What is meaning of the crucifixion of Christ? Why did Christ die on a cross and what does this tell us about the 'plan of salvation' according to Christian theology? According to the theologian Augustine and the theologians of the church in later centuries who considered him 'the father of Christian theology', Christ died to be an atonement sacrifice to pay for the sins of humanity, following the doctrines laid out in books like Leviticus in the Torah, known as the Law of Moses. By partaking of this sacrifice you are ritually 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and are 'imputed' the perfection of Christ. He fully paid the price by completely and perfectly fulfilling this law of Moses and then suffering the punishment for wrongdoers, thus satisfying the demands of justice.

     This is a peculiar notion. Jeremiah stated that God did not tell those people to bring sacrifices and offerings when they came out of Egypt, but that rather these sacrificing and blood atonement laws were forged by the Levite priests of the Jerusalem temple. (See the full quotation below). This doctrine of Christ as a Levite animal sacrifice did not orginate with the prophets of Israel or with the gospels, but rather with theologians of the church, like Augustine. This doctrine is not mentioned in the gospels. There is at least one tradition that all four gospels we presently possess agree upon and that is that Christ was crucified to preserve a system of religious dogmatism and his chief persecutors, those who relentlessly pursued him to his death, his prosecutors, his accusers, and his those who were determined to crucify Christ, were the highest religious authorities of his day.

     As Thomas Paine noted of the doctrine of the atonement sacrifice, it was not based on justice for a crime committed, but rather on the notion of paying a debt, which anyone can do. However justice, he said, cannot punish the innocent for the guilty without destroying the very notion of the thing itself, which is justice. The gospels make no mention of 'paying the price', but rather tell us that Christ was crucified by religious dogmatics. This testimony is also found in the letters attributed to the apostle Paul, who described both his great love for the dogmas of his ancestors and his final rejection of the religious dogma of the day, encapsulated in books such as Leviticus, calling it all 'so much rubbish', one of the great turn around stories in the Church Testament. In the Church Testament we thus get two different sides of the picture, a condemnation of the dogmatics of Christ's day, found in the gospels, and a parallel portrait of the conversion of one of those condemned dogmatics, found in the Pauline corpus.

     The gospels mention nothing about 'paying the price', but rather testify about the crucifixion as follows...

"From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." (Matthew Chapter 16 verse 21)

"Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day." (Matthew Chapter 20 verse 18)

"The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised ... Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and on the third day rise." And they remembered his words ..." (Luke Chapter 9 verse 22, Luke Chapter 24 verse 6)

"And he began to teach them that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." (Mark 8:31)

"Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise." (Mark Chapter 10 verse 33)

"The Pharisees answered them, "Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him?" (John Chapter 7 verse 47)

"The Pharisees then said to one another, "You see that you can do nothing; look, the world has gone after him." Nevertheless many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue." (John Chapter 12 verses 19, 42)

"So Judas, procuring a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons." (John Chapter 18 verse 3)

     The struggle against dogmatism in religion did not originate with Christ. It is found earlier in the Jewish tradition, as a radical school of Jewish prophets struggled against the entrenched religious orthodoxy of their day, and became outcasts, or, in the words of the Isaiah prophets, 'voices crying out in the wilderness', the wilderness being where a prophet could expect to be exiled in those days (and we see the same thing today - consider the famous example of Salman Rushdie, another protest writer against religious orthodoxy and dogmatism, who, as far as I know, is still hiding out in the wilderness somewhere. And there are many more examples of the same type of thing, both directly associated with the persecution of religious reformers and in other areas of human life, where the questioning of social norms and societal dogmas is not welcomed).

     For a fine example of the protest writings of the Isaiah school of prophets, see the page on the prophets of Israel as the poets of Israel. To read a collection of the protest writings of both the prophets of Israel and of the early radical protest movement that typified the church, before the church itself became the primary source of both dogmas and persecution, see the page on early protest writings in the Bible which are examples of analogues to the modern practice of Biblical criticism and protest against both the Bible and the religious dogmatism.

     One of the finest and briefest expositions of the protest movement among the radical school of Jewish prophecy is found in the book of Jeremiah.

     Note that in the following passage first Jeremiah condemns the Torah practices of animal sacrifice, then the Torah practice of burning at the stake, and then follows this with an explicit condemnation of the Torah. This is then followed by another condemnation of the Torah regulations concerning taking over the land and houses and even the wives and virgin daughters of others, supposedly at the command of God.

