tehological insight

[dreamer_easy]

I am so pleased with the typo in the Subject line that I'm keeping it. Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that the Crucifixion occurred because God promised not to repeat the Flood. Am I right?

Comments

[infinitarian.livejournal.com]

Some possible answers:
1. This presupposes a degree of continuity (of genre, authorial intention etc) in the Bible which really isn't there.
2. Taking the story on its own terms, and assuming that it has internal consistency, you could argue that God's covenant with Noah limited His[*] later options -- but He was happy enough to use disaster afterwards as a punishment against specific groups, as at Babel, Sodom, Gomorrah etc. Nothing about the covenant commits Him to a later show of mercy as such.
3. I'd make a distinction between the Atonement -- which I tend to see as residing in the Incarnation -- and the Crucifixion, which (like trinalin) I tend to think of as an historical accident.

I'll admit that none of those answers comes from a terribly orthodox theological perspective, though.

[*] I'm not normally comfortable with calling God "he", but this is specifically the character in the Old Testament whom we're discussing...

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

the Atonement

Uh-oh, my ignorance is showing. What's that?

[infinitarian.livejournal.com]

If you mean precisely what is it, you'll need to ask a theologian (and I doubt you'll get a straight answer when you do). In general terms, the Atonement is the healing of the rift between God and humanity which results (if you believe in that sort of thing) from the Fall.

My take on this is that the person of Jesus united God and humanity in a literal "At-one-ment". ("Atonement" is a word with such a spectacularly transparent etymology that most people think it's a contrived and tacky pun made up by preachers.) Traditional evangelical theology talks about "penal substitutionary atonement", whereby the sins of humanity required punishment according to God's laws, and this could only be avoided by God substituting God's self in humanity's place. As you'll have gathered, I'm not keen on that interpretation.

(Sorry about the delay in replying. My employers have LiveJournal blocked on the grounds that all our students would spend their days arsing around on LiveJournal and never getting any work done, with the result that we librarians can't either.)

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Belated ta for this. It's extremely interesting!

Why does your ikon show a piano molesting a skull?

[infinitarian.livejournal.com]

Er, no particular reason, I just like the picture. Well, actually I like the title.

It's Salvador Dali's Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Ah - I had the participants' roles reversed.