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 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 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 for that is after the manner of the gods.12 displayed as a constructive activity, creating the In the Girardian theory of sacrifice as human being, the afterlife, and the cosmos as a violence, the community internalizes its whole. It was also, of course, a social feelings of guilt after the ritual scapegoating instrument—constructing individuals as part of has taken place, honoring and often deifying a class and defining both the classified the now immolated victim. The Śatapatha individual and the classes themselves from Brāhmaṇa, however, is more a prescriptive text within the universe of the ritual.” 9 To than a descriptive one. Why would understand how this process works, we can euphemistic language be used for what the begin with a representative text from the Vedic community that produced this Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa about the vegetal soma apparently continued to do on a periodic basis sacrifice: “Now, in performing that sacrifice, under royal auspices? Nothing in the scapegoat they slay it; and in pressing out the king theory seems to hold out the possibility that (Soma), they slay him; and in quieting and ritual scapegoating can survive in the age of a immolating the victim, they slay it. The second naiveté, for scapegoaters remain haviryagña they slay with the mortar and ignorant of what they do, which is why pestle, and with the two mill-stones.”10 The increased awareness of the scapegoating

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 3 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8

58 Christopher Denny

mechanism in modern times has driven Here distribution becomes a matter of scapegoating into retreat according to Girard.13 prayer, with the hope that the sacrificed victim Moreover, the first excerpt above explicitly is reconstituted among the gods. Based upon distinguishes between slaughter and the available body of vedic texts and “quieting,” placing an added burden of proof commentaries, McClymond’s claim that “the on those who would hold to the position that division or apportionment of the offering is the surface meaning of the text conceals a more significant than its death” is sound.15 collective unawareness of the violence that is at McClymond also writes: “Instead of seeing the core of the ritual. killing as an independent and definitive feature Moving from issues of euphemism to of sacrifice, we need to approach killing as only apportionment in vedic animal sacrifice, one of many important—and interdependent— concerns over distribution of a sacrificial elements in a complex ritual.”16 victim also create serious problems for There are significant moral objections that reductionistic equations of sacrifice with can be made to this hermeneutic practice to violence, for it is very difficult to understand which I will respond shortly, but for now I will why an animal used as a scapegoat in toto would outline some soteriological consequences that acquire such value immediately afterwards arise in light of these vedic practices. What when consumed piecemeal. The Kātyāyana distinguishes the theology of vedic ritual from Śrauta Sūtra provides many examples of that of other civilizations is that in the detailed instructions for the distribution of sacrifice is held to be constitutive of ṛta, the animal flesh and organs. Different orders of cosmic order. Brian Smith puts it succinctly, priests are the designated recipients of writing: “In Vedism, ritual activity at all levels particular body parts while other parts are does not merely ‘interpret,’ ‘symbolize,’ or reserved for the deities, with cosmic ‘dramatize’; it constitutes, constructs and orientation a key factor. Any interpretation of integrates. Ritual forms the naturally formless; the process of apportionment that would it connects the inherently disconnected; and it attempt to marginalize the centrality of this heals the ‘sickness’ of excess which is the state aspect of vedic ritual faces challenges from a toward which all things and beings perpetually passage like this one in the Rig Veda. tend.” 17 Sacrificial efficacy is given a Whatever of the horse’s flesh the fly transcendental anchor in one of the most has eaten, or whatever stays stuck to the famous hymns in the Rig Veda, the - stake or the axe, or to the hands or nails of Sukta. Here is a that describes the slaughterer—let all of that stay with the sacrifice of the cosmic giant, the god you even among the gods. . . . Purusha. The gods sacrifice Purusha, and from Whatever runs of your body when it this sacrifice the whole cosmos is created—the has been placed on the spit and roasted by vedic gods and , the animal world, the fire, let it not lie there in the earth or human beings, the sky, the sun and moon, the on the grass, but let it be given to the gods wind, and language: who long for it.14 Using the Man as their oblation, the Gods performed their sacrifice.

