Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial

Religion (1997) 27, 231–243

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? R J. D To take up this question in a way that might lead to fruitful discussion, we must begin with some careful definitions and distinctions. The fundamental distinction to be made is between what is ordinarily referred to as the ideal or normative idea of sacrifice, and the phenomenological or descriptive idea of sacrifice.1 Of similar importance will be a self-critical awareness of what voice is speaking, and from what knowledge and experience that voice is speaking, and a sensitive awareness of how that voice may ? 1997 Academic Press Limited. differ from other voices.

Terminology In the proposition ‘Christianity is sacrificial’ two terms must be defined: ‘Christianity’ and ‘sacrificial’. Each of these terms can be understood normatively or descriptively, thus affording four basic possibilities of meaning. (A) Christianity (normative) is sacrificial (normative). (B) Christianity (descriptive) is not sacrificial (normative). (C) Christianity (normative is not sacrificial (descriptive). (D) Christianity (descriptive) is sacrificial (descriptive).

A. If I understand ‘Christianity’ normatively as the ideal of nonviolent, self-giving love and service which Christians of faith recognize as exemplified in Jesus’ completely free, obediential, self giving love to the Father and to and for us; and if I also understand ‘sacrificial’ normatively as the ideal realization in our human lives of that sacrificial example of Jesus in the way we are and live ‘for others’ as Jesus was/is ‘for us’ then Christianity is indeed, in its ideal, in its very essence, sacrificial.

B. But if I understand ‘Christianity’ not normatively, as described in A, but descriptively or phenomenologically as the sum total of the relatively crude, legalistic, retributive, and even vindictive assumptions about Christianity and Christianity’s God that characterize much of Christian history and much of contemporary popular Christianity, then Christianity is not sacrificial—at least not in the normative sense described in A.

C. And if I understand ‘Christianity’ normatively, as described in A, but understand ‘sacrificial’ descriptively, i.e., in terms of the relatively popular ideas of it connected with the negative ideas of diminishment and humiliation and the imposition of punishment and suffering—ideas that are fairly widespread (not just) in popular Christianity, then Christianity is not sacrificial. D. And finally, if I understand ‘Christianity’ descriptively, as described in B, and I also understand ‘sacrificial’ descriptively, as in C, then Christianity is indeed sacrificial—but the meaning of this proposition D (absent the qualifiers), although identical in wording with proposition A (absent the qualifiers), is totally opposite to proposition A. 0048–721X/97/030231+13 $25.00/0/rl960061

? 1997 Academic Press Limited

232 R. J. Daly Voices In addition to distinguishing the terms, one must also distinguish the voice that is speaking. Most of us have several voices. We can shift from voice to voice, or even speak in several voices at the same time. To speak in many voices at the same time is quite common. Indeed most of us, unless we make a special effort to attend precisely to what we are doing, will probably find that the answer we give to the question ‘Is Christianity antisacrificial’? will be an answer spoken in many voices. However natural it may be for us to speak simultaneously in different voices, or to swing back and forth between voices, to do so unattentively is to make constructive, dialogic discussion of the kind we seek here extremely difficult, if not downright impossible.2 One of the voices with which I speak in answering our question is that of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, student of and minister of the Word of God, receiver of and minister of the sacramental dispensation of grace which the Christian Church—and specifically within that the Roman Catholic Church—understands itself to be. When, I speak in that voice, I am speaking with an obvious commitment—or bias—to demonstrate that the true ideal of Christianity is that described in A, and that true Christian life means, in line with that ideal, living for others as Jesus lived/lives for us. In addition, when I am speaking in that voice, I am also attempting to exhort, inspire, empower others to take up that Christic life of self-giving love and service. But I also have the voice of a theologian, scholar, and critic: the voice in which I am trying to speak when writing this paper and participating in this discussion. When I speak in that critical and even self-critical voice, I am aware that there are some who would find the way I define the terms in my propositions A, B, C, and D to be presumptuous and unacceptable because of the pro-Christian, even pro-institutional bias latent in them. Thus, as a scholar, I have to be open to the likelihood not only that others will prefer to speak in different voices, but also that my own scholarly voice is influenced by my religious voice. For example, I am aware that my six-line ‘naming’ of the essence of Christianity (one way of describing my proposition A) might, to some colleagues, be theoretically acceptable as one of several possible descriptions of ideal Christianity, but at the same time be quite uncongenial to them precisely because of its sheer idealism and lack of realism. While I can draw upon four and one-half decades of formal religious life—most of it focused on the scientific study of theology—to argue that my vision of Christianity is authentic and true, I know that others of equally sound or better judgment may not agree with me at all. Or they may point out that my viewpoint is theoretically arguable but practically irrelevant. Other scholars might prefer to put the question and carve out its first definition of terms in a way quite different from mine. Feminists, for example, may legitimately protest against my apparent insensitivity to a patriarchalism that has used and still uses the ‘sacrificial’ aspects of Catholic Christianity as a club to maintain the status quo.3 My only response, if I am true to my ideal vision of Christianity, is to accept that rage, make it my own, and move forward with my sisters to try to eradicate its causes. It is of little help to point out to my sisters that what disturbs them is an abuse of, an aberration of ‘Christian sacrifice’ (as I define it). For the problem doesn’t lie in the definitions but in the practice. The problem lies not so much in the names and the terms, as in the realities for which they stand.4

Back to the Question With such qualifications in mind we have to move on, as best we can, and try to say something constructive about the question.

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 233 To go back, then, to our basic proposition and its fourfold variation: both my personal religious voice and my critical theological voice cries out emphatically that Christianity is sacrificial—but only in accord with the normative (as opposed to the descriptive) definition of the two principal terms. In other words, the mind behind the religious and theological voice with which I speak is one that is thoroughly convinced that the Christ Event has done away with sacrifice in the comparative-religions or history-of-religions sense of that word. Those disciplines may indeed help us to understand Christian history and contemporary popular Christianity, for they have been and are, to a great extent, characterized by sacrifice in the phenomenological/descriptive sense. But sacrifice in that sense has no authentic place in the religion founded by Jesus Christ. We are not talking about that kind of sacrifice when we say that Jesus offered himself to the Father and to and for us. Nor, if our Christianity is authentic, are we talking about that kind of sacrifice when we say that we are united with Jesus in his self-offering.5 For many, however, to define the terms as I do may simply not be a realistic option. Many people are so filled with the ideas and experiences of a God and a Christianity that correspond to the descriptive, phenomenological elements of my opening analysis of the proposition ‘Christianity is sacrificial’ that they perceive my effort to (re)define authentic Christian sacrifice as lying somewhere between the perniciously obtuse and the irrelevant. However, since it is primarily scholars that I am addressing here, this is an appropriate situation for me to stake out my position and marshal arguments in favour of it. Clear thinking, if it is achieved, may help us solve our problems. Lack of it, however, is a sure guarantee that we won’t solve them. One way to do this is to put the question ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? to Christians in different epochs of Christian history. Let us begin with ‘Christians’ in the New Testament period. The varied evidence from the New Testament itself suggests that most of those who recognized themselves as members of the new religious group which later came to be known as the Christian Church would answer the question ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? with a resounding No! In the minds of the earliest Christians, sacrificing is what Jewish priests did in the Jerusalem temple. Sacrificing was also what pagans did in their idolatrous temples. It is not surprising if we find that the earliest Christians were not enthusiastic proponents or practitioners of what could be called (descriptively or phenomenologically) a sacrificial religion.6 The gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and activity seem to bear this out, but by no means in an undifferentiated way. Nowhere is Jesus portrayed as taking part in the sacrificial ceremonies of the temple, although he does occasionally refer to them, often positively. He is portrayed mostly as going to the temple to teach and to pray. But there is more to it than that. Although Jesus condemns what he perceives to be an abuse of the temple space (the cleansing of the temple is one of the few incidents reported in all four evangelists), he also seems not to challenge the basic validity and function of the temple. He seems at times not just to tolerate the temple (the incident of the temple tax), but also to support it (instructing the healed lepers to show themselves to the priests). He insists on personal reconciliation before offering sacrifice. He instructs his disciples to prepare the Passover meal; this apparently was done in the traditional manner which involved the slaughtering of the lambs by priests in (what the Mishnah describes as) a sacrificial ceremony in the temple. However, such considerations have us swimming in the still murky waters of life-of-Jesus research and the theological conclusions that can or cannot be drawn from such inherently contingent data. We are on more solid grounds when we ask

234 R. J. Daly what were the attitudes and practices of Christians in the time of the New Testament. Here the epistles—far less ambiguous as historical sources—are our primary points of reference.

