Huh? It’s how Paul described the matter.
Sorry, but that’s what the Greek indicates.
You can’t make the leap from that to the Crucifixion.
1 Like
you know we could agree on so much if you would just avoid those political knife jabs…just cant help yourself can you!
Not all Creationists have a terrible understanding of the appropriate way to obtain bible theology and doctrine…just some. The unfortunate thing is, the larger mainstream Christian denominations are the ones who cock this up all the time and they are the same ones you listen to and make your judgements on.
What you should do is simply consder the arguments presented, follow sound theological practice in referencing, and then make your conclusions. Thats the academic way to do this…its rather simple to be honest and shows up false theology in practically every scenario you will likely encounter.
As an example, whilst i align with AIG in most of their Creation/Flood theology, i have very little in common with them theologically and particularly in matters of signficant doctrine.
First and foremost, they do not believe in the Seventh Day Sabbath which, contrary to popular claims, is not Jewish. Even just basic logic and a little historical knowlege categorically concludes that it is proven within Christianity and Judasim’s own writings that the Sabbath predates Judaism by thousands of years. It is not a Jewish custom…they inherited it from long before they ever existed. It doesnt matter what mumbo jumbo any idiot tries to concoct…those are the historical facts!
Never heard that interpretation before. However, if you look at the passage as a whole, your interpretation is not valid. here is why:
Verse 6 :
John 17:6
“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
Here Jesus was talking about those people (not spiritual being or evil, but people) whom God had given Him.
In verse 12, Jesus had guarded them and kept them safe except for Judas. It will be way off to see that Jesus was keeping Lucifer safe and fail.
There is no good reason to argue why the event with Judas couldn’t be the fulfilment of the OT prophecy century ago. That was what prophecy about. The prophecy always talked about future fulfilment.
Like most questions involving Theology, or the weekly Sermon, there is always more than one answer, or direction one can perceive.
Also, the answer depends on who you ask.
Personally, I would find it extremely difficult for Christos to have forgiven the thief next to Him, and to NOT forgive a former disciple, who clearly had second, third, and more thoughts about what he did.
Now the Orthodox Roman Catholics would say that he went to Hell because he took his own life.
Lastly, with respect to the Crucifixion of Christos; however you examine the various descriptive texts, must always be considered. The Crucifixion, was supposed to happen. Thus you really can’t blame anyone for it happening.
Maybe we don’t need to cram all our hope into those last moments of life. It is appointed to all mortals to die once and after that the judgement. After death, everyone faces judgement; everyone has a direct encounter with Jesus. We can hope that the judge of all the earth will do right.
I was taught a hollowed out form of judgement where it’s only a formality – the ceremonial reading of a judgement already made. But that doesn’t do justice to what the Bible says, especially in Jesus’ teaching and also in 1 Peter as I mentioned before. Judgement is a big deal and will include surprises. So perhaps the judgement after death is when we see Jesus as he truly is (and ourselves as we truly are?), when we enter our plea and when we hear the verdict. If so, nobody is robbed of a real chance to plead for mercy. No contingencies of life rush judgement.
And I’m sure we’ll be surprised at a few who plead for mercy as well as a few who don’t. Maybe that’s why judgement may be more tolerable for a godless pagan from Sodom than for some God-fearing Israelites (Luke 10:5–15). It won’t be about what we know, but how we respond to Jesus. If Jesus is the judge and judgement comes after death, then no life is too short or death too quick to cut off hope.
3 Likes
Paul manages to find room for some blame (1 Cor. 2:8) - If the rulers of this age had known the wisdom that is from God, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. Not that this makes some certain set of people culpable all by themselves. We’re all to blame. But that is the point … blame. None of the historic nonsense about ‘only Jews’ or ‘only Romans’ are to blame. No … it’s all of us.
Nope. The “academic way” starts by asking what the context was, including the culture, historical situation, and worldview, along with the literary type. Until those are determined, all a reader is doing is imposing his/her own worldview on the text.
