Except it is true. Simple things are not simple: they merely appear simple. It is easy and simple to see simple things, but understanding them is the task fo a lifetime.
I am, right at this moment, typing away on a computer. It’s the simplest thing in the world - everybody I know can do it!
Have you thought about how all this works? Electromagnetic principles are used in hundreds or thousands of ways to create, store, and transfer the data. I am only able to communicate. These are transported to you at speeds I cannot imagine, and can only use in mathematica expression.
If you like, I can say this instead: there are no simple things. None at all. There are simply those whose complexities we see and those we do not.
Loosely, the concept is that the wages of sin is death, and that an atonement must be made. This is the concept behind (animal) sacrifice as atonement for (human) sin in the OT.
Christ’s death as atonement for our sin is the extension of that same concept.
While I agree it’s not perfectly consistent and seems like a bit of a stretch to offer up human instead of animal sacrifice, the general theme is preserved. It is the notion of this Rule needing to be obeyed that gives rise to the expression “Jesus had to die on the cross to pay for our sins…” There was no avoiding the immutability of the Rule: Sin exacts a penalty of death and a penalty must somehow be paid.
The Son is the Father though. They are different…but teh same. They are both God, right? So they are the same. “But they are different!”. Of course! That makes about as much as sense as the religion.
He sacrificed his ONLY SON! He only had one! And he sacrificed him! For our sorry selves! “We’re not worthy!”. It’s kind of like in N. Korea how they constantly remind people of the suffering endured by the “Dear Leader” for the sake of the Koreans. It’s just a giant cult.
His only son? He’s God. He can have a million sons. And his son is “him”. He’s God or “part of the trinity”. And he had to “sacrifice” him according to whose law of “there must be bloodshed and torture and death for sin!”. Whose rule was that? Wasn’t that God’s? So he makes a crazy rule and then satifies it by sacrificing himself (or not really himself but his “Son” which is the same thing kind of but not exactly as the “Son” is God too). And people should be grateful for this! Or they’ll get damned to hell like they deserve.
Oh, simple. If a being is all powerful, it has to act in a paradoxical way to exist. Essentially it must pretend that it’s not all powerful so that the universe can’t be perfect all the time whilst allowing for free will etc. If it’s all powerful, then it would get to decide whether or not an imperfect world + free will is a logical necessity.
I suppose you could argue that whilst Jesus is the same thing as God, Jesus is not the same thing as the Father, or the Holy Spirit. So he wasn’t really sacrificing himself to himself, he was actually sacrificing his son that was part of something that he is also part of for himself.
And maybe you could argue that the Logical Laws of Everything are actually above God and that he’s only ‘all powerful’ from our perspective, so he had to do all this elaborate nonsense to make it work.
But I don’t think you’d get very far with those arguments.
I suppose it may be a matter of semantics, but similar to what Chief Pedant said, the general principle is still upheld that the penalty of sin is death. To put it in simplistic terms, in the OT, you would atone for your sins by offering a sacrifice.. After the crucifixion of Christ, you essentially replace the death of the animal you sacrificed with the death of Christ. In either case, you’re essentially replacing your own death with the death of another. If you don’t do either, then you have to accept that penalty yourself which I would refer to as spiritual death.
That is, in the OT you may have had to perform a ritual sacrifice and now you only have to accept Jesus (the specifics of which I don’t think are relevant, so I won’t get into it), they’re both just two ways of fulfilling the same requirement, and failing to do them still results in the same ultimate penalty for you.
This isn’t a perfect analogy so bear with me, but I think comparing sin to debt will help illustrate the point. Let’s say I owe a debt to someone. My options are that I can either repay that debt or I default on the loan and accept whatever legal consequences go along with that. Now say someone else comes along and says they’re willing to pay my debt to the first person in exchange as part of a bartering agreement with him for some service or good that I can provide. If I accept the barter offer from the second person, I still have a debt and it’s still getting paid, I’m just not having to offer up any money for it. If instead I refuse to pay the first person and I refuse to accept the offer of the second person’s offer to barter, I still end up facing the same legal consequences as if the second person hadn’t made me an offer at all. So while one could argue about how the nature of the debt changes, the same generaly principle applies that a debt exists and it must be paid.
But there has been a change. If there has been no change at all, then the atonement didn’t happen.
So yes, I would say that’s entirely a matter of semantics. One side is saying there was a change and the other side is saying that something is different but there was no change.
(Reminds me of a stupid argument I got into with my BIL one day at dinner. We were talking about one of the western dams and he said they were letting water through to “see what happens.” I said, “Yeah, I heard they were doing some experimentation…” “NO!” he shouted. “They are just trying to see what happens!”
It is this sort of butchering of the language which drives us pedants crazy (although it’s made a nice living for religious apologists):
“Simple things are not simple: they merely appear simple.”
If you are trying to say that some things may appear simple, or be simply stated, but are actually deeply complex or contradictory, or even wrong–then I have no beef with your position.
