It is not really important whether Jesus was a literal person who did what the Bible claims he did.

The teachings attributed to Jesus would have been attributed and gathered to someone else if not him, because that's how the world has preserved Great Teachings down through the ages.

The carriers of human wisdom never claimed to originate much--it was their followers who fudged with authorship and ascribed to them the traditional tales which came down from the ancestors.

The more interesting discussion is whether or not Christianity is a net gain or loss, based on the 2,000 years of history we have with it. Strong opinions both ways.

I used to believe "good person" was a synonym for "Christian." This resulted in me being parted from my money and the leadership of my own life for a significant period of time.

After doing a lot of reading and after quite some time after leaving Mormonism, I woke up. One day I went to sleep believing in Jesus and in the morning I could not believe that I ever swallowed the whole story--original sin, virgin birth, resurrection, ascension, but what struck me first is,

what the HELL am I doing honoring human sacrifice?

That being willing to sacrifice (murder) your children is not only laudable (Moses was ok with it), but then God did it himself (think of the example that sets for crazy people all over the world).

Why do I revere the idea that inflicting torture can "pay" for wrongdoing committed by other people at other times....

As if that were not barbaric enough, we then EAT his body and DRINK his blood.

Well, I'm done. It was clear to me that morning that these ideas of atonement are not helpful for human progression from violence to peace or from hatred to compassion.

Seriously, and I have to say, this is just my own mental process (could be controlled by Satan for all I know) and does not disrespect the beliefs of any reading this.

My own opinion only.

Anagrammy

And think about the people that he was tortured for: masturbators, gossipers, adulterers, petty thieves, ordinary liars, porn watchers, lazy people. In short, all of us. I can see the need to punish someone for causing permanent damage to others, like murder; but looking back on my life, as stupid as some of the things that I've done have been, I have to ask myself: Why would I need to be whipped, beaten, and executed for THAT?!

Kind of reminds one a little of the "Whipping Boy". Why does God need such a character?

I completely agree, whether or not there was a historical Jesus never was the correct question. If we can't show that God exists, it wouldn't matter anyway.

I assert that if we took a basic high school or college intro to logic student, made of list of all the properties of the entity we call God as stated in the Bible, and merely began matching up incongruent properties such that A != B, we'd find we'd eliminate all properties (meaning the entities existence is not possible), or have to concede, the God character doesn't possess the characteristic the Bible claims - making it unreliable as a source of information about God.

For this reason I have no qualms stating the God of the Bible doesn't exist. There may be a God, but the one the Jesus of the Bible speaks of isn't a real possibility. This calls into question whether there is a need to acknowledge Jesus as a saviour of anything.

If the mormon story can be so manipulated after only 200 years, imagine what it could do after 2000, and there you have christianity.

There is one problem with the historical Jesus. Christians are using the alleged absolute certainty of the existence of a historical Jesus to justify belief in all of the mythical elements about him. The logic is that there was a Jesus, therefore the things that were claimed about him were probably true. In that respect biblical scholars are failing to get the right message out to the general public.

Gee -- that wasn't what I was taught in seminary -- my
profs were about evenly split between those who held out
no hopes for an historical Jesus, and those who dismissed
him as an obscure Galilean preacher. The seminary's
Philosophy Dept. Chair denied every single aspect of
Christianity including its theology.

And that was in the _last century,_ for goodness sake! --
and not at Yale or Starr-King, but rather at a conservative,
back-woods grad school in Ohio -- pretty much "general public"
students there.

UD

Not the seminary I would attend. Why go to seminary if you are not going into the ministry, etc.?

rhgc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not the seminary I would attend. Why go to
> seminary if you are not going into the ministry,
> etc.?

At Methodist Theological School in Ohio, the term
"ministry" is applied to numerous different fields
of community service. For example, they offer(ed) a
full range of counseling courses, (and not just
instruction on how to administer the sacraments, or
how to administer religious instruction from the pulpit).

I served my internship as an associate pastor, just like
many other graduates did. However, less than half of my
graduating class ended up as full-time paid pastors,
without their also working in some other field of ministry.
A few of the graduates never sought ordination at all.

