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What does an enlightened being getting brutely murdered on a cross 2000 years ago have to do with anything? (self.DebateReligion)

seerToby が 投稿

Hi everyone. I'm the type of person who has to have a fully rational and logical grasp on any belief or idea before I can accept it. With that out of the way, I have trouble with the following idea.

Before I start, let it be known that I have done a lot of researching and studying on almost every religion and philosophy out there, and have combined ideas from all of them to come up with what makes sense to me.

Let's talk about the end goal that most religions and philosophies aim to achieve, enlightenment. It is generally agreed upon that enlightenment can be achieved by everyone. It is also mostly agreed upon that to reach enlightenment, a lot of hard work on your part is required. Some movements say no work is required, but rather enlightenment is available to you right now, you just have to truly realize that to achieve it. Now in this scenario, the hard work would be to make that realization, and since you don't have enlightened people popping up all over the place, it must be very hard to do that.

This brings me to the point of this post. Christianity argues that yes, enlightenment is available to everyone, or rather was available, but because of original sin, it has been denied from us. Makes sense so far. There is a lot of sin going on in this world, so the idea of original sin fits. Humans cannot escape original sin on their own, but only through the grace of God. To be 'saved' by God's grace, one has to accept that they are inherently sinners, accept that they can't reach enlightenment by themselves (still making sense here), ...and believe that some guy claiming to be God's son died for us on a cross some 2000 years ago, and got resurrected three days later.

Now this last part is where I get totally thrown off. The very idea make absolutely no rational sense, and one must believe in the supernatural (or illogical ideas) in order to believe it. I believe that Jesus existed, I believe he was enlightened similar to the Buddha, and had a deep connection with God or Being, which when looked at at from that perspective, makes his claims to be God's son make sense. I believe he was a great man and teacher and did a lot of great things, but I just can see that us believing in the fact that he died for us saves anyone.

Can anyone please elaborate and explain in a way I can grasp?

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[–]encouragethestormcatholic | BA theology 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

Christianity argues that yes, enlightenment is available to everyone, or rather was available, but because of original sin, it has been denied from us. Makes sense so far. There is a lot of sin going on in this world, so the idea of original sin fits. Humans cannot escape original sin on their own, but only through the grace of God. To be 'saved' by God's grace, one has to accept that they are inherently sinners, accept that they can't reach enlightenment by themselves (still making sense here), ...and believe that some guy claiming to be God's son died for us on a cross some 2000 years ago, and got resurrected three days later.

Right, the relevant questions are now: if God became human, what does that mean about being human? If God suffered, what implications might that have for suffering? If God died, what happens to death?

The widely revered Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas maintains that God did not, in fact, need to suffer and die in order to save humanity; God, being omnipotent, could have simply willed humanity saved, and it would have been sufficient. Operating from this theological perspective, the Catholic Church offers a number of reasons to explain God's choice to redeem us in the way he did. Christ took on our humanity and died:

  • in order to be our model of holiness
  • so that we might know God's love
  • so that we might become partakers in the divine nature

It is the last of these explanations that most piques my intellectual curiosity. What does it mean, exactly, that God became man so that we might become partakers in the divine nature?

Well, as human beings, the great miseries of our condition are the facts that we (1) suffer and (2) die.

God becomes human. Therefore, a permanent link is established between humanity and divinity: because God is now human, humanity is now divine.

God suffers. Suffering is thought of as meaninglessness, but now that God, who is Truth and meaning itself, has suffered, suffering is now no longer meaningless: God imbues it with purpose, ensuring that those who suffer unjustly will have hope of a better life.

Death is seen as the end of our life, a great darkness and void beyond which there is nothing. God is existence itself and the source of all life. Existence itself enters into nothingness, and thus the nothingness is transformed into the conduit toward a new existence, a new life in heaven. Death is no longer an entrance into nothingness but rather the point at which life wins, the point at which we may enter completely into the life of God.

So Christ did not have to die for people to be saved. But in saving us in the way he did he accomplished so much more than just saving us; he elevated us, making our existence supremely meaningful precisely by effecting a substantive change in human nature and in the nature of suffering and death.

[–]seerToby[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Great explanation! Christ died in order to save and elevate us. How does us believing in that make a difference though? Wouldn't we be saved either way?

[–]encouragethestormcatholic | BA theology 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The question now is one of union with Christ. It is God who creates meaning out of suffering; our sufferings are therefore meaningful insofar as we are united to God's creative agency. It is God who overcomes death; our deaths are overcome insofar as we are united to God. It is God who elevates our humanity; we become more fully human insofar as we love, for God is love.

[–]MrMostDefinitelynon believer seeking god 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Who does god need to create meaning out of suffering? There is no suffering in heaven, right?

[–]Ryan_K321Theravada Buddhist 4ポイント5ポイント  (4子コメント)

How can anyone be expected to explain that when you invent your own beliefs? Christianity never talks about enlightenment nor do any of the Abrahamic religions. Enlightenment in buddhism has a very specific meaning that has nothing to do with God or "Being".

