During his tumultuous career, Peter Abelard faced a series of vehement backlashes against his theological work and the way he conducted his personal life ; indeed, his affair and secret marriage to Heloise famously culminated in physical castration, and his conflicts with Bernard and William of St. Thierry, theological. Abelard's controversial stance towards the Trinity and the rights of the devil led to his condemnation at the Council of Sens in 1141 and, after a failed attempt to gain the Pope's favor, he was excommunicated and his works burned. The ferocity of Bernard's polemic against Abelard branded him and his theology with the stigma of heresy, but Abelard was a gifted thinker and debater, as the Chambers' Biographical Dictionary describes him, "the keenest thinker and theologian boldest of the 12th century"[1 ] and, especially given the rise of the moral theory of atonement in our more liberal modern context, Abelard's theology, particularly his soteriology, is worth revisiting. Having ignored the theories of redemption and satisfaction of the atonement, ubiquitous in medieval soteriology, Abelard embarked on a consideration of the true role of Christ and the crucifixion within God's model of salvation. He does so in relation to his specific conception of sin. In this essay I will seek to examine whether Abelard's account of sin sheds any light on his account of the atonement. I will attempt to argue the line of argument that Abelard's conception of sin is inextricably linked to his understanding of atonement; his belief in the punishment inherited from original sin makes the death of Christ necessary for our liberation from this punishment. At the same time, however, we find in Abelard a shift from this bloody and sacrificial salvation towards an atonement of love; his understanding of sin as entirely intentional necessarily means that salvation, for Abelard, must occur at the level of intention: Christ's death operates in a subjective sense to ensure the redirection of our intentions from concupiscence to purity and from fear to purity. Love. This is not to say that Abelard is a proto-modern moral atonement theorist as he still seems to subscribe to the idea of ​​objective sacrifice. However, in Abelard, we find a definite movement towards a soteriology that revolves on the axis of love; Abelard's conception of justice is defined in terms of love for God and, in turn, his conception of sin is defined in terms of the lack of this love. Atonement, therefore, depends on the rekindling of lost love. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay To evaluate the extent to which Abelard's conception of sin sheds light on his theory of atonement, it is first necessary to explore what sin means to Abelard; as Williams notes, "Abelard's understanding of the power sin has over us will be crucial to understanding what he thinks Christ accomplished for us on the Cross." that we are bound by the punishment for original sin (“the objective dominion of sin”)[3], on the one hand, and bound by personal sin (“the subjective dominion of sin”)[4] on the other. I will address the latter type first. I think it is fair to say that Abelard's understanding of sin is inextricably linked to his idea of ​​justice which, as Williams notes, "is simply loving God for himself and acting justly out of love for him." This love Abelard refers to “charity”; exists both in us and in God with the very charity of God whoarouses charity in his creation towards him. Since righteousness and justice depend on love for God, it follows that “our sin is to despise the creator, and to sin is to despise the creator – not to do for his sake what we believe we should do for him.” or not give up for him what we believe should be given up".[6] Acting against God's will is equivalent to acting against God, therefore acting outside of perfect love for him. Abelard postulates a strongly individualistic conception of sin; the guilt is found in the soul of each individual and he is therefore solely responsible for its management and, in turn, for his relationship with the creator since, as Kemeny points out, «the object of sin is God; sin disrupts the harmonious relations between Creator and creature.'[7] Abelard espouses a rather complex view of the location of sin, of the point at which sin actually takes place. Contrary to the thinking of many of his contemporaries, Abelard rejects the idea that actions themselves can have an ethical value independently of intention; he writes that «there is no substance in sin; it consists in non-being rather than in being. It is as if we defined the shadows by saying that they are the absence of light where light existed.'[8] Furthermore, Abelard rejects the idea that the vices of mind and body that make an individual prone to sin are not, in themselves sinful selves since some vices of the mind do not lead to sin; as Kemeny writes, '...some vices of the mind - for example, dullness - do not make people prone to sin. Others, such as short temper, do.'[9] Through overcoming these vices, merit and virtue can be cultivated, but they themselves are not intrinsically sinful. Instead, these morally neutral vices make the will inclined to act inappropriately. It is in the intention that Abelard identifies the sin; actions have an ethical value derived from the intentions with which they are committed. As Marenbon writes, «actions are rightly described as good or bad, but only by virtue of the intentions from which they arise. But intentions, although they belong to the life of the mind, are sinful only in relation to a clearly foreseen (even if perhaps prevented) action".[10] Any intention to act against God's will shows contempt for God and any intention that seeks to do what the individual believes to be good/in accordance with God's will is demonstrating love. There is no guilt in acting on a good intention, but to be morally good, the belief at which the intention aims must be correct. For Abelard, consent is giving in to one's intention. Intention is what comprises the action: the reasons for committing it, the moral value of the action, etc. Although for Abelard an agent is not responsible for his own natural inclinations, he is responsible for what he consents to in order to satiate his appetites. . Abelard argues that much of our immoral behavior is actually involuntary – we cannot help but consent to satiate our desires – but this does not excuse them or mean that we are not morally responsible for these involuntary actions. To agree to act against God's will, regardless of natural inclination, is to deny God the love owed him by his creation. Along with his subjective understanding of personal guilt and sin, Abelard espouses a specific understanding of original sin and the burden post-lapsarian humanity carries with it. First, during the fall conditions were created that incline man to evil desires; the fall interrupts the rational soul's ability to govern the body and a void exists between humanity and God. Thus, after the fall, humanity inherits some physical and mental weaknesses, the "vices"morally neutral that Abelard speaks of. However, it is these vices that give rise to evil desires that lead to sin. Furthermore, the fall created sinful conditions making the world less bearable; as Williams observes, “because of original sin, we are subject to temporal misfortune as well as eternal damnation. The hardships of the present life in turn push us to seek security in earthly goods, and the Law, by promising us such goods, makes our desire for them all the more ardent".