The Distraction of Substitutionary Atonement

“Castrating Paul, Neutering Jesus.”

I believe that the apostle Paul was most likely a candidate for the position of Jewish high priest in Jerusalem before he got involved with Christianity. Paul was a Pharisee, a highly educated man and an individual who had close connections with the Jewish establishment. Because his father purchased Roman citizenship for the family, we might suppose that Paul also had, through his own family, some connection with important Roman citizens. The fact that Paul was also named Saul alludes not to a name change but the fact that people like him usually had two names—a Jewish one and a Roman one.  In the first century of the common era, the local Roman government had a hand in appointing the high priest, at the very least no one could hold the office unless Rome agreed.  Since Rome was involved in the selection of the high priest, it would seem that Rome would be supportive of Saul’s early persecution of Christians who were seen as opponents of the system. Saul was present at the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr and by his passive participation seemed to endorse this murder.

There was a lot of unrest in Palestine in the first century of the common era. We know that Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor of Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified (approximately 29 CE) was removed for incompetence. He was ordered to report to Caesar in 36 CE for killing Samaritans in a bloody confrontation with people apparently engaged on a religious journey to view or find artifacts supposedly left on a mountain by Moses. We also know that there was a revolt against Rome beginning in about 66 CE which led to Jerusalem being destroyed by the Roman army in 70 CE. While we probably don’t know exactly when the Paul was executed, it seems to have been done by the Emperor Nero about 64 or 65 CE. Military operations in that time were necessarily slow and deliberate. For example, to capture the Jewish rebels who had retreated to the fortress of Masada, the Roman army built a ramp to enable them to reach that mountain fortress. The ramp was 375 feet high and took 10 to 12 weeks to build (with slave labor). Masada fell into Roman hands in 72/73 CE.  If we take that as the date the Roman efforts to quash the rebellion ended, then there was war in Palestine for about 7 years.  It would appear that the gospels of Mark and perhaps Matthew and Luke as well were being written during the end of or just after that war.  I doubt if much attention has been paid to this war as background to the study of the New Testament, except to note that the “church” might be coming aware that the arrival of the kingdom of God had been delayed and that with the death of some major figures from the beginning history (including Paul), and that it behooved them to get some written accounts of the beginning created before all the prime figures were dead.

          According to the Gospels, Jesus had speculated about the temple in Jerusalem being destroyed. The early leadership of the Christians was aware of the impending destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Indeed, Jesus himself may have seen it coming.  Of course, references in the gospels to the “future” destruction of the temple were most likely written after the fact, given the commonly understood dates of the writing of these gospels. The destruction of the temple also brought an end to animal sacrifices. We also know that in the first century of the common era there were people who were bothered by the concept of animal sacrifice. Pliny the Younger sent a letter to Rome, around 100 CE, stating that the decline in animal sacrifices was causing a negative impact on farming in Asia minor. It has long been supposed that this decline was related to the growth of Christianity, but it may very well be that the decline in animal sacrifice preceded or at least accompanied the emergence of Christianity.

Paul implies that the death of Jesus puts an end to the need for animal sacrifices. What I’m proposing is that Paul’s emphasis on the substitutionary death of Jesus was an effort to save Judaism from the inevitable destruction of its central temple in Jerusalem. Sometimes we seem to think that biblical materials were produced in a vacuum. We ignore or discount the fact that these materials were addressed to a particular audience (which is not us), at a particular time and for a particular reason.  It would be helpful to understand to whom (in addition to where) Paul was writing. There were apparently lots of synagogues in cities in Roman times. There were a number of people who were attracted to the teachings of Judaism in part because Judaism emphasized the oneness of God. Lots of people apparently attended synagogue and listened to the teachings of rabbis. They appreciated the principles of Judaism but abhorred the concept of circumcision. We also know that these bands of “hearers,” as the people who came to listen to the rabbis were known, provided a ready audience for early Christian preachers. Many conversions or baptisms were facilitated by those preachers working with the so-called “hearers.” I wonder if baptism in the very beginning of the church took the place of circumcision. If indeed the hearers encountering early Christian teaching supposed that this new approach to faith eliminated both the need for circumcision and for the continuing practice of animal sacrifice, two major obstacles that prevented the “hearers” from actually joining the synagogue were eliminated.  It may very well be that Paul’s letters were addressed to people who had joined the Christian movement through their involvement as hearers at local synagogues. 