"Thus says YAHWEH of hosts, the God of Israel: "Add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices, and eat the flesh. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.’ But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers. So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call to them, but they will not answer you. And you shall say to them, ‘This is the nation that did not obey the voice of YAHWEH their God, and did not accept discipline; truth has perished; it is cut off from their lips. Cut off your hair and cast it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for YAHWEH has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.’ For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, says YAHWEH; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says YAHWEH, when it will no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of Slaughter: for they will bury in Topheth, because there is no room elsewhere. And the dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the air, and for the beasts of the earth; and none will frighten them away ... Death shall be preferred to life by all the remnant that remains of this evil family in all the places where I have driven them, says YAHWEH of hosts. You shall say to them, Thus says YAHWEH: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, they refuse to return. I have listened carefully, but they have not spoken what is right; no man repents of his wickedness, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Every one turns to his own course, like a war horse plunging headlong into battle. Even the stork in the heavens knows the time to migrate; and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming; but now my people know not the requirements of YAHWEH. How can you say, ‘We are wise, for we have the laws of Yahweh’? But, behold, the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. The wise men shall be put to shame, they shall be dismayed and trapped; but they have rejected the word of YAHWEH, so what kind of wisdom did they have. Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to conquerors, because from the least to the greatest every one is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest every one deals falsely. They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall with a great crash; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says YAHWEH. When I would gather them, says YAHWEH, there are no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree; even the leaves are withered, and what I gave them has passed away from them." (Jeremiah Chapter 7 verse 21)

     Christ as portrayed in the gospels, continued this early radical tradition of rejecting the cherished religious dogmas of the time. In both Mark and Matthew's gospel Christ is portrayed as rejecting the 'clean-unclean' and food laws of books such as Leviticus, calling them, like Jeremiah, 'human commandments'. (Note that these passages are purged from Luke's gospel, Luke proving not to be one of those who supported radicalism, but rather, as his treatment of Paul proves, a backwards looking reactionary when it came to dogmas of all sorts.)

"How right Isaiah was when he prophesied concerning you, saying, 'this people pays me lipservice, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain, for they teach as doctrines thecommandments of men.' You neglect the commandments of God, in order to maintain yourhuman traditions. How clever you are at setting aside the commandment of God in order tomaintain your traditions...In this way by your traditions, handed down among you, you makeGod's word null and void. And you do many other things just like that. After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear." When he had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable. And He *said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.)" (Mark Chapter 7 verse 6)

     His violations of religious dogma and carrying on the earlier traditions of Biblical critique practiced by the former Jewish prophets did not end with his violations and condemnations of cleanliness and food laws. Like the radical school of prophets before him, he also condemned and violated the Sabbath.

"Therefore some of the Pharisees were saying, "This man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath."
"For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father." (John Chapter 9 verse 16, Chapter 5 verse 18)

     It is curious that the standard dogma of the church in the ages to follow then became that Christ died 'willingly' to be 'a whole offerings sacrifice' like in Leviticus, as 'God commanded those people when they came out of Egypt' so as to make him a whole offerings sacrifice to 'pay for the sins of humanity.' One sure way to get crucified by the church would be to quote Jeremiah (as I have found out myself) or to question the church dogma of 'the Leviticus sacrifice of Christ' who 'came to completely fulfill the Levite Priestly ideology' by 'dying on a cross' as an 'atonement sacrifice', the types of dogmas that have always appealed to priests, first in Jeremiah's time then later in the days of Christ, and then for ages in the pulpits of the church. According to the gospels, and according to Paul, Christ died to destroy the priestly Levitical system, not to fulfill it. After condemning the religious practices of the day he was crucified on a charge of religious heresy and blasphemy.

