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From: Eugene.Bigelow@ebay.sun.com (Geno )
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Atheists and Hell
Message-ID: <May.12.04.26.34.1993.9884@athos.rutgers.edu>
Date: 12 May 93 08:26:35 GMT
Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu
Reply-To: Eugene.Bigelow@ebay.sun.com
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 60
Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu

|> Imagine the worst depth of despair you've
|> ever encountered, or the worst physical pain you've ever experienced.
|> Some people suffer such emotional, physical, and mental anguish
|> in their lives that their deaths seem to be merciful. But at least
|> the pain does end in death. What if you lived a hundred such lives,
|> at the conclusion of one you were instantly reborn into another?
|> What if you lived a million, a billion years in this state?
|> What if this kept going forever?


>Did this happen to Jesus? I don't think so, not from what I heard. He lived
>ONE DAY of suffering and died. If the wages of sin is the above paragraph, then
>JESUS DIDN'T PAY FOR OUR SINS, DID HE?

This is something I've always found a little curious. I've never quite understood
the trinity thing. On the one hand, Jesus is supposed to be God incarnate. But,
at the same time, he is God's son "For God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten son". First question is, if Jesus was God in human form, how could
he really be God's son? If the Holy Ghost "planted the seed" in Mary, so to speak,
then it seems that Jesus' relationship to God would be the equivalent to the
human father/son relationship. While a son might inherit alot of the father's 
qualities, he is not the father. They are still two separite entities. To try
and say that a son is the same person as the father is obviously wrong. In that
case, Jesus and God aren't the same. On the other hand, if their relationship
isn't the same as the human father/son relationship, but Jesus is actually God
incarnate, then he's not really God's son and he never was. He's just God
manifesting himself as Jesus. At least, this is how I'm seeing it. Can someone
who is more knowledgeable about the trinity enlighten us? 

Getting back to the original question, what is the great price that Jesus paid
to redeem our sins? Was it dying on the cross? Since Jesus knew that he would
rise again in 3 days and then ascend back to heaven, I have a hard time seeing
how this is considered paying such a great price for humanity. His earthly body
may have been killed, but then, so what? He suffered a few hours of physical
pain, but then, there has been many a human who has suffered a great deal more.
The fact that Jesus was God's only begotten son doesn't seem to me to have much
meaning since God can beget as many sons as he wants to. Jesus being the only
one was simply a matter of choice. I suspect that these questions will be very
offensive to many Christians on this net. To those people, please accept my
sincere apologies. It is not my intention to offend or to trivialize Christ.
But, I do believe these are legitimate questions and I am genuinely curious.
 
[Note that the Trinity and Incarnation have to be looked at together.
First, your reading of the Virgin Birth is an uncommon one.  (In this
group, it's dangerous to say that no one believes something.)  You
seem to be suggesting the Jesus is God's son in a physical sense,
with the Holy Spirit as Father and Mary as Mother.  I consider that
terrible heresy, though some people react less violently.  The Virgin
Birth says that Jesus' birth is God's responsibility.  But it doesn't
imply that God's sperm was involved.  Indeed one (though by no means
the only) speculation is that God used Joseph's genetic material.

Second, Jesus is in some sense doubly indirect from the Father.  In a
Trinitarian context, the term Son refers to the eternal Logos, who is
a part of God.  The Son didn't come into existence with Jesus' birth.
Jesus is the incarnation of the Son.  So his sonness isn't
specifically a result of being incarnated.  Rather, it's the Son
who was incarnated.

--clh]
