First let’s assume that Christianity is the real deal. The bible is truth. This isn’t the point of this post.
I want to know if all that is true was the crucifixion of Jesus an unholy or evil act? If the crucifixion had to happen and it truly was to rid us of all our sins and save us then can it be evil?
It’s possible that the purpose of the crucifixion was used to show that God can use an evil act to do miracles.
There is nothing simple as saying the crusifixtion was a good thing or an evil thing.
I believe that the act of sacrifice and reasurection was preordained and his life was meant to end in painful execution.
The theme of killing god and reasurecting him is a common theme not only Christianity, but practically every early religion. Example of a reasurected god is Osirus in Egyptian mythology. So, thematically its nothing new. It represents the pulse of death and life and how they are not completely seperate, but two sides of the same coin. Christ suffers for the sins of everyone he takes the pain of everyone else on his shoulders in his act of self-sacrifice.
So, were his executioners evil? Not at all. Because evil does not exist. Evil is an over simplified lable that we put onto people, and events that we don’t like. It’s the stamp that we use to seperate Hitlers, and Charles Mansons from normal folks like us. But the truth is that even people we call “evil” are humans the same as the “good” folks like you and me.
I agree with what you say Manifested the first post was just an idea I had some time ago.
If everything in the Bible is true then the crucifixion was a sort of war crime. That would make it evil.
The Romans wouldn’t have thought of it like that. You have to remember that Christ wasn’t the only person who was crusified. Nor did he seem like anything particularily new. In that part of the world there were many people in that part of the world who were crusified. Its not as though anyone set out to kill an innocent man on a cross. Most Romans wouldn’t just use the old “following orders” excuse, but they believed they were punishing a criminal. You have to understand that there were many people who came out of the woodwork calling themselves prophits, and sons of god. Jesus and his followers were treated as they would any other potentially dangerous cult. Does this excuse the millions who died in this way? Certainly not. But the intention was to rid crime in a dangerous part of the empire. Crusifixtion is an incredibly harsh punishment, but life in the old world was harsh too, especially in the desert regions like in Israel.
Zak,
It can be, if one understands this as a situation where a good result was squeezed out of an evil act. The act still remains evil. In fact I think that is a big part of the whole passion narrative - good triumphing, even in the mire of humanity at it’s worst.
Manifested,
Well if you mean that “evil” doesn’t exist in the same way “cold” doesn’t exist, I’d agree. Both are terms we slap upon a given situation where something is lacking. In the case of cold, it’s an absence of heat - in the case of evil, we’re talking about the absence of good.
I’m fond of the Thomistic definition of evil (though I’m sure it’s older than Thomas Aquinas, who drew heavily from Aristotle) - that it is the disordered pursuit of a perceived good. Someone steals, because they want wealth, which is a “good” - but the way they’re going about it lacks integrity, hence why we differentiate theft from lawful gain.
So evil “exists”, in the sense I’ve described. Of course, it exists in degrees. As for your comparison/contrast of Charles Manson, etc. demonstrates, is not that evil (in the sense I qualified) doesn’t exist, but rather that it is more common than many would like to acknowledge (you are correct that we like to believe our shit doesn’t stink.)
Manifested,
Taking the Biblical version of events for granted, it’s pretty clear that at least Pontius Pilate had an unclean conscience about the whole thing - his consent to the execution of Jesus being motivated by Jewish heckling that a failure to put to death a claimant to royalty was somehow an affront to the rights of the Emperor. IOW, he was motivated (by cowardess) to do something he knew was unjust.
More so, the rabbinical/priestly conspirators who had Jesus brought to Pilate, clearly knew what they were up to. While human motives are a complicated thing, it is obvious they went out of their way to fabricate false witness against Jesus, claiming he taught things he did not, ignoring the good he did, etc. While they obviously did not acknowledge him to be Divine, they certainly were set on having an innocent man put to death.
Agreed, which is likely why the New Testament portrays Christ as saying “Father, they know not what they do”, and why at least one of the soldiers is portrayed as having a religious experience in beholding the way Christ died (as opposed to those who had concocted the whole scheme to have him put to death.)
Personally I go back and forth on the idea of Neo-Platonist concepts. Like the question is there actually a True Good, or a True Evil. I just mean that to lable something as simply evil over simplifies it because nothing on this plane of existance is truely good or evil. Despite how certain presidents like to portray terrorists. Not that I want to get too steeped in politics here, that’s just a modern example of this dangerous oversimplification.