In your “as Christians tell the story”, you’re missing quite a bit.
Christ’s level of suffering in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross was such that he atoned for all of the sins of everyone who ever lived and ever would live. Atoned, as in “to atone is to suffer the penalty for sins, thereby removing the effects of sin from the repentant sinner and allowing him or her to be reconciled to God”.
It’s the method by which God is able to temper justice with mercy, through the mechanism of having someone else voluntarily pay a legitimate debt on our behalf.
This level of suffering by definition exceeds any suffering that ever has or ever will be suffered by anyone else, since it essentially includes it all.
Christ suffered willingly and voluntarily, knowing ahead of time what he was getting himself into, in order to save everyone else from being forced to suffer for their own sins. That payment in our place is what provides the opportunity for us to be saved from our spiritual death.
Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection in order to solve physical death is very important, but minor suffering by comparison.
Christ’s two part atonement is so beyond the sacrifice made by John Perry that you’d have to start referring to humanly incomprehensible numbers in order to fairly compare them.
The part about Gathsemane is exclusively Mormon doctrine. I’m pretty sure the part about him suffering the pain of our sins, rather than just the comparatively infinitesimal pain of crusifiction, is not.
The Wikipedia page you linked to talked about his emotional turmoil, but nothing more. The Mormon belief is that he suffered part of the atonement there. While the emotional turmoil is technically suffering, it’s not really on the same scale, and not what Sharper was talking about.
Depends on your theology. From what I remember reading Constantine’s Sword, Anselm’s theology was that Adam & Eve’s crime against God was an infinite crime since God is infinite, and so nothing less than another punishment (of an infinite being) could be equally infinite and wipe it out. So it’s not that Jesus experienced, packed into 3 short days, the sins or the suffering of all humanity through all time—it’s just one crime of lèse majesté had to be balanced out.
(Of course, this is Christianity we’re talking about. If you know of fewer than 100 distinct positions, that just shows you haven’t done your homework.)
“Moreover, arguing that an error against God is infinite because He is infinite is like arguing that it is holy because God is, or like thinking that the injuries commited against a tiger must be striped.”—Jorge Luis Borges
Suffering. It wasn’t specifically mentioned whether the suffering was all transmuted into physical pain while on the cross. In fact it was the actually being dead part that mattered the most—presumably he got whatever we had coming to us when we die while he was dead.
If God really let his own son suffer that amount of pain, then he really his the most horrible person that ever existed… and don’t tell me there was no other way to atone for the sins, or that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. God is supposed to be omnipowerful, if he is so, just having his son willing to suffer to redeem humanity should be way enough to redeem without having to inflict such incredible pain to him.
The belief is that he either isn’t completely omnipotent, or that someone suffering for sins is morally better than nobody suffering. Much the same goes for not sinning.
Can someone explain why this is being voted down? The article assumes that Christ’s suffering was limited to the crucifixion. This post points out that that’s incorrect. He suffered many orders of magnitude worse than that.
I think issue is being taken with the fact that Christ’s suffering is being defined as something incomparably greater than what other humans can experience. There are a number of theological points which could be discussed (all fruitlessly in my opinion) but when I sit down to understand the Christ story, I do not attribute metaphysical degrees of suffering to Jesus. The point is that, as Richard Dawkins has said before, the “snapping of fingers” could have been chosen as an adequate basis for atonement, if God so wished it. That God, in this particular myth, required “the shedding of blood” for atonement means that, literally, God is responsible for his own suffering and was fully aware of surviving that suffering, however extensive it might have been. This makes him infinitely less of a hero than John Perry. Trying to literally define Christ’s suffering as being however immense so as to render him a hero is not a line of reasoning that I’m prepared to view as reasonable in any sense.
but when I sit down to understand the Christ story, I do not attribute metaphysical degrees of suffering to Jesus.
So, you misunderstand the story, and the post corrected that. Shouldn’t that get it voted up?
The point is that, as Richard Dawkins has said before, the “snapping of fingers” could have been chosen as an adequate basis for atonement, if God so wished it.
