Who collected the Ransom?

[Nick Hallandale]

The New Testament says that Jesus paid a ransom for many, for all.

Matthew 20:28 KJV
28Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.

1Timothy 2:6 KJV
6Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

So who collected the ransom?
Was it God?
Was it the Devil?
Was it Mankind?
Tell me who you think collected the ransom and why ?

[bernee51]

In order to create a dependence of us on himself (God), which I suspect was God's intent.

Why would god want us to have a dependence on himself? God is a 'perfect' entity is he not? If god has 'intent' that means he is lacking in something. How can a perfect entity be lacking in anything?

[redstang281]

In order to create a dependence of us on himself (God), which I suspect was God's intent.

Why would god want us to have a dependence on himself? God is a 'perfect' entity is he not? If god has 'intent' that means he is lacking in something. How can a perfect entity be lacking in anything?

Because he does not take complete control over man but relinquishes some of his power over us.

[redstang281]

According to the oldest traditions, Jesus became God's son at his baptism.
Becoming God's son (anointed) was not divinity any more then David the Priests or the Prophets.

A "son" (or daughter) of God is named such because they are a direct creation of God. As opposed to you or I who are born as an indirect creation of God, we are just sons or daughters of Adam. The only way for us to become a son or daughter is to be born again then at that point we are directly created by God. (That's why David was consider a son too).

For proof of this see the below verse. Jesus was compared to Adam because they were both direct creations of God. If Jesus was not born from the Holy Spirit through a virgin birth then he would not be "the last Adam".

1 Corinthians 15:45 - So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

The virgin birth is hardly credible and is a misreading of the Hebrew scripture translated into Greek.

I disagree. I feel that the controversy over this verse is silly. The hebrew word has just as much possibility, if not more, of meaning "virgin".

The Jews are more comfortable believing Isaiah doesn't support Christianity and apparently have managed to convince themselves that a prophecy of "young girl" having a baby is somehow striking.

In order to create a dependence of us on himself (God), which I suspect was God's intent.

Dependence? Wow, you sure have a low view of God's intent.
"I call you friends not servants"

That's not what I meant.

We depend on God for salvation, not ourselves.

God is judging Jesus as himself in human. When Jesus walked the earth he was God taking on human form. So for that period of time he was taking on both natures, God and man. So when God judges Jesus he does so in the same fashion he would judge a man. Like you said, there are attributes of mankind that are definitely less then perfect.

How can he have both natures and be perfect?

Because sin is passed through the father, sense Jesus was born by the virgin birth God was able to circumvent the sin curse.

Why is he judging Jesus or himself?

I'm sorry I don't understand the question?

But because Jesus is God, and he circumvented the curse of sin (by means of the virgin birth) he is able to be found righteous in God's eyes.

The curse of sin is a Pauline invention, which is really the curse of the law.

Because I believe the entire Bible is authored by God and only penned by men I don't accept such a notion. That kind of thought comes from naturalist who are trying to force the Bible into their world view box... but it doesn't fit.

The idea of original sin is not exclusive to the documents penned by Paul.

Job 15:14 - What is man, that he should be clean? And what is he born of a woman that he should be righteous?

1 Kings 8:46 - If they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin), and if You are angry with them, and have delivered them up before the enemy, and they have been led away captive to the land of the enemy, far or near,

Maybe he found righteousness in God's eyes as others have but that hardly justifies us. But the fall is really not a Hebrew concept.
The whole thing sound convoluted.

Really, you have never noticed that not a single person in this world has ever led a perfect life? I know of no person in my life who hasn't let me down at one point or another.

[Rob]

So God had a debt we owed because he charged us. We can't pay it so it is a bad debt. Then God kills himself(or his son) over his debt.

Some how it doesn't make sense. It seem that they took a metaphor and made it a doctrine.

The affectionate heavenly Father, whose spirit indwells his children on earth, is not a divided personality--one of justice and one of mercy--neither does it require a mediator to secure the Father's favor or forgiveness. Divine righteousness is not dominated by strict retributive justice; God as a father transcends God as a judge. (41.4)

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. (2017.6)

I understand how the atonement doctrine may have made sense to 1st century Jewish person, but to teach or hold such nonsense today is silly and childish. It is the atonement doctrine which in my view is not only an insult to God, but a primitive and unworthy doctrine for any deep thinking person to hold today. It is unrepresentative of a loving, fair, and just God that in any sense of the word is worthy of being called a loving Father.

The belief that God required the shedding of innocent blood before the guilty could be forgiven. We all know the story, right? Adam and Eve created perfectly in the garden (no evolution if interpreted literally), Eve tempts Adam with the forbidden fruit, which Adam eats and God kicks them out the garden, relegates them to mortal status, and the curse that all their children are born in sin for the sins of their parents (“original sin”); in other words, the theological belief that the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross is that he died for our sins. I find absolutely nothing loving, fair, just, righteous, or true in such a childish scheme of substituting an innocent person to be punished in substitution for the unjustly condemned innocent children that are being punished for the so-called “original sin” of their parents. That is about as brutal and unfair as turning around and slapping my older daughter for the misbehavior of her younger sister, and then turning to her and then saying, “Now I can forgive you.”

As I said, “I understand how this may have made sense to 1st century Jewish person immersed in the ritualistic sacrificial purity system, but to teach or hold such nonsense today is silly and childish. The sacrificial system was part of the historical beliefs that existed at that time. In Jesus’ time, it was really believed there was no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood, and entire economies revolved around supplying the temple animals for worshipers to present to the priests for sacrificial ceremonies. But I don’t honestly believe that any enlightened Jew or Christian still literally believes in the Old Testament that there can be no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood, either some innocent dove or lambs, or the so-called final and last sacrifice, the celestial sacrifice to end all sacrifice, Jesus himself.

Fundamentalist Christians may use dogmatic beliefs, such as the atonement doctrine, to establish in-groups and out-groups, who is judged to be a Christian and who is judged not to be a Christian; they are quick to condemn others for being gay, believing in evolution, or not believing in the atonement doctrine, but fail to realize that the atonement doctrine has a history, and many enlightened educated Christians no longer literally believe this doctrine either, and so are by the bigoted and judgmental standards of blind dogma are not Christians either. Ironically, that would mean many protestant mainline Christians are not really Christians.

But, of course, that is not really true. Many Christians in liberal churches have a variety of beliefs, and don’t make beliefs the litmus test of faith. Take the following observations of the Christian theologian Mark Heim:

Why is the death of Christ significant? Some of the church is sure it knows the answer, while much of the rest of the church is deeply uncomfortable with the question. The publicized comment by a feminist theologian at the "Re-imagining" conference a few years ago is only one example of the discomfort: "I don’t think we need a theory of atonement at all. I don’t think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff…"

That statement sparked a lot of reflex outrage, which seemed to confirm that a very sore point had been touched -- as if to say, "This is a painful topic, and we don’t appreciate your bringing it up." Much of the positive response to the "re-imagining" statement bore the mark of relief and recognition: "So I’m not the only one who never got it or bought it."

This topic, and such typical responses to the atonement doctrine, is hardly new in the field of comparative religion, in inter-faith studies, and is increasingly being openly reinterpreted by Christian theologians. Mainline liberal Christianity has long ago made its peace with evolution; similarly so with the atonement doctrine, the literal interpretation of which has long since quietly been abandoned. There real meaning of Jesus' death on the cross is one of love and forgiveness, not some so-called sacrifice for fictitious “original sin.” Rather, the real value and meaning is in his life and teachings, the fact that the way he met his death was a living example of his teachings. He taught us to love our enemies, to forgive those who persecute us, and he did just that when he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” as the Roman soldiers nailed him to the cross. Even while he was suffering, he took the time to turn to the thief and offer him salvation. So, even in his crucifixion he revealed the love of God.

[S]ilence, or discreet mumbling, on this subject is far from unusual. This is nowhere so notable as in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In many Protestant congregations this event has become a solemn ritual affirmation of the spiritual equality of the participants, their mutual commitment to one another; and their shared hope for a future society with a just distribution of resources. Even the Roman Catholic Eucharist, once steeped in sacrificial emphasis, can now be encountered in forms that seem primarily celebrations of community, with a moment of silence, as it were, for the untimely demise of our late brother.

In many instances these changes in ritual practice reflect important efforts to recover a liturgical fullness which a narrow focus on sacrifice had distorted. So, for instance, the landmark ecumenical document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, developed by the World Council of Churches’ Faith and Order Commission, treats the meaning of the Lord’s Supper under five headings: thanksgiving, memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection, invocation of the Spirit, communion of the faithful, and feast of the future fulfillment of God’s reign. Each denomination can find elements in the list that have been absent or stunted in its own practice. But often such elements have been embraced not so much as a welcome broadening of a particular tradition as a welcome way of changing the subject.

Certainly Christian faith is as unimaginable without Jesus’ life (his actions and teaching) as without his death. No clear notion could be formed of Jesus’ death without a concrete life as the context and presupposition for it. From the early time that gospel became the primary Christian scriptural form, the seamless unity of the life and death was clear. Christians err when they give the impression that the only truly important thing about Jesus’ life is its end.

At the same time, modern attempts to construct a view of Jesus that omits any emphasis on the death -- focusing instead on a message or practice Jesus taught without reference to his own fate -- are implausible as history and often lack distinctive Christian character. (….)

That doctrine, substitutionary atonement, can be summarized this way: We are guilty of sin against God and our neighbors. The continuing sins themselves, the root desires that prompt them, and the guilt we bear for making such brutal response to God’s good gifts -- all these together separate us from God and are far beyond any human power to mend. Someday we might finally become truly righteous; our wills might finally be remade to trust God with delight; we might even reverse the mortality that followed from sin. Even if that happened, this perfected love, faith and hope would not change the past, nor would they make restitution of anything but what we owed God to begin with. The criminal who becomes a saint can never undo the terrible loss of his victims.

We can conceive a kind of crude recompense that adds something on the other side of the scales, as it were: the reformed offender can now sacrificially treat some people much better than simple justice would require, as before he treated some much worse. However; it is not possible to do this with God, since we owe everything to God to begin with. Thus a gap, a price, remains to be reckoned with. Christ stands in this gap, pays this price, bearing the punishment we deserve and he does not. In so doing, Christ offers something on our behalf that could never be expected or required, Christ offers the "over and above" gift that clears the slate and brings sinners into reconciled relation with God.

