BRUSSELS (ChurchMilitant.com) - Brussels is getting backlash from Poland for flying a gay flag outside of the European Parliament.
On Thursday, a rainbow flag was hoisted up in front of the building for the first time in its history, marking "International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia."
Despite outcry from Polish conservatives, the European Union said, "Regrettably, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) persons in Europe are still subject to serious discrimination and maltreatment on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity."
Ryszard Legutko, co-chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group, said in a letter to the European Parliament that Thursday's initiative displayed "just one lobby group."
He questioned why the Parliament would not promote other unofficial "international days" like those celebrating museums, beer or students.
Since 1990, May 17 has been remembered as the anniversary of the removal of homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization.
But Legutko blasted the display of a rainbow flag, saying it endorses a "moral revolution" that privileges same-sex couples. There are "practically no ... attacks" on those with same-sex attraction, Legutko emphasized.
There are 'practically no ... attacks' on those with same-sex attraction.
This didn't stop the European Commission and European External Action Service, also in Brussels, from illuminating its headquarters with the colors of the gay flag.
Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, said, "It's time we put an end to the widespread discrimination against LGBTI people together."
However, Legutko instead recommended hoisting a flag with a fish a symbol of Christianity to symbolize the millions of Christians suffering persecution worldwide.
Poster Comment:
Many of us are sick and tired of politicians kissing the asses of queers! Resurrect the law that outlaws homosexual acts and proselytizing today's thoroughly confused youth. The belong hidden under a rock.
Widespread LGBTQI discrimination? Where? When? By whom? If it happens there must have been major stories in the press. But nothing.
Instead what I see are Christians being slaughtered and persecuted by the thousands over the last 20 years and not a word from the atheistic marxists in Brussels, London, Berlin, Paris.
These topics are more like work for me. Actually it was in my past. I could explain one thing or two, but to debate, the topics would have to be more advanced.
For example how the neo-Lamarckian schemes and original (pre-genetic) Darwinism relate to gene sharing and communication within ecosystems and biosphere as a whole. Also how the gene switching is regulated. Also the role of inter-population segregation in targeted streams of micro-evolution. Evolution of human gene pools interacting with collective psyche. Etc ...
I didn't say debate. I find debate useless and uninteresting. Nobody ever convinced me of anything by taking an adversarial position to me and fighting with me. Not one time, in 55 years, has anybody ever convinced me of a single thing by debate. Debate is completely useless.
Not so. The Supreme Court swept aside statutes barring gay marriage, but anti-discrimination statutes have been put into place through the vote in states and municipalities all over the country.
From Wiki:
"The strongest expansions in LGBT rights in the United States have come from the United States Supreme Court. In four landmark rulings between the years 1996 and 2015, the Supreme Court invalidated a state law banning protected class recognition based upon homosexuality, struck down sodomy laws nationwide, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act, and made same- sex marriage legal nationwide."
"Adoption of children by same-sex married couples is legal nationwide since June 2015 following the Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges."
When you can't get the votes, plead your case in front of a socially liberal court.
I'll agree with you when nature files a suit in court and testifies,and wins.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
Prohibition was pushed through by organized Christian Temperance organizations
Who,like all the other commie "do-gooder" organizations was anything BUT "temperate".
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
No. You draw the line at murder, non-consensual sex, slavery, animal cruelty and terrorism.
Unfortunately common sense is very uncommon,and WAAAAY too many people confuse their own personal biases with common sense.
"Why,if I had MY way........."
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
It is not. You do not understand how natural selection work.
No,you don't. You confuse religious doctrine and prejudices with nature.
Nature doesn't give a flaming flip WHAT you,me,or anyone else thinks. Nature is something we deal with by trying to adapt to it,not something we give orders.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
For example how the neo-Lamarckian schemes and original (pre-genetic) Darwinism relate to gene sharing and communication within ecosystems and biosphere as a whole. Also how the gene switching is regulated. Also the role of inter-population segregation in targeted streams of micro-evolution. Evolution of human gene pools interacting with collective psyche. Etc ...
You have no excuse at all for your arguments against the existence of homosexuality.
In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
In my opinion what's acquired is the predisposition to homosexuality -- as with the predisposition to pedophilia, alcoholism, drug use, smoking or being overweight, to name a few.
Doesn't mean you have to engage in that behavior, or that you're entitled to engage in that behavior, or that the rest of us have to accept that behavior as normal.
When you can't get the votes, plead your case in front of a socially liberal court.