Simple things are simple. Some concepts–theology especially–which pretend to be simple truths–are actually deeply complex or contradictory or even wrong. It is inappropropriate to present them as if they were simple, obvious and self-evident.
“God is three persons, and yet one.” A “simple” sentence, yes, but utterly contradictory and clearly impossible. And making a simple sentence out of a “mystery” does not make it a simple concept or a simple truth.
That is precisely what I did, in fact, say. Likewise, I state there are no simple things, only things which we accept a shorthand for, and therefore accept to be simple. Simplicity may actually means “that which we can understand in a shorthand way” as its fundmental basis. All simplicity is simplification, but it is appropriate or not according to the situation.
Moreover, in relative terms, I argue it is the things we see which appear most complicated which are, in fact, the easiest and simplest to fully understand (even if nobody has ever quite done so). The things we take for granted as being simple are the most twisted and difficult to unknot.
That is only true if they are, in fact, incorrect. You must decide that before objecting to their complexity. Secondly, I object to your assumption that simple theological statements are designed to “pretend to be simple truths.” They do not pretend, and they are not simple. I do not have, however, have much truck with those who claim to have simple truths.
“God is three persons, and yet one.” A “simple” sentence, yes, but utterly contradictory and clearly impossible. And making a simple sentence out of a “mystery” does not make it a simple concept or a simple truth.
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I disagree. It certainly is not really simple, but it is also quite possible. It happens to nearly everyone every day.* If God, a being which we cannot imagine, lives outside space and time, and does not obey our rules says it is so, I do not argue. Of course, I think God does fall into the category of things which can be logically comprehended, and that logic is a gift he gave us in part that we might do so, but even so our lingual limitations are mere pretensions that do not and cannot emcompass him.
*Yes. I can give examples, although it’s only if you want to get into a weird theological debate. I sure we can agree to disagree without sacrificing the rest of our arguments, if you’d rather avoid the mess of it.
I’m no longer an Xtian, but may I proffer an explanation anyway?
One view of the meaning of the Crucifixion is that Jesus’ mission was not to make it possible for mortals to be forgiven by God, but rather to dispel the illusion that God did not love us in the first place. In this view, the estrangement of humanity from its maker was based not on God’s anger but on man’s being subject to an illusion; God always loved us, warts & all, and at no point ever intended us to be subject to his punishment. But because of Adam & Eve’s “sin”–which in this sense is not a violation of God’s law, but a disregarding of God’s counsel–humans came to believe that God was repelled by the most basic elements of their nature. The purpose of the Incarnation, then, was to demonstrate that God was willing to suffer and die as we suffer and die, to share in our limitations, vicissitudes, and grief; it was to demonstrate his love for us, and show us that we were already forgiven.
By your logic, since a cat is a mammal, and so is a dog, therefore a cat is a dog.
Ttrinitarian Christians – the overwhelming majority of Christian/as, and the only ones who preoccupy themselves with questions of the Atonement, in my experience – do not equate the Son with the Father. Both are God, yes, but they are separate Persons in one Godhead. The Trinitarian God can be analogized to a completely functional being with multiple personality disorder, in the same sense that Jesus analogized God to an unjust judge – not quite precisely on target, but it makes the point.
And it’s not His “only” son – it’s His only-begotten Son. Consider a carpenter. He may make things out of wood – fine things. But they’re his creations. And unless his name is Gepetto, they are not his children; they are his creations. If we turn him into a builder of robots, the same thing still applies: they’re his creatures, things he made that are intrinsically other than himself. Even if he “adopts” a robot as a son-substitute, it will not be really his son. On the other hand, if he goes home and makes love to his wife, nine months later she may well give birth to a boy who is of the same sort as himself, who is really and truly his son.
The relationship between the co-eternal First and Second Persons of the Christian Trinity is closely paralleled by that of a human father and son. And the Godhead is the family business – in which father and son are partners: YHWH & Son, Unltd., so to speak. Both are God – it’s not “God is the Father; Jesus is just Son of God.”
Now, I’m not prepared to defend Trinitarian theology against skepticism – in my opinion, it stands as an explanation of an observed fact, inductively, not as something to be deduced from axioms in some deductive scheme.
Feel free to attack the actual theology. But don’t erect straw men based on misunderstandings of those teachings, and think you’re debunking Christian belief in attacking them.
I think I have an analogy which makes sort of sense of it.
Let’s imagine we have a person locked up for a crime. There are two different ways of getting him out. The first is to make a payment of some kind, in return for which he is set free - however, the rule is still in place, and were the crime committed again, that person would be right back in jail. Or, a payment could be made, in return for which the rule is expunged - not only is he set free, but he could not be locked up again for that act, because it’s no longer a crime.
In the second situation, the rules have changed. In the first situation, the rules haven’t changed, they’ve simply been followed using an option which follows the same rules in a different way. One way follows and fulfils the rules, the other sweeps them aside entirely.
I mean no offense, but if such an ignorance is widespread, it seems like it would be useful if you would have a go at at least a minor attempt at explaining the general, or your, understanding of this particular point. I at least am very interested in what you have to say on this point.
