Abstract
While Robert Grosseteste’s contribution to the 13th-century debate on the reason for the Incarnation is well known, his novel theory of what caused Christ’s death, and in particular the role which it plays in shaping his understanding of the atonement, has largely gone unexplored. This article first outlines Grosseteste’s belief that Christ died not as a result of the cross, but rather as a result of his divine will, focusing specifically upon on his scientific arguments showing that at the moment of his death Christ’s body was still ‘healthy and whole.’ The article then shows how Grosseteste makes his theory of Christ’s self-immolation central to his account of satisfaction. Particular attention is paid to the role of suffering in Grosseteste’s theory of the redemption and how he places charity and the Aristotelian notion of friendship at the heart of Christ’s satisfactory act, thereby prefiguring something of Aquinas’s key ideas.
Introduction
Recent years have witnessed something of a resurgence in the study of the philosophy and scientific discoveries of the 13th-century Bishop of Lincoln and polymath, Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253).
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As the plethora of new translations, editions, and projects have revealed, Grosseteste offered many penetrating insights into the nature of the natural world and the place of human beings within it.
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Relatively little, however, has been written recently on Grosseteste’s many important theological contributions, several of which, it is fair to say, exerted a profound, indeed paradigmatic, influence upon a host of later 13th- and 14th-century thinkers, including, most notably, St Bonaventure (1217–74).
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Perhaps the most original theological contributions made by Grosseteste are to be found in his Christological reflections. In his On the Cessation of the Laws (De cessatione legalium), dated to around 1231–35, Grosseteste offered what was arguably the first truly systematic treatment of the counter-factual question which was to become central to so much of later Franciscan Christology,
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namely, whether Christ would have become incarnate even if Adam had not sinned.
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As Grosseteste makes clear in book three of the Cessation, his answer to this question is a resounding yes.
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The self-diffusive nature of God’s goodness, coupled with the beatific end for which the soul is ordained and the economy of God’s grace in the church and the sacraments, all demand that Christ’s incarnation be eternally predestined and thus not dependent upon the Fall.
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As James McEvoy notes, what Grosseteste presents us with in De cessatione legalium is a sharply incisive argument; one which, whilst conceding the need for satisfaction post lapsum, and therefore affirming the core ideas of Anselm’s Cur deus homo?, nonetheless views the primary, or rather originating, motivation for the incarnation not as the remedying of sin, still less the restitution of a thwarted divine telos, but rather the crowning of creation and its loving union with God.
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As the De cessatione legalium puts it, all creatures ‘sigh’ for the coming of Christ: For no one doubts that all things were made for man in his best condition (optimum statum hominis). On account of this, the end of all created things in this sensible world is the Church triumphant, and in particular the end of all would be the single head of this Church. For this reason, both time and every creature await (expectarent) and, in their own way, sigh (suspirarent) for the God-man, the head of the Church. When he comes, because he would be the chief end of all (ipse esset finis omnium principuus), it would be the fulfilment of time (plenitudo temporis). For the true fulfilment of something is the end for which it was striving, and in this way the God-man himself would be the ‘firstborn of every creature’ (Col. 1.15).