Here is a bit of an aside about making assumptions.  If I was an expert physicist (which I am not) and earned a living teaching elementary physics to college freshmen, I might have in my files a lot of material about basic physics.  I might not have much at all about quantum physics.  Someone going through my files after my death might suppose I was unacquainted with quantum physics.  They might be surprised if they discovered, on the hard drive of my computer, a major book I was writing about quantum physics.   There is an old axiom that we ought not forget:  absence of proof is not proof of absence.  When we ignore the audiences which ancient writers were addressing and the purpose or intention of their work, we risk missing a lot of about the significance of the material which we have.

Child sacrifice was a widely practiced custom in the ancient world. It apparently had no attachment to a specific religion and appeared in many ancient cultures and places. The famous story of Abraham and Isaac may at least be based on Judaism’s early rejection of child sacrifice. In 1843 Soren Kierkegaard wrote a little book entitled Fear and Trembling.  This book is an essay on the story about Abraham and Isaac.  Kierkegaard, among other things, wanted to lift up the psychological, spiritual, and intellectual turmoil in which Abraham found himself immersed when he dealt with what he believed to be a call from God to sacrifice his son.  One way that Kierkegaard highlights the anguish in which Abraham found himself is to suppose that this journey into the wilderness to make the sacrifice was made in silence.  No one knew what to say while presumably everyone knew what was really going on. 

          The Abraham story probably is about 3,000 years old.  It comes down to us from a time in history when child-sacrifice was practiced.  There are indications that a rather large number of primitive cultures all around the world practiced child-sacrifice.  While there are some difficulties discovering what actually happened, there are also indications that near neighbors of the early Hebrews had an organized system of child-sacrifice.  These people apparently had a large bronze figure with extended arms.  A child would be placed in these arms and then the statute would be heated with a fire built at or in its base.  The heat caused the statutes arms to extend and the child was then dropped into the fire and cremated.  It was also reported that the priests beat drums during this ceremony to drown out the sound of the infants screaming thus preventing the child’s parents from hearing the horrible anguish of their child.  There are indicators in the writing of the prophet Micah, who was also active about nearly 3,000 years ago and also in work of Jeremiah who was writing about 2500 years ago, that the Hebrew people were aware of these horrifying customs of their neighbors.  It is not clear whether or not the ancient Hebrews, before the time of Abraham had similar practices. It is in this context that Abraham becomes convinced that God is demanding that he sacrifice his first born (and only) son.  I invite you to consider what some of the roots of this nearly universal practice of child-sacrifice might be.   It appears that in most of the societies practicing such things there was a two-part belief:  that God is a fierce power who threatens to destroy people because people are wicked, wrong, messed up, and inadequate by nature.  The only way for these inherently flawed people to protect themselves from the vicious and somewhat capricious actions of this dangerous God is to make a sacrifice that proves to God that the people are submissive, obedient, compliant, and terribly sorry for their inadequacies.  The sacrifice of one of their children seems to be supreme proof of the people’s faithfulness.  There are even stories from some cultures that families bought or adopted children from poor families and then sacrificed these poor souls as substitutes for their own birth children.  This led in at least one case to families feeling forced to “repent” of these wicked ways and sacrifice their birth children when the sacrificing of substitute victims didn’t seem to appease God and gain the people the right divine favors.  If these people’s perspective sounds a bit like the concept of original sin that would pervade centuries of Christian thought, you may be onto something.  The doctrine of original sin may have eventually been separated from the practice of child-sacrifice, but the two actually seem to be related.

