Medieval Christian Theology: Redemption
"God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." The New Testament writers, though they often differ in detail and emphasis, are completely consistent in their understanding that the primary earthly mission of Jesus Christ was to intercede on behalf of sinful humans and to effect their salvation. They also agreed that it was precisely because Jesus was the Son of God that his work, which aimed at healing the rift between humanity and divinity, was efficacious. As both God and Man, Jesus could serve in a sort of mediating role, and could even act as the “rescuer” of humankind. As St Anselm puts it, “The one who was to assume a human existence was to come to fight against the devil … and intercede for human beings.” The Epistle to the Hebrews views Christ as the High Priest who makes an intercessory sacrifice to God on behalf of humans, while the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation saw him as the sacrificial Lamb itself.
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Paul, on the other hand, repeatedly emphasizes Jesus as the New Adam: Christ’s obedience—even, in Paul’s words, “unto death”’ (Philippians 2:8)— undoes the effects of Adam’s primal act of disobedience, and Christ’s death and resurrection cleanse and renew the world.
Certainly the various authors of the New Testament, as well as early and medieval Christians, regarded Christ’s unjust, humiliating, and horrifically agonizing execution on the Cross at the hands of the political and religious authorities as being somehow the central means by which God’s rescue operation of the sinful world could happen. And likewise they saw Jesus’s resurrection from the dead as somehow a ratification of this act of salvation, or as a signal indicator of its success: “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:21-22). |
However, the biblical texts are never especially clear or developed about these somehows, that is, about exactly how and why Christ’s particular death was able to achieve atonement between humans and God.
The most prevalent theory in the early Church, formulated perhaps most influentially by the second-century theologian Origen, was that Christ’s death served as a ransom, a transaction in which God redeems humanity from the power of Satan. (In fact, the English word ransom derives via French rançon from the Latin word redemptio, from which we also get the word redemption.) Because Christ was human, indeed because he was a sort of perfect archetype of humanity, he was able to stand in for humans and serve as their “ransom money,” so to speak. But because Christ was also divine—and sinless—the Devil had no legitimate binding claim on him. Christ’s breaking free of the bonds of death on the first Easter therefore signals how the Devil’s hold on humanity has been definitively broken.
The most prevalent theory in the early Church, formulated perhaps most influentially by the second-century theologian Origen, was that Christ’s death served as a ransom, a transaction in which God redeems humanity from the power of Satan. (In fact, the English word ransom derives via French rançon from the Latin word redemptio, from which we also get the word redemption.) Because Christ was human, indeed because he was a sort of perfect archetype of humanity, he was able to stand in for humans and serve as their “ransom money,” so to speak. But because Christ was also divine—and sinless—the Devil had no legitimate binding claim on him. Christ’s breaking free of the bonds of death on the first Easter therefore signals how the Devil’s hold on humanity has been definitively broken.
This ransom theory of atonement with God was highly influential throughout the earlier Middle Ages; Augustine, for one, had been an enthusiastic proponent. However, it was not without its critics. Early on, the fourth-century Church father Gregory of Nazianzus had criticized the idea of ransom, because it implied that God actually owed the Devil something. Writing at the end of the eleventh century, the incisive Anselm of Canterbury also found ransom theory wanting, and proposed instead what is now known as the satisfaction theory of atonement. For Anselm, the original sin of Adam and Eve—as well as all consequent sins—stand as an affront to God’s honor, as they are acts of more or less willed disobedience to God’s will; as Anselm writes, "we live very dangerously." It would be unjust, he argues, for God simply to forgive these sins unilaterally: God’s honor must be restored, and the debt of justice owed to God must be satisfied. God, out of his gracious love, provides the Incarnate Christ as a means of satisfying this debt. Christ’s boundless goodness, as well as the supreme injustice of his execution, provides the necessary satisfaction of the debt.
