Why God Became Man - St. Anselm

St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) is a foundational theological treatise that seeks to demonstrate through rational necessity why the incarnation and death of Jesus Christ were essential for human salvation. The text is structured as a dialectical inquiry between Anselm and his student Boso, moving away from simple appeals to scriptural authority to prove that only a God-man could resolve the crisis of human sin. Anselm argues that sin is a theft of God’s honor that creates an infinite debt which humanity is powerless to repay, yet divine justice demands that restitution be made by a member of the human race. Consequently, the author concludes that a Savior must possess perfect divinity to provide a sacrifice of infinite value and perfect humanity to represent the offending party. Ultimately, this work serves to provide believers with a logical foundation for their faith while answering the objections of those who find the Christian narrative of a suffering deity to be intellectually inconsistent.This podcast was created with the assistance of AI.