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The Crucifixion--Why??
"The erroneous supposition that the righteousness of God was irreconcilable with the selfless love of the heavenly Father, presupposed absence of unity in the nature of Deity and led directly to the elaboration of the atonement doctrine, which is a philosophic assault upon both the unity and the free-willness of God." (41)
As usual, the revelators state their position clearly and succinctly--except for one thing. If the atonement concept is false (and logically it must be), then why did Jesus, so soon after embarking upon his public mission, die on the cross?
Could he not have more profitably continued with his campaign of teaching and developing future teachers, thus laying the foundations of an enduring organization to spread his revelation of the Father throughout the world?
When Jesus made the announcement to his apostles about their final fateful visit to Jerusalem for the Passover, he knew, and they knew, that this was courting disaster. A safe haven was available to them in the Decapolis, or to the north in Philip's territory or, also to the north, in familiar territory around Tyre, Sidon, and Damascus.
Furthermore, Jesus had been offered the opportunity, and the money, to establish a school of philosophy and religion, plus an infirmary for the sick, at Alexandria, the intellectual hub of the world of that time. (1666) Could he not have achieved so much more than what came from the Jerusalem visit--his betrayal by one of his own, his crucifixion, and his faithful apostles running off into hiding.
The reality appears to be that it was God's will that Jesus should do what he did. Hence we have to accept that divine wisdom was aware that this was, in the long term, the course of action most likely to bring lasting benefit to us Urantians. But we are entitled to wonder why.
Military men have long known that the confidence and loyalty of troops in their leaders reaches a maximum only when those troops are aware that they will not be asked to do anything that their leader himself would not be prepared to do. Alexander the Great is the outstanding example.
In Jesus' discussion of the biblical story about Job, we can find: "Do you not see that Job longed for a human God, that he hungered to commune with a divine Being who knows man's mortal estate and understands that the just must often suffer in innocence as a part of this first life of the long Paradise ascent? Wherefore has the Son of Man come forth from the Father to live such a life in the flesh that he will be able to comfort and succor all those who must henceforth be called upon to endure the afflictions of Job." (1663)
Certainly, no matter what we may have to endure in this mortal life, we can never have cause to complain that Jesus himself does not know about nor understand our sufferings.
But it seems highly dubious that such was the sole reason that Jesus was called upon to endure the crucifixion. If we look to see what happened to Abner, perhaps here there is a clue. Abner was the chief of the original followers of John the Baptist. Later Abner established a group of followers of Jesus at Philadelphia, east of the Jordan. About it, the book says, "The Eastern version of the message of Jesus, notwithstanding that it remained more true to his teachings, continued to follow the uncompromising attitude of Abner. It never progressed as did the Hellenized version (of Paul) and was eventually lost in the Islamic movement."
Paul's version of Christianity had the atonement doctrine as a central theme. Abner's associates included Jesus' lifelong friends, Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, as well as David Zebedee and his wife (who was Jesus' sister, Ruth), surely indicating that Abner's group held closely to Jesus' real teaching.
However, it was Christianity as taught by Paul, that subdued the Roman Empire and lasted until the present day. But semi-dormant within it, can be found the central core of Jesus' revelation of the Father.
Perhaps the inclusion of the atonement doctrine into early Christianity was the only possible way of preserving Jesus' revelation of the Universal Father until such time as we Urantia mortals attain the degree of spiritual receptivity that would permit a more general acceptance of Jesus' real message.
The Gospels do, of course, contain that revelation, a fact that is well illustrated by the incorporation of almost all of the spoken word of Jesus from the gospels into the text of the Urantia Papers--and further supported by the large number of Christians who, throughout the ages, have recognized and lived by Jesus' revelation of the Father.
In fact, on the surface of things, it appears likely that the proportion of practicing Christians who actually make a really serious attempt to live by that revelation may be considerably higher than with Urantia Book readers.
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