Cur Deus Homo: Why the God-Man?

Available here in a modern scholarly translation, Anselm’s famous treatise Cur Deus Homo (Why the God-Man?) attempts to show unbelievers that, far from being an unfitting and irrational act, God’s incarnation as man was a suitable, even (contingently-speaking) a necessary act by which to restore the right relation of God and a human race afflicted by sin. Anselm’s “satisfaction” theory of atonement (not to be confused with penal substitution) formalized a tradition with its seeds in the patristic period and set the context for much reflection on the Cross in the Middle Ages and throughout the Reformation period. Published by Ex Fontibus Co.