Yep. That's our system. The quickest way to ban abortion completely is to get five pro-life justices and have them abolish abortion nationwide as a matter of constitutional right of persons to life.
The power is there. The only question is: who is to wield it?
Doesn't mean you have to engage in that behavior, or that you're entitled to engage in that behavior, or that the rest of us have to accept that behavior as normal.
That is true. The only behavior we HAVE to engage in, involuntarily, is breathing and excreting.
So, the question is: what are you ENTITLED to engage in? I think we would both come down on the side of saying "What the law of our land lets us do."
So then it's purely a question of what that law should be (and who decides).
I think that the law should let people have whatever sex they please with other consenting adults, and I think the law should not give any recourse to those who dislike that. And that's actually what our law DOES, right now, so I am content with it.
The only question, then, is whether or not we have to ACCEPT legal behavior as "normal". You and I both don't think that homosexual activity is "normal". It's deviant. I shrug my shoulders at it because I just don't care what people do. You are horrified by it. I think it's important that you don't get to express your horror legally in any way, that you essentially have to passively accept something you really don't like, even if you don't think it's normal at all, because the law says it's legal.
In the same vein, I know that abortion is the intentional pre-meditated murder of an innocent unborn child. It horrifies me, and if I had the power, I would outlaw it and punish those who commit it. But the law is against me, so however abnormal I find the activity and the law, I just have to lump it. If it's important enough to me, I can emigrate to get away from that law, or I can persuade other people to agree with me and get an administration in there that will put five like-minded people on the Supremes.
In general, I find the liberalizing and relaxing of legal restraints on personal liberty to be a very good thing and I support it. I think we went too far with abortion, but everything else seems, on balance, positive to me. Including letting gays have whatever sex they want to have. I don't care. And I don't think that people who DO care, like you do, should have any say in it. So the law is permissive, and the politics have to be strong enough to stop you in your tracks. One of us is going to be unhappy. In general, moralistic, puritanical and racist types have had their politics beaten down and beaten back over the course of American history, and greater and greater liberty has emerged. I strongly support that trend, both of freeing people from puritanical laws, and of putting into place the political and legal structures to prevent your side from regaining momentum to ever be able to change any of the rules back.
Ergo, for example, in the case of race, not only did slavery and segregation need to be formally outlawed on paper, but we needed the FBI and internal intelligence and law enforcement apparatus of state to go in and smash the KKK and related organizations, to prosecute and persecute and beat them down sufficiently that people recognized that they would pay a heavy social, economic, political and economic price if they sided with the losing side of that fight. The past was racially oppressive. People did not change their minds easily. So once the racists were defeated in physical and legal battle, they needed to be forcibly oppressed by the government, persecuted, so that people would be afraid to join their ranks or mouth support for them, for fear of their own well being.
This was effective. The KKK was once a mighty organization that struck fear into many, both physical fear on the ground and also in the halls of power. But they were defeated and reduced, to the point that only a crazy person on the margins who was so filled with racial hatred that he would be willing to give up any prospects of a decent job or a normal life would join.
In some lands in history, masturbation was a mortal sin, and was punished violently through public whipping or worse. Unmarried heterosexual fornication and gay sex in private between consenting adults both fall into the category of masturbation: things that are nobody's business, that nobody should be able to punish. Since some people want to, and are unhappy if those things are allowed, those people have to be kept unhappy, by making damned sure they cannot wrest back control of the law to reimpose their views.
Unmarried heterosexual fornication and gay sex in private between consenting adults both fall into the category of masturbation
Not exactly. Into category of mutual masturbation falls female homosexuality and sometimes male homosexuality. Heterosexual fornication is not a masturbation.
Serious unnatural sin is anal sex, also among heterosexual couples, perhaps lighter in the later case.
At least so say canons of the Orthodox Church that deal with sins and penance.
Not exactly. Into category of mutual masturbation falls female homosexuality and sometimes male homosexuality. Heterosexual fornication is not a masturbation.
I did not mean the mechanics. I meant to say that these are all grave sexual sins, according to the dominant religions anyway.
In general, I find the liberalizing and relaxing of legal restraints on personal liberty to be a very good thing and I support it.
Well, that would work in a society consisting solely of responsible adults -- as would most Libertarian ideas.
But our society also consists of impressionable children along with irresponsible adults who expect, nay demand, the rest of us to pick up the tab when things go bad for them.
So, the question is: what are you ENTITLED to engage in? I think we would both come down on the side of saying "What the law of our land lets us do."
