Jesus action in the Temple (Matthew 21:12–17; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48; John 2:13–16) symbolizes he is the true Temple, the reality behind the Temple’s cosmic representation, that is God communing with the world, displacing death, and inaugurating life and peace (I argue here). However, if Jesus action in the Temple, and Christ himself, are reduced to the sacrifice in the Temple on the day of atonement, this misses the shift in meaning inaugurated by Christ. According to Paul (in Galatians 4), Judaism and the law are subject to the elementary principles of the cosmos. To interpret Christ through the law is to subject him to enslaving elementary principles of this world, rather than reconceiving the world in light of freedom in Christ. Paul warns Christians that by prioritizing the law, rather than Christ, they remain enslaved to the world (ta stoicheia tou kosmou), like Israel and all people. By following Torah, by observances of days, months and seasons, by concern with circumcision and food laws, by following and prioritizing Judaism, they are returning to idolatry (4:8) (enslaved to the stoicheia). The meaning of Christ is not to be fit into Judaism, the Temple, the sacrifices, rather, this world is undone in Christ. As Paul says to the Colossians, having died with Christ to ta stoicheia tou kosmou, they should not be submitting to decrees any longer (2:20-21). Is Christ sent by God to be a sacrificial victim, in which he is understood in light of the law (the sacrifice of atonement), or is the revelation of Christ providing a new, salvific, meaning. This is what is at stake in the debate around one key word, hilastērion, in one key verse, Romans 3:25.
The piece of furniture in the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant, with its covering – the Mercy Seat (hilastērion), is the semiotic point for understanding both the work of Christ and Temple symbolism in Romans 3:25. Does hilastērion here refer to the Mercy Seat, or by means of metaphor or metonym, is this verse referring to Christ as (commonly rendered) the “sacrifice of atonement” or “propitiation”? What is at stake in the rendering of this key verse and key word are two opposed ways of conceiving the work of Christ.
Hilastērion is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word kapporet, which is the cover or Mercy Seat of the ark upon which the blood was sprinkled on Yom Kippur. Hilastērion is not the sacrifice or the blood, but is the place the blood of the sacrifice is applied, though the common rendering (in verse 25) is to relate Christ directly to the sacrifice: “Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (ESV); or “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood” (NRSV). Contrary to this interpretation, many argue that Jesus is to be identified with the place, the Mercy Seat, and not with the sacrifice.[1] Daniel Bailey states the case bluntly, “hilasterion never designates a sacrificial victim, the NRSV lacks support.”[2] Jesus as Mercy Seat “involves more than just forgiveness based on cultic atonement. Like the old mercy seat, Jesus is the focal point of the revelation of God and his saving righteousness” and this best fits Romans 3:21-26.[3]
The Mercy Seat was the place Moses would come to speak directly to God, and God would provide an interpretation and even revision and addendum to the law. Exodus 33 describes Moses habit of pitching the Tent of Witness so he could confer with God face to face. Numbers names the place explicitly as the Seat of Mercy: “Moses went into the Tent of Witness to speak to him [God], and he heard the voice of the Lord speaking to him from above the ἱλαστήριον, which is on the Ark of Witness between the two cherubim, and he spoke to him” (Num 7.89). Numbers 12 also describes this face-to-face meeting: “When there are prophets among you, I the LORD make myself known to them in visions; I speak to them in dreams. Not so with my servant Moses; he is entrusted with all my house. With him I speak face to face—clearly, not in riddles; and he beholds the form of the LORD” (Num 12:6–8).
Though the law is already given at this point, the conversation regarded interpreting the law, and even revision of the law. As Nathan Porter shows, in response to a question, God made exceptions for rules regarding uncleanness during Passover (Num 9:7-8). God tells them that anyone who is unclean in a particular way should still keep the Passover (9.10). “In other words, God has reinterpreted the laws previously given, in accordance with the new events in Israel’s life. . .. Moses is not simply to keep the Passover according to the law (νόμον), but also according to its interpretation (σύγκρισιν; 9.2).”[4] Interpretations are provided, allowing for the changing circumstances of Israel, which already indicates the coming radical shift.
As Porter concludes, “Paul refers to Jesus as a ἱλαστήριον because he is the place where God reveals the definitive interpretation of the law to his people. The faith of Jesus Christ is the content of this revelation, the true meaning of the law.”[5] Christ is where God is revealed and the means by which access to God is provided. He is the location and means of the final and full self-disclosure. In Bailey’s translation, “God set out Jesus in his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith.”[6] It is through faith, or the faithfulness of Christ and imitation and entry into this faithfulness, that both Jews and Gentiles have put on righteousness.
“He is the righteousness of God revealed” (Rom 1:17). God’s righteousness is the content of revelation as salvation through Christ: “But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom 3:21-22). The law attested to this righteousness and yet is separate or “apart”, as God made Christ the true Mercy Seat, a revelation of his righteousness (25-26). This is not simply a rehashing of the cultic meaning of hilasterion, but its deployment in an overturning of its identity with the Jewish cult.
Through identity of Christ with the Mercy Seat, the focus is on the revelation of Christ, Jesus as the ideal sanctuary (cf. Exodus 15:17), not a fitting of the meaning of Jesus into the Temple but taking Christ as the point of meaning, with Jesus becoming the new center of worship, the new cosmic meeting point of God and humans, and the key to interpreting the law. The law was interpreted originally with the aid of the divine voice at the Mercy Seat, and now Christ is the “semiotic portal,” in the words of Anthony Barlett, through which meaning is apprehended. Bartlett renders Rom 3:25: “The redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as the portal of mercy (divine nonviolence) by his blood working through faithfulness.” As he goes on to note, “It is the simultaneous deconstruction of the Temple and the generative event of the cross.”[7] Christ is not just another Temple sacrifice, a means of propitiation or expiation, but the identity of Christ with the Mercy Seat opens a radical new semiotic portal that is salvific.
[1] Daniel P. Bailey, “Jesus as the Mercy Seat: The Semantics and Theology of Paul’s Use of Hilasterion in Romans 3: 25” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1999); Bell, “Sacrifice and Christology in Paul,” 17–20; Stökl Ben Ezra, The Impact of Yom Kippur on Early Christianity, 197–205; Markus Tiwald, “Christ as Hilasterion (Rom 3:25): Pauline Theology of the Day of Atonement in the Mirror of Early Jewish Thought,” in Day of Atonement (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 189–209; Vis, “The Purification Offering,” 2012, 312–18.
[2] Bailey, from the abstract of his dissertation.
[3] Bailey, 221.
[4] Nathan Porter, “Between the Cherubim: The ‘Mercy Seat’ as Site of Divine Revelation in Romans 3.25” (Journal for the Study of the New Testament 1 –26) 7.
[5] Porter, 3.
[6] Bailey, 221.
[7] Anthony Bartlett, Signs of Change: The Bible’s Evolution of Divine Nonviolence (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022) 190.