Jim Parker
Member
AH! Then we're in different boats together. M.Div + (apparently) never ending post grad study.
Not a thing. I was responding to your comment, "...we know that it was not until the work of Anselm that we had an adequate understanding of the Atonement."
Anselm's understanding of the atonement was not only inadequate but dismally off point. It was an example of the result of the scholastic infatuation with Aristotle which resulted in the concept that Christian truths are divided into natural and supernatural. Scholasticism linked theology very closely with philosophy, even more so with metaphysics. Thus Christian theology became an intellectual exercise rather than the empirical knowledge of God and salvation became understood as the result of an intellectual acceptance of the teaching of scripture rather than a personal experience of God as the One who loves, heals and embraces. That intellectualism pervades Roman and Protestant theology to this day. (Witness the unending arguments here as to what the scriptures really mean.)
My reference to Athanasius' On the Incarnation, was to direct you to an orthodox (lower case "o") understanding of the atonement. You can get a Kindle copy of it at Amazon for 99 cents.
One of the unfortunate outcomes of scholasticism is the juridical view of salvation arising from Anselm's concept of the necessity of justice being a higher authority to which God must submit. That error has permeated all of western theology.
Another unfortunate outcome is the distortion of the trinity by the addition of the Filioque to the creed which, in effect, subordinates the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son. The filioque confuses the personal properties: the "unbegotten" of the Father, the "begotten" of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Father is the cause of the "generation" of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit. (The filioque was first accepted at the council of Toledo in the 6th century but did not gain full acceptance in the west until 1014.)
I found that confusion reflected in your comments pertaining to the Trinity.
The East and west did not formally split until the 11th century. The formal acceptance of the filioque may have been the "final straw."
iakov the fool
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