Why Christ's Passion and Death?

[3DOP]

In the thread which began as whether Christ in His humanity would have had a defective reproductive system, Benjamin McGuire wrote an incisive reply to one of my posts that deserves its own thread I think. Benjamin wrote:  

Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith).

I would be pleased if Mosiah 15 is compatible with the view of @3DOP on the Atonement. From discussions that I have had in the past, most LDS here seem to take a position which I think mirrors Evangelical thought, that Christ had to suffer all that He did in order to appease God's wrath and to make reparation or atone for all of our sins. At the outset, I admit that this used to be my view of the matter. I was an Evangelical for almost twenty years and a minister for seven years. As a Catholic, I retained that view of the Atonement when I converted in 1995 to the Catholic faith. That idea of the Atonement is compatible with the Catholic faith. But so is the view, which is undefined for us, which I have come to adopt. I want to be clear that the view that I am going to suggest as being the most fitting is only one of at least two schools of thoughts that is permissible for the Catholic faithful if I understand the matter correctly. Anyway, I would be pleased as I said, to discover that among LDS also, different schools of thought might be considered permissible so that there might be more open-mindedness on the LDS side as I try to explain my position.

I did not come to my conclusions from a systematic manual kind of study, but rather ascetical/devotional material that was trying to rouse in the reader a deeper love and affection for our Lord and Saviour. Manuals of systemic theology are good in their place. But we are also in need of something to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Summas Theologica are not written in such a way as to do that, in my opinion, for the ordinary Christian, who is just trying to be close to God and learn to pray. St. Thomas takes us to the land of pitter-pat with his beautiful hymns about the Eucharist. Shoot, I think I even heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Panis Angelicus once! I am not dismissing the immense value that St. Thomas and others have given to the faithful in their systematic theologies. And to prove this point, I am going to use such a theological text to show that my more recently adopted view, that makes my heart glow more readily, might also be possible within both the LDS (Mosiah 15?) and Catholic faiths.

When Holy Scripture designates Christ's precious blood, or the giving up of His life, as a ransom-price for our sins, the basic thought is that the atonement offered is of equal value to the guilt of the sins.

Yes. I think many Catholics and LDS would agree. Then we read:  

Christ's Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (Sent. communis.)

The bolded above is a bolded subheading in the treatise. The Latin words in the parenthesis has to do with the grade of certainty with which Catholics can at this time regard the teaching. It will mean that it is clearly not defined. There is room for discussion. it is explained here:

Common teaching (sententia communis) is doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally.

I include one quote under the subheading that might explain how this "free opinion" can be understood:

Pope Clement VI declared in the Jubilee Bull "Unigenitus Dei filius" of the year 1343, that Christ had shed His blood copiously, as it were, in streams, even though one little drop of blood, on account of the Hypostatic union with the Logos, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race.

---Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, 4th Edition May 1960, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, pp. 188, 189 (grade of certainty concept on p. 10)

So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching?

Thanks, 3DOP  

Edited November 4, 2025 by 3DOP

[bluebell]

8 minutes ago, 3DOP said:

In the thread which began as whether Christ in His humanity would have had a defective reproductive system, Benjamin McGuire wrote an incisive reply to one of my posts that deserves its own thread I think. Benjamin wrote:  

Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith).

I would be pleased if Mosiah 15 is compatible with the view of @3DOP on the Atonement. From discussions that I have had in the past, most LDS here seem to take a position which I think mirrors Evangelical thought, that Christ had to suffer all that He did in order to appease God's wrath and to make reparation or atone for all of our sins. At the outset, I admit that this used to be my view of the matter. I was an Evangelical for almost twenty years and a minister for seven years. As a Catholic, I retained that view when I converted in 1995. That idea of the Atonement is compatible with the Catholic faith. But so is the view, which is undefined for us, which I have come to adopt. I want to be clear that the view that I am going to suggest as being the most fitting is only one of at least two schools of thoughts that is permissible for the Catholic faithful if I understand the matter correctly. Anyway, I would be pleased as I said, to discover that among LDS also, different schools of thought might be considered permissible so that there might be more open-mindedness on the LDS side as I try to explain my position.

I did not come to my conclusions from a systematic manual kind of study, but rather ascetical/devotional material that was trying to rouse in the reader a deeper love and affection for our Lord and Saviour in the reader. Manuals of systemic theology are good in their place. But we are also in need of something to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Summas Theologica are not written in such a way as to do that, in my opinion, for the ordinary Christian, who is just trying to be close to God and learn to pray. St. Thomas takes us to the land of pitter-pat with his beautiful hymns about the Eucharist. Shoot, I think I even heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Panis Angelicus once! I am not dismissing the immense value that St. Thomas and others have given to the faithful in their systematic theologies. And to prove this point, I am going to use such a theological text to show that my more recently adopted view, that makes my heart glow more readily, might also be possible within both the LDS (Mosiah 15?) and Catholic faiths.

When Holy Scripture designates Christ's precious blood, or the giving up of His life, as a ransom-price for our sins, the basic thought is that the atonement offered is of equal value to the guilt of the sins.

Yes. I think many Catholics and LDS would agree. Then we read:  

Christ's Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (Sent. communis.)

The bolded above is a bolded subheading in the treatise. The Latin words in the parenthesis has to do with the grade of certainty with which Catholics can at this time regard the teaching. It will mean that it is clearly not defined. There is room for discussion. it is explained here:

Common teaching (sententia communis) is doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally.

I include one quote under the subheading that might explain how this "free opinion" can be understood:

Pope Clement VI declared in the Jubilee Bull "Unigenitus Dei filius" of the year 1343, that Christ had shed His blood copiously, as it were, in streams, even though one little drop of blood, on account of the Hypostatic union with the Logos, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race.

---Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, 4th Edition May 1960, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, pp. 188, 189 (grade of certainty concept on p. 10)

So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching?

Thanks, 3DOP  

We can consider it I think.

My pondering first leads me to ask, what would be the point of the payment exceeding the debt (so to speak)?  I also never considered the idea that the Atonement was meant to appease the wrath of God the Father.

[3DOP]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

We can consider it I think.

My pondering first leads me to ask, what would be the point of the payment exceeding the debt (so to speak)?  I also never considered the idea that the Atonement was meant to appease the wrath of God the Father.

Great...no wrath then but strictly justice...the wrath part might have been coming from my former evangelicalism. I don't think I have nearly exhausted the mystery about why God would want to exceed the debt. In fact, nothing in this would be original with me. But I return again and again to at least one idea that I will share later since you ask. 

Probably tomorrow after more remarks come through. It is going to in the 70's this afternoon, and I have to get out and do some winterizing this afternoon (ugh). And I was also reminded I need to vote (ugh. I used to vote by mail in Washington. But in Kansas you have to send in a request every time and I didn't think of it.) 

[CV75]

2 hours ago, 3DOP said:

In the thread which began as whether Christ in His humanity would have had a defective reproductive system, Benjamin McGuire wrote an incisive reply to one of my posts that deserves its own thread I think. Benjamin wrote:  

Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith).

I would be pleased if Mosiah 15 is compatible with the view of @3DOP on the Atonement. From discussions that I have had in the past, most LDS here seem to take a position which I think mirrors Evangelical thought, that Christ had to suffer all that He did in order to appease God's wrath and to make reparation or atone for all of our sins. At the outset, I admit that this used to be my view of the matter. I was an Evangelical for almost twenty years and a minister for seven years. As a Catholic, I retained that view of the Atonement when I converted in 1995 to the Catholic faith. That idea of the Atonement is compatible with the Catholic faith. But so is the view, which is undefined for us, which I have come to adopt. I want to be clear that the view that I am going to suggest as being the most fitting is only one of at least two schools of thoughts that is permissible for the Catholic faithful if I understand the matter correctly. Anyway, I would be pleased as I said, to discover that among LDS also, different schools of thought might be considered permissible so that there might be more open-mindedness on the LDS side as I try to explain my position.

