Does the Ransom Sacrifice doctrine add up?

by nicolaou 60 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  nicolaou

  Common to almost all flavours of the Christian faith is the teaching of the ransom. That the sacrifice of Jesus' perfect human life paid back the debt of the perfect human life which our forefather Adam had forfeited.

  But is it truly a 'corresponding sacrifice'?

  Points to consider:

  [1] If Adam had not sinned, he would've lived forever. Thus by sinning, and eventually dying, he would be dead - forever. Jesus on the other hand could not have lived forever. ( To have not given up his life would have been an act of disobedience - he would just have been another 'dead Adam'.) So the value of his sacrifice was not equal to that lost.

  [2] Jesus existed before Adam and exists still. Where is the loss? If I sacrifice £30 to cover a speeding fine I am down by £30. If God sacrifices his son to pay a 'sin debt' he should be down by one son. I cannot offer the courts 'money' I printed myself to pay a debt and yet God can 'create' a perfect man specifically for the purpose of paying the ransom. Why?

  [3] Adam's offspring were immediately born into imperfection because of the debt he incurred. Why, once Christ had paid back the debt in 33 C.E., were subsequent babies not immediately born into perfection?

  It just doesn't seem to balance. Now please don't start bashing me about the head for having a go at cherished beliefs, I'm not looking for an argument. Honest, straightforward questions deserve answers in kind.

  Nic'
• 

  googlemagoogle

  the ransom sacrifice doctrine is one of the most illogical doctrines.
  
  one can't pay a ransom to himself. because of this some early church authors thought, the ransom was payed to the devil. but the wts (and most if not all of christianity) does not teach this.
• 

  Dansk

  And why did God greatly increase the pregnancy pangs of all women when it was only Eve who sinned?

  That's like me making my son, Dominic, suffer for something his older brother, Karl, had done! Remember, according to the Bible God actually said he was going to make all women suffer due to one woman's folly. What kind of a loving father is that?

  Nic, very little in the Bible adds up for me anymore. I'm a lot happier since I channelled my interests and energies elsewhere.

  Ian
• 

  nicolaou

  Nic, very little in the Bible adds up for me anymore.

  Hi Ian !!

  I know what you mean. Do you remember when I was round at your place (2 years ago!) you said something very similar and I sort of backed off a bit. I wasn't ready at that point to entertain too much criticism of 'God's Word'.

  Guess I'm just falling deeper and deeper into this atheist/apostate pit of despair....

  Cool!

  Love to both you and Claire.
• 

  Terry

  And while we are on the subject!

  One day it popped into my head that his Ransom Sacrifice thingy is a blatant example of INJUSTICE.

  1.JUSTICE requires persons get what they___deserve__. Good behavior=rewards. Bad behavior=punishment.

  2.Adam and Eve performed badly. They died. Okay, that is justice. No problem so far.

  3.Offspring of Adam and Eve are REGARDED AS SINNERS even though the are born not having done anything sinful! That is INjustice.

  4.Furthermore, nothing a human can do once they are born (regarded as a "sinner") can placate God's obsession with their imputed sinfulness.

  5. God gives an ethnic group (Jews) a set of "perfect" laws knowing full well they are unable to keep them. In this law thousands of animals have to die in place of humans. Animal death=human sin by some strange twist of thinking.

  6.God sends his guiltless son to die IN PLACE OF Adam (but not EVE). But, Adam has already died!

  Punishing the guilty is justice; but, punishing the innocent is madness and sadistic!

  7.Somehow, by replacing ADAM (in the death scenario) with JESUS the deed is accomplished. Yet, Adam already paid the price for his sin by dying. That should have been the end of justice.

  8. Offspring of Adam had no requirement of believing in Adam did they? No. But, they were considered sinful anyway. And further, they died anyway!

  9.A peculiarity of the Ransom doctrine is you get no benefit at all if you don't believe the doctrine! You have to "accept Jesus as your savior". (Would you have to believe in penicillin for penicillin to work?)

  10. God is said to GIVE his only begotten son. But, this giving is strange because GOD GETS BACK (his son) after giving him when Jesus ascends to heaven!?!?

  St. Augustine is the author (along with Paul's weird ramblings) of this Ransom Doctrine. It is nutty as a fruitcake. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny or reason. It is a pastiche of crazy ideas trying to make sense of scripture and mythos. It is most absurd. Yet, the Earth and mankind are held hostage to this crackpot belief (and have been for a couple of thousand freakin' years!!
• 

  AlanF

  The doctrine is ridiculous no matter which of the many Christian interpretations is put on it.

  Fundamentally, it's illogical to think that killing a 3rd party for sins committed by a 2nd party against a 1st party results in real justice. The logic is that of ancient middle eastern nomadic tribes, which is at extreme odds with modern ideas of justice. Similar ideas can be found in the Muslim notion that murder can be atoned for by paying a sufficient sum of money to the dead person's family.

  For my extensive debunking of the Watchtower's version of this idea, see my essay on "God's Justice" here: http://www.geocities.com/osarsif/index2.htm

  AlanF
• 

  zen nudist

  the basis is flawed

  Adam died of natural causes, God did nothing to change adam physically, he only prevented him from the tree of life... had the potential, even after the fall to grant eternal life.... so there was no sin nature transferred to Adams children and the whole rest of the story is bogus
• 

  IP_SEC

  I can give you the dub explaination... these arent my cherished beliefs, Im just saying...

  To have not given up his life would have been an act of disobedience - he would just have been another 'dead Adam'

  Well no because when he was given perfect human life, he was given all of the rights that come with perfect human life. One of those rights is the right to live forever. Since it is a God given right, no one, not even god had the right to take it from him unlawfully. Since perfection at the time of Jesus birth meant perfection under the Law, which Jesus (according to the bible) was, god nor man had the right to take his life. God didnt tell jesus he had to die. Just that he must die if he wanted to help man and get back to heaven himself.

  Jesus existed before Adam and exists still. Where is the loss? If I sacrifice £30 to cover a speeding fine I am down by £30.

  Because you cant compare apples to oranges. Thats why Jesus had to become a man. It was his human life, not spirit life that had redemptive value. The loss was to the rights and privleges that he deserved as a perfect man. One of which was life everlasting. The other right he had answers your next question.

  Adam's offspring were immediately born into imperfection because of the debt he incurred. Why, once Christ had paid back the debt in 33 C.E., were subsequent babies not immediately born into perfection?

  The debt was paid off not just by jesus giving up his own right to life, but also by giving up the right to have his own children, and for them to have children, and so on. When Jesus died, so also died the potential for life that that could have been his through procreation. Those descendants were owed to Jesus, but he gave that up to jehovah. Thus now jehovah has at his disposal all of this potential for perfect human life to counter balance the real perfect human lifes that adam lost for his children when he sinned. Each one of the perfect human lifes that could have been but we'rent because jesus gave them up, are now like vouchers for adoption.

  Now there is only two ways to get this voucher, you have to die and be ressed on the basis of jesus being the 'life', or you have to sign up as a witness and make it through the the big A. At the end of the 1000 years you can present your voucher for adoption to god and he then takes the potential for perfect human life given up by one of Jesus potential descendants and applies it to you. This is how Jesus becomes our Eternal Father. You replace what he gave up.

  Ohhh my, my head is spinning now
• 

  Rod P

  I, too, have had to question this whole notion of the Ransom Sacrifice. The logic and the justice just don't add up, in my mind anyway.

  It used to be thought that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and the sun, moon, planets and stars all revolved around the earth. From that perspective, it is not surprising that believers would see this "Divine Drama" being played out on the earth for the entire (known) Universe.

  Fast forward to the Age of Discovery, the invention of the telescope, the discovery of a whle new universe out there. The earth is but a small planet amongst 9, all revolving around the Sun, which is a medium-sized star in a small corner of the Milky Way Galaxy. And this galaxy is but one amongst billions of other galaxies that comprise this almost unimaginably huge universe.

