'For God so loved the world ...'
Gamma Gamaliel
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Here we go. Another atonement thread.
The 'trilemma' one is being side-tracked onto substitutionary atonement issues - penal or otherwise.
Hostly advice is to start another. So here goes.
I'll start with an attempt to answer @Martin54 who asked what Christ's submission to the Father's will in the Garden of Gethsemane 'tells us about love.'
In doing so, I'm conscious that things could very quickly become yet another reprise of his loss of faith - something I by no means wish to diminish or dismiss.
Nevertheless, I will attempt an answer.
A conventional, and indeed scriptural response, might be to say, 'Greater love hath no man than this but to give up his life for his friends.'
We don't need to invoke a penal or juridical understanding of the atonement to regard Christ's sacrificial death upon the cross as a loving act. He voluntarily took upon himself our suffering and pain and 'tasted death' for all of us.
We can argue about the mechanics, whether Christ was absorbing the penalty for our sin, or whether he was completely identifying with our humanity or becoming a 'curse' for us etc etc - or conquering the power of sin and death through his own death and Resurrection.
But however we cut it, all Christian traditions seem to agree that it was the ultimate loving act. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.'
There's a cosmic element here.
I can't remember which of the Fathers said it, bit one opined that the Incarnation would have taken place even if humanity had never sinned. Such would have been God's desire to identify with and 'be among' his creatures.
Ok, that may be hyperbolic and it may raise eyebrows in some evangelical quarters but I think it does illustrate a core element here. It's about identification, about sharing our humanity and our death, about God becoming human in every sense apart from sin.
And through the cross he somehow 'absorbed' that too. 'He who was without sin became sin for us ...'
I don't know how any of this 'works' but I don't see it in terms of God being 'subject' and somehow captive to his own righteousness as it were - in terms of having to observe or obey particular immutable decrees if we can put it like that.
That smacks of God painting himself into a corner.
Neither do I see it as some kind of cosmic bloodlust as we see in Gibson's execrable film, The Passion Of The Christ or the bloody medieval altarpieces we find in many cathedrals and museums.
I'm thinking aloud here - thinking allowed - and perhaps Shipmates who are wiser than I can help me.
So, here we go again. The atonement. What think ye?
The 'trilemma' one is being side-tracked onto substitutionary atonement issues - penal or otherwise.
Hostly advice is to start another. So here goes.
I'll start with an attempt to answer @Martin54 who asked what Christ's submission to the Father's will in the Garden of Gethsemane 'tells us about love.'
In doing so, I'm conscious that things could very quickly become yet another reprise of his loss of faith - something I by no means wish to diminish or dismiss.
Nevertheless, I will attempt an answer.
A conventional, and indeed scriptural response, might be to say, 'Greater love hath no man than this but to give up his life for his friends.'
We don't need to invoke a penal or juridical understanding of the atonement to regard Christ's sacrificial death upon the cross as a loving act. He voluntarily took upon himself our suffering and pain and 'tasted death' for all of us.
We can argue about the mechanics, whether Christ was absorbing the penalty for our sin, or whether he was completely identifying with our humanity or becoming a 'curse' for us etc etc - or conquering the power of sin and death through his own death and Resurrection.
But however we cut it, all Christian traditions seem to agree that it was the ultimate loving act. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.'
There's a cosmic element here.
I can't remember which of the Fathers said it, bit one opined that the Incarnation would have taken place even if humanity had never sinned. Such would have been God's desire to identify with and 'be among' his creatures.
Ok, that may be hyperbolic and it may raise eyebrows in some evangelical quarters but I think it does illustrate a core element here. It's about identification, about sharing our humanity and our death, about God becoming human in every sense apart from sin.
And through the cross he somehow 'absorbed' that too. 'He who was without sin became sin for us ...'
I don't know how any of this 'works' but I don't see it in terms of God being 'subject' and somehow captive to his own righteousness as it were - in terms of having to observe or obey particular immutable decrees if we can put it like that.
That smacks of God painting himself into a corner.
Neither do I see it as some kind of cosmic bloodlust as we see in Gibson's execrable film, The Passion Of The Christ or the bloody medieval altarpieces we find in many cathedrals and museums.
I'm thinking aloud here - thinking allowed - and perhaps Shipmates who are wiser than I can help me.
So, here we go again. The atonement. What think ye?
