Monday, October 17, 2022

Terry J. Wright on Christ's Atonement and Propitiation

  

If wrath is not constitutive of God’s character, then, it would be surprising if the sacrificial system was given to Israel solely to avert that wrath. This is perhaps too restricted a role for the system and does not seem to account for the fact that other sacrifices are offered in thanksgiving or celebration. Furthermore, the declarations ‘be forgiven’ ([Lev] 4:20c, 26c, 31c, 35c) or ‘be clean’ in other passages (12:8; 14:18-20, 53; 16:30) after atonement is made suggests a close link between the state of forgiveness and the state of being ritually clean. So although the ḥaṭṭāt offering (4:1-5:13) atones for sin and enables forgiveness to be declared, we must further recognise that the verb kippēr is found in contexts of both moral wrongdoing and cultic or ritual impurity When the priest makes atonement, he pronounces either forgiveness or ritual purity as the situation warrants. Accordingly, we may suggest that within kipper can at times connote propitiation, it does not entail propitiation, or require atonement to be understood solely as or equal to propitiation. Atonement deals with sin fundamentally by purifying that which has been defiled by sin.

 

The proper context for understanding the sacrificial system, then, is not as a means to avert God’s anger—though that is not entirely foreign to the system, but as a way to maintain the divine presence in Israel’s midst. Throughout Leviticus, God is shown primarily not as wrathful but as holy and whose holiness characterises all that he is and does and says (see, for example, 11:44-45; 19:2; 30:3, 8, 26; 22:32). It is in God’s holy presence that Moses receives the instructions for making sacrifices and it is entirely apposite, therefore, to understand the sacrificial system within this context of divine holiness, as a response to Israel’s sin, her covenant unfaithfulness, which stains that which should be holy. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster Theological Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 172-73)

  

Typically, the hand-laying element in the ḥaṭṭāt offerings (4:4, 15, 24, 29, 33) signifies that the animal for sacrifice truly belongs to the person offering it and so, by this declaration of ownership, is to act for and in that person’s place; there is little point in the blood of the animal being used to purify the sacred things if the person who has contributed to their contamination has not admitted responsibility for that act through this rite. (ibid., 178)

 

Further Reading:


Critique of "The Christ Who Heals"