On Christ's Passion

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
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Torchwood
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On Christ's Passion

Post by Torchwood »

Crucifixion was nasty and barbaric, yes,

but compared to:
-terminal cancer
-other degenerative diseases, such as congestive heart failure or Alzheimer's
- lifelong severe disability, physical or mental

then He did not suffer that much, it was over in less than a day.
Ibrahim
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Ibrahim »

So?
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

Ibrahim wrote:So?
8-)
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by noddy »

i got kicked out of early high school divinity class for asking why it was such a big deal for him to die when he *knew* he was son of god and there (*) was an afterlife and thusly didnt have the fear of extinction the rest of us carry.

later on, other christians tried to explain it away via his "humanity" and that he carried the same doubts and fears as the rest of us but that does confuse his divinity somewhat for me... maybe im a bit simple.

(*) where o wear did the their be there
Last edited by noddy on Wed Apr 11, 2012 4:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

noddy wrote:i got kicked out of early highschool divinity class for asking why it was such a big deal for him to die when he *knew* he was son of god and their was an afterlife and thusly didnt have the fear of extinction the rest of us carry.

later on, other christians tried to explain it away via his "humanity" and that he carried the same doubts and fears as the rest of us but that does confuse his divinity somewhat for me... maybe im a bit simple.
I would have kicked you out of class for being such a smartass but still using "their" incorrectly.
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by noddy »

heh, sometimes i rattle it out too fast and the autopilot fails me, i never did take grammar seriously enough :/
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by YMix »

noddy wrote:i got kicked out of early highschool divinity class for asking why it was such a big deal for him to die when he *knew* he was son of god and their was an afterlife and thusly didnt have the fear of extinction the rest of us carry.

later on, other christians tried to explain it away via his "humanity" and that he carried the same doubts and fears as the rest of us but that does confuse his divinity somewhat for me... maybe im a bit simple.
Christians want to have it both ways: they want Christ to be both god and human at the same time. I don't think that's possible. Plus, as Torchwood said, it was over in a couple of hours. Job had it far worse.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Juggernaut Nihilism »

YMix wrote:Christians want to have it both ways: they want Christ to be both god and human at the same time.
It's almost as if this conversation has been had before...
"The fundamental rule of political analysis from the point of psychology is, follow the sacredness, and around it is a ring of motivated ignorance."
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by noddy »

aye it does.

best wishes to torchwood and his family is about all i should have said.

on this topic, i also wonder about those that for whatever reasons just hate everything and spend a life time of suffering, I have one of those in my extended family and its really hard sometimes to see why suicide is so bad...a horrid thing to think or say but if you knew that person and how much everything hurts to them.. its beyond idiots like me.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Ibrahim »

I wasn't being flippant about anyone's personal problems, but I do wonder what the philosophical and theological implications are supposed to be. "Jesus didn't suffer the most." Did anyone say he did? Was he supposed to? Is there something about Christianity I'm missing here?
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by cdgt »

OK, I can't stand it... ;)

Only here due to a lack of activity in the guns thread. :twisted:

For your consideration...
  • IF Jesus was the eternal son of God, part of the trinity in perfect union / fellowship / communication / (whatever term you want to use) with the other members of the trinity both inside and outside of time.
  • IF Jesus took on the sin of the world, the result of which was spiritual death (not just physical), which meant complete separation (if only temporary, which is arguable, but a tangent I think unprofitable to pursue) from the other members of the trinity.
  • That would mean the experience on the cross was not just physical and mental anguish, but a spiritual anguish completely beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, dwarfing by a factor of something like infinity in comparison to said physical and mental anguish, and (my speculation, never really seen discussed) comparable anguish on the part of the other members of the trinity.
[Pause]

Additional thoughts:
  • That would also mean that the Godhead considered sin fairly serious business that such a radical remedy would be deemed necessary.
  • That would also imply that since such a remedy would be used upon such flawed creatures, the motivation for it is so incomprehensible that the word "love" seems ... inadequate. But thus sayeth John 3:16.
  • That would also mean that "all paths lead to God" or "christianity is just another path" is so much hookum and explains the ostensible exclusivity re: "the way, the truth, and the life" and "no one comes to the Father but by me" aspects of christianity.
One can deny or question the IF statements. But if they are accepted, or allowed as plausible (in a non-scientific sense) ... well, again, for your consideration...
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Typhoon »