"Then the high priest tore his robes, and said, "He has uttered blasphemy. Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy."" (Matthew Chapter 26 verse 65)

"Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy!" (Mark Chapter 2 verse 7)

""You have heard his blasphemy. What is your decision?" And they all condemned him as deserving death." (Mark Chapter 14 verse 64)

"The Jews answered him, "It is not for a good work that we stone you but for blasphemy."" (John Chapter 10 verse 33)

     Dogmatism, of any kind, requires ignorance and the subsequent atmosphere of superstition that then develops, to thrive, and for this reason you will find throughout history that when dogmatics are in the pulpits prophets are to be found, if they are to be found at all, in the wilderness. Once the church became a bastion of dogmatism, and took up the necessary accompanying practice of crucifixion, prophets and protestors could either be found nailed to a fence post by those churches or, like Spinoza, who barely escaped crucifixion by the church for writing things milder than what you will read on this web site, they would be found 'fleeing to the wilderness' to escape the clutches of that furiously enraged church.

     While the gospels give us a picture of the relentless persecution of Christ by religious authorities for violating their sacred religious dogmas, the letters of Paul give us the portrait of one of those enraged dogmatics. Paul was himself one of the religious authorities who persecuted Christ and the early church, arresting and whipping the members of the church, fervent and zealous for his ancestral dogmas, until he experienced a conversion experience. While at one time Paul was zealous for all the dogmas including the food laws, the unclean laws, and circumcision, after his conversion he himself became a radical protestor in the tradition of the earlier Jewish prophets and of Christ and the early church he once hated and persecuted so viciously.

"Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law a Pharisee, as to zeal a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ..." (Philippians Chapter 3 verse 5)

     After deciding that everything he once cherished was revealed by the crucifixion to be 'sheer rubbish', as described in Phillipians, Paul then began singing a different tune. To borrow his words from Romans, he was 'crucified with Christ' and it was 'no longer I who lived, but Christ who lived in me.' From that time on Paul had 'the mind of Christ' and was determined to 'take every thought captive to Christ', as is revealed by his turn around on the dogmas of his ancestors as indicated in the passage below.

"Everything I know about Messiah Joshua convinces me that nothing in itself is unclean(prohibited); but only if someone gets the idea into their heads that a thing is unclean' (prohibited)then for them it becomes unclean." (Romans Chapter 14 verse 14)

     The epistles also pick up on the theme of persecution by religious authorities because of their dogmatism, and describes the raising of Christ from the dead as a triumph over the religious authorities of his day.

"Having canceled the law which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailingit to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them,triumphing over them. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drinkor with regard to a festival or a new moon or a commandments ... If with Christ you died to the elementalspirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submitto regulations, "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch" (referring to things which all perishas they are used), according to human commandments and doctrines? ... Set your minds on thingsthat are above, not on things that are on earth." (Colossians Chapter 2 verse 14)

     No investigation of the dogmatism of Augustine should start without first making note of Augustine's reactionary backlash, his preference for religious dogmatism, and his wholesale nullification of the radical prophets of both Israel and the early church, and, yes, even Christ was nullified by Augustine. It turns out that Augustine was not only the 'father of Christian theology', the same theology still hanging over the church to this very day, he was also the father of the crucifixions practiced by the church, in that it was the instruction of Augustine that the church should crucify all who followed in the footsteps of the Jewish prophets and Christ, himself, and dared to defy sacred church dogmas. It was Augustine's dogma, being a dogmatic and a theologian, that Christ died to establish another tyrannical reign of orthodox dogmatism over the planet, and that the sacred instructions of the crucified Christ, it naturally followed, were that the church should learn a lesson from the crucifixion, noting carefully how it was done, and thus be well equipped to start crucifying, according to estimates, between hundreds of thousands or even millions of human beings for the sake of church dogmas. Augustine set the stage for the future witch hunts and crusades of the church, by demanding the death penalty be imposed on those who questioned church dogmas. After all, what church would ever be fully equipped without sacraments and rosaries and the ever present, and required, hammer and a box of nails.

     Augustine was no radical but rather was the reactionaries reactionary and a dogmatic to the core. His theology of the 'the Levite whole offerings sacrifice of Christ' to institute a system of dogma and sacraments into the church completely missed the obvious point in the gospels, the prophets, and the epistles. But, as the gospels themselves stated, God hid the truth about the crucifixion from the wise and the clever and revealed it all to those who were as simple as little children, and that excluded Augustine.

     Even the tiniest of infants was not safe from the cruel damnations of Augustine, who preferred church dogmas to human babies, and would rather have preserved the meaning of a church sacrifice than allow even one helpless infant to escape the fires of hell without being required to participate in dogmatic church rituals.

