The Proslogion, Gilbert Crispin, and the Cur Deus homo

The connection between Gilbert Crispin’s Dispute between a Jew and a Christian and Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo is paradoxically well established and yet underexplored. As early as 1954, Richard Southern noted some links between the two texts and hypothesized that Anselm had some influence on Gilbert's argument. Gilbert's Dispute has sometimes been used to help explain the role of Anselm's unnamed Jewish interlocutors in the Cur Deus Homo, though more often Anselm’s Jews are considered to be fictive and not indicative of any real interaction between Anselm and Jews. When the connection between texts are investigated, the main points of connection are seen in the occurrence of a Jewish objection against the Incarnation using the language of the Proslogion, in a discussion of the devil's rights, and in Gilbert's use of an argument against the possibility of an angel or human restoring human nature. My argument will acknowledge these elements, though I will take issue with Richard Southern's interpretation of them, and go further, showing that the Cur Deus Homo is an apologetic for Anselm's Proslogion, that the questions raised in Gilbert's Dispute also contribute to Anselm's discussions in the Cur Deus Homo of the virgin birth and several other topics. Additionally, I will argue that Anselm's tactic of removing Christ from the discussion is a tactic developed in response to the failure of Gilbert's attempt to offer a convincing argument for the Incarnation using the Old Testament. For the benefit of those who have not read it, let me provide a brief overview of Gilbert's Dispute. Gilbert Crispin, one of Anselm's former students, was brought to England from Normandy by Lanfranc in 1085, where he became the abbot at Westminster. The Norman kings, in addition to importing a great number of Bec alumni for the purpose of reinvigorating the English monasteries, also imported a contingent of Jews from Normandy to take care of some of their financial matters – even back then war required the ability to acquire debt and Jews could charge interest to non-Jews. Gilbert apparently did business with one of these Jews, who Gilbert reports was educated in Mainz, and occasionally they engaged in a friendly theological discussion, which served as the genesis of Gilbert's written dispute. While there is some dispute over the reality of Gilbert's interlocutor, the majority of scholars think that the Dispute is the fruit of a genuine discussion, though one that Gilbert reworked and edited. We see elements of this reality when the Jewish speaker complains about Christian treatment of Jews at the beginning of the dialogue, wondering why if "the Law must be observed, why do you compare its followers to