Questioning the Crucifixion

[QED]

I hope it will be possible to have a sensible debate about what will no doubt be a very emotive issue here -- an issue that I genuinely don't understand and one that fills me with curiosity: Why it is that the execution of Jesus is supposed to be such a 'big deal'? After all, people were being strung-up all over the place for their beliefs, crimes or even just for sadistic pleasure. Whole rivers of blood have flown out of unjustified human agony before and after the this one particular event. But the crucifixion of Christ is meant to stand out -- because of what?

Sure he was the son of god (or one third of the trinity if that makes a difference) but he was also supposed to be supernatural, with the ability to perform miracles such as returning to life (I'm thinking PlayStation character here). So in what way was his 'death' a set-back for god, in what way was it a loss to anyone?

Had the Romans actually killed an irreplaceable (or mortal) son of God, then there would have been a genuine sacrifice but as he arose afterwards there doesn't seem to be any net loss hence I'm puzzled by the enormous impact it seems to have on the followers of Christianity. When a mortal loses a son that surely is a tragic and irreplaceable loss (and there are no shortages of these unfortunate events in history) yet none that I can think of have made anything like the same sort of impact. Is it rational then that the Crucifixion should have such an impact or should it, if anything, be regarded as somewhat less consequential given the apparent lack of harm it did to those concerned?

[ShieldAxe]

Well , he legalized christianity where before it was illegal. That may not be 'promoting' it to the exclusion of all others, but it certainly helped it along.

So, the communist party is legal to operate in the U.S., does that mean the U.S. is promoting communism?

Soon after his victory in AD 324 he outlawed pagan sacrifices, now feeling far more at liberty to enforce his new religious policy. The treasures of pagan temples were confiscated and used to pay for the construction of new Christian churches.

You're forgetting that Emperor Julian (361-363) completely reversed this and promoted paganism... Also, pagan sacrifices were outlawed while Constantine himself a non-Christian.

Gladiatorial contests were outruled and harsh new laws were issued prohibiting sexual immorality.

Are you saying that this is a bad thing?

Jews in particular were forbidden from owning Christian slaves.

How is ending slavery showing favoritism? The U.S. actively seeks to stop slavery of prostitutes from Asia, does that mean the U.S. is promoting the profession of prostitution?

In AD 325 Constantine once again held a religious council, summoning the bishops of the east and west to Nicaea. At this council the branch of the Christian faith known as Arianism was condemned as a heresy and the only admissible Christian creed of the day (the Nicene Creed) was precisely defined.

Constantine was interested in religion. But, as you must know from reading this article, Constantine was a control freak and even if he didn't belong to the Church, he thought it was his role to "fix" the divisions within it.

Let me add that Constantine is a very complex character. Just like it is difficult to know the intentions of modern day politicians and the wheeling and dealing that is done behind the scenes, so it is very difficult to know all that was happening behind the scenes. For all we know, Constantine was engaged in bitter disputes with the pagan temple priests who may have thought they had more power than Constantine. It is very difficult to know all the thoughts and motivations of this very complex character.

He legalized christianity and it became the state sponsored religion. If you want to say that isn't promoting it, fine. He advocated, advanced, espoused, and endorsed it. According to historians he also did the following:

-He funded Christian leaders and the construction of churches
-He made December 25th, the birthday of the pagan Unconquered Sun god, the official holiday it is now--the birthday of Jesus
-He also made Sunday an official Roman holiday so that more people could attend church, and made churches tax-exempt.
-He also called together and presided over the Council of Nicaea that 300 bishops attended, which again dealt with the Arian controversy about the nature of the divinity of Jesus. The Council issued an official statement of creed affirming Jesus' complete divinity, and the decision was enforced politically by Constantine.

http://campus.northpark.edu/history/Web ... verts.html

[trencacloscas]

Constantine legalizing all religions was a promotion of Christianity?

