I’d like to retract my statement earlier–emarkp is perfectly correct, in that Jesus’ suffering was infinite and thus an infinite atonement. It’s right there in Scripture (LDS scripture, anyway), and what I said is a common misconception, but wrong. But the point is that he did suffer more than we will, thus paying for our sins so we don’t have to. It was voluntary–as I understand it (not very well), Jesus went to the Garden, said something like, ‘let this cup pass from me…nevertheless, thy will, not mine, be done,’ and then God poured out all this pain onto him. It wasn’t just the crucifixion, it was Gethsemane. That’s the important part, and the Atonement is not an easy concept to grasp or understand–I certainly don’t claim to.
Opus1, do you mean that fundies don’t think Christ suffered more than your average Joe who goes to hell? I’ve never heard this addressed specifically, but it seems pretty obvious to me that infinite suffering for all sin and pain, ever, is considerably more than what Joe deserves or will get. (Us Mormons have interesting views about heaven and hell too, though, which the fundamentalists probably do not share.) I think I’ll have to ask around about this–it’s an interesting question.
jmullaney, I don’t see a problem with this, and I don’t understand your scornful ‘magic time travelling sin’ thing (are you saying God can’t arrange payment ahead of time? I thought he was omniscient and onmipotent and all), but we all know you live to make fun of believers, I don’t know why you even bother.
(BTW, I see no evendence that he suffered other that “emotionally” (for lack of a better word) in the Garden)
But here is the casuistry some might lapse into from what you are saying: “If Jesus already suffered infinitely, then it does not matter whether I sin or not, for I do not suffer from my sins and Jesus’s suffering, already having been infinite, can not be increased.”
I am not saying it is beyond the realm of possibility that this may be true but:
a) There is no need for our sins to travel backwards in time.
b) Such a belief is dangerous to the faith, especially if coupled with the idea that Jesus’s suffering was infintite.
c) It is dangerous to the faith because while Jesus’s death on the cross was redemptive and reconciling, it does not negate his request that we take up our own cross and follow him, which such a belief can also be seen as doing.
So I see no need to hold or spread dangerous, untenable, and unnecessary beliefs about the Pachal mystery.
Although God has accounted for our failing in his divine plan, I do not believe in predestination.
Man has free will and thus God can not possibly know my sins before I commit them IMHO.
You only get out of suffering for your sins if you repent of them. No repentance means you still have to pay for them. And it’s not like repentance is so much easy fun, or that you don’t miss out on light, knowledge and blessings while you’re off sinning. (See parable of the prodigal son, etc.) Some people do think, ‘I’ll repent later and do whatever I want now,’ but they’re usually sorry later.
Emotional pain isn’t painful? Sweating blood wasn’t good enough for you, huh? The Bible just isn’t that specific, it doesn’t say one way or the other. I don’t see how it’s an important point, though.
Are you sure that God sees time the same way we do? And if it’s an infinite atonement, then why does he have to know your sins ahead of time? I don’t see how that constitutes predestination, which I don’t believe in either. The entirety of God’s plan seems to be that we will never have our freedom to choose impinged on in any way by him.
Umm, by Pachal do you mean Paschal, or a term I’m not familiar with? Not trying to be insulting here, there are a lot of Catholic terms LDS people aren’t familiar with.
All in all, you don’t seem to think that Christ paid for our sins at all, which, I thought, is the point the Gospels are trying to make, him being the Messiah and Savior and all. So, the question being on Jesus’ suffering, if you don’t think that, what do you think, and why are you here?
See. Isn’t that simple? Why complicate things with ideas that open themselves up for ridicule.
I have no idea what you are talking about. But I’m glad you do not believe in predestiny.
But this whole thread seems to be missing the point that it is not Christ’s suffering which is the atonement for the sin of the world, but Christ’s prefect love unto death despite suffering. God is merciful in his very nature and doesn’t need suffering to forgive us.
Sorry. I’m cribbing. Pascal means “of or pertaining to Passover” from the Hebrew.
