Did Jesus really sacrifice himself for your sins?

[Lyfe]

It's from hadith. I tried to identify it through the footnotes but am unable to ATM. The book I copied it from is here, with a list of sources in the preface:

https://www.al-islam.org/shiite-anthology-sayyid-muhammad-husayn-tabatabai

The Tractate you posted starts out nicely enough, celebrating the universal Totality, but man it goes off the rails quickly. There's little comparison to the soundness of the Aristotelian(?) based Islamic preoccupation with the theme of Essence vs Attributes of the One. Even in their description of God in the TT you linked there's still a touch of anthropomorphism, these emotionally charged concepts such as father and son. Already by the 3rd section a person like myself is shocked at the to read such imaginative declarations:

Just as the Father exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no one else, and the one apart from whom there is no other unbegotten one, so too the Son exists in the proper sense, the one before whom there was no other, and after whom no other son exists. Therefore, he is a firstborn and an only Son, "firstborn" because no one exists before him and "only Son" because no one is after him.

...Not only did the Son exist from the beginning, but the Church, too, existed from the beginning. Now, he who thinks that the discovery that the Son is an only son opposes the statement (about the Church) because of the mysterious quality of the matter, it is not so. For just as the Father is a unity, and has revealed himself as Father for him alone, so too the Son was found to be a brother to himself alone, in virtue of the fact that he is unbegotten and without beginning. He wonders at himself, along with the Father, and he gives him(self) glory and honor and love. Furthermore, he too is the one whom he conceives of as Son, in accordance with the dispositions: "without beginning" and "without end." Thus is the matter something which is fixed. Being innumerable and illimitable, his offspring are indivisible. Those which exist have come forth from the Son and the Father like kisses, because of the multitude of some who kiss one another with a good, insatiable thought, the kiss being a unity, although it involves many kisses. This is to say, it is the Church consisting of many men that existed before the aeons, which is called, in the proper sense, "the aeons of the aeons." This is the nature of the holy imperishable spirits, upon which the Son rests, since it is his essence, just as the Father rests upon the Son.

Seriously? We're expected to ponder some guy's dreams and feel illuminated? This type of stuff about the Son, the Logos, Aenons and Archons- I add it to my list of other forced Christian doctrines/theories like Atonement theology. Maybe it's why small bands like the Valentinians were wiped out. I guess as I grow older Jewish cosmonology has less and less meaning to the levels of awareness I'm experiencing.

It's seems obvious that Islam arose as a refutation of Rabbinical Judaism and Byzantine Christianity. It was a natural and necessary correction that took over the minds of people in the region. The tales of Adam and Moses were kept alive but with a consistent, simplified message of understanding. There's always debate between philosophers and jurists but the proof of Islam's supremacy is the Muslim adherence to regular prayer, fasting, and charity- it's that simple. Christian doctrine is so far out... common people try to follow along and make it real in their own lives but the foundation is so unbelievable that it inevitably falls away.

Atonement and sacrifice theology is literally everywhere in the OT. You guys accept the OT, no?

 

[AdjeYen]

They can be considered identical. Both are the Primordial (/primal /primeval /perfect /original) Man, depending on which interpretation one follows; and the image of God. Adam as portrayed in Genesis is an allegory (that includes Noah and Abraham), which was the dominant interpretation in Christianity until the rise of Protestantism, describing the evolution of Man from his original to his fallen status, spiritually; Adam being Man as God intended, in His image. Jesus Christ is historical. In simpler though perhaps imprecise terms, one could think of it as Adam being God's mental blueprint of the Perfect Man, Jesus Christ being its manifestation in our world. The invisible image and the visible.

Trying to synthesize the historical perspectives is a difficult excercise. Regardless, this isn't something one needs to break his head over in search for salvation.

