Lucifuge Rofocale said:
Those are the contradictions I wanted to be answered. Thanks Ossai for taking the time to respond to Elliot posts while I wasn't here (I had to marry those days).
Elliot would you answer Ossais's post above?
Congratulations on your marriage!
Regarding Ossai's post...he calls my thinking fractured. I'm not just going to respond to the mere statement.
I think that *punishment* is a way of looking at the objective reality of the situation. I'm taking the Skinner approach here (beyond reward/punishment).
See, I call it punishment because I want the alternative. It's punishment to me. That's great if it's punishment to you too.
But I am allowing for other people to have the OPPOSITE attitude. If someone wants to be cut off from God, the reality of that will be a REWARD. That's the notion I'm injecting into all of this, and I'm not sure if I'll get anyone here to appreciate that notion, but understand, if you're going to call my thinking *fractured* that notion might be the reason for your opinion, so maybe try to understand what I'm saying here, even if you disagree with that, and just maybe that'll help to mend the supposed broken bones (which I happen to think walk around just fine).
Ossai said that I said there was no need for a sacrificial plan...if I said that, I meant it in that God did not need to have it all laid out like he laid it out. He also didn't need to have a plan to reconcile himself with humanity. That's what I meant when I said that it wasn't necessary. Regarding sacrifice, I suppose that God didn't need to have Jesus in order for the reconciliation to happen, but that's the way it happened, and I think it all works out, and I have no problem with it. If you want to quibble over what God needed to do, or should have done, I'm not all that interested. I'm sorry I even mentioned *need* to that extent, but I will say that God could have done it anyway he wanted to, and that's as far as I meant the word *need*.
I do yield to God's universal authority. He would extent that to a universal *might makes right*. I reject that, because God makes free choice allowances (of course they'd have to *work* in his universal framework) and I reject how he would have me translate that to how morality would work on Earth. No one on Earth is God, so I have no use for *might makes right* in terms of human interaction.
Of course I never SAID *might makes right* so I don't feel any further need to defend a case that I didn't actually make.
As for the Christian angle being meaningless, that's poppycock. I believe that the Christian angle is the recognition of the salvific act. Forget for a moment the specifics of the salvific act. If you can appreciate the concept (maybe you can't), the specifics fill the glass. The specifics aren't the glass. The specifics could be something else. They are what they are. The salvific act had to be something. If it was something else, I'd like to think the Christians would have *that* angle (but then the Christians probably wouldn't be called Christians, would they?
)
Re: all anyone has to do is wait until they are dead...if anybody has that attitude and glories in that attitude they will have to be accountable for that attitude. They would have to admit that the mere attitude was at the very least unfortunate. The attitude admits that they *knew better*.
Now, if the person does not have that willful attitude (the way in which you express it), I don't think their accountability is by any means commensurate.
And you're back on the *punishing* gig! It isn't that you don't want to be punished! If that's your attitude on getting into heaven (I don't want to be heaven) I'll insist here and now that you won't be getting in that way (and I don't like to use such phrases, but I'm thinking that this is the kind of phraseology you are thinking about, or expecting). It isn't what you DON'T want, but what you DO want. A negative attitude will not (WILL NOT) reconcile you to God. Ugh. You're looking at this totally backwards, and all I can do is shake me head.
The salvific act does not nullify original sin in the immediate, obviously. We are born flawed, with the tendency to sin, and sin we will. We can be freed from that eventually. If you will, you can say or understand that the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ will have its fullest meaning PERSONALLY to the individual at that moment after death, when God is faced and judgment happens and all that. This would be the more transcendant, timeless, and universal understanding of the salvific act.
Obviously the Christian does not believe that Christ's death and resurrection enables us humans to live perfectly moral lives! I'm not sure how to respond to the contrary notion as it is too absurd to consider.
Ossai then boils down his question:
"Why don't you tell me whats that horrible sin jesus need to pay in the cross. To exist?â€"
And the answer is that the question is ridiculous. There is no singular horrible sin that Jesus needs to pay on the cross. It is the totality of human sin. In its entirety. We're all part of that.
-Elliot