     Augustine practiced nullification of the radical traditions of the Bible in favor of a doctrine of 'divine inspiration of Holy Scripture' a belief carried on today in many churches in that the Bible is held to be 'completely infallible and inerrant, completely in all its parts, without exception'. It was this dogma that got Christ crucified and prophets dispatched to the wilderness, apparently a small detail that did not bother Augustine, and does not bother certain churches either, or so it would appear. Augustine had been 'saved by the sacraments', after all, so what did he have to worry about. And those churches have been 'saved by the blood of lamb', so what they do they have to worry about or to be concerned with such small details.

     In order to free oneself from this false belief in 'inerrancy' of the Bible and strict enforcement of its dogma, it is necessary to free oneself from Augustine, who continues to reach out accross the ages in that it is his theology which holds sway in so much of what little remains of the church. In order to deal with Augustine it is necessary first to deal with his false doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. It is a constant refrain of Augustine that even his opponents had to agree that such and such a dogma was correct for such and such a dogma was 'the inerrant word of Holy writ'. If a person allows themselves to be sucked into such a swamp of endless Bible quotes as Augustine throws up, it would only allow him to cloak his activities behind a veneer of 'obedience', when, if the truth be told he was a perjurer and a deceiver, who employed scriptures as a type of club with which he attempted to pound into the ground those who protested the mindless cruelty and blatant injustice of his theological propositions. It is the practice of Augustine to attempt to bury all opposition under an avalanche of Bible quotes (but only a carefully selected few), quoting, for example, almost every celebrity in the Bible to 'prove' that unbaptized babies burn forever in the flames of hell, a doctrine of all 'holy men' as 'proved' by 'divine scripture', according to the practice of Augustine.

     I have posted Augustine's treatise, On the Baptism of Infants and it is from there that I draw the following quotes. To get sucked into the black hole that Augustine opens before any readers one must first get sucked into the belief in 'the infallible inerrancy of scripture'. In sending babies to hell Augustine makes the point that 'even his opponents are forced to agree' with such and such a dogma, because, apparently, even his opponents did not have the common sense at the time to deal with Augustine's unethical handling of scriptures as a first principle, and instead got snared into wrangling with Augustine over 'the interpretation' of scriptures, giving the upper hand to Augustine, who was skillful at nullifying and distorting inconvenient scriptures.

In the following passage, taken from 'On the Baptism of infants', Augustine points out that even his opponents cannot disagree with his propositions...

Even ifthere were in men nothing but original sin, it would be sufficient for their condemnation ... even thatsin alone which was originally derived unto men not only excludes from the kingdom of God, whichinfants are unable to enter (as they (his opponents) themselves allow), unless they have received the grace of Christbefore they die, but also alienates from salvation and everlasting life...

The fact that Augustine was a reactionary dogmatic (and on the wrong side of the crucifixion as well) is demonstrated by such statements as the following.

Let us therefore give in and yield our assent to the authority of Holy Scripture, which knows not howeither to be deceived or to deceive.

     This tenet is central to all of Augustine's theology, for everything is 'proved' with book quotes, and the only way to finally and permanently dispose of Augustine and Augustinian theology is to first strip away his cloak of 'holiness' by exposing the fraudulent nature of his use of the Bible. This having been done, he can begin speaking for himself for a change, and the obvious nature of his hypocrisy, the dogmatic slant he gave to the crucifixion, and the resulting injustice that permeated his theology can be clearly seen for what they are.

     It is understandable why Augustine met with such vehement opposition by those, such as the Pelagians, who are now considered 'heretics' for taking up the defence of helpless infants before Augustine's burning onslaught, while Augustine, who was emotionally unbalanced enough to advocate the burning of babies, is 'orthodox' and 'the father of Christian theology.' As Jeremiah wrote above, 'they burned their sons and daughters, which was no command of God, nor did it ever even enter God's mind that they would do such a disgusting thing." When the root is rotten soon enough the whole tree becomes rotten. So it was the case that Augustine also became the father of crucifixions and witch hunts in the church in the ages to come, the father of dogmatism. It is understandable why his critics, now commonly labeled 'heretics' (even on university campuses) protested the rising disaster this man was going to bring to the churches in the ages to come, as the original message of the church became twisted and distorted to the point that the preservation of dogmatism became the meaning of the crucifixion to the point that the church became the crucifier, and even helpless infants would then have to be consigned to the flames, in one massive act of crucifixion, in order to preserve the meaning of a church sacrament and a church sacrifice. To allow even so much as one infant to escape hell fire without baptism would nullify the meaning of the sacrament, and render it optional and would in this way have brought into question the 'salvation' of Augustine himself. This 'threat' to church dogma was something that Augustine recognized and resisted vehemently, for he considered these 'sacraments' and these dogmas to be more worthy than the life of a human baby.

