Did Jesus Have To Be Killed?

[glintofpewter]

If a company sells a faulty product do they insist that the consumer pay for the fix or do they provide the fix for free?

 

Dutch

 

They provide the fix for free.

 

So why does God say we owe a debt to fix his faulty product?

 

 

Hornet, I am just playing. Our positions are so far apart and fairly set that we won't change each other's mind.

 

Take Care

 

Dutch

[Hornet]

They provide the fix for free.

 

So why does God say we owe a debt to fix his faulty product?

 

 

Hornet, I am just playing. Our positions are so far apart and fairly set that we won't change each other's mind.

 

Take Care

 

Dutch

 

We corrupted our own nature. People did not have a corrupt nature when they first came into existence. We sinned against God and the punishment we deserve is called a debt.

[glintofpewter]

Hornet,

We corrupted our own nature. People did not have a corrupt nature when they first came into existence. We sinned against God and the punishment we deserve is called a debt.

 

God knows about creation as it is created; we owe no debt for being as we are created. Repairs might be needed but creation as it is is as God created it for which God must take full responsibility. "Original sin", "devil" and "freewill" mayhem get God off the hook by saying that God didn't create it all, or "oops, I didn't mean it" and make God less than fully divine. If there were a devil, she would be of God's creation and intention, if there is original sin it is of God's intention, if we have freewill, it is of God's intention. To my mind original sin and devil don't exist. For freewill - how else could creation be dynamic and vital if it weren't free. We don't owe a debt because we are the way we are made. We didn't come into the world owing a debt and have not accrued enough debt so that it is unpayable.

 

I believe the (human) construct of original sin gave/gives civil and religious governments oppressive control over their member citizens.

 

from tariki

 

I just transpose this onto Christianity. Without the "death" of Christ featuring in some way, then it seems to me to be reduced to a moral system pure and simple. Personally, from my own Buddhist perspective, it is in the idea of kenosis, the self emptying of Christ, within the Incarnation and exemplified further in the Cross, that Christianity transcends itself from being a purely moral system. (Phillipians 2:7). In following Christ, the self is emptied of "self" and - in this "wisdom" - exists for others.

 

This seems a useful view and understanding of Christ's purpose or Christ as final cause. The structural relationships between Christ and us are similar; but in the "original sin" construct Jesus says I will take care of it for you because you can't (a co-dependant relationship) and in the emptying of self construct Christ says watch, follow me, allowing us to grow up. Roughly speaking.

 

Take Care

Dutch

[tariki]

Its not really my style to rattle sabres, though I have been known to do so when someone gets my gander up.......My style - if such it can be called - is more to open the dustbin of my mind and stir the various bits and pieces that have gathered there over the years. Having stirred, I just carry on living day by day..............and the road to joy is revealed to me without my exactly realising it to quote my friend Thomas Merton.

 

So I think of debts, and what the Divine may or may not have done, or think. And think myself of the "O felix culpa"...."O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer."...........and the all knowing Wikipedia tells us that.....

 

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas cited this line when he explained how the principle that "God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom" underlies the causal relation between original sin and the Divine Redeemer's Incarnation, thus concluding that a higher state is not inhibited by sin. The Catholic saint Ambrose also speaks of the fortunate ruin of Adam in the Garden of Eden in that his sin brought more good to humanity than if he had stayed perfectly innocent.

 

I stir such thoughts in with other thoughts of "rebellion", of the "reality" of the devil.........of a Divinity who demands "justice". And think of the words of George MacDonald, a long gone Scottish vicar - or somesuch - who said that he believed that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing, that without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice.

 

I'm on one of my rambles now.......There is a wonderful little book by the "zen" man D T Suzuki entitled "Buddha of Infinite Light", which concerns the Shin (Pure Land) teachings. At one point he speaks of "synergism" and "monergism" with regards to "earning" our "salvation". In his friendly style, Suzuki likens "synergism" to the activities of monkeys, who carry their offspring on their backs. This means that the baby monkeys grasp their mothers body with their limbs or tail, so the mother is not doing all the work herself. This Suzuki contrasts with monergism, which he illustrates by the example of how a mother cat carries her kittens. She grasps the neck of each kitten with her mouth and carries it from one place to another. The kitten just lets the mother carry them.

 

So, synergism and monergism. And I think of faith and works and the place of each. Pure Land follows the way of monergism, the way of Other Power. (Remembering of course that their is neither other power nor self power, their is only Other Power.)

 

What I do think is, judging from my reading, is that monkeys are often prone to accuse others of not clinging on hard enough, while kittens are left to wonder why all the litter have not been grabbed and lifted up by the teeth of mum.

 

Anyway, perhaps enough.

 

All the best

tariki

[minsocal]

It seems to me that God created all that is, as it is and as it is evolving. I agree with Spinoza in that human psychology is part of creation and perhaps we have some of our concepts upside down when we psychologize God. In the 18th Century, the notion of final cause was introduced not to define God's intentions, but locate humanity in relation to God. The conept of final cause generally refers not to the origins of facts, but to the origins of values, both polar and scalar.