Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Expiatory Power of the Blood of Christ

Throughout the Pentateuch, there is an insistent prohibition against the consumption of blood because, it is said, “the blood is the life” (Deut 12:23; cf. Gen 9:4). This identification relates, moreover, not just to dietary legislation, but is also at the heart of Israel’s sacrificial worship of God, for it is by reason of the life within it that blood is able to make atonement upon the altar (Lev 17:10-14). The purpose of this paper is to deal first with the relationship between blood and life, and then further to explore the expiatory power of lifeblood within the sacrificial cult ordained by God in the Old Testament and perfected by Christ in the New.

The Blood Is the Life


The biblical identification of blood with life goes all the way back to the time of Noah. When after the great deluge God granted permission to Noah and to his sons to eat the flesh of animals, there is a prohibition joined to this permission: “Only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen 9:4). It is interesting to note here that this command is here “made incumbent on all humanity,”1 on all the descendants of Noah. In its origin the prohibition against eating blood is universal in scope.2

Many commentators rightly draw attention to the widespread association of blood with life in the ancient cultures of the Near East. In the Navarre Bible Commentary, for example, this prohibition is said to reflect “the culture of a period when blood was regarded as the source of life,”3 and again, “there existed a strong conviction among those peoples that blood was the seat and source of life.”4 Indeed, this connection was evidently made in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Canaan, and in Arabia, as well as amongst the Israelites.5

Some writers are content to state that the biblical authors (together with the rest of the ancient world) probably arrived at their belief in the identity between life and blood based on the simple “observation that loss of much blood leads to death,”6 while others view the Old Testament prohibition against blood consumption as ultimately derived from “a taboo that is also known elsewhere.”7 Jacob Milgrom, however, disagrees sharply with this last interpretation: “That none of Israel’s neighbors possesses this absolute and universally binding prohibition means that it cannot be a vestige of a primitive taboo, but the result of a deliberate, reasoned enactment.”8

If, however, one simply takes the divine inspiration of the Scriptures seriously, these arguments and conjectures largely fall away or fall into place. The common observation that loss of blood leads to loss of life is rather a confirmation of their divinely revealed identity, than the source of a deduction. It is not surprising if many of the descendants of Noah remembered the identity of blood with life while ignoring and eventually forgetting the prohibition against eating it. Israel’s adherence to this law does not go back to some “taboo,” but to God himself. In short, the prohibition against eating blood is a divine law based upon a real identity between blood and life. Blood is not, of course, simply the same as life; but for animals and men they are inextricably linked.

The Expiatory Power of Sacrificial Blood


There is more at stake here in this connection between blood and life, however, than just dietary laws. For God also revealed to Israel that he would accept blood as life upon the altar in atonement for sin. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life” (Lev 17:11). Here we are at the very heart of Israel’s sacrificial cult.


The atoning power of blood lies in the fact that God accepts it as an offering of life. In other words, God does not desire blood simply as such, but precisely inasmuch as the life of the creature is within it. This, however, raises a crucial question in regards to the idea of substitution. “Basic to the theory of sacrifice in ancient Israel, as in many other ancient societies, was the notion of substitution.”9 The lives of animals were offered in place of the lives of men. The laying of hands upon the animal seems to have been symbolic of this substitution: “By placing (Heb sāmak) a hand on the animal (Lev 1:4; 3:2, 8, 13: 4:4, 15, 24, 29), sinners passed their essence on to it (cf. Num 27:18-23).”10 The question that must arise here, though, is this: In what respect does the animal stand in the place of man? Is this substitution a matter of redirecting God’s vengeance away from sinful men, i.e., is it a matter of penal substitution? Or, is it rather a matter of God requiring a visible expression of an interior offering of man’s own life to God? In other words, does God demand life (in the sense of death) as punishment, or does he desire to receive life as a gift (in the sense of a voluntary dedication of one’s life to God)?

Baruch Levine seems to favor the former interpretation. In his commentary on Leviticus 17:11, referring to the Hebrew formula le-khapper ‘al nafshoteikhem, “for making expiation for your lives,” he writes: “Literally, this formula means ‘to serve as kofer (ransom) for your lives.’ God accepts the blood of the sacrifices in lieu of human blood.”11 Further on, he continues along the same lines:


In our passage, blood is considered efficacious because it represents life, not because it has special properties. Creatures cannot live without blood, and killing is expressed as shedding blood. On this basis, the blood of the sacrifice offered on the altar is the ‘life’ of the sacrifice and can stand in place of human life. God accepts it in lieu of human life and grants expiation or refrains from wrath.12



There is much that is true here, to be sure. Certainly God accepts the lifeblood of the sacrificed animal as standing in the place of human life; but Levine seems to envision this primarily in terms of death. To put it simply, animals are killed instead of the men who deserve to be killed.

There is, however, another way to understand this substitution. God does not accept the life of an animal in lieu of human life, if this means that having sacrificed an animal a man does not also need to offer his own life interiorly to God. Rather, God accepts the sacrificial offering of animal life as an exterior expression of man’s necessary interior self-offering. That this latter interpretation is preferable is clear from the numerous texts in the prophetic tradition that speak of God’s dissatisfaction with ritual animal sacrifice.


