April 21 — St. Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm was born in what is now northern Italy in about 1033, became a Benedictine monk in Normandy in 1059, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. In that capacity he fought for reform of the clergy and for the freedom of the Church from the King and nobility (foreshadowing St. Thomas Becket's struggles with Henry II). He died on April 21, 1109.

He also wrote several theological and philosophical works, in which he developed proofs of the existence of God, and he is considered by some the founder of medieval Scholasticism. He described his work as "fides quærens intellectum" (faith seeking understanding), and said "Credo ut intellegam" (I believe so that I may know). He also wrote a book, Cur Deus Homo, in which he develops the idea that it was necessary for God to become man in order to satisfy divine justice for human sinfulness. The wiki article on Anselm explains it as follows:

The Satisfaction (or Commercial) theory of the atonement was formulated by Anselm of Canterbury in his book, Cur Deus Homo (lit. ‘Why the God Man’).^[53] He has introduced the idea of satisfaction as the chief demand of the nature of God, of punishment as a possible alternative of satisfaction and equally fulfilling the requirements of justice thus opening the way to the assertion of punishment as the true satisfaction of the law. In his view, God’s offended honor and dignity could only be satisfied by the sacrifice of the God-man, Jesus Christ. Anselm undertook to explain the rational necessity of the Christian mystery of the atonement. His philosophy rests on three positions—first, that satisfaction is necessary on account of God's honour and justice; second, that such satisfaction can be given only by the peculiar personality of the God-man Jesus; and, third, that such satisfaction is really given by this God-man's voluntary death.

According to this view, sin incurs a debt to Divine justice, a debt that must be paid somehow. Thus, no sin, according to Anselm, can be forgiven without satisfaction. However, the incurred debt is something far greater than a human being is capable of paying. All the service that a person can offer to God is already obligated on other debts to God.^[53] By Anselm's time the suggestion has been made that some innocent person, or angel, might possibly pay the debt incurred by sinners. That, however, we would put the sinner under obligation to that deliverer and the sinner would become indebted to a "mere creature."^{[citation needed]}

The only way in which the satisfaction could be made─that humans could be set free from their sin─was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. He himself would have to be sinless, thus having no debt that he owed. His death is something greater than all the sins of all humanity. His death makes full satisfaction to the Divine Justice. Anselm's theory persisted for eight centuries.^[54]

Anselm's formulation differs markedly from Reformation views. For Anselm, Christ obeyed where we should have obeyed; for John Calvin, he was punished where we should have been punished. While Anselm's interpretation permitted man to offer Christ to God, the Protestant Faith insists that it is God, not man, who reconciles fallen humanity by sacrificing His son.^[54]