Free Grid of the Gods by Joseph P. Farrell, Scott D. de Hart Page A

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,