atonement: a debt that needs to be paid vs. a stain/burden that needs to be lifted

This is related to the comment stream on an earlier post.

Here's Bruce Marshall in First Things with a review of Gary Anderson's book, Sin: A History...


Marshall opens by quoting Mk 10:21's "Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”. He points to self-sacrifice for the poor and notes the connection to our gifts yielding “treasure in heaven”. Anderson says, "We give to the poor, and God rewards us with a deposit in our heavenly bank account."

From there, he broadens the discussion to conceptions of sin and atonement...

In both early Christianity and rabbinic Judaism, sin is overwhelmingly described as a debt owed to God, while the forgiveness of sin is understood as a repayment of that debt.

The earlier biblical texts were different. Before the Babylonian exile in 587 B.C., sin was sometimes described as a defiling stain but mainly as a burden to be borne. Sins produced a weight that was loaded onto the back of the sinner and eventually would crush him. Thus, for example, the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16...The goat is not an object of punishment but a beast of burden.

...in Aramaic the language for religious transgression comes directly from the world of commerce....Over time, the idea of a debt demanding payment became pervasive in Jewish discourse about sin and forgiveness: in Second Isaiah [chs. 40-55] and Daniel...and throughout the New Testament.

Communal and individual suffering is clearly a basic biblical currency by which the debt of sin can be paid off. Isaiah 40, for example, tells us that Israel has paid God back in suffering “double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:2)....Decades of penal service in Babylon would be required to satisfy its terms.”

Suffering, however, is not the only currency. As the Second Temple period drew to a close, almsgiving came to be seen as the supremely effective way to pay down one’s debt. Thus, in Daniel 4:27...At root, to redeem means to buy out of slavery....

Not all debts end up being paid. Sometimes a creditor remits a debt, turning the sum owed by his debtor into an unmerited gift....

In early Christianity, the Cross of Jesus motivates God to remit our debt. The most important text for the Church Fathers’ reflection on atonement is probably Colossians 2:14: “Christ erased the bond of indebtedness that stood against us, nailing it to the cross.” The author of Colossians here uses the standard Greek term for a debt instrument— cheirographon, a note of hand that was destroyed when the debt was repaid....

It is not by accident that words for religious faith in many languages are the same as those for financial relationships; indeed, the word credit, loaned to English by Latin, simply means that one believes or trusts another....