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While Grosseteste is rightly hailed as having opened up new ground with his account of the ratio incarnationis, one which clearly anticipates the positions of Alexander of Hales (1185–1245) and John of La Rochelle (1200–45) in the Summa Halensis, and of course the much more well-known contributions of Bl. John Duns Scotus (1266–1308), his belief in Christ’s eternal predestination is not—so I should like to suggest—the most novel, nor indeed most controversial, aspect of his Christology. 10 This epithet, instead, belongs to a rather underexplored and easily overlooked aspect of his thought, namely his account of Christ’s death and how it served to procure the satisfaction required for salvation. What Grosseteste argues in the Cessation, and indeed in several other important texts—including his sermons Ex rerum initiarum, 11 De triplici ierarchia humana, 12 and Tota pulchra es 13 —is that neither the cross itself, nor indeed Christ’s passion as a whole, caused the God-man’s death. Instead, the mors Christi occurred at the command of his divine will, thus meaning that his death was an act of self-sacrifice or, as McEvoy puts it, an act of ‘self-immolation.’ 14
At the moment of his death, Christ’s body, so Grosseteste contends, not only possessed the strength of youth, but was in fact still ‘healthy and whole’ (sanus et integer). 15 As such, it was still capable of supporting life. The result is that the force which severed Christ’s soul from his still-healthy body, and which was thus ultimately responsible for his death and the satisfactory act worked through it, was not a ‘creaturely’ one; instead, as we will see, it possessed a decidedly supernatural origin. Christ’s, death, in essence, resembled something akin to a miracle. It was an act of supernatural intervention within the order of nature. To support this highly controversial claim, Grosseteste articulates two closely related strands of reasoning. The first derives from biological arguments designed to prove that at the moment of his passing Christ’s body still possessed a significant amount of the vital humours needed to support life; the second, from the soul’s natural unity with the body and the incapacity of any creature, regardless of its strength or dignity, to abstract it from the body when the latter is still capable of life. As we shall see, these two lines of argument, and indeed his broader theory of Christ’s self-immolation, are absolutely central, even critical, to ascertaining Grosseteste’s distinctive understanding of Christ’s suffering and the nature of his atoning satisfaction.
While the De cessatione legalium is a text which has been explored in depth, the three sermons mentioned earlier—Tota pulchra es, Ex rerum initiatarum, and De triplici ierarchia humana—have received little attention. Dating to Grosseteste’s episcopacy, and thus written several years after the De cessatione legalium, all three sermons significantly expand upon the latter’s theory of Christ’s self-immolation. As McEvoy has shown, on account of certain thematic convergences, Tota pulchra es appears to be contemporary with Grosseteste’s De celesti ierarchia (1239–41) and should thus be dated to the same period as the latter or just after. 16 What is striking about this sermon is that as part of his discussion of Christ’s self-immolation Grosseteste heavily underscores the fact that Christ’s infinite suffering entailed that the Virgin Mary, on account of her love for her son, must have suffered the most of all human beings after him. 17 In turn, Ex rerum initiatarum appears to post-date Tota pulchra es. The reason for this is that where Tota pulchra es merely entertains the possibility of the Immaculate Conception, Ex rerum initiatarum affirms the doctrine unhesitatingly. 18 Finally, De triplici ierarchia humana appears to date from Grosseteste’s later years. The reason for this is that the sermon incorporates all the main ideas concerning Christ’s self-immolation and satisfactory act which the previous works contain and expresses them with the most systematic force. 19
Christ’s Body and the Cross
With regard to his ‘biological’ arguments, Grosseteste’s starting point is his belief that the crucifixion wounds (vulni crucis) as described in the Gospels—the nailing of Christ’s hands and feet, the scourging of his body, and his crowning with thorns—are insufficient to explain why he died in so short a time. 20 The torture inflicted on the two thieves crucified alongside Christ, so Grosseteste argues, is enough to explain why they died: they hung upon their crosses much longer than Christ did; and, more importantly their legs were broken so as to hasten their passing. Yet this is not the case with Christ. Christ died after ‘only three short hours.’ 21 Moreover, he did not suffer the same bodily wounds as his two counterparts. Indeed, the fact that the latter had to undergo further torture in order to procure their deaths proves that crucifixion itself is not sufficient to kill the body quickly. It is, however, the absence of any severe blood loss which the Bishop sees as conclusive proof that Christ’s body was still capable of supporting life at the moment of his death. Key here is his conviction, like other medieval scientists, that blood is the critical humour generating the ‘warmth’ (calor), and thus vitality, of the body. 22 In Grosseteste’s medical judgment, the wounds inflicted upon Christ on the cross were insufficient to drain his body of its blood. As such, they cannot of themselves have proved fatal. ‘The piercing (perforatio) of hands and feet’ he writes ‘could not empty blood from his heart and innards in so brief a time (brevi temporis spacio).’ 23 Moreover, the plenitude of blood within Christ’s body is confirmed by the fact that, upon being pierced by the soldier’s lance, his cadaver poured forth copious amounts of blood, something, which the Bishop tells us is not typical of corpses.
