Path: christian
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu
Subject: the Atonement
Approved: christian@geneva.rutgers.edu

I commented in response to a couple of posting that I was going to
post this.  This essay is about the Atonement: the doctrine dealing
with the significance of Jesus' death.

The NT is full of sacrificial language.  Eph. talks about Christ
giving himself as a fragrant offering (Eph 5:2).  Act 8:32, Paul (e.g.
I Cor 5:7) and many places in Rev (e.g. Rev 5:6) talk of Jesus as a
sacrificial lamb, an image that is clearly implicit in all accounts of
the last supper.  That Jesus himself thought of his death as a
sacrifice is clear from the words of institution ("This is my blood of
the covenant, which is poured out for many", Mk 14:24, "This is my
body which is for you", 1 Cor 11:24), as well as from his earlier
discussion of his death. (e.g. Mark 8:31ff).  Some scholars suspect
the predictions as having being later inventions.  This seems unlikely
for Mark 8:31ff, because the account of Peter's denial makes no sense
without the prediction of Jesus' death, and I think the church is very
unlikely to have invented that story.  I also believe that the words
of institution are likely to be among the most carefully preserved of
Jesus' words.  Thus I have no qualms about asserting that the
atonement goes back to Jesus, and was not invented by Paul based on
the mystery cults (as has sometimes been claimed).

Interesting enough, there is no definitive theory among Christian
theologians as to why Jesus died or how his death saves us.  That's
surprising when you consider the amount of ink used on other topics.
There are a number of different "models", but no official definition.
My personal view is that this begins to get into areas that we can't
know.  We know what God has done for us, but we don't know what
alternative were available and why he chose to do things the way he
did.

My guess is that initially the concept of Christ as a sacrifice was
based on both the general Jewish tradition of animal sacrifice, as
well as on the more specific concepts of expiatory death and suffering
(see the postscript).  In the OT there seem to have been few of the
kinds of questions that bother later Christians about Jesus'
sacrifice.  Nobody asks why sacrificing an animal accomplishes
anything.  I suspect originally, the question of who Jesus' sacrifice
is to would not have occured to anyone.  In both what Jesus is quoted
as saying and other NT writers' reflections, the sacrifice is clearly
seen as being on behalf of those who believe in him.  Hebrews is
particularly full of this sacrificial language.  In Hebrews Christ is
portrayed as both victim and priest, sacrificing himself for our sin
(see particularly Heb 5).  The parallel with the Jewish sacrificial
system is quite clear: Jesus is the perfect lamb, who takes away our
sin permanently as the lambs did temporarily.  However there's no real
explanation of how a sacrifice helps us.

Paul seems to have the clearest theory of atonement in the NT.  In
Paul's letters it is explained that Christians are united with Christ
in such a way that they experience both Christ's death and
resurrection.  E.g. Rom 6:4: "We were buried therefore with him by
baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father we too might walk in newness of life".  In later
theologians we get theories about how Christ's death satisfied God's
demand for justice and other such arguments.  For Paul however death
and resurrection together constitute creation of a new life: death to
the old life and entrance into a new one.  Our old life is full of
sin, and can lead only to death.  Only death can free us from it.

That Jesus' death is a sacrificial act on his part is clear in both
his own words and all of the NT discussion.  However it is also
described as a sacrificial act performed by God.  Rom 8:32 talks about
God giving his son for us.  So do similar passages in Heb, John, Acts,
etc.  As Christian theology began to see Christ as God himself present
with us, this became an act of self-sacrifice by God.  This isn't
quite so clear in the NT, but Heb shows Jesus as one who has God's
full being (Heb 1:3) but who made himself like us so he could die for
us (Heb 2:14 ff), and Paul clearly sees God as acting through Christ
to save us (e.g. 2 Cor 2:14, and particularly 2 Cor 5:19, "in Christ
God was reconciling the world to himself").

Jesus' sacrifice is one of the most powerful images in the history of
religion, and has many meanings to many people.  I'm just going to try
to mention a couple of those that are most important for me.  There's
an underlying idea that we need salvation because our sin separates us
from God.  As one of our readers (Helmut Richter) has observed,
the problem is not on God's side, but our side.  While some models
of atonement have taken this approach, I agree with Helmut on the
following:
    Wrong: God has a problem, His wrath. To help Himself, He set up this
           everlasting sacrifice.
    Right: We have a problem, our sin. To help us, ...
For me, Christ's death is relevant to me because of the fact that
as Paul says, Christ comes to be present in me.  Jesus' death and
resurrection deals with our alientation from God in two ways: (1) Only
the end of our old life and birth of a new one can solve our problem.
We experience this through Christ's death and resurrection.  That is,
as Christians, we die and are reborn through him.  (2) In
Christ, God enters into human life.  He voluntarily accepts the
suffering, death, and even alienation that are our normal fate.  I
accept Jesus' words on the cross "my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34) as indicating that Jesus voluntarily
experienced even our separation from God.  (From a theoretical point
of view I'm saying something very odd here, of course, since I'm
saying that God chose to experience separation from God.)  By
experiencing the consequences of sin, Jesus in effect came over to our
side of the dividing wall between us and God.  Thus even our sins
can't separate us from God.


------

This is a postscript on the Jewish background of Jesus' sacrifice.  It
is based on H. J. Schoeps book "Paul".  Schoeps is a well-known German
Jewish scholar.  Schoeps indicates that the idea of someone suffering
for the people is well-known in Judaism.  He cites a number of
Rabbinical documents and documents current in the 1st Cent.  At
various times David, Ezekiel, Job and Jonah were thought of as atoning
for the sins of the people.  Expiatory power is associated with the
death of martyrs.  About the Messiah, Schoeps quotes a well-known
statement by Billerbeck: "The ancient synagogue knows a suffereing
Messiah, to whom death was not appointed, and it knows a dying
Messiah, of whom no sufferings are predicated, the Messiah ben
Joseph".  The Messiah who dies is a warrior king, who dies in a war
with God and Magog.  However no expiatory significance is given to
this Messiah.  It is the Messiah ben David who is the suffering
servant.  Schoeps quotes a number of Jewish sources describing the
sufferings of the Messiah for the people, but he does not suffer a
sacrificial death.  Thus there is no direct Jewish precedent for the
Messiah dying for the people.  However it is clear that this concept
of a suffering Messiah (based on Is 53), combined with the general
Jewish understanding of the power of a martyr's death, is one of the
bases for the early Christian thinking.  (This paragraph may be
slightly out of date now.  Apparently one of the Qumran documents does
suggest a messiah who died for the people.)

Aside from Is 53 as OT background, Schoeps also mentions the sacrifice
of Isaac.  In Jewish tradition, it is given great expiatory value.  As
a sacrifice of the son by the father, done at God's command, it is
more directly parallel to Jesus' death than Is 53.  He quotes a number
of targums (Jewish translations and commentaries on Biblical passages)
as indicating that divine forgiveness of sins is based on the power of
Isaac's sacrifice.  Isaac is referred to as a lamb in some places, and
references to the ram that replaced him are of course common.  (Oddly
enough, the Jewish traditions don't seem to be bothered by the fact
that Isaac wasn't actually sacrificed.  In fact in a few
interpretations, he does die, though Abraham doesn't sacrifice him.)