What happened when Jesus died?

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swimmerbabe11
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Read the nicene creed

Also, autocorrect just taught me that you cant have niceness without nicene!
Zobel
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AstroAg17 said:

I've been wondering about this lately. Jesus was a full fledged member of the trinity while he was on earth, right? Fully God and whatnot. When he died, did he just go hang out in heaven for a few days or was he actually gone? If he just went back to heaven then I don't understand how his death can be seen as a sacrifice. To call it a sacrifice it would seem that he would have to be giving something up, rather than trading earthly life in for something infinitely better. It seems to me that if that was the case, this situation is like briar rabbit talking up the sacrifice of being thrown in the briar patch. That's probably a bit more disrespectful than I meant it to be, but I like that metaphor. I'm really curious about the theology of this.
The Trinity is the reality of the common substance of the three persons (Father, Son, Spirit). Christ was a unique hypostasis of the Logos and human nature. So, he was fully God and Fully man, the incarnation of the Word (Logos). This is the single greatest mystery of Christianity.

Fr Thomas Hopko did a podcast on this subject way back in 2008. I'm paraphrasing him here.

For starters, He really was a man, and so His death really hurt. As much as you or I would suffer, He suffered. He didn't appear to suffer, it wasn't for dramatic effect. So even though Brer Rabbit was thrown into the briar patch, he didn't suffer -- it was all a trick.

And Christ really died, as much as you or I would have died. So, what happened to Him when He died is what happened to any man. The Fathers talk about death or hades as less of a place and more of a status. He was dead, and He really did "go" to hades / sheol. However, He was not in Hell, what people think of as hell, for a couple of reasons.

One, because Hell doesn't exist as most people think (like Dante's Inferno). God doesn't torment people, nor does he hand them over to Satan to be tormented for all eternity. The Orthodox Church doesn't believe in material hellfire (a distinction from Rome).

Two, hell is not separation from God. God will never turn away from us (cf Romans 8:38) and the divine love isn't predicated on any particular action or condition of ours; He loves us, He died for us when we were yet sinners (cf Romans 5:8), and He died for all mankind (cf 2 Cor 2:15, Ezekiel 18:32, 33:11 etc).

Three, it would make no sense that being God He could be tormented by Satan, or separated from God (how could He be separated from Himself?).

During Bright Week (the week after Pascha) we sing these hymns about this:

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O Immortal One, when Thou didst descend into the tomb, Thou didst destroy the power of Hades; and Thou didst rise victorious, O Christ God. Thou hast said to the ointment-bearing women: Rejoice! And Thou gavest peace to Thy Disciples, O Bestower of Resurrection to those Who had fallen.
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In the grave with the body but in Hades with the soul as God; in paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Holy Spirit wast Thou, O Christ, filling all things, Thyself uncircumscribed.

So He suffered the death of a man in a divine way, but He also entered the state of being dead in the divine way. That which is life cannot suffer the corruption of death, and He who Exists can't be un-existed. So, when He died, He destroyed death. He became dead and in His death He freed those who were dead, raising them forever into His presence. He forgave absolutely everyone, He died for absolutely everyone, and absolutely all mankind was/is/will be raised (issue of the eternal kingdom existing outside of our time) on the last day into the Presence of God.


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swimmerbabe11
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I'm sorry, the apostles creed says he descended to the dead or descended to hell.
Zobel
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AstroAg17 said:

That's much more helpful. I'm not sure what percentage of Christians would agree with you on that though, some of that seemed pretty denomination specific.

I don't think I understand what you believe happens after death. Can you link me to something?

I considered that the suffering might be at the heart of the sacrifice, but if that were the case I don't see the focus on the crucifixion. It would be more about the cumulative suffering over the course of his life. Granted, most occurred on the final day, but it should all count equally. Every one of Jesus' minor mishaps from stubbing a toe to discomfort from a wet shirt would then be God's sacrifice for us. That just doesn't seem as profound.


Also by Fr Thomas
http://www.orthodoxchristian.info/pages/afterdeath.htm

The sacrifice isn't His suffering. It's not like He had to suffer a certain amount, to quantify all sins or something. His death was the sacrifice, because in His death he defeated death. It would have been meaningless with infinite suffering but no death.
Sapper Redux
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In what way would it be a real death? Is God capable of death?
Zobel
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Christ was the unique incarnation of the Logos of God, a single hypostases, with a human nature and Divine nature, commingled. So, He died as a man just as He hungered and ate food. But being God He could not be contained by death.