UD

I agree. Even though I no longer believe in Jesus as the Son of God, I don't think that it matters if he existed. He was likely a reformer of a corrupt Jewish society, nothing more. That said, given the society he was dealing with, he did teach some very good things. I think that people need to be focusing on fighting those who have corrupted a message of "love thy neighbor" "forgive thy neighbor" and "blessed are the peacemakers" and used them as an excuse to hate and kill.

Jesus could be considered an archetype, not a real person, and still be valid to Mormonism. Since in theory, members are supposed to emulate Christ. In practice, unfortunately, they worship ideology and hand the reins of their free will over to an authority structure. The result of this is that the TSCC is dead inside. I take no pleasure in this monumental failure.

Jesus us not supposed to be a hero, martyr, or dead historical figure. He is supposed to be us, to live through us. We become him, that's the long-forgotten gospel. Christ lives in the now when we manifest him through ourselves.

Think of Santa Clause. Every Christmas, you probably give presents and feel real good about it. You're Santa. The myth may have been based on a real person, or on the Amanita Muscaria mushroom, but it doesn't matter which.

The idea of "atonement" is from Paul and John, not Jesus. Indeed, the word atonement was fabricated from nothing by Tyndale, a man who lived more than a 1000 years later.

John was not one of the 12 apostles, and most scholars believe he was a believer out of Antioch, and that is why his writings are so much different than Matthew, Luke, and Mark. His writings have a Gnostic flare.

Paul, of course, never met Jesus personally. Whether he met Jesus or the devil in vision, or he made it all up, is for personal interpretation.

Child sacrifice was condemned by Moses, so I'm not sure where you are getting your ideas from.

Up too late--I was thinking of Abraham sacrificing Isaac.

It has been fascinating to read that the Christian religion as we know it was actually created by Paul and then supported by the apostles.

Even more amazing, Paul arrived in Jerusalem not knowing about the standard Jesus stories that we seem to think were always attached to Jesus-- the Virgin birth, the Magi, the miracles.

I totally agree that Jesus saying, in effect, "I die so that I can be reborn in you" is a very deep concept involving real spiritual transformation and having nothing to do with Christianity, let alone batshit crazy Mormonism.

Anagrammy

OK. I see. Abraham being told to sacrifice his son certainly can be viewed that way.

That said, God did not follow through on his command for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, preventing him from doing what that pagans did to their children. It was important for God to send that message to justify the pagans in their child sacrifice, to leave a hole in the Bible and ancient Israel to allow man to create the evil beliefs that they did and do. But we do learn from Moses that such practices are condemned by God. He knew Christians would spiritualize the event of Abraham and Isaac and apply it to Jesus incorrectly. It was His intention to cause the confusion to create a great contrast between Him and man, so that followers of man could see the evil ideas and exit "religion".

Christians and Mormons fail to realize God never followed through on the command and never intended to. Mormons and Christians apply the "atonement" principle to animal sacrifice and to Jesus, and so did the Jews anciently, but it is more a reflection of pagan thought than it is what is intended in the Hebrew culture and language.

The word atonement comes from a root word in hebrew that means "covering". Tyndale completely botched the meaning by inventing the word atonement.

The idea of cutting a covenant using an animal was to solidify the decision to obey, recognizing that if you did not follow through on the promise, then you deserved to die like the animal. Israel perverted the principel by absorbing pagan ideas that teach that the death of animals or human beings causes "forgiveness" from the gods and appeases them, or God, which was never God's intention in the matter.

The idea of covering our "bad behavior" is to bury it and stop it. The Hebrew word is used to describe the pitch covering Noah's ark, which kept the "water" out of the boat, preventing it from sinking. Same is true of the animal sacrifice. It was to generate remorse and increase the commitment to obey God, keeping bad behavior out of our lives.

The documented perversion of the principle is found in Judaism, Christianity, and Mormonism, which can be traced in several places directly in the Old Testament record in which Israel believed the death of the animals caused forgiveness of sins. God spoke to Israel and told them he hated their sacrifices for that reason. The ritual turned into believing the power of forgiveness came from the death of the animal, which it was never intended to be that way. Of course, Christianity picked up on that false concept of "atonement" based on Paul's and John's writings, being influenced by Greek and Roman pagans who infiltrated Judaism, and they turned Jesus into something he was not.

