Penal Substitution AND Christus Victor?

Dave sent me an email with some challenging questions regarding my article “ Penal Substitution vs. Christus Victor” that I thought it might be interesting to answer in a blog. So here we go. I'll put Dave's questions in bold.

I read your article "Penal Substitution V Christus Victor" with interest. It is a very stimulating document. However -can I challenge you to engage more with what those advocating Penal Substitution are and are not arguing. There are a few things worth considering.

First the literature around -worth considering the old classic The Cross of Christ -John Stott and of course more recently Sach Ovey and Jeffry, Pierced for our transgression. Also Tom Wright's support for Penal Subsitution. Certainly the line would be not CV v PSA but rather PSA and CV togethr helping to give a full picture.

I have read Stott's book many times. It is certainly a classic as far as PS goes. I have also read “Pierced for Our Transgressions” and thought that was in contrast very poorly researched. I think they completely misrepresent for example the positions of people like Augustine and Athanasius. NT Wright has had some pretty negative things to say about this book. For what its worth, I have also spoken with NT Wright personally about PS, and he actually rejects it while embracing substitutionary atonement understood within the context of CV.

Let me mention a few other books on the side of PS that I found quite good. “The Glory of Penal Substitution” has quite a few good papers in it worth reading. I particularly liked the one by Van Hoozer. Packer's article “The Logic of Penal Substitution” is brilliant (and available online). Leon Morris “Apostolic Preaching” has some phenomenal research in it. Then there are people like PT Forsyth and James Denney who have some great stuff too.

One thing here that crystallizes with reading Forsyth, Denney, Van Hoozer, and Packer is that a great deal of the criticisms that are made of PS have also been made by people advocating PS too. So it is possible to embrace PS and at the same time be critical of its more legalistic and “crude” expressions. The question then becomes: what would a sophisticated and grace centered version of PS look like as opposed to a legalistic one?

This is perhaps best captured by Packer's now famous quote
“…Jesus Christ our Lord moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement for which we were otherwise inescapably destined and so won us forgiveness adoption and glory.”

Great quote. Do you recall where Packer said this?

It may surprise you to hear that, as it stands, I would agree with the above quote. I would want to refine and clarify a few points I am sure, but I will say that I do think that substitutionary atonement (which is a broader term than PS) is the linchpin of the entire atonement – the means of our redemption.

Where I would want to tweak the above statement is the phrase “endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement”. I do not think that the God needed to “get his anger out of his system” by punishing someone, even if that someone was himself. I would say instead that wrath is averted through our purification, or in technical terms that propitiation happens through expiation. Remove the sin (expiation) and you remove the cause of judgement (propitiation). Expiation is the key concept here in the atonement – our transformation and purification through Christ's blood.

So with that in mind can we say that Christ endured the judgement and death that humanity was due? Absolutely. The question is why? For what reason? That's where I think PS gets it wrong. The reason is expiation.

Key things there

1. Moved by a love... -this is language of love. It is an uncharitable nonsense to suggest that "In Satisfaction-Doctrine love is not central, but viewed with suspicion." I appreciate my language is strong there -but we have got to be right when we talk about what people believe.

Yes, love does need to be seen as the motivating factor. Some (for example Emil Brunner) have instead stressed that the need to fulfill the demands of justice or moral law was the key factor. I disagree, and so do people like Packer and Denney.

I's say that most Evangelicals who embrace PS do so because they see the love and grace of God in that he would endure suffering out of love for us. This is something I certainly would embrace as well. The problem is that many other people hearing the stress on God demanding punishment have gotten the opposite impression which has lead them to a hurtful image of God that damages their trust and can keep them from grace. Beyond any theological issues, I think this is the key issue: how can we present the Gospel and atonement so that people hear the message of a loving and just God they can trust? At least on a popular level (and often on an academic level as well) this has been quite problematic with PS because people are often more concerned with defending doctrine than they are with communicating grace (and here I will resist naming names, but I can unfortunately think of quite a few). I do want to stress also that I do not mean to imply that you are doing this at all. On the contrary, I greatly appreciated the generous and irenic tone in your post.

