Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Concur. The "necessity" of an action does not purify it the way it does in the law. Jesus was fulfilling his telos, but that doesn't mean the instrumentalities of his death are equally deserving of thanks. Christian doctrine frowns on doing good things with bad intentions.
The important thing to remember is that the Gospels were written in the decades after the crucifixion and are deeply political documents (though more than just that to those who believe they were divinely inspired). John is especially anti-semitic because it was written between C.E. 70 and 120 by a community of former Jews who had been expelled from their local synagogue for being Jesus freaks. So they wrote a Gospel that was particularly hard on the Jews.* It's also widely believed that Pilate gets off relatively easy in all of the Gospels because Christians didn't want to attract negative attention from their Roman overlords. So they blamed the Jews and started a grand and ignoble tradition of anti-semitism. Anger and blame for the crucifixion is centuries older than the theology that eventually called it "necessary."
*This is obviously a theory with whom some disagree, but non-wingnut scholars, including Catholics, find it credible. The seminal work was done by a Sulpician priest, Raymond Brown, in this book.
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Thousands of years later, this from the Vatican:
"We realize now that many, many centuries of blindness have dimmed our eyes so that we no longer see the beauty of Thy Chosen People and no longer recognize in their faces the features of our first-born brother. We realize that our brows are branded with the mark of Cain. Centuries long has Abel lain in blood and tears because we had forgotten Thy love. Forgive us the curse which we unjustly laid on the name of the Jews. Forgive us that with our curse, we crucified Thee a second time."
Pope John XXIII
