Lamb of the Free: A Critical Review

Andrew Remington Rillera. Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus's Death. Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2024. 356 pp, $39.

Reading and reviewing Andrew Rillera’s Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Understandings of Jesus’s Death has been on my “to-do” list for probably eight months. But ministry, a dissertation defense, and various other commitments have kept me from it. I’ve long been interested in atonement theology (a small section of my dissertation is devoted to it), and when a book comes along that promises to undermine the fundamental exegetical foundations of penal substitution atonement (PSA) and a number of scholars I respect agree to blurb it, I am interested. But when the recent Comer Kerfuffle happened, like many, I bumped it up the list. (As in the entertainment business and in atonement theology—there’s rarely such a thing as bad press for book sales.) 

In any case, what is Rillera up to? Well, the bulk of the material argument of the book is devoted to three direct aims: first, Rillera wants to introduce readers to a better understanding of the Levitical sacrificial and purity system that is often opaque and misunderstood by most parishioners by making accessible the findings of some recent OT scholarship (LOTF, 1). Second, he aims to apply those findings to the study of the NT texts’ teaching around the meaning of the death of Christ to illuminate their true significance (LOTF,1-2). Third, in the process, Rillera would like to undermine the exegetical basis for the doctrine of penal substitution (2). His underlying motivations for that last goal seem to be that penal substitutionary theology generates many problems for discipleship, including a faulty motivational structure (7-8), as well as the fact that it contributes to distorted notions of God’s justice as overly, or distinctly-retributive (LOTF, 3). (On that last point, this is a significant emphasis of Douglas Campbell’s foreword, which rightly or wrongly, forms something of an interpretive grid for the work.)

Essentially, if it turns out that proponents of PSA have rooted much of their justification for penal substitutionary atonement on the basis of misunderstandings of the meaning of OT atoning (kipper) sacrifices, as well as misunderstanding other kinds of sacrifices (well-being, covenant-initiation meals, the Passover), then correcting those will show how PSA has gone wrong in reading NT texts that treat Christ’s death as well.

I’ll be frank and say, what follows will be a critical review, as I disagree with Rillera’s fundamental conclusion about the presence of PSA in the Bible as well as several other theological threads in the work. This will be unsurprising given my long-standing defense of penal substitution and my position as an ordained Presbyterian minister, which, as Rillera has pointed out with respect to several of his Evangelical interlocutors, means my job is potentially dependent on disagreeing with him. All I can say in my defense is that I’ll do my best to be fair in my critical arguments, remain open to correction, and restate the fact that I think this is generally a problem for any Christian reviewer who addresses any doctrine touching on their own confession, including the basic creeds. 

Appreciations

Before I get into the criticism, though, I want to note a few strengths. 

First, as a New Testament scholar, unsurprisingly his study is about 98% biblical exposition, with a glance or two at the history of theology, and barely a systematician in sight. And that’s fine, actually. He stays in his lane and does what he’s good at. The biggest strength of this book is how exegetically focused he tries to be. That’s admirable. I don’t think theology proceeds by exegesis alone, but there is a certain kind of theology that proceeds by way of vibes and theological finger-painting with daubs of verses and biblical ‘themes.’ Rillera shoves your nose in the text over and over again and does a good job of introducing folks to much of the recent literature on sacrifice. There are a few places where a greater familiarity with the history of discussion might have helped refine categories, but overall, I can’t get mad at someone wanting to be thoroughly exegetical. 

Second, it is thankfully aggressively anti-Marcionite in character and doesn’t go in for bad Girardianism. The entire premise of the book is that there is a uniform theology of sacrifice, atonement, and reconciliation narrative that extends from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The New Testament authors are not idiots who misunderstand the Old Testament or stretch it or fudge it or liberate it. They love it and explain Christ’s work in terms of it. Relatedly his handling of the Gospels, the prophetic ‘critique’ of Levitical cultus, and so on, have much to commend them. This is the kind of PSA critic I prefer in contrast to, well, many of the others I’ve read.  

Third, for the most part this is a book of arguments. Rillera’s opinions are clear—more than clear!—but for the most part he avoids socio-psychological projection games against his theological ‘opponents.’ This is not always the case with many books taking aim at theological positions held by out-groups. I appreciate that. 

Fourth, I’d like to make a kind of a meta-comment on this issue of substitution, representation, incorporation, participation and other such terms to describe the relationship that Christ’s saving work has to our life in him. First, I have long been a fan of non-exclusive use of these various terms and I think this is actually one of the strengths of the classical, Reformed theological emphasis on our covenantal/legal, vital, mystical, marital, adoptive union with Christ. Substitution simpliciter, absent these categories of union does not make sense of the text or theologically. This is one of the reasons I became Reformed and Presbyterian more than ten years ago. In which case, trying to get folks generally to grasp the importance of the various dimensions of our union with Christ is something I appreciate. (On union with Christ generally, see Grant Macaskill, Union with Christ in the New Testament, and G.K. Beale’s massive, Union with the Resurrected Christ, and for history and theology, Robert Letham, Union with Christ: In Scripture, History, and Theology). 

The Shape of the Review

All that said, my critical review will be long. This is partly because I don’t know how a review of a book this filled with arguments can be short. But also, I don’t think it has had too many critical engagements yet and so I offer myself as tribute. 

The review will also proceed in three stages, that are, well, backwards. 

First, I’m going to argue that what Rillera himself teaches about the death of Christ as “cursed solidarity atonement” logically implies a form of penal substitution. 

Second, expanding on this, I am going to shore up this contention by contesting several of Rillera’s readings of non-atoning ritual and sacrificial texts about Christ’s death in the New Testament and Old Testament around Isaiah 53, the Passover, ransom, and especially covenant-renewal. 

Third, I’ll finally turn to critique some of his reading of the sacrificial system, because while much of it is a presentation of some of the scholarly consensus, several points are contested and contestable.  

Cursed Solidarity Death?

One last bit of clarification for those who have not read the book before I begin: Rillera thinks a mistake has been made in using the term atonement as a catch-all for the broader conception of reconciliation and salvation accomplished by the cross as well as the more specific term to translate the Hebrew kipper, which he believes means ‘cleansing’ or ‘decontamination’ in the majority of priestly texts. This is why there are several texts where he finds no ‘atonement’ even if he finds salvific and reconciling significance. One of the big points that Rillera wants to drive across is the variety of ways that the New Testament thinks about the saving efficacy of Christ’s death and resurrection—as a non-atoning sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice, and those times where it’s not thought of as a sacrifice at all. 

I want to first address one dimension that falls under that last category, which is that of covenant curse.

Towards the end of the book, Rillera affirms that what Christ suffers is in some sense a cursed death in solidarity with ours:

Jesus's taking on sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3) and experiencing the curse of the covenant (Gal 3-4) is an act of solidarity and union--"cursed solidarity 'atonement'" if you like, and so long as "atonement" here means "reconciliation" rather than kipper. It's only a prior commitment to penal substitutionary atonement that shoehorns that concept of 'substitution' into these acts of divine solidarity (LOTF, 274). 

Let’s make a few things clear.

First, as to the claims, as the Messiah, the Son enters into our situation and thereby wills to endure the cursed condition of those who were under penalties of the covenant for disobedience. Now what he means by that can seem ambiguous at times, but his exegesis of Galatians 3:13 helps. Here he says Jesus is like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who though relatively righteous, suffer alongside Israel in their plight, “being hauled off into exile, that is, experiencing the curse of the covenant along with the people.” As Ezekiel enacted Israel’s curse and promised restoration, “Jesus’s crucifixion identifies with the curse of the law and his resurrection announces and identifies with the promised restoration” (LOTF, 255).

The point being, though, that his “‘becoming a curse’ is never used to mean that curses are being drawn away from others and onto something/one else instead” (256). Instead, Christ comes into the position of one under the Law (Gal. 4:4) and fully participates in “the negative condition of Israel.” He suffers “(covenantal) cursed solidarity.” And then, through his resurrection he overturns it—which is how the “blessing” comes through to the Gentiles (Gal. 3:14; LOTF, 256). “Put another way, the curse is dealt with by construing it as a judicial sentence…and then reversing that judicial sentence in Jesus’s resurrection life.” And this is what redeems everybody enslaved under the curse (LOTF, 257). 

Earlier in the work, Rillera makes a similar claim about what Jesus is proclaiming in the destruction of the Temple. Jesus condemns the Temple as ripe for judgement because of the accumulated moral impurity of the people due to bloodshed, idolatry, and so forth (LOTF, 166-167). He rightly notes Jesus’s critique is not of the Temple system as such, but the sin of the people which has reached a breaking point calling down divine judgment. And so, “the Gospels construe Jesus’s death as the embodiment of Jerusalem’s judgment as they narrate Jesus’s arrest, trials, and crucifixion” (LOTF, 173).

