Two opposing understandings of sacrifice
As everyone knows, it’s wrong to speak of the atonement in terms of “sacrifice.” A Father who would cruelly sacrifice his Son, even “for the sake of our salvation,” merits no worship at all, and deserved to be accused to child abuse; what’s more, a God for whom human blood must be spilled to atone for sin is unnervingly less forgiving even than human beings are sometimes. Some of this concern can be mitigated by remembering to set the whole sacrificial idea in its properly Trinitarian context: it’s not simply a matter of the Father sacrificing his Son, but of the Triune God giving himself even unto death. Still, that doesn’t resolve our natural revulsion at the idea that in order to achieve our salvation, someone has to die a gruesome death.
What’s necessary, in this context, is to distinguish different understandings of sacrifice–to allow that “sacrificial logic” isn’t the same in every context, and we have to understand the very particular way in which the New Testament applies that term to Jesus. On David Bentley Hart’s reading (in “Christ and Nothing (No Other God),” p. 11–12 of In the Aftermath), the gospel accounts pit two different ideas of sacrifice against each other. “The cross of Christ is not simply a sacrifice, but the place where two opposed understandings of sacrifice clashed.” One the one hand, the classical idea of the tragic sacrifice: that sometimes, by sad necessity, someone has to be killed in order to maintain the delicate order of the city. On the other hand, the Jewish idea of sacrifice centered on the Day of Atonement: a kind of qurban, a “drawing nigh” to God by giving oneself completely over to him. In the Jewish concept, the sacrifice in no way preserves the society’s order; only God does that, and does it gratuitously. Rather, it is the gift offered back to God in gratitude for his first, infinitely superior gift.
The first kind of sacrifice is decisively rejected in the gospels. That’s the sacrifice Caiaphas thinks he’s making when he announces that it’s necessary for one man to die for the sake of many. Ironically, it’s Caiaphas’s doctrine of the sacrificial atonement that many Christians have adopted as the true one, and it’s Caiaphas’s doctrine that’s laid to waste by the recent criticisms of sacrificial atonement. But the gospels speak of Jesus’ death as sacrificial in the second sense–and even then, only as the culmination of his whole life of self-giving love. For the classical tragic understanding of sacrifice, there’s no way for a life to be sacrificial, only death; in the gospels, it’s very precisely Jesus’ whole life that’s “sacrificed,” freely given over as a gift, to God. The resurrection is the Father’s repudiation of Caiaphas’s sacrifice (and proof that the Father did not himself sacrifice his Son in that way), and his acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice–a life so committed to love, so committed to living humanly, that he was willing to die rather than renounce his mission.
As an aside, a re-reading of Anselm on the atonement will show that he very carefully follows the second kind of sacrificial logic.
14 April 2009 |
Comments (3)
Tags: David Bentley Hart, Soteriology
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Brian, this is a helpful distinction for me. This sort of clarity on sacrifice and atonement is missing from the language I’ve heard used. It takes a lot of care to unpack the words we so commonly throw around.
From what language does “qurban” come? I believe that is the same word used in Egyptian Coptic churches to identify the blessed bread in church, and the bread used in communion. Hard to believe that’s a coincidence.
Brian,
New reader. Found your blog via Jason’s at Per Crucem.
It is ironic, tragically so, that Caiaphas’ interpretation of Jesus’ sacrifice has been taken up, mutatis mutandis, by many Evangelicals – with disastrous consequences, I believe. And, like you, Robert Jenson believes Anselm’s argument is not represented fairly. Personally, I’m not so sure. I suppose I need to re-read it. In any case, thanks.
I actually have no idea, Greta, what qurban means or where it comes from. It’s a word Hart uses to describe the kind of sacrifice appropriate to the day of atonement–and I can’t find a definition online. An interesting connection with the Coptic eucharist! I doubt too whether it’s a coincidence.
Chris–thanks for the comments! I agree that the dominant critiques of Anselm tend to be critiques of a bastardized form of his argument, inattentive to some of the nuance of what’s going on there. That’s not to say I think his argument is altogether right, but just that many of the popular criticisms aren’t terribly good criticisms.