What if Jesus didn't die?

Great Debates
41

I think that’s sort of what Auto is trying to get at: put it this way, you commit a crime against the government (God) that causes property damage in amount X (sin against God), and God eventually (through Jesus, as it were) says, “oh don’t worry about it, I’ll pay for it myself” (Jesus/God accepts the punishment for your sin) as long as you’ll say thank you (acknowledge Jesus as the savior).

That all being said, I’m still in the camp that says it’s ludicrous for a being with the powers of God to suddenly have “painted himself in to a corner”. An omnipotent being with the power to create a universe (so they say) wouldn’t
A) Be dumb enough to cause Genesis to happen the way it did
B) Be stupid enough to end up with an irrevocable set of laws in a way that he had to create a loophole (see my above posts) to deal with it
C) Go about the loophole in such a bizarre and poorly documented way.
D) Subsequently fail to directly remind people that this is in fact the only loophole to God’s grace.

42

[QUOTE=begbert2]
So… A person commits a crime against Jesus. (Never mind the dude he actually stabbed.) Jesus, the victim, then punishes himself for the crime. Transgressor goes scot free.

This is justice…how? Two wrongs don’t make a right, you know. If Jesus merely dropped the charges, that’s mercy. Jesus sweating it in Galilee and then getting himself tacked up on a cross for the crimes he was/will be the victim for is :dubious:.
[/QUOTE]

I’m tired so I’ll limit my comments to this. The transgressor does not go scot free, because forgiveness is never forced upon a person. A person must accept God/Jesus’s love to have the debt anulled. Please dont extrapolate this into thinking only Christians can be forgiven/get-into-Heaven. It’s complicated… :smack:

43

How did I sin? Why am I being punished for what adam did?

44

[QUOTE=Begbert2]
Satan being an independent agent changes nothing, since the problem isn’t Satan being God’s possession,
[/QUOTE]

Sin is Satan’s possessions, When we sin we have trespassed into Satan’s kingdom, he now has a claim against us.

45

[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Before the crucifixion, there was no innocent person (with some exceptions).
[/quote]
That has never made sense. People are morally responsible for what they have done; not for what their ancestors did. And if they are guilty of something, the death of a man they almost certainly had nothing to do with and may never have heard of makes them no more innocent.

[QUOTE=Autolycus]
I’m not a big expert on Leviticus, but I think most people agree that the 10 Commandments are common sense advice for the betterment of the human race.
[/quote]
“I am the Lord your God” ? Holding no God before him ? Keeping the Sabbath holy ? Don’t take God’s name in vain ? Don’t make idols ? Sorry, no.

[QUOTE=Autolycus]
Anyhow, I always thought Jesus had the right to take everyone’s sins onto himself, because HE was the one who was being sinned against.
[/quote]
But he wasn’t; people do evil things towards each other all the time. If some kills me, I’m the one sinned against. The goverment may do the enforcing, but I’m the dead guy.

[QUOTE=Autolycus]
In modern society, crimes are not transferrable because they are between individuals, groups, or nations. God, however, is the ultimate transgressee. That is, if you believe in the Christian God to begin with…and here we go again.
[/QUOTE]
Not just believe in him; believe that he’s the one and only party that can be offended against.

46

Here’s the thing I don’t get about the whole original sin/jesus dying for our sins thing. A lot of the Christians I’ve talked to, just about all of them in fact, don’t take the genesis story to be literal. Adam and Eve weren’t actual people, it’s just a story, etc. They still claim they can take religious lessons from it, but it didn’t actually physically happen. So if it really didn’t actually happen, why would jesus have to die to allow redemption from original sin? If Adam and Eve weren’t real, they couldn’t have done the original sin thing. If they weren’t around to do the original sin thing, how could it exist, and why would jesus have to die for it? It just seems that in order to believe the whole thing about jesus dying and rising and redemption and all that, you have to believe that the thing he’s redeeming you from was real too.

47

Let’s see…

[QUOTE=enigm4tic]
I think that’s sort of what Auto is trying to get at: put it this way, you commit a crime against the government (God) that causes property damage in amount X (sin against God), and God eventually (through Jesus, as it were) says, “oh don’t worry about it, I’ll pay for it myself” (Jesus/God accepts the punishment for your sin) as long as you’ll say thank you (acknowledge Jesus as the savior).
[/QUOTE]
You may be right, in which case the question remains: how does the magistrate suffering punishment help anything? If you’re sinning against god, you end up with God punishing himself to pay for an injury against himself. The victim suffering again for every crime committed against him is creative as notions go, but it still doesn’t strike me as being just.