What's your source of this claim? Where does it come from?
No, it's not, but we, human beings, make things way more difficult and complicated than they should be. That's why I asked you about Adam being God's mental blueprint source because I have never heard of such a thing in my life before. It sounds like something a Buddhist would say.
Did you know that human beings are God's best creation? There's no "God's mental perfect man." It doesn't exist.

 

[Artful Revealer]

What's your source of this claim? Where does it come from?

There are many sources. It's been a prevalent idea throughout Judeo-Christian history.

An overview:

Spoiler: Primordial Man

Philo
The first to use the expression "original man," or "heavenly man," was Philo, in whose view the γενικός, or οὐράνιος ἄνθρωπος, "as being born in the image of God, has no participation in any corruptible or earthlike essence; whereas the earthly man is made of loose material, called a lump of clay."[1] The heavenly man, as the perfect image of the Logos, is neither man nor woman, but an incorporeal intelligence purely an idea; while the earthly man, who was created by God later, is perceptible to the senses and partakes of earthly qualities.[2] Philo is evidently combining philosophy and Midrash, Plato and the rabbis.

Setting out from the duplicate biblical account of Adam, who was formed in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and of the first man, whose body God formed from the earth (Genesis 2:7), he combines with it the Platonic theory of forms; taking the primordial Adam as the idea, and the created man of flesh and blood as the "image."

Pauline Christianity
The above-quoted Midrash is even of greater importance for the understanding of the Pauline Christology, as affording the key to Paul's doctrine of the first and second Adam. The main passage in Pauline Christology is 1 Corinthians 15:45–50. According to this there is a double form of man's existence; for God created a heavenly Adam in the spiritual world and an earthly one of clay for the material world. The first Adam was of flesh and blood and therefore subject to death—merely "a living soul"; the second Adam was "a life-giving spirit"—a spirit whose body, like the heavenly beings in general, is immaterial.

As a pupil of Gamaliel, Paul simply operates with conceptions familiar to the Palestinian theologians. Messiah, as the Midrash remarks, is, on the one hand, the first Adam, the original man who existed before Creation, his spirit being already present. On the other hand, Christ is the second, or Last Adam in so far as his bodily appearance followed the Creation. Adam, through Pauline Christology, was a pattern of the one to come. In Paul's Epistle to the Romans he writes: "14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come." [10]

The pattern of Adam, was that death came through a man, through sin, so all will die. The pattern of Christ the second Adam, was that all will be made alive through Christ. - 1 Corinthians 15: 21 - 22[11]

And in Paul's Epistle to the Colossians Paul also writes; "Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation."

With Philo the original man is an idea; with Paul He is the pre-existent Logos, and Wisdom of God, incarnate as the man Jesus Christ. With Philo the first man is the original man; Paul identifies the original man with the second Adam. The Christian Apostle evidently drew upon the Judean theology of his day; but it can not be denied that in ancient times this theology was indebted to the Alexandrians for many of its ideas, and probably among them for that of pre-existence. The Midrash thus considered affords a suitable transition to the Gnostic theories of the original man.

Clementine literature
It has been said that the Midrash already speaks of the spirit (πνεῦμα) of the first Adam or of the Messiah without, however, absolutely identifying Adam and Messiah. This identification could only be made by persons who regarded only the spirit of the Scripture (meaning, of course, their conception of it) and not the letter as binding. In such circles originated the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions, in which the doctrine of the original man (called also in the Clementine writings "the true prophet") is of prime importance. It is quite certain that this doctrine is of Judæo-Christian origin. The identity of Adam and Jesus seems to have been taught in the original form of the Clementine writings. The Homilies distinctly assert:[13]

If any one do not allow the man fashioned by the hands of God to have the holy spirit of Christ, is he not guilty of the greatest impiety in allowing another, born of an impure stock, to have it? But he would act most piously if he should say that He alone has it who has changed His form and His name from the beginning of the world, and so appeared again and again in the world until, coming to his own times, . . . He shall enjoy rest forever.