Everything that happens to Jesus will happen to Jerusalem, much in the way Ezekiel suffers with Israel in his identification with their curse (Ezek. 4:4-6). He acts as a place-sharer, who does not substitute, but goes ahead, experiences Jerusalem’s death, and in rising again, brings about the promise of her new life. He saves by making “direct contact with the consequences of moral impurity and exhaust[ing] them” (LOTF, 173-174), much as he heals ritual impurity by the holiness of his being. He makes moral purification for Israel by making contact with death “experiencing God’s abandonment of the temple in himself…and then defeating that death in his resurrection”, in so doing he pioneers a way through their judgment to promised resurrection life (LOTF, 174).

Covenant Curses are Divine Legal Punishments

At this point, let’s recall some basics. The covenant is given by God (even if through angels, Gal. 3:19) containing binding laws and can be called simply, “the Law.” This is the Covenant Lord's law, a divine law. This divine law from God contains within it curses that are pronounced as coming Moses on God's behalf (Deuteronomy 28) and their function equivalent (though not designated ‘curses’) from the mouth of God (Leviticus 26) . Among them, God warned that war, pestilence, famine, exile and, obviously, death as the merited consequence against Israel’s moral infractions, violations and crimes against his covenant.

These merited consequences on the bases of moral desert against sin are justifiably called penalties, or punishments. Again, given their source in God’s law, these are divine punishments that when enacted, express divine displeasure and opposition to the behaviors, attitudes, and actions calling them forth. Further, the theory of punishment that connects consequences with desert, ill-treatment to actors due to evil action, is historically called “retributive”, insofar as it involves a “return” of the action or consequences upon the actor, even if in some representative form.¹ 

I am drawing this out, but you need to see that this necessarily means that if you admit that Christ’s death is his suffering of the curse of the Law, you are confessing him to be suffering divinely appointed retribution for Israel’s merited sin in some sense. He suffers alongside of Israel a “judicial sentence” that is God’s sentence upon sin that he prescribed in his Law.² (Even as it anticipates its overturning in the resurrection.)

Restorative Discipline or Retribution?

Let me pause and anticipate two objections to the way I have characterized things thus far. First, looking at the curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 29, the language of “discipline” comes up a lot, and there is the obvious anticipation that after judgement there will be a return of Israel and forgiveness. What someone might want to argue, then, is that the Exile, the curses, and so forth, are not “retributive”, but are rather “restorative.” Given their aim at reconciliation, the intention is not punitive as such, but of relational restoration. This potential rejoinder fails for a couple of reasons. 

First, the hard dichotomy between restorative justice and retributive justice in judgment simply doesn’t exist. What God is doing is delivering or returning harsh treatment (famine, pestilence, war, exile) that is pictured as deserved and in some key sense proportioned to sin, even when mitigated. This is retribution that is at least partly aimed at restoration, but it is retribution nevertheless. Indeed, unless the concept of retribution and punishment according to merit are baked in, then discipline fails. Much of what Israel is being taught that is intended to provoke repentance concerns the just and holy character of God, the nature of and consequences of their sin and so on. There is no getting around that.³

Relatedly, I will just say that theories of reconciliation aside, there is just no getting around the vast swathes of material showing God endorses, commands, and is committed to what Campbell terms “negative justice” in his foreword. Simply perusing the various penal codes in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and sundry other texts in the NT gives evidence of that. One can simultaneously hold that Christ’s death is not an act of retribution and nevertheless affirm that God punishes sin retributively in all sorts of other cases. They are not unrelated, but the latter is not the only bit of evidence for the former. 

Second, even if we were to accept a bifurcation between negative retribution and discipline, while the language and category of discipline is suited to Israel as a nation it wouldn’t seem suited to the individual Israelites who are—because of their wickedness and sin—receiving judgment in the form of famine, pestilence, and war ending in death. In the language of Ezekiel 18, these souls are dying for their own sins—their blood is on their own head and will be put to death. None of the folks dying under the sword, or of famine, etc., would consider it as anything other than merited punishment that they deserved, even if it had a chastising effect. Again, this is retributive. And this is exactly what is happening in the covenant curse (ie. legal sanction, penalty, or punishment). 

Wrath of God or Nations?

A second point has to do with agency. It might be claimed that the penalty being suffered by Israel is God’s judgment, his ‘wrath’, etc., but that this is a metaphorical predication referring to the judgment executed by the nations. And so, really, the agent of judgment and punishment are the Gentiles. In which case, it’s not a matter of God directly punishing Israel, of out-Zeusing Zeus in his wrath, but recognizing the sort of cause-effect relationship of Israel’s sin leading to their predicament, suffering the judgment of the Gentiles, which is the “wrath” of God, as it were. It’s a deflationary and distancing move, of sorts.  

This kind of distancing move fails, I think, for a couple of reasons. 

The first is that it is basically an undercooked account of transcendent divine agency, whereby God freely works his will through human agents who have their own distinct wills, that are nevertheless superintended by his own ontologically prior will. This is the basic metaphysical picture of judgment pictured in the prophets and the narratives—God is at work in the work of other agents. Text after text could be adduced here but see for instance Isaiah 10, Amos 4, and 2 Kings 17. In all of these cases, God either directly claims credit for the actions of the nations, or the actions of the nations are given a divine interpretation that superintends upon the human actions, or he claims the nation as his tool, acting as an extension of his own will. In many (if not all) cases, the judgment of the nations just are the judgment of the transcendent God, which he goes out of his way to claim by the mouth of the prophets. The nations’ intentions and moral aims are distinct, but there is a reason God can speak about sending them to do his will.   

The other reason that this move is deployed is to act as a kind of deflationary argument as an attempt to fix something that is prominent in bad popular accounts of PSA, but that is not of the essence of the view. The reality is that classical articulations of the doctrine of God in relation to penal substitution and wrath already had a doctrine of immutability and impassibility and analogical predication at work. Thus speaking of God’s wrath never meant a convulsion of the divine person or character, but rather was an analogical and accommodated way of speaking of God’s settled will in opposition to sin, as well as the effects of his will to deal with it.⁴

This is Already a Lot

So at least so far, you have penal solidarity death as a matter of Jesus suffering divine retribution alongside us. 

With that said, I want to note that you're already far along into much of what most penal substitution critics don't want to affirm. For instance, again, you are into the deep end of the 'negative' justice that Douglas Campbell was writing about in his foreword. In fact, given Joshua McNall's very persuasive analysis in chapter 4 of The Mosaic of Atonement that PSA ought to be considered a family of views and not just a singular view, you might think that what I have described in Rillera is already fairly well in the family tree. Perhaps a kissing cousin with bog-standard PSA. In fact, it might even be closer to it than Anselm's satisfaction theory given that here Christ is not merely offering an overwhelming positive satisfaction of obedience instead of suffering punishment but is actually suffering that punishment. 

I mention all of this because the book has been gleefully trumpeted by so many as a devastating death-blow to penal substitution. The subtext of this, of course, is that it provides an anti-retributive, anti-punitive account of God, his justice, and salvation. But the fine-print letter of Rillera’s actual argument doesn’t get you off that retributive hook. For as much as Rillera may dispute potentially retributive readings and concerns in various texts that a standard penal substitution advocate may want to propose, it remains there, even in several of the readings Rillera himself gives. (And for that reason, it is actually a stronger reading!)

Substitution?

All that I have said about retribution may be true, but how is substitution logically implied? 

Perhaps you might want to say that Jesus suffers a cursed death alongside of us and in so doing exhausts it and pushed through to the other side, accomplishing the resurrection, etc., and our hope is now that. Maybe we say that Jesus died our death for us with us, so he didn’t die instead of us. He died a penal death with us, but in a soteriologically unique way, because innocent and divine, such that this death no longer lasts because it has no claim on him. And so in union with him, we get to rise on the other side of death. There's a case to be made from 2 Cor. 5:14, 21 for that and as we already saw in Rillera’s exegesis of Gal. 3:13. Indeed, Rillera goes there by arguing what Jesus does is enter into the cursed condition we already occupy and already suffer in order to undo it alongside of us (LOTF, 271). The image he uses is that of a sort of cosmic Voodoo Doll—where Christ’s incarnation allows an identification and solidarity such that the cosmos undergoes its travails and is promised a new rebirth in what occurs in Christ. 

Again, so far as it goes, I think there's a lot to be said for this argument. As I said, this is what a lot of Reformed theology of Christ as our federal head, our Last Adam does for us. What happens to the head, happens to the body. There is a real, covenantal and vital union of the believer with Christ that is first founded in the hypostatic union of natures in the person of Christ; this is what allows the double-imputation of sin to Christ and righteousness to the believer to be more than a mere legal fiction. What’s more, I have a lot of time for seeing the justification of Christ coming to us through his resurrection (Rom. 4:25). (Richard Gaffin has done a lot with this already in Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology.)