If it is as Aulen would say about reconciliation between God and man -then it is our relationship to him. Is sin simply the thing that oppresses us? What about the sense in which we identify with those who killed Jesus -those who are hostile to God.

I think you may be misunderstanding Aulen here (which may be my fault). He would say that the cross is primarily about our redemption (deliverance) by God from the bondage of sin, death, and the devil not of reconciliation (forgivness) between God and humanity. In that context he speaks of a “doublesidedness” where we are at the same time the victim of sin – its captive – and are guilty and culpable because it is our sin that has led us into this bondage. So we have humans as being both victims and perpetrators, needing to be liberated/ransomed/redeemed and reconciled/forgiven.

Christus Victor in opposition to Penal Substitution places us in a difficult position because -we are the ones who should be defeated by his victory.

I agree and disagree here.

I disagree in that I'd say our “defeat” is a necessary part of the atonement in that our sin and we are overcome and in that our identity is transformed from being a “son of perdition” to a son or daughter of God. Our enmity is defeated.

I would agree that a full view would need to see the themes of substitution and ransom rather together rather than as opposed, but would say that because PS and CV are essentially incompatible this merger, this would need to be in the form of CV together with an incarnational understanding of substitutionary atonement.

We need of course to bring other elements to bear -especially the idea of faith union.

Yes! I would argue here that the way to understand substitutionary atonement is not in terms of satisfaction of punishment or propitiation of wrath, but as recapitulation – God enters into our wretchedness, lostness, suffering, sickness, and sin and as us representationally overcomes death and hell in rising from the dead. In dying and rising as us (representationally, incarnation ally) Christ makes it possible for us to die and rise in Christ as well so that we are made holy through our union with him, us in Christ and Christ in us transforming us through an indwelling personal relationship with God.

Thanks for the challenging questions, and I hope you find some edification here in my response as well.

The History and Development of Satisfaction Doctrine

Tracing the development of Satisfaction doctrine is a confusing one, in part because the definition of the word has changed. In common usage today it means gratification (one recalls the song by the Rolling Stones), but the theological meaning is of making restitution: mending what has been broken, paying back what was taken. In Anselm, satisfaction is an alternative to punishment.

"The honor taken away must be repaid, or punishment must follow" (Cur Deus Homo Bk 1 Ch 8)

One makes satisfaction in order to avoid punishment. We can think here of a person paying a fine to avoid being thrown in debtor's prison. If someone else makes this restitution for us and "pays the fine" we are spared punishment. In Anselmian Satisfaction, since we cannot ourselves make satisfaction and restore God's honor since even if we led a perfect life we would only be giving what is our due, we are headed for punishment. So Christ not only lives a sinless life, which is again his due, but also is willing to endure death for the sake of love. This goes beyond the call of duty and thus honors God, restoring God's honor which Anselm saw as the central problem of the Atonement.

The concept of satisfaction changes in Aquinas where it is punishment that makes satisfaction.
First satisfaction is defined as compensation "Satisfaction is compensation for a past offense". Aquinas states then that "there is due satisfaction [ie compensation] when the punishment balances the fault" (Summa XP Q13 A1)

This sounds like penal substitution, but Aquinas is careful to say that he does not mean this to be taken in legal terms

"If we speak of that satisfactory punishment, which one takes upon oneself voluntarily, one may bear another's punishment... If, however, we speak of punishment inflicted on account of sin, inasmuch as it is penal, then each one is punished for his own sin only, because the sinful act is something personal. But if we speak of a punishment that is medicinal, in this way it does happen that one is punished for another's sin." (FS, Q. 87-A8)

What he means then by "satisfactory punishment" as opposed to punishment that is "penal" is essentially the Catholic idea of penance. Aquinas refers to the practice saying, "A satisfactory punishment is imposed upon penitents" (TP, Q49 A3) and defines this idea of "Satisfactory Punishment" (penance) as a compensation of self-inflicted pain in equal measure to the pleasure derived from the sin "punishment may equal the pleasure contained in a sin committed." (XP Q13 A1) One might say we make restitution (satisfaction) through acts of penance similar to how fasting purges the body of toxins.

