IF Jesus death is atonement...

[Elijah John]

IF Jesus death appeases the Father and makes it possible for him to forgive, (a position that I reject because I do not believe the Father needs blood in order to forgive) then who is Jesus sacrifice applied to?

Isn't there a verse from Paul that goes something like this: "Jesus died for all ESPECIALLY (my emphasis) for those who believe."

Paul's statement seems to leave room for the possibility that non-Christians can be saved too.

Agree or disagree and why?

[charlo921]

[Replying to post 1 by Elijah John]

anyone willing can be saved.its whomsoever is willing .Christ's death did many things .He was the perfect Passover.He defeated death which is to say the devil..He gave us Power and foreKnowledge of future events.

[Goat]

[Replying to post 1 by Elijah John]

anyone willing can be saved.its whomsoever is willing .Christ's death did many things .He was the perfect Passover.He defeated death which is to say the devil..He gave us Power and foreKnowledge of future events.

Please provide evidence showing that you have Power and foreknowledge of future events. Show he actually 'defeated death. Please show that the devil exists.. and that he was the 'Perfect passover'

[JoeyKnothead]

From the OP:

If Jesus' death is atonement... who is it for?

Sister Bertha Better'n You, so she can look down her nose at ya when you do something she doesn't want ya to, and feel like she did her a good thing for having done it.

Paul's statement seems to leave room for the possibility that non-Christians can be saved too.

By that, I sure hope he meant being saved from the Christians who'd impose draconian, ancient, outmoded thinking on us all.

[Elijah John]

From the OP:

If Jesus' death is atonement... who is it for?

Sister Bertha Better'n You, so she can look down her nose at ya when you do something she doesn't want ya to, and feel like she did her a good thing for having done it.

Paul's statement seems to leave room for the possibility that non-Christians can be saved too.

By that, I sure hope he meant being saved from the Christians who'd impose draconian, ancient, outmoded thinking on us all.

It's one thing for someone to believe in exclusivist, mythic dogma, but quite another to condemn others to everlasting torture for merely NOT believing in the same exclusivist mythic dogma. That kind of thinking goes from merely delusional to borderline dangerously delusional, imo.

But also, when Jesus said from the cross, "Father forgive them for they no not what they do" that seems to be more evidence which contradict Fundamentalist/Evangelical claims that assert only Jesus atonement believers will get to Heaven. Jesus seems to appeal for forgiveness for the ignorant as well, and seems far more inclusivise than some of his present day followers.

[ttruscott]

...

It's one thing for someone to believe in exclusivist, mythic dogma, but quite another to condemn others to everlasting torture for merely NOT believing in the same exclusivist mythic dogma. That kind of thinking goes from merely delusional to borderline dangerously delusional, imo.

...

Borderline dangerous maybe, but the charge is moot because it never happened. You base your understanding of the charge against the devil by how evil people are talked about here on earth but earth is a special environment nothing like sheol before the fall where we had true innocence and free will, whereas here we have neither.

When, while innocent and by his own free will, Satan rejected YHWH as his GOD and rejected HIS promises of election by salvation from all his future sins, the ensuing enslaving addiction to evil radically changed him from being able to fulfill GOD's purpose for his creation, the heavenly experience, and self created himself as an eternal enemy of GOD because he had eternally rejected the only source of salvation from that sin.

So while this was all caused by his non-acceptance of the proper belief, it was not the cause of his judgement which was rather based upon the natural consequences that he became eternally evil, unfit for polite society and needing to be banished. What I'm trying to say is that it was the natural consequence of rejecting YHWH by faith that GOD warned us would end in disaster, not the CONTENT of what they chose to believe instead of HIM.

The "NOT believing in the same exclusivist mythic dogma" implies that all belief has the same natural consequences but we know by experience that some beliefs are dangerous and others benign or even rewarding by their natural consequence. [Just think about getting stoned and believing you can fly...against everyone shouting at you not to jump!]

HE did not demand belief but warned that rejecting faith in HIM would change their nature, their personal character, for eternity and they would then be subject to banishment from HIS created reality to save HIS Family from their depredations which would be endlessly eternal without the banishment.

A righteous judge must sentence criminals to the proper punishment, no matter how they feel about it. The intent of banishment was to keep these criminals away from HIS holy society since they never would repent. Though this banishment would be to a place they would experience as torment, HIS intention was not their torture (pain to achieve an end or for no reason at all) but the safety of HIS Family. How they feel about that is immaterial, since they became eternally psychopathic criminals on the level of what we think of as demonic devils by their free will knowing that if they were making a mistake, exactly what the consequences would be...but hating the idea of a GOD above them convinced them to take the chance, alas.

Peace, Ted

[1213]

IF Jesus death appeases the Father and makes it possible for him to forgive, (a position that I reject because I do not believe the Father needs blood in order to forgive) then who is Jesus sacrifice applied to?

