Spiritualization?

Stephen Finlan (Problems With Atonement, 20-29) offers a sixfold typology of “spiritualization” of sacrifice that includes “moralizing interpretation of ritual,” “internalizing,” the use of ritual imagery for non-ritual realities, at the extreme an outright “rejection of ritual.”

What he identifies as “spiritualization” is certainly present in both Jewish and Christian writers. But the whole analysis assumes an unstated definition of sacrifice that detaches it from it canonical (and, I would argue, historical) settings.

He spends several pages, for instance, examining the “epochal  . . . replacement of human sacrifice with animal sacrifice” (20-22). There’s no doubt it’s there: Prophets condemn the continuing practice of human sacrifice, and animals definitely take the place of firstborn sons. But why should this be a “spiritualization” rather than part of the original essence of biblical sacrifice? After all, sacrificial rites were introduced to an Israel descended from Abraham – who offered a ram in place of his son – and an Israel recently delivered from Egypt by the replacement of a lamb or goat for their firstborn sons. It’s even written into Leviticus 1: The bovines offered as “sons of the herd” (1:5). Animal substitutes for humans isn’t spiritualization; it’s simply what sacrifice is in the Bible.

Similarly, his claim that “moralizing interpretations” reflect a form of spiritualization assumes that sacrifice was originally amoral. But what if they are not? Finlan quotes Mary Douglas’s claim that “ritual laws . . . are grounded in justice” (22), but he sees this as abstraction. I imagine Douglas would protest that she was uncovering an original intention. (For more along these lines, see my discussion of Leigh Trevaskis’s work on Leviticus here.)

I could work through each of the six levels of spiritualization along these lines, but I won’t belabor the point. I would only add that Finlan fundamentally reverses what I think is the biblical understanding of sacrifice. I find Augustine’s views more compelling: What Finlan takes as baseline sacrifice is metaphorical sacrifice. True sacrifice is not the slaughter of the animal but the self-offering of Christ and His people in life.