post tenebras lux

If he could have defused the hand grenade instead, yes.If he could have taken the gun away from the assassin beforehand, or ensured that there were no bullet in the chamber, yes.

Wasn't your god powerful enough?

Clivedurdle

There are two questions to consider here

1 is it suicide? Yes.
2 Is suicide a sin? Open - it is no longer unlawful under British law - but it was recently, but sin and unlawful are not the same - that is why I asked when did suicide become a sin!

We are clearly dealing with different characters in Hebrews and the gospels - in fact do the gospels claim jesus is sinless? What about Mark?

Is the sinlessness of Jesus actually a biblical doctrine? I have assumed so because of Hebrews and revelation, but is that correct?

dzim77

I see your point that by a certain definition it may be considered a suicide.

I'm honestly not sure what the Catholic church says on this issue.

Perhaps motive is the issue here?

A man jumping from a building out of depression and dispair is far from a man jumping on a grenade to save his friends. The first is done from selfish motive. The second from a motive to save others. Regardless of the semantics of the definition of suicide, the gospels portray Jesus's motives as a desire to save others. This should not be considered sin any more than a man taking a bullet for his friend.

Not directly.

Yes, definitely.

"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." 2 Corinthians 5:21

Clivedurdle

Which leads to another interesting question - is there actually a consistent understanding of the sinlessness of Jesus Christ between the different books of the bible?

And when (and where) was Jesus "made sin"? (paraphrase of 2C5 21 above.)

dzim77

Hi Clive,

Yes. He was sinless.

Not always directly stated as such, but never contradicted in any book.

Theologically, this verse refers to the idea of atonement. Jesus, as a perfectly sinless man/God, 'took on' or 'bore' our sin on the cross so that he could bear God's wrath for sin in the place of sinners... an atoning sacrifice. This particular verse seems to indicate that Jesus was so identified with sin on the cross that Paul says he 'became' sin for us.

EDIT: Sorry, to answer your question... apparently sometime during his crucifixion.

Here's a passage with the same idea...

pharoah

How about:

Clivedurdle

Anyone remember the various heresies around this?

For example, if Christ became sin, why could not god have made him sinless the split second before? What is the purpose of all this god becoming human stuff who then dies and becomes god again?

A mythical christ dying and rising again in the heavens is a far simpler way to redeem us all - and I think it is stated in this way in Hebrews.

Everyone then got confused by expansions to the story - the historising of the Christ - a normal reaction to humanise gods, probably not deliberately, people acted out these stories using a main character called Jesus - and later read back into Paul and Hebrews stuff that is not there!

dzim77

...I'm not following you here(??)

A spotless sacrifice is required for atonement.

[/QUOTE]

I don't see a 'mythical' Christ at all in Hebrews...

You can see the author of Hebrews presents us with a real-life, flesh-and-blood Jesus who lived a perfect life and died as an atoning sacrifice for sin.

You can also see from 1 Peter that Jesus died "in his own body on the tree".

Clivedurdle

Try reading the new testament without assuming any of the authors knew about stuff from other NT books - starting with hebrews!

lpetrich

I'm judging Jesus Christ by his actions, not by claims of divinity. Your argument seems to be "JC had been God, and when God does something, that means that it is not a sin."

There are other ways of stating falsehoods than explicitly lying, as I had mentioned earlier.

Pure hairsplitting. The Bible is very explicit:
And what JC's disciples were doing was harvesting grain.

But I thought that the big issue is that he claimed all of that. Also, the NT is not exactly coherent on Jesus Christ's nature. Some parts imply that he was God Son of God, while others imply that he was only human, or at least subordinate to God.

Or a sleazy lawyer.

Is there also a Mother?

But beside that, this seems like finding the most convenient "reading" and then waving it around as the One True Reading.

But nobody else outside of the writers of the Gospels had ever heard of those miracles around when Jesus Christ had (allegedly) lived. Philo didn't. Josephus didn't. Suetonius didn't. Tacitus didn't. Lucian of Samosata didn't.

And Jesus Christ was allegedly a BIG celebrity who had gained a LOT of notoriety. Philo was interested in eccentric Jewish sects, but he never mentioned JC. Josephus wrote about such self-styled prophets as John the Baptizer, Theudas, and "the Egyptian", but said next to nothing about JC -- his only alleged mentions of JC have been VERY controversial.

A figment of the imaginations of his early followers. I find it as convincing as the resurrection of Osiris from the dead, which is to say, not at all.

And as to prophecy fulfillments, let's consider:

When the wall of the town of Velitrae was struck by lightning, soothsayers interpreted this as a prophecy that a ruler of the world would someday be born there. And Augustus Caesar sort-of fulfilled that prophecy (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars: the Divine Augustus, 94).

After mysteriously disappearing in a cloud in a thunderstorm, Romulus briefly returned, telling Proculus Junius that his city, Rome, deserves to rule the world and that Romans should learn how to conquer it. Not quite a prophecy, but it was sort-of fulfilled (Livy, History of Rome, 1.16).

BTW, Romulus was allegedly the son of a god and a virgin. I think I've heard of something like that before...

On the day that Alexander the Great was born, the temple of Artemis in Ephesus burned down, and the local soothsayers interpreted this as meaning that a disaster for Asia had been born that day. Their prophecy was fulfilled by Alexander's conquests (Plutarch, Parallel Lives: the Life of Alexander, 3).

Plutarch also noted that there were some who believed that Alexander the Great's biological father was not Philip of Macedon, but Zeus.

Perseus's grandfather Acrisius learned of a prophecy that his daughter Danae would have a son who would one day kill him. So he had her locked up in a tower. But Zeus appeared to her as a shower of gold, pouring onto her lap, and she became pregnant with Perseus. When he was discovered, the two were put in a trunk and tossed into the sea; however, the two survived and Perseus grew up to accidentally kill Acrisius and fulfill that prophecy.

The baby Oedipus's parents learned of a prophecy that he would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. So his parents left him in the wilderness, hoping that he would die. But he didn't, and he grew up and fulfilled those prophecies.

Zeus's father Kronos one day learned of a prophecy that he would have a son who would depose him as Ruler of the Universe. He thus swallowed each of the children that his partner Rhea would have, but she gave him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes instead of Zeus. He was raised in a cave in Crete, and he grew up, made Kronos vomit up his brothers and sisters, and then fulfilled that prophecy by him and his friends defeating Kronos and his friends.

King Kamsa learned of a prophecy that his sister Devaki would have an eighth son who would kill him. So he killed son after son as Devaki had them, but Devaki switched her eighth one with someone's daughter, and that one was Krishna. He grew up and eventually fulfilled that prophecy, killing Kamsa.

King Suddhodhana learned of a prophecy that his son Siddhartha Gautama would grow up to be a great religious leader rather than become a suitable heir for his throne. So he tried to keep Gautama away from images of pain and suffering and sickness and death. He was less than successful in that, and Gautama left his wife and young son to try to find out what was going on with that. And he fulfilled that prophecy; he became known as the Enlightened One -- the Buddha.