From Bondage to Liberty in Religion: A Spiritual Autobiography

by George T. Ashley

The question has been asked, why burn the offering? Why was it not sufficient simply to shed the blood? Perhaps in the beginning this was the practice. There is nothing said about burning the offerings of either Cain or Abel. It is highly probable they were not burnt. Jehovah was satisfied with the mere sight of blood, the destruction of a life. But this, Cain did not offer. There was no blood in his fruit-offering; hence Jehovah was not only unappeased, but insulted. The first mention of "burnt-offerings" in the Bible is the offering made by Noah after the flood. From this on they are common. The purpose of burning the offering was simply to cook it,—to roast it. The offering was nearly always eaten. Sometimes only the fat, considered the choicest part, was burnt as an offering to the god; while the people and priests ate the balance, either roasted or boiled. See a full account of this in 1 Sam. ii, 12f. As man has always made his gods in his own image he imagined the gods, like himself, loved to eat. Therefore, in addition to appeasing the wrath of the god by the sight of the blood of the victim, his favor was supposed to be further obtained by feeding him. As the good host always sets the best he has before his guest, so the best part of the sacrificed victim was placed on the altar for the god. Altho invisible, it was firmly believed that the god consumed the burning flesh or fat, as it was reduced to smoke and ascended to heaven. The parties making the offering,—sometimes only an individual, or a family, but often the whole tribe,—ate the balance. They were therefore, "eating with the god," and consequently on good terms with him, just as eating together today is an indication of friendship, or the taking of salt together among certain savage tribes is a token of peace and friendship, or the smoking from the common pipe among the early American Indians. Later in Israel, the whole offering was burnt. Jehovah was entitled to it all. Men had outgrown the idea of "eating with Jehovah."

We now come back more specifically to the purpose of this blood atonement. We have no account in all the Old Testament where it was ever offered with direct reference to a future life,—for the purpose of escaping hell. We have already seen that there is absolutely nothing in the story of Eden and the fall of man, upon which to predicate any thought of immortality after physical death, either a heaven or hell. We now come to note that there is nowhere any direct reference to a life after death, in any book of the Old Testament, written before the exile. The account of Saul having the witch of Endor call up Samuel after his death; and David's faith that he could go to his dead child, indeed indicate some belief at this time in an after-life; but nowhere is there the remotest reference to a hell, a separate place of torment for the wicked. In the case of Samuel being recalled to converse with Saul, he says, that altho Jehovah had departed from Saul, and notwithstanding Saul's great wickedness, "Tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me,"—the saintly Samuel, all in the same place. There are a few direct references to a future life, in a few places only, in some of the books written during or after the exile. But nowhere in the Old Testament do we find a single reference to the offering of the sacrifice of atonement with any reference whatever to a future life. To ancient Israel, Jehovah was a God of the present,—not the future. He did things then,—in the present tense. He was the God of the living,—not of the dead. And Jesus affirmed the same thing.

He was exclusively a God for this world and this life. The atoning sacrifice was offered to appease his wrath against them for their past sins, not the sin of the individual only, but the sins of the whole nation. The benefits they expected to receive from this remission of sins thru the blood of the atonement were here and now,—not in some future life.

We pass rapidly now to the time of the Christ. Altho the canonical books of the Old Testament give us no clue to any definite, fixed beliefs among the Jews concerning a future life, heaven, hell or the resurrection of the dead, yet, according to the New Testament literature, these views were all quite clearly defined, and generally believed among all the Jews, except the party of the Sadducees, relatively a very small party. Whence came these beliefs? If they had come by some divine revelation they would certainly have been recorded in some of their sacred books. But they were not. The only rational answer is that they learned all these things from their Eastern masters during the captivity, where all these beliefs are now known to have been current centuries before the captivity, and brought them back on their return; and with some modifications incorporated them into their own system. Yet there is no indication in the New Testament, nor any contemporary literature now extant, that the atoning sacrifice that was continually offered in the temple, even down to the destruction of Jerusalem, was ever offered with any view, or reference to a future life; much less as a means of escaping hell.