 It’s possible that first century people might have at least heard stories about the practices of child sacrifice even if it was no longer done in the Roman empire. However, inconvenient children in Greece and in the Roman empire were exposed to the elements and left to die. Plutarch (ca. 46–120 CE) mentions child sacrifice happening in Carthage. Archeologists have found considerable evidence of child burial in Carthage, but there is some disagreement about the practice, or at least the extent, of child sacrifice.  Child sacrifice was an attempt to placate angry deities and so in tough times –when crops failed, or the nation was threatened by foreign adversaries—child sacrificing increased. There is a link between the people of Carthage and the ancient Canaanites who practiced child-sacrifice. Indeed, it is still being practiced in Africa. “In the 21st century, such practices have been reported in Nigeria, Uganda, Swaziland, Liberia, Tanzania, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, as well as Mozambique, and Mali.” [See Wikipedia, child sacrifice in Africa. My reader is cautioned about the gory details that are reported in the Wikipedia article on child sacrifice which includes such things as removing organs from a living child’s body and children being buried alive.] It could be that people who had an awareness of these practices might have been impressed by the notion that God allowed his only Son to be sacrificed.  That would have been an impressive statement about the ultimate sacrifice requiring the end of sacrificial death as a component of worship.   Paul (and others) could have used this logic to appeal to people interested in Judaism but repelled by the concept of animal sacrificing.  Paul’s teaching may have seemed to many as a way of bringing new life to the Judaism they already knew.

It seems quite possible that what Paul developed as a rhetorical device to spread the teachings of Jesus while preserving the essence of Judaism got turned into the essential truth about Christianity. In other words, here’s a classic example of how the tail ends up wagging the dog. We know that there was early conflict amongst the Way Walkers about Jewish and Gentile versions of Christianity. Sadly enough, we also know how the church came to discriminate against Jewish people. In fact, it has been suggested that some of the interpretations of who Judas was were manifestations of early anti-Semitism. Only very recently has the Roman catholic church stopped blaming the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus; within my lifetime the phrase “perfidious Jews” was taken out of the Roman liturgy (1963). The emphasis on Jesus as a sacrificial offering has often overshadowed the teachings of Jesus. Very recently a leading evangelical preacher was quoted in the New York Times as saying that the teachings of Jesus were not really the important thing about him, but that the sacrificial aspect of his death was of critical importance.  This seems to fly in the face of the fact that the words for “cross” and “crucifixion” appear 73 times in the New Testament, while the words for “love” (verb and noun) appear 259 times. Curiously enough, the terms “cross” and “crucify” only appear 18 times in Pauline writings which represents about 25% of the New Testament occurrences of those words.

The illogic of God requiring child sacrifice in the person of Jesus has led to a plethora of theological musings which has largely distracted the church from realizing that substitutionary atonement requires the concept that God the Father endorses child sacrifice. It is quite a stretch to go from the fundamental effort to portray God as such a loving presence to the hideous idea that he would be willing to have his son murdered! Richard Rohr in a recent writing identifies Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033-1109) as the author of a paper which stated that Jesus needed to die in order to restore the honor of God.  From this paper came the concept that we know as substitutionary atonement.  Rohr also tells us that for about 1,000 years prior to Anselm’s pronouncement, most Christians believed that the crucifixion was a ransom paid to the devil.  To put it another way:  for about half the history of Christianity, the concept of original sin did not exist.

The emphasis on Jesus as a sacrificial victim has distracted the church from trying to understand and appreciate the actual life of a man called Jesus, the examples he provided for how to live, and the teaching he shared with his followers. It is not too difficult to make a case for the proposition that Jesus was a landless, rebellious peasant who was equally critical of both the Roman and the Jewish establishments. However, such an image is very much a minority position in established Christianity.

          Using a concordance of the New Testament, I counted the number of times the word “sin” appears in Paul’s writing: that number is 53 and of those 53 occurrences 40 of them are in the letter to the Romans. The word “love” appears in the same writings of Paul 73 times. It is my impression that Christian fundamentalists overemphasize Paul’s concern about sin and discount the importance of love in his writing and in the entire New Testament.

          In the ancient world, military victors often castrated the enemies they had defeated. Of course, castration destroys a man’s ability to be a father. Castration was thus used to put an end to a particular line of descendants thus ensuring that a defeated king would not have any descendants who might eventually become usurpers of the throne of that defeated king. Castrated males, also known as eunuchs, were often used to protect harems and to work in some other sensitive political positions. For a long time, young boys were castrated before puberty to create singers called castrati. These “boys” grew up to be the equivalent of male sopranos. In fact, a lot of music was written for these castrati. This child abuse custom was finally made illegal in the late 19^th century. One could make the case for the notion that castration was used not only to deprive people of their natural power but also to allow the authorities to manipulate the victims.

