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 Why Did Jesus Die?
Mel Gibson's movie has thrust this powerful question back at the center of Holy Week
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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| Why Jesus Died |
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The Good vs. Evil Theory |
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According to one theory of the early church, the debt Christ pays for humanity is to the Devil and is achieved by a kind of divine bait and switch. The church father Gregory of Nyssa used the metaphor of Christ's mortality as the bait gobbled up by the Devil-as-fish, who is vanquished when the hook—Christ's all-conquering divine nature—is revealed. That is just one of many expressions of Jesus' death as a preplanned and therefore triumphant moment in God's successful campaign against the doomed legions of Satan.
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