There are many reasons to be uncomfortable with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement and with atonement theology generally. First, few can be unaware that the cross has been the keystone of Christian anti-Semitism. The libel that charges Jews with Jesus’ death draws its virulent strength from the companion assumption that this death was somehow uniquely horrible and uniquely important.

Second, the language of sacrifice to many people is either empty because it is unintelligible, or offensive because it is morally primitive. The first time I visited the Kali temple in Calcutta, I literally stepped in pools of blood from a sacrificed goat. I was shocked, but I saw the irony in that shock. I have attended worship services all my life that talked and sang regularly about blood. I had never walked away with any on my shoes before.

Most people are no more likely to regard Christ as a sin-offering who removes our guilt than they are to consider sacrificing oxen on an altar in the neighborhood playground as a way to keep their children safe. We can hardly imagine God planning the suffering and death of one innocent as the condition of releasing guilty others. And it would be worse if we could do so, for a God about whom this is the truth is a God we could hardly love and worship. A good part of atonement theory today for Christians consists in conjuring up some idea of sacrifice that we can half-believe in long enough to attribute meaning to Christ’s death. Once it has served that transitory purpose, we drop it as swiftly as possible as, at best, a metaphor.

Third, transactional views of Jesus’ death depend upon categories that themselves pose problems. Legal or economic understandings of atonement frame human sin in terms of a debt that must be paid. Feudal terms present sin as an offense against God’s honor that must be satisfied. Such categories explain Jesus’ death, but in such a way as to pose further intractable questions. If the debt is actually paid, in what sense is God merciful? If it is God who in fact pays the debt humans owe, how is justice truly satisfied?

Fourth, an awareness of world religions and mythology has put Jesus’ death in an unavoidably comparative context. The Gospels attribute unique significance to the cross. Yet since the rise of modern anthropology we know that tales of dying and rising gods are commonplace. Christian nearsightedness comes from standing so close to just one cross in a forest of others. We are told that these dying and rising gods express symbolic truths about the cycles of nature, the quest for psychic wholeness, the healing of inner wounds. And we are often also told that non-Christian myths convey these truths much more elegantly and nonviolently, neither marred by the crude literalism and moralism of the Christian passion stories nor vexed by fixation on an actual historical event.

Fifth, there is what we might call an internal problem in the biblical understanding of the cross. Someone who wanders into a pew for the duration of Lent may rightly be perplexed by the New Testament’s somewhat schizoid outlook on a simple matter: Is the cross a good thing or not? Jesus sets his face to go to Jerusalem. Jesus teaches his disciples, to their horror or disbelief that he must die. Despite his own reluctance, he goes to his execution out of obedience to God -- "not my will but thy will be done" -- and does not lift a finger to oppose it. Yet the Gospels are equally emphatic that Jesus is innocent, that his arrest and killing are unjust, that those who dispatch him are quite indifferent to truth and treat Jesus as a pawn in larger political or social conflicts, that it is shameful for his friends to betray and abandon him. Jesus says, "The son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born" (Mark 14:21).

In short, Jesus’ death saves the world and it ought not to happen. God’s will is the same as that of evil men. Are Herod, Pilate and Judas criminals or saints? It is not only the stranger in the pew who may wonder, "Does the Bible have its story straight?"

Sixth, we readily suspect that emphasis on the cross fosters toxic psychological and social effects. In exalting Christ’s death, do we not glorify innocent suffering and encourage people to accept it passively "in imitation of Christ"? By making the cross God’s recipe for salvation, do we paint God as a violent and merciless despot? Does the church’s theology, which has the divine Father punish his innocent child to redeem the world, look uncomfortably like a charter for child abuse? Is the invitation to identify with Christ’s death and suffering a kind of therapeutic malpractice, fostering morbid fantasies? The cross has been carried at the head of crusades and pogroms, even as it was offered to the weak as a model of how they ought to accept their suffering. Perhaps now it should carry a label: this religious image may be harmful to your health.

All these criticisms have strong voice within the churches as well as outside them. It is little wonder that oldline Protestant congregations especially strike very uncertain notes on this subject. Responses have fallen into two main categories: those that defend a revised understanding of Jesus’ death as a redemptive sacrifice on our behalf and those that attempt to articulate the significance of the cross without recourse to sacrificial terms at all.

Many who would maintain the substitutionary understanding of Christ’s death do not deny that it has been and continues to be subject to abuse. The battered wife sent back to her husband with a pastor’s exhortation to bear her cross as Christ did is sadly no figment of imagination.

Yet it is also true that for a supposed charter for oppression and abuse, the theology of the cross has a peculiar history among the poor and the marginalized. The testimony of numberless such persons indicates that they do not see in the cross a mandate for passive suffering of evil. What they see, in the midst of a world that regards them as nobodies, is the most powerful affirmation of their individual worth. That Christ, that God, was willing to suffer and die specifically for them is a message of hope and self-respect that can hardly be measured, and that transforms their lives. That God has become one of the broken and despised ones of history is an unshakable reference point from which to resist the mental colonization that accepts God as belonging to the side of the oppressors.

The liveliness of substitutionary atonement theology in the storefronts and barrios may, as some contend, stem from "false consciousness." Or it may arise because they know what they are talking about, those powerless ones who find the Jesus crucified in their place a source of self-respect that the rulers of this world cannot take away.

Some protest that this affirmation comes at a cost: You cannot receive it unless you first abase yourself as a hopeless and helpless sinner in need of redemption. It is insult added to injury to ask those who are weakest to focus on their own shortcomings in this way. Of course, the oppressed are rarely unaware of their weakness, and if anything they have less means than the advantaged have of deceiving themselves about their need or their sins. They may be less offended that atonement theology presumes a human situation of bondage and moral need which they know all too well than grateful that the cross meets them precisely at this place, with the extraordinary insistence that nevertheless they are loved, worthy and precious.

Major efforts have been made to rework atonement theology to meet the various criticisms. Jürgen Moltmann is a key example. He has focused on the tendency of substitutionary ideas to set God, as the one who requires an expiatory death, over against Jesus, the one who suffers it. If orthodox Christian teaching is to be believed, Moltmann points out, this account cannot be right. Jesus is God. In fact, in the title of Moltmann’s important book, Jesus is the crucified God. Whatever the reason for the offering, it is made by God and what is offered is God’s own self.

Trinitarian theology, which attempts to explicate the Christian conviction that it is God who suffers and is punished, can only further the confusion at times-now it is the Father who insists on blood and the Son who sheds it. Moltmann’s work makes the striking argument that the sacrifice of the cross is not a punishment to appease God’s justice, but God’s act of identification with humanity and the source of a new hope for the human future. The sacrifice is not directed to God: it takes place within God. There is no difference in will between the Father and the Son; both act out of passion for human redemption. And there is no difference in suffering. Both suffer, only they do so in different dimensions of the same event, and in this way they enter into the depth of human loss most fully.

The incarnate Word suffers what it is to die. The Father suffers what it is like to lose the beloved to death. Everything that makes death more bitter to the one who dies -- brutality, injustice, arbitrariness -- heightens the terror and suffering of that death to the ones who remain. There is no impassive God who observes and accepts Jesus’ death. There is only the God who knows both the agony of losing one’s self at the cross and the agony of losing the beloved there. Let those who have seen the pain of two loving spouses, one dying and one living, judge which half of the broken heart is lighter.

For all the breadth of Moltmann’s work, many fault him for leaving the language and the machinery of substitutionary theory largely intact. He may wring from them the least toxic results possible; nevertheless, the complaint is made, the premises themselves will continually lend support to abusive notions of self-sacrifice and surrogate suffering. From this view, one must look to other ways to articulate the meaning of Jesus’ death.

And in fact there are a variety of images in the tradition. Some, like patristic ideas of Jesus’ death as a ransom to the devil or a clever trap for him, are largely museum pieces for most Christians. But others are much in evidence.

If there is a major alternative to the substitutionary theory in the churches, it appears as an eclectic mix of several elements. One of these elements is the so-called exemplarist view associated with medieval theologian Peter Abelard and many later Protestant liberals. In this understanding, Jesus’ death is heroic: it demonstrates perseverance in the right to the supreme limit of a human life. Jesus’ death demonstrates God’s love to us because it shows the extent to which God is willing to identify with our lot as suffering and mortal humans. It is a kind of shock therapy, appealing to the human conscience in the same way that Gandhi’s willingness to suffer sought to awaken his opponents shame and repentance. The tone is expressed in the line from Isaac Watts’s hymn, "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."

The exemplary view has a somewhat different flavor depending on whether the emphasis falls on Jesus as an example of human faithfulness toward God or on the incarnate God’s humble appeal to humanity. But in either case, the death is not a transaction but an inspiration.

Another alternative element is the "Christus Victor" view, prominent in writings from the early church and reemphasized in the 20th century by Gustaf Aulén. Here Jesus’ death is seen as a key part of God’s victory over the evil powers arrayed against the divine aim. This view is reflected in the Easter hymn which says, "The powers of death have done their worst, but Christ their legions hath dispersed." These powers are often now understood as economic, social and political in nature rather than demonic. Much more than virtuous endurance, Jesus death is a moment of active resistance to evil. His death is the nobly lost battle that is prelude to final victory in the war; when the resurrection comes and others take up the struggle for justice on Christ’s behalf.

This element has a strong affinity for liberation perspectives. Like the activist or guerrilla martyr, Christ’s death is an apparent defeat that is in fact the leading edge of a new society in which the powers behind this death will themselves be overthrown.

In both of the elements just mentioned, Jesus’ death acquires its significance by connection with other aspects of Jesus’ life that are regarded as fundamentally saving. It may be Jesus teaching that is most significant, and so the death is the seal of the integrity of that teaching. Or it may be the social project or the struggle against the powers that is the real work of Christ, and so the death draws its meaning as the last measure of devotion to that struggle.

A third approach views the incarnation as a whole as the saving work. It is God’s transit of the fullness of human life -- from conception and birth to friendship and struggle to suffering and death -- that transforms humanity. The incarnate Word breaks a path through human nature, one might say, and thus changes the journey for all others who travel the human road. On this view, Bethlehem is as much the saving event as Calvary Jesus’ death has a special character because here the path has been made through the deepest baffler. It is God’s presence in the human condition that saves. Death is notable only as the most unlikely aspect of that condition for God to share, the extreme instance of the general rule of the incarnation.