There is testimony that he did not die on account of a great loss of blood through the nail-wounds (per vulnera clavorum): when his side was opened with a lance (cum lancea) after he died, blood came out from his innards (although dead bodies even without the loss of blood, if they are wounded after death, do not usually flow with blood because the blood is cooled and coagulated (infrigidato et coagulato)).
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Further underscoring the fact that Christ’s body still possessed the ‘vigour of life’ (calor vitalis) is that immediately prior to his death the Incarnate Word gave a loud cry: ‘Into your hands I commend my spirit.’ 25 The capacity to articulate such a cry, Grosseteste observes, is indicative not of a body close to death, but rather of one that is still healthy and strong. For if Christ’s vital life signs had been failing then surely, as common sense would seem to dictate, he would have offered an ‘inarticulate groan.’ 26 As the Cessation puts it: ‘if the vigour of life had failed within him he would not have been in any way able to shout so (nullo modo clamare sic potuisset).’ 27 Coupled with the absence of any significant blood loss, what all this serves to prove is that Christ died not by the ‘violence of a wound (per violentiam vulneris)’ nor indeed by any other act of human agency. Instead, his death occurred as the result of something outside the order of nature. 28 If immediately prior to his death Christ’s side had been pierced by the soldier’s lance, or if, like the two thieves, his legs had been broken, then the passion would indeed have been sufficient to kill him. This is so because these wounds, through the resulting haemorrhaging of blood, would have rendered his body incapable of life and thereby forced his soul to abandon his body. But this was not the case. Instead, at the moment of his death, Christ was not only ‘healthy and whole’ but clearly very much alive. 29
The Soul’s Care for the Body
To understand Grosseteste’s assertion that a supernatural power must be invoked to explain Christ’s death, we need to appreciate his thinking on the soul’s care for the body (cura corpori). For Grosseteste the soul ‘naturally desires to be joined to its body (naturaliter appetat coniungi suo corpori).’ 30 Moreover, ‘it abhors (abhorreat) nothing so much as its separation from the body through death.’ 31 As such, to the very best of its ability, it will cling to the body, uniting the latter to itself, so long as the body is capable of retaining life, even if only faintly. 32 To this extent, the soul is, in Grosseteste’s thinking, not only ‘naturally inseparable (naturaliter inseperabilis)’ from its material counterpart, but the body itself is integral to the soul’s identity. 33 This is even more so in the case of Christ who, free as he was from the taint of sin, possessed a body that was subject to neither the punishment of mortality nor the disposition towards ill-health. The result, of course, is that no finite cause, no matter how great it is, could sever Christ’s soul from his body when the latter still possessed the calor vitalis. 34 It is, so Grosseteste tells us, only when a finite cause has definitively destroyed the body’s vitality—be this through violent force, poison, or ill-health—that it can precipitate the soul’s severance from the body. 35 By contrast, a supernatural force does not possess such limitations. For in the same way a supernatural force alone can create the soul ex nihilo within the body, so it is clear that only a supernatural agent can act to separate (deponere) the soul from the body when the latter is still capable of supporting life. 36
Only an infinite power (infinitam potenciam) can possibly separate the soul or life from the body, if the latter is healthy and its natural powers have contracted no deficiency. For no finite created power, however great it might be, could possibly withdraw (abstrahere) even the tiniest form of life from its subject, unless the natural forces and the natural heat, by the intermediary of which life itself adheres to its subject, were debilitated; if the entire force of the world (tota enim virtus mundana) were put together it would not remove the vegetable life from a plant, unless the heat and the humour of the plant itself were weakened. But the body of Christ on the cross (corpus Christi in cruce) was in its full health (in plena sanitate), and so no natural force could weaken its natural powers against his will. Only therefore the infinite virtue and the infinite power which transcends (super) all natural virtue was able to withdraw his life from his body in the state in which it was.
