And why do you have some sort of need to call the statements lies? It is not as though Liberal was creating a screed to condemn Judaism. He mentioned one issue, in passing, that does not appear to be central to his own discussion. I have no problem with anyone pointing out that his dismissal of John’s use of the phrase is not in accord with the majority of scholarship. Once that point has been made, however, there is no point in hijacking the thread–or violating the rules of the forum–simply to harp on that matter.
You’ve made your point, now back off of the hijack. Your issue is really irrelevant to the thread.
And if you have some deep-seated need to hurl insults, yoiu can open up your own thread in the BBQ Pit to hurl them.
= = =
Look, this series of threads has gone on for a couple of months, now. The participation in each thread has been
Part 1: 134 posts, with 8 serious posters and 2,509 views
Part 2: 55 posts, with 5 serious posters and 1,156 views
Part 3: 72 posts, with 4 serious posters and 1,261 views
Part 4: 57 posts, with 10 or so posters, and 1,302 views.
Given that at least four of the posters have been consistent through the several threads, we have an enormous viewer to poster ratio. There are obviously a number of people who are demonstrating some interest in this series of threads, just the way they have developed so far.
Hijacking the thread and hurling insults to contest a rather minor point is not going to be permitted. If you feel that the matter is more important, open a separate thread to debate it.
I would certainly agree that the tack Liberal has taken with regard to the biblical exigesis in not in accord with any major path of critical review. I would also acknowledge that I find his sidebar discussion unfortunate in that it provides an opportunity for folks with differing views to voice them in the middle of a different discussion. Given that he is not trying to establish an historical position, but a philosophical one, it is pretty clear that such a point is not relevant to the central discussion of the thread. You are welcome to point out the difference. You are not welcome to harp on the matter and disrupt the thread.
This is not a matter of Liberal dictating the content of the thread. This is a matter of not permitting an ongoing discussion to be disrupted over issues that are outside the scope of the discussion.
I can’t respond to your questions here because of the new rule that any discussion of any mod action be in ATMB, so I’ll respond to you fully there.
But the short answer is “No. I will not stop posting in this thread.” It’s not a hijack to address bigoted bullshit. Simply being a mod doesn’t allow you to make up rules on the fly to protect a poster who can’t handle being called on his…um…errors…and it’s a long standing SDMB rule that an OP does NOT own a thread (see the cite above).
I hope I’m not banned over this, but at the same time, bigotry shouldn’t be allowed to stand unanswered.
That was hardly hurling insults. It was a condemnation of a toothless threat on his part.
This is hardly a minor point. If, as Liberal asserts, this is a series of threads based on a shared interpretation of a set of writings, then those interpretations are indeed central to the discussion. The authorship of the writings is a key to understanding and interpreting them in anything approaching a reasonable manner.
The second source of our knowledge is this passage from the Beloved.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. […snip…] The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John 1:1&14
It is clear, at least to me, that in this passage, John is saying that Jesus is God incarnate among men.
The third source of our knowledge is this passage
“We are not stoning you for any of these,” replied the Jews [who had picked up stones to throw], “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”
Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are gods’? If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?
John 10:33-36
The NIV notes that the Law to which Jesus refers is this:
“I [God] said, ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’”
Psalm 82:6
There are, in these passages, I believe two separate statements. The overriding one (or more precisely, the more important one) is the establishment of Jesus directly claiming to be God. But a second, and almost equally important point is the proclamation that we all are gods. Now, the capitalization really doesn’t matter, but the plurality might according to some “scholars”. The typical comment about this passage is that we are gods in some sense — sort of lesser gods than God Himself.
But that brings us to the fourth source of our knowledge:
"My prayer is not for them [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
John 17:20-21
It is my understanding from this passage that we are not mere lesser gods, but that we all are one with God, just as the Word was with God. (previously cited) The notion that I take from the Beloved is that Jesus teaches we are on an equal footing with Him and His father, spiritual-wise (as opposed to physical-wise.)
There is also the very critical proclamation that we are in Him and His Father, just as They are in one another.
This is the fifth source of our knowledge:
I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12
Jesus again elevates man to His level (the spiritual component of man — please don’t forget that we established the dual nature of man as both animal and spirit in the Metphysics and Ontology thread, Part III).