Oh, C'mon! "In hoc signo vinces", remember? He actually gave Christianism all the privileges to become major in the Empire. He even ordered and directed the Concilium of Nicaea, Eusebius of Cesarea, the court theologian, patched up the Bible for the masses... Without Constantine, Christianism today would be probably as popular as Mithraism.

[QED]

While having an interesting discussion in the topic Can Genesis and the Big Bang be reconciled? I asked Harvey the following...

Before I can understand this explanation of yours Harvey, you're going to have to explain to me what Christ's sacrifice actually was.

What do you mean? It was a sacrifice of his life.

It seems highly topical to re-visit my question at this particular time of the year, but please note that I ask what I ask with great respect. I'm simply trying to understand something that is very obscure to me... of all men Jesus is supposed to be the only to have overcome his mortality and walked again among the living. No matter how I look at this celebrated claim I cannot see a real sacrifice (the irretrievable loss of something precious).

To me a sacrifice of this nature is only meaningful when a mortal life is terminated, the consciousness of the individual becoming the irretrievable component. Indeed it might be the only example of something irretrievable in the universe. So of all sacrifices ever made by mortals giving up their lives, this particular example stands out as being somewhat nullified by the supposed immortality of the subject.

[Cathar1950]

QED I think you have a point. If he was God what kind of sacrifice was needed and and what did he give up if he was not mortal. What about the 1000's of Jews that were staked up? The whole thing sounds more like the Mystery religions then any kind of Jewish ideal, and Jesus was Jewish and a follower of YHWH for the earliest traditions. Why were they (the Christian Jews still going to the Temple after his death and it is even reported that James his brother was There on the day of Atonement decades later? The whole thing and it's meaning sounds like an invention of Paul. From Pauls letters he seems to have a different idea(Gospel) then the Pillars of the church he bashed.

[harvey1]

To me a sacrifice of this nature is only meaningful when a mortal life is terminated, the consciousness of the individual becoming the irretrievable component. Indeed it might be the only example of something irretrievable in the universe. So of all sacrifices ever made by mortals giving up their lives, this particular example stands out as being somewhat nullified by the supposed immortality of the subject.

I don't see how a person giving up their life in total faith to God is not a sacrifice. It was only because God raised up Jesus is there a reason why Jesus continued to live. Jesus gave, and God gave it right back.

[McCulloch]

I don't see how a person giving up their life in total faith to God is not a sacrifice. It was only because God raised up Jesus is there a reason why Jesus continued to live. Jesus gave, and God gave it right back.

Are you one of those non-trinitarians? According to orthodox Christian theology, Jesus is God. Jesus (God) gave his life and God (Jesus) gave it right back? Didn't Jesus prophesy his own resurrection? How could his sacrifice be a greater one than one who sacrifices without such a divine assurance?

[harvey1]

If he was God what kind of sacrifice was needed and and what did he give up if he was not mortal.

Jesus gave up mortality, but God gave him immortality.

What about the 1000's of Jews that were staked up?

Not just Jews, but millions of people have had their lives ended brutally and for little or no reason. However, those people were not the incarnation of the Logos either. Their deaths, while horrible and tragic, do not save anyone. Jesus saves.

The whole thing sounds more like the Mystery religions then any kind of Jewish ideal

I'm not sure why you would say that. I could quote Hebrew scriptures, Hebrew apocrypha, and the Dead Sea scrolls that all show that Christianity was not some foreign development. In fact, I think most biblical scholars (including atheist and agnostic ones) do not believe that Christianity evolved from any mystery religion. From what I heard, that is just the opinion of a very few who are not taken very seriously.

Jesus was Jewish and a follower of YHWH for the earliest traditions. Why were they (the Christian Jews still going to the Temple after his death and it is even reported that James his brother was There on the day of Atonement decades later?

Christianity was still evolving from the Jewish religious base. It took as much as a century before the Church lost most of its Jewish Christian influences.

The whole thing and it's meaning sounds like an invention of Paul. From Pauls letters he seems to have a different idea(Gospel) then the Pillars of the church he bashed.

