Sacrifice
by Chris Epperson
Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney, wrote an interesting piece on atonement theology, a week or so back. It is an interesting little piece published in the Guardian. I link it HERE .
Fraser is quite correctly critical of a particular kind of doctrine of the atonement, we might refer to as substitutionary. The idea is that God demands a sacrifice to restore right relationship with humanity and Jesus becomes that sacrifice. The formulation of this way of thinking about the atoning death of Jesus is much more complex and subtle, but this is the broad brush.
It is troubling for all the reasons Fraser mentions. It smacks of brutality and violence. It doesn’t portray God in a very positive light. In certain global quarters, it might even lend support to practices most of us would consider quite barbaric.
I am not sure, however, that it would be appropriate to divorce Christianity of the atoning death of Jesus on the cross of Good Friday. The scriptures clearly see Jesus death in sacrificial terms. Surely, Jesus death in the minds of the writers of the scriptures, and in my mind was “for us”. So there is a sense in which Christ is the sinless victim for a sinful humanity. I don’t think you can simply walk away from Christian history, teaching and the Bible.
That said, I don’t think we need to be forever tied to a particular vision of the meaning of sacrifice. Usually, ritual sacrifice denotes an unwilling victim to be the offering. In the case of Jesus, the scriptures portray a victim, conflicted, but having a choice. It seems that Jesus chose to accept his death in service of God. The Bible does not indicate Jesus death was a transaction. It speaks in terms of kenosis, the free pouring out of life by choice in service of God. St. Paul certainly speaks of his life in these sacrificial terms. The martyrs of the early Christian Church seemed to embrace this same vision of sacrifice.
Here in the west, we don’t care for sacrifice. We rightly reject the implications of ritual sacrifice. However, we don’t much care for the notion of kenosis either. Offering ourselves and accepting less is not our strong suit. God is not a hungry, blood thirsty beast, that tends to be our territory. Maybe what we need is a deeper grasp of the mystery of Jesus’ self- authenticating, self-sacrificing acceptance of the cost of love?
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6 comments:
As I said in a recent e-mail to Bishop Breidenthal, yes to vicarious offering, sacrifice, and obedience, no to vicarious punishment. This seems to be the theology of the Prayer Book Catechism and of Philippians 2. I would argue that Hebrews teaches the same in some of the key passages. God does not have punishment needs. There may be readings of certain passages in the NT (and OT) that suggest Jesus being punished in our place. One shouldn't press these metaphors too far.
One could question the word "vicarious," but I think it stands so long as we realize that we have come to participate in an action, which precedes and empowers our own, just as grace precedes and empowers the free action of our will. By him, with him, and in him, humanity is made right with God.
The atoning value of the cross should never be seen in abstraction from the resurrection or the life and ministry of Jesus.
The movie, K-19, about a disaster on a Russian nuclear submarine at the height of the Cold War has an example of a sort of "vicarious sacrifice." Some sailors volunteer to absorb lethal doses of radiation as they repair a leak in the coolant of the reactor.
I wonder - and have suggested in sermons - if this isn't more like the Christian Atonement accomplished by God in Christ.
A few further thoughts to add...
The word sacrifice literally means "to make holy". On a cultural level we Americans seem to have no trouble with lifting up people who "make the supreme sacrifice": soldiers, police, fire fighters, etc. whose line of work is the cause of their death when it is in service for others. Indeed, we laud these people as heroes (I'm not saying we shouldn't). But why should the needs of our country, society, communities shape our understanding of what makes a death holy, if we are not willing to accord God the same possibility? If Jesus is God Incarnate, then his death was a self-sacrifice - not denying his human suffering in any way, but also not a helpless and hapless victim. For Jesus to go through destruction and abandonment at the Crucifixion means that God knows what death is all about, that there is no aspect of human existence that has not been taken up into God in the transformation of life in the Resurrection. It's not so much that Jesus died in our place (although I would not want to give up that language), but that Jesus in his role as the Second Adam, encompassing all humanity goes through Death into New Life and takes us with him, "the first-born of many brothers and sisters". To me that is very different than what used to get referred to when I was in seminary as "cosmic child abuse".