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
I believe that Jesus was sent to show us the way as we (humanity) continued to mistranslate God’s messages to us through judges and prophets. As we prefer to listen to someone showing us what to do on YouTube rather than reading a workshop manual, so we needed God to be with us in a form we understood and could relate to.
It was inevitable that Jesus would be put to death by those who preferred to keep the status quo and the power and control it gave them rather than to listen to and follow him. The greatest teaching of Jesus was his humility and forgiveness, as love was spat back into their faces. It also showed us that whatever we do and say, God will still love us.
For me, this love overpowers everything. Our own sense of consciousness of good and evil cries out for punishment when we do the wrong thing, but God’s love says that our repentance is sufficient - no need for punishment, our regret is enough. This Atonement is for our sake, not for God’s sake.
I don't understand all of the stuff that you've been debating about theology, however it seems to me that it is possible to come to different conclusions if one isn't stuck in the same groove.
For example, let's say that we accept 'God is love' as a statement (I don't, but let's just offer it for the sake of argument). That doesn't inevitably lead to a personal God and then the Christian ideas of atonement.
It's possible to think of other ways that could operate. A beekeeper may well say that he loves his hive of bees. But that's a different thing to saying that he is interested in every bee (which he can't be, because the lifecycle of bees require deaths of individual bees). It's not impossible to imagine a deity who loves humanity without any involvement with individual humans.
But I'm dealing with a specifically Christian belief here, and so an element of 'groove-thinking' is going to be part of that. I'm pitching things within that particular paradigm or groove.
If there is no God or if the Christian concept of God is abandoned in favour of something else then my question isn't a pertinent one.
If we were discussing Marxism, say, then we'd obviously have to consider concepts and beliefs that form part of that particular system.
Or if classical music then we'd be looking at that rather than rock, pop, soul or Gospel, say.
(a) As I said back there, the atonement, through suicidal self sacrifice, is the biggest inseparable part of Jesus' delusion.
(b) No worries either way mate. We're beyond my commonplace loss of faith. I diminish and dismiss it. It has opened up this dialogue.
(c) Here we go. How did his giving up his life save his friends? Who were his friends? But yeah, in purely human terms, altruism to death is as good as it gets. Where did he exercise that? When? How? What did they get out of it? A better meaning of life for them?
(d) I'm sure from his point of view, his sane brilliant grandiose delusion, his suicidal act was an act of love. How did he take upon himself our suffering and pain? What difference does that make to our suffering and pain? Especially that of the massive majority of humanity who haven't heard that story. I can see how it can comfort those who buy into it of course. And therefore that feeds back in cognitive bias to it being a loving act.
(e) Theories, theories, theories; once you buy the story.
(f) See the first and last two sentences of (d).
(g) Where?
(h) Ah, sin. What's that? I like the idea of Love's desire to identify with and 'be among' Their creatures. What would that look like in history? What difference would them being a 'sinner' or not, whatever that is, make?
(i) Love incarnate would know what, that They were presumably, so that would give Them all the advantages they need. I just don't understand this 'sin' thing. Apart from the human condition. Of weakness and ignorance. Incarnate love would have sufficiently less weakness and ignorance. There is immense potential to that idea. Such an entity would still have to have immense weakness and ignorance. To partake of it. Jesus fits the bill. A bit too much. The Love, if it were there, is swamped by the culture. The obsession with this sin thing.
(Tangent. What could Love have done, whether incarnate or not, to demonstrate Themselves once and for all time, all cultures? Nothing I realise. It can't be done. But could They have said and done, when incarnate, anything, something, in history that would give every thinking person, regardless of culture, pause to wonder that Love were the ground of being. That all was well and always had been and would be for all? )
(j) Sin, sin, sin. What?
(k) That first clause says it all.
(l) I don't think so. There again, I am Caliban to their Prosperos. I wouldn't know such wisdom if it bit me would I?
'These things were written that you might believe.'
The NT isn't there to convince us otherwise.
Meanwhile, I'm sorry Martin54 but I find you alphabetical points hard to follow. I have to scroll back and forth between what I'd written and your responses.
Fine, I'm not worried about a bit of hardwork but it does make your reply harder to process.
That's where the cosmic element lies and that's where the d) and g) issues are addressed.
No Incarnation, no atonement.
And yes, it does depend on our buying into the story. We can't 'prove' it of course.
If we could then faith wouldn't be faith. Annoying that.
