Believers in a triune God, why does there have to be an interscessor?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
It’s easy to gloss over the ugly stuff and cull out the sweet things, but then you aren’t talking about the Bible; you are talking about your personal paradigm, parts of which are supported by parts of the Bible.
[/QUOTE]

What are you talking about, who glossed over the ugly stuff? The thing you mention above is insignificant compared to eternally lost salvation, we are talking about much bigger issues big ugly eternal death vs sweet eternal life - it don’t get bigger that that!

62

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
What are you talking about, who glossed over the ugly stuff? The thing you mention above is insignificant compared to eternally lost salvation, we are talking about much bigger issues big ugly eternal death vs sweet eternal life - it don’t get bigger that that!
[/QUOTE]
This actually left a bitter taste in my mouth upon reading. Suffice to say, it is a repulsive perspective, at least in my eyes.

On the upside, it is somewhat refreshing (though scary) to hear of a believer who is not in denial about their God’s hypocracy.

63

[QUOTE=begbert2]
On the upside, it is somewhat refreshing (though scary) to hear of a believer who is not in denial about their God’s hypocracy.
[/QUOTE]

Why would you say that God is a hypocrite? In what way?

64

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Why would you say that God is a hypocrite? In what way?
[/QUOTE]
“Thou shalt not kill, unless I get the whim for wholesale slaughter and you’re working for me.” “Revenge is mine.” Surely there are more.

The god of the bible is undoubtedly evil; at least with regard to his interactions with humanity. (Even if he operates on a plane above us and is our creator it doesn’t justify or excuse him crushing thinking, feeling people like ants beneath his uncaring boot.) Essentially, he’s the evil dictator who offers rewards for service to him. “Sweet eternal life”, specifically, is the reward.

Personally I don’t think I could stomach serving such evil, even if the price of morality is “big ugly eternal death”. YMMV.

65

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
What are you talking about, who glossed over the ugly stuff? The thing you mention above is insignificant compared to eternally lost salvation, we are talking about much bigger issues big ugly eternal death vs sweet eternal life - it don’t get bigger that that!
[/QUOTE]

So imagine a soldier slaughtering thousands of babies with a sword upon the command of his God. This, for you is insignificant because sweet eternal life is available from the same God for those finding themselves on the winning side.

You may well be right in your theology. But it should not be difficult to understand why outside observers of this paradigm see an evil construct and not one in which they would choose to participate. It is hard to separate the type of behaviour that Joshua and his army engaged in at the command of God from the type of behaviour the faithful attribute to demons.

66

[QUOTE=Chief Pedant]
So imagine a soldier slaughtering thousands of babies with a sword upon the command of his God. This, for you is insignificant because sweet eternal life is available from the same God for those finding themselves on the winning side.
[/QUOTE]
Well I was referring to the people who were slain, I would WAG they had no hope of salvation, as such it didn’t really matter how/when they die.

There is a big difference between the OT and NT, I believe it was a different time entirely, Jesus coming to earth split time IMHO (and man being imperfect gets it off a few years). The battles to regain the holy land is a direct correspondence of the war Christians are asked to wage against Satanic forces, we are to gain ground for God’s Kingdom and retake the earth, not by physical force but spiritual warfare.

In the NT, which is for the time we are living it, it appears that Jesus allows self defense (He told the apostles to take a sword with them) - so that could lead to a killing, and perhaps one other time, which has to do with the beast in Revelation suffering a fatal wound, and being raised to life by Satan - but The Revelation doesn’t say that it is a assassination attempt, it could very well be a slip and fall in the bathtub. So no God doesn’t have us killing, though Jesus Himself will during the second coming.

[QUOTE=begbert2]

The god of the bible is undoubtedly evil; at least with regard to his interactions with humanity.
[/QUOTE]
You are comparing 2 very different times.

In modern times, if one comes to God through Jesus God will accept him - this is salvation. It a reward that is not deserved, for we all deserve to die, for we all have sinned. So in this aspect God is good, he is willing to save us from our fate. The service to him has to do with your reward if you are saved, which is a separate issue. There are also theories that Satan will ‘reward’ (read ‘punish differently’) people who have served him, none of that is plesent however.

67

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Well I was referring to the people who were slain, I would WAG they had no hope of salvation, as such it didn’t really matter how/when they die.
[/QUOTE]

So no biggie if you slaughter a few nations a titchy bit before their natural end–even their babies?

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
You are comparing 2 very different times.
[/QUOTE]

But not two different Gods. And that’s the rub.

