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 SACRIFICE

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SACRIFICE

with the testimony of Latin patristic literature. While the Greek Church adhered to the old mystical conception in connexion with the theory of ransom, the doctrine of the Redemption received a further development in the "juristic theory of satisfaction" of St. Anselm of Canterbury ("Cur Deus homo" in P. L., CLVIII, 359 sqq.); this was freed of some crudities by St. Thomas Aquinas and deepened by the "ethical theory of reconciliation". A compre- hensive theory, employing dialectically all the Bibli- cal and patristic factors, is still a desideratum in speculative theology.

(2) Theological Problems. — Other difficult ques- tions concerning the sacrifice of the Cross have been already more successfully dealt with by theolo- gians. On account of the remarkable and unique coincidence of the priest, victim, and acceptor of the sacrifice, a first question arises as to whether Christ was victim and priest according to His Divine or according to His human nature. On the basis of the dogma of the hypostatic union the only answer is: although the God-Man or the Logos Himself was at once both priest and victim, He was both, not according to His Divine nature, but through the function of His humanity. For, since the Divine nature was absolutely incapable of suffering, it was no more possible for Christ to act as priest according to His Divine nature, than it was for God the Father or the Holy Ghost. As regards the relation bctwce^n the priest and the acceptor, it is usually stated in explanation that Christ acts only as sacrificing i)ri('st, and that God the Father alone receives the sacrifice. This view is false. Even though God the Father is mentioned as the only acceptor by the Council of Trent (Sess. XXII, cap. i), this is merely an appro- priation, which excludes neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost in the matter of acceptance. The acceptor of the sacrifice of the Cross is thus the offended God, or the whole Trinity, to which Christ as Logos and Son of God also belongs. One must, however, distinguish between the Divinity and the Humanity of Christ and say: while Christ as God, together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, accepted His own sacrifice in expiation of the offended Deity, He off(>red this same sacrifice as Man vicari- ously to the Blesscul Trinity. While this coincidence of the three functions of priest, victim, and acceptor in the same Christ may constitute a mystery, it yet contains no contradiction (cf. Augustine, "De civ. Dei", X, xx). A third problem of great impor- tance concerns the nature of the actio sacrifica in the sacrifice of the Cross. Did the sacrificial act consist in the slaying of Christ on the Cross? This qu(!stion must be answered with a decided negative; otherwise one would have to say that the function of high-priest at the sacrifice of the Cross was exercised, not by Christ, but by his torturers and their myrmi- dons, the Roman soldiers. In the Mosaic sacrifices also the essence of the sacrifice lay, not in the actual slaying of the victim, but in the letting, or rather in the sprinkling, of the blood. Consequently, the sacrifice of the Cro.ss, at which Christ functions as sole priest, must likewise be referred to the free offering of His blood for us men, inasmuch as the Redeemer, while outwardly submitting to the forci- ble shedding of His blood by His executioners, simultaneously offered it to God in the spirit of sacrifice (cf. John, x, 17 sq.; Heb., ix, 22: I Peter, i, 2).

Tanner, Cruentum Christi sacrificium, incruentum Missa sacri- ficium explicatum (Prague, 1669) ; Condren, Das Priestertum u. das Opfer Jesu Christi (Ratisbon, 1847) ; von Cichowski, Das alttestamentl. Pascha in seinem Verhaltnis zum Opfer Christi

(Munich, 1849); Thalhofer, Die Opfer des Hebraerbriefes (Dil- lingen, 18.5.5); Idem, Das Opfer des alien u. neuen Bundes (Ratis- bon, 1870); BicKEL, Messeu. Pascha (Mainz, 1871); Pell, Das Dogma von der Siindi- u. Erlosung im Lichte der Vernunft (Ratis- bon, 1S.S6); Idem, Die Lehre des hi. Athanasius von der SUnde u. Erlosung (Passau, 1888) ; Oswald, Die Erldsung in Christo Jesu

(2nd ed., Paderborn, 1887); Strater, Die Erlosungslehre des hi. Athanasim (Freiburg, 1894); Anrich, Das antike Mysterien- wesen u. sein Einfluss auf das Christentum (Gottingen, 1894); Schenz, Die priesterl. Tdtigkeit des Messias nach dem Propheten Isajas (Ratisbon, 1892); Seeberg, Der Tod Christi in seiner Be- deutung far die Erldsung (Leipzig, 1895) ; Dorholt, Die Lehre von der Genugtuung Christi (Paderborn, 1896) ; Charre, Le sa- crifice de I'Homme-Dieu (Paris, 1899) ; Grimm, Gesch. des Leidena Jesu, I (Ratisbon, 1903) ; Funke, Die Satisfactionstheorie des hi. Anselm (Munster, 1903); Ritter, Christus der Erloser (Linz, 1903); Belser, Gesch. des Leidens u. Sterbens, der Auferstehung u. Himmelfahrt des Herrn (Freiburg, 1903) ; Jentsch, Hellentum u. Christentum (Leipzig, 1903) ; Muth, Die Heilstat Christi ala stellvertretende Genugtuung (Ratisbon, 1904) ; Riviere, Le dogme de la Redemption (Paris, 1905); Crombrdgghe, De soteriologioB Christiana primis fontibus (Louvain, 1905); Kluge, Das Seelenlei- den des Welterlosers (Mainz, 1905); Weigl, Die Heilslehre des hi. Cyrill von Jerusalem (Mainz, 1905); Weiss, Die messianischen Vorbilder im A. T. (Freiburg, 1905); Fiebig, Babel u. das N. T. (Tubingen, 1905) ; Feldmann, Der Knecht Gottes in Isajas Kap. 40-00 (Freiburg, 1907) ; Staab, Die Lehre von der stellvertretenden Genugtuung Christi (Paderborn, 1908) ; Pohle, Dogmatik, II (Paderborn, 1909); Bauer, Vom Griechentum zum Christentum (Leipzig, 1910); Harnack, Dogmengesch., I-II (Tubingen, 1901). For other literature see Mass, Sacrifice of the, and Priest-

IV. Theory of Sacrifice. — In view of the com- prehensive historical material which we have gathered both from pagan practice and from the religions Divinely revealed, it is now possible to essay a scien- tific theory of sacrifice, the chief lines being drawn naturally from the Jewish and Christian sacrificial .systems.

(1) Universality of Sacrifice. — One of the specially characteristic features which the history of religions places before us is the wide diffusion, even the univer- sality, of sacrifice among the human race. It ia true that Andrew Lang ("The Making of a Religion", London, 1899) maintains the improbable view that originally the supreme, majestic, and heavenly God was as little venerated with sacrifices as He is to-day among certain tribes of Africa and Australia; that even in the Jahwehism of the Israelites the sacrificial cult was rather a degeneration than an ethico-reli- gious advance. In agreement with this (other in- vestigators add) is the fact that in many features the Mosaic sacrificial ritual was simply borrowed from the pagan ritual of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and other Semitic peoples. It is remarkabh! also that many leathers of the Church (e. g. Chrysostom) and Scholastics, and among the Jews, Maiinonides represented the Mosaic sacrifices as merely a conces- sion which God made to the weakness of the Jewish character in order to restrain the Chosen People from the horrors of bloody sacrifice to idols. This one-sided view, however, cannot be maintained before the bar of the history or the psychology of rehgion. Nothing is psychologically so intelligible as the derivation of sacrifice from the naturally religious heart of man, and the history of all peoples similarly proves that scarcely a single religion has ever existed or exists to-day without some sacrifice. A religion entirely without sacrifice seems almost a psychological impossibility, and is at least unnatural. It is the complete want of sacrifice among some Afri- can and Australian tribes, rather than the numerous sacrifices of Mosaism, that has resulted from degen- eration. Had God conceded the bloody sacrifices simply on account of the weakness of the Israelites, as above asserted. He would have promoted, rather than checked, the spread of pagan idolatrj', espe- cially if the sacrificial ritual were also taken from pagan religions. Here as elsewhere parallels in other religions prove no borrowing, unless such is supported by strict historical evidence, and even the actual borrowings may in their new home have been inspired with an entirely new spirit. The adoption of the substance of paganism into Mosaism is dis- proved especially by the anti-pagan and unique idea of holiness with which the whole Jewish cult is stamped (cf. Lev., xi, 44), and which shows the sacrificial thora as of one piece. A later editor could