37
Thus, as the Cessation puts it: ‘when the Lord Jesus hung upon the cross (in cruce pendens) with a then-healthy body and breathed forth his own spirit by will, he performed a work divine and proper to divinity alone.’ 38
Grosseteste, Anselm, and the Centrality of Christ’s Will
While Grosseteste’s claim that it was Christ’s divine will which caused his death may be a highly novel one, it is important to recognize that the centrality which the Bishop accords to Christ’s will in relation to the cross and the satisfaction which it procured is nonetheless a very a traditional one. In particular, it has clear convergences with Anselm’s thought, particularly that found in Cur deus homo 1. 8–10. For Anselm Christ’s will—both human and divine—are central to understanding the events of the cross. Christ freely desired to restore humanity to a right relationship with God and to make satisfaction for sin. As such, through his willing of the latter, he assented to laying down his own life. Moreover, Christ’s election to go to the cross, so Anselm tells us, was one that was utterly free: ‘For the Father did not coerce (invitum) Christ to face death against his will, or give permission for him to be killed, but Christ himself of his own volition (sed idem ipse sponte) underwent death in order to save humanity.’ 39 For Anselm, therefore, Christ’s death and Christ’s will are inextricably bound up with one another. Indeed, it is Christ’s free will which serves to ground the satisfactory value of the cross itself. What separates Anselm from Grosseteste, however, is that for the former Christ’s will led him to the cross and the death which it incurred, whereas for the latter Christ’s will did not just lead him to the cross, but was itself the instrument of his death.
Satisfaction and Suffering
Grosseteste’s assertion that only a supernatural agent can explain Christ’s death leads him to offer a very distinctive interpretation of the nature of Christ’s suffering. Traditionally, it is the physical and psychological torture of the cross which is focused upon when discussing Christ’s satisfactory act; such is the focus, for example, in Aquinas and Bonaventure.
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Yet for Grosseteste the logic which he advances demands a different position. If Christ did not die from the cross itself, but rather from an act of his divine will, then we are forced to conclude that over and above his physical and mental anguish Christ endured another type of suffering; one entirely separate from the torture of the cross itself. This, of course, is the pain which comes through the severance of the soul from the still-healthy body. Through the latter Christ suffered a pain that was not only ‘most bitter’ (acerbissima), but which far exceeded any physical and mental anguish he endured.
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This is so because this severance not only constituted an act of violence against the natural order itself, but, more importantly, because it occurred as a result of his divine will. Since the latter is infinite, both in its scope and power, so the suffering which it inflicted upon him must also be of an infinite nature: ‘ergo cum infinita fuit potencia et infinitus fuit dolor.’
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For ‘the pain and grief in the very withdrawing of life is in direct proportion to the power by which the life is withdrawn against the course of nature (violenter).’
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Thus, as the Bishop puts it in his sermon De triplici ierarchia humana: Furthermore, what is possessed (possidetur) with love cannot be lost (amittitur) without grief. Therefore the greater the love (maior est amor) that unites the lover with the beloved, the greater the grief (dolor) experienced in the separation and the loss of the beloved. Now the soul of Christ clung (adherebat) with an infinite love to that most incomparable (excellentissimo) body which was united inseparably to the deity itself; it is certain that his soul loved its union with his body in proportion to the good represented by the union of his body to the deity itself, that is to say, an infinite good (bonum infinitum). Where it follows that the love of the bond with the body was infinite, and it follows from that that the suffering in the separation [of soul and body] was infinite (infinitus fuit dolor).
