I’m not seeing how that ‘redemption’ business works from a mechanical standpoint. Heck, I’m not really sure what you mean by the term.
By its straight definition, “redemption” means “the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.” So that gives us two options - he’s returning something to us, or he’s clearing our debt. I’m not seeing how him getting meaty and then getting his meat killed accomplishes any of those ends. It’s not just that he could have cleared our slates without the meat; it’s that the meat itself doesn’t seem to help. If anything the fact that we killed his meaty butt would seem to be even worse for our collective sin count.
The things really pushing back against this whole ‘crucifixion = sacrifice’ story working are that the more powerful god is the more unnecessary it is (if he’s the one judging us he could just dismiss all charges with a wave of his hand) and the fact that sacrifice, itself, has always been about a supplicant begging the favor of a deity by pleasing it with the act of the sacrifice itself. The supplicants are giving up something for the deity, and he either likes the gift for the gift’s sake or because “it’s the thought that counts”. But this only works if the supplicant is different from the deity, because if the supplicant is the same as the deity then there’s no gift being given at all, which means there’s no effect at all.
That’s just how sacrifices work. The Jesus sacrifice story only works if there’s something that’s not Jesus that he’s trying to gain the favor of. I’m absolutely certain that the people who decided to describe Jesus’s execution as being (instead) a willing sacrifice were under the impression that Jesus was a separate person from God. I hold this opinion because I assume they knew how sacrifices work in practice, because they were happening all the time back then. The story later got twisted up by people who weren’t directly familiar with sacrifice and who wished to deify Jesus, but it doesn’t change the fact that if we’re to believe that sacrifices work, then they work for a well-known reason - pleasing the deity with the sacrifice.
Jesus still has his human nature. His human body resurrected. His human body is in heaven, and we consume his human body in the Eucharist (along with his divinity).
Christ’s incarnation and death were for humanity. It did not benefit God, it benefits us. Our debt to God is paid. We could not pay the debt ourselves because of our limits as humans. That’s why God himself took on human flesh and did what we could not do. He lived a perfect life and willingly suffered even unto death. Could Jesus have lived a sinless life to the age of 80 and died peacefully in his sleep, and saved humanity that way? Maybe he could have, I don’t know. But humanity wanted to kill him, and succeeded, and he submitted to the punishment willingly even though it wasn’t deserved.
We haven’t mentioned original sin, but that’s where this all comes from. With original sin, nature got skewed and our relationship with God was irreparably damaged. The damage done by original sin had to be fixed. We need to be brought back to the state we were in before the fall. It’s been happening little by little for 2,000 years.
Reading the whole exchange, pretty much the only thing I can be absolutely certain of is that he didn’t mean was that he’s God. He was very, very, very explicit that he and God are different people. Honestly I can’t see how anyone could honestly read this passage and say otherwise - I can only assume that the person who cherry-picked that quote for you and told you it showed that Jesus=God was dishonest as fuck.
As for what he actually meant, while reading it what leaps to mind is typo. (Or more realistically, transcription error.) It seriously looks like part of the sentence is missing; based on what he said the crowd wouldn’t stone him unless they were the sort to get infuriated by bad grammar.
But if we were to pretend he really said that, I would suppose that he really meant “before Abraham was born, I existed!” - that is, that he was claiming to have existed as a spirit before being born and to have been watching Abraham from the heavens. (Which, as noted, is consistent with the overall christian mythology.)
Per your cites that’s not the human body people are eating though - they’re eating a time-traveled corpse from the moment of his death. The human body in heaven is presumably sitting around watching Netflix.
Again, the person who you owe your money to can’t pay your debt for you; he can only absolve it.
And Jesus totally provoked humanity into killing him. The bible is explicit about that. He flipped tables, spoke out about the destruction of the temple, and generally disturbed the peace.
If someone assigns a debt to me that I cannot possibly pay, then that person has/is the problem, not me, especially if it is a debt from an imaginary ancestor. This crap about eating his divinity by eating his time-travelling body is nothing more than homeopathic magic, akin to eating a lion’s heart to become brave or ingesting rhino horn dust to become virile.
I’m sorry that you are having such a hard time understanding the exchange, but Jesus’ audience knew exactly what he meant, which is why they were about to stone him.
The “I am” is a blindingly obvious reference to the story of Moses and the burning bush.
Dude. I quoted the text. It’s right there. I’m quite confident you’re not going to fool anybody.
As for blindingly obvious references, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me” is a blindingly obvious reference to the fact that Jesus utterly rejects the idea that’s he’s God, and it’s not the only one in there. I’m sorry that you’re so entrenched in your beliefs that you reject the words of Jesus. Heresy must be a bitch.
Is that what was going on? That wasn’t my intent. He shouldn’t have to accept Catholic teaching, but to quibble over a matter such as this is a bit ridiculous, considering even the vast majority of Protestants accept the Catholic interpretation that Jesus was claiming to be God in John 8:58.
Your religion, at its origin was very much a creation of mankind - specifically a bunch of scholars arguing it out. And this nonsense about how Jesus was wrong about whether he was God or not? Not in Christ’s church!
So you are saying that Jesus did not have to die. So that makes God a masochist or a sadist depending on the state of the Trinity at the moment.
If God wants our sacrifice, it is to show love and or obedience. Why does God have to sacrifice to himself?
Isn’t it standard dogma that salvation is only available through Christ? If so, then the sacrifice is required, and God can’t do it on his own and thus God is not God.
Oral tradition isn’t worth the paper it is written on. Especially since in those days it was acceptable to add all sorts larding to the story of a hero you want to promote. Just like Washington throwing the dollar across the Potomac.
The best evidence against the Resurrection is that hardly anyone there gave a shit.
Why marshal evidence against something that never happened at the time it didn’t happen and when no one claimed it did happen. Unless you have evidence that the resurrection story was current then. Josephus does not mention it, not in the authentic parts of Josephus.
Um wut? Sabellianism, or (Modalism) is clearly distinct from Catholic Trinitarianism. Of course Sabellius would have been excommunicated for pushing a false (and anti-Nicean, even before Nicea! Imagine that!) view of the Trinity. Nicea affirmed what was already orthodox teaching. Nothing new came out of it.
Really? That’s pretty bad if it’s the best you’ve got. I would think the best evidence against the Resurrection is that people don’t rise from the dead.