#coakley

Response 1: A society built entirely on win-win scenarios only can exist when there is a functional medium of exchange which enables rough (and to a large extent, illusory and constructed) equivalence between different desires. If you deal with people who do not accept your medium of exchange, then win-win scenarios can be impossible (because you have conflicting desires or imperatives which cannot be exchanged way through the compelling illusion of equivalency). In such a world, sacrifice, either self-accepted or imposed upon the other, is necessary. 

Response 2: Certain things are, in themselves non-exchangeable, and we all recognize that the notion that they are exchangeable is illusory. Human life is the typical example here: we put a price on it in various ways, but non-morally blind people recognize that such price is driven by the necessity of the current system rather than a coherent expression of value. Being willing to risk what is non-exchangeable, such as one’s life, for what is exchangeable, such as money, is a sacrifice, and it is the fundamental ground of all human societies. (especially a society like our own, where we impose massive risks on others in order to live (e.g. driving), and require certain individuals to accept disproportionate risks in order for our societies to survive (e.g. soldiers).   Response 3: The decision for one non-commensurable good over another can be rational; and indeed based on one’s previous actions and the structure of one’s life, there can even be a clear answer which good one must choose. Nonetheless, one is still rejecting a good that cannot truly be placed in equivalence with another. That, in  real sense can be described as a sacrifice. Response 4: Once we recognize that non-commensurable goods exist, the possibility of sacrifice one (real) set of goods for another exists. This is, of course, one meaning of the Garden of Gethsemene. Jesus’ weeps because he is sacrificing a genuine good and properly incommensurable good, of a human life which has not yet faced death.  Of course, Jesus not only dies for the sake of another real good (salvation), but he also continues to live: but the resurrected life is a different kind of life, with different goods, as is made obvious by the ascension. 

Response 5: Sacrifice has never been a moral imperative in a universe of exchange, it has always been a symbol and opening to a world beyond the logic of exchange. While it has an intrinsic rationality that is deeper and richer than that of pure exchange of things, trying to restrict it and understand it within an immanent ethical calculus is to miss the fullness of the point. (though, incidentally, for the reasons described above and others, sacrifice is also immanently rational.)  

Response 6: The whole point of a symbol is that it is not calculable, that it includes a variety of irreducible worlds. Each thing described above is an expression of that primordial reality that we represent and recognize in sacrifice: but it is not the totality of the thing. As Christians, insofar as we take the Cross to be the revelation of God (along of course with the life, death resurrection etc), we must say that he is a sacrificing and crucified God. This is his nature. 

Of course, the truth of other things about God make this a mystery, which hopefully I will write more about. But ultimately, in addition to the immanent and transcendent reasons why sacrifice matters, the ultimate truth is this.  God is Sacrifice; which is hardly a strange belief insofar as love as well, is a mode of sacrifice.  Necessary Counterweight: When we say “God is Sacrifice” we must not downplay any of the ways that God is not like our human institutions of sacrificing.  The divine model of sacrifice is the one who has absolute power giving himself up for the sake of others: whereas the human model of sacrifice has all too frequently turned to the forcing the weak to give up what little they have for the comfort of the powerful. This is especially true of self-sacrifice, which is imposed as a moral rule upon the weak. 

To be clear, the seizing of sacrifice by those the world judges as weak can be a source of power for the overcoming of evil (for the immanent, transcendent, and divine reasons described above). But the imposition of sacrifice on them is demonic and in utter opposition to God. 

Properly speaking, sacrifice is a mode of power, and if a sacrifice is not genuinely empowering to the one making it, then it is not a true sacrifice.