Grid of the Gods (40 page)

…

Anselm:
…It may, indeed be said, that the Father commanded him to die, when he enjoined that upon him on account of which he met death…And this,
since none other could accomplish it
, availed as much with the Son, who so earnestly desired the salvation of man, as if the Father had commanded him to die; and, therefore, “as the Father gave him commandment, so he did, and the cup which the Father gave to him he drank, being obedient even unto death.”

Note the curious statement “since none other could accomplish it,” a statement that many interpreters take as referring to the insufficiency and weakness of the human will and its inability not to sin. Christ, as a “perfect man” presumably does not suffer this weakness, and therefore, is able to offer a perfect obedience.

But this would be to reduce Anselm’s argument, for this is not the only “absolute reason” that he has in mind.

2. Debt, Payment, and Satisfaction

That “absolute reason” is revealed by what Anselm has to say about the ideas of debt, payment, and satisfaction in chapter twelve of the
Cur Deus
:

Anselm:
Let us return and consider whether it were proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone,
without any payment of the honor taken from him.

…

But
if sin is neither paid for nor punished, it is subject to no law.

Here the notion of payment and debt becomes more fully defined: it is a “payment for the honor taken” from God by man.

This is further elaborated in chapter nineteen:

Anselm:
Therefore,
consider it settled that, without satisfaction, that is, without voluntary payment of the debt, God can neither pass by the sin
unpunished, nor can the sinner attain that happiness, or happiness like that, which he had before he sinned;
for man cannot in this way be restored, or become such as he was before he sinned.

Boso:
…For, if we pay our debt, why do we pray God to put it away? Is not God unjust to demand what has already been paid? But if we do not make payment, why do we supplicate in vain that he will do what he cannot do, because it is unbecoming?

Anselm:
He who does not pay says in vain: “Pardon”; but he who pays makes supplication, because prayer is properly connected with the payment; for
God owes no man anything, but every creature owes God…

Here the language of “debt” and “payment” has come fully out into the open, but note, that in the implicit logic of Anselm’s argument,
both
God
and
man are caught as cogs in a machine of higher logic, that of an abstract justice demanding punishment and satisfaction for sin. Lest this point be missed, Anselm is really saying that there is
no intrinsic forgiveness whatsoever
; there is no fiat of forgiveness without the shedding of blood.

This gruesome logic is elaborated even further in chapters twenty through twenty-three:

Anselm:
Neither, I think, will you doubt this, that
satisfaction should be proportionate to guilt.

…

When you render anything to God which you owe him, irrespective of your past sin, you should not reckon this as the debt which you owe for sin.
But you owe God every one of those things which you have mentioned….

Boso:
Truly I dare not say that in all these things I pay any portion of my debt to God.

Anselm:
How then do you pay God for your transgression?

Boso:
If in justice I owe God myself and all my powers, even when I do not sin, I have nothing left to render to him for my sin.

Anselm:
What will become of you then? How will you be saved?

…

(We) set aside Christ and his religion as if they did not exist, when we proposed to inquire whether his coming were necessary to man’s salvation.

(CHAPTER XXI)

…

Anselm:
Therefore
you make no satisfaction unless you restore something greater than the amount of that obligation,
which should restrain you from committing the sin.

Here the implicit logic is finally revealed, for mankind owes a debt that he cannot repay, yet, since it is mankind that
owes
the debt, he
must
repay.

And this leads to the heart of the logic of Anselm’s “machine of sacrifice.”

3. Infinite Debt, Infinite Payment, and the Internal
Logic of the Sacrifice of Christ According to Anselm

Mankind owes a debt that is, in effect, infinite, since his sin was — as was seen in the citations above — an affront to the honor of God, an honor one can only assume was infinite, like God Himself. Because of this, the infinite debt can only be “paid off” or “satisfied” by an infinite payment, yet, mankind had to pay it, since he himself owed it. And thus we come to the heart of the
Cur Deus Homo
, the
Why the God-Man
, for only God, by coming man, could both satisfy, and pay, the abstract infinite debt, as is enunciated in Book II, chapters six and seven of the
Cur Deus
:

Anselm:
But this cannot be effected, except the price paid to God for the sin of man be something greater than all the universe besides God.

Boso:
So it appears.

Anselm:
Moreover, it is necessary that he who can give God anything of his own which is more valuable than all things in the possession of God, must be greater than all else but God himself.

Boso:
I cannot deny it.

Anselm:
Therefore none but God can make this satisfaction.

Boso:
So it appears.

Anselm:
But none but a man ought to do this, other wise man does not make the satisfaction.

Boso:
Nothing seems more just.

