2 Jesus Christ questions.

I have been doing some reading about various religious topics for the last couple months, mainly out of curiosity. I make no claim to be any sort of religious scholar, but there is one set of questions that has carried thru all my readings with me.

#1) Did Jesus know he was the son of god, immortal, unable to truely die?

#2) And if so, then what was he “sacrificing” for the sins of man if he knew he wouldn’t really lose anything? Was his “sacrifice” just taking a major beating on the cross? Could that have really hurt him if he was immortal?

It’s kind of like Zeus says to Hercules in the Disney movie “It’s not really heroic unless you risk losing something by doing it” (paraphrased) What did Jesus stand to lose?

  1. definitely ‘knew’…which helped him bring himself to death by declaring this and acting like it as he marched into Jerusalem in the face of the local Roman gov. Almost begged to be killed by claiming it. Was asked to recant to save his life, but he declared he was God/Son of God

  2. He died for ‘our’ sins probably is fit for a theologian, but based on my life as a catholic (now atheist) I can say that all men have natural sin, thanks to Adam and Eve and the apple, and that by dying on the cross …

…you know what? I still don’t know what the hell this means, but always get a kick out of catholics trying to shoe horn this into something.

I have thought about this as well. I do not want to this thread to turn into an anti-christian thread, but as an addendum, I have always wondered about the “For God so love the world that he gave his only begotten son…” verse. What was he really giving up? Wasn’t God with him? The whole thing is very confusing to me.

Is Jesus and God interchangeable in all religions that follow the KJB, or a version of it?

I was also wondering the same thing that Khadaji did about what “God” was actually giving up when he “sent” Jesus to earth. Wasn’t he in control the entire time? He is God afterall.

I guess I am just not understanding where the sacrifices were made in these actions. They seemed to both be riskless. Sending Jesus down to earth, and Jesus dieing for our sins both seem riskless to me.

Well, it’s been a long time since I had a religion class, but I think the deal is this: although Jesus was God, he was also fully mortal when he was on earth, with all the normal weaknesses and temptations, and was just as subject to pain and fear as any man. The sacrifice was becoming mortal. God didn’t have to do this at all, but He did it to save mankind.

This is from 12 years of Catholic school, many years ago. I’m not an expert.

These are really more debatable questions than factual ones, so I’ll move this thread to Great Debates.

If you have a child, and the child is taken by rebels, and held captive, will you surrender yourself to the rebels, to save your child? If you were invulnerable, like Superman, would that make the entire exercise risk free? Wouldn’t you still worry about your child? They are not invulnerable. Do you think that harm to your child might be painful for you?

The sacrifice of the Lord was not a human quid pro quo exchange of His risk for our risk. He became human, as a living example to us, and he chose to assume the cost of our sins. That He is able to bear that cost more easily than we might does not make His love for us less.

Keeping books is not the point. Total and perfect love is the point.

Tris

“Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man’s head.” ~ Ambrose Bierce ~

Actually, Jesus didn’t know what was in store for Him, if my reading of the Scriptures in which He discusses His own future is any indication – He had faith that God intended a positive ending. The assumption that Jesus had omniscience on tap is a misreading of the character of the man as depicted in Scripture; He knew a lot of stuff, but lived out His life as a man, and took the risk of going through with what would bring on His death in faith that God would raise Him or in some other way make His giving of Himself worthwhile.

To me, that makes all the difference.

I believe you guys are right. Christ took the body of a human. This came with all the pain and emotion and other baggage associated.
All “saved” Christians believe they are going to heaven too. But they still are scared poopless of dying, and of pain, and of taxes, etc…
As a man, Christ didnt know everything. He had to learn like everyone else did at the time. He eventually became aware that He was the Savior, but he still had to pray like others did to "talk" to God. It doesnt seem like He was God`s puppet. As a man He had to control his own temptations and emotions, etc…

Actually, it was considered heretical in the early church to say that Jesus and God are “interchangeable”. (This heresy was called Monarchianism, IIRC.) One major objection to this view was “God (the Father) can’t die.” Jesus was considered both fully God and fully human. As human he could (and did) die. IANAC, and I don’t understand how these views can be reconciled. As far as I can tell, the answer is:

“It’s a mystery.”

Also, your denomination is not determined by what version of the Bible you use, (although there may be a correlation) but by the governing structures and/or statements of creed that your church follows.

vs.

Come on. It’s one thing to call Jesus the “Son of God” and let people mull over what that means, but to insist that Jesus was altogether GOD, that he created the Universe all by himself, that he was simultaneously processing the prayers of hundreds of millions of people is, well, pretty damn dubious. There’s a tremendous distinction to be made. It’s like the parable of the fleas who gathered around a hair and called it a dog.

