Saint Thomas Aquinas on Salvation, Making Satisfaction, and the Restoration of Friendship with God

THE THEMES OF “making satisfaction” and (to a lesser extent) “merit” in the thought of Thomas Aquinas are worth revisiting.² A number of scholars have claimed that the seeds of a penal understanding of salvation lie in Aquinas’s notion of satisfaction. In contrast to St. Anselm, who operated with a strict distinction between punishment and making satisfaction, Aquinas, so they allege, would have blurred this distinction by introducing the notion of poena satisfactoria. In this manner Aquinas would have “paved the way” for a penal understanding of salvation. Gerald O’Collins, for instance, has argued that Aquinas’s soteriology contributed to the development of “a monstrous version of redemption: Christ as the penal substitute propitiating the divine anger.”³ O’Collins further attempts to substantiate this claim by arguing that the language of divine appeasement is present throughout Aquinas’s writings. Others see this alleged rupture with Anselm as a cause for quiet gratification: a reading in which Aquinas supposedly anticipates some of the views of the Reformers strengthens their status as legitimate exponents of the tradition.⁴

There are undoubtedly important differences between Anselm and Aquinas. For example, Aquinas, perhaps following William of Auvergne’s own Cur Deus homo, allows for a plurality of models whereas Anselm offers only one. More importantly, in contrast to Anselm, Aquinas rightly emphasizes the need for our participation in Christ’s redemptive work: through the intimate union between Christ and his Body, the faithful can share in the merits of Christ.⁵ Thus, a genuine exchange can take place whereby Christ’s suffering can be satisfactory for us because of his union as Head with us, his Body; and our sufferings can become a participation in Christ’s, allowing us to become more Christ-like.⁶ Moreover, as I will argue in this article, Aquinas will subtly but significantly recast Anselm’s doctrine in light of charity and friendship with God, where demands of a just retribution are not as stringent as they would be amongst those who are not friends.

Before I delve into the main argument, a preliminary observation is in order. In my view, “making satisfaction” is neither the most innovative nor the most important theme in Aquinas’s soteriology. The young Aquinas follows Peter Lombard (and early thirteenth-century Scholastics) in book 3 of his commentary on the Sentences, distinction 18, focussing primarily on the merit that Christ attains through his charity.⁷ Distinction 19, however, offers a more diverse picture. Here Aquinas mentions other models, such as liberation from sin and the devil, redemption, and reconciliation. In distinction 20 we encounter the theme of making satisfaction (with one explicit reference to Anselm’s Cur Deus homo).⁸ References to making satisfaction and Anselm’s Cur Deus homo surface more frequently in book 4, especially in the treatise on penance, where we find an entire quaestio dedicated to it.⁹ This link between satisfaction and penitential practices is not without significance, as I hope to show in this article. Also, it is fair to say that Aquinas’s emphasis on distinct models evolves. In his commentary on the Sentences merit is the most important model of salvation. The theme of making satisfaction dominates the discussion in Summa contra Gentiles III, chapter 55. By the time he writes the Summa theologiae III, question 48, Aquinas presents a balanced account, offering a richly diverse picture of models of atonement, such as merit, making satisfaction, redemption, and especially sacrifice, which now receives an attention it had not enjoyed in his earlier theological syntheses and which may very well be the most important one (as STh III, q. 48, a. 6, ad 3 appears to suggest).¹⁰

In what follows I want to consider whether a penal reading of Aquinas’s soteriology is plausible. I will first deal, albeit briefly, with the issue of the language of divine anger; second, and in more detail, I will discuss the notions of satisfaction and poena satisfactoria.¹¹ After this I will treat of merit, charity...