[QUOTE=Autoclytus]
I’m tired so I’ll limit my comments to this. The transgressor does not go scot free, because forgiveness is never forced upon a person. A person must accept God/Jesus’s love to have the debt anulled. Please dont extrapolate this into thinking only Christians can be forgiven/get-into-Heaven. It’s complicated… :smack:
[/QUOTE]
Interesting that you seem to be saying that accepting the atonement is a cost. I see it that way, but most Christians I know don’t at all. Suffice to say that if it is a cost, then this is not necessarily mercy, but merely asking for payment in a different coin. (The degree of mercy/justice depends on how much better/worse subservience is to a direct, fair punishment.)

The notion of the acceptance of god’s grace being a cost still doesn’t explain why the judge or victim needs to punish himself, but it does open up another possibility for God’s motive in all this: he might be in it to gather people in a position of indebtedness and subservience to him. Not exactly altruistic, but certainly not irrational. If that’s the motive, then it’s possible that the purpose of nailing Jesus to the cross was to deliberately cultivate increased feelings of guilt and indebtedness to him from those granted mercy, in order to guide them into a position of greater subservience to god. The crucifixion still has nothing to do with justice in that scenario, but at least it has a purpose. (Whether justice is served depends on whether subervience to god is proper punishment for your crimes, but then, under this scenario God might not be all that interested in justice anyway, except as a means to an end.)

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Sin is Satan’s possessions, When we sin we have trespassed into Satan’s kingdom, he now has a claim against us.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, now this is an interesting approach. Putting aside for a moment that sins are actions, and a broad category of them at that, and therefore not possessable under even the craziest strict copyright law…

So, the person sins, thereby magically acquiring a debt to Satan. Satan demands payment, and Jesus suffers to satisfy Satan’s bloodlust. God then either grants mercy on the person or gives them to Satan anyway, depending on whether the person accepts Jesus as their savior.

Okay, if you accept that Satan has some legitimate claim against people who sin, and has the power to compell payment from God, then this works at least at the level of a transaction, I’ll give it that. Justice it ain’t, though. At best, it’s a case of Jesus paying off a Satan that doesn’t care if the transgressor is punished, only that he gets to see somebody hurting.

Copperwindow, hotflungwok, I’m not thinking original sin is necessary for any of this. There are numerous rules that the Christian God is held to have made, and for which he claims the right to judge us for. Surely you’ve broken at least a few of those rules in your time; how do you spend your sabbaths?

48

nor me, I was merely creating a possible explanation to what was going on, I’m not on that side of the debate.

Satan’s kingdom being defined as “everything that isn’t God’s kingdom (which in turn as defined as everything that has no sin)”? No “grey zones”? This gets in to the “harsh god” concept, where as soon as you have trespassed, knowingly, or unknowingly, against God, you are instantly condemned to hell if you fail to take a certain proscribed set of actions to get back in to God’s grace which are essentially the same for all manner of sin great and small.

FWIW I have heard the argument made before this thread that sins are always a transgress against God because God “owns” everything. Is there a certain sect of Christianity or a school of thought at least that teaches this? Or is it directly in the bible or what?

49

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Ah, now this is an interesting approach. Putting aside for a moment that sins are actions, and a broad category of them at that, and therefore not possessable under even the craziest strict copyright law…
[/QUOTE]

Doesn’t this board stand up for intellectual property rights, if not where can I download free MP3’s of new songs? God created the concept of marriage - without Him creating it it would never have been within our capacity. We are using His idea when we get married, since we are His, that’s OK, we are allowed. The concept of adultery, I’m not sure if it was created and abandoned by God, or if possible created by Satan. Without it’s creation you could not do it - it just would not exist. You belonging to God had incurred a debt to Satan.

The taking of the fruit, the knowledge of good and evil, can be seen as us being able to use the intellectual property of Satan or God at our free will.

Satan is at God’s thrown constantly pleading his case to acquire us, God is the judge, but God will honor His word, which means that Satan has legitimate God given rights.

In a basic form this is correct. If Jesus knows you He will speak up for you to His Father.

Justice demands that Satan be repaid, as long as this is satisfied justice is served.

50

kanicbird, are these thoughts your own? Because they are, best as I can tell, not biblically based

51

Going a bit further on my post. Followers of Jesus are to become part of Jesus, His hands and Feet, eventually becoming one with Him, who is already one with the Father. Anotehr take on this is we are members of His church (church as fellow believers, not physical buildings), Jesus is set to marry His church, which means we will become one with him.

As we become one with Jesus, and Jesus’ dept is paid, our debt is also paid.

52

[QUOTE=the raindog]
kanicbird, are these thoughts your own? Because they are, best as I can tell, not biblically based
[/QUOTE]

Which ones? There is a biblical basis for much of what I posted, but some is a extrapolation to fit the Q’s brought up.

53

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Doesn’t this board stand up for intellectual property rights, if not where can I download free MP3’s of new songs? God created the concept of marriage - without Him creating it it would never have been within our capacity. We are using His idea when we get married, since we are His, that’s OK, we are allowed. The concept of adultery, I’m not sure if it was created and abandoned by God, or if possible created by Satan. Without it’s creation you could not do it - it just would not exist. You belonging to God had incurred a debt to Satan.

