The Sacrificial reading (n.) of the Passion is mankind's most enormous misunderstanding — and its most revealing sign of being unable to grasp its own violence even when it is spelled out.
The Sacrificial reading (n.) takes the very mechanism the Gospels exposed — and so should have destroyed — and rebuilds it into a cultural foundation for Christendom and the modern world.
The Sacrificial reading (n.) is a small but costly regression to the Old Testament: Christian sacrificial theology matches not the Gospels but the Songs of the Suffering Servant.
The Sacrificial reading (n.) was no historical accident: pagans who had never had an Old Testament could take in the Gospel only through it, and the Gospel spread thanks to it.
The Sacrificial reading (n.) is a protective envelope, crumbling to dust in our time, around a living principle that has so far stayed hidden.