Indeed, if we take the New Testament as it is, none of the apostles of Jesus wrote it. Matthew's name is not on his gospel, but it is handed down by tradition that he wrote it. Mark and Luke were not apostles. Jude and James were not apostles. John was not the apostle John, but a believer from Antioch. 1st and 2nd Peter are forgeries.

Thus, the more rational conclusion is that like Jesus, the 12 apostles never wrote anything down in order to not take attention away from the Torah, or what Moses received. Later, when the gospel message became distorted, Christians became concerned and started writing things down over time, starting with confronting Paul's writings, of course. Then, centuries later the Roman Catholic church influenced by Greek/Roman pagans decided to start tampering with the texts, leaving us with a highly corrupted New Testament. That is what happens when we put "middle men" in between us and God.

There was obviously some tension between a prophetic
class in ancient Israel and the priestly class who ran
the State Religion under the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem
and the kingly governments in the north.

But, to interpret that prophetic tension as a proof against
atonement seems to me to be quite a stretch. Yes, there
probably were occasional religious voices that spoke out
against animal sacrifice, as a means for dealing with
national and personal transgressions of the covenant, but
I cannot fathom how all of that transfers over to our
thinking that the Day of Atonement was not a day when
national "sin" was covered over, to the point of being a
total redemption -- just like the periodic jubilee
removed financial debts, totally.

If you can find some early Jewish argument against this
scenario, I'd be happy to look it over. Or, if Judiasm
itself was corrupted, then I'd like to know the details
of how the idea of what we call, in English, "atonement"
was wrongly inserted into the ancient religion.

UD

This does take quite a bit of research into the history of the word atonement from Tyndale, as well as an indepth study of the Hebrew word Yom Kipper that should be translated "day of covering" and not "Day of Atonement". I'm just pointing you in the direction to research.

The idea of the animal sacrifice was intended to produce repentance on the person who did something wrong, rather than evoking God's forgiveness by the act of killing an animal.

Ancient kings used to cut covenants using animals to make the point of honoring promises and extending trust to each other, which had little to do with "forgiving" anyone of transgressions.

What I'm suggesting is that Israel twisted the meaning of animal sacrifices and believed like the pagans did. The pagans had rituals to appease their gods, and they believed the rituals made the gods happy, not the acts of goodness, mercy, and justice that acgtually pleases God. The pagans did not focus on the moral actions and behaviors, but set up rituals to appease the gods, supposedly, which perveted Israel's understanding of what Moses received from God.

There is the story in the Bible, for example, of a general in Israel name Jephthah who was steeped in pagan ritual and sought to restore Israel into God's graces, and he promised God that if he won the battle for Israel, that he would sacrifice the first person who came out the door of his house to God, Yahweh. He won the battle, and the person who walked out the door was his daughter. He followed through and killed her. This shows the mentality of incorrectly understanding the purpose of animal sacrifice, which had been perverted by pagan human sacrifices. I believe the story is in the Bible to demonstrate how mixed up Israel had become on the purpose of animal sacrifice, being incorrectly taught by pagans that death pleases God, when it does not. The death of the animal is only used as a means to evoke humility and to give human beings a stronger motivation to stop bad behavior. (See Judges Chapter 11)

The hypocricy of Israel's pretence in killing animals without changing their behavior is pretty clear in scripture, and the main problem with that action is in having the kind of views of Jephthah regarding sacrifice and offerings.

Jesus also said to study the meaning of: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." He was quoting Hab 6:6.

God's mercy is very **conditional**, unlike what Christianity teaches. His mercy is evoked by keeping His commandments. Thus, without repentance, offering sacrifices does not evoke his mercy. That is the point Jesus was making.

Part of this view of animal sacrifice is also seen in the statement, "The life is in the blood." Christianity changes this to life is in death, not life is in life. The blood of Jesus represents his life in keeping the commandments of God as a human being, not in magical pixie dust blood Paul taught about, which is really an extention of the many demigods that were in the pagan theologies of his day.

Unfortunately, Judiasm accepted Tyndale's terrible definition of Yom Kipper, which should be translated Day of Covering rather than the bastardized "Day of Atonment" Tyndale created out of nothing. Therefore, the world calls it the Day of Atonment today.

The Day of Covering included a 10 day period to reflect on the bad behavior of the year with a deternimnation to CHANGE and get in harmony with God's commandments. The holiday period helps the mind focus on one year at a time, rather than continually going into the past and resurrecting emotional garbage from many years past that should be buried each year in the trash can.

