(March 21, 2013 at 9:34 am)Tonus Wrote: [quote='Godschild' pid='418204' dateline='1363845849']There are things we do know that Christ gave up ie. sacrificed. Christ being part of the Holy Trinity gave up His separation from sin to become sin. So God suffered knowing sin instead of the purity He had always know, this was done for all people. Christ gave up His great powers when He came as Jesus, Jesus relied on the Father's power, this means He had to trust instead of always being trusted, this was done for all people. As Drich said, Christ gave up His righteousness and became sin, this in itself should be proof of His love, this was done for all people.
Tonus Wrote:That's an interesting take on it. That has some real potential. If you don't mind, I'm going to theorize a bit here...
I can see where this can work with the concept that humanity's fallen condition is the result of god's design, and therefore he is the cause.
Why do you insist that God is at fault, Adam and Eve were the one's that sinned, they were not forced. My parents did a great job of raising me, yet when I was out on my own I made many bad choices, choices that lead to the result my parents told me they would. I do not blame them, I made the choices that I was taught not to and the resulting consequences belong on my shoulders and mine alone.
Tonus Wrote:Having creating everything and found it to be "good," he presented Adam and Eve with a simple challenge, and they failed miserably. At first, god refuses to accept that his design could be that faulty. He makes some ambiguous promises for the future, but for a while he allows things to develop. Here we see Yahweh, the OT god: resentful, capricious, uncompromising, and harsh. At some point, he arranges to become human for a time and experience the human condition personally.
Let's determine when this choice was made, scripture tells us that this was determined before creation, and the choice was not to experience the human condition, it was to be the perfect sacrifice through the human condition. I agree that God seem hard on His people, just as a child believes it's parents are harsh when they are being punished, He asked them to trust them and obey so He could protect them, when they did they prospered greatly, when not they were punished. One description you used "uncompromising", why would the Creator ever need to bargain with His creation.
Tonus Wrote:After growing up human, he becomes conflicted. Seeing it from 'our' vantage point, he understands better why those first humans fell so quickly and easily, and is unsettled (if not outright repulsed) by his own treatment of humanity in the intervening centuries. He begins his ministry conflicted by his two natures: the arbitrary, cruel, demanding Yahweh versus the empathetic Jesus.
Christ, the Father, nor the Holy Spirit has ever been conflicted, they are the omniscient God, Yahweh knows all for all time and eternity.
Tonus Wrote:The Sermon on the Mount gives evidence of this conflicted nature. Jesus blesses those who struggle and suffer through the pains that Yahweh has visited upon them, and promises them rewards as if he recognizes the unfairness of their condition. Then Yahweh comes forth, cursing their weakness by implying that the law wasn't encompassing enough. That they simply need to be more perfect (just like god) and more humble (not so much like god). This kind of back-and-forth continues through to the end, and it's not clear who is winning.
I'm not sure how you can come up with this through the Sermon on the Mount, man is responsible for his condition. The the struggling and the suffering people of that time generally were put in that position by the supposed righteous and upstanding people or they were born into a poor position. Jesus was giving them hope for the future. As far as the struggle you say God is going through, Jesus said himself that a house divided can not stand, Jesus also says that He and the Father are One. Through scripture we see God hard at work to redeem those who will except His extended hand.
Tonus Wrote:This struggle continues throughout the gospels. Jesus wins out; he is so burdened by guilt at what Yahweh put humanity through, that he feels the only way to compensate is to put himself through cruel punishment. He arranges for men to mock him, assault him, scourge him, curse him, and finally kill him in a way that was humiliating, painful, and slow. But first he faces his conflict one last time, asking to be spared his fate, a moment of human weakness that quickly passes. Just before he dies, he cries out to Yahweh in anguish and regret that he has been forsaken. Perhaps he referred to himself as a representative of humanity, so that at the very last, he understands the crime that god committed against man. Jesus' last act is to judge god's work as faulty, and in doing so he diminishes god.
You have a big imagination, but why imagine, the truth is in the scriptures you are trying to mock. Christ does not judge himself, there's nothing to judge His plan is perfect, which by the way can only come from a perfect God. Jesus had no regrets on the cross, He did suffer through the horror of all sin being placed upon Him, but no regret.
Tonus Wrote:And the deed is done. God has connected with humanity and understands them as he could not have before. Chastened, he opens the gates of heaven and offers salvation to humanity, not because they are right but because he was wrong. Just as he had moved closer to them, so he provides for them to move closer to him. God makes up for his misstep by offering humanity godhood.
Again some imagination, totally wrong. God never needed to identify with man, he completely understood, this is why he knew the only way to restore man to himself was to give his Son as a sacrifice for man, to give man a way to have his wrongs righted by God.
Tonus Wrote:I can imagine that this is the kind of road map that Christianity will require as time marches on and the Bible continues to be deconstructed and people come to understand it better. We can come full circle, to the times when gods were very human in their actions and attitudes and not so distant from the people that they pretended to condescend to. We will make real progress towards accepting that god is us, and we are god. And hopefully, that will help us to realize the real dream of the Bible: that we can create heaven right here, instead of slogging through this world as if it were a rest stop on the way to something better.
Jesus said that the word of God would never change not one little bit Matt.5:18. If people do not come to God through the provision he has given, then they will suffer their choice. This life is not a rest stop by any means, it is a time to walk in a faithful relationship with God through Jesus Christ for the coming eternity.
I do not mind you theorizing but shouldn't you do it with what is actually in scripture, making things up does not help the argument.
What I wrote does not in any way support what you theorized, Christ's suffering could never be associated with such.
God loves those who believe and those who do not and the same goes for me, you have no choice in this matter. That puts the matter of total free will to rest.