Actuality of Atonement: Chapter Five

Gunton turns his final chapter on atonement models to sacrifice. Is Jesus a sacrifice? How are we to understand this metaphor of Jesus' death?

Gunton follows Mary Douglas in arguing that sacrifice is about keeping things in order. Sacrifice works to purify and cleanse those things that got out of order. (Here Gunton notes that our own concern with cleanliness might not simply be rational!) This means that while the previous metaphors of justice and victory might at first seem to be most appropriate, sacrifice can still strike a deep chord for contemporaries.

Sacrifice is already a metaphor in the Old Testament: God's desires a broken and contrite spirit as a sacrifice. Paul uses it as a metaphor in Romans 12, too. This doesn't mean that sacrifice as a metaphor isn't real; it means that Christ tells us what sacrifice really is.

Gunton doesn't see the sacrifice of Christ in punitive terms. It is a free act of Jesus. It is also a gift of God. God sends his Son. There is both reception and loss, being giving and free action in the sacrifice.

Gunton then mentions Calvin's metaphor of the temple. Because the temple, the center of sacrificial practice, is a place to draw close to God, Christ has now accomplished this in his death. Flesh is devoted as a temple to God in the ascension of Christ. Gunton emphasizes the fact that the covenant established here deals with the heart, to bring transformation by the death of Christ. The cleansing work of this sacrifice is deep and penetrating.