Refining the Question Relying on my own earlier research, I would ask a double question: First, what is the sacrificial activity, if any, in which the first few generations of Christians participate? Second, what do they understand that they are doing when they engage in that activity? As I have indicated, the epistles are our primary point of reference. This is not by apriori choice, but simply because there alone do we find answers to our question. There are only five passages in which I find what I can construe as an answer to my question. For convenience’s sake, I reproduce them here in the NRSV version and add to each some of the comment I made some years ago when I first asked these questions:

[1] Romans 12:1–2 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters (adelphoi), by the mercies of God, to present (parastanai) your bodies (sômata) as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual (logikos) worship. 2Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Comment. The opening adjuration marks the transition from the earlier doctrinal part of the pastoral part where Paul presents at length his theology of Christian life. The most significant aspect of this text is its startling combination of what had been heretofore incompatible: on the one hand, Paul seems to have deliberately given the text a Hellenistic, perhaps even incipiently gnostic, spiritualizing flavour by using the vocabulary of the logikê thusia (spiritual/reasonable sacrifice) idea of Greek religious philosophy. On the other hand, he could hardly have found a more Semitically flavoured word than sôma (body). As in the eucharistic words of institution where sôma signifies the total Christian—in his/her physical, bodily form, so here, sôma signifies the total Christian—in his/her physical, bodily state of being—the total Christian person who is already baptized into Christ (Rom 6:1–10) and has already become someone begotten by God in whom the Spirit dwells (Rom 8:14–18). This totality of the self is what Paul solemnly adjures his brethren to offer to God (i.e., put at God’s disposition) as a living, holy, and pleasing sacrifice. Paul thus combines the irreconcilable in order to bring out the true nature of Christian sacrifice. He combines the most elevated ethical and spiritual ideas of the Greeks with the somatic ideas of his Jewish experience and Christian existence. This enables him to reject the Hellenistic mistrust of matter and to emphasize two cardinal points of Christian faith: creation and Incarnation. The rest of this passage thus falls into place as describing Christian life in terms of cultic service— terms which, significantly, are as applicable to Christ as to the individual Christian (Daly, The Origins 64).

[2] Romans 15:15–16 On some points I have written to you rather boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given me by God to 16be a minister (leitourgos) of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service (hierourgein) of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles [i.e., the Gentiles=the offering, as in Isa 66:20] may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 235 Comment. In their context in Romans as well as in their content, these verses are at the heart of Paul’s understanding of his own life. He sees his apostolic mission as a ‘sacrificial service’ which is priestly, public, eschatological, and universal. He sees this ‘liturgy of life’ as charism or grace. For sacrifice is a comprehensive process, part of which is obedient self-offering. The grace of sacrifice comprises (1) the offering up of Jesus Christ, through God and for us, (2) the ‘sacrificial service’ or priestly activity of preaching the word, and all that this entails existentially in one’s life, and (3) the obedience of faith in giving oneself to God for the sake of one’s neighbour. Finally, Paul sees this apostolic ‘liturgy of life’ as a comprehensive service involving the founding, building up, and maintenance of the Church (Daly, The Origins 65).

[3] 1 Peter 2:4–10 4

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and 5like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual (pneumatikos) house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices (pneumatikas thusias) acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6For it stands in scripture: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame’. 7

To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’ [Ps. 117 (LXX): 22],

8

and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall’ [Isa 8:14].

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [Exod 19:6], God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. 10

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Comment. The Hellenistic, even gnostic-flavoured imagery of vv. 1–3 (not quoted here) serve, like the similar language of Rom 12:1, to take up all that is good into the Christian perspective. Then, with vv. 4–5 we have come to the richest two verses in the entire Bible for the [Christian] theology of sacrifice. The invitation of v. 4 ‘come to him’ (i.e., ‘believe in Christ’) uses the same verb that is used to describe the approach of the priest to the altar of sacrifice. The paradoxically striking image living stone s is applied first to Christ and then to the Christian. ‘Rejected by men’ recalls the parable of the wicked vintners (Mark 12:10 parr), but the addition of ‘living’ and the invitation to us to become ‘living stones’ both recalls the ‘living sacrifice’ of Rom 12:1 and leads 1 Peter directly into the community-as-temple theme. The development beyond Paul consists chiefly in the inclusion in one image (living stones) of what Paul strove to express by the juxtaposition of images from organic