[11] Regarding original sin proper, Abelard takes a very different position than most of his contemporaries. He does not argue that humanity has inherent sin by virtue of its relationship with the first parents, Adam and Eve, but that it possesses intrinsic punishment for that sin. As Abelard writes, "and therefore, since we say that men were procreated and are born with original sin, and that they contracted this original sin from their progenitors, it seems that this must rather be related to the punishment of sin. than to the guilt of the soul and contempt for God".[12] Original sin, or its punishment, is transmitted through sexual intercourse, in the broad sense that it is transmitted from parents to children, but the sexual act itself is non-sinful and adds nothing to the punishment of original sin. It seems, therefore, that Abelard is espousing a two-tiered approach to sin: the original punishment is inherited by every human being but, separately from this, each human being accumulates his own personal guilt based on his own succumbing to evil intentions. As we will see, this dual understanding of sin fuels a clear and dual understanding of atonement. Furthermore, it will become clear that regarding personal guilt, Abelard's focus on sin as a lack of love for God will become the focus of his theory of atonement. Abelard emphasizes the transformative power of Christ on the cross as the only mechanism of atonement. for personal sin. Abelard focuses on what the death of Christ did in us. At the basis of Abelard's thought is the fundamental idea that Christians should never serve God out of fear but only out of love; theories such as the redemption or satisfaction models make us reluctant to express love for God because of the bloody act we witnessed in Christ's death: it is not the product of love. For Abelard, if we serve God out of fear, we do not truly love God and without this love we cannot hope to achieve salvation. Alternatively, Abelard wants to argue that through the atonement God generates in us a love that allows us to do good works. The mechanism of salvation from personal guilt is at the level of the human heart. This makes sense if one considers Abelard's aforementioned understanding of sin as individualistic and intentional. Through a renewed love for God, inspired by the passion and desire to imitate the perfect love manifested in Christ, our intentions are once again directed towards acting according to the will of God and therefore away from concupiscence (the passions and desires of the heart ). . As Abelard writes, ...through this unique grace that he has manifested to us - that is, that the Son assumed our nature and taught us with his words and his example, until death - he has bound us to himself in love…therefore, the true love of anyone who is the recipient of such a favor of divine grace will not withdraw from suffering (tolerate) for its sake.[13] However, while it is undeniable that Abelard heavily espouses this subjectivist understanding of the atonement and not If they seek to move the theology of the atonement more in the direction of transformation through love rather than throughfear, I think Abelard's status as a mere "exemplarist" can sometimes be over-emphasized. Nieuwenhove summarizes the response of many to Abelard's soteriology: "Abelard's understanding of salvation is completely subjectivist (it is something that happens to us) while a balanced soteriology should also be objectivist."[14] Abelard's contemporaries condemned him for a similar reason, arguing that his theory of atonement was on the side of heretical Pelagianism; for example, "the Pelagian danger that Bernard fears is that Abelard has rendered Christ's atoning work unnecessary for our salvation." According to this vision, we are in principle capable of earning the dignity of salvation on our own".[15] It is clear, however, that these Pelagian/merely exemplaryistic accusations are unfounded. Abelard makes him clearly accept the objective transaction that occurs at the crucifixion of Christ. First, it is through this objective transaction that the inherited punishment for original sin is absolved. Abelard clearly does not reject the notion of bloody transaction or payment; as he writes in his commentary on Romans seven, ...we have had the power to sell ourselves into slavery, but we have no power to buy ourselves back. Innocent blood was given for us. Nor can we free ourselves from the dominion of sin by our own strength, but only by the grace of the Redeemer.[16] As Williams notes, '...Christ is our redeemer. he who redeems us. The price he paid was his blood, in other words, his life. One could hardly ask for a clearer statement of an "objective transaction"....Christ has brought the punishment for our sins so that we would not have to...the punishment to which we would otherwise have been subject is erased. '[17] In this sense, then, Abelard is espousing a version of the penal substitution model whereby Christ dissolves our punishment for Adam's sin. In addition to Abelard advocating the idea of ​​an objective transaction as a mechanism for absolution from punishment for original sin, sin, it also appears that without the "objective transaction" there would be nothing to elicit the love necessary for atonement in subjective sense. It is through imitation of the perfect sacrificial love of Christ that we are saved; As McGrath observes, "Abailard is an exemplarist if, and only if, it can be shown that he understands Christ as our example, through whose imitation we are redeemed - while it is clear that he understands Christ as our example in the sense that, since we have been redeemed by Him, we now desire to imitate Him.”[18] Without Christ's gift of redemption and the self-sacrifice necessary to achieve it, we are not only inspired to imitate Christ, but we are also grateful for His grace. that Abelard cannot be classified as a mere exemplarist since, first, he espouses a two-tiered theory of atonement and, second, the example needed for the exemplarist position was provided only by an objective transaction Quinn's assessment of Abelard as a "hierarchical pluralist"[19] is accurate; he argues that "like Aquinas, he offers an account of the Atonement that has one dominant motif to which the others are subordinate."[20] Indeed, Abelard has an objective and subjective element in his theory of the atonement, but I think it is also true to say that the objective elements are underdeveloped compared to the subjective ones. Abelard wants to emphasize the transformative power of love in his "hierarchy" of atonement against the background of sacrificial and satisfaction theories and, therefore, perhaps emphasizes to a greater extent the subjectivist side of his theory. This does not mean, however, that we should forget the objective side of its understanding. I think that.265