And finally, this is the sixth source of our knowledge, involving Jesus washing the feet of his disciples:
When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. "You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.
John 13:12-17
This passage seems pretty straightforward to me. Jesus is humbling Himself before man, and without waiving off His standing as Teacher and Lord. He is telling man that he should follow His example of serving his fellow man. It is service that a good master does. To be God is to serve man. God finds man to be aesthetically valuable.
Do these interpretations seem reasonable? Pertinent questions or comments?
That would be true if the goal were to interpret the writings as the writer intended them to be interpreted. But that is not the goal. The goal is for me to explain how I interpret the writings sui generis, as I said before — in other words, interpretations that are independent and unique in and of themselves, and for participants to express whether my interpretations are reasonable in their own view. I welcome the participation of anyone who understands the definitions of the terms in the same way I do, and who fundamentally agrees with the nature of existence and reality as I explained them in Part III. I welcome them to comment on my interpretations (including you, if you are included in that group).
First, my suggestion for how you might want to reapproach developing the thesis was in the context of your having abandoned the thread. I have never undertaken to tell you how to conduct the thread, although I have thoughts on the subject, as I don’t consider that my prerogative.
Second, pointing out you’re doing an exegesis in Part IV rather than epistemology isn’t a derailment. If nothing else, it helps lurkers follow the discussion. Epistemology has a settled meaning. What you’re doing is something else. And, yes, your explanation of what you’re setting out to do helps.
Third, this isn’t just semantics. You’ve moved into substance, while calling it a preliminary. If you want to say “these are the Scriptures on which I rely and how I interpret them,” fine. If you want to say only people who agree with those interpretations may participate, I believe that exceeds your right as the OP. Also, interpretations which sound fine in the abstract (and, so far, everything you’ve posited sounds okay in the abstract) doesn’t mean they go through when applied in a specific context.
Fourth, for the balance of discussion, I shall make such remarks as I see fit. You may acknowledge, dispute or reject them as you like. Others, including lurkers, may take a different view. It’s a GD thread. You don’t get to tell me what I may and may not say. Tom, of course, does have that prerogative. Feel free to report anything you think is out of line. I’ll take Tom’s instructions and suggestions without objection or fuss.
Fifth, further to Post #52, if you think this thesis will be persuasive to non-Christians, you’re kidding yourself. You might persuade us it’s internally consistent. More than that would require you to establish John’s authority, which you have pointedly declined to do.
Well, although you make a good point about being God, but certainly at that time, one could be Jewish and believe Jesus was the Messiah. There have been several Jewish Messiahs, here’s a long list:
"Among the Chabad Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judaism, there was a growing messianic fervour in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to the belief that their Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson was about to reveal himself to be the messiah. Schneerson died in 1994 and some of his followers still believe he will be the messiah and will reveal himself when the time is right. A few years before he died, rabbi Schneerson accepted a delegation of non Hassidic Rabbi’s who came to ask him general and specific questions. One of the questions was if he was the Messiah.Rabbi Schneerson vehemently denied the assumption."
Are those Jews who believe Rabbi Schneerson was or even is the messiah no longer Jewish? At what time does belief in a particular potential messiah make one non- Jewish? Who revokes their Jewishness, can they be excommunicated?:dubious:
Certainly at some point in time most of the “adherents of Jesus as the Messiah” = Christians, but most of those were gentiles at that point anyway.
I don’t believe you and I have any problems with one another that we can’t overcome on our own. But to be clear, at least let me correct one misimpression. I never meant to say that participants must agree with my interpretations. In fact, I have specifically called upon participants to discuss my interpretations — but on the basis on which they are made. In se. Independent of any alleged intentions by their source, whether John or some other actual author. At stake here is not whether John said what or when or what his religion was or would have been, and so on. At stake is whether we can or cannot come to an agreement on what the quoted passages can mean to a reasonable person, irrespective of their authorship. Any argument about their authorship is moot, since nobody really knows who wrote it. I call the writer John the Beloved merely by tradition. In other words, it is not the authorship that I am interpreting. It’s the words.