Don't ask me to unscrew the inscrutable in the paradoxical nature of the incarnation of God. As I said we fully admit no rational explanation to describe the location and containing if the uncontainable. St Athanasius' On The Incarnation touches on some of this.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm
Sapper Redux
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The willingness of the Orthodox to admit their theological limits has always been a plus for them in my book.
Aggrad08
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Yea it's a stark contrast from the typical catholic position and it keeps them from arguing some absurd things in defense of certain Christian "mysteries" as some call them. Its a completely honest position and I respect that, even if I don't agree that such things should be accepted on faith. This tradition seems to be consistent, I really enjoyed the brothers karamozov, in that that Dostoevsky gives one of the more balanced and honest depictions of skepticism I've seen from a Christian author.

OnlyForNow
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Correct, but the meaning of that can vary.
Aggiefan#1
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AstroAg17 said:

That's much more helpful. I'm not sure what percentage of Christians would agree with you on that though, some of that seemed pretty denomination specific.


Yep, crazy Orthodox denomination specific stuff. You know, that "denomination" that's been around roughly 2000 years, founded by all the Apostles, Church fathers, wrote the Bible and all that. You don't want to get caught up in that Orthodox denomination.

As far as percentage that would all or mostly agree would roughly be the entire catholic world. Basically most of the Christian world.

If you could poll all Christians from the beginning to current then you are looking at roughly 95+% of them.

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Aggiefan#1
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I'm just picking on you and thus the winky face. I would not mean to offend in any way.

In all honesty you and I come from a similar background so I can offer some advice a bit.

Read the church fathers. K2 is a much more educated lay-theologian than I so he has made many good book recommendations. Many that I have picked up. K2's threads are a decent read in and of themselves honestly.

Hard to argue with they guys that literally laid down every belief system every modern Christian has wether they know it or not.
fwheightsboy
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A lot of words to explain something that is guesswork.
Zobel
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Yes, because if it can't be explained in 140 characters it's not worth explaining.
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ramblin_ag02
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My first video was on this subject. My conclusion is that Jesus died so we could all have eternal life. But had he not done so, he could have created heaven on earth in his own lifetime
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Zobel
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Matthew 26 seems to directly refute this.
ramblin_ag02
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More specifically a "knock off" heaven on Earth
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Zobel
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I don't understand what that means. It seems to fundamentally miss the purpose of the death of Christ (ie to defeat what St Paul calls "the last enemy" - death). Heaven isn't just an absence of bad things.
ramblin_ag02
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You're getting hung up on a figure of speech. Hard to sum up a 20 min video in few sentences. But basically Jesus could have ruled this world. He could have eliminated disease, disaster, injustice, oppression, and war. He could have made the earth a utopia. He was even tempted specifically in the manner.

But instead he did his Father's Will. He died to conquer death. But he didnt so much sacrifice his body (after all, he got a better one 3 days later). He sacrificed 1980 years and counting of peace and justice on earth.
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Zobel
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Oh I see what you mean. But that's false heaven. That's the lie of the world, basically the same temptation we all face - to want the world, created things, over God.
fwheightsboy
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k2aggie07 said:

Yes, because if it can't be explained in 140 characters it's not worth explaining.
You can use as many characters as you want, but you have no idea of what you are talking about. It is all guesswork, supposition, fear, and hope. Not fact. How many formerly dead people have you talked with that have told you about any of this? Do you have special knowledge that others do not? What happens when anyone dies is pure guesswork and hope. Only your "faith" says otherwise. And faith is not proof, it is an absence of proof.
Zobel
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Everyone chooses their own reality, chooses which posits they find useful for interpreting reality around them. Very few of us create new posits for ourselves based entirely on our own unique experiences; we rely on the posits of others that we believe aid our understanding of reality, that give us some predictive insight into reality.

Pretending you operate on any other basis is disingenuous, and the way you go about doing it is simply rude.
agie95
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k2aggie07 said:

AstroAg17 said:

So, he was fully God and Fully man, the incarnation of the Word (Logos). This is the single greatest mystery of Christianity.

Please explain how something can be fully one thing, but yet fully another. If one is 100% (fully) something then one cannot be something else.

Zobel
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You think everything about the divine should be subject to your ability to understand it? So you drag God down from the incomprehensible and transcendent and seek to subordinate Him to your intellect.

You object to paradox, maybe? I will explain the two natures of Christ after you tell me how a bush can burn and not be consumed. Or how a staff can be a snake. Less literal, more figurative? How can a man give freely, yet gain even more while another may withhold unduly, but come to poverty?

Maybe the OT isn't so much your jam. Can you explain how a man can be born from a virgin? Or how the first is last and the last is first? Or how dying, we live? Or being weak we are strong? Hey this should be easy for you... how can a man rise from the tomb three days dead?

But my questions are mine, I'm nobody. Perhaps you can answer St Gregory?