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 4 Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice

Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communicatarian Sacrifical Soteriologies 59

Spring served them for the clarified butter, Purusha-Sukta in the context of similar Indo- Summer for the fuel, and Autumn for the European myths involving the world-creating offering. sacrifice of a person, puts it this way: “The myth tells us of the origin of the world and also His mouth became the ; his arms of the origin of the most important human became the warrior prince, his legs institution—sacrifice. In truth, these are not the common man who plies his trade. two separate origins but one. The first sacrifice The lowly serf was born from his feet. is the origin of the world, and each repeated sacrifice serves to re-create it.”20 Each sacrifice The Moon was born from his mind; the Sun draws upon the cosmic power of the original came into being from his eye; sacrifice to achieve its ends. All subsequent from his mouth came Indra and Agni, brahminical sacrifices were understood as while from his breath the Wind was born.18 replicating that original act of creation and The Purusha-Sukta is not the only creation rescuing people from the asacrificial possibility myth to describe the universe as the product of of non-being. sacrificial distribution; the Babylonian Enuma Elish describes how the universe and the human How Christians Can Learn from Vedic race are constructed from the bodies of the Sacrificial Soteriology gods Tiamat and Kingu, but there the I do not claim that Christians should apportionment is destructive, the result of reinstitute a sacrificial cult in imitation of vedic warfare and execution, rather than the practices. Nor should Christians step away consequence of a sacrifice that constitutes a from a theistic worldview to adopt an community. In the Purusha-Sukta however, alternative remythicized understanding of the both Indra, the supreme deity in the vedic creation as the product of ritual sacrifice. What pantheon, and Agni, the deity who conveys I do assert is that vedic sacrificial practice and sacrifices to the gods, stand in a subordinate the mythical conviction that the universe is the relationship to the creative cosmic sacrifice. product of creative sacrifice provide ways of Indra and Agni are themselves products of the thinking about Christ’s atoning sacrifice as primeval sacrifice; they are subordinate to it. something more than only violence against a The Purusha-Sukta offers an immanent view of single individual. Does this hypothesis, sacrifice that encompasses all of the cosmos. however, mean that we should agree that the Sacrifice is not a telegram sent from the earthly violence that is ensconced within some world to the world above; instead vedic sacrificial rituals, and certainly embedded in sacrifice contains an intrinsic validity that is Christ’s execution at Golgotha, is intended to construct and constitute the world soteriologically justified so long as communal itself.19 religious ties are reaffirmed and strengthened How then do the individual brahminical thereby? Girard’s moral claims in particular sacrifices, including the aśvamedha, relate to haunt attempts to reinterpret Christian this original, world-creating sacrifice? Bruce atonement as a communitarian sacrificial Lincoln, in the process of trying to place the soteriology because they apparently lead to a

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 5 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8

60 Christopher Denny

zero-sum choice in which we either have to 3:21—26 from questions of divine agency. Heim abandon the category of sacrifice or affirm the writes: injustice surrounding Christ’s death. Must we How are we to take the phrase “as a choose between the perspectives of the sacrifice of atonement”? Is this a sacrificers and the victims? Moreover, the specification of the heart of God’s purpose, sacrificial community constituted and affirmed or is it a description of a position, a place in vedic ritual is from the standpoint of modern taken up by Christ in the service of God’s egalitarianism radically deficient, for it is purpose to redeem and ransom humanity? I hierarchical and caste-based. Is that the type of incline to the latter. God enters into the community today’s Christians hope to achieve position of the victim of sacrificial by remembering and representing Christ’s atonement (a position already defined by sacrifice at their eucharistic celebrations? human practice) and occupies it so as to be Yet even justifiable moral concerns about able to act from that place to reverse sacrifice can lead to all-too easy privileging of sacrifice and redeem us from it. God steps individualist soteriologies. What if the major forward in Jesus to be one subject to the soteriological concern with sacrifice should be human practice of atonement in blood, not not who is guilty and who is vindicated, or who because that is God’s preferred logic or is the perpetrator and who is the scapegoat, but because this belief is God’s aim, but because rather the type of community that both sides this is the very site where human bondage desire to see enacted? There are two headings and sin are enacted.21 under which I will follow up on this question; Heim interprets this passage as a move the first heading is theological and the second away from transcendent theo-logic towards an is moral. immanent theo-drama. This is a sound First, a theological preference for a development if one wants to secure a communitarian soteriology would mean that christocentric understanding of divine activity, New Testament interpretation should not be but once New Testament soteriological hasty in dismissing the social, communitarian, interpretation moves in this direction why and functional benefits of sacrifice out of a can’t we proceed further and follow Paul in primary concern to stress sacrifice’s efficacy in using this soteriological claim to rehabilitate restoring human people to a right relationship the category of sacrifice? If sacrifice is not a with God. For an example of how these two strategy to appease the abstract workings of soteriological foci, which are of course not divine providence, then it should not be incompatible with one another, can be brought abandoned as a heuristic device as if that were into seeming competition, consider one recent the only interpretation of sacrifice available. interpretation of atonement from Paul’s Letter Consider the presumed link between sacrifice to the Romans. At a point in his book Saved and killing that McClymond challenges with from Sacrifice, S. Mark Heim attempts to provide her focus on vegetal offerings in vedic theological support for Girard’s tradition. If the vedic yajña can be understood anthropological claims by separating Paul’s as something more than mere killing and language about Christ’s atonement in Romans violence, why must a nonviolent Christian

