gstafleu

Here is something I have been wondering about. According to current Christian doctrine we have, from the Trinity, God=Jesus, or close enough not to matter. Furthermore, given that God is in charge of everything, no sparrow shall fall and all that, he clearly was in control of the passion (in the sense that he knew it would happen, could have prevented it if he wanted to and so on). From this it follows that in a sense God sacrificed himself for the good of his people. You can of course try the usual escape clause of free will, but I would suggest that in this case we forgo that exercise (this is after all not the Philosophy forum).

The question then is: was some sort of godly self-sacrifice concept already present in th NT or not? Except for the dubious Johanine comma the trinity is not easy to find in the NT. Would the "Son of God" concept be close enough to call the passion a self-sacrifice? (In a monotheistic world it is a bit difficult to see the son of God as essentially different from God himself, but who knows.)

As a second question, irrespective if the self-sacrifice concept appears in the NT or a bit later, where does it come from? Many things in Christianity can be derived from the OT. Can this?

Gerard Stafleu