Paul was certainly a revolutionary, and probably an outsider because of his views, but he was not the only missionary going to the outside world. We know that Christianity went to Egypt early on, and the Thomist tradition of the Church suggests a greater deparature from the Jewish Christian roots than how Pauline churches had evolved. I think it is fair to say that Christianity evolved quickly after Jesus' death and that within a few decades there was considerable differences in how different Christian leaders perceived to be orthodox Christianity.

[Bro Dave]

MEANING OF THE DEATH ON THE CROSS

188:4.1 Although Jesus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mortal man nor to provide some sort of effective approach to an otherwise offended and unforgiving God; even though the Son of Man did not offer himself as a sacrifice to appease the wrath of God and to open the way for sinful man to obtain salvation; notwithstanding that these ideas of atonement and propitiation are erroneous, nonetheless, there are significances attached to this death of Jesus on the cross which should not be overlooked. It is a fact that Urantia has become known among other neighboring inhabited planets as the "World of the Cross."
188:4.2 Jesus desired to live a full mortal life in the flesh on Urantia. Death is, ordinarily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mortal drama. In your well-meant efforts to escape the superstitious errors of the false interpretation of the meaning of the death on the cross, you should be careful not to make the great mistake of failing to perceive the true significance and the genuine import of the Master's death.

188:4.3 Mortal man was never the property of the archdeceivers. Jesus did not die to ransom man from the clutch of the apostate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Father in heaven never conceived of such crass injustice as damning a mortal soul because of the evildoing of his ancestors. Neither was the Master's death on the cross a sacrifice which consisted in an effort to pay God a debt which the race of mankind had come to owe him.
188:4.4 Before Jesus lived on earth, you might possibly have been justified in believing in such a God, but not since the Master lived and died among your fellow mortals. Moses taught the dignity and justice of a Creator God; but Jesus portrayed the love and mercy of a heavenly Father.
188:4.5 The animal nature -- the tendency toward evil-doing -- may be hereditary, but sin is not transmitted from parent to child. Sin is the act of conscious and deliberate rebellion against the Father's will and the Sons' laws by an individual will creature.
188:4.6 Jesus lived and died for a whole universe, not just for the races of this one world. While the mortals of the realms had salvation even before Jesus lived and died on Urantia, it is nevertheless a fact that his bestowal on this world greatly illuminated the way of salvation; his death did much to make forever plain the certainty of mortal survival after death in the flesh.
188:4.7 Though it is hardly proper to speak of Jesus as a sacrificer, a ransomer, or a redeemer, it is wholly correct to refer to him as a savior. He forever made the way of salvation (survival) more clear and certain; he did better and more surely show the way of salvation for all the mortals of all the worlds of the universe of Nebadon.
188:4.8 When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and loving Father, the only concept which Jesus ever taught, you must forthwith, in all consistency, utterly abandon all those primitive notions about God as an offended monarch, a stern and all-powerful ruler whose chief delight is to detect his subjects in wrongdoing and to see that they are adequately punished, unless some being almost equal to himself should volunteer to suffer for them, to die as a substitute and in their stead. The whole idea of ransom and atonement is incompatible with the concept of God as it was taught and exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth. The infinite love of God is not secondary to anything in the divine nature.
188:4.9 All this concept of atonement and sacrificial salvation is rooted and grounded in selfishness. Jesus taught that service to one's fellows is the highest concept of the brotherhood of spirit believers. Salvation should be taken for granted by those who believe in the fatherhood of God. The believer's chief concern should not be the selfish desire for personal salvation but rather the unselfish urge to love and, therefore, serve one's fellows even as Jesus loved and served mortal men.
188:4.10 Neither do genuine believers trouble themselves so much about the future punishment of sin. The real believer is only concerned about present separation from God. True, wise fathers may chasten their sons, but they do all this in love and for corrective purposes. They do not punish in anger, neither do they chastise in retribution.
188:4.11 Even if God were the stern and legal monarch of a universe in which justice ruled supreme, he certainly would not be satisfied with the childish scheme of substituting an innocent sufferer for a guilty offender.
188:4.12 The great thing about the death of Jesus, as it is related to the enrichment of human experience and the enlargement of the way of salvation, is not the fact of his death but rather the superb manner and the matchless spirit in which he met death.
188:4.13 This entire idea of the ransom of the atonement places salvation upon a plane of unreality; such a concept is purely philosophic. Human salvation is real; it is based on two realities which may be grasped by the creature's faith and thereby become incorporated into individual human experience: the fact of the fatherhood of God and its correlated truth, the brotherhood of man. It is true, after all, that you are to be "forgiven your debts, even as you forgive your debtors."


