February 8, 2010
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(debate) Did Jesus Worship Satan?
Intro:
I like debating weird hypothetical arguments. One gets tired of the same old normal arguments that (while necessary, culturally) get really really boring after a while. I've recently tested out my "Does God Lie?" argument in a public debate with some success.
I'm brainstorming ideas for how to argue the case that if we accept
the scenario of Jesus being tempted in the desert by Satan, the balance of evidence seems to be in favor of Jesus giving in.
It would have to be possible for Jesus to fail in the desert for it to be a real temptation. If it was impossible for Jesus to sin, then it would only be a meaningless taunting. A show.The evidence indicates that he did fail and decide to worship Satan.
Presumably God the Father would abandon the earthly Jesus in that event.
Jesus was a failed prophet who predicted he would return shortly. He didn't. (It's been a LONG time, too) Perhaps he knew this was how it was supposed to be, but God the Father was no longer with him.
The NT promises that the Church would be accompanied by the Holy Spirit to lead them in all truth. Today the Church is splintered into hundreds and thousands of denominations. It would seem God has abandoned the Church. The NT promises there would be miracles to accompany the gospel message. This is not the case. God is not on their team.
Jesus seems to start to lose it near the end of his ministry, becoming angry and overturning tables in the Temple.
He is overly slanderous towards his opponents, the Pharisees, indicating he'd lost patience with his earthly ministry.
He doesn't seem to have access to all knowledge, indicating God was no longer with him.
It seems Jesus was unable to accept failure, and continued on, getting himself executed in a pompous rivalry with earthly authorities. On the cross, Jesus says, "Oh God, why have you forsaken me?" seeming
to admit they had parted ways. Hence it would make sense that God didn't raise him from the dead. Presumably the body went missing for whatever reason, and his followers moved along with a false conception of events via hallucination and group think, and started their own religion. In their writings they tried to smooth things over as best they could.
Perhaps the success of Christianity despite God's withdrawn investment was because God had prepared the way ahead of time in terms of what would have happened in history.
It would seem salvation for humanity is not available after all.
Outro:All I've tried to do here is take the basic Christian supernatural premises for granted and make a better shitty argument than a Christian. The moral of the story is that if we open the Pandora's box of religious epistemology, anything goes. And anything an apologist can contrive to support a laundry list of unverifiable doctrines and supernatural propositions is really them talking out of their hindquarters.
Eventually I'll be sure to look up all the relevant verses and go searching for the apologetic responses to them in order to familiarize myself with the curve balls which would be coming my way (and to make sure my arguments actually work of course). This is just my rough outline. I'm not really even sure if I'd bother using this argument for anything other than practice in public debate since it's really just a mental exercise in lateral thinking.
Any suggestions?
Ben
Comments (14)
Hey!
It's been a long time, but the title grabbed me and I've been drinking (tough day). I was just thinking that I was interested in hearing the bit about Jesus worshipping Satan, and it seems like you got side tracked. Maybe not, maybe you were fleshing out the evidence. But I would like to see what you think about Jesus worshipping Satan. I have read multiple times about how Satan was God's favorite, then he fucked up and got cast out of Heaven. I've read that he loved God too much. If so, I'm surprised he didn't say he was God's son. Then there's stuff about a war in Heaven. Jesus worshipping Satan is an interesting idea, but where did you get it? If Jesus really was tempted by Satan in the desert, it seems he would know Satan intimately. He would have some kind of empathy and knowledge about Satan's motivations. Maybe Jesus even felt he was abandoned by God the same as Satan was.
Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason just did a video relating to this that you might want to check out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPNCYBBxvnc
@artworkjanalee - It's just a random theology nerd question I've asked myself occasionally that has turned into an argument. What would it mean theologically if Jesus would have worshiped Satan? It's not like God can hand over his superpowers. Would that mean our creation would just be something he writes off on his taxes as a soteriological loss? I imagine the authors of the gospels must have had some idea in mind. I'm curious as to what that was. If only the gospels were comic books, we'd have plenty of elseworld issues to answer that question. But alas, all we can see are modern theologians squirming in their seats trying to figure out how temptation can be at all meaningful if it is impossible for Jesus to sin. Satan must really be a dumbass if he just keeps trying. I guess he didn't go to Sunday school. *shrug*
@Mike - Wow. He makes a great case for the incoherency of the Incarnation.
Maybe Jesus did ignore Satan's temptation and God was feeling proud of His son. Then He realized pride was a sin and turned to drink...
My favorite theory is that God and Satan are one and the same. The OT certainly makes me think it's an interesting proposition, given all the baby killing, floods, plagues, wars, unusual worship requirements, etc. Perhaps the meeting in the desert is when Jesus realizes this very important fact (for sake of this discussion, that is) and things just kind of went downhill from there. The "Oh God why have you forsaken me?" may have been a last-minute cry of frustration that the "real" God was nowhere to be found... not just in Jesus' life, but everywhere, including in religious text and worship.
It's exactly that "squirming in their seats" that you refer to that will probably be your biggest obstacle in actually having this out in a discussion with a real Christian. They're going to be forced by their theology (in marginally different ways, depending on what sect they're arguing for/from) to stonewall you on the very first "what if."
They'll be unable to entertain the idea that Jesus could've given in to the temptation - he's by their definition unable to sin. They'll be unable to entertain the idea that Jesus wasn't truly tempted because, by their definition, he was "fully" human. They will flip back and forth along this paradoxical malfeasance of reason without so much as blinking, simultaneously arguing for Jesus' full godhood (and thus impermeability to actual sinful choices) and Jesus' full humanhood (and thus ability to be "tempted just like we are" or whatever).
I like the Facepalm Jesus.
For future reference: http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=137034
The problem I see in most of the questions is the implied acceptance of the Christian paradigm. Did you know that Satan appears only once in the Bible and Lucifer is mentioned only once, in Isaiah (Satan in Job.) Nowhere are they said to be the same person. Milton did that. The Lucifer Isaiah was referring to was actually a Babylonian god of wisdom (some say Sophia). Satan when he is mentioned in Job, is nowhere mentioned
as the enemy of god but aS "the accuser", Yahweh's prosecutor as it were. There is no mention in the Jewish scriptuires of a war in heaven between the angels. This is a gentile invention mentioned only in the book of Revelation. Most Christians, as well as most non-Christians, have taken the poetry of Milton and the art of the artists of the renaissance, and conflated them with Bible scriptures. Just shows how screwed up Christianity is and how screwed up the West is as every corpuscle of the western bloodstream has been poisoned with Judeo Christian mythology.
I'm not disagreeing.
Yes. Jesus indeed worshiped Satan, which is why God had him punished by men because of the deception he had done. May i share this link: http://thename.ph/thename/revelations/nosecondcoming-en.html
Hey man you have got hunch. And you will get your answers by reading http://www.thename.ph
http://answering-judaism.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/did-jesus-worship-satan-response-to.html
http://double-woe-seven.blogspot.com/2014/03/response-to-answering-judaism-on.html