I think it would be a bit much to expect a comprehensive exposition in the 'red-letter' quotes in the NT ('the words of our Lord in red').
'Look folks, I am about to be crucified and the reason for that is ...'
From memory though, I'm sure there is a quotation attributed to Christ in which he says the Son of Man shall give his life 'as a ransom for many.'
What he meant by that is open to debate.
I'll look up some of the sayings directly attributed to Christ at some point to follow this up.
Meanwhile, I think it's axiomatic that what we have in the NT are accounts and epistles etc which were sanctioned and 'authorised' by the Christians of the first few centuries as representing what they believed to be the best possible sources for, and expositions of, their faith. Holy Tradition is wider than scripture in the more 'Catholic' traditions of course.
That obviously begs the question as to whether they understood Christ correctly or reported his teachings accurately or developed their doctrines from tantalising glimpses after the event.
Or whether God the Holy Spirit guided and guarded the process in some mysterious way.
Christ says that the 'Son of Man' came not to be served but to serve, and to 'give his life as a ransom for many.'
His disciples are exhorted to have the same attitude.
We can't take 'proof-texts' in isolation, of course and there will be a range of views on what this means.
As I said back there, the atonement, through suicidal self sacrifice, is the biggest inseparable part of Jesus' delusion. No worries either way mate. We're beyond my commonplace loss of faith. I diminish and dismiss it. It has opened up this dialogue. Here we go. How did his giving up his life save his friends? Who were his friends? But yeah, in purely human terms, altruism to death is as good as it gets. Where did he exercise that? When? How? What did they get out of it? A better meaning of life for them? I'm sure from his point of view, his sane brilliant grandiose delusion, his suicidal act was an act of love. How did he take upon himself our suffering and pain? What difference does that make to our suffering and pain? Especially that of the massive majority of humanity who haven't heard that story. I can see how it can comfort those who buy into it of course. And therefore that feeds back in cognitive bias to it being a loving act. Theories, theories, theories; once you buy the story. See the first and last two sentences of. Where? Ah, sin. What's that? I like the idea of Love's desire to identify with and 'be among' Their creatures. What would that look like in history? What difference would them being a 'sinner' or not, whatever that is, make? Love incarnate would know what, that They were presumably, so that would give Them all the advantages they need. I just don't understand this 'sin' thing. Apart from the human condition. Of weakness and ignorance. Incarnate love would have sufficiently less weakness and ignorance. There is immense potential to that idea. Such an entity would still have to have immense weakness and ignorance. To partake of it. Jesus fits the bill. A bit too much. The Love, if it were there, is swamped by the culture. The obsession with this sin thing.
(Tangent. What could Love have done, whether incarnate or not, to demonstrate Themselves once and for all time, all cultures? Nothing I realise. It can't be done. But could They have said and done, when incarnate, anything, something, in history that would give every thinking person, regardless of culture, pause to wonder that Love were the ground of being. That all was well and always had been and would be for all? ) Sin, sin, sin. What? That first clause says it all. I don't think so. There again, I am Caliban to their Prosperos. I wouldn't know such wisdom if it bit me would I?
After this reply @Merry Vole. As well as in it.
The delusion is that of a brilliant and otherwise perfectly sane man. Its grandiosity is breathtaking, dark triad level, but without the illness. It's a familial, ancestral, cultural delusion. Maternally inherited. But not that you might know. Agreed. It makes no attempt to in its brilliant rhetoric.
Addressed not too late I hope.
Worse than annoying. Devastating. If one buys in to it for half a century and realises that the supernatural pearl of that great price is fake. Unnatural. Man made. So much for diminishing and dismissing!
Aye, he said it here (or rather in Mark or Quelle) the first of three times,
Matthew 16:21 “From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”
Whoops! Too long.
There is no question that his mission was to save, to die for, others; those who would believe that, no matter how it's dressed up, no matter how it's sanitized.
This is the Jesus of faith. The curse of faith: I desire its object without it. I am evil and adulterous.
AH! Yes! Mark 10:45
Ransom paid in agony, blood and death.
or
Resurrection!
Thanks too for trying to track down the verses you had in mind.
At the risk of rehearsing points that have been raised on other threads, you seem to be stating as a matter of absolute certainty issues that are 'matters of faith.'
You are right to remind us that the NT says that these things were written that we might 'believe' rather than 'know.' Granted.
