But for his death, Christ requires or needs no reward or blessing so instead the reward owed to Christ, the compensation due to him is paid to human beings who believe in him, hence the gift of everlasting life.

            One of the issues that Anderson’s treatment of the subject raises is— to what degree should later Aramaic targums on and of the OT, or Dead Sea Scroll material, inform, or even determine the way we read either the OT or the NT? I certainly believe we must always take all relevant evidence into account, including all linguistic evidence but at the end of the day, conundrums in the Hebrew OT are not necessarily best resolved by studying esoteric Jewish literature from a sectarian community such as at Qumran, and even less are later Targums reflecting the rise of rabbinic Judaism helpful in sorting out Biblical lexicography. The reason I say this is simple— in both cases the Sitz im Lebens or situations in life of these two communities (at Qumran, or during the Mishnaic period) is different from that during the Biblical period.  We cannot simply assume the dots can be so facilely connected as Anderson does in a linear history of ideas kind of manner.

            Furthermore,  I do not agree with Anderson that the debt metaphor is the controlling metaphor about sin in the NT.  Sin is seen as a disease, sin is seen as a filth from which one needs cleansing, sin is seen as a burden or weight, and sin is seen as an act of rebellion, and sin is seen as a debt in the NT.  It is furthermore not true that there is no explanation of how Christ’s death atones for sin in the NT.  To the contrary we are told that it is life blood poured out in death that makes atonement.  We may not be able to say quite why that is so (is it because human life created in God’s image is of sacred worth, and no sacrifice could be higher than giving a human life) but we can say how the atonement works.  The blood of the sinless and perfect Passover lamb poured out atones for sin, and as the scapegoat he not merely atones for sin, he removes it from God’s presence.

            It is to Anselm’s credit that he rejected the ransom to Satan theory about what was happening in the atonement, and substituted a different more mercantile model. It was God who was owed a debt for sin.  It is not clear to me however that either Anderson reads Anselm right, or that Anselm is right in rejecting the notion of a penal substitutionary sacrifice of Christ. Anselm argued that because God does not coerce Christ into doing it, but rather Christ freely chooses to do it, that we cannot see God as demanding satisfaction by such a sacrifice.  It is quite true that Christ did what he did out of love, and freely, but it is not true that it was not a necessity to deal with the sin problem. And the reason for this is clear— God is holy, just and righteous, and cannot pass over sin forever.  He cannot take an eternal pass on his very character.   The fact that Christ willingly gave his life doesn’t for a moment remove the fact that: 1) Christ explained it was necessary for the son of man to suffer many things and be killed to provide a ransom for the man, and 2) Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane does indeed submit to God’s will that he die on the cross. God does indeed substitute the innocent lamb of God for us, the guilty party.   Anselm’s further distinction between punishment and satisfaction, while helpful does not provide a basis for denying Christ suffered our punishment for us, as Isaiah 53 indeed suggests- he was bruised for our iniquities, and it was the will of God that it be so, as Isaiah 53 says.   According to Anselm, satisfaction is providing a willing sacrifice, punishment is wrongly defined as suffering the just consequences for one’s sins involuntarily.  If you leave out the word involuntarily, the definition is more apt.  While I agree that the emphasis in the NT is placed on God’s love as the reason or motivation for sending and sacrificing the Son, this is nowhere put at odds with the notion of a penal substitutionary atonement in the NT precisely because love like holiness are two attributes of the divine character and they are not at odds with one another, nor does one trump the other. The death of Christ shows how God can be both righteous and the one who out of love sets right the sinner.   There is an interesting quote from the current Pope on p. 199 which shows, sadly, the pitting of God’s love over against any sort of penal substitution theory of atonement.  Even the Pope, and these remarks were made when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, can make mistakes about the theology of atonement in the NT.   That Anselm’s theology of sin as debt bears a close resemblance to that of some post 70 rabbis, is true enough, but quite beside the point.  The question is whether Anselm is in accord with the variety and complexity of the way Christ’s death is presented in the NT, and the answer to that is no,  when one recognizes that sin as debt is not the controlling metaphor in the NT, but only one way of speaking about the matter.   

            Here at the end of this critique several final points should be made: 1) probing the root metaphors for theological ideas is one fertile way to study those ideas but only when it is realized that a theology, even a theology of sin and atonement is not all about metaphors; 2) metaphors, like similes, by definition are comparisons of two unlike things that in some particular way are alike. One still has to ask how something is alike—- how, in this case sin is like a debt or something owed.  Sin cannot be confined or fully defined by the concept of debt. It is only one day to deal with the complex concept of sin.  While I agree with Anderson that sin as debt can be one way to conceptualize sin and sacrifice, it cannot be the controlling metaphor, as it does not stand alone, even in the NT itself. 3) theological ideas do not simply arise out of metaphors. Metaphors arise as ways to explain theological realities. The death of Jesus was not an idea, it was a fact about which their was theological reflection both before and after Golgotha.  We forget at our peril that we are not just dealing and playing with ideas and their evolution in the Bible. We are dealing with realities, indeed eternal verities about the character of the living God and of ourselves and about our inter-relationship.  We should not think we can get at the heart of such complex theological matters simply by word studies. It also requires Word studies, and that is a different matter.    If it is the mark of a good book that it stirs up considerable reflection and thought, then Anderson’s book on Sin, is certainly a very good book, however much I may disagree with him at key junctures.