It is my pleasure to introduce David Moffitt, author of Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (Baker Academic).
Dr. David M. Moffitt is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews (Fife, United Kingdom). He is also Extraordinary Researcher, The Unit for Reformational Theology and the Development of the South African Society, Faculty of Theology, North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.
His book, Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Novum Testamentum Supplements 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) was awarded a Manfred Lautenschäger Award for Theological Promise in 2013. He has also co-authored with Stefan Alkier, New Testament Basics: A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text (Fortress, 2022).
Dr. Moffitt was gracious enough to conduct an interview with me on his latest book, Rethinking the Atonement.
The Interview
B. J. Oropeza
What did Christ’s death accomplish? How does his death repair or cover the sins of humanity? Over the
centuries there have been various attempts at interpreting the atonement of Christ, such as the penal-substitutionary view in which Jesus in essence was punished in place of the sinner on the cross. Also there is the Christus Victor view in which Jesus in essence triumphed over the forces of Sin, Death, and Satan on the cross. And there are of course other views, too.
The title of your work, Rethinking the Atonement seems to suggest another alternative. What is your view of the atonement of Christ?
David Moffitt
I think there are some real problems with the way “the atonement” gets discussed today, problems that create conceptual confusion. Simply put, “the atonement” often today refers to all the salvific work Jesus accomplished when he died on the cross.
When Jesus said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30) as he died, many assume that this can only mean that all of Jesus’s salvific work is completed. Many assume that the “It” that is finished self-evidently refers to all of Jesus’s sacrificial and atoning work.
I aim to rethink this kind of interpretation of Christ’s atoning work, especially from the perspective of Levitical sacrifice.
Oropeza
For our viewers, Levitical sacrifice basically refers to the types of sacrifices Israelite priests conducted in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, such as the animal sacrifices we find on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16.
Moffitt
If we narrow the concept of atonement to the context of Levitical sacrifice and the ministry of the Old Testament high priests, there are significant problems with an account of “the atonement” that reduces Jesus’s atoning work only to the crucifixion.
These are related to problems with our understanding of the practice of sacrifice itself. We tend not to even notice some of the problems here. For instance, many of us today don’t realize that exactly zero animals were killed on the altars at the tabernacle or the temple in Jerusalem. We assume altars are for killing animals. This is simply wrong. The altars were where sacrifices were given to God, but they were not where animals were slaughtered or killed. That is just a fundamental misunderstanding.
But the fact that atonement is often linked with priestly work at the altars raises questions about how closely atonement would be associated with the slaughter of the animal, which again was not performed on an altar. There are actually lots of other features of sacrifice and atonement that we tend not to notice or to misunderstand.
Oropeza
What would be some of those other features?
Moffitt
For example, sacrifice consisted of a process that involved numerous things that happened after an animal is killed. This indicates that, contrary to our common assumptions, sacrifice was not focused on slaughtering animals. The focus was instead on bringing the blood and flesh of the sacrifice to the altar and so into God’s house and presence.
This is connected to another misconception we often hold. We tend to think about sacrifice as ultimately being about giving something up. Ancient people, however, would think more about giving something to a god. For Jewish people, sacrifice was about giving a gift to the God whose temple was in Jerusalem.
Furthermore, giving sacrifices to God happened by priests taking the sacrifices into his house and presence. On the special day known as the Day of Atonement, atonement is partly accomplished by the high priest going into the holy of holies to bring blood and incense into God’s presence and offer them to him there.
Oropeza
So how does this tie in with Jesus in the New Testament?
Moffitt
Observations such as these indicate that sacrifice and atonement were about a lot more than just killing animals.
When I speak of rethinking the atonement, I am exploring the possibility that when early Christians reflected on Jesus in terms of sacrifice and atonement, they could think about a lot more than just Jesus’s death.
Indeed, I am arguing that at least some New Testament texts, especially in Hebrews, show that they could think about Jesus entering the heavenly holy of holies as a high priest and there presenting himself to God and ministering on behalf of his people in order to do something analogous to what the high priests on earth did—make atonement.
Given this focus, I typically try to stress that I am exploring “sacrificial atonement,” which is a narrower context and account of “atonement” than often thought about today. Today atonement can become a category that has to do with all the salvific work Jesus did, which was finished when he died on the cross.
Oropeza
Could you elaborate on the Day of Atonement in relation to your view?
Moffitt
When it comes to the Day of Atonement, the Epistle to the Hebrews works with sustained analogies between Jesus’s ascension into God’s heavenly presence and ongoing high-priestly ministry, on the one hand, and some of the key elements of the Levitical high priest’s activities and ministry on the Day of Atonement, on the other. Here we are clearly dealing with sacrificial ideas.
