Jesus was “rejected” by the Jews long after this all happened. And, the “rejection” is more of a misrepresentation of history by Christians who were trying to curry favor with the Romans. It was prudent to pin the crucifixion on the Jews because then Christ would not be someone legally condemned in a Roman court, and hence a dangerous criminal in the eyes of the Romans. If that were the case the Christians would literally be worshipping an enemy of the state. However, if you could show that the crucifixion was at the behest of the Jews, then the Romans need not fear him, as it was purely a local matter.

In any case, it’s quite probable that there were many Jewish converts in the diaspora and there were Jewish-Christians in Palestine for a few centuries after Jesus’ death. That’s not a rejection. What did happen is that rabbinic Judaism clearly had to assert that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, because otherwise they would be Christian. However, this happened many years after the fact, no representative of rabbinic Judaism was involved in Jesus’ crucifixion.

Which means even if the Jews ad unanimously accepted Jesus as their King and God, he still could have suffered in Gethsemane, died, and been Resurrected.

I think that that if the Jewish nation had overwhelmingly accepted Jesus Christ as the Messiah, he could have and would have still performed the atonement—by suffering in the garden of Gethsemane and/or something similar to that. I think he could still have taken upon himself the sins of the world without requiring the Jewish people reject him at his first coming.

As you said, it’s hypothetical. But I tend to lean away from interpretations that require someone to sin in order for God’s plan to advance. It seems to remove genuine choice, and it seems to build one group’s eternal felicity on a foundation made of another person’s necessary punishment. For a discussion of this idea as related to the LDS doctrines of Satan, see this discussion.

The only person involved in the equation who could have prevented the atonement from happening was Jesus himself. And if he had chosen at any point to call the whole thing off, we would not be saved. No resurrection, no exaltation.

Everyone else involved was pretty much already pointed in the direction of Gethsemane and Calvary. Had some of the people involved decided to accept Jesus as the messiah, someone else would have crucified him. With human nature and God’s omniscience involved, the outcome was never in question.

Anyway, that’s the Mormon view. But don’t ask me to vigorously defend it in a debate, because I don’t personally have a dog in that fight. Other than the dog of hating stupidity and misinformation.

I think you gave a very uncharitable reading to Prufrock’s statement, where he wrote: “Regarding interfaith dialog, etc., in addition to appreciating anything that increases civility and service, I’m reminded that everyone involved is still waiting, in one way or another, to triumph over the others.”

You appear to imply that the triumph he’s referring to is one group of people dominating or convincing (or worse coercing) other individuals not of that group.

My take was that he was referring to the day in which everyone expects God to reveal the real “truth” to all, and as each group believes it has “the truth”, everyone expects that their group will be proven by God to be “the one true way.” IE, that God with vindicate or make known the one true way (ie, “my/our” church/religion).

I didn’t interpret his use of the word “triumph” to mean any form of person-over-person domination, but rather how everyone believes that _God_ will triumph (ie, the 2nd coming where all the baddies are killed off) and “true believers” will be vindicated. And, of course, every sincere believer thinks they are on God’s side.

Yet, they’re a pillar of the latter. Is that building the shaky on the shakier? Why not just apply an equal degree of critical honesty to both of them?

But with qualification: I have never applied that comparison, here or anywhere else, to the type of interfaith dialogue I have already acknowledged to have value. I apply it, as noted, to the nonsense of interfaith argument and bashing of the the type that, in her anti-Mormon evangelical youth, Ms. Jack espoused.

I’m surprised. A careful reading or reading of my original post shows it to be rather benign: an observation specific to obnoxious evangelical anti-Mormons (the kind Ms. Jack finally chose to leave); and being reminded of the religious triumphalism that exists in participants of interfaith dialogue. An awareness that first came to me during a 2-day interfaith conference of SDAs, Muslims and Jews.