Vicarious redemption according to bertaberts

[headheart]

Someone has a bee in their knickers and is reading into posts things that aren't there.

Some wears knickers some don't.

More Knicker Phobia From Tassman's Sockpuppet Pancreasman.jpg

Peace, out.
Eric.

[Catholicity]

Yip, stick the old fingers in the ears and go "blah-blah-blah" Superciliousness may be a big word but it certainly sums up all my encounters with you on this forum and in private mail.
Though I'm sad to have to do it, for I do value much of what you say Yet because it so laden with dogmatism and yet a darker something keeps surfacing the ignore list is my only choice.

Eric, I've always been quite kind to you. But....Cool it.

[Littlejoe]

Yip, stick the old fingers in the ears and go "blah-blah-blah" Superciliousness may be a big word but it certainly sums up all my encounters with you on this forum and in private mail.
Though I'm sad to have to do it, for I do value much of what you say Yet because it so laden with dogmatism and yet a darker something keeps surfacing the ignore list is my only choice.

Goodbye,
Eric.

Supercilious? Adrift??? Nah...you must have been looking in the mirror...

Adrift has always been one on the forefront of believing and preaching that civil discourse instead of raucous and inflammatory rhetoric should be observed....You could not be more wrong IMHO.

And if believing what you have faithfully studied... and now believe that to be true is dogmatic, then I think we all stand charged....

bye bye Eric,

[pancreasman]

Supercilious? Adrift??? Nah...you must have been looking in the mirror...

Adrift has always been one on the forefront of believing and preaching that civil discourse instead of raucous and inflammatory rhetoric should be observed....You could not be more wrong IMHO.

And if believing what you have faithfully studied... and now believe that to be true is dogmatic, then I think we all stand charged....

bye bye Eric,

I agree. Though I disagree with Adrift about practically everything he is always courteous, civil and articulate. I just wanted to have that on record for the good karma. Not that I believe in karma.

[RBerman]

I have spent a lot of years studying, but now I have changed my approach. My theory, which I have probably expressed before, is most Christians know enough but don't practice all they know.

In my experience, no Christians know enough, and most of us (myself included) are not good at practicing the little we do know.

[Adrift]

Thank you for the kind word folks.

It doesn't appear to be reciprocal, but I don't really have a problem with Eric. He's made a point to email me his thoughts on different posts on this forum over the years, and we've had some interesting discussions, and I've learned over the years that he's complicated and passionate and has come through a lot in his life.

I think Eric sees this forum, and his threads in particular as opportunities to impart some of the things he's learned in his life, and to evangelize to the lost, and while I think these are noble goals, I've made it clear to him in the past that I don't think this forum is really the best place for one on one evangelism, in fact, I think its quite the opposite. There's just too much noise and too many opinions, and most people who post on, say, the Apologetics sub-forum are not exactly open to receive, but come to threads with their own strong beliefs and opinions about whatever topic they're engaged in. And I think that's fine. This is a discussion forum after all, and discussion means an exchange of ideas and opinions. But I also don't have any problem with (or even really care that much about) Eric's reasons for posting, he can post whatever he likes for whatever reason he wants as far as I'm concerned. I don't really interact with his threads or posts that often, and its mostly because I find a lot of what he writes incoherent. But when he creates a large number of threads in a short amount of time on a subforum I read and post on on a fairly regular basis, its sort of hard to ignore.

I could be wrong, but I think Eric designs many of his threads as intricate sort of experiments where he sometimes plays devils advocate, uses polls, and uses videos and images to ultimately get his reader to be receptive to whatever wisdom he has to impart, or to get people (maybe) to question their own reasons for coming to the beliefs they currently own. I don't know... again, I have a hard time figuring out what he's doing most of the time, but on the odd occasion that someone asks for clarification I think he finds that as a challenge to whatever elaborate designs he has for his topic. A sort of malicious sabotaging of his grand plans... or something. The same goes for side discussions that aren't particularly pertinent to whatever goal he's trying to accomplish. Basically, I think what he wants is complete control over the direction of his threads and where the conversation goes, and I don't think he understands that that's not really practical at a forum like TWeb, and this obviously frustrates him. I think maybe what he needs to do is create his own forum where he can make up his own rules and decide exactly how conversation should go, or maybe just challenge people to one on one debate in the Gym section or something.

