If the Romans decided to not kill Jesus, would christians not be forgived?
I’m guessing without the hook ending of the crucifixion, Christianity would be lumped in with any number of localized cults in that time and place that faded out when their leaders gradually lost their charm and influence. Like Elvis, dying was for Jesus a great career move.
After 2000 years, I think most people would be incredibly impressed by an incredibly old sage possibly much more than that cross stunt.
Well, there goes Easter.
The Christians, if there were any in that alternate history, could just say “God has forgiven us ! He turned the Roman’s hand’s away from the Savior !”
Really, when you are making stuff up, you can make anything up you like. And it’s not like the whole idea of Jesus’s death on the cross causing God to forgive humanity ever made sense.
annnnd literal interpretation of the OP…
I think “if Jesus didn’t die” well then, he wouldn’t be Jesus, in the modern day christian sense. Christianity probably would have merely turned in to “a few new stories to talk about” to most Jews. World may be a lot different without the evangelical fervor…
Wow, Der Trihs, it sure sounds like you are suddesting that Jesus wasn’t the son of god and wasn’t born to a virgin mother and die on the cross for our sins and didn’t resusect to the heavens… 
I’m guessing you’re not very popular at Easter Brunch :eek:
< shrugs > Honestly, it doesn’t matter for this if he was. Fraud, Son of God or Jesus the Super Psychic, the whole “died for our sins” bit has always been silly, and the whole mythology surrounding him has been made up; that’s why there’s more than one version.
In regard to the OP,
Jesus’s death and resurrection is the penultimate moment in Christian theology. Without the death and resurrection, there is no Christianity as we know it today. Jesus dying for our sins did not cause God to forgive him, because in at least the Catholic viewpoint, they are the same entity. Jesus dying for our sins took them away because he assumed them for himself and paid the price to Satan, which is death. Because Jesus is God, Satan was played for a fool and his plan to kil Christ ended up with the eternal salvation of the human race.
If Jesus was God but didn’t die and just lived forever on earth, it would certainly make most people believers, but it would not solve the problem of sin. Without the death and resurrection of Jesus, God cant just say “presto chango, your sin is gone” because He is ultimately kind AND ultimately just. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is an IMHO an excellent allegory for the topic at hand. Aslan assumed the dweeb’s death sentence for his sin of treachery, ala the Old Magic. Aslan however, being the Christ of Narnia, conquered death and defeated the White Witch, who was not Satan but a definite evil presence (the white witch’s origin is covered in another Narnia book which name I cant remember).
If you’re a hard atheist, of course this is going to sound like a bunch of baloney. If you’re Christian however, I humbly propose that Christian theology has a modicum of rationality to it. And FWIW, I am slightly offended that people claim “it is all made up.”
Would you care to explain how it’s silly, or are you having fun sniping from your clock tower?
In regards to the more-than-one version argument, I guess you dont believe in many pre-Modern figures either. I cant think of an example but I’m fairly certain many Classical figures having widely varying biographies.
Also, think about it… if the Bible was just a made up story about a guy named Jesus, wouldn’t the versions be the same instead of different? People were not stupid 2000 years ago, they would have realized that different versions might be interpreted as “a load of hooey” so intelligent fakers would have decided upon a single interpretation. What happened in actuallity though, was that 40-80 years later, 4 communities decide to write down for posterity what happened to Jesus. These versions are all slightly different to reflect the biases of the community, but all agree on the major major points. Each community also had likely knowledge about Paul and his on-going letters.
Dont you think it’s highly unlikely that any Church could last 2000 years if it’s based on a complete fairy tale? I do. I’m not saying there’s any empirical proof that Jesus is the Son of God, but calling everything Christians hold dear is “made up” is IMO ignorant.
Getting nitpicky here:
Autolycus, you might want to look up the actual meaning of penultimate.
Oops, replace that with “key” or “crucial.” Care to provide me with a fancy word for those ;)?
Of course he could, and no he’s not. Being the one who decided we are sinners, he can say we aren’t anytime. And if he was at all kind and just, much less ultimately, he wouldn’t hold all of humanity to blame for our ancester’s sins, nor if he did would he forgive us after Jesus died, nor would he have acted as portrayed in the Bible. God, in the Bible, is not remotely kind nor just.
Hard atheist ? I’d say that most non Christians would look at is as nonsense.
As many people have pointed out over the years, God could forgive us at any time. And has also been pointed out, the idea that the death of Jesus or anyone else should make up for my or yours or anyone else but Jesus’s sins simply doesn’t make sense.
Not if they were made by different people. It was all written down well after his death, with plenty of time for the various stories to pass through various hands.
So, which part is the part that isn’t made up? I suppose if your claiming that a man named Jesus lived, preached, and possibly died, I’ll even go so far as to say in the manner prescribed, and was subsequently deified as the Son of God, sure, there’s probably a lot (if not exact) truth to it. If you’re further claiming that he was resurrected, ascended to heaven, and took all of his sins upon himself, then you’re going to get the standard boilerplate “Ya got no proof” pile-on. Namely, that to suggest that the ressurection was not “all made up” and is hard fact that you must believe to go to Heaven (ie. accepting that Jesus is the savior) you’re going to run in to the standard opinion-not-fact-you-have-no-proof argument that anybody has yet to overcome without using circular reasoning.
The way I see it, God set up the Universe to be according with His Goodness. Sin by definition is choosing something other than God’s Way. Christianity was originally called The Way IIRC. God didn’t decide we were sinners, humanity has earned that title fair and square. God cant change the system b/c God cant stop being God.