These three elements each have roots in the Bible and in tradition, and they can be freely combined in various proportions. Such a mixture is often recommended for its explicit nonsubstitutionary character. However, it is also true that all these elements can be readily incorporated by advocates of substitutionary atonement. In other words, these elements have no internal logic that makes them a strict alternative to transactional views. If we affirm them instead of transactional views, it must be because we insist we want only these ideas and no others, not because they themselves exclude such an addition.

The main appeal of "atonement lite" derives from the problematic ideas that have been subtracted. This subtraction does in large measure mute the critiques aimed at transactional views of sacrifice. The drawback to this approach is that it leaves large amounts of scripture and tradition at the heart of Christian faith unappropriated. The language of sacrifice, reconciliation and redemption is avoided or discounted, even while it remains inextricably lodged in Bible, liturgy, sacrament and hymnody.

This approach tends, then, to set up transactional views as "atonement plus," and to lend weight to their claims to be more biblical and more authentically Christian, since they deny nothing in the other approaches but include positive readings of the central sacrificial texts and images of the tradition.

If there is to be a compelling theology of the cross, one that is a true alternative to views of Christ’s death as a sacrificial punishment administered by God, it must be one that does not abandon these texts and this language, but offers a different vision of their meaning. We shall consider such an approach next week.

-- Heim, Mark S. Why Does Jesus’ Death Matter? [Web Page]. Accessed 2004.

The simple truth is that the early gospels were written in light of Paul's theological ideas and therefore, reflect later ideas about the meaning of Jesus' life, and his incarnation and death, in terms of a sacrificial atonement, a teaching that originated with Paul, and not Jesus himself.

Another Christian and Philosopher of Religion, John Hick, says the following:

[T]he later Christian notion that Jesus, in his death, was our substitute in bearing God's just punishment, or otherwise appeasing the divine wrath or satisfying the divine justice, and so enabling a righteous Creator to forgive his sinful creatures is--it seems to me--far removed from the spirit and teachings of Jesus himself. His own understanding of the divine forgiveness is expressed in, for example, the parable of the prodigal son. The earthly father clearly represents the heavenly Father. When his erring son repents and returns home, the father does not say, 'Because I am a just father I cannot forgive you until I have first killed my other son to atone to me for your sins.' He calls for the best robe and has a great feast prepared, 'for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found' (Luke 15:24). Again, in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to speak to God directly, as their heavenly Father, and to ask for forgiveness. There is here no mediator, no atoning sacrifice; only the profound and far-reaching requirement that we forgive one another.

-- Hick, John. Disputed Questions. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1993; c1993 p. 41.

Given a juridical conception of atonement, Jesus had to be God, as St. Anselm demonstrated in his Cur Deus Homo? For only a sacrifice of divine, and therefore infinite, value could give adequate satisfaction for the wrong done by human sin to the creator and lord of the universe; or could meet the inexorable requirements of divine justice, thereby enabling God to regard sinful men and women as just and as fit to be received into the kingdom....

Here we find, in the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer and in such parables as that of the prodigal son, the assumption of a direct relationship to God in which all who are truly penitent can ask for and receive forgiveness and new life. The father in the parable did not require a blood sacrifice to appease his sense of justice: as soon as he saw his son returning he 'had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him ... [and said] "For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found"' (Luke 15:20, 24). And the only condition for God's forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer is that we also forgive one another.

This is far removed from the idea that God can forgive sinners only because Jesus has borne our just punishment by his death on the cross, or has somehow by that death satisfied the divine justice. A forgiveness that has to be bought by full payment of the moral debt is not in fact forgiveness at all. But Jesus did speak of the authentic miracle of forgiveness, a miracle not captured in the standard atonement theories.

-- Hick, John. Disputed Questions. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1993; c1993 p. 95; 98.

Not only is the atonement doctrine an insult to God, it is not a teaching of Jesus', and it is not even Jewish, and Jesus was born, raised, and deeply Jewish! Jesus taught only the best of the Jewish scripture -- Torah. The atonement doctrine is the work of Paul, in a well-meant but wasted attempt to convince the Jewish people to accept these new teachings, which in the end backfired and burdened this new religion, Christianity, with the absurd atonement doctrine for over 2000 years.

Question:
Dear Rabbi Singer,

Does the Jewish faith have a teaching comparable to that of “original sin” in the Christian tradition? By this I mean the teaching that all human beings are born with an innate tendency to disobey God. In my particular Christian tradition, water baptism is required for the removal of this sin. Would you please comment. Thanks for your assistance.

Answer:
The term “original sin” is unknown to the Jewish scriptures, and the church’s teachings on this doctrine are antithetical to the core principles of the Torah and its prophets. Moreover, your comment that your Christian denomination teaches that water baptism is essential for the removal of sin may rattle the sensitivities of more Christians than anything I am going to say. Nevertheless, you have raised a number of important issues that must be addressed. Before answering your question, however, it is important that our website visitors understand the Christian doctrine on original sin.

According to church teachings, the mortal sin committed by our first parents in the Garden of Eden had catastrophic consequences for the human race. Most importantly, Christendom holds that these devastating effects extend far beyond the curses of painful childbirth and laborious farming conditions outlined in the third chapter of Genesis.

This well-known church doctrine posits that when Adam and Eve rebelled against God and ate from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge, all of their descendants became infected with the stain of their transgression. Moreover, as a consequence of this first iniquity, man is hopelessly lost in a state of sin in which he has been held captive since this fall. As a result, he is powerless to follow the path of obedience and righteousness by his own free will. Rather, missionaries contend, because all are born with an innate and uncontrollable lust for sin, humanity can do nothing to merit its own salvation. In essence, man is totally depraved and true free will is far beyond his grasp. “Totally depraved” may seem to be a harsh way for a Christian doctrine to depict mankind’s dire condition, yet this is precisely the term used by the church to describe man’s desperate, sinful predicament. It is only through faith in Jesus, Christendom concludes, that hopeless man can be saved.

You stated in your question that the doctrine on original sin teaches that “all human beings are born with an innate tendency to disobey God.” While this statement is superficially correct, it fails to convey the far-reaching scope of this church doctrine. Although Christianity does teach that the entire human race is born with an evil inclination, this tenet encompasses a far more extreme position than the one that you briefly outlined. In fact, missionaries insist that as a result of the fall in the Garden of Eden, man’s unquenchable desire for sin is virtually ungovernable. In Christian terms, man is not inclined toward sin but more accurately is a slave to sin. As a result, the church concludes, short of converting to Christianity, humanity can do nothing to save itself from hell.

Bear in mind, there is good reason for the church’s uncompromising stand on this cherished doctrine. The founders of Christianity understood that if man can save himself from eternal damnation through his own initiative and obedience to God, the church would have very little to offer the human race. Moreover, if righteousness can be achieved through submission to the commandments outlined in the Torah, what possible benefit could Jesus’ death provide for mankind? Such self-probing thoughts, however, were unimaginable to those who shaped primitive Christianity.

Despite the zealous position missionaries take as they defend this creed, the Christian doctrine on original sin is profoundly hostile to the central teachings of the Jewish scriptures. Over and over again the Torah loudly dismisses the notion that man has lost his divinely endowed capacity to freely choose good over evil, life over death. This is not a hidden or ambiguous message in the Jewish scriptures. On the contrary, it is proclaimed in virtually every teaching that Moses directs to the children of Israel.

In fact, in an extraordinary sermon delivered by Moses in the last days of his life, the prophet stands before the entire nation and condemns the notion that man’s condition is utterly hopeless. Throughout this uplifting exhortation, Moses declares that it is man alone who can and must merit his own salvation. Moreover, as he unhesitatingly speaks in the name of God, the lawgiver thoroughly rejects the notion that obedience to the Almighty is “too difficult or far off” and declares to the children of Israel that righteousness has been placed within their reach.

Deuteronomy 30 isn’t a quiet chapter and its verses read as though the Torah is bracing the Jewish people for the Christian doctrines that would confront them many centuries later. As the last Book of the Pentateuch draws to a close, Moses admonishes his young nation not to question their capacity to remain faithful to the mitzvoth of the Torah. Deuteronomy 30:10-14 states:

. . . if you will hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law; if you turn unto the Lord thy God with all your heart and with all your soul; for this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you neither is it too far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, and make us hear it, that we may do it?” Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say: “Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it that we may do it?” The word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

The Jewish people have drawn great comfort and encouragement from this uplifting promise. For the church, however, Moses’ strong message created a theological disaster. How could the authors of the New Testament reasonably insist that man’s dire condition was hopeless if the Torah unambiguously declared that man possessed an extraordinary ability to remain faithful to God? How could the church fathers possibly contend that the mitzvoth in the Torah couldn’t save the Jewish people when the Creator proclaimed otherwise? How could missionaries conceivably maintain that the commandments of the Torah are too difficult when the Torah declares that they are “not far off,” “not too hard,” and “you may do it”?

This staggering problem did not escape the keen attention of Paul. Bear in mind, the author of Romans and Galatians constructed his most consequential doctrines on the premise that man is utterly depraved and incapable of saving himself through his own obedience to God. In chapter after chapter he directs his largely gentile audiences toward the cross and away from Sinai as he repeatedly insists that man is lost without Jesus.

Yet how could Paul harmonize this wayward theology with the Jewish scriptures in which his teachings were not only unknown, but thoroughly condemned? Even with the nimble skills that Paul possessed, welding together the church’s young doctrine on original sin with diametrically opposed teachings of the Jewish scriptures would not be a simple task.

Employing unparalleled literary manipulation, however, Paul manages to conceal this vexing theological problem with a swipe of his well-worn eraser. In fact, Paul’s innovative approach to biblical tampering was so remarkable that it would set the standard of scriptural revisionism for future New Testament authors.

A classic example of this biblical revisionism can be found in Romans 10:8 where Paul announces to his readers that he is quoting directly from scripture as he records the words of Deuteronomy 30:14. Yet as he approaches the last portion of this verse, he carefully stops short of the Torah’s vital conclusion and expunges the remaining segment of this crucial verse. In Romans 10:8 Paul writes,

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach).