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How then was He begotten? This Generation would have been no great thing, if you could have comprehended it who have no real knowledge even of your own generation, or at least who comprehend very little of it, and of that little you are ashamed to speak; and then do you think you know the whole? You will have to undergo much labor before you discover the laws of composition, formation, manifestation, and the bond whereby soul is united to bodymind to soul, and reason to mind; and movement, increase, assimilation of food, sense, memory, recollection, and all the rest of the parts of which you are compounded; and which of them belongs to the soul and body together, and which to each independently of the other, and which is received from each other. For those parts whose maturity comes later, yet received their laws at the time of conception. Tell me what these laws are? And do not even then venture to speculate on the Generation of God; for that would be unsafe. For even if you knew all about your own, yet you do not by any means know about God's. And if you do not understand your own, how can you know about God's? For in proportion as God is harder to trace out than man, so is the heavenly Generation harder to comprehend than your own. But if you assert that because you cannot comprehend it, therefore He cannot have been begotten, it will be time for you to strike out many existing things which you cannot comprehend; and first of all God Himself. For you cannot say what He is, even if you are very reckless, and excessively proud of your intelligence. First, cast away your notions of flow and divisions and sections, and your conceptions of immaterial as if it were material birth, and then you may perhaps worthily conceive of the Divine Generation. How was He begotten? I repeat the question in indignation. The Begetting of God must be honored by silence. It is a great thing for you to learn that He was begotten. But the manner of His generation we will not admit that even Angels can conceive, much less you. Shall I tell you how it was? It was in a manner known to the Father Who begot, and to the Son Who was begotten. Anything more than this is hidden by a cloud, and escapes your dim sight.
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For we have learned to believe in and to teach the Deity of the Son from [the prophets'] great and lofty utterances. And what utterances are these? These: God The Word He That Was In The Beginning and With The Beginning, and The Beginning. In the Beginning was The Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, (John 1:1) and With You is the Beginning, and He who calls her The Beginning from generations. (Isaiah 41:4) Then the Son is Only-begotten: The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, it says, He has declared Him. (John 1:18) The Way, the Truth, the Life, the Light. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; and I am the Light of the World. Wisdom and Power, Christ, the Wisdom of God, and the Power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:24) The Effulgence, the Impress, the Image, the Seal; Who being the Effulgence of His glory and the Impress of His Essence, and the Image of His Goodness, (Wisdom 7:26) and Him has God the Father sealed. (John 6:27) Lord, King, He That Is, The Almighty. The Lord rained down fire from the Lord; (Genesis 19:24) and A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of Your Kingdom; and Which is and was and is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8) all which are clearly spoken of the Son, with all the other passages of the same force, none of which is an afterthought, or added later to the Son or the Spirit, any more than to the Father Himself. For Their Perfection is not affected by additions. There never was a time when He was without the Word, or when He was not the Father, or when He was not true, or not wise, or not powerful, or devoid of life, or of splendor, or of goodness.

For He Whom you now treat with contempt was once above you. He Who is now Man was once the Uncompounded. What He was He continued to be; what He was not He took to Himself. In the beginning He was, uncaused; for what is the Cause of God? But afterwards for a cause He was born. And that cause was that you might be saved, who insult Him and despise His Godhead, because of this, that He took upon Him your denser nature, having converse with Flesh by means of Mind. While His inferior Nature, the Humanity, became God, because it was united to God, and became One Person because the Higher Nature prevailed in order that I too might be made God so far as He is made Man. He was born but He had been begotten: He was born of a woman but she was a Virgin. The first is human, the second Divine. In His Human nature He had no Father, but also in His Divine Nature no Mother. Both these belong to Godhead. He dwelt in the womb but He was recognized by the Prophet, himself still in the womb, leaping before the Word, for Whose sake He came into being. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes (Luke 2:41) but He took off the swathing bands of the grave by His rising again. He was laid in a manger but He was glorified by Angels, and proclaimed by a star, and worshipped by the Magi. Why are you offended by that which is presented to your sight, because you will not look at that which is presented to your mind? He was driven into exile into Egypt but He drove away the Egyptian idols. He had no form nor comeliness in the eyes of the Jews (Isaiah 53:2) but to David He is fairer than the children of men. And on the Mountain He was bright as the lightning, and became more luminous than the sun, (Matthew 17:2) initiating us into the mystery of the future.