I did not come to my conclusions from a systematic manual kind of study, but rather ascetical/devotional material that was trying to rouse in the reader a deeper love and affection for our Lord and Saviour. Manuals of systemic theology are good in their place. But we are also in need of something to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Summas Theologica are not written in such a way as to do that, in my opinion, for the ordinary Christian, who is just trying to be close to God and learn to pray. St. Thomas takes us to the land of pitter-pat with his beautiful hymns about the Eucharist. Shoot, I think I even heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Panis Angelicus once! I am not dismissing the immense value that St. Thomas and others have given to the faithful in their systematic theologies. And to prove this point, I am going to use such a theological text to show that my more recently adopted view, that makes my heart glow more readily, might also be possible within both the LDS (Mosiah 15?) and Catholic faiths.

When Holy Scripture designates Christ's precious blood, or the giving up of His life, as a ransom-price for our sins, the basic thought is that the atonement offered is of equal value to the guilt of the sins.

Yes. I think many Catholics and LDS would agree. Then we read:  

Christ's Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (Sent. communis.)

The bolded above is a bolded subheading in the treatise. The Latin words in the parenthesis has to do with the grade of certainty with which Catholics can at this time regard the teaching. It will mean that it is clearly not defined. There is room for discussion. it is explained here:

Common teaching (sententia communis) is doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally.

I include one quote under the subheading that might explain how this "free opinion" can be understood:

Pope Clement VI declared in the Jubilee Bull "Unigenitus Dei filius" of the year 1343, that Christ had shed His blood copiously, as it were, in streams, even though one little drop of blood, on account of the Hypostatic union with the Logos, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race.

---Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, 4th Edition May 1960, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, pp. 188, 189 (grade of certainty concept on p. 10)

So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching?

Thanks, 3DOP  

Here is how I see Christ exceeding my debt (tying it to Abraham 3, "I am more intelligent than they all [combined'...": I do no fully comprehend the depths a life, if any at all, without His intercession would be like. Yes, I feel bad when I sin and good when I repent, but I cannot comprehend just how bad I would feel if my trajectory continued to its unaided conclusion, complete and utter spiritual and physical death. He does not hold me accountable for what I do not know and cannot do (reducing my debt accordingly), but He does create a mansion and enable me to live there as if I did (a vastly larger payment). Christ suffered for what I do and do not comprehend. I may grow into this fullest degree of comprehension as I grow in Him, but He made room for that growth. Similarly, He has the wherewithal to pay my debt and then transform it into credit and wealth untold. Beauty from ashes. By paying more than the debt He both liberates me and owns the bank.

Since God is more godly than all His children combined, His suffering had to cover the gap between the combination and whatever His greater than the combination is, hence His "all" exceeded our combined "all" by at least double.

Edited November 4, 2025 by CV75

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 hours ago, 3DOP said:

So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching?

So I have a few thoughts -

First, Mormonism as a whole does not (yet) have much of a specialized language for theological discussion. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the basic gist, as I understand it, is that early Mormonism displayed a protestant distrust of creeds (and creedal language), and so it chose to define its theology through the language of scripture - by redefining that language rather than trying to create new terminology that could be given more precise definitions. To use two examples on both sides of this issue, I might point to LDS discourse about the term "transgression." Or the absolute sense of confusion if I were to ask members in an LDS Sunday School class what they thought of the penal substitution theory of atonement. This is an important issue because when we get to this question about whether LDS have the freedom to ponder the meaning of atonement, there isn't, within the LDS Church, a particularly well defined description of what atonement is, or how it works. It is more of a functional description of what it does (the end result). Consequently, I would argue that there really isn't a dogma here. Further, if we measure the general requirements for full participation in Mormonism as represented by the requirements for temple participation, the list of recommend questions is relatively short and contains nothing at all about questions like this. One could argue that you could have very heterodox views on the atonement and still be able to have full participation in the LDS Church.

I might go a bit further and suggest that there are a few other key LDS issues that will slow or delay the development of such a dogma -

Early LDS schisms were not really comparable to the schisms of early Christianity. The succession crisis following the death of Joseph Smith, and the schisms that come with the end of polygamy are both of a distinctly different nature. On top of this, Mormonism has, for the most part (and this is certainly due to the way that Mormonism developed in its early years) managed to keep a central authority. So there hasn't been a need for anything (yet) like an ecumenical council, where dogma is hashed out and determined. Partly because of this, dogma is more likely to be found in policy (the LDS Church Handbook of Instruction) rather than in approved lesson materials. The LDS Church generally does not publish formal statements of doctrine - about the closest we have come is the Proclamation on the Family - but even there we have a document which contained nothing new (just material that gets re-prioritized) - it was correlated. And even with that document, leaders have found it necessary to make clarifications - which have come in material found in the Handbook of Instruction. Material in the Handbook is really more aimed at identifying heterodoxy and heresy rather than orthodoxy. So, at least for the time being, I don't believe that we will see a push towards dogma (certainly not in my lifetime). Further, for issues like this where there isn't a historical context with a lot of detail, the notion of correlation in the LDS Church makes changes towards a more dogmatic approach difficult.

All of this, of course, is a different set of issues from whether or not an LDS member can find support for various views within authoritative sources.

[teddyaware]

20 hours ago, 3DOP said:

In the thread which began as whether Christ in His humanity would have had a defective reproductive system, Benjamin McGuire wrote an incisive reply to one of my posts that deserves its own thread I think. Benjamin wrote:  

Mosiah 15 does it's best to differentiate between the two natures of Jesus and to point to the fact that it is the fully human nature of Jesus that allows for intercession to be made. To a God, there is no real suffering, there is no real temptation. To say that Jesus suffers in the capacity of His divine nature is to say that he suffered a trivial thing. And Mosiah 15 presents a view of atonement which I suspect is not all that different from @3DOP's, as well as a view of the nature of Jesus that isn't too far off (Mosiah 15 is quite similar in a way to Chalcedon's Statement of Faith).

I would be pleased if Mosiah 15 is compatible with the view of @3DOP on the Atonement. From discussions that I have had in the past, most LDS here seem to take a position which I think mirrors Evangelical thought, that Christ had to suffer all that He did in order to appease God's wrath and to make reparation or atone for all of our sins. At the outset, I admit that this used to be my view of the matter. I was an Evangelical for almost twenty years and a minister for seven years. As a Catholic, I retained that view of the Atonement when I converted in 1995 to the Catholic faith. That idea of the Atonement is compatible with the Catholic faith. But so is the view, which is undefined for us, which I have come to adopt. I want to be clear that the view that I am going to suggest as being the most fitting is only one of at least two schools of thoughts that is permissible for the Catholic faithful if I understand the matter correctly. Anyway, I would be pleased as I said, to discover that among LDS also, different schools of thought might be considered permissible so that there might be more open-mindedness on the LDS side as I try to explain my position.

I did not come to my conclusions from a systematic manual kind of study, but rather ascetical/devotional material that was trying to rouse in the reader a deeper love and affection for our Lord and Saviour. Manuals of systemic theology are good in their place. But we are also in need of something to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Summas Theologica are not written in such a way as to do that, in my opinion, for the ordinary Christian, who is just trying to be close to God and learn to pray. St. Thomas takes us to the land of pitter-pat with his beautiful hymns about the Eucharist. Shoot, I think I even heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Panis Angelicus once! I am not dismissing the immense value that St. Thomas and others have given to the faithful in their systematic theologies. And to prove this point, I am going to use such a theological text to show that my more recently adopted view, that makes my heart glow more readily, might also be possible within both the LDS (Mosiah 15?) and Catholic faiths.

When Holy Scripture designates Christ's precious blood, or the giving up of His life, as a ransom-price for our sins, the basic thought is that the atonement offered is of equal value to the guilt of the sins.

Yes. I think many Catholics and LDS would agree. Then we read:  

Christ's Vicarious Atonement is superabundant, that is, the positive value of the expiation is greater than the negative value of the sin. (Sent. communis.)

The bolded above is a bolded subheading in the treatise. The Latin words in the parenthesis has to do with the grade of certainty with which Catholics can at this time regard the teaching. It will mean that it is clearly not defined. There is room for discussion. it is explained here:

Common teaching (sententia communis) is doctrine, which in itself belongs to the field of free opinions, but which is accepted by theologians generally.

I include one quote under the subheading that might explain how this "free opinion" can be understood:

Pope Clement VI declared in the Jubilee Bull "Unigenitus Dei filius" of the year 1343, that Christ had shed His blood copiously, as it were, in streams, even though one little drop of blood, on account of the Hypostatic union with the Logos, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race.

---Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, 4th Edition May 1960, Tan Books and Publishers, Rockford, IL, pp. 188, 189 (grade of certainty concept on p. 10)

So instead of an assumption that many Catholics can correctly hold, that Christ was appeasing the wrath of His Almighty Father, Catholics may ponder why it could have been the will of the Father and the Son to exceed what was judicially adequate to redeem a fallen race through the Son's passion and death. My question for my LDS friends here is about whether like us Catholics, the Latter-day Saint faithful have the freedom to ponder this question? Or is the question settled by dogmatic LDS teaching?

Thanks, 3DOP  

In Moses 7, it appears that the prophet Enoch at one time also entertained the erroneous notion that for God “there is no real suffering,” but Enoch soon learned that he was totally mistaken. Whether the following verses are speaking of Enoch encountering Christ in heaven prior to the Lord’s incarnation, or if Enoch is actually beholding and conversing with God the Father himself, the fact is that even in heaven God is capable of experiencing an overwhelming degree of emotional and spiritual suffering, belying the false belief that the God of heaven exists in some kind of passionless, emotionless bubble because he’s “above it all” and nothing really bothers him.

This false idea hearkens back to ancient Greek philosophy where God is thought to be more of an abstract idea rather than a material being with powerful emotions, emotions that are that are a natural part of an existence that requires struggle against great opposition in order for existence to be meaningful. In 2 Nephi 2, the prophet Lehi masterfully affirms the absolute necessity of there being diametric opposition in all things, for without everything having its opposite nothing could exist. Therefore there must good and evil, there must be pleasure and pain, and there must be sorrow and happiness, etc., otherwise there would be no point to existence.

God and the children he created in his image are not now and never will be passionless automatons who are emotionally aloof and above it all. There always has been and there always will be the ability to feel emotions, for without emotions, especially the deep emotions that flow out of love, existence and life would be utterly meaningless. There never was a beginning to the feeling of emotions, and as the following verses so powerfully demonstrate, God was experiencing acute sorrow for the sins of the world long before Christ ever came to earth…

28 And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?

29 And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?

30 And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations, and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever;

31 And thou hast taken Zion to thine own bosom, from all thy creations, from all eternity to all eternity; and naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne; and mercy shall go before thy face and have no end; how is it thou canst weep?

32 The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;

33 And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood; (Moses 7)

and…

35 Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name; Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my name , also.

36 Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren.

37 But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer? (Moses 7)

 

[3DOP]

19 hours ago, CV75 said:

Here is how I see Christ exceeding my debt (tying it to Abraham 3, "I am more intelligent than they all [combined'...": I do no fully comprehend the depths a life, if any at all, without His intercession would be like. Yes, I feel bad when I sin and good when I repent, but I cannot comprehend just how bad I would feel if my trajectory continued to its unaided conclusion, complete and utter spiritual and physical death. He does not hold me accountable for what I do not know and cannot do (reducing my debt accordingly), but He does create a mansion and enable me to live there as if I did (a vastly larger payment). Christ suffered for what I do and do not comprehend. I may grow into this fullest degree of comprehension as I grow in Him, but He made room for that growth. Similarly, He has the wherewithal to pay my debt and then transform it into credit and wealth untold. Beauty from ashes. By paying more than the debt He both liberates me and owns the bank.

Since God is more godly than all His children combined, His suffering had to cover the gap between the combination and whatever His greater than the combination is, hence His "all" exceeded our combined "all" by at least double.

Very interesting CV. I like that idea of liberation and "the bank". I hope to return to the same idea when I would try to put forward three reasons why Christ would make superabundant atonement. (I would be surprised if there are only three)

 Thanks for your reply.

[3DOP]

On 11/4/2025 at 12:08 PM, bluebell said:

We can consider it I think.

My pondering first leads me to ask, what would be the point of the payment exceeding the debt (so to speak)?  I also never considered the idea that the Atonement was meant to appease the wrath of God the Father.

Hi bluebell,

I have at least three speculative reasons about why it was the will of God that the Son (whose will was the same) should make an Atonement for man that was "exceeding the debt (so to speak)."

The first I will explain is the reason that I return to again and again. I have touched on this before at this website and I remembered an LDS participant who seemed to hate the idea that the Lord should suffer any more than the absolute minimum to gain the result of "equalling the debt", or "paying the price". I don't remember the nomenclature. But when, as I recall, no one else opined on the subject, I concluded that this was probably the common belief among LDS. I readily admit that such a small "sample" is inadequate to make any judgment on what is common among you. So all of the replies I have received for now seem to be in favor of the common belief among Catholic theologians, but with conclusions that can only be considered as free opinion. I will not make the mistake of thinking that silence is acquiescence this time. I welcome any LDS participants to offer any evidence for why this subject should not be in the area of free opinion. (Benjamin gives some interesting thoughts for why LDS would have problems with being too dogmatic about it.) 

Reason #1

The Incarnate Word is upon the earth in order to offer a Sacrifice, and the Sacrifice is begun to-day. The first shedding of the Blood of the Man-God was sufficient to the fulness and perfection of a Sacrifice; but he is come to win the heart of the sinner and that heart is so hard that all the streams of that Precious Blood, which flow from the Cross on Calvary, will scarcely make it yield. The drops that were shed to-day would have been enough to satisfy the justice of the Eternal Father, but not to cure man's miseries, and the Babe's Heart would not be satisfied to leave us uncured. He came for man's sake, and his love for man will go to what looks like excess--he will carry out the whole meaning of his dear name--he will be our 'Jesus,' our Saviour.

---The Liturgical Year, Dom Prosper Gueranger, Vol. 2, p. 384, Republished by St. Bonaventure Publications, July 2000, (entry for the Feast of the Circumcision)

Our author did not cite the theological reason why one drop of blood was enough to satisfy justice. Most commentators hold that it was because Jesus was and is the Man-God. As man He was united to us. As God, He was united with the Father and the Spirit, and so any sacrifice had an infinite value because of this status. But again, theology like this isn't what Gueranger is aiming at. The point is that not one human soul is exempt from being greatly beloved beyond all of our imaginations by God who was willing to leave heaven to be circumcised. But that is not all. For our sakes, who are made to return unfathomable love in our creaturely way, and who cannot be satisfied with creaturely goods alone, God goes to further excess as our Divine Lover. In another place, we see Gueranger use the word reckless to describe God's demonstration of love which is intended to melt our icy hearts.