Anselm’s theory of satisfaction resonated with many medieval believers because it drew an analogy between God and earthly lords, who were also concerned to redress assaults on their honor; in fact, Anselm’s idea falls flat for many modern people precisely because it is couched in the language of feudalism. But in its day satisfaction theory was highly influential, and slowly eclipsed the ransom theory of atonement. By the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas had endorsed Anselm’s ideas, fine-tuning them a bit in the process, and it is through Aquinas that satisfaction theory eventually became mainstream Catholic theology, which it remains, more or less, to the present day. Anselm did, however, face a formidable challenger in the person of Peter Abelard, the erstwhile Wunderkind of the Parisian schools and probably the keenest logician of the Middle Ages. Openly rejecting both the traditional ransom theory and Anselm’s satisfaction theory, Abelard argued that Christ’s appearance on earth was efficacious for salvation because he served as a moral exemplar. Jesus, for Abelard, exemplified the perfect (and sinless) human life, and had lived in obedience to the will of God, even unto his death. The Crucifixion, according to Abelard, was thus the ultimate example of such obedience, but it was also efficacious because it evinced sorrow in believers, a sorrow that could lead to the amendment of one's life and the repentance of one's sins. Abelard’s theory was roundly condemned, perhaps more because of Abelard's many enemies than because of any intrinsic lack of merit. It did, however, exert a slow influence over time, gained some traction during the Reformation, and has been especially popular among mainstream Protestants in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Anselm’s theory of satisfaction resonated with many medieval believers because it drew an analogy between God and earthly lords, who were also concerned to redress assaults on their honor; in fact, Anselm’s idea falls flat for many modern people precisely because it is couched in the language of feudalism. But in its day satisfaction theory was highly influential, and slowly eclipsed the ransom theory of atonement. By the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas had endorsed Anselm’s ideas, fine-tuning them a bit in the process, and it is through Aquinas that satisfaction theory eventually became mainstream Catholic theology, which it remains, more or less, to the present day. Anselm did, however, face a formidable challenger in the person of Peter Abelard, the erstwhile Wunderkind of the Parisian schools and probably the keenest logician of the Middle Ages. Openly rejecting both the traditional ransom theory and Anselm’s satisfaction theory, Abelard argued that Christ’s appearance on earth was efficacious for salvation because he served as a moral exemplar. Jesus, for Abelard, exemplified the perfect (and sinless) human life, and had lived in obedience to the will of God, even unto his death. The Crucifixion, according to Abelard, was thus the ultimate example of such obedience, but it was also efficacious because it evinced sorrow in believers, a sorrow that could lead to the amendment of one's life and the repentance of one's sins. Abelard’s theory was roundly condemned, perhaps more because of Abelard's many enemies than because of any intrinsic lack of merit. It did, however, exert a slow influence over time, gained some traction during the Reformation, and has been especially popular among mainstream Protestants in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Regardless of how or why the redemption works, what mattered most to medieval Christians was that it did work: belief in Christ and his redemptive actions thus became a major cornerstone of medieval Christian religious belief. For medieval Christians, the redemption enacted by Christ removed—at least in theory—the obstacles between humanity and God and it promised to reverse the consequences of original sin. The medieval imagination was much exercised by the promise of the general resurrection on the Day of Judgment: like the Resurrected Christ, the dead, they believed, would rise and spirits would be reunited with bodies. In other words, the death brought into the world by Adam and Eve’s primal disobedience would be undone. Moreover, the souls of the blessed would—again, through Christ’s saving actions—enjoy to their full capacity the presence of the loving God. As St Paul writes:
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“I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:17-19)
The anonymous poet of the Middle English Pearl imagines God’s presence in even more tangible terms:
“The Lombe uus glades, our care is kest; / He myrthes uus alle at uch a mes. / Uchones blysse is breme and best, / And never ones honour yet never the les” (ll. 861-4).
The sheer joy in the divine presence imagined by Paul or the Pearl-poet could of course only be enjoyed by those souls faithful enough and virtuous enough to merit it. Consequently, many medieval Christians devoted considerable spiritual energy toward assuring that they would be among the saved when their earthly lives were over. While the saving grace ushered in by Christ, as we have seen, opened the way to God and mitigated the effects of original sin, Christians were still expected to lead virtuous lives and to avoid all sins: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And yet sin, as everyone knew, was still mostly unavoidable; to interact with others in practically any community would open one to opportunities for sin, and even monastics of the purest and most ascetic reputations are reported to have fought constantly against bodily urges and sinful thoughts.