     Ignoring the gospel injunction, itself taken from the radical school of prophecy, that 'it is mercy that God requires, and not sacrifice' Augustine insists that it is sacrifice that God requires, particularly in the new form of 'sacraments' in the church, and that therefore no mercy can be shown to an unbaptized infant.

"In him (Adam) was constituted the form ofcondemnation to his future progeny, who should spring from him by natural descent; so that from oneall men were born to a condemnation, from which there is no deliverance but in the Saviour's grace."

Why did death reign onaccount of the sin of one, unless it was that men were bound by the chain of death in that one man inwhom all men sinned, even though they added no sins of their own? The fact is, that the reign of death drags many more downto eternal punishment.

That person, therefore, greatly deceives both himselfand others, who teaches that they (unbaptized babies) will not be involved in condemnation; whereas the apostle says:"Judgment from one offence to condemnation," and again a little after: "By the offence of one upon allpersons to condemnation."

Only the 'sacrament' of baptism can save the eternally damned infants of the earth, and mercy is not an option, as those who believe this 'are deceived'.

whoever is born of the flesh has need ofspiritual regeneration--not only that he may reach the kingdom of God, but also that he may be freedfrom the damnation of sin. Hence men are on the one hand born in the flesh liable to sin and deathfrom the first Adam, and on the other hand are born again in baptism associated with therighteousness and eternal life of the second Adam.

Augustine's opponents were 'perplexed' at how to deal with Augustine's barrage of Bible quotes to 'prove' the eternal burning of infants.

When you ask them, whether those (babies) that are not baptized, and are not made joint-heirs withChrist and par-takers of the kingdom of heaven, have at any rate the blessing of eternal life in theresurrection of the dead, they are extremely perplexed, and find no way out of their difficulty. Forwhat Christian is there who would allow it to be said, that any one could attain to eternal salvationwithout being born again in Christ,-- [a result] which He meant to be effected through baptism, at thevery time when such a sacrament was purposely instituted for regenerating in the hope of eternalsalvation?

Infants are 'ungodly' through no fault of their own, and they burn in hell through 'inheriting Adam's sin' and thus running afoul of a church dogma.

Who then could be so bold as to affirm, that without theregeneration of which the apostle speaks, infants could attain to eternal salvation, as if Christ died notfor them? For "Christ died for the ungodly." If they were hurt by no malady of original sin,how is it they are carried to the Physician Christ, for the express purpose of receiving the sacramentof eternal salvation, by the pious anxiety of those who run to Him?

Christ burns babies, and those who disagree are plainly wrong, according to Augustine.

There never has been heard, there never is heard, there never will be heard in the Church, such afiction concerning Christ.

Augustine acknowledges that infants have no sins of their own, but he damns them anyway, on the grounds of dogma, and in order to preserve the meaning of a church 'sacrament', not to mention to preserve church dogma.

Now, inasmuch as infants are not held bound by any sins of their own actual life, it is theguilt of original sin which is healed in them by the grace of Him who saves them by the layer ofregeneration.

For who would dare to say that Christ is not the Saviour and Redeemer ofinfants? But from what does He save them, if there is no malady of original sin within them? Fromwhat does He redeem them, if through their origin from the first man they are not sold under sin? Letthere be then no eternal salvation promised to infants out of our own opinion, without Christ'sbaptism; for none is promised in that Holy Scripture which is to be preferred to all human authorityand opinion ... If, therefore, as so many and such divine witnesses agree, neither salvation nor eternal life canbe hoped for by any man without baptism and YAHWEH's body and blood, it is vain to promise theseblessings to infants without them ... (Babies will be in) apenal state, not, as the darkness of the night, necessary for the refreshment of living beings. [XXV.]So that infants, unless they pass into the number of believers through the sacrament which wasdivinely instituted for this purpose, will undoubtedly remain in this darkness.

