Hart’s Essay http://www.scribd.com/doc/195047624/A-Gift-Exceeding-Every-Debt#scribd
The popular impressions of Anselm’s God as petty and capricious, easily offended and demanding a tribute of blood in order to forgive us, are so wildly off the mark Fleming Rutledge wonders if Anselm’s many critics have actually read Cur Deus Homo or, if they’ve paused to consider the title of it: ‘Why the God-Man?’ The title itself indicates that Anselm does not commit the misstep of which he’s commonly accused; namely, he does not pit the Father and Son against one another nor does he posit Christ’s humanity as the sole agent of our salvation, another frequent charge against him. As the title makes clear, from the front cover forward, Anselm sees salvation as a fully Trinitarian work enfolding incarnation and unfolding from it.
So then, contrary to the abundant caricatures, Anselm’s God is not an infinitely offended god who demands blood sacrifice, even his own, in order to rectify our relationship with him. Anselm’s is an infinitely merciful triune God who, in order to fulfill his creative intent, says Hart:
‘…recapitulates humanity by passing through all the violences of sin and death, rendering to God the obedience that is his due, and so transforms the event of his death into an occasion of infinite blessings…Christ’s death does not even effect a change in God’s attitude towards humanity; God’s attitude never alters: he desires the salvation of his creatures, and will not abandon them even to their own cruelties.’
Atonement in Anselm then is quite the opposite of what many take it be. It is not an economic exchange our corruption compelled God to transact. It is the motion of triune perichoretic love, the Father offering the Son to and for us in our estrangement, the Son offering his life in obedience to the Father even though that obedience leads to a cross, and the Father vindicating the Son’s loving obedience by raising him from the dead, a motion where there is no distinction between God’s justice and God’s mercy for Easter shows God’s utmost Law to be steadfast love to his creatures.
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