This topic contains 13 replies, has 9 voices, and was last updated by 
Wade 1 year, 7 months ago.
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So I’ve been wrestling with this one. Always have. I’ve hesitated to ask (just because it seems it should be simple) but there is nothing simple about it I guess.
I have never understood the need for a blood sacrifice. Seeing that it is the Easter holiday, I guess its fitting to finally ask the question.
So…Why the ‘blood sacrifice’? Why was it necessary for Jesus to die (brutally and bloody)? How is/was that supposed to take away our ‘sins’?
I don’t know anymore. Hello @wayne-rumsby?
AnonymousLike I know? Not. I kinda know it’s all wrapped up in Penal Substitution. It’s as ancient as sacrifices. It’s core to early jewish history. The best sacrifices were lambs without blemish. Jesus is said to be the perfect sacrifice. Jonathan Brink helped me get past that.
So glad to have started this book! I’ll send it on to you Sara when I finish if you’d like!
@starfielder What book? And of course I’d like it.
lol
AnonymousSaraJ – I just finished reading a short e-book on my Kindle called A Better Atonement (Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin) by Tony Jones. (It was only $2.99 if you have a Kindle.) In this book, the author discusses 8 different viewpoints regarding why Jesus died and what his death accomplished (atonement is the technical word for that – which you probably already know.) These have all been held by the church at one time or another. I copied and pasted these 8 viewpoints from an Amazon review of the e-book done by Joshua Hopping. Hopefully this may shed some light on your question, although it may also raise more questions. But at least it might give you some ideas to chew on and be a starting point for formulating your own belief regarding Jesus’ death. That’s IF you want to wade through this technical stuff. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to.
A good primer on atonement theories from a post-modern theologianByJoshua Hopping
Here are the eight views regarding atonement that the author addresses in his book:a) Penal Substitutionary Atonement – First proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in 1098 AD and picked up by Martin Luther and John Calvin in the 1500’s AD, this metaphors basically states that Jesus died to appease the wrath of God the Father that was directed towards humanity due to our rebellion against Him.
b) Union with God – A metaphor that was developed fairly early on in Christianity history with a strong connection to the Trinity and still held by the Eastern Orthodox Church today. In a nutshell, this metaphor views the atonement as an “invitation into the eternal, loving relationship of the Trinity – ultimately, into union with God.”
“Orthodox incarnational theology, which is at the core of the original Gospel, teaches that God Himself, the second Person of the Trinity, became incarnate, not in order to pay a debt to the devil or to God the Father, nor to be a substitutionary offering to appease a just God, but in order to rescue us from our fallen condition and transform us, enabling us to become godlike.”
c) Ransom Captive – This metaphor focuses on actions of Adam and Eve who “bargained away the freedom of the human race to Satan in exchange for the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Jesus, therefore, came as a ransom for the “captive human race” as stated by Jesus himself (Mt 20:28, Mk 10:45). While this metaphor has been around since the time of Jesus, some folks see “holes” in it as it seems to give the evil one too much power – or as Tony puts it in the book,
“It seems that if God is the creator of all that is, then God can act any way that God deems appropriate. And it seems rather unlikely that God would set up the cosmos in such a way that Satan could gain the upper hand and force God to negotiate a deal.” –
One good thing about the Ransom Captive metaphor of the atonement is that it has a strong emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus, which, sadly, is lacking in some of the other metaphors.
d) Christus Victor – This was THE predominant understanding of the atonement for the first thousand years of the church and is still held by billions of believers today. At its heart, this metaphor simply states that Jesus’ “death is God’s victory over sin and death…the crucifixion is not a necessary transaction to appease a wrathful and justice-demanding deity, but an act of divine love. God entered fully into the bondage of death, turned it inside out by making it a moment of victory, and thereby liberates humanity to live lives of love without the fear of death”
e) Moral Exemplar – This is another fairly early metaphor with Jesus being “seen as a moral exemplar, who calls us toward a better life, both individually and corporately…God sent his son, Jesus, as the perfect example of a moral life. Jesus’ teachings and his healing miracles form the core of this message, and his death is as a martyr for this cause: the crucifixion both calls attention to Jesus’ life and message, and it is an act of self-sacrifice, one of the highest virtues of the moral life. We see Jesus’ death, and we are inspired to a better life ourselves.”f) The Last Scapegoat – A recent player on the atonement scene developed by Rene Girard, a French anthropologist/literary critic who is still alive. While this metaphor is fairly complex, the root of it is this:
“In Christ, God becomes the one who is rejected and expelled. That is, the scapegoat is not one us who is sacrificed to appease an angry deity. Instead, the deity himself enters our society, becomes the scapegoat, and thereby eliminates the need for any future scapegoats or sacrifices.”