The Recognitions also lay stress upon the identity of Adam and Jesus; for in the passage[14] wherein it is mysteriously hinted that Adam was anointed with the eternal oil, the meaning can only be that Adam is the anointed (מָשִׁיחַ). If other passages in the "Recognitions" seem to contradict this identification they only serve to show how vacillating the work is in reference to the doctrine of the original man. This conception is expressed in true Philonic and Platonic fashion in i. 18, where it is declared that the "interna species" (ἰδέα) of man had its existence earlier. The original man of the Clementines is, therefore, simply a product of three elements, namely, Jewish theology, Platonic-Philonic philosophy, and Oriental theosophy; and this fact serves to explain their obscurity of expression on the subject.

Other Christian sects
In close relationship to the Clementine writings stand the Bible translator Symmachus and the Jewish-Christian sect to which he belonged. Victorinus Rhetor[15] states that "The Symmachiani teach Eum—Christum—Adam esse et esse animam generalem." The Jewish-Christian sect of the Elcesaites also taught (about the year 100) that Jesus appeared on earth in changing human forms, and that He will reappear.[16] That by these "changing human forms" are to be understood the appearances of Adam and the patriarchs is pointed out by Epiphanius,[17] according to whom the Jewish-Christian sects of Sampsæans, Ossenes, Nazarene, and Ebionites adopted the doctrine of the Elcesaites that Jesus and Adam are identical.

The "Primal Man" of the Elcesaites, was also, according to the conception of these Jewish Gnostics, of huge dimensions; viz., ninety-six miles in height and ninety-four miles in breadth; being originally androgynous, and then cleft in two, the masculine part becoming the Messiah, and the feminine part the Holy Ghost.[18]

Gnosticism
The Primeval Man (Protanthropos, Adam) occupies a prominent place in several Gnostic systems. In the Coptic Nag Hammadi texts, the archetypical Adam is known as Pigeradamas or Geradamas.[19] According to Irenaeus[20] the Aeon Autogenes emits the true and perfect Anthrôpos, also called Adamas; he has a helpmate, "Perfect Knowledge", and receives an irresistible force, so that all things rest in him. Others say[21] there is a blessed and incorruptible and endless light in the power of Bythos; this is the Father of all things who is invoked as the First Man, who, with his Ennoia, emits "the Son of Man", or Euteranthrôpos.[22]

According to Valentinus, Adam was created in the name of Anthrôpos and overawes the demons by the fear of the pre-existent man (tou proontos anthropou). In the Valentinian syzygies and in the Marcosian system we meet in the fourth (originally the third) place Anthrôpos and Ecclesia.[22]

In the Pistis Sophia the Aeon Jeu is called the First Man, he is the overseer of the Light, messenger of the First Precept, and constitutes the forces of the Heimarmene. In the Books of Jeu this "great Man" is the King of the Light-treasure, he is enthroned above all things and is the goal of all souls.[22]

According to the Naassenes, the Protanthropos is the first element; the fundamental being before its differentiation into individuals. "The Son of Man" is the same being after it has been individualized into existing things and thus sunk into matter.[22]

The Gnostic Anthrôpos, therefore, or Adamas, as it is sometimes called, is a cosmogonic element, pure mind as distinct from matter, mind conceived hypostatically as emanating from God and not yet darkened by contact with matter. This mind is considered as the reason of humanity, or humanity itself, as a personified idea, a category without corporeality, the human reason conceived as the World-Soul. The same idea, somewhat modified, occurs in Hermetic literature, especially the Poimandres.[22]

No, it's not, but we, human beings, make things way more difficult and complicated than they should be. That's why I asked you about Adam being God's mental blueprint source because I have never heard of such a thing in my life before. It sounds like something a Buddhist would say.
Did you know that human beings are God's best creation? There's no "God's mental perfect man." It doesn't exist.

When you create something - could be a painting, sculpture, whatever - does it not exist in your mind before it becomes real / perceivable in our observable, tangible dimension?