Aquinas sees penance as having two functions. First to pay a debt, and second "to serve as a remedy for the avoidance of sin" . In this later case he says that "as a remedy against future sin, the satisfaction of one does not profit another, for the flesh of one man is not tamed by another's fast" and again "one man is not freed from guilt by another's contrition"(XP Q13 A2). Since according to Aquinas "Christ bore a satisfactory punishment, not for His, but for our sins." (FS Q87 A7) The penance Christ did has its effect in paying the "debt of punishment" incurred by our sin.

This is a concept similar to Anselm's that we owe a debt of honor to God, with a critical difference: While Anselm said we could never pay this because any good we could do was owed to God anyway, Aquinas says that in addition to our due of obedience we can make up for our debt through acts of penance "man owes God all that he is able to give him...over and above which he can offer something by way of satisfaction". Unlike Anslem, Aquinas claims that we can make satisfaction for our own sin, and that our problem is not our personal sin, but original sin "original sin... is an infection of human nature itself, so that, unlike actual sin, it could not be expiated by the satisfaction of a mere man." (XP Q13 A1) Thus Christ, as the "second Adam" does penance in our place paying the debt of our original sin. Aquinas is careful to stress here that this is done not in legal terms but as an act of charity quoting how we are called to "bear one another's burdens in love"(XP Q13 A2).

As much as I can appreciate the focus on love and inner reform in Aquinas I am not so thrilled with the idea of self-inflicting physical pain (penance) nor do I see how Christ taking the debt of punishment for us is not a contradiction of Aquinas' claim that "one is punished for his own sin only, because the sinful act is something personal". Then again, his Summa Theologica is over 4000 pages of dense Medieval theology(good grief!) , so it is entirely possible that I am missing it somewhere in there.

Aquinas was of course not the first to introduce the idea of penance which had a long tradition in the Latin speaking church due in part to the fact the the word for repentance in Latin is the same as the word for penance. Because of this Biblical passages such as Matthew 3:2 had been translated in Latin as "Do penance for the kingdom of God is at hand".

Both Luther and Erasmus criticized this saying that penance was an incorrect translation of the original Greek word "metanoeite" which means a change of mind and allegiance rather than a feelings of contrition evidenced in outer acts. One meant "turn back" while the other meant "feel bad". As a result Protestantism rejected the idea of penance as a condition for forgiveness saying that forgiveness came "through faith alone by grace alone". It is painfully ironic that while the Reformers so violently rejected the concepts of penance and indulgences, they accepted and understanding of the cross based on these very concepts.

Yet there was another twist. With Calvin the idea of satisfaction changed again. He retained the formula of Aquinas that satisfaction is made through punishment, but instead of meaning that inner restitution was made through penance, Calvin conceived of this in legal terms: the law required punishment in order to be satisfied. Both Anselm and Aquinas would have agreed that it was just to punish the guilty in the absence of restitution. Where they would have disagreed is in saying that another could take the criminal (penal) punishment meant for another. In Cur Deus Homo, Anselm's discussion partner Bozo asks,

"What justice is there in his suffering death for the sinner, who was the most just of all men? What man, if he condemned the innocent to free the guilty, would not himself be judged worthy of condemnation?"

Anselm's answer is that

"God the Father did not treat that man as you seem to suppose, nor put to death the innocent for the guilty" (Cur Deus Homo Bk I Ch 8)

These Infinite Spaces

My article " Understanding the Cross: Penal Substitution vs Christus Victor is generating some lively dialog over on the Blog These Infinate Spaces. I've included some of my responses here for you. You can check out the whole thing in context here. Just so you know, the text below "CV" stands for Christus Victor and "PS" for Penal Subsitution.

Craig writes: "What Anselm rejected in the Ransom theory was the idea that God had to make a bargain with the devil, and that He essentially tricked the devil into releasing human souls"

This criticism was not a new idea with Anselm. The Church Fathers had argued extensively about the best way to formulate this, and had made similar criticisms themselves. What is of monumental significance is that with Anselm, a major shift occurred where salvation was no longer understood in the deep terms of humanity being enslaved to sin and our need to be liberated from that bondage, but instead viewed sin in the legal terms of transgression, understanding salvation as paying a penalty to “satisfy” the demands of law. When the central understanding of atonement shifted from ransom from slavery to satisfaction of justice, the paradigm for sin shifted with it from the relational idea of bondage (who we belong to) to the legal idea of transgression (what we do).

