Anselm’s Influence on the Teaching of the Summa Halensis on Redemption

Abstract

It has long been recognized that the Summa Halensiswas one of the first texts to extensively engage the arguments of Anselm’s Cur Deus homo. As a result of this engagement, Anselm can rightly be thought of as exercising a great deal of influence on how the Summa understands Christ’s redemptive work. We see this influence, for instance, when the Summa takes up questions Anselm poses about redemption, such as whether satisfaction is necessary for sin or whether only a God-man can make satisfaction.Without denying the influence of Anselm on the soteriology of the Summa Halensis, this chapter focuses primarily on how the Summa both modifies Anselm’s ideas and supplements them. Thus, I examine how the Summa employs the distinction between God’s absolute and ordained power to modify Anselm’s claims regarding the manner in which certain aspects of God’s plan of redemption are deemed necessary. Also, I show that Peter Lombard’s Sentences significantly shape how the Summa interprets what Anselm writes about Christ’s satisfaction and merit. Finally, I consider how the Summa draws on other authorities such as Gregory the Great and John Damascene to supplement Anselm’s account of redemption. Alexander of Hales was one of the first 13-century theologians to closely examine Cur Deus homo and treat Anselm as a significant theological authority. Anselm’s treatise is cited extensively in Alexander’s Glossa and in his disputed questions. Yet Anselm’s Cur Deus homo has an even greater presence in the Summa Halensis (SH) than it does those earlier works. Michael Robson, who has documented the influence of Anselm among early Franciscan theologians, writes, ‘A barometer of the growing influence of Anselm on the nascent Franciscan school is strikingly present in Book 3 of the Summa Fratris Alexandri, whose early questions presuppose a close reading of the Cur Deus homo.’1 Similarly, J. Patout Burns writes that in the SH ‘Anselm comes into his own as the master of teaching on redemption’.2 Anselm did exercise a great amount of influence on how the SH understands Christ’s redemptive work. The SH, for instance, adopts Anselm’s claim that making satisfaction is central to  Michael Robson, ‘Odo Rigaldi and the Assimilation of St. Anselm’s Cur Deus homo in the School of the Cordeliers in Paris,’ in Saint Anselm and his Legacy, ed. Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan, Durham Medieval and Renaissance Mongraphs and Essays, 2 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 165. For more on the place of the Summa Halensis in the reception of Cur Deus homo, see Brian P. McGuire, ‘The History of Saint Anselm’s Theology of the Redemption in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’ (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1970).  J. Patout Burns, ‘The Concept of Satisfaction in Medieval Redemption Theory,’ Theological Studies