If you feel that any of my specific interpretations are far-fetched or even outright wrong, this is the time and place to say so. And we will work together, as we have done in the other three threads, to come to an understanding that we can both be satisfied with. Once again, I cannot stress enough what a superior debate we will all have if we all are of one mind upon the matter of what we are talking about. If I say “aesthetics”, and you think I mean beauty, then confusion and equivocation ensue. Likewise, if I think John 1 is a statement about the eternal nature of Jesus, but you think it is something else, then when I refer to John 1 in the debate, there will be a derailment of the thread as we rehash what John 1 implies, when we should be examining the validity (and soundness) of my argument.
So, fire away. I only ask that you do so in the spirit of the thread; i.e., for the point of understanding me. Not just for the point of arguing with me. If you need to argue to understand, that’s fine. But understanding is the goal.
Those are good points, and points that Tom has made elsewhere. I would add also that there were Jews in particular (Gentiles would have been unconcerned with this politic) who opposed Jesus upon learning that He had no intention of being their leader in the sense of riding into Jerusalem to do battle with the Romans. They were the Zealots of the time, or so I’ve read.
At this point, I believe that the point has been clearly established that John the Beloved presented Jesus as God incarnate, and the spiritual side of man as His co-equal. Certainly, more scriptures are available if needed for further convincing. But what I’ve quoted should suffice for a consensus.
There are quite many epistemic claims yet to be made, but as I said before, it will take time to search them out and paste them cleanly here, not to mention giving time to thoughtful interpretations of them. So there’ll be plenty of fascination left before the debate, DrDeth.
Great. Thanks, MrDibble. I have to figure out right now why UPS cannot seem to get a shipping charge correctly figured from Texas to New Zealand. But soon thereafter, I hope to begin giving you plenty to catch up on. Enjoy your trip!
Liberal, I’m down with what you said in Post #66. Reviewing the thread (meaning Part IV) with a better understanding of what you’re trying to achieve in this section, I have a few questions and comments.
First, how do you justify relying solely on the Johannine Gospel? There are, after all, three others, plus Paul (who also calls his message a gospel). If we are trying to answer the question of whether God/Jesus uses an aesthetic system (as defined here), those seem as pertinent as John.
Second, in Post #15, you asserted, “Goodness [presumably, as defined here] is not possible without God, and vice-versa. It’s a biconditional implication.” Have you demonstrated that somewhere and I missed it? Or is that yet to come?
Third, in Post #26, you asserted, “what God values aesthetically above all else is goodness, and so goodness is in that sense linked to God,” second that, “God is unconcerned with the serial killer’s moral depravity. He (God) is in fact unconcerned in general with the morality of the serial killer (as we have defined morality). God does not judge the serial killer’s morality or moral code. Neither does His Son, Jesus,” and third that “God is not concerned with actions. Rather, he is concerned with what people value.” You state the second assertion has been supported already, but I can’t find it; please refresh my recollection. As for the first and third, again, have you demonstrated those somewhere and I missed them?
Fourth, I earlier made the point you are equivocating on the word morality. I made that an aside in small type, as I considered it substance and appropriately left to Part V. You have since made clear that substance at the level of Scriptural interpretation is not only appropriate in this section but preferred, so I raise the issue again. Isn’t the story of the adultrous woman (see Post #36) a question of ethical judgment (as defined here) rather than morality? While we’re at it, can’t the same thing be said of the serial killer?
I can’t express how thankful I am that you actually took the time to review the thread as requested. In return for your thoughtfulness, what I will do is post all the definitions at the beginning of Part V from all the previous threads, I - IV. That way, you can know the definitions agreed upon without having to read the entire series, but will still have the opportunity to go back for context whenever you need it. Besides, I believe that definitions should precede any argument (or loose proof). It was good enough for Euclid, so it’s good enough for me.
I’m not sure that I can justify it per se, but I can give you the reason. You may or may not consider it to be justification, but if you had asked simply “Why are you using (mostly) John?”, I would have answered this way: it is because of the nature of my conversion experience and how I’ve dealt with my faith subsequently.
Billy Graham once observed that if a person had access to no scripture other than John, he could be “saved”. (I quote the term because he did not use it in the same sense that I defined it earlier.) And as it happens, it was during the process of translating the book of John that my own conversion occurred. There are, as you say, supporting scriptures elsewhere, but I really don’t need (all of) them. (I do use some.)