So, you misunderstand the story, and the post corrected that. Shouldn’t that get it voted up?
I believe the poster misunderstands the story and that the Dawkins quote is relevant to that point. The Christ myth depicts Christ as being God-incarnate suffering in human-format, and therefore suffering in precisely the same way that humans would suffer. I do not agree that it is intended to depict Christ’s atonement as categorically more painful nor incomprehensibly painful. This is why these theological debates are fruitless. Since this is all interpretation of myth, I’m not sure there is enough objective evidence here to conclusively favor either interpretation.
Specifically, the incomprehensibility of the suffering was invoked to argue that Christ, in the myth, is more heroic than John Perry is in our understanding of human suffering. I think Dawkins’ quote aptly argues against that interpretation. Even if Christ suffered incomprehensibly (I disagree that the myth asserts that he did), his knowledge of surviving the suffering and obtaining what he selfishly wanted (the salvation of mankind) makes him less of a hero than John Perry in my opinion. And many here seem to share that opinion.
If someone wishes to believe that the crucifixion myth matters because of Christ’s incomprehensible suffering, that’s fine. I disagree that that is a well-supported interpretation of the myth, and even if it were, God himself is the logical cause of his own suffering. He had to prefer to obtain human salvation through the act of suffering in order to arrange the universe such that that was what he required himself to do. Not heroic. In fact, once an entity is omnipotent, attributing heroism at all becomes a tricky matter.
The Christ myth depicts Christ as being God-incarnate suffering in human-format, and therefore suffering in precisely the same way that humans would suffer.
On a historical note, this is true for Orthodox Christianity; not true for monophysitism (and still relevant in, say, the Armenian church).
I looked up the Atonement on Wikipedia. I can’t seem to tell if he’s universally believed to have suffered more than just the crucifixion itself. It doesn’t seem to mention it on the main part, but it also doesn’t mention it on what Mormons believe differently.
In your “as Christians tell the story”, you’re missing quite a bit.
Christ’s level of suffering in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross was such that he atoned for all of the sins of everyone who ever lived and ever would live. Atoned, as in “to atone is to suffer the penalty for sins, thereby removing the effects of sin from the repentant sinner and allowing him or her to be reconciled to God”.
It’s the method by which God is able to temper justice with mercy, through the mechanism of having someone else voluntarily pay a legitimate debt on our behalf.
This level of suffering by definition exceeds any suffering that ever has or ever will be suffered by anyone else, since it essentially includes it all.
Christ suffered willingly and voluntarily, knowing ahead of time what he was getting himself into, in order to save everyone else from being forced to suffer for their own sins. That payment in our place is what provides the opportunity for us to be saved from our spiritual death.
Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection in order to solve physical death is very important, but minor suffering by comparison.
Christ’s two part atonement is so beyond the sacrifice made by John Perry that you’d have to start referring to humanly incomprehensible numbers in order to fairly compare them.
The part about Gathsemane is exclusively Mormon doctrine. I’m pretty sure the part about him suffering the pain of our sins, rather than just the comparatively infinitesimal pain of crusifiction, is not.
Not at all. It was the subject of an oratorio by Beethoven), who (whatever might be said about his religious beliefs) was definitely not a Mormon!
The Wikipedia page you linked to talked about his emotional turmoil, but nothing more. The Mormon belief is that he suffered part of the atonement there. While the emotional turmoil is technically suffering, it’s not really on the same scale, and not what Sharper was talking about.
(I confirm. The garden part definitely wasn’t in my mythology.)
Was the part about him suffering from our sins and not just the cross?
The Gahsmane part wasn’t in my mythology. The for sins part was.
Just to make sure: it’s that the pain he suffered was from our sins, and not just the cross, right?
Depends on your theology. From what I remember reading Constantine’s Sword, Anselm’s theology was that Adam & Eve’s crime against God was an infinite crime since God is infinite, and so nothing less than another punishment (of an infinite being) could be equally infinite and wipe it out. So it’s not that Jesus experienced, packed into 3 short days, the sins or the suffering of all humanity through all time—it’s just one crime of lèse majesté had to be balanced out.