Nope. It would be the behavior you choose to do because you're you. No one gets to tell YOU what to do. You're "entitled" to do whatever your personal moral compass allows.
An example of this would be Jeremiah Johnson or any of his mountain men friends. They live above the treeline and away from civilization.
Yor problem is that you want to behave like a mountain man but live among the rest of us. Doesn't work that way.
Obviously the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church have different views of sex. Masturbation is, and always has been, a very grave sin - a mortal sin of sexual immorality - in the Catholic Church. The catechism confirms this. So, while I agree with you, based on the mildness of the Torah towards this sin, calling it a mere uncleanness, the Catholic Church holds masturbation to be porneia, a gravely disordered sin, and notes that the mental aspect involved constitutes lust in the heart and mind, which Jesus identified as adultery. So, our discussion has uncovered another enormous difference between the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and a very ancient one.
Perhaps harshness of Latin Church toward minor sexual transgressions is a result of mandatory celibacy that affected mindset of their clergy?
BTW, the church canons that I mentioned are from long before Schism, so perhaps Western attitudes were formed by the scholastic celibate scholars during Middle Ages?
I wonder how much hypocrisy was involved there and guilt tripping?
The Catholic Church says that its moral views on this date from the early church, from long before the Schism. So, this is an example of something on which the Church that was once united always disagreed, apparently, between East and West. In a similar vein, the Eastern Orthodox allow remarriage after divorce. I don't know if they always have, but they do now. The Catholic Church never did - to the point of losing England on account of it.
The Catholic Church says that it's moral views on this date from the early church
The Whore of Babylon's "Moral views" are a crock of Bullshyte exemplified by how it plays the shell game with predators like Joseph Maskell and E. Neil Magnus.
Well, that would work in a society consisting solely of responsible adults -- as would most Libertarian ideas.
But our society also consists of impressionable children along with irresponsible adults who expect, nay demand, the rest of us to pick up the tab when things go bad for them.
Meaning, your argument is specious.
My argument is the law of the land. Your argument is your own reasoning, and it has not persuaded the bulk of the American people.
Our laws already permit consenting adults to perform whatever sex acts they please in private, and also on film for the Internet to see.
Our laws recognize that impressionable children should be protected from such things, and so we have an age of consent, we have rules against pornographic information being distributed or viewed by minors. We have ages of legal marriage.
We have struck what we, as a society, consider to be a reasonable balance between adults' rights of sexual liberty, and the need to protect children from sex before they are mature.
You don't agree with where the society has drawn the line. I do, so I include myself as part of the "we" that have set the rule where we have set it.
It would be one thing if you were taking the position I do on abortion - that it is evil, and wrong, and SHOULD BE outlawed, but is, in fact, legal. I call the law itself evil in the case of abortion.
If you did that regarding the laws of sexual liberty, because you disagree with the degree of permissiveness in our society, then I would have little to say to you other than that we disagree on the amount of sexual liberty there should be.
Trouble is, though, that's not what you are arguing. You are speaking as though your opinion on these matters IS the law, as though you are the final arbiter not of right and wrong, but of what the law IS. And you are not. The law IS, in fact, precisely where I think it ought to be on the subject: very broad personal liberty, with some protection for children - but not so much protection for children that private adult sexual behavior, and public adult affectionate non-sexual behavior (hand-holding, kissing, snuggling), is restricted. Where the law IS, is where I think it should be. You object to it quite strongly, but you speak as though your opinion, which is NOT the law, and which, in fact, has absolutely no force or authority in our society (just as my opinion on abortion has no authority in our society), WERE the law.
You have called my "argument" specious. It's not specious. It is operant. It is authoritative. The Law IS what I have said I like, and it IS NOT what you think on the subject.
So, you can lament how bad things have become that our laws are so permissive - O Tempus! O Mores! - and there's little I could say to that other than "I disagree". But when you take the tone of a king, or a grand inquisitor, as though you are the arbiter of what the law is and what arguments are acceptable - well, I have to call you out on it, because that's just not true.
Someone like Stone could come along and say that the law of society is beneath the Law of God, and that I am some sort of evil heathen for wanting societal laws to be less restrictive than the laws of God. At least then he would be able to refer to an actual law that our civil laws breach. I do precisely that when speaking of abortion, which is the pre-meditated murder of innocent children, under the law of God - but NOT under the law of the state in which we live.
