I’ve never heard a good explanation of why the crucifixion was necessary.
TampaFlyer wrote:
The standard explanation is something like this:
[ol][li]Besides being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, God also posesses infinite justice. So although God can do anything, He won’t do something if doing so would not be just.[/li][li]All sins must be punished for justice to be served.[/li][li]When Adam and Eve ate the Forbidden Fruit, they committed a sin.[/li][li]Their sin was this weird-ass special sin which meant that all subsequent people born with Adam and Eve as their ancestors (i.e. everybody) inherits this sin automatically.[/li][li]Thus, everyone has sinned and must be punished.[/li][li]But God is omnibenevolent as well as infinitely just. Although justice demands that all sins be punished, benevolence dictates that people should not be subjected to punishment.[/li][li]So, God gave Jesus everyone else’s punishment, instead of punishing everybody else.[/ol][/li]
That last point is a little wonky, 'cause I’ve never heard of a system where justice is served if Person A takes the punishment for Person B’s transgressions. Then again, the 4th point is also pretty wonky, 'cause I’ve never heard of a system where someone’s transgressions are inherited by his/her offspring.
Oh, and I forgot to mention: The punishment for Adam and Eve’s sin of eating the Forbidden Fruit is to roast in the fires of Hell for all eternity after you die.
But ya gotta wonder: Why would an omnibenevolent God put a forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden in the first place?
[pompous voice]
Because this Jesus fellow was a threat to the whole social order, honestly. You can’t just have someone going around calling for a general strike, challenging the god-given authority of both his own priests and king, but even that of the emperor in Rome. That bastard child simply would not shut-up. He knew the punishment for treason and if you ask me he got what he deserved. Good thing we nailed him when we did – who knows what would have happened if this kingdom of god thing had gotten off the ground?
[/pompous voice]
Is that what you meant, Tampa?
Yeah, that’s about the way I’ve heard it said.
So God the omnipotent, feeling He has no choice, punishes humankind in general for something they in general did not do (only Adam and Eve dunnit) because, by God, THAT is justice, and carries this out by punishing Jesus, his Son, who is really Himself, by getting crucified, except that he doesn’t bother staying dead, perhaps because due to omnibenevolence to himself…excuse me, I think I need an Anacin. Isn’t there also something about how this omnibenevolent, infinitely just entity is going to insist that I lend creedence to all of the murky convolutedness above in what I say think and do or else I run the risk of getting the punishment anyway?
I think if I had to choose between being crucified myself and having to believe in such a God and such a reality, I’d rather be crucified.
“But I would not feel so all alone / Everybody must get stoned.” - Bob Dylan
Yeah, that’s the script, put in rather sardonic terms. The one exception I’d take to it is that for most people who see things in this way, we’re not liable for punishment simply because Adam ate the apple…it was the whole idea of moving into a sin-filled life (from his previous in-touch-with-God Paradiasical life) that equals “original sin” – not that “in Adam’s fall we sinne’d all” but that we are born into a sin-filled world and cannot help but “pick up a little of the dirt” no matter how hard we try not to.
It’s not my favorite view of how things work.
I think there is some truth to the following understanding, although this may not have been exactly how Paul reasoned it.
- Homo Sapiens evolved. Unlike animals, we should have the spiritual wherewithall not to do things to harm our fellow man, and we have souls.
- Because of the Fall of Man, explained allegorically in the Adam and Eve parable, the Devil gained dominion over the earth.
- After laying down a foundation for belief for many millenia, God sent Jesus to defeat the Devil.
- The Devil wasn’t going down without a fight, and therefore saw to the crucifixion of Jesus.
- Jesus wasn’t going down without a fight either, and descended into Hell to kick some ass, (and freed the righteous from days immemorial according to some belief).
- The real way Jesus defeated the devil was by coming back in the resurrection, showing through this miracle there is indeed an afterlife and that God’s promise of heaven for the righteous and hell for the unrepentant is true.
A possible #6 is “almost no one believed anyway but at least those who want to go to heaven can get there now.”
Better, AHunter3?
To me, most of this stuff is an irrelevant distraction from the real reason we should remember him. It is as if enormous hordes of people spoke warmly of Abraham Lincoln but said that what made him great was that he died in the Ford Theater in order to heal the breach between the states and now His Truth Is Marching On; that it was Divinely Necessary for the South to secede because otherwise he could not have died in the Ford Theater which was necessary in order for His Truth to be Marching On; That he was taller than a mere man, at least 100 feet tall, and he came from Illinois, which we call the Land of Lincoln because he was destined to come from there, and he had a blue ox that helped him split rails, and he walked barefoot to return library books because someday His Truth would Be Marching On; and it came to pass that he was pitted against Stephen Douglas who defeated him, which was holy and wonderful because in 1860 he rose from defeat and ascended to the Presidency and sitteth as the First Republican and freed the slaves with 40 acres and a mule and His Truth is Marching On. And THAT is why you should vote Republican this fall.
And it is as if I wanted to shake them hard and say, “No, you idiots, you’re just repeating silly stuff you heard someone else say. He WAS a great hero but it wasn’t wonderful that he got executed and in the wake of his death no one, not the north, not the south, and certainly not the former slaves, can be said to have benefitted from the termination of his life, which was NOT necessary in any metaphysical sense for the Civil War to end. And that no Republican since the advent of Rutherford B. Hayes can claim his mantle just by virtue of being a Republican. You’d appreciate him more if you came to a fresh understanding of him less colored by your preconceived notions of who he was and what it means. And shut up already about ‘His Truth is Marching On’; it’s just a bloody phrase and saying it over and over doesn’t make it any more meaningful to the rest of us.”
You follow?
AHunter3 wrote:
“Anacin”? Careful, you’re dating yourself.
(I dated myself once, but I had the same problems.)
Oh yeah, I forgot about that little detail:
- It’s not quite justice if somebody else merely volunteers to take the punishment for your transgressions in place of you. It has to be a contractual agreement or something. Meaning, you have to agree to it. And, um, believing that Jesus died for your sins is how you agree to it. Yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket.
Yes, and I agree whole-heartedly that believing in a particular eschatology of the crucifixion isn’t important for salvation. It is important to some people who never-the-less keep Christ’s teachings.
I do recognize that there are some protestant sects with the following conversion speech which I myself have heard before: “Repeat after me: Jesus died for my sins, I accept him as lord and savior. Thanks, now you are saved and will go to heaven. Next.” I call these people “magic spell” cults – I’m not sure if there is a particular denomination associated with this.
These people are, of course, completely insane – if we are to suppose they have actually read the New Testament and walked away with that conclusion, otherwise they are just completely mislead.
So I think we are on the same page.
OK!
All that being said, I tend to agree with what I understand him to have been saying.