His perfect love atoned for the sin of the world so that many could be made righteous is my understanding. Which is to say, we may still be righteous through a death to sin. (But I’m not positive I’ve ever had a good grasp on Paul’s eschatology. True, we do not have to be kosher or circumcized but Paul’s explanation as to why seems rambling and it’s a lousy thing to base an argumnt on 2000 years later.)
I don’t remember making a concession here–all I said was, Jesus atoned for our sins. If we don’t repent and take advantage of that, then we have to pay the price of the sins ourselves. Those who have a ‘play now, pay later’ attitude, instead of trying to do their best the whole time, are usually sorry later, because repentance isn’t easy, and you miss out on blessings and knowledge.
Luke 22:44 “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”
I was always taught that this was literally suffering so intense that he sweat blood.
Christ loves us perfectly, yes, and because of that he was willing to be a sinless sacrifice for us. As the literal Son of God and a sinless being, he was the only one who was capable of it. Yes, God is merciful, but he is also just. The Atonement satisfies both eternal justice and eternal mercy.
I know what Paschal means–Pachal however was unfamiliar to me.
Oh. I happened to be searching the RSV – the verses 43-44 aren’t included there because they were a recent addition. But anyway, unless you go by the KJV this is clearly a simile.
But, I can see we are basically agreed. The important thing is that those who do not keep the Lord’s teachings and follow him are going to burn in hell like me.
(although I still find so little evidence of others keeping his teachings so at least I will not want for company)
I don’t hold the RSV in any higher regard than other translations. I can find no claim that Luke 22:43-44 were a “recent addition.” I do see a claim that they aren’t in some older transcripts, however, that is by no means conclusive.
Either way, sweat as blood isn’t a simile that leaps to the mind. It doesn’t seem to add much to the statement that Jesus was in agony. You seem to suggest that because the wording in the English translation uses the phrasing “was as it were” that it’s a simile. Is that a correct summation of your comment? To me it could be read ambiguously as portrayed in the Bible–whether Jesus’ suffering was emotional/physical/etc. in the Garden of Gethsemane. However, we LDS don’t close the canon there, and have several modern passages that corroborate the loss of blood in the garden.
It is true that God is merciful, but He is also just. Jesus taught that forgiveness is conditional. It’s His atoning sacrifice that makes it possible, but it is up to us each individually to accept that offer. The Atonement is like Jesus providing the elevator to Heaven, but we must still choose to get on the elevator. (Otherwise, He would be denying our free will to choose not to go to Heaven if that is our choice.)
Here are what all the translations I have handy say:
If your canon was not divinely inspired, then its author(s) would only have had access to the KJV at the time it would presumably have been written. So that is no surprise, no offense.
But didn’t Jesus forgive sins before his crucifixion? So why does his sacrifice make anything possible that was not possible already?
Yes, jmullaney, we can all go to biblegateway too.
Yes, he did. The Atonement takes care of both past and future people, but at some point the actual sacrifice for sin had to be made. ‘Let’s not and say we did’ was not going to work here. Previous to Jesus’ lifetime, the Jews sacrificed animals to obtain forgiveness–this was a type and shadow of things to come, symbolizing Christ’s coming sacrifice. The OT refers to it many times. Once he had fulfilled the Mosaic law by being the ultimate sacrifice, animal sacrifice was no longer necessary, so these days we pray for forgiveness, take the Sacrament in remembrance of the Atonement, and work through the repentance process to become better.
And since the LDS believe that our canon is divinely inspired, we believe that Christ sweat blood. You don’t have to believe our canon (although it would be a good idea ), but it’s difficult to explain Mormon beliefs without recourse to the entire scriptural canon we use.
As emarkp said, sweat as blood isn’t a simile that leaps to the mind. If Luke wanted to emphasize just sweat, why didn’t he say that he looked like he’d been though a thunderstorm or something? I think the reference to blood is there for a reason.
Why? God desires mercy not sacrifice. Yes, heaven was opened to the righteous dead who had dwelt in Abraham’s busom. But the unrigheous still need to repent to be forgiven.
I am suspicious that your canon countermands teachings of the Gospels. Doesn’t the Mormon belief regarding marriage and the afterlife directly contradict what Jesus taught?
It does symbolically reenforce the idea of his fear, although he trusted in God anyway.