With that, the deep reaching impact of the Christus Victor soterology was last and "Christus Victor" became in the minds of many Evangelicals today an insignificant appendix (for example with both John Stott and Derek Tidball). It is this "tacking on" of Christus Victor that I find problematic. I think it actually has some really profound implications that need to be explored. Two people who have pioneered this in different areas are Jürgen Moltmann and Walter Wink.

David writes:
"As Craig rightly asserts, CV doesn't really have a vigorous understanding of a personified Satan"

This statement surprised me. I would disagree and say that CV is in fact rooted in a deep understanding of the devil, and that PS is lacking in it. One can completely leave the devil out of the formulation of Penal Substitution. Christus Victor on the other hand is rooted in the idea of Christ overcoming "sin, death, and the devil". It expands the idea of sin beyond "transgression" to "bondage" showing the deep reaching consequences of evil in the human heart. CV is essentially about a change of identity from bondage to adoption, the theme of "redemption from slavery". The devil is crucial to this understanding.

What Gustav Aulen has removed from the ransom theory is not the devil, but its heavy legal focus and replaced it with a dramatic focus. Quite a number of major Evangelical theologians including JI Packer and James Denney have sharply criticized the legal focus in PS as well, and Packer has suggested that PS should also be seen (following Aulen) with a dramatic rather than legal focus (which he Packer sharply criticizes).

So what is so bad about a legal focus? I am not really arguing that it is "cold". I think one can me emotional and cold as well. In fact as an aside, I find Jonathan Edwards a pretty bad example of positive emotion since he was pretty nasty. I would instead suggest Spurgeon who was a PS advocating Calvinist with a huge heart for the lost. He is an excellent example of "positive emotion". The problem I have with a legal theory of the cross is twofold (there are other reasons, but I will limit myself for brevity sake):

1) A legal focus does not express the focus of Scripture which is clearly on the supremacy of love (Love is the "greatest commandment", the "sum of the law and the profits", if I "have not love I am nothing", "God is love", etc) over the law which the NT (both Jesus and Paul) are quite critical of. Biblically focus of the Atonement needs to be relational not legal. It was an expression of God's amazing love for us.

2) A legal focus trivializes sin. Sin is not simply an infraction, it is a cancer. It is bondage. It is about identity (who we belong to and who we are). It is a deep rooted problem that needs to be deeply addressed. Punishment does not heal the wounds of the sinner nor those who have been sinned against. It is superficial. What people need is a profound inner transformation, a change in identity, healing for their cancer. These are all aspects of God's work that a legal theory simply cannot capture.

So why don't we then have, as Packer suggests, a dramatic relational understanding of PS? Good idea. This is I think how most Evangelicals understand the cross: they see the great cost, they are humbled that this was "for them", they are moved by dramatic depictions like the movie "The Passion". The problem here is that while we can and should have a dramatic understanding of substitutionary atonement and vicarious sacrifice (as Luther did) there is a fundamental flaw specifically in PS's explanation of that vicarious sacrifice:

The idea of "satisfaction" does not mean "to gratify" as it does in English today but "to make restitution". With Anselm the idea of satisfaction/restitution was a way to avoid punishment. We make restitution and thus avoid punishment (pay the fine avoid a whipping). Specifically with the cross, Jesus make restitution by restoring God's honor (by giving his life so nobly for us Jesus gave God extra honor beyond what was due God in the sinless life of Jesus making up for the honor God had lost because of our dishonoring sin). Since restitution/satisfaction had been made there was no reason for the punishment. Now of course this whole system of honor is an artificial man-made concept of feudal times, but within Anselm's framework it does all make sense. I think there is in fact (if we could pull it out of its feudal legal framework a bit) some deep things about Anselm's theory. PT Forsyth does a good job of exploring this.