Sorry, but interpreting any literature from before a millennium ago is not simple. The only way to pretend it is simple is to treat it as though the modern reader’s worldview was a constant throughout history.
Historical knowledge only says that the Sabbath was instituted at the time of Moses or whenever the Pentateuch documents were written; by definition historical knowledge cannot reach past the physical and textual evidence. And that is logical, because without evidence all you have is conjecture.
Those aren’t historical facts because there’s no evidence – we have no manuscripts or inscriptions from prior to the Exodus at the earliest. You’re treating history the way some Roman historians did: if you don’t have evidence, make something up! That what you’re making up is roughly based on ancient writings doesn’t matter since the earliest evidence for those writings is over a millennium after their alleged origin.
History scholarship is like science: it insists on evidence. This is why the dispute over whether various sets of stables uncovered in Israel is important: if they are actually Solomon’s that tells us something very different than if they are Ahab’s – for example if they are Ahab’s stables they tell us that Ahab was a middleman in the horse trade from Nubia to Mesopotamia, while if they were Solomon’s then they were probably where horses were trained for battle.
Actually only a small portion of what the various prophets said pointed much to the future at all. The primary function of a prophet was to apply the principles of the Torah to the situation they lived in.
To a modern mind perhaps, but that comes from the idea that responsibility can only add up to 100%, thus if God was 100% responsible then no one else can be blamed. But responsibility doesn’t work like slices of pizza; especially in ancient thinking if you added up the portions of responsibility that different agencies had coming up with 200% or 300% was not considered odd. As an example, if a city was conquered, it would be 100% the responsibility of the general who commanded the attackers, 100% the responsibility of the soldiers who broke into the city, and 100% the responsibility of the general in charge of the defenses for failing in his duty – and there could be other portions that were the responsibilities of others involved.
1 Like
An element which hasn’t quite surfaced a few times so far in the thread is a concept sometimes called “the shape of history”, which is the idea that history is somewhat akin to a river which by its nature is constrained by the landscape it flows through. This entails the idea that there is a pattern to which human events must conform, which in some instances means that there are roles which – regardless of the individuals involved – are going to get played out by someone in/on the scene. This ties to the idea of “the fullness of time”, so that some event isn’t going to happen until the flow of history has the proper elements in place, sort of like a set of "if . . . then . . . " statements.
On the flip side this suggests – since the flow of history isn’t programmed – that sometimes the “if” can be and “if and” or a set of such. To illustrate, if there is an event E which requires A, B, C, and D to have occurred, to be in place so that E can occur, then history can end up “marching in place” where the shape of history seemingly doesn’t change once A, B, and C are ‘locked in’ but D is still to come.
At any rate, in terms of Judas: call the presence of a betrayer event J, one requirement of Event I, the Incarnation. Under the “shape of history” rubric, the Incarnation couldn’t happen until the condition of having J available was satisfied then event I could not occur.
This concept can be found in Greek thought and also in second-temple Judaism; the significance of the latter is that it was not seen as being contrary to the omnipotence and omniresponsibility of Yahweh.
I’ll also note that this is not classical predestination; consider that event J above is not necessarily imposed on an individual but things ‘march in place’ until an individual who due to his own choices fills the role designated J. Even in the stronger form, where if event I is due then someone is going to emerge as fulfilling J, the individual who fulfills J arrives there by his own choices.
