Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:9.1The hu­man sac­ri­fice, through­out the course of the evo­lu­tion of Uran­tian rit­u­als, has ad­vanced from the bloody busi­ness of man-eat­ing to higher and more sym­bolic lev­els. The early rit­u­als of sac­ri­fice bred the later cer­e­monies of sacra­ment. In more re­cent times the priest alone would par­take of a bit of the can­ni­bal­is­tic sac­ri­fice or a drop of hu­man blood, and then all would par­take of the an­i­mal sub­sti­tute. These early ideas of ran­som, re­demp­tion, and covenants have evolved into the later-day sacra­men­tal ser­vices. And all this cer­e­mo­nial evo­lu­tion has ex­erted a mighty so­cial­iz­ing in­flu­ence.

89:9.2In con­nec­tion with the Mother of God cult, in Mex­ico and else­where, a sacra­ment of cakes and wine was even­tu­ally uti­lized in lieu of the flesh and blood of the older hu­man sac­ri­fices. The He­brews long prac­ticed this rit­ual as a part of their Pass­over cer­e­monies, and it was from this cer­e­mo­nial that the later Chris­tian ver­sion of the sacra­ment took its ori­gin.

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

89:9.4And so, af­ter long ages the cult of the sac­ri­fice has evolved into the cult of the sacra­ment. Thus are the sacra­ments of mod­ern re­li­gions the le­git­i­mate suc­ces­sors of those shock­ing early cer­e­monies of hu­man sac­ri­fice and the still ear­lier can­ni­bal­is­tic rit­u­als. Many still de­pend upon blood for sal­va­tion, but it has at least be­come fig­u­ra­tive, sym­bolic, and mys­tic.