Only you then go on to present as a matter of cast-iron certainty your conviction that Christ was 'deluded' both on ancestral grounds and the actions of his Jewish Mum. Sounds like something from a 1970s sit-com or from the play 'Oi Vey, Maria.'
This has to be the case because @Martin54, as Pope, Magisterium and final authority happens to say so.
Or so it seems to me.
Let's try a thought experiment. Let's assume for a moment, I know it's hard, that Christ wasn't deluded and that his followers did record and interpret his teachings and ministry and his apparent Resurrection appearances with reasonable accuracy.
If that were true - Betjeman voice 'And is it true?' - then how are we to understand the various NT representations of the atonement and the way Christians of various persuasions have understood it down the centuries?
We all know you have lost your faith. We aren't dismissing that but I'm sure we've all heard enough about it not to want to hear it over and over again in every single thread on every conceivable topic.
I really don't intend that to sound like a brush off 😐.
LOL on 'Oi Vey, Maria.' Before we get to the thought experiment, I'm not using Bart D. Ehrman's laser scalpel on scripture. I'm giving it all good will, Especially the new bit and its prime subject. I'm looking for the most faithful natural explanation for Jesus.
I did the faith experiment with ever greater generous orthodoxy for 50 years. If you want to revisit that, fine.
Let's assume it's all true. Starting with the incarnation. If it's true, then it isn't. Except in the mystical sense, not in any juridical sense whatsoever. I've explored this here for years. If Jesus were an incarnation, that alone, and then all its outworking dealt with in only a Loving way, is the best possible news. End of. Next? What, how then should we live? With gratitude within breaths, with elation, and unconditional positive regard and actual kindness for all, especially as we'll meet them all on the way down.
I'll just have to do it the hard way.
As for an infidel - null faith - perspective, it is essential in every relevant topic.
As I say, I am evil and adulterous and the sign of the (wonderful) prophet Jonah that demonstrates a hint of Love and a plethora of natural, timeless, human love 700BCE is not enough.
'How then should we live?' is a darn good question for all of us, whether we believe these things or not.
For those of us who do, it's a particularly challenging one as our actions don't match up. 'Who is equal to these things?'
I'm not sure where we can next in this discussion though.
Would anyone like to help?
Proposed by Peter Abelard, as a rejection of Anselm's Satisfaction, it states that the life, example, and humility of Christ can effect a moral change in people which is, in itself salvific. This works with either a high or low Christology. The way in which Jesus lived a life of pure love and humility, the way in which his human will was sacrificed to the will of the Father even unto death, is what we all must strive to be, however imperfectly we do it. I can't see atonement in any other way. Jesus taught the way of repentance and submission to the will of God, and he lived it to the full. It's all we need.
It seems like a preposterous highly decorated mansion resting on no foundations at all.
An Orthodox priest once observed to me that there was never an Ecumenical Council that addressed the issue of the atonement. They were essentially about Christology and pneumatology. I'd argue that the controversies over iconography followed on from all that also, but that's another issue.
So from an Orthodox perspective there is no one single dogmatic way to understand the atonement. Sure, the ransom theory tended to hold sway in the early centuries and there were certainly Patristic voices who weren't happy about that. As @pablito1954 says, it's a highly problematic way of looking at the atonement.
As indeed is the penal substitutionary model, for all the reasons he cites.
I was always reluctant to abandon it as I feared that to do so would be to be lax on sin, lax on the causes of sin (to borrow and bend a Blairite phrase).
I don't think I've got any less of an appreciation of the dire consequences of sin now than I had back in my evangelical days.
What I'm struggling to get over though is 'charismatic evangelical guilt' which is just as debilitating in its own way than its more famous cousin, Catholic Guilt.
I can find answers to all those concerns though in the scriptures and teachings of the Church. He said neatly.
Whether they'd convince anyone else is a moot point though.
The issues that @Alan29 raises are harder to address, as they take us beyond what can so easily become abstract theological concepts to nitty-gritty questions of 'what difference does it make?'
A question my atheist friends pose.
I don't 'blame' them for doing so. It's not a question I can easily answer without resorting to cliché and preachers' tropes. 'We live between the now and the not yet ...' etc.
Yes, the scriptures say that whilst we don't yet see 'all things submitted under his feet' we still 'see Jesus.'
And what we 'see' of him (by faith) can sustain our hope.