With Thomas Aquinas the idea of satisfaction/restitution changed. Unlike Anselm who said one made restitution to avoid punishment (pay the fine or go to jail) Aquinas said that it was the punishment that made the restitution (By seeing someone hurt you felt better). On a carnal level we can see how making someone hurt who hurt us would be "satisfying" (that is, gratifying). Its the basic desire for revenge, for payback. Whether it "makes things right" (restitution) is debatable. But there's another level here: What if instead of whipping and executing the guilty man we instead take someone who is innocent and good and beat and execute them instead and then let the guilty one go free? Does that sound like a fulfillment of justice? No, it sounds terrible. This is the elephant in the room of PS, it is as a (legal) theory profoundly unjust.

Compare that with the idea of someone giving their life for another, a firefighter who dies rescuing others from the flames, a body guard who takes a bullet for someone. this is heroic and deeply moving. We often see in movies the hero say to the terrorists who are going to kill someone (usually female) "No take me!". I think anyone with kids who are sick and suffering can relate to the wish that we could suffer instead of them. "I'd give anything to take their place" we say. But what is the theme here? It is Christus Victor. The bullet, the burning building, the ravaging disease, the terrorists, are not pictures of "justice being satisfied" they are bad things. Pictures of the Accuser, of Satan.

In short the vicarious sacrifice "in our place" is a moving and dramatic idea that is all over the NT. But explaining it in legal terms gives completely the wrong impression because in a legal sense it would be profoundly unjust. Understood in a relational sense however, as a ransom, as a redemption, it makes perfect sense.

Craig writes:
"Derek, I don't understand how you can reject the category of law, but still wish to uphold the concept of justice. Law is justice implemented and applied."

I would differentiate between human laws which are an outwardly imposed artificial human construct, and God's moral law which is simply the way the universe works. Sin is not punished by some extra action of God, sin "leads to death" just like hitting the ground is the consequence of gravity. God "gives us over to wrath" Paul says. God's moral laws are written into the fabric of who we are. Their consequences are inevitable flowing from the nature of how life works, again like gravity. Biblically this is not "justice", it is wrath, the curse, death. "Justice" biblically speaking is about "making things right". This was Luther's major discovery. Justice was not about consequence for sin as the Scholastics taught, it was about God making thing right.

Michael writes,
"The problem I can see with Derek's Christus Victor scheme is dualism... which is to say: God is not in any sense here the agent of our judgment/punishment."

I don't see this to be the case. I wonder if you have read the entire article on my website rather than merely the posts here? Biblically we have all three expressions:
1)God being the one who brings judgment,
2) judgment coming as a process ("the wrath" and "the curse" in Paul) and
3) judgment being executed by the devil.

So there is a pretty complex picture in Scripture. In Christus Victor the image is of the devil as the "accuser" (which is what "Satan" means) but it is also understood that he has "rights" because we have indeed sinned. This picture is not of God and Satan as co-equal (dualism) but of Satan as a fallen angel.

That means that the law for example is made to be good, made to point to God (not to be equal with God) but can through sin become something that instead leads to death (fallen). So God who desires life seeks a way to redeem both fallen humanity as well as to redeem the fallen law through grace. It is a more complex view than PS to incorporate the idea of fallenness and the devil, but I think it is also truer to both the complexity of the Biblical witness and to life. I go into all this in more detail in part 4 of my essay.

You are correct that ultimately God is the author of wrath (and of gravity). Gustav Aulen calls this the "double-sidedness" of the Atonement: God saves us from his own wrath. The Divine Love overcomes the Divine Wrath.

Subjective and Objective Atonement - Abelard,Girard

I've noticed that proponents of Penal Substitution seem to divide the world in to two camps: those who see the Atonement as objective (themselves) and those who see it as subjective (everyone else). By "objective" and "subjective" they mean whether the Atonement deals with an objective problem outside of ourselves such as God's wrath against sin, vs. the Atonement dealing with a subjective problem within ourselves such as our being estranged from God because we have a false image of him. The classic example of a subjective understanding of the Atonement is Abelard who saw the purpose of the cross as wooing us to God by a display of sacrificial love displayed on the cross.

Most proponents of Penal Substitution would acknowledge that there is indeed a subjective element to the cross since the love shown there does compel and speak to the heart of the lost just as Jesus does. However they would argue (I think rightly) that if our problem was only a subjective one that it would be rather unjust for the innocent Jesus to die just to appease us.