Predictably, the last words of Deuteronomy 30:14, “that you may do it,” were meticulously deleted by Paul. Bear in mind that he had good reason for removing this clause -- the powerful message contained in these closing words rendered all that Paul was preaching as heresy.

This stunning misquote in Romans stands out as a remarkable illustration of Paul’s ability to shape scriptures in order to create the illusion that his theological message conformed to the principles of the Torah. By removing the final segment of this verse, Paul succeeded in convincing his largely gentile readers that his Christian teachings were supported by the principles of the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy 30:14:
Romans 10:8 )

But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach).

The question that immediately comes to mind is: How can Paul deliberately remove a vital clause from Moses’ message and still expect to gain a following among the Jewish people? While considering this question, we can begin to understand why Paul attained great success among his gentile audiences and utterly failed among the Jews who were unimpressed with his contrived message.

It is for this reason that although both Paul and Matthew quoted extensively from the Jewish scriptures, they achieved a very different result. Paul was largely a minister to gentile audiences who were ignorant of the Jewish Bible (the only Bible in existence at the time). As a result, they did not possess the skills necessary to discern between genuine Judaism and Bible tampering. These illiterate masses were, as a result, vulnerable, and eagerly consumed everything that Paul taught them. In fact, throughout the New Testament it was exclusively the Jewish apostates to Christianity who challenged Paul’s authority, never the gentile community.

Matthew, on the other hand, directed all of his evangelism and Bible quotes to Jewish audiences. Jewish people, however, were keenly aware of Matthew’s manipulation of their Bible. As a result, the first Gospel failed to effectively reach its intended Jewish readers. It required little more than a perfunctory reading of the first few chapters in the Book of Matthew for Jewish people to determine that there was no prophecy in Isaiah that foretold that a virgin would give birth to a messiah. Likewise, the Jewish people were doubly unimpressed with Matthew’s claim that the messiah was to be a resident of Nazareth, when no such prophecy existed. The people of Israel concluded that Matthew had engaged in a willful and unrestrained corruption of their sacred scriptures. Consequently, the author of the first Gospel failed in his effort to convert his targeted Jewish audiences to Christianity.
Ironically, there was no individual in history who was more responsible for the strong resistance of the Jewish people to the Christian message than Matthew. In contrast, the person most responsible for the church’s unparalleled success among the gentiles was unquestionably the apostle Paul. Not surprisingly, throughout the biblical narrative, gentiles had always had a terrible time discerning chaff from wheat, truth from heresy; and the Jews were repeatedly warned never to emulate them. Tragically, some of our people missed this crucial message.

Paul, however, should have been tipped off that his teachings on original sin were misguided and that his broad-brushed characterization of humanity was erroneous. In fact, the Jewish scriptures repeatedly praised numerous men of God for their unwavering righteousness. For example, the Bible declared that men like Calev1 and King Josiah2 were faithful throughout their extraordinary lives. Moreover, because of their devotion to their Creator, Abraham and Daniel were the objects of the Almighty’s warm affection as He tenderly referred to Abraham as “My friend,”3 and Daniel, “beloved.”4 These extraordinary people did not merit these remarkable superlatives because they believed in Jesus or depended on a blood atonement; but rather, it was their devotion to God and unyielding obedience to His Torah that shaped their lives.

Job’s unique loyalty to God stands as a permanent enigma to Christian theology as well. Here was a man who was severely tested by Satan and endured unimaginable personal tragedies, yet despite these afflictions, Job remains the model of the righteous servant of God. While in Christian theology Job’s personal spiritual triumph is a theological impossibility, in Jewish terms it stands out as the embodiment of God’s salvation program for mankind. Job didn’t rely on Jesus to save him and he certainly did not turn to the cross for his redemption; rather, it was his unswerving obedience to God that made his life a lesson for all of humanity.

Paul’s unfounded doctrine on original sin sullies the exemplary legacies of these and many other great men of God. Moreover, Christians must ponder whether it is an insult to the Creator to label all of God’s human creation depraved.
Quite unwittingly, Luke committed a striking theological blunder that severely undermined Paul’s teachings on original sin. In the first chapter of Luke, the evangelist seeks to portray Elizabeth, who is the cousin of Mary, and her husband Zechariah as the virtuous parents of John the Baptist. Yet in his zeal to characterize the baptizer’s mother and father as saints, Luke unwittingly writes, “Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.�h (Luke 1:6)

The question that immediately comes to mind is how can missionaries possibly harmonize Paul’s insistence that all humanity is depraved when Luke insists that Elizabeth and Zechariah were to be regarded as “blameless”? This is a stunning gaffe for Luke to make when it was he who eagerly promoted Paul in his Book of Acts. Doesn’t Luke’s assertion that this couple observed “all the Lord’s commandments” fly in the face of Paul’s central teaching that no one is capable of keeping the mitzvoth of the Torah? Is it not a fact that Christianity teaches that this task is impossible?

Paul never lived to read the Book of Luke, yet throughout his epistles Paul sidesteps any statement in the Jewish scriptures that could undermine his teaching on original sin. For example, immediately after the sin of Adam and Eve is narrated, the Torah declares that man can master his passionate lust for sin. In Genesis 4:6-7, God turns to Cain and warns him,

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? If, though, you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you shall master over it.

For Christian architects like Paul, Augustine, and Calvin, this declaration of man’s capacity to restrain and govern his lust for sin is nothing short of heresy. Moreover, the fact that the Torah places these assuring words immediately following the sin in the Garden of Eden5 is profoundly troubling for the church. How can depraved humanity control its iniquity when the Book of Romans repeatedly insists that man can do nothing to release himself from sin’s powerful grip? Yet notice that there is nothing in the Eden narrative that could be construed as support for Paul’s teaching on humanity’s dire condition. On the contrary, in just these two inspiring verses, the Torah dispels forever the church’s teachings on original sin.

There is one final point that must be addressed regarding a passing statement you made in your question. I was somewhat puzzled by your comment that your brand of Christianity teaches that “water baptism is required for the removal of this sin.” It is not uncommon for Christians to relate some personal tidbit about their religious beliefs somewhere in the course of their question. What was so surprising about your comment, however, is that your church has simply replaced one commandment with another. On the one hand, your church teaches that the commandments explicitly ordained by the Torah are to be abandoned by believing Christians. Yet in the very same breath, your church then introduces this brand new commandment declaring that its parishioners must undergo a water baptism to be saved. It would seem more logical that if you were going to contemplate observing commandments, you might as well devote your loyalty to those mitzvoth ordained by God rather than those introduced by your pastor and deacons.

The notion that man is saved by being washed in water or forgiven through human blood is unknown to the Jewish scriptures. The Almighty does, however, clearly lay out His sovereign plan for His covenant people when he declares, “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.” (Deuteronomy 30:15) What is this “life” and “good” of which the Torah speaks? Missionaries insist that the Jewish nation must convert to Christianity and believe in a crucified messiah in order to be saved. The Torah, however, disagrees. Throughout the Hebrew Bible the Almighty unambiguously declares that the children of Israel are to draw near to Him with intense love and faithfully keep His commandments. This is the desire of the Creator. Moses beseeches the children of Israel,

I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees, and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. (Deuteronomy 30:16)

Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, remained intensely loyal to God’s commandments and, as a result, the Torah regards our first patriarch as the paradigm of faithfulness.

I will make your descendants multiply as the stars of heaven; I will give to your descendants all these lands, and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because Abraham obeyed My voice and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws. (Genesis 26:4-5)

The Almighty did not give us desires that we cannot govern or commandments that we could not keep. The Torah was not delivered to angels, it was given to the children of Israel long after our first ancestors transgressed in the Garden of Eden.

In Jewish terms, sin is not a person, it’s an event, and that event happened yesterday. In chapter after chapter, the prophets of Israel beseech those who lost their way to turn back to the Merciful One because today is a new day.

Best wishes for a happy Purim.

Very sincerely yours,
Rabbi Tovia Singer

Footnotes:

1 Numbers 14:24.
2 II Kings 22:2.
3 Isaiah 41:8.
4 Daniel 9:23; 10:11; 10:19.
5 The sin in the Garden of Eden is found in chapter three of Genesis.

-- Singer, Rabbi. Outreach Judaism - Q&A: Does Judaism Believe in Original Sin? What Does the Bible Really Say? [Web Page]. Accessed 2004. Available at: http://www.outreachjudaism.org/original.htm.

[Easyrider]

Rob,

Your previous dissertation on trying to establish revisionist liberal theology as the more correct or accurate version of Christianity is hardly mainstream - though it is in vogue with liberal left fringe groups such as the Jesus Seminar, many pro-gay churches, the discredited Bishop Spong, and others. Liberal churches are not doing well according to the following:

The most recent “Religious Congregations and Membership” study, published in 2000 (the study is conducted each decade) by the Glenmary Research Center, tells the statistical story. Progressive churches are progressing, it seems, ever closer to oblivion. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (11,106 churches) has experienced a decline of 11.6 percent over the previous ten years; the United Methodist Church (35,721 churches) was down 6.7 percent; and the Episcopal Church (7,314 churches) lost 5.3 percent of its membership. Also, the United Churches of Christ (5,863 churches) declined 14.8 percent while the American Baptist Churches USA were down 5.7 percent.

The denominations showing growth included the deeply conservative Southern Baptist Convention, a collection of 41,514 churches, whose overall growth rate was 5 percent. The traditionalist Presbyterian Church in America (as opposed the mainline Presbyterian Church U.S.A.) experienced an impressive 42.4 percent increase, while the Christian and Missionary Alliance rose 21.8 percent. Meanwhile, the Evangelical Free Church was up 57.2 percent, and Pentecostal denominations also boomed. The Assemblies of God, with 11,880 churches, saw 18.5 percent growth, while the Church of God, with 5,612 churches, saw growth of 40.2 percent.

What is behind this traditionalist rise and progressive decline? The New York Times, in its summary of the survey, noted, "Socially conservative churches that demand high commitment from their members grew faster than other religious denominations in the last decade…." Glenmary director Ken Sanchagrin told the paper he was “astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative. And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people's definition, the more they were losing."