There's a realism to the way I discuss these things. There's an authoritarian unrealism to the way that you discuss it. Your viewpoint USED TO BE the law of the land, just as slavery and segregation USED TO BE the law of the American South. But the South lost that fight, and now the law down South is a law that most there opposed at one point. Likewise, the law of sexual restriction and illegality of homosexual or unmarried heterosexual contact has been swept away. The folks who believed in those old laws fought for them, against people like me, who fought against them. They lost. The law on those subjects is what I say it is, and what I want it to be, not what they say it is.
With abortion, I've clearly lost the battle at present. Not sure whether the war can eventually be won or not on that front. But I never make the mistake of equating my personal opinion of things with the law. Where the law agrees with my opinion, I am happy. Where it doesn't, I am sad or irritated. In no case do I do what you do, and assert that my opinion, where its faction has already lost control of the law, is nevertheless "the law". It isn't.
Yes, we DO say. And you fellows in Eastern Orthodoxy say that your way of doing things is the way it has always been. And in truth, documentary evidence of both positions existing simultaneously exists.
Which REALLY means that the Church was never actually united way back then, it was just so spread out and had such greater issues pressing that these differences that have always separated East and West did not come to the forefront for about a millennium.
When they did, and Europe was stable enough that Christians could fight about these differences that were always there, they did fight about them, and each claimed - truthfully - that THEIR way of doing was "original".
There hasn't been REAL Christian unity in belief or doctrine since the beginning. The Acts of the Apostles are full of the contentions of the Apostolic generation, and it never got better than that afterwards.
Neither the Catholic NOR the Orthodox Churches would ever want to admit THAT, so each goes on believing itself to be authentic and original, which is actually true, but each considers all other ways to have "fallwn away" from the original purity, which each asserts they alone represent. And that is patently false.
Those who are honest enough to admit that the evidence shows greater diversity than most would like, are quick to then change the discussion to questions of hiearchical authority.
From my perch, the failures of both churches on that score are howlingly self-evident.
Then the Protestants came along and blew things up.
Meanwhile the Oriental Orthodox could claim that BOTH the Catholics and the EO have lapsed into error and heresy, but if they did claim such a thing, nobody would listen or care, because, really, who are THOSE PEOPLE to have an opinion. Theological wisdom from Africa or India or the deep middle east? Please!
My own view: the Quakers have gotten it more right than anybody else, as far as actually listening to God goes.
the Church was never actually united way back then, it was just so spread out and had such greater issues pressing that these differences
She came to West from the East. All Seven Ecumenical Councils (that defined basic dogmas of Christian Faith like Holy Trinity) were conducted in the Greek speaking East and at none of them the Bishop of Rome was present at them.
The first Latin translation was done several generations after Apostles and called Vulgate (vulgar) ie for the uneducated people who did not know Greek.
Map below, also remember that the East was more densely populated at that time.
Germanic tribes that dominated Latin West were theologically crude and self-willed. They introduced Germanic notion of guilt that combined with Latin legalism did a lot of harm to the Western souls.
Germanic tribes that dominated Latin West were theologically crude, self-willed and arrogant. They introduced Germanic notion of guilt that combined with Latin legalism did a lot of harm to the Western souls.
Penal Substitution has its origin in Anselm of Canterbury. Anselm was a Roman Catholic archbishop during the 11th century. His seminal work, Cur Deus Homo, expressed for the first time in the history of the church the Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement. Anselm wrote that the problem Jesus came to solve was that mankind did not give God his due. Every time someone sinned, they incurred a divine debt, a debt in magnitude to the one to whom it was due. Because God is infinite, any sin against him requires an infinite payment. But man, being finite, has no way to pay. God does not forgive without payment, so man is without hope, lost until a savior should come. But God in his mercy sent his Son to make that payment for us. Only an infinite being could make an infinite payment, so he exacted that payment from himself. This is what Jesus accomplished at the cross.
Anselm was influenced in the development of this doctrine by many sources in his cultural context. Anselm lived within a medieval common law that had developed out of Germanic tribal law. The Germans assigned value to human life on the principle of weregild, the honor given by ones standing in the tribal community. The higher ones position, the higher the honor assigned. When a members honor was affronted, payment had to be made to restore that honor. In most circumstances, this payment was life. The exception to this rule was for slaves. If someone killed the slave of another, the offender had to make recompense by paying the value of the slave to the owner. Slaves had no value in and of themselves because of their low position, but did have value to their master. If someone killed or offended the honor of a freeman, life had to be paid for life. Honor was life, so any damage to anothers honor required your very existence as recompense. To offend a king, by extension of the value placed on his position, demanded the highest payment of all. Anselm extended this model to Gods relationship with man, saying that, because God is of infinite honor, any sin against him requires an infinite payment, without which God will not forgive.