68

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Well I was referring to the people who were slain, I would WAG they had no hope of salvation, as such it didn’t really matter how/when they die.
[/QUOTE]
That would be every man, woman and child. I’m curious, though. Do you suppose there are any alive today that have no hope of salvation? If there were, would you truly feel no remorse if they were slaughtered, be they man, woman or even child?

69

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
Do you suppose there are any alive today that have no hope of salvation?
[/QUOTE]

I think you are referring to people, as opposed to spiritual beings, there seems to be a class of people who have gained and then abandoned salvation, this people appear to be eternally lost, a fate worse then those who never achieved salvation.

As for people who never accepted the gift of salvation, it does seem they are also lost, though as long as they are still alive there is a chance that they will accept.

So only the first class of people have no hope of salvation IMHO.

I don’t believe a child could be in such a state, but I’ll ignore that issue right now. The remorse and compassion would be that they were eternally lost and cast into ‘the outer darkness’. I don’t know if the few extra years on earth really makes a difference, but then again, there is the biblical account of a demon (a condemned being) worried about being judged before his time, so a case could be made to let the condemned live on earth a bit longer before death is a bit more compassionate.

Death is not the end, but the split of body and spirit. Something that was not suppose to happen, something we were not designed for.

70

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
I don’t believe a child could be in such a state, but I’ll ignore that issue right now.
[/QUOTE]
No, let’s not ignore the issue right now. In the examples above which come straight from the Bible, every man, woman and child was slaughtered in each country that was “liberated”, and you said that no one who was slaughtered had even a hope of salvation.

71

Again you are compare OT times directly to NT times, it’s not a belief I currently hold and this is how I view it: as I stated above Jesus split time. Looking back in time past 1 AD (or 4 BC) can not be done directly IMHO, there is a distortion, a change in humanity on a spiritual level, if not a physical level.

Those tribes/‘countries’ that were conquered and destroyed may have been children of Satan and have already been condemned, much like the demons are today. It was not until Jesus opened the gift of salvation to other peoples then God’s chosen people that they could come to salvation. So children at the time of the OP may have had no hope of salvation.

72

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Again you are compare OT times directly to NT times, it’s not a belief I currently hold and this is how I view it: as I stated above Jesus split time. Looking back in time past 1 AD (or 4 BC) can not be done directly IMHO, there is a distortion, a change in humanity on a spiritual level, if not a physical level.

Those tribes/‘countries’ that were conquered and destroyed may have been children of Satan and have already been condemned, much like the demons are today. It was not until Jesus opened the gift of salvation to other peoples then God’s chosen people that they could come to salvation. So children at the time of the OP may have had no hope of salvation.
[/QUOTE]
If only you believed in the power of Man or even God as much as you believe in the power of devils and demons.

73

I think the image of this angry, slaughtering God that is described in the Old Testament is one of the reasons that so many Christians do not accept the Bible as the literal word of God. Some don’t think of it as even inspired. The notion that you can quote scripture to refute all Christian belief is misguided.

By the way, Joshua, if he really existed, would have lived in a time when he would have believed that there was one true God for Israel and other Gods for other countries. The same is true of Moses (if he actually existed). I wasn’t aware of this belief system until recently.

74

There were various tribes in the land at the time of the Conquest, but only few that were marked for total extermination. Most were allowed to surrender to the Israelites & stay as vassals, fewer spared & exiled, but very few to be totally
slaughtered (and even then, if they fled, they were not to be pursued to the death). The few that were “devoted” to destruction seem to have been those
who practiced sacred harlotry & human, esp. child, sacrifice; also those that
unprovokedly attacked Israel during the Exodus (the Amalekites); and those
regarded as involved with the Nephilim. Btw, ALL these people would have known
about the Exodus & the Wandering & how God intervened for these invading peoples, so if they had any sense, they would either surrender or flee.

ANOTHER possibility is that the command to kill everyone was not a literal command to genocide but a badly-translated order not to let avoiding “collateral damage” get in the way of victory, especially if the women & children get brought onto the battlefield (as happened in VietNam).

Any innocents killed then have the same fate as innocents killed now… infants & non-accountable children either go into Paradise through Christ’s provision, OR they will be brought to life in the Resurrection to get their opportunity to grow & come to Christ- and IF they know about their former life as Canaanite babies, they will probably thank God for sparing them from growing up in such a decadent
culture.

I wish our observant/Orthodox Jewish Dopers would chime in on this (though it probably wouldn’t be till late tomorrow or Sunday) as its their God, history & Scriptures being slandered as much as that of Christians.

75

I’ll throw in my two cents, even though Kanicbird and a few others have pretty much explained it.

The topic has drifted, so I’ll go back to the OP “Why does there have to be an intercessor?”