He was baptized as Man but He remitted sins as God not because He needed purificatory rites Himself, but that He might sanctify the element of water. He was tempted as Man, but He conquered as God; yea, He bids us be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world. (John 16:33) He hungered but He fed thousands; yea, He is the Bread that gives life, and That is of heaven. He thirsted but He cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. Yea, He promised that fountains should flow from them that believe. He was wearied, but He is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. (Matthew 11:28) He was heavy with sleep, but He walked lightly over the sea. He rebuked the winds, He made Peter light as he began to sink. He pays tribute, but it is out of a fish; yea, He is the King of those who demanded it. (John 19:19) He is called a Samaritan and a demoniac; but He saves him that came down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves; the demons acknowledge Him, and He drives out demons and sinks in the sea legions of foul spirits, (Luke 8:28-33) and sees the Prince of the demons falling like lightning. He is stoned, but is not taken. He prays, but He hears prayer. He weeps, but He causes tears to cease. He asks where Lazarus was laid, for He was Man; but He raises Lazarus, for He was God. (John 11:43) He is sold, and very cheap, for it is only for thirty pieces of silver; (Matthew 26:15) but He redeems the world, and that at a great price, for the Price was His own blood. (1 Peter 1:19) As a sheep He is led to the slaughter, (Isaiah 53:7) but He is the Shepherd of Israel, and now of the whole world also. As a Lamb He is silent, yet He is the Word, and is proclaimed by the Voice of one crying in the wilderness. (John 1:23) He is bruised and wounded, but He heals every disease and every infirmity. (Isaiah 53:23) He is lifted up and nailed to the Tree, but by the Tree of Life He restores us; yea, He saves even the Robber crucified with Him; (Luke 23:43) yea, He wrapped the visible world in darkness. He is given vinegar to drink mingled with gall. Who? He who turned the water into wine (John 2:1-11), who is the destroyer of the bitter taste, who is Sweetness and altogether desire. (Song of Songs 5:16) He lays down His life, but He has power to take it again; (John 10:18) and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. (Matthew 27:51) He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again; He goes down into hades, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall come again to judge the quick and the dead, and to put to the test such words as yours. If the one give you a starting point for your error, let the others put an end to it.
diehard03
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Oh I see what you mean. But that's false heaven. That's the lie of the world, basically the same temptation we all face - to want the world, created things, over God.

I think he just means that God could do whatever he wants. Sin could have never existed to begin with, or Jesus could have have had to come once, etc.

I don't think yall are really disagreeing. You are both lauding submission to God and his methodology.
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agie95
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So basically, you want to present something, but yet cannot explain. You divert the attention to something else (list of other questions that I must answer first), b/c of your inability to explain it. Then you post some supposed saint to describe the complexity of God. You presented a position that you hold steadfast to, therefore you should be able to explain how something can be 100% one thing and yet 100% another thing. Yet, you can't or won't.



Zobel
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Of course it does. A paradox is any statement with two things that can be true apart but not true together. Paradox can be logical, scientific, mathematical, whatever.

And, yes -- Christ as fully God and fully man is a paradox. I don't pretend to be able to reconcile it, because it can't be reconciled. You act like that's a problem, it doesn't bother me any more than the apparent paradox of a solid object does. I say apparent paradox because the paradox is drawn by frame of reference; it is both solid and not-solid, depending on the scale at which you view it. The trouble isn't with reality, it's not with the macro object or the atoms or subatomic particles, but with the posits we place at each level, the explanation we assign to reality. Reality is. There is no such thing as a paradox; paradoxes are created by the false framework of understanding we apply overtop of it. Don't you imagine that what appears as a paradox to us (God and Man) is simple, if we could have God's frame of reference?

Let's understand what St Gregory, who was rebutting claims of "logical" scholars of his day, was saying. This man agie95 wants to get down and dirty about the paradoxical nature of Christ's incarnation, suggesting that if we can't explain it, then it is false.

As an appeal to a logical claim this is fraught with problems, which is exactly what St Gregory points out. "If you assert that because you cannot comprehend it, therefore [it cannot be], it will be time for you to strike out many existing things which you cannot comprehend; and first of all God Himself." We are in no position to suggest that the comprehensibility of a thing is categorically tied to its existence.

Why does he demand a logical explanation for Christ is fully God and fully man but never busies himself trying to understand how "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever"? How can a man be unchanged, who was born, and grew up, and died, and resurrected? Of course this is speaking of the Godhead, but it doesn't bother him one bit.

St Maximos writes "The great mystery of the divine incarnation remains a mystery for ever. How can the Word made flesh be essentially the same person that is wholly with the Father? How can he who is by nature God become by nature wholly man without lacking either nature, neither the divine by which he is God nor the human by which he became man? Faith alone grasps these mysteries. Faith alone is truly the substance and foundation of all that exceeds knowledge and understanding."

We have direct scriptural admonishment that divine knowledge and wisdom surpasses human understanding. Logical discourse has a beginning -- the foundational work traces to Aristotle, and only in the 19th century did mankind really move beyond the framework he supplied. And yet we're going to subordinate God to this? It's a ridiculous premise.
Zobel
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Yes, agreed, I didn't understand him at first.
Rusty Aha
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BusterAg
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AstroAg17 said:

Jesus being wholly God and wholly man is paradoxical, and to accept it as true is the definition of illogical.
Is there nothing in the physical realm which we do not as a species understand?
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