Here's why I don’t think that goes far enough, though. I don’t see any indication in the NT that after the death and resurrection of Christ, Christians die deaths that continue to be considered death-as-punishment for sin. We don't die deaths signifying relational separation from God and under his wrath. We don't die deaths indicating a lack of forgiveness for our sins. As Christians, we die in Christ, we go to sleep in the hope of resurrection (1 Thess. 4:15), we die expecting to be with the Lord, which is gain (Phil. 1:21). We die physically, but inwardly, resurrection and renewal is already at work in us (2 Cor. 4:16). We still experience effects of the curse (of Adam), but once we are in Christ we don’t die under the curse or under the Law (Rom. 6:14; 7:6). Of course, that is because in a way, we have died to the Law through Christ (7:6), we have been crucified with Christ, living now through faith in the one who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20). Nevertheless, our impending death has been transformed into a death of a different kind.⁵

What am I getting at? I absolutely want to affirm that there is a dimension where Christ dies our death with us and for us and even as us, such that when we put our faith in him, his death is our death to sin. Nevertheless, there is still a clear sense in which our death that we look to now is transformed in a way that we will not suffer the unique kind of death that he died at 3 pm on Calvary that I should have. Rillera happily admits that his death is soteriologically unique, and that Christ is our forerunner, and so on, but I think that part of what we must say is that uniqueness includes a substitution that took place at an event in time in which I was not an immediate participant. He does first what we ought to have done, in such a way that the meaning of what we do second has changed—he has done more than share our place, he has taken it. 

We could make the point at the simple level of sensory experience: I did not die due to blood loss, pulmonary exhaustion, severe physical trauma at 3 p.m. on a Friday, two thousand years ago on Golgotha. None of us did. Only Jesus did that. In that sense, we are all like Barabbas. Instead of Barabbas going to the cross and dying next to two other bandits, this other ‘Son of the Father’ was chosen, taken, and had nails driven into his hands on the wood of the cross, accepting the penalty for the crimes which Barabbas was guilty, while Barabbas (potentially) looked on. An exchange occurred there in the life of one man that pictured one element of Christ’s death in relation to all men.⁶ This is not trivial. 

Further, beyond the particular physical sufferings of Christ, I did not do that while experiencing in some sense the weight of sin, guilt, and the psychic consciousness of divine disapproval of that sin. Only Jesus did in his human body and soul.⁷

Let’s think about it this way:

1. As a sinner, I deserved and should be subject to X (death as a covenant curse and punishment including alienation from God)
2. Jesus did not deserve X (death as a covenant curse and punishment, etc.)
3. Jesus suffered X (death as a covenant curse and punishment, etc.), on my behalf
4. As a result, I no longer have to suffer X (death as a covenant curse and punishment), even though I still suffer Y (death as sleep, death as testimony to God against the powers, death as messianic co-crucifixion:, etc..).⁸

Ergo, Jesus suffered a death that I deserved, on my behalf, so that the death I die is no longer one of curse and punishment, and the death I do die is different in kind. He died the kind of death that I deserved so that I wouldn’t have to.

That sounds like penal substitution doesn’t it? 

Not Just a Patch

It’s worth pausing here to make a further point clear: What I am proposing is not some kind of “patch” for a faulty system in order to rescue it from Rillera’s critique. What I am articulating is just basic PSA as historically understood. 

Look at the Heidelberg Catechism:

42. Since Christ has died for us,
    why do we still have to die?
43. Our death does not pay the debt of our sins. (Ps. 49.7)
    Rather, it puts an end to our sinning
    and is our entrance into eternal life. (John 5:24; Phil. 1:21-23; 1 Thess. 5:9-10)

And now the Westminster Large Catechism:

85. Death being the wages of sin, why are not the righteous delivered from death, seeing all their sins are forgiven in Christ?
86. The righteous shall be delivered from death itself at the last day, and even in death are delivered from the sting and curse of it; so that, although they die, yet it is out of God’s love, to free them perfectly from sin and misery, and to make them capable of further communion with Christ in glory, which they then enter upon.

These were not written yesterday. They are confessionally Reformed documents from over 400 years ago, which are easily taken to be examples of penal substitutionary thought.

Apparently, then, it has never been part of the claims of classic penal substitution that Christ died so I don’t have to die in any sense. It is that Christ’s death in this way and as an act of God’s retributive judgment substitutes for my own death as an act of retributive judgment. 

Again, I am not opposed to representation, or solidarity, or participation as categories that help us understand the various dimensions and depths of the relation of my life and death to Christ's in union with him. It is arguable that his status as our representative is what allows him to function as our substitute in just this way, and there are long discussions in the tradition on this point. So while there are many sections where I agree with Rillera that these other types of relation are in view, I just don't buy (and have never bought) the absolute dichotomy that he adopts from Simon Gathercole (Defending Substitution), which is that in any text we have either substitution or representation/participation/solidarity, or certainly that across all texts one or the other relationship must obtain.  

But this is why, given what Rillera himself has affirmed about one aspect of Christ’s saving work on the cross, I think some form of penal substitution is still logically implied.⁹

Deepening the Case: Thinking About the Servant and Covenant Restoration 

As noted before, Rillera’s book has been taken to show that penal substitution has no exegetical basis in Israel’s sacrificial system properly construed. I think this is wrong, but I want to continue this examination by looking at a few more “non-sacrificial” texts and lines of evidence that give us foundations for thinking Christ’s death was certainly penal and even substitutionary along the lines of covenant renewal even without any sacrificial texts in play. 

To begin, I’ll start by summarizing some of the work of David Moffitt, which may seem ironic given Rillera’s heavy dependence on his early work on Atonement and the Logic of Resurrection in the Epistle to the Hebrews. In his later book, though, Rethinking Atonement: New Perspectives on Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, he has an interesting essay on “Isaiah 53, Hebrews, and Covenant Renewal.” In it he examines the relationship between the servant of Isaiah 53 and the work of covenantal restoration in Hebrews (esp. 9:28). Contrary to the idea that it is a high-priestly sacrifice, he claims that Jesus’s death has an “extra-sacrificial role” in restoring “God’s covenant relationship with his people” (RA, 48). 

As Moffitt sees it, Isaiah 53 does not picture the servant offering a priestly asham according to the Levitical system but rather pictures a time when the Levitical system is inoperative because the Temple has been destroyed and the covenant curses have fallen upon God’s people (RA, 49, 53-54). Notably, his argument shares a key assumption that Rillera does, which is that the cult is limited in function and can only clear some sins (not all) and physical impurities (RA, 54). 

What does Moffitt make of the work of the Servant? Well, he is pictured as bringing about a New Exodus, on the other side of which the system of sacrifice can be reinstated. The Servant is given a covenant which restores God’s people (Is. 42:7; 49:5-12), on the other side of their exile that is an experience of “God’s anger and the covenant curses”, and this happens through “the suffering and death of the Servant in Isaiah 52:12-53:12”, whereby somehow the “servant’s vicarious death contributes to the turning of God’s anger into mercy (54:7-8).” 

How? Well, again, he rejects a priestly, Levitical offering being at play—he doesn’t find the various alleged sacrificial allusions convincing (RA, 51-52).¹⁰ In any case, Moffitt argues the asham (53:10), though often used as a reference to the guilt offering, is also used to refer to guilt and the elimination of guilt (Gen. 26:10; 42:21; 2 Chron. 19:10; Isa. 24:6). This matters because instead of “imagining God offering the servant as a sacrifice (guilt offering), the point seems to be that God planned to eliminate the guilt of the people that was placed upon the servant by having the servant take the guilt and die in the place of the guilty. This is a reconciling act that removes the guilt, but it is not a sacrificial one in terms of the Levitical cult” (RT, 53). Notably, Moffitt thinks that removing the sacrificial overtone still renders a plainly penal and arguably substitutionary (“in the place of”) meaning to the text. This seems to go even further than Rillera’s invocation of Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel suffering though righteous alongside the wicked and because of them.

Moffitt also argues that this logic is picked up by the Martyrs of 2 Maccabees, where there is an acknowledgment of the Deuteronomic logic that while Israel is under the curse, which is a punishment on account of the people’s sin (2 Macc. 6:12-17), Levitical sacrifices cannot be accepted (56). In the narrative of 2 Macc. 6:18-7:42, we have the story of Eleazar and the seven martyr brothers, which is then followed by chapter 8, which describes the success of the Maccabean revolt by Judas because “the Lord’s wrath had turned to mercy” (8:5; RA, 56). Something about their death brings about a restoration of relationship, for in it there comes an end to “God’s wrath” which “is being poured out upon his people because of their disobedience to his law.” He concludes with others that in the logic of the narrative the “suffering and death” of the martyrs is what turns God’s wrath to mercy. 

It is true, several times the brothers admit “we suffer these things on our own account, because we sinned against God” (7:18), but the seventh brother affirms that “through me and my brothers, may there be an end to the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation” (7:38), which he confesses all the while having remained, according to the chronicler, “undefiled, putting all his trust in the Lord” (7:40). The picture is of a relatively righteous few suffering punishment for the many and bringing an end to judgment. Moffitt argues this is supported explicitly by the logic outlined from Isaiah 53-54, of bearing curses, then mercy, and several more arguments as well. Those arguments include the clear influence of servant material from Isaiah 49 on the prayer of 2 Maccabees 1:24-29 at the restoration of the sacrifices, that the language in 2 Maccabees describing the martyrs is aligned with Isaiah 53’s, the likely impact of Isaiah 53’s unique theology of one suffering for the sins of the other in 2 Maccabees 7:32-33, 37-38, and the shared theology of intercession between the texts with the martyrs interceding for sinful Israel much as the Servant does (RA, 57-61). 

