Anselm of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury · Father of Scholasticism · 1033–1109

Anselm was born at Aosta in Italy and settled at the abbey of Bec in Normandy to study under Lanfranc, whom he succeeded as prior. When Lanfranc died as Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm was pressed to follow him, and in 1093 William II, gravely ill and fearing hell, appointed him against his repeated pleas. His stand against the kings of England for the liberty of the church cost him years of exile.1

Anselm held that faith is the precondition of knowledge: credo ut intelligam, “I believe in order to understand.” He did not despise reason but employed it in all his writings, and he is called the father of scholasticism. In the Proslogion he set out the ontological argument for God’s existence:2

We believe that you [God] are a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.3 Anselm of CanterburyProslogion

In exile he wrote Cur Deus Homo (“Why God Became Man”), the most influential treatise on the atonement in the Middle Ages. Against the older view that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to Satan, Anselm taught that it was God who was owed, and that only one who is both God and man could make satisfaction for sin.4

His Legacy

Nathan Busenitz writes that the sixteenth-century Reformers “would build on this understanding of the atonement,” though they moved from God’s wounded honor to his holy justice, teaching that Christ bore the penalty of sin in our place. They did not agree with everything Anselm taught, but they saw him as an ally on salvation by grace through faith. He prayed:5

Look, O Lord, upon the face of Your Anointed, who became obedient to You even unto death, and let not the scars of His wounds be hidden from Your eyes forever, that You may remember how great a satisfaction for our sins You have received from Him.6 Anselm of Canterburyas quoted by Nathan Busenitz

Medieval Theologians

Notes

  1. Mark Galli and Ted Olsen, eds., 131 Christians Everyone Should Know (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), “Anselm.” Summarized. ↩
  2. Galli and Olsen, 131 Christians, “Anselm.” Summarized; Michael J. Vlach, “Historical Theology I: A.D. 100–1600” (course notes, TH 507, The Master’s Seminary, Fall 2007), “Anselm of Canterbury.” ↩
  3. Vlach, “Historical Theology I,” “Anselm of Canterbury,” quoting the Proslogion. ↩
  4. Galli and Olsen, 131 Christians, “Anselm.” Summarized; Nathan Busenitz, Forerunners of the Faith Teacher’s Guide: 13 Lessons to Understand and Appreciate the Basics of Church History (Chicago: Moody, 2020), 82. ↩
  5. Busenitz, Forerunners of the Faith Teacher’s Guide, 82–83. ↩
  6. Busenitz, Forerunners of the Faith Teacher’s Guide, 83. ↩