236 R. J. Daly growth and building construction. Theologically, the new image not only emphasizes the importance of internal dispositions; it also reinforces the central message of Romans 12: that true Christian sacrifice means putting oneself totally, body and soul, at the disposition of God and neighbour. The house to be built of stones is pneumatikos (spiritual), not only in contrast to the material temple ‘made with hands’, but also because it is the dwelling place of God’s Spirit, the ‘place’ where ‘spiritual’ (=Christian) sacrifices are to be offered to God through Jesus Christ. Three important themes are thus combined: (1) the Christian form of cultic spiritualization, (2) the theology of acceptance, (3) the Christian principle of the mediatorship of Christ. 1 Pet 2:4–10 has also been famous as the focal point in Scripture for the doctrine of, and often fierce controversies concerning, universal priesthood. But this idea is not an innovation with 1 Peter; it is present in Exod 19:6: ‘You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’, and is extensively alluded to in Jewish biblical and extra-biblical literature (e.g., Isa 56:6–7; 59:21; 60:7, 11; 61:6; 2 Macc 2:17; Jub. 16:18; 33:10; and in Philo, de Vita Mosis II 224–25; de Specialibus Legibus II 145). Note carefully the functions of this universal priesthood: they are (1) the ‘cultic’ function of offering spiritual (i.e., Christian) sacrifices (v. 5) and (2) the equally ‘cultic’ function (recall Rom 15:16) of declaring ‘the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’ (v. 9). The second function is but one particular specification of the first; for this text, just like Heb 13:16, as we shall see below, clearly identifies ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God’ with active commitment to living the Christian life (Daly, The Origins 66–67).

[4] Hebrews 10:19–25 19

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Comment. [This passage] serves the same structural function as Rom 12:1–2: transition from the earlier largely doctrinal to the later largely practical part of the letter. . . . After the solemn exhortation to ‘draw near’, that is, to participate in Christ’s high-priestly (sacrificial) activity, vv. 23–25 spell out what this activity of ‘Christian sacrifice’ is: it is the Christian life itself lived in community. Living the Christian life has taken over the atoning function of the sacrificial cult. Thus the deliberate sin of Heb 10:26 for which ‘there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins’ would seemed to be the separating of oneself from the only sacrificial action that now has any validity: Christian life itself (Daly, The Origins 73)

[5] Hebrews 13:10–16 10

We have an altar from which those who officiate in the tent have no right to eat. 11For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 237 as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. 12Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. 13Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. 14For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. 15Through him, then, let us continually offer a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Comment. Opinion has divided, often along confessional lines, about whether this passage is speaking about the Eucharist. The most satisfying answer is that eucharistic meaning is probably present but clearly not as the central intention of the passage, for the author seems to have in mind the total saving action of Christ. ‘Altar’ in v.10 signifies at least the spiritualized equivalent of a sacrificial ritual The exhortatory transition in v.13, just like those of Rom 12:1 and Heb 10:l9ff (see above) introduces the concrete specification of Christian sacrifice in practical terms (vv. 15–16; cf. 10:23–24; 12:28). ‘Fruit of lips’ is fairly common in Old Testament and Jewish literature as a symbolic metaphor of worthy worship. But only in Qumran (1QS 9 and 10) does it have so explicit a sacrificial meaning as in Heb 13:15. Not surprisingly, Qumran also provides the strongest pre-Christian Jewish witness to the spiritualized concept of sacrifice as the practical life of virtue (Daly, The Origins 74-75).

Conclusions from asking this Question of the New Testament To sum up, I can still do no better than quote what I wrote in 1978: There is a long and controversy-laden history to the idea that Christian sacrifice, or, more generally, true Christian worship, is centred not in acts of ritual and liturgical worship but in the practical, ethical sphere of the lived Christian life. The idea as such is not new. What is new, and what establishes the necessary starting-point for all future reflection on the meaning of Christian sacrifice, is our demonstration that the commonly accepted methods of modern critical scholarship prove beyond reasonable doubt that this primarily ethical concept of Christian sacrifice is indeed the one that is operative in the New Testament. The consistency of this conclusion with the development of the idea of Israelite and Christian sacrifice sketched in this work can also be forcefully demonstrated by examining that handful of New Testament passages which speak of the sacrifices offered by Christians: Rom 12:1–2; Rom 15:15–16; 1 Pet 2:4–10; Heb 10:19–25; Heb 12:18–13:16. In each of these passages, either explicitly or implicitly (from the fact that they all occur in the context of practical exhortation), sacrifice is understood as the practical living of the life of Christian virtue and Christian mission. The core of the specifically New Testament concept of Christian sacrifice is, thus, not cultic or liturgical, but practical and ethical. The sacrifice to be offered by the people of God in the new covenant is indeed a ‘liturgy of life’ (Daly, The Origins 82–83).

Let me emphasize again that what we have here is a highly significant historical and theological finding. It is not based on a (contingent) reconstruction of the teaching of the historical Jesus; it is based on the actual biblical texts themselves and their fairly straightforward meaning: the texts and their meaning which Christian churches generally accept as the normative guide to their theology and life. I do not think that it is possible for a responsible discussion of the question ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? to prescind from this finding. Nevertheless, as 1900 years of intervening history indicates, the question, however clarified in its ultimate principle, still cries out for all sorts of answers.