God "Lite" is running the risk of becoming increasingly irrelevant.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/s ... 070747.asp

Regarding Rabbi Singer, Dr. Michael L. Brown has taken numerous Singer arguments to task and refuted them, both in person (head-to-head debate) and in Brown's scholarly work, "Answering Jewish Objections to Jesus" (Volumes 1-3, available at Amazon.com). Brown's 4th volume is due out later this year. Time does not permit my recapping all the fallacious arguments Singer has made regarding Jesus and the New Testament, but they are available in part on many websites.

Jesus is Lord!

[Rob]

Jesus is Lord!

Indeed, Jesus is our Creator and Lord, but most importantly, he is our loving Savior who has been one of us, and understands us:

MEANING OF THE DEATH ON THE CROSS

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 [Earth] has become known among other neighboring inhabited planets as the "World of the Cross." (2016.6)

Jesus desired to live a full mortal life in the flesh on [Earth]. 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. (2016.7)

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. (2016.8)

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. (2016.9)

The animal nature--the tendency toward evildoing--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. (2016.10)

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 [Earth], 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. (2017.1)

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. (2017.2)

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. (2017.3)

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. (2017.4)

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. (2017.5)

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. (2017.6)

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. (2017.7)

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." (2017.8)

LESSONS FROM THE CROSS

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. (2017.9)

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 [Earth]. 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. (2018.1)

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. (2018.2)

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. (2018.3)

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. (2018.4)

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." (2018.5)

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. (2018.6)

On other worlds, as well as on [Earth], 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. (2019.1)

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. (2019.2)

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. (2019.3)

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. (2019.4)

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. (2019.5)

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. (2019.6 )

My intent is to work with the firmer areas of scholarly consensus (rarely total consensus) and to try to form a picture of what was going on during the first decades of Christianity. How did the early disciples come to understand Jesus, and what can we learn from them in our own efforts to comprehend this Jesus and his uniqueness? (Knitter 1986: 173)

Jesus Was Theocentric

One of the few issues on which New Testament experts are in full agreement is that the focus and core content of Jesus' original message was the "kingdom of God." Jesus' main task was to announce this kingdom, a kingdom soon to come, yet already mysteriously present and at work (Luke 11:20; 17:21). The present moment was heavy with urgency and responsibility; persons must turn their lives around, convert, in order to be part of this kingdom. Jesus' mission and person, therefore, were profoundly kingdom-centered, which means God-centered. All his powers were to serve this God and this kingdom; all else took second place. "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done," was the content of his prayer and his work. (Knitter 1986: 173)

But if the original message of Jesus was theocentric, the pervasive message of the New Testament is undeniably christocentric. After his death and resurrection, the proclaimer became the proclaimed. The focus shifted. As we shall see, there is a logic, even a necessity, in this shift. In it, the original message of Jesus was transformed, not lost. [my italics] The christocentrism of the New Testament does not lose hold of Jesus' original theocentrism. Jesus never takes the place of God. Even in the three texts in which Jesus is proclaimed as God or as divine (John 1:1, 20:28; Heb. 1:8-9), an evident subordination is preserved. Even Paul, in urging his radical christocentrism, reminds his communities that "You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God." (1 Cor. 3:23). His final vision is "that God may be everything to everyone" (1 Cor. 15:28). The New Testament maintains a delicate, sometimes difficult, balance between chrisocentrism and theocentrism. (Knitter 1986: 173-174)

(....) Although Jesus did not really define himself for us, he did give us -- New Testament scholars agree -- some idea of how he saw his mission. He understood his role in bringing about this already-yet-still-to-come kingdom to be pivotal. (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Jesus understood himself as excercising a special, a unique, role in God's plan. .... [T]he total picture of what he said and did indicates that he most likely experienced himself as the eschatological prophet -- the final prophet (Deut. 18:15-19) who was anointed specially by God's Spirit, who was to complete the mission of the earlier prophets by announcing and enacting the good news of God's final rule.[9] (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Schillebeeckx makes an elaborate and convincing argument that Jesus' "original Abba-experience" provides the "source and secret of his being, message and manner of life." Jesus seemed to feel and to claim a special intimacy with God, a special sonship. This is perhaps as close as we can come to penetrating his self-consciousness.[10] His deep awareness of God as his Father was in line with Jewish tradition; it does not automatically imply exclusivity. It does, however, indicate specialness, uniqueness. This must be respected in all contemporary interpretations of Jesus.[11] (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Jesus remained profoundly theocentric. Whenever christology forgets this, it opens Christian consciousness to a "myopic christocentrism," to a "jesusology," to a reductionism that absorbs God into Jesus.[12] Christocentrism without theocentrism easily becomes an idolatry that violates not only Christian revelation but the revelation found in other faiths. (Knitter 1986: 174-175)

From Kingdom of God to Son of God

Why did the proclaimer become proclaimed? How did Jesus' original message about the kingdom of God come to be translated into the early communities' proclamation of Jesus as Messiah, Lord, Christ, Word, Savior, Son of God? An overview of how contemporary New Testament scholars are trying to answer those questions offers valuable help for our own efforts to understand the uniqueness of Jesus in contemporary interreligious dialogue. (Knitter 1986: 175)

From what both the scholars and common sense tell us, it is clear that all New Testament christology, all the titles and proclamations about Jesus, have their origin in the saving experience of Jesus by individuals and the community. We must be careful not to distinguish experience and interpretation too neatly, as if it were possible to have a naked experience without any interpretation. Still, when we try to grasp the constellation of New Testament interpretations of Jesus, we find that they originated in a big-bang experience that transformed persons' lives, an experience of what can be called salvation. In their encounter with this man, they met the power and the reality of God, a reality that enabled them to feel, understand, and act differently from before. They had hope now, for this life and the next. (Knitter 1986: 175)

Such a saving experience of Jesus was an experience of revelation. Jesus made something know to them, something that not only satisfied their minds but transformed their entire being. This experience of a saving power or revelation was the source and sustenance of all the interpretations of Jesus found in the New Testament: "It was the sense that they found what they were looking for in Jesus that started the whole christological ball rolling."[13] (Knitter 1986: 175)

-- Knitter, Paul F. No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. Second ed. New York: Orbis Books; 1986; c1985 pp. 173-175. (The American Society of Missiology Series.

PAUL'S LOVING BUT ANGRY GOD

It was much the same idea of a God whose justice requires retribution for sin that had already helped Paul make sense of Jesus' terrible end, crucifixion, the capital punishment administered by the Romans to the worst criminals:

... Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood.

In Paul's thinking, the God of infinite love, still echoed in the traditions going back to Jesus, was combined with the scriptural traditions of the just God obliged to avenge evil. The result was the concept of a loving God sending his Son to placate a God wrathful over sin:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will be saved through him from the wrath of God.

Apparently the only way Paul could make sense of Jesus' terrible death on the cross was to think of a loving but angry God needing in this way to avenge humanity's disobedience. This is why Paul could focus his message so pointedly:

We proclaim Christ crucified.

Paul's gospel was:

Christ died for our sins in accordance wth the scriptures.

(....)

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS

The completely new lifestyle Jesus developed for himself, and called upon others to practice as well, was not for his part meant as a means to appease an angry God in an effort to win favor. Quite the reverse. It was because God was already active on all sides in a fatherly way that one could practice that lifestyle, for it consisted in receiving from God through the actions of others and God giving to others through one's own action.

Thus Jesus' message was not a new law to which humans had to conform, not a morality laying out what they had to do to deserve God's favor. Rather, it was indeed gospel, good news, telling what God was doing for and through humans. Of course it was not Paul's gospel of "Christ crucified," but Jesus' own gospel of the kingdom of God: God reigning for and through people who listened to what Jesus had to say.

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; pp. 215-218.

It may well seem to you that the gospel of Jesus did not include all that is high and holy in the Christian gospel as we know it. All those magnificent, transcendent, Christian beliefs seem absent from the original gospel of Jesus -- his "gospel" may seem minimal by comparison with the gospel! Missing from his gospel are not only where he came from ("conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary"), but also what he came to do. Where, after all, is "the saving work of Christ": dying for out sins, rising on the third day, appearing to the apostles resurrected from the dead? These are, after all, the gospel about Jesus, which you, understandably enough, believe and cherish. But if you really are committed to Jesus, then you should be committed to the gospel of Jesus, which is what I have written this book to try to help you see and understand: the "good news" Jesus offered people during his public ministry. (Robinson 2005: 225)

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; p. 225.

I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom--the reality of the fatherhood of God and the truth of the sonship of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the saving gospel. Your message is not changed by my resurrection experience. Sonship with God, by faith, is still the saving truth of the gospel of the kingdom. You are to go forth preaching the love of God and the service of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this ennobling truth. (2052.4)

To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it. (2090.4)

Actually, the original revisionists were first Peter, and then Paul:

Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian. (2091.10)

[Easyrider]

To Rob:

PAPER 57 - THE ORIGIN OF URANTIA

http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper57.html

At the time of the beginning of this recital, the Primary Master Force Organizers of Paradise had long been in full control of the space-energies which were later organized as the Andronover nebula.

987,000,000,000 years ago associate force organizer and then acting inspector number 811,307 of the Orvonton series, traveling out from Uversa, reported to the Ancients of Days that space conditions were favorable for the initiation of materialization phenomena in a certain sector of the, then, easterly segment of Orvonton.

900,000,000,000 years ago the Uversa archives testify, there was recorded a permit issued by the Uversa Council of Equilibrium to the superuniverse government authorizing the dispatch of a force organizer and staff to the region

900,000,000,000 years ago the Uversa archives testify, there was recorded a permit issued by the Uversa Council of Equilibrium to the superuniverse government authorizing the dispatch of a force organizer and staff to the region previously designated by inspector number 811,307. The Orvonton authorities commissioned the original discoverer of this potential universe to execute the mandate of the Ancients of Days calling for the organization of a new material creation.

The recording of this permit signifies that the force organizer and staff had already departed from Uversa on the long journey to that easterly space sector where they were subsequently to engage in those protracted activities which would terminate in the emergence of a new physical creation in Orvonton.

875,000,000,000 years ago the enormous Andronover nebula number 876,926 was duly initiated. Only the presence of the force organizer and the liaison staff was required to inaugurate the energy whirl which eventually grew into this vast cyclone of space. Subsequent to the initiation of such nebular revolutions, the living force organizers simply withdraw at right angles to the plane of the revolutionary disk, and from that time forward, the inherent qualities of energy insure the progressive and orderly evolution of such a new physical system.