(Of course, this is Christianity we’re talking about. If you know of fewer than 100 distinct positions, that just shows you haven’t done your homework.)
“Moreover, arguing that an error against God is infinite because He is infinite is like arguing that it is holy because God is, or like thinking that the injuries commited against a tiger must be striped.”—Jorge Luis Borges
A classic. I recently re-read my copy of his Nonfiction, so possibly I actually am remembering it from there rather than Constantine’s Sword.
Suffering. It wasn’t specifically mentioned whether the suffering was all transmuted into physical pain while on the cross. In fact it was the actually being dead part that mattered the most—presumably he got whatever we had coming to us when we die while he was dead.
If God really let his own son suffer that amount of pain, then he really his the most horrible person that ever existed… and don’t tell me there was no other way to atone for the sins, or that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. God is supposed to be omnipowerful, if he is so, just having his son willing to suffer to redeem humanity should be way enough to redeem without having to inflict such incredible pain to him.
The belief is that he either isn’t completely omnipotent, or that someone suffering for sins is morally better than nobody suffering. Much the same goes for not sinning.
Can someone explain why this is being voted down? The article assumes that Christ’s suffering was limited to the crucifixion. This post points out that that’s incorrect. He suffered many orders of magnitude worse than that.
I think issue is being taken with the fact that Christ’s suffering is being defined as something incomparably greater than what other humans can experience. There are a number of theological points which could be discussed (all fruitlessly in my opinion) but when I sit down to understand the Christ story, I do not attribute metaphysical degrees of suffering to Jesus. The point is that, as Richard Dawkins has said before, the “snapping of fingers” could have been chosen as an adequate basis for atonement, if God so wished it. That God, in this particular myth, required “the shedding of blood” for atonement means that, literally, God is responsible for his own suffering and was fully aware of surviving that suffering, however extensive it might have been. This makes him infinitely less of a hero than John Perry. Trying to literally define Christ’s suffering as being however immense so as to render him a hero is not a line of reasoning that I’m prepared to view as reasonable in any sense.
So, you misunderstand the story, and the post corrected that. Shouldn’t that get it voted up?
I don’t think that was mentioned in this article.
I believe the poster misunderstands the story and that the Dawkins quote is relevant to that point. The Christ myth depicts Christ as being God-incarnate suffering in human-format, and therefore suffering in precisely the same way that humans would suffer. I do not agree that it is intended to depict Christ’s atonement as categorically more painful nor incomprehensibly painful. This is why these theological debates are fruitless. Since this is all interpretation of myth, I’m not sure there is enough objective evidence here to conclusively favor either interpretation.
Specifically, the incomprehensibility of the suffering was invoked to argue that Christ, in the myth, is more heroic than John Perry is in our understanding of human suffering. I think Dawkins’ quote aptly argues against that interpretation. Even if Christ suffered incomprehensibly (I disagree that the myth asserts that he did), his knowledge of surviving the suffering and obtaining what he selfishly wanted (the salvation of mankind) makes him less of a hero than John Perry in my opinion. And many here seem to share that opinion.
If someone wishes to believe that the crucifixion myth matters because of Christ’s incomprehensible suffering, that’s fine. I disagree that that is a well-supported interpretation of the myth, and even if it were, God himself is the logical cause of his own suffering. He had to prefer to obtain human salvation through the act of suffering in order to arrange the universe such that that was what he required himself to do. Not heroic. In fact, once an entity is omnipotent, attributing heroism at all becomes a tricky matter.
On a historical note, this is true for Orthodox Christianity; not true for monophysitism (and still relevant in, say, the Armenian church).
I looked up the Atonement on Wikipedia. I can’t seem to tell if he’s universally believed to have suffered more than just the crucifixion itself. It doesn’t seem to mention it on the main part, but it also doesn’t mention it on what Mormons believe differently.