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chapter 2 Blood Money Antichristian Economics and the Drama of the Sacraments God loves a cheerful giver. Saint Paul The Root of All Evil Prior to Christian scripture redemption in Greek meant to free by cash payment. The way we might redeem an old heirloom from hock, money back then could purchase human life. It freed prisoners of war, for example, or convicts. In the case of temple slaves, you had to pay the gods—or, what comes down to the same, the temple priests. Redemption meant you bought the person back.1 Christianity introduces just a couple of novelties into this usage. First, those in need of manumission now include the unimprisoned and free1 . See the entries for λύτρον-ἀιτολύτρωσις by F. Büchsel in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. and ed. Geoffry W. Bromiley, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 4:340–51. Paul J. Achtemeier, 1 Peter: A Commentary on First Peter, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), p. 127, provides a helpful synopsis on the prehistory: in the LXX this cluster of terms covers “redemption of property by paying its value to the present holder [Lev. 24:26, 33, 48–49]; the retribution for faults committed [Exod. 21:30]; the ransom of the firstborn [Exod. 13:12–13; Num. 3:44–51, 18:15–17]; and the ‘atonement price’ (half-shekel paid by every Israelite [Exod. 30:12–16]). The term is also used to describe the deliverance of Israel by God from its bondage and exile, in which case the price is normally not mentioned [Exod. 6:6; Deut. 7:8; cf. Isa. 44:22–23, 51:11, 52:3].” For fuller treatment, see Bernd Janowski, “Auslösung des verwirkten Lebens: Zur Geschichte und Struktur der biblischen Lösegeldvorstellung,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 79 (1982): 25–59. 88 Blood Money born. Birth itself, irrespective of any social determinant, is condemnation enough. Life as such has become the universal life sentence. This sounds grim, maybe, but the new outlook promised great relief. Slavery, imprisonment , guilt—these imply clear remedies, whereas the quotidian limitation of a finite existence by itself does not. So long as you are only imprisoned, you can, in exchange for freedom, pay damages or ransom. You can bribe the judge. You have only to know what sort of payment the judge accepts. That is the second Christian novelty. According to scripture, God accepts restitution, same as in any Greek religion—only not in cash and not from you. Christ alone provides the necessary “ransom” (lutron; Mt 20:28; Mk 10:45).2 And Christ pays your debt in blood. Judaism had offered at best a single biblical instance “in which sacrificial blood is said to be a ransom for human life” (Lev. 17:11),3 but with the advent of Christ, God’s economics would henceforth conform more strictly to an old rabbinic dictum than had the rabbis: “There is no remission without bloodshed” (Heb. 9:22).4 Without the crucifixion, in other words, there is no redemption. In Paul’s sublime understatement, “You are bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:20, 7:23). By this he presumably meant a price beyond all cost, since to make payments in exchange for salvation of course you cannot be rich enough. You are bought, rather, at the price of blood, though this does not mean you can bleed enough, either. On the contrary, the church of God has to be “purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28b).5 With God’s blood. That oxymoron caused some scribes to 2. More fully, “ransom for [anti] many.” Cf. 1 Tim. 2:6, where antilutron is used synonymously with lutron. I deal with the word anti as a preposition connected to fiscal exchange in the next chapter. “That they had been ransomed,” writes Peter H. Davids, “is found in all strata of the early church” (The First Epistle of Peter [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990], p. 71); he then gives a convenient list of instances in the NT. For an overview of the ransom motif specifically in Paul, see Wilfrid Haubeck, Loskauf durch Christus: Herkunft, Gestalt, und Bedeutung des paulinischen Loskaufmotivs (Giessen: Brunnen, 1985). There are scattered pagan instances of the same idea; see, for example, the citation in Martin Hengel, The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), p. 24. 3. Baruch J. Schwartz, “The Prohibitions Concerning the ‘Eating’ of Blood in Leviticus 17,” in Priesthood...

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