Anselm and honor

Anselm means something very different by “honor” than we are readily equipped to understand without effort. God is not a tin-pot dictator obsessed with his privileges. On the contrary, the Trinitarian movement that Anselm always has in mind is described in Philippians 2:5-7: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied (Greek root kenosis) himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” God’s honor is God’s righteousness, his holiness, his perfection — but it is also his love and freedom, which show themselves in the kenotic self-emptying of the Son.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 156