238 R. J. Daly For, as the years passed, what was already inchoative in the Christian Scriptures— referring to Jesus’ death as sacrificial, referring to the following of Christ as sacrificial— became more common. In the writings of Origen, for example, the metaphorical use of sacrificial terms to refer to life lived in Christ has become rampant. By the time of Augustine, the thematization of the idea of Christ being both the priest and victim of his sacrifice paralleled by Christians being both the priest and victim of their sacrifice seems to have become complete. This seems to be a faithful development of the main trajectory of spiritualization I found in the New Testament epistles.

Spiritualization Spiritualization means something much broader than simply antimaterialistic. We use it to refer to all the attempts within Judaism and Christianity to emphasize the true meaning of sacrifice, that is, the inner, spiritual, or ethical significance of the cult over against the merely material or merely external understanding of it. In the developed Christian sense, spiritualize came to mean, effectively ‘Christologize’. If we take this as the term of the specifically Christian development of the term ‘spiritualization’, we can outline the trajectory of that development as follows: The first phase of the spiritualizing trend has its roots deep in the Old Testament; for it is already well underway when, even as early as the tenth century Yahwistic accounts of Noah’s sacrifice (Gen 8) and of the sacrifices of Cain and Abel (Gen 4), the sacred writers insist with increasing explicitness on the vital importance of the religious dispositions with which one offers sacrifice. . . . In these writings it is quite clear that sacrifices offered by those failing to live up to the covenantal demands of justice and mercy are considered to be simply ‘not pleasing’ or ‘not acceptable’ or even ‘hateful’ in the eyes of God. But material sacrifice is not thereby done away with, for this prophetic criticism makes sense only under the presupposition of the continued validity of the sacrificial system. What is achieved here is not precisely a rejection of the sacrificial cult, but rather the all-important realization that without the proper religious and ethical dispositions, material sacrifice (and, by implications, all external religious observance) is worthless. With the completion of the first phase of the spiritualizing trend, even though proper dispositions are now seen as absolutely essential, the effective or dynamic center of sacrifice still seems to be the actual performance of the sacrificial ceremony. But as we move into the second phase of the spiritualizing trend, largely a post-exilic development, this center clearly shifts from the ceremony to the dispositions themselves. An apparently strong catalyst for this change was the experience of exile and diaspora. Increasing numbers of Jews who continued to believe in the necessity of material sacrifice were prevented by geography from actively participating in sacrifice at the Jerusalem temple, the one place where sacrifice could validly be offered. Increasingly, the notion took root that what brought about reconciliation, atonement, and communion with God was not the actual performance of the sacrifices, but the fact that one performed them according to the law, that is, in accordance with the will of God. This shift helped make it possible for the Qumran sectarians, while separated from the temple, to develop a theology of sacrificial atonement which looked upon their own community as the new temple, and the pious works performed by the community as taking the place of the atoning sacrifices materially offered in the Jerusalem temple. It also helped make it possible for Judaism to survive the loss of the temple after A.D. 70. For once the value of sacrifice was seen precisely as an act of obedient piety, it was not difficult to see other acts of obedient piety as being able to accomplish what was previously thought to be achievable only by ritual sacrifice. It is in this context that Philo, writing in diaspora Alexandria, so emphasizes the internal religious dispositions for sacrifice that the external action or ceremony is accorded only symbolic significance. Much of the extremity of Philo’s position is due to the antimaterial bias of his basically Platonistic philosophy. Christian thought, on the

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 239 other hand, which draws a great deal from Philo, is generally preserved from the extremes of a radically antimaterial spiritualization by its own antidualistic faith both in God’s creation of the material world and in the historical, bodily Incarnation of the Logos. Christian sacrifice, therefore, both in its perfect realization in Jesus Christ, and in its imperfect realization in his followers, is both spiritual and bodily. . . . The spiritualizing trend reaches its [Christian] culmination in a specifically incarnational spiritualization . . . [which] moves beyond the initial phase where dispositions are emphasized while ceremonial action remains central, and it moves beyond the second phase where ceremonial action becomes almost superfluous, to a third phase where, to the vital importance of proper dispositions, is now added the importance of incarnating proper dispositions in human action. The insights of phases one and two are taken up into a new incarnationally spiritualized notion of sacrifice described in terms of the performance of down-to-earth, practical, diaconal, ministerial, and apostolic works of the Christian life (Daly, The Origins 136–38).

