Yes, and she ate an apple that made her ageless. Still unclear on why she gets to be the executioner of all traitors, and who made that deal. It’s the sort of thing that Lewis couldn’t go back and fill in without making Aslan and the Emperor (who may or may not even exist) look unsympathetic.
It’s part of the generally trippy quality of the first book. By the second book, the worldbuilding is already entirely different, but it seems Lewis kept at least some of the dreamlike approach throughout the series.
Jadis lied to Edmund about making him a prince and his siblings (not that he cared much about them) nobility. Judge Judy would say that she didn’t go into this whole situation with clean hands, so tough.
She also would have bawled out Edmund for being whiny.
I don’t have an issue with that. Being fully Man and fully God, He understood what was about to happen to him. Yes, He would be resurrected and soon after ascend to Heaven, but the crucifixion itself would be physical agony and painful, ignominious death, the likes of which He had never experienced.
To use a ridiculously oversimplified (and I hope, not blasphemous) earthly example, say my goal is to lose weight. I may know intellectually what I need to do is eat properly and exercise every day. Now, being a lazy cuss, I don’t really WANT to do that, and if there’s another legitimate way for me to lose weight, I’ll happily take it. Regardless, though, I don’t have a choice – I have to lose the weight. So if I know what the goal is, and I have to reach the goal, in the end, given no other choice, I’ll eat properly and exercise.
Jesus did the same. He knew his purpose, and that it would have to be fulfilled. He also knew he’d be resurrected after death (each Gospel refers to Jesus’ remarks about “destroying the Temple and rebuilding it after three days”, I believe). Still, though, He was human, and if His purpose could be realized without going through the crucifixion, He was all about going that route.
Been a while since I read the material but when you phrase it this way it gets me wondering… By most reasonable standards, Jesus’ experience with crucifixion was dreadful. As I was reading your post I was thinking to myself, “Yeah, that was pretty bad, but probably not worse than many experienced during the Spanish Inquisition.” But then it occurred to me, if Jesus man was at least partially in tune with The Bigger Picture, he might be able to foresee at least some of the horrors that would be perpetrated in His name. A reasonably self-disciplined fellow could handle crucifixion, but it would be MUCH harder to knowingly endure being the trigger of an organization that would go on to continue your good works AND sponsor true hell-on-earth on the meek. I know…that’s just projection. The story has to be read for what it says. Right?
Dendarii Dame, I want, truly, for any omnipotent beings to be bigger in spirit than Judge Judy. But you hit the mark on what aggravates me about the OP–just because someone’s a scumbag, do they therefore deserve from any less than what you would want for yourself?
Many Christians argue about God’s omnipotence – does He know all things that will happen, or all the things that can ever happen?
Lord knows I’m not qualified to discuss this stuff, but … I, personally, think that God doesn’t know the future. I believe He knows every possible choice I will ever make, from the biggest to the smallest, and He knows what the outcome will be of that choice (and how it will affect all future choices I could make), but He doesn’t know what choice I will make in each instance.
To your point about Jesus and knowing what was to come: I think the worst agony Jesus endured on the cross wasn’t the physical pain – it was feeling God withdraw from Him as He assumed the sin for all mankind. He had literally never been apart from God before that moment, and the overwhelming loneliness, pain and fear was worse by far than the torture of the cross. Crucifixion could take days to kill a person, but Jesus died shortly after realizing God had turned away from Him. I think He literally lost the will to live at that point.
Your thoughts strike me as very much Aslan–he’s always willing to help, but he treats the future as something he knows but is forbidden to talk about. Quite possibly because discussing it could influence the decisions of those he’s talking with.
Still not sure he played fair with Jadis, but one can only examine it for so long before concluding Aslan didn’t do anything. He was a character in an elaborate morality play couched in a brand-new genre, after the author experienced two very world-changing wars and the birth of the atomic age. OP is probably a worthy question, but not one worthy of many hours of fine examination.
This was actually dealt with in the TV movie JESUS starring Jeremy Sisto. Jesus has nightmares of Crusaders killing, ‘witches’ (maybe Joan of Arc) burning, & soldiers dying in His Name. At Gesthemane, He sees it all again as part of His Cup, and Satan tells Him that He could spare people all this suffering if He’d just quit.
The former is pretty much standard, although some theologians allow a little thought-experimental exploration of alternative history.
I spent a few years asking various people – including ministers, pastors, priests, and other theologians – “What would have happened if Jesus had succumbed to Satan’s temptation, and declared himself Emperor of all Earth?”
Many refused to accept the premise. “That couldn’t have happened.” “Jesus was beyond temptation.” “Satan has no power over God.”
Only once did I find a nice man, studying for the priesthood, who was willing to look at the question seriously. He said, “Jesus would have been a wise and powerful emperor. He would have ruled well, and brought peace for many years. But when he died, it all would have fallen apart, and there would have been chaos everywhere. And…everyone who died would be damned to hell.”
Nope. Because what you say is part of the theology from the letters which predate the gospels. Jesus takes upon himself all of our sins, the guilt of the entire world. Not just those things done in his name, but everything humanity does.
Heck, that’s the reason given for God abandoning him, since God can’t stand to be around sin. And, at that point. Jesus had all the sin of the world.
That’s why his death has redemptive value. The sin he takes on dies with him.
So not only is Jesus feeling the guilt for everything that happens because of him, he’s feeling the guilt for everything that happens. Or, my way of looking at it: he is feeling the guilt for everything that happens because he as God created the world and humanity.
But you hit the mark on what aggravates me about the OP–just because someone’s a scumbag, do they therefore deserve from any less than what you would want for yourself?