justice; that it is not to meet any want in God that satisfaction, any more than obedience, is required, but from regard to us; that it cannot be said He would have shown His omnipotence more fully by pardoning with a mere word, for in this work it was most essential to reveal His goodness and His justice; that mere forgiveness would not have been so constraining a claim on our thankfulness and love, because it is a far greater thing to die for men than only to forgive them; nor would it have set us a better example, for punishment belongs to God, though not to man, and moreover by satisfaction God gave us a more perfect model; lastly, that it is a property of the Highest Good to employ, where possible, the co-operation of the creature in His noblest works, and this was possible in redemption though not in creation. 3. The next question is a favourite one with the Schoolmen. Could any mere creature make satisfaction for the whole human race? The author, in replying, first divides satisfaction into that made for the injury, and that made for the loss. It is clear that no mere creature could make satisfaction for the injury done to God, on account of His greatness. But neither could he for the loss. No mere man could give an equivalent to God for the loss He suffered by Adam's sin, which extended over the whole race. Still less could a creature of some other order of being, as an angel, do so, for his satisfaction could have no relation to the sin of man. 4. As to whether a mere man, with the assistance of grace, could make satisfaction for his own sins, it is replied that he might make a partial, but not a plenary, satisfaction for actual, none for original sin; because original sin involves depravation not only of will but of nature. For this last none could make satisfaction who was not himself free from it, and who did not possess grace to be the Second Adam, or Head of the renewed race (gratiam communem hoc est gratiam Capitis). Hence Christ alone could atone for original sin, and He by doing so won grace for men, whereby they are enabled to make satisfaction for their own actual sins. His Passion, therefore, acts more fully in the sacrament of baptism, which remits original, than in the sacrament of penance, which remits actual sin. 5. To the fifth question St. Bonaventure answers, that the most fitting method of satisfaction for God to accept was the Passion and Death of Christ, because it is the noblest that can be conceived, and that on four grounds. It was the most acceptable for appeasing God, the most suitable for curing the disease of sin, the most effectual for attracting the human race, and the wisest for overcoming the enemy of man. It was the most pleasing to God, because, as St. Anselm said, the hardest, and therefore most precious, free-will offering man can make in token of entire self-sacrifice, is voluntary death. As man had sinned through pride, lust, and disobedience, the fittest cure was humility, pain, and fulfilling of the divine law. In no other way could God so effectually elicit the love of men as by dying for them on the Cross; and without winning their love He could not save them, for He would not force their free-will. Finally, as Satan overcame man by treachery, so Christ overcame Satan by prudence, "drawing Leviathan with a hook." Objections are then stated and answered. It may be said that Christ's life is more precious than His death; but the greatest satisfaction is the most painful, and to be willing to die for God's honour is a more heroic act of perfection and charity than to be willing to live for it. It may be objected again, that the sin of Adam cannot be atoned by the greater sin of the murderers of Christ. But the Atonement is made by Him, not by His murderers; and it is a conspicuous evidence of Divine wisdom to draw good out of evil, nay, to draw the highest good. If it is further urged, that Christ should then have suffered twice, once for Adam's sin, once for the greater sin of those who slew Him, it is replied, that the merits of His sufferings exceed infinitely the guilt of the traitor Judas, of the Jews who instigated His death, and the Gentiles who accomplished it. 6. The last question concerns the necessity of this method of satisfaction. And here Bonaventure is in direct collision with Anselm. He admits, indeed, that on man's side no other method was possible, but with God all things are possible. To the objection, that no method but satisfaction consists with the Divine justice, and that only the death of the God-Man could make adequate satisfaction, he replies, first, that God might, had He so willed, have saved us by way of mercy and not of justice, and still nothing would have been left disordered (inordinatum) or even unpunished in the universe, for sin brings its own punishment with it; secondly, though Christ's death was the most fitting satisfaction, any, the very slightest, suffering of His would perhaps have been sufficient, for, as it is written, "with Him is plenteous redemption." 1 St. Bonaventure concludes by expressing his firm belief, that the human race could have been delivered by other methods, but will not pronounce whether or not it could have been otherwise redeemed. No one will be disposed to quarrel with the conclusion, but it is not very easy to reconcile with all that has gone before. If penal satisfaction was so demonstrably the method most becoming the attributes of God and the condition of man, it is difficult to conceive any other being adopted; and if sin would in any case have adequately punished itself, the argument for a penal satisfaction being requisite is undermined. The Cur Deus Homo is more consistent here. Alexander of Hales, and Albert the Great, come nearer to Anselm's view. Alexander begins, it is true, by admitting that according to that justice which is identical with His Being, and therefore with His power, God could have saved man without satisfaction, though according to that justice which goes by congruity of merits He could not. But the admission 1 Ps. cxxix. (E. V. cxxx.) 7. 2 "De liberatione enim firmiter credo, quod alio modo potuit liberari, de redemptione vero nec nego nec andeo affirmare, quia temerarium est, cum de divinâ potentiâ agitur, terminum præfigere ei. Amplius enim potest quam nos possu mus cogitare." does not go for much. For he afterwards decides, with Anselm, that, had God used His absolute power to pardon man, He would have left something disordered (inordinatum) in His kingdom, which is as impossible as for Him to do evil; and no satisfaction could be adequate but that of the God-Man.' Albert the Great comes to a similar conclusion, on the ground that original sin could only be remitted through One who was the second Head of the race, and, as it would be monstrous to have two heads in the natural order, the second must be in the supernatural order; or, in other words, must be Christ, who, as God, can alone impart grace to the mystical body. We come now to the founders of the two great schools of Thomists and Scotists, which have existed from that day to this in the Church; and we shall find them differing, as on other points, so also in their view of the Atonement; a difference partly grounded on their opposite views of the motive of the Incarnation. With the Thomist doctrine of grace, and all the controversies that have been raised upon it, we are not concerned here. The reasoning of Aquinas on the Atonement is contained in four Questions of the Summa, from which I will extract the points most deserving of notice.3 He treats in order the sufferings of Christ, their efficient cause, and their results. As regards the question of necessity, taking the Aristotelian division of internal Alex. Hales Summa, Pars iii. Q. i. 4, 7. |