Torchwood wrote:Crucifixion was nasty and barbaric, yes,

but compared to:
-terminal cancer
-other degenerative diseases, such as congestive heart failure or Alzheimer's
- lifelong severe disability, physical or mental

then He did not suffer that much, it was over in less than a day.
I suppose the key point is that Christ was persecuted and then executed as opposed to having died from natural causes [which may or may not have involved unfortunate prolonged suffering] most likely complications due to tooth decay.

It occurred to me that Christ is said to have been about 33 years old when he died, which means that he had already well exceeded the estimated average life expectancy at birth in ancient Rome: 28 years.

Not only that, but he had also exceeded the global average life expectancy at the beginning of the 20th century: 31 years.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by noddy »

cdgt wrote:OK, I can't stand it... ;)

Only here due to a lack of activity in the guns thread. :twisted:

For your consideration...
  • IF Jesus was the eternal son of God, part of the trinity in perfect union / fellowship / communication / (whatever term you want to use) with the other members of the trinity both inside and outside of time.
  • IF Jesus took on the sin of the world, the result of which was spiritual death (not just physical), which meant complete separation (if only temporary, which is arguable, but a tangent I think unprofitable to pursue) from the other members of the trinity.
  • That would mean the experience on the cross was not just physical and mental anguish, but a spiritual anguish completely beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, dwarfing by a factor of something like infinity in comparison to said physical and mental anguish, and (my speculation, never really seen discussed) comparable anguish on the part of the other members of the trinity.
[Pause]

Additional thoughts:
  • That would also mean that the Godhead considered sin fairly serious business that such a radical remedy would be deemed necessary.
  • That would also imply that since such a remedy would be used upon such flawed creatures, the motivation for it is so incomprehensible that the word "love" seems ... inadequate. But thus sayeth John 3:16.
  • That would also mean that "all paths lead to God" or "christianity is just another path" is so much hookum and explains the ostensible exclusivity re: "the way, the truth, and the life" and "no one comes to the Father but by me" aspects of christianity.
One can deny or question the IF statements. But if they are accepted, or allowed as plausible (in a non-scientific sense) ... well, again, for your consideration...
this within the context of itself parses well enough.

ill need more time than i have today to say anything sensible in response, hopefully with added extra grammar :/
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Torchwood »

Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani ? (My God, why have your forsaken me?), said by JC on the cross.

Apart from being about the only bit of Aramaic in the NT, the unexpectedness of such a statement gives it a ring of authenticity.

It can be read two ways:

- given the IF statements ;) CD's interpretation is a good one
- not given the IF statements, a more obvious interpretation comes to mind.

Typhoon, I think 28 yr life expectancy includes infant mortality. If you survived the first 3 years, expectation was a bit better than that.
best wishes to torchwood and his family is about all i should have said.
Yes, terminal suffering is on my mind. Still, it is a general point.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Demon of Undoing »

The problem with reconciling that Christ suffered for us/ in our stead for the punishment we get AND that he just died instead of going to hell like people do is that he didn't go to hell, and neither will we. He experienced death, he experienced exactly the wages of sin. The wages are death, not eternal punishment in conscious torment. Jews had no such concept. If you don't think he was simply dying on a cross and feeling it approaching when hw cried out in Aramaic, you start having to come up with all sorts of extraBiblical concepts of " hell is separation from god".

To fit that abominable Greek concept of hell in, you have to mutate the entire reality of the crucifixion. He suffered just what the sinner suffers, and without making it an atoning act, he would never have died. It is because he was holy in his essence that he rose from the grave,ie death could hold no claim.

It's not that God experienced suffering for the first time. It's that he experienced death, virtually His opposite, for us.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Parodite »

The idea of some metaphysical exchange between sinful debt and death as the currency beats me totally. What speaks to me though is the story of a man leading a totally pious life of love in service to other human beings, being flawlessly good, innocent and always teaching the message of non-violence.. And yet being murdered because of it.

