ON THE ALTAR

Sacrifice as an essential element in Christian history.

Historian of religion Sheehan provides a weighty treatise on the role of sacrifice in Christianity. The author makes note that whereas sacrifice has been an integral part of virtually every culture and religion through time, Christianity’s approach to the topic has been unique. “From early on,” he explains, “Christianity both abolished and absorbed sacrifice.” In other words, the Christian religion is based on the concept that “God became man in order that He might die, each drop of His innocent blood sufficient to satisfy what we owe to God.” Through that one perfect sacrifice, Christianity teaches, believers are exempt from the need for further sacrifice. Nevertheless, as Sheehan goes on to exhaustively detail, it was never quite that simple. Instead, Christianity built up an “archive” of ideas and practices based on the concept of sacrifice, which in turn molded the faith through time. “Christianity’s archive was (and is) constitutively heteronomous,” the author asserts, in both a distillation of his thesis and a prime example of his ponderous writing style. This “archive” has been ever-growing, is multifaceted, and has gone on to have strong effects on broader cultures, up to the present day. Sheehan’s work can be lauded for its depth of research and rich use of obscure texts. However, it is written exclusively for a specialist, academic audience. The author’s impressive vocabulary and heavy prose will act as a stumbling block to all but the most erudite and committed of readers. His conclusions also grow more and more abstract as the book goes on, ending with the dawn of the age of science in the 19th century.

A feat of research, but overly lofty and inaccessible.