Nasruddin wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 2:53 pm
Gnostic Bishop wrote: ↑Fri Nov 03, 2017 5:38 am
Further, if Jesus was a sinner as you say and I agree, can a sinner just decide to forgive himself, or is it the victim of that sin that has the ability to forgive it?
Regards
DL
That is an interesting question, and I would answer "No", if what you do creates consequences that affect other people in a harmful way.
I do not agree but the answer as to why is rather long and complex. Read what follows and see what you think of the logic.
Christians are always trying to absolve God of moral culpability in the fall by whipping out their favorite "free will!", or “ it’s all man’s fault”.
That is "God gave us free will and it was our free willed choices that caused our fall. Hence God is not blameworthy."
But this simply avoids God's culpability as the author of Human Nature. Free will is only the ability to choose. It is not an explanation why anyone would want to choose "A" or "B" (bad or good action). An explanation for why Eve would even have the nature of "being vulnerable to being easily swayed by a serpent" and "desiring to eat a forbidden fruit" must lie in the nature God gave Eve in the first place. Hence God is culpable for deliberately making humans with a nature-inclined-to-fall, and "free will" means nothing as a response to this problem.
If all sin by nature then, the sin nature is dominant. If not, we would have at least some who would not sin. That being the case, for God to punish us for following the instincts and natures he put in us would be quite wrong.
Psalm 51:5 "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me."
Having said the above for the God that I do not believe in, I am a Gnostic Christian naturalist, let me tell you that evil is all human generated. Evil is our responsibility.
Much has been written to explain what I see as a natural part of evolution.
Consider.
First, let us eliminate what some see as evil. Natural disasters. These are unthinking occurrences and are neither good nor evil. There is no intent to do evil even as victims are created.
Evil then is only human to human.
As evolving creatures, all we ever do, and ever can do, is compete or cooperate.
Cooperation we would see as good as there are no victims created. Competition would be seen as evil as it creates a victim. We all are either cooperating, doing good, or competing, doing evil at all times.
Without us doing some of both, we would likely go extinct.
This, to me, explains why there is evil in the world quite well.
Be you a believer in nature, evolution or God, we should all see that what Christians see as something to blame, evil, we should see that what we have, competition, deserves a huge thanks for being available to us.
There is no conflict between nature and God on this issue. This is how things are and should be. We all must do what some will think is evil as we compete and create losers to this competition.
But the question is relative to what you would call a 'sin'. In the case of Jesus, I would assume here that we are talking about breaking religious codes,
My thinking is not controlled or led by religions as most of them are quite missogynous and homophobic and a poor place to find morality.
so a sin Jesus committed would be one judged as such by his community or religion. Breaking a religious law did not always result in a victim (working on a Sabbath, blasphemy, eating unclean food, etc) unless you class the victim as the community that is offended by your actions, or the Law itself which is violated, or God whom you have disobeyed.
Jews used to stone people for working on the Sabbath as that went against what they thought their God demanded. Even Jesus was threatened with stoning for claiming to be God.
So in this context, could Jesus forgive himself?
Yes, just like you can if you repent of the act and give restitution if you can.
I am a Gnostic Christian and universalist and recognize that we are as we are thanks to all those who have contributed to what we are. That means that we all share the blame for all being who we are.
Take Hitler. Was he born evil? No. He was made to be what he ended as by all those who contributed and facilitated in him becoming what he ended up being. Right?
So all those people should also bear some of his punishment. Right?
We know there are passages where he violated some Laws and seemed unconcerned, so he must have forgiven himself those.
Indeed. Not that I think of Jesus as just being a fictitious archetype of a good man.
Some theologians also interpret his words to mean that he claimed to be the Law, if not God himself. So he certainly felt he could excuse himself, which amounts to the same thing.
Indeed, but with his own interpretation of what God is.
I see more than one Jesus in scriptures and I follow the one whose way of thinking is shown in this link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded
Key quotes are these.
Matthew 6:22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
John 14:23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.
Romans 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Let me add these as you likely follow the lawyers.
Luke 11:52 Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.
Mark 7:13 Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.
Since you agree with me that Jesus was a sinner, what sins do you think he committed?