Thomas Aquinas's vision of atonement is generally considered more conceptually expansive than Anselm of Canterbury's. Where Aquinas's multipartite account of Christ's passion incorporates a variety of biblical motifs, Anselm appears to narrow the focus to satisfactory debt-repayment alone. This article proposes two approaches for reframing the comparison between the two accounts. I argue first that both Anselm and Aquinas considered debt-repayment necessary but not sufficient in itself to accomplish all that is needed for the remittance of sin and the restoration of humanity. For Anselm, as for Aquinas, Christ must also liberate captives, defeat the devil, amend Adam's sin by recapitulation and win merit in which his members participate. The first reframing thus locates Anselm in much closer proximity to Aquinas than has generally been supposed. The second reframing throws light on a significant divergence between the two. I argue that the kenotic trajectory of abasement and ascent, pictured in the Philippian hymn, is put to strikingly different use by each theologian. This second reframing throws into sharp relief Aquinas's emphasis on Christ's suffering as a theological priority which Anselm does not share. Looking to Anselm's Benedictine context, I contend, yields one possible means of accounting for this departure.

The hypothesis of this article is that Anselm describes two consequences of sin for the human will in De casu diaboli, and these two consequences structure Anselm's later account of human salvation in the Cur Deus homo. First, sin causes us to deserve punishment for injustice; and, second, sin removes the grace by which humans were able to attain the goal of their creation, which is the happiness of heaven. Book 1 of the Cur Deus homo, then, deals with the need for satisfaction in the face of punishment, while book 2 addresses the need for a supererogatory gift that elevates human nature and restores it to its heavenly end. The article argues that, for Anselm, only a God-man can provide both the satisfaction and supererogatory gift necessary to restore humans to their original divine purpose.

This article demonstrates that an economic context is essential to the metaphor that Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard used in their arguments against a ransom theory of atonement. Contrary to typical analyses, which suggest their metaphor makes a point about obedience or honour that slaves or servants owe to a master or king, this metaphor in fact suggests relations between the lord of a manor and his servi – serfs bound to the land, perpetually indebted to the lord and effectively considered his property. Should servi attempt to desert their lord, he had the right simply to reclaim them wherever they went. Insofar as this right voided the servus’ choice to leave their lord, the metaphorical framework of manorial economy ruled out the ‘rights of the devil’ in a way previous debt-slavery and military frameworks for ransom theory (in themselves) did not.

This article makes a case for universal salvation based on the soteriology of Anselm of Canterbury's Cur Deus Homo. It argues that without an affirmation of universal salvation, Anselm's argument fails on the grounds of its own soteriological logic, which unites the fitting and the necessary for God, assumes the primary importance of divine aseity for understanding salvation history, and affirms the ontological unity of the human race as the object of God's redemptive love. Also detailed is the development of the relationship between mercy and justice in Anselm's thought from the Proslogion to Cur Deus Homo, and it is shown how Anselm's developed soteriology in the latter challenges major features of the Augustinianism he inherited. The article concludes that a robust theology of divine aseity like Anselm's will entail that creation be understood as a theatre for the manifestation of God's eternal love for his creatures.

Over the last fifty years studies of Anselm of Canterbury's concept of divine justice have delivered different results. The aim of this article is to present the results of a new comprehensive inquiry, based on the interpretation of key passages about justice in Anselm's theological works. The article argues that Anselm works with three definitions of God's justice. The first is the most traditional: God's justice is his right dealing with good and bad. The second definition follows the Anselmian concept of God: God's justice is his acting according to his being that than which nothing greater can be conceived. The third definition is God's rightness of will, preserved for its own sake. The article concludes that the attempt to show how these three definitions are related to each other brings to light tensions and loose ends in Anselm's works.

Anselm's ontological proof, which sets out to show that God must exist and which depends upon the premise that human beings can conceptualize God, seems antithetical to the apophatic tradition, but Anselm's work in general and his proof in particular are, nonetheless, exemplars of apophasis. The proof shows the atheist's position to be untenable, while also revealing the ambiguities of the believer's claim. In proving the necessary existence of God, Anselm destroys all idols and with them, all human conceptions of divinity, for whatever conception can be achieved always stands vulnerable to being overcome. Thus, Anselm is left to conclude that God is in fact “something greater than can be thought.” Anselm shows that language can never offer a final and complete formulation for God, and he does so through his own name for God (“something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”), a name that remains brilliantly open and which is ingenious, not for what it affirms about God, but rather for what it denies.