The Self-Donation of God. Jack D. Kilcrease

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Self-Donation of God - Jack D. Kilcrease страница 18

Автор:
Серия:
Издательство:
The Self-Donation of God - Jack D. Kilcrease

Скачать книгу

require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:5–6). The only way to remedy sin is the substitution of life through the pouring of blood. This necessarily occurs through animal sacrifice, since as YHWH states, “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev 17:11). For this reason, sacrifice for sin means a separation of blood from the flesh and not simply the death of the animal.

      The choices of blood atonement and animal sacrifice are important for a number of other reasons. First, since blood contains life, it cries out and thereby gives a testimony. When Cain kills Abel, God tells Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (4:10). Later the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that Christ’s blood also cries out and thereby “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:24, emphasis added). Living blood therefore gives testimony of forgiveness that has been paid for. In the case of covenants, it also stands as a witness to the truthfulness of the divine promise.

      Other features of Israelite atonement theology should be recognized. Within Israelite cultic life, a wide variety of sacrifices (particularly sacrifices atoning for sin) also symbolically united in themselves both righteousness and sin. The Passover sacrifice (a substitutionary sacrifice for the life of the firstborn) was enacted by the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish, suggesting cultic and moral holiness. At the same time, the lamb was killed as a substitute of the firstborn male livestock and children of Israel, whom God insists must be ransomed: “you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem” (Exod 13:12–13). Therefore, the lamb who united both purity and condemnation in itself served as the sacrifice to redeem the firstborn of Israel.

      That the high priest moves into the holy of holies through the blood of this goat on the Day of Atonement appears to lend further evidence to Fletcher-Louis’s thesis that the high priest represents a new Adam. Though Fletcher-Louis does not make this direct connection, it could be suggested that just as Adam withdrew and “hid from the Lord God” (Gen 3:8) as a result of breaking the law, the high priest moves back into the representation of Eden (the holy of holies) and into the divine presence, through the fulfillment of the law. Interpreted in this manner, the ritual itself appears to be a representation of the end of universal exile. In enacting this ritual then, the high priest represents both Israel’s sin and the actualization of its righteousness.

Скачать книгу