Speculative Reflections on Atonement, Punishment, and Guilt: Part 1, The Cultic Function of Atonement

Since my recent reflection on "falling from grace," bringing Numbers 15 into that conversation, I've been ruminating and messing around with a very speculative reflection about the relationship between atonement and punishment and how all that might be translated into an eschatological framework. This one of those series that I'm beginning where I don't know where I'm going or how it'll end. Experimental theology ahead. 

To get started, in this post let me recap some of the things I recently shared about atonement, filling those thoughts out a bit, and nudging forward.

First, in the Levitical imagination atonement did not restore a broken relationship but rather maintained an ongoing relationship. This insight, right here, flips the script on how we tend to think about atonement. In a penal, forensic framework we are "lost." Atonement is made for us and we become "saved." But that's not how atonement functions in Leviticus. On the Day of Atonement the Israelites were not lost. They were already in relation with God. Atonement was made to maintain that relation. 

Simply put, in Leviticus atonement wasn't forensic, it was cultic. Atonement decontaminated the space allowing Israel to maintain proximity to the holiness of God. 

In the book of Hebrews Jesus is described as providing a "better sacrifice" than the blood of bulls and goats. But the Levitical framework is carried over. Jesus' blood decontaminates the space allowing the faithful yet sinful community to maintain proximity to the holiness of God. Again, the issue isn't forensic but cultic. Due to the decontamination provided by Jesus, we can draw near to God, even into the Holy of Holies. A previously unimaginable closeness. Hebrews 10: 

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

The distinction that Hebrews makes between Jesus' blood and the Levitical sacrifices doesn't concern the function of atonement. It concerns, rather, how the ongoing decontamination is provided. The decontamination provided by the Levitical sacrifices could only be achieved via repetition. Jesus, by contrast, provides a once for all decontamination that doesn't have to be repeated. The decontamination provided by Jesus is ongoing because it is perpetual. Hebrews 10:

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Again, notice that the function of atonement--a decontamination that maintains relation--is the same. Atonement isn't a forensic verdict. It is, rather, a cultic act that allows the sinful community to maintain proximity to the holiness of God. See, for example, 1 John 1:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It's the same cultic framework from Leviticus, atonement providing an ongoing decontamination, a continual cleansing, that maintains relation to God's holiness in light of our sinfulness. Atonement is less about moving outsiders to insiders than keeping insiders on the inside. 

That said, as I described in my recent series, high-handed and defiant sin, throwing off the yoke of the Torah, would cause a person to be "cut off" from the community and covenantal relation with God. As described in Numbers 15, atonement would not cover such sin. Such a person was "lost" and "dead." The Levitical sacrifices provided no remedy. And once again the logic carries over in the New Testament vision. Again from Hebrews 10: "For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins."

In such a case, the issue is no longer cultic decontamination. Resurrection was necessary.