'Oh taste and see (understand) that the Lord is good ...'
Easier said than done, of course.
'I would have despaired unless I believed I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.'
It's all work in progress. I've not thrown in the towel but neither do I sit in judgement on or criticise those who have done so.
'Lord I believe, help thou mine unbelief.'
But yes, this ... and more besides.
'Trampling down Death by Death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.'
'If Christ be not raised our faith is futile, we are still in our sins.'
Amen and amen.
There was no first Adam.
And even tho' I agree with Jesus' entirely human kindness, entirely human social justice, they are for salvation, redemption in this entirely human life. His ghastly self imposed death certainly underlines his ethics, which get tacked on to the Grand-Guignol. You recapitulate his justification of that death; he believed that it was his father's will. We're back to that Abrahamic, including Abraham and Isaac, Iron Age Love-less ghastliness again. Why couldn't Jesus just teach us submission to the will of Love? He's have had to reveal Love in the first place of course. He . did . not.
Now that is powerful, poignant. I wish it were so. Until we look under the hood. It's full of sin. Without any evidence whatsoever of Love.
No comment.
@Gamma Gamaliel
OK as far as,
Here we go again, sin. SIN!!!! What about it? What is it? What are the dire consequences of it?
And OK after.
'I don't believe, help thou mine unknowing.'
No . we're . not. Whatever they are. We're just living in the moment. While it lasts. So be kind. Die grateful.
Actually I have great sympathy for this view. Mostly my 'pilgrim journey ' boils down to trying to live in the light of maybe this the only teaching of Jesus that I can really relate to.
He was, and is.
The rest is human mistranslation.
Thanks...That'll do for me !!
We intersect totally there. What we have in common is more than sufficient. Nothing else matters.
Was what? And what's the mistranslation? Of what? To what?
Firstly, I'm not convinced that we need a 'literal' first Adam in the Garden of Eden sense to have Christ as the Second Adam. Whatever else we may say about the Creation story in Genesis, I'm not sure it's about a couple in fig-leaves and a talking snake.
As for sin, well, the Orthodox understanding is that it is a 'falling short', a 'missing the mark', let an arrow dropping short of the target. In which case it can be viewed as a 'disease' that needs to be 'healed' rather than a crime that needs to be punished.
I haven't time to develop that just now.
As for 'submission to the will of love' - well yes, and I don't see how the atonement obviates that. Rather it fulfils it.
Yep, we still disagree, @Martin54, have a nice day...
Hence my acceptance of Recapitulation is qualified. Adam can represent humanity, not necessarily as an individual. This is why I emphasise Christ's moral example as a model of atonement I can accept. Not as a cosmic event on this tiny speck of dust we inhabit. But as a personal event everyone has to follow in pursuit of the ego death that leads to punitive knowledge.
Was what? And what's the mistranslation? Of what? To what?[/quote]
He was, and is, demonstrating and teaching us submission to the will of love.
The mistranslation is the result of our human efforts to make sense of it all. We can’t. But we won’t stop trying, and sharing our ideas about it, and teaching students the theories others have come up with over the millennia. It’s what we do. In doing so, we move away from the truth about God when we imagine God with human traits and forget that love is all we need.
One of our local Orthodoxen will, I hope, correct me if I’m wrong.
Some Orthodox will posit that God's eternal presence outside time as it were will be blissful for those that love him ❤️ but hot and painful for those who don't or who might ultimately reject him. 'Our God is a consuming fire.'
There seems to be a growing trend towards forms of universalism within Orthodoxy at the moment - if oxymoron like 'trend' and 'Orthodoxy' can exist in the same sentence... 😉
As I understand it, though a kind of full-on dogmatic universalism is seen as heretical.
'We may hope that all may be saved. We cannot say that all will be saved.'
There are also bizarre folk-religious beliefs in some quarters, such as the 'Heavenly Toll-booths' thing where various penalties are exacted in stages before the soul finally reaches heaven. Most serious Orthodox theologians seem to repudiate this, although I wouldn't be surprised to find support for these sort of beliefs at a high level in some majority-Orthodox countries.
A rule of thumb seems to be that the further east you go the wierder it gets. 😉
Mind you, I know of some Orthodox theologians closer to home who champion some aspects of folk-religion despite the misgivings of their colleagues.
