scrumpy

What difference does willingness make to the concept of the service of justice? If my son and a group of his friends were charged with murdering your son, and I then willingly presented myself before the Court to take punishment that would otherwise be meted out to my son and his friends, justice is not served. Willingness is not the issue.

Justice can only be served if the guilty parties are convicted on good evidence and sentenced accordingly. Guilt can neither be assumed in advance of a crime, nor punished substitutionally.

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: scrumpy ]
Edited twice because after 10:45 I turn into a bad speller.

[ October 13, 2002: Message edited by: scrumpy ]</p>

kingjames1

Big sheep - (BTW, please explain the long name) - I never suggested that every one who interpreted the bible needed to be an intellectual or a bible scholar. The issue was not mere interpretation, but historical and biblical criticism. Indeed, the book is one for ALL people. And I firm the historical doctrine of the perspicuity of scripture. But I do not think ALL people would be capable of a convincing, scholarly critique or defense of the historicity of the scriptures. This is not to say that most people are incapable of understanding the biblical and historical issues - I just think most people don't, for whatever reasons (typically, apathy).


You also wrote:

The bible "calling a whale a fish" is not so much an issue of knowledge, (in this case, a confusion of biological nomenclature), as it is interpretation. No doubt, our precision with regard to the animal kingdom is far more developed than that of the ancient near east. We make such distinctions as mammalian and non-mammalian, or boney and cartilaginous, or whatever. However, it is not strange in the least to me that in seventh/sixth century (BCE) Hebrew, the same word for fish (animals living in the sea) would be applied to whales (if that is in fact even the proper interpretation of the word! - I believe most bible versions translate 'Jonah's whale' as "fish," for example).

I am not denying the idea that there has been a steady increase in human knowledge, especially so-called scientific knowledge. But the examples you raise are interpretive issues. In fact, there are some cases in the English language where we fail to make certain conceptual disctinctions the Hebrew language makes - this is more cultural than anything else.

And BTW, more knowledge does not seem to be synonymous with more wisdom in living life...

Regarding your second comment about the councils, please understand that I am not trying to build a case for the veracity of Scritpures or the deity of Christ based on the church councils! See my previous post concerning my intentions in noting the early councils. I only wanted to point out that this discussion has been going on 1.8 millenia...a discussion that continues among capable scholars today (e.g. Richard Swinburne or Thomas V. Morris).

J.

Starboy

It is most likely that he did not die on the cross. Thus he was resuscitated not resurrected. The whole thing was not so miraculous after all. Probably just another magic trick, he was probably slipped something to make it look like he was dead. Jesus != god, jesus == fraud. You can add Paul/Saul to the list of Christian frauds. Fraud is the basis of Christianity and is part of a long tradition that exists even to this day.

Starboy

kingjames1

yo, scrumptious (s'up scrumpty scrump)



My comment about Jesus' voluntariness was not meant to be a complete answer to your question, but was to answer the other half of this common objection, which usually pictures Jesus as a hapless victim of God's 'misdirected wrath.'

However, your comment that "guilt can [not be] punished substitutionally" is contradicted in the doctrine of the union of the believer with Christ, which I tried (perhaps unsuccessfully) to unpack in my previous post. Moreover, your assertion that substitional atonement is invalid denies the entire basis of the Jewish ceremonial-sacrificial system. Read Leviticus 16 - the 'imputing' of the tribes' sins to a scape-goat, and a sacrificial goat slaughtered on the altar on behalf of Israel - i.e. substitutionary atonement.

If you are going to make such assertions, you must defend them.

I'm curious, how do you define justice? What is the foundation for your understanding of justice, right and wrong, etc.? Is justice just a human/social construct? If it is, can you 'deny' the validity of a cultural construct, esp. one of which you stand outside? If not, what is the basis for claiming some things to be just and others unjust?

J.

kingjames1

On what basis do you claim that the swoon theory is the "most likely"? In case your interested, that theory has been picked apart by numerous scholars. If you'd like, I can give you the names of some of the books in which it is dealt with.

In response to your speculations, I'll quote someone else on this post, "unsubstantiated claptrap." But thanks for the rhetorical offering...always good to be reminded that non-Christians too have their dogma.

kingjames1

Thank you babelfish for the warm welcome!

I appreciate your kindness and openness. It's very nice (and, unfortantely, rare) to engage in dialogue w/others who hold very different views from our own, without going at each others' throats...


