Part 20 (1/2)
The life or blood of the animal was distinctly said to make ”the atonement for the soul.” This notion of a _representative_ victim is one that belonged to the whole ancient world, as can be seen by reference to any of the great cyclopaedias. It was _adopted_ by the Jews, not _revealed_ to them by Jehovah. The scape-goat (Lev. 16) and many other cases of seemingly expiatory sacrifices are embodiments of this idea, which was adopted by Christianity directly from Judaism, whose priests had adopted it from other people.
The practice of b.l.o.o.d.y offerings was common to Hindoos, a.s.syrians, Phnicians, Greeks, and Northmen. There is a Hindoo ritual for human as well as for brute animals set forth in _Asiatic Researches_. In _Fragments of Sanchoniathon_, Kronos sacrifices his ”only son” to his father Ouranos, his ”father in heaven.” Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigeneia,
before going to Troy, and Polyxena, daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles to his manes. Repeatedly in the Punic wars children of n.o.ble families were burned alive to aesculapius, G.o.d of medicine.
Burning at the stake and hanging upon a gibbet were sacrifices to appease the divine justice. In short, all b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices were propitiatory, to appease the rage of hunger in a famished G.o.d. Blood was excellent, because its aroma was the vehicle of life, and so afforded support to life.
In Homer's _Odyssey_, Ulysses slays animals before the ghosts of Hades, and these run up to be nourished by the blood. He draws his sword, rushes upon them, and drives them away. Then, selecting one with whom he wishes to talk, he feeds him with the invigorating vapor, and the ghost is then made strong enough to talk.
But none of these sacrifices were strictly vicarious. The old G.o.ds were angry at neglect, but never had the kind of justice that a sheep or goat or cow could not appease. The Jews were not unfamiliar with human sacrifices (Lev. 27:28,29; Judg. 11:30-39), and even the early Christians are said to have offered b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices of human beings.
The deification of Jesus to correspond with the apotheosis of other personages required a divine parentage. This idea was not gotten up until the second Christian century. Justin made Jesus a second G.o.d. But the earlier Fathers did not connect the notion of the vicarious atonement with that of original sin and total depravity. Basilides maintained that penal suffering or suffering for purposes of justice of necessity implies personal criminality in the sufferer, and therefore cannot be endured by an innocent person as a subst.i.tute.
Prof. Robertson Smith, LL.D., in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, in his learned article on ”Sacrifice,” says part: ”Where we find a practice of sacrificing honorific gifts to the G.o.ds, we usually find also certain other sacrifices which resemble those already characterized, to be consumed in sacred ceremony, but differ from them, inasmuch as the sacrifice-usually a living victim-is not regarded as a tribute of honor to the G.o.d, but has a special or mystic significance. The most familiar case of this second species of sacrifice is that which the Romans distinguished from the _hostia honoraria_ by the name of _hostia piacularis_. In the former case the deity accepts a gift; in the latter, he demands a life. The former kind of sacrifice is offered by the wors.h.i.+pper on the basis of an established relation of friendly dependence on his divine lord; the latter is directed to appease the divine anger or to conciliate the favor of a deity on whom the wors.h.i.+pper has no right to count” (vol. xxi. p.. 132).
_Piamlar Sacrifices_.-”The idea of subst.i.tution is widespread among all early religions, and is found in honorific as well as piacular rites. In all such cases the idea is that the subst.i.tute shall imitate as closely as is possible or convenient the victim whose place it supplies; and so in piacular ceremonies the G.o.d may indeed accept one life for another, or certain select lives to atone for the guilt of a whole community; but these lives ought to be of the guilty kin, just as in blood-revenge the death of any kinsman of the manslayer satisfies justice. Hence such rites as the Semitic sacrifices of children by their fathers [Moloch], the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and similar cases among the Greeks, inasmuch as something is given up by the wors.h.i.+ppers [pg 400]nor the offering up of boys to the G.o.ddess Mania at Rome....
