I know it’s a metaphor, Soup, I was being dry. I’m just trying to tease out exactly what that metaphor is.
It’s pointless to try and correlate logic and religion; the two don’t go hand in hand. That is why there is faith.
Is it really a metaphore?
I doubt that very much.
I think that Eden was believed to actually have existed, it was believed there was an actual first man and that there was a real tree of knowledge.
That we modern people know this to be a bunch of *** doesn’t mean it was intended as a metaphore, originally.
Same with a lot of other literal bible statements and contradictions. Bit of a cop-out really to go and say ‘Oh, yes well obviously this verse is wrong, so it must be a metaphore or symbolism.’
When we talk about religion, fishcrawford, you are correct.
However, when we talk about spiritual things we should expect logic. God is about love and spiritual things.
IMHO if one reads the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. (John is different.) You will be reading the closest, most authentic material available on the life of Jesus. In this material will not be found the doctrine of Jesus being sacrificed for our salvation.
I think it would be a good research project to have people read these gospels who are not familiar with the Christian religion and ask them to write down their impression of Jesus and His death.
Read each gospel as you would a book for the first time.
[Yoda]Ohhhhh… Post-cognition must you have. Hmmm, wise then you must be, all things to see then, Hmmmmmhhh?[Yoda]
Thats the beauty of God’s Word. You look at it believing or not and it will get the point across. Whee. In any event, how do you know it didn’t happen? I have it written down in paper; can you say someone else was there and saw nothing? 
Kalt, you are seeing what you want to see.
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Now, were christians to believe god sent his own son to hell for all eternity for our sins, it would still mean the christian god is a cruel sadist, but at least it could be said that god made a meaningful sacrifice.
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Jesus IS God. He let himself be demeaned by his own self-wounding creation, humiliated, and murdered. He let people do this to himself. And yes, because he was also God as he was Jesus, he also saw it happening. If Jesus had gone to hell, it would have been because he wished to be there, because he felt it was time for God’s mercy to be there.
Have you ever loved someone so much, that nothign they could ever do, even the most base actions, could remove that love? And that even when they did brutal violence and barbaric pain upon you, you accepted it out of love and rewarded them for it?
I haven’t.
Well, weren’t they told in the Old Testament that the animals they sacrificed had to be without spot or blemish? No deformity of any kind? Only makes sense to me. How could something that’s imperfect cover the sins of the imperfect? Wish I’d brought my electronic Bible to work with me so I could look some things up. I don’t want to leave the board to look it up. Anyway, Jesus was the only one quailified to pay the price for our sins as He was God, therefore perfect and without sin.
Lekatt, Once again I disagree with you that there’s nothing in the gospels about Jesus’ sacrifice for sin.
Matthew 26:28 - For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
It’s there whether you want to see it or not.
Still don’t get the logic part.
Adam and Eve commit a ‘nono’.
God punishes them and all their offspring (!!!)
Around 700 AUC God has second thoughts about punishing all of mankind.
He creates a human clone of himself and has it totured and killed.
All of those who believe this will no longer have to burn in hell eternally.
Where is all the logic in this?
- Why punish people into the umpteenth generation for something these individuals did not commit?
- If you are omnipotent and all seeing how can you have second thoughts about anything?
- If you did have second thoughts, why not get everybody out of hell? At the very least those who’ve never even heard of You or Jezus.
- In what way exactly does believing in Christ nullify this ‘original sin’ concept anyway?
- God did not, in fact, punish them. Adam and Eve made the choice (albiet with imperfect information, though they had enough to know that Apple wasn’t going to be gateway to happy-land) to enter into the world of knowledge. They ate from the tree. They were not punished, but transformed.
You might, if you were so inclined, to state that it is a metaphor of man’s rise from the animal. Adam and Eve, upon knowing Good and Evil, could no longer remain Good by innocence alone. And because they were imperfect creatures, they would sin.
2)Ah, but when did God have second thoughts. Does the idea of time even apply to Him? Or is just that God decided to have mercy at such-and-such a time because it as the right time for us?
That is part of the Mystery: what is the nature of God? Why does workl in such mysterious ways?
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I point out that interpretation is not inherent in Christianity. Like I’ve f&c*i$g pointed out 500 FREAKING times before!
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You don’t get it: Christ essentially wiped the slate clean because He wanted to. He just declared it to be so, with a blood sacrifice, of himself, for all mankind.
Huh?
If something is written down on paper that makes it true?
Just so you know, none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They were all written well after the crucifixion. (70-150 CE).
Since there are no extra-biblical accounts of the resurrection or any other miracles, I think it’s safe to say that plenty of people were there who saw nothing.
Huh? If something is written down on paper that makes it true?
Just so you know, none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. They were all written well after the crucifixion. (70-150 CE).
Since there are no extra-biblical accounts of the resurrection or any other miracles, I think it’s safe to say that plenty of people were there who saw nothing.
Bandit
- We burn in hell for all eternity because of this sin, a deliberate act of God. So yes it is a punishment.
2)OK, calling a lack of logic ‘a mystery’ is one way of escaping the problem. ‘You must simply believe it. No matter that it sounds like bolloks, that’s the beauty of it, the mystery.’
Hmm, right.
3)Granted, not your take on Christianity but that take cetainly exists.