J.

ax

Ax: Ah, hello Farrel till!
FT: Ah hello there, I have astory to tell on this matter
Ax Really?! Please, go ahead!
FT: ahem..Yes, it's true. I confess. I recently went to church. A friend, who constantly reminds me that he is praying for me and seems supremely confident that someday I will see the error of my way, repent, and return to the fold, asked me to attend his church on the occasion of its special Friendship-Day Services. In a moment of weakness, pity, or something, I accepted the invitation, and the following Sunday found me sitting beside him in a pew. Except for the few times I have had debates scheduled as part of church services, this was my first time to "go to church" since September 1963 when, after preaching a sermon on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, I decided that I could no longer endure the hypocrisy of preaching what I knew I didn't believe anymore. Well, this wasn't really my first time to go to church since then, but another occasion when I tried to go can't be counted. On a Sunday perhaps four or five years ago, I went to the local Church of Christ hoping to meet in person its preacher, whom I had been corresponding with. When he learned I was in the audience, he stood in the pulpit and announced that the services would not continue until I had left. So much for seeking and saving the lost.

At any rate, I recently went to church with my friend, and it was an experience worth telling about. The sermon was about friendship, a subject the preacher had no doubt selected to fit the occasion. It began with the reading of a text in 1 Samuel 18:1-5, which relates an incident in the friendship of David and Jonathan, the son of King Saul. The preacher elaborated on the depth of the friendship between David and Jonathan and related some of their experiences to illustrate what true friends are willing to do for each other.

Of course, it didn't take a genius to guess where the preacher was going with his sermon topic, so I reached for a hymnal, checked the index, then opened the book to "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," and showed it to my friend, who grinned weakly. Sure enough, the preacher eventually got around to assuring us that we have a friend in Jesus, whose friendship is greater than any we could ever expect to experience. How can we know this? Well, Jesus himself told us, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends" (John 15:13). Jesus laid down his life for us, so what better friendship could we ask for? Of course, this part of the sermon was spiced with references to the pain and agony that Jesus suffered on the cross and the great love that God must have had for mankind to allow his only son to endure such an experience.

From a religious point of view, it was an impressive and emotional sermon, and there was even one "altar call" before the preacher had finished. I probably was the only person in the audience who wasn't impressed, and during a friendship luncheon following the services, the preacher sat with my friend and me, so I had the opportunity to talk to him and explain why I wasn't impressed.

I pointed out that the entire sermon had been based on anthropomorphic premises that assumed what is true of people must also be true of God. I used myself as an example and asked the preacher to imagine a scenario in which he is about to be executed by a despotic government. If in such a case, I went to the leader of this government and offered myself as a substitute for the preacher and my offer was accepted, one could truly say that my act would constitute a remarkable expression of friendship and love. "But what if I knew that I was eternal and omnipotent," I asked the preacher, "and that my death would be only a temporary thing and less than three days later, I would be restored to life never to die again. Wouldn't that take something away from the remarkableness of my gesture on your behalf?" Indeed, if I knew that I possessed eternalness and omnipotence, it would be rather despicable of me if I refused to offer myself as a substitute for a friend who was about to be executed. Even so, "Kill me instead" in such a scenario would not be a noble gesture at all; it would actually be sort of an obligation that the omnipotent one should feel duty bound to discharge. I suggested to the preacher that these are ideas that seem to escape gullible pulpit audiences, and I can't recall that he had any satisfactory response to make to my comments.

I was reminded of that sermon just the day before I sat down to write this article. On the way to K-Mart, I had remembered to check out the latest message on the yard sign of a church that always has some simplistic religious platitude posted. You have probably seen these yourselves, something like, "God Sent His Son to Man to Make Men God's Sons" or such like. That day the message was, "God's Xmas Gift to Men Was His Son." My first reaction to the message was surprise that it had taken Christ out of Christmas, and then it reminded me of the friendship sermon on the day I went to church. Here again was the idea that God's gift of his only begotten son to die for the sins of mankind was some supremely noble gesture, but I just can't buy the idea.

I have two sons, and I would never agree to offer either of them as a substitute for anyone under sentence of death. However, let's just suppose that I were an eternally omniscient and omnipotent entity, and so I would necessarily know that if I offered one of my sons as a substitute for someone else, his death would be only temporary and three days later he would be alive again nevermore to die. What would be the big deal about my gesture?

