Today is Yom Kippur in the Jewish world.  Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement.” In modern Judaism, it is a day for fasting and for repenting of sins.  The common greeting for this day is g’mar chativah tovah – “may you be inscribed for good (in the Book of Life)”!

There’s a lot that could be said about the Day of Atonement, but this time I wanted to post here something I wrote about the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I mean no offense to anyone of the Jewish faith that may be reading this, but I use this holiday to remind myself of the eternal and infinitely effective atonement performed by Jesus Christ on behalf of all mankind.  In remembrance of this event (although Christ died at Passover, not at Yom Kippur), I am reposting the following (originally posted 4 May 2009):

Before posting my rather lengthy statement, I want to make a few acknowledgements and explanatory notes.  First of all, this work was greatly influenced by the writings of Margaret Barker, especially her book Temple Theology and an article on the Atonement that she wrote entitled “Atonement: the Rite of Healing.” I also greatly benefitted from the thoughts and writings of others, such as LDS thinkers James CarrollBlake OstlerDavid Littlefield, Jacob Morgan, Jacob Baker, Donald Parry, and Dennis Potter.  My thoughts are not a complete statement, by any means, of what all the atonement is, how it works, and what it covers, but I tried to emphasis a biblical understanding as opposed to one informed primarily by philosophy or modern theological musings.  The statement is  limited in length, meant to be read and discussed in only six minutes, so there is obviously much about the atonement that I would like to have included, but could not.  Also, as my professor is Catholic, you may note that some of the terminology that I use is more of a Catholic flavor than I would normally employ. Anyways, without further explanation, here is what I came up with:

“Behold, I Make All Things New”:

Atonement as Reconciliation and Restoration of the Created Order

The essence of atonement is the reconciliation of man to God and also the restoration of the original created order. While I accept many of the elements of classical atonement theory, I believe that they often employ only certain biblical metaphors while incorporating many extra-biblical elements.  My view could be compared in many aspects to the “recapitulation” view of Irenaeus, but with more of an element of substitution and more emphasis on the Passion than the Incarnation. Overall, I feel that a strongly biblical view is essential.

“Covenant” is a recurring element in both the Old and New Testaments and is key to my understanding of atonement. In Matt 26:28, we read:  “for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Ancient Israelite tradition held that there was an “everlasting covenant” or “covenant of peace”, that was connected with the high priesthood and specifically associated with atonement (Num 25:11–13).  The notion of covenant is important to the Creation. The Hebrew word for covenant, berith, is similar to the word for create, bara’, and means “to bind.” Some have suggested that the Creation was a process of binding into bonds, defining limits and definitions and using these to order the visible creation (see Job 38:8–11, 31, 33)1. The original Chaos was overcome and bound-given limitations-according to this cosmic covenant.

Christ, the Word, the Firstborn, the Great High Priest, was the agent of creation (John 1:1–4Col 1:15–19). It is He who gives life and light to the world. He is the bond of creation, and “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Christ preserves the unity and harmony initiated by the covenant of creation.

I believe, with Irenaeus, that in the original created state, God and man, man and woman, humanity and nature were in harmony.  Adam and Eve, in this state, could have lived forever in the presence of God, enjoying direct communion with Deity, being immune from death and hell–if they did not violate the covenant of creation that maintained this state. However, we know that sin was introduced-the covenant was violated. Anciently, covenants were always associated with penalties or punishments. We see that when Adam and Eve break the covenant given to them in the Garden of Eden, the promised punishment is death2. The result of breaking the covenant of creation was the Fall, which damaged the bonds that maintained the created order and allowed Chaos and corruption to enter the world (otherwise known as the “wrath” of God). This led to disease, destruction, and death.  The extreme excess of sin in the days of Noah caused the waters of Chaos to be loosed from their boundaries that had been set and flood the earth (see also Isa 24:4–6). When the covenant is broken, created beings lose the protections God has put in place and are exposed to danger.  Furthermore, because sin causes the sinner to become unclean/impure, and because no unclean thing can remain in the presence of God, a spiritual death, or estrangement from the presence of God, is necessary.  In the punishment of Adam and Eve, we see both the penalty of physical death and also spiritual death (expulsion from the Garden).  While I do believe that Justice requires sin to be punished, I see Justice as the absolute necessity that the Law, or the Covenant, be upheld. God cannot make a covenant or law and then not hold one of the parties to it-he cannot go back on his word. There would have to be a way to undo the damage caused by the violation.