          I’m suggesting that a lot of so-called Christian theology, by overemphasizing Pauline ideas about substitutionary atonement and underemphasizing Pauline ideas about love, has castrated Paul. The result of this helped in the neutering of Jesus. This line of thinking discounts the role of Jesus as a teacher or wisdom figure and puts the emphasis on Jesus as a victim. To put it quite plainly, the emphasis on substitutionary atonement casts God in the role of a murderer who continues the ancient tradition of child sacrifice. Of course, Christian theology has avoided these rather stark implications by engaging in irrational sophistry. Sophistry “means the clever use of arguments that seem true but are really false, in order to deceive people.” (Cambridge English dictionary) Although it might be impossible to tell exactly, it might even be that the early writings of Paul, which preceded the Gospels, influenced the writing of the Gospels.

          The church system has allowed itself to ignore the radical teachings of a neutered Jesus. It seems clear enough to me that across the span of history and across the variety of manifestations of the church there has been little unanimity with regard to the definition of sin. If the primary perspective on the person of Jesus sees him as a sacrificial victim and the definition of the sins for which this victim was murdered is not consistent, then it becomes easier to avoid consideration of Jesus’ teaching. In fact, it becomes necessary to avoid the teaching in order to ignore the inconsistent definitions of sin.

The conception of Jesus as the victim murdered for sin, often coupled with declarations of his innocence, ignores the historicity of the man’s life. It is difficult to imagine that Jesus, who was probably 35 years of age at the time of the crucifixion, had never married. It would appear to be in the church’s best interest to ignore the possibility that Jesus was married. Obviously, a neutered Jesus would not have children. It may also be in the church’s interest to see Jesus as a young man. While in our time, 35 years of age is considered young, in first century Palestine a 35 year old man would have been considered an adult at about age 13 and anyone over 55 would be seen as old. In terms of our understanding of the life-cycle, Jesus would have been well into the second half of life.  I have never seen a portrayal of Jesus as a wise, old man. These assumptions enable the church to maintain the image of Jesus as an innocent victim and ignore the possibility that he may have had children. When we consider that the ministry of Jesus lasted for about three years, we are forced to realize that our records of that ministry are woefully inadequate and probably distorted since the earliest of them were not written until at least 20 years [most scholars would probably say closer to 50 years] after the crucifixion. Galilee, which was about 90 miles north of Jerusalem, was apparently a hotbed of resistance to the establishment. Jesus is reputed to have gathered crowds there. The Gospels number those crowds in the thousands and even if those numbers are somewhat inflated both the Roman and Jewish establishments would find the gathering of large crowds in Galilee to be a major concern. Most of the towns in Galilee were small rural villages with rarely more than 400 inhabitants. Bethsaida, which was a fishing village on the shore of the Sea of Galilee may have had a population of 4,000. If rumors reached Jerusalem that Jesus had crowds of the thousands in Galilee that would have been a huge number. It does appear that the authorities sent investigators to Galilee to check things out.  Jesus was definitely on the radar screen of the authorities well before his arrest.

          The church has also sanctioned the sanitizing of the crucifixion.  The Romans stripped the victims of crucifixion naked.  There is an account of soldiers casting lots for Jesus’ garment which implies that he was crucified naked.  However, I doubt that there is any example of a portrayal of the crucifixion that shows a naked Jesus.  There is also a report that a spear was stuck in Jesus’ side to ascertain that he was dead; this may be a euphemism for the practice of impaling the victims of crucifixion by ramming a spear or sword into the victim’s anus.  I once had planned to include such a description of the crucifixion in a church program and was told it was too violent and awful.  That really made it clear to me that the church needs a clean picture of a painless crucifixion.  Jesus not only gets neutered; he also gets sanitized. 

