Excerpted and edited from A Confirmation of Faith (Resource/Wipf & Stock)
What is the meaning of Christ’s death? might be a question we ask ourselves as we approach Good Friday. On the one hand, traditional Christian teaching has been that Christ was our substitute on the cross to atone for the sins that we, God’s rebellious creatures, have committed. Paul tells us in Romans 6 that “the wages of sin is death.”
On the other hand, many have trouble with the anthropomorphic image of an angry, vengeful God who demands a blood sacrifice rather than a God who loves creation and is ready to forgive. One of my clergy friends (admitting that it is a radical theory) holds that Jesus was killed because he spoke truth to power, and it was only later that all the theories about atonement were created. However, scripture has many references to sacrifice as atonement for sin, both in the Hebrew scriptures (e.g., Lev. 5:6) and in the New Testament (Rom. 3:24).
Our liturgy, too, is full of references to Christ’s atonement for our sins (e.g., “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world.”). Cynthia Bourgeault makes the argument that God wasn’t angry. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but he died on behalf of a collective fallen human condition. [1]
I think there is another possibility that addresses our individual as well as collective sin. Jesus died not because an angry God demanded it, but because humans, somewhere in our collective unconscious, demand atonement. Channeling God’s voice, Hosea wrote, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6). Karen Armstrong maintains that human sacrifice was common in the ancient world, even among the pre-Israel Canaanites. [2]
That same archetype from society’s collective unconscious is evident today in a predominantly punitive, rather than restorative, justice system. We demand harsh atonement for wrongs. Amnesty International recorded at least 1,477 death sentences in 54 countries in 2020—sometimes for acts that should not be criminalized.
Perhaps, then, Christ offered himself as a sacrifice for the whole world not to appease God’s wrath over our sins, but to appease the human demand for atonement. In his sacrifice, he gave of himself in a way that said, “Okay, this is it. It is finished. I am giving my life for the sins of the world. No more sacrifice—animal or human—is required.”
Furthermore, Christ’s death puts the seal on the fact that Jesus was fully human, experiencing all that humans experience, even to the extreme of suffering, torture, and death, what Cynthia Bourgeault calls “the sacramental necessity that Jesus drink to the dregs the full anguish of the human condition.” [3]
And he went even further. He demonstrated by his resurrection that new and glorious life can arise from a fallen state.
I welcome your comments.
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[1] Bourgeault, Cynthia. The Wisdom Jesus. Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2008, 107.
[2] Armstrong, Karen. The Great Transformation. New York: Knopf, 2006, xv.
[3] Bourgeault, Wisdom Jesus, 118.
Improbable Benedictine 