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 6 Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice

Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communicatarian Sacrifical Soteriologies 61

atonement be nonsacrificial? Heim notes that By offering bread and wine as his body and Romans 3 roots God’s saving action not in blood in the context of a Passover meal, Jesus is Christ’s blood but in faith in Christ, which is not repudiating Jewish sacrificial practice but true, but Paul does not separate blood and faith reaffirming its communitarian liberating here.22 Nor does Paul separate Christ’s blood orientation in a transformed context. In Mark from the new covenant in 1 Corinthians 11:25, 14:24 and Matthew 26:28 Jesus says that the where Paul references a saying of Jesus that he blood he offers in the meal is that of the has received: “This cup is the new covenant in covenant shed for many. There is no credible my blood. Do this, as often as you drink of it, in way to escape the sacrificial implications of this remembrance of me” (NRSV). statement that recalls the Passover lamb of the Paul’s handing down of the early Christian Exodus and the delivery of the people of Israel community’s remembrance of Jesus’ from Egypt. Moreover, Jesus’ concern with the instructions at his final meal with his disciples distribution of the sacrifice, his instructions to echo the synoptic sayings found in Matthew the disciples to eat and drink, offer a point of 26:26—29, Mark 14:22—25, and Luke 22:14—20. comparison with the vedic sacrifices I Girard claims that the gospels provide no referenced above, in which the ordering of the support for a sacrificial reading of Christ’s community is reaffirmed through ritual death, but the exegetical support that he gives apportionment. Unlike the sacrificial for this assertion is thin. In Things Hidden Since instructions in Exodus 12, however, here the the Foundation of the World he makes reference wine offered as blood is consumed rather than to Jesus’ quotation at Matthew 9:13 of Hosea sprinkled at the doorways. This change 6:6: “I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice” as diffuses the distinctive apotropaic function of though that verse, when joined with Jesus’ the original Passover blood and instead admonition in the Sermon on the Mount to be incorporates the wine-blood into the meal that reconciled with one’s brother before offering binds the participants together as they ingest sacrifice (Mt. 5:23—24), is sufficient to establish the blood. What is external to the bodies of the a nonsacrificial interpretation of the Kingdom participants becomes internalized without of God, the basileia theou. 23 Neither text, being privatized, for in Luke 22:28—30 Jesus however, offers the global denunciation of ratifies a political cosmogony among the sacrifice in itself that Girard claims they do. If apostles by assigning them thrones in his Jesus attacks sacrifice in itself, he is certainly basileia immediately after his distribution of being elliptic in his pronouncements. In a bread and wine. While the Rig Veda provides passage in his more recent book Evolution and the narrative of the Purusha-Sukta, the synoptic Conversion Girard concedes that “we cannot narratives of eucharistic institution exemplify a have a perfectly non-sacrificial space” and that Basileia-Sukta or an Ecclesia-Sukta, in which a the eucharistic celebration is rooted in archaic new community is formed through the cannibalism.24 This leads us naturally to the sacrificial distribution of elements. role of Jesus’ final meal and its relation to The second heading in this communitarian sacrifice in the synoptic gospels. sketch moves from theological concerns to return to the moral concerns over scapegoating

