Today the Church remembers Saint Anselm...

Saint Anselm was once Archbishop of Canterbury. He is remembered for several things, but perhaps most famously for his influence on the Church's understanding of the Atonement - the saving action of Jesus that gives us confidence in the eternal life that awaits.

What exactly happened in Jesus' life, death and Resurrection that made such a difference to us all has been hotly debated since it happened - and still is now.

There are loads of ways to think about this, but most of the ideas can be fitted roughly around three main ideas. To summarise them (in far too little detail...!) :

- The first Christians took a Christus Victor approach (Christ the victor/Christ victorious) … in some way, by dying and rising to new life, Christ was victorious over death - not just for himself, but for us too, and reigns over the eternal life that awaits us after we die.

- Satisfaction. Anselm came up with a different approach. He argued that because Jesus was God, his dying for sin was the ultimate way to put right that which damaged the honour God deserves - and because Jesus was also human, this could apply to all of us.

- More recently, a moral exemplar idea has been added to those first two. This focuses on the example set to us by Jesus. His life and death give us a pattern to follow, and point towards the unlimited love that God has for all of us.

All of these three categories have pros and cons, and part of faith is getting comfortable with the mystery that God inevitably presents us with, as well as searching for answers and meaning. (Personally I suspect a little of each of the categories combined probably makes most sense to me, but that's also terribly Anglican...!)



A prayer of Saint Anselm:

O Lord our God,
grant us grace to desire You with our whole heart;
that, so desiring, we may seek,
and, seeking, find You;
and so finding You, may love You;
and loving You, may hate those sins from which You have redeemed us.
Amen.


♫ Jesus is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world...  Agnus Dei

(Agnus Dei  (The Lamb of God):

Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace.)