No, my point isn’t that it makes God a murderer. My point is that there’s no way to believe in the substitutionary atonement of Jesus without it requiring, on some level the good-cop bad-cop equation I mentioned earlier. God (the Father) requires a sacrifice and noting that he makes it himself doesn’t mean it’s not still required.

God can’t forgive just by grace and mercy: somebody’s gotta die, and another aspect of God takes the punishment. (Though as I noted to SBG, one might reasonably wonder in just what way Jesus “died,” since he came right back better than ever. Can you really give your life for another if you do it knowing you’ll be returning to life, in supernaturally glorified form, straightaway?)

Now on to humanity’s crime against God: initially the crime seems small–disobedience, eating the fruit. (You might say “gaining knowledge,” but we’ve been over the naivete thing earlier on this thread.) But consider the crime: this was the only law–and thus the only way for Adam and Eve to show either that they wanted God (By the Genesis account, He seems to have had a very personal relationship with them, walking and talking in the evenings in Eden), and they threw that all away on the one command.

Did they? Because the Bible actually does not say they were expelled from the Garden for punishment. They were expelled so that they would not eat of the Tree of Life and become immortal like the gods.

(Which means that the common Creationist idea that death entered the world with the Fall is wrong; Adam and Eve were clearly created mortal. It also makes one wonder why God would put two trees in the Garden for no reason other than to fret over whether the humans would eat their fruit.)

In Paradise Lost, God, speaking of the Fall, says, For man will heark’n to his glozing lyes,And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience . Thus, when man fell he broke all the rules there were to break, committed every sin, betrayed his pledge. It follows that the punishment for this one sin must be very great. (I am not going into eternal hell right now; we shall save that discussion for a later post.)
Now, if the sin was very great (”sole pledge” broken!) and the punishment was very great (death–spiritual and physical), then the cost for God to redeem humanity must also be great. Hence the blood: another death was required to wipe away the death of mankind. The punishment fit the crime, and the redemption fit it also.

Putting aside the question of why you or I should be held guilty of Adam’s sin, and the question of whether Jesus actually “died” in any meaningful way, it still isn’t clear at all to me how the death of a piece of God helps matters any.

It seems more like the underpants gnomes from South Park. Their plan: Step One: Steal underpants. Step Two: ??? Step Three: Profit!

In this ase: Step One: Crucify Jesus. Step Two: ??? Step Three: Redemption!

It’s the Step Two that needs filling in.

(The Genesis story is so obviously metaphor, and it’s rich as metaphor. I wish you could see how badly it weakens it to literalize it. But that too is another discussion.)

Trying to redeem humanity with something besides death actually seems foolish, if you think about it enough. Say you owe a million-dollar debt to the bank: giving them a few pennies or even a couple thousand dollars is only a pittance.

True, but killing me doesn’t repay the debt either. And the bank president’s killing his own son in my place certainly doesn’t help.

Say you have offended a friend deeply: you’d need a lot of flowers (we’ll say a girl friend! ) and a lot of time to smooth over your offense. Now we have offended the infinite God and broken the single rule–the “sole pledge” of our obedience–it follows that whatever “smooths over” that offense must also be great. The blood requirement does make sense even in human logic.

It makes far more sense to believe that God sees our failures not as “offenses” but as symptoms of spiritual blindness and sickness, needing healing, not punishment.

I don’t assume you always grew up believing it, but I do assume you grew up in a culture that supports, affirms and encourages Christianity over and above other religious traditions. Certainly not all Americans are Christians and there are pockets of population where Christianity is a minority faith (among Jewish enclaves and in some immigrant communities), but by and large, if you’re going to adhere to specific religious tradition in the U.S., Christianity is the one that most people will understand and approve.

So you come to it from a position of having not been particularly religious at all, which is not the same as being deeply committed to another faith system in another culture.

They are, and you’ve taken this one past the breaking point.

In our limited human world, once the father drowns, he’s dead and unable to offer any further aid. In the traditional Christian view, God remains in his heaven and in interaction with human souls no matter what. (And we might well ponder in just what way Jesus actually “died,” since his death was reversed in three days’ time and he ascended to far greater glory … but that is another discussion altogether.)

So from the Christian universalist point of view, the extended analogy fails because it imposes a finality at the moment of death — for both the rescuer and the victim — that doesn’t pertain to eternal matters.

Of course, I may get very curious to see what Musing and SteveG said and just put up with my internet.

We’ll see.

Me too. SteveG wanted to know knowing better just how you do see it , and I told him, and the way I see it includes a literal flood.

But I’ll look forward to your reviews.

And Santa Claus actually fits through my chimney, though I don’t have one …

That was the reason for my smiley face at the end. I believe in a literal flood but I know you guys don’t. And I’d prefer not to chase the rabbit of literal vs allegorical on this thread.

I will hold my tongue for the moment.

The religious discussion sounds like a reasonable discussion and the points seem cogent, although I will probably need to reread the full derivation since savedbygrace has me busy elsewhere.

It is the literal than can get exciting, and perhaps for the religious implications might not be required?

We’re explaining what God’s mercy looks like in the middle of the Biblical flood, so we’re talking about a literal flood.

But SBG and I both realize you probably do not (and SteveG does not) believe in a literal Flood.