Atonement: Sin, Sacrifice, and Salvation

A Review

Atonement: Sin, Sacrifice, and Salvation in Jewish and Christian Antiquity.
eds. Max Botner, Justin H. Duff, and Simon Dürr
Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2020.

Reviewed by Troy Arnott

Originating from a symposium held at the University of Saint Andrews in June 2018, Atonement: Sin, Sacrifice, and Salvation in Jewish and Christian Antiquity, offers a collection of essays dedicated to the examination of this particularly complex theological term. Divided into two parts, the first addresses various legislative details in the Hebrew Bible, whilst the second (and longer) addresses anthropological, cosmological, and mediatory aspects of early Jewish and Christian atonement theologies.

Sacrifice and Atonement in the Hebrew Bible

Christian Eberhart's essay: Atonement, fittingly initiates the conversation by naming and addressing the apparent misunderstanding among both Hebrew and New Testament Bible scholars and systematic theologians regarding the term. Much of the disagreement, he proposes, results from a failure to grasp the inner logic of ancient cultic rites. Eberhart suggests that the conceptual frame "presupposes that humans and God are separated" (4) due to sin and other impurities. Subsequently, words like "atonement," "expiation," and "propitiation" only find meaning once the problems they seek to remedy are correctly diagnosed. Essentially, sacrificial systems either seek to remedy matters that have caused a rupture between human and divine relations or provide a means by which the resulting anger (God's) may be abated or both. When ill-conceived, argues Eberhart, ritual sacrifice invariably attracts criticism. However, once the inner logic is understood, the elements of sacrifice and blood application find meaning. As such, examination of ancient cultic practice demands a polythetic approach (8).

Following a valuable description of the five types of Levitical offerings, Eberhart examines the "hand-leaning gesture." He suggests that the transference, characteristic of the scapegoat ceremony (cf. Lev 16:21), is illegitimately applied to other rituals that employ subtly different hand-leaning gestures. Building upon Calabro's research, he contends that the scapegoat gesture is an outlier; all other single-handed gestures assign "status or role" (13) to the animal and not, as is often presumed, a transference of sin upon the beast. If this approximates actuality, then Eberhart is right to suggest that many "substitutionary" theories will need to be rethought.  

Deborah Rooke's essay: Sin, Sacrifice, but No Salvation, attends to the penalty of karet, or "cutting off," characteristic of the Priestly writings (22). Building upon Wold and Milgrom, Rooke argues that the penalty intends to play a prescriptive role within the Israelite community. Namely, the punitive measures within P's legislative code describing God's action intend to mobilize the community to act in turn. This communal form of stigmatization operates as a deterrent, intended to maintain stability across a highly stratified holiness schema. Developing this theory from the niphal of כרת, her examination of this aspect of the Priestly code warrants attention. 

Finally, David Wright's: Atonement Beyond Israel, addresses H's redaction of P's legislation relating to the sin offering הטאת (ḥaṭṭā’t), or perhaps more accurately "purgation offering," given it functioned to remove impurity from the sanctuary. He suggests the logic of the sin offering reflected a belief in a build-up of contaminants that directly threatened the presence of the Deity among the nation. Like an uninhabitable bedroom due to the accumulation of mess, sin offerings functioned as a cleaning operative by removing pollutants from the temple precinct so the Deity can remain. Wright contends that while P had a more "narrowed cultic focus" (41) given its occupation with the tabernacle, H attended to a broader scope of matters, including aspects to do with the land and the inhabitants they were about to acquire. What follows is a detailed analysis of the הטאת and its development in the book of Numbers. Wright argues that it was not a concern for inclusion that motivated H's legislative detail; instead, it was a necessary response to the increased number of contaminants their presence would generate. The viability of the Deity seems to have been of paramount concern.  

Combined, these essays offer the reader significant insight into the logic of ancient ritual sacrifice and represent considerable value for those wrestling with this complex theological term. In particular, the agency of blood and its application as a means of sanctifying or cleansing the temple precinct finds application in the NT when applied to the agency of Christ's blood (see the language of Hebrews 1:3; 2:17; and John 1:7-10).

Cosmology, Anthropology, and Mediatory Aspects of Atonement

The second part of Atonement addresses the anthropological, cosmological, and mediatorial aspects of early Jewish and Christian atonement theories. Of the six essays, three warrant particular attention.

Carol Newsom's essay raises a critical anthropological question regarding the nature of the human predicament. She poses the question: what if the problem is not necessarily what humans have done wrong, but rather who they essentially are? Tracing selected passages from Second Temple literature, particularly the Hodayot, Newsom suggests it was during this period that long-standing assumptions about moral agency shifted. What emerged was a darker conviction; human beings not only did wrong, they were wrong. Some select writings suggest that humans were "created without moral capacity" (70). Moreover, whilst the limitations of moral capacity had already been identified (see, for example, Ezek 44:7-9), subsequent analysis by authors from within this period offered a far deeper ontological verdict. Helpfully, Newsom observes that this religious pessimism laid the groundwork for a parallel conviction; given human beings were innately sinful, their only hope was for an inner transformation of the heart no sacrificial system could remedy. Moreover, whilst these insights might lend tacit support to particular systematic and soteriological traditions, they need not do so. Overall, Newsom's scholarship usefully broadens the scope of what constitutes sin and traces an anthropological question that lies at the heart of all atonement theories. 

Catrin Williams's essay: "Seeing," Salvation, and the Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, explores how the Evangelist employs scripture and allusion to shape his soteriological vision. Noting John's proclivity for composite citations, Williams investigates the Baptist's famous "Lamb of God" saying (cf. John 1:29, 36) and what represents for many atonement theorists a type of ritual oxymoron. Given the Evangelist's attention to Passover as the interpretive lens for Jesus's death, how can he remove sin, given Passover lambs do not remove sin? Or do they? Maybe this seemingly incongruous conflation merely reflects a freedom that the Evangelist believed he was at liberty to employ? Williams's resulting argument is worthy of consideration. She suggests that "the composite elements in John 1:29 are, in all likelihood, intended to be multilayered." They reflect a deliberate "fusion in the Baptist's statement about Jesus," providing "useful clues as to how salvation works according to John" (140). Williams's insights represent significant provocations; firstly, by suggesting that the Evangelist is at liberty to conflate atonement elements, and secondly, by suggesting that John might have his own atonement voice. 

Finally, T. J. Lang's Sealed for Redemption explores the "economics of atonement" in the epistle to the Ephesians. Lang argues that Paul's "language of ransom, gift-exchange, and wealth" throughout his epistle is deliberate. He employs "commercial terminology" (156) from the marketplace when describing the "economic" benefits of Jesus's death. Lang traces this rhetoric, even observing in Paul's description of the Spirit's role of people procurement, a further example of his "commercial" intent. Further, it is the Spirit who serves as a "deposit" that secures the "redemption" of God's own "possession." 

Usefully, Lang's work suggests that Paul is not limited to the conceptual world and language of his ethnic forebears when describing the accomplishments of Christ. Replete with exegetical insight, Sealed for Redemption is worth the effort if for nothing more than Lang's protracted attention to the word "ransom" (λύτρον) and its near semantic neighbour "redemption" (ὰπολύτροσις). 

Atonement represents a significant amalgam of scholarly insight into a complex theological term. It is a must for anyone who wishes to plumb the conceptual frame of the saving significance of Christ's sacrificial death. 

Troy Arnott is senior leader at New Community Church in Melbourne and a PhD Student at Ridley College.