For by Him all things were created
that are in heaven and that are on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or principalities or powers.
All things were created through Him and for Him.
Letter to the Colossians 1:16
The theory of Acceptance is commonly attributed to the medieval theologians Duns Scotus127 and William Ockham,128 theologians of the Via Moderna.129 The Via Moderna or Nominalist school of theology was based on the idea that God is omnipotent; he could have created the world and the rest of the universe in any desired form. Obviously, he chose the one he created for some good reason known only to himself; therefore, we must accept that the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds and could not have been otherwise. Scotus and Ockham never wrote a structured theory of salvation (their interests lay more in other doctrinal matters), but merely expressed some opinions on the subject, in their erudite dissertations.
8.1. Acceptance theory
Acceptance theory stems from the principle, expressed by both thinkers but radicalised by Ockham, that only God can determine the value of a person or action, and therefore, in the sphere of salvation, nothing is worthy except what is accepted by God as such.
According to Scotus, in the order of creation, everything was aimed from the beginning at the glory of the incarnate Word. He was established before the foundation of the world and was not a mere remedy for the fall of man; he would have become incarnate even in its absence. God does not react but acts from the height of his omnipotence and omniscience to carry out his own ineffable will; it follows that neither man nor Satan can condition God's choices and force him to act accordingly. The incarnation of Jesus was not a “plan B” put in place to make amends for something that went wrong in creation, but was “plan A” from the beginning, since everything was created through him and in view of him:
The world is created for a purpose that is inherently Christological. It has a social order, as well as a natural one, that reflects the wisdom of the divine Logos. The advent of Jesus is therefore not an epiphenomenon or accidental turn in the course of creation but, as the incarnation of the creative Word, its central event. In the Middle Ages, Franciscan theologians, especially J. Duns Scotus, speculated that Christ would have become incarnate, even had Adam not sinned, in order to raise the cosmos to its appointed destiny.130
Jürgen Moltmann came to the same conclusion in the 20th century, stating that if the incarnation were only an emergency measure on God's part, once Jesus had completed his task, he would become superfluous, and the link between God and man in Christ would dissolve. On the contrary, if God had intended the incarnation of Christ from eternity, it would be the foundation and completion of creation, and the indispensable link between God and humanity:
[...] it is only the incarnation of the Son which completes creation-in-the-beginning through the new bond between God and man manifested in Christ the Son, and through the brotherhood into which he receives believers. The incarnation of the Son then becomes the foundation of the new creation.131
Scotus, while generally adopting Anselm's idea of Satisfaction, believed that the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son were not necessary to repair God's offended honour, but to restore to the Father what had been lost, namely fallen humanity. The choice of Christ's sacrifice for salvation was not for the purpose of repairing an outrage, but was the supreme manifestation of his eternal love for humanity, so that all might be brought under his grace:
His assertion [stands out] that Divine Incarnation itself was “the first idea in the mind of God” and not an after-the-fact attempt to solve the problem of sin. Scotus, in effect, taught that grace is inherent to the universe from the moment of the “Big Bang” (implied in Genesis 1:2, which has the Spirit hovering over chaos). His cosmic Christology implies that grace is not a later add-on-now-and-then-for-a-few phenomenon, but the very shape of the universe from the start.132
Similarly, Ockham believed that “according to the laws now ordained by God, no human being will ever be saved […] without created grace.”133
Salvation, therefore, as it depends on God's grace and acceptance, could have taken place in any way determined by God himself, e.g., through the sacrifice of an ordinary man or an angel, but the fact that God, in his supreme freedom, decided to accept the sacrifice of Jesus as a suitable form, testifies to his great love for mankind and should kindle the flame of love in the hearts of men. It would seem to glimpse, in Scotus' hypothesis, a fusion of Anselm's and Abelard's theories:
Knowing that God became incarnate and died on the Cross, when something other or lesser would have been able to merit grace for the fallen, should enkindle a deep love for God in man because it reveals the lengths to which God will go to bring his fallen creatures back to him. […] God willed the Passion of the Incarnate Logos to express his love for creatures in a dramatic way that is better suited to enkindling in the creature love for God.134
The goal of Jesus' work would therefore be to lead humanity back into the realm of its destiny of perfection and communion with God, that is, into the love of the Trinity:
Scotus pointed to God's desire to be loved by someone outside himself in a supreme way as the reason for the Incarnation. The Incarnation is designed for that purpose. Other authors, without specifically giving this reason, maintain that the Word became flesh in order to come to the head of the universe, of all Creation, in order to deify us, and they see the liberation from sin not as the reason for the Incarnation but as one of its fruits. Such is the Scotist line.135
The emphasis placed by Scotus and Ockham on grace and irrefutable divine acceptance, already advocated by Augustine, will probably influence Luther and Calvin two centuries later, regarding concepts such as “sola gratia” and predestination.
8.2. Criticism of the Acceptance theory
According to some critics, if God could have saved mankind in many ways, as Scotus and Ockham argued, it would be morally questionable that he chose, as the most appropriate method, to have his only begotten Son tortured to death. He could, very trivially, have forgiven or found an easier way to redeem humanity. Ironically, the theory of Acceptance would precisely contradict the principle of Ockham's razor, according to which, among several plausible hypotheses, the simplest would be the most correct.
Secondly, according to Scotus's reasoning, even if humanity had not sinned, the Word would still have incarnated. Some might object to what purpose such an incarnation would have taken place and what merits Jesus would have had, such as to guarantee him to sit at the right hand of the Father and be glorified by him: “Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”136
In response to this objection, let me make an amendment to Scotus' theory, with the help of Irenaeus. It could be assumed, for example, that the fall was not an accidental event, but rather an inevitable consequence of creation, and was not limited to Adam and Eve but is repeated in the same way in every created man and woman. This assumption stems from the fact that creatures are, by definition, inferior to the Creator, and these creatures, if endowed with freedom (and we know that freedom is a prerequisite for love), will inevitably end up making imperfect choices, since perfection is an attribute of God alone:
However, anyone says, “What then? Could not God have exhibited man as perfect from beginning?” let him know that, inasmuch as God is indeed always the same and unbegotten as respects Himself, all things are possible to Him. But created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated. But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very reason do they come short of the perfect.137
Consequently, just as the fall is implicit in creation because of its natural imperfection (indeed, if Adam and Eve had been perfect, they would not have sinned), so too the incarnation of Jesus and the work of salvation were foreseen from eternity in the mind of God, as Scotus rightly hypothesised.
8.3. Conclusion
The Acceptance theory is only a rather incomplete draft and carries with it the limitations and criticisms of Satisfaction and Moral Influence theories. However, it has the great merit of reinforcing the concept of the supreme authority of God, who works freely in grace and out of love for his creatures, and not as an offended and punitive god, which was the typical view of the late medieval period. Secondly, it emphasises the centrality of the incarnation and the role of Jesus from eternity and does not position it as a mere fallback put in place by God to fix a situation that got out of hand. Salvation cannot and must not be seen as a work initiated by the devil, but God's original idea to make people partakers of his love through grace. The incarnation of Jesus and the solidarity in suffering with mankind are not an accidental and secondary fact, but the heart and engine of creation from eternity. This is the merit that must surely be given to the two great scholars Scotus and Ockham.