10/17/2010

How was Jesus sacrificed when he did not really die?

Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins, but they also believe that Jesus rose from the dead, that is, Jesus did not die after all. If Jesus did not really die, then he wasn’t really sacrificed, was he? Cf. If you slaughtered an animal in order to sacrifice it to your god(s), but it came back to life immediately, was the animal sacrificed?

Indeed, if you believe that Jesus is God, and that God cannot die, then you have to believe that Jesus cannot die either. You can at most believe that that human organism which was Jesus' body ceased to function and then was revived by God. (This was, by the way, no big deal for God. Remember, God is omnipotent!) But then this would be compatible with Jesus the person not being dead at any time. If Jesus is God, then there was no point of time at which the person Jesus --- who is God --- was dead.

So, strictly speaking, Jesus was not sacrificed; it was Jesus' body that was sacrificed (even this, as I pointed out in the first paragraph, is questionable since his body was revived). But there is no reason to believe that that particular human body was so special that the sacrifice of it was sufficient for redeeming us, for God could easily have taken on another human body.

It may be objected that if, as Christians believe, humans have an immaterial soul, then in the sense in which Jesus did not die, humans whose bodies ceased to function did not die either, nor, for that reason,could any of them be sacrificed. True, but that only strengthens my point. If not even humans can be sacrificed, then how could Jesus be sacrificed? (There is, however, an important difference between normal humans and Jesus: even if humans have an immaterial soul, a human soul can be destroyed by God, while Jesus cannot cease to exist.)

10/10/2010

Love at first sight

Is there such a thing as love at first sight? I think it depends on how literally we take the word 'love' here. If 'love' here means no more than a feeling of romantic attraction, then there is certainly love at first sight. However, if 'love' here means, well, love, then it is not clear that most of the cases that people would describe as 'love at first sight' are really love.

When someone describes his first encounter with his beloved as 'love at first sight', it is usually a retrospective description. It is in the light of his love for her now that he sees the first encounter that way. If after the first encounter their relationship had not developed further, that would not have changed that experience, but he probably would not have described it as 'love at first sight'. So it is more reasonable to think that the first encounter was not love at first sight; it is just that it is seen as love at first sight retrospectively.