A critically evaluation of the concept of "sacrifice" as a model for the atonement.

There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin;

He only could unlock the gate

Of heaven, and let us in.

Perhaps the best way to go about critically evaluating the concept of sacrifice as a model for the atonement is to say what sacrifice is not before we try to work out what is actually meant by the concept and what it implies. Sacrifice is not about "propitiating God in the pagan sense and so winning His favour and of causing Him to be gracious towards men." ("The Atonement in New Testament teaching" Vincent Taylor p271), also it is perhaps best to consider the atonement apart from considerations of its unethical and degrading implications to study it properly, "Apart from all other considerations the fundamental character of the Atonement as the proof of the expression of the love of God, imposes this necessity upon us." (ibid. p271). The main question behind the sacrificial concept of atonement seem to be: was Christ a "....sacrifice for sin and also an example of a goodly life... thinking of Him as the ‘sacrifice for sin’ of how, by His ‘one oblation of himself, once offered’, He overcame the power of evil to spread corruption in His created world, and once and for all won the right to forgive all sins past, present and future." ? (Hodgson. L, - "The Doctrine of the Atonement" p86) Or not? The answer will be found if the sacrificial model stands up against criticism.

The Jews and Sacrifice - Expiation

There seemed to have been two main thoughts behind the sacrificial cult of the Jews, apart from circumventing the effects of sin. One is that if God is offended he needs to be convinced to look upon his worshippers with kindness again - this is propitiation, and theologians like Vincent Taylor deny that it has any real significance for the Jews. The other main idea is expiation - that a man must make amends with God if he has sinned. This system of atonement is responsible for the view that the sacrifice of Christ was a transaction to appease the anger of God. The idea of expiation is clearly seen in Jewish culture in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Animal sacrifice became a substitutive equivalent for this law of retaliation and is clearly shown in the story of Abraham and Isaac were the ram is offered in place of Isaac. (It is interesting to note that the philosopher Kierkegaard considered this to be one of the paradoxes of Christianity and explores it in depth in "Fear and Trembling". Some significance can be found in the fact that in the story a ram is used and later Christ is to be referred to as the Lamb of God. Kierkegaard was also concerned with other Christian paradoxes like the Incarnation and was not convinced by solutions like kenosis.

These paradoxes of Incarnation and of sacrifice that surround the figure of Christ like a metaphysical mist should concern us here to some extent. That Christ needed to be sacrificed and was sacrificed by God is worthy of some note and some theologians have been concerned with the ethical and metaphysical dilemmas of love and original sin that the atonement introduces). In the Old Testament sacrifice is a recognised means of expiation - the covering or annulling of sins, not because God is bribed or coerced, but appeased, that the sacrifice is a vehicle to approach God; identifying him with the purity of his offering. The use of sacrificial ideas by Christ and early Christians is therefore perfectly natural. They made use of familiar religious beliefs of their time and Christ used sacrificial ideas probably inspired by the Jewish idea of the Suffering Servant. Therefore, perhaps it makes sense to see the Atonement in the same light that he did, "Sacrifice was the universal religious rite in antiquity" ("The Atonement - its meaning and significance", Leon Morris p16). The Jews of the Old Testament days were people that watched the sacrifice of animals on their alters and saw this as a holy, just and imperative practise. The training of the Hebrew people in a sacrificial system grew more complicated and drawn-out with each revision, even so it seemed sufficient to keep before the minds of the Jews the difficulty of making amends for the horrors of sin.

The Perfect Sacrifice - Propitiation

Christ is seen to have been the only sacrifice that could make amends for humanities age old rebellion against God. No ordinary payment could be made, humanity could not pay the penalty that was demanded. As the animal the Jews offered had to be unblemished, so did the ultimate sacrifice to God. Does it seem possible that animals could wash away sin with their blood? For the huge debt of sin, perfect human life would have to be offered and Christ was the perfect conclusion to a long line of sacrifice. He fulfilled the long line of Jewish priests and came from the mystical line of Melchizedek which is eternal and royal. Christ would reconcile sins forever "This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God... for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10.12,14). But perhaps the greatest sacrifice of Christ is found in the Cry of Dereliction. When God’s presence was removed, the highest of humans fell the lowest - separation from God is the ultimate pain anyone can suffer, and Christ bore this metaphysical pain and the physical pain of crucifixion. This was the complete sacrifice and allowed propitiation between humanity and God to take place.