One could conclude that therefore the world is a hopeless and evil pit where loving innocence is murdered and the effort to do good ultimately in vain. That however is turned upside down by declaring the crucifixion not only a moral victory of one man, but also presented as a necessity and the only road to the promised land of a brotherhood of man where one day love and peace reign the world.

Such radical non-violence though never had much followers.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Marcus »

How much or for how long Christ suffered before dying is immaterial to the fact that He died, the just for the unjust, to satisfy the Divine sense of justice. However one wants to understand the Genesis story, the gist of it is that mankind, fallen in our federal head, Adam, is morally separated from a holy God. Jesus was and is the Christ of God, the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world were laid and raised to become the new Adam.

Sin no longer necessarily separates man from God.

What separates man from God today is what separated man from God in Eden—disbelief.

The question asked in Eden is asked anew of every man who ever lived or will live: "Has God said?"
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by YMix »

Torchwood wrote:- not given the IF statements, a more obvious interpretation comes to mind.
That things did not go as expected? :)
Parodite wrote:The idea of some metaphysical exchange between sinful debt and death as the currency beats me totally.
Seconded. God makes universe according to his plan. Man does something bad, presumable also according to god's plan. Jesus dies for man's sins. None of this makes any sense to me. This is probably where faith comes in.
Marcus wrote:The question asked in Eden is asked anew of every man who ever lived or will live: "Has God said?"
Does it matter? And using that "ever lived or will live" there is a bit presumptuous on your part.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Marcus »

Parodite wrote:. . What speaks to me though is the story of a man . . always teaching the message of non-violence. . .

One could conclude that therefore the world is a hopeless and evil pit where loving innocence is murdered and the effort to do good ultimately in vain. That however is turned upside down by declaring the crucifixion not only a moral victory of one man, but also presented as a necessity and the only road to the promised land of a brotherhood of man where one day love and peace reign the world.

Such radical non-violence though never had much followers.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on."

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is Wisdom to the mighty, He is Succour to the brave,
So the world shall be His footstool, and the soul of Time His slave,
Our God is marching on.


—from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through Oblivion's sea;
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff
must fly;
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by.

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned.


—selected from "The Present Crisis"
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
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"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Demon of Undoing »

Asking questions upon which grave matters depend, and demanding the same level of knowledge from those hearing second hand as from those with empirical verification, is poor form. I don't know what Adam knew. I don't know what God said. All I got is a book printed, edited and written by a bunch of people of questionable character.

Parodite

I tend to come close to your view here. In church, you will hear all sorts of catch phrases and code words that ostensibly tell you how to live a Christ like life. Take up your cross, in Jesus name, love your neighbor, obedience to God. It's jingoism. What does it mean?

It means the process of conviction, confession, repentance and atonement culminates in living that kind of life you describe. That life is not evidence of some mystical salvation. It IS salvation. By that obedience, impossible without a Christ- like symbolic death within oneself, the Kingdom of heaven is manifest. That example is contagious but expensive. Who would have a life worth living in love must end the one mired in selfish hatred.

There is no heaven or he'll required. Biblically speaking, neither is significant. This is about life, or death. You can be alive and dead inside or dead and alive inside of others. That's as metaphysical as it needs to be, and that's just about all Christ was talking about.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Parodite »

DofU, indeed as you say. Once sniffed, recognized and processed, the magic can safely be "left alone" like a good stew in the oven. Good things follow.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Parodite »

NxzP1XPCGJE
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Dioscuri »

How one can speak of the Evangelion to Greekless barbarians I do not know, but we can at least let in some elements of Truth.

"The Cross" is Stauros. When they crucify him, they staurousin auton. The verb Staurow historically does not correlate with that seminal Roman innovation in political technology, the Crux. It originally refers to the act of putting up a fence. The noun Stauros meant simply a fence post. A Stauroma was a palisade, a defensive line of pikes either planted in the ground or held by soldiers. This is the origin in the crossover of meanings: just as the fence is the immemorial signifier of the boundary of any basic civilization, that which keeps in the cattle and keeps out the raiders, so the Crosses came to represent the boundary of Empire, the New Order, the civilization of the future, Rome.

