Anselmian Abelard

In his study of Abelard’s soteriology, Logic of Divine Love, Richard Weingart the common claim that Abelard’s doctrine of the atonement is a “subjective” one.

For starters, that opinion is based on a brief comment in Abelard’s Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos that “is only an outline of Abailard’s teaching,” and not a complete account )131).Most substantively, even that passage is not “subjective”: “The whole tone of the passage is set by the theme that God is moved by love to take the initiative in transforming men. It bears the same theocentric character as the rest of his teaching about Christ’s redemptive life and death” (132).

It is this sort of insight that leads Adam Kotsko (The Politics of Redemption) to deny that Abelard intended to reject Anselm’s satisfaction theory: “if I love someone, I don’t want that person to die. If a friend decided to submit to death arbitrarily and claimed it was ‘for me,’ I would be confused and likely even angry rather than inspired. It’s only when my friend’s death is somehow necessary in order to save me from some dire threat than I am grateful for my friend’s sacrifice – indeed, that it makes sense as a sacrifice” (158). In Abelard’s theology, God still makes these sorts of “calculations,” and Kotsko concludes that he is supplementing Anselm “with the motive of love” and thus delivers Anselm’s theory “in the form that will be much more normative for popular religiosity” (158).