However, another, and, in some respects, ominous trajectory is also developing, that of the institutionalization or ritualization of Christian Sacrifice.

The Ritualization and Institutionalization of Christian Sacrifice This begins the story by which Christians began to think and speak, in an indiscriminately univocal way, both of their own ritual liturgical activity as sacrificial, and of the unique redemptive activity of Christ as sacrificial.

The Early Church As early as Hippolytus at the beginning of the third century, Christian writers are beginning to refer to the Eucharist as sacrificial. In view of the extent of sacrificial imagery in Jesus’ eucharistic words of institution and in the (primarily) Pauline reflection on the meaning of the Christ-event, there is nothing particularly surprising or problematic about this development. For one thing, at least at this relatively early patristic stage of development, a strong case can be made that the primary understanding of Christian sacrifice remained the spiritualized one described above. However, from the context of that primary understanding, it is a bit surprising, to say nothing of problematic, that we now begin to hear Christians speaking of the sacrificial action of the presiding priest. And we begin to hear the meal gifts of bread and wine being spoken of as the sacrificial offerings. To paint with broad strokes, what seems to be happening is that Christians, apparently now more comfortable with the idea of ‘sacrifice’ (as opposed to their forebears who generally thought of it more negatively, in association with Jewish or pagan sacrifice), begin to look back into the Old Testament for help to understand what ‘Christian sacrifice’ might mean. In terms of ‘theoretical’ methodology, this move was correct enough; concretely, however, it was all wrong. The problem was that the Christians of the patristic age looked to the wrong origins, or, at least, viewed them through faulty lenses. They had no epistemic access to the process of spiritualization. For all practical purposes, they had no inkling that it even existed. The process by which religious Judaism had solved its own dilemma (no atonement without sacrifice—no sacrifice without temple) and in the process provided Christianity with the foundation for its own incarnational spiritualization was simply not on the patristic radar screen. The Fathers of the Church read the Bible—specifically the Hebrew Scriptures—Christologically and without awareness of what we call historicity. Although Origen might have had some inkling of it, for all practical purposes the Christian Fathers had no idea that the place to look to gain insight into the meaning of

240 R. J. Daly Christian sacrifice was not the Old Testament read ahistorically, but the later writings and the oral traditions of intertestamental and early rabbinic Judaism. For that is where the process of spiritualization was coming to maturity and establishing the foundations of the specifically Christian incarnational understanding of sacrifice. It was also the place where that Jewish spirituality, which apparently was the spirituality of Jesus himself, was taking shape. What, they asked again and again, were the essential characteristics of sacrifice? If clarity could be established on that point, one could then apply the definition to the Mass/Lord’s Supper and thus prove by scholarly argument the faith professed in one’s particular church. It is not hard to see here some of the new scientific (inductive) methods being added to the traditional methods of deduction. ‘Inductive’ analysis fairly easily identified two obvious traits of sacrifice: oblation and destruction. The Last Supper of Jesus Christ the night before he died was the original oblation; Golgotha was the destruction. Those two elements, then, oblation and destruction, became the critical, essential elements of sacrifice which the Catholic theological community desperately needed to see both symbolized and memorialized in the Mass, but also made really present there so that it could be called, ‘truly and properly’,7 the Sacrifice of the Mass. Catholics needed to show that the violent sacrifice of Christ was either repeated, or continued, or made present, or really participated in. Protestants, in addition to their need to prove just the opposite, also needed to experience an intense subjective remembering (and thus also, and in that symbolic sense, participation in) the violent death of Christ. In one of the tragic ironies of Christian history, violence was, for both Catholics and Protestants, not only central to the way they thought about this most central Christian sacrament/ordinance, but also, all too often, central to the way they argued about it. In other words, no one was looking to the Christ-event, on its own terms and in its own context, in order to find out what the basic meaning of Christian sacrifice might be.

The Present Age To jump ahead to the present age, one of the questions we ask is: How does sacrifice ‘work’? Or to put it in traditional theological language, how does sacrifice bring about atonement? The fact that sacrifice effects atonement seems to be a common presupposition of both Jewish and Christian theology. The fact that Christ’s atoning work was sacrificial also seems to be not much in dispute among Christians. But how to understand this fact in terms of the ongoing life of Church and sacrament is where Christian spirits have divided. Years ago I attempted to define atonement as essentially a creature-directed action of God which restores or strengthens the relationship which, now in fact destroyed or weakened by ‘sin’, should by God’s design prevail between creatures and God.8 In that earlier formulation, I defined the dynamic of the process primarily, if not indeed exclusively, as the action of God, not of the creature. While continuing to hold that basic view of the dynamic, I now see that I must qualify it to make room for the dialogic, personal-intercommunicative elements which are present in any authentic divine-human relationship.9 Essentially the process of atonement is that of becoming one with God through Jesus and in and through the Spirit of Jesus. To the extent that this takes place, the process and dynamic of it is essentially interpersonal, intercommunicative. What does it mean when one uses the word ‘sacrifice’ to describe the means by which this process comes about? (Many members of the Reformation churches would

