C. Redemption
The
language of “redemption” (apolytrōsis)
would have had a rich background for any 1st-century audience. Slaves could be
“redeemed” by paying a suitable ransom price; so too could prisoners of war.
The association of this language with freeing slaves made it natural for Jews
to use the vocabulary of redemption to refer above all to the great act of
liberation by God in rescuing the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (cf. Deut
7:8 and elsewhere). Although the redemption of slaves or prisoners in the
secular realm always involved the payment of a ransom price (lytron), it is very doubtful if Jews
ever thought in such concrete terms in speaking of God’s action at the Exodus
as a redemption. Rather, God’s “redeeming” of Israel simply referred to His
rescue, with no idea of a price being paid. (See Hill 1967: 49–81 contra Morris
1955: 9–59.)
NT writers
used this language freely, bringing out different aspects of the imagery
evoked. Thus texts such as Luke 24:21 simply refer to God’s hoped-for
intervention in the future in bringing liberation. The same is probably true in
Rom 8:23.
Whether NT
writers ever conceived of Jesus’ death as a “ransom price,” a price that had to
be paid to secure the release of humanity, is more uncertain. This idea became
extremely popular in patristic thought with great discussions about whom the
price was paid to (God? or the Devil?) and the nature of the transaction
involved. It is however difficult to find such ideas in the NT itself (though
see Marshall 1974 for a different view). Texts like Eph 1:7 (“redemption
through his blood”) and 1 Pet 1:18–19 (“you were redeemed … with the precious
blood of Christ”) can scarcely be made to support the theory of Jesus’ death as
a ransom price paid, since both texts do not use the Gk construction of a
genitive of price. Both are using the language of redemption more generally to
claim that the liberation which the Christian can now enjoy has been achieved
by means of Jesus’ death, without spelling out the means more precisely (see
Hill 1967: 70–74).
The related
language of Paul, “you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20; 7:23), should
also probably not be pressed too far. Paul is simply using the language of the
slave market to stress the fact that Christians have now changed their
allegiance: they are no longer under their old master (sin or whatever); they
are now under a new master in God. The precise nature of the price is not
discussed. Similarly Paul’s language of Jesus “redeeming” those under the curse
of the Law by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13; 4:5) can only with difficulty
support the view that Jesus’ death is being interpreted as a ransom price paid
in a substitutionary sense. Far more important for Paul here seems to be the
representative nature of Jesus’ death (see Hooker 1971). Jesus’ becoming a
curse for humanity involves his joining humanity; his life of obedience to
death, and his vindication by God in the resurrection, annuls the curse of the
Law and enables the new life of freedom to be available to all who are “in” him
(cf. Gal 3:14). Again, the language of “redeeming” is probably being used in
general terms to indicate the liberation (here from the Law) achieved by Jesus,
but without pressing the analogy of secular redemption any further to think in
terms of specific ransom prices.
The nearest
one gets to an idea of a price being paid is in Mark 10:45, where Jesus’ death
is said to be a lytron anti pollon,
“a ransom for many.” The use of anti
(“in place of,” “for”), if pressed, does suggest ideas of substitution and
equivalence, and the ransom idea in lytron
could be said to reinforce this. However, one should not read too much into
this. There is for example no talk of “sin” here and one should not necessarily
interpret the verse as implying a view of Jesus’ death as an expiatory
sacrifice for sin with a substitutionary idea of sacrifice implied. This
probably confuses categories unnecessarily. There is a close parallel to the
ideas concerned in 4 Macc 17:22 (see
Williams). However, it is as likely that the lytron vocabulary is intended to evoke the language of the great
act of redemption in the OT whereby Yahweh redeemed the Israelites from Egypt
and established them as the chosen nation. The communal, even covenantal,
overtones of the language may be just as important as any ideas of precise
equivalents in ransom prices paid (see Hooker 1959: 77–78).
(C. M. Tuckett, "Atonement in the NT," The Anchor Yale Bible
Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. [New York: Doubleday, 1992],
1:520-21