Five hundred years after Anselm, John Calvin took his ideas a step further, saying that the debt owed to God by mankind was one of punishment. God had to punish sin because he was just. And when man sinned, he incurred Gods wrath toward himself, since God hates sin. The only way to appease this wrath is to make payment. Because God is infinite, the payment made must be infinite. Man, being finite, could not provide such a sacrifice, so God in Christ provided it himself.
It's an angle that shuts down polite conversation. Converts will bicker, but the cradle Catholics won't.
Was I impolite?
Converts will bicker, but the cradle Catholics won't.
Most of my friends are cradle Catholics. Those who care about content of their faith, do bicker occasionally. Others often are closet atheists.
You see, when I end up in a polite company where debating religion or politics or philosophy is considered a bad manner, I leave as fast as I can. Life is too short.
Converts will bicker, but the cradle Catholics won't.
Yes, your RCIA cohorts over at the other site and Free Republic are quite zealous. But the cradle Catholics (I was one) are great to talk with and friendly.
Because the way that you argue for the superiority of Orthodoxy sounds like the Protestant converts
What type of Red Herring argument is it? I stated logically my case and you in response obfuscate topic with how my arguments sound similar to Protestant converts.
No more talk about of what proper doctrine of atonement for sins is? Case closed?
I'm not really interested in Orthodox reasoning. You're sure you're right, and that is why you lost the whole East to the Muslims. The West managed to salvage Greece back from the Muslims, by armed force and aid. And Greece persisted for a century. Now it has basically gone atheist with the rest of Europe.
So, what did your "Orthodoxy" get you? Islam, mostly. A failed theology that ended up a splinter.
That's what I will talk about. Your doctrines did not remove slavery. The Muslims did. So the Muslims won, because they offered superior human freedom to Byzantine Orthodoxy. Case closed.
From my perspective.
The Catholics? Sure, I can tell you what's wrong with us. It's why we're dying.
The Protestants? Sure, I can go after them, but why bother?
Truth is, the closest religion to what Christ actually taught is the Quakers. And they are the ones who abolished slavery, got women the vote, got single pricing and conscientious objection put into law. So if I have to fight FOR a religion based on actual practice and theological belief, I'll go stand with the Quakers.
I'm a Catholic because I'm French and Irish, was born that way, and was a Catholic when God healed my neck and grabbed my face and flew the dove into my head. I dance with the one that brung me. I also recognize the things wrong with the Catholic Church, and how intractable the Catholics, like the Orthodox and the Protestants, all are to changing ANY aspect of their tradition, no matter how evil, stupid, self-destructive, un-Christlike or illogical it is.
I've heard all of the legalistic arguments - and I'm a far better lawyer than anybody who has ever argued them. The flaws in the arguments are obvious, but those who argue them are not good lawyer and don't even see them. And why bother? Nobody ever changes his mind about any of these things. Argument is futile.
Religion is only ever changed by external events and funerals.
I abandoned atheism, because I cam to the conclusion that it is an erroneous worldview. Then I started the search for what Truth really is. First through philosophy, then through religious investigation. That is how I found Orthodoxy.
For me you are simply French and Irish who keeps RC religion as a coat of arms. Nothing more, nothing less. You put your blood before God.
Lord Jesus said:
"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
And Aquila is in exact agreement with Symmachus. With regard first to the words which are apparently said in the Person of our Saviour: "Heal my soul, for I have sinned against thee," you will notice in Symmachus they are not so rendered, but thus: "Heal my soul, even if I have sinned against thee." And He speaks thus, since He shares our sins. So it is said: "And the Lord hath laid on him our iniquities, and he bears our sins." Thus the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, (467) became a curse on our behalf:
"Whom, though he knew no sin, God made sin for our sake, giving him as redemption for all, that we might become the righteousness of God in him."
[...]
But since being in the likeness of sinful flesh He condemned sin in the flesh, the words quoted are rightly used. And in that He made our sins His own from His love and benevolence towards us, He says these words, adding further on in the same Psalm: "Thou hast (b) protected me because of my innocence," clearly shewing the impeccability of the Lamb of God. And how can He make our sins His own, and be said to bear our iniquities, except by our being regarded as His body, according to the apostle, who says: "Now ye are the body of Christ, and severally members?" And by the rule that "if one member suffer all the members suffer with it," so when the many members suffer and sin, He too by the laws of (c) sympathy (since the Word of God was pleased to take the form of a slave and to be knit into the common tabernacle of us all) takes into Himself the labours of the suffering members, and makes our sicknesses His, and suffers all our woes and labours by the laws of love. And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf, (d) and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down on Himself the apportioned curse, being made a curse for us. And what is that but the price of our |196 souls?