g) Substitution, Without the Penal – To be true to fair to St. Anselm of Canterbury, we must mention that his original theory of the atonement is different than the PSA it eventually developed into. For St. Anselm, humanity “owe God a debt, and that debt is obedience. But because of our sin, we are incapable of paying that debt, we are incapable of obedience to God. Jesus Christ, being perfectly obedient to God, is able to pay that debt, and he did so on the cross. We are not thereby freed of our obligation to obey, but we are freed of the arrears that we owe.”
h) God’s Solidarity With Us – Jurgen Moltmann, a German Reformed theologian, once proposed that common to every human being is the “experience of godforsakenness.” As such, in “act of ultimate solidarity with every human being who has ever existed, God voluntarily relinquished his godship, in part, in order to truly experience the human condition.” Because of this solidarity that was made available to humanity through the cross, we are “welcomed into the relation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” [note that the primary difference between this theory and the "Union with God" theory is that the Union metaphor includes an element of humanity being rescued from our "fallen condition" and being transformed while the Solidarity theory is primarily about God experiencing godforsakenness with us.]
AnonymousThis is a great discussion. I have been wrestling with this for awhile now. Easter is this weekend and I truly just don’t “get” it anymore. I know what they all say, blood atonement, propitiation, blah blah. But, really? Does it make any sense why a God would send himself, take on human form, and live here and die to reconcile the humans back to himself because they “sinned” and he has to have blood between him and us in order to stand being around us anymore??
Since I don’t really believe in sin any longer and I don’t believe in a fiery hell and I think heaven is here on earth – what the heck is the point? I do think we are suppose to live our lives like Jesus did, loving others, really loving others, not this fake crap we have been sold as Christianity. So, if all we are suppose to get from his life here, then why the death? ARGH, I dont get it!
Anyone else pondering this?
Here is an unscientific hypothesis of the beginning of blood sacrifice. The cradle of humankind is said to be sub-Saharan Africa. In the area is the East African Rift, a highly volcanic region. It is not hard to see that mankind has had a long association and knowledge of volcanoes. There no doubt has been many emigrations of people north down the Nile Valley into the area of Egypt.
One can imagine that ancient man thought volcanoes were magical or divine with their shock and awe. Were the first animal and human sacrifices made to volcano gods? If livestock and humans were killed by volcanic eruptions, people could get the idea that the angry mountain god desired food or blood. Thus to keep peace, experts-priests, began the sacrificial system to honor and appease volcano god.
Have modern religions evolved over the years from the fear/reverence of ancient volcano gods? Take note of the Aztec/Mayan religion with their sacrifices, volcanoes and pyramids and the Egyptians with their pyramids (replicas of volcanoes/sunbeams?). Remember that there is a direct link between Israel and Egypt. According to the bible Moses leaves Egypt with the Israelites and goes to a mountain that acts suspiciously like an active volcano and soon institutes an intricate sacrificial system (Leviticus).
Was God just accommodating human religion? Why would a real God want blood sacrifice similar to crude and ignorant volcano and nature worshipping early man? And why is the doctrine of hell depicting images that are associated with hot fiery volcanoes? Has there been a borrowing of ideas by biblical writers, or are volcanoes physical metaphors of a spiritual reality? How can we know? How could we?….. I have more questions than answer
Jo, that list is very interesting. I shall be reading it again carefully.
Hugh, there is quite some evidence that a lot of the Levitical law as written in the Torah was retro-actively fitted by later writers, almost certainly Levitical priests as late as the Return. The older Mosaic Law was said to be rather simpler. But scholars don’t know where all the seams are in the stitched-together work. There are some sort-of obvious ones, mostly in the stories, and I seem to remember one fairly stark inconsistency to do with the structure of the Tabernacle itself. But I haven’t looked for quite a while.
Easter has surprised me by ceasing to have any real meaning for me this year. Stepping out from under the “Christian Guilt” of “you should do this” and “you should be like that” has also meant leaving personal salvation and beliefs aside, too. I may figure out a way to reconcile that in time, but right now, this is not the case.
I read recently that Jesus’ crucifixion was supposed to be the one sacrifice to end the constant cycle in the Mosaic Law. That doesn’t answer the OP’s question, though. Putting on my amateur anthropologist’s hat on for a moment, the people that the Jews came out of would have regarded the blood of a living creature to be tremendously important: spill enough of it and the creature dies. To that sort of bronze-age thinking, spilling the blood of a living creature – the more “perfect” the better – on an altar to a god was a way of imparting them power in a way that every person could understand. It is a sort of “magical” thinking, if you will.
Wade.
@staticsan I agree that the most likely time that the Hebrew scriptures went through editing was at the exile or thereafter.
Some would say that very first sacrifice in the bible was the animal that was killed to supply the coats of skins to replace the fig leaves that Adam & Eve wore to ‘cover their shame’ after eating the forbidden fruit. This would seem to put the focus of sacrifice on the issue of covering. If I remember correctly the Hebrew word for atonement is kafar which simply means ‘cover’. So covering nakedness seems to be the starting point here rather than highlighting the blood.
The idea of sexual conscience seems to have some relevancy to the story in Genesis as well as in non-biblical sacrifices when virgins were the choice victims.