I thought we covered this already. God cannot look on sin with the least degree of allowance. Justice must be satisfied, for God is just as well as merciful. The Atonement does both. And we have also already covered the part about repentance being necessary for forgiveness.
That’s a topic for another thread, but essentially, no. Your usual kind of marraige does only lasts until death, and people who are married ‘until death do you part’ are no longer married in heaven. That’s what Jesus was talking about. He also gave Peter the keys of the priesthood, saying that whatsoever he bound or loosed on earth would be bound or loosed in heaven as well. What could this be referring to if not relationships between people–that is, marriage and family relationships? We believe that we have those same keys of the priesthood, so that when we are sealed as a family in the temple, that is eternally binding. Start another thread, though, if you really want to discuss it.
it says the person crucified was actually an archangel named Melchizedek. you will find Melchizedek mentioned in Hebrews. it says “Jesus Christ was made priest according to the order of Melchizedek.”
you may now play the theme from the Twilight Zone.
Sure. I wasn’t making the claim that just because it was written in a book, that the whole world must accept it (rather, it should be accepted because of the testimony given from the Holy Ghost). My point was that those of us who believe it is inspired have an additional account to draw upon.
There was no resurrection before Christ’s atonement, and the gulf between paradise and hell was uncrossable–this fundamentally changed once He suffered in the Garden of Gethsemane as well as on the cross, and rose from the dead. Christ (or Jehovah as He was called in the old testament) could forgive sins, for sure. However, it is at the final judgement the we present ourselves before the Father, with Jesus is our advocate. It is there that we must be cleaned through His atonement to enter into God’s eternal kingdom.
All need to repent (Romans 3), for there was only one righteous, and that was Jesus.It is true that one’s person’s repentence may be more arduous than anothers, but it is no less necessary.
I don’t see how blood reinforces the idea of fear. Especially since it came after He said, “Thy will be done.” It seems to me to reinforce the idea that real suffering was happening right there and then.
Yeah, a lot of people have made really weird interpretations of that verse in Hebrews. However, we find out that Melchizedek was a king of Salem, who received the tithes of Abraham:
Which pretty clearly identifies Melchizedek as existing long before Christ went up on the cross.
Homer: So God, what is the meaning of life anyway?
God: Oh, you’ll find out when you’re dead.
Homer: Aw, but what if I can’t wait that long?
God: You can’t wait six weeks?
I tried several days ago to answer this, but lost the connection and everything I typed when I tried to submit.
Oh, well, you’ll just have to struggle in unenlightenment.
OK, OK! Basically:
Dying young hurts more than dying old. Both physically (those nerve cells gradually die off) and psychically (the anguish of being cut down in your prime). I mean, we’re all going to die; but the last temptation of Christ was that he could put it off for 40 years. (Yeah, I know that’s just in Kazantzakis’s novel; but it makes sense.)
and on another point…
2) Human populations normally settle to a particular “normal” age distribution. There were some pretty old people in Jesus’s day, as there would be in any country that didn’t have a social policy borrowed from Logan’s Run. The idea that at any time in history human beings were wasting away in decrepitude at 40 is silly; it comes from the ignorance of modern Westerners (actually, Amurricans) who think all their sanitation programs are fundamental to civilization–a simply provincial viewpoint.
My Sunday school teacher said that Christ accepted the blame for all our sins. He said that must have been the difficult part. People die for each other every day, it may be difficult but it is within the capabilities of a human. Accepting the blame for acts you have not committed and would not commit, now that is hard. I think it is harder for a young man than the old one.
It also is much more marketable. How many sucessful products have old spokes persons? If god the father is pictured as old, then it makes sense to have a man in his prime as the image of the new face of god. Makes for more interesting crucifixes. If he were old and wrinkly on the cross the wounds may be lost in the folds.
Another twist is that most Christians use Isaiah 52 & 53 as “proof” that Jesus was the Messiah because he supposedly fulfilled the verses there. But yet in Isaiah 53:10, it clearly states that subject of the verse will have a LONG life (“prolong his days”) and also have children. However Jesus had neither of these.
), but it’s difficult to explain Mormon beliefs without recourse to the entire scriptural canon we use.