Posted on 10/23/2023 10:13:11 AM PDT by DallasBiff
“We can have this same discussion regarding Judas and his ‘free will’ betrayal of Jesus, which Jesus also predicted. Or we could have the same discussion regarding Jesus’ prediction that Peter would exercise his ‘free will’ and deny him three times.”
Certainly. But you’re not pointing out any actual contradiction, so what is there to discuss?
If you are seriously contending that Pilate had no choice in the matter, then you are also arguing that Pilate is innocent. After all, if I were to program a robot to murder someone, I could not throw my hands up in the air and say “I’m innocent, the robot did it!” No, in that case the robot would be innocent and the programmer would be guilty. So to argue that Pilate had no free will in the matter is to declare Pilate innocent and God Himself the guilty party. Is that what you are intending to do?
Guilty of what?
Guilty of sacrificing his Son to atone for our sins?
There is a reason why Jesus is called the Lamb.
Why do you think Jesus was put upon this Earth?
Oh, this is an embarrassing mistake on my part. I have in fact read the gospels, and you're absolutely right.
“Guilty of what?”
Condemning an innocent man to death. That’s Pilate’s crime, no?
But if Pilate had no choice, and God forced him to do it, as you seem to be contending, then that crime must be God’s, not Pilate’s.
Tell me, would we still be saved if Jesus died in his bed as an old man of three score and ten after living a long, happy life, because Pontius Pilate decided to pardon Jesus that day?
Why Did Pontius Pilate Have Jesus Executed?
Politics.
Why did the Jews have Jesus executed?
Envy (Matt. 27:18).
____________________________________________________
Why did Jesus, the Son of God, allow himself to be crucified?
To fulfill prophesy.
It is interesting that Pilate is considered a “Saint” in the Coptic Church in Egypt (his saints day is June 15th). According to the Coptic’s, he traveled to Egypt and became a Christian working with St. Mark. Both Pilate and his wife became Christian.
OK.
And why was it prophesied that Jesus would be crucified?
Because of God's great love for us.
“Philo summarizes Pilate’s rule as corrupt and full of bribery,” says Stephen J. Patterson, an early Christianity historian at Willamette University and the author of several books including The Forgotten Creed: Christianity's Original Struggle Against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism. That sort of behavior wouldn’t have been all that extraordinary for a Roman ruler, but Pilate apparently did it more ruthlessly than most.”..then history.com concludes:Problem is, it’s not easy to know how historical Philo’s account actually was, says Helen Bond, head of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity and author of Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation. “Philo is a hugely dramatic writer,” she notes, and one with very clear biases: “People who uphold Jewish laws are recorded in highly positive ways, while people who do not are described in highly negative terms.”...
“Josephus was born in Jerusalem the year Pilate left office and so would have had reasonably good information,” Bond says. “The story has the ring of a new governor seeing what he can get away with and completely underestimating the strength of local opinion when it came to graven images.” At the same time, Bond notes, the story shows his willingness to back down and respect public opinion....
Contrary to the depiction of Pilate as a merciless ruler by Philo and Josephus, all four Gospels portray him as a vacillating judge. According to the Gospel of Mark, Pilate came to the defense of Jesus before yielding to the desire of the crowd....
But Mark had an ulterior agenda, ...“Mark’s purpose is not really historical,” Patterson says.
Thus meaning it chooses a few words of a couple men of the past, one biased, to assess the whole of Pilate's reign, in order to impugn the words of Scripture.
Even wikipedia is more balanced: Scholarly assessments
The main ancient sources on Pilate offer very different views on his governorship and personality. Philo is hostile, Josephus mostly neutral, and the Gospels "comparatively friendly."[288] This, combined with the general lack of information on Pilate's long time in office, has resulted in a wide range of assessments by modern scholars.[19]
On the basis of the many offenses that Pilate caused to the Judaean populace, some scholars find Pilate to have been a particularly bad governor. M. P. Charlesworth argues that Pilate was "a man whose character and capacity fell below those of the ordinary provincial official [...] in ten years he had piled blunder on blunder in his scorn for and misunderstanding of the people he was sent to rule."[289] However, Paul Maier argues that Pilate's long term as governor of Judaea indicates he must have been a reasonably competent administrator,[290] while Henry MacAdam argues that "[a]mong the Judaean governors prior to the Jewish War, Pilate must be ranked as more capable than most."[291] Other scholars have argued that Pilate was simply culturally insensitive in his interactions with the Jews and in this way a typical Roman official.[292]
Beginning with E. Stauffer in 1948, some scholars have argued, on the basis of his possible appointment by Sejanus, that Pilate's offenses against the Jews were directed by Sejanus out of hatred of the Jews and a desire to destroy their nation, a theory supported by the pagan imagery on Pilate's coins.[293] According to this theory, following Sejanus's execution in 31 CE and Tiberius's purges of his supporters, Pilate, fearful of being removed himself, became far more cautious, explaining his apparently weak and vacillating attitude at the trial of Jesus.[294] Helen Bond argues that "[g]iven the history of pagan designs throughout Judaean coinage, particularly from Herod and Gratus, Pilate's coins do not seem to be deliberately offensive,"[295] and that the coins offer little evidence of any connection between Pilate and Sejanus.[296] Carter notes this theory arose in the context of the aftermath of the Holocaust, that the evidence that Sejanus was anti-Semitic depends entirely on Philo, and that "[m]ost scholars have not been convinced that it is an accurate or a fair picture of Pilate."[297] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate#Scholarly_assessments
No, Jesus would have still died no matter what Pilate chose. That’s one of the mistakes you are making in your logic I think. One individual’s choices cannot thwart what God has prophesied, but at the same time, God making a prophecy does not constrain any individual’s choices. You seem to think both of those cannot be true, but there is no logical reason why they cannot both be true.
Not trying to get into an argument, rather sharing my perspective. My feeling is while God knows everything that has and will happen, the person, whether Judas, Pilate etc. made a free will choice to do what they did. God knowing what they chose to do has no bearing on what they did.
But we're not talking about people in general, who do have free will, we're talking specifically about what was ordained to happen in order to allow Christ to atone for our sins.
Have you ever heard of God working through someone to accomplish a miracle? Well, in the same way God worked through these people in order to set up the circumstances that had to be in order for Jesus to die for our sins.
You can say that Pontius Pilate had free will and could have chosen not to condemn Christ to be crucified, but it is also true that Pontius Pilate had to choose in the way he did in order for God's plan to bring salvation to man to be implemented.
I can choose to sin or not to sin, and God gives me free will to choose either way.
But in the grand scheme of Christ dying for our salvation, wasn't Pontius Pilate, Judas, and Peter all actually doing God's bidding in order for events to occur in the way that they did? Remember, this was a long term process, in our perception of time anyway, for this Salvation plan of God's to unfold.
After all, it started with a Virgin birth.
Fair point. I would also say that by making an appeasement deal by offering Barbarous vs Jesus, he was putting the decision on the Jewish leadership, and taking “Rome” out of the political calculus.
The Sanhedrin wanted it done.
They were in between a rock and a hard place.
The Romans allowed them a certain autonomy but if the people felt if Jesus was the messiah there would be a revolution and the Romans would have cracked down hard on them all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.