All of that is lost in the concept of free forgiveness in Christianity without change, which comes from the word "atonement". Such a concept of being "one with God" only belongs after this life is over, and when we are all resurrected to live forever...it doesn't belong with our mortal life. We are all a very far distance from being "one" with God.

The concept of the atonement is that it ends animal sacrifice with the ultimate sacrifice of the son of God. As a parent one knows that it is easier to offer oneself than your child. The pain was, contrary to some erroneous beliefs, of limited duration and Christ arose, indicating he is no longer dead. If Christ is simply a mortal Jesus, the idea is that it is insufficient to atone for the infinite number and variety of sins.

It was said we drink the blood etc. of Christ. This is the theology of only some groups and of relatively recent vintage. I almost persuaded a catholic instructor in college that it is an incorrect conclusion from the scriptures and that the sacrament is only symbolic. The sacrifice was once and for all. Note that JS, in intending to return to all prior practices, intended to reinstitute animal sacrifice! Ugh.

Yes, what rhgc said. This is how I learned it in Protestantism. Symbolism abounds. Jesus' sacrifice once for all time. No continual eating and drinking of literal blood.

"Once for all time", in fact, is a deeply meaningful refrain reflecting the Protestant/EV belief in the doctrines surrounding Jesus and the cross and the personal nature of that (in the abstract - He died for all mankind; in the immediate - He died for YOU, each one of us, so goes the teaching).

Animal sacrifice is part of the "Old Law" that was superceded by Jesus, as I learned the Old Testament in many Bible classes in mainstream Protestant circles.

Nightingale Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, what rhgc said. This is how I learned it in
> Protestantism.
...

Among the Reorganized LDS, I was taught that the atonement
was from all eternity -- but that in "the meridian of time"
it became practical.

In other words, God the Father did not suddenly feel compassion
for damned humanity, the moment blood was shed upon the cross,
but rather, there was "salvation" built into the very fabric
of the world, before it was ever formed as a physical reality.

So -- what was this "meridian of time," that made the date
the right moment? The RLDS teachers were somewhat vague on
that point, but kept coming back to the term "change of heart"
and "full repentance." Some sort of watershed point in
human history, I suppose.

Like the Mormons, the RLDS tended to discount the shedding of
blood on the cross being the sacrifice that set in motion a
universal, infinite vicarious redemption.

They even found a way to accommodate this non-Christian, and
allow me to express the view that the passion narrative is
symbolic and is not a creedal profession required of members
for full fellowship.

All of that said, I'm not sure what is being taught within
Community of Christ nowadays -- probably a dozen different
viewpoints on what repentance and redemption entails.

UD

Intellectually Homeless Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> That said, God did not follow through on his
> command for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac,
> preventing him from doing what that pagans did to
> their children. It was important for God to send
> that message to justify the pagans in their child
> sacrifice, to leave a hole in the Bible and
> ancient Israel to allow man to create the evil
> beliefs that they did and do. But we do learn from
> Moses that such practices are condemned by God....

>... Christians and Mormons fail to realize God never
> followed through on the command and never intended
> to.

> ,,,,beings causes "forgiveness" from the gods and
> appeases them, or God, which was never God's
> intention in the matter.
>
> The idea of covering our "bad behavior" is to bury
> it and stop it. The Hebrew word is used to
> describe the pitch covering Noah's ark, which kept
> the "water" out of the boat, preventing it from
> sinking...

... God spoke to Israel and told them he hated
> their sacrifices for that reason...

>
... That is what happens when we put "middle men" in between
> us and God.

Your entire argument rests on the premise of the existence of a fictional god. It is a circular reasoning. It voids your entire argument. The god of the OT is just tradition of superstitious, theocratic, nomadic sheepherders from the Late Bronze Age. Yahweh, or Jehovah or whatever you want to call him, did not exist. It is just nonsense and myth. Just look at that fatuous Noah nonsense that you mention.

Use facts, not myth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2013 06:49PM by No Mo.

No Mo,

One could argue that the Noah story is symbolic and created by man to teach principles, rather than a literal record, validating the ideas used to define the words Yom Kipper or Day of Covering. It's not as cut and dry as you paint it to be.

