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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   20719 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 12, 2025

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But if Jesus wasn't killed, he couldn't save everyone, right?

If He had died by very slow decay, would that have counted as a sufficient sacrifice by God Incarnate?

Isn't it a pretty wild idea that the torture and execution of a good man "saves the world"? What's the mechanism there? Sounds a bit like human sacrifice and scapegoating doesn't it? With some magic thrown in.

"Scapegoating" itself as a word comes from Jewish tradition where the sins of the entire nation would be laid on a single literal goat who was then released into the wilderness (practically, pushed off a cliff outside town), while another 'innocent' goat would be sacrificed on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. Jesus literally and symbolically took the role of both being innocent and being sacrificed, and it's quite literal in Christianity that he took on him the sins of the world there, which sins would otherwise prevent us individually from reaching heaven. Reasons for why exactly he was capable of doing this differ across sects but usually are some variant of him being innocent or of godly nature.

In modern discourse being scapegoated is seen as a bad thing (i.e. avoiding responsibility) but Christians would agree that you need some action yourself to obtain this absolution, though it's "free" in a more general sense. Here is the key point where the various sects differ greatly, what action? Some believe that you need to follow some kind of true regret/restitution/prayer process, others that you need to confess to a priest, others that you actually don't have to do anything other than once in your whole life ask for forgiveness and that's it.

Sounds a bit like human sacrifice and scapegoating doesn't it?

Unironically yes. The Bible depicts it as a sacrifice: though those who killed Jesus didn’t intend it that way, Jesus did. And if you do a quick search, you will find a million sermons with titles like “Christ our Scapegoat,” referencing the literal scapegoat in Leviticus.

Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man, offering himself as a sacrifice to God the Father on behalf of sinners is the mechanism. It’s the core of Christian belief.

Maybe I should try reading the Bible at some point. Is it good literature? :P

There's some novelty in that particular human sacrifice: instead of the victim being labeled evil, he gets labeled god. Which kinda puts a finishing touch to the whole tradition instead of having to find a new scapegoat at each turning. In theory, at least.

Edit: typo

It depends on what parts of the Bible. Some, absolutely. My very-atheist hometown of Portland, OR (suburbs but still) had a "Bible as Literature" English elective class in high school! No, I didn't take it, sadly.

Not all chapters are equal, and it also depends on the translation. KJV has a pretty famous poetic style, though the NRSV keeps a good bit of the charm while updating the language somewhat. Read some famous passages in the ESV though and you might feel like a toddler, it's pretty bad. There's some of the Psalms, of course, parts of Isaiah with nice imagery, the start of Genesis is a bit of a classic. In the New Testament, it's a little more parceled out into particular chapters, though John and Luke are definitely more literary than the other Gospels.

Afaik aztek human sacrifice tradition also held many of the victims in high regard.

Maybe I should try reading the Bible at some point. Is it good literature? :P

It's kind of cliched.

Yeah basically God sacrificing his son patched out the sacrifice dependency.

Yes. But the Christian position is that even though the outcome was good, the act was still bad. I've never heard anyone seriously try to argue that killing Jesus was good on a consequentialist basis, anyways.

There have been people who've taken that line historically. That's the line of the Gospel of Judas, for instance: that Judas was a hero because he caused the Crucifixion, which saved the world.

However, this is obviously heretical, and to my knowledge orthodox Christianity has never had any time for it. The Crucifixion may have been the means by which the world was saved, but it was still nonetheless an evil deed.

The Gospel of Judas did.

I've never heard anyone seriously try to argue that killing Jesus was good on a consequentialist basis, anyways.

I've heard about some ancient Gnostics who argued exactly that. They got excommunicated as heretics.

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