The volunteering of a Holocaust victim was a temporary reprieve against being executed by Nazis. Didn't do jack squat beyond that.
You make an interesting distinction between the two acts - a distinction that deserves further examination and inquiry.
I'm going to jump ahead here and, instead of asking you to explain WHY one pure act of Love and Compassion should be considered superior / more efficacious than another and make a bold assumption (though only to save time; I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth, but getting the relevant details from you people is like sometimes like pulling teeth: you folks never volunteer explanations, just brash assertions):
Christ's sacrifice - though not necessarily more self-less or more painful than, e.g., Maximilian Kolbe's (one could even argue that an Imperfect Man making a sacrifice of that magnitude, merely to stay the execution of another prisoner, deserves more credit than a Perfect Man doing it to Save the Whole World) - was more efficacious (in effecting the Forgiveness of Sins, Redeeming Mankind, etc.) merely because it had been so ordained.
Right?
Because God the Father had ordained: Christ dying on the Cross shall be considered sufficient!
God the Father could, instead, just as easily have ordained: Christ pricking his thumb and shedding a drop of blood shall be considered sufficient!
And before you mention Christ having risen from the dead (in case you think that that was somehow integral to the Forgiveness of Sins): There are Biblical accounts of people rising from the dead both prior to and after the Crucifixion, so I don't see what is so special about that.
Regards,
As Wolfgang Pauli once said of another physicist's theory, "[You're] not even *wrong*."
For one thing, you are only looking at the immediate physical suffering. You are forgetting both the spiritual aspect -- Jesus had to endure more than the physical -- cf. Psalm 22 ("strong bulls of Bashan surround me" interpreted as demons assailing Him on the cross) -- as well as the Eternal Son, for the first and only time in all eternity, having the Father turn His back on Him.
Secondly, you are forgetting the *delta*.
Kolbe = ordinary human prisoner, volunteering to be executed. He could not save himself from death, and could only temporarily achieve a stay of execution by Nazis, not anything else. His death == "well, he died a little sooner than either the conditions in the camp, or sickness, or a bullet, would've killed him anyway"
Jesus = the Son eternally begotten of the Father, laying aside equality with God and making himself nothing, and accepting a shameful death, to destroy the power of death forever and restore all of mankind to God.
Christ's death was not more efficacious because it had been ordained; it had been ordained because it was uniquely efficacious ("...for it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin.")
God the Father could, instead, just as easily have ordained: Christ pricking his thumb and shedding a drop of blood shall be considered sufficient!
This is why you're wrong. You're acting (again) as though either this is a fairy tale, in which elements can be arbitrarily added or subtracted, either according to the fancy of the teller in that moment, or for various emotional/literary effects; or, as though one were merely evaluating various algorithmic functions, or values for key parameters in a model, and judging "goodness of fit."
"The wages of sin is death"; and "without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin." Poking your thumb with a needle isn't gonna do it.
BZZZZT.
You should've noticed, when Moses presses God so that he can tell the Israelites who is sending him, God answers "I AM".
God is unchanging and his attributes are intrinsic and essential; it cannot be that He ever could have been other than who He is. There is NO SUCH THING, not even as a thought experiment.
The reason atheists think this, is (again, back to the "Great, but I wanted a BUD Light!" commercial) is that their minds have been trained in the efficacy of such in performing mathematical model of physical, non-sentient (and non-Divine!) entities; their success in such leads them to jump to the conclusion that such mental gymnastics are not only efficacious, but in fact are also a guarantor of certain metaphysical assumptions. (When in fact the assumptions are pretty much a precursor to hoping for / trusting in the usefulness of the empirical / experimental method.)
There are Biblical accounts of people rising from the dead both prior to and after the Crucifixion, so I don't see what is so special about that.
None of the others rose by their own will or power. Whereas Jesus openly predicted His death *and* Resurrection, and pointed out "17The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. 18No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father.” John 18.