This idea of Jesus dying to appease our own wrongful need for retribution is, as far as I can tell, essentially what Girardian theory says, and for this reason Girardian theory strikes me as wrong. Again: if our problem was only a subjective one it would be unjust for the innocent Jesus to die just to appease us.

Similarly I would agree that an understanding of the cross based only on Abelard's view is equally lacking. To make an analogy: if a fire fighter runs into a burning building and dies in the flames trying to save people from an objective danger (the fire) this a noble thing. However if that same person would set themselves on fire to show us their love, this would be very disturbing to say the least. Likewise, Jesus dying only to show us God's love and not for a real objective reason would be equally disturbing. So there must be a objective reason for the cross (that can also speak to us and compel subjectively).

Where I think proponents of Penal Substitution get it wrong is in thinking that any view of the Atonement besides their own is automatically subjective. As we have seen Abelard's view is subjective, likewise (and if I any proponents of Girard would like to contradict me on this I would be happy to be corrected) Girard's view is subjective. Indeed the majority of liberal Christianity has presented understandings of the cross that are subjective. That is why I stress that I am not coming at this from a liberal perspective but from neo-evangelical one (some might also say neo-orthodox but since I have not read enough Barth I cant really say). My understanding of the cross is objective, but it sees another objective problem that goes deeper that appeasing wrath.

Penal substitution's objective necessity for the Atonement is that our sin has evoked God's just wrath and that this wrath must be quenched through punishment. That punishment is taken by Jesus who takes our place and thus appeases God's wrath. The problem with this theory is that it does not actually solve the objective problem of sin. God is not angry without reason, he is angry because of our sin. As with any anger, you get angry about something because you care about it. If you care about your kid and see them doing things that are hurting them it makes you angry because you care about them. This is the picture of God's wrath that we see all through the prophets: God is angry with Israel because of her sin and longs to see her turn back. He is angry because he loves. So in order to really deal with the objective reason for the anger what needs to happen is not simply that God can unleash his rage on someone, but that the problem that made him rightly mad in the first place is fixed. The objective problem is not God's wrath, but our sin which has incurred God's wrath. God's wrath is "propitiated" (made favorable) when our sin is healed. The primary work of the cross is not to appease wrath, but to solve the source of wrath by healing our sin.

Penal Substitution would claim that God only expiates our sin after he has been propitiated (that is: he will forgive us only after his wrath has been satisfied through punishment). This makes very little sense to say that someone will only forgive after they have gotten payback. Conversely I would say that God is propitiated ("made favorable") because our sin is expiated (removed). Remove the sin, and there is no reason to be mad. To quote JI Packer:

"The idea of propitiation includes that of expiation as its means"(The Logic of Penal Substitution)

There are in fact many objective theories of the Atonement. Penal Substitution is one. Then there is the view I have been outlining above where the objective problem is our need for moral healing (I like to call it "Incarnational Atonement" which is a combination of Vicarious Sacrifice and Recapitulation), and of course there is Christus Victor where the objective problem is our bondage to the devil.

Temple Sacrifice Pt 3

In the previous installements I've tried to explore how we might understand the Temple Scarifices by understanding mor about the culture they came out of and the meanings they connected to them. We need to keep in mind though that it is vital to understand the meaning and drama behind the Sacrifices rather than their functional mechanics. Being a part of the actual experience of the drama of temple sacrifice effected a person much more deeply that any explanation that can be given for it. In the same way, the crucifixion story can effect and move a person in a way that mere explanations of the atonement cannot. In watching Jesus carry that cross through spit and mud, in seeing the nail scarred hands, we become involved in his story, understanding it on a level that is often outside of our words to express.

Story and ritual have an ability to immerse and involve a person that no analysis can capture. In trying to understand the rites of a culture long ago, it can be helpful to explain the meanings and motivations of the sacrifices; but at their core, they were likely understood in the wordless language of drama, just as we today connect to both ritual and story on a gut level. We are moved by it, but do not have words. No amount of musical theory can explain why a Bach recital will move a person to tears, or for that matter what it it's like to be in the middle of a mosh pit at punk rock concert. To truly understand we need to be immersed in it. Understood in this way, the ritual of Sacrifice enacted the drama of re-connection. It was more than anything understood on a gut level, not on a mechanical one.