I think Jesus was sacrifice for all, because he used his life for all people so that they could find God and become righteous.

[Elijah John]

...

It's one thing for someone to believe in exclusivist, mythic dogma, but quite another to condemn others to everlasting torture for merely NOT believing in the same exclusivist mythic dogma. That kind of thinking goes from merely delusional to borderline dangerously delusional, imo.

...

Borderline dangerous maybe, but the charge is moot because it never happened. You base your understanding of the charge against the devil by how evil people are talked about here on earth but earth is a special environment nothing like sheol before the fall where we had true innocence and free will, whereas here we have neither.

When, while innocent and by his own free will, Satan rejected YHWH as his GOD and rejected HIS promises of election by salvation from all his future sins, the ensuing enslaving addiction to evil radically changed him from being able to fulfill GOD's purpose for his creation, the heavenly experience, and self created himself as an eternal enemy of GOD because he had eternally rejected the only source of salvation from that sin.

So while this was all caused by his non-acceptance of the proper belief, it was not the cause of his judgement which was rather based upon the natural consequences that he became eternally evil, unfit for polite society and needing to be banished. What I'm trying to say is that it was the natural consequence of rejecting YHWH by faith that GOD warned us would end in disaster, not the CONTENT of what they chose to believe instead of HIM.

The "NOT believing in the same exclusivist mythic dogma" implies that all belief has the same natural consequences but we know by experience that some beliefs are dangerous and others benign or even rewarding by their natural consequence. [Just think about getting stoned and believing you can fly...against everyone shouting at you not to jump!]

HE did not demand belief but warned that rejecting faith in HIM would change their nature, their personal character, for eternity and they would then be subject to banishment from HIS created reality to save HIS Family from their depredations which would be endlessly eternal without the banishment.

A righteous judge must sentence criminals to the proper punishment, no matter how they feel about it. The intent of banishment was to keep these criminals away from HIS holy society since they never would repent. Though this banishment would be to a place they would experience as torment, HIS intention was not their torture (pain to achieve an end or for no reason at all) but the safety of HIS Family. How they feel about that is immaterial, since they became eternally psychopathic criminals on the level of what we think of as demonic devils by their free will knowing that if they were making a mistake, exactly what the consequences would be...but hating the idea of a GOD above them convinced them to take the chance, alas.

Peace, Ted

Oh, but dangerously delusional Bible-literalist thinking that led to dangerous actions DID happen. In the inquisition, the witch burnings and hangings were all motivated at root by exclusivist delusional theology, ie the Catholicism and Anglicanism of the middle ages and the Puritanism of the 17th century to name just a few examples.

But your right, Fundamentalist Christianity of the present day has not (usually) led to the kind of violent actions that, say, Muslim Fundamentalism has all too often spawned.

But regarding the Devil talk, I was referring to PEOPLE who do not believe, not Satan. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals tend to believe that PEOPLE who do not believe in their Pauline blood-appeasement theology go to hell, everlasting torture merely for not believing. That seems to me to be cruel and unusual punishment, to say the least, not worthy of a Loving God, even One who is just.

And if one considers non-believers in Paul's theology lost, it is easy to dehumanize them, descriminate against them, commit acts of violence against them as some free lance folks (like the Klan ) have been known to do.

[Korah]

[Replying to post 8 by Elijah John]
As is his usual wont, Ted (ttruscott) expresses it very badly, but he is presenting the underpinning of the Classic Theory of Atonement (the one I personally accept, along with a nod toward Peter Abelard's Moral Theory of the Atonement) that was uniformly accepted by all Christians for the first thousand years. (Also known as Christus Victor as taught in the 20th Century by the Swedish Bishop Gustav Aulen.)

The idea is that somehow God got saddled with Lucifer (and his cohorts) as The Prince of This World, and was not entitled to displace him without "legal" cause. But when Satan inspired the chief priests to torture and kill the Son of God (=God the Son, as it turned out), he lost all his rights over humankind.

Not that things changed very much as the world views things. John 4:23-24, 6:32-65, 14:15-30, and 16:7-28, however, teach us that God's reign entered this world with Jesus's death and Resurrection in the form of worshiping God "in spirit and truth" and in the never-ending (somewhere in the world) observation of the Lord's Supper and the sacrifice in the Mass or Holy Communion.

[Elijah John]

IF Jesus death appeases the Father and makes it possible for him to forgive, (a position that I reject because I do not believe the Father needs blood in order to forgive) then who is Jesus sacrifice applied to?

I think Jesus was sacrifice for all, because he used his life for all people so that they could find God and become righteous.

If I believed in Pauline blood-atomement theology, this is the viewpoint that I would favor, one that I think even Paul endorsed (though not explicitly, and not consistently). But Paul did argue that all died from Adam's original sin, and that Jesus makes it possible for all to live because of his sacrifice.