It's worth briefly noting here that N.T. Wright perceptively links this Maccabean theology of intercession, substitution, and exilic curse/punishment-bearing to Galatians 3:13, shoring up the logic and argument of what has already been affirmed about that text above (Galatians, 211).

Furthermore, this reading is contrary to that of Rillera’s in crucial ways. First, he surprisingly only treats Isaiah 53 in a discussion of 1 Peter 2:24 (while addressing other NT texts). Here he mostly argues (similarly to Moffitt) that this text as well as every other NT reference to it does not present Christ or the servant as a sacrifice (LOTF, 244), but he also further argues that the NT primarily (though not exclusively, Matt.8:16-17), deploys the Suffering Servant motif as a paradigm of righteous suffering following Daniel, Wisdom of Solomon, etc., that includes “suffering, probably martyrdom, but also vindication” (LOTF, 245-246). He does endure “the consequences of the majority’s sinfulness” in solidarity with them (LOTF, 247). This is why it is something that Christ’s followers can participate in on the other side of his vindication that creates the conditions of their own faithfulness, etc. 

If Moffitt’s reading is correct, Rillera has not properly dealt with Isaiah’s theology of Christ as the bearer and eliminator of guilt through his death for others, nor with the tradition of reading the Servant in Isaiah 53 in 2 Maccabees 7 (a text he does not treat) as more than a paradigm for righteous suffering and vindication, but rather one of righteous vicarious or substitutionary suffering of the punitive curses [or: “of God’s wrath”], which turns God’s wrath to mercy, and then vindication.¹¹ These are potentially important gaps. 

To press further, though, if Moffitt is correct, Rillera has also missed key allusions to Isaiah 53 in Hebrews. In 9:28 where Christ was “offered once to bear the sins of many,” (cf. Isa. 53:12: RA, 62), as well as Hebrews 2:9 where Christ is crowned with glory and honor subsequent to his vicarious suffering (RA  66). In the former, Moffitt argues that the author of Hebrews is weaving a complex, layered account involving both pre-priestly work of covenant-renewal in his death on earth as well as a theology of priestly, self-offering in heaven in the back half of Hebrews 9-10. In 9:25, Jesus offers himself to God in the holy of holies in his ascension, but in 9:28, Jesus is “offered” (passive voice) corresponding to his earthly appearance and death (RA, 64). Moffitt argues that if the author can keep several stages and dimensions of Christ’s priestly sacrificial work on earth and in heaven distinct, then he can also keep different dimensions of his death distinct and have them operating at the same time, including his sin-bearing which was necessary to inaugurate a New Covenant, presumably by bearing the judgment under which the people languished in his crucifixion (RA, 65). Of course, Rillera might simply dispute that the allusion is present, but I find Moffitt’s argument here convincing. 

With respect to Hebrews 2:9, more briefly, Moffitt argues that the logic of Psalm 22 or Psalm 8 cannot carry the weight of why Christ’s exaltation must come after his suffering, but that LXX Isaiah 52:13 provides a logic for why he is glorified because of his suffering for others—“Jesus can be seen to deserve the glorification promised in Psalm 8 because he tasted death on behalf of others.” Further, it is “his singular, vicarious death, like that of the servant, that sets him apart from his human siblings” (RA, 67). More links are made, but this suffices for now. 

There are three more points worth making here.

First, in both of these allusions, Hebrews is drawing on an interpretive tradition with respect to Isaiah 53 that even when not taken to be a Levitical sacrifice has to do with one who suffers as a  vicarious/substitutionary sin-bearer, endures wrath, and helps inaugurate a new covenant. Now, let’s be clear: Rillera absolutely thinks that much of the exegesis of Hebrews 9-10 is about inaugurating a new covenant and sees both non-kipper and kipper sacrifices at work in the passage (LOTF, 221). But he does not tie the argument into Isaiah 53 or seem to have a place for the death of Christ to function in this sense in 9:28. 

Second, with all this said, one could go back and run this through Rillera’s exegesis of 1 Peter 2:24, which cites Isaiah 53. There he argues peri hamartion is not taken as a reference to the asham sacrifice, nor should it be read to be dealing primarily with any sort of atoning, wrath-bearing, curse-bearing significance,  but rather about providing a script for “suffering the consequences of the sinfulness of the many” in solidarity with the many (LOTF, 247). But with Moffitt’s reading of Isaiah 53 in play, even if  peri hamartion is not invoking technical sacrificial vocabulary, that doesn’t mean the theology of wrath-ending/mercy-accomplishing death is not in play, which then extends far beyond what Rillera allows. Keeping Moffitt’s reading in mind also potentially shifts the way we read Mark 10:45, which Rillera admits probably has Isaiah 53 in the background, but again, seems to reduce to an invocation of a “script” for Christ’s pioneering suffering in solidarity (LOTF, 251-253). And I don’t believe that admitting such a sense ruins or denies the call to discipleship and suffering that Rillera is concerned to foreground, any more than it has for readers who have taken it that way for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. 

Passover

At this point, I want to start moving backwards to earlier chapters and start disputing readings of key rituals. 

First, Rillera’s rejection of any kind of substitutionary logic in the original Passover is unconvincing. To deal with one argument, he asks, “if the Passover lamb ‘substituted’ for or ‘redeemed’ all the firstborns for an Israelite family (human and animal), then why does Israel still need to ‘redeem’ their firstborns…later and in a completely alternative manner (Exod. 13:2, 11-16; 34:19-20; cf. 22:29-30; Numb. 18:15-17)?” (LOTF, 47). Instead, on Rillera’s reading, the Levites function as stand-ins who substitute for the firstborn as sanctuary workers, and the ransom given for any firstborns in excess of the Levites is a financial one to cover or pay for the labor owed the Lord (LOTF, 49). To Rillera, the fact that they are to serve the Lord alive would tell against the idea that their death was owed or desired. 

On the contrary, it seems quite possible to recognize two different kinds of redemptions at work—one is an initial redemption from the threat of judgment hanging over the Israelites and their firstborns, which is what the original Passover dealt with, and every subsequent Passover memorialized as a unique, one-off redemption. Second, any subsequent, annual redemption is then about the service that is owed by those firstborns in perpetuity and is taken care of by the Levitical arrangement. This seems to be one of those places where narrative sequence matters in understanding Israel’s cult and law. 

Turning it around, I find that Rillera’s own “gap-filling” reading of the use of the hyssop-blood drawing on non-sacrificial purification rituals (Lev. 14), as a unique, one-off apotropaic (something which wards off evil) ritual that purifies the house of impurity (what kinds?) against the Destroyer (i.e.. God’s own judgment) doesn’t quite fill enough gaps. The largest gap is simply why the Israelites would be at risk of the Lord’s judgement when he passes through the land to strike “all the firstborn in the land of Egypt” as a judgment on the gods of Egypt (Exod. 12:12). Remember, God (or the Destroyer) passing through and killing the firstborn is an act of retributive judgment for Egypt’s enslavement of YHWH’s firstborn son, Israel, to Pharoah and the false gods (Exod. 4), as well as a response to the drowning of Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exod. 1). Israel shouldn’t be at risk of the judgment unless they themselves were liable to judgment for their idolatries and worship of false gods (as Ezekiel 20:7-8 affirms), in the persons of the firstborn. In which case, we need a moral logic for why blood can function apotropaically in the original Passover event. It is not protection from threat in general, but protection from punitive judgment for Israel’s idol-worship (Ezek 20:7-8) that is needed. 

Also unconvincing is Rillera’s argument that if the logic of the blood or meal were substitutionary, then it would make no sense to have the threats of judgment attached to all the other attendant parts of the meal like eating the bitter herbs, roasting, not leaving anything, etc. for the death simpliciter would be enough, or otherwise every single part would have to have substitutionary significance (LOTF, 46). But this does not follow at all, for it appears obvious that a single ritual can have several layers of meaning at once and that the performance of that ritual may hang the efficacy of those distinct layers upon the proper performance of all of them together. 

Let’s clarify a bit. Rillera already thinks multiple things are going on here in the Passover meal: we have a fellowship meal including a lamb, whose blood-hyssop combo also functions as an apotropaic. But he doesn’t think that for the apotropaic function to be in play every part of the meal must have a clear apotropaic dimension. In the same way, however, it is possible to think that there is a fellowship meal including a lamb, whose blood-hyssop combo also has a substitutionary significance testifying a confession on the part of the participants of their liability to the same judgment as their neighbors, or perhaps a plea for mercy that blood has already been shed for sin here. Just as there can be components of fellowship and apotropaicity, there can be fellowship and substitution. Indeed, we might think that without the fellowship meal instructions being followed, the confession testified to within the blood might be seen to be false, much as bringing a sacrifice with a false heart or obtained through financial misdeed falsifies the meaning of the ritual. 