Latter-day Saints in this forum have been very eloquent in showing that they have been touched by the passion and death of Christ through meditating in their mind's eye, on His suffering. I will close for now by suggesting that many LDS and Protestants clearly help themselves in this way to take steps to deepen their love, obedience, and devotion to their Lord Jesus. Highly commendable and not to be criticised. But there are Catholic Saints, who are not necessarily literate, who have still learned their faith through a "book". That book is the Cross of Calvary, with Christ suspended on it. Why must they be limited to using only their mind's eye of the events of our faith?

The Catholic Church knows how difficult it is for Her children to meditate and sweetly contemplate upon all the mysteries of the faith, and so She encourages through art and music, visible and audible aids to our devotion. The rising sight and smell of sweet incense reminds us how our prayers of faith ascend heavenward when we unite with the Church's liturgy. Rather than through words alone, She gives us sensible signs of our faith adapted to our human condition. It isn't because we stupidly magnify an instrument of murder, as I have heard. That is truly ignorant rhetoric. LDS and Protestants mostly view the Saviour through their mind's eye, and are to be admired for so doing. But Catholics see no idolatry in putting before the faithful reverent, beautiful, and modest renderings of events for the eyes and ears of our human bodies to help us even more to contemplate in a concrete and human way, the mysteries of our faith, the center of which is the Holy Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross.

Edited November 5, 2025 by 3DOP

[halconero]

I haven't had the time I'd like to participate in threads like these lately, and my own reply here will likely be lacking in several unsatisfying ways (to me at least).

To preface, this is a great topic, and one that consumes the majority of my own study and pondering over the scriptures for the past year or so.

My succinct answer is that yes, Latter-day Saints are quite free to explore the 'why' as well as the 'how' of the Son's passion, death, and, if I may add, His resurrection. I have personally seen an evolution in thought during my own lifetime in this regard. For example, one of the most famous discourses in my own childhood was "The Mediator," by Boyd K. Packer. This particular emphasis on the atonement was, in my opinion, the dominant model of my childhood and youth. Similar to the template you outlined, common among Protestantism, it focuses on the payment of our spiritual debt to God by His Son.

Now? I would suggest that the current model taught by most general authorities is the "enabling atonement," which comprises both healing from sin and suffering, and sanctification of the penitent (i.e., enabling the believer to grow into a superabundance, as you might say, of righteousness, love, and goodness). As you noted in your own experience relating Catholic and Protestant views on the passion and death of Christ, this view of atonement does not conflict with a model wherein Jesus satisfies God's wrath, while still asking us how oneness with God goes beyond payment of sin.

In either sense, it is an evolution, and suggests there is room to explore a core question that may be summarized as "what think ye of Christ?" In fact, I might go as far to say that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provides wider latitude than most denominations to explore this question due to the fact that we may, in fact, lack a systematic, doctrinal theory of Christ's passion. That is not to say we lack specific observations we consider "doctrinal," in the sense that to be a member in good standing you must affirm them; specifically, that Jesus of Nazareth was the Only Begotten Son of God, that He suffered and died for the sins and pains of humanity (and possibly all creation), and that He arose on the third day into immortality. Nor is to say that we lack proposed systems for why this was necessary or how it was done. It does, however, mean that we do not bind any particular prophet, apostle, or lay member to any one explanation of these. In my opinion, this lack of a dogmatic explanation or explanations is a feature, not a bug, which invites members individually to ponder God and His Christ, and allows the General Authorities to adapt explanations to the capacities and pastoral needs of the members.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 hours ago, 3DOP said:

I have at least three speculative reasons about why it was the will of God that the Son (whose will was the same) should make an Atonement for man that was "exceeding the debt (so to speak)."

Here are my thoughts on this specific question -

The theology of the Book of Mormon is, at times, progressive. There are two distinct views in the earlier parts (Lehi and Abinadi) and then later, these two are brought together. It is Moroni that we tend to get the most complete synthesis of the two. Moroni tells us this (Moroni 7:27-28):

Quote

Christ hath ascended into heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he claimeth all those who have faith in him; and they who have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocateth the cause of the children of men; and he dwelleth eternally in the heavens.

There are other (I would suggest less complete) references to this idea - but here, Jesus is described as having received his "rights of mercy" from the Father. The atonement is about two things - justice and mercy. I think that sometimes we focus more on the justice part - because it is easier to understand. And if all we need to think about is justice, then perhaps a single drop of blood would be enough. But the thing about mercy (and we see this in the New Testament in the parable of the laborers and in the parable of the prodigal son, and so on) is that mercy, at least on the surface doesn't even have the pretense of justice. There is no fairness there (at least not as we generally recognize it). Earlier, I suggested that Mosiah 15 was of interest to me. Here is my interpretation (vss 1-9) -

Quote

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the Father, being the Father and the Son—The Father, because he was conceived by the power of God; and the Son, because of the flesh; thus becoming the Father and Son—And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the Son to the Father, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people. And after all this, after working many mighty miracles among the children of men, he shall be led, yea, even as Isaiah said, as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father. And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men—Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

I think that this is addressing some of the same sort of concerns that we find in the statement of faith from Chalcedon. There we read:

Quote

So, following the saintly fathers, we all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; consubstantial with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same consubstantial with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days the same for us and for our salvation from Mary, the virgin God-bearer as regards his humanity; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being; he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught from the beginning about him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself instructed us, and as the creed of the fathers handed it down to us.

Truly God, and truly man. So what if we replace the words in Mosiah 15 - what if I use "truly God" or "true God" everywhere I read "the Father" and "truly man" or "true man" everywhere I read "the Son"?

Quote

And now Abinadi said unto them: I would that ye should understand that God himself shall come down among the children of men, and shall redeem his people. And because he dwelleth in flesh he shall be called the Son of God, and having subjected the flesh to the will of the true God, being truly God and truly man—True God, because he was conceived by the power of God; and true man, because of the flesh; thus becoming truly God and truly man—And they are one God, yea, the very Eternal Father of heaven and of earth. And thus the flesh becoming subject to the Spirit, or the true man to the true God, being one God, suffereth temptation, and yieldeth not to the temptation, but suffereth himself to be mocked, and scourged, and cast out, and disowned by his people. And after all this, after working many mighty miracles among the children of men, he shall be led, yea, even as Isaiah said, as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of true man being swallowed up in the will of true God. And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving true man power to make intercession for the children of men—Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

The theology here is fascinating. LDS have often read this passage as referring to God the Father and God the Son as separate persons - but I think that this is not what Abinadi means here. But Abinadi doesn't stop with the question of how the Messiah could be both God and man. Abinadi is interested in the functionalism of such a duology. What comes out of this is that by the atonement, God breaks the bands of death - but it is also the atonement that gives Jesus the power (as one of us - wholly human) to stand between us and justice - this is the mercy that Moroni speaks of. And I think from an LDS perspective, that one drop of blood might have been enough to answer justice. And in fact, since the victory over death is something that is external to our mortal existence, it is the divine nature in Jesus that overcomes death. But I think that it is the "exceeding the debt" that gives the man Jesus the necessary right of mercy that Moroni mentions. What I mean by this is that in LDS thought, despite the debt of justice being paid in full for all, not all enter into God's presence at the final judgement. That determination is made by the Son. And because this mercy is not always 'fair' in the way that we understand it, I would argue that by suffering what humanity suffers (and then some), Jesus can answer us (or rather we are perhaps forced to accept his judgment) because we cannot say that He does not understand our suffering - that He cannot understand why we did what we did, or made the choices that we made. Likewise, because mortality is inherently unfair (and unjust), He can, by experiencing what we experience (and then some) can understand when one of us was pushed beyond our capacity to bear - and in this way, the test of mortality becomes a level playing field from His perspective. Two individuals who made the same choices - for one there needs to be accountability, and for the other, mercy - because the sum of their experience was different, and the quality of their agency in that moment was different, and their willingness to accept the mercy of God may continue to be different, and so on.