Crucifixion was a penalty reserved for terrorists and rebels.  Jesus may have been considered by some as a terrorist.  The title Iscariot affixed to Judas’ name suggests he was a Sicarii.  These people carried very short daggers, infiltrated crowds of people, assassinated victims and slipped away.  They wanted to free Israel from Roman domination.  While some scholars believe the terrorist attribution to Judas is inaccurate, the long association of a terrorist title with at least one of the disciples of Jesus along with the execution of Jesus as a terrorist, may tell us that our typical pictures of Jesus, the gentle, nice, “pretty” man are way off target.  It becomes easy to ignore the historical context of Jesus life and focus on the irrational concept that humanity cannot see that God is love unless God arranges the murder of Jesus.

What about making a case that Jesus died to protect the integrity of his message?  Something has to be very important for a person to choose to die defending it.  Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem and his deliberate management of the events of the week including determining when to die—to maximize the impact of his death– seem to point to a man intent on proclaiming the importance of his teaching. The occurrences of the last week of Jesus life indicates that there was a lot of careful planning almost to a level of micro-management to ensure that the authorities’ ability to act would fit into Jesus’ plans. For example, Jesus came and went through the city gate every day that week and apparently made sure he was out of the city before the gate was closed for the night. The night of the Last Supper was the only night Jesus chose to stay in the city and he arranged the place where he would meet with his disciples that night and gave his disciples instructions on how to find it. They are to follow a man carrying a water jar—which would have been the task of women and which would have fooled the Romans who thought of Jews as inferior people.  There is some indication that Jesus had chosen Judas to arrange for his arrest. One of the ignored features of that night is that Jesus was not arrested in the upper room where he and the disciples had supper. This suggests that Jesus and Judas had prearranged a place where the arrest would take place.  The reports we have indicate that Judas left the dinner at Jesus’ behest [“what you are going to do, do quickly.” John 12:24] and that after that the entire band went to the Garden of Gethsemane.  Judas would have to have known that’s what would happen so that he knew where to bring the authorities to arrest Jesus. That would indicate that Judas actually played a key role in the events of that night at Jesus’ request. It might also have been part of the plan for the arrest to take place out of doors so the disciples could easily elude the authorities who came to arrest Jesus. This would have insured that there were live witnesses to carry on the work Jesus had begun. Thus, Jesus controlled the time and place when he would be arrested and seems to have arranged to be crucified while the lambs for Passover were being killed (although there is a good deal of scholarly debate about the exact correlation between Jesus death and the slaughter of the lambs). I doubt that very many Christians would seriously entertain an image of Jesus as a crafty, clever and wise politician who knew how to work (or game) the system. An image like that would conflict with ideas about Jesus as an innocent victim.   However, that image seems to fit well with Jesus’ own recommendation that his followers be as crafty as serpents and as innocent as doves: “I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves, so be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.”  (Matthew 10:16) The Jesus who says this is telling us he is a worldly-wise politician as well as a spiritual leader. Judas has been anathematized by the church for betraying Jesus. Here is more illogic about substitutionary atonement:  if substitutionary atonement is THE critical concept about the death of Jesus, why not celebrate the man who helped make it happen?  I can easily imagine that after the crucifixion Judas would want to have killed himself if he had expected something else to happen.  But there is the puzzlement about a document known as the gospel of Judas, which takes a rather different approach to things—did Judas write it (not likely) or does it represent an oral tradition flowing from Judas himself to later followers?  The gospel of Judas opposes substutionary atonement!  Did he die at his own hand but much later than is supposed? Did the other disciples, who may have had a hand in the stories recorded in the gospels, actually stone Judas as the Gospel of Judas claims?  Were the disciples angry with Judas or even envious that Jesus had chosen him to play a key role in the Maundy Thursday night drama?

          Among the things that are lost in this un-sane process is the model of the suffering servant who confronts corrupt power whether it appears in a religious institution or a political system, who champions the cause of the poor, and offers blessings to peacekeepers regardless of the personal cost.  This suffering servant knows what he is doing and chooses carefully when, where and how to deliver his message.  I suppose we would have difficulty with considering Jesus to be a clever, crafty suffering servant. I think the reality is that Jesus was a much more sophisticated person than we usually suppose that he was. Our supposition is probably encouraged by the tendency to see Jesus as a naïve, innocent victim– a perspective that seeing Jesus as a sacrificial offering supports.