When I joined Christianity, I presumed that the religion did not have anything to do with animal sacrifice; having learned more about it, including the fact that Jesus himself encouraged a leper to bring two birds to a priest for sacrifice, I am now reconsidering a great deal of things about the religion. I would like to discuss whether animal sacrifice in both the Old Testament and New Testament was a good thing and whether God would appreciate it.
To begin with, one must ask why God would want animals to be sacrificed. The only information I could find in the Bible is given in Leviticus 1:9, which mentions that burnt flesh has a “pleasing aroma” to the Lord. As God is above sensual pleasure, one presumes that this is not the reason God would have wanted sacrifices.
The standard explanation for why God would want sacrifices, which is nevertheless not found in the Bible to my knowledge, is that they constitute substitutionary atonement for sin, i.e. because the punishment for sin is death, the killing of an innocent creature placates God’s wraith, which would normally fall on the sinner, and thus the sacrificial victim “takes” the punishment intended for the sinner, and the sinner is forgiven. This explanation is false for several reasons.
For starters, we assume that killing an innocent creature is wrong and, therefore, sinful. If someone commits a sinful act, and then decides to kill an innocent creature to “atone” for that sinful act, they are in fact not atoning but committing another sinful act. Imagine for a moment a thief being prosecuted for his crimes; he decides, in front of the judge, to pull out a knife, stab a pigeon to death and hand it over to the judge, then tell the judge that in exchange for killing that pigeon, he can get to walk free. Not only would he continue to be prosecuted for theft, he would also be charged for cruelty to animals.
There is also the matter that the punishment for sin is supposedly death, ostensibly because God hates sin. However, God possesses a flawless sense of justice. To perform justice is arguably to either destroy evil or reform it, for the sake of preventing further evil from manifesting (this is admittedly debatable, as various people will have different concepts of justice). Punishment is only something one does for retribution and for practical reasons, and is not in itself just; legal punishment is carried out, in theory, to deter other people from pursuing crimes. Punishment provides no benefit unless it serves to prevent further evil, and if an ox is killed instead of the sinner, the loss incurred by this does not make the sinner any less likely to commit further evil than, say, charging him a fine equivalent to the price of the ox for the sin.
If the pro-sacrifice argument is that God specifically demands death as the punishment for sin, the counter-argument is still that punishing an innocent creature for the wrongs of another creature is itself wrong. In the above example of the thief, who is to receive a death sentence, it would be like the thief telling the judge to pass the sentence onto a pigeon instead. The judge would not display justice at all if he did that!
God does not demand sacrifices to sate His wraith. A perfectly just individual is, in theory, immune to wraith, as it does not bias his assessment of right and wrong. He would not feel wraith when going against evil, but simply recognize that the target of his enmity was evil and oppose it for that reason.
Because God is perfectly loving, He cares about innocent creatures and does not want them to be hurt; hurting an innocent creature in His name thus goes against His desires.
Also because He is perfectly loving, He is able to forgive sins without demanding the murder of animals in exchange for it.
It seems that for God to approve of animal sacrifices, he would have to be either unjust or unloving. If I’m wrong about this, then please provide your arguments. What motives would God have to approve of animal sacrifice?
To begin with, one must ask why God would want animals to be sacrificed. The only information I could find in the Bible is given in Leviticus 1:9, which mentions that burnt flesh has a “pleasing aroma” to the Lord. As God is above sensual pleasure, one presumes that this is not the reason God would have wanted sacrifices.
The standard explanation for why God would want sacrifices, which is nevertheless not found in the Bible to my knowledge, is that they constitute substitutionary atonement for sin, i.e. because the punishment for sin is death, the killing of an innocent creature placates God’s wraith, which would normally fall on the sinner, and thus the sacrificial victim “takes” the punishment intended for the sinner, and the sinner is forgiven. This explanation is false for several reasons.
For starters, we assume that killing an innocent creature is wrong and, therefore, sinful. If someone commits a sinful act, and then decides to kill an innocent creature to “atone” for that sinful act, they are in fact not atoning but committing another sinful act. Imagine for a moment a thief being prosecuted for his crimes; he decides, in front of the judge, to pull out a knife, stab a pigeon to death and hand it over to the judge, then tell the judge that in exchange for killing that pigeon, he can get to walk free. Not only would he continue to be prosecuted for theft, he would also be charged for cruelty to animals.
There is also the matter that the punishment for sin is supposedly death, ostensibly because God hates sin. However, God possesses a flawless sense of justice. To perform justice is arguably to either destroy evil or reform it, for the sake of preventing further evil from manifesting (this is admittedly debatable, as various people will have different concepts of justice). Punishment is only something one does for retribution and for practical reasons, and is not in itself just; legal punishment is carried out, in theory, to deter other people from pursuing crimes. Punishment provides no benefit unless it serves to prevent further evil, and if an ox is killed instead of the sinner, the loss incurred by this does not make the sinner any less likely to commit further evil than, say, charging him a fine equivalent to the price of the ox for the sin.
If the pro-sacrifice argument is that God specifically demands death as the punishment for sin, the counter-argument is still that punishing an innocent creature for the wrongs of another creature is itself wrong. In the above example of the thief, who is to receive a death sentence, it would be like the thief telling the judge to pass the sentence onto a pigeon instead. The judge would not display justice at all if he did that!
God does not demand sacrifices to sate His wraith. A perfectly just individual is, in theory, immune to wraith, as it does not bias his assessment of right and wrong. He would not feel wraith when going against evil, but simply recognize that the target of his enmity was evil and oppose it for that reason.
Because God is perfectly loving, He cares about innocent creatures and does not want them to be hurt; hurting an innocent creature in His name thus goes against His desires.
Also because He is perfectly loving, He is able to forgive sins without demanding the murder of animals in exchange for it.
It seems that for God to approve of animal sacrifices, he would have to be either unjust or unloving. If I’m wrong about this, then please provide your arguments. What motives would God have to approve of animal sacrifice?