Alma 7:12 also describes this -

Quote

And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

And you can see here how there is a demarcation between the two. He takes on death to loose the bands of death (to answer justice). But He takes on the infirmities of the people "that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that He may know according to the flesh how to succor His people according to their infirmities." I think that there is something transcendent in the idea of a God who suffers our suffering, who shares our grief, who feels our pain - so that He can fully express the mercy that we need. And the theology here that He experiences it according to the flesh: not as a transcendent God, but as a mortal man. There is the repeated emphasis here that it is the man Jesus who must experience all of this.

Perhaps this is an unfinished christology - but I think such readings help us understand why many in the LDS community tend to lean towards a more universalist understanding of the atonement based on the mercy of a God who experiences as man what we experience.

[halconero]

2 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There are other (I would suggest less complete) references to this idea - but here, Jesus is described as having received his "rights of mercy" from the Father. The atonement is about two things - justice and mercy. I think that sometimes we focus more on the justice part - because it is easier to understand. And if all we need to think about is justice, then perhaps a single drop of blood would be enough. But the thing about mercy (and we see this in the New Testament in the parable of the laborers and in the parable of the prodigal son, and so on) is that mercy, at least on the surface doesn't even have the pretense of justice. There is no fairness there (at least not as we generally recognize it). Earlier, I suggested that Mosiah 15 was of interest to me. Here is my interpretation (vss 1-9) -

If I can throw out another possibility here: the shedding of Christ's blood may not have been the aspect of the atonement that most relates to justice for sin, at least in the way we've come to conceive in Western European thought. Rather, it more specifically completes the restoration of life and communion with God in a fashion we term mercy, specifically a mercy that is, again, on tangentially related to western, modern concepts of mercy.

To back up a bit, Latter-day Saints sometimes (unfairly, in my opinion) suggest that Nicene Christianity was mostly the product of Greek Philosophy. I would suggest that our common conceptualization of justice and mercy, inherited from Protestantism specifically, is far more infected with Roman legal theory than the Trinity is with Greek metaphysics. While both Reformers, John Calvin differed greatly from Luther in their pre-Reformation training, which likewise infused their beliefs around sin, grace, mercy, and justice. John Calvin, in particular, drew on his training as a lawyer in France to inform his beliefs. His legal thesis: written just prior to or early on in his conversion to Protestant thinking, focuses on Roman civil law and the application of punishment and clemency in relation to sin. From there, it's easy to see how he developed a forensic view of the atonement that has persisted with us ever since.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe justice and mercy are concepts intimately tied to Jesus Christ and His atonement. Likewise, I know court room analogies exist in the scriptures, including the image of Christ as our Advocate (i.e., lawyer) with the Father. Conversely, the same word that intuits a court room setting in one context, may have a different meaning in another. For example, consider how the title "judge" differs between its use in the Hebrew Bible from the modern idea of what a judge is. In a similar regard, I think it's worthwhile to consider how justice and mercy were conceptualized anciently, and how the Israelite systems relate to both.

Take, for instance, the observation that animal sacrifice never functioned (at least to my knowledge) as vicarious punishment for sin. The penitent individual would indeed bring the animal to the congregation of the tabernacle or temple, and lay their hands on the animal, but this was not about transferring guilt to it; rather, it was about identifying with the animal. Sin was punished, but not through the shedding of blood. Collectively, it was punished on Yom Kippur by the selection of Azazel, the scapegoat, whose name has one of the most interesting and debated origins among scholars, with possibilities including "wilderness goat," "goat for the rough place," "the sent away/removed," or even, "The Mighty God," or "God removes." Azazel is led away from the congregation of Israel, cut off from its presence, and sent away into the wilderness, thus removing sin from God's presence. Individually, sin was punished by collecting the dung of a sacrificed animal, and, again, removing it from the presence of the congregation and burning it away from the presence of God. In both instance, the chief mechanism for 'punishing' sin is a proxy cutting off, not the shedding of blood.

So, what does the shedding of blood do? At least in the Israelite sacrificial model, it is actually the vicarious consecration of life unto God. There is a little noticed, but oft repeated idea in the Old Testament that life is in the blood. Even once sin is removed vicariously from the penitent, man or woman does not yet enjoy the presence of God. To do so, a few things have to happen. One of these is the offering of a consecrated life unto God. Yet the penitent man or woman is (a) not capable of offering a pure life unto God and (b) not capable of offering their own life without dying. So, the penitent offers a pure life unto God, vicariously. That pure life may be sprinkled on that altar, offered up as smoke unto God (i.e., God takes that life into himself), and even used to anoint the penitent. The second aspect is to enjoy a covenant meal with God. Only in rare instances does ancient Hebrew speak of creating, establishing, or entering into covenants. The correct term, translated literally into English, is to cut or divide a covenant, in exactly the same way that a dear father carves the turkey at Thanksgiving to divide among the family. If that seems odd, consider how Abram and God establish covenant with each other, or how Moses prepares the Elders of Israel to see God. Thus, the meat of the covenant is shared between God (through smoke of the sacrifice), His priests, and people, who all share in the meal together.*

Justice, in the above framework, is not focused on punishing sin, but on restoring correct order and relationships. It is, for example, no coincidence that the Hebrew word for justice (Tze-dek) shares the same root with charity (Tzedak-ah) and righteousness (Tzad-dik). The punishing of sin isn't to pay a divine debt, but its expurgation from our lives and presence, so that God may restore justice through mercy. Mediation, in this context, is not the reconciling of justice with mercy; mercy is the mediator. The consecration of life and the dividing of the covenant is the mercy of God.

If any of the above, then, has relation to Jesus' sacrifice, it turns a whole lot of what we know on its head. His agony, bleeding, and suffering for the sins and traumas of the world was not Him suffering punishment. Rather, it was an exertion to break himself in heart and spirit in pouring out His life and self on our behalf, to offer up the ultimate in a consecrated life unto God, and, in turn apply that consecrated life to ourselves. If he thus stand between us and justice, it is not to evade its application, but, as mercy Himself, to mediate our return to justice in the proper relationship and frame. Put another way, only He could affect the sort of restorative justice that we desire, being both the scapegoat cut off from the presence of God on our behalf, and the goat whose blood sanctified our place in  the presence of and order of God.

*I have wondered, recently, to what extent the sacrament serves a similar function, in which we offer up our hearts and spirit on the altars of the Church. Christ then takes these, and, through His atonement, offers up a pure life on our behalf. The covenant is cut anew through the division of the body and blood of the Lamb of God, and a meal shared among the congregation to represent communion with God.

[Orthodox Christian]

Hello everyone. On the subject of salvation, which for us Orthodox is theosis: spiritual union with God through grace. Of course His crucification, death and resurrection  are central to Christ's  overcoming death for our reunion with the Father.  I would recommend Bishop Kenneth Myers YouTube videos on Salvation and How We Got it Wrong. Bishop Ken is an Anglican Bishop but admits to being spiritually Orthodox, and this set of short videos sets forth certainly the Orthodox understanding of salvation. I hope you find them interesting and enlightening as to as the Orthodox view of the saving work of Christ. These videos and others can be found at Kenneth Myers website through Graceworks. Just click on the menu and scroll down to videos.

