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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Promise or threat?
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
John 14
What’s the difference between a promise and a threat?
It’s a simple question, of course, but one with far-reaching