Salvation As a Mechanical Process

Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?

Richard E. Davies

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532694530, 9781532694547
• eBook ISBN: 9781532694554
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Christians have been taught that Jesus died on the cross to pay a fine or ransom to expiate or atone for our sins. Furthermore, they have been taught that the death of Jesus is the only way individuals can receive eternal salvation. In general, this notion is called the "doctrine of blood atonement" or "penal substitution," or some similar name.One reason for this teaching is that the development of Newtonian mechanics has led us to believe that God's "laws of salvation" must be as easy to understand as the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century "laws" of our physical world. This book demonstrates that there are alternatives for understanding Jesus' execution that are consistent with the twentieth- and twenty-first-century understanding of our physical world. In fact, the early Christian writers (including the Bible itself) described these alternatives. "Sacrifice" was only one form of the early Christian narrative explaining the death of Jesus.Although "blood atonement" was understandable in ancient Romanculture, it is not understandable in our culture. The inevitableconclusion is that we should abandon "blood atonement" anddevelop one of the alternative ways of understanding the cosmic significance of Jesus' execution.

1

Singing God’s Song

There is but one thing man can be assured of regarding God’s nature, to know and perceive that nothing can be revealed in human language concerning God.

—Arnobius1

Among many Christians the blood of Jesus is seen as an economic symbol. Consider the twentieth-century gospel song, “Victory in Jesus,” which affirms that Jesus “bought me with his redeeming blood.” It is a rousing “upbeat” song that is fun to sing. We find it in several Baptist hymnals, the United Methodist Hymnal, Hymns for a Pilgrim People (congregational), and a number of non-denominational hymnals. The CCLI licensing agency lists it among its top one hundred hymns. In other words, it is widely known. In the one phrase “bought me with his redeeming blood,” the song accurately summarizes the doctrine of sacrificial blood atonement, a Christian doctrine that is vigorously expounded and defended by some, ignored by others, but questioned by few. Even those who ignore this doctrine are influenced by it, so it is worth looking into the background of something that is really a strange statement of belief.

While I was writing this book, I received in the mail a brochure quoting Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham: “The most important thing my father taught me is that Jesus Christ is God’s Son who took your sins and mine to the cross, shed His blood for our sins, died in our place, and God raised him to life. He taught me that we needed to preach that message with urgency until Christ returns.” I have no evidence that this quotation is truly from Franklin Graham, but it is certain that the organization issuing the brochure accepts the notion that the essence of Christianity is found in the Roman execution of Jesus, seen as sacrificial blood atonement.

We will see that the doctrine of blood atonement is as old as Christianity, and we will also see how this doctrine came about. Ancient Roman cultural presumptions made this doctrine logically inevitable, even though by the end of the first millennium logical paradoxes inherent in this doctrine were causing problems for Christian thinkers. The question by which people justify the doctrine is, “How can we reconcile God’s justice with God’s mercy?” If God is just, then there is no hope that God will admit sinners such as us into heaven. We have to hope that God is merciful, but if God is merciful, how can God be just?2 The basic solution to this paradox has been that Jesus Christ paid a ransom for our souls when he was crucified. This economic transaction settled the question of justice and allowed God to mercifully admit us to heaven. However, as we shall see, there are further logical problems to be solved, there are alternatives for understanding God’s mercy, and the development of the doctrine was not simply a response to the economic question but a response to ancient culture and philosophy.

The notion that the execution of Jesus was a blood sacrifice to God Almighty and was accepted by God as atonement for human sin was not immediately obvious to Christians. A later chapter in this book will be a brief survey of the New Testament with respect to blood atonement. The notion of sacrificial blood atonement was clearly taught by some New Testament authors, but not by all. Some of the New Testament passages quoted by some Christians in order to sanctify this notion can easily be read differently. It will be interesting to see that Saint Paul, who speaks clearly about Christ being a sacrifice, also speaks about atonement and salvation through other means. Sometimes our interpretation of the New Testament depends on the assumptions we bring when reading.

Among the Christian writers belonging to the second, third, and fourth generation of Christians, all are concerned about morality, teaching that those who are good will go to heaven while those who are bad will go to hell. Among them there is little discussion of atonement, sacrificial or otherwise. Among those that speak of atonement, teaching about whether the execution of Jesus constituted a sacrifice is divided.

Among the early witnesses affirming the notion of blood atonement, the Letter to Diognetus, probably written between 130 and 200 (about a century and a half after the first Easter) says that Jesus was a sacrifice to God: “Himself in pity took our sin, himself gave his own Son as ransom for us, the Holy for the wicked, the innocent for the guilty, the just for the unjust, the incorruptible for the corruptible, the immortal for the mortal. For what else could cover our sins but his righteousness?”3 This was clearly influenced by the “servant songs” of Isaiah, which were understood as a prophecy of the coming of Christ (e.g., Isa 53:5) and it is as straightforward a statement of blood atonement as we are likely to encounter.

Later, Origen (184–253) agreed with Paul’s comment that Jesus was like a Levitical sin offering (Rom 8:3), which is another affirmation of blood atonement. One of the servant songs, Isaiah 53:10 (in the Greek Septuagint version), even refers to the servant as a “sin offering,” using the same term Saint Paul used in Romans 8:3, so it is not surprising that a textual scholar such as Origen would be in full agreement.4

In contrast, Clement of Alexandria (who may have been one of Origen’s teachers, although this is not certain) apparently found no need for an atoning sacrifice. His understanding was that God’s grace is simply available to all who have faith. He presents a long chapter about the cruelty of pagan deities who demand human sacrifice and does not mention the death of Jesus as a sacrifice. A little later he devotes a long chapter to an exhortation to accept Christian salvation. In this chapter he quotes several New Testament passages and emphasizes fai...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Singing God’s Song
• Chapter 2: Sacrifice in the Ancient World
• Chapter 3: The Perfection of Pagan Gods, God Almighty, and the Blessed Virgin
• Chapter 4: Blood Proves Jesus Christ Is Human
• Chapter 5: Eucharist as Sacrifice and Participation
• Chapter 6: The Eucharist in the Early Centuries
• Chapter 7: Searching the Bible
• Chapter 8: Alternatives to Sacrificial Blood Atonement
• Chapter 9: Where Do We Go from Here? How to Sing a Different Song
• Appendix I
• Bibliography