.Why Christ's  salvation and death? Because God so loved the world. Simply that, and our understanding of love falls very short of our understanding of God's. 

Edited November 6, 2025 by Orthodox Christian

[bluebell]

Over the last few years I've leaned toward Christ's mercy being an integral aspect of His justice (or the justice of God) because it doesn't seem like it could be just to create an earth and test fallen mortals on their ability to be like God in a fallen world--and have eternal consequences based on the outcome of that test--unless a Savior was also provided.

[the narrator]

13 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The atonement is about two things - justice and mercy. I think that sometimes we focus more on the justice part - because it is easier to understand.

A big problem with the "justice vs. mercy" framework that LDSaints tend to invoke is that in doing so they only see justice in terms of punitive justice. And thus end up with something like Packer's "Mediator," where the evil creditor is representative of . . . God?) This is largely due to the BofM largely incorporating later Christian soteriology; however, the form of justice that predominates the bible is one of restorative justice--that is, an emphasis on relieving the oppressed and impoverished (AKA those treated unjustly). If we take a restorative view of justice over a punitive one, mercy no longer stands against justice but is the means by which justice is achieved (and hence Jesus declaring, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy"). Unfortunately though, the BofM, particularly Alma's lecture to frighten Corianton into obedience, is so entrenched with this later view of justice that it would take considerable work to get LDSaints to view it differently.

[3DOP]

On 11/4/2025 at 3:45 PM, Benjamin McGuire said:

So I have a few thoughts -

First, Mormonism as a whole does not (yet) have much of a specialized language for theological discussion. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the basic gist, as I understand it, is that early Mormonism displayed a protestant distrust of creeds (and creedal language), and so it chose to define its theology through the language of scripture - by redefining that language rather than trying to create new terminology that could be given more precise definitions. To use two examples on both sides of this issue, I might point to LDS discourse about the term "transgression." Or the absolute sense of confusion if I were to ask members in an LDS Sunday School class what they thought of the penal substitution theory of atonement. This is an important issue because when we get to this question about whether LDS have the freedom to ponder the meaning of atonement, there isn't, within the LDS Church, a particularly well defined description of what atonement is, or how it works. It is more of a functional description of what it does (the end result). Consequently, I would argue that there really isn't a dogma here. Further, if we measure the general requirements for full participation in Mormonism as represented by the requirements for temple participation, the list of recommend questions is relatively short and contains nothing at all about questions like this. One could argue that you could have very heterodox views on the atonement and still be able to have full participation in the LDS Church.

I might go a bit further and suggest that there are a few other key LDS issues that will slow or delay the development of such a dogma -

Early LDS schisms were not really comparable to the schisms of early Christianity. The succession crisis following the death of Joseph Smith, and the schisms that come with the end of polygamy are both of a distinctly different nature. On top of this, Mormonism has, for the most part (and this is certainly due to the way that Mormonism developed in its early years) managed to keep a central authority. So there hasn't been a need for anything (yet) like an ecumenical council, where dogma is hashed out and determined. Partly because of this, dogma is more likely to be found in policy (the LDS Church Handbook of Instruction) rather than in approved lesson materials. The LDS Church generally does not publish formal statements of doctrine - about the closest we have come is the Proclamation on the Family - but even there we have a document which contained nothing new (just material that gets re-prioritized) - it was correlated. And even with that document, leaders have found it necessary to make clarifications - which have come in material found in the Handbook of Instruction. Material in the Handbook is really more aimed at identifying heterodoxy and heresy rather than orthodoxy. So, at least for the time being, I don't believe that we will see a push towards dogma (certainly not in my lifetime). Further, for issues like this where there isn't a historical context with a lot of detail, the notion of correlation in the LDS Church makes changes towards a more dogmatic approach difficult.

All of this, of course, is a different set of issues from whether or not an LDS member can find support for various views within authoritative sources.

Philip Schaff compiled a three volume work called the The Creeds of Christendom. The third volume is titled as "The Creeds of the Protestant and Evangelical Churches". Between 1523 and 1932, I count around 60 separate creeds from the Table of Contents, which are mostly drawn up when communities split but sometimes when they reunite. There is no commentary which means that up to 1932 there are 960 pages of Protestant creeds contained in this book. I don't think this detracts much from your post, but I doubt that the LDS get there attitude toward creeds from the Protestants. When the Lord is said to have told Jos. Smith that "all their creeds are an abomination", Joseph was living in an area with very little Catholic presence. I tend to think he thought the Lord was talking about all of the Protestants who were in his immediate neighborhood.

It seems to me then from what follows that paragraph, that from your point of view, the Latter-day Saint would be as free as a Catholic to consider the possibility that the afflictions of mind and body that our Lord endured in His Passion were more than what was necessary to satisfy God's justice. I mainly like to propose this idea because of how it has been a blessing to me to think, as Orthodox Christian says below (or I guess above after this posts), that it is all because our great God loves us and will do anything that is moral and that does not violate our free will, to unite Himself ever more to us, even to the point that Orthodox Christian made, of theosis. 

And He wants us not for His sake. God is not unhappy without us! But we are unhappy without Him, and He knows us better than we know ourselves. If we think our hearts are full of bliss and peace without Him, we do not know ourselves. We are made to desire what only God can give us. Himself. The Word became flesh because our "abstract hellenistic God" (Hi teddy.) wants and initiates an intimate relationship with each of us! 

No big deal about the creeds,

Rory

Edited November 6, 2025 by 3DOP

[3DOP]

13 hours ago, halconero said:

If I can throw out another possibility here: the shedding of Christ's blood may not have been the aspect of the atonement that most relates to justice for sin, at least in the way we've come to conceive in Western European thought. Rather, it more specifically completes the restoration of life and communion with God in a fashion we term mercy, specifically a mercy that is, again, on tangentially related to western, modern concepts of mercy.

To back up a bit, Latter-day Saints sometimes (unfairly, in my opinion) suggest that Nicene Christianity was mostly the product of Greek Philosophy. I would suggest that our common conceptualization of justice and mercy, inherited from Protestantism specifically, is far more infected with Roman legal theory than the Trinity is with Greek metaphysics. While both Reformers, John Calvin differed greatly from Luther in their pre-Reformation training, which likewise infused their beliefs around sin, grace, mercy, and justice. John Calvin, in particular, drew on his training as a lawyer in France to inform his beliefs. His legal thesis: written just prior to or early on in his conversion to Protestant thinking, focuses on Roman civil law and the application of punishment and clemency in relation to sin. From there, it's easy to see how he developed a forensic view of the atonement that has persisted with us ever since.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe justice and mercy are concepts intimately tied to Jesus Christ and His atonement. Likewise, I know court room analogies exist in the scriptures, including the image of Christ as our Advocate (i.e., lawyer) with the Father. Conversely, the same word that intuits a court room setting in one context, may have a different meaning in another. For example, consider how the title "judge" differs between its use in the Hebrew Bible from the modern idea of what a judge is. In a similar regard, I think it's worthwhile to consider how justice and mercy were conceptualized anciently, and how the Israelite systems relate to both.