But perhaps propitiation is difficult for the twentieth century Christian to accept as part of the concept of sacrifice. The anthropomorphised way of talking of God as angry and then favourably disposed as a result of sacrifice is bound to make some feel uncomfortable. To talk of changing emotions in an unchanging God and the fact that one needs to propitiate instead of relying on the infinite mercy and benevolence of God leads to further difficulties. But the Incarnation is the purpose for revealing God as the God of Love and the Atonement is because of His love for humanity - it is the sin God is angry at, not the sinner. In the sacrificial model of the atonement, Christ has propitiated our sins and allowed us to approach God as a result, but it is only if we fully co-operate with Christ that God is fully propitiated.

All of the old familiar imagery of Christ’s sacrifice helped the people of New Testament times to understand why this happened and what it meant for Christ to die on the cross. The New Testament writers ask for the believer to respond to Christ’s sacrifice, and that there must be changes in the believer’s life because the way to salvation is now open. "It was natural that their expositions of the doctrine of the atonement should be set in the thought forms and expressed in the language of Jewish sacrificial worship." (Hodgson. L, - "The Doctrine of the Atonement" p140). The most important thing is Christ’s perfect sacrifice, and that all sin is atoned for. It is true though that the concepts of propitiation and expiation belong to an age where ritual sacrifice was essential to a persons relationship with God, where as today, this is not so - or at least not so obviously the case. Many Christians sacrifice things for God and they need not be on an alter. Also, the concepts of propitiation and expiation belong more to a transactional model for atonement rather than a sacrificial one. That said, the sacrificial theory of atonement crosses over with other models like transaction (it could be argued they are virtually the same) and others like debt and satisfaction.

The Atonement Model of Sacrifice

There are four common models of atonement theory:

  • 1. Meeting the just demands of divine law;
  • 2. As the offering of sacrifice;
  • 3. A victory over Satan;
  • 4. The reversal of the Sin of Adam.

It is number two that we are concerned with here and whether it successfully explains the event of the atonement as an actuality of universal reconciliation with God. The mechanics of sacrifice as a model for atonement, as well as what its sentiments imply, can come under serious criticism.

Sacrifice could not longer be seen as adequate because it is based in the socio-historic context of the writings of the New Testament, as mentioned above. If it is the blood sacrifice of Christ that is emphasised, his death and crucifixion, then the concept seems cultural in the light of the socio-historical situation, and therefor invalid as a contemporary theological model for the Atonement. If, however, we were to re-state the case to avoid this, and say instead that atoning for sin requires the payment of enormous price, then one cannot see why this must have been achieved by one specific and extraordinary sacrifice. Why not the sacrifice of thousands of unblemished animals? Or unblemished people? Or better yet, why not the sacrifice of thousands of Angels?

To overcome the difficulties of the images of sacrifice inherent in the model of atonement we could, like Gunton, view them as metaphor, "The metaphor of sacrifice... needs to be translated and transformed from the cultic context, (so) it does not thereby become redundant, leaving only the residue of a reductionist Christology about an exemplary human life." (White, V. - "An Essay in Universalism and Particularity - the Atonement and Incarnation" p43). The Enlightenment went some way as to undermine our confidence in metaphor due to its rationalistic approach to the world and its meaning. Gunton’s concern is to re-state and re-examine the Atonement metaphors. He wants to make God’s action of the Incarnation and Atonement real through these metaphors, whether it be through a victory, sacrifice or payment of debt. So, if one is to avoid the problems of the socio-historic nature of the sacrifice model, one will have to pay close attention to the model as a metaphorical one. These metaphors are not made any less important by being metaphors, so this atonement model at the moment still holds.