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 7 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8

62 Christopher Denny

referenced above. We must remember that in of the Eucharist given above may appeal to some instances sacrifice can serve to divide and Roman Catholics, Christians in the Lutheran undermine communities rather than unite tradition have generally followed Luther’s non- them. To defend the possibility of a sacrificial interpretation of the eucharistic constructive communitarian theology of ritual set forth in The Babylonian Captivity of the sacrifice is not the same thing as offering a Church, in which sacrifice is understood as a global defense of this practice in every case. misguided human offering that conflicts with McClymond cautions: “I am not arguing that needed receptivity to the promise of Christ.27 sacrifice upholds a specific ethical code of In the Hindu tradition, at the beginning of his conduct. Rather, I am arguing that the commentary on the Sūtra Śaṃkara foundational notion that there is a right way writes: (and a wrong way) to handle certain offerings . . The special question with regard to the . suggests a sense of ‘ought’ in the community’s enquiry into is whether it worldview.” 25 Sacrificial meals can support presupposes as its antecedent the hierarchical groupings or more egalitarian understanding of the acts of religious duty movements, but sacrifices do not support (which is acquired by means of the Pûrvâ abstracted societies. Mary Douglas’s lapidary Mîmâmsâ). To this question we reply in the statement, “Solidarity is only gesturing when it negative, because for a man who has read involves no sacrifice,” applies here.26 Killing, the Vedânta-parts of the Veda it is possible cutting, and eating are social acts that provide to enter on the enquiry into Brahman even material and embodied cohesion, in contrast before engaging in the enquiry into with creedal summaries or privatized religious duty.28 affirmations of belief that can be more easily Śaṃkara argued against Mīmāṃsa claims shorn of communitarian commitment. for ritual’s efficacy, while for his part Luther These parallels between vedic sacrificial sought to dismantle the medieval clericalist meals and the eucharistic distribution provide structure that he believed obscured the gospel alternatives to equating sacrifice simply with and kept laity from the promise of the gospels. killing, but what about internalized concepts of For both authors ritual sacrifice stands in sacrifice? In the post-Enlightenment era, has opposition to genuine salvation.29 an internalized understanding of sacrifice Yet just as a sacrificial interpretation of the replaced ritual sacrifice so that ritual is Last Supper is possible, so too is a sacrificial obsolete as a valid heuristic framework when reading of upaniṣadic Vedānta texts. The addressing questions of salvation and Upaniṣads react against vedic sacrificial liberation? After all, each religious tradition practices by internalizing and extending the described here faced historical crises in which idea so that those outside the priestly caste can their sacrificial practices were called into perform sacrifice. In the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka question; in each tradition there have been Upaniṣad, the human person is identified with many who have decided, for different reasons, the world-creating Purusha-Sukta, as in this to abandon sacrifice as a heuristic category for deathbed ritual: “When a man thinks that he is soteriology. While the sacrificial interpretation about to depart, he says to his son, ‘you are

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 8 Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice

Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communicatarian Sacrifical Soteriologies 63