Original sin is something I am not an expert on. Hopefully Polycarp or RevTim can chime in, or another expert.
As for the OT God, I read a great apologetic about it years ago. Naturally an apologetic might not fly with you, being written by a Christian. Anyway, it has mostly to do with the “wage of sin being death” and God’s authority to dictate what is just, not ours. The Book of Job plays into account here. Believing in God and then calling his actions unGodly is the height of arrogance. Of course since you are an atheist, you can judge all you want as is your right.
The Dalai Lama would disagree. I know anecdotes are not great debate strategy, but he is a wise man and also not Christian who puts credibility into some, if not many tenets of Christianity. I would be very interested to learn his opinion on Jesus’ divinity.
If a family with child is taken hostage for ransom, and the kidnappers are going to kill the child, a father may say “kill me instead” Jesus death for our sins is that on a scale of God.
God can not make sins vanish without a trace, because it would violate what God is, and that’s Good. God can forgive any sin, but He cant make them like they never happened. I dont speak for God obviously, I’m just repeating what I think Catholic doctrine states.
I will give you that. I dont think it’s made up, but let’s just say it is now for the sake of argument. I still dont understand why a community would make up a religion that would obviously bring them a hard future.
All I have to say to this is that there’s a hefty difference between being mistaken and making things up. I can write in good faith about Plato’s philosophy and be mistaken, or I could make up things like “Plato had a pet unicorn.” Calling Christian Gospel authors mistaken and claiming they were just pulling it out of their ass is waaaaay different.
so you’re arguing absolute morality? That regardless of God, or perhaps, by God’s very nature, there are certain things that are always right and always wrong, and God knows where that line is drawn in the sand. So at some point humanity crossed it (or each of us individually will inevitably do so depending on how adherent you are to Original Sin), but God being a nice guy decides, awww, well, that sorta sucks, so how about… A LOOPHOLE! I’ll send this guy Jesus (my son) so that even though ya’ll are a bunch of cretins, you can still have forgiveness!
That sounds, well, convoluted at best and an outright denial of one’s responsibility to morality at worse
Why not? Nobody isn’t saying they BELIEVED, or wanted to follow Christ. That’s a personal decision. Der Trihs is calling in to question the basic validity of the story as fact not whether or not people of faith chose to believe it for whatever reason. Besides, if you do believe it, then according to you (and them) you may suffer or sin during your lifetime but you’ll go to heaven for all eternity because Jesus died for your sins and you gratefully accepted his sacrifice on behalf of humanity. Eternity in heaven ain’t such a hard life, is it?
On Preview
How so? Especially with a weighty subject of God’s word? If you want to play a semantics game, I’ll try a different wording. for whatever reason, parts of the Gospel are not historical fact, and may be misrecorded, and may even convey messages differently and in different ways in different parts written by different people. This makes it extremely difficult to accept as an accurate, full, and true account of God’s Word.
Not a good example to use. For the kings involved in Troy there are indeed other tales, but just because we found evidence of Troy and many leaders mentioned in the Iliad it does not follow then that the gods of Olympus are real.
I can see you will not like it if **Diogenes the Cynic ** drops by. Actually there is still lots of controversy regarding what happened when they decided to write the gospels.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb1.htm
Oh, I see you also will not like deep time:
There is powerful evidence that humans controlled fire 125,000 years ago, (some evidence is there to suggest human ancestors used fire 300,000 years ago!)
Now the problem is this: traditionally speaking, about 8000 years ago god allegedly decided to give us a new gift. A little bit late compared to Prometheus… 
The point is that I see as very unlikely that the “real true church” and proper salvation was deemed by god not to be important to reveal to humanity until the 3000th generation.
Without the crucifixion, there could be no redemption and Christianity wouldn’t exist. Whether you see the story as factual, fictional or somewhere in between, it all means the same thing.
The forgiveness of sins was thought to be possible only through sacrifice. Originally, a goat was sacrificed by “loading” all of a village’s sins onto it, then chasing or hurling it over a cliff to its death; this expunged the sins of the village and gave us the concept of the scapegoat. Eventually, the goat became a spotless white lamb, hence the refrences to Jesus as “Lamb of God.”
But the forgiveness of all humankind’s sins forever after can’t be achieved by sacrificing pure white lambs. Something more was needed. So God sent “his only begotten son,” Jesus to be sacrificed (again, whether you believe in the story literally, figuratively or not at all doesn’t matter; this is the story we have). But the sacrifice had to be ritualistic and official. That’s where the Romans came in. Only the Roman rulers could execute a man; the Jewish leadership trumped up the charges the Romans needed and the sacrifice took place. By the way, in working so hard to have Jesus killed, the Jews actually had a crucial hand in creating the Christian religion, for which Christians ought to be grateful.
If you believe the story is completely made up (and it does, of course, follow the pattern of ancient resurrection sagas like those of Attis, Adonis and Osiris) the crufixion resulting in death is still necessary for the story to work. If it’s fiction, then resurrection is symbolic of transcendence over earthly trials; the human spirit is freed from the shackles of earthly bondage, whether its governmental oppression, a job you hate or the ultimate dirt nap.
If you believe the story is real and factual, then “what if Jesus didn’t die” is a moot point. He did die. He did rise from the dead and transcend death, and his resurrection is God’s ultimate promise that redemption is possible for all of us.
If **Polycarp ** sees this, I hope I got it mostly right.