Upstream James asked about the scriptural passage concerning the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham:
I’ve always wondered this about Abraham: if he would obey the command to slit the throat of his innocent son, how exactly are we to suppose he was able to discern the voice of God from the voice of Satan?
This also raises the question as to whether he obeyed God not because He was good but because He was powerful and if he would have obeyed the dictates of an equally omnipotent Fiend.
If the story is simply a parable and a myth, could not the moral have been better served through a less literal take on “sacrifice”?
This requirement of the shedding of blood for atonement is still a personal stumbling block of Christian theology. Must this bleeding also be accompanied by either human or animal pain or is it simply the draining of the body’s fluids that God requires? I’m not sure exactly what to make of such a being …
Bill Congdon responds:
Well, I will try. James, it’s an excellent question, but I think you’re falling into the dual trap, so common these days, of taking the story literally and then trying to psychologize the characters. The answer, as always, can be found in the text itself, without reference to an outside perspective, although Fr. Reardon’s and Michael’s traditional readings are certainly good and useful. The problem is that they depend on perspectives which didn’t exist when Genesis was written, but which developed much later with the writing of the New Testament, and therefore do not take the original intent of the Genesis writer into account. We must read this text (and the rest of the Bible) according to its own original context, as a story, not a symbolic codification of later theological principles. Or, for that matter, of psychology, which simply didn’t exist as a literary tool at the time.
Within the text of Genesis itself, then, several elements build up to the story (or “pericope,” to use technical language) of the “sacrifice of Isaac.” The most important element, of course, is God’s promise to Abraham first stated in Gen 12:1-4:
Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.”
God repeats these promises several times between Gen 12 and Gen 22, and equate to God assuring Abraham that he will be immortal (through his descendents, the standard understanding of immortality in Old Testament times). At the same time, though, the promises (and therefore the very existence of the people for whom this is a story of origins) are threatened by various circumstances. In Gen 16, Abraham himself tries to get around the problem of Sarah’s barren womb by following her suggestion that he get a child by Haggar her slave. Sarah herself laughs at God’s promise in Gen 18. And in Gen 20, the future of the nation is threatened when its mother is almost taken from Abraham by Abimelech. By the time Isaac is conceived and born in Gen 21, the hearer breathes a sigh of relief.
But the relief is short-lived! No sooner is Isaac grown to boyhood then God tells Abraham to sacrifice him at Moriah. This is intended precisely to horrify the hearer, as we are still horrified today. How could a loving and just God ask for such a thing? Well, He does, specifically to test Abraham’s faith. And what is the point? To inform the hearer that it is God and no other–not Abraham, not Sarah–who fulfills this promise. It is a powerful statement intended to convey the absolute authority of God and the futility of man to contend with it. God made the promise; God can take it away. Blessed be God beyond all human logic or instinct.
So the point of the story isn’t that Abraham really knew that God would come through in the clutch. In fact, God’s command goes precisely against the covenant He made with Abraham! The point is that the writer uses extreme literary tension to show the audience that while this God is not to be argued with and that He will test those who profess faith in Him, He will indeed fulfill His promises. It seems arbitrary to us moderns that God tested Abraham that way. In fact, it seemed that way to the original hearers too! Let us not try to blunt the point of the story with external justifications or psychological inference. It is a sharp point indeed and should be recognized as such.
As for the question of God requiring blood sacrifices, first let us take into account that human sacrifice was rife in the Ancient Near East, and that the substitution of animals for humans in a sacrificial cultus actually represents an improvement on the status quo. Second, and importantly, let us recognize that although certain passages in the Old Testament speak approvingly of sacrificial worship, the text as a whole is dominated by the anti-sacrificial perspective of the prophets and their followers, who stressed obedience to God’s word, not sacrificial worship, as the path to righteousness. In many obvious and subtle ways, the sacrificial perspective is subordinated to the dabaric (from Hebrew dabar, “word” (the same as Greek logos)). The best-known example of this perspective is, of course, Hosea 6:4-6 (which is quoted as well in Matthew 9:13):
“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.”
Finally, let us remember that blood in the biblical thought-system represents life. This gives us a clue to understanding the language of sacrifice in the New Testament. Jesus is the Word of God, the prophetic dabar incarnate in flesh, God’s utterance made man. When Jesus pours out his blood on the cross, he is pouring out his life in obedience and faithfulness to the Word he preaches and is. In other words, he gives up his own life rather than turn away from God. It is precisely this faith on Jesus’ part which saves us, because it allows God the Father to justify Jesus’ words and actions by raising him from the dead. So the blood of Christ signifies the faith of Christ. If Christ poured out his blood for you, then he poured out his life for you. If you are washed in the blood of the Lamb, you are justified by Christ’s ultimate faith. If you drink the Blood of Christ at communion, you are partaking of his heavenly supper with his faithful sacrifice in mind. The blood language in the New Testament doesn’t mean that God the Father finally found the flavor He likes best, but that He justifies those who are faithful to His dabar, his prophetic Word incarnate in Jesus and also “enlanguaged” in the scriptures.
So James, don’t worry about the stumbling block. It’s not there; it’s just that people don’t know how to negotiate the symbolic language of the Bible anymore, and resort to irrational literalism. This may vex those who prefere a mystical approach, but as the priest who chrismated me said more than once, “Jesus was crucified out in the marketplace, not between two candlesticks.”
I think a similar question was posed by Socrates and later addressed by CS Lewis (among others): that is, whether God’s will is good because he is God or because there is some other “thing” or nature called Good to which God subjects Himself to.
As you said, perhaps the moral out of this is primarily of obedience to a God whose will is also incidentally (?) good, or perhaps intertwined with his nature at least (luckily for us). That the authors were probably aware of the narrative tension (through obedience to a seemingly unjust command) of this story underlines the point even further.
James, as soon as you import the points concerning Socrates and C.S. Lewis you shift interpretive ground of Genesis 22. Putting it differently, to posit a “thing” to which “God submits Himself to” places something above God. In scriptural terms such a “thing” would be an idol, in this case a law, principle, or something else that governs the actions of God.
In scripture, God is not governed by anything outside of Himself. His will is evident through His word, that is, the word of the prophet and apostle. God’s will, in other words, is not given to man as a speculative principle, but as a commandment requiring obedience.