----- Original Message ----- From: "Sue Bolton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "aleggett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:42 PM Subject: Re: The Bible.
Hi Allan, Thank you for your reply. I read the attachment you sent on John 14:6, and wish to ask you some question and make a few comments: When you say that "Most Biblical scholars today will argue that it is unlikely that any of the words in John's gospel that are supposedly said by Jesus are unlikely to have come from his mouth", could you qualify that? By "most scholars" do you mean most members of the Jesus Seminar, or...? Certainly the members of the Jesus Seminar are united on this point, but it is not new and Catholic Scholars going back to the early 20th century raised doubts about the authenticity of the Jesus sayings in John's Gospel. Rudolf Schnackenburg in his 1965 3 Volume commentary on John's gospel certainly supports it as does, I believe, (although I can't be certain of it,) Raymond Brown. There are at least 2 very stong arguements for this. The first one is that the words of Jesus in this Gospel are always of the same literary type as the auther himself. The second is that the Jesus of John's gospel stands in stark contrast to the Jesus of the synoptics. In the synoptics, the central proclomation of Jesus is the Kingdom of God. John only refers to this once in 3:3,5. In John, the central proclomation of Jesus is himself. (I am.....) As our lecturer put it at college, in the synoptics, there is a sort of messanic secret that is not openly revealed until the crucifixion (in Mark's Gospel at least) whereas in John's Gospel J seems to be running around everywhere proclaiming himself as the incarnation of God. Either the synoptics have managed to capture the essence of Jesus sayings or John has but it is difficult to claim that both of them have unless Jesus had a split personality. The scholars are pretty well united that it is John's gospel that has missed the mark. Although you've said elsewhere that we cannot pick and choose what parts of the Bible we take seriously, you don't recognise the integrity of John's gospel. Eg John 20: 30-31 says: "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." The Greek word translated here as 'believe' apparently occurs 98 times in this gospel. You say, "Jesus is seen as *an* expression of God's love", whereas the author of this gospel clearly believes that he is *the* expression of God's love. I don't need to remind you of John 3: 16! You say, "The way of love is universal. It is not restricted to any belief structure or religion........ The way of love is advocated by other religions also as being the way to complete fulness of life." I agree that the capacity to love and be loved is universal, part of our humanity, but Christianity is the only world religon that makes love the #1 priority and teaches that it is initiated by God. Only Sufis, Bahais, and certain nineteenth century forms of Hinduism come anywhere near that, and they have all been influenced by Christianity to a greater or lesser extent. I don't entirely disagree with you here although I don't know enough about other religions and their teachings to go to far into it. I have, however, found a number of teachings and sayings that have come from different traditions that speak loudly of the importance of love. I'm also unsure of your statement about the influence from Christianity. It is really only in later times that I can see a strong reference to the centrality of unconditional and sacrificial love being proclaimed generally in Christian teaching. Our history books tell us that fear has been a more central theme and certainly the actions of such things as the crusades, inquisisition, burning of witches, torturing people into conversion etc hardy speak of a religion that was motivated by love. What's more, it is only Christ who taught that we have to love our enemy and gives us the capacity to do so. [There's a Buddhist teaching about love appeasing hatred, but is that possible through meditation alone?] Please understand, in saying that "Christ is the Way...", I'm not saying I believe only "Christians" are "saved". "No one comes to the Father except by Me" is a mystery I leave to God and Eternity! Grace & Peace Allan ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
