Yes, that is a BOLD statement I just made for the thread title. Before you go and comment saying that I don't know basic atonement theology (which, trust me, I do, just ask anyone around here), hear me out.
According to St. Anselm's theory of satisfaction atonement (which forms the basis model for Roman Catholic and Protestant understanding of why Jesus had to be crucified), human sin incurs a debt against God. Because we're all constantly sinning, there is no possible way for us to pay back that debt, since any good we do already gets allocated to other debts we owe to God--keeping an oath, for example. In comes Jesus. Now, Jesus, being a perfect being, offered up His own life to pay the debt incurred by our sins. Since He didn't have a debt to God, all the payment He made went to paying off our debt. And since Jesus is a perfect being, He was able to pay that debt perfectly, above and beyond what we even owed.
Now, according to this theory, humanity is theoretically freed from the debt of sin to God. On the contrary, I make the proposition that Jesus merely replaced one debt for another. He paid off the debt owed to God for our sins, but now we are even more indebted to Jesus than we ever were to the Father, because Jesus paid off our debt while gaining nothing in return.
In almost any case where someone does you a favor out of the kindness of their hearts, that necessitates that you reciprocate the favor at some point or another. If someone gives you $10,000 to help you out of debt, it goes without saying that you are now obligated to do the same for them. We are now in Jesus' debt, and we owe Him big-time. At least with the debt of sin, we could try our best to pay it back by acting virtuously. But since Jesus paid off that debt with no strings attached, we now have literally no way to repay that debt, since it was done out of Jesus' good graces.
So in the grand scheme of things, Jesus dying to pay our debt to God just put us further into a debt that we are even less able to pay.
Your take? Is my argument valid? How am I right (or, most likely, wrong)?
According to St. Anselm's theory of satisfaction atonement (which forms the basis model for Roman Catholic and Protestant understanding of why Jesus had to be crucified), human sin incurs a debt against God. Because we're all constantly sinning, there is no possible way for us to pay back that debt, since any good we do already gets allocated to other debts we owe to God--keeping an oath, for example. In comes Jesus. Now, Jesus, being a perfect being, offered up His own life to pay the debt incurred by our sins. Since He didn't have a debt to God, all the payment He made went to paying off our debt. And since Jesus is a perfect being, He was able to pay that debt perfectly, above and beyond what we even owed.
Now, according to this theory, humanity is theoretically freed from the debt of sin to God. On the contrary, I make the proposition that Jesus merely replaced one debt for another. He paid off the debt owed to God for our sins, but now we are even more indebted to Jesus than we ever were to the Father, because Jesus paid off our debt while gaining nothing in return.
In almost any case where someone does you a favor out of the kindness of their hearts, that necessitates that you reciprocate the favor at some point or another. If someone gives you $10,000 to help you out of debt, it goes without saying that you are now obligated to do the same for them. We are now in Jesus' debt, and we owe Him big-time. At least with the debt of sin, we could try our best to pay it back by acting virtuously. But since Jesus paid off that debt with no strings attached, we now have literally no way to repay that debt, since it was done out of Jesus' good graces.
So in the grand scheme of things, Jesus dying to pay our debt to God just put us further into a debt that we are even less able to pay.
Your take? Is my argument valid? How am I right (or, most likely, wrong)?
It's hard to believe that someone is the son of God, but is hampered by such chronological dilemmas.
