On Jesus - why specifically was suffering and dying required?

Great Debates
1

We all know the story - after wandering around for a little while, Jesus goes off to pray in a garden, is personally tortured by God, and then immediately afterward is apprehended by the Romans and after a brief trial was whipped bloody, crowned with thorns, and executed via crucifiction. As far as I know it is universally accepted that not just the Gethsemane torture but the entire thing was deliberately orchestrated by God, nominally for the purpose of ensuring everyone’s salvation somehow.

I’m interested in the ‘somehow’. Taken at face value, what we have here is a straightforward scapegoat sacrifice - one person takes the punishment that another person deserves, and the other person’s accounts are then considered settled despite they themselves not having endured punishment. Originally this was apparently done by trying to deflect your sins onto an actual goat. One gets the idea that the one dispensing punishment is pretty dim to be so easily fooled; the most charitable interpretation is that the person meting out punishment simply doesn’t care who gets punished, as long as the punisher gets to punish somebody. Regardless, scapegoat sacrifices are not and cannot be about justice being served; they are explicitly an abrogation of justice.

Now, back in the good ole’ days, it was pretty standard to try and sate your deity’s rages and hungers with something other than your own flesh; the dieties in question were rather explicitly unjust and capricius beings who would happily smite you beyond reason if annoyed, but could maybe be distracted with a lovely roast animal instead. There are shades of this in the old testament; the sacrifices are made to curry favor and show appreciation to God, and he is a few times described as being directly pleased by the savory smell (and taste?) of sacrifical meat on the barbecue. There is no need to imagine a complicated redemption system here; you piss off God with your sins, and then make him a tasty dinner to get back in his good graces. One hardly needs to invoke the sacrifice as being a scapegoat - it’s just a bribe, simple as that. God accepts the sacrifices because he likes the sacrifices themselves.

And then we get to the whole Jesus thing. If you attempt to extend the above explanation to include Jesus, things start getting weird - you have God torturing and killing Jesus because he likes torturing and killing Jesus. Presumably when Jesus asked the cup to be taken from him God laughed maniacally and shouted, “No chance - drink, you bastard, drink!” And if you take the literalism of God accepting sacrifices because he likes the taste literally, well, suddenly communion makes starts making sense. ‘This is my body, eat of it’ indeed.

Of course, you don’t hear things along those lines in most major churches - at least not the ones I’m familiar with. Which means that most people probably don’t think that the Jesus sacrifice was supposed to make God directly happy or satisfy his hungers. The question is, though, what exactly was accomplished by Jesus being tortured and killed? Is it a scapegoat sacrifice, with God compulsively lashing out due to sin but not caring that an innocent is being hit? Is god trying to trick himself into thinking that all the guilty were punished, when in reality only Jesus was? Or is there a higher power above God that is able to demand and compel that punishment occurs - but is so stupid that they don’t notice the wrong person is getting it? Or perhaps this higher power simply hates Jesus so much he’s willing to forget about everyone else as long as Jesus gets put through the wringer for a weekend?

If one posits that someone other than God is demanding the sacrifice, the candidate that springs to mind is Satan, since one presumes that Satan is sort of miffed with God and Jesus and would enjoy seeing them squirm. However for this to be the case Satan would have to have power over God. Not just over man, but over God himself - when Satan came calling God would have to be unable to just tell him to go to Hell. Now, I know that some people actually do embrace this model - but I don’t get the idea that this is the norm nowadays either.

So. How do Christains explain the need for the torture and death of Jesus, and the mechanics by which it ensures human salvation? Or do they? Full disclosure: I was raised in a Christian environment, and even though it didn’t take with me and I was a fully aware atheist by the time I left my teens, it took the better part of the next decade before I sloughed off enough of my upbringing to realize that in addition to being untrue, Christianity’s core tenent literally doesn’t make sense, even on its own terms. That’s just how ingrained into my upbringing and environment the Jesus thing is. So I can certainly understand if most people haven’t given it a moment’s thought. But surely some Christians have - so how do they explain it? What did Jesus’s sacrifice do, that couldn’t be accomplished some other, less barbaric way? Explain this to me in a way that doesn’t fall apart on cursory examination, please?

