Suffering and Salvation in Ciudad Jurez:

3: Anselm and Salvation

69 3 Anselm and Salvation I n the foregoing critical reading of feminicide, a social-suffering hermeneutic made clear the brutal execution of female human beings precisely because they are female, the tragic and unintelligible dimension of this evil, the social vertigo that this evil unleashes, and the varied ways we are all caught in its vortex.1 The question of salvation, in its origin just as today, begins with our awareness of our abiding need for God. We need release from evil. We need God; we cling to the power of God in hopeful anticipation of healing, of a salvation that can come only from God. Our awareness of our need is never more acute than in the battle with evil, such as in the confrontation with the horror of feminicide. This chapter turns to a towering figure within the Christian tradition, Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), whose Cur Deus Homo (hereafter CDH), published in 1098, has become an unparalleled contribution to the doctrine of salvation . To this day, this approach holds powerful sway in the imaginations of many Christian faithful.2 For almost half of the Christian tradition’s history, CDH, together with the variety of interpretations of CDH written over the millennium, has served as a primary resource for believers trying to understand what Christian salvation can mean particularly in light of the brokenness and suffering that mark every age of human history. Today, many of those who have suffered feminicide seek this same end. They desire a union with 70 5 Suffering and salvation God. They want release from the evil they experience or, short of that, at least some assurance that their suffering and that of their loved ones is not in vain. Why examine CDH and not another construal of Christian salvation? Elizabeth A. Johnson captures well the overriding import of CDH: In the eleventh century the biblical and patristic pluralism so characteristic of the interpretations of Jesus and salvation began to recede in the West due to Anselm’s brilliant restructuring of the satisfaction metaphor into a full-fledged, ontologically based theory. To wit: God became a human being and died to pay back what was due to the honor of God offended by sin. I sometimes think that Anselm should be considered the most successful theologian of all time. Imagine having almost a one-thousand-year run for your theological construct! It was never declared a dogma but might just as well have been, so dominant has been its influence in theology, preaching, devotion, and the penitential system of the Church, up to our own day.3 Anselm’s contribution to this discourse has been critiqued, reshaped, and reinterpreted over the course of some nine centuries. There are, of course, differences between what Anselm wrote (and intended), on the one hand, and how he has been interpreted, and sometimes misunderstood over the years, on the other hand. This includes the various popular appropriations of Anselm, including various satisfaction theologies popularly preached and practiced today. While other interpretations of the doctrine of salvation have been developed over the centuries, arguably many of these later contributions have been, in some form, commentary on Anselm’s towering work. In the last four decades, in particular, Christian theologians have again engaged in the foundational spadework of questioning the presuppositions and implications of Anselm’s teaching. Today, the ability of Anselm’s interpretation to respond to the concerns of our own time is under scrutiny. In light of the Juárez feminicide, this chapter argues that the paradigmatic ,enduring,andoverridingAnselmianconstrualof salvationbecomes far more problematic and, accordingly, less defensible. By the end of this chapter, it will be clear that there is a need to rethink salvation. In order to defend this claim, the first section situates Anselm’s contribution within the world that he inherited. It does this through a brief analysis of the intellectual, sociopolitical, theological, and ecclesial Anselm and Salvation 5 71 context that set the stage for his CDH. This section lays out the argument of CDH and investigates some of the subtle points of Anselm’s doctrine of salvation. The next section considers the import of the historic legacy of CDH. CDH’s “history of effect” is a constituent part of what it means. It has often been misinterpreted in various historical contexts in a manner that ends up supporting ongoing violence to disastrous effect. The final section probes the relative...