Redemption, Salvation, Atonement? The fly in the ointment (page 2)

tec

E) Strongly disagree.

Justice without mercy is eye for eye. Didn't someone else once say that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind?

We love because he first loved us. Christ came to do more than just die for us; He also came to show us the way to the Father. The way to peace. But as per the sacrifice... (and the quote above)... when someone takes your sin/crime/whatever onto themselves, making amends for you, then they are showing love to you. This inspires love from us, in turn. Forgiveness and mercy is the way to heal the world; not eye for eye justice. Justice has its place of course, but unless it is tempered with mercy, it does nothing to help mankind.

Tammy

tec

Adam and Eve used their free will TO sin. Using free will was not a sin.

Tammy

J. Hofer

what the heck is free will?

james_woods

Using free will was not a sin.

But many would argue that the non-use of free will would be equivalent to not having free will.

tec

You can use your free will to make a good decision or a bad decision. Making a good decision brings natural rewards/benefits. Making a bad decision brings natural consequences. Neither reward nor consequence changes the fact that you had the free will to choose which course to take.

Tammy

SweetBabyCheezits

Psac: If by Adam you mean ADAM the hebrew word for Man, yes, but I wouldn't use the word criminal, that was YOUR choice of words remeber?

Okay, "criminal" doesn't appear in this thread until Psac post 7744. But that's neither here nor there. My point is we didn't define who the criminals are in the context of your questions about them. I quoted Thomas Paine who referred to a hypothetical situation in which he committed a "crime". But that was just an analogy.

So I'm asking who is the criminal - in your opinion - in the context of the rest of your post here:

Psac: How is the criminal re-habilitaed then? what is done so that the crime is not commited again by said criminal? what is done so that the criminal doesn't WANT to commit the crime or need to?

I, for one, would say the human criminals according to Genesis are the man named Adam and the woman named Eve. They committed a "crime" against nature (!) by eating sin-laden fruit, breaking a law. There was no "rehab" for those two. The death sentence was served. Case should've been closed upon their death.

I'm saying the idea that offspring must carry the ancestors' burden for hundreds or thousands of generations, only to be corrected when god or some version of him comes down, spends a few decades living, and then dies.... at which point nothing demonstrably changes for the human race... is troubling, to say the least. It would be less ridiculous if the whole story of sin ended with Adam and Eve's death.

SweetBabyCheezits

TEC: Justice without mercy is eye for eye.

.... which, unremarkably, is prescribed in the OT, the same place from whence the whole "need for redemption" idea came.

TEC: Didn't someone else once say that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind?

Gandhi, I believe.

...when someone takes your sin/crime/whatever onto themselves, making amends for you, then they are showing love to you.

That's the point of Paine's quote: that is not justice. The innocent cannot stand in place of the guilty when it comes to a crime, even if they wanted to. If my wife commits a homicide, I cannot throw myself before the court and beg to take her death sentence upon myself. According to the most basic principles of justice, Jesus also would not be able to take A&E's crime onto himself. A&E were the only ones who needed to pay the price for their crime. And as the story goes, they died as sentenced.

Regardless, you're saying eye for eye isn't real justice. I'm saying the standard Christian view of atonement is WORSE than even just an eye for an eye. It claims that babies are - in context of this discussion - "criminals", by the nature of the fact that they inherit sin from their parents. This is twisted.... the antithesis of justice.

Ding

If I understand the point of SBC's Thomas Paine quote, it's that while one person can pay another person's financial debt for another, justice does not allow one person to pay a moral debt of another. That is, the justice would allow Jesus to pay my mortgage but not to take my death sentence for me.

It seems to me that the answer involves the required new birth Jesus spoke of to Nicodemus in John 3:3. I believe through that experience God undertakes a spiritual transaction in which the believer is so identified with Christ spiritually before God that what happened to Christ happened to him.

I think Paul was referring to this when he wrote in Galatians 2:19-20: "For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Obviously, Christians haven't been physically crucified with Christ, so Paul is discussing a spiritual transaction that has take place.

Similar is Romans 6:4-9: "We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."

Also, Colossians 3:1-3: "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

wasblind

" what the heck is free will? "

somethin' Jehovah's Witnesses don't have

moshe

The Jewish beliefs about atonement is at odds with Christian dogma--

-http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org/explanation1.html

Redemption, Salvation, Atonement? The fly in the ointment

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