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As the Chateau D’Amour notes: ‘but when to death he [willingly] surrendered . . . he suffered a hundred times more pain and evil than devils could ever have laid upon human nature.’ 45 Moreover, it was the infinite nature of the suffering caused by his self-immolation which served to guarantee the excess—and thereby unique nature—of Christ’s suffering over that endured by any other human being: ‘excedat omnem penam alium.’ 46
Also the passion of Christ was incomparably greater (incomparabiliter fuit maior) than any other passion. Not solely because his death was the most ignominious (probrossima), but, so I think, because it was also the most bitter (acerbissima). For he placed his soul apart from its healthy body, despite it having a plenitude of vital heat (caloris vitalis). But the segregation of the soul from a healthy body, in which the vital heat flourishes (viget), is by far the most difficult thing to do. This is so because it is an act above all human power (supra omnem humanam potentiam est). For no one has died or is able to die whilst the heat of nature flourishes in the heart (dum viget calor naturalis in corde). Therefore, that separation of the soul of Jesus Christ from his healthy body was the most difficult thing, and it was greatly against the natural appetite of his soul, which naturally hungered to be united with his body. And therefore his death was of the bitterest nature (acerbitatis maximae).
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For Grosseteste it is the infinite quality of Christ’s poena which is the key thing to focus upon here. This is so because, as a result of it, Christ was able to do what no purus homo could do—i.e., offer a voluntary act of loving obedience that was truly proportionate to the infinite debt owed to God by sinful humanity. On account of the fact that the ordinary human soul lacks infinite power and will, no purus homo can sever his soul from his still-healthy body; and nor, as such, can she experience the infinite pain which it incurs, thereby precluding her from offering a truly proportionate act of satisfaction to God. We thus see that for Grosseteste the belief that Christ died through the voluntary sundering of his soul from his still-healthy body is by no means a peripheral or secondary feature of his theology of satisfaction. Instead, it is an absolutely critical aspect of it. Had Christ not died at the command of his divine will—i.e., had he, like the two thieves, died as a result of the cross itself—then the satisfaction which he offered to the Father would have been insufficient to repay the debt of honour needed to secure salvation. Satisfaction, in other words, is entirely grounded in Christ’s voluntary self-immolation and is thus inseparable from it. The logical consequence of this is that the cross itself is not so much the instrument or cause of redemption, but merely the occasion for it.
Christ’s Self-Immolation and the Pattern of Christian Piety
What is particularly striking is how Grosseteste sees Christ’s satisfactory self-immolation as incorporating, and serving to define, the pattern of ordinary Christian piety, particularly that of penance. The untold suffering which Christ endured on our behalf, so the Bishop tells us, should stimulate within us not only a burning compassion for Christ, but also a fervent desire to make satisfaction for our own sins. In particular, it encourages us to unite our own penitential suffering to his. 48 ‘By the fact that we are as it were all of us one in Christ’ he remarks ‘our suffering (nostra pena) together with his suffering (pena eius) may be an infinite satisfaction for an infinite sin.’ 49 In essence, whilst we, as puri homines, may not be able to effect a perfectly satisfactory act of self-immolation—this, as we have just seen, is proper to the divine will of the God-man alone—we are nonetheless required to enact a form of inner spiritual immolation, one whereby our hearts, out of love for Christ and a genuine remorse for sin, radically identify with him and his sacrifice. Crucially, however, the immediate purpose of such radical self-identification is not to inflict suffering upon ourselves, nor is to make suffering the goal or guiding pattern of Christian life. Rather, it is to help conform us to Christ, thereby rendering us his imago. Just as important, however, Grosseteste adds, is that such spiritual immolation allows us to unite ourselves with other Christians—past, present, and future—in a fraternal bond of love, thereby strengthening the calor vitalis of the church, Christ’s mystical body. 50
If therefore there has to be such grief for a single mortal sin [as Christ experienced in his crucifixion] how great (quantum debet) should be the grief of those men living under vow who must grieve not for their own sins alone, nor solely for the sins of their brethren or for those of Christians generally, but beyond that still for the sins of all men now living (pro peccatis omnium hominum), and of all future generations!
