The death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross of Golgotha is considered by some one billion Christians around the world to be the central and essential doctrine of the Christian faith. That Christ died on a tree, was buried, and rose again on the third day is considered the essential article of faith. Christians are in competition that to deny the resurrection is to deny the Christian faith.
Why, according to Christians, did Christ have to die on a tree at Golgotha? Humanity is sold to sin and death, Christians say, a redemption price had to be paid. Only God could pay the price.
The language in which the Christian doctrine of redemption is expressed is based on practices associated with the ancient institution of slavery. A slave was human chattel, a living tool owned by another human being as a factor of production. He or she had no legal rights of their own. It could be bought or sold on a market like cattle, sheep, and goats, and indeed like any property of economic value. A man could become a slave if he was captured in war. A man may become a slave if he falls into debt and is forced to sell himself to his creditor. Third, he could be born into slavery; that is, if one of his parents was a slave.
A slave could regain his freedom by paying a price for it. In ancient Rome, slaves could save to regain their freedom. The price, however, was so high that only a few slaves whose masters were favorably disposed could actually save money to buy themselves back. The legal code of ancient Israel gave a man, who had sold himself into slavery to his creditor, the right to buy himself back. The code, realizing that it was usually almost impossible for a slave to save enough to buy himself back, authorized the man’s relatives – a father, an uncle, or any other male blood relative – to buy or redeem the man. of slavery.
The concept of Christ’s death, as redemption, derives from the practice of a relative redeeming a man from slavery. Modern theologians refer to it as the law of the kinsman redeemer.
The notion is explicitly expressed in Hebrews 2:14-15: “Since the children partook of flesh and blood, He Himself also partook of the same, to render powerless through death the one who had the empire of the death, that is, the devil; and free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.
The price paid to redeem a slave from his master was made once: valuable consideration becomes perpetually the master’s, and the former slave’s freedom. We find, however, in the Christian doctrine of the redemptive death of Christ a twist in the treatment that seems to say that God paid a price to redeem the Christian from the slavery of sin and death, but somehow managed , after the “slave” had been freed, to claim payment back from the creditor. From the perspective of the “slave”, on whose behalf the kinsman-redeemer made the payment, the payment is a gift. If for some reason the relative returned to claim the payment he had made to the creditor, his action would be equivalent to that of an Indian giver, and would immediately annul the former slave’s freedom.
The term Indian gift is an expression that emerged in the early times of interaction of European immigrants to the American continent with the natives. An Indian giver is one who gives a gift but then returns to claim the gift that he had given. Sociologists have shown, however, that European immigrants’ negative impression of Native Americans, that Native Americans could not be trusted to give their word, was wrong. The misunderstanding had arisen from a difference in ownership concepts between the two groups. The early European settlers misconstrued the goods and services they received from Native Americans as “gifts” and were therefore perplexed when the natives returned to demand an equivalent in return. They had not understood that Native Americans operated a barter economy in which goods were exchanged for goods.
Christian redemption is represented in terms of a life-for-life exchange: Christ’s for the Christian’s. But why did Christ need to take back his life if it had been given as a ransom for my soul? Could it be redemption for an Indian gift? Can a man reclaim a payment he has made after receiving the good or service paid for? How and why does the Christian theory of Redemption by Indian gift arise? If Christ’s death was really a payment to release human lives from the power of death, why should the one who died have his life restored in a miraculous resurrection?
One can easily anticipate the Christian defense: that only the human body and life of Christ were given in sacrifice or redemption payment. The divine life of Christ, as God, was not taken away. A closer look at early Christian theology would show this to be a false argument. The Gospel accounts are firm in the affirmation that the resurrection of Christ was a bodily resurrection.
When Jesus appeared to his disciples in the upper room, they were alarmed. They knew he was dead, and yet here he was. He had to be a ghost-spirit presenting himself with an appearance of flesh and blood, they must have reasoned in fear of him. Christ (according to the gospel narrator) was careful to correct the impression that he had risen as a spirit being. He reasoned with his disciples, intellectually:
“Look,” he said. “Look at my hands and my feet that I am myself. Feel, feel and feel that I am flesh and bones, and not spirit” (Lk 24,37).
Christ was telling his disciples, with emphasis, that he was not a spiritual being. His physical human frame had risen to life. To prove his claim, he allowed Thomas Didymus to touch and feel his person. He sat down at the table and had lunch with them:
“Look,” he said. “As a fish, I am not a spirit.”
Jesus strove to prove his bodily resurrection. He wanted his disciples to believe that he had recovered his human life from death. I think it would be false for anyone to present the argument that God had adopted a heavenly principle of pious deception: that Jesus had simply presented himself in a false guise of a human body in order to convince his disciples of his resurrection…
Could the redemption really have been for an Indian gift?