The drama of the Temple Sacrifices - like all story - spoke to people a the core of who they were. It acted out the profound longing in the worshiper for connection. The book of Hebrews tells us that the temple sacrifice was a “copy and shadow of what is in heaven” (Heb 8:5). The true picture is found in Christ who is both the perfect mediator, and the perfect sacrifice. In other words, the reality that the story of the sacrifices pointed to was the cross. The cross is, in the words of C.S. Lewis “a myth which is also a fact” that myth - meaning a story that defines us as people - has “come down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history”. The story of our deepest yearnings rooted in the reality of who we are, came and lived among us, died on a cross, and rose again. The temple sacrifices were an earthly symbol for the heavenly reality enacted on the cross. God in Christ takes our place, does what we could not do, breaks us out of the grip of guilt, and makes our hearts clean again.

As much as we can try to understand the Temple Sacrifices, the fact remains that it is still pretty upsetting to think about. Perhaps this gut reaction we have tells us something important. Quite plainly, we are reminded in Hebrews that in the temple sacrifice a real animal was slaughtered and died. In the same way, the fact of the crucifixion was that Jesus really died a horrific death. We should be wary of any theory of the cross that makes the death of Jesus either “self-evident” (like a rational legal theory can), or “romanticizes” the crucifixion into palatable and noble metaphors (as a Christus Victor theory can). Any metaphors and meaning we might see in the cross are not abstract images, but refer to the real and bloody death of Jesus on the cross. Yes it was necessary, and yes it is about God's love, but it also is a shock. When we today find the idea of animal sacrifice to be something shocking and primitive, this is in fact exactly the reaction Paul describes to his preaching of the crucified Christ by both Jews and Greeks who saw the cross as “a stumbling block” and “foolishness”.

The cross as practised by Rome was by no means a symbol of the “fulfilment of justice”, it was a symbol of great shame and failure. If we want to understand the cross, that is where we need to begin – in its shame and failure. The cross was to the people of Jesus' time something horrific, and one cannot get around that by trying to frame it in detached legal terms that call a scandal “reasonable”. Likewise, as much as we may be tempted to have a “bloodless cross” and only focus on God's love and good news, this we also must not do. Life begins at the cross. One must face its horror dead on, one must have the courage to look at its ugliness and at our own ugliness. There, in the shadow of the cross, we will find life.

Temple Sacrifice Pt. 2

We left off last time with God saying through Isaiah "I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats". With that in mind, we turn to deal with the popular misconception that the saying “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” in Hebrews 9:22 means that God needs blood in order to be able to forgive, as if it were some sort of magical incantation or legal requirement. However reading the entire verse we see it says

“The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb 9:22)

Here the stated purpose of the blood is not to appease through punishment, but to be “cleansed with blood”. Cleansing, or purifying as it is sometimes translated, is associated in this verse with forgiveness. The full formula of Hebrew 9 is that without being cleansed with blood there is no forgiveness. God does not need a sacrifice to forgive us or love us, we need to be made clean inside. Notice below how the writer of Hebrews continually draws a connection between blood and cleansing,

“The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death,so that we may serve the living God!” (Heb 9:13-14)

What does it mean to be purified by blood? In the Hebrew thought, purifying, or sanctification (making holy), involved a purging of what is impure “You must purge the evil from among you” (Dt 13:5 et al). The blood represented, in the Jewish thought, the life of the animal “For the life of a creature is in the blood (Lev 17:11) So the temple sacrifices involved ceremonial act of purging oneself of sin, as Paul says by “dying to sin in us” (Ro 6) vicariously through the death of the animal on the altar. This is understood more broadly, again in terms of consecration, giving over to God “The blood... sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them”. The function of blood here is not to appease, but to “purge out evil” - to sanctify. A similar thought today would be the idea of removing a cancer from our bodies. The two ideas of consecration and sanctification are in fact closely related because the concept of “setting apart” (consecration) is similar to the idea of “purging out evil” (purification). This idea flowed over into their understanding of health conditions and the idea of a person being “unclean” or of certain foods as “unclean”.

