In The Eschatological Economy I wanted to show that there are interesting reasons why modern society wants to believe that the concept of sacrifice is vicious and outmoded. Modernity is not only mistaken about this, it is concealing something about itself. Christians certainly need to rediscover a clearer and more trinitarian account, because the concept of sacrifice is central to the gospel and cannot be removed without loss. Jesus Christ is ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’. My own professor, Colin Gunton, wanted to show that the concept of sacrifice makes sense, but he found it hard to show how. Many other theologians, like the New Testament and patristic scholar Frances Young in her ‘Sacrifice and the Death of Christ’, were saying that ancient people sacrificed, we don’t, so it difficult or even impossible for us to make sense of Christian doctrine, in terms of sacrifice at least. I was amazed to find Karl Barth saying the same thing (Church Dogmatics volume IV.1 p.275). Frances Young and Karl Barth were puzzled because they understood sacrifice as propitiation (placating a fierce judge), which seems to suggest that pain must be experienced, which is very close to saying that God demands the pain. The problem was that the concept of sacrifice had become linked in Augustinian theology to a doctrine of God that was more pagan (Stoic) than Christian.
It is part of the creed of modernity that we have left all our earlier violence and superstition behind. Just as Christianity surpassed paganism, the modern worldview believes that modernity has now surpassed Christianity. The belief that one system and one age gives way to another that is superior, is itself a ‘replacement theology’, or supersessionism. It believes that we used to be religious, but now we are not. It is up to the Christians to pop this balloon, and point out that one religion (Christianity) has been swapped for another (modernity) but it is still an open question which religion is better. Christians have to say that if a society, like ours, gives up Christianity it has not gone beyond Christianity, but simply gone back to the default position and become pagan again.
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