We turn now to the Christ. It has already been said that he nowhere makes the least reference to a vicarious atonement to be made by himself for the sins of world. True, he warns his disciples that he must needs go up to Jerusalem, there to suffer and be put to death; but nowhere does he say that this death is to redeem back mankind from the devil; nor appease the wrath of God against mankind by the sight of his blood; nor to vindicate the majesty of a broken law, for the benefit of mankind. It is all but universally acknowledged that his disciples had no such conception of his mission, but followed him up to Jerusalem expecting to see him made King, sit on the "throne of David" and restore Israel to her pristine glory, according to the universal interpretation of the Messianic prophecies. After his tragic death, and alleged resurrection and ascension,—in which his disciples certainly implicitly believed, no matter what the actual facts may be,—we still hear not a word about his death being a vicarious atonement for sin. When Peter preached that great sermon on the day of Pentecost he says not one word about a vicarious atonement in the death of Christ, but lays the whole emphasis on his resurrection and ascension. Let the reader turn here to that sermon in the second chapter of Acts and read it; and he will find that the whole burden of Peter's sermon is to the effect, that since the Jews had put Jesus to death, he had broken the bonds of death and hades, they being powerless to hold him, and had ascended to the right hand of God, whereby he had conquered both death and hades, and for which "God hath made him both Lord and Christ." Note, that because of this resurrection and ascension he had been made both Lord and Christ,—and not by any virtue in his death itself. Not the remotest hint of vicarious atonement! The natural inference is—tho Peter is not quoted as saying so in so many words,—that men are to be saved from death and hades hereafter, because Jesus had escaped from both, and thus not only paved the way, but himself thereby became able to save others also.

As is well known, for half a century or more, the followers of the new faith, who for fifteen years were all Jews, or Jewish proselytes, looked with anxious expectancy for the return of this Jesus, with the power and glory of heaven, to set up his earthly kingdom on the throne of David in Jerusalem. Not a word yet about saving men's soul's from hell thru vicarious atonement. No need for a vicarious atonement to save men from hell hereafter, if they were soon to live on this earth forever—those who died before his return to be raised from the dead as he was, while those that remained were to be "caught up in the clouds to meet him in the air and live forever,"—under the benign reign of the Messiah of God.

But we are approaching its development. There appears upon the scene one Saul of Tarsus, afterwards known as Paul the Apostle. It is generally conceded that he never saw Jesus in his lifetime; in fact knew nothing of him while he lived. He early became a violent persecutor of the new sect, which for years was only another Jewish sect, as exclusively Jewish in its views and outlook as were the priests and Rabbis. But Paul was a well educated man, a scholar in his day,—and a philosopher. He was a Jew to the core, and lived and died one. We need not consider the story of his trip to Damascus, the supposed miracle on the way, and his conversion to the new faith. He soon became the greatest leader and exponent it had thus far produced; and he put a new interpretation on it, entirely unchristian, if we are to take the recorded teachings of the Christ himself as our standard for Christianity. And the Christianity of the world today is much more Pauline than Christian, judged by this standard.

This Paul operated independent of the other Apostles. He was a "free lance" and launched forth, both in a field, and with a doctrine all his own. He was thoroly familiar with the whole Jewish system. He knew all about the meaning and purpose of the sacrifice of atonement. Yet he was too wise not to know that there was no intrinsic merit in the blood of bulls and goats to cleanse from sin, or appease the divine wrath. Yet as a loyal Jew he certainly believed these to be of divine origin,—and that they must have a meaning deeper than the physical fact itself. He was a believer in the coming of the long-promised Messiah—to restore Israel. A man of his knowledge and foresight might well be able to read "the signs of the times," and see that the Jewish nation could but little longer maintain its separate identity against the overwhelming power of the growing Roman Empire. It must soon be swallowed up and its separate identity lost in the greater whole. No power in Israel seemed to be able to stem the tide of events. Remember that this was now some years after the crucifixion; and after Paul had changed his course towards the new sect, because of the events about Damascus,—no matter what they may have been. At any rate, it is quite clear, no matter what the reasons may have been that induced him to do so, that he had accepted in good faith, as a veritable truth, the belief in the physical resurrection of the crucified Jesus. Paul tells us himself that after his escape from Damascus he went into Arabia for three years,—perhaps to try to think out some rational interpretation of the meaning of the events that he had felt himself forced to accept as true.

After this we find him passing thru Jerusalem, stopping a few weeks with Peter and the other Apostles to learn from them all he could; and then going on to his native city, Tarsus, where we lose sight of him for several years before we find him starting on his first great missionary journey from Antioch, in which we begin to get our first glimpses of the doctrine of vicarious atonement made for the sins of the world by the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

During these years of Paul's obscurity, both in Arabia and at Tarsus, what was he probably doing? We do not know. But is it unreasonable to conjecture that he must have spent at least a good portion of his time in profound study, to try to reconcile these new views with the past history, traditions and beliefs of his own people? If this new teaching meant only a new ethical standard of life; that men are saved by what they are and do, without any reference to belief, then the whole Jewish system of sacrifices had no meaning at all, and never did have. We can hardly conceive of Paul, educated as he was in all the lore and traditions of his people, accepting such a view as this. To him all the traditions and practices of his people were at least of divine origin; and hence must have a meaning of eternal significance. Yet, it must have been plain to him that in the natural course of events, as they were then clearly tending, it could not be long until the elaborate temple ritual, with all its sacrifices, oblation, burning bullocks and incense, must soon cease forever!