The Meaning of Atonement

[Rob Osborn]

8 minutes ago, Traveler said:

What argument?  Sacred scripture tells us the result of sin (tasting evil) is death.  It appears your thought process is only accounting for evil or sin associated with that which is physically mortal.  There is also a spiritual element of evil and sin - thus a spiritual (non mortal) death.

 

The Traveler

Yeah, Satan and his followers sinned and suffered spiritual death.

[wenglund]

Can one fully know good without sacrifice? And, isn't a mortal body necessary to make a sacrifice?

I ask because, since we all agree that that fall to mortality was necessary, and since it was by way of the fall to mortality that Adam and Eve and their posterity were enabled to know good and/from evil, then reason would suggest that there is someting about mortality that was not only necessary to the Plan, but also needed to know good and/from evil. And, my last few questions are intended to explore certain possibilities in that regard. Here are some more:

Can one fully know good absent becoming a parent?

Restating a previous question, can one fully know good without one rising above the three kinds of temptations Christ experienced? 

Perhaps becoming as the Gods, knowing good from evil, not only consists of experiencing the kinds of good and evil that is only possible with flesh, but even more so in going beyond discerning good from evil to invariably choosing good despite the powerful temptation to chose evil. Could it be that, ultimately, knowing good and evil as the Gods is when one has developed in faith where the flesh is brought into subjection to the spirit, and one no longer has a disposition to sin, thereby rendering Satan bound--having no more power or influence over one.

This tastes good to me.

Thanks, -Wade Englund- 

[wenglund]

Earlier in the thread we discussed the need to understand the creation and fall in order to fully understand the atonement.

Now I wish to propose that in order to fully understand the atonement we need to consider it as an act of creation--i.e. out of the fallen dust of mortality, God forms a new man, and breaths within his nostrils the quickening breath of life, and man became a living spiritual soul. (Compare Gen 2.7 with various other scriptures HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

In other words, to fully understand the atonement, we need to understand the creation acts of "new birth" that is baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost as well as the resurrection. 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

1 minute ago, wenglund said:

Now I wish to propose that in order to fully understand the atonement we need to consider it as an act of creation--i.e. out of the fallen dust of mortality, God forms a new man, and breaths within his nostrils the quickening breath of life, and man became a living spiritual soul. (Compare Gen 2.7 with various other scriptures HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE)

With this in mind, I find this quote from Margaret Barker, cited in Jeffery M Bradshaw;s book on the Creation, to be of particular interest:

Quote

Margaret Barker: The Creator at the Heart of Creation
The Bible begins with the story of Creation. This is the biblical word for environment… But
environment can imply that we humans are at the center, and everything happens around
us. The biblical idea of the Creation constantly reminds us of the Creator, and in the Bible,
the act of Creation is something unique to God. The special verb used in the biblical stories,   bara, is never used of human activity. God creates.
Later tradition recorded that both the temple in Jerusalem and the Tabernacle which
Moses had built in the desert represented Creation. The Tabernacle had been erected in
obedience to the Lord’s command to Moses: “Build me a holy place so that I may ‘dwell’
(in the Greek translation this is ‘be seen’) in your midst.”604 In their place of worship, then,
they acknowledged that it was the Creator who was at the heart of the Creation, not the
human… Adam was the first high priest of the temple, and care of the Creation was his
liturgy. The word “liturgy” originally meant a public service performed for a master, orfor the state, but in the case of priests, it meant their service for God. The temple was the
Creation and, as later interpreters taught, the Creation was the temple.605

605 M. Barker, Paradise, p. 1.

So, not only are the temples a place where man may learn of the creation, they are also places where, particularly given that men's bodies are temples,  man may become a new creation.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-