In terms of the Incarnation, I’d say that at least these were conditions that needed to be in place before it would happen:
- Jews living in the Holy Land with more scattered across the nations/provinces
- a political situation such that easy travel across long distances was possible
- a linguistic situation so that a single language could be used across the above area
- a broad understanding that deity is not geographically bound, present among both the Jews and across the Roman empire
- an understanding that having a Yahweh Who remained unseen in heaven while a distinct Yahweh walked on earth did not violate the Oneness of Yahweh
- a truly cruel method of punishment
Here I am going to broaden the understanding of event J from above, from the need for a betrayer to the need for some means to set up the Crucifixion without significant turmoil in Jerusalem. In that case, whereas in the scenario above Judas was seemingly more coerced into his task in this one he was much more a free actor because there could have been other ways to get Jesus arrested and condemned – though there are constraints on that since anything He might have done to prompt the Romans to arrest him would likely have resulted in enough violence to require a heavy-handed military response, which means the ones asking for His death had to be the religious leaders. But unless somehow those leaders could find out on their own where Jesus would be celebrating the feast with His disciples and where He would be going such that there were no crowds (or even witnesses) and He could thus easily be taken. How the Upper Room was arranged for that last meal together suggests it was a clandestine operation, making it more difficult to find Jesus isolated, but the religious leaders could easily have had Jesus followed. That means there would have been a few other ways Jesus could have been taken, in which case Judas’ choices were definitely his own.
1 Like
One of my problems with this is, it is part and parcel with this whole human sacrifice black magic spell so God can forgive people theology. And I don’t believe in any of that nonsense. Yes Jesus died for our salvation just as many soldiers have died for our freedom. But these are just doing whatever it takes if that is what it takes and not because there is some law requiring any such thing – except maybe in the heads of the demented people shouting “crucify him!”
Ok so yeah, people really are that deranged and so it is no great surprise they demand such sick things, so the likelihood of Jesus having to die was pretty strong. As Jesus observed, it was what the whole history of Israel was pointing to. But we as Christians don’t have to be so messed up in the head, joining in the crowd shouting “crucify Him” and like some sick vampire like creature rejoicing in murder and blood for our own benefit. Something is really wrong with that! And it is a big reason why Christianity is now so often dismissed as not only archaic but downright evil.
Your bias is showing again. For starters, there’s no “magic” involved since no spirits were being manipulated; for seconds, the “payment” aspect is just one model of the effects of Christ’s death – another is that in order to fix death He had to meet it, suffer it, and “get better”, coming out the other side alive again, a result that He can share since we are also human (this was romanticized by one medieval writer who portrayed Jesus as a knight [who needed no armor] who went to face a “black knight” who guarded not the path to death but the bridge out of Death’s realm, and Jesus, having defeated the black knight, opened the bridge). Another, more metaphysical, is that sin has some sort of substance and that the Father stuck all sin to Jesus so that when He died sin got dragged into the realm of death where He left it behind. Of course these are all substitutionary models where Jesus takes our place and does what we couldn’t do, but there are others, such as the disease/healing model where by dying Jesus becomes our “medicine” (a version of the “by His stripes we are healed” idea).
I’ve never seen Christianity rejected because of the Crucifixion per se, only because the idea that He thereby “paid” for our sins is crude and seems an artifice to folks today – in fact I’ve seen some faces light up when a “payment” model is st aside and the victory is explained in terms of meeting death and winning or being too strong to remain dead and thus opening the same path to us: die, but not stay that way (which is also a very clear NT model).
Then the one people really object to is the ransom model because since it makes no sense that Jesus had to pay the Devil anything then the ransom must have gone to the Father, which also seems really contrived.
This brings to mind a cartoon I saw: Jesus is portrayed as saying, “Dude, Dad is really pissed, but stick with Me; I’ll talk Him down” – I suspect it was meant as a counter to the “I’ll save you from what I’ll do to you if you don’t believe in me” meme.
1 Like
bias? You mean the fact that I wasn’t raised and indoctrinated to believe such rationalizations, but actually had to find for myself a reasonable rational basis for believing there was any value to Christian beliefs?