5. LESSONS FROM THE CROSS

188:5.1 The cross of Jesus portrays the full measure of the supreme devotion of the true shepherd for even the unworthy members of his flock. It forever places all relations between God and man upon the family basis. God is the Father; man is his son. Love, the love of a father for his son, becomes the central truth in the universe relations of Creator and creature -- not the justice of a king which seeks satisfaction in the sufferings and punishment of the evil-doing subject.
188:5.2 The cross forever shows that the attitude of Jesus toward sinners was neither condemnation nor condonation, but rather eternal and loving salvation. Jesus is truly a savior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to goodness and righteous survival. Jesus loves men so much that his love awakens the response of love in the human heart. Love is truly contagious and eternally creative. Jesus' death on the cross exemplifies a love which is sufficiently strong and divine to forgive sin and swallow up all evil-doing. Jesus disclosed to this world a higher quality of righteousness than justice -- mere technical right and wrong. Divine love does not merely forgive wrongs; it absorbs and actually destroys them. The forgiveness of love utterly transcends the forgiveness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-doing to one side; but love destroys forever the sin and all weakness resulting therefrom. Jesus brought a new method of living to Urantia. He taught us not to resist evil but to find through him a goodness which effectually destroys evil. The forgiveness of Jesus is not condonation; it is salvation from condemnation. Salvation does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not compromise nor condone hate; it destroys it. The love of Jesus is never satisfied with mere forgiveness. The Master's love implies rehabilitation, eternal survival. It is altogether proper to speak of salvation as redemption if you mean this eternal rehabilitation.
188:5.3 Jesus, by the power of his personal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose better ways of living. Jesus portrayed a deliverance from the past which in itself promised a triumph for the future. Forgiveness thus provided salvation. The beauty of divine love, once fully admitted to the human heart, forever destroys the charm of sin and the power of evil.

188:5.4 The sufferings of Jesus were not confined to the crucifixion. In reality, Jesus of Nazareth spent upward of twenty-five years on the cross of a real and intense mortal existence. The real value of the cross consists in the fact that it was the supreme and final expression of his love, the completed revelation of his mercy.

188:5.5 On millions of inhabited worlds, tens of trillions of evolving creatures who may have been tempted to give up the moral struggle and abandon the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Jesus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, inspired by the sight of God's laying down his incarnate life in devotion to the unselfish service of man.
188:5.6 The triumph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Jesus' attitude toward those who assailed him. He made the cross an eternal symbol of the triumph of love over hate and the victory of truth over evil when he prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." That devotion of love was contagious throughout a vast universe; the disciples caught it from their Master. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this service, said, as they stoned him to death, "Lay not this sin to their charge."
188:5.7 The cross makes a supreme appeal to the best in man because it discloses one who was willing to lay down his life in the service of his fellow men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be willing to lay down his life for his friends -- and Jesus had such a love that he was willing to lay down his life for his enemies, a love greater than any which had hitherto been known on earth.
188:5.8 On other worlds, as well as on Urantia, this sublime spectacle of the death of the human Jesus on the cross of Golgotha has stirred the emotions of mortals, while it has aroused the highest devotion of the angels.

