Idol Killer Interview 7 Did Jesus Fulfil All the Old Testament Sacrifices & Save Us from God?

The second-to-last component in the machinery of penal-substitutionary atonement (PSA) is the idea that Christ--as the perfect, unblemished sacrifice--satisfies God’s wrath against sin once and for all, thereby obviating any further need for animal sacrifices. This claim (#16 in the PSA model) underlies the idea that Christ fulfills the entirety of the Old Testament sacrificial system, a belief that is ubiquitous across Christianity, including Protestantism, Catholicism, and even in the Orthodox Study Bible.

Claim 16 creates inconsistencies with other aspects of the PSA system. Anselm argued that the atonement should mirror the fall and be as painful as possible, which is incompatible with the idea that Christ represents all the Old Testament animals offered in sacrifice, as these were supposedly killed quickly in a painless manner. Additionally, PSA asserts that Christ became a literal sin and a curse on the cross, raising questions about how he could simultaneously be an unblemished offering for mankind's sins. Those discrepancies expose PSA as a false system, lacking systematic consistency. Paul Vendredi also laments the ignorance of prominent Christian scholars towards basic Old Testament festivals, such as the misunderstanding of Passover being synonymous with Yom Kippur and the swapping of the Passover lamb for the Scapegoat. He notes the irony of highly educated theologians mistaking sheep for goats, creating a false system of theology whereof even the most rudimentary of farming experience would have disabused them.

PSA is also undermined by the biblical references to Jesus as a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek offered bread and wine, while Jesus reinstituted the sacrifice of bread and wine at the Last Supper. However, Jesus did not seem to hold the priests of his era, who offered animal sacrifices in the temple, in high regard. The speaker cites Matthew 22;29 where Jesus criticizes the priests for not knowing the scriptures. Jesus also predicted the destruction of the temple where these sacrifices were offered. Furthermore, when Jesus entered the temple, he drove out the animals used for sacrifice and overthrew the tables of the money changers, making the buying and selling of sacrificial animals impossible.

Regarding PSA’s ransom-to-God theory, Paul emphasizes that the New Testament does not specify who the ransom is paid to, raising speculation about whether it is paid to Satan, death, or God. Despite various interpretations from church fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus suggested that the term is used in a stipulative sense to mean rescue rather than a strict lexical definition. Indeed, the Greek word "lithron," translated as "ransom," more accurately means "rescue" or "deliverance," as shown in the Septuagint’s rendering of Exodus 6;6, where God promises to “ransom” Israel from Egypt.