500,000,000,000 years ago the first Andronover sun was born. This blazing streak broke away from the mother gravity grasp and tore out into space on an independent adventure in the cosmos of creation. Its orbit was determined by its path of escape. Such young suns quickly become spherical and start out on their long and eventful careers as the stars of space. Excepting terminal nebular nucleuses, the vast majority of Orvonton suns have had an analogous birth. These escaping suns pass through varied periods of evolution and subsequent universe service.

It was scarcely a million years subsequent to this epoch that Michael of Nebadon, a Creator Son of Paradise, selected this disintegrating nebula as the site of his adventure in universe building. Almost immediately the architectural worlds of Salvington and the one hundred constellation headquarters groups of planets were begun. It required almost one million years to complete these clusters of specially created worlds. The local system headquarters planets were constructed over a period extending from that time to about five billion years ago.

300,000,000,000 years ago the Andronover solar circuits were well established, and the nebular system was passing through a transient period of relative physical stability. About this time the staff of Michael arrived on Salvington, and the Uversa government of Orvonton extended physical recognition to the local universe of Nebadon.

3,000,000,000 years ago the solar system was functioning much as it does today. Its members continued to grow in size as space meteors continued to pour in upon the planets and their satellites at a prodigious rate. About this time your solar system was placed on the physical registry of Nebadon and given its name, Monmatia.

900,000,000 years ago witnessed the arrival on Urantia of the first Satania scouting party sent out from Jerusem to examine the planet and make a report on its adaptation for a life-experiment station. This commission consisted of twenty-four members, embracing Life Carriers, Lanonandek Sons, Melchizedeks, seraphim, and other orders of celestial life having to do with the early days of planetary organization and administration.

600,000,000 years ago the commission of Life Carriers sent out from Jerusem arrived on Urantia and began the study of physical conditions preparatory to launching life on world number 606 of the Satania system.

550,000,000 years ago the Life Carrier corps returned to Urantia. In co-operation with spiritual powers and superphysical forces we organized and initiated the original life patterns of this world and planted them in the hospitable waters of the realm. All planetary life (aside from extraplanetary personalities) down to the days of Caligastia, the Planetary Prince, had its origin in our three original, identical, and simultaneous marine-life implantations. These three life implantations have been designated as: the central or Eurasian-African, the eastern or Australasian, and the western, embracing Greenland and the Americas.

We, the Life Carriers on Urantia, had passed through the long vigil of watchful waiting since the day we first planted the life plasm in the planetary waters, and naturally the appearance of the first really intelligent and volitional beings brought to us great joy and supreme satisfaction.

http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper62.html

These one hundred rematerialized members of the Prince's staff were chosen by Caligastia from over 785,000 ascendant citizens of Jerusem who volunteered for embarkation on the Urantia adventure. Each one of the chosen one hundred was from a different planet, and none of them were from Urantia.

http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper66.html

The tomb of Joseph was empty, not because the body of Jesus had been rehabilitated or resurrected, but because the celestial hosts had been granted their request to afford it a special and unique dissolution, a return of the "dust to dust," without the intervention of the delays of time and without the operation of the ordinary and visible processes of mortal decay and material corruption. The mortal remains of Jesus underwent the same natural process of elemental disintegration as characterizes all human bodies on earth except that, in point of time, this natural mode of dissolution was greatly accelerated, hastened to that point where it became well-nigh instantaneous.

http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper189.html

When the morontia Master had thus spoken, he vanished from their sight. This so-called ascension of Jesus was in no way different from his other disappearances from mortal vision during the forty days of his morontia career on Urantia. The Master went to Edentia by way of Jerusem, where the Most Highs, under the observation of the Paradise Son, released Jesus of Nazareth from the morontia state and, through the spirit channels of ascension, returned him to the status of Paradise sonship and supreme sovereignty on Salvington. It was about seven forty-five this morning when the morontia Jesus disappeared from the observation of his eleven apostles to begin the ascent to the right hand of his Father, there to receive formal confirmation of his completed sovereignty of the universe of Nebadon.

http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper193.html

Rob, this "Book of Urantia" is too far out for me. I doubt you will have much luck passing it off around here after reading about your ancient space cadets.

[Rob]

Rob, this "Book of Urantia" is too far out for me. I doubt you will have much luck passing it off around here after reading about your ancient space cadets.

Indeed Easyrider,

It is “far out,” and I will have to agree with you on that one But then, there are some pretty “far out” claims made in the Bible too, as well as the Bhagvad Gita, Qu’ran, or almost any other religious text. I guess in the end we all must evaluate the content of each statement, and I think the statements about the erroneous nature of the atonement doctrine, and the high moral and ethical viewpoint of the MEANING OF THE DEATH ON THE CROSS and LESSONS FROM THE CROSS are morally, ethically, and spiritually appealing for those who find such primitive religious beliefs as the atonement doctrine spiritually repulsive and an insult to the living God. And one does not need to believe the claims about the Urantia Book to evaluate its moral and philosophical arguments. Encouragingly for those who are unable to find any spiritual comfort in such primitive beliefs, the argument the Urantia Book presents regarding the atonement doctrine having taken origin with Paul and not Jesus are well established within both the Christian and academic community of scholars who study the Christian tradition utilizing modern historical and Biblical criticism. It is a well known fact there is something they call the original message of Jesus vs. the early Christian communities teachings about Jesus, regardless of the fact that conservative Christians refuse to acknowledge the truth about the scriptures and the early Churches’ efforts to spread its teachings.

Now after all, the topic of this thread is “Who collected the Ransom?” so any critique of the atonement doctrine is relevant to this topic, regardless of its source. Perhaps it would be more in accord with the nature of debate and the rules of this site Easyrider, if you address the arguments rather than the source or person, for I can find sources from Buddhism, Hinduism, and even Christianity making the very arguments made in the quotations above, and they would be just as relevant to the topic at hand.

Your choice to ignore the topic of this thread and to post irrelevant material is little more than "frivolous, flame bait."

Please abide by the following rules:

....

4. Stay on the topic of debate. If a topic brings up another issue, start another thread.
5. Support your assertions/arguments with evidence. Do not make blanket statements that are not supportable by logic/evidence.

....

7. Do not post frivolous, flame bait, or inflammatory messages.

....

And now, back to the real issue, the question of the philosophical absurdity of the atonement doctrine:

Jesus as Messiah

One of my most memorable adventures as a cultural intermediary occured about twelve years ago when I translated for a Christian colleague who was visiting the monestary in southern India where I was living. He was there working on a translation of a Buddhist text, and I volunteered my services as interpreter. One day, in the course of his conversations with one of the senior scholars of the monestary, it came up that he was a Christian, and my teacher asked him to share some of his beliefs. My friend chose to focus on Jesus' identity as messiah. As I finished translating the words of my colleague, my teacher broke out in a fit of laughter, much to my embarrassment. He then proceeded to question his interlocutor in a kind of pointed and unabashedly adversarial way that is typical of the Tibetan monastic debate courtyard. There ensued a lively exchange, but when all was said and done, my teacher's basic question was this: How can the death of one individual act as the direct and substantive cause for the salvation of others? (José Ignacio Cabezón)

-- Gross, Rita M. & Muck Terry C., Editors. Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about the Buddha. New York: Continuum; 2000; c2000 pp. 27-28.

In a debate between Jesus and a Jewish authority on the Law about how to gain eternal life, Jesus quotes the Jewish equivalent of a creed that Jews knew by heart. But then to cinch the point, Luke does not have Jesus proceed in rabbinic fashion to quote supporting texts. Instead, Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan. And in fact this won over the authority on Jewish Law, even though the Hebrew scripture in question could well have been argued to limit "neighbor" to those in one's own clan or tribe, which would have excluded a Samaritan, whom Jesus nonetheless used as his role model of neighborliness -- after all, one should love one's enemy! (Robinson 2005: 69)

(・) This Jewish legal authority would have known quite well that "neighbor" did not include just anybody. Indeed, the command to love one's neighbor was originally limited in its scope to one's own clan or ethnic group. (Robinson 2005: 84)

[To highlight that even the early church and apostles did not leave behind their Jewish prejudices, note how there was conflict between Paul and early Jewish followers regarding eating with gentiles.]

Jesus was not a trained theologian, and so did not have a "system" of thought or develop key doctrines, much in contrast to someone like Paul --and much in contrast to the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls! [Or later Christian church] (Robinson 2005: 74)

(・) Since both key idioms, "kingdom of God" and "son of man," are largely absent from the Dead Sea sectarians' expectation of the end of the world that they were sure was about to happen, one may well wonder whether "kingdom of God" and "son of man" really are key terms pointing to the near end of the world on the part of Jesus. Does this mean that Jesus, though using these idioms in his message, was not focusing on the hope/threat that the world was about to come to its end? Could he, in this regard, have departed from his mentor, John the Baptist (though John also did not use these idioms in his predictions of the near end of the world)? (Robinson 2005: 74-75)

For Paul, this faith attests to the crucifixion of Jesus as a blood sacrifice canceling out the sins of believers. In antiquity, and still at the time in the temple at Jerusalem, animal sacrifice was thought to effect forgiveness. But we no longer think that was today. (Robinson 2005: 87)

It is ironic that Jesus himself, in the parable of the prodigal son, told of a boy who had left home, squandered his inheritance on a very bad lifestyle, and then in desperation returned remorsefully to his father, whereupon the father welcomed him back with open arms. Jesus・God apparently did not need blood sacrifice to make up for all the bad things the prodigal son had done, much to the dismay of the prodigal son's self-righteous older brother・ (Robinson 2005: 87)

Paul on the other hand repudiated those who could not make sense of Jesus・horrible death as a blood sacrifice:

・the one who gave himself on behalf of our sins.

Paul's focus on that blood sacrifice as necessary for salvation is clear:

I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

(・) The outcome has been the Apostles' Creed, which omits completely Jesus' Galilean ministry as a Jew in defining who Jesus was and what he did that is worth believing. It is this glaring omission in our understanding of Jesus that the present is seeking to fill. (Robinson 2005: 87-88)

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; pp. 84-88.

