Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

In interpreting his death in the light of the Torah and the prophets, did Jesus deny his previous message? Precisely the contrary is the case. Jesus had proclaimed the reign of God as a reign of God’s mercy and kindness. When he now, in the crucial hour before his death, sets before the eyes of the participants in the meal in definitive signs that God is holding fast to the covenant with Israel, indeed, that God is renewing the covenant and assuring this people of new life in spite of everything, he reveals the true radicality of God’s mercy. We must truly say that only in the interpretation Jesus gives to his approaching death does his message of the reign of God achieve its ultimate power and shape. And here, with utmost clarity, appears definitively the “being for others” that was implied in his message from the beginning.

If there are again and again exegetes who simply deny that Jesus could have understood his death as an existential representative substitution for the many and an atoning sacrifice for Israel, that is not really based on questions of historical criticism. Their decision has already been made beforehand, long before the historical discussion has begun. Rudolf Bultmann made that clear, with the honesty that was his, when in his famous essay on “New Testament and Mythology” he wrote:

How can my guilt be atoned for by the death of someone guiltless (assuming one may even speak of such)? What primitive concepts of guilt and righteousness lie behind any such notion? And what primitive concepts of God? If what is said about Christ’s atoning death is to be understood in terms of the idea of sacrifice, what kind of primitive mythology is it according to which a divine being who has become man atones with his blood for the sins of humanity?

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Precisely here the course is set for historical demonstrations that present themselves as logical and certain. People living in the wake of the European Enlightenment can no longer reconcile concepts such as representative substitution and atonement with the autonomy they have gained by so much struggle.¹⁷ But are they really irreconcilable? What is meant by representative substitution and atonement only becomes an irritant when the experience of the people of God has been forgotten. For life in the people of God, representative substitution and atonement are simply elementary. They detract nothing from the dignity and independence of the human being.

Representative Substitution

Israel’s existence always depended on individuals who believed with their whole existence. That the scarlet thread of salvation history was never broken depended on Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Amos, and Isaiah; on King Josiah, on John the Baptizer, and on many others. Others could enter into their faith and so come to believe in their own right. It is not a language game to say of Abraham that whoever blesses him will be blessed, and that through him all the families of the earth achieve blessing (Gen 12:3). Jesus’ representative substitution for the many is no exotic exception but the culmination and ultimate distillation of a long history of representation in Israel. Only by way of representative substitution can faith be handed on at all.

Nevertheless, representative substitution never means dispensing others from their own faith and repentance; it is meant to make both those things possible. True representation does not infantilize; it desires nothing more strongly than that the other should be free to act. It is done so that one person takes the place of another, not to “replace” that one, but to enable the other person to take possession of her or his own place.¹⁸

In this sense we depend on others, our representatives, from the beginning of our lives to the end. As children we needed our parents, who fed and clothed us, wiped our noses, and enrolled us in school, until finally we could do all that for ourselves. Then we needed teachers, who with endless patience taught us to read and write and do arithmetic. And that others help us, introduce us to new knowledge, lead the way for us by their abilities, show us solutions—that will go on till the end of our lives. Even as adults we are constantly dependent on the competence and abilities of others.