Augustine proceeds to quote scripture to 'prove' that even Christ clearly taught that he was going to burn unbaptized babies...

Accordingly, also YAHWEH Himself (wishing to remove from thehearts of wrong-believers that vague and indefinite middle condition, which some would providefor unbaptized infants,--as if, by reason of their innocence, they were embraced in eternal life, butwere not, because of their unbaptized state, with Christ in His kingdom ... "He that is not with me is against me." Take then the caseof any infant you please: If he is already in Christ, why is he baptized? If, however, as the Truth hasit, he is baptized just that he may be with Christ, it certainly follows that he who is not baptized is notwith Christ; and because he is not "with" Christ, he is "against" Christ; for He has pronounced Hisown sentence, which is so explicit that we ought not, and indeed cannot, impair it or change it ... "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, thatwhosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Every infant, therefore, wasdestined to perish, and to lose everlasting life, if through the sacrament of baptism he believed not inthe only-begotten Son of God.

Church dogma stated that no one could be saved without 'believing in Christ'. (Note that Augustine himself did not believe Christ, or the prophets, or Paul for that matter, as is shown by his doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, but that did not stop him from condemning others.) Babies cannot 'believe Christ' but they can still 'renounce the devil' if they are 'sponsored' by their parents, a nifty trick of dogmatism that seems to preserve the strict church dogma of believing, even for those who cannot believe.

They are rightly called believers, because they in a certain sense profess faith by thewords of their parents, why are they not also held to be before that penitents when they are shownto renounce the devil and this world by the profession again of the same parents?

Once again Augustine condemns mercy and demands the 'sacrifice' of Christ, in the form of 'sacraments' as required for the salvation of infants.

"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." And sothey try to ascribe to unbaptized infants, by the merit of their innocence, the gift of salvation andeternal life, but at the same time, owing to their being unbaptized, to exclude them from the kingdomof heaven. But how novel and astonishing is such an assumption, as if there could possibly besalvation and eternal life without heirship with Christ, without the kingdom of heaven! ... Will, however, any man be so bold as to say that this statement has no relation to infants, and thatthey can have life in them without partaking of His body and blood ... eventhey (babies) will not have life if they eat not the flesh of the Son of man ... if they (babies) who are baptized are, by virtue of the excellence andadministration of so great a sacrament, nevertheless reckoned in the number of the faithful, althoughby their own heart and mouth they do not literally perform what appertains to the action of faith andconfession; surely they (those unbaptized babies) who have lacked the sacrament must be classed amongst those who do notbelieve on the Son, and therefore, if they shall depart this life without this grace, they will have toencounter what is written concerning such--they shall not have life, but the wrath of God abideth onthem. Whence could this result to those who clearly have no sins of their own, if they are not held tobe obnoxious to original sin?

     Next Augustine will try to dispense with the obvious cruel injustice of his dogmatic position by appealing the doctrine of 'divine mystery'. This was a stunt also pulled by Calvin whenever the cruelty of his theology was questioned. Claim that it is all 'a divine mystery' why it should be the case that one baby, through no effort its own, gets baptized and goes to heaven, and another baby, through no fault of its own, does not get baptized and goes to burn forever in the flames of hell. It is 'a divine mystery', Augustine insists, but this fraudulent argument is just a cloak for his own injustice.

Now those very persons, who think it unjust that infants which depart this life without the grace ofChrist should be deprived not only of the kingdom of God, into which they themselves admit thatnone but such as are regenerated through baptism can enter, but also of eternal life andsalvation,--when they ask how it can be just that one man should be freed from original sin andanother not, although the condition of both of them is the same, might answer their own question, inaccordance with their own opinion of how it can be so frequently just and right that one should havebaptism administered to him whereby to enter into the kingdom of God, and another not be sofavoured, although the case of both is alike.