The point of Israel and the 10 Commandments is to put laws in place that make people free on a land that could not be taken away from them by kings and despots to operate according to conscience and live in a society that is safe from criminals who steal another's reputation, property, spouse, and life itself. It failed because Israel learned to steal, kill, cheat, lie, commit adultery, bear false witness, covet, and pretty much break the laws of God. Then they justified their evil and made themselves "forgiven" by killing animals and performing dead rituals. That evil behavior ended in Israel's destruction.

My view is that the Bible became corrupted on purpose by God's inaction and withdrawing His power and evidence of his existence in Israel, so that people today can move away from man-made "religion" and make their own decisions about God without depending on others to make it for them. Though corrupted, there are valuable principles in the Bible to give moral direction to people to create a safe place for us to live by lessoning or removing the criminal mind and the bad and harmful consequences that it creates.

I don't jump into these arguments about what god intended because I have been through the arguments all the way back to the fact that an all-seeing, all-knowing, perfectly complete and perfect being doesn't "need" to create anything.

He can't be bored, he is complete.
He can't be proving anything, there's nothing to prove to only himself.
There is no good and evil unless he creates the evil, since he is all-good.
And since he sees the future and did create all-good people, he could foresee they would go back.
He could foresee his plan would succeed/fail.
So no point.

The interesting thing about Christianity is totally (to me) the study of human culture and the interaction between societies and religion and how events effect a tipping point for some ideas and not for others.


Anagrammy

anagrammy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...
> He can't be bored, he is complete.
...

I was taught that God participates in the incompleteness of
the universe through _our_ experience of that incompleteness.

I may not myself experience the pain, fear and confusion
felt by a crying infant -- but, in my relationship with that
infant, his distress can be my distress -- no matter how
calm and in control I may be in my exterior observation.

That is an analogy, of course -- and not meant to convey
what God is or isn't. Empathy is not Divinity.

Another way that "completeness" was explained to me, is in
the symbology of a picture jigsaw puzzle. Thrown upon the
table, helter-skelter, the picture image is incomplete.
If the individual pieces were capable of consciousness
and self-reflection, they would experience that incompleteness.
And yet, when properly brought together, those very pieces
serve to make up the completeness of the puzzle's image.
"Messiah" comes about in the completeness of the body of
Christ, and not in one piece of the puzzle being supreme.

UD

Uncle Dale said:

"Another way that "completeness" was explained to me, is in
the symbology of a picture jigsaw puzzle. Thrown upon the
table, helter-skelter, the picture image is incomplete.
If the individual pieces were capable of consciousness
and self-reflection, they would experience that incompleteness.
And yet, when properly brought together, those very pieces
serve to make up the completeness of the puzzle's image.

"Messiah" comes about in the completeness of the body of
Christ, and not in one piece of the puzzle being supreme."


The last part does not follow from the first part. I can understand the image in a puzzle being incomprehensible until the puzzle is ordered. I get that deeper meaning can be seen when the parts are arranged, becoming "greater" than the whole in terms of conveying image.

How that somehow explains the completeness of the body of Christ (the church) escapes me. It doesn't follow.

My train of logic goes more like this, "God already knows the image that would come about if all the pieces are arranged in the proper order, so he doesn't need to arrange them."

If the arranging is for the purpose of promoting human understanding, as so many things are, to what point if God already knows whether and who and how any or all humans will respond.


Anagrammy

anagrammy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
...
> The last part does not follow from the first part.
...

It only follows, in the basic idea of completeness. Ask a
rabbi today what the "son of man" in the Book of Daniel is
supposed to represent, and probably he will say that the
term stands for all of faithful Israel.

Ask what we are to make of the suffering servant imagery in
Isaiah, and again you'll probably be directed back to the
entire covenant community.

Why would the rabbi not simply admit that those passages
are prophetic predictions of Jesus the son of Mary?

But, before we stop to answer that rhetorical question,
let's also ask ourselves what relationship the Jewish
Messiah is supposed to have to Israel itself? Ask some
of my relatives, and they might say "to conquer the
Arabs and insure the safety of God's people!"

However, thought about a little longer, it becomes obvious
that "Messiah" has a relationship to the entire community
of the faithful which results in a completeness. "Messiah,"
in that instance, can be involved in the "son of man" and
Isaiah's suffering servant -- can, in some ways, even be
equated with that corporate symbolism.