2

I personally do not believe for a second that the sacrifices in the old testament were asked for by God. You basically alluded to the fact that the most logical explanation is that this was simply a pagan tradition that got carried over. What you find is that many of the later prophets say that God never even asked for the sacrifices (Jeremiah 7:22 although the NIV purposefully mistranslates this to go along with their theology).

Just about anyone familiar with Christianity has heard Paul’s teaching about salvation by faith alone. Though the synoptics record Christ as saying almost nothing about needing faith for salvation (though I don’t personally deny this meaning), this is simply one meaning behind the crucifixion. Below is a list of equally valid and important meanings behind why Christ laid down his life for us. While this obviously requires more understanding to answer your question, I think it is a good starting point.

  1. Christ laid down his life so that we may see the awfulness of innocent suffering and “God’s absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering” (Rev. Andrew Linzey)
  2. Christ laid down his life to figuratively save his sheep (humans)
  3. Christ laid down his life to literally save his sheep (sheep) by putting an end to the sacrificial system once and for all
  4. Christ laid down his life to defeat all evil at the cross (Christus Victor)
  5. Christ laid down his life as a perfect example of how we should forgive our enemies, no matter how much shit is thrown on us
  6. Christ laid down his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45)
  7. Christ laid down his life and “died for us” so that he could die as the leader of a revolution instead of allowing the Romans to kill all of his followers
  8. Christ laid down his life as an example that we must take up our cross and die to ourselves
  9. Christ laid down his life to stand trial for us (Who without sin could cast the first stone?)
    10)Christ laid down his life as an apology to us so that we may forgive God for the suffering built into our human nature and the world
    11)Christ laid down his life to show us that we are studying for a test that will not be graded (Paul)
    12)Christ laid down his life so that love over law finally prevails. “It is finished”.
3

Okay, let’s start here:

  1. Jesus’s suffereing, while not a walk in the park, was commonplace in his day, and arguably far exceeded in many cases. This is not addressing the torture done directly by God, which we can only read about and not really sympathize with.
  2. Figuratively?
  3. It was about the LITERAL sheep?
  4. There’s lots of evil around, for it having been already defeated.
  5. Pretty elaborate scheme to set up an example, I’d say, but at least this is relatively internally consistent. It has nothing to do with himan salvation though.
  6. Ransomed from whom?
  7. Um, er, so it was a publicity stunt?
  8. So we’re supposed to get ourselves arrested and executed?
  9. Bit confusing - is he standing trial in our place (as a scapegoat), or is he throwing stones at us as the prosecutor? And wasn’t he without sin even without the torture and death, or even without coming to earth at all?
  10. Um, okay. Pretty small apology, but this too is at least a coherent explanation, if again having nothing to do with salvation.
  11. Huh? Of course it will be graded, that’s nigh-universally agreed upon. And Jesus getting tortured and killed doesn’t show that anyway. Paul seems to have been smoking something.
  12. By what mechanic does him getting tortured and killed change the law?

Also, only explanations 6 and 12 (and maybe 2, 4, and 9) cast the Jesus sacrifice as being at all related to human salvation. This is not to disparage your efforts in compiling the list - it just highlights how confused the opinions you’re listing seem to be. Many of these give the feel of a desperate attempt to post-hoc justify Jesus’s death - which admittedly is to be expected when a Jewish messianic cult suddenly sees their would-be messaih get disqualified in a most definitive manner.

And as to to the sacrifice thing, didn’t God on numerous occasions give specific instructions not just for how the sacrifices were to be done, but sometimes where to do them (and in one memorable case, asking for a human sacrifice and then calling a last-minute ‘jinx!’ but still swapping in an animal to barbecue)?

4

I was raised Anglican, and what I was taught was that the penalty for sin was death, which was the purpose for sacrifices before that. Sacrifices were accepted or denied by God for many reasons but basically boil down to whether we were truly repentant and loved God or simply going through the motions. Jesus’s death was what established the new convenant, being the ultimate, perfect sacrifice; thus, we no longer need to offer other sacrifices as long as we accept that one.

The key point though that I think confuses people is that the penalty of sin is death. As I was taught, this is basically that any sin separates us from God, because God is perfect and without sin, and separation from God is tantamount to spiritual death. Thus, our sins have to be absolved or we will die. Jesus demonstrated and taught us about the sort of lives we should live, then provided the means to set ourselves right in the eyes of God.