I’m currently agnostic, but in my early 20’s I studied the Bible. I read it many times, and several dozen other books By Chuck Swindoll, Colsen, Robertson and many others too obscure for me to remember.

The way I understood it is like this:

God is perfect. He’s sinless and super-clean. He’s so clean that he can’t even allow us into His presence, because humanity is sinful. Even if you live the perfect life, when you consider “original sin” and “unclean thoughts” we pretty much can’t help it.

Allowing us as we are into His presence would sully Him. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is.

But, since He does love us and wanted to bring us back into the fold, he had to figure out a way to reach out to us without getting His hands dirty.

So, here comes Jesus Christ, God and Man. Able to decend into the mucky-muck yet stay sinless himself.

He’s the “channel”. The “One Way”.

It’s incorrect to pray to God, or thank God. He can’t hear you. You have to go through Christ. (until you are “born again”)

Why was Christ put to death? Because the alternative would have been for all of humanity to be destroyed because God can’t accept us as we are. So, Christ, being sinless “took on the sins of the world” and died as a sacrifice in our stead.

Now, humanity is sinless (at least the ones who accept the sacrifice) and can approach God directly.

So, that’s what the “intercessor” is all about.

I guess.

76

[QUOTE=Zambini57]
I’ll throw in my two cents, even though Kanicbird and a few others have pretty much explained it.

The topic has drifted, so I’ll go back to the OP “Why does there have to be an intercessor?”

I’m currently agnostic, but in my early 20’s I studied the Bible. I read it many times, and several dozen other books By Chuck Swindoll, Colsen, Robertson and many others too obscure for me to remember.

The way I understood it is like this:

God is perfect. He’s sinless and super-clean. He’s so clean that he can’t even allow us into His presence, because humanity is sinful. Even if you live the perfect life, when you consider “original sin” and “unclean thoughts” we pretty much can’t help it.

Allowing us as we are into His presence would sully Him. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is.

But, since He does love us and wanted to bring us back into the fold, he had to figure out a way to reach out to us without getting His hands dirty.

So, here comes Jesus Christ, God and Man. Able to decend into the mucky-muck yet stay sinless himself.

He’s the “channel”. The “One Way”.

It’s incorrect to pray to God, or thank God. He can’t hear you. You have to go through Christ. (until you are “born again”)

Why was Christ put to death? Because the alternative would have been for all of humanity to be destroyed because God can’t accept us as we are. So, Christ, being sinless “took on the sins of the world” and died as a sacrifice in our stead.

Now, humanity is sinless (at least the ones who accept the sacrifice) and can approach God directly.

So, that’s what the “intercessor” is all about.

I guess.
[/QUOTE]

Any answer along the lines of “The rules say so.”, especially concerning our nature, run smack into the God-as-sysadmin counter-argument. If the nature of existence is such that we are sinful and imperfect, it is because the world was made such that we would be that way. God does not deal in alternatives, or side effects; if an omnipotent entity wants for X to happen, then neither more nor less than X happens.

77

[QUOTE=Zambini57]
I’ll throw in my two cents, even though Kanicbird and a few others have pretty much explained it.

The topic has drifted, so I’ll go back to the OP “Why does there have to be an intercessor?”

I’m currently agnostic, but in my early 20’s I studied the Bible. I read it many times, and several dozen other books By Chuck Swindoll, Colsen, Robertson and many others too obscure for me to remember.

The way I understood it is like this:

God is perfect. He’s sinless and super-clean. He’s so clean that he can’t even allow us into His presence, because humanity is sinful. Even if you live the perfect life, when you consider “original sin” and “unclean thoughts” we pretty much can’t help it.

Allowing us as we are into His presence would sully Him. It sounds callous, but that’s the way it is.

But, since He does love us and wanted to bring us back into the fold, he had to figure out a way to reach out to us without getting His hands dirty.

So, here comes Jesus Christ, God and Man. Able to decend into the mucky-muck yet stay sinless himself.

He’s the “channel”. The “One Way”.

It’s incorrect to pray to God, or thank God. He can’t hear you. You have to go through Christ. (until you are “born again”)

Why was Christ put to death? Because the alternative would have been for all of humanity to be destroyed because God can’t accept us as we are. So, Christ, being sinless “took on the sins of the world” and died as a sacrifice in our stead.

Now, humanity is sinless (at least the ones who accept the sacrifice) and can approach God directly.

So, that’s what the “intercessor” is all about.

I guess.
[/QUOTE]
Actually the immidiate problem I see is that this thread is specifically about the triune god - so Jesus and God are the same person. So, why can he handle the company of sin while he’s wearing his “Jesus hat” but not when he’s wearing his “God hat”?