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 241 not put the question this way, of course, since for them atonement does not take place precisely by means of the sacramental ‘ordinance’ but through the immediate working of the Holy Spirit. However, I believe that this does not take care of the question, but only moves it, still unanswered, to a different place.) I suggest we might more easily find the common ground we need for putting the question by asking what, in human (i.e. psychological, sociological, etc.) terms is going on in us when atonement is taking place. In other words, what is happening in us when ‘Christians sacrifice’ (whether this is understood purely symbolically or realisticsacramentally) is being offered? That is the question, I think, that the work of René Girard is addressing. It is a question that deals, obviously, with exegetical data. But is not, precisely, an exegetical question. I have heard exegetes take up Girard’s interpretations and quickly dismiss them as going beyond or outside the ‘evidence’. Exegetically speaking (when exegesis is understood as a strict application of the historical-critical method, and as the goals and purposes of that method are understood by most contemporary exegetes), they are more or less correct. But the real question is being missed. What Girard is doing—or at least what I see him as doing—is asking, phenomenologically, psychologically, socialscientifically, what is happening when ‘atonement’ is taking place. That is not a question which exegesis, narrowly defined, is equipped to answer, for the authors and first readers of the biblical texts were not—except perhaps in a remotely inchoative way—asking that question. And yet, it is not a question about which the Bible has little or nothing to say. For one thing, although Girard may not have initially formulated his mimetic scapegoat theory precisely as an interpretation of the Bible, precisely as ‘biblical theology’, the Bible was, as I perceive it, one of the major sources of the theory. Girard’s theory seems to have been developed, intuited, sensed, and educed from various sources such as literature, psychology, anthropology, sociology, human experience, religious reflection, as well as from reflection on the Bible. Girard has, at times, taken up the Bible to find there exemplifications and illustrations of his theory. Thus, it is quite legitimate for exegesis to critique that. Indeed, it is absolutely essential that it do so. But to stop there as if nothing more were to be said is a serious methodological mistake. First, although exegesis deals and must deal with some of the basic data behind our question, ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? it does not deal directly with many aspects of the question itself. Second, the historical-critical method which is the basic tool of exegesis is a child of the rationalistic culture of modernity which defines ‘out of court’ some of the most important aspects of the question we are asking. This is not to suggest either that the method is false or superfluous, or that all users of the historical-critical method buy into or are confined within the hermeneutical strictures of its historical presuppositions. But it is important to remind ourselves that the method itself was not designed to deal with, and thus most likely does not adequately deal with, some of the most important aspects of the question we are asking. My own sense of the situation is that the general structure of Girard’s theory offers an excellent architectonic theoretical context within which to ask the question, ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? I say this because, as I understand it, Girard’s basic theory has a positive place for all the essential elements of the question, and it also has place for the questions and findings of the academic disciplines to which I have some access: literature, and especially exegesis, and theology. For the latter two, I would refer to the work of Raymund Schwager whose work, beyond that of his first book on the subject, Must There Be Scapegoats, has unfortunately not been translated into English.10

242 R. J. Daly Conclusion So, we come back to our question: ‘Is Christianity sacrificial’? The real question is, what is it that one is talking about when one uses the term sacrifice/sacrificial? What it is that one calls sacrifice is to a large extent a matter of terminological convention. However, even should we come to agreement on how the term and concept is to be used, a significant amount of disagreement on the theological aspects of the question would remain. As I have already indicated, I think that one of the central points of disagreement focuses on whether Church and Sacrament are, as Catholics generally understand it, the very means through which God brings about (sacrificial?) atonement, or whether Church and Ordinance are, as Protestants generally understand it, only the divinely ordained occasion on which God, through the Holy Spirit immediately brings about atonement. This is a profound question on which ecumenists, ecclesiologists, and liturgical and sacramental theologians must continue to work. However, I suggest that there is a vital aspect of the question on which a significant amount of critical agreement by a group like ourselves should be possible. I would line up the question this way. Granted that Christians of the New Testament period and following thought of and spoke of the redemptive work of Christ as sacrificial, and granted that our access to (Epistle to the Hebrews) or participation in (Greek Fathers) that work of Christ, or in its ‘benefits’11 is also ‘sacrificial’ (however symbolic or sacramentally realistic our understanding of that may be), a certain amount of scientific-scholarly agreement should be possible on precisely what (phenomenologically speaking) is taking place in human life and society when atonement is taking place. That, it seems to me, is both a desirable and possible goal, one that is by no means without significance for Christian theology, or for what we hope can be a healing understanding of the relationships between violence and religion.