Take, for instance, the observation that animal sacrifice never functioned (at least to my knowledge) as vicarious punishment for sin. The penitent individual would indeed bring the animal to the congregation of the tabernacle or temple, and lay their hands on the animal, but this was not about transferring guilt to it; rather, it was about identifying with the animal. Sin was punished, but not through the shedding of blood. Collectively, it was punished on Yom Kippur by the selection of Azazel, the scapegoat, whose name has one of the most interesting and debated origins among scholars, with possibilities including "wilderness goat," "goat for the rough place," "the sent away/removed," or even, "The Mighty God," or "God removes." Azazel is led away from the congregation of Israel, cut off from its presence, and sent away into the wilderness, thus removing sin from God's presence. Individually, sin was punished by collecting the dung of a sacrificed animal, and, again, removing it from the presence of the congregation and burning it away from the presence of God. In both instance, the chief mechanism for 'punishing' sin is a proxy cutting off, not the shedding of blood.

So, what does the shedding of blood do? At least in the Israelite sacrificial model, it is actually the vicarious consecration of life unto God. There is a little noticed, but oft repeated idea in the Old Testament that life is in the blood. Even once sin is removed vicariously from the penitent, man or woman does not yet enjoy the presence of God. To do so, a few things have to happen. One of these is the offering of a consecrated life unto God. Yet the penitent man or woman is (a) not capable of offering a pure life unto God and (b) not capable of offering their own life without dying. So, the penitent offers a pure life unto God, vicariously. That pure life may be sprinkled on that altar, offered up as smoke unto God (i.e., God takes that life into himself), and even used to anoint the penitent. The second aspect is to enjoy a covenant meal with God. Only in rare instances does ancient Hebrew speak of creating, establishing, or entering into covenants. The correct term, translated literally into English, is to cut or divide a covenant, in exactly the same way that a dear father carves the turkey at Thanksgiving to divide among the family. If that seems odd, consider how Abram and God establish covenant with each other, or how Moses prepares the Elders of Israel to see God. Thus, the meat of the covenant is shared between God (through smoke of the sacrifice), His priests, and people, who all share in the meal together.*

Justice, in the above framework, is not focused on punishing sin, but on restoring correct order and relationships. It is, for example, no coincidence that the Hebrew word for justice (Tze-dek) shares the same root with charity (Tzedak-ah) and righteousness (Tzad-dik). The punishing of sin isn't to pay a divine debt, but its expurgation from our lives and presence, so that God may restore justice through mercy. Mediation, in this context, is not the reconciling of justice with mercy; mercy is the mediator. The consecration of life and the dividing of the covenant is the mercy of God.

If any of the above, then, has relation to Jesus' sacrifice, it turns a whole lot of what we know on its head. His agony, bleeding, and suffering for the sins and traumas of the world was not Him suffering punishment. Rather, it was an exertion to break himself in heart and spirit in pouring out His life and self on our behalf, to offer up the ultimate in a consecrated life unto God, and, in turn apply that consecrated life to ourselves. If he thus stand between us and justice, it is not to evade its application, but, as mercy Himself, to mediate our return to justice in the proper relationship and frame. Put another way, only He could affect the sort of restorative justice that we desire, being both the scapegoat cut off from the presence of God on our behalf, and the goat whose blood sanctified our place in  the presence of and order of God.

*I have wondered, recently, to what extent the sacrament serves a similar function, in which we offer up our hearts and spirit on the altars of the Church. Christ then takes these, and, through His atonement, offers up a pure life on our behalf. The covenant is cut anew through the division of the body and blood of the Lamb of God, and a meal shared among the congregation to represent communion with God.

Hi halconero. I like your new look in a jacket and tie! Probably not that new. I forget what you used to look like, and don't intend any criticism of what I can't remember. 

That is a lot to think about. You know about the Old Covenant a lot more than me. Anyway, I am pretty sure I like it. In any event...we agree that we don't have to think that Christ's suffering was only about penal justice? The idea I am promoting here is old, but somewhat new to me. I think that it makes God more approachable. Not that He is unapproachable if it is all about justice. But if it is to show HIs affection for us, and we get that He is doing EVERYTHING to make us meet His approach? I won't say He becomes irresistible although I want to say that. With free will we can always resist.  

[3DOP]

17 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Here are my thoughts on this specific question -

The theology of the Book of Mormon is, at times, progressive. There are two distinct views in the earlier parts (Lehi and Abinadi) and then later, these two are brought together. It is Moroni that we tend to get the most complete synthesis of the two. Moroni tells us this (Moroni 7:27-28):

There are other (I would suggest less complete) references to this idea - but here, Jesus is described as having received his "rights of mercy" from the Father. The atonement is about two things - justice and mercy. I think that sometimes we focus more on the justice part - because it is easier to understand. And if all we need to think about is justice, then perhaps a single drop of blood would be enough. But the thing about mercy (and we see this in the New Testament in the parable of the laborers and in the parable of the prodigal son, and so on) is that mercy, at least on the surface doesn't even have the pretense of justice. There is no fairness there (at least not as we generally recognize it). Earlier, I suggested that Mosiah 15 was of interest to me. Here is my interpretation (vss 1-9) -

I think that this is addressing some of the same sort of concerns that we find in the statement of faith from Chalcedon. There we read:

Truly God, and truly man. So what if we replace the words in Mosiah 15 - what if I use "truly God" or "true God" everywhere I read "the Father" and "truly man" or "true man" everywhere I read "the Son"?

The theology here is fascinating. LDS have often read this passage as referring to God the Father and God the Son as separate persons - but I think that this is not what Abinadi means here. But Abinadi doesn't stop with the question of how the Messiah could be both God and man. Abinadi is interested in the functionalism of such a duology. What comes out of this is that by the atonement, God breaks the bands of death - but it is also the atonement that gives Jesus the power (as one of us - wholly human) to stand between us and justice - this is the mercy that Moroni speaks of. And I think from an LDS perspective, that one drop of blood might have been enough to answer justice. And in fact, since the victory over death is something that is external to our mortal existence, it is the divine nature in Jesus that overcomes death. But I think that it is the "exceeding the debt" that gives the man Jesus the necessary right of mercy that Moroni mentions. What I mean by this is that in LDS thought, despite the debt of justice being paid in full for all, not all enter into God's presence at the final judgement. That determination is made by the Son. And because this mercy is not always 'fair' in the way that we understand it, I would argue that by suffering what humanity suffers (and then some), Jesus can answer us (or rather we are perhaps forced to accept his judgment) because we cannot say that He does not understand our suffering - that He cannot understand why we did what we did, or made the choices that we made. Likewise, because mortality is inherently unfair (and unjust), He can, by experiencing what we experience (and then some) can understand when one of us was pushed beyond our capacity to bear - and in this way, the test of mortality becomes a level playing field from His perspective. Two individuals who made the same choices - for one there needs to be accountability, and for the other, mercy - because the sum of their experience was different, and the quality of their agency in that moment was different, and their willingness to accept the mercy of God may continue to be different, and so on.

Alma 7:12 also describes this -

And you can see here how there is a demarcation between the two. He takes on death to loose the bands of death (to answer justice). But He takes on the infirmities of the people "that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that He may know according to the flesh how to succor His people according to their infirmities." I think that there is something transcendent in the idea of a God who suffers our suffering, who shares our grief, who feels our pain - so that He can fully express the mercy that we need. And the theology here that He experiences it according to the flesh: not as a transcendent God, but as a mortal man. There is the repeated emphasis here that it is the man Jesus who must experience all of this.

Perhaps this is an unfinished christology - but I think such readings help us understand why many in the LDS community tend to lean towards a more universalist understanding of the atonement based on the mercy of a God who experiences as man what we experience.

Benjamin

I think that there is something transcendent in the idea of a God who suffers our suffering, who shares our grief, who feels our pain - so that He can fully express the mercy that we need. And the theology here that He experiences it according to the flesh: not as a transcendent God, but as a mortal man. There is the repeated emphasis here that it is the man Jesus who must experience all of this.

Rory

Some LDS are uncomfortable with God's transcendence. My Catholic God is certainly "too transcendent". "If God is transcendent it means He does not hear your prayers." I have been told that here. I believe in a transcendent God, before I am Catholic or anything but a theist, with or without any hellenizing philosophy. As a Christian, before I am Catholic, He is close by. "In Him we live and move and have our being" (St. Paul in Athens)

God is far off. Transcendent. And God is within. Immanent. 

Transcendent God made Himself, in the person of His Son, Emmanuel! God with us. Immanent. God claims to be both according to Catholic dogma. Perhaps not so clearly yet for LDS. But you appear to be free to think about it? Do we have to choose between one or the other? Must it be Transcendence or Immanence? Don't we want it all?

God doesn't give His creatures desires that cannot be met. Higher animals like my beloved cat aren't worried about eternal life or transcendence or immanence. My Whitey is in bliss when I give her some extra stuff she likes called Temptations if she cleans up her bowl. But man is not so easily transported to heights of joy. We want the greatest God imaginable to comfort and care for us. Creaturely desire seems like a sign of something put into us from beyond us. Anyway, that is my hope.

[Calm]

15 hours ago, halconero said:

If any of the above, then, has relation to Jesus' sacrifice, it turns a whole lot of what we know on its head. His agony, bleeding, and suffering for the sins and traumas of the world was not Him suffering punishment. Rather, it was an exertion to break himself in heart and spirit in pouring out His life and self on our behalf, to offer up the ultimate in a consecrated life unto God, and, in turn apply that consecrated life to ourselves. If he thus stand between us and justice, it is not to evade its application, but, as mercy Himself, to mediate our return to justice in the proper relationship and frame. Put another way, only He could affect the sort of restorative justice that we desire, being both the scapegoat cut off from the presence of God on our behalf, and the goat whose blood sanctified our place in  the presence of and order of God.

This speaks to me deeply, more so than any other explanation.

[Benjamin McGuire]

2 hours ago, 3DOP said:

I don't think this detracts much from your post, but I doubt that the LDS get there attitude toward creeds from the Protestants.

There is little question though, that even without a strong Catholic presence in the US in the early 19th century, there were certainly strong anti-Catholic sentiments. And the anti-credalism in the early U.S. (in which early Mormonism participates) is a part of this. The rhetoric was at times at odds with the practice - as you note. But Mormonism maintained this position considerably longer - because it was buoyed by early interpretation of the Book of Mormon.

[halconero]

4 hours ago, 3DOP said:

Hi halconero. I like your new look in a jacket and tie! Probably not that new. I forget what you used to look like, and don't intend any criticism of what I can't remember. 

I was a cat, but I got better.

[halconero]

I'm getting back to the rest of this now, as all I had time for yesterday was my above quip from my adventures as an animorph.

20 hours ago, 3DOP said:

That is a lot to think about. You know about the Old Covenant a lot more than me. Anyway, I am pretty sure I like it.

I have found the experience enlightening. There is a phrase in one of our teaching manuals in the Church that each commandment of God teaches us something about His nature. I considered that, if the Law of Moses and its sacrifices were types and shadows of Christ, then they must tech us something about Him and His own sacrifice. There is yet much to learn, but it is fascinating to me how they expiate and mediate the depth and breadth of human experience, including individual and collective sin, thanksgiving, joy, mourning, and covenant cutting. If, then, these tell us something about the Atonement, it signifies a wider and deeper application than punishment alone.

20 hours ago, 3DOP said:

In any event...we agree that we don't have to think that Christ's suffering was only about penal justice?

Yes, wholeheartedly. I'm not even sure penal justice is a useful term to be honest, insofar as we keep applying concepts related to retribution and deterrence related to our civil and common law legal systems to them. If, indeed, we can foreshadow Christ in the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, then it stands to reason that He is both scapegoat and the goat that remains to be offered up to God. To the extent that justice is exemplified in the former, its purpose is not vengeance or deterrence, but to cut off and remove from ourselves that which prevents us from communing with God. I suppose that may be termed a penalty, but it serves a very different function (at least to me) than appeasing God or avoiding His judgment. In many ways, it is a plea to be judged, to welcome communion and leadership with the Judge of all Israel, and to prepare ourselves to be in His presence by casting away the old self. To the extent that it is applied to the unrepentant, it is only because they refuse God's offer to go into the wilderness Himself and carry their sins away from the camp of their own life; He will not force anyone to withstand His presence that does not want to be there, which, interestingly, is a mercy itself to those that refuse to be near Him. And while the casting away may involve suffering (see Jesus' cry about being forsaken by God), I don't think that's the suffering we most commonly think of when we ponder the Atonement, which tends to focus instead on His blood, stripes, and death (as well as the additional weight Latter-day Saints provide to His experience starting in Gethsemane).

That, in my opinion, relates far more to the Old Testament purpose of the shedding of blood, and the New Testament term "kenosis," or the self-emptying of Jesus. It is Jesus choosing to experience, heal, and then consecrate life to God. This life, as mediated by Him, is not only His, but ours, if we let Him. In the Old Testament, this is typified not only by the sharing of identity between the one offering sacrifice and the sacrifice itself, but the priest also sharing in the communal meal, whose eating of the sin offering (whose purpose, again, isn't to punish, but to restore) mediates and heals the vicarious offerer as symbolized by digestion. Thus Jesus is both the Lamb and High Priest of God, taking into Himself our lives, mediating them, and, as part of this, emptying His life in consecration to the Most High. All that is to say that Jesus' suffering, in my opinion, deals far more with the internalization, purification, and the pouring out/consecration of life to God. We, then, are invited (by Paul specifically, but also ours) to identify with and eagerly seek to emulate Him, so that our life becomes His life, and His life becomes our life.

20 hours ago, 3DOP said:

The idea I am promoting here is old, but somewhat new to me. I think that it makes God more approachable. Not that He is unapproachable if it is all about justice. But if it is to show HIs affection for us, and we get that He is doing EVERYTHING to make us meet His approach? I won't say He becomes irresistible although I want to say that. With free will we can always resist.  

I agree wholeheartedly. It helps me understand that justice, as God sees it, is a relationship with His people. A relationship with God is the just ordering the of the universe and the reason for which it was created. Being cast off is an aberration of that, which God undertook not to punish, but because only God as Christ had the capacity and ability to simultaneously be cast off and be the means of reconciliation. In other words, He fixes the aberration; the aberration is not a goal in itself. Mercy, then, doesn't compete with justice, but is the pathway to justice in the manner that God desires, which is to be among us and with us.

If, then, only Christ can simultaneously be the one cast off and the one to reconcile or be reconciled; or, put another way, only Christ can reconcile God to Himself, while casting away sin, how can we do the same? I might suggest it is by become as Him, or as Paul puts it:

So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness[m] with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

This, in many ways, gets us close to the classical articulation of theosis, as our Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters might put it. While Latter-day Saints, because of our doctrine on exaltation, extend this further, I do think there is value in considering how we might experience suffering and glory with the Son of God, who, as scapegoat, goes off into exile carrying our sins; who, as lamb, offers up a pure life; who, as priest, mediates whatever suffering prevents communion; and who, as God, accepts and receives us into Him, that we might enjoy communion with Him. There is beautiful culmination in all of this, typified by one of the most ancient and simplest of human practices, typified by the sacrament (or Eucharist, as you would say): sitting down, dividing, and sharing a meal together.

[halconero]

19 hours ago, Calm said:

This speaks to me deeply, more so than any other explanation.

Me too.