But how does the high priest on earth make atonement for the people on the Day of Atonement? It is not simply by slaughtering animals. If all the high priest did was kill some animals, there would be no atonement because no sacrifices would have been offered/given to God. Rather, after the animals (a bull and a goat) were killed, the high priest took their blood into the holy of holies and offered it to God. Hebrews speaks about this in passages like Hebrews 9:7 .
This pattern of entering God’s presence is followed by Jesus. He does not offer himself as a sacrifice to God when he dies. Rather, it is when he passed through the heavens as the great high priest (Heb 4:14) and entered into the heavenly holy of holies to appear before God for us (Heb 9:24) that he offered himself to God as the ultimate atoning sacrifice.
He now does what the high priest was likely thought to do while in God’s presence offering blood in the holy of holies—intercede for the people. Hebrews 7:25 says that Jesus is able to save his people completely because he always lives to intercede for them. All of this is tracking with the atoning ministry of the earthly high priests who went into God’s presences in the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement to offer the blood and, presumably, pray for the people. This is one of the main ways that the high priests made atonement for the people on the Day of Atonement.
In a highly analogous way, Hebrews is arguing that Jesus, after he died, rose from the dead and ascended into the heavenly tabernacle as the great high priest where he now intercedes for the people. Jesus is now doing the kind of atoning work for his people that the high priests did on the Day of Atonement.
Hebrews is using the process of offering a sacrifice to God to reflect on how Jesus has ascended into to God’s presence to present himself before God and do what the high priests did on the Day of Atonement—minister on behalf of the people in order that atonement would be made for them.
Oropeza
How does this view relate to the presentation of atonement we seem to find in the apparently substitutionary (or representational) aspect of the suffering Servant in Isaiah 53?
Moffitt
For what it’s worth, I think Isaiah 53 presents the death of the Servant figure as substitutionary (and penal). What I don’t think Isaiah 53 is doing is drawing on Levitical sacrificial categories to describe the Servant’s death and suffering as sacrifice and sacrificial atonement. I’m not alone on this point, but anyone who knows the literature will know this is a hotly debated topic.
Oropeza
Yes it is! I could think of some edited compilations of various interpretations on this passage that have come out in the last few decades.*
Moffitt
Without going too far into the weeds (there are lots of exegetical details that need to be thought through here), my view on Isaiah 53 is that the work the Servant is called to do is not sacrificial. This is largely because the Servant is called to restore the covenant relationship between God and his people precisely in a context in which sacrifices cannot be offered to and would not be accepted by God.
The covenant is in breach, the people are in exile, Jerusalem and its temple are destroyed—sacrifices cannot be offered and texts like Lev 26:31 suggest that in such a situation God would not accept them even if they could be offered.
The Servant’s role, then, is not that of sacrifice but that of healing the covenant relationship so that the people can be restored to the land and sacrifices can again be offered. Notice that text in Isaiah 54-56 presents a prophetic vision of renewal, blessing, and restoration between God and his people that includes those formerly excluded now being invited to worship at the temple (esp. Isa 56).
This renewal of relationship is clearly a salvific task. It is “atoning” in the broad sense of the term, not least because it contributes to reconciliation (I take it that a restored covenant relationship is a reconciled relationship). But this is not “sacrificial atonement.”
Oropeza
I like that you bring out the importance of covenant breach and restoration in this passage. That’s an aspect overlooked or not stressed enough in some of the literature I’ve read.
Moffitt
Without question Isaiah 53 is a central text that early Christians drew upon to understand some of the ways that the death of Jesus is significant and salvific. I suspect that the primary categories that they are thinking about are categories that have to do with renewed relationship between God and his people and the blessings of that restored covenant.
Jesus’s suffering and death do the kinds of things that the Isaianic Servant’s suffering and death are said to do. In New Testament terms, this has to do with redemption and the inauguration of the New Covenant relationship. If, however, these are not sacrificial categories (if the Servant does not die to make “sacrificial atonement”), then it may be a mistake to read Levitical sacrificial, atoning ideas into the New Testament’s use of Isaiah 53 to reflect on Jesus’s death.
Oropeza
Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon….
Notes
* Here is the information on the four volumes that focus on Isaiah 53:
- William H. Bellinger and William R. Farmer, eds., Jesus and the Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 and Christian Origins (Trinity Press, 1998)
- S. R. Driver and Adolf Neubauer, The “Suffering Servant” of Isaiah, according to the Jewish Interpreters (Wipf & Stock, 1999 reprint)
- Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds., The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, trans. D. Bailey (Eerdmans, 2004),
- Darrell L. Bock and Mitch Glaser, eds. The Gospel According to Isaiah 53: Encountering the Suffering Servant in Jewish and Christian Theology (Kregel, 2012).
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