Let's further complicate this scenario by assuming that my son is a chip off the old block who possesses my same characteristics of eternalness, omniscience, and omnipotence. These characteristics would necessarily remove any reason for him to be concerned about my decision to offer him as a substitute in death for others. If he were truly omniscient, then he would know that he was also eternal and omnipotent. Therefore, he would know that his death would be merely temporary. He would also know that he was incapable of suffering any real harm, because omnipotence would not be subject to physical harm. This logical consequence of omnipotence, in fact, often makes me wonder how those who crucified Jesus managed to kill him. How could something eternal and omnipotent be killed even temporarily? I suppose the same inerrantists who tell us that in the nature of deities it is possible for 1+1+1 to equal one will now tell us something about Jesus's being "wholly God" and "wholly man," and so it was the "wholly man" part of him that the ordeal of the cross killed, as if it isn't ridiculously contradictory to talk about something being "wholly" one thing while simultaneously being "wholly" something else. When I hear such as this, I have to wonder if theologians ever study logic.

So just what is the big deal that theologians make about the "supreme" sacrifice that God made for man in offering up his son? In the scenario hypothesized above, there wouldn't be anything to write home about if I, as an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent person, should offer up one of my sons if he too possessed the same characteristics. So why get all teary-eyed and grovel in guilt and shame when we hear preachers wail about the supreme love that God showed for mankind in sending his son to die for the miserable creatures that we are?

At any rate, I went to church, and all that the experience did was confirm that I had made the right decision 32 years ago when I walked away from a belief system that couldn't be any more illogical if someone had deliberately tried to make it so. If Christians want to go to church and weep over their sins when they hear preachers wailing about an omniscient, omnipotent deity who for some inexplicable reason prayed feverishly in the Garden of Gethsemane (while sweating "as it were great drops of blood") to be spared the ordeal of something that wasn't going to hurt him all that much anyway (and if it hurt him at all, it was his own fault, because an omnipotent person could anesthetize himself to pain), that's their privilege. There is no law against superstitious ignorance. As for me, I have better things to do with my time.

Ax: wow, that was a great story.

Anti-Creedance Front

When I thought about Mithraism and Christianity, and how puzzled archaeologists are when they dig up occult/mystery religion sites, I wonder what someone would think when they excavated a long-abandoned temple of Christianity? They would see such things as a man nailed to a cross, little angels painted on the walls, Latin in some places if it was Catholic, 13 pictures showing this man carrying and being nailed to the cross... I would be boggled by the symbolism too. I have no doubt in my mind that many of the practices in Christianity have occult influences, with this thought. If people didn't explain to you some of the weird things about the religion (some of which remain unanswered), you would wonder what the heck was going on too.

Doubting Didymus

Whenever I think of this topic, I feel like Arthur Dent at the restraunt at the end of the universe, and his run-in with the major cow.

The cow was an intelligent beast, which was bred specifically to want to be eaten and be capable of saying so. The Cow offers arthur his liver, which "must be very tender by now, as I have been force-feeding myself for months". It then politely offers to nip off and shoot itself (very humanely, it specifies).

Arthur finds the whole ordeal most ofputting, and insists on a salad.

Now if the fundamentalists are right, humans are worthless worms fit only to burn in hell. We are so full of sin that we deserve to be tortured. Perfect god has decreed this, and if HE really exists, then he must be always right.

If this is the case, and the only other option is for someone else to take the blame, then I do not want that salvation. I don't care how badly Jesus wants to take my punishment for me. Those sins are mine, not his, and I would rather take the punishment myself than let another take it for me. Thats just not justice as I know it.

How many people here, if they were on trial for manslaughter or something, would stand by and let a good friend take the rap? Not I. No matter how willing the friend. No matter how terrifying the punishment.

Of course, come the moment, who knows? I might just have to chicken out and let my friend get the chair. Even so, would I feel like I had done the right thing? No, I would feel guilty as jabber and fuck.

Gregg

Yes, early Christianity (which didn't believe in a historical Jesus) and the Roman mystery religions made more sense in this regard. Since Christianity was divorced from its Greek philosophical and cosmological underpinnings (as above, so below) and literalized, Christians have been forced to write reams of apologetics in an attempt to get Jesus' sacrifice to make any sort of logical sense.

Gregg