17 Apropos of the modern situation, Robert Daly criticizes those who approach the sacrifice of Christ in the light of conventional theories: ‘We have usually started at the wrong end. We should have tried to learn from the Christ event what it was Christians were trying to express when, at first quite hesitantly, in earliest Christianity they began to speak of the Christ event … as sacrificial; instead, we went to look at the practice of different religions in the world, drawing up a general definition of sacrifice, and then seeing if it were applicable to Christ. The usual definition drawn from the history of religions or cultural anthropology is reasonable enough in itself but when made to apply to Christ, it is disastrously inadequate’: ‘Sacrifice Unveiled or Sacrifice Revisited: Trinitarian and Liturgical Perspectives’, Theological Studies, 64 (2003), 24 42, at 25.
Both in the ancient world and later, sacrifice was normally understood as human beings in a cultic setting surrendering something valuable to God (especially a victim who was slain), with a view to bringing about communion with God and changing the participants who took part in the shared feast. Hebrews, however, while presenting Christ as a sacrificial victim in his death, explicitly denied that this death took place in a cultic setting (see above) and at best only hinted at a sacred feast shared by believers (Heb. 13: 9–10). The most startling difference, however, from any ‘conventional’ understanding of sacrifice, a difference which Hebrews and other New Testament books illustrate, is that it was not human beings who went to God with their gift(s) or victim(s); it was God who provided the means for the sacrifice to take place (e.g. Rom. 3: 25). As Hebrews put it, ‘in these last days’ God provided his Son for the priestly work of ‘purification for sins’ (Heb. 1: 1–3). The normal roles were reversed: in this sacrificial process the primary initiative was with God and not with human beings. In the words of Edward Kilmartin:
Sacrifice is not, in the first place, an activity of human beings directed to God and, in the second place, something that reaches its goal in the response of divine acceptance and bestowal of divine blessing on the cultic community. Rather, sacrifice in the New Testament understanding … is, in the first place, the self offering of the Father in the gift of the Son, and, in the second place, the unique response of the Son in his humanity to the Father, and, in the third place, the self offering of believers in union with Christ by which they share in his covenant relation with the Father.18
18 E. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology, ed. R. J. Daly (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998), 381 2; italics ours.
(2) Whatever Christ did by way of external sacrifice symbolized and expressed his interior self-giving to the Father. Far from being centred on himself, Christ related in love and obedience to God the Father and was ready for painful self-renunciation; he had come to do God’s will (Heb. 10: 7, 9). The interior dispositions of Christ made all the difference. (3) His whole life was a continual free gift of himself (or sacrifice) to God and others. The compassionate service of others described by the Gospels filled out the obedient self-giving through which the Letter to the Hebrews sums up the human life of Jesus (Heb. 2: 17–18; 5: 1–3). A spirit of sacrifice characterized the entire human existence of the Son of God, from his incarnation through to completing his work of ‘purification for sins’ and sitting at the right hand of God (Heb. 1: 1–3). It would be a mistake to limit Christ’s sacrificial performance to his death and exaltation. The self-giving of his life moved seamlessly into his self-giving at death. (4) This self-sacrifice should not be understood as if Jesus were a penal substitute, who was punished in the place of sinners and so appeased an angry God. We saw how Aquinas opened the door for others to develop this interpretation of sacrifice by calling it ‘something which is done to render God due honour with a view to placating him’ (STh. 3a. 48. 3 resp.; italics ours). Luther, Calvin, Catholic preachers such as J. B. Bossuet, and other Christians took to an extreme this view of Christ being punished for sinners and even as a sinner—a morally repulsive view that Hebrews and other New Testament witnesses do not support.19
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