Deus Ex

Nothing confusing about that.

aa5874

You mean GOD has a PHYSICAL Son?

What absurdity!

God had a Physical Son and killed him for three days?

What baloney!

You mean there is a SPARE GOD.


You mean GOD obeyed HIMSELF, KILLED HIMSELF, and then brought himself back to LIFE.

When did GOD defeat SIN? On the VERY DAY GOD died (fell asleep) it was SINFUL MEN who supposedly KILLED him.

Even if GOD did really DIE he DID not DEFEAT sin.

show_no_mercy

This only further reinforces the idea that Christianity only makes sense 2,000 years ago and has no relevance to today's world. In 2010, to sacrifice means to give up something of value.

Elijah

I think the “Jesus is God” is going to produce some difficulties in trying to understand the story, especially if you are working with a superstitious understanding of God.

At the time of Jesus the platonic concept of a constant god was spreading, at least through the academic minded Jews so the point of sacrifice wasn’t about giving up something valuable or about appeasing God, since God was considered constant now and couldn’t be swayed with sacrifice. It was usually about connecting to the spiritual elements through symbolic ritual in a more mystic nature than a superstitious offering to a guy in the sky.

The sacrifice is special/unique here because he is someone that at least some of the Jews are recognizing as their king and expected messiah. It’s not that he was a good person it was that he was being thought of as their leader that gave him the ability to inject a new meme into society which he appears to desire to change the social order.

From the Codrus wiki

During the time of the Dorian Invasion of Peloponnesus (c. 1068 BC), the Dorians under Aletes had consulted the Delphic Oracle, who prophesied that their invasion would succeed as long as the king was not harmed. The news of this prophecy, that only the death of an Athenian king would ensure the safety of Athens, quickly found its way to the ears of Codrus. In devotion to his people, Codrus disguised himself as a peasant and made it to the vicinity of the Dorian encampment across the river, where he provoked a group of Dorian soldiers. He was put to death in the quarrel, and the Dorians, realizing Codrus had been slain, decided to retreat in fear of their prophesied defeat.

It was the king’s sacrifice that was necessary here and in the Gospel for victory.

WVIncagold

Jesus took a nap. thats it no sacrifice. I sacrifice the same way when its a lazy sunday and i take a nap rather than mow the lawn. Mowing the lawn now thats a sacrifice. taking a nap is being lazy.

aa5874

Your post makes very little sense.

In the Synoptics the disciples of Jesus ran away when he was arrested and Peter LIED and DENIED ever knowing or associated with Jesus.

All the spiritual and mystic elements EVAPORATED.

Without the resurrection the Jesus story was nothing but total disaster.

Please read the Jesus story. After Jesus was arrested and crucified, it was the resurrection, not the death of Jesus, that REVIVED the cult.

The death of Jesus meant absolutely nothing to the disciples but DISASTER.

The disciples ONLY wanted JESUS ALIVE so proving he was DIVINE.

Death without the Resurrection would mean Jesus was a fraud and a FALSE prophet not a sacrifice.

Toto

The idea of Jesus as sacrifice is left over from a heretical view that was absorbed and Christianized (but badly) by orthodox Christians. In this view, there are two gods - the evil demiurge who created the imperfect world; and the greater "good god" who sent his son to redeem mankind from the clutches of the demiurge. The redemption came because the demiurge was tricked into executing an innocent man, which thereby created a debt that was used to redeem mankind. (None of this makes a lot of sense to me, but that's the story.)

link There are reflections of this in Paul's 1 Cor 2:8, when he talks about Jesus being crucified by the archons, who would not have done so if they had recognized the Lord.

spin

And that's just what one would expect any christian to say: despite it being unnecessarily confusing it's not difficult (for a believer) to get his/her head around the idea.

It's not difficult for an observer to get his/her head around either. It was a post hoc religious political decision not directly derived from the earliest religion, but seen as a means of dealing with later religious developments which included the need to set down policy for the direction of the church in the fourth century.

How does one decide how to handle a religion that works on the necessity of being monotheistic yet has deified a second entity? The political jockeying of the time of Constantine and his successors was how the church dealt with it. The conservative Arius tried to defend the uniqueness of god by arguing against the steady push to deify Jesus, but his opponents wouldn't accept the secondary position of their savior. It was a purely political decision, based on the whims of people who had no possibility of testing the reality of the religious claims. Each side had support from the bible. It's a bit like slavery at the time of the Civil War: each side had their political commitment and they used the bible to support it, yet it was still a political decision. The conflict between the trinitarians and the Arians of the fourth century was nothing but church politics.

That you don't think it is that difficult to get one's head around the idea that the Son and the Father are both one God, but that the Son is not the Father and the Father is not the Son is natural enough in the wake of 1600 years of orthodoxy. You abnegate your responsibility to analyze the background to the historical event of the elevation of the trinity which ended in the fourth century crisis. A neutral observer would think that was the only likely position for the average believer, as belief in the Xenu event is the only likely one for the commited scientologist.


spin

bacht

Would the explanation in Hebrews be considered a catholicizing argument? There Christ is both the high priest and final sacrifice in heaven, replacing the annual Day of Atonement ritual.

Toto

That doesn't sound so much like an argument as a weaving together of themes that have some emotional resonance, but don't make a lot of sense if you try to look at them logically. What is the point of this sacrifice? Why does god/YHWH require it? Sacrifice does have some primitive psychological function - see this recent comment on Bibleinterp.com: :huh:

None of this makes logical sense, but it's been a part of human history for a long time.