Jesus and the Cross - Theories of Atonement

Jesus is NOT the Cross

     Why did Jesus, the centerpiece of Christianity die?  It's interesting how many people believe that the cross was the way Jesus paid our debt to God (or the Devil). There is absolutely no doubt that Jesus died for our sin. But some people think He died because of our sins and some think He died to forgive our sins.  There is a distinct separation between the two and there is no shortage of people ready to speculate on them.  Some say Jesus paid our debt to God, others say He paid the Devil, and still others say He led by example.  These ideas have been debated throughout history, but one idea of Penal Substitution has dominated the playing field for almost 1,000 years.  However, it has recently been challenged by the very ideas that it had silenced so many years before.  Penal Substitution is a refinement of a slightly older idea known as Satisfaction.  For the thousand years before Penal Substitution was created, two ideas were formed about the death of Jesus.  One was Ransom, and the other was Moral Influence.  The more prevalent of the two was Moral Influence.

Biblical Creation vs. The Big Bang

Introduction

     “In the beginning there was…” can lead to complete concurrence or dissension depending on what completes that statement.  If the Evolutionary theory is added to complete the statement, then you will have the scientists’ concurrence and the Christians’ dissension.  If Biblical creation completes that statement, then you will have the Christians’ concurrence and the scientists’ dissension.  There are also various positions that find themselves in-between the two sides; some Christians believe in the Evolutionary theory, while some scientists are Christians and believe their Bible.  This paper focuses on the argument between Christians who believe that the Bible is clear about creation, the scientists who believe that science paints a different picture, and the ever-increasing middle ground that sees both sides coinciding rather than contradicting the other.  It also will be written under the assumption that God exists.  Many Christians tend to demonize science because it seems to revoke their traditional values; however, scientists see their work as not revoking traditional values, but progressing onto better values.  A good example of this in another realm would be that slavery was a traditional value and seemed to be Biblical, but it was morally wrong and we progressed onto a better set of ethics, which were better supported by the Bible than slavery was.

The Creation Account and The Big Bang

     If you look into what science and Christianity have to say about the origins of the world, then you may be surprised and you may realize that there must be a God. In the big bang theory everything began as a small dense fourth dimensional mass which can be seen as in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. God is timeless and so is the fourth dimension according to most science fiction writers; coincidence? I think not. Science doesn't know what cause this immensely dense fourth dimensional mass to expand(not explode), but they do know that the reason it did is because somehow light began to separate from the mass causing many chemical reactions. The Bible states that God said, "Let there be light". How would early Christians know that light came first without access to the amazing science that we have today unless God clued them in on it? Then the Bible says that God separated the waters of the Heavens from the waters of the Earth, thus the Heavens and the Earth separated and grew apart as the universe expanded. But wait, there is even more to these theories. Science states next that there was so much heat from the expansion of all of the molecules that the light was muffled by a dense fog-like state of the molecules and light would not return again until the sun and stars were formed. This explains why the Bible recreates the separation of light from dark and God creates the sun, stars and moon. As the stars appeared in Science everything began to cool and thus planets were formed. I don't think that it is a coincidence that everything lines up almost perfectly with the Bible. How could early Hebrews know the order that science has determined the world came to be in without divine enlightenment from God? I don't think they could have.  These are my thoughts on the topic and I know the two theories don't fit together perfectly, but they are close enough that you have to wonder how the Hebrews could have gotten so close without our modern advances.

     Genesis 1