The Church, however, provided through its sacraments a remedy for a world in which sin was still pervasive. Three of the Church's sacraments are especially pertinent in this context—Baptism, Confession, and Eucharist. Baptism, in medieval Europe typically administered to infants by a priest, was a ritual cleansing and a conferral of God’s saving grace upon the child (or upon the rare adult convert); it served to “wash away” all sins, including original sin, and to induct the baptized person into full membership in the Church. The sacrament of Confession (or Reconciliation), which involved confessing one’s sins privately to a priest and performing some sort of appropriate penance for them, was also a way of alleviating the stain of the particular sins confessed and of restoring oneself to a right
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relationship with God. The sacrament of the Eucharist was modeled after the Last Supper that Christ took with his disciples on the night before his arrest and crucifixion (Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22). It was administered in a church or chapel by a priest, who consecrated bread and wine, which then were believed to mystically become the body and blood of Christ. Medieval Catholics believed that Christ was truly present in the bread and wine. (In the later Middle Ages, the bread and wine, according to the doctrine of the Transubstantiation, were believed to be literally transformed into Christ’s body and blood.) The Eucharist was a direct encounter with Christ, the living God, and it was thus understood to confer spiritual sustenance, strengthening the communicant’s resistance against sinful temptations.
The sacraments generally relied upon a priest. However, beyond the strict confines of the institutional Church, individual Christians could also work to mitigate their sins, draw closer to God, and prepare themselves better to enjoy the fruits of Christ’s redemption of the world through acts of prayer. Christians could—and did—pray for forgiveness of their own sins and for the sins of others. For most monks and nuns, prayers for "corporate sin," that is, for the sins of the entire world, were a routine part of their daily devotions. Moreover, several of the Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) were recognized as distinctly penitential, providing a meditation on sin and redemption for clergy and devout laity alike. Typical medieval Christians also prayed for the deceased, or paid for masses to be prayed for the deceased, hoping to ease the pains of Purgatory for their departed loved ones and to speed their way to full communion with God. Most Christians also prayed regularly to local (or favorite, or famous) saints for a host of possible benefits, which could include prayers for the remission of sins. Though saints, they knew, could not themselves forgive sins—a prerogative allowed to God alone—saints could nonetheless plead with God on behalf of the sinner. In this respect, and in countless others, no saint was considered more efficacious, or more frequently and urgently called on throughout the long centuries of the Middle Ages, than the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
The sacraments generally relied upon a priest. However, beyond the strict confines of the institutional Church, individual Christians could also work to mitigate their sins, draw closer to God, and prepare themselves better to enjoy the fruits of Christ’s redemption of the world through acts of prayer. Christians could—and did—pray for forgiveness of their own sins and for the sins of others. For most monks and nuns, prayers for "corporate sin," that is, for the sins of the entire world, were a routine part of their daily devotions. Moreover, several of the Psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) were recognized as distinctly penitential, providing a meditation on sin and redemption for clergy and devout laity alike. Typical medieval Christians also prayed for the deceased, or paid for masses to be prayed for the deceased, hoping to ease the pains of Purgatory for their departed loved ones and to speed their way to full communion with God. Most Christians also prayed regularly to local (or favorite, or famous) saints for a host of possible benefits, which could include prayers for the remission of sins. Though saints, they knew, could not themselves forgive sins—a prerogative allowed to God alone—saints could nonetheless plead with God on behalf of the sinner. In this respect, and in countless others, no saint was considered more efficacious, or more frequently and urgently called on throughout the long centuries of the Middle Ages, than the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God.
Further Reading
- Peter Abelard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition, ed. Blanche Beatrice Boyer and Richard Peter McKeon (University of Chicago Press, 1978)
- Anselm of Canterbury, The Major Works, trans. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford University Press, 2008)
- Kevin A. McMahon, "Penance and Peter Abelard's Move Within," The Saint Anselm Journal 6 (2009)
- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2017)
- Rik Van Nieuwenhove, "St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas on 'Satifaction': or How Catholic and Protestant Understandings of the Cross Differ," Angelicum 80 (2003): 159-176