188:5.9 The cross is that high symbol of sacred service, the devotion of one's life to the welfare and salvation of one's fellows. The cross is not the symbol of the sacrifice of the innocent Son of God in the place of guilty sinners and in order to appease the wrath of an offended God, but it does stand forever, on earth and throughout a vast universe, as a sacred symbol of the good bestowing themselves upon the evil and thereby saving them by this very devotion of love. The cross does stand as the token of the highest form of unselfish service, the supreme devotion of the full bestowal of a righteous life in the service of wholehearted ministry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great symbol of the bestowal life of Jesus truly inspires all of us to want to go and do likewise.
188:5.10 When thinking men and women look upon Jesus as he offers up his life on the cross, they will hardly again permit themselves to complain at even the severest hardships of life, much less at petty harassments and their many purely fictitious grievances. His life was so glorious and his death so triumphant that we are all enticed to a willingness to share both. There is true drawing power in the whole bestowal of Michael, from the days of his youth to this overwhelming spectacle of his death on the cross.
188:5.11 Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a revelation of God, you do not look with the eyes of the primitive man nor with the viewpoint of the later barbarian, both of whom regarded God as a relentless Sovereign of stern justice and rigid law-enforcement. Rather, make sure that you see in the cross the final manifestation of the love and devotion of Jesus to his life mission of bestowal upon the mortal races of his vast universe. See in the death of the Son of Man the climax of the unfolding of the Father's divine love for his sons of the mortal spheres. The cross thus portrays the devotion of willing affection and the bestowal of voluntary salvation upon those who are willing to receive such gifts and devotion. There was nothing in the cross which the Father required -- only that which Jesus so willingly gave, and which he refused to avoid.

188:5.12 If man cannot otherwise appreciate Jesus and understand the meaning of his bestowal on earth, he can at least comprehend the fellowship of his mortal sufferings. No man can ever fear that the Creator does not know the nature or extent of his temporal afflictions.
188:5.13 We know that the death on the cross was not to effect man's reconciliation to God but to stimulate man's realization of the Father's eternal love and his Son's unending mercy, and to broadcast these universal truths to a whole universe.

[QED]

I don't see how a person giving up their life in total faith to God is not a sacrifice. It was only because God raised up Jesus is there a reason why Jesus continued to live. Jesus gave, and God gave it right back.

This is meant to be a colossal sacrifice though Harvey, one which has continued to resonate for two thousand years. Looking at it logically, this person called Jesus is reported to have had supernatural powers. Accounts of him healing the sick, walking on water and so on clearly set the stage for him being able to transcend the normal boundaries of physical law. So how can we empathise with this unfamiliar being? We can be very confident that another mortal like us would endure suffering and pay the ultimate price by dying, but can we have that same confidence for a person who, by all accounts, resembles some character in a PlayStation game who can gets up after "Game Over" and plays again?

I'm afraid it looks suspiciously to me as though the authors of a story have hoisted themselves by their own petard. They can't have it both ways by ascribing supernatural properties to their main character and then draw on the same sympathies that would be expected for regular mortals like us. Truly mortal "Joan of Ark" type martyrs have made a clear and unambiguous sacrifice in my opinion, but none have had the same impact as Jesus Christ. This is a great mystery to me and the only way I can solve it is to imagine that everyone knows deep down that Jesus was nothing more than a regular mortal and goes along with the rest of the story without questioning it. No matter how I look at it there's something very fishy (!) going on in all this.

[harvey1]

Are you one of those non-trinitarians? According to orthodox Christian theology, Jesus is God. Jesus (God) gave his life and God (Jesus) gave it right back? Didn't Jesus prophesy his own resurrection? How could his sacrifice be a greater one than one who sacrifices without such a divine assurance?

I'm not a fundamentalist McCulloch. I don't read the Gospels as a news account. My understanding of Jesus is as a person who came to see that he was the Messiah, and that it was God's will that he sacrifice his life, and was willing to do so for a much greater purpose. It was a great act of faith, something that we celebrate this day because he has Risen.