Finally, while there are various possible causal relationships possible, sometimes the intuitive, broad, narrative frame of “you enslaved and killed my Firstborn(s), so I will punish yours,” already tilts us towards seeing a retributive and substitutionary logic in play in the judgment. Or perhaps, just to throw a spanner in the discussion—it at least seems to bring into play the need for a ransom payment to buy you out of your situation of liability. 

Exodus 24 and the Sanctions of the Covenant

Rillera’s reading of the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24 is also significant. 

At this point, it’s worth reiterating something about his view of various sacrifices. There are atoning sacrifices and non-atoning sacrifices. Burnt offerings function to attract the divine presence through a pleasing aroma, while well-being sacrifices are about sacred feasting and fellowship with the deity; both are therefore generally non-atoning in Rillera’s stipulated sense (LOTF 54—more on this later). This explains why Rillera thinks we don’t have atoning sacrifices in the ritual of Exodus 24:5, which involved burnt and fellowship offerings. But what about the blood ritual involving the application of blood to both the altar representing God and on the people (Exod. 24:6, 8), or perhaps the 12 pillars representing them (24:4)? This is “the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all of these words.” 

Despite it having no atoning significance, Rillera sees two dimensions to the ritual: first, it has a visible memorial function and, second, it has a bonding function. The blood dashed on the side of the altar remains a visible token for the people. He also takes the symbolic blood manipulation and application to the people and the altar to be non-atoning; rather, it has an indexing function that effects or symbolizes a metaphysical transition from one state of being into another on analogy with priestly consecration or the cleansing of a person with scale disease (LOTF, 58-66). Now, while this was a generally helpful discussion, I am not convinced that Rillera has described the full significance of the ceremonial application of the blood. 

Instead, Bobby Jamiesons’s discussion is clarifying. Drawing on both ancient and modern commentators (Ibn Ezra. William Propp, Exodus 19-40, 295), he argues that what we have in this section of the covenant “cutting” is the use of a self-maledictory oath.¹² Consider an analogy: YHWH walking through the cut-up animals split in two in Genesis 15 in the form of a flaming fire-pot (a text Rillera doesn’t address). Several commentators connect it to the witness of Jeremiah 34:18-19:

¹⁸ And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts— ¹⁹ the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf.

On which, here is Hebrew scholar, Jon D. Levenson:

The parallels from Mesopotamia and Jeremiah 34:17-22 suggest that the ritual is one of self-cursing: the one who passes between the cut-up pieces is solemnly affirming that if he violates the covenant, he will be like them—dead. (Inheriting Abraham, 44). 

Several other names could be adduced (Walter Brueggemann, Gerhard Von Rad, etc.), but they all agree the logic is simple: walking through the animals was a threat, a portrait of what will befall you if you betray the covenant. 

Turning back to Exodus 24, perhaps we might say, then, that the blood on the people and the altar’s “visible memorial function” serves to remind Israel of God’s commitment in blood as well as their own. Both had symbolically taken blood onto themselves as a sign that they are bound so tightly that to break faith is to court death.

When this comes into view, however, several NT texts have a different significance. Obviously, Jesus’s own use of Exodus 24 in Matthew 26:28, where Jesus says the wine is his blood of the new covenant poured out for the many for the forgiveness of their sins would be worth talking about.

Instead, I’ll continue to coast on Jamieson’s discussion, who notes how this fits the new covenant inauguration argument of Hebrews 9:15-22 in a way that corrects, or perhaps fills in Rillera’s own. Rillera rightly sees that much of Hebrews’ argument about the work of Christ hinges on his ability to bring about the forgiveness of sins associated with a new covenant as the prophets prophesied (Ezek. 16, 36: Jer. 31, etc), but not on the basis of the sacrificial system which (on Rillera’s account) could not bring about cleansing for severe moral impurity (LOTF, 222).  But a key part of the way Jesus’s death redeems them from the sins that were incurred under the first covenant and makes a way for the foundation of the new covenant in his blood, is precisely that he has suffered the covenant sanction of death for falling away from the covenant (Heb. 2:2) that hung over them on their behalf. 

Rillera rightly sees that Christ’s faithful life and obedience unto death deals with the sins that provoked the death-by-exile, forming the basis of the new covenant that results in the forgiveness of sins and moral cleansing (LOTF, 223). But it is less clear that he recognizes the retrospective role that clearing the covenant sanctions plays in establishing the New Covenant, since his paradigm for what the blood of the covenant in Exodus 24 focuses primarily on a consecrating bond in the present. When this retrospective emphasis is recognized, we understand that the forgiveness of sins, then, comes with the establishment of the New Covenant precisely because the sanctions of the Old Covenant have been born in the death of Christ. 

That Rillera misses this is plausible since he reads the redemption/ransom (“lytrosis”) in 9:15 as a callback to the Exodus, which is the paradigm of the prophets (LOTF, 228 fn. 32). The key there, though, is that Rillera constantly emphasizes that in the Exodus paradigm the financial language of “ransom” or “redemption” is entirely a metaphor for the effects of God’s salvific activity, i.e., it’s the result of setting slaves free, liberation, perhaps at great cost, but without any thought of payment to any party such as Pharoah, the gods, sin, the devil, God, his offended justice, or anything else. The sacrifices of Passover and covenant-formation are associated and linked to a “ransom,” but not as their cause, or a payment liberating from bloodguilt, but rather as a celebration of liberation (LOTF, 203-204).¹³

Theologically, we might want to question whether the “If A in OT, then A in NT” relationship conceived here is too tight, given that types and anti-types often have relationships of intensification and partial transformation as different types are brought into contact with each other in the person and work of Christ. But this connection between redemption and a ransom from bloodguilt is especially the case if there is a missing conceptual link in terms of Christ’s death as suffering the covenant sanction, which is what constitutes the price of redemption or a ransom from bloodguilt. 

Colossian Interlude

Let’s offend against good biblical scholarship for a moment and briefly try to connect the dots in Hebrews using a text in Paul that Rillera only glances at briefly: Colossians 1:13-14 and 2:13c-15. In the first text we have a nice overlap of themes, where God delivers his people from the domain of darkness (a likely reference to the kingdom of Satan/Pharoah), into that of his beloved (Davidic) Son, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” So right there is a portrait of an Exodus-like redemption/liberation from a domain of slavery, which is described as the forgiveness of sins. 

How does that happen? Paul explains that later in very condensed language when he tells the Colossians that in union with Christ they have gone from “trespasses and sins”, to being made alive with Christ, “having forgiven us all our trespasses” (2:13). This forgiveness is accomplished through the cancellation of the “record of debt” that stood against us. That term, cheirographon, is a highly disputed hapax legomena in the commentaries, but the basic force of several proposed translations is that some accounting, some ledger, some heavenly books, some record of our sins in accordance with Torah with “its legal demands,” have been erased—and this has happened through the cross.

A very simple way of reading that would be to recognize that Christ’s death is the suffering of the sanction and therefore the way of wiping out the ledger. And subsequent to the cross, Christ has been raised again, triumphing over the powers (the devil, demonic forces, etc). Theologically, it seems those legal demands and debts stood in the way of our forgiveness, keeping us enslaved to the powers of darkness, until the penal death of the Son removed them, and his resurrection effected the forceful completion of our liberation. The action of the cross is not mere debt-forgiveness by fiat, but forceful action dealing with the debt.   

An Exodus through a penal death clearing away the charges of sin ransoming us from a situation of enslavement, bringing about forgiveness and into a new relationship (covenant) with God in his Kingdom? That shares much of the theological architecture of the argument of Hebrews. (On all this, see Jeremy R. Treat, The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology, 111-127)  

Sacrifice, Ransom, Blood, and Life for Life

At this point, some comments are finally in order around Rillera’s conception of some of the sacrifices, of the function of blood, ransom, and the life-for-life principle. In brief, I think his focus has not given proper place to the role that ransom from blood-guilt factors into the cult given his intense focus on decontamination readings.  

But just to be clear, again, none of what I have argued so far in the first or second sections about penalty, representation, or substitution in relation to the theology of covenant sanctions are dependent on the analysis that follows. Which is to say, I could get everything wrong in the following sections, and Rillera’s reading of atoning sacrifices could be perfectly correct, and it still wouldn’t mean there is no penal substitution in the Bible’s depiction of Christ’s death.  

The Burnt Offering

To begin, first, I think Peter Leithart is basically right to question Rillera’s judgment that the daily tamid offering, which is an burnt/ascension (olah) offering, is not atoning, given that the main text about the burnt offering explicitly says it is and continues to be in the Levitical system (Lev. 1:1-4), as well as Rillera’s idea that somewhere along the way in biblical history the burnt offering stopped having an atoning function (LOTF, 90). I understand why Rillera needs it to be so. If it is atoning, then it doesn’t map as cleanly onto the more narrow construction of what he takes atonement to mean (i.e., cleansing). But this seems to require running past the first thing we hear in the most basic instructions we have about the ritual in Leviticus and treating that as the anomaly. It also fits oddly in his basic form of arguments in most of the work, which largely appeal to a theologically internally coherent structure to the final form of the text. Indeed, there are only a couple of places he appeals to critical-redaction judgments: here and his reading of Leviticus 16:30, which also fits awkwardly in his reconstruction, (LOTF, 136-140).  