For me, my conversion experience was sudden and thorough. One moment, I had a particular worldview, and the next moment, my worldview was almost completely changed. It is a difficult situation to describe , but I suppose the best way you could imagine it (assuming there might be no common frame of reference between us) is a smoker waking up one morning and realizing, to her great surprise, that she is a non-smoker. She has no desire for a cigarette, and it is as though, in her mind, the addiction is some distant and foggy memory. She looks at life now as a non-smoker does. She no longer even thinks about taking smoke breaks, or making a run to the tobacco store, or whatever. There is no appeal nor attraction whatsoever with respect to smoking.
That is sort of how it was for me, but it happened while I was wide awake (though, granted, I was stoned on pot, and in a minivan full of hippies).
It was disorienting to say the least. Just as the smoker might slip up and walk outside one morning, only to realize, “What the hell did I come out here for?”, I had similar experiences early on. But being, as I am, interested in philosophy and logic, it wasn’t long before I set out to formulate my faith as almost a deductive system. The trigger for it all had been the previously quoted John 8:58.
I can’t tell you why it happened, nor why it happened the way it happened, nor why John was any different from any other book (except that it was the only one I had on hand, it was in Greek, and it was some time before I even knew what it was that I was translating.) I’ve given details of this story so many times that I’m sure you’ve probably heard it all before, so I won’t go into all that.
But that’s why John. It’s because John is meaningful to me and to my faith, and most of the premises I have made with respect to my faith either are found directly in John (or a few other sources), or are, in my mind at least, directly implied. My premises are formed like all others: inductively. There is no other way to form premises. If they were deduced, they would be inferences.
And so… since this is my witness, and my particular “brand” (undefined) of Christianity is so very different from the mainstream, I wanted to share with people the meat of it. But to do so first required a mutual understanding of terms and concepts. My faith is not really expressable using traditional mainstreams terms like “salvation” or “love” or “sin” with the meanings they have in, say, a typical Baptist sermon.
So, it became a project for me that I wanted people to understand what I believe and why. By its very nature, that is witnessing. But I wanted to approach it a bit differently. I wanted to divide the topics into philosophical pieces, separating aesthetics from metaphysics, for example, so that there would be some context for the terms. I did not want to dive into a long explanation of what I believe and why I believe it, leaving people scratching their heads about my use of “sin” to mean “that which obstructs love”. Or my use of “goodness” to mean “that which edifies”.
It is not necessarily the case that John (or any other source) said something like, “Goodness is that which edifies”. Rather, it was a definition that was necessary to explain (to myself and others) my worldview. If “goodness” were to mean “that which satisfies God’s moral code”, then it would mean absolutely nothing to me. It would not apply to my faith, and it is my faith that I am attempting to share.
Therefore, my idea was to take whatever time would be necessary, and use as organized a means as possible, to familiarize people with what I mean by what I say BEFORE I spell it all out. That way, when you read the OP in Part V, there will be no confusion about what goodness, or love, or reality, or any of that stuff means when I say it. It was, as I’ve said often now, an attempt at having a discussion in which all parties mutually understand the terms used by all other parties. It isn’t just religion in which discussions (or debates) fall apart and fly all over the place simply because Geroge means one thing when he says X and Jane infers something quite different.
And so, it is really nothing more than the application of Ockham’s Razor that I use John as my primary epistemic source. Very little else is necessary. And in fact, there are statements and implications made by Paul and others (and on rare occasions, even John) with which I disagree. I consider the Bible to be one guide among many guides (including other books and the Holy Spirit Himself). I do not believe it is infallible; nor do I believe it is “The Word of God”, so to speak.
I hope that helps you better to understand why I have selected John.
It is yet to come. The demonstration, I mean. The post you reference was a direct response to a direct question, but I believe it is a reasonable deduction, and will be a part of the OP in V. Briefly, however, I don’t think it will hurt anything to say that since God is that which facilitates or conveys goodness (by definition) and goodness is that which He values the most (by axiom), then it follows that without God there would be nothing conveyed and therefore no goodness (since nothing implies the absence of everything including goodness); and likewise, were there no goodness, then God, as the facilitator of nothing, would have nothing to do and in fact no reason to exist. Therefore, God may be considered the very source of goodness since, without Him, none would flow. And likewise, goodness may be considered the very source of God since, without it, He would not be God.