This idea of devotion and purification through blood is still of course quite foreign to us today, yet it is a practice found in nearly every ancient culture and one that predates the Jewish temple sacrifice. Unless we want to write all these cultures and people off as “primitive” we would need to assume that there is something reflected in the practice that connects to a fundamental part of our shared human experience. The word “atonement” literally means “made at-one” and generally speaking, all of the various sacrifices can be said to be about connectedness. The first fruits offering expressed an acknowledgment that what we had was not ours alone. The Passover sacrifice expressed a solidarity with God's people in times of trouble. The thanksgiving offering expressed in gratitude an acknowledgment of our connectedness to others. Specifically in the case of the sin offering it was a sense of restoring a broken connection that had been severed by sin. Sacrifice was a ritual that allowed people to work through the very real guilt they felt and their desire to atone for it, not understood in the legal context of a requirement (as if God really needs a cow) or an appeasement (as if one could bribe God or buy his love) but as a way provided by a loving God to work through our guilt and restore our lost connection to God, ourselves, and others. Again, not in the sense of dealing with mere “guilt feelings” disconnected from reality, but of dealing with the alienating reality of a stained conscience. It enacted symbolically the faith that God could make us clean again, mending the bond we had severed.

Temple Sacrifice Pt 1

What was the point of the sacrifices, if it was not to appease?

There are in the Old Testament many types of sacrifices, only a few having to do with atonement for sin. There were sacrifices of thanksgiving, there were sacrifices of first fruits, there is was the passover sacrifice, and so on. In all of the sacrifices, the central theme is not appeasement, but representational consecration. That is, symbolically through the offering the worshiper says “this offering represents my giving to you my life”, or as you might hear in a love song "God I belong to you, here is my heart". It is not a statement of placation (as if God needed to be bribed into loving us), but an act of devotion, entrusting oneself to God, giving your life into God's hands. In the case of the thanksgiving and first fruits offerings it means that all that we have comes from God and so with these first fruits we acknowledge that it all belongs to God. The passover offering was about the birth of the people of Israel and marked the time of the exodus of God's people out of bondage, so the passover offering was about committing and aligning oneself on God's side against oppression. Finally along with all the other sacrifices the sacrifice of atonement for sin was saying “Here is my life, I want to live it for you Lord. I die to the sinful in me and give my life to you”.

In the same way blood was sprinkled to dedicate the temple, and dedicate the law to God. This was the case with the Passover sacrifice which originated as the people marked their house door showing their allegiance with God, consecrating their house as belonging to the Lord. Thus Jesus when he connects his death with the Passover speaks of a “Covenant” being established by his blood “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Lk22:20). It was the sealing of a promise, like signing a contract in blood. We can see here that whether a sin offering, or a thanks offering, or a dedication that in every case there is the common theme of consecration – dedicating to God. This sense of consecration is conveyed in the Latin root of the word “sacrifice” which means “to make sacred” or "to consecrate". We give ourselves, our lives, our need, our thanks, our allegiance to God vicariously through the ritual of sacrifice.

There is here the aspect of identification with the animal – you bring a part of yourself to the altar, in many cases laying a hand on the animal's head before it is slaughtered. Specifically in the case of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement we can see also an aspect of transference as the scapegoat was sent off bearing the sin away (Lv 16:21-22). And as previously mentioned there is here a clear aspect of vicarious atonement specifically with the sin offerings - that animal that died was you. The consecration here meant that the sinner brought their broken life to the altar Yet in all of this the writers of the Old Testament are emphatic that the main object of sacrifice is not about a mechanical transaction detached from relationship, but the outward ritual effecting inner change, devotion, and repentance. As David says

“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean wash me, and I will be whiter than snow...Create in me a pure heart, O God..." (Ps 51:7,10)

David's prayer here is that the outward cleansing of the hyssop would go down and cleanse his inmost being. God, David says, is not interested in outward actions, but in the state of his heart. This is a relational exchange not a legal one.

"You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it. You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps 51:16-17).

Next time we'll deal with Hebrews 9:22