If I am hungry, I shall not tell you: for the whole earth, and all that is in it, belongs to me. Am I likely to eat the flesh of bulls, or to drink the blood of goats? Offer to God the sacrifice of praise, and fulfil your vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of tribulation and I shall rescue you; and you will glorify me. (Ps 50:12-15)


If you had wished for sacrifice, I would certainly have given it: but you will not delight in holocausts. The sacrifice offered to God is a broken spirit; God will not despise a heart that is broken and humbled. (Ps 51:16-17)


By what means shall I reach God, or take hold of my God, the most high? Shall I reach him with holocausts, with year-old calves? Will God be satisfied with thousands of rams or ten thousands of fat goats? What if I give the first-born of my impiety, the fruit of my belly for the sin of my soul? Have you been told, O man, what is good? Or what does the Lord require from you, except to practice justice, and to love mercy, and to be prepared to go with the Lord your God? (Mic 6:6-8)


I desire mercy rather than sacrifice. (Hos 6:6)



These texts make it abundantly clear that God does not need man’s sacrifices for his own sake; he is not pleased by animal sacrifices simply as such. He is pleased, though, for example, by a contrite heart, and by mercy. Yet why then did he command such sacrifices to be offered? This is a question that St. Augustine deals with admirably in his great work De civitate Dei contra paganos (The City of God). His conclusion: “The visible sacrifice is the sacrament, the sacred sign, of the invisible sacrifice.”13 The offering of the lifeblood of an animal to God was meant to be a “sacrament”14 of an interior act on the part of the offerer. God wished the visible sacrifices of the Old Law to be observed in order to signify those invisible sacrifices that he more truly desires, namely, according to Psalm 51, a humble and contrite heart; according to Psalm 50, praise; in Micah, justice, mercy, walking with him; in the words of Hosea, found twice on the lips of the Savior (Mt 9:13; 12:7), it is mercy that he desires as a true sacrifice. Taking all of these and like texts into account, St. Augustine is able to offer a concise and enduring definition of true sacrifice: “The true sacrifice is offered in every act which is designed to unite us to God in a holy fellowship.”15

The true sacrifice required by God is the interior self-oblation of the offerer, of which the exterior gift of animal blood is a sign. He commanded the Israelites to offer the lifeblood of animals in order to signify thereby that what he required of them was their own lives – lives offered and dedicated to his service, lived in humility, in the exercise of justice and mercy, and in praise and adoration of him. The lifeblood of the animal poured out upon the altar is effective in making atonement only when it actually corresponds to the interior offering, “on the altar of the heart,” of a sacrifice of humility and praise, in which “the flame on the altar is the burning fire of charity.”16 Such a sacrifice pleases God. The sinner is forgiven, not because God’s punishment fell upon an innocent animal, but because the sinner’s own interior self-oblation, expressed exteriorly through the offering of the lifeblood of an animal, is pleasing to God, who thus graciously remits (at least partially) the punishment due to his sin. God does not take the life of (kill) an animal instead of a man; he rather accepts the life of an animal as signifying the heart of man voluntarily placed upon the altar, there to be consumed by the fire of divine charity and transformed into an ever greater likeness to God.




The Expiatory Power of the Blood of Christ


Basic to the Christian understanding of the Old Testament sacrifices, of course, is that they were ultimately accepted by God only in view of the definitive sacrifice offered by Christ upon the altar of the Cross. Here again there is an insistence upon the role of the blood in making atonement. All throughout the New Testament, the sacred authors refer again and again to the precious blood of Christ as that which inaugurates the New Covenant (Mt 26:28; Mk 14:24; Lk 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25; Heb 13:20), that which brings life to those who receive it in the Eucharist (Jn 6:53-56); by the blood of Christ we are redeemed (Acts 20:28; Eph 1:7; Heb 9:12; Rev 5:9), justified (Rom 5:9), sanctified (Heb 13:12), purified (Heb 9:14; 1 Jn 1:7), reconciled (Col 1:20), liberated (Rev 1:5), and brought near to God (Eph 2:13); his blood makes expiation (Rom 3:25), and “speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:24).

As in the Old Testament animal sacrifices, so in the sacrifice of Christ does the notion of substitution play a role, but it is a different (more perfect) kind of substitution; there is also present in the latter as in the former an interplay between an interior and an exterior offering, yet in Christ these two converge perfectly.


In regards to the notion of substitution, in the Old Testament sacrifices, the life of an animal was offered in place of the life of man. This was worship with replacements, which, in the memorable words of Joseph Ratzinger, “turns out to be a replacement for worship.”17 What Ratzinger has in mind here is the contrast between what he refers to as “replacement” on the one hand and “representation” on the other. Unlike animals, which can only take man’s place upon the altar, Christ, as the true representative, gathers up all men into himself. In Christ, we now have a true representative through whom, with whom, and in whom to offer ourselves to God the Father.

Whereas in the case of the Old Testament animal sacrifices, the offered lifeblood of the animal might or might not correspond to a genuine interior self-oblation on the part of the offerer, in Christ the two converge. The blood which he offers is his own blood, which offering is not merely a sign of his interior gift, but the actual “concrete expression of a love of which it is said that it extends ‘to the end’ (Jn 13:1).”18 Christ’s interior self-oblation in loving gift to the Father for men finds its fullest and most perfect expression in the exterior pouring out of his lifeblood upon the altar of the Cross.

There is no question here as to whether it is the blood of the sacrifice (exterior aspect of sacrifice) that pleases God, or the dispositions (praise, humility, mercy, etc.) of the offerer (interior aspect). It is both. The two converge and are one. In the Old Testament sacrifices, God accepted the life of animals as pleasing only inasmuch as these foreshadowed the sacrifice of Christ, and truly corresponded to a pleasing disposition on the part of the offerer. The sacrifice of Christ, on the other hand, is pleasing to God, according to Aquinas, both “because of the exceeding charity from which He suffered,” and “on account of the dignity of His life which He laid down in atonement, for it was the life of one who was God and man.”19 In him the exterior gift of his lifeblood corresponds perfectly to his interior dedication of his whole life and being to the will of his Father. His blood makes atonement upon the altar of the Cross by reason of the life which is within it – the life of a God-man, poured out as the perfect expression of his burning charity

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