Further, I don’t think his basic explanation of what the burnt offering symbolizes goes deep enough. It is, as Rillera argues, a meal, a pleasing aroma to attract and maintain divine presence, and a food offering of sorts. But the ANE parallels with Mesopotamia and Greece do not go far enough (LOTF, 32). Following Leigh Trevaskis (and I believe Roy McDaniel’s future volume presents a distinct variation on this), much of what is involved in the burnt offering is the worshipper presenting a stand-in, perfect, “without blemish” animal who is not so much a substitute sufferer, but whose perfection and integrity symbolizes the perfection of life needed to enter into the divine presence. This functions to pre-emptively “ransom” any worshipper from the threat of divine wrath upon approach.¹⁴ Indeed, as Moshe Halbertal argues, half the point of ritual offerings is to secure approach to the divine via a gift, both in situations of relational breach or even absent them.¹⁵ This understanding is perfectly consonant with that. Additionally, this is a function it could have both in the pre-Levitical order and within it. 

Although, note, if this is the case, then we have reason to believe there were atoning burnt offerings occurring in Exodus 24 on top of the significance of the blood manipulation in the self-maledictory oath.

Kipper and Cleansing

Beyond this, following Milgrom and others, Rillera argues for a ‘cleansing’ or ‘decontamination’ view of the term kipper in the priestly literature. Again, in his view, “atonement” in theological literature is confusing when it is coordinated with the term “kipper.” For Rillera, kipper is not a term broadly speaking about reconciliation, but rather more narrowly referring to purification/decontamination/cleansing of the sancta, the holy things, of the defilement of ritual and some minor moral impurity. At base, the word means “removal,” and it takes its sense from what is being removed from what. In Rillera’s account, in the priestly literature, ritual impurity and the impurity of minor sins are being removed from sancta (LOTF, 112-115). This is common enough. Following Gilders, he also notes that kipper can also have the sense of “remove from the danger of death” and thereby be regularly translated at “ransom”, which is the obvious sense in key financial contexts (Exod. 21:30; Numb. 35:31-32; LOTF, 113). This is also common enough. But in sacrificial texts, Rillera almost universally favors a pure decontamination reading of the term including in Leviticus 17:11, and that is not universal.¹⁶

He also subscribes to the very common formula that ascribes the power that blood has to act as this kind of detergent to the fact that “blood = life” (LOTF, 119-121). Leviticus 17:11 says, “ For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” On Rillera’s interpretation, this life is potent enough that it can be used to cleanse and decontaminate the holy things and the Tabernacle from the defilement of ritual impurity that symbolically represents “the forces of death” encroaching on the holiness of God, which is his life. And this is its main, perhaps singular use in the cult.

I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but what is wrong with this? 

Problems with Ritual Cosmology

First, I’ll make a basic note about his “ritual cosmology” of holiness, purity, and so on. Here Rillera mostly follows Milgrom, but at places he nods to some of the criticisms and corrections of Milgrom’s death=impurity / holiness=life formula, with an appeal to Jonathan Klawans to allow that impurity also involves human finitude, not simply death.¹⁷ But for the bulk of the book, finitude is not doing much work, it’s just “forces of death,” which is then wielded as a fairly blunt tool to tell us what a ritual absolutely cannot be doing. He also appears to operate with a fairly materialist conception of ritual impurity on the basis of aerial miasma analogy, which I have always found strained (Lemos and Douglas have helpful criticisms here).¹⁸

One meta problem this generates for Rillera’s whole account, though, is an under-developed concept of divine holiness, which is a problem for understanding the cult. I know I would say that, given my dissertation on holiness, but his dependence on Milgrom’s formula basically only has him think of holiness as God’s life (which is good to a degree when following Klawans because he emphasizes the metaphysics of the divine being as sexless and deathless), but tends to screen out other fairly important dimensions such as kingship and justice, which motivate some significant theodicy questions pertaining to the justice of the God who dwells in Israel’s midst that the cult is designed to answer.¹⁹ This is why, despite the fact that it would be a mistake to suggest Rillera doesn’t treat matters of justice as important, there seems to be a consistent move towards screening them out as the locus of concern at key points/texts.²⁰

Leviticus 17:11: Cleansing or Ransom?

To press more specifically, I don’t buy his reading of Leviticus 17:11 in several respects, nor his understanding of the principle he believes is at the center of the passage. Following Feldman, he thinks kipper here does not mean ransom, contrary to what seems to be the preponderance of commentators (Baruch Schwartz, Baruch Levine, Jay Sklar, Yitzhak Feder, etc.), including Milgrom himself. That said, in that section he spends time steel-manning Milgrom’s reading in order to show that even if “ransom” is implied, it still wouldn’t support “substitutionary death”, before adapting some of Milgrom’s work to his own sans ransom (LOTF 122-127). Instead, he believes 17:11 speaks to decontamination and takes it to be an explanation of the principle of why it has its power to cleanse. Here he depends on and yet modifies Milgrom’s basic thesis that all killing of domesticated animals outside of the appointed place and time is basically murder and so part of the point of ritual slaughter, depositing the blood in the right place, returning it to God, etc., is to turn it into something that is a “non-killing”, in which case, reading it as a ransom for bloodguilt is otiose because it’s not a killing (LOTF, 19, 123-125).²¹

A couple of problems emerge here for me.

First, he does little with the fact that a key part of the logic of Leviticus 17 beyond forbidding the ingestion of blood is clearly to restrict non-authorized sacrifices in the wrong location to goat-demons (17:7) in the wilderness context, not so much a concern about the ethics of animal killing for sacrifice itself.²²

Second, on his steelman of Milgrom’s construction, Rillera argues the blood would function to ransom the worshipper from bloodguilt for the actual sacrificial slaughter itself, nullifying his liability for that killing. On that basis he argues that this could not be for a situation where a worshipper was already guilty and needed the blood to atone for him, for in that case there’d be a double-blood guilt (one for the original offense and a second for the blood-shed in the sacrificial slaughter). 

Of course, one somewhat puckish way out is to adopt Rillera’s own view that ritual slaughter turns sacrifice into “not-a-killing”, rendering otiose a need for blood to atone for that slaughter. If that’s the case, it would then free up that blood to function in a life-for-life manner to ransom a worshipper from blood-guilt for an offense prior to the ritual slaughter. In other words, if Rillera is correct that sacrifice intrinsically removes the worry about blood-guilt from a given act of ritual slaughter, then that would be exactly the kind of ritual slaughter needed to secure the life from the blood that can function as a ransom for blood-guilt that is present prior to said ritual slaughter. And that’s all on the assumption that ritualizing the slaughter is about rendering it “not-a-killing.” If you don’t buy Rillera’s argument there, then you’re probably not concerned with this issue  to start.   

In any case, it is true that this would not immediately translate into a theology of “substitutionary killing.” Nevertheless, it would be fully consistent with the basic theology that the life-force in the blood is the proper currency that God has designated to redeem or ransom you in a situation when your own life is potentially forfeit or at risk (“I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life”). I don’t think this rules out also using the principle of the life being contained in the blood to explain blood’s cleansing power as well, should you want to take his reading of the sin offering and Day of Atonement. That said, it would help foreground again the importance of the moral need for ransom from blood-guilt within the Levitical cult. 

It’s also worth recalling that even in classic, penal substitutionary accounts, the active obedience and whole life of Christ contributes to the value of the sacrifice offered up in his death on our accounts.  John Owen, on the basis of Hebrews, has argued that the most pleasing thing that renders Christ’s death valuable to the Father is the preciousness of his obedience unto death, which is imputed to believers as the positive side of the great exchange: “God was more pleased with the obedience of Christ than he was displeased with the sin and disobedience of Adam.” Penal substitution advocates should be quick to remember that our theology doesn’t require us to reduce every single aspect of Christ’s work to his crucifixion, nor even the whole of his crucifixion to the negative moment of his passive suffering of judgment. One of the potential benefits of engaging Rillera’s work on sacrifice is to help us remember to broaden our focus to the wide variety of things Christ’s accomplishes in his reconciling work for us. 

At this point, let me return to a thread on “ransom” that we were pulling above. Put simply, I don’t think lytrosis in the New Testament can be reduced simply to a financial metaphor whose details we should not press, or even simply the broader theology of redemption from the Exodus that simply communicates “costly release from slavery.” There are better and worse ways of doing it, of course. But the theology of ransom from bloodguilt present here and in more obvious texts (Exod. 21: Numb. 35), and in several other texts in the Hebrew canon is too prominent to ignore.²³ Christ as our ransom, offering up his life to redeem us from our liability to bloodguilt, liberating us from liability to the judgment of God, from the covenant curses due to our sins, clearing a way for the New Exodus, isn’t penal substitution as such. Nevertheless, it is fully consistent with it and makes sense in several of the texts from which Rillera screens it out. Nor is it a problem for it to be associated with Passover and the foundation of the New Covenant, given what we have already seen about the complementary theology found in those rituals. 