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Grosseteste develops this theme particularly clearly in his sermon on Galatians 5:24, Qui autem sunt Christi. 52 Here he further underscores how the practice of spiritual immolation has an actively salvific quality. Not only does it allow us to be radically identified with the crucified Christ, but, more importantly, it facilitates our participation in the cruciform and redeeming pattern of love which he himself exhibited. 53 Through ‘preparing a cross in our minds,’ the Bishop states, we ‘join (coniungere) the cross of our love to that cross of love (cruci amoris) which was in Christ the man.’ 54 The result, of course, is that according to Grosseteste all Christians must recognize that ‘the cross of love (crux autem amoris) is unavoidably accompanied . . . by the cross of penance.’ 55 ‘He who loves God, and loves his friend and his enemy, and also the creatures of the world grieves and does penance for the sins he has committed against God and against his friend, his enemy and the creatures of the world.’ 56
Suffering and Charity
In light of all this, one can be forgiven for thinking that Grosseteste’s theory of Christ’s self-immolation makes suffering the central axis of salvation itself. Indeed it is tempting to think that, despite his claims to the contrary, Grosseteste departs from—or rather risks misconstruing—the basic thrust of the Anselmian theory of satisfaction. As Rik Van Nieuwenhove has shown, for Anselm, just like Thomas Aquinas, it is not Christ’s suffering per se which is responsible for the atonement, but rather something more positive. In Anselm’s case it is the dignity of honour with which Christ the God-man willingly repaid the debt owed by homo lapsus, whilst for Aquinas it is the charity with which Christ made satisfaction. 57 Careful inspection reveals, however, that whilst Grosseteste’s theory of Christ’s salvific self-immolation and its role in shaping Christian piety may certainly place a great deal of emphasis on the connection between suffering and satisfaction, it does nonetheless remain within the general contours of the Anselmian framework; indeed, it actively anticipates several of the key insights articulated by the later 13th-century tradition, in particular those of Aquinas. 58
To suggest that for Grosseteste Christ’s suffering is not the primary, or at least grounding, aspect of his theory of satisfaction may seem at odds with what we have said thus far. After all, did not Grosseteste insist that it is only through the infinite nature of his suffering that Christ was able to repay the infinite debt of honour owed to God? Careful inspection reveals, however, that for Grosseteste, in a manner not too dissimilar to Thomas, what serves to render Christ’s act of self-immolation truly salvific is the charity with which he, the immaculate, perfectly innocent Deus-homo, willingly submitted to the infinite poena caused by the severance of his soul from his still-healthy body. ‘Out of love for the Father’, he tells us, Christ formed within himself a ‘cross of love’ (crux amoris) and it was this which ‘made him mount the cross of wood’ (fecit eum ascendere crucem ligni). 59 Moreover, the love with which the still-healthy Christ laid down his life was so perfect that not only did it embrace the Father and the whole of fallen humanity—both friend and foe—in a bond of perfect love, but it also touched the totality of creation itself, bringing the latter back into a balanced relationship with its Creator.
In Christ the man this cross of love was present (fuit crux ista amoris), for he directed his human love upwards towards the Father, and to the right, as it were, towards his friends, to his enemies to the left, and to corporeal creatures, as it were, downwards. Now that cross of love it was which made him mount the cross of wood. For out of love for the Father (Ex amore enim patris) he, who was ‘obedient unto death’ [Phil 2:8], willed to be nailed to the wood of the cross, in order to redeem both friend and foe (pro amicis et inimicis) and to restore the other creatures to their ancient dignity.
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To this extent we see that Grosseteste attempts to counterbalance his emphasis on the infinite nature of Christ’s suffering by underlining the limitless and all-encompassing nature of Christ’s perfect charity. What also becomes clear from this is that for Grosseteste, although Christ’s suffering may be—to use terms which admittedly Grosseteste himself does not use—the instrumental cause of his satisfactory act, it is not the primary or motive work within it; rather, this privilege belonged solely to his self-giving charity. Whilst Aquinas of course did not articulate anything like Grosseteste’s theory of Christ’s death, what is clear is that the Bishop nonetheless prefigures, even if only in part, something of the centrality which Thomas was to later place on charity in in his own account of satisfaction.