The rash title of this book, The Gospel of Jesus, does not have in view the gospel about Jesus that Paul preached, which, following him, the Christian church down through the ages has believed as the one and only gospel. Rather, the title refers to the gospel that was Jesus' own message in Galilee during a very brief period, probably no more than a year, before his crucifixion. These two gospels are not the same, and, what is even worse, Jesus' own gospel has been lost from sight, hidden behind the gospel truth.

[The goal is to find] "... the core, what Jesus considered his own gospel." (Robinson 2005: 1)

(....) Our real problem with Jesus is not the vast amount of detail we will never know, for most of that we do not need to know. The problem is that we have ascribed to him a different gospel form what he himself envisaged! We have put him on a pedestal and worshiped him, rather than walking in his footsteps. Put somewhat differently: we must work our way back through the church's own familiar gospel and its domestication of the gospel of Jesus. Only then do we strike upon what he really had to say, which was a brittle, upsetting, comforting, challenging gospel -- one the present book seeks to lay bare. (Robinson 2005: 2)

(....)

THE APOSTLES' CREED

The Apostles' Creed, shared among almost all branches of Christianity, poses the problem clearly, if unintentionally. It presents Jesus as the central figure in the Trinity in heaven, rather than as the individual he was in Galilee. Listen Closely to the way the creed presents him. Before reporting that Jesus went to heaven, the creed only tells what was done for him:

conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary

and then what was done against him:

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried

But on his life between birth and death, Bethlehem and Golgotha, the creed is completely silent! Missing is what was said and done by Jesus, what Jesus himself actually had to say by way of gospel. (Robinson 2005: 2-3)

(....) The name "Apostles' Creed" is itself a misnomer, if it is taken to mean that it was composed by the twelve apostles, indeed by any of Jesus' Galilean followers. It actually developed out of the baptismal confession of the gentile church of Rome, documented only from the second century on. How the original disciples themselves would have put it can be inferred only by going back through the Gospels to the oldest traditions they preserve... (Robinson 2005: 3)

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; pp. 1-3.

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. (2017.3)

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. (2017.4)

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. (2017.5)

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. (2017.6)

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. (2017.7)

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." (2017.8)

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." (2018.5)

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. (2018.6)

(….) 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. (2019.4)

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. (2019.5)

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. (2019.6 )

My intent is to work with the firmer areas of scholarly consensus (rarely total consensus) and to try to form a picture of what was going on during the first decades of Christianity. How did the early disciples come to understand Jesus, and what can we learn from them in our own efforts to comprehend this Jesus and his uniqueness? (Knitter 1986: 173)

Jesus Was Theocentric

One of the few issues on which New Testament experts are in full agreement is that the focus and core content of Jesus' original message was the "kingdom of God." Jesus' main task was to announce this kingdom, a kingdom soon to come, yet already mysteriously present and at work (Luke 11:20; 17:21). The present moment was heavy with urgency and responsibility; persons must turn their lives around, convert, in order to be part of this kingdom. Jesus' mission and person, therefore, were profoundly kingdom-centered, which means God-centered. All his powers were to serve this God and this kingdom; all else took second place. "Thy kingdom come; thy will be done," was the content of his prayer and his work. (Knitter 1986: 173)

But if the original message of Jesus was theocentric, the pervasive message of the New Testament is undeniably christocentric. After his death and resurrection, the proclaimer became the proclaimed. The focus shifted. As we shall see, there is a logic, even a necessity, in this shift. In it, the original message of Jesus was transformed, not lost. [my italics] The christocentrism of the New Testament does not lose hold of Jesus' original theocentrism. Jesus never takes the place of God. Even in the three texts in which Jesus is proclaimed as God or as divine (John 1:1, 20:28; Heb. 1:8-9), an evident subordination is preserved. Even Paul, in urging his radical christocentrism, reminds his communities that "You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God." (1 Cor. 3:23). His final vision is "that God may be everything to everyone" (1 Cor. 15:28). The New Testament maintains a delicate, sometimes difficult, balance between chrisocentrism and theocentrism. (Knitter 1986: 173-174)

(....) Although Jesus did not really define himself for us, he did give us -- New Testament scholars agree -- some idea of how he saw his mission. He understood his role in bringing about this already-yet-still-to-come kingdom to be pivotal. (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Jesus understood himself as excercising a special, a unique, role in God's plan. .... [T]he total picture of what he said and did indicates that he most likely experienced himself as the eschatological prophet -- the final prophet (Deut. 18:15-19) who was anointed specially by God's Spirit, who was to complete the mission of the earlier prophets by announcing and enacting the good news of God's final rule.[9] (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Schillebeeckx makes an elaborate and convincing argument that Jesus' "original Abba-experience" provides the "source and secret of his being, message and manner of life." Jesus seemed to feel and to claim a special intimacy with God, a special sonship. This is perhaps as close as we can come to penetrating his self-consciousness.[10] His deep awareness of God as his Father was in line with Jewish tradition; it does not automatically imply exclusivity. It does, however, indicate specialness, uniqueness. This must be respected in all contemporary interpretations of Jesus.[11] (Knitter 1986: 174)

(....) Jesus remained profoundly theocentric. Whenever christology forgets this, it opens Christian consciousness to a "myopic christocentrism," to a "jesusology," to a reductionism that absorbs God into Jesus.[12] Christocentrism without theocentrism easily becomes an idolatry that violates not only Christian revelation but the revelation found in other faiths. (Knitter 1986: 174-175)

From Kingdom of God to Son of God

Why did the proclaimer become proclaimed? How did Jesus' original message about the kingdom of God come to be translated into the early communities' proclamation of Jesus as Messiah, Lord, Christ, Word, Savior, Son of God? An overview of how contemporary New Testament scholars are trying to answer those questions offers valuable help for our own efforts to understand the uniqueness of Jesus in contemporary interreligious dialogue. (Knitter 1986: 175)

From what both the scholars and common sense tell us, it is clear that all New Testament christology, all the titles and proclamations about Jesus, have their origin in the saving experience of Jesus by individuals and the community. We must be careful not to distinguish experience and interpretation too neatly, as if it were possible to have a naked experience without any interpretation. Still, when we try to grasp the constellation of New Testament interpretations of Jesus, we find that they originated in a big-bang experience that transformed persons' lives, an experience of what can be called salvation. In their encounter with this man, they met the power and the reality of God, a reality that enabled them to feel, understand, and act differently from before. They had hope now, for this life and the next. (Knitter 1986: 175)

Such a saving experience of Jesus was an experience of revelation. Jesus made something know to them, something that not only satisfied their minds but transformed their entire being. This experience of a saving power or revelation was the source and sustenance of all the interpretations of Jesus found in the New Testament: "It was the sense that they found what they were looking for in Jesus that started the whole christological ball rolling."[13] (Knitter 1986: 175)

-- Knitter, Paul F. No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. Second ed. New York: Orbis Books; 1986; c1985 pp. 173-175. (The American Society of Missiology Series.

PAUL'S LOVING BUT ANGRY GOD

It was much the same idea of a God whose justice requires retribution for sin that had already helped Paul make sense of Jesus' terrible end, crucifixion, the capital punishment administered by the Romans to the worst criminals:

... Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood.

In Paul's thinking, the God of infinite love, still echoed in the traditions going back to Jesus, was combined with the scriptural traditions of the just God obliged to avenge evil. The result was the concept of a loving God sending his Son to placate a God wrathful over sin:

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will be saved through him from the wrath of God.

Apparently the only way Paul could make sense of Jesus' terrible death on the cross was to think of a loving but angry God needing in this way to avenge humanity's disobedience. This is why Paul could focus his message so pointedly:

We proclaim Christ crucified.

Paul's gospel was:

Christ died for our sins in accordance wth the scriptures.

(....)

THE GOSPEL OF JESUS

The completely new lifestyle Jesus developed for himself, and called upon others to practice as well, was not for his part meant as a means to appease an angry God in an effort to win favor. Quite the reverse. It was because God was already active on all sides in a fatherly way that one could practice that lifestyle, for it consisted in receiving from God through the actions of others and God giving to others through one's own action.

Thus Jesus' message was not a new law to which humans had to conform, not a morality laying out what they had to do to deserve God's favor. Rather, it was indeed gospel, good news, telling what God was doing for and through humans. Of course it was not Paul's gospel of "Christ crucified," but Jesus' own gospel of the kingdom of God: God reigning for and through people who listened to what Jesus had to say.

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; pp. 215-218.

It may well seem to you that the gospel of Jesus did not include all that is high and holy in the Christian gospel as we know it. All those magnificent, transcendent, Christian beliefs seem absent from the original gospel of Jesus -- his "gospel" may seem minimal by comparison with the gospel! Missing from his gospel are not only where he came from ("conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary"), but also what he came to do. Where, after all, is "the saving work of Christ": dying for out sins, rising on the third day, appearing to the apostles resurrected from the dead? These are, after all, the gospel about Jesus, which you, understandably enough, believe and cherish. But if you really are committed to Jesus, then you should be committed to the gospel of Jesus, which is what I have written this book to try to help you see and understand: the "good news" Jesus offered people during his public ministry. (Robinson 2005: 225)

-- Robinson, James M. The Gospel of Jesus: In Search of the Original Good News. New York: HarperCollins; 2005; p. 225.

I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom--the reality of the fatherhood of God and the truth of the sonship of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the saving gospel. Your message is not changed by my resurrection experience. Sonship with God, by faith, is still the saving truth of the gospel of the kingdom. You are to go forth preaching the love of God and the service of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this ennobling truth. (2052.4)

To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it. (2090.4)

Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian. (2091.10)

Those who feel that the acceptance of Christiantiy in its historical forms and statements involves an intellectual sacrifice too great for a religious view of reason, may approach Jesus in complete confidence. Jesus required no intellectual sacrifices. He did not restrict or repress; he released the whole of life. A lamp may not be put under a bushel, but on a stand.... (Bundy 1928: 288)

In its traditional emphasis historical Christianity has seemed to forget the original sources of its theology. All of our Christian theology had its origin in vital religious experience. It sprang from a fountain of fervent faith that was in no sense cautious or self-conscious concerning the form in which it expressed itself. Most of our Christian theology comes from Paul, but Paul never thought that he would become Christianity's first great theologian. It never occurred to him that his formulations of his own personal faith would become normative for later Christian thought. (Bundy 1928: 288-289)

(....) The theology of Paul is the religion of Paul. (Bundy 1928: 289)

-- Bundy, Walter E. The Religion of Jesus. First ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company; 1928; c1928 pp. 288-289.

