- THE special result of mediæval theology as regards the problem of reconciliation between God and men, is found only in one aspect of it in the line which Anselm and Abelard deliberately entered upon. The effect of the death of Christ upon men—which they both virtually unite in describing as counter-love, and as imitation of His surrender of Himself to God—is laid down in the Catholic doctrine of justification, with the aim of conserving, in the Divine work of grace, the claims of moral freedom and of human spontaneity. But, when the idea of reconciliation is followed out in its reference to God, the thought of Christ’s merit, which Anselm and Abelard had employed only in a cursory way, becomes the predominant one. It is manifest that Anselm was not distinctly aware of the diversity of that thought from the idea of satisfaction, for he exchanges the one for the other; still, the rupture with his own premisses at the critical point of his theory indicates a feeling on his part that the idea of Christ’s merit would be a more serviceable one than that of His satisfaction. Although, therefore, the latter idea was taken up by Hugo of St. Victor,1 on the authority of Anselm, it is highly significant for the culminating point or scientific acme which the scholastic theology reached in Duns, that Peter Lombard, in his Book of Sentences, the leading manual of that time, exhibits the death of Christ under all possible categories, except that of a satisfaction to God, while he attributes the chief importance to the idea of merit. This procedure is, of course, quite in accordance with the fact that Anselm could not be reckoned among the fathers of Church doctrine; and certainly, therefore, does not imply the intention of combating his theory. Yet, if the use of the idea of satisfaction was not suppressed by the ascendency of the Lombard’s text-book, at least that of the idea of Christ’s merit was favoured thereby. Doubtless, it is in consequence of this that Thomas felt himself led to distinguish the two ideas. But Duns in methodically perfecting that distinction declared for the idea of merit as against that of satisfaction, which still has the preponderance with Thomas. This relation of succession between the two men suggests the convenience of considering their teachings in conjunction.
The very attitude which the Lombard assumed towards the problem secured for its treatment the utmost possible scientific freedom (see above, p. 22). In the third book of the Sentences (Dist. xviii. xix.), side by side with the point of view of merit whereby Christ has earned grace for us, he also gives a place to the thought of redemption from the power of the devil. The latter head was recommended to him by the unanimous testimony of all Christian antiquity, the former by the authorities of Augustine and Ambrose. In his representation of the transaction with the devil, he does not shrink from stating, without any circumlocution, the intentional fraud practised upon him, in the death of Christ. This, however, is merely by the way. The Lombard’s main view is that redemption from the devil depends upon liberation from sin; but this he carries back in Abelard’s style to the idea that Christ’s death, as a proof of God’s love, justifies by awakening the counter-love which excludes sin. This is only the one side of Abelard’s view, which was foreshadowed by Augustine; the other side of it has exercised no influence on the doctrinal tradition of the Church. In direct connexion with Augustine too (De Trinitate, xiii. 11. 16), he repudiates the representation as if Christ by His death appeased the wrath of the Father, who was thereby first induced to love us. On the contrary, he continues, God had loved us before from all eternity; and since sins were hostile to God, the suitable way was to forgive this enmity (Christ covering the sins from God’s notice), and to reconcile the sinner by justification. But in connexion with this the Lombard hints, at one time, that Christ in His death was the sufficient sacrifice for our reconciliation, at another time that He bore in Himself the punishment of our sins—certainly without adding any explanation of the way in which these thoughts are connected. Christ’s position as Mediator he refers back to the fact that He was of human nature; but then that only means that His suffering and dying could not be predicated of His Divine nature. For the rest, he makes it emphatic that Christ, by His righteousness, stood just in as close a relation to God as that in which He stood to men by His suffering and dying; and declares that the reconciliation of men with God would not have been possible through Him, had it not been for the union between the Divine and human natures in Him. Here the Lombard takes up a line adopted by Anselm only because he is following Augustine. For he again abandons the former, in order to affirm with Augustine (De Trin. xiii. 10) that some other method for our deliverance from sin than that by the death of Christ might also have been possible to God, but that a better method cannot be supposed to exist (Dist. xx.). He makes use of this proposition, indeed, only again to throw light upon the transaction with the devil, by showing that it was planned and determined not merely by Divine power but also by Divine justice; the thought, however, has a more extended influence on the development of the doctrine in the middle ages.