The reason why this grace comesupon one man and not on another may be hidden, but it cannot be unjust. For "is thereunrighteousness with God? God forbid." But we must first bend our necks to the authority of theHoly Scriptures, in order that we may each arrive at knowledge and understanding through faith. Forit is not said in vain, "Thy judgments are a great deep." The profundity of this deep" the apostle, as ifwith a feeling of dread, notices in that exclamation: "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdomand the knowledge of God!" He had indeed previously pointed out the meaning of this marvellousdepth, when he said: "For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy uponall." Then struck, as it were, with a horrible fear of this deep: "O the depth of the riches both of thewisdom and the knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past findingout! For who hath known the mind of YAHWEH? or who hath been His counsellor? or who hath firstgiven to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and in Him,are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen." How utterly insignificant, then, is our faculty fordiscussing the justice of God's judgments, and for the consideration of His gratuitous grace, which,as men have no prevenient merits for deserving it, cannot be partial or unrighteous, and which doesnot disturb us when it is bestowed upon unworthy men, as much as when it is denied to those whoare equally unworthy!

     Now the correct way to deal with Augustine's deluge of Bible quotes is to first note that he perjured himself about the Bible, that he rejected the doctrines of the Jewish prophets, rejected the example of Paul, and instead led the church in a return to religious dogmatism. Next we can note how the meaning of the crucifixion in its original context was nullified and disposed of by Augustine, who, after all, was one of those hammer wielding dogmatics himself. Since that time the meaning of the death of Christ has been lost, submerged in an ocean of church dogmatism about 'being washed in the blood of the lamb'. Now certainly Paul, who was a crucifier, and one of those exposed and overthrown by the crucifixion, was thus 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and became 'a new creature in Christ' and took on 'the mind of Christ'. But this same claim can no longer be made by churches for whom 'the blood of the lamb' has been reduced to mean nothing more than more of that religious dogmatism, drained of its original meaning, ripped out of its original context, twisted and distorted until it has been turned completely upside down and inside out.

     It turns out that this false assertion of 'Biblical infallibility' was be central to Augustine's methodology and it remains central to church theology to this very day. After all, such things as the burning of infants is cruel and immoral and only by employing 'the authority of scriptures' as a kind of club to use in pounding down all opposition could Augustine expect to triumph, as he did triumph, over the objections of normal human reason and the most ordinary of human compassions for infants. By refusing to assent to the moral objections raised by his opponents and instead propping up his dogma with a deluge of book quotes, and thus attempting to place his opponents on the defensive, was the only way he could expect to succeed in establishing such an inhumane system of dogma as the orthodox belief in the church in the ages that followed, and as it continues to be both in practice and in spirit in so many churches today.

Taking into account all the inspired statements (from the Bible) which I have quoted,--whether I regard the value ofeach passage one by one, or combine their united testimony in an accumulated witness or eveninclude similar passages which I have not adduced,--there can be nothing discovered, but that whichthe catholic Church holds, in her dutiful vigilance against all profane novelties.

     One must suppose that one of these 'profane novelties' would include the 'profane novelties' of such prophets as Jeremiah, who condemned such mindless book quoting with a severe warning to those who would practice it, such as Augustine. (But never mind.)

Well, then,let us remove the doubt; let us now listen to YAHWEH, and not to men's notions and conjectures; letus, I say, hear what YAHWEH says--not indeed concerning the sacrament of the layer, but concerningthe sacrament of His own holy table, to which none but a baptized person has a right to approach:"Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye shall have no life in you." What do we want more?What answer to this can be adduced, unless it be by that obstinacy."

     The opponents of Augustine, who were appalled by the mindless cruelty of his damnation of infants apparently did not think to appeal to the court of radical prophecy as a way to expose the fraudulent use of scripture by this reckless theologian, and instead got sucked into a pit by Augustine by giving their consent to his dogma of 'the authority of scripture' a point Augustine makes repeatedly in his writings.

     The church has been notorious throughout history for being the refuge of dogmatics and their dogmas, and it is not surprising that by leaving behind their radical roots throughout history the church became famous for its crucifixions, its witch hunts and persecution of 'heretics' and 'blasphemers'. You can consider the example of Spinoza as just one of so many people who merely carried on the traditions of Biblical critique practiced by Christ and the other prophets, and had his life threatened by the church. All empty dogmas about 'regeneration' or 'having the mind of Christ' or being 'born again' or most famously, 'washed in the blood of the lamb' are nothing more than vain and empty dogmas when employed by churches who have left their radical roots, who have forgotten the true meaning of the crucifixion, and thus have themselves become the primary exporters of dogmatism in our society and throughout history have always been known as the primary crucifiers of others. 'When ever you did it to the least of these people, you did it to me...'

For more some interesting results on the Sahara, see the Eden Watch 2002 pages...