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The teaching which you say is "not a Christian notion" and is "thoroughly incorrect" is the core teaching of millions and millions of Christians. So either it is one Christian notion and your notion is another Christian notion, or you have the exclusive True Christian teaching, and the millions and millions of others are not True Christians because they have been out there for decades preaching a Gospel which is entirely heretical.
You said it, not me.
But we don't need to go quite that far. I think you've misunderstood, so forgive me for not communicating clearly.
There's a very specific set of ideas that I responded to.
- God killed himself as a
blood sacrificeThat there was blood involved in the sacrifice of Christ does not make it a blood sacrifice. While it is true that Christ both died and was a sacrifice, and that these things necessarily are linked, one is a means and the other an end.
- mandating correct belief regardless of actions and behavior in order to avoid eternal damnation
Also not a Christian notion, certainly not a universal one. The rise of "belief" over and against action is largely a post-Reformation notion. The scriptures never establish belief as a criteria for salvation - always actions.
It's no good throwing scripture without commentary, because believe it or not my understanding is also based on the scriptures, including Hebrews and Romans. The distinction is how we understand those scriptures.
1) The inherent, fallen sin-nature of mankind.
No. Sin is not inherent to the nature of mankind. Christ Jesus is fully God and fully Man. This is established by the Faith of Nicaea, is common and fundamental to the belief of anyone who is properly called Christian. I hope we can agree here. If not, I will have to say that whatever your beliefs may be, they are not Christian.
When He became human, He took human nature to Himself - becoming of two natures, Divine and Man, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation". If sin was inherent to the nature of mankind - existing as a permanent or essential characteristic - either He is not human or we are not, and if that is the case, our salvation is not possible. That man is
fallen does not make the nature of humans
evil, and the very idea of the fall shows that sin itself is
external to the human nature. As Aristotle says, "the nature of a thing is its end" and the end of humans is to be in union with God, to be like He is by grace, to "become partakers of the divine nature" (that is, salvation).
As Sin is not only foreign to this end but antithetical to it, it is clear that sin is not only not essential to the nature of Man, but incompatible with it. And accordingly with sin, death.
We can see this simply because Man was not created with Sin, existed before Sin, and was called "good". God is not the author of evil, but He made Man.
If sin was proper to Man, of what nature did Christ Jesus take? Did He join Himself with sin? If sin is inherent to Man, we should hate men. Aren't we told to "hate evil"? And yet we are are to love one another.
To be clear, human nature is distorted, the image and likeness is damaged. But not destroyed, not inherently evil.
2) Mankind's inherent sin prevents us from approaching the presence of God in full communion.
Once we deny that man's sin is
inherent from the above then I agree.
You also need to carefully handle the word Sin and sins. Sin is a force in the world, a destructive, disease-like taint given agency by sins. Paraphrasing St Paul, Sin entered the world because of one man's sin, and Sin caused death.
3) Blood sacrifices were instituted by God as necessary under the first post-Fall covenant (the Law He gave unto Moses).
I disagree, but that's because I am rejecting the common and very bad understanding of "blood sacrifice". Sacrifices were prescribed - worship is synonymous with sacrifice - and ritual purification involved blood. But not all sacrifices required blood, and those that did were not about
death. Death is always incidental. It is not "blood for the blood God".
Blood is always about life, and in that aspect it should be seen as the antipole to sin - again because sin and death are linked. Sin is "death stuff" and blood is "life stuff". Do you see the immediate problem with linking "blood sacrifice" with death? On the contrary, the blood is about life.
Also - just as we have to be careful with Sin vs sins (because the scriptures make the distinction) we should also be careful with the words used to describe the various offerings and sacrifices in the Torah (because the scriptures make the distinction). A sin offering and a guilt offering in both the Hebrew and the Greek don't actually have the word "sacrifice" or "offering" in Leviticus. They are both referred to simply as "sin" and "guilt". The "offering" part is contextualized. And, importantly, neither is the word "blood sacrifice" in the scriptures.
4) Christ, as the highest priest of all priests, performed a blood sacrifice of himself.
I have issues with this, too, but probably quibbling maybe? But "highest of all" makes it seem like a difference in hierarchy where Christ was actually a distinction in kind. The function of a priest is to represent God to Man, and Man to God. This is Israel's scriptural role as a nation. Christ did this in a fundamentally unique way, being a unique mediator between God and Man not only in His actions but also in His very being, as He is of both natures. I would rather we say that Christ as the
perfect high priest.
He didn't perform a "blood sacrifice" - again this notion is nowhere to be found in the Torah - but He did offer Himself to make atonement (literally covering) and propitiation for Sin - once for all - and for the sins of the people. His offering was a gift, a perfect offering of the perfect human - which we are to emulate ("present your bodies as living sacrifices, which is rational worship") and also a sin (offering) and a guilt (offering). As well as a thank offering and peace offering and every other sacrifice and offering all tied up in one.
5) Christ's blood sacrifice is the only sacrifice which does not need to be renewed by successive visits to priests, but is both necessary AND sufficient for salvation.
Given the objection to characterizing it as a 'blood sacrifice' ----
Of course the second part is correct. Because He was fully God and fully Man, His blood - His "life stuff" was truly the source and fountain of all Life. And therefore it perfectly and totally consumed and destroyed Sin and sins. As St Isaac the Syrian says, all of the sins of mankind were like a handful of sand thrown into the sea. Or, like when the woman with the issue of blood touched Him - He didn't become unclean, but she became clean. He, being Life itself, took death on to Himself, and when death encountered Life it was destroyed, annihilated. This is why it does not need to be repeated. This is also why it was not merely effective temporally for the Tabernacle, or the camp, or the priest, or the people.
In terms of the day of Atonement ritual, Christ was both goats - the goat for Yahweh (NOT with sin on it) who is killed and the blood used to cleanse the residual taint of sin from the Tabernacle, AND the goat for Azazel who has sin put on it and is NOT killed but instead expelled out. Only again, because He is Life, when He takes on the sins of the people, those sins are eradicated in His holiness, and He is still a pure, perfect, unblemished, acceptable, holy offering suitable to be sacrificed to God. Sin is not returned out into the world, to the nations, but drawn in and destroyed, opening the path of communion with God to all men, all mankind,
through Christ Jesus,
because He shares our nature, as our brother.