Satisfaction and Friendship
The above quote is also particularly instructive in another way. It shows us that for Grosseteste, again in a manner similar to Aquinas, the charity involved in Christ’s satisfactory act of self-immolation ought to be understood in terms of friendship. 61 Influenced by his work on Aristotle’s Nicomachian Ethics, the Bishop tells us that, through the ‘law of friendship,’ Christ becomes an ‘alter ipse’ for the sinner, thereby meaning he is able to repay the debt of honour which is owed. 62 This is made possible because, through the bond of friendship, the sinner’s actions become his and, more importantly, his become theirs. 63 ‘The things that Christ performs on his behalf (i.e., the redeemed sinner’s), the one united to him actually does through Christ and in Christ.’ 64 Thus, as McEvoy puts it, ‘the idea, then, is that Christ [upon the cross] is the alter ipse of each of the redeemed, the one who out of pure friendship took all the faithful into solidarity with his own person and substituted himself for them.’ 65
Now no one should think that an objection to the views we are developing might be made on the grounds that the one who is in person God and man is someone quite apart from any given sinful man. In reality, someone who cleaves to him with true faith, firm hope, and persevering charity is no longer a separate being but is united to his personality and is one Christ with him. To such an extent is this true that it is no longer the individual in question who performs the works of faith, hope, and charity, but it is Christ who effects them in him. Moreover, the things that Christ performs on his behalf, the one united to him actually does through Christ and in Christ. According to the law of friendship, each of the two friends is his friend’s ‘other self’, in virtue both of the bond of love and the unity it forges between them, and also through the ‘unity of will regarding moral right and wrong’ . . . Keeping this in mind, can we not say that all [believers] are one in him, far more than is the case even regarding friends, when we consider that they are by creation the sons of God-made-man; that their rebirth reinforces their sonship; and that they are sons by sharing in his nature, as well as by receiving his illumination, and being as it were all glued together by an indissoluble love?
66
For Grosseteste it is this ‘indissoluble love’ of friendship by which Christ and the redeemed are ‘glued’ together which renders Christ’s act of self-immolation truly efficacious, not simply with respect to the repayment of the debt of honour owed by homo lapsus but also the grace which is offered to humanity in the here and now through the church. 67 This is so because it is through the bond of friendship that Christ administers his grace to the faithful through the sacraments. Using the latter—in particular that of penance—Christ invites the sinner to unite themselves to him and share in his redemptive act of charity, thereby atoning for their own sins and, crucially, those of their fellow Christians—their ‘friends’ in Christ. 68 Indeed, it is only through such participatory union with Christ that the sacraments and our own personal acts of penance possess any potency. 69 For Grosseteste, as such, the church’s sacramental life is thus very much to be seen as framed against, and as an outworking of, the charity of friendship which lies at the heart of Christ’s satisfactory act of self-immolation. 70 Like the latter, the sacraments and the practice of penitential living are an invitation and doorway to a restored friendship with God.
Conclusion
As McEvoy has pointed out, whilst Grosseteste’s thinking on the absolute predestination of Christ may have exerted a profound, even critical, influence upon later 13th-century Christological debates, his interpretation of Christ’s death remained almost entirely ignored. 71 Beyond a handful of later 13th-century thinkers, few took Grosseteste’s theory of the mors Christi seriously; and nor, in turn, is any precursor, at least of a substantial nature, to be found within the earlier theological tradition. 72 In this respect, Grosseteste can be said to have made an entirely novel, albeit inconspicuous, contribution to the medieval debate on the cross. Yet, as we have also seen, the theory of satisfaction which he constructs around his doctrine of Christ’s death does nonetheless prefigure something of the key insights adopted by later thinkers, particularly concerning the role of charity and friendship in satisfaction. What is perhaps most striking, however, is how Grosseteste deliberately places his very substantial scientific learning at the disposal of his Christological-soteriological speculation. As far as I can see, the Bishop is unique amongst the medievals in doing this. He sees no tension in bringing his scientific learning into dialogue with his theological reasoning, and indeed using it to support, elucidate, and substantially inform his doctrinal conclusions. Thus, shaped as it is by his scientific learning, and his strong desire to respect what he sees as the historical reality of Christ’s death, his theory of the cross and human redemption as a whole is one which is concerned with what may be described as the ‘anatomy of salvation.’
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was funded by Leverhulme charity.