Each for his own sins

by peacefulpete 5 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  peacefulpete

  Is not the notion of one person dying for the sins of another rejected in this famous passage?

  20 The one who sins is the one who will die. The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them.

  Judaism includes many notions of redemption, however the idea of redemption is the paying to Yahweh what was owed him through compliance and rite not by the death of some innocent person. This was a leap that most Jews just could not make. It was a cosmic injustice.

  23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
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  FedUpJW

  WT prefers this scripture though it seems, "because I am God. . . bringing punishment for the error of fathers upon sons, upon the third generation and upon the fourth generation."
  
  
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  peacefulpete

  Yes I know the vengeful formulation of the Deuteronomists. It reflects the worst of human nature, wishing ill upon the children of our enemies. Today the Geneva Convention specifically renounces it but even as far back as Ezekiel's final form they condemned it as crime. Having been exposed to the Christian doctrine of vicarious human sacrifice from youth on we may not appreciate the deep moral dilemma it posed to Jews.
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  JoenB75

  Hebrews 9:13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
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  HowTheBibleWasCreated

  The idea is expressed fully in 1 Kings 21 i think. Ahab repents and YHWH forgives him.. BUT the punishment falls on his children who all die horribly. (Well actually 2 Kings 9 is slightly historical)
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  peacefulpete

  JoenB75.

  It easy to forget how foreign the soteriology of Christianity was from native Judaism. Sacrifices of grain, vegetables and animals were seen as gifts of thanks and indebtedness, even in the case of "sin" offerings the objective was to secure reconciliation and an appeal for communion not a paying of a price for sin or an effort to be seen as sinless .Forgiveness was gained through repentance and restitution. With this in mind it is interesting you bring up Hebrews.

  The unknown author of Hebrews shows awareness that the Jewish faith did not understand sacrifices to have a substitutionary value but served as a reminder of failure.

  3But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. 4For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

  Note however in verse 4 he makes the suggestion that the issue was the animal to human imbalance. In this he has already made a radical break from native Judaism's understanding of sacrifices and their purpose as I've just said. In the mind of the writer of Hebrews the sacrifices took sins away in the sense of paying a price but they just didn't work well because they were animals and not human. He has shown a transactional thinking, a tit for tat barter. However the author never fully explains how this works. In fact no where it is consistently and fully explained. Christians as a result have debated the nature of the transaction for 2000 years. Check Wiki: Substitutionary atonement - Wikipedia

  All this debating resulted from the Christian revisioning Jewish sacrifice as something it wasn't and ignoring the basic injustice of one man dying for the sins of another.