Saving Jesus

[OutwiththeOutCrowd]

The more I think about the story of the death of Jesus on the cross, the more I feel I want to go back in a time machine and beg him not to go through with it. From what I understand, and assuming for the moment that the story is true, Jesus could have found a way out, but felt it was the will of God and his destiny to allow events to play out without his resistance.

I just wonder, though, if Jesus (and God?) could, in principle, have been persuaded to change his mind on the matter if enough people had understood in advance the fatalism of his thinking and pleaded with him not to do it on their account?

Would there have been a way to convince him that he didn’t have to fulfil prophecies, nor save us from our sins?

You see, my personal feeling is that, if I am intrinsically unworthy of heaven, and ‘boosted’ into the possibility of experiencing it only through the sacrifice of Jesus, I would rather accept that death is the end and have Jesus escape crucifixion. If suffering of an innocent being is the price to be paid for heaven, then I would prefer to give up on such a heaven and take the rap for my own sins.

Am I alone in feeling this way? I really don't think I can be.

Had Jesus lived longer, he would probably have found time to write his memoirs, providing a record of his teachings in a form we could be confident he was happy with. We would not have to worry about the inerrancy, or otherwise, of the New Testament. If he had wanted to start a church, he could have been specific about his intentions for it.

Moreover, there would have been more time for his influence as a teacher to spread and for his life to be documented by the writers of the day in such a way that his very existence wouldn’t be in question. While we wouldn’t have an afterlife in heaven to look forward to, the writings of Jesus would illuminate our path in the life we do have. (I am assuming no afterlife, but if it had to be hell, at least it would be hell with a conscience unburdened by the thought of having been complicit in the suffering of Jesus.)

I know it’s not really possible to change the past, and many will think me bonkers and/or naive for thinking about changing the history of Christianity, but who would come with me in my time machine to try to save Jesus?

I'm not sure the idea that God is outside of time, as Jeanne and niminy talk about, necessarily conflicts with the concept of God's intervention, as put forward by poodles.

God intervenes, has intervened, through Christ. What Christ has achieved and still achieves in people is God's intervention.

So In your opinion, God never intervenes in human lives? Ever? No
prayers answered. No miracles.

Well, I'm trying to talk theology rather than my views, because I'm not sure enough how to say what I think.

But, I think it doesn't mean much to say God 'intervenes' if you imagine it the way someone suggested upthread - God suddenly changing his mind, and sweeping down like a comic book hero to save the day for an individual.

I don't think we'd know which things to attribute to God (as opp Christ, I suppose).

X post, Bertrand.

Jeanne but Christ was God in human form, the embodiment of God, when He was on earth, according to Christian belief. So what you attribute to Christ you can attribute to God.

Well, yes. But also no. God and Christ are, and also are not the same person.

Well yes, that is the mystery in the trinity. But they essentially are the same 'substance', do the same, act the same. Christ did not sin, did God's will entirely, when he was here as a man, so in Him we can see God.

"I'm not sure the idea that God is outside of time, as Jeanne and niminy talk about, necessarily conflicts with the concept of God's intervention, as put forward by poodles.

God intervenes, has intervened, through Christ. What Christ has achieved and still achieves in people is God's intervention."

This is exactly what I meant, thank you Capsium.

And included within that his coming renewal of the earth, if that is what you believe, when he will wipe every tear and exercise his divine judgement.

I also believe in an interventionist God - he intervenes in my life, that's for sure. Why he doesn't intervene all the time? Well at least the Vineyard atm likes the 'now and not yet' theory put forward by I think Niminy earlier. Sometimes God's Kingdom can break through but othertimes not because it's not yet here fully.

OP 'Mere Christianity' might help you, well, it helped me to understand why I needed Jesus's atonement. I see you are not a Christian, but it might help you understand the question posited. And Tom Wright's 'Surprised by Joy' does well in explaining the resurrection and future aspects of Jesus's death. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a theologian though, and haven't read loads of books - these are just ones that helped me.

cap - YY, but not vice versa.

Christ is more knowable than God, because Christ is the human embodiment.

So we can understand Christ's interventions, but can't understand why God doesn't (eg.) save people from rape, or war, or famine.

"So we can understand Christ's interventions, but can't understand why God doesn't (eg.) save people from rape, or war, or famine."

But we can have a good guess? ;-)

My best thoughts on the matter are: either that the current hold by evil/sin over the earth means that God is engaged in a battle for the earth (won in some way by Jesus and not fulfilled yet, mysteriously) in which he sometimes breaks through and other times doesn't; and/or that our bondage with sin prevents him from doing so.

Jeanne In trying to imagine from God's eternal perspective, outside of time, I get a sense of the quality/essence of people overall being important, rather than individual actions. Outside of time, it is the quality of things rather than events that matter, I imagine. So intervention through Christ in order for people to engage with Him and change their essential quality, which in turn can manifest in a change in behaviour, makes sense in this way, to me.

We can always guess.

I am happy with the idea that we don't know.

I do think that it must be like trying to think in nine dimensions or something like that - however hard we try, our brains just won't manage it.

I think evil just is. And I think people keep trying to explain it in terms that have made sense at one or another point in human history, but sometimes that almost makes things harder, because the old explanations look so strange now.

Cross post.

Yes, I agree with that very much. Thank you, that helps.

Yes I like that Caps. Good thinking.

Thanks, I don't think I can particularly claim the thinking as my own though...

