Cur Deus Homo
Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man)
Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury
Why God became man, worked out as a debt nobody else could settle. Boso keeps asking the awkward question, which is his job.
- Catch rate
- 15 / 255
- Base research
- 176
- Stat total
- 294
Base stats
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
Why these numbers
The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.
Two books of dialogue, complete, and short enough to read in an evening.
It defines sin as a debt unpaid and then follows the arithmetic without flinching: only a man ought to pay it, only God could.
The book argues against its own case on purpose — Boso is instructed to bring the strongest objection an unbeliever has. A position built under that pressure is hard to knock over.
The standard reference point for every later account of the atonement, including the ones that disagree with it.
Cited for this book
Anselm says in his own preface why he wrote it: unbelievers were bringing the objection up and ridiculing Christian simplicity as absurd. So the book is addressed to that objection rather than around it — and the interlocutor, Boso, is instructed to put the case as strongly as it can be put.
Moves learned
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | What Is Owed | Soteriology | Argument | 72 | 100% | 15 |
| 1 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 34 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 38 | The Burden of Sin | Soteriology | Type shift | — | — | 10 |
| 43 | Than Which Nothing Greater | Rationality | Argument | 82 | 90% | 5 |
| 46 | None but God, None but Man | Soteriology | Argument | 84 | 100% | 5 |