This need was understood in the Israelite sacrificial system. On the Day of Atonement, two goats were presented. One represented Yahweh (as Yahweh, not forYahweh) and the other Azazel (the leader of the fallen angels).  The goat representing Yahweh was killed, its blood was caught in a bowl, and then it was eaten. When the priests ate the sin sacrifice, they symbolically absorbed the sins of the people into themselves. The high priest (also representing Yahweh) “bore” the sins of the people, taking the corrupted blood into the Holy of Holies. The blood was then somehow considered to be endowed with or transformed into “life” (Lev. 17:11) and was smeared or sprinkled on various parts of the temple and grounds, and also the people. The blood/life was seen as having a cleansing effect and was understood to “repair” (the basic meaning of the Hebrew kipper) the damage done to the creation by sin. The high priest eventually transferred the sins he bore onto the head of the Azazel goat. They could have simply sent the sinful people into the wilderness, separating them from the rest of the community, but the goal of atonement was the restoration of unity, not further separation. The sin was born away by a substitute, so that the unity of the community was preserved.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is in agreement with this view of the atonement ritual, indicating that Christ was both high priest and sacrifice (Heb 9:11–12). The blood that Jesus shed was seen as having the power to cleanse, repair and give new life to all creation-perhaps by virtue of Christ’s divinity, his entering heaven or by virtue of his blood being transformed to spirit/life as part of the resurrection (these ideas may be part of the same process).

In the Israelite ritual, the high priest (representing the LORD) also reverses the fall of Adam by passing by the cherubim (depicted on the initial curtain at the entrance), going through the Great Hall (designed to represent the Garden of Eden) and entering the presence of God in the Holy of Holies (heaven).  In the NT, Christ is seen as a second Adam reversing the effects of the sin of the first (1 Cor 15:21–22). Christ necessarily had to die in order that he could be resurrected. His resurrection overcame the power of death and was completed upon his ascension to the Father.  By passing through the veil of the true Holy of Holies, he opened up the way for all mankind to do the same (Heb 9:24; 6:19-20). He overcame both physical death and spiritual death, redeeming mankind from the Fall of Adam.

Christ absorbed into himself the sins of the people and bore them away. He did this by uniting himself to us, taking upon his innocent self our corruption, while imputing his divine life to all who willingly unite themselves to him. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he prayed to the Father “that they [who believe] all may be one as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17: 21–22).

While Irenaeus and others focused on Christ’s becoming one with humanity at the Incarnation (Athanasius says that he “assumed humanity that we might become God”), I would like to emphasize this unification at the beginning of his passion. The Father answered his great prayer and allowed Christ to become indentified with each and every human soul in a way that, from that point in the garden to his death on the cross, Christ took upon himself all the sins of the world, including their damaging effects–he felt the guilt, the sorrow, the estrangement, the pain, the mental anguish, and even the sicknesses that each human feels. I believe he did this so that he could fully understand and empathize with the sinner, and therefore be in a position to fully forgive them when he has seen the sincerity of their repentance. This is not done to satisfy God’s damaged honor, nor as a punishment for the sins of others.  In a sense, Christ vicariously suffers the penalties of sin, but not at the hands of an angry God (there should be no basis for the “child abuse” argument)–he willingly suffers because he has willingly united himself to sinful mankind in order to know, through experience, how to help them.

The spilling of his blood seals this new covenant that will restore the original harmonious created order. While I understand the desire to see the atonement as non-violent, I believe such a view entails a misunderstanding of the ancient concept of covenant. Covenants were always sealed with blood –to make a covenant was to “cut” a covenant. In the Israelite ritual, as we have mentioned, the blood of the sacrifice, although originally corrupt, after it had been taken into the Holy of Holies, was seen as having a cleansing and life-giving power. While this is a difficult concept for us, in our modern age, to understand, the spilling of blood was a necessary part of Christ’s atonement and opened the way for us to be cleansed and receive new life.

The way in which we receive this new life is by uniting ourselves to Christ. While the resurrection of Christ overcame death and offered new life universally, our personal estrangement from God, our spiritual death, is only overcome for us individually when we enter into this new covenant that Christ established. We do this through baptism and the reception of the Holy Spirit, which sacraments serve to fully cleanse us from sin and unite us to the body of Christ. When we subsequently sin, we violate this covenant and open ourselves up again to the negative effects associated. However, the infinite effectiveness of the atonement allows that when we fully repent and renew our unity to and covenant with Christ by partaking of his flesh and blood (the Eucharist), Christ can bear away our sins and forgive us. This allows us to resume our new life in Christ and our reconciliation to God. Christ identifies with our fallen humanity so that we can be partakers of his divine nature.

In Hebrew, “bearing” and “forgiving” come from the same root (nasa). Jesus was the sacrifice and also the high priest bearing/forgiving the sins of the people. He was also the scapegoat. But wasn’t Azazel (Satan) supposed to be the scapegoat? The renewal of the creation was not fully complete until the Azazel goat was taken into the wilderness and pushed into the pit. In the book of Revelation (chs. 20-21), we read that the New Heaven and New Earth will be fully realized only after Satan is punished–bound and thrown into the pit and the lake of fire. At this point, the renewal of Creation and reuniting of God and man commenced with the passion will be fully complete and Christ will declare: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).



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