Jeg har nå lest ferdig ei bok jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke likte noe særlig. Det er Sacrifice Unveiled, The True Meaning of Christian Sarifice, skrevet av Robert Daly, SJ. Boka ble utgitt i 2009 men forfatteren har visst arbeidet med offer-temaet siden 60-tallet, og visst oppdaget mye nytt via fenomenoligiske og mimetiske teorier, og en grunnleggende forståelse av at offeret (og eukaristien) er Trinitarisk (hva nå det skal bety). I praksis fører det til at det er lite igjen av katolske forståelse av Kristi offer, og av eukaristien.
Daly har også skrevet en kortere framstilling av det boka handler om, og derfra siterer jeg:
… Traditional Western atonement theory — at least in its extreme, but all-too common forms — ultimately reduces to something like the following caricature: (1) God’s honor is damaged by sin; (2) God demanded a bloody victim to pay for this sin; (3) God is assuaged by the victim; (4) the death of Jesus the victim functioned as a payoff that purchased salvation for us.
Such a theory is literally monstrous in some of its implications. For when it is absolutized or pushed to its “theo-logical” conclusions and made to replace the Incarnation as central Christian doctrine, it tends to veil from human view (from Protestants as well as from Catholics) the merciful and loving God of biblical revelation. Despite my books and articles on the subject, I had for many years no satisfactory answer to this problem.
That changed when, serendipitously forced to edit Ed Kilmartin’s last book, I discovered the trinitarian understanding of sacrifice to which I now turn. Authentic Christian, that is, Trinitarian Understanding of Sacrifice Constantly fine-tuning my own understanding of it, … First of all, Christian sacrifice is not some object that we manipulate; it is not primarily a ceremony or ritual; nor is it something that we “do” or “give up.” For it is, first and foremost, something deeply personal: a mutually self-giving event that takes place between persons. Actually it is the most profoundly personal and interpersonal act of which a human being is capable or in which a human being can participate.
It begins in a kind of first “moment,” not with us but with the self-offering of God the Father in the gift-sending of the Son. Christian sacrifice continues its “process of becoming” in a second “moment,” in the self-offering “response” of the Son, in his humanity and in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father and for us. Christian sacrifice continues its coming-to-be, and only then does it begin to become Christian sacrifice in our lives when we, in human actions that are empowered by the same Spirit that was in Jesus, begin to enter into that perfect, en-spirited, mutually self-giving, mutually self-communicating personal relationship that is the life of the Blessed Trinity. …..