Now then, “only” begotten son notwithstanding, I’ve often mused that Jesus has numerous siblings out there, one for each inhabited planet, that God sends at the appropriate point in their evolution. So there are worlds where people worship the “Daughter of God”.

Or something.

I think Jezus thought he knew.
IMHO he was one of those that think they have been singled out by God. That he had a holy mission. That that is the meaning of ‘Son of God’.
When he found himself dangling from a cross he might have realised something was wrong here. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Hence the ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me.’

‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me.’ doesn’t sound like a ‘part of God’ that knows it is soon to be reunited with it’s bigger part.

Wel, yeah, but c’mon, have pity. Its TAXES. :wink:

Obviously, most of you are about as athiest as can be, so I am ignoring you.

He is saying this because God the Father could not bear to look at what mankind did. That is to say, he was rather hurt, even knowing it would happen, that we murered his Son-Self.

In any event, to understand it all you must be able to comprehend how Jesus can be God and not be God at the same time. Freaky, right?

When Jesus said “My God, why have you forsaken me?”, He was quoting the opening line of Psalm 22.

Crucifixion and death did not come as surprises to Him.

Regards,
Shodan

Read the psalm - it is quite interesting in this context.

The general and abstract concept of God shared by theist and nontheist alike is one in which He is supreme, head honcho of the universe, all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. Even atheists reject belief in such an entity, however conceived; their arguments generally do not refute a deus otiosus but rather the complexus of a Platonic theos, the Elohim of Jewish Scripture, the God of traditional Christianity, etc. Tillich/Spong style theology suggests that this concept is inadequate to explain exactly what God is.

So does Trinitarian theology.

The one thing omniscience cannot know is what it feels like to be in doubt, to worry about what might happen, to doubt.

If humility is a virtue, it is one that cannot be shared by a supreme being.

If self-sacrificing love is the highest of virtues, then how, in the absence of a universe, can an entity by itself choose to do so, and under what (self-imposed) rules can it make a sacrifice of itself?

The entire point to the Trinity is that God is not just Up There and All-Powerful, but also found in the person of a man who walked the earth as one of us, who felt doubt (“Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani”) and grief (“Jesus wept”) – whose will was capable of being opposed to the divine will and of choosing to make a self-sacrifice in order to follow the divine will (“If you are willing, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.”)

God knows what we go through, our hopes, our fears, our dreams, our nightmares, our tenderness, our anger, our lust, our grief. He’s been there, done that.

Picturing Jesus as Omnipotence wearing a human body like a suite of clothes pleases some conservative Christians out of their love for Him. But it’s not the Scriptural picture. He loved and grieved and felt anger and sorrow and worry and tiredness, just like any of us.

One of the key elements of Christian theology regarding the problem of Jesus-as-God and Jesus-as-man focuses on the statement of Paul in Philippians 2:6-8. The translations are quite varied (because Paul was in the midst of an extended metaphor and the translators have trouble juggling the exact literal words while attempting to convey Paul’s meaning). However, the key word that Paul uses in the passage is '[symbol]ecenwsen[/symbol] ('echenôsen) from which we get the theological concept of Kenosis, literally an “emptying” of one’s self.

While actually God, Jesus, for a time, put off his godhead, emptying himself of all the power that accrued to his divinity and became fully human, even to the point of a shameful death.

At the risk of getting slammed, I’d like to point out that there’s a very interesting movie that deals with exactly this issue: what did Jesus know and when did he know it? It doesn’t draw its material directly from the Gospels, but instead uses the framework of the gospel story with scenes that are original to the film (well, it was a novel first) that echo famous scenes from the Bible. I highly recommend any Christian who prizes independent thuoght to check it out.

Particularly if they are interested in the kinds of questions raised by the OP.

Oh yeah, and its name: The Last Temptation of Christ.

Kirk

Or you know…they could read the actual Bible. Or an actual book by a real live theologist who actually knows what he or she is talking about.

It’s like telling someone interested in how the Mafia really works to go watch The Godfather. Bah. Have we really become so lazy that we are resorting to taking fictional movies as serious research or philosophical treatises?

And why do you assume that Nikos Kazantzakis does not know what he is talking about? Not everything in literature is fluff and many works of fiction treat very deep subjects with the utmost respect–War and Peace, for example.

Some of the best considerations of things religious, spiritual and philosphical have been couched in the realm of fiction. The Bible does not directly address these questions to the depth that later philosophy has… and like it or not, the theme behind the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, and its film, is a philosophical consideration of Jesus’ level or awareness of his true nature and destiny. Being fictional in its structure (you know, like the Bible) does not lessen the depth of its purpose or the weight of the issues it takes in hand.

Kirk