Jehovah's Witnesses hold that Jesus is a separate person from Jehovah God. As far as the price of atonement, I cannot recall that they ever considered the question. He gave up life as a perfect flesh-and-blood human, which is what Adam "sacrificed" when he sinned. It's one of those things that I didn't think about until much later, the notion of what was really lost. Jesus did two things-- dirtied his hands by becoming a human, and gave up a human body. Given his long life to that point (presumably thousands, if not billions of years already) and that he had eternity ahead of him, neither seems like much of a price to pay. If his status in heaven is somehow lowered by the act, it might almost be considered a sacrifice, but what does that lower status amount to?
Jesus as god (highest on the ladder) or as god's son (second on the ladder) is about as high as status gets. Did someone else supersede him? Does Gabriel get the pick of biscuits from the breakfast tray before Jesus now? Does Jesus only get the second best harp to play? Is it that he has to stand there, red-faced, and pretend that he doesn't hear the angels giggling when he walks past? I don't know of any tangible loss that isn't based on something (status) that we're told doesn't really matter as Christians. The lowest among you shall be the most exalted, after all. By humbling himself, Jesus could only gain status. I don't see that he really sacrificed anything of value.
Jesus as god (highest on the ladder) or as god's son (second on the ladder) is about as high as status gets. Did someone else supersede him? Does Gabriel get the pick of biscuits from the breakfast tray before Jesus now? Does Jesus only get the second best harp to play? Is it that he has to stand there, red-faced, and pretend that he doesn't hear the angels giggling when he walks past? I don't know of any tangible loss that isn't based on something (status) that we're told doesn't really matter as Christians. The lowest among you shall be the most exalted, after all. By humbling himself, Jesus could only gain status. I don't see that he really sacrificed anything of value.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould