Ethics

In Christian teachings, Jesus is said to have died for our sins. Is such a thing even possible? One person can pay another's financial debt, can 'moral debt' be transferred in the same way.

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The question asked here is interesting, but not in my area of expertise, I'm afraid. I would, however, like to say something about the background stated with the question.

The most familiar form of the doctrine to which you are referring is known as "substitutionary atonement". It was introduced in the twelfth century by Anselm and has since become central to many people's thinking about the meaning of Jesus's death on the cross. For all I know, it may be the official doctrine of some denominations that have official doctrines, such as Catholicism.

This doctrine does have some basis in scripture, but it has been and continues to be controversial. One reason is that many people find it offensive that God should require God's own son, Jesus, to suffer a violent, agonizing death, no matter what its alleged purpose. And the idea that God would require atonement for wrongdoing to take the form of physical suffering seems to many people to make God out to be some kind of cosmic child abuser. As the great American preacher Hosea Ballou put it:

"The belief that the great Jehovah was offended with his creatures to that degree, that nothing but the death of Christ, or the endless misery of mankind, could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to the Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries. The error has been fatal to the life and spirit of the religion of Christ in our world; all those principles which are to be dreaded by men have been believed to exist in God; and professors [of the faith] have been moulded into the image of their Deity and become more cruel...." (Quoted in Proverbs of Ashes, p. 30)

These themes are developed in several excellent books, including Stephen Finlan's Options on Atonement in Christian Thought, Mark Heim's Saved From Sacrifice, and, most powerfully, Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker's Proverbs of Ashes.

I recommend this last book to everyone, Christian or otherwise, because Western culture has embraced so much of this theology. As Brock and Parker argue, our culture's unthinking, reflexive tendency to blame victims of violence for their own suffering is, to a large extent, rooted in this sort of theology. Which is to say that this theology arguably condones violence, especially intimate violence.

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