”In advanced societies the tendency is to modify the horrors of the ritual, either by accepting an effusion of blood without actually slaying the victim-e. g. in the flagellation of the Spartan lads-or by a further extension of the doctrine of subst.i.tution: the Romans, for example, subst.i.tuted puppets for the human sacrifices to Mania, and cast rush dolls into the Tiber, at the yearly atoning sacrifice on the Sublician Bridge. More usually, however, the life of an animal is accepted by the G.o.d in place of a human life.... Among the Egyptians the victim was marked with a seal bearing the image of a man bound and kneeling with a sword at his throat. And often we find a ceremonial laying of the sin to be expiated on the head of the victim (Herod, ii.
39; Lev. 4: 4, compared with 14: 21).
”In such piacular rites the G.o.d demands only the life of the victim, which is sometimes indicated by a special ritual with the blood (as among the Hebrews the blood of the sin-offering was applied to the horns of the altar or to the mercy-seat within the veil), and there is no sacrificial meal. Thus, among the Greeks the carcase of the victim was buried or cast into the sea [comp, with most important Hebrew sin-offerings and sacrifice of children to Moloch-outside the camp or city].
”When the flesh of the sacrifice is consumed by the priests, as with certain Roman piacula and Hebrew sin-offerings, the sacrificial flesh is seemingly a gift accepted by the deity and a.s.signed by him to the priests, so that the distinction between a honorific and a piacular sacrifice is partly obliterated. But this is not hard to understand; for just as a blood-rite takes the place of blood-revenge in human justice, so an offence against the G.o.ds may in certain cases be redeemed by a fine (e. g. Herod, ii. 65) or a sacrificial gift. This seems to have been the origin of the Hebrew _trespa.s.s-offering_ (p. 136).
”The most curious developments of piacular sacrifice take place in the wors.h.i.+p of deities of the totem type. Here the natural subst.i.tute for the death of a criminal of the tribe is an animal of the kind with which the wors.h.i.+ppers and their G.o.d alike count kindred-an animal, that is, which must not be offered in a sacrificial feast, and which indeed it is impious to kill. Thus, Hecate was invoked as a dog, and dogs were her piacular sacrifices. And in like manner in Egypt the piacular sacrifice of the cow-G.o.ddess Isis-Hathor was a bull, and the sacrifice was accompanied by lamentations as at the funeral of a kinsman.”
Under the head of _Mystical or Sacramental Sacrifices_-i. e. sacrifices at initiations and in the _Mysteries_: ”According to Julian, the mystical sacrifices of the cities of the Roman empire were... offered once or twice a year, and consisted of such victims as the dog of Hecate, which might not ordinarily be eaten or used to furnish forth the tables of the G.o.ds.... The mystic sacrifices seem always to have had an atoning efficacy; their special feature is that the victim is not simply slain and burned or cast away, but that the wors.h.i.+ppers partake of the body and blood of the sacred animal, and that so his life pa.s.ses, as it were, into their lives and knits them to the deity in living communion.
”In the Old Testament the heathen mysteries seem to appear as ceremonies of initiation by which a man was introduced into a new wors.h.i.+p.... But originally the initiation must have been introduction into a particular social community.... From this point of view the sacramental rites of mystical sacrifice are a form of blood-covenant.... In all the forms of blood-covenant, whether a sacrifice is offered or the veins of the parties opened and their own blood used, the idea is the same: the bond created is a bond of kindred, because one blood is now in the veins of all who have shared the ceremony.”
A learned friend writes me: ”I doubt whether a real distinction can be made between _propitiatory and expiatory_ sacrifices. Propitiation is by expiation. The basic idea in all sacrifices of that nature appears to be _subst.i.tution_; that is, something taking the place of the offender....
It seems that the basis of all sacrifice is to be found in a relations.h.i.+p, or _kins.h.i.+p_ (through blood), between the deity-who is only the representative of the tribal head regarded as still living in the spirit-world-and the wors.h.i.+pper.
”I may add that the idea of pollution by wrongdoing-i. e. offending the tribal deity-to be got rid of only by the shedding of blood, is not unknown to so-called savages. This applies especially to offences against chast.i.ty, as with the Malers of Rajmahal, India, and the Dyaks of Borneo. The pig is the animal usually sacrificed-probably because it is the most valuable animal food. The Padam Abors of a.s.sam look upon all crimes as public pollutions which require to be washed away by a public sacrifice. Here we have the idea of cleansing by the application of blood, and this appears to be the idea also with the Malers, and probably among the aboriginal hill-tribes of India generally.”
Mommsen, the Roman historian, says: ”At the very core of the Latin religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the world of the G.o.ds, and to view the former as a crime against the G.o.ds, and the latter as its expiation. The execution of the criminal condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to Ceres on the gallows, just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and the good spirits on the field of battle. The fearful idea of subst.i.tution also meets us here: when the G.o.ds of the community were angry, and n.o.body could be laid hold of as definitely guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself up (_devovere se_).”
But it was left for Anselm of Canterbury, late in the eleventh century, to first formulate the doctrine of vicarious atonement. Before this there seemed to be among the theologians the idea that in some way Christ came to restore, at least in part, all that was lost in Adam.
During the first four centuries of the Christian era there seems to have been no fixed opinion as to whether there was a ransom-price paid to G.o.d or the devil. Under the article ”Devil ” in the Encyclopdia Britannica it is said:
”He [the devil] was, according to Cyprian (_De Unitate Ecd_.), the author of all heresies and delusions: he held man by reason of his sin in rightful possession, and man could only be rescued from his power by the ransom of Christ's blood. This extraordinary idea of a payment or satisfaction to the devil being made by Christ as the price of man's salvation is found both in Irenaeus (Adv. Hcer., v. 1. 1.) and in Origen, and may be said to have held its sway in the Church for a thousand years. And yet Origen is credited with the opinion that, bad as the devil was, he was not altogether beyond hope of pardon.”
It would be tedious to note the various views that have prevailed among theologians to the present day. Some hold that the offering was made to G.o.d to satisfy divine justice; others hold that it was a commercial transaction-so much blood for so many souls; and still others regard the whole as a governmental display to impress the world with a sense of the hatefulness of sin. Calvinists seem to think that the atonement was only made for the elect, but that the blood of Christ had sufficient merit to save the whole world. Roman Catholics hold that it is the literal, material blood of Christ that saves the sinner, and hence their extreme belief in the dogma of _transubstantiation_, the real body and blood of Jesus being offered in the sacrifice of the Ma.s.s, and taken by the penitent in the Holy Communion. Protestants generally hold to a sort of consubstantiation-a sort of real presence in the sacrament; while persons of intelligence profess to believe that this whole theory of blood-salvation is only to be accepted in a figurative sense. The fact is, that the whole scheme of vicarious atonement is an ancient superst.i.tion, though taught in the New Testament, and is absurd and unphilosophical, and false in principle and in practice, as we shall hereafter show.
We leave altogether out of view the logical conclusion that if the blood shed by Jesus was the blood of a man, it could have had no more efficacy than the blood of any other human being, and that if the blood shed was the blood of a G.o.d, the very mention of the thought is absurd and blasphemous in the extreme. It is nonsense to say that it was the union of the divine with the human nature that gave the blood of Christ its peculiar efficacy-that the altar sanctifies the gift for if the blood was changed by the man being united with the G.o.d, it was not human blood, but the blood of a divine man.
Now, there is no evidence that the blood of Jesus (supposing that he was crucified) differed in its essential qualities from other human blood.
If a.n.a.lyzed by the chemist, it would have been found to contain only the const.i.tuent particles which belong to human blood. The white and red corpuscles and other chemical properties would have been found in it.