syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
|
Post by syzygy on Jun 11, 2017 13:05:28 GMT
I have been taught answers to this question ranging from “He conquered sin and death and opened the gates of heaven” to “He offered adequate recompense to God for the offenses of humankind” and “He ransomed us from all that enslaves us.” The first sounds too metaphorical to be of much use. The second, Anselm’s idea, sounds like a payment to God and is open to the objection that a God who demands such a payment is not worthy of worship. The third sounds like a payment to the devil!
The best part of all three is that they tell about an objective change in the world or in us or in God, and that’s what I’m looking for. I’m not satisfied with an answer that says that Jesus taught us and showed us the right way to live or how horrible sin is or how loving God is. These answers I consider subject changes, changes in our ideas that leave to us the task of applying them and saving ourselves and the world—just as any great teacher would do. Jesus must have been not just a teacher but also a doer.
So then what did Jesus do? What objective changes did Jesus make in the world or us or God? I have been nursing some initial thoughts about this, including a response to Anselm, and I hope to share them later and get your feedback; but first I would like to just raise the question for some of your thoughts.
|
|
jonkon
Master of the Arts
Posts: 111
|
Post by jonkon on Jun 11, 2017 14:40:41 GMT
Two things: (1) Immediate: Allowing indwelling of the Holy Spirit to give us a broader and clearer view of the reality around us. (2) Long term: Jesus died in our place that out death is not permanent but that we might have eternal life.
|
|
syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
|
Post by syzygy on Jun 15, 2017 13:09:25 GMT
Jonkon: Two things: (1) Immediate: Allowing indwelling of the Holy Spirit to give us a broader and clearer view of the reality around us. (2) Long term: Jesus died in our place that out death is not permanent but that we might have eternal life.
Both things true, but, on the first: The question asks what did Jesus do, not what did he send somebody else to do. What was it about Jesus’ career that the Father could say, “With this I am well-pleased; I will raise this Jesus up to sit at my right hand”? On the second: I really want to know how that works. What change did Jesus’ death (and his life) work so that death might not be permanent? Was it that his death paid the price that our sins required but we couldn’t pay?
My thoughts run in an opposite direction to the last (i.e., Anselm’s) idea, a re-balancing of the Scales of Justice – that thing that tells us there’s something wrong in the universe if a crime is not paid for. It’s the reason we, in some parts of the U.S., still use capital punishment even after it’s been shown not to deter future crime (although revenge might be the truer motive). It’s the reason some parents still use spanking as a tool for discipline, though other, non-violent methods are better suited to the goal of raising morally upright children.
Rather than re-balancing the Scales of Justice, I think Jesus broke them. The torture and execution of a man who committed no wrong but was God incarnate was an injustice that even God could not balance. Or, at least, would not balance, since Jesus, obeying the Father’s will, underwent this injustice willingly. This death makes futile any attempt to re-balance the universe, which we vainly try to do when we measure out punishment to fit crimes. This death makes forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation, and recompense (most likely partial or even symbolic) – in that order – the way the universe is righted after an offense.
This death ends the sacrifices of the Older Testament, but not by completing them. Rather it completes the strand in the Jewish Scriptures that criticizes the practice of offering gifts to God: the warnings of some of the prophets, the denial of David’s request to build a temple, the story of Jephthah and the sacrifice of his daughter, the near sacrifice of Isaac. Even the expulsion of Adam and Even from Paradise shows that it isn’t we who give to God, but God gives to us. He sacrificed some of his own animals to clothe the sinful pair before sending them out.
I haven’t said anything about Jesus’ life before his death. So the question about what Jesus did to change the world or us or God needs a fuller answer, which I can attempt after I get my computer back from the motel where I left it a few days ago (!). Besides, if I stop here maybe I can get some response. Have I managed to say something meaningful and true about what Jesus did? What did Jesus actually do that changed everything?
|
|
jonkon
Master of the Arts
Posts: 111
|
Post by jonkon on Jun 15, 2017 20:26:04 GMT
In breaking the Decalogue, we directly insult God, questioning His benevolence, goodness, and wisdom. Such acts as theft and murder reduce a creature made in the image of God to a worthless object, rendering God Himself worthless. As a consequence we lose our ability to enter into a life-sustaining relationship with God. Christ restores this ability by taking upon Himself the punishment we brought upon ourselves. This in turn has the long term effect of making our deaths a temporary phenomenon and the immediate effect of being able to enjoy, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the experience and presence of God.
|
|
|
Post by sandwiches on Jun 15, 2017 21:29:51 GMT
Jesus must have been not just a teacher but also a doer.
That seems an unhelpful dichotomy. It was not just his teaching but the example he set by living out his teaching. I have just read Larry Hurtado's 'Why on Earth did Anyone Become a Christian in The First Three Centuries?' Most of the book deals with the disincentives to become a Christian in the Roman empire. There is little written evidence as to why people became Christians in the face of such disincentives. He ventures a couple of guesses on why they did toward the end of the book. These guesses are based on an estimation of what might have been missing in the Roman world. The suggestionsa are 'A Loving God' and 'Eternal Life'. Particular gods in the pagan world could be benign or generous on occasion but deities were not about loving humans or being loved by them (leaving aside occasional erotic escapades). The idea of Eternal Life was bound up for Christians with the idea of resurrection and something available to all believers not just Emperor/generals or the rich. If these teachings and the example set by his own life and resurrection had not touched a chord or met the needs of people Jesus would have been forgotten after his death, like other wonder-workers of his age. Jesus was not a military conquerer whose appeal was based on military success and the threat of death to apostates. Perhaps it was unfortunate for Christianity when Constantine made the connection between Christ and military success.
|
|
syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
|
Post by syzygy on Jun 15, 2017 22:54:30 GMT
Jonkon, the first part of this reply is a little off topic, but "worthless object" seems extreme. How does God love a worthless object?