[–]seerToby[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

You are correct, and you can argue differently, but I believe they are different words for the same thing. The deeper you dig into both religions, the origins of them and the people they are are based off, the more conformations of this you find. Thoughts?

[–]innitgrand 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

No, you're twisting words. Enlightenment is acquiring a certain knowledge and is about the inner self. Christianity tells us to follow God and is about our relationship to him. Because of sin we are separate from God and because of the atonement of Jesus we can get close to him. Our task does not end there however. We are still humans who do bad things but now those bad things are forgiven. We are called to not only believe in Jesus but to follow him and be like him. This has nothing to do with enlightenment because we don't change ourselves, Jesus does this and we let him. I see how you think they are similar but Christianity focuses on your relationship with God and calls us to fully throw our lives onto him. Jesus wasn't enlightened, he was God.

[–]seerToby[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Great answer. My understanding of being 'saved' had been equal to being enlightened. That's a mistake on my part.

Hindu theology teaches that we are all God, and aims to help us realize that. Once that realization is made, enlightenment is achieved. There have been people in history who have achieved this state of enlightenment, realized that they are God, and not had the teaching necessary to also realize that everyone else is God as well. You can imagine they claimed to be God's son and more, and people worshiping them as such, since the charisma of such people is near impossible to resist.

Do you think there's any difference between those people that come to realize that they are God, and Jesus? It seems Jesus was born knowing he was God, or God's son. (Sounds very similar to being enlightened). Are you saying that those people's experience is fake, and Jesus' real?

[–]innitgrand 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ah yes well that's quite different from Christian theology as there is only one God who is also three (doesn't really compute so don't think too much about it). So Christian theology would say yes to the statement that only Jesus' was real and all the others fake. We humans take part in the honors that Jesus gets (doing miracles, living forever with God etc.) but we always remain human. Hinduism makes the statement that we all are Gods but just need to realize it (or become them). I see the similarity but Jesus wasn't enlightened because he has always been God and when he came to earth he still knew this. Christianity has a thick line between beings: God, Angel, human, animal etc. A human will never be more or less than human. It can be in the presence of God or not but it will always remain human. Jesus was the only exception as he was both God and man (and in many theologies, still is).

[–]GrossRyder 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

This is one story that has baffled thinkers, confounded those who are dependent only on reason and dismissed out rightly by atheists/naturalists/materialists. Heck, it has confounded even the Jews from that time till now. The problem stems from, as in all organized religions, turning a story into a hard and fast doctrine in which either you are an unthinking, uncritical believer or have had some experience of "conversion" (like Paul) and then become an unquestioning follower, or you dismiss it out-rightly as completely fabricated nonsense. Very few people treat it as a story from which there is a significant potential to learn, or as an intellectual challenge. One thing is clear: that it requires experience, knowledge and power to unravel this story for it's significance on an intellectual level. For those not inclined intellectually, it's a binary situation: either you become a blind follower or a bitter critic. Sadly, this is the state of the human mind in this age of instant solutions - we don't want to wonder on mysteries - it has to make instant sense or dismissed immediately as non-sense. You have pointed out the big flaw in the doctrine of "died so that we can be saved" - that which poses the question of not only "how can that be?" but also "why?". The problem and the flaw in the doctrine is that all that is required is faith/belief in Jesus as the savior in order to be saved. And this kind of problem is generic to all doctrines in all organized religions. What organized religions will never even inform you is that all doctrines are fragile and fallible. "The truth is a snare ; you cannot have it without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it , but only in
such a way that it catches you." Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

[–]NFossilgnostic atheist | anti-theist | ignostic | weak scientism 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

An actual "enlightened being", whatever that means, doing anything would have much to do with a lot. There is no reason to believe any actual "enlightened being" did anything including existing.

[–]detsher77Pantheist, MA in Theology 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

You have combined so many theological concepts into a single paragraph that it would take a huge amount of time to unravel but honestly, it's not your fault, many Christians do the same thing.

So here is the bare bones answer to your main question:

Jesus is the "Lamb of God" because he is the last blood sacrifice. That pretty little picture of the lamb at Easter isn't for cuddles, it's for the slaughter. If you read the New Testament book of Hebrews, it's essentially one long letter that says, stop making blood sacrifices, Jesus did it for the world for the last time, we can be done now.

So ultimately, the story is written this way because people of the time were using blood sacrifice as their common response to pleasing God and the newly forming Christians wanted to stop the practice. Under those historical contexts, it's actually a great thing - but in comparison to how it's used and talked about today, it's a bit horrific if you ask me.

[–]sericatusnoncognitivist/lazy Taoist. 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well, he was enlightened. 'He' is said to have imparted a lot of wisdom about tolerance and acceptance as a way of becoming the biggest group possible. Other solutions on how to do this centered on making other groups smaller (war) or making your group larger through adding children (breeding). This seems like a pretty big deal, and appropriately people made a big fuss about it. Because they were people though, they abused and twisted and malformed the core idea to their own ends.

[–]MangalzAgnostic Atheist | Definitionist -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Christ was a sacrifice for man's sin.

Religions sprung up around him.

And that's that.

Zebra.

You shouldn't question it so deeply.