Punishment and Penal Substitution

D

domer76

Verified User
So, in the OT, this god used mass killings to punish transgressors of his creation that he made faulty in the first place. He wiped out the entire world, save a few, in the flood. Killed every fucking person, save a few, in Sodom and Gomorrha. The slaughter of the Canaanites. He kills Job’s family based on a fucking bet. Not to mention all the animal sacrifice through the millennia. So, he got tired of all that mass killing and decided to torture and kill one more innocent person, his own son.

Why is this god unable to forgive sin by the very people he created without some sort of penalty? He made them with flaws and then punishes them for those very flaws? The penalty being pain, suffering and death. Of innocents, no less.

And, regarding that atonement thing, now I can sin without consequences simply by accepting that Jesus died for those sins? What a great “get out of jail free” card! Penal substitution.

True forgiveness comes with no strings attached.
 
domer76 said:
So, in the OT, this god used mass killings to punish transgressors of his creation that he made faulty in the first place. He wiped out the entire world, save a few, in the flood. Killed every fucking person, save a few, in Sodom and Gomorrha. The slaughter of the Canaanites. He kills Job’s family based on a fucking bet. Not to mention all the animal sacrifice through the millennia. So, he got tired of all that mass killing and decided to torture and kill one more innocent person, his own son.

Why is this god unable to forgive sin by the very people he created without some sort of penalty? He made them with flaws and then punishes them for those very flaws? The penalty being pain, suffering and death. Of innocents, no less.

And, regarding that atonement thing, now I can sin without consequences simply by accepting that Jesus died for those sins? What a great “get out of jail free” card! Penal substitution.

True forgiveness comes with no strings attached.
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Look at today's situation.

Trump is a hate filled dictator. Yet many worship him.
 
domer76 said:
He kills Job’s family based on a fucking bet.
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The Book of Job is one of those where I REALLY like the first part since it is like a meditation on the nature of suffering. How could this happen to a pious man such as Job? It's a brilliant bit of writing. But then the worst part happens at the end when Job questions God and basically God just says "Hey WHO ARE YOU to question ME????" There's a part of me that always hoped the first part was written by a different author than the latter part.
 
domer76 said:
So, in the OT, this god used mass killings to punish transgressors of his creation that he made faulty in the first place. He wiped out the entire world, save a few, in the flood. Killed every fucking person, save a few, in Sodom and Gomorrha. The slaughter of the Canaanites. He kills Job’s family based on a fucking bet. Not to mention all the animal sacrifice through the millennia. So, he got tired of all that mass killing and decided to torture and kill one more innocent person, his own son.

Why is this god unable to forgive sin by the very people he created without some sort of penalty? He made them with flaws and then punishes them for those very flaws? The penalty being pain, suffering and death. Of innocents, no less.
Click to expand...

There's some cool bits to Christian Soteriology (eg the concept that we are all imperfect beings and we should show some forebearance or "grace" for lack of a better word) toward each other, but when you lay it out linearly it is kinda weird.

He manifests himself on earth to sacrifice himself to himself to atone mankind to himself.


 
domer76 said:
So, in the OT, this god used mass killings to punish transgressors of his creation that he made faulty in the first place. He wiped out the entire world, save a few, in the flood. Killed every fucking person, save a few, in Sodom and Gomorrha. The slaughter of the Canaanites. He kills Job’s family based on a fucking bet. Not to mention all the animal sacrifice through the millennia. So, he got tired of all that mass killing and decided to torture and kill one more innocent person, his own son.

Why is this god unable to forgive sin by the very people he created without some sort of penalty? He made them with flaws and then punishes them for those very flaws? The penalty being pain, suffering and death. Of innocents, no less.

And, regarding that atonement thing, now I can sin without consequences simply by accepting that Jesus died for those sins? What a great “get out of jail free” card! Penal substitution.

True forgiveness comes with no strings attached.
Click to expand...
I generally don't like to interpret the Old Testament/Hebrew bible because I have not read the Talmud or Midrash, which are the authoritative Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew bible.