  So now, let's assume for a few minutes, that for some inexplicable reason the Ransom Sacrifice is true. Where does this fit into the overall scheme of things? Do the sins of Adam and Eve, that the rest of mankind has inherited the consequences for, apply equally to other parts of the universe? If there is life on other planets (and I believe there is), does this mean that the beings on other worlds are subject to Adamic sin? Does the Ransom Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross have efficacy for those "people" too? What if it did, but they are not even aware of our existence? Did they start out "perfect" and then suddenly, out of the blue, they became mortal and sinful because of Adam back on earth? I mean, how absurd can this be?

  Well then, what if this "Adam-Sin-Ransom Sacrifice" thing IS limited to the Planet Earth? Does it make sense that, in this whole vast universe, the God of this Universe sent down his only begotten Son, to suffer and die this gruesome death to pay the price for what one man and woman did 4000 years earlier, on an insignificant planet revolving around a puny star in an obscure corner of an average galaxy amongst billions of other galaxies? Puhleeeze, give me a break!!! It never ceases to amaze me, what a bunch of Egotists we humans really are!

  I think that to get to the bottom of this whole notion of a Ransom Sacrifice for mankind, we must search the cultural and historical roots of some of those ancient civilizations. There we will discover the origins of this whole notion or concept, which somehow found its way into the Bible. To that end, some time ago I stumbled on a couple of very enlightening websites that really traced the origin and evolution of this concept. I will have to do a little bit of digging, but when I find them, I will share them with you on this thread.

  (It seems to me that Narkissos would know a lot about this topic.)

  Rod P.
• 

  Leolaia

  If you look at the scriptures referring to Jesus' expiatory sacrifice as a "ransom" (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, 1 Timothy 2:6, Hebrews 9:15), nowhere is Adam mentioned (he is mentioned in 1 Timothy 2:13-14, but the subject had already changed so that the passage is about female subordination). Various Christian theories of the ransom claim that it is directly for settling Adam's debt and indirectly for mankind, whereas the Watchtower has put its own twist on it by claiming that Jesus and Adam are exactly equivalent in "price" (which would be inacceptable for most Christians, as this would deny his deity or claim that Adam was similarly divine). However the biblical concept is that the ransom is not for one man's sin but "for many" (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45), "for all" (1 Timothy 2:6), and explicitly for settling the debt of "the sins committed under the first covenant" (Hebrews 9:15). The concept is more like Jesus gave himself as a ransom to save all Jews or all humanity from their own sins. The notion of the ransom basically casts a much older Jewish notion of expiatory sacrifice (absolving sin) within a Hellenistic pecuniary system (e.g. of paying for sins), so that the Suffering Servant songs of Deutero-Isaiah refer to the suffering of the faithful remnant among the exiles as vicariously absolving for the sins of others (e.g. Israel as a whole, who ignored God's law) as a substitutionary sacrifice, accepting the penalty that should otherwise go to others (cf. especially Isaiah 53:11-12). Similarly, the Maccabean martyrs who died during the persecution of Antiochus IV Epiphanes were also thought to have died to vicariously absolve the iniquity of their contemporaries (cf. 4 Maccabees 1:11, 6:20-21, 18:4). There are similar models in the Hellenistic world; Seneca, for instance, describes Socrates as dying "in order to free mankind from the fear of death and imprisonment" (Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, 24.4).

  The NT references to Adam and his correspondence with Jesus are not connected with this specific ransom concept. Instead, they liken Adam and Jesus in terms of function and role. In Romans 5, sin and death entered the world through Adam just as grace and justification from sin enter the world through Jesus. The purpose of mentioning Adam is to explain how one individual could justify the sins of everyone in the world: "Just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men" (Romans 5:18). There is no ransom here....Jesus only has a paralleled role in ending sin just as Adam started sin. The other reference cited to support the relation of Adam to the ransom is 1 Corinthians 15, but again these references are only to note an inverse parallelism between Jesus and Adam in bringing either death or life, "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (v. 22), or in the manner in which they were brought to life: "The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit" (v. 45). The notion that the ransom is to pay for Adam's sin, and that only Jesus could be equivalent to Adam to pay for the ransom, is basically mixing up two unrelated notions in the NT.