Anyways, I hope the best for him, but it's probably in his best interest to keep me on ignore if he finds me a disruption.

[headheart]

I agree. Though I disagree with Adrift about practically everything he is always courteous, civil and articulate. I just wanted to have that on record for the good karma. Not that I believe in karma.

Let's just say that I'm not impressed with his style of using my threads to make a point he made in private with regard to technique and not specific to discussions. This bleeding in of agenda driven posting both by himself and others on Christians flaming Wiccans on the Wicca & Neo-pagan Religions thread have led me to conclude that the style of posting by some including Department Heads amounts to nothing more than ganging-up herd mentality. I suggest you leave it alone and get on with this discussion which is not about me or my views, but bertabert's view of the atonement.

I rest my case:

I think Eric sees this forum, and his threads in particular as opportunities to impart some of the things he's learned in his life, and to evangelize to the lost, and while I think these are noble goals, I've made it clear to him in the past that I don't think this forum is really the best place for one on one evangelism, in fact, I think its quite the opposite.

Peace,
Eric.

[headheart]

For myself, I could never understand penal substitutionary atonement and I still can't.

But my attitude to atonement softened when I discovered there were other theories of it than the penal substitutionary: moral influence theory, ransom theory, Christus Victor, recapitulation theory. Based on my reading, I get the impression that penal substitutionary atonement was formulated during the Reformation, and was based on some ideas of Anselm in the 11th century - i.e. roughly 1000 years after Christ.

I guess, some people think any rejection of penal substitutionary atonement is heresy. But if you don't think that, then maybe the answer to people like bertaberts is to broaden their horizons of how varied the different Christian understandings of what Jesus achieved on the cross are - one needs to pay attention to the variety of different understandings of this expressed over 2000 years of Christian theology, and the way those understandings have interacted with each other and evolved over time. Maybe one of the other theories will make more sense to him.

I've noted a similar problem when trying to explain this to those who've fed on a diet of Gnosticism and Hinduism, for the whole blood sacrifice idea is revolting to some, in spite of the fact they are not totally (Hinduism) without any history of blood sacrifices.

Anselm's theology was especially pertinent in a medieval context, but one also has to contend with biblical theologies of animal sacrifice, eg, the passover lamb and scapegoat. Depending upon one's approach to biblical inerrancy, these are either dogmatic propositions or contemporary Jewish perspectives.

Sure enough, but most hold to a strict view of inerrancy and therefore object to the idea of a bloody human sacrifice and therefore that view of the atonement.

Peace,
Eric.

[headheart]

In fact though some found UrbanMonk's thinking to be a little too weird for them, he seemed to struggle with this same problem as did robertb (from his very first post to TWC) where no-one has actually been able to answer him directly on the issue of the Atonement. (based on my own read of all his posts) Though I might have missed one, I cannot remember reading that anyone had actually provided a biblical explanation of the atonement which removed his disgust for it. I'd appreciate and answer about this as I'm sure he would too?

Here are three of the discussion I had with UrbanMonk with respect to major Bible doctrines and even JB participated sharing some of his learned insights.

Here are the three discussions which eventually led to Theology Web and a discussion about the atonement fired by my discussion with UrbanMonk:

a. February 25th 2010, 06:39 PM = St. Paul vs Adviata VendAnta
b. March 13th 2010, 01:14 AM = "overlaps" - headheart and urban monk only.
c. March 11th 2010, 02:08 PM = What is "Adviata VedAnta" ? ( JB post 3 & post 8 )

After which I brought his argument to this forum (Theology 201)

d. June 2nd 2010, 04:10 PM = Modern Theology 101 - The Doctrine of Atonement

No doubt, I have had my own difficulties about this, but this is not about my struggles but the struggles of not only bertaberts but many who find very little comfort in the rounds of arguments with so many variations and this final discussion (d) Modern Theology 101 - The Doctrine of Atonement - where bling's argument is responded to by hendrik and left to hibernate since September 30th 2010, 12:00 AM :

bling's challenge: (post 55)

'The idea of God needing “Blood” is belittling God. We needed to have blood sacrifices in the Old Testament to see the symbolic representation of Christ. God does not need or want blood, but allows this cruel bloody sacrifice to help us understand the debt of sin, to allow us be punished (disciplined) without being destroyed, and to provide us all the benefits that come from being disciplined.'

Hendrik wrote the following: (Post 63)

'I agree that the idea of God needing blood is wrong. I think however that one can view penal substitution from the other end. It's not that God needed blood to forgive us. He did not. He can and does forgive us freely. However he considers it right to take responsibility for our sin on himself, and to accept some of the punishment we would deserve. See Rom 3:25.

Penal substitution is not the only thing going on in the crucifixion. Maybe not even the primary one. But the NT is full of images pointing at the OT sacrificial system. And Jesus used Is 53 to understand what he was doing. I don't think we can get away from the idea of Jesus dying in our place.

I think it makes moral sense, but only if you go beyond legalistic views of justice and look at the ways people are actually connected to each other. From a legal point of view, it does not make sense to punish someone who is innocent for what someone else did. I would consider a legal system that did this unjust. But in interpersonal relationships it does sometimes make sense for some to take responsibility for some else's actions, including accepting punishment for them.

Here's an example I used in another group: Suppose a kid damages a neighbor's house. The damage is too large for the kid to do anything about. But the neighbor is rich, and a family friend. He won't notice the expense, and he wouldn't ask for repayment anyway. But the parent may still believe that it wouldn't be good for the child if he simply ignores the offense. He might choose to pay the neighbor, not just because he owes his friend, but because it's not good for the child's action to have no consequences. Perhaps the example is contrived, but I do think there are situations where a parent or friend will in fact take responsibility for someone else's action. Does this involve accepting guilt? Not always. In this example, no one would consider the parent to be actually guilty. But the OT has this concept of guilt as an almost physical force, which has to come to roost somewhere, and parents and children are part of each other and can end up getting the guilt. While we don't formally accept this concept today, it does still affect us. Families, friends, and members of larger groups do feel involved when one of their members does something. Christianity is based on a concept of exchange. The prototype is our relationship with Christ, where he accepts our sin and we get new life from him. But even in interpersonal relationships, we bear each other's burdens, and I think that may include to some extent even guilt.

Now it is a matter of judgement when and how to apply this. There are many cases where I would actively counsel someone not to feel guilty because of someone else's actions. And neither Jesus nor I would want to see the full "eye for an eye" type of punishment done all the time, even to the actual perpetrator. Yet offenses do create a "debt" – they merit punishment, even if in many cases we don't want to carry out the full punishment (or indeed any of it). And people are involved in each other. In such a context, I think it makes sense for God to judge that it's not good for us if he simply ignores our offenses, but to accept responsibility for them himself, and suffer some punishment. I say "some" because there's a lot of overblown rhetoric about Jesus' crucifixion. It wasn't the worst possible torture than can be imagined. And it certainly wasn't an eternity in hell, although it probably felt like it at the time, and Mark 15:34 suggests that Jesus experienced the alienation from God that is a large part of the actual punishment of Hell. But God is not demanding that in order to forgive us someone has to serve the full sentence that we deserve. Yet I think his judgement that it is in our interest for him to accept responsibility, some measure of guilt, and consequences for our sin is consistent with his character and with the demands of justice.'

Is this the best answer?

Peace,
Eric

[FarEastBird]

This bleeding in of agenda driven posting both by himself and others on Christians flaming Wiccans on the Wicca & Neo-pagan Religions thread have led me to conclude that the style of posting by some including Department Heads amounts to nothing more than ganging-up herd mentality.


Peace,
Eric.

Excellent observation!!! They have gone the way of the Pharisees; thinking/promoting that theirs is the only way to the keys of learning. Not knowing where there behaviour leads to. It sucks when we see people fail in Good Behaviour 101.


Peace,
FEB

[headheart]

Note to readers:


This post was transferred out of Theology 201 and into Apologetics 301 where I am already engaged in discussing this directly with "bertaberts" ===========> If Christianity is in essence neither a creed, nor a code, nor ceremonies, what is it? (refer: Post 76)

Goodbye,
headheart.