The Trinity Explained

[Watson]

Derp derp *points to his own post on the last page*

Damn page turn...

[DeistPaladin]

It was an act of love and tolerance, is that so hard to understand?

I can think of better ways to demonstrate love and teach the meaning of selflessness and sacrifice than being whipped and nailed to a cross.

[Watson]

Then you obviously don't get it.

[Anomalocaris]

When humanity has attained a certain level of knowledge about his world, and has systematized and disciplined its thinking process through long experiment and practical verification, and you personally have lived to a certain age in this environment during which you presumably could have profited from this knowledge, it is no longer a credit to you for you to think you "get" certain things - like ghosts, spirits, gins, Santa Claus, fairies, and Jesus.

[Watson]

Did I say that it was, my friend?

[DeistPaladin]

Jesus wasn't the penultimate sacrifice, he was the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus couldn't be sacrificed to Yahweh, because Jesus is Yahweh. That would be illogical. Jesus was God sacrificing himself for us. On our behalf. It wasn't humans doing the sacrifice this time, but God. Only 'not God' could sacrifice anything to God.

As DBP pointed out, this argument makes no sense whatsoever. Aside from that, there are a few more problems:

Jesus was the sacrifice that fulfilled the need for further animal sacrifices. The OT deals with such sacrifices as methods for atonement for sins and pleasing Yahweh. To take this method of divine appeasement seriously (setting aside the question as to how do gods benefit from blood on their alters again and why a human sacrifice is the ultimate sacrifice), this is like paying the entire balance on a credit card instead of the minimum payments. Correct?

If so, the same rules apply. Animal sacrifices were made TO Yahweh to atone for sins. These are like minimum payments to a credit card company. Along comes Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice. He's like paying off the balance in full. So we (theoretically) benefit as our sins are forgive (the debt is paid off, as Christians often like to say in their analogies). So Jesus paid for our sins? Who did he pay? He didn't pay us, as you don't pay a debtor for their own debts. You pay the creditor, Yahweh. Just as you pay the credit card company to have our debts forgiven, Jesus was sacrificed TO Yahweh to pay for our sins.

Also, it wasn't Yahweh who drove in the nails and raised the cross.

[Watson]

Christ's sacrifice was for humanity; through His sacrifice and actions, He sent a message to humanity of God's love and devotion. He was setting an example by which to live so as to bring oneself closer to God's grace and love. Those who learned from that sacrifice were who the sacrifice was for; those who did not learn from the sacrifice were unaccepting of God in the first place, and remained(or remain to this day) that way. The sacrifice was not to appease God's wrath towards sin; it was to relieve people of their sin, via learning from the sacrifice and message, so that they would not condemn themselves to a life seperated from God.

It was an act of love and tolerance, is that so hard to understand?

Animal sacrifices and Jesus' sacrifice are not the same thing. It's comparing apples to oranges, splitting-hairs, nitpicking or what have you. You're applying rules applied to one scenario which do not apply to another, to the other.

[DeistPaladin]

Then you obviously don't get it.

When I went to see the Passion of the Christ, my Christian friend saw a loving act by a god willing to do all of this for him. I saw a two-hour gay BDSM snuff flick where some poor guy got the hell beaten out of him and then put to a slow agonizing death. He found it uplifting. I found it depressing.

Maybe he "gets it" and I don't but I don't think so. I saw what was there on the screen, unfiltered by indoctrination as to what I was supposed to be witnessing.

Same with the entire concept of the loving sacrifice. It only makes sense to someone who's been conditioned to feel a certain way about it. To me, it only makes sense if there are forces beyond the sacrificee's control. A soldier who jumps on a grenade to save his comrades only does so because the grenade is otherwise beyond his control. The cause/effect in my example is clear. We understand HOW the sacrifice helps and why it was necessary.

With your example, it isn't clear how a man being beaten, tortured and nailed to a cross helps anything. Also, Yahweh can decide who to forgive and who to condemn. Neither cause/effect nor motive are clear. It's just senseless bloodshed and torture.

[Watson]

Actually read my whole post. I'm not repeating it.

[Anomalocaris]

[quote='Watson' pid='97605' dateline='1286293379']
Christ's sacrifice was for humanity; through His sacrifice and actions, He sent a message to humanity of God's love and devotion. He was setting an example by which to live so as to bring oneself closer to God's grace and love. Those who learned from that sacrifice were who the sacrifice was for; those who did not learn from the sacrifice were unaccepting of God in the first place, and remained(or remain to this day) that way. The sacrifice was not to appease God's wrath towards sin; it was to relieve people of their sin, via learning from the sacrifice and message, so that they would not condemn themselves to a life seperated from God.

It was an act of love and tolerance, is that so hard to understand?

When you sacrifice an animal, You lose the use of the animal. The use of animal does not come back to you when the formality is complete. The price you pay for the "sacrifice" entails a real sacrifice.

When you brandy about Jesus' supposed "sacrifices", if you at all concern yourself with even partial intellectual integrity, then you must decide whether you believe the sacrafice part, or the trinity, resurrection and ascension part, for they are mutually exclusive.

If you believe the sacrifice part, then what he gave up he could not reclaim. He is gone, dead and decomposed. His sacrifice is perhaps noble in a certain mentally deranged way, but many others in history have made similar sacrifices for sounder reasons, only they did not suffer such extravagant and unscrupulous post mortem hype.

If you believe the divine part, and think him resurrected, and the holy trinity not reduced to holy binity by way of the supposed sacrifice, then where is the sacrifice?

So you are right. It is apples and oranges. Animal sacrifice, however repellent to a civilized man, is in most cases a genuine sacrifice. The "sacrifice" of Jesus is just a tale about a protagonist having it both ways, and so shabbily constructed by a committee of maggot brained fanatics that 2000 years of fervent obfuscation still could not disguise the narrative deceit and doublespeak.