Penal Death Atonement 

One more key bit of data here to complicate things even further. At a key point, Rillera actually does affirm a penal atonement in the law. In his section arguing that the Day of Atonement does not deal adequately with major moral impurities, he notes that in Numbers 35 the pollution inhering on the land from a capital offense of murder cannot be cleansed or atoned for by a blood sacrifice (LOTF, 85). Instead, it can only be “cleansed” by the “exile of the community or the death of the offender” (LOTF, 86). This is not the point he was going for, but what we see here is that, for some reason, the blood poured out in the penal death of the offender atones for the land. In this case, we don’t have penal substitutionary atonement. But we do have penalty paid that  atones for the land. 

There appears to be a clearly retributive logic at work, where only the blood of the offender himself serves to atone or answer for the blood that has been shed. Now, this can be taken as a unique form of blood as detergent to cleanse, in this case, not ritual impurity (the forces of death), or even minor impurity, but major impurity from the land. But it also makes sense according to the logic of the need to ransom from bloodguilt. God will not allow another ransom to set free the life of the murderer—remember in the sacrificial system, every allowance for ransom is already only a concessions, not a fait accompli, which is why it is gracious—because only the murderer’s life can answer for the bloodguilt that cries out from the ground and ransom the community to prevent it from being dragged off into the exile of covenant curse.²⁴ It is the murderer’s blood or the community’s exile that answers this cry. 

That this is part of the cultic and legal system of Israel as such means that it is part of the grammar of how we ought to think of atonement more broadly, perhaps blurring some of the allegedly clearer lines between the logic of cleansing and the logic of ransom, which was allegedly foreign to most of the priestly occurrences of kipper. (Incidentally, this is why I find myself favorable towards Sklar’s basic judgment about kipper, that it refers typically to a kipper-arrangement that has both purgative and ransoming results, since impurity endangers and sin not only endangers, but also pollutes—in which case, in situations of defilement you need an element of ransom and in situations of sin, you need an element of purgation.)  And in this we can see how Christ’s penal death can begin to function as a purgative ransom from exile on behalf of those whose actual hands are covered in blood.²⁵

I could keep going here as there are several more elements both in his treatment of Old Testament sacrificial narratives, ritual, and their NT correspondences where I think there are fruitful critiques to be made. That said, this review is too long already and I also know of a couple more reviews treating the cultic system more carefully than I possibly could that are in the works, so I’ll leave something on the table for them.

Closing Pastoral Concerns

Before closing, though, I want to turn to some final practical matters: As I noted above, Rillera had some pastoral concerns underneath his exegetical ones: first, the question of discipleship, and second, the question of justice. I’d like to briefly address both, although, I’ll just note I’ve tackled these elsewhere before. 

Discipleship

On the point about discipleship, I’ll note what is probably apparent by now: I am not actually a scholar, but rather a campus minister with about 15 years of experience working with college students.  Operating on that anecdotal, personal ministry experience and talking with dozens, if not hundreds of peers, I will say I (and we) have seen lives transformed by the simple understanding that all of my guilt has been objectively dealt with and decisively paid for by my Savior who gave himself for me in my place. I have seen students recognize that that gift that God has given in Christ calls forth a corresponding gift in response—that sacrifice of an entire life. 

Nevertheless, what substitution secures us from is the danger of a totally participatory co-crucifixion that reconciles them to God. It saves them from thinking that they are by their own suffering paying off their sin, making up for their faults, cleansing the world from the stain of their failures, rendering themselves more reconciled or “atoned” in that broader sense, which is the constant, Pelagian tendency of the human heart. Why? Because there is a bright red line between what my Savior does for me first, apart from, before me, in my place, and what I do in response to and in union with him by his Spirit. That is one very good thing that substitution does.

Of course, it is certainly the case that just about any Christian doctrine can be used and abused and distorted by immature Christians to cut the nerve of Christian discipleship. People had been doing that with the gospel that Paul preached—which is why we have sections of Romans chapter 6. The plain fact of the matter is, though, to suggest that penal substitution necessarily, logically, or actually cuts the nerve to sacrificial discipleship and obedience, you must engage in an unintentional widespread slander of millions of Christians throughout Church history who have engaged in missions, charity, discipleship, martyrdom, advocacy, prison reform and so much more who did so all the while affirming the doctrine of penal substitution, not just mentally but existentially.

That is because they have not always treated it as an abstract doctrine but precisely in conversation with all of the verses Rillera discusses. This is why Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion has a long section entitled: “Of Bearing the Cross—One Branch of Self-Denial.” Or closer to us in time, go see the last 80 pages of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, probably the most influential account of penal substitution in the last forty years, in which he applies the ethic of the cross at length to the Christian life, church, and society. These are not unrepresentative outliers. They are worth mentioning precisely because in the broad scheme of things, on this matter they are unremarkable and representative of much of the history of Protestant and evangelical piety associated with this doctrine of the cross. Evangelical and Protestant history is full of the stories of millions of generous families, lives healed, repentance, etc., as the fruit of this doctrine. 

Justice

On the question of whether or not penal substitution has contributed to a highly punitive and vindictive society, I think the most powerful argument leveraged in that direction is Timothy Gorringe’s, God’s Just Vengeance. The problem with this sort of argument generally stems from confusing historical correlation with necessary logical causation (i.e., this ideology has contributed to X, therefore it must contribute to X, instead of Y, which is actually logically possible as well). Indeed, sometimes the relation really is mere correlation and not causation. It is also similarly guilty of violating the dictum abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not forbid proper use), and is a form of theological consequentialism. 

I’m not convinced Rillera would disagree, but I think it’s worth coming back to the question raised by Fleming Rutledge in The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. A highly retributive and punitive society absolutely can be dangerous and unjust. But what about a society where crime and violence operate with impunity? Where dirty cops never get in trouble because they are treated as if they're above the law and therefore they are not treated as they deserve? Where lynchings happened but since “nobody saw anything,”  no one is held accountable for these heinous crimes? Communities where policing is so thin that criminals functionally run entire neighborhoods, and law abiding, peaceful families who simply want to make a life, carry on in abject fear? Societies where crime is not punished with an eye towards retributive concerns but paternalistically or entirely therapeutically can lead to a breakdown of order that inevitably leaves the weak and vulnerable exposed. This is precisely why so many Psalms praise God for his retributive justice, his holiness being exalted in his kingship, which established an order of justice in which the poor, the marginalized, the weak, the oppressed can be protected from the strong and have a shot at a flourishing life (Ps. 92-99). 

I’ve said this before, but one of the most powerful lines in Frederick Douglass’s biography comes after listing travesty after travesty, crime after crime against his enslaved compatriots, and then asking, “Will not a righteous God visit for these things?” He is asking for an answer, a retributive moment of judgment—to use Campbell’s terms, he is asking for some “negative” justice. I don’t think that in doing so, he desires to picture God as a fair “dictator”, upon whom to model political authoritarianism (LOTF, xviii). And I, for one, don’t think I’ll argue with him.   

Conclusion

This review has gone far too long and yet I keenly feel its deficits: vast swathes of Scripture remain uncommented on, so many of Rillera’s arguments on various passages must be left unattended, and I even worry that I have not represented his arguments as fully as he deserves, (though, I do believe with the amount of re-reading I’ve done that I’ve tried). I welcome any corrections. 

Nevertheless, with all those caveats, I have three last comments. 

First, I am grateful. Occasionally you run across a book with which you disagree that is nevertheless argued so forcefully, it makes you really work, rethink specifics, and wrestle with the text in new ways. Andrew Rillera has done that for me, and for that I thank him.

Second, while I am happy to confess that penal substitution is not the whole of the message of the cross, I do not believe it’s not incidental, ancillary, or marginal to it. And I hope I’ve shown it is certainly not dead. 

Third, Christ’s work really is a beautiful, multi-faceted jewel whose glories keep astounding every time you turn it just one more time in the light. If you’ve read this far, my encouragement is to keep turning. It just keeps getting better.

Footnotes

1. On the concept of punishment and retribution, see Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment, 100–24. There is much fuzzy thinking around this, for as O’Donovan notes, even speaking of a “retributive theory of punishment” or judgment introduces a sort of redundancy. If the harsh treatment is not conceptualized as a merited return, its justice is questionable at the most basic level. For another classic discussion, see C.S. Lewis’s Essay, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment.”

2. I also think it’s worth clarifying here, that the narrative and historical situation of God’s covenant curses within the story of Israel does make it concreted, but it does not thereby radically historicize it such that it ceases to tell us something about the nature of God’s justice in se. Biblical scholars will at times complain about theological presentations of atonement that assume an “abstract” justice as opposed to the concrete historical dealings of God with Israel via his covenant. The thing we need to understand is that while God’s dealings with Israel are situated and his covenant is historical, God’s relation to Israel is meant to be a light to the nations—that is, it is meant to be illustrative of who he is and how he deals with humanity at large, in many respects. Israel is a second Adam, another son, whose relationship typifies God’s dealings with the world beyond Israel. All of that to say, the covenant curses are particular to his relation to Israel, but they tell us about God’s relation in justice to the world as well, much as the creation theology of Israel’s tabernacle tells of God’s relation to the Cosmos as a whole.  

