Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

Last week when we were together we were considering Anselm's two great little books and last week we considered his work Prost logian.

This week we're going to consider his work,

Cur deus Homo. Now that's the Latin title. The English

translation of that is, why the God man? It's such a crucial question, isn't it? Why the God man? Why did Jesus come and why did

Jesus die on the cross? What is that all about? Well, in this book, Anselm's trying to figure it out.

The book is actually a dialogue. It's between Anselm and a man named Bozo.

He starts us with a very fascinating place.

He starts us with the issue of divine justice. Now think about that for a moment. Why does Anselm start there?

He starts there because that starting point has everything to do with what we think of Christ and what we think of his work.

If we have the idea that we're basically good people and God's a loving Heavenly Father

and all we need to do is sort of be better, well that's

certainly going to impact how we think of Christ and how we think of what he did

on the cross. But if we start with this idea that God is holy and we and our humanity are sinful and we are

deserving of nothing other than divine wrath because that is what is demanded by divine justice?

Well, if that is our starting point, well, then what we think of Christ and what we think of the cross is an entirely different thing altogether, isn't it?

And so Anselm starts us there. He starts us with this idea of divine justice. Now God just can't look at our sins and act as if we

never did them, you know, he can't sort of take our sins and lift up the cosmic rug as it were and sort

of sweep them under there and we'll just hide them

under there and nobody will notice. If he were to do that he would not be God.

He would not be just. He would not be holy. So God can't do that.

Anseum has Boso consider other things God could do.

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