This is what I was taught:
a) Penal Substitutionary Atonement – First proposed by St. Anselm of Canterbury in 1098 AD and picked up by Martin Luther and John Calvin in the 1500′s AD, this metaphors basically states that Jesus died to appease the wrath of God the Father that was directed towards humanity due to our rebellion against Him.
I refuse to teach this to my children. To believe in PSA one must believe in Original Sin vs. Original Goodness. I no longer believe in original sin, so the whole PSA falls apart.
I am closer to this now:
e) Moral Exemplar – This is another fairly early metaphor with Jesus being “seen as a moral exemplar, who calls us toward a better life, both individually and corporately…God sent his son, Jesus, as the perfect example of a moral life. Jesus’ teachings and his healing miracles form the core of this message, and his death is as a martyr for this cause: the crucifixion both calls attention to Jesus’ life and message, and it is an act of self-sacrifice, one of the highest virtues of the moral life. We see Jesus’ death, and we are inspired to a better life ourselves.”
I could see this. We had an interesting conversation during chat about the meaning of Jesus death. I think it was more political (he died for his cause of loving the outsiders which was against the religious and political majority). Since I don’t believe in the whole original sin deal, I don’t think his death had anything to do with things I do or don’t do 2000+++ years later. That doesn’t even make sense to me anymore.
@saraj I have also been taught that, that each thing I do or don’t do is re-crucifying Jesus. I honestly think instilling that sort of fear in children/people is abusive. You are forced, if you buy in, to live a performance based life where you must be vigilant every moment of every day or somebody “pays”. What a prison and no wonder I do not know how to simply “be” and not “do”.
After studying the various philosophical dialogs that have been happening over the last 2000 years I find no compelling reason to give the Christian one any particular intellectual significance. To me, Christianity was spread primarily through coercion and violence, not because its world view was particularly admirable.
While some of these views on the death of Christ rehabilitate Christianity better than others, I find no good reason to take an iron age idea of justice and try to fit it into a modern understanding of the world. The fact that we have so many people of the world indoctrinated into the Christian view of god requires some transitional narratives, but ultimately the main reason I gave the Christian religion any attention was because I was born into it.
Many values that are held by Christians are helpful. The reasons for keeping them tend to be poor under many Christian doctrines. One of the presentations by Sam Harris showed how simple it was to point out the absurdity of core Christian beliefs. He pointed out the 10 commandments. These are claimed to be the pinnacle of moral values within many Christian denominations and have been throughout Christian history.
He points out that there is no condemnation of slavery, mistreatment of women or children, and it even treats women as legal property. The kicker for me was his observation that the 2nd commandment basically outlawed sculpture. Supposedly this commandment is the 2nd to the highest moral instruction. It would take quite a lot of sculpture to occur before it would be considered harmful. One could substitute almost any guideline and be superior to the condemnation of sculpture. You could condemn high fat foods or tell people to treat their children well and exceed the wisdom of the 2nd commandment.
I could go into other silly things that the Bible teaches, but my point is I find no reason to give the Bible any more consideration than say the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or the Greek myths.
I am much more practical in my approach to values. I believe we have an innate empathy that is a sufficient guide to understand how to be with each other. Jesus clearly called on this ability when he told people to love their neighbors as themselves. To me it’s clear that in areas of the world where reason is valued and religion is not held beyond question you have higher qualities of life. Norway and Sweden are largely secular. They have the highest quality of life on the planet. The education level is very high and their standard of living is the highest. In contrast, those societies where they are ruled by religion, the quality of life is the lowest.
That doesn’t mean that religious people are bad, but I think the evidence tells us that we need to question some of the values of religion. And, to me, this value put on the death of Christ, is definitely a suspicious one.
Thank you everyone for your responses. You have given me A LOT to think about. I SO appreciate your time.
@pamwerner I was also taught that everytime I sinned it was like driving another nail through Jesus on the cross. I hear you on the…”What a prison and no wonder I do not know how to simply “be” and not “do”.”
I could have posted this yesterday. One of my possibly-not-christian-anymore friends gave me a link to a blog post written by an ex-christian about the horrors she sees inflicted on her children’s minds about Easter. http://whateveknew.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/super-natural-easter/ She finds that the Easter story tends to scare her children more than anything else. I don’t remember it scaring me when I was a child, but then, that was more than thirty years ago.
Turns out the blog poster is the ex-wife of someone I know, which makes the post more poignant because I recall him talking about weekends with his kids. He and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with yet another friend who goes to my church and is how I met all the other people in this story (except the the blog poster). Particularly the original friend I first mentioned; we’ve had some wonderfully deep discussions. Including one the other night about the so-called “christian” antics of others towards that blog poster. To hear the tales, it was not pleasant.
I’m still in the bible study with the original friend through whom I met all these people. All the other people in the study are, of course, staunch Christians. They would not see the problems with the Easter story that we are discussing.
But I do.
Wade.
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