We are here with more questions on the atonement for David M. Moffitt who recently wrote, Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic). In part I of this interview, we discussed his view of the atonement of Christ, how the Old Testament sacrificial system is commonly misunderstood, the Day of Atonement, and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, among other things. This week we will cover, inter alia, Moffitt’s view of the ascension of Christ and his heavenly intercession.
Dr. Moffitt is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews (Fife, United Kingdom). He is also Extraordinary Researcher, The Unit for Reformational Theology and the Development of the South African Society, Faculty of Theology, North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa.

Here is part II and the conclusion of the interview:
The Interview Part II
Oropeza
The subtitle of your work suggests a new way or “new perspective” regarding the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Could you unpack your perspective on these?
Moffitt
I really want to avoid running new reductionistic accounts of how Jesus saves us. I hope that what I am about to say will be taken as speaking in general terms about what I think are larger patterns that run through the New Testament.
I am not trying to say that Jesus’s death is only about one thing or that his resurrection is only about one thing, or that his ascension is only about one thing.
Oropeza
Understood.
Moffitt
With that caveat in mind, it seems to me that there are general patterns across the New Testament that largely or with some consistency link Jesus’s death with ideas of redemption/ liberation/ release from enslaving powers and with the defeat of the devil.
These are, perhaps unsurprisingly, ideas that can be associated with Passover and covenant inauguration. I develop this idea in relation to Hebrews in the first few chapters of Rethinking the Atonement.
Jesus’s resurrection is clearly about the vindication of the Son of God, but it is so much more than that. The resurrection moves humanity into the fullness of eschatological life that is capable of being forever in God’s presence.
Thus, Jesus’s resurrection becomes the pattern for the future salvation of the body, which by implication points to the transformation and renewal of the created world.
I argue that in Hebrews the resurrection is central to how Jesus, who comes from the tribe of Judah, can be a legitimate high priest. This is what Hebrews 7, the appeal to Melchizedek, and the author’s reading of Psalm 110:4 are all about (the author of Hebrews knows that according to the Mosaic law the earthly priests must be from the tribe of Levi: see Heb 7:14; 8:4).
Oropeza
For our viewers, Psalm 110:4 (LXX 109) reads: “The Lord swore and will not regret. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” In Genesis 14, Melchizedek was a non-Israelite priest of the Most High God. Abraham gave the priest a tenth of his goods. This Psalm verse is repeated in Heb 5:6, 10; 6:20; and in 7:11–28. It is obviously important to the author of Hebrews!
Moffitt
Christ’s ascension names the return of the risen Son to the Father now also as the return of humanity to the presence of God. This is the restoration of what was lost at the Fall of Adam. But it also marks the rule of the messianic king, the fulfillment of Ps 110:1, and the entrance of the great High Priest into the heavenly holy of holies (so Hebrews in particular, but also more implicitly in Acts).
Divine, royal, and high-priestly categories are all being developed in the New Testament around the confession of the ascended Jesus. As I noted in part I of our interview regarding the Day of Atonement, many of my own arguments* link the ascension with the presentation of the gift—Jesus himself—as the sacrifice he offers to his Father and as the way in which he begins his ongoing high-priestly ministry of intercession for his people.
This is one way Jesus provides an ongoing relationship among his people, including ongoing forgiveness and the ongoing presence of the spirit among his people. These are Day of Atonement ideas, or, if you will, covenant maintenance ideas. The ascended Christ, especially in his high-priestly ministry, maintains the New Covenant he inaugurated.
Oropeza
For our viewers, notice that the new covenant (Jer 31:31–34) is emphasized in Hebrews, including Hebrews 7:22; 8:6–13; 9:15; 10:15–18, 29; 12:24; and 13:20.
Moffitt
Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, it seems to me, have to do with salvation. But not all that Jesus does to accomplish salvation is done solely by any one of these events. Jesus, one might say, solves all the problems that keep God and humanity apart. But he does not solve all these problems in the same way at the same time (e.g., when he died). I think Irenaeus was already on to this (second century CE).
Oropeza
In your book you mention that in patristic writings, Jesus’s post-resurrection presentation of himself before God is interpreted “along sacrificial lines.” Here is where you quote from Irenaeus’s Against Heresies 3.19.3: Jesus “descend[ed] into the lower part of the earth, searching for the sheep that was lost—which really was his own handiwork—and ascend[ed] into the height above, offering [offerentem] and recommending to his Father that human nature which had been found, making in himself the first-fruits [primitias] of the resurrection of humankind” (Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement, 185–86 note 8). There are quite a few others examples from the patristic writers that you show in support of this view, particularly in ch. 11 of your book.
Here’s another question. I notice in Hebrews 7:25 a passage similar to Romans 8:34. Both verses claim that Christ presently makes intercession for believers. In your view, how exactly is this intercession done?
