Sacrifice & Atonement

[Bill Hamblin]

I'm busy and don't have time for a detailed reply to this complex topic. I would just observe the following.

There are a number of different ways to approach this subject.

1- Anthropological. From this perspective you can observe how different peoples throughout the world and throughout history have offered sacrifice, and practices that accompany those sacrifices. From the anthropological perspective, we can observed that sacrifice is probably the most universal form of religious ritual throughout history. All ancient peoples throughout all times and all places have offered sacrifice. Sacrifice involves several different inherent human instincts. First is the instinct to eat. After breathing, eating is the most instinctual human act. (OK, maybe crying is second.) Very soon humans come to recognize that they must kill in order to go to eat. The sacralization of this killing is the essence of sacrifice. The second anthropological fact we need to consider is that of food sharing. Human infants cannot survive without food sharing, and food sharing is instinctive among all humans. Another anthropological foundation of sacrifice is that the food from the sacrifice is shared both with God and the community. Finally there is gift-giving. There is an instinctive human sense that giving a gift and exchanging gifts creates bonds of mutual trust and responsibility. There is an almost universal sense throughout all primordial and ancient cultures that sacrifice involves the giving of a gift to God, and the exchanging of gifts between God and God and humans. If we look at the way tribal societies create systems of justice from an anthropological perspective, we find that the law of retaliation (the lex talionis of the Hebrew Bible) is almost universal. That is to say, just as gift-giving creates bonds of mutual obligation, so acts of offense, stealing and violence creates bonds of mutual retaliation. When a gift is given to you, it creates an obligation in you to return a favor to the gift-giver (As Cicero put it, Do ut des--"I give so you will give"). On the other hand, when an offense is given to you, it creates an obligation for you to retaliate. In the most primordial sense, this retaliation involved returning the same offense to the offender-- Blow for blow, and life for life. As we see in the Bible, this retaliation could be avoided by gift-giving, thus returning to the sense of mutual obligation to as opposed to mutual retaliation. In practice what this means is, if someone steals a camel from you, that that camel must be returned with an additional gift (Ex. 22). Gift giving is thus a means to avoid retaliation, and also a means to create create mutual obligation. Sacrifice is widely understood anthropologically as gift-giving to God. When you give a gift to God it creates an obligation in God to bless you with rain, fertility, etc. When you have offended God, on the other hand, giving God a gift can defer the obligation God has to retaliate for the offense given him. This anthropological concept is reflected in the sin offering in the Hebrew Bible. If you offend someone in a very serious way, the proper retaliation is death (Num. 35:9-30). Death can be avoided only if a very large blood-money offering is made. You can see this in the Hebrew Bible where the death of someone can be forestalled for by a monetary payment (Lev 27).

2-Historical. From this perspective you take one of the sacrificial traditions and try to analyze its practices and mythos as it changes throughout time. You can see this clearly in the Bible, where there are different interpretations of the meaning of sacrifice, and the mythos of sacrifice changes and develops through time, culminating in the sacrificial atonement theology of the New Testament. In the Old Testament we find all of the different anthropological forms of sacrifice manifest, as well as a distinctive Israelite mythos. But the essence of the matter is that if you sin against God, God will retaliate in a completely appropriate fashion by causing your death. That death can be avoided only by an appropriate gift giving, that is to say, by sacrifice. Sacrifice, understood as an exchange of gifts with God, thus serves serves as a means to atone ("cover") for a sin against God, and restore proper relationships and reconciliation. Without a proper exchange of gifts, such a reconciliation is impossible. What if you were to poor, and unable to pay the atonement fine yourself? In that case someone else could step in and pay the fine for you. This was generally a wealthy relative, who is known as is the redeemer, one who redeemed the life of his relatives by paying the fine himself (or purchasing him from debt-slavery, etc.). This creates the possibility for a substitution sacrifice, where one person pays the fine and offers the sacrifice on behalf of another. Thus, in the case of Jesus and the New Testament atonement, God himself becomes the Redeemer, paying the fine and making the substitutionary sacrifice himself, indeed, offering himself.

3- Theological. This is the way that most Latter-Day Saints approach the question. Indeed, the vast majority of LDS writings on the topic approach the issue with theological questions in mind. In my opinion this is exclusively theological approach needs to be tempered with analysis from all five different perspectives.

4- Historical theological. This approach examines the question of theologies of the atonement of a particular tradition, culture, or religion, and examines the development of these ideas through time. I believe this helps us understand that many of the theological interpretations and theories of the atonement are in fact allegories, metaphors, and parables. A that is to say, they don't tell us about the cosmic nature of the atonement, but rather help us understand the importance and meaning of the atonement through culturally determined allegories. These allegories must be understood within the historical context in which they were originally given (2 Ne. 25:1-6).

5- Cosmic. Here you ask the big metaphysical and meta-historical questions about the meaning of the atonement from the perspective of God and the infinity of time and space and creation. Mormons love to speculate about these types of questions, but in reality we have very little information about them, and some rather explicit statements in Scripture saying that basically humans can't understand it (DC 19:13-19; 76:45-48). In my opinion all we can know about the cosmic nature of the atonement is that God says it was necessary.

[WalkerW]

I'm busy and don't have time for a detailed reply to this complex topic.

I know you are. I appreciate you taking the time to provide this info. Feel free to post any future thoughts or insights you might have, no matter how brief or long.

[trim]

These comments from Margaret Barker on this topic were interesting to me.

Atonement translates the Hebrew kpr, but the meaning of kpr in a ritual context is not known.

Investigations have uncovered only what actions were used in the rites of atonement, not

what that action was believed to effect. The possibilities for its meaning are