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Salvation As a Mechanical Process: Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?
Salvation As a Mechanical Process: Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?
Salvation As a Mechanical Process: Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?
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Salvation As a Mechanical Process: Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?

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Christians have been taught that Jesus died on the cross to pay a fine or ransom to expiate or atone for our sins. Furthermore, they have been taught that the death of Jesus is the only way individuals can receive eternal salvation. In general, this notion is called the "doctrine of blood atonement" or "penal substitution," or some similar name.
One reason for this teaching is that the development of Newtonian mechanics has led us to believe that God's "laws of salvation" must be as easy to understand as the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century "laws" of our physical world.
This book demonstrates that there are alternatives for understanding Jesus' execution that are consistent with the twentieth- and twenty-first-century understanding of our physical world. In fact, the early Christian writers (including the Bible itself) described these alternatives. "Sacrifice" was only one form of the early Christian narrative explaining the death of Jesus.
Although "blood atonement" was understandable in ancient Roman
culture, it is not understandable in our culture. The inevitable
conclusion is that we should abandon "blood atonement" and
develop one of the alternative ways of understanding the cosmic significance of Jesus' execution.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 14, 2020
ISBN9781532694554
Salvation As a Mechanical Process: Do Christians Need to Believe that Jesus Died for Their Sins?
Author

Richard E. Davies

Richard E. Davies is a retired dean from Martin University, Indianapolis, and a United Methodist minister. One of his previous books is St. Paul in Macedonia (2013).

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    Salvation As a Mechanical Process - Richard E. Davies

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