What an odd definition of magic. I certainly haven’t seen any definition like that, and it certainly has nothing to do with my use of the word. I am referring to a device in fictional stories where people can affect events with thoughts and/or actions without any material connection with those events. To be sure it is often defined as employing a supernatural agency with the implication that no such agency really exists. But of course I do believe a supernatural agency exists (i.e. God) but since I don’t believe one can manipulate/control God enough to use God in affecting events, this is still covered by the word “magic.”
I am well aware that there are a number of different metaphors used in the Bible to explain how Jesus gave His life for our salvation (i.e. the atonement), and I can even explain the rational basis of those metaphors (as well as where, like most metaphors, they fail spectacularly). The point was that this notion that Jesus had to die feeds into the irrational misuse of some of those metaphors as if they should be taken literally.
I have frequently seen Christianity rejected and denounced as evil for precisely the reason that it looks like a “human sacrifice black magic spell so God can forgive.” To be sure, I think poor theology and a failure to explain the atonement well is involved in that.
The irrational angry god is not one I believe in. (that is what “talking someone down means” – trying to get them to be more rational)
… what I usually refer to as racketeering…
No, I mean your bias that calls anything supernatural “magic” and judges it from the perspective of a MSWV and Enlightenment-founded ethics.
Sorry, I use the definition of magic from the ANE, where interestingly even deities could be compelled to act on someone’s behalf if the right rituals could be found.
Divine activity initiated by God is not magic, and as you note He cannot be compelled.
Yeah, I didn’t find it much of an improvement over the common atheist meme.
LOL
Good label – it makes God look like a Mafia boss.
1 Like
Main street financial services corp?
Is that how you describe any development of ethics beyond of the middle ages? Because I have little regard for the ethics of any of those eras: enlightenment, middle ages, or ancient. They are all pretty disgusting, and I would consider anyone calling for a return to ethics from before the enlightenment as a public enemy.
Modern scientific worldview.
I got tired of writing that out multiple times in response to YECers.
Modern Scientific worldview… of course.
Science is an inseparable part of my perceptive process – part of how I perceive reality. I am always quite frank that I read the Bible through that filter to see if any of it was worth paying any attention to. If there was no compatibility then I would conclude it is detached from reality and thus a fantasy like Lord of the Rings and so many other SF&F books I like so much (as I pretty much assumed when I was young).
And I could find value in the Bible because there is nothing in science which requires us to equate the MSWV with the totality of reality itself. That would be naturalism.
God is supernatural (not a part of the space-time mathematical laws of nature), but I do not see God as magic. Nor do I think God is a performer of magic. Omnipotence only means God can accomplish whatever He chooses and not that He can accomplish anything by whatever means He prefers. The result is not independent of the means. Rational coherence is the difference between dream and reality. To insist God can do things anyway you want Him to, is to make us no more than a dream and God no more than a dreamer. This is not only pan(en)theism, but also a considerable demotion of God, since any child is omnipotent in his own dreams.
But only God can make His dreams real.
Anyway, my point with MSWV was that it is not the proper one for reading, for example, the opening chapters of Genesis.
1 Like
That is nonsensical circularity. Anyone can say their dreams are real and the dreams of someone else are not real. It means absolutely nothing.
The difference between dream and reality is rational coherence and consistency.
I am reminded of …
“What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. (The Matrix)
Then they should be able to point to the physical objects from their dreams.
The difference between dreams and reality is whether it’s just brain activity or solid existence.
1 Like
Oh? Has God done that for you then? Though, frankly, it doesn’t sound coherent to me. Where would God do that? …in His dream of the physical universe or in some place outside His dream of the physical universe?
Just because you haven’t dreamt of brain activity or something being solid doesn’t mean nobody else has. And I don’t see why that particular dream should be any more real or why seeing brain activity in a dream or an experience of something solid in a dream would make it real. But rational coherence and consistency between all the different aspects of the experience would be a far more believable evidence that it is real. In fact, with that rational coherence and consistency I cannot see how it any less real. Other differences would just mean I am in a different world – one which is real and not a dream.
1 Like