I wanted to share that bit with you, not just to portend Part V, but to demonstrate why my definitions are so important. If goodness is nothing more than a part of God’s moral code, then no conveyance of it is necessary (or even possible, since it is internalized) except as a code of ethics, which He requires man to follow because, well, because who knows. It turns into the reward/punishment nature of faith, which is anathema to my own. It becomes a convenient context in which men (religious leaders) can manipulate other men (who fear punishment) into doing things like handing over money.
If I have your enumerations right, the second assertion is supported in the post you linked to earlier, number 15. There, you’ll find:
“Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.” — John 5:22
And…
“You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one.” — John 8:15
Both are Jesus speaking: His Father judges no one, and neither does He (even though He is authorized to do so).
The first assertion was made as an application of the philosophical principle of transitivity, i.e. A implies B; B implies C; therefore, A implies C. That, again, I would have saved for Part V, but it was a direct answer to a direct question, and even then was only a supposition. It is found in post number 26, when Revenant Threshold asks me whether edification and that which God aesthetically values are “intrinsically linked”. As you can see, I refrained from saying that they were linked intrinsically, but only possible by transitivity. The main point I was making in that response was the fact that God’s aesthetical evaluations are volitional; that is, He is a free moral agent like any other.
The third assertion is implied by the verse previously quoted from John, in which Jesus commands that we love one another. He in fact formulates it as a “new command” in another verse from John, just after He washes His disciples’ feet:
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
John 13:34-35
As I define love, Jesus is saying to edify one another, or value one another aesthetically. Therefore, God is concerned not with how you behave, but with what you value. I will be presenting here more epistemic sources of Jesus engaging in behavior that the religious leaders of the time consider to be sinful, or unclean. The fact that God Incarnate behaves in ways that His own alleged representatives consider to be wrong is a fairly strong indicator that behavior is not his strictest concern. Here is one of those rare sources outside John to help illustrate the point:
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
[…snip…]
Then [Jesus] said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
Mark 2:23-24&27
I think it is both. We spent the entire span of Part II discussing the difference between morality and ethics, including how a code of ethics might often derive directly from one or more moral codes. We also discussed how aesthetic decisions are ultimately based on moral codes — that is, we tend to value what we consider to be good. Again, leaving John:
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Luke 12:34
In other words, it goes the other way as well. Your essence (your heart) may be identified by what you value.
In the case of the adulterous woman, she was violating the ethical code of the community, certainly. That is why they wanted her punished. But the reason they brought her to Jesus (as you can see if you read the passage in full) was to put Him in an impossible bind. Either He would say to go ahead and stone her, since that was the law, or else He would defy the law, making Himself a criminal. (Which He did eventually anyway, but not at this time.) Instead of appealing to their ethical code, however, He took a third approach which they had not anticipated. He appealed to their consciences — their moral codes. He called upon any on them who believed they were sinless to throw the first stone. Note that the first to drop their stones and leave were the eldest, because their wisdom and life experience told them almost right away that they were not morally perfect. In fact, it is not at all unlikely that many of the stone holders had been intimate with her. And so, they had called upon Jesus to make an ethical judgment, and His response was to call upon them to make a moral one — about themselves.
Since there are no intervening posts, I’m not going to bother with the quote function. Besides, most of this really relates to Part V, so I’d like to close out the discussion as quickly as possible, so you can go back to posting the Scriptures on which you rely and finish Part IV.
Why John? Thank you for the explanation. Doubtless you have posted this before, but not in a thread in which I participated. And I understand about sudden conversions. My deconversion from Christianity was sudden and wholly unexpected. One reason I raised the question is that it seems to me the other Gospels (including Paul) take rather a different tack on many of the points you raise. Whether God is concerned with actions, for example.
Goodness requires God. If you’re saying goodness (as defined here) requires God, that would be assuming the conclusion. In fact, as developed in Part II, God was not part of the definition. If you’re saying, God by definition facillitates goodness (not sure where that happened), it doesn’t follow that one can’t have goodness without God. On the contrary, I’m quite certain edification (as defined here) happens all the time without God. Let’s leave this for Part V.
God aesthetically values goodness. Obviously, this is a very important point. Frankly, the brief development did nothing for me. I’ll wait for Part V.
