S
Spock
Guest
If you take the whole OT into account, you will see that Yahweh is bloodthirsty, vain, vindictive, cruel, capricious, etc… being. If you look at the Abel-Cain story you will see an arbitrary acceptence and rejection of offerings, where the good will of Cain was rejected.God the Father is not bloodthirsty; His anger does not need to be mollified.
In which case it was a useless gesture.Jesus’ sacrifice is the giving of all to the Father, just as the Father gives all to the Son.
Makes absolutely no difference. Neither Abraham nor Isaac was aware that God is simply playing cat-and-mouse with them. To place someone into that situation - is incredible cruelty. That fact that the charade was stopped before the final moment makes is a teeny-bit better, but it is still inexcusable.There is a further dimension to this notion. Jean-Luc Marion has pointed out that God already had a plan in place to spare Isaac. The “sacrifice” was to remind Abraham that Isaac was a “gift”, not his personal possession.
Thus, sacrifice is not destruction, or restitution, or a contractual quid pro quo. Its purpose is to acknowledge the “gift”.
At the moment of such acknowledgement, God manifests Himself (e.g.,God appeared to Abraham and directed him to substitute the ram).
For a Jean-Luc Marion video, see vimeo.com/5712520. This is 90 minutes long. You may want to watch just the last 10 minutes of the video.
By the way, the use of the word “gift” even is quotation marks should be avoided. God does not give “gifts”, he hands out “loans”, which carry obligations but come without ownership. We are not even the proprietors of our own lives. A “gift” where there is no transfer of ownership is not a “gift”.