Holy and Safe
On Decontamination, Atonement, and Rahner's Rule
Defenders of penal substitutionary atonement often cite what they believe to be a knockout prooftext from Hebrews 9:22: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”
This seems pretty clear cut. And yet, what is often missed is how Hebrews 9:22 is being read from within a forensic/penal framework, specifically the idea that the shed blood appeases the wrath of God. But that’s not the proper framework from which to understand Hebrews 9:22.
As scholars like Jacob Milgrom have pointed out, the use of blood in the book of Leviticus, especially in the Day of Atonement rituals, has to do with ritual cleansing and decontamination. Blood, as life, is the only detergent (Milgrom’s word) strong enough to wipe away the pollution of sin and death. God isn’t angry at the goat sacrificed in Leviticus 16. The goat isn’t being punished. So there’s no sense in which the offered goat is being “substituted” for Israel in a forensic sense, suffering the wrath of God in Israel’s place. Punishment just isn’t the issue in Leviticus 16. The framework isn’t forensic/penal but cultic, having to do with holiness and contamination. The critical issue is proximity to God, being able to approach and live with God, in light of our sin.
So, there is a hazard being negotiated, but that hazard is how moral defilement makes approach to God risky and impossible. Thus the need for a detergent, a cleansing agent to decontaminate the people and the space. Only blood is strong enough to perform this function. This is the context of Hebrews 9:22. Without the necessary detergent, approach to God is impossible.
And this is one of the great themes of Hebrews, how Jesus provides his own blood as the detergent par excellence, a cleansing agent so powerful it wipes away sin and death once for all. No repeated cleansings are necessary. And because of this detergent’s power, we can be bold in “drawing near to God”:
Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Hebrews 10:19-22)
Notice, again, how the framework here is cultic rather than forensic/penal. We have “confidence to enter the Most Holy Place” because of “the blood of Jesus.” We can “draw near” because our hearts have been “sprinkled to cleanse us.” The images of atonement here have to do with Levitical decontamination via the cleansing power of the detergent provided by Christ.
To deepen the point, let me also invoke Rahner’s Rule. The Catholic theologian famously declared, “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity.” That is to say, the actions of God that we see revealed within history (what is called the “economic Trinity”) are identical to God’s very nature, essence, and life (what is called the “immanent Trinity”). What this means for me, in relation to atonement-as-decontamination, is that while God is holy, God also proactively cleanses the space that makes our approach possible. Crucially, to keep with Rahner’s Rule, this isn’t to be viewed as a sequence of events: Act 1: Holiness, Act 2: Human sin brings contamination, Act 3: Risk in drawing near, Act 4: Blood shed (detergent and cleansing provided), Act 5: Confidence in drawing near. Rather, the holiness of God and the provision of decontamination (acts within the “economy” of salvation) reflect the eternal and unchanging nature of God. Simply put, it is true that God’s holiness is risky for sinful human persons, but it’s also true that God’s very nature is the provision that makes our approach possible.
That is to say, God’s holiness doesn’t precede his safety. Nor is God’s unapproachability prior to his approachability. These are not sequences in a drama, but reflections of God’s very nature.
Simply put, God is, simultaneously, holy and safe because that is who God is. The vision of Jesus we behold on the cross is a theophany of this duality. Before God, sin is both exposed and pardoned from before the foundation of the world.
Thank you, Richard. This is quite helpful. Rahner makes sense, and we already have this kind of thought in Orthodoxy.
Fr Aiden Kimel approaches difficult texts asking the question how they can be preached, on the basis of the Resurrection, in order to focus on God's goodness and ultimate restoration. So one would start, "Christ is risen, therefore...." Your post today completes this for me with the idea, "....therefore it - and He - is the proof that God has provided everything necessary for approach to himself in the cultic sense, connected to the Incarnation with God's own voluntary actions from his love." Or something like that :)
Dana
Thank you for this helpful post. I think you’re spot on in identifying a misapplication of a juridical lens over top of that passage.
Thinking out loud here about the application of Rahner’s Rule to this particular aspect of soteriology:
It’s easy to grasp how God’s processio (nature, essence) is what makes approaching him dangerous when one is defiled by sin. He is a consuming fire after all.
What aspect of his nature is bound up in his missio? I mean, how do we respect the limitations of RR so as not to conflate the necessary distinctions between the immanent and economic?
If Jesus’ nature is bound up in his saving work (according to RR), and if he is only Savior because of his work, how is his deity not dependent on his humanity?
Perhaps I’m being too nit picky but I think that saying his nature is both dangerous and safe is something different than saying the immanent and economic are the same.