I think animal sacrifice is wrong, but any of us including me who are eating beef, pork, and poultry are supporting industrial scale confinement and slaughter of animals that has to be at least as cruel as temple sacrifice.

The Bronze Age was a violent world, and some of the stories in the Hebrew Bible reflect that. Until the advent of modern medicine, life was cheap and people were very accustomed to the routine and ubiquitous presence of death in a way that is totally foreign to us. The authors of the Hebrew bible were writing in a language and context that made sense to Bronze Age societies.
 
domer76 said:
And, regarding that atonement thing, now I can sin without consequences simply by accepting that Jesus died for those sins? What a great “get out of jail free” card! Penal substitution.

True forgiveness comes with no strings attached.
Click to expand...
that forgiveness through Jesus's sacrifice IS actually forgiveness with no strings attached. thanks would be nice.



your own thoughts are scattered, disharmonic, and contradictory.
 
Cypress said:
I generally don't like to interpret the Old Testament/Hebrew bible because I have not read the Talmud or Midrash, which are the authoritative Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew bible.

I think animal sacrifice is wrong, but any of us including me who are eating beef, pork, and poultry are supporting industrial scale confinement and slaughter of animals that has to be at least as cruel as temple sacrifice.

The Bronze Age was a violent world, and some of the stories in the Hebrew Bible reflect that. Until the advent of modern medicine, life was cheap and people were very accustomed to the routine and ubiquitous presence of death in a way that is totally foreign to us. The authors of the Hebrew bible were writing in a language and context that made sense to Bronze Age societies.
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The idea that a god would create a flawed creature and then punish that creature for their flaws is beyond comprehension.
 
domer76 said:
The idea that a god would create a flawed creature and then punish that creature for their flaws is beyond comprehension.
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I'm sure these stories made sense to Bronze Age Israelites. Their world was very different than ours, they were not shocked by death and violence in the way we have become.

Any genuine study of history and religion require us to lay our 21st century standards aside.

Because we do have 21st century standards Reform Judaism tends to focus on the social justice message of the Jewish prophets. and then, I never heard Job or any of these kind of OT stories used in the Eastern liturgy.

If I was genuinely interested in the underlying meaning and purpose of Job or Exodus, I would read the Talmud and Midrash, or at least seek out reputable Jewish scholars.
 
Hume said:
Agree. One of the most horrible pieces of theology anyone devised.
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Plato advocated eugenics in the Republic, and Aristotle thought some people were born to be natural slaves.

But we don't faint in shock, and banish Plato and Aristotle from our cultural mileu.

We openly recognize they were products of their time, and we keep their best philosophical concepts as part of our cultural and ethical memory.

From the perspective of Christianity, the New Testament was the final, and superior, revelation. The OT is generally considered reference material and is really mostly just important for a creation story and prophecy about Jesus. I can't ever remember Job, or the wars against the Cananites being the topic of the liturgy
 
Cypress said:
I'm sure these stories made sense to Bronze Age Israelites. Their world was very different than ours, they were not shocked by death and violence in the way we have become.

Any genuine study of history and religion require us to lay our 21st century standards aside.

Because we do have 21st century standards Reform Judaism tends to focus on the social justice message of the Jewish prophets. and then, I never heard Job or any of these kind of OT stories used in the Eastern liturgy.

If I was genuinely interested in the underlying meaning and purpose of Job or Exodus, I would read the Talmud and Midrash, or at least seek out reputable Jewish scholars.
Click to expand...
Those standards still apply to today with the concepts of heaven and hell. Of Jesus dying for our sins with the only way for salvation being through him. The Christian god is still a reward and punishment god.
 
domer76 said:
Those standards still apply to today with the concepts of heaven and hell. Of Jesus dying for our sins with the only way for salvation being through him. The Christian god is still a reward and punishment god.
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Christianity is problematic in being an exclusivist religion.
 
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