Moffitt
I do think Hebrews 7:25 and Romans 8:34 (and 1 John 2:1–2) are referring to the same basic ways of thinking about Jesus. In fact, I would argue that Romans 8:35–39 (“nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus”) is a kind of covenant maintenance notion that is rooted not only in the fact that Jesus died, but more, in the fact that Jesus is at God’s right hand now interceding for us.
In my view, Jesus’s high-priestly ministry and Ps 110 underlie both of these texts. In both of these texts Jesus is in God’s presence. That is already redolent of priestly and sacrificial ideas.
Hebrews and Romans both, per Ps 110:1, speak of Jesus at God’s right hand. And in both these texts Jesus is doing priestly, even atoning, work. This implies, I think, that both Hebrews and Romans are looking through Ps 110:1 (“Sit at my right hand”) to Ps 110:4 (“You are priest forever”). Hebrews clearly cites and interprets Ps 110:4 (esp. in ch. 7), but it seems likely that Ps 110:4 underlies Romans 8:34: Jesus is not only seated at God’s right hand (Ps 110:1); he is also doing something priestly – interceding for us.
Oropeza
Is Jesus actually praying for us in heaven, and if so, doesn’t this image seem strange if we assume he is enthroned at the “right hand” of God? (Maybe I’m over-visualizing this by seeing Jesus in a posture of prayer similar to pictures of him in the garden of Gethsemane.) Could it be that, as some theologians past and present have argued, this intercession has to do with the atoning death of Christ, the act of which itself is a perpetual reminder of Christ’s sacrifice that always intercedes on behalf of the saints?
Moffitt
I see no reason not to take this idea of intercession (or advocacy, as in 1 John 2:1) as some kind of active speech by the Son to the Father. I don’t know why being at the Father’s right hand would make that a strange idea. In fact, one might view Jesus’s spatial relationship to the Father—now in God’s heavenly presence—as one that is advantageous for intercession.
In any case, I think the pattern here comes from priestly and sacrificial ministry as it is spelled out in the Old Testament. Priests (and especially the high priest) bring gifts to God and are in a special position to intercede before God on behalf of the people because they have entered God’s presence in the temple.
I am not convinced that Jesus’s ongoing intercession can be reduced to the event of his death. I am also not persuaded that early Jewish followers of Jesus (as Paul and the author of Hebrews were) would think that Jesus takes his death into God’s presence and offers that to God as his sacrifice or there in God’s presence appeals to his death to atone for his people.
There are a lot of arguments from the realm of Jewish sacrifice that suggest such ideas are inherently opposed to Old Testament concepts of sacrifice. That, it seems to me, should matter if in fact the God who reveals himself in the Old Testament is the same God who is also revealed in the New Testament.
Oropeza
Maybe it’s my trinitarian assumptions, but regarding intercessory speech, how is it that the Father is apparently reluctant to do something the Son requests of Him if they are the same God? I notice that the high Christology in John 16:26–27 may be bucking against this type of intercession.
Moffitt
As for Trinitarian thinking, I don’t see why it would be a problem for our understanding of the Trinity to envision the incarnate Son appealing to his Father on our behalf. That is part of what a high priest does.
It seems to me that such a notion is no more troubling for understanding the dynamics of the relations between the persons of the Trinity, than is the idea that the Son has to die to change our relationship with the Father in some way, which the New Testament clearly affirms. I suppose that is another way of saying that it seems to me that however we think about the relations within the Trinity, we should allow our understanding to be informed by what Scripture actually says about those relations.
One other point is worth mentioning, though it is not exactly about intercession and the Trinity. I discuss this point briefly in ch. 11 of Rethinking the Atonement. Hippolytus, an early Bishop of Rome, argues in his Against Noetus that one of the ways we can know that the Father is not the eternal Word (the Son) is precisely because the risen Jesus, who is the eternal Word, ascended into the Father’s heavenly presence to offer himself as a sacrifice to the Father (!).
Hippolytus is making initial arguments against the idea that the Father and the Son are, to use later theological terminology, the same person. Hippolytus agrees that the Father and the Son are God, but he disagrees that the Son is the Father and the Father is the Son. One of his arguments is that the Father is eternal spirit and not flesh. The eternal Word/the Son, however, is, like the Father, eternal spirit but also took on flesh in the incarnation.
After dying and rising, the Son returned to heaven in his flesh. There in heaven he offered his flesh to the Father as a sacrifice. Now, Hippolytus says, there is flesh in heaven—the flesh of the risen Son. It must, therefore, be the case that the Father, who is not flesh in heaven, is not the Son, who now has his flesh with him in heaven. The Father cannot be the Son—Q.E.D.
Hippolytus’s argument that that eternal Word returned to heaven to offer himself to the Father as a sacrifice lays an important foundational plank for later Trinitarian reflection. That is not an argument for the Trinity that I remember hearing in seminary. But it is remarkable not least because it ticks with a Jewish logic of sacrifice in which a gift is given to God by moving into his presence (and, unsurprisingly, it seems to be informed by Hebrews).
Oropeza
Thank you, David. You are definitely prompting me and a lot of other readers to rethink the atonement!