According to the Nicene Creed, Jesus Christ was “crucified under Pontius Pilate” for our sake. However, according to the Gospel, he was crucified for the sake of punishment for his crimes in the state. This brings up the question of how his execution was for our sake when it was a penalty for a civil crime. If, as the Gospel according to Matthew suggests, he planned his crucifixion, using Pilate and the legal system as ploys in his larger scheme, is his death ultimately a suicide? This then calls for an explanation of how a suicide can be for the sake of another.
According to the next line of the Creed, Jesus “suffered death and buried”. This fits with the purpose of a punishment as generally they entail some sort of suffering. It also fits with a sacrifice, though, as sacrifice entails some sort of loss. If this is the case, Jesus sacrificed himself for our sake, “our” referring to those who endorse the Nicene Creed at least,and possibly others—the Creed does not specify. But this method of sacrifice is very unusual. Animals being sacrificed do not sacrifice themselves, nor are they sacrificed via being convicted criminals executed for their crimes. This detail complicates how Jesus’s death may be a sacrifice as the method has no precedent.
The other possibility, then, if the death itself is not a sacrifice, but the death is for our
sake, is that the actions surrounding it are for our sake. For example, if a soldier were to free a group of prisoners of war but were then executed for doing so, his death could be said to be for their sake. Likewise, Jesus’s acts which led to his execution may then be the actions that are for our sake whilst his death itself is the culmination of those actions and the sacrifice in the sense of personal loss that he endured to be able to have committed such acts.
Tag: religion
Even if the Bible is not the law, it is the document a lot of Americans look to for values
In the US, a lot of people are Christian. Christianity is a big enough force in the country that the “Religious Right” is a thing. While not all Republicans are concerned with religion, it’s at least a staple of the party, and any conservative politician will at least pay lip service to it. The Trump administration is no exception, and it has indeed tried to justify itself with the Bible.
In response to this and the absolutely infernal acts the administration is propagating, some others have pointed out that a good reading of the Bible will lead one to find condemnations of categories of things that include treating immigrants and refugees horribly.
In response to this response, some have stepped back and tried to deny any authority to the Bible either way:
In some sense, yes, this is right. Though the second paragraph makes a subtle shift. Most people who are talking about the application of Jesus’s words to tearing kids from their parents are not trying to make a legal argument. I would be very surprised to find someone saying that tearing kids from their parents is illegal. Plenty of people are saying that it’s wrong, or that people should not tear kids from their parents, but that’s not the same as saying it’s illegal.
There are Constitutional provisions in the US restricting how laws can interact with religion. Though there’s an under-appreciated distinction between policies and the reasons behind policies. This comes up when people talk about the political compass too. Someone could be, say, authoritarian-left for a variety of different, even contrary reasons. But if you’re just trying to measure the concrete policies people support, then the motivations are abstracted away.
Likewise, people have all sorts of motivations for voting the way that they do. Many people, citizens and legislators, look to religion for guidance on which ways to vote. And if it’s something like what to set the income tax rates at or whether usury ought to be legal, then that’s a thing people can do. (There is some slippery room with legislators openly voting based on religious beliefs for policies without religious content, but even then, most people will let their values or morality tell them how to vote, and many people get those values from religion. You’re just one step removed.)
So in the sense of whether the Bible is the document that the agents of the state are supposed to consult in governing the country, no, of course not. You look to the laws and the will of the people. However, most of the people behind the laws and will are Christians. You might not like that. I’m not arguing whether that’s a thing worth trying to change, but for now, it is the case, and it will almost certainly be the case for at least several more years. So even if you think a long-term strategy of diminishing Christianity or religion in general is good, short-term solutions to urgent problems are also needed.
Public opinion and outcry does seem to have some effect on what the US government does. (Just yesterday Trump signed an order to keep families together. This may have been the Republican plan all along, but nonetheless, the plan at least had to incorporate public reactions.) So, to get good outcomes, we should include persuading the public to support the right policies. To do this requires appealing to the values people have. (We should also try to instill better values, but, again, that’s a long-term move.) In this case, adherence to the values of Christianity is a value a lot of people already have, and Jesus is pretty clear on this topic. So even if you or I think the Bible is not the document to look at for guidance in organizing society, plenty of people do, and they’re going to act as such. So we may as well point out that Jesus said to be good to people, as well as other things condemning pretty much everything ICE and company do.
Now, one might argue that if the majority religion were some other religion that supported these atrocities, then we would want people to steer away from what it says. Sure. We rarely appeal to every value anyway. In that case we would not look to adherence to religious teachings as a value and pick other values to appeal to. We can see this here, anyway. Most people probably take the obtaining of wealth as a value. Taking in refugees does not clearly serve that end. But for our purposes, that just means we don’t appeal to the value of money on this topic.
ASMS: Public Jesus
I believe this one explains itself.
