Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!christian From: tp0x@spica.fac.cs.cmu.edu (Thomas Price) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Trinity Message-ID: Date: 2 Nov 90 08:33:10 GMT Sender: hedrick@porthos.rutgers.edu Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 38 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Moderator: > I don't see how the death of a prophet could accomplish what the > NT says Jesus' death accomplished. I don't either: Jesus was sinless; no other man ever was. Every other prophet would have deserved his own death on the cross: accordingly, the death of one of them would not have been a condemnation of the law of sin and death placed on creation at the fall. Moderator: > It is seen as God's self-sacrifice. I'm not sure which passages you are referring to -- could you list them below? Moderator: > Jesus is an obedient servant. If we want to think of him as revealing God, > then this implies that somehow God himself is not just the transcendent > lawgiver, but the obedient child. I don't see that this follows. Jesus swallowed his own spit every few seconds. Does this mean that God swallows His own spit every few seconds? I don't mean to be flippant: I suspect you may wish to divide characteristics of Jesus into some associated with humanity and some with divinity -- but then I could legitimately claim that the servitude belonged to the humanity-group. Tom [As to your question about God's self-sacrifice, a couple of passages I find immedidately are 2 Cor 5:18ff and Col 1:19. Both of these seem to say that God was acting through Christ on the cross. I did not mean to imply that the Father suffered on the cross directly. (That would in fact be a heresy.) But I think Paul would say that Christ's death for us was God's action through Christ. This sort of functional unity between God and Christ is certainly related to the relationship between God the prophets. The prophets speak for and in some cases act for God. But I don't think in their case God is seen as being present through them quite so directly. It's hard to imagine Col 1:19-20 being said in quite that form of Moses. --clh]