(CHAPTER VII)

Anselm:
…
For God will not do it, because he has no debt to pay; and man will not do it, because he cannot. Therefore, in order that the God-man may perform this, it is necessary that the same being should be perfect God and perfect man, in order to make this atonement.

And with those statements, Anselm has reduced God, man, and Christ as cogs in a kind of “accounting” adjustment as vast cogs in an impersonal machine of justice and sacrifice. Anselm “wins” the argument, and his disciple Boso summarizes this principle in chapter eighteen of Book Two:

Boso:
…And you, by numerous and positive reasons, have shown that the restoring of mankind ought not to take place, and could not, without man paid the debt which he owed God for his sin. And
this debt was so great that, while none but man must solve the debt, none but God was able to do it; so that he who does it must be both God and man.
And hence arises a necessity that God should take man into unity with his own person; so that he who in his own nature was bound to pay the debt, but could not, might be able to do it in the person of God.

Pause and consider quite carefully what this means. On Anselm’s view, God is a banker, and Christ is less a person than an action of sacrifice balancing the books; all other aspects of the life and teaching of Christ are, really, merely superfluous to this overriding sacrificial necessity. On this view, even life itself is an indebtedness, and this reveals the flaw in Anselm’s logic, for if life itself is an indebtedness, could mankind
ever
sufficiently “honor God” to pay back the debt of life?

There is, of course, a further flaw in Anselm, and it is a moral one, for it makes God the Father demand the death-by-torture of his own Son to satisfy an affront to His honor, an act that, even on
human terms, seems neither just nor befitting a “God of Love,” and an action few, if any, human fathers would ever demand.

We are dealing, in short, with a kind of closed “economico- theological” system, with God’s honor as the interest, and mankind the principal and collateral on it.

With this view of mankind as a mechanism in a machine, let us now return to the Aztecs, to Teotihuacan, and look more closely at the possible physics connections.

C. Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan may rightly be said to be the Giza of the Americas. Its massive Pyramid of the Sun and Pyramid of the Moon dominate the Valley of Mexico, and their names themselves are both specifically mentioned in the local native lore, and were adopted by the Aztecs themselves when they moved into the Valley.
²¹
The name Teotihuacan itself means “city of the gods.” Indeed, the emperor Montezuma himself thought that the Pyramid of the Sun was the “original primeval mound marking the spot where creation had been set in motion at the beginning of the present epoch of the earth.”
²²
In this, as we shall discover, the Aztecs echoed the Egyptians, who also regarded their great pyramids at Giza as representing the primeval mountains of creation.

In other words, the pyramids of Teotihuacan and in particular the Pyramid of the Sun were regarded as somehow fundamentally connected to the cosmological processes of creation itself. For the Aztecs, as for the Egytptians, they were, in some rudimentary sense, understood to be
machines
manipulating the physics of the cosmological process of creation and destruction itself at the highest, topological level
.

However, for the Aztecs, unlike for the Egyptians, that manipulation was accomplished through the barbaric practice of human sacrifice, a practice overseen by priests who, according to Nahuatl tradition, directed sacrifices as part of the ritual of immortality and ascension connected with the pyramids.
²³
Before
proceeding to a more detailed examination, it is worth speculating on why sacrifice was thought, in some manner, to be connected with pyramids, immortality, and the manipulation of the medium.

We have already noted that pyramids were understood by the Meso-Americans, in some rudimentary form, as machines directly linked to the cosmological processes of creation, to a
physics
. As I have also noted in my book
The Cosmic War
, some of the ancient technologies seem to have been operable, or were
perceived
as being operable, only in close conjunction or actual physical contact with their possessors.
²⁴
It is also known that the Aztecs in particular practiced human sacrifice with what may best be described as reckless abandon, as if, somehow, the sheer numbers and emotional trauma associated with them somehow enhanced the effect - whatever it was perceived to be - of the practice. Taking the Aztec and Mayan myths as our clue, we may conclude that at some point during the development of the Grid, that an elite arose - or perhaps simply asserted itself - that understood that there was a direct effect of consciousness upon the physical medium, and through the practice of massive human sacrifice, was attempting literally to “traumatize” or “shock” it.

Turning to Teotihuacan itself, it is to be noted that the site is very ancient, and bears the marks of several eras of construction.
²⁵
The problem is, that no one
really
knows who built it, nor really, when it was built. Indeed, when the Conquistadors discovered the site,

No one could tell them who had built the great ceremonial center, whence the builders had come, or whither they had gone. All they could learn was that two centuries earlier, when the Mexica had arrived in the valley, they had found the mysterious city already in an abandoned condition,
covered with earth and vegetation.
²⁶

The presence not only of vegetation but of
earth
covering the monuments of Teotihuacan suggests that when the Aztecs came upon the site, it had been abandoned for some time.