The taking of the fruit, the knowledge of good and evil, can be seen as us being able to use the intellectual property of Satan or God at our free will.
[/QUOTE]
A song is a copyrightable; a gesture isn’t. Actions, to the best of my knowledge, are not ownable. But anyway…

Are you proposing that we never have any ideas on our own, and only exist as things that can select from the multiple-choice test answers helpfully provided by God and Satan? That’s an incredibly limiting definition of free will. I guess then the reason there’s gonna be no sin in heaven is because everyone in it (except God and maybe Jesus) is mentally incapable of even conceptualizing the thought of an evil deed? (I guess we won’t have memories of our time on earth then.)

I will concede that if we’re merely stupid decision-making automotons with no conceptual ability, imagination, or intelligence, then the notion of us having to pay for using the priviledged content of the thoughts in our own heads makes a certain twisted sense. This does not make God paying the fee in our stead just, though; see below.

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Justice demands that Satan be repaid, as long as this is satisfied justice is served.
[/QUOTE]
Justice demands that people pay for their actions, and that actions done to people are repaid. Even assuming satan has a right to anything, only the second part of justice is being satisfied here.

You do realize that justice and mercy are mutually exclusive, right? Justice is when everyone gets what they deserve. Mercy is when you come off better than you deserve. They can’t both happen at the same time.

54

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
Going a bit further on my post. Followers of Jesus are to become part of Jesus, His hands and Feet, eventually becoming one with Him, who is already one with the Father. Anotehr take on this is we are members of His church (church as fellow believers, not physical buildings), Jesus is set to marry His church, which means we will become one with him
[/QUOTE]

As a Catholic, I fully understand what you are getting at, but I think you should clarify what you mean by “becoming one” for the sake of the environment. Jesus is not The Borg.

55

I think The Raindog is specifically referring topost #49
I had a similar thought but couldn’t figure out a good way to put in to words exactly what I wanted to ask, Raindog took the direct approach, which works.

56

Post 49

*Doesn’t this board stand up for intellectual property rights, if not where can I download free MP3’s of new songs? * - Not Biblical

God created the concept of marriage - Biblical

- without Him creating it it would never have been within our capacity extrapolation arguable biblical

  • Biblical with my opinion at the end

The concept of adultery, I’m not sure if it was created and abandoned by God, or if possible created by Satan.* opinion based on knowledge of the concept of sin.

*Without it’s creation you could not do it - it just would not exist.

    • Fact

You belonging to God had incurred a debt to Satan. - I’d have to look up this to see if it is biblical or not, I suspect it’s a extrapolation.

Satan is at God’s thrown constantly pleading his case to acquire us, - Not Sure
*
God is the judge, but God will honor His word, which means that Satan has legitimate God given rights.* - Biblical and I can support the conclusion biblically.

In a basic form this is correct. If Jesus knows you He will speak up for you to His Father. - Biblical

Justice demands that Satan be repaid, - Biblical as far as repayment must be made, and the wages of sin is death

  • as long as this is satisfied justice is served.* - Conclusion
57

These in particular I’d be interested in seeing. If these are biblical conclusions I don’t recall ever seeing the wording or extrapolations used to arrive at these particular arguments.

58

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Are you proposing that we never have any ideas on our own
[/QUOTE]

What could you possibly do that someone somewhere hasn’t done before, and what could you do that God didn’t think of first?

There are plenty of things we can do with God’s kingdom alone, without the knowledge of Satan’s. Look at all the things Jesus did - He only acted in God’s kingdom. IMHO Satan and his forces only operate in Satan’s kingdom - I don’t think demons are allowed or capable to operate in God’s kingdom.

Your sins will be gone - as if they never happened. I don’t know if you will remember them, or if you would want to.

Yes and the wages of sin is death - again:
Non-believer = death dept satisfied
Beleiver = Jesus paid the death by dieing dept satisfied

You are getting into salvation theory here. as I pointed out above, non-believers has to pay for sin by death. Believers, who are to become one with Jesus, who is one with the Father, and God has already paid this price.

59

[QUOTE=kanicbird]
*Without it’s creation you could not do it - it just would not exist.

    • Fact
      [/QUOTE]
      Incidentally, this is where you assert that we don’t have the independent ability to think (since all thought is is the independent creation of ideas, such as the idea of marriage, hitting someone with a rock, etc.)
60

[QUOTE=Autolycus]
As a Catholic, I fully understand what you are getting at, but I think you should clarify what you mean by “becoming one” for the sake of the environment. Jesus is not The Borg.
[/QUOTE]

The easiest and clearest way I think is:
Marriage in God’s view unites 2 into 1 even though there are still 2 people
Christians are members of Christ’s church
Jesus will marry His Church

So we will become one with Jesus, though we will be still ourselves. We will be perfectly in line with the will of Jesus, Who is perfectly in line with the Father.