Vicki McGrath+
Chris
Great topic and one I'm sure will (and always has) elicit(ed) much debate. In my humble opinion, atonement theory is the most misunderstood topic in Christianity. I agree with your view of atonement (note that there was no effective hyperlink to the story from the Guardian).
I would like to inject this notion in to your post, however: Recent (within the last 80 years or so) American evangelicalism has caused alot of folks to view Christ's death on the cross as THE saving event in the story of Jesus. This has, in turn, allowed most of the American Christian culture to internalize Jesus as its own little gumball machine of saving grace. No doubt the Christ event is of key importance in the story of God and God's relationship with all of creation, I submit that it is to what Christ died that is important for us to remember--Jesus death on the cross represented the victory of the powers and principalities of the day winning the battle against what Jesus represented. Let's call this the "earthly" economy.
Jesus' resurrection, however, represented the victory of "God's" economy.
The important lesson for us to bear in mind as Christians is that when those two worlds collide, the earthly economic systems and structures are incompatible with those of God's. This, I argue, is the point of the cross. In order for God's kingdom to be restored and all of God's creation to be reconciled back unto Him, that which represents the world's power and structures must first die. What is God's reaction to this "earthly" victory? Enter grace. God raises Jesus up from the death and destruction (which was the best such earthly system could offer, i.e. the elimination of that which speaks (spoke) against it) that the crucifixion represented. In essence, God is able to take the very worst that the world can throw at Jesus, i.e. death, and respond with love, grace, restoration, reconciliation and peace. To say it another way, God wanted (and continues to want) nothing more than continued community with His creation--even when creation acts out in horribly evil means and attempts to eliminate the very God (in the person of Jesus) who is there to commune with it.
The ultimate meaning of the Christ event is that God's love conquers even the very worst that we can throw at Him.
Chad's addition here is very helpful. Conflict with the fallen powers is a major strand of NT soteriology, esp. in Colossians and Ephesians. It is also very prominent in the Easter Vigil, as well as the associated baptismal rite with its threefold renunciation and Pauline logic (Romans 6, the Vigil epistle).
A relationship between the Christus victor motif and vicarious offering, sacrifice, and obedience is suggested by the Christ hymn in Philippians 2. "Wherefore God has highly exalted him, etc." It seems to me that the supreme act of self-giving love on behalf of others, in which we are caught up by sacramental participation and union and which founds an alternative society (being in Christ even though we remain in Adam), is itself the conquest of the powers. By his life, death, and resurrection Christ enacts and embodies the power of love which is stronger than the things we think are strong. And we have been caught up in that. The renunciations of the baptismal rite have already been accomplished and lived out in the Head on behalf of the members and in him by the grace of the Holy Spirit we are catching up as we are made holy. All through our union with Christ in his dying and rising.
To cite Rowan Williams essay "On Being Creatures" (in On Christian Theology):
But to open myself to the divine action is to seek to discover that act which is wholly and purely the movement of a generosity that finds joy in being for the other. There is no 'private' or individual goal possible: our prayer is supposed to deliver us from what gets in the way of our immersion in and continuity with the act of God, what blocks our own happiness in each other. That human life which we believe to have been uniquely open to the divine act, the life of Jesus is a life given to the creation of a people for God, a community without limit; and it is by this life that we begin to orient ourselves at all toward the creator in the first place. Our openness to God is our readiness for the action of a generosity creative of community to be 'enacted' in us--our readiness, therefore to challenge and resist the making or remaking of exclusions and inequalities in creation. The discovery of solidarity in creatureliness has obvious consequences, which hardly need spelling out, for our sense of responsibility in the material world; it puts at once into question the model of unilateral mastery over the world. And if we can grasp this, we can also understand, perhaps, how bizarre a distortion it has been to think that the human spirit 'imitates' God by exploitative mastery. The creative life, death, and resurrection of Jesus manifests a creator who works in, not against, our limits, our mortality: the creator who, as the one who calls being forth from nothing, gives without dominating.
All,
Well said. I too see the cross and Jesus death in terms of solidarity. It is certainly the place where God has experienced the full range of human existence. Jesus' death combined with resurrection and ascension makes possible the human experience of the life of God.
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