Introduction
Faith is a topic of unending debate between opinions of various people. It’s also a bundle of questions and answers; enigmas and mysteries to solve. It’s like a labyrinth of life. Many people attempt to explain different aspects of it. Some statements matter more; some become revolutionary while some are unheard of.
Many of these opinions affected numerous lives or way of lives, and two of this life changing statements about faith – specifically about the sin of humanity and how God saved humanity – are from Athanasius and Anselm.
Athanasius’ View of Sin
St Athanasius speaks of sin, humanity and God in ‘The Incarnation of the Word’ thoroughly. He strongly emphasized that sin exists in our world because of us. In his text he says “God created man for incorruption and as an image of His own eternity; but by envy of the devil death entered into the world” (St. Athanasius 10) and because of Man’s weakness, the wrongful actions of humankind paved way to sin. With sin present and ruling the world, Man was in danger of being reduced to nothing – this is because the only penalty for sin is death. And so men began to ‘die and corruption ran riot, wickedness, un-contentment, selfishness and all kinds of destructive behavior slowly ruled the earth’ (St. Athanasius 10). Gradually, bad became worse and then worst. God saw how the Earth battled, how crimes rose, and how evil took over. St. Athanasius established how gruesome the world became because of sin, how sin had a tight hold on Man and how Humanity was going towards and in the process of obliterating itself from the face of the earth.
In another part of his discussion, he pointed out what God, the Creator did about sin. He quoted that “it was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us” (. Athanasius 8). This was the Creator’s response; He came down to this world, through Christ His son, and bridged the gap between God and man, the gap being sin.
He explained why the Creator needed to do this. According to St Athanasius, even if humans repent from sin, no matter how hard we try to right our mistakes; fallen nature cannot be fixed by mere humans. We have been corrupted and only the One who created us can restore us, only God’s grace can be the remedy to this fallen nature.
These were just some of the effects sin brought about to humanity. With sin in the picture, the human race was going fast and straight to destruction and oblivion. With our transgression from God’s Law, with our sin, Athanasius passionately stressed how this situation was ‘monstrous and unfitting’ because as man made by the Word – made by God – we are two things (1) nothing but also (2) everything. We came out of thin air with just God’s Word, which makes us nothing but we are also made in the likeness and image of God! It was unthinkable to think that God’s supreme goodness in us would cause this damage. “Beings which once had shared the nature of the Word should perish and turn back again into non-existence through corruption,” Athanasius (12) stressed.
After Athanasius established what sin was and what it did to mankind, he then delved on how God and His grace saved us from nothingness. This story of Salvation has its own mysteries, which our human brain cannot and will not comprehend, but St. Athanasius put it in a simple way. He quoted the scriptures that said "The Lord God has appeared to us and again, He sent forth His Word and healed [us] and again, it was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself" (Athanasius 63). The Lord himself! – Athanasius says. Even with some unbelievers and doubters throughout history, the salvation story that ‘God was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us’ is persuasive.
St. Athanasius also discusses that “The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal” (Athanasius 69). In Jesus Christ, through the Son of Man, God came to heal and to teach the way. Jesus also taught the life we should live in this world; ‘He put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it’ (Athanasius 69). Jesus Christ, the Son of God – God Himself, saved us. At some point Athanasius pointed out the fact that God could have easily corrected us; as our Maker, He had the power over His creation – but God chose another way. This was where he explained Mary, the pure and spotless virgin. This was where she came in. She was used as an instrument for the salvation of all.
Mary’s life had been all about God’s will, and it is also discussed how God’s ‘divinity’ wasn’t affected because of the Creator’s preparation of the Virgin Mary. She was the temple God prepared to inhabit; so He could come into the Earth as a human person like us.
Why He had to live with us and like us, you ask? It’s because of His genuine love for us, his unfailing grace. The penalty for sin was death, our death – and through Christ, we were spared. This was when Christ, God Himself, paid the price for us! He gave up His body to death in our place. With this, we can also look at another aspect, how Christ lived. He literally showed us the way of life. He gave us an ‘antidote to the fire’ as Athanasius coins it. This was because God insisted on revealing Himself everywhere: “He was consistent in working through man to reveal Himself everywhere, so that nothing was left void of His Divinity and knowledge” (. Athanasius 73).