In making one's way amongst the creatures called humans, one discerns an unfailing trait among them as regards the things they consider important or worthy of attention: The presence of anything of any interest whatsoever is marked by erections. Wherever men live, you find things sticking out of things (or stuck into things).

In Greek you would say stauroi en gei hestasi, the fenceposts have been stood/planted in the ground. The noun derives from the verb, Histemi, one of the marvels of language, a word which encodes the secret of all language, as you may see if care to follow along.

If you think about it, most everything in life can be summed up as alternations of things that stick out, or, contrariwise, that get stuck into other things. Jesus had spikes stuck into him in order to make him stick out, to be stood up above everyone's heads and be seen by all. Before that, he had stuck himself out from normative religious understandings and stuck some new ideas into the minds of listeners. And the defenders of the Right determined that what Jesus was sticking into people was so dangerous and wrong that he had to be made to stop sticking out, and the way to do that was to stick him out on a Stauros so everyone would see him sticking out so they would learn what happens to someone who sticks out so much.

But all that's ignoring something much more basic, which is that the Cross is simply the Tau, the letter T with its upright bar and its crossbar, such that the vertical thrust out of the horizontal earth seems to be countered, or crowned, or negated, by a perpendicular stroke, a plane of heaven parallelling the plane of earth and cutting off (or simply receiving?) the vertical gesture made from earth to heaven. The pragmatic explanation is of course that a few poles in the ground do not a fence make, you need crossbars to join them together; without crossbars the oxen wander out, it's not an actual boundary.

So sticking a pole in the ground does not get you a Stauros, and does not constitute a strong indication of the settlement where you live and raise your kin and kine. You need a clear boundary marking. A boundary is a Horos, a limit, a measure, a separation. When you read your Horo-scope, you are reading of the definitions and the limits prescribed for you by the stars and planets to learn how best to remain within them and not wander into lives not meant for you. And what does a community do when they build a fence to mark off the ends of their land?

Yes indeed, they stand up a boundary, they Sta-Horos --> Stauros

To backtrack a moment, what were Stauroi built around (and for)? But of course, Tauroi. You need fences to keep hold of your oxen, those most valued and numinous of creatures who had Money named after them. The closeness of the relation of the enclosure to the enclosed you would do well to note here. I daresay, fences would never have existed if not for oxen, and maybe no civilization at all. There's just something about cows, that incredible amount of flesh, a moveable feast to be sure, and then that extraordinary duality of the bull: the deadly, charging ferocity and quiescent, endlessly accepting passivity. That duality explains it all. On the one hand, you have the reason that you don't have a bull unless you have a fence. It is a thing of great power that can't be allowed to roam free. Tauros & Stauros. On the other hand you have what makes an ox so valuable; it is a thing of great domitability, a massive hulk of meat that you can get close to, pet and scratch, a gentle creature that will betray nothing more than a sad, distant glaze over its eyes as you draw near it with the knife.

And this is where we come to the meaning, not merely the definition and etymology, of Stauros.

"The Passion" is Pathe, a word which does not indicate suffering (that would be Pathema). Pathe denotes solely a passive state, an experiencing, being the object of actions that originate outside of oneself. From the squirming discomforts of our Puritan forefathers we have received the understanding of "passion" that equates Christ's passage across the cross with the alleged torments of sexual pleasure. This is hardly English's only crime against the coherence of older and nobler languages, and at least we may appreciate the continued resonance of the sense we have of "surrendering oneself to passion," which is what one originally did regarding passion.

To undergo a Passion is to abandon all of one's own agency and power; to make oneself nothing but an object, passive before the wills of others. And so with a bit of thought one realizes that there is really nothing remarkable whatsoever about Jesus' passion. This sort of thing happens all the time. That a criminal be publicly executed is just as normal and natural and appointed by God as that a master of a household draw the blade across the throat of his ox.

There are 4 accounts of Jesus's life and death, and among those 4 accounts there are 3 versions of his last words.