The metaphors of sacrifice hold great meaning and can convey it as the highly significant offering that Christ’s death is, "When, then, we tell the story of Jesus we do not narrate simply the tale of a true, Spirit-led human being, touched but unpolluted by the disseminated corruption through which he passes, but of a human offering of life to the father, concentrated and overflowing." (ibid. p43). Paul Fiddes also treats the sacrificial model of Atonement as a metaphorical model. He points out that metaphor have a subjective emphasis, one has to interpret the metaphor for oneself. This subjective concept of metaphor is best put in Sally MacFague’s explanation of it, "metaphor always contains the whisper: it is and it is not" - perhaps another of Kierkegaard’s religious paradoxes? Christ’s work demands a personal response if the metaphor of sacrifice demand this subjective interpretation, and Fiddes argues that "..the full meaning of salvation must include that actual subjective effect in us..." (ibid. p47).

This emphasis on subjectivism in a metaphorical treatment of the sacrificial model brings me to my next criticism that sacrifice can be seen to imply a Pelagian notion that we can do something to expiate ourselves, rather than receive the free gift of forgiveness from God. This criticism seems somewhat anachronistic as, "Before the coming of Christ it would not have been true to say that penitence was all that was needed, and the sacrificial system was surely of value as bearing witness to this truth." (Hodgson. L, - "The Doctrine of the Atonement" p30). Hodgson sees an important connection here with psalm fifty one and how the Jews felt about the use of sacrificial language and the language of personal devotion and penitence contain therein. He draws the conclusion that "in the best Jewish worship the practice of sacrifice was spiritualised by personal devotion and heartfelt penitence." (ibid. p30).

In this way then, the sacrifice can be seen as a gift from God, but one which the believer can respond to personally - like the Jews did - without being charged with Pelagianism; and this conclusion can also support what has been said about metaphor and subjective responses. Hodgson also feels that this conclusion can defend against criticisms of sacrifice as being impersonal with regards to humanities relationship with God, and that this did not "...substitute an impersonal transaction for a personal devotion." (ibid. p29). He uses the example of Abraham and Isaac to express through sacrifice the personal relationship of humanity with God, and perhaps it is here that we can see a Kierkegaardian paradox at work within the model of sacrifice - that the sacrifice was God’s gift, but also requires a personalised, subjective response to an objective, universal event.

However, the model of sacrifice is presented too often as propitiatory or placatory and it does not seem to be well founded in New Testament texts as a comprehensive theory. "In making a bold use of the sacrificial category the theologian is compelled to make a statement of doctrine which, in its entirety , is not presented with in the New Testament itself, and, in consequence, his results will have a definiteness strange to its pages." (Taylor. V, - "The Atonement in New Testament Teaching" p275). The paradoxes that have been pointed out also require some serious thought as to what this implies for the sacrificial model, unless one agrees with Kierkegaard that "a thinker without a paradox is like a lover with passion" one will have reconcile the paradoxes therein without diluting the full meaning of the model. Furthermore, one must also agree that the model be viewed as metaphorical, otherwise one may fall foul of the criticism that such a model is "..an unethical presentation of the idea of God, falling far beneath the standards of New Testament teaching..." (ibid. p277). Furthermore, the model of sacrifice seems to threaten too much division within the Godhead as it necessarily shows God’s attitude is changed by Christ’s sacrifice. Whether this harkens to deeper troubles in Christian theology, or whether this merely means sacrifice is not acceptable as a model for the atonement is left to be explored.

Bibliography

Clifford, C. "Atonement and Justification" (Oxford University Press 1990)

Hodgson. L, - "The Doctrine of the Atonement" (London, Nisbet and Co. Ltd 1951)

Morris, L. - "The Atonement - its meaning and significance" (Inter-Varsity Press 1983)

Nele, H. - "The Doctrine of the Atonement in the theology of Wolfhart Pannenburg" (de Gruyter 1978)

Taylor. V, - "The Atonement in New Testament Teaching" (The Epworth Press 1940)

White, V. - "An Essay in Universalism and Particularity - the Atonement and Incarnation" (Cambridge University Press)

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