I'm more interested in the idea of death as a "temporary phenomenon." I think Jesus changed death for us, but not by making it less important. For the Stoics and Platonist death was a door to a different kind of life. It had very little meaning other than that. Souls, considered the important part of us, don't die, according to them. To the Epicureans death was nothing. For the average Roman or Greek, as for us, death was/is not something to think about very much. But for Christians, because of Jesus, death is an important part of life, our metaphorical death to self as well as our literal death at the end. I think this is another thing that Jesus did--change the meaning of death by incorporating it into God's life. Jesus, the Son of God, will always be the one who died.
|
|
syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
|
Post by syzygy on Jun 16, 2017 3:11:38 GMT
Sandwiches: Jesus taught by words and by example. It's teaching either way. Granted he was actually doing something when he welcomed and cured and forgave. Even telling parables was doing something. But Jesus must have been more than a teacher, even including teaching by example. Let me explain with a comparison. Einstein developed and taught the theory of relativity. Now that we (some of us) have learned the theory, we can forget Einstein and we'll still have the theory. The fact that it was Einstein instead of somebody else isn't important. It's not that way with Jesus. With Jesus it couldn't have been anybody else, and if we forget Jesus while remembering what he taught, including about eternal life, we'll have the most inconsequential part of what Christians believe.
So my thought is that Jesus changed something and not just in the lives of the few he helped in some way and not just in his followers learning a new way of thinking and acting. The world is different, human nature is different, maybe even God is different, somehow. Another thought just occurred: Maybe the time is different. What do you think?
|
|
|
Post by sandwiches on Jun 16, 2017 16:52:49 GMT
syzygy
I may be just thick but I still don't quite get your point. Jesus changed human history by his teaching and example. Einstein was a genius who helped our understanding of physics and the Universe etc. Jesus taught that we should love God and therefore each other and lived out that teaching. Jesus did not do that by force. Jesus is the game-changer.
|
|
syzygy
Master of the Arts
Posts: 103
|
Post by syzygy on Jun 16, 2017 21:04:38 GMT
If we were to find the meaning of Jesus only in what he taught (by word or example), then once we had the teaching, we could forget Jesus. That wouldn't be Christianity, but in the Einstein example it could be perfectly good science. If it were Jesus' teaching that saves us, then once we "got" that teaching we'd be saving ourselves. Jesus doesn't just change things through us (although he does that). He changes things himself. I've been trying to lay hold of ways that he does that that make sense to me. Not that opening up the possibility of eternal life in heaven is nonsense, but I'm not satisfied with that. Christianity, with our incarnate God, is the most down-to-earth religion there is, I believe. It's about much more than going to another place after we die.
Honestly, I have to apologize for not setting out a whole coherent thought up to this point. I've been thinking and scribbling about this for a long time and trying for clarity. Actually, this exercise of going public (for the first time) has been helpful. I think I'm ready now to be both more precise and more complete. If you could bear with me for a while, I'd appreciate it.
Jesus changed things: 1. Jesus changed the world by breaking the Scales of Justice. His death was so unjust that it can never be compensated. Now not payment (much less revenge or getting even) but forgiveness is at the center of righting the wrongs of the world. 2. Jesus changed human death by bringing it into the life of God. The Son of God is the one who died and rose. Now death is not “nothing to us,” the Epicurean view; nor a mere door to another world and a spiritual life, the Stoic-Platonic view; nor just the end followed by nothing of atheism; nor something to ignore while getting on with the business of life – but a finishing touch (Jesus’ “It is finished”), the completion of a meaningful story, something to prepare for all one’s life by “dying to self.” 3. Jesus changed each human life from ONLY a fragment of a whole to a BLESSED fragment. Jesus’ life was as fragmentary as ours. He could not be, explore, taste, every human possibility. He was Jew, not Greek or Chinese. He was Caucasian, not Black. He lived his whole life in a small area of the world and a tiny portion of time. He was a carpenter, not of any other trade. He was one particular, not every possible, height and body build. He was a man, not a woman. Jesus brought fragmentariness into divinity. Jesus’ story was not the whole story. Each of us has a fragmentary story as well, but now that God has taken on fragmentariness, we can have a new kind of ultimate meaning. It does not involve disappearing into a much larger whole, whether Humanity or the Universe or the Nothing. We fragmentary beings have ultimate meaning by being related to another fragment, an ultimate meaning that affirms, rather than destroys, our particular individuality. 4. Jesus changed time. Now we are not in the only time there is, the eternal cycle. And we are not in the Jewish time of waiting for the fullness of time. We are in a time between a fulfillment already accomplished by Jesus and the promised but not yet arrived flowering of that seed. (Language fails me here, but it’s a common enough thought. Others have expressed it better.)
Jesus was indeed a game changer the way teachers change things through their students, but I think he changed things directly also, in these and, I assume, other ways.
Have I made sense yet? Feel free to criticize.
|
|