How I agree with Hardin:
- The Father did not kill Jesus.
- The Father did not abandon Jesus to crucifixion because He was angry with humanity.
- Jesus’ crucifixion, rightly understood, puts an end to blood sacrifice. (Note the torn curtain.)
- We are to imitate Jesus.
- The Father does not like blood or violence.
How I disagree with Hardin:
- Making amends, which is what some of the Levitical sacrifices, including the big one (Yom Kippur) were all about, is good and right.
- God instituted, or at least did not contradict Jewish belief that He instituted, the Levitical sacrifices.
- Jesus’ death affirms the logic of the Levitical sacrifices as just even if it simultaneously exposes their form (violence against innocent victims) as unjust.
- It is unclear to me what Hardin can make of John the Baptizer’s insistence that Jesus was the “lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29,36).