The second is a lot more complex, and therefore much more easily comprehended. It’ salways the simplest things which are hardest to understand.
As far as your options for the second point, i’m not so sure that it does fail to represent them, though this may betray my lack of understanding. They seem different, certainly; i’d say that the change essentially seems to be the reason why God “had” to do what he did; in the first, it’s because we couldn’t ourselves; in the second, he is motivated by his own senses of both justice and benevolence; the third, by benevolence again and a self-imposed limitation. Arguably with those instances that are motivated by his choices might not be described as him “having” to do something, but I would say it’s fair, especially considering your particular choice of words.
If something’s hard to understand, you can’t guarantee that when it will be understood, either.
But recall that my point in the other thread was just to explain that a lot of Christians don’t think it accurate. Perhaps many catholics do. I know a lot of fundamentalists do. But I never claimed no Christians believe the statement to be accurate.
I must be misunderstanding; some form of atonement is required in both cases. I don’t see how you’re equating no change to no atonement.
This is not what I meant to communicate. That is, the quote in the OP says that the rule changed. I am arguing that the rule did not change because the penalty for sin was death before Jesus’s crucifixion, and the penalty for sin is still death afterward. So the underlying law which requires atonement did not change
However, if you encapsulate the method of atonement and the law that requires it as one thing, then one could argue that the rule has changed, but I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of the situation.
Let’s try another analogy. Let’s say that, for a given district that a given crime’s punishment is determined by the class of crime that it is. So, for the sake of example, let’s say that shoplifting is a class 4 misdemeanor and that a class 4 misdemeanor is punishable by 30 days in jail or a $1000 fine. Now let’s say the governor decides that he’ll offer a program through executive order in which someone can work off up to a $1000 fine through doing community service such that that money comes out of some sort of fund that pays off a certain amount based on the hours they work… the specifics aren’t really relevant, I just want to make sure I’m explaining the concept I’m going for.
In that frame, let’s ask if the law regarding shoplifting has changed. One could say that the law has changed because the resulting punishment is different; before they either went to jail or paid a fine and now they can just do community service instead. One could also argue that, while the resulting punishment has changed, the law regarding shoplifting hasn’t been touched, it’s still punishable as a class 4 misdemeanor. This is what I meant by a matter of semantics.
That is, the way for which sin is atoned hasn’t changed; it was death and it is death still. I think taken by itself, reasonable people could look at a situation like that and view it from either perspective. However, in the context of the Bible (Matthew 5:17-18), it is made pretty clear that the law isn’t changed, and that it is instead fulfilled; hence, one interpretation makes more sense than the other from a Christian perspective.
What kind of religion is it that has to have the fundamental information of the faith interpreted? If I believed in god ,I would expect more clarity. I would not settle for insider experts debating truths through time and then expecting me to accept the decision as the word of god. How much of a pass do people give religion?
I remember when it was a mortal sin to eat meat on Friday. Then they decided it wasn’t any more. I thought of all the souls suffering eternal damnation for such a horrible crime against the church. Did they get a reprieve? Did god make the decades of pain go away?
The problem with this argument is that it dances around polytheism. It tries to have both: one god, but really there’s three. If there’s only one god, then he sacrificed himself to himself to undo something he did a long time before that. If there’s three, then he didn’t, but now Christianity is polytheistic. I’ve never heard anything even resembling a reasonable explanation of this, even from priests. It’s one of the questions that gets answered with ‘you just have to believe’ or ‘that’s why it’s called a mystery’ a lot. Personally, I think it’s just a test of faith, as in ‘If they buy this, they’ll buy anything!’.
A “hate and fear” of a religion that has a long history of hurting people, and continues to do so to this day.
Ah, the standard religious defense when someone points out that a bit of religious doctrine is stupid. “You are mere human scum and can’t understand.” Especially silly since it’s just something made up by humans.
It’s not hard to understand because it’s some deep idea beyond a mere human mind. It’s hard to understand because it’s incoherent nonsense.
And all three options make no sense. They aren’t beyond our “tiny minds” ability to comprehend; they are simply stupid ideas. And all three fit the “snarky ignorant” comment you are sneering at.
I don’t want to get too far off-topic here, but I think there’s an important point to be made here. That is, I don’t think the nature of God is relevant to salvation and, really, it’s the sort of thing that theologians and monks spend their time trying to understand. In fact, as I stated above, I don’t believe in the trinity, but I do believe that the nature of God is a little bit more complex than either he’s multiple gods or he’s one god.
I also think that, as we’ve been discussing, “he sacrificed himself to himself to undo something he did a long time before that” isn’t a fair representation because, to my knowledge no Christian, even one who doesn’t believe in the trinity, believes that he sacrificed himself to himself or that it was to undo something. Jesus’s crucifixion wasn’t a sacrifice to himself, nor was it a sacrifice to the “other god”; it was an atonement for the sins of man. So, really, I don’t see how his nature as one god, multiple gods, or as a trinity is even relevant.