God doesn’t judge. I’m familiar with those passages, of course, but it seems to me complicated. After all, for example, Jesus does instruct the adultrous woman not to sin anymore (sin as ordinarily defined). Whether this is an aesthetic, moral or ethical judgment as defined here can be mooted. But it seems clear some sort of judgment is being made. Also, that this is better left to Part V.
God not concerned with actions. To be blunt, I don’t think this can be sustained, even if we stick to John. Jesus’ instruction to the adultrous woman says otherwise. The commandment to love one another also entails action. And, as mentioned, the other Gospels are replete with instructions to do or not do things. See, e.g., the Sermon on the Mount. Whether Christians are redeemed by faith alone is another question. But that God is concerned with actions seems to me obvious. Also, you have yet to demonstrate that Jesus (and John) meant love as you have defined the term.
Ethics v. morality. Yes, I followed that thread, and have reviewed it a couple times. My point is that you have many times (that was only one) declared “we can’t make moral judgments” without accounting for the fact that morality is specially defined here. I like the distinction, but it does leave us the legitimate right to make ethical judgments. (Even if God does not.) Also, I think we can and do make moral judgments secondary to ethical ones. For example, we condemn Michael Vick in the first instance on ethical grounds, i.e., running a dog fighting ring. But, we may temper or harden our condemnation based on whether we think he repents (a moral judgment) or is just saying what he has to say to get back into professional football.
PBear, thanks for your comments. I think you’re right that much of what we (you and I) are discussing is best suited for the debate. However, I did want to clear up one misperception and make one point. First, when I say that God is not concerned with actions, I do not mean that God doesn’t care whether you help an old lady or murder her. I simply mean that He knows that whatever action you take will depend on how and in what way you value her, and so that therefore in comparison to the actions taken by people, He is more interested in what they value, since, as Revenant Threshold and I discussed, actions (or, for that matter, inactions) are a direct result of aesthetical judgments. I’m not excluding His concern with actions, but merely subordinating it for the reasons given.
Second, with respect to definitions, I tried to make it plain in my previous post that my definitions (of love, for example) are not necessarily themselves drawn from scripture, but rather are necessary to explain my interpretations of scripture. It may well be, for all I know, that by “love” John meant “an erotic attraction”. But as I keep saying, I am not concerned with what John (or whoever it was) intended to say. I am concerned with the words as I read them. My goal here is to explain my faith to people. That’s why I call it “witnessing”. How I define the terms I use is utterly critical to a genuine understanding.
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.
John 3:19-21
This is another reference to aesthetics as we have defined it (of what value is the Light to us?), but this time there is both a decision and a consequence. The decision is whether we value darkness over light (or vice-versa), and the consequence is that we will avoid the Light if we value darkness, but will approach the Light if we value It. My interpretation is that the Light is Jesus.
Our next source is this passage, which takes place as Jesus (a Jew) converses with a woman (a Samaritan). The two, by tradition, are not supposed to interact:
The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”
“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”
Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
John 4:9-13
It is my interpretation that the eternal ontological nature of Jesus (and us) is reiterated above. But in addition to that, I interpret that he valued the woman more than he valued the opinions of religious leaders about associating with Samaritans. Finally, it is noteworthy that He offers eternal life to someone who is not Jewish.
Last in this series is this passage:
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:25:26
I can’t imagine it being interpreted any differently than Jesus declaring that He is the Messiah, or the Christ.
If there is disagreement about these interpretations, please let me know. Or comments, or whatever.
How you define terms is critical to an understanding of your beliefs, yes. But it is equally critical to know how you are shoehorning your definitions into the texts that you claim to be deriving support from. You can say over and over that you are unconcerned with what the author of these texts mean by the word ‘love’, but then how is that you can care what he says about love? If he is talking about a concept that is far removed from the one that you are talking about, then what he says has no bearing on your topic.
So, when you write:
This makes no sense. There is no basis for your claim to this meaning for the supposed words of Jesus, because it is the author of John who wrote that, not you. He has imbued those words with meaning (or, more likely, chose them for their meaning), not you.
Again though, this comes down to knowing the source. Why would it be noteworthy that he is offering his brand of salvation to a non-Jew if, as we can reasonably see, this Gospel is aimed at a non-Jewish audience? Of course the author would want to create as many situations as possible in which he could present a picture of an inclusive religion. Once more it comes down to understanding the text for what it is, not in trying to read something more into it.
