Vergeving en herstel: De relevantie van Anselmus' concepten van gerechtigheid en genoegdoening voor de verzoeningsleer in de moderne westerse cultuur

This study addresses the question why Christ died for the sins of the human race, and, specifically, why God cannot “just forgive.” That God does not just forgive is an aspect of the Christian faith that perplexes modern western culture and evokes resistance from it. To shed light on this question, we have chosen to delve into the thought of Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), especially as expressed in his Cur Deus Homo. According to Anselm, God’s justice demands satisfaction – that is the reason why forgiveness alone is not enough. The present study investigates to what extent Anselm’s views of justice and satisfaction can explain within the context of modern western culture why God does not just forgive. This question is worth asking, since the past several decades have seen extensive research on Anselm and his context, which has only partly been processed in systematic-theological reflection, while also leaving several questions open for further investigation. The basic research question is: how can Anselm’s views of justice and satisfaction, in the light of recent Anselm scholarship and against the background of contemporary western culture, help us to account for the faith claim that Jesus died “for our sins”—and, in particular, the implication that God apparently does not just forgive sin? We begin by addressing several methodological questions and presenting the current state of scholarship (Chapter 1). Then we investigate how Anselm’s thought has been processed by Paul Fiddes, Colin Gunton, and Richard Swinburne in their reflection on the significance of Christ’s suffering and death (Chapter 2). Thereafter we offer a conceptual analysis of these terms. This is in turn followed by a contextual analysis: what light does Anselm’s context shed on his use of these concepts? (Chapter 3) Moreover, we offer a brief exploration of what justice and satisfaction mean in the Bible. This survey is rooted in our view of systematic theology as, among other things, a reflection on expressions of faith as they come to us in Scripture (Chapter 4). Finally, we weave together the different threads of these chapters in a theological proposal that seeks to answer our research question (Chapter 5). We see the primary systematic-theological value of Anselm in his account of the importance of justice in the world, namely that it implies rectitude and beauty. Moreover, his thought has value for its insistence on the nature of satisfaction as actual restoration and in his identification of what must be restored, namely a will that is fully obedient to God. We emphasize the relationship between justice, wholeness, and beauty. We understand the injustice inflicted upon God by human beings particularly as a failure to acknowledge his dignity, and as such as a deficiency in love. Finally, we emphasize the rational nature of justice, implying that we can use arguments to show why something does or does not represent a good restoration of a relationship. In the western modern context, Anselm shows that a failure to act properly in personal relationships also involves a deficiency committed against the other. What a person does as an autonomous individual affects the other. That deficiency involves guilt and should not have been inflicted upon the other. Anselm shows us that if that deficiency is not restored, the situation is in the end not truly good. Without satisfaction, human beings fail to give God what He is worthy to receive. They are not as beautiful as they could have been and as God intended them to be. This is not a valid option for God and humanity.