Athanasius provided the thought that God’s presence was already present throughout the cosmos. Now God wanted His knowledge to be known across the universe too: “He might fill all things everywhere with the knowledge of Himself, just as they are already filled with His presence” (Athanasius 73) believes.
Anselm’s View of Sin
Anselm, on the other hand, also tackled sin, humanity, and God on in his “Why Did God Become Man?” with a scholarly approach. His point focused on human reason and how it can reveal God’s works. He also gave emphasis on ‘Atonement’ where we could be reconciled with God, even with the sin of humanity and its effects on us. Then he talked about how God worked and works in line with the sin of humanity and His love for us. Further along the conversation, Anselm proves his point and justified why God had become man and died.
Anselm illustrates sin as origin of our lack of belief in God's honor and in doing so we “refuse or fail to give Him what is due His” (Anselm 11). He further deepened his thought by saying that we were made to subject ourselves in God’s will, and sin is rooted from our violation and unwillingness to keep God’s Honor. “The greatest act of honor, which a man can do for God is to lay down his own life in order to protect that honor” (Anselm 64) he points out; and when we sin we break apart from God’s person.
When we sin, Anselm explains that we do not pay back our debts to God; God being our Creator deserves our full submission and Anselm says that if we fail to return to God what is meant for God – we must repent and give back to God what we robbed him of. He says it in this way.
If someone sins, he has to restore what he has taken away, before he can be clear of fault.
So then, everyone who sins ought to pay back the honor of which he has robbed God.
This is the satisfaction which every sinner owes to God. (Anselm 43)
With sin comes the burden of humanity. Anselm reiterated how great a burden sin is with the obligation we failed to fulfill, what we took from God, and how we will never be happy nor fulfilled without the consolation of Faith and salvation of Christ.
Our obligation as human is being able to follow and ‘look; only to God’s will. When we look differently in other directions, we knowingly oppose God’s will – this sin according to Anselm cannot be repaid. He points out that this brings despair and unhappiness.
With this revelation, he added another alarming effect of our sin -- that we dishonored God by succumbing to the devil. He conveyed this by saying “he freely yielded to the devil to sin, and on this account justly incurred the penalty of death; so, in his weakness and mortality, which he had brought upon himself” (Anselm 40).
After numerous arguments, Anselm points out why God cannot just let sin pass by without a penalty – why God’s compassion and mercy is not right to cancel sin without compensation. He justifies this by stressing the character of God – how it is not proper to blur the line between guilty and not guilty. “So, if it is not fitting for God to do anything unjustly, it does not belong to his liberty or compassion or will to let the sinner go unpunished if he does not return to God what he has stolen from him” (Anselm 22). It is just simply who God is and He deserves to be given what is meant for Him; thus, we need to return to Him what we took – we should surrender our will to Him for His honor.
I quote Anselm in saying “Therefore man cannot and ought not by any means to receive from God what God designed to give him, unless he return to God everything which he took from him; so that, as by man God suffered loss, by man, also, He might recover His loss” (Anselm 21) In this statement, he explains why God had to be Man and how God addressed our sins. He clarifies that only a man can bring back to God what ‘man’ stole from God; thus, Jesus Christ in the form of Flesh,’ is a real genuine human who will repay humanities sin.
Anselm explains somewhere in his book that it had to be a divinity in the form of a man – Jesus Christ who is spotless; the Sacrificial Lamb who had to do this because a ‘sinful man cannot -- as a sinner cannot justify a sinner.
With Christ’s passion, death and resurrection – His paschal journey – God the Father owed him a reward. But because everything the Father (Creator) has, the Con (Jesus Christ) already has also; this reward was instead given to us: to humanity -- this reward, this gift being our freedom. Jesus Christ stood as our savior, paying our debts to the Lord by asking for atonement on our behalf.
Conclusion
While Athanasius focuses on God’s sacrifice – through Christ, being flesh and human dwelling in the world – which led to our salvation, Anselm focuses on a more logical explanation about human reason and God’s person. Athanasius highlights how God’s Word created humanity and saved humanity by making the word flesh who will dwell among us to save us from sin, death and destruction; thus, living our lives and dying our deaths. On the other hand, Anselm used reason to prove that God did save humanity from sin, death, and destruction by being a man – for atonement for humanity is only possible in this form – who took our place in the face of death.
Works Cited
Anselm. “Why God Became Man,” n.d. PDF file
Athanasius. “St. Athanasius on the Incarnation,” n.d. PDF file
