Origenist Atonement

Frances Young (Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers) has a very rich account of Origen’s understanding of the atonement.

Recent critics of sacrificial violence have nothing on Origen. Reflecting on the story of Jephthah’s daughter, he wrote that “the Being must be a very cruel one to whom such a sacrifice is offered for the salvation of men.” This wasn’t a set-up for a pat answer. Nothing is pat with Origen. He goes on, “we require some breadth of mind and some ability to solve the difficulties raised against Providence, to be able to account for such things and to see that they are mysteries that exceed our human nature” (quoted, 181).

Origen had a number of ways of defending Providence against these difficulties. One rather imaginative one was to suggest that Jesus was a sin-eater. As Young summarizes his point, “God is a consuming fire. The God of fire consumes human sins; he assumes them, devours them and purges them. Christ thus took upon himself our sins, and like a fire, he ate and assumed them into himself” (180; Luther later echoes this sort of account).

Intriguingly, Origen draws on ancient myths of propitiating martyrdom to explain the mechanics of atonement. “He who was crucified quite recently accepted his death willingly for the human race, like those . . . who have died for their country to check epidemics of plague, or famines or stormy seas. For it is probably that in the nature of things there are certain mysteries, causes which are hard for the multitude to understand, which are responsible for the fact that one righteous man dying voluntarily for the community may avert the activities of evil daemons by expiation, since it is they who bring about plagues or famines or stormy seas or anything similar” (quoted 182).

In his Romans commentary, he makes this similar argument: “now Christ died for us, and how, since he was the lamb of God, he bore the sins of the world and carried out weaknesses and suffered for us, we have often explained in other places, where we brought as examples accounts that are found in secular histories; for even in them, some persons are said to have driven away pestilences, storms and other such eventualities by throwing themselves into the grip of death, and to have freed their homeland or nation from the destruction of an impending catastrophe” (quoted 182).

As Young says, “When Origen is pushed to explain Christ’s sacrifice for sin, he turns not to propitiation of God as a rationale; for God himself offered the sacrifice. The sacrifice for sin was a ransom, a sacrifice of aversion, offered to the devil to free mankind from sin for the pure worship of God who was thus reconciled, that is, made ‘propitius’” (184).

Origen’s account depends on a dualism: There are forces outside of God that Jesus’ death brings under control. Jesus pacifies not the Father but principalities and powers. The dualism appears to be a temporary one; once Jesus has offered Himself, He becomes Lord of all, the Lord of the storm and the plague. It’s as if the cosmos itself was torn by Adam’s sin, and repaired only by Jesus’ death. Origen could appeal to some of Paul’s language about Sin and Death in support, and his account fits with the New Testament’s sense that Christ’s work brings in a new creation. It makes the “new creation” quite literal. There’s what might almost be called a “metaphysical” change with the death and resurrection of Christ.

I’m not endorsing Origen here, only trying to grasp his reasoning. And I’m suggesting that this sort of dualism-subdued-to-God is a, perhaps the only, coherent alternative to an atonement theory that sees the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice.