If you say so but that is not what I read.
But I like your way. That way there was no sacrifice and we do not need a redeemer.
Then the whole sacrifice thing was a hoax and Jesus was never chosen to die for our sins.
Sweet. Now Christians have to find some other way to be forgiven.
Regards
DL
Except it denies Christian dogma and tradition.
Regards
DL
Man, that makes it kinda hard to have any kind of discussion, don’t you think? If everything was that easy - just state what the dogma is, there is not much use for a forum.
I don’t think I need to point out how dogma has changed over the centuries, or how some tradition has led to bad consequences?
I think that, if you give people the courtesy of admitting that they too are intelligent, and have studied, and have come to different conclusions, you’ll find that things get very ----- interesting! At least that is how it works for me.
Blessings on you. 
Jesus was chosen/begotten from before the foundation of the world to be the Saviour. This was because God knew we’d rebel and try to get away from Him. He decided that the way to reach out to us was to live the human life, to suffer what we suffer (including both false celebrity culture and then the scapegoating we are so good at), and to ultimately triumph over the worst that we could throw at Him.
Christ was not sacrificed to God’s arbitrary judicial system, He was given to us, and we sacrificed Him to ourselves. God made Himself vulnerable through this, ultimately to show that love is unconquerable.
The true thing Christ was chosen for was not to be a sacrifice or a scapegoat specifically, but to show us the triumphant and all-encompassing love of God…ie, He was chosen to show us our evil nature: our pure, murderous evil, and show us how we can break free of it and be triumphant in the Resurrection, which is forgotten by so much of the church as a sort of post script, while the death and supposed sacrificial element is glorified. You have to die to be resurrected, but death is a stepping stone to that ultimate goal, the goal He has in mind for us all, in a time when we no longer demand scapegoats to appease our (not God’s) wrath.
We sin, and we need a redeemer, and we need forgiveness, but Christ’s death didn’t make forgiveness possible: it WAS the forgiveness, the very way that God chose to show us how He loves us. The resurrection tells us that while we were still sinners, Christ loved us and died for us…the forgiveness existed since before the creation of the world, when Christ was chosen, and is not dependent on any sacrifice.
Even in the Old Testament God says He doesn’t delight in sacrifice…the sacrifice culture was given as a means of calming the ancient Hebrews’ entirely human desire to scapegoat. Rather than people, they were told to kill animals, whose meat was mostly used as food for the priests. However, this was not an end in itself, as God later on says He won’t accept those sacrifices, and what He wants is obedience. And obedience to God is not submitting to some divine autocrat: it is choosing all those things that make life better for all of us, and establish relationships rather than destroy them.
So there is plenty to discuss here. God did NOT choose Christ to appease His own schizophrenic wrath…and Christ’s blood is God’s demonstration of love, and it literally shows forgiveness that covers our sins (God loves and forgives us so much, He is content to take the worst we can throw at Him, and still come back for more).
We definitely need a redeemer, and we need forgiveness…but forgiveness is given, not paid for, otherwise it is not forgiveness.
Not all Christian dogma and tradition, by a long shot. There have been many atonement theories in Christian history, going back to the 2nd century – the main opponents to the Gnostics back then {cough} didn’t usually go with the idea of God choosing someone to sacrifice to appease His wrath while letting the guilty go free. (The Christus Victor model, in several versions, was far more prevalent, but also some other theories.)
And not even all penal sub theories necessarily have that idea in mind, though that’s admittedly a popular and prevalent version of PSA even today. The people who take the popular version are inadvertently contradicting trinitarian theism, though – and non-trinitarians who take it aren’t doing their theologies any favor either. At this time the Roman Catholic Church seems to be taking the much more nuanced penal solidarity version, where Christ suffers with all the unjust so that all the unjust may (if they choose to) rise with Christ, the goal being not to reconcile the Father to sinners (which the popular version of PSA typically involves) but to reconcile those who are unjust to the Father (which happens to be how the scriptural grammar runs every single time the topic is brought up in the texts, not-incidentally. The recent RCC Great Catechism, I have noted, works hard at being consistent about this: God in all Persons of deity reaches out in reconciliation to sinners already from the beginning, doers of injustice are who should be reconciled to God and to their victims.)
There is another closely related version of penal atonement theory connected to the Abrahamic Covenant where God (as the Son) voluntarily took Abraham’s place (as Abraham’s eventual descendant via the Incarnation) in the covenant vow with the Father. On this theory the Son voluntarily accepts the penalty of anyone anywhere being unjust, thus being also unfaithful to God (which would happen anyway even without the covenant) and thus breaching the covenant (since by the Incarnation, all rational creatures ever created by God count as Abraham’s family). The Son pays the price of all unjust creatures breaching the covenant, not to satisfy the wrath of God (which would be the Son’s own wrath against sin) but in order to continue maintaining the covenant agreement between the Father and the Son – that agreement being to bring all Abraham’s descendants to righteous behavior eventually. The Son’s voluntary death is an enacted symbol of that agreement and commitment. (Historically this has not been a popular version of PSA since it obviously would mean universal salvation must be true, but there are a couple of New Testament texts that reference the idea specifically.)
Another closely related version of penal atonement theory is connected to the notion that God’s voluntary self-sacrificial action is how any not-God reality, including not-God creatures (with their own derivative rationalities), comes into and continues staying in existence at all. Insofar as any creatures suffer as a result of that action, whether accidentally (since Nature as a not-God entity goes about its own God-supported mechanical business, allowing created persons to have a neutral field of reality in which to have relationships with one another at all) or intentionally (by unjust actions against other persons), God voluntarily and omnisciently and omnipresently suffers with all victims as well as with all (eventually) punished victimizers, the cross being the specific historical enactment of that suffering. God suffers with the innocent (such as those slain by injustice) as well as with the guilty.
But, if all you’re interested in is shooting at a popular straw man version of Christianity (one that many Christians have set themselves up to be straw men about), then none of that, and none of the other ways Christians have regarded the sacrifice of Jesus, is going to matter. You’ll just (rightly) shoot at the easy target and then go away satisfied that surely there can be no other options within Christian theology.
Most of us on this forum, though, will remember Jesus’ saying from GosJohn, that the only just judgment of the greatest possible judge, is the judgment that intends to bring all unjust people to be just to one another instead (thus truly honoring the Son as well as the Father). 
Sonia (SLJ) was affirming a sacrifice, and a redeemer. (Which is why she said “Savior? Yes Sacrifice? Yes”.) She just didn’t go on to talk about sacrifice specifically, but addressed part of the context of the verse you quoted – which does talk about Jesus, given by the Father, redeeming/ransoming unjust people into just people, and which uses sacrifice language (the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb etc.)
Denying that the affirmed sacrifice was to divert the punishment of evil men onto an innocent Son, is not at all logically the same as denying the sacrifice (much less denying the ransom/redemption). Sonia only denied a common claim about the purpose of the sacrifice.
We’ve had several threads on the topic of penal sub atonement (pro and/or con) over the years; and Paidion helpfully started another one the same day as GB here.
When I find those you describe, indeed good dialog can be had. They would be mostly non-literal readers. Literalists, mostly the right wing of religions, are not usually intelligent nor have they studied anything worthy. If they had, they would not be literalists.
If in their so called studies, if they cannot realize that snakes and donkeys cannot speak human, for instance, then how can you class them as intelligent?
Do you believe that snakes and donkeys can speak human speech?
Regards
DL
Pathetic and not a thought as to the morality of the dogma and crap you spout. Let’s chat morals if you dare.
How will you get yourself into heaven? On your own merit or via a scapegoat?
Revisit substitutionary atonement or vicarious redemption and scapegoating with me just to refresh your memory.
youtube.com/watch?v=uNtBkOXItqw
I am not an atheist but Satan and Christians want atheists to embrace barbaric human sacrifice and the notion that we should profit from punishing the innocent instead of the guilty. Scapegoating IOW.
In reality, if God did demand such a barbaric sacrifice, he would be sinning as we all know that it is immoral to kill the innocent. God knows this yet Christians do not seem to. You do. Right?
Those with good morals will know that no noble and gracious God would demand the sacrifice of a son just to prove it’s benevolence. When you die, Satan will ask you; how was your ticket to heaven purchased? With innocent blood?
If and when you say yes, you become his.
The other option in scriptures, a moral one, is shown here. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Scriptures indicate that God prefers repentance to sacrifice and as God’s will is supreme and cannot be thwarted, this will come to pass.
It is a special distorted Christian view of love that sees, — as the greatest act of love possible, — their God condemning them, and then turning and demanding his son’s deaths and thus corrupting God’s perfect justice. A bribe set by God as judge himself for himself. This is of course ridiculous.
Christians have an insane view of love, IMO.
Would you express your love for humanity or those you love by having your own child needlessly murdered?
Or if convinced that a sacrifice was somehow good, would you have the moral fortitude to step up yourself to that cross instead of sending your child?
Your cowardly God did not.
Regards
DL
Actually, I think many of us, when we think of a ‘just’ God, think along the lines of this essay. It’s what I hold to; I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on it!
I will have to look it up.
You gave a lot of information above but did not seem to land on what your moral views actually are.
Let’s start with a simple question.
Who do you think is more likely to favor the punishment of the innocent over punishing the guilty the most? Satan or God?
Which is more likely to use such methods or ask for them?
Regards
DL
If you want me to opine then summarize it.
No disrespect but I do way too much reading in a day to take half of one to read that essay.
Regards
DL
If you want to read it, it will take you all of 15 minutes.
No offense taken, we’re all very busy…
That is hardly the point I tried to make.
There is a book, the bible, that many have read and all come away with a different message.
Note how many thousand denominations or cults it has.
I cannot look for whatever you see in something unless you indicate what it is.
I have no time for such games.
Regards
DL
I understand.
I won’t do the ''this is the essay in 100 words or less" for you, because it would just be a caricature of what the man is saying. If you don’t have time, that’s fine.
Games, quotha!!
DL,
I get the impression from your replies that you are not really understanding what we’ve been trying to communicate, so let’s start with your simple question and go from there …
I believe God favors punishing the guilty and acquitting the innocent. I don’t believe God ever punishes the innocent, and I believe God condemns those who do.
Eze 18:20 The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.
Is 5:22-23 Woe to those … who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!
Sonia
Hi Gnostic Bishop,
The essay Dave is linking to is one that most universalists have read and it informs most of the members thought here regarding “justice” and penal substitution atonement to greater or lesser degrees. This is not just any old “essay” and I would recommend highly you read it carefully if you want to engage in this kind of discussion–just to know where most of us are coming from.
Steve
You have just condemned the Christian God. Nice.
If you do not believe God ever punishes the innocent, then you are either not reading the bible literally, which is better, or you have scrapped half of the bible that shows God punishing the innocent. That is a lot of cherry picking if hat is what you are doing.
What does your mind do with all those instances that you do not believe?
Regards
DL
Not yet. I did scan that piece but did not like the way it was written. Too many statements that I did not like and without the author here it is pointless to read. That is why I asked our friend for his quick version in case he had the same concerns.
Regards
DL
I gladly condemn any unjust portrayal of God. I do think there are branches of Christianity whose idea of God is unjust. That’s not the same as condemning God himself.
What instances do you have in mind?
Sonia
It’s safe to assume that a bunch of us here agree with what MacDonald says. We might be willing to discuss those statements you don’t like.
Sonia