3. It came in the mail after the bulk of the review was written, but I wanted to flag that Paul Thomas Sloan’s, Jesus and the Law of Israel, 193, rightly speaks of God’s “punitive discipline.” I think that accurately captures the reality of what is happening with respect to Israel. Indeed, the book as a whole is very helpful on overlapping matters of concern.  

4. For a good article on the way this worked in the classical tradition, see Steven J. Duby, “The Cross and the Fulness of God: Clarifying the Meaning of Divine Wrath in Penal Substitution,” SBET (2011), Vol. 29, No. 2, 165-176.

5. This doesn’t come out in the book, but there is not much language of the believer’s appropriation of Christ’s work in union by faith, nor does the image of a cosmic Voodoo Doll lend itself to that as much. I don’t want to speculate, but this might be partly explained by the fact that Rillera himself seems to openly hold to a form of universalism. The necessity of a potentially optional faith lends itself conceptually to substitution more easily than some form of automatic vicariousness or participation or representation that works its way out into the cosmos and the whole human race. What happens to Christ before me and outside of me is something I must embrace by faith as something that happened on my behalf.  If space permitted, this question of application would be a significant one to follow up. 

6. N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began, 213

7. See the helpful discussion in Joshua McNall, The Mosaic of Atonement, 102-103, who argues we need three interlocking elements of representation, incorporation, and substitution to account for all the data relating to Christ’s death for us. He sees representation as an umbrella category that includes incorporative elements alongside of substitutionary elements, which I think is congenial to the NT in general. And so, I do actually think Rillera’s reading of 2 Cor. 5:13-21 being more participatory and representative makes sense. I just don’t think that makes sense of all the texts.   

8. The one counter here is Col. 1:24, but even there it seems the point is that Paul’s suffering is an extension of the martyrological suffering of Christ in his witness to the Gentiles, and not some uniquely salvific curse-bearing on our behalf.

9. Incidentally, given that John Mark Comer later mentioned that he was unconvinced by Rillera’s argument that there is no substitution at all in the Bible, and the fact that Rillera clearly affirms penalty, perhaps he might find that he does, in fact, affirm penal substitution?

10. Although, contra, see the forceful argument of William Lane Craig, Atonement and the Death of Christ, 43-45. If Craig is right, though, then not only is Moffitt wrong, but so is Rillera, in which case we’ve got the theology of the asham in play in Isaiah 53 and potentially the rest of the texts we’ll treat below. 

11. Again, I came to this after the review was written, but see also Sloan, Jesus and the Law of Moses, 189-192.

12. According to Jamieson, Ibn Ezra reports the opinion of of Saadia who “takes [the blood rite] as an allusion, as if to say, ‘Your blood may be spilled with impunity, just as this blood is, if you do not keep the covenant.’” Robert Bruce Jamieson III, “Not Without Blood: Jesus’ Death and Heavenly Offering in Hebrews”, (Phd. Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2017), pg. 123

13. Again, his work came after the review was written, but on all this see what I take to be a similar perspective to my own in Sloan, Jesus and the Law of Moses, 193-199, even though he is largely dealing with material in the Gospels. I find myself broadly sympathetic to his proposal of a Restoration eschatology at work across the NT, even if I would parse some texts differently.

14. Leigh Trevaskis, Holiness, Ritual, and Ethics in Leviticus, pp. 206, see 172-207 for full argument. 

15. Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice, pp. 8-18.

16. Weirdly enough, no interaction whatsoever with Jay Sklar’s important volume, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement: the Priestly Conceptions, which is odd given that it is one of the most significant close examinations of the important vocabulary terms by a conservative scholar in the last 20 years. A shortened version of part of his argument can be examined in his article, “Sin and Impurity: Atoned or Purified? Yes!” It would have been good, if only to refute. Yitzhak Feder’s, Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual: Origins, Context, and Meaning, also would have been helpful. 

17. Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism, 57-58.

18. For an important critical article on the problems with this highly structuralist account, see T.M. Lemos, “Where There is Dirt, is There System? Revising Biblical Purity Constructions,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Vol 37.3 (2013): 265-294. See also, Mary Douglass’s criticism of Milgrom’s account in her, Leviticus as literature.

19. Roy Gane, Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy., 305-333.   As a side-note, I was surprised at Rillera’s dismissive and condescending treatment of Gane’s model and criticism of Milgrom given that (a) Gane completed the dissertation under Milgrom, (b) Milgrom himself praised Gane’s work even while pushing back on it, and (c) Rillera himself diverges from Milgrom at key points. Finally, I’ll just say I’m not convinced Rillera’s criticism of Gane (LOTF, 98-110) properly takes into account how relatively non-materialist his “legal and biological” conception of impurity can be taken when he talks about removing impurity from the body (C&C, 160-162).

Consider that in his reading of Leviticus 14:36, he notes that Israelites are told to remove items from their house before the priest pronounces it unclean, in case by that pronunciation it is rendered unclean, when otherwise it would not be (C&C, 161). Which means there are cases where an object can be considered ritually unclean and to symbolically possess uncleanness “upon it” due to a legal declaration, when its location in another environment at the time of inspection can protect it from being deemed unclean. It seems simple enough, then, to locate impurity symbolically both on the body and on the sancta and to speak of symbolic removal from (min) both sites at different times. And this is why the lengthy discussion of lochial discharge spanning beyond the prescribed 80 days seems somewhat beside the point (LOTF, 104-108). That said, this is really not my area, so I could be out over my skis on this point.

20. I suppose this is a good enough place to complain about Rillera’s idiosyncratic treatment of Romans 3:24-26. Without going into all the details, Rillera spends a couple of pages arguing that hilasterion is not the Ark of the Covenant lid, or anything to do with the Day of Atonement. Instead, following Adolf Deissman, he sees hilasterion as a conciliatory “votive-gift” offering (LOTF, 262-268). With Greco-Roman parallels and specifically the event of Octavian’s clemency in view, the idea is that Christ is given as a votive-offering, an altar of sorts, testifying to the forgiving love of God, testifying to his forbearance [and his willingness to endure overlook, and not account people their sins. testifying to his willingness to endure, his willingness to overlook and not account people their sins (LOTF, 268-269).

This really is an inversion of most traditional readings whereby there is a fairly clear logic that—for God to be both just and a justifier, sin must be dealt with and not simply passed over. For God to do that, would be for him to abandon his own word, his own faithfulness to the covenant in the enforcement of his law. Again, this is where Gane is good at noting that the question of the Temple and Tabernacle contains a question of theodicy—how can the good God, who is a perfect King and Judge, who gives the justice that every Israelite longs for, treat sinners mercifully? I don’t have the space to address Rillera’s reading of the Prophets and Psalmists that says they just think of forgiveness as something God grants without atonement, etc., but I’ll note here the important discussion in chapter 16 of Cult and Character on the moral liability assumed by the King when he “just forgives.”

Further, despite Rillera not actually being an Abelardian through his book (and Abelard himself not actually holding this view), this is an essentially “Abelardian” reading of the text where the cross is basically a way of saying, “no, I really forgive you, I really love you, don’t worry about it.” The votive-offering doesn’t seem to solve the problem of passed-over sin. It just asserts that it isn’t a problem because God is merciful. However, the broader narrative logic of idolatry, the equality of Jews and Gentiles as under God’s judgment and wrath, the death of Christ provides the solution to that, which just is…the votive gift testifying to God’s mercy. There are plenty of non-penal substitution readings that are wrong, but generally answer the needs of the argument. This one doesn’t seem to. 

21. Yitzhak Feder, Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual,  202, makes the interesting counter-argument to this assumption that disposing the blood properly speaks to returning life which belongs to God. He notes that among all the places God is said to dwell in the Hebrew Bible (heaven, Temple and Tabernacle, etc.) it never says he dwells in the earth, and so understanding pouring out blood libations into the ground as returning blood to God might inadvertently place God on a plane with chthonic death deities. 

22. Yitzhak Feder, Blood Expiation in Hittite and Biblical Ritual, 199. Indeed, Feder very forcefully argues that the hattat as a whole should basically be understood as a ransom that answers to the concept of blood-guilt. Need I note that he’s not an Evangelical under contract at a Protestant institution?

23. On bloodguilt and the consequences of sin and its relation to punishment in the priestly literatures, see Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, Atonement, pp. 12-43. 

24. Incidentally, this is an important point. That God allows for a ransom in some cases and not in severe cases like that of murder does not tell us that there can in principle be no ransoming atonement for them, but simply that in the parameters of the Old Covenant God has not made provision for such things. And we can absolutely see why that would need to be the case given that Israel’s law was not only a testimony to spiritual truths but was the actual legislation for the socio-political order. In which case, knowing you could buy your way out of murder would not lead to the right kind of moral calculus for the citizens of Israel.

25. See, again, Sklar, Sin, Impurity, Sacrifice, and Atonement, and “Sin and Impurity: Atoned or Purified? Yes!”