Notes 1 For an illustration (taken from fundamental ethics) of the necessity of this type of distinction, see Bruno Schüller, ‘The Debate on the Specific Character of Christian Ethics: Some Remarks’, in Readings in Moral Theology No.2: The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics, C. E. Curran and R. A. McCormick (eds.), S.J., New York/Ramsey: Paulist, 1980 207–33, at 224–26. 2 In illustration of the vital importance of distinguishing between the various conceptual and imaginative construals that lie behind different theological positions, see David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975 esp. 163. However, while Kelsey suggests that once one has identified the imaginative construals in question, little more can be done, a methodology of ‘dialectic’, such as suggested by Bernard Lonergan’s Method in Theology, New York: Herder and Herder, 1972 and applied by Charles Hefling, Jr., ‘Lonergan on Development: The Way to Nicea in light of His More Recent Methodology (diss.; Boston College, 1982) 305–57 indicates that much more can and should be attempted. 3 For example, see my ‘The Power of Sacrifice in Ancient Judaism and Christianity’ Journal of Ritual Studies 4:2 (1990) 181–98. 4 This is, of course, a commonplace in feminist literature. One of the most influential voices seems to be that of Julia Kristeva. A good place to start would be The Kristeva Reader, Toril Moi (ed.), New York: Columbia University, 1986). On this general theme as it relates to Christian theology, see David N. Power, et al., ‘Sacramental Theology: A Review of Literature; 4. Feminist Theology’, Theological Studies 55:4 (1994) 693–702. 5 The lack of this kind of distinction played a sad role in the inability of Christians in the time of the Reformation to understand each other on the matter of the Eucharist as sacrificial. The (usually) carefully crafted language of the Council of Trent, for example, uses the same word offerre to speak indiscriminately both of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ and the frequentlyrepeated liturgical celebration of the Eucharist. Posttridentine theologians commonly used comparative-religious categories to try to understand the liturgical offerre and thought that they were thereby saying something about Christ’s offerre!

Is Christianity Sacrificial or Antisacrificial? 243 6 Much of what I have to say on this subject goes back to the work of my dissertation years, subsequently published in two books: Christian Sacrifice: The Judaeo-Christian Background before Origen; Studies in Christian Antiquity 18 (Washington: The Catholic University of America, 1978, and The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978. 7 The Council of Trent, Session 22 (1562) canon 1: H. Denzinger and A. Schönmetzer, (eds), Enchiridion Symbolorum 3rd ed., Barcelona-New York: Herder, 1965 no. 1751, p.411. ET: Josef Neuner and Heinrich Roos, The Teaching of the Catholic Church, Staten Island: Alba House, 1967. 8 See Daly, The Origins of the Christian Doctrine of Sacrifice 25–30, esp. 28. 9 A pivotal point in the development of my own thinking on this was Frans Jozef van Beeck, ‘Divine Revelation: Intervention or Self-Communication’? Theological Studies 52 (1991) 199–226. 10 See my ‘Foreword’ to Raymund Schwager, S.J., Must There be Scapegoats: Violence and Redemption in the Bible, trans. Maria L. Assad, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987. The untranslated books of Schwager which I find to be the most valuable studies which bring theology and exegesis to bear on the questions raised by Girard are: Der Wunderbare Tausch: Zur Geschichte und Deutung der Erlösungslehre, Munich: Kösel, 1986 and Jesus im Heilsdrama: Entwurf einer biblischen Erlösungslehre; Innsbrucker theologische Studien 29, Innsbruck-Vienna: Tyrolia, 1990. 11 See Arland J. Hultgren, Christ and His Benefits: Christology and Redemption in the New Testament, Philadeiphia: Fortress, 1987).

ROBERT J. DALY (b. 1933 in Quincy, Massachusetts, U.S.A.) is a Jesuit priest and professor of theology at Boston College where he has taught for 27 years. Former editor of the journal Theological Studies, he has, after his early research into the origins of the Christian idea of sacrifice, published on a broad range of biblical, patristic, and theological topics. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167-3802, U.S.A.