(This is not to say that there aren’t other problems that apply even in non-triune cases; this is just the first problem I noticed.)

78

[QUOTE=FriarTed]
There were various tribes in the land at the time of the Conquest, but only few that were marked for total extermination. Most were allowed to surrender to the Israelites & stay as vassals, fewer spared & exiled, but very few to be totally
slaughtered (and even then, if they fled, they were not to be pursued to the death). The few that were “devoted” to destruction seem to have been those
who practiced sacred harlotry & human, esp. child, sacrifice; also those that
unprovokedly attacked Israel during the Exodus (the Amalekites); and those
regarded as involved with the Nephilim. Btw, ALL these people would have known
about the Exodus & the Wandering & how God intervened for these invading peoples, so if they had any sense, they would either surrender or flee.

ANOTHER possibility is that the command to kill everyone was not a literal command to genocide but a badly-translated order not to let avoiding “collateral damage” get in the way of victory, especially if the women & children get brought onto the battlefield (as happened in VietNam).

Any innocents killed then have the same fate as innocents killed now… infants & non-accountable children either go into Paradise through Christ’s provision, OR they will be brought to life in the Resurrection to get their opportunity to grow & come to Christ- and IF they know about their former life as Canaanite babies, they will probably thank God for sparing them from growing up in such a decadent
culture.

I wish our observant/Orthodox Jewish Dopers would chime in on this (though it probably wouldn’t be till late tomorrow or Sunday) as its their God, history & Scriptures being slandered as much as that of Christians.
[/QUOTE]

Make that last sentence “quoted” instead of “slandered” or (libeled). As for the first part of your post, read the book of Joshua. You will find no support for what you say except for a general assumption that any existing peoples were on the wrong side of the Faith.

The notion that slaughtering innocents–infants and non-accountable children–before they are of age is good for them since they will then be granted better opportunity for salvation in the afterlife is bizarre. By such reasoning the church should aggressively promote abortion and infanticide because it would save souls for eternity. In fact the Protestant and Catholic churches generally oppose abortion.

To the point of the OP: the God of the Old Testament is the psychological reason that the concept of a more friendly intercessor–the Holy Spirit–and a more human God–Jesus–took such powerful root.

As I said above, the dilemma is that they are all the same God in Christian theology. One does not avoid the strange contradictions in the Bible by simply renaming things. In much the same way that many other religions have postulated various gods to cover the various circumstances of life, Christians have arrived at three. One–the Holy Spirit–is the intercessor. The insistence that they are all One–the Mystery of the Trinity–is not a mystery at all but a self-contradictory contrivance based on the problem that historically the Faith was monotheistic.

79

[QUOTE=Zoe]
I think the image of this angry, slaughtering God that is described in the Old Testament is one of the reasons that so many Christians do not accept the Bible as the literal word of God. Some don’t think of it as even inspired. The notion that you can quote scripture to refute all Christian belief is misguided.

By the way, Joshua, if he really existed, would have lived in a time when he would have believed that there was one true God for Israel and other Gods for other countries. The same is true of Moses (if he actually existed). I wasn’t aware of this belief system until recently.
[/QUOTE]

Surely the One True God would have revealed truth to the fellow he was ordering to do the slaughtering…one cannot excuse behaviour on the one hand and argue for a supreme deity who personally deals with men on the other.

It is not an “image” of the angry, slaughtering God. It’s a plain reading of plain text.

80

[QUOTE=FriarTed]
I wish our observant/Orthodox Jewish Dopers would chime in on this (though it probably wouldn’t be till late tomorrow or Sunday) as its their God, history & Scriptures being slandered as much as that of Christians.
[/QUOTE]
It may well be interesting to see what the strong Judaism believers have to say.

Meantime, Ted, I suggest you look up “slander” in a dictionary or encyclopedia. “Slander and Libel” in Wikipedia is a good place to start.

I realize that this is a “court of public opinion” rather than any kind of legal court, but it is interesting to consider just how you would look trying to advance your broad “indictment” in a court of law.

“Truth” is considered an “absolute defense” in USA and Canada. (See the listing under “Defenses.”)

You don’t consider what has been pointed out here to be the truth? Too bad.

“Statements made in a good faith and reasonable belief that they were true” is another item listed.

Then we have “Opinion” and “Fair comment on a matter of public interest.”

I think you just don’t like what is being said here.

Finally, I can see how you might imagine that your biblegod could be slandered. But how do you slander history? And “Scriptures” slandered? By quoting them?! :dubious:

Self-slander, maybe?

True Blue Jack