So it’s not about torture or bribes, its about purity. I don’t believe those particulars so much anymore, I think there’s a lot more levels to it, like the list Trust provides and some others, but that was the big part that they focused on and seems to be fairly common in other denominations as well.

5

Being Jewish, I’m just as confused. I’ve asked the question about why the sacrifice was necessary (never mind the torture) before and have gotten the response that for some reason God cannot provide salvation without it. Well, there goes omnipotence.
The Bible is full of these lame justifications. Why did the righteous king lose the battle and die? Because his daddy was evil - though his daddy died in bad surrounded by concubines at a ripe old age.

6

One take on it is Jesus had to be handed over to the powers of death aka the powers of Satan for Satan to do what he wants. This involved the suffering and death as Satan’s way of discouraging Jesus’ message and actions from spreading. Satan wanted to make a public statement of Jesus, basically saying don’t try what this man did as it didn’t work.

By Satan putting God in human flesh to death (by default without cause), Satan overstepped his authority and now the ‘contract’ that allowed Satan’s Kingdom to operate on earth was in violation. The part that is in violation is that sin leads to death. Any sin, no matter how small or large or how few or many has the exact same penalty - death.

It is that all sin, no matter how small that gave Satan such power to rule on earth, as all have sinned. It is also that part of the contract, that no matter how big or many one sins that the penalty is the same - death that God used to defeat Satan.

As part of Satan’s kingdom, he accepted the transfer of sins from one person to another, so here on earth for instance we have the children bearing the sins of the parents (up to 4 generation in scripture). This insured that even innocent children would die in this world. But due to the transfer ability of sins that Satan accepted to rule on earth, God allows us to transfer our sins to Him. It is this transfer ability, and the innocence of Jesus when Jesus was put to death that allows us to say that the penalty to us has been transfered to Jesus and, no matter how many sins or how bad the sin is, it has been totally paid, as it only requires one death, which Jesus did.
The suffering part had a additional effect, ‘By his wounds we are healed’. Our ability to heal (in some or perhaps all capacity) was awarded because of the unjust suffering of Jesus.

7

You say that this is one take on it. Where might this take on the situation be found-cite, please?

8

I believe my question left it sufficiently open that personal explanations are sufficient answers, insomach as everyone with a pulse knows that just because one person speaks of religious matters as though they were absolute they should still be taken as opinion first.

I sort of expected kanicbird (if (s)he appeared) to weigh in with the opinion that the reason sacrifice is necessary is because Satan has power over God, which does appear to be what happened. As I noted in my opinion this is a possible explanation that allows for a moderate amount of internal consistency, as long as you don’t then turn around and say that God has power or authority of his own to judge people. This perspective is noted - I’m still curious about other perspectives though.

9

So, to summarize, any sin from jaywalking to genocide earns (spiritual) death, unless you scapegoat it first with a sacrifice’s (physical) death. Previous to Jesus a sacrifice’s physical death only answered for the prior sins of the sacrificers; each subsequent sin after this necessitated a subsequent physical sacrifice. (One supposes that there was a way around deathbed sinning too?) Then Jesus’s (physical) death came along, and it was so awesome that it could be used repeatedly thereafter by anybody, to avoid having to undergo (spiritual) death themselves. Is that a fair summary?
You’re right that the “wages of sin is death” thing is a bit confusing, not helped in the least by the fact that it’s ambiguous about which kind of death we’re talking about. Regardless I find myself wondering who set up and is imposing this sin -> death rule, and why they choose to accept replacements and substitutions. (Since that would probably undermine their reason for making the rule, unless the only point is they like getting lots of death.)

10

The field of theology you are inquiring about is soteriology - the doctrine of salvation. Christians over the century have proposed a vast number of rationale as to why “the Son of Man must suffer and … be killed.” [Mark 8:31] Posts in this thread have touched upon a number of them. The Wikipedia article on Atonement has a pretty good summary of the various doctrines.

As for me personally, although I find all the nuances of the different theologies interesting, I am content with not completely understanding how it works. Jesus said it was necessary, so I’m content to have faith that somehow, it was necessary. For now I only see in the glass darkly.

11

So nobody healed of any injuries before Jesus’s torture?

