In the last few issues I have been sharing thoughts about the Letter to the Hebrews which is attributed to Paul. I shared that scholars have suggested that in Judaism there were many different ideas about sacrifice and that Western Christianity’s image of Jesus as the once for all sacrifice for sin is but an interpretation of this historical event. This is only be understood within the theological framework that places emphasis on the fact that we are all sinners. That our sins must be paid for in order for God to forgive us and that Jesus is the sacrifice who paid the price. I am sure that most of my readers are aware of this typically Western approach to the death of Jesus on the Cross. Within this framework of thought, God cannot or will not forgive sins unless adequate payment is made; for God to forgive without payment would imply that sin doesn’t matter all that much to God. Somebody had to pay the price. But ordinary humans couldn’t pay the price; they would be dying only for their own sins. Only a perfect human, a sinless human who didn’t deserve to die, could be the sacrifice. For Anselm (a Western Father of the Church), this explained the necessity of the Incarnation: God became human in Jesus so that he could be the perfect sacrifice that paid for our sins (At this point you should also read “Leaning our Faith from the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20150208” if you haven’t already).

I am, at this point, including the Western understanding of the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross since it is the one to which most Christians, in our Western society, are exposed. The theological terms for this understanding of Jesus’ death include the terms substitutionary atonement and satisfaction theory of the atonement. The first emphasizes that Jesus died in our place. The second that He satisfied the debt we owe to God. Though less than a thousand years old, many people today (perhaps most) think that this is true Christianity – the official, traditional understanding of Jesus’ death. It is the default position for many when they hear the words sacrifice and atonement and when they think about the death of Jesus.

This is not the Eastern Church’s understanding of Christ’s death. The Eastern Church has a different and equally valid understanding of His death. It is a matter of perspective. The Western understanding is based on the idea of original sin and our inheritance of the effect of this sin.