Sweet Zombie Jesus! Now you bump a more than 10 years old thread?
It’s an interesting idea with interesting replies. Should we throw out The Scarlet Letter because it’s even older?
Interesting thread, nonetheless. Let’s try and rescue it from eternal damnation.
This one’s probably the best argument so far. Kinda like “The Jaunt”, the Stephen King short story in which teleportation’s only possible if you’re put to sleep first, because anyone who teleports awake winds up in an alternate temporal state which last virtually forever. (“It’s eternity in there…”)
That said, a virtual eternity with an ending still ends. And while Jesus may have experienced a type of eternal hell, in reality, he didn’t. Especially since, being God, he already knows what real eternity feels like. It would feel like one of those crazy dreams you have which seems to last nearly a lifetime, but once you wake up, it’s obviously nothing. So the real question is: What did Jesus lose from this experience? Anything at all? If he came out the other side the exact same entity, what did he actually sacrifice?
(And this debate really begs the question of why any sacrifice is necessary at all, assuming an omnipotent, all-loving God…)
Jesus may have to sacrifice himself again to atone for all the times that mankind has used “begs the question” incorrectly. 
No, it isn’t. It’s a desperate unevidenced-by-anything-said -in-the-Bible attempt to make a token effort look like a freakin’ big sacrifice. If anything, the bit about a ridiculously long time seeming like a day to God implies that the three days he spent He Knows Where must have seems like a split-second to him, not the other way around.
My answer is simply that it’s not the death but the brutal way he died that is important. The time he spent dead is just to show he’s really dead, and to be symbolic.
Sure, the “going to hell” is also there. But it’s not what causes redemption. It’s the he died, not what he did afterwards that is stated to be important thoughout most of Scripture. Only once is there a mention of him going to “the depths” and no focus on him being tortured there.
As for why his death is a sacrifice, you guys assume that he knows he will go to heaven. But that’s not what scripture says. He says “My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?” And he goes on and on about faith. Jesus doesn’t know, he has faith.
Even after being resurrected, only the Father knows the time and place when Jesus will appear again. It is clear that, despite being the same Person, God the Son does not know everything God the Father knows.
I guess I am saying that he is “fully human,” because, to be fully human means that Jesus has no more assurances than we do about what will happen. He has only the same faith we can have.
I do agree that there is an aspect that Jesus has, unlike every other human, not done anything wrong. And, yes, to some extent, you could argue that God only got a taste of what it could be like–worse things have happened to humans.
But none of that seems to invalidate the theology. The idea that, if a non-Christian could just find the right way, they could cause Christianity to completely unravel is mistaken. The belief system has had a long time to evolve and fix any apparently problems.
If it could have been out-reasoned, it would have been.
It’s because of the concept of God actually suffering pain, for however short a time. Can you imagine how that would feel for an immortal being who had never before suffered physical discomfort? It would be truly excruciating (an apt word as it comes from the Latin crux, cross). The pain would be magnified a thousandfold as it would be felt for the first time and would seem to last for an eternity.
That counts as sacrifice in my book.
While we’re left to only imagine how an otherwise omnipotent being would suffer under such circumstances, the omnipotent and omniscient being would already know. After all, he created all this, including the suffering.
How is that not mere polytheism?
Yeah, I’m not sure that’s a story Christians would want to stick with concerning their omniscient god, “I See All, I Know Al…Holy Crap, this hurts!”
Because he is both totally human and totally divine…Which makes about as much sense as being totally vegan and totally carnivorous as far as I’m concerned.
Heh. You know, it seems like BigT should’ve worked that in: ‘Jesus totally doesn’t know and Jesus totally knows; the Son totally does not know things the Father knows and the Son totally does know those things; he has no more assurances than we do about what will happen – and he has more assurances than we do.’
Concerning the last words of Christ, let’s not pretend that there isn’t as much ambiguity there as there is concerning the other events of his life.
Luke has him saying:
Luke 23:34: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.
Luke 23:43: Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.
Luke 23:46: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.
With John we get:
John 19:28: I thirst.
John 19:30: It is finished.
And finally with Matthew and Mark we get:
Matthew 27:46 & Mark 15:34 My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Maybe God has multiple personality disorder.
Maybe it’s because he was supposed to be “totally innocent” to be a proper sacrifice…unlike all the babies and children that suffered far, far worse and had a far, far more horrendous death for something they never did, and stayed in the cold hard ground because “someone” cursed them with the sins of ancestors.
“We are born sick and ordered, on threat of eternal punishment, to be well.”
- Christopher Hitchens
An excellent point and one I leave for the Christian theologians to work out, after they’ve wrestled with among other things whether God can be known by the created intellect, whether the existence of God (Deum esse) is per se notum (known intuitively), and of course how many seraphim, cherubim, thrones and archangels can dance on the head of a pin. These questions and similar ones must of course take priority as the whole world anxiously awaits the answers. 
“42”
- Douglas Adams.
I’ve heard others say that, at the moment of death, he suffered the (miraculous) punishment that everyone else on earth had earned. He suffered God’s fury. Anybody else would have been flash-fried to ashes.
Here, I have to disagree. Christianity has long been out-reasoned. That doesn’t matter, because it isn’t founded on reason, but on obedience. Father Patrick tells you what you have to believe, and, if you do, you’re a Christian (according to his specific denomination and tradition. The Church is still in the business of suppressing heresy – they just don’t use torture and burning at the stake these days.)
There are many painful logical holes in Christianity; the faithful don’t care. If you want to, you can believe five impossible things before breakfast.
The late, great Polycarp gave a lovely explanation how Christianity was not polytheistic. I didn’t buy it.
I have been here too long.