4)No, I don’t get it. Why not simply wipe the slate clean, why the circus act?
What about this?
Luke 1:1-2 - For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us. Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember where, it could be from the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, that writings have been found that could have been dated before 70 AD.
They were eyewitnesses. I don’t know about all 4 but John definitely was there with Jesus. I think the others were too. So how can you say the gospels weren’t written by eyewitnesses?
You have no better opposing evidence. 
So that we would understand hat was done. Thats the whole point - if God simply did it, it would mean nothing, we would not have known. God has sent Himself to be a living eternal sacrifice. ANd to see us onto the path He wants us to take.
Here is the problems with using the “Jesus as the unblemished sin sacrifice” (IMHO of course):
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Human sacrifice is prohibited in the OT. Those who sacrificed children to their god did so for the same basic reason used by Christianity, the child (or child of god) is without sin, is morally perfect and therefore is acceptable to sacrifice. Human sacrifice was NEVER acceptable to those of the OT.
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Blood sacrifice only covered unintentional sin, not all sin. Those who willfully sinned had to atone for the sin themselves through prayer and restitution (if necessary) to those sinned against.
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Using Levitcus to justify Jesus sacrifice poses a problem since there were very specific instructions on how the blood must be used, it must be placed on the altar in the temple to be seen as worthy enough for use as atonement. If one wants to use Leviticus literally for atonement, it must be used in it’s entirety, not just the parts that work to fit into your theology.
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The OT allows for simple prayer to take the place of blood sacrifice (Hosea 14 and I Kings 8). And IIRC, there is a Psalms that states that God does not want sacrifice but repentance. There is no mention of a need for any kind of avatar and this was long before Jesus came on the scene.
People who take a strict literal intepretation of the Bible, such as His4Ever SHOULD have a problem with this. However we’ve seen how these kinds of people pick and choose which verses to follow and which to ignore. I’d love to see an explanation from these kind of people as well as the interpretations of people like Poly and Lib.
Indeed, so are you.
Sorry, but jesus can’t both be the son of god and god (that is, as long as you only believe in one god). You can’t say stuff like “god gave his only son jesus” and then say “jesus is god.”
So if god let people hurt him (assuming he felt pain; he could have been having an orgasm while it looked like they were hurting him - he’s god) how is that such a great sacrifice. He wasn’t murdered, he’s right back in heaven. You can’t murder god. Whether he has the power to murder himself or allow himself to be murdered is like asking if he can make a stone that’s too heavy for him to lift.
And how is letting yourself be hurt considered “mercy”? Sparing someone else from being hurt would qualify as mercy, but letting people whack me with a stick isn’t merciful at all. Sparing the lives of those who killed jesus would be mercy I suppose, but i have yet to hear a christian tell me that those people aren’t in hell. Come to think of it, as long as people are still being punished (i.e. going to hell) for sinning on earth, the status quo didn’t change at all, and god/jesus didn’t “die for our sins” at all. As long as he’s still there being worshipped, he didn’t die at all.
What reward?
As long as jesus and god are supreme beings, I have a hard time believing they (it seems clear that you’re now talking about two gods) felt what we humans call “pain.” You religious people love to talk about how we humans can never possibly understand the way god works/thinks, but we can understand the way his nerves carry pain signals to his brain? hogwash. Be consistent.
It is clear that jesus didn’t “accept [crucifixion] out of love” … he did it to be a martyr (even though nothing really happened) and cause millions and millions of christians to follow him later on. You and countless others like you follow him blindly (i.e. with “faith”)… considering he’s immortal and probably felt no pain, it was a pretty good deal. If I were an immortal god, felt no pain, and wanted millions of people to worship and follow me, i’d let some thugs “hurt” me too (if that’s all it takes, and apparently it is).
I just love this quote,
“We must question the story logic of an all-knowing, all-powerful God. Who creates faulty human beings and then blames them for his own mistakes.”-Gene Roddenberry
This might help a little. It’s Anselm’s dialogue “Cur Deus Homo”, where he lays out his theory of Jesus’s death and redemption
What about it? The Bible is true because the Bible SAYS so? This is circular logic.
Nope. Sorry. Not the gospels. The earliest gospel, Mark, was written about 70 CE. Some of Paul’s letters date from about 50 CE. There is nothing earlier than this. (Paul never met Jesus btw.)
The Gospel of John was written sometime between 100-150 CE, far too late for it to have been written by the Apostle himself. Furthermore, the author of John never identifies himself and it was only 2nd century tradition which ever identified this gospel with John the Apostle.
The fact that Matthew refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (22:7) proves that it cannot have been written before 70 CE. Once again, the attribution of this gospel to the apostle is merely tradition. It was common practice in this era to ascribe more illustrious authorship to such works of literature in order to reach a larger audience.
“Luke” was not an apostle and wrote his gospel about 90 CE. The crucifixion occurred before he was born.
Mark, as I said, was the earliest gospel, (70 CE) but once again the name of the author is not mentioned in the gospel itself, and, as with John, the attribution to “Mark” originated in the 2nd century.
Diogenes the Cynic (Rap name: Sinope Diggy Dog) died in 320 BC, so I wonder how he could have opinions on any of this. Perhaps they have Internet access in the 7th circle of hell?
Why would Diogenes be in hell?