It is but a short intellectual step from the completeness
of a corporate messiahship, to the Christian notion of the
"body of Christ." That "body" may not be complete without
its "head;" but neither is it complete without some other
part -- maybe a microscopically small part of a brain cell
or of a heart valve.

It was that "completeness" that I was attempting to convey.
The Mormons mighty try and categorize it under "Christlike,"
but you won't see me advocating that doctrine.

UD

Anagrammy, I can agreee with you. I think the teachings ascribed to Jesus are great, mostly. Although I don't think they are unique. Others taught much of the same stuff centuries before Jesus allegedly taught them. The OT practice of animal sacrifice and the NT idea of torture and sacrifice to atone for everyone's sins is a very ancient, and very barbaric idea and practice.

I know I am off in a corner relative to many people here. I still believe in a higher power, I believe we live many lives, I believe it matters what we do in our lives, and I believe those who watch over us love us. I know the world is full of terrible things and events. But I still have my beliefs, which I mentioned.

I don't need Jesus to become what I want to become. I think many others benefit from a belief in him. To each his own. I think we would be better off NOW if we let go of the ideas of Christianity and became simply "spiritual". We'll see if this is where mankind heads.

Peace.

Nature is enough for me. It's awe-inspiring, it's renewing, it's glorious and completely real. It's impartial, diverse and completely universal and fair in its treatment of humans.

We can't really say that about god.


Anagrammy

Things and ideas that are not constrained by natural laws are not real. Nature is all there is. There's plenty in the natural world and universe to wax spiritual about without resorting to the supernatural. Teachings ascribed to Jesus are often valuable, but only to buttress our own innate sense of morality, which comes from our nature as social, evolved beings.

If one lived by the Old Testament, they'd be thrown in prison.
If one lived by the New, they'd be put in an asylum.

The moral fabric of modern society doesn't come from the bible. It comes from humanism and cultural progress.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2013 11:47AM by rationalguy.

If we were born in any other part of the world we would be having this conversation about Buddha, for one. If we were born in any time on earth, we would be having this conversation about Jupiter or Oden, for example. Our perspective on this (and many other issues) has been over informed by our very narrow experience in an almost exclusively Judeo-Christian culture. Even our slice of that pie is very small (Mormon membership is approximately 1% of world Catholic membership).

http://imgur.com/gMppl

It just goes to show how insignificant and local these issues are in the global and universal schemes.

s4711 logged out Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If we were born in any other part of the world we
> would be having this conversation about Buddha,
> for one.
...

As I heard it, Sakyamuni was merely one in a long line of
South Asian sages. His teachings do not depend upon his
being unique, nor even an historical personage. Prove him
unreal or a false Buddha, and nothing is changed.

The community is important.
The eightfold path is important.
The sutras are important.

But they are as dust upon a mirror, compared to
REAL importance.

UD

Uncle Dale Wrote:

> But they are as dust upon a mirror, compared to
> REAL importance.
>
> UD

polish that mirror!

But not all christians have this conception of the atonement or of God. Here is a quote from an eastern orthodox article dealing with the subject:

"This juridical conception of God, this completely distorted interpretation of God's justice, was nothing else than the projection of human passions on theology. It was a return to the pagan process of humanizing God and deifying man. Men are vexed and angered when not taken seriously and consider it a humiliation which only vengeance can remove, whether it is by crime or by duel. This was the worldly, passionate conception of justice prevailing in the minds of a so-called "Christian" society.

Western Christians thought about God's justice in the same way also; God, the infinite Being, was infinitely insulted by Adam's disobedience. He decided that the guilt of Adam's disobedience descended equally to all His children, and that all were to be sentenced to death for Adam's sin, which they did not commit. God's justice for Westerners operated like a vendetta. Not only the man who insulted you, but also all his family must die. And what was tragic for men, to the point of hopelessness, was that no man, nor even all humanity, could appease God's insulted dignity, even if all men in history were to be sacrificed. God's dignity could be saved only if He could punish someone of the same dignity as He. So in order to save both God's dignity and mankind, there was no other solution than the incarnation of His Son, so that a man of godly dignity could be sacrificed to save God's honor."

Obviously they interpret it differently, the whole article can be found here:

http://www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm