For Christians, Christ’s sacrifice is fundamental to the salvation narrative. Christ’s death was a necessary condition, a requirement for God’s forgiveness of human sinfulness and for humans’ salvation. Simply put, salvation would not be possible without Christ’s crucifixion. When I was taught this narrative as a child, no one provided any rationale for it. The logic of the narrative was just assumed to be self-evident. But it isn’t self-evident; it isn’t even rational.
When as a teenager I lost my belief in God, I rejected the salvation narrative as being part and parcel of a set of false beliefs: Because there is no God, there is no Christ, no sacrifice, and no salvation. It was only years later that I thought to analyze the rationale underlying the salvation narrative, such as it was, and found it to be, well, wanting. For me, it raises a host of questions.
Fundamentally, why would God, in order to grant humans the possibility of salvation, require Christ, another member of the Godhead, to come down to earth and sacrifice his life? Why would God demand an actual sacrifice? Of another member of the Godhead? Why couldn’t, or wouldn’t, God simply declare a “do-over,” declare that he was forgiving humankind and allowing them the opportunity for salvation without going through the charade of a virgin birth, a crucifixion, and a resurrection?
Did God and Christ discuss this sacrifice scenario before it was played out on earth? And did Christ’s sacrifice actually cause God to change his mind regarding the ultimate fate of humankind? Frankly, from the point of view of logic, how could an all-knowing God change his mind about anything? Presumably, he already knew how things were going to turn out. God decided to give humans an opportunity for salvation because Christ was crucified? Where is the logic in that? In crucifying Christ, humans again demonstrated their sinfulness, and as a result God decided that, yes, humans could have the opportunity for salvation? Does that make sense? Was there even a possibility of failure? After all, as a member of the Godhead, Christ was all-powerful.
I find no rational answers to these questions within the salvation narrative. Instead, I have come to believe that the explanation for the narrative rests in the ritual of animal sacrifice. The Jewish people practiced animal sacrifice throughout the Old Testament, as well as during New Testament times. The ritual symbolized respect for and loyalty to God and served as an act of atonement for past sins and as a plea for God’s forgiveness.
Under the Christian narrative the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice was fundamentally the same as for animal sacrifices—to honor and to appease God. A common Christian apologetic is that the references to the ritual of animal sacrifice in the Old Testament were a foreshadowing of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, as the “Lamb of God.” But I believe the apologists have this backwards. Animal sacrifice had been a common ritual for millennia prior to the time of the Christian narrative and had been practiced by the Israelites’ neighbors as well as by various other religious sects that had no connection to Judeo-Christian culture.
Assume, instead, that Jesus was a historical figure, a would-be messiah who was executed for his revolutionary message of liberation from Roman rule. Imagine the disappointment, the cognitive dissonance that his followers would have suffered as a result of his failure and death. One way to resolve that dissonance would be to recast Jesus’s death as the ultimate ritual sacrifice, in effect, a great victory rather than a failure. That explanation, for me at least, carries greater logic than does the standard Christian narrative.
Based on past experience, I would not expect this essay to change anyone’s point of view, neither those of faith nor those without, regarding the rationale for the crucifixion narrative. Still, I would enjoy readers’ thoughtful comments germane to the question of that rationale.
© 2018 John M. Phillips
John. Thanks for another thought provoking essay. I used to take refuge in the comfortable notion that “Atheism is arrogance.” The logic being that it is as impossible to prove the non-existence of a God as it is to prove a God’s existence. This particular formulation would explain why your past experience is that your essays seldom succeed in changing anyone’s point of view. The proposition that one should accept any form of religious belief based on faith is coercive. It is aimed at dissuading people from exercising their capacities for rational, skeptical analysis. Science is a more useful tool for coming to an understanding of experience than religion. It formulates questions that are actually susceptible to answers and in seeking answers expands knowledge and understanding.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mark, for your thoughtful comments. You are right that it becomes nearly impossible for individuals to change their point of view, particularly when they get to my age. That is why it is so important to teach students, particularly in the lower grades, to maintain the ability to engage in rational, skeptical analysis.
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