Alfredo wrote: What I still don't understand, for a few reasons, is why the sin-stuff must necessarily be transferred in a way which requires the torture of a Jesus...
Jesus' torture wasn't anything abnormal. And there are worse things done on a daily basis.
It wasn't the torture that made that particular piece of inhumanity the atonement. It was the who it was done to.
(Nevo, Jan 23) And the Melchizedek Priesthood may not have been restored until the summer of 1830, several months after the organization of the Church.
CaliforniaKid wrote:For God so loved the world that he sacrificed his only begotten son in a bloody spectacle in order to propitiate his own anger toward you and to be able to associate with you without tarnishing his pristine righteous image. Therefore, give thanks.
Your post is a good example of why I don't do this very often: people get mad and/or hurt. So I think I'll stop now. I've had my say.
...
They get mad all right. They also sometimes say they are hurt.
I am however afraid that this may well be no more than a ploy to get you to stop offering views they don't like, and are unable to rebut by rational argument.
I suggest you simply assure people of your goodwill, and refuse to let a heckler's veto silence you.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Chap wrote:The analogy between Jesus and service in the armed forces is a very imperfect one.
Soldiers do not enlist because they want to die for their country. If anyone does try to enlist with that aim in mind, you may be sure that those they are likely to serve with will hope very much indeed that such a candidate will not get through the psychological evaluation. They enlist because they are willing to fight for their country. The people they want to die as a result of their action are their country's enemies. If they are good soldiers and remember their training they will do their very best to stay alive. Dying is a risk soldiers have to accept, and we should be grateful that so many are prepared to accept that risk, but it is an outcome none but the dangerously deranged would actively seek.
In the case of Jesus, the case was very different. He did not come tooled up to take out Satan, got the worst of it, and died a hero's death in glorious combat. Instead we are asked to believe that he came intending to die, because his dying was essential, and God demanded it. That's very different to what soldiers do.
I like in the movie Patton where he says:
Now, I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
"I do not want you to think that I am very righteous, for I am not." Joseph Smith (History of the Church 5:401)
CaliforniaKid wrote:My understanding of punishment, however, is that it is meant to dissuade and restrain the offender from committing further offenses. It's meant to be educational, not to balance the cosmic scales, satisfy some abstract notion of justice, or even provide some kind of revenge or emotional satisfaction to the victim.
Requiring that an offender make restitution to a victim can be a particularly fair and effective form of punishment, which takes into account the needs of victims as well as those of offenders. But restitution should not be confused with revenge.
The abstract concepts of revenge, honor, and justice were imperfect pre-modern ways of conceptualizing the need to punish and restrain offenders. They were conceptual "shortcuts", if you will, that enabled people with no understanding of game theory to successfully negotiate various kinds of social "games".
Today, we understand enough about game theory that we no longer need those shortcuts, and we can also see that each of them had a range of weaknesses and unintended side effects that might have been avoided by a more sophisticated conceptual framework.
For example, the abstract concepts of honor and revenge might suggest that a violation of the honor of an infinite being demands an infinite punishment for the honor to be restored. When the true social purposes of punishment are understood, however, we see that infinite punishment would defeat those purposes. It would leave no incentive for the offender to reform himself, because there is no getting out on good behavior.
The abstract concept of justice, meanwhile, might suggest that punishment could be transferable. But when we understand punishment's true social purposes, we see that transference of punishment defeats those purposes. If you suffer punishment in my place, then I am neither restrained nor educated. The only lesson I learn is that altruistic people make foolish decisions and seek out unnecessary suffering. It's possible I'll be appreciative of what you did, and even seek to repay you somehow. But it's also possible I'll think you're an idiot and promise never to become as dumb as you. If you want to use mercy as a carrot, there's no need for my punishment to be transferred to an innocent person. It can simply be relaxed as a reward for good behavior, without any transference at all.
I want to say I appreciated this well thought out ciritcism of some thnking about the atonement. I agree with your statements . There have been times I have been tempted to lay blame for a lot of bad Christian behavior on the theory you are criticising. It may not be clear how far such blame would be accurate.
My friend Joseph Campbell put john 3:16 + this way: "Just before going into the garden at the end of the Last Supper, Jesus says to his friends "let us dance" and they hold hands in a circle and as they circle around him , Jesus sings "Glory be to thee Father"! Amen they chant. and on and on : "Glory be to thee Word"-Amen! "I would be born and I would bear" -Amen! "I would eat and be eaten" Amen! "Thou that dancest, see what I do, for thine is this passion of manhood which i am about to suffer"-Amen! "I would flee and I would stray"- Amen "I would unite and be united" -Amen!
"A door am I to thee that knocketh at me.. A way am I to thee , a wayfarer"
And when the dance is ended ,he walks out into the garden to be taken and crucified.
Campbell finishes: "When you go to your death as a god, you are going to eternal life-so what is there to be angry or said about? It is magnificent. Let us celebrate it!!!
Whereof this is an addendum to John 3:61: Thou shalt also believe in a penal substitutionary atonement and thou shalt wait until St. Anslem for the first articulation of said atonement theory. I may be "the way, the truth, and the life," but Anselm is the bomb-diggety, therefore thou shalt see Cur Deus Homo for further light and knowledge.
This post seemed to me to be a reasonable first response to the opening post by CaliforniaKid. I was puzzled that it was not picked up on much. I think it points out that the New testament does not have clear simple explaination of what is meant by the atonement. Yes as he pointed out the phrases, propituation, sacrifice, by his blood, all are repeated as short reference. I do not think those summary phrases explain very well. The fact that Christian theology took a thousand years to arrive at Anselms now popular theory should be good evidence of the ambiguity.
Looking at the opening post a second time I find myself that it contains less reason than even Anselms(which I feel rather storongly is inadaquate). But Anselm does point out the consideration of maintaining public objective order. In this thread several LDS posters reference that consideration as though it had some special Mormon provence instead of just being a part of thinking most popular in recent centuries.
In my view a better picture of the meaning of atonement can be found by considering the whole book of John or Romans. Fragments or summary phrases just do not explain much.