Be all that as it may, the Orthodox don't tend to go in for lurid imagery about eternal torment. Yes, you can find depictions of Hell replete with imps and demons in medieval frescoes and the like, but by and large the emphasis is on the Harrowing of Hell as it were.
It's interesting that in a fresco of the Last Judgment at the monastery at Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, Saint Sophrony insisted that a set of scales wielded by a demon be tilted in favour of mercy rather than judgement.
Generally speaking though, the Orthodox don't tend to speculate a great deal about who will or won't be saved or whether 'hell' is permanent, temporary, full or empty.
We tend to be able to live with a degree of paradox and ambiguity. I'm theory at least. I keep coming across callow Orthodox youth who seem far too black and white about anything and everything.
I'm a newbie of course.
Other Orthodox posters may be able to fill in the gaps.
Can you explain how the atonement, whatever that is, fulfils the will of Love. I can, in the most rarefied, abstract of terms. But not in a messy suicide mission. Has anybody ever considered that he made his killers kill him? Where's the morality in that?
I'm sure we do. How could we not? In every regard? Who knows. And you now @ChastMastr.
@pablito1954, yes I see how Adam is just a symbol of humanity, which even the character's creators pretty obviously saw.
Christ's moral example as a model of atonement is interesting. No mention of the crucifixion. I see his moral example as the best of human relative to culture, reason to be cheerful about being human.
What would unitive knowledge look like in humans? Shared awareness? Collective consciousness? How can that come about naturally? A virus?
How did and does he demonstrate and teach us submission to the will of Love?
Again, mistranslation of what text? No atonement metaphor works. Of the crucifixion text. Which is 'mistranslated' in all atonement theories because it doesn't work in itself, as a demonstration of Love.
So Sodom and Gomorrah's acceptable? Abraham and Isaac are acceptable? All manner of Bronze Age weirdness purportedly about God (who is Love remember) is acceptable? What about Exodus?
I am inclined to accept that Abraham is based on a real person. This does not mean that I believe everything else that is written in the first books of the Old Testament to be strictly true.
i"m good with this, as well as with
(John 12:24)
and
(John 12:31-33)
which indicates that he sees his death as a vehicle for judging and casting out the devil, while drawing the human race to himself (that is, away from destruction).
Pardon bad typing, I think I may have a broken finger.
@Martin54, I think I've quoted paris of the Apostle Peter's Pentecost sermon before ... and please excuse my quoting from memory without verse references and with some added emphasis.
What do we have?
'This Jesus whom you crucified...'
An accusation. You crucified him.
You did it.
Did God make them do it, any more than he makes you or I post on these boards or have a cup of tea or act selfishly (or selflessly) or love our family and friends or treat people well or badly?
'Sorry, I was rude to that person in Purgatory but God made me do it ...'
What do we also have?
Christ delivered over to death by 'God's set purpose and foreknowledge,' certainly. But his death comes 'by the hands of wicked men.'
Human beings are not sock-puppets. We have agency. We are of course constrained by circumstances, culture and so on, but we are responsible for our actions.
This is what I mean by living with paradox. Christ went willingly to his death- but not without a struggle in Gethsemane where his human nature quite naturally baulked at the idea of going to his death, but where his human will aligned itself with the divine will.
Back in my evangelical days I came across certain extreme evos who could not accept that Christ could harbour fears or doubts and so concocted elaborate theories to explain the 'Agony in The Garden' in terms other than Christ's evident and very human distress at the prospect of a hideously violent death.
I can think of various ancient heresies that fit that bill.
I'm not trying to be simplistic but an Orthodox understanding of Christology and 'synergia' between the divine and human wills in the Person of Christ goes someway towards reconciling these conundrums.
Christ didn't 'make' his tormentors torment him or his killers kill him, but yes, he was certainly putting himself in a very dangerous position and one in which both the Roman civil authorities and some of the Jewish religious authorities were going to want him removed.
This isn't to 'blame the Jews'. Herod, Pilate, the Sandedrin, they were all implicated.
'Where's the morality in that?' you ask.
I'm not saying it's easy to make sense of all this. People have been trying to do so for 2000 years.
They'll continue to do so for however long we have left.
That's how this stuff works. Through discussion, debate, conciliarity.
Does God 'judge' us for being merely human? I don't think so. I'm a newbie when it comes to auricular or sacramental confession. I find it awkward. Yet I do it. On several occasions after granting absolution a priest has said, 'Don't beat yourself up, we are all human.'
I haven't asked God's forgiveness for being human, but for things I've done that 'miss the mark' as it were 'through negligence, through weakness, through my own deliberate fault.'
'Who can discern his errors? Forgive, O Lord my hidden faults.'
I know none of this is likely to convince you but I can only lay things out as I see them.
@Telford - yes, I'm on a similar page insofar that I am prepared to accept that there are historical figures and events behind the stories in Genesis and Exodus, but that these books aren't 'reportage' in the way we understand that today.
I'd also say, along with C S Lewis that 'mythology' can and does convey truths in a way that a bald historical narrative (and no narrative is 'bald' and not value-laden) might not.
That's not to say that I'm not troubled by the genocides in the Pentateuch and Joshua and so on, but I tend to 'Christianise' them in a more allegorical or metaphorical way.
This doesn't remove all the problems of course.
Anyway, it's late. I've woken up in the wee small hours and need to go back to sleep.
To justify God's ways to man.'
@Gamma Gamaliel
I thought God was supposed to be Love? Our Love is a consuming fire has a completely different connotation doesn't it?
Is Saint Sophrony's demon called Maat by any chance? Over four thousand years old. Do they use a feather? Now weighted for mercy is a mercy.
Orthodoxy has no less a problem with Loveless fundamentalism than any other Christian tradition. Declaring Love a heresy is pretty impressive.
@Telford. I still love the power of Abraham treating with God under the terebinth trees of Mamre. Superb fiction. Late Iron Age fiction. Abraham's a mythical Bronze Age character written about after the Late Bronze Age Collapse, in the late Iron Age, from folk patriarch tales, over a thousand years later than set. By a tribe of Canaanites who'd managed to shake off the name by claiming Babylonian ancestry. Whilst in Babylonian captivity. There is no historicity in the Bronze Age patriarchs at all. Great literature. And there's no Love in them either. Dread, yes. All highly informative to Jesus.
What have you been up to?!
The Lovelessness in the existence of the demiurge is a problem too isn't it? Unless we totally metaphorize it like Adam, as a failure of human evolution.
Are we further from destruction now?
@Gamma Gamaliel No matter how you dress it up, it was suicide by cop. Where's the conciliarity with Love? The chaos and special pleading are a joke. How human.
So that's me told ... 😉
My interlocutor is right, of course. To avoid spending any longer in Purgatory (the other one, rather than this one, although there are those who'd hope ...), I hearby repent in sackcloth and ashes.
On the 'suicide by cop' thing, I s'pose if we are going to have a God who immerses himself in our human systems and struggles then that, or something like it, might be expected. Someone, either on this thread or elsewhere, wrote that it was 'inevitable' that Christ would have a head-long collision with the powers that be.
We can go round and round in circles on theodicy, foreknowledge, inevitability etc etc.
Which of the Fathers wrote that too much wrestling with theology makes the head spin?
There was one who said it could drive us nuts.
No. God didn't harden their hearts by magic. He provoked them through his son.
Because God, father and son, deliberately provoked them to.
In what way? Meaning what at all in fact? And no, we're certainly not God's sock puppets. And will is involved in every action, every word. But the constraints cannot be overstated can they. The Bolger case comes to mind. We create each other.
Naturally he was remarkably true to himself. And gave himself a good talking to. His conditioning was perfect. Watching The Little Drummer Girl series. Superb. Say it and it's true.
I'm glad it does for you. Happy to discuss the conundrums, incarnation is psychologically fascinating. A normal human with a divine moral compass for a start.
He deliberately provoked them to inevitably arrest, torture and kill him. That was his mission.
As was he and his father.
Glad to be playing my part.
How dare he? God that is.
Absolutely.
Which historical figures? From the Bronze Age? Sargon? Sekhemre Khutawy Amenemhat Sobekhotep? Neferhotep I? Thutmose or Amenhotep, I? Hatshepshut? Thutmose III? Amenhotep II?
Aye, we can read between the cuneiform.
Well you'd have to being a modern, liberal person.
No. Only nature or Love can do that.
Slept well I hope.
And onchocerciasis, mosquitoes, hyaenas, earthquakes, floods, landslides, drought, wolfsbane, hemlock water dropwort, box jellyfish and much much more.
Aye. That's why I don't believe in any. I just need to know.
That Love is the ground of being.