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Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communitarian Sacrificial Soteriologies

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Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communitarian Sacrificial Soteriologies Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 26 Article 8 November 2013 Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communitarian Sacrificial Soteriologies Christopher Denny St. John’s University (NY) Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Denny, Christopher (2013) "Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communitarian Sacrificial Soteriologies," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 26, Article 8. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1547 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communitarian Sacrificial Soteriologies Christopher Denny St. John’s University (NY) CAN there be a constructive Christian contemporary issues facing Christian doctrines appropriation of understandings of religious of atonement. Recent Christian systematic sacrifice from another religious tradition? As theology features dissension over the far back as the first-century letter to the appropriate use of substitutionary, penal, and Hebrews, Christians defined the efficacy of sacrificial metaphors to describe Jesus’ violent Jesus Christ’s sacrifice over and against death on the cross. Some have urged Christians previous sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem, to abandon penal substitutionary theories of and in subsequent centuries have argued that atonement because they distort God into a Christ’s sacrifice is an unrepeatable historical wrathful patriarch who must be appeased by act manifesting God’s favor to human beings. the violent death of his masochistic Son.1 The Unless Christian theologians are willing to take influential René Girard goes further and argues the path of liberal pluralism and concede that that the biblical gospels, when properly the sacrifice offered through Jesus of Nazareth interpreted, oppose the category of sacrifice is one species within a genus of soteriological itself, which Girard equates with ritual possibilities, an epiphenomenon of an murder.2 underlying reconciliation equally present in What if we envision Christian sacrifice as various religious traditions, one is hard pressed constructive of a community rather than as to understand how the Christian doctrine of destructive to participants? What if atonement represents anything but an impasse theologians, taking a cue from generations of in interreligious dialogue. social scientists, defined sacrifice primarily in In an attempt to cross this theological terms of its social effects rather than in terms barrier, I turn to some key sacrificial themes in of an essentialist paradigm by which humans classic Hindu texts for help in resolving become reconciled to God? Would this Christopher D. Denny is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, teaching courses in patristic and medieval Christian theology. He is the coeditor, with Jeremy Bonner and Mary Beth Fraser Connolly, of Empowering the People of God: Catholic Action before and after Vatican II (Fordham UP, 2013), and with Christopher McMahon, of Finding Salvation in Christ: Essays on Christology and Soteriology in Honor of William P. Loewe (Pickwick, 2011). Other publications include articles in Communio, the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Logos, Christianity and Literature, and Horizons. He is the recipient of best-article awards from the Catholic Press Association and the College Theology Society. His current research projects articulate ways imaginative literature and non-Christian scriptures can shape Christian anthropology. Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 26 (2013):55-66 Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8 56 Christopher Denny ameliorate some of the problems the critics of highlights the injustice of the crucifixion but substitutionary atonement rightfully identify? also truncates our field of attention towards Here vedic yajña provides an alternative one man who died on Calvary rather than the sacrificial paradigm that overcomes many of many who lived through that day. 5 The these roadblocks, and provides a resource for individualized focus is present when the same reemphasizing marginalized sacrificial themes writer states: within Christian traditions. The Pūrva A victim is controlled by forces and Mīmāṃsā tradition promotes the doctrine of circumstances beyond himself or herself. svataḥ prāmanyā, “intrinsic validity,” and so the A victim surrenders control to others and Mīmāṃsā school of interpretation understands accepts the injustice imposed by others. yajña not as a utilitarian exercise in gaining Jesus in satisfaction and substitutionary extrinsic goods but rather as a nexus of atonement models victimization. When performances whose value is intrinsic within this atonement motif is the model for the sacrificial actions themselves.3 This essay is people who have experienced abuse or a contribution towards a Christian sacrificial exploitation, this model underscores their soteriology of svataḥ prāmanyā, which seeks to status as victims.6 reinterpret religious atonement in a Questions of agency, activity, and passivity communitarian direction without abandoning loom large in this line of recent soteriological the category of sacrifice. Within this argument, but unduly obscure the framework, the representation of the sacrifice communitarian focus these authors promote, in the celebration of the Eucharist or the Lord’s for concerns about individual agency in Supper need not be distorted into a quasi- atonement theology already privilege modern mythological appeasement of an angry deity, or liberalism’s assumption that the exercise of as a literalized metaphor in which one pays off free agency is what saves people. Perhaps this spiritual debt. Instead, the anamnesis and assumption could be demonstrated to be true, distribution of the material elements in the but without such a demonstration the effects of eucharistic ritual brings about community and salvific agency gravitate to a libertarian frame salvation that is experienced within the of reference in which agency equals salvation performance itself.4 tout court.7 Kathryn McClymond, in her recent book Questioning Assumptions about Beyond Sacred Violence: A Comparative Study of Individual Agency and Violence in Sacrifice, has demonstrated that modern Sacrifice Western articulations and denunciations of One key presumption that I make is that religious sacrifice across various religious sacrifice is more than simply the stylized public traditions are reductive and unreflectively death of a passive individual at one particular shaped by Jesus’ crucifixion. For example, point in time. To frame the doctrine of McClymond traces how Henri Hubert, Marcel atonement, as one such writer does, with Mauss, and others center sacrifice upon killing, leading questions such as “Who or what needs the even for the vegetal offerings that in many death of Jesus? . Who ultimately killed Jesus?” societies constitute the majority of sacrificial https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 2 Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communicatarian Sacrifical Soteriologies 57 practices. Even in animal sacrifices killing is language of killing here is the same as scholars only one part of the ritual, and responsible would find used in vedic texts describing comparative theology should be ready to animal sacrifice, and the language of quieting examine other ritual constructions that or strangling the victim recalls the aśvamedha operate from different presumptions. or horse sacrifice, only here no blood is shed Moreover, if comparative theology pays due and the ritual does not readily lend itself to a heed to ritual performance it should follow violent interpretation.11 McClymond’s recommendation that a When we move to texts dealing with animal polythetic understanding of sacrifice “draws sacrifice, the moment of death is often attention to the importance of the interactions overshadowed by euphemism and concerns between activities” rather than isolating one about distribution. First, I will deal with performative element to provide Christian- euphemism with reference to the horse influenced grist for a creedal mill. 8 As sacrifice that is the pinnacle of vedic ritual. interpreted by the Mīmāṃsakas, Vedic yajña Consider this excerpt from the Śatapatha provides one alternative ritual construction. Brāhmaṇa: They then step back (to the altar) and sit Vedic Sacrifice as a Communitarian down turning towards the Âhavanîya [fire], Soteriology 'lest they should be eye-witnesses to its Spatial constraints forbid an expansive being quieted [strangled].' . They either presentation of the vedic texts that provide the choke it by merely keeping its mouth foundation for the soteriological contrast I am closed, or they make a noose. Therefore he drawing here. I begin with Brian Smith’s says not, 'Slay! kill!' for that is [the] human observation. In Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual manner, but, 'Quiet it! It has passed away!' and Religion he wrote: “The sacrifice was
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