Brahman, you are the sacrifice and you are the Sacrifice is also a way of understanding the end world.’ The son answers, ‘I am Brahman, I am for which the world is made: to echo the the sacrifice, I am the world.’ . . . Verily, mutual giving and receiving of Father, Son, and whatever sacrifices have been made, all those, Spirit with the dynamics of space and time, as a taken as one are the world.”30 Verses in the sacrifice of praise.”32 Chāndogya Upaniṣad continue in this vein.31 The first-century Christian movement had to make Conclusion similar adjustments to its sacrificial practices I have employed texts on vedic sacrifice to after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, support the assertion that, just as Christian as the sacrificial paradigm outlived the Jewish theologians in recent decades have equated the sacrificial cult. Christians now interpreted the economic and immanent Trinities, they must historical event of Jesus’ death as a trans- also be willing to claim, “The economic historical reality that could be spiritually sacrifice is the immanent sacrifice.” In other accessed through the performance of the words, rather than primarily concerning Eucharist. Despite the very different Christian themselves with how Jesus’ death on the cross and Hindu understandings of historical events affected his Father, and how Christians’ and their normativity for subsequent religious merited or unmerited experiences of suffering practices, ritual sacrifice continued to provide join individuals to the redeeming work of soteriological paradigms for adherents in both Christ, Christians should pay more attention to traditions even in the face of internal critiques the Eucharist’s svataḥ prāmanyā, heeding the such as those of Luther and Śaṃkara. intrinsic validity that this sacrificial practice Contemporary Christian theologians are have in constituting personhood and fond of stating that “The economic Trinity is community in the life of the church. the immanent Trinity” in attempts to correlate An altered understanding of religious the Godhead with salvation history. In this sacrifice can break past the barrier of vein theologians such as Colin Gunton have individualism. Maintaining sacrifice as a argued that Christian theologies of sacrifice spiritual imperative, rather than jettisoning acquire their most comprehensive scope when sacrifice as critics would do, allows people to they articulate sacrifice in trinitarian rather recognize how this ancient cross-cultural than in cultic language, rooting religious practice reflexively defines human selves sacrifice in Jesus’ eternal kenotic love for his within diverse social environments. At the Father. At the close of his book The Promise of social level, such a world-constituting Trinitarian Theology, Gunton claims that the conception of sacrifice preserves its Trinity provides a very different definition of responsible use as a moral category that sacrifice, one much more amenable in the rescues communal aspirations from context of a sacrificial meal—the definition of sentimentalized abstractions, but it can also sacrifice as gift. In language recalling the counter the violent language of heteronomic Purusha-Sukta, Gunton writes: “To be is to exist substitutionary sacrifice in militaristic and in a dynamic of mutual giving and receiving. nationalistic rhetoric, in which the scapegoat That is a ‘sacrificial ontology’ of God . . . .

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 9 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8

64 Christopher Denny

to be offered up is too often identified as one’s 5 J. Denny Weaver, “Violence in Christian opponent rather than oneself.

Theology,” Cross Currents 51, no. 2 (Summer Notes 2001): 150—76, at 153. Emphasis in original. 1 See J. Denny Weaver, The Nonviolent Atonement 6 Weaver, “Violence in Christian Theology,” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001); S. Mark Heim, 163. Saved from Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross (Grand 7 This makes Weaver’s denunciation of Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Rita Nakashima Brock, Constantinian Christianity and American “And a Little Child Will Lead Us: Christology imperialism inconsistent, inasmuch as these and Child Abuse”; in Christianity, Patriarchy, and political entities embody the ideology of agency Abuse: A Feminist Critique, eds. Joanne Carlson elevated above any social limitations. If agency Brown and Carole R. Bohn (New York: Pilgrim, saves, then late-modern capitalism represents a 1989), 42—61. soteriological apotheosis that merits our http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015015476719 collective assent. See Weaver, “Violence in 2 See René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Christian Theology,” 168—69. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 8 Kathryn McClymond, Beyond Sacred Violence: A University Press, 1977); The Scapegoat, trans. Comparative Study of Sacrifice (Baltimore: Johns Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Hopkins University Press, 2008), 27. University Press, 1986); Things Hidden Since the http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015074063499 Foundation of the World, trans. Stephen Bann and Emphasis in original. Michael Metteer (Stanford: Stanford University 9 Brian K. Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Press, 1987). Ritual, and Religion (New York: Oxford 3 For a helpful essay on this point linking Pūrva University Press, 1989), 46. Mīmāmsā to current philosophical debates http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015014590536 regarding foundationalism and its opponents, Emphasis in original. See also Smith, “Sacrifice see Daniel Arnold, “Intrinsic Validity: A Study and Being,” Numen 32 (1985): 71—87. on the Relevance of Pūrva Mīmāmsā,” http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852785X00166 Philosophy East and West 51, no. 1 (Jan. 2001): 10 The Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa according to the Text of 26—53. the Māhyandina School [2.2.2.1], vol. 1, trans. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pew.2001.0002 Julius Eggeling, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 12 4 I am aware that intra-Christian differences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1882), 308. over the theology of the Eucharist (e.g. 11 For primary source texts giving details of the transubstantiation, the role of the presider, aśvamedha, see Textual Sources for the Study of etc.) mean that different Christian communities , eds. and trans. Wendy Doniger would appropriate such a communitarian O’Flaherty, Daniel Gold, David Haberman, and soteriology of sacrifice in different ways. David Shulman, Textual Sources for the Study Nevertheless, I think that many Roman of Religion (Manchester: Manchester Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, and Eastern University Press, 1988; Chicago: University of Orthodox could affirm the central tents of the Chicago Press, 1990), 14-17; Kātyāyana Śrauta approach outlined in this essay. Sūtra {Rules for the Vedic Sacrifices}, trans. H. G.

