The Self-Donation of God. Jack D. Kilcrease

was previously noted in the introduction, the Abrahamic covenant stands in a kind of existential conflict with the Sinaitic covenant. The Sinaitic covenant is bilateral and therefore demands obedience on the part of Israel for its fulfillment. This means it demands the self-dedication and the self-giving of Israel to YHWH. The history of the Fall and the exodus narratives clearly demonstrate that Israel cannot do this. Furthermore, Deuteronomy 27–32 (after the Sinaitic covenant’s restatement and renewal in the second generation) emphasizes the impossibility of the fulfillment of the covenant (without the circumcision of the heart, see 30:6) and plans for the covenant’s obsolescence. The Abrahamic covenant, on the other hand, involves the self-donation of God and giving of the divine being to his people in the form of a promise. To engage in an act of unilateral promise is an act of self-donation. By making such a promise, God pledges his entire being to the task of fulfilling the terms of the promise. The biblical texts recognize this and therefore in making covenants (Gen 22:16) and sending forth his redemptive Word of grace (Isa 45:23), God repeatedly states: “I swear by myself.” Particularly within the cultural context of the Ancient Near East, to swear by one’s self is therefore to give the whole self over to curse and death, as we observed in the covenantal ceremony of Genesis 15.125

In Exodus 40, the self-donation of God in the confirmation of the promise also takes the form of the descent of the divine presence into the tabernacle. This descent of the divine kavod prefigures the incarnation. Therefore the New Testament and the church fathers rightly see the ceremonies of Leviticus (that center around this pre-Incarnation-incarnation) as being shadows of the work of Christ. In fact, as we will see, the New Testament identifies Jesus with the kavod, and therefore the preincarnate Christ is the agent who gives his righteousness to humanity before and after the incarnation. In this, God becomes present to Israel as a sign of his unilateral commitment to them by the giving of the divine being to them. By this action, God enables the cult, which as we will show below, is meant to channel his holiness to Israel. Giving his own holiness to Israel, YHWH acknowledges that his people do not possess holiness of their own.126

YHWH himself is holy and therefore gives his holiness to Israel, thereby making them holy: “I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel” (Ezek 37:28). As John Kleinig has shown, holiness is not a demand per se, in that it is not something humans produce or generate.127 Rather, it is something God alone possesses: “The Lord alone is inherently and permanently holy. His holiness is his godliness, his nature, and his power as God. It is inseparable from him and his presence.” For this reason, “Holiness is derived only from him. People and things borrow their holiness from their association with him at Mount Sinai and at the sanctuary.”128 Therefore, holiness is properly defined as God’s otherness and godliness, including his righteousness and moral perfection.

Such a share in God’s uncreated righteousness and glory is not generated by human activity, but rather is received passively. Humans of course can lose such a share in God’s own holiness if they do not remain with the boundaries that God has established and consecrated: “Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. Keep my statutes and do them; I am the Lord who sanctifies you” (Lev 20:7–8, emphasis added). Violating God’s commandments and opposing the proper boundaries of creation moves Israel out of the realm of God’s holiness and into the realm of uncleanness. Becoming unclean causes Israel to be destroyed by God’s holiness and unable to participate in his holiness (Lev 10; 1 Sam 6; 2 Sam 6). God enacts the cult to maintain his promise of self-donating holiness to Israel. By participating in God’s own holiness and not placing blocks in front of the flow of divine holiness, Israel maintains itself within the realm of the clean (holy and clean, and common and clean, as opposed to common and unclean).129 This means primarily (as Kleinig has convincingly argued) avoiding idolatry and being weaned off of animistic modes of thought.130 This way of understanding the divine-human relationship forms the first set of rationales for the ritual laws of the Pentateuch.

Expanding on Hahn’s earlier suggestion regarding covenantal sacrifice, we can shed much light on the need for atoning sacrifice.131 Atoning sacrifice prefigures the final new testament of forgiveness. Such a new testament represents the resolution in the tension between the Abrahamic and Siniatic covenants (Rom 3:25, 8:3–4). In effect, atoning sacrifice would be impossible if it were not for a prior commitment of God to Israel. It too represents the content of the two great covenants. It enacts the judgment of the Sinaitic code on a substitute in order to maintain the life of Israel promised in the Abrahamic covenant. It also represents God’s own giving of an atoning sacrifice to Israel: “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev 17:11, emphasis added). Moreover, atoning sacrifice represents and mediates the self-donation of God’s own holiness to his people.132

Regarding the specifics of blood atonement, we should observe that this category of sacrifice comprised a number of different kinds of offerings: sin offerings (Lev 4:1—5:13, 6:24–30, 8:14–17, 16:3–22) and guilt offerings (5:14—6:7, 7:1–6).133 Offerings for guilt involve the death of an animal, and just as in Genesis 3, humanity’s disobedience resulted in their condemnation to death (Gen 3:19). All sin for Israel is tied up with the rejection of the creator who is the source of life. That all sin is ultimately sin against God is expressed most clearly in the fact that the first commandment recorded in Exodus is the prohibition of idolatry and apostasy (Exod 20:3). Hence, just as with regard to civil matters where Israel is to take an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (21:24), so too the rejection of God (the source of life) must result in death. In the book of Genesis it is not insignificant that animal sacrifice is first instituted in connection with God’s authorization of lex talionis: “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen 9:5–6). The only way to remedy sin is the substitution of life through the pouring of blood. This necessarily occurs through animal sacrifice, since as YHWH states, “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev 17:11). For this reason, sacrifice for sin means a separation of blood from the flesh and not simply the death of the animal.

      The choices of blood atonement and animal sacrifice are important for a number of other reasons. First, since blood contains life, it cries out and thereby gives a testimony. When Cain kills Abel, God tells Cain, “The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (4:10). Later the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that Christ’s blood also cries out and thereby “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Heb 12:24, emphasis added). Living blood therefore gives testimony of forgiveness that has been paid for. In the case of covenants, it also stands as a witness to the truthfulness of the divine promise.

Secondly, the choice of animals as sacrifices for sins (as opposed to, for example, grain offerings) is not arbitrary, but represents the restoration of human vocation in creation. As we noted earlier, the first real animal sacrifices by Noah coincide with the reiteration of the promises of dominion over creation given to Adam and Eve. In killing the animal, not only are the sins paid for by substitution, but humans are restored to their position of dominion in creation by being given the right and ability to kill the animals (Gen. 9:2). Where there is the forgiveness of sins, as Luther notes, there is also life and salvation.134

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