Salvation was only possible by the shedding of divine blood.
Tell me: What blood was shed in the Incarnation? Because that's when humanity was reconciled to God.
What do you mean, 'self-sacrificial love'? What sense does that make? The reality was that the Jewish high priests wanted him crucified because of blasphemy, while the Romans did because of sedition and treason. Jesus had no choice in the matter.
Ah! But he
did have a choice. He could have shut up, gone into hiding, and lived a loooong life. He didn't have to go to Jerusalem. In fact, the gospel story tells us that "he set his face toward Jerusalem." He chose to put himself in harm's way, because he loved us.
But non-believers cannot be saved:
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me."
Right! And "through me" happened in the Incarnation.
So a Buddhist or Hindu who does not accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior is not saved, according to Christian doctrine.
Nope. The love that Jesus exemplified in God-With-Us is available to all humanity.
You claim salvation comes via Jesus's 'sacrificial love', but that is an oxymoron, as real love is unconditional, in which no sacrifice is necessary.
As I've just pointed out, the sacrifice wasn't necessary. It was a choice.
The Paschal Lamb sacrificed and eaten upon the Jews Exodus from Egypt is a prefigurement for Jesus, the Lamb of God, the whole point being blood sacrifice as a means of atonement.
No it isn't. Just ask any Jew, and they'll tell you that. The lamb eaten by the exodus Jews was in no way intended as a prefigurement for Jesus. We
see it that way, because it helps us to connect with our roots, but that's not what was intended.
Without the shedding of blood, there can be no atonement.
Substitutionary atonement is not the only legitimate theology -- and I certainly don't buy it.
The goat sent away into the wilderness by the Jews is a prefigurement for Jesus being crucified and dying
See above. There is no "prefigurement" of Jesus in the OT.
The fact that a covenant had to come into play is just another set of conditions for man being able to receive divine favor.
The new covenant isn't a condition
for Divine favor, it is the
effect of Divine favor, or grace.
The reality of this situation is further indication that men wrote the scriptures and infused human ideas into them.
You're not saying anything new or earth-shattering here. Of
course human beings wrote the texts. Do you think they fell out of the sky??? Of
course they're full of human ideas. Theology is a human endeavor.
"I will forgive you; I will love you, if only you will do this or that, or not do this or that". That is not unconditional love.
Ah! But that's not what it says. What it says is that the Father waits for the lost son
until he is found, and that the shepherd will search for the lost sheep
until it is found. God says, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." The Psalmist says, "Where can I hide from [God]?" Paul says that nothing can separate us from the love of God.
Unconditional love would have it that God would have set aside Adam and Eve's sin and forgive them unconditionally. After all, God is the one who created the scenario in the first place, the first Sting Operation, so to speak.
If you remember, God
did mitigate the penalty of immediate death. But there are always consequences for our actions.
In reality, what you call 'the old paradigm', and the new are still the product of ignorance and superstition, in which one believes, for whatever reason, that the shedding of divine blood somehow magically washes sin and guilt away.
Only for those who choose to believe in Substitutionary Atonement -- which I do not.
Belief is the key, as it also is in voodoo.
Or,
God is the key, just as God was the key in the beginning.
I believe that what has happened is that the old primitive superstitions have merely been raised and refined to a new level known as 'white magic'. In other words, they have been ritualized and formalized via a kind of high class mumbo jumbo to make them appear more 'official' and 'authoritative', and even more mysterious, while at their core, they are virtually the same psychological mechanisms at play.
Opinions vary. Mine is that we were created in love, and love is the operative paradigm for the world. What we need "saved" from is our own illusions of who we are that cause us to live in states of sin.