The problem with St Paul

On Easter Saturday, I wrote for the Times about the victimhood of Christ, describing this as a regrettable foundation for a world religion. In online posts beneath my column came hundreds of comments from Christians protesting that I’d misunderstood the Crucifixion’s meaning, which was (they said) the ultimate victory. Triumphantly, Jesus redeemed our sins. Or ‘atoned’ for them. Along with atonement and redemption, expressions like ‘ransomed’, ‘forgiven’, ‘pardoned’, ‘paid for’, ‘healed’ and ‘washed away’ recurred, as well as ‘sacrifice’ – Jesus’s blood-sacrifice to expiate the world’s sins: a kind of reparation. The notion of release – from slavery, debt or imprisonment – suffuses these responses.

In the context of human sin, what do those words actually mean? I’ve been thinking and reading around the subject. In a faithless age many readers will find such exploration arcane. But we remain essentially a Christian country, and over the last week I’ve understood that the doctrine of Redemption through Christ’s crucifixion is central to our national religion; and an outsider’s view – I’m an unbeliever – may be worth setting out.

Confronted by the literature, one fast concludes that faith has developed a private language that’s almost impossible for non-believers to understand. I’m also coming to believe that many lay worshippers intone the words without really asking what they mean. I return below to the question of meaning.

First, though, the question of authority. Where does the doctrine of atonement through Christ’s crucifixion find its roots? To my great surprise I find no anchorage for the teaching in anything we believe Jesus said. It just isn’t there! There are claims made for him, but none by him. It appears to be years later that the doctrine was developed. Decades after Christ’s death the Letter to the Hebrews (9:11-28) uses the example of animal sacrifice to suggest that the self-sacrifice of the Crucifixion was the ultimate act of expiation.