Terry EAGLETON. Radical Sacrifice. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2018. Pp. 216. $25.00 hb. ISBN-10:0-300-23335-3. Reviewed by Daniel SMITH-CHRISTOPHER, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA 90045

Since his spirited attack on both institutional distortions of the radicalism of the Gospels, AND the “anti-God brigade” (Richard Dawkins and Christopher Kitchens), the internationally noted leftist thinker and literary scholar, Terry Eagleton, has been on a fascinating journey.  That book was Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate (also Yale University Press, 2009), and the book now under consideration as a further development of thoughts strikingly proposed in the 2009 work.

Radical Sacrifice is not so much a work of systematic theology.  Thoughts do not necessarily build one upon the other, although there is a sense of progression in the chapters.  Instead, one is perhaps best recommended to read Radical Sacrifice as one would read the Book of Proverbs – mining it for the gold that is plentiful in both Proverbs and Radical Sacrifice.

Early in this work, Eagleton takes on the criticism of the concepts of sacrifice that have been on the receiving end of considerable progressive social thought – and usually for very good reason.  If “sacrifice” is intended to simply be “pie in the sky when you die”, then Marxist (and any number of other varieties of progressive) political and social commentators were quite correct to tear such a notion into pieces as self-serving apologies for the 1% maintaining their power, money, and (often) rule.   But Eagleton isn’t interested in such simplistic formulas: “The most compelling version of sacrifice concerns the flourishing of the self, not its extinction.  It involves a formidable release of energy, a transformation of the human subject and a turbulent transitus from death to new life” (7).

For this reader, it is Eagleton’s trained literary eye turned to the Bible that results in some of the greatest pearls offered in his work:

Yahweh is not in general presented by the Scriptures as a wrathful deity who needs to be kept sweet.  A god who loves his creatures so dearly that he is prepared to be done to death by them clearly requires no appeasing.  The notion of sacrifice as mutually profitable exchange – of do ut des, or giving in order to get back – is untypical of the Hebrew Bible.  If sacrifice is indeed acceptable to the Old Testament, it is as a matter of love, praise, repentance, thanksgiving and the like, not as a species of divine lobbying….(22).

Here is someone who has actually read Leviticus, rather than merely wave a hand in its general direction.  How strikingly refreshing!

Among the other gifts of Eagleton’s work is a very interesting criticism of Rene Girard, the darling of so many attempts to make some kind of modern sense of Biblical concepts of sacrifice.  I think Eagleton’s much-needed criticism will be very helpful in future assessments of Girard’s work – which has nonetheless gathered rather devoted disciples among Biblical Scholars, as well as in much wider circles of thought.

The final lines of the first chapter serve to give one a flavorful taste of Eagleton’s fine rhetoric: It is thus that the Resurrection breaks into the disciples’ defeatist gloom after Calvary with all the illogicality of a Dadaist happening, inaugurating the unimaginably avant-garde reality of the kingdom of God.  Yes this new creation is made possible only by Jesus’ passage through the very sacrificial institution that has now been definitively surpassed. (29).

The chapters of this brief but sumptuous feast include: (2) Tragedy and Crucifixion, (3) Martyrdom and Mortality, (4) Exchange and Excess, and (5) Kings and Beggars.
Where else will we sample such superlative observations as “Mercy and forgiveness are ways of inserting the future into the present, anticipating a time in which all odds will belevelled and all debts annulled…”(106), and:  “The oil lavished by Mary Magdalene on the feet of Jesus, to the dismay of the book-balancing Judas, is thus for Christian faith not an affront to thrift but part of a deeper economy, one whose source lies in the reckless self-squandering of God himself” (114).

Literary scholars will naturally benefit far more than I did with regard to the many references to poetry and literature, of course, but for my eye as a student of the Bible, Eagleton’s pearls of great price were innumerable, to wit: “Forgiveness is the enemy of exchange value” (124), which in one line summarizes the sentiment of a great deal of what I have joyfully read in the wonderful essays of the 19th and early 20th century British Christian Socialists including the fiery Scot, Keir Hardie, one of the primary founders of the British Labour Party – and a man who read his Bible carefully.

Obviously, I highly recommend Eagleton’s work – not only for what it is – but also for what it promises in the future, now having established a quite fascinating trajectory through Reason, Faith, and Revolution (2009) and now Radical Sacrifice.  Having stated this, however, if Eagleton never turns his attention directly to Christian thought again, we will have benefitted immeasurably.   Would that other agnostics write of Christianity, and especially its Bible, with such wise passion and committed conscience.  We are, after all, speaking of the author of the second edition (!) of Why Marx Was Right (Yale, 2018).  What a fascinating journey this is.