In 2 accounts, Matthew and Mark, there is his cry of despair, "Eli Eli lama sabachthani", which I shall abbreviate as "Why?"
In 1 account, Luke, he says, "Father, into your hands I -Paratithemai- my spirit."
In 1 account, John, he says one word only: "Tetelestai," "It is done."

In Luke's account, the term Jesus uses, paratithemai, can be translated "bequeath," "return," "leave," "relinquish" and other inaccuracies, the least bad of which is "I deliver up my spirit". Luke, in short, does not contain the most riveting account of the passion. These dying words seem to smack not just of failure and futility but of indifference to this failure, "Well, I had my shot, I guess it's up to you now, God." I prefer another reading of paratithemai, "I pledge my spirit into your hands," in the sense of covering someone else's debt (or bet), or, indeed, getting him to cover yours. The verb's other meanings include "to stake, to place as a wager". There's something tricky going on here.

The radical opposite of this is the all-knowing voice of the Johannine Jesus, who concludes with no nonsense, "It is done."

In between these two poles we have the agreement of two gospels on what everyone likes to remember about Jesus, "Ooo! Ooo! He doubted too!" We are so entranced by the "Why, God?!" version because it is this version that invites us to complete the narrative. Jesus lets slip that he doesn't know what the genuflect is going on here either (promises had been made by an ostensibly trustworthy source, and Jesus had stepped up to play what he thought was his role, but now it may all be falling apart, we really don't know...) and so we're all in this together, in a position of radical doubt.

So, to recap, we have a quadripartite gospel portraying 3 views regarding the nature of Jesus's accomplishment, which we are about to see, are in fact the 3 phases or moments in the accomplishment of any Act or Passage of significance.


-----Paratithemai
--------0
------/***\
-----/******\
--Why?-----Why?
----\ *******/
-----\*****/
--------1
-----Tetelestai


With the above, we have revealed unto you the sacred quaternio of the Crossing, which is the structure not only of all religious ritual, but of all language and knowledge, all human accomplishment (or failure). This figure represents not merely the Act of Jesus, about which as I said there is nothing exceptional, but every possible destiny in the universe. You will not believe us, but it is so.

At the position marked 0 (zero), we have the moment of Jesus's Act in its in-completion: Jesus, dying, does not comprehend the game, does not see anything as having been completed, but still holds himself to the initial understanding of what the Act was to be, and he "pays it forward," leaves it in God's hands.

The two positions marked "Why?" constitute the Crossing proper. They represent the crisis of Jesus's initial understanding of the Act: the initial trust has been violated or voided, and Jesus makes the eternal protest of the victim, "What ruse? What illusion?"

At the position marked 1 (one) we have Jesus's full consciousness of the accomplishment of the Act. "It is done." What exactly has been done? This we cannot tell you. But there is a clue. Just before his last words, Jesus sees that his Act is being watched by his mother Mary and by "ton matheten hon aegapa", "the disciple he loved," whom we are supposed to believe is the John who is writing this account. Jesus tells him a quite remarkable thing, "Mathete, Ide he meter sou," "Disciple, behold your mother." The disciple turns to Mary, and they embrace. Jesus has replaced himself. A switcheroo. His last word follows.


The meaning of whatever it was that was accomplished on the Cross was determined by a process that is not essentially different than that which is determinative in any act or event of significance. All such significance is a result of a Crossing in which certain flows in the texture of reality are stopped and others are opened. Whether it is a man being stood up on a cross, or a bull's throat being crossed by the hand of a priest, this is how things are done.

I will conclude this instruction with a partial list of the meanings of a certain Greek verb.

Histemi: to make someone to stand; to put in position; to stop or halt; to rouse, stir up, or excite; to raise (as in a mast); to establish or institute (as in a festival); to place in the balance or to weigh; to lie down; to stand up; to end; to begin.

You have heard.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Demon of Undoing »

Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and say that, while I'm pretty sure I follow, I'm not sure how this changes much.

Great writing, though.
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Re: On Christ's Passion

Post by Enki »

Christ either proved that there is no such thing as death, or else the entire story is utterly meaningless.
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
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