An Open Letter to Kevin Thew Forrester

Professor Thomas Williams of the University of South Florida is indeed a progressive on a number of key issues of our time. Yet, like many of our friends here at the Anglican Centrist, he is also committed to creedal orthodoxy. He blogs here. He writes:

Dear Fr Thew Forrester:

I most earnestly beg you to stop talking about Saint Anselm. You simply do not know what you are talking about, and your apologia is not helped by your insistence on perpetuating pseudo-historical claptrap about this great theologian.

In Approaching the Heart of Faith, you quote a passage from Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire in which the authors say that "Anselm's doctrine of the atonement gave support for holy war" and that his "theology and piety crystallized the religious foundations of the Crusades." "Christians," the authors say, "were exhorted to imitate Christ's self-offering in the cause of God's justice." Exhorted by whom? Certainly not by Anselm, who would have rejected any such notion as fundamentally incompatible with his key conclusions in Cur Deus Homo: the sufficiency of the God-man's self-offering and the inability of fallen human beings to do anything on their own to effect a reconciliation between themselves and God. Indeed, the idea that Anselm's soteriology could provide theological underpinnings for the Crusades is not merely a gross libel against Anselm but rather obvious nonsense.

The authors seek to paper over this nonsense by sleight of hand, invoking "Peace by the blood of the Cross." I take it we're to think that the notion of the bloody Cross as an instrument of peace leads naturally to the Crusades. But for Anselm, the peace that is made by the blood of the Cross is peace between God and humanity -- a peace that is entirely of God's own making, that he initiates and sustains because he loves us and created us for himself -- and the blood of the Cross can only be the blood of the God-man, offered once for all as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and (yes) satisfaction. How any reasonable or fair-minded person can think that this soteriology supports wars of conquest and religious imperialism is beyond me.

The authors' casual admission that Anselm "forbade his own monks from joining the Crusades" rather understates the case. Anselm disapproved of the Crusades, period. I would commend to you Sir Richard Southern's wonderful biography, Anselm: A Portrait in Landscape, for more on this point.

What I find most disturbing is the authors' tendentious quotation of a passage from Cur Deus Homo 1.12 in support of the (presumably Crusade-justifying) claim that "When authorities in the Church called for vengeance, they did so on God's behalf." If one actually bothers to read the passage the authors quote, and to attend to its context, it will be obvious that Anselm is not talking about anything remotely like the Crusades. He's thinking of ordinary punishment for criminal wrongdoing, punishment that is carried out by rulers on those over whom they have lawful authority. Moreover, Anselm makes the statement immediately after warning us that we are not to arrogate to ourselves the prerogative for vengeance that is properly God's alone. Either the authors know Anselm only at second hand, or they are deliberating twisting his words to make them carry a much more insidious meaning than they can really be made to bear.

As for the claim that "Anselm's theology helped to provide justification for Christendom to embark on its first pogroms against the Jews of Europe," I should very much like to see some evidence that Anselm's theology -- which is to say, views that Anselm actually held, as opposed to views ascribed to Anselm by people who have never bothered reading him -- played some role in such heinous sins. In the alternative, I should like to see some even minimally plausible argument that takes Anselm's soteriology for its premises and issues in the conclusion that pogroms are well-advised. Seeing neither of these, and being confident that neither of them is forthcoming, I will simply say that Anselm is ill-chosen for the role of all-purpose Bad Guy that he plays in Approaching the Heart of Faith.

It is also odd that you would chose Julian of Norwich as an alternative to Anselm's teaching on "peace by the blood of the Cross." By contrast with Anselm, who uses the word 'blood' only twice in Cur Deus Homo (both times when someone else is the speaker) and gives no attention at all in that work to the physical agony of Jesus, the Lady Julian fixes our attention on the bloodshed and suffering of the Cross. Consider:
Then I suddenly saw the red blood tricking down from under the crown of thorns, hot and fresh and very plentiful. (Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Elizabeth Spearing, 45)

[T]he bodily sight of the plentiful bleeding from Christ's head remained. The great drops fell down from under the crown of thorns like pills, as though they had come out of the veins; and as they came out they were dark red, for the blood was very thick. (50-51)

And after this I saw, as I watched, the body of Christ bleeding abundantly, in weals from the scourging. It looked like this: the fair skin was very deeply broken, down into the tender flesh, sharply slashed all over the dear body; the hot blood ran out so abundantly that no skin or wound could be seen, it seemed to be all blood. (59-60)
And Julian is as clear as Anselm that the suffering and death of Christ are on account of sin and for our sake:
It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering. (80)

And so now we have reason for grief, because our sin is the cause of Christ's suffering; and we have reason for lasting joy, because endless love made him suffer. (126)

Look and see that I loved you so much before I died for you that I was willing to die for you; and now I have died for you, and willingly suffered as much as I can for you. (76)
Repeatedly quoting "All will be well" from Julian, as though it were her only message for us, does as great a disservice to the richness of her thinking as your caricature of Anselm does to his.

Nothing I say here constitutes a positive defense of Anselm's soteriology, let alone an affirmation that his soteriology is either complete in itself or binding on all Christians. (Anselm himself emphatically denies that he has said the last word on the Incarnation and Atonement; he denies, in fact, that any last word on those mysteries can ever be said.) I do not ask that you accept Anselm's account of why God became incarnate. I ask only that you stop mispresenting Anselm by repeating the preposterous slanders against him that are made by people who mistake invective and invention for sober scholarship.

Yours faithfully in Christ,

The Rev'd Dr Thomas Williams
Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Philosophy