12

For those not inclined to click on my link above, Wikipedia lists the following theories of atonement:
[ul]
[li]Moral Influence[/li][li]Ransom and Christus Victor[/li][li]Satisfaction[/li][li]Penal Substitution[/li][li]Governmental[/li][li]Scapegoating[/li][/ul]
Each has a long history and most of the specific wiki articles do a pretty good job at summarizing them, as well as providing the most common support and objections for each doctrine.

13

And if kanicbird had said something like “My take on it is..” I wouldn’t have responded, but saying “One take on it is..” implies a school of thought that takes this view, not just one person.

14

Not that Satan has power over God - he does not, but God has wisdom over Satan. God allows Satan to operate knowing ahead of time that Satan’s plan is flawed and will collapse by it’s very nature. God can honor the agreement Satan wants because God knows it’s already checkmate.

Satan is just a child of God, just a bit more ‘advanced’ then ‘people’ are, and God’s children are given power and responsibility. Just like we can use our power wrong, so can beings like Satan, but God has a plan for all mistakes without resorting to outright opposing it. In this God’s children can learn that God’s way is the only way and decide for themselves that they want God’s way.

15

Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. God does not change. The gift was won for all time this has to include the past.

16

I would put that a perfect (sinless) sacrifice was needed, so all those other scapegoat sacrifices would have been found lacking in final judgement, though it could buy some leniency in the physical world.

In the NT it was ‘enacted by angels’ through a moderator who is ID’s as God.

17

So God freely submits himself to Satan’s plan, and freely cedes power to Satan to make screwy rules over all humanity that mainly involve death and stuff. Meh, it’s consistent enough I guess. (Lest you think me a potential convert, I better nip that one in the bud - I wouldn’t worship that God. But it’s a consistent enough model, in the same way a casually malicious God would be consistent.)

Not too surprising an answer, but I just wanted to double-check. I personally read this as saying that Jesus doesn’t have free will. It’s a time/causation thing.

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
In the NT it was ‘enacted by angels’ through a moderator who is ID’s as God.
[/QUOTE]
Wait a tic - you just said it was Satan’s plan. Make up your mind.

18

I think it’s something like this:

God: OK, humans, here’s the rules: Blah blah blah Leviticus blah blah. Oh, and whenever you mess up, you need to sacrifice to Me in order to make us tight again.

forward a couple millenia

God: Shit, this isn’t working for me, I need to do some serious revisions on the rules, and I don’t really want all these little sacrifices. But I already gave My promise and said that I would accept them…it was part of the Covenant, I can’t go back on My word.

Jesus: Hey, Dad…how about I go down there, and they can sacrifice Me to You instead, as the Final Sacrifice? I’m already part of You, and I’ll go down and give Word of God 2.0, live a blameless life and You can accept My big sacrifice in lieu of all the little ones. There’s already a precedent of You accepting human sacrifice cos of that whole April Fools’ gag you pulled on Abraham.

God: Righteous! God and Jesus fistbump

19

I didn’t say it was enacted by ‘holy’ angels, just angels which includes naughty ones, though moderated by God (so things are not totally horrible here on earth)

The other parts of the post seems like you got what I was typing.

20

I think this is a reasonable assumption. A lot of symbolism was attached, a lot of legend grew up around the story after the fact. The memory of a martyred leader can be a powerful influence for any group to manipulate.

Did Jesus have a martyr complex? If the historicity of the biblical account is to be believed, his mental and spiritual anguish in Gethsemane would indicate so. He probably knew or suspected that to continue publicizing his message and confronting the authorities could lead to an untimely and unpleasant death, but at that point he could hardly avoid it without being branded a charlatan and coward. There are plenty of more recent stories of inspirational leaders that became martyrs, who knew they were placing themselves in grave danger by continuing their activities, but had sufficient concern for or faith in their cause that they did so anyway.

I realize that many Christians feel that this view trivializes the legend of Jesus, but it really doesn’t do that. If the biblical story of Christ is valid at all (and I personally think it is valid, if not factual in every detail) then the lesson derived from it is of a wise and inspirational social activist, a spiritual leader whose message was so powerful that he literally laid his life on the line to bring it to the public. That the message has been abused and distorted by many self-styled followers does not in any way diminish the act.
SS