He is a masochist. Remember mankind is being punished for the original sin, none of them had anything to do with it. I am in favor of placing all Christian who have any ancestor who committed any crime in jail. Hey we’d be acting Godlike.
I believe that hell exists. I don’t claim to know if Scripture’s descriptions of it are literal or figurative. Of course theologians have speculated over the centuries, but Catholic teaching doesn’t go very deep into the details of “what hell is like”, just that it’s real, and it’s not a nice place.
His suffering lasted a few hours. His so-called death counts for nothing because it only lasted a day and a half (maybe less, because we have no idea how long it was before he got up again). Death is final. To die, to sleep, no more. That is why death is a sacrifice: you lose everything. You lose your agency, your sensations, your pleasure, your pain. All of it. Take away the irrevocable permanence and it is simply not death, just a nap.
Why would he need to ‘validate’ his claim of divinity?
I thought the whole point was that you didn’t need ‘evidence’ or ‘proof’.
“I see only with deep regret that God punishes so many of His children for their numerous stupidities, for which only He Himself can be held responsible; in my opinion, only His nonexistence could excuse Him.” - Albert Einstein
Thank you EscAlaMike, throughout this entire thread, for showing me the truth and beauty of this statement.
I’m not.
We believe in the immortality of the soul. I don’t know what sensations the soul may be able to experience after death. We believe in a final resurrection for all of humanity, so in a sense, yes death is “just a nap”.
Then you clearly missed the point. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then he was either a charlatan or clinically insane, and Christians are a sorry lot indeed.
‘Jesus’ wasn’t divine - you keep saying he was ‘human’ - therefore the only thing his resurection would ‘prove’ is that GOD is divine.
Uh, okay. But, like I keep saying, magic doesn’t really prove anything, according to the Bible: the unimpressed pharaoh responds to a miracle after miracle by calling in wise men and sorcerers, the magicians of Egypt, who promptly follow suit in like manner with their enchantments; and Deuteronomy 13 takes pains to establish that one shouldn’t hearken unto the words of a prophet or wonder worker, no matter that the sign or wonder comes to pass.
If —as you say — we could write the guy off as a charlatan or insane minus this or that feat, then I see no reason not to still write him off. (You know, so long as we’re still saying he’s big on the Old Testament: if some guy comes along tomorrow and does magic and replies to my mention of the OT by saying “well, maybe that’s all just a pack of lies,” then he’s got a case to make; but what’s Jesus got?)
And?
That belief still fails to explain what Jesus sacrificed. “Sacrifice” means to give something up. Something you want to keep. What did Jesus give up?
Theologians call it the “hypostatic union”. Jesus is both human and divine, simultaneously.
His life. He didn’t want to die, but he submitted to it in obedience to the Father. That’s what the episode in the Garden of Gethsemane is about. “Let this cup pass from me…not my will but yours be done”.
[Puts his lapsed catholic hat on:]
Uh, he really did not die.
[/Phlcho]
As I’m more on the agnostic side nowadays, I have to agree with Joseph Campbell, you are confusing what it is symbolic with what is literal.
Yet, he got it back. He even knew he was going to get it back, so it was just an hour or two of discomfort, a day or so of oblivion, then he was back, acting like some kind of show off. In John, it even says he stuck around for a long while after coming back.
What did he sacrifice?
Lutherans neither ran the Crusades nor the Inquisition.
Not that Luther wasn’t an anti-semitic piece of shit.
Excellent idea. Except that the ancestor knew the difference between right and wrong, which Adam and Eve did not. And the ancestor existed, which Adam and Eve did not.