In his own experience he was a religious subject, but in the experience of the earliest Christians he was always a religious object. As such he gave to the Christian faith its distinctive character and content.... (Bundy 1928: 280)

The New Testamant itself is not made up of injunctions of Jesus but of faith's fervent interpretations of his person. Outside of the first three Gospels there are not in the New Testament more than a dozen sentences from his religious message. The first Christians preached Jesus himself. Jesus had his own message, the kingdom of God, and the early Christians had their own distinctive message, Jesus himself, to whom they attached the whole body of their religious hopes. (Bundy 1928: 280-281)

Between the religious experience of Jesus and that of the first Christians there is a complete shift in the centers of interest and emphasis.... How it was that this shift from religious subject to religious object, from the Jesus of history to the Christ of faith, came about we are not in a position to explain, but it stands as a clear fact in the testimony of the New Testament itself. It goes back to the first faint dawning of the Christian consciousness and it had its birth in the Easter experiences of the original witnesses. Jesus as religious object was inherent in the resurrection faith of the first witnesses. Thus, the most radical change came at the very outset. (Bundy 1928: 281)

Theologies and Christologies required time for formation and formulation, but faith in Jesus as religious object was the work of a moment. It transpired with a flash because it was the one ignition point in the experience of those who claimed that Jesus was alive and that they had seen him. Long before the Gospels were written the Christian faith had received its its distinctive features which later were to mark it as a new religion. The belief in Jesus' Messiahship, his divine dignity, and his present exaltation and glorification, was a fixed element that reached back beyond Paul to the resurrection faith of the first witnesses. Paul did not create the Christian faith in Jesus as a religious object. He speaks of himself as the last of the Easter experients. (I Cor. 15,8.) Paul was simply the sharer of a faith that was older than his own Christian experience. (Bundy 1928: 281-282)

In the history of Christianty, from the first Easter morning down to the present, we see the Christ of faith gradually suppressing the Jesus of history, the supernatural and superhistorical object of the Christian faith slowly but surely submerging the human historical subject of the richest religious experience of which we know. This process was only natural, for it was the involuntary outgrowth of the experiences of the first disciples at the center of whose lives stood the firm conviction that Jesus was not dead but lived and that they had seen him. This process of obscuration is at work in the New Testament itself and there it has already accomplished this great shift from religious subject to religious object. (Bundy 1928: 282)

THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF JESUS AND THEOLOGY

In the past Jesus has been approached almost exclusively from the theological point of view. Each word of his, each incident in his life, has been fitted into the great systems of Christian thought. Until the last century the Christian interest in what Jesus said and did confined itself to a quest for confirmation of theological theories in his words and deeds. This theological approach reaches back to the New Testament itself and it has invaded even the thought of Jesus. An excellent example of this is found in Mark 10,45:

"For the Son of man also came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." [Luke 22: 25-27] (Bundy 1928: 282-283)

In the first part of this passage we have a genuine word of Jesus, the very essence of whose mission was not to be ministered unto, but to minister. However, the closing clause is a Christian conviction cast about the death of Jesus. That it is of Christian origin is clear from the fact that it looks back on his life as closed; it surveys and appraises his work as a whole. It presents a Christian interpretation rather than a personal conviction of Jesus, who did not regard his death as a part of a great divine drama.... (Bundy 1928: 283)

Christian theology has seemed to aim at system rather than at a sharing of Jesus' religious experience. (Bundy 1928: 283)

-- Bundy, Walter E. The Religion of Jesus. First ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company; 1928; c1928 pp. 280-283.

THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF JESUS AND ORGANIZED RELIGION

In recent times a great deal of debate has arisen about the question: Who founded Christianity, Jesus or Paul? The answer to this question depends upon one's understanding of Christianity. If by Christianity we mean Jesus' faith in God as Father and in His kingdom and its coming, such as he preached in the Sermon on the Mount and in his parables, then Jesus was the founder of Christianity. But if by Christianity we mean an organized and official religion, a new faith that involved a definite break with the religion of Israel, competing with other religions of the first three centuries for supremacy in the Roman world, then Paul was the founder of Christianity. The founding of Christianity in the historical forms in which it has appeared is the work of Paul and other early Christians as the result of their Easter experiences. (Bundy 1928: 294-295)

That Paul and the early disciples foresaw the great institution that was to come and that they consciously laid the foundation for it, is, of course, out of question. Paul and the rest were passionate preachers of their great religious convictions and certainties concerning Jesus. There were propagandists of their faith, not plotters of a program that was to reach down through the centuries. In Paul's day there was little or no official organization; the Christian centers which he established were only mission stations, purely democratic communities, one differing quite naturally from the other. But at the heart of the Christian experience of Paul there were elements that demanded a definite break with the Judaistic past, elements that were actually distinctive, and of this break Paul himself was clearly conscious. In fact, Paul stands as the great first-century progressive who shook from the new faith the shackles of Judaism and who launched it in the great currents of the life of the Roman world. In its historical forms as a new faith, as a system of thought, as an organized religion, Christianity bears the marks of Paul rather than those of Jesus. [my italics] (Bundy 1928: 295)

-- Bundy, Walter E. The Religion of Jesus. First ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company; 1928; c1928 pp. 294-295.

Christian theologians have evolved elaborate soteriological systems, showing why and how and under what conditions God redeems men. From Paul down they have expounded the necessity of Jesus' death, the indispensability of the cross, and Jesus as the only mediator between God and man. In the simpler faith of Jesus, however, man stands directly in the presence of his Maker, the child in the presence of his Father. In sharpest contrast with Paul's scheme of mediatorial salvation stands Jesus' childlike picture of God as the shepherd who goes into the wilderness and seeks till he finds the lost sheep, as the father who hastens to meet the lost son and welcomes him home. According to Jesus it is not a scheme that saves men, for it is not the will of the Father that any should perish. In his faith there is absolutely no theoretical scheme of salvation, because to his religious way of thinking God's children include all, the disobedient as well as the obedient. (Bundy 1928: 94)

-- Bundy, Walter E. The Religion of Jesus. First ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company; 1928; c1928 p. 94.

Given a juridical conception of atonement, Jesus had to be God, as St. Anselm demonstrated in his Cur Deus Homo? For only a sacrifice of divine, and therefore infinite, value could give adequate satisfaction for the wrong done by human sin to the creator and lord of the universe; or could meet the inexorable requirements of divine justice, thereby enabling God to regard sinful men and women as just and as fit to be received into the kingdom....

n the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer and in such parables as that of the prodigal son, [we find] the assumption of a direct relationship to God in which all who are truly penitent can ask for and receive forgiveness and new life. The father in the parable did not require a blood sacrifice to appease his sense of justice: as soon as he saw his son returning he 'had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him ... [and said] "For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found (Luke 15:20, 24)." And the only condition for God's forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer is that we also forgive one another.

This is far removed from the idea that God can forgive sinners only because Jesus has borne our just punishment by his death on the cross, or has somehow by that death satisfied the divine justice. A forgiveness that has to be bought by full payment of the moral debt is not in fact forgiveness at all. But Jesus did speak of the authentic miracle of forgiveness, a miracle not captured in the standard atonement theories.

-- Hick, John. Disputed Questions. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1993; c1993 p. 95; 98.

[T]he later Christian notion that Jesus, in his death, was our substitute in bearing God's just punishment, or otherwise apeasing the divine wrath or satisfying the divine justice, and so enabling a righteous Creator to forgive his sinful creatures is--it seems to me--far removed from the spirit and teachings of Jesus himself. His own understanding of the divine forgiveness is expressed in, for example, the parable of the prodigal son. The earthly father clearly represents the heavenly Father. When his erring son repents and returns home, the father does not say, 'Because I am a just father I cannot forgive you until I have first killed my other son to atone to me for your sins.' He calls for the best robe and has a great feast prepared, 'for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found' (Luke 15:24). Again, in the Lord's Prayer, Jesus taught his disciples to speak to God directly, as their heavenly Father, and to ask for forgiveness. There is here no mediator, no atoning sacrifice; only the profound and far-reaching requirement that we forgive one another.

-- Hick, John. Disputed Questions. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1993; c1993 p. 41.

Righteousness implies that God is the source of the moral law of the universe. Truth exhibits God as a revealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves affection, seeks understanding fellowship such as exists between parent and child. Righteousness may be the divine thought, but love is a father's attitude. The erroneous supposition that the righteousness of God was irreconcilable with the selfless love of the heavenly Father, presupposed absence of unity in the nature of Deity and led directly to the elaboration of the atonement doctrine, which is a philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God. (41.3)

[chachynga]

God can do anything.

Then why allow 'sin' in the first place?

To create love. Love is not real unless there is the option to not love.

God hates sin. God chooses not to tolerate sin.

The only reason 'sin' exists is because 'god' (supposedly) exists.

(IMV, 'sin' does not exist as there is no god to sin against. Remove god, sin disappears.)

.

You do that and life ceases to exist for all.

But say that it didn't!

Sin would abound and increase beyond your comprehension, the only thing keeping sin from over running this planet are God Remnant.

Remove them and Sin would increase to the point of destruction.

Leave them and even have them grow in numbers and have the remnant understand more of Gods laws and words and follow them as they will, and you will have wickedness destroy itself and those that would desire goodness, seek God and His Laws.

Either way God is always in control and in the equation, he cant be removed as any JUSTNESS and righteous compassion etc. all has it's origins with God.

[chachynga]

So God had a debt we owed because he charged us. We can't pay it so it is a bad debt. Then God kills himself(or his son) over his debt.
Some how it doesn't make sense. It seem that they took a metaphor and made it a doctrine.

Our children are fighting for our country. Some die and we say they died for our country.
Jesus death like the many thousands the Romas killed died the same death.

That's because you don't understand the true story of the Bible and God and His ways and why he had to come.

He did not come for every person, he came for other reasons.... the whole world can have a ride in his kingdom because he Purchased the whole world because there was a treasure that he found and hid in the earth and he went to go buy the treasure. by buying the whole field ie earth...