And so the oracle says in our person: "By his stripes we were healed," and "The Lord delivered him for our sins," with the result that uniting Himself to us and us to Himself, and appropriating our sufferings, He can say, "I said, Lord, have mercy on me, heal my soul, (468) for I have sinned against thee," and can cry that they who plot against Him, not men only but invisible daemons as well, when they see the surpassing power of His Holy Name and title, by means of which He filled the world full of Christians a little after, think that they will be able to extinguish it, if they plot His death. This is what is proved by His saying: "My enemies have spoken evil of me, saying, When shall he die and his name perish?"
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica, X.1
Chrysostom, Homily on Galatians 3:3 (ACD, vol. 3, p. 108)
The people were liable to punishment since they had not fulfilled the whole Law. Christ satisfied a different curse, the one that says, Cursed is everyone that is hanged on a tree.. Both the one who is hanged and the one who transgresses the Law are accursed. Christ, who was going to lift that curse, could not properly be made liable to it, yet he had to receive a curse. He received the curse instead of being liable to it, and through this he lifted the curse. Just as, when someone is condemned to death, another innocent person who chooses to die for him releases him from that punishment, so Christ also did.
In reality, the people were subject to another curse, which says, Cursed is every one that continues not in the things that are written in the book of the Law. Deuteronomy 27:26 To this curse, I say, people were subject, for no man had continued in, or was a keeper of, the whole Law; but Christ exchanged this curse for the other, Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree. As then both he who hanged on a tree, and he who transgresses the Law, is cursed, and as it was necessary for him who is about to relieve from a curse himself to be free from it, but to receive another instead of it, therefore Christ took upon Him such another, and thereby relieved us from the curse. It was like an innocent man's undertaking to die for another sentenced to death, and so rescuing him from punishment. For Christ took upon Him not the curse of transgression, but the other curse, in order to remove that of others. For, He had done no violence neither was any deceit in His mouth. Isaiah 53:9;1 Peter 2:22 And as by dying He rescued from death those who were dying, so by taking upon Himself the curse, He delivered them from it.
This, the catholic faith has known of the one and only mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who condescended to undergo deaththat is, the penalty of sinwithout sin, for us. As He alone became the Son of man, in order that we might become through Him sons of God, so He alone, on our behalf, undertook punishment without ill deservings, that we through Him might obtain grace without good deservings. Because as to us nothing good was due so to Him nothing bad was due. Therefore, commending His love to them to whom He was about to give undeserved life, He was willing to suffer for them an undeserved death. (Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book 4, chap. 7)
CHURCH FATHERS: Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, Book IV (Augustine)
He blotted out through death the sentence of death, that by a new creation of our race in Himself He might sweep away the penalty appointed by the former Law. He let them nail Him to the cross that He might nail to the curse of the cross and abolish all the curses to which the world is condemned. He suffered as man to the utmost that He might put powers to shame. For Scripture had foretold that He Who is God should die; that the victory and triumph of them that trust in Him lay in the fact that He, Who is immortal and cannot be overcome by death, was to die that mortals might gain eternity.
CHURCH FATHERS: On the Trinity, Book I (Hilary of Poitiers)
If Phinees, when he waxed zealous and slew the evil-doer, staved the wrath of God, shall not Jesus, who slew not another, but gave up Himself for a ransom, put away the wrath which is against mankind? Further; if the lamb under Moses drove the destroyer far away, did not much rather the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world, deliver us from our sins? The blood of a silly sheep gave salvation; and shall not the Blood of the Only-begotten much rather save? Jesus then really suffered for all men; for the Cross was no illusion, otherwise our redemption is an illusion also These things the Saviour endured, and made peace through the Blood of His Cross, for things in heaven, and things in earth. For we were enemies of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. There must needs therefore have happened one of two things; either that God, in His truth, should destroy all men, or that in His loving-kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the wisdom of God; He preserved both the truth of His sentence, and the exercise of His loving-kindness. Christ took our sins in His body on the tree, that we by His death might die to sin, and live unto righteousness.--St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, XIII