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 10 Denny: Christians and Vedic Sacrifice

Christians and Vedic Sacrifice: Comparing Communicatarian Sacrifical Soteriologies 65

Ranade (Poona: H. G. Ranade and R. H. Ranade, 20 Bruce Lincoln, “The Indo-European Myth of 1978), 532—50. Creation,” History of Religions 15 (1975): 121—45, http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015043534059; at 139. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/462739 see also Asko Parpola, “The Coming of the 21 Heim, 143. Aryans to Iran and India and the Cultural and 22 See Heim, 143. Ethnic Identity of the Dāsas,” Studia Orientalia 64 23 See Girard, Things Hidden, 180. (1988): 195—302, at 253. 24 Girard, Evolution and Conversion: Dialogues on 12 Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa [3.8.1.15], vol. 2, trans. the Origin of Culture (New York: Continuum, Eggeling, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 26 2007), 217. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1885), 189— 25 McClymond, 147. Emphasis in original. 90. 26 Mary Douglas, How Institutions Think 13 Girard, “The Anthropology of the Cross: A (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 4. Conversation with René Girard,” epilogue in http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39076000515929 The Girard Reader, ed. James G. Williams (New 27 See Luther, “The Pagan Servitude of the York: Crossroad, 1996), 274. Church,” trans. Bertram L. Woolf, in Martin 14 The Rig-Veda [RV 1.162.9, 11], trans. Wendy Luther: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Doniger O’Flaherty, Penguin Classics (London: Dillenberger (New York: Doubleday, 1961), Penguin Books, 1981), 90. 286—88. 15 McClymond, 62. http://dx.doi.org/2027/uc1.32106006102807 16 McClymond, 64. 28 The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by 17 Brian K. Smith, “Sacrifice and Being,” 72. Saṅkarâkârya, vol. 1, trans. George Thibaut, Emphasis in original. Sacred Books of the East, vol. 34 (Oxford: 18 Rig Veda [10.90.6, 12—13], trans. Raimundo Oxford University Press, 1890), 10. Panikkar, in The Vedic Experience/Mantramañjarī: 29 The opposition between Mīmāṃsakas and An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and early Vedāntins has been given a very nuanced Contemporary Celebration (Delhi: Motilal treatment in Mīmāṃsa and Vedānta: Interaction Banarsidass, 1977), 75—76. and Continuity, ed. Johannes Bronkhorst (Delhi: 19 For an opposing view, one that disagrees with Motilal Banarsidass, 2007). Smith’s position on the constitutive character http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015081839931 of vedic sacrifice, cf. J. C. Heesterman, 30 Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad [1.5.17]; in The “Hinduism and Vedic Ritual,” review of Principal Upaniṣads, ed. and trans. Sarvepalli Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual and Religion, by Radhakrishnan (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Brian K. Smith, History of Religions 30, no. 3 (Feb. Humanities Press International, 1992), 179. 1991): 296—305. 31 See Chāndogya Upaniṣad [3.16.1, 3, 5]; in The http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/463230 Here Principal Upaniṣads, 394—95. Heesterman claims that all religion cannot 32 Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian impose meaning on “living reality,” but only Theology, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), proposes an otherworldly order beyond life and 205. death. http://dx.doi.org/2027/mdp.39015046503473 A

Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2013 11 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 26 [2013], Art. 8

66 Christopher Denny

prime exponent of the continuing validity of sacrifice in understanding Christian atonement is Robert J. Daly. Among his works on the subject, see Sacrifice Unveiled: The True Meaning of Christian Sacrifice (New York: T&T Clark, 2009).

https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol26/iss1/8 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1547 12