I'm glad you lot came along :)

Love that thinking Capsium. If not yours where did you come across it? (if you don't mind me asking)

I'm not happy with the idea that we don't know about evil. Part of this is being brought up by a father who's majorly into climate change. If we're facing the end of the world as we know it through human activity, as is quite possible, I would like to understand how and why people as a whole could make that choice. Maybe that would help me understand the church's largely minimal interest in the greatest evils of our time and largely great interest in gay marriage...

poodles I think the idea is a culmination of my understanding of Jesus in the Bible. When Jesus washes the disciples' feet and when He talks about the inside of the cups needing to be cleaned come to remembrance, when I think of it.

I think the problem of trying to understand evil is that understanding slides so easily into rationalisations that make evil someone else's problem. I don't myself think there is anything better to describe the way way humans do vile, stupid, cruel things than Paul saying 'the thing I would do, I do not do; and the thing I would not do, that I do' (or words to that effect). GK Chesterton said that original sin was the one empirically provable Christian doctrine - the evidence being not only all around us but also in ourselves.

I also like Francis Spufford's coinage HPtFtU - the Human Propensity to Fuck things Up.

"Stained glass possibly. Although there is lots of pre christian coloured glass. But hospitals and universities existed long before Christianity. Human rights? Depends what you mean. Polyphony exists in many non christian cultures. I am always amazed when Christians bag all the good stuff!"

Just wanted to come back with some historical corrections. Stained glass as an art form only developed in Christian Europe. While coloured glass existed before Christianity, the use of coloured glass to make picture-windows is a specifically Christian art.

Hospitals did not exist before Christianity. Although there were valetudinaria in the Roman empire, as this link from the Science Museum makes clear, it is not clear that they were in fact anything like a hospital. The first public hospitals as we know them were established by Christians, and one of the acts of the first council of Nicea (325 CE) was to decree the establishment of a hospital in every city.

Universities did not exist before Christianity. Greek and Roman gymnasia and schools were entirely different kinds of thing. There is a good argument that the first university was an Islamic foundation; however, all the major universities of Europe (and in the first cases, the United States) were specifically Christian foundations.

Polyphony, that is music where there are simultaneous different melodic and harmonic lines, was invented in medieval Europe, from around the 11th century, specifically in the context of church music. There are other world music traditions that have harmonic and melodic complexity, but they are not polyphony.

Slavery: I agree the record of the Christian church is mixed. But if you are going to try proof-texting, I'll have to come back with Galatians 3.28. Paul was of course writing in a situation in which slave-owning was universal. It's a matter of historical record that the early Christian church was particularly attractive to slaves and women precisely because they were accorded a status and value by early Christians they didn't have elsewhere in the Roman empire. And it is true, of course, that while Christians did support chattel slavery in the C18th and C19th, the great abolitionist campaigns were run by Christians on Christian principles.

Human rights: it is established beyond debate in the history of ideas that the concept of human rights is a development of the Christian principle of the equal value of all in God's eyes. Equal rights as a concept has only developed in Christian societies.

Witch trials: were mainly prosecuted by the state and not by the church. Where they were in the hands of the church, mainly in Catholic countries, hardly anyone died; where they were in the hands of the state (northern Europe) more did, though far fewer than is commonly imagined (wiki for example says no more than 40,000).

Whiteshirt saying something doesn't make sense does not make it so. Assertion is not explanation.

It's fair to highlight that some christians throughout history have gone against the mainstream christian views of that time such as slavery and LGBT, no one is saying that all christians ever supported the slave trade, clearly very few christians nowadays would support slavery.

The issue is the text you claim to be given to you by an infinitely morally superior being and that your chosen God was always and will always be morally superior to humans when anyone can read it and see that slavery was not frowned on and women had to remain silent. Would you expect Jesus to have trotted out something like the human rights act instead of 'blessed are you if you are poor'.

The HRA seeks to make it possible for everyone to have the right to achieve the best life possible by limiting discrimination in all its forms. How ridiculous and undermining would it seem if, at the end of the main clauses of the HRA it said, 'but how lucky are you when people abuse/rape/discriminate against you'. The beatitudes and the HRA could barely be more different in spirit.

As I have surmised before, society tends to drag the church along, and by that I mean some of the christians within the church whose views on equality are more developed have made it possible for the church to alter it's stance even when their religious text is riddled with inequality.

empirically provable christian doctrine

But we don't only do bad stuff do we? We do wonderful loving stuff as well which proves my theory that the God XYZ made us to contain both good and bad. But seriously the bible was written by humans who saw people around them being, erm, human. It wasn't written by a an entity that had no knowledge of humanity and its warts and wonders. You don't need divine wisdom to see that some people are not as nice as others. It's a bit like saying all the claims in the bible are true because it mentions trees and guess what, there are trees, therefore it's all true.

You're welcome to your views HeadinHands, even if they don't have a historical foundation.

The beatitudes need to be read in a context in which none of the poor people that Jesus was speaking to were considered to be people under Roman law.

As for society dragging the church behind it, I grant you that in some recent instances this has been the case- I agree that the church is behind public opinion on LGBTi rights. I wish the church would change. But that doesn't add up to a general case that the church has always lagged behind social change.

This is my last post before I have to go off for a while.

Your post about original sin illustrates exactly my point about how rationalisations of evil tend to end up making it someone else's problem. You say 'we know some people aren't as nice as others' - presumably it's the not nice people who go around doing all the bad stuff, then.

But that's simply not the case. We all have the capacity to hurt the people we love, to do stupid and cruel and thoughtless and hurtful things. Evil is a continuum, and we're all on it somewhere: all of us have at some time or another done something to deliberately hurt or destroy. There's a difference of degree, but not of kind, between saying something hurtful to your partner because you're cross with them, and acts of appalling evil. It's not them; it's us. Christianity is far more realistic about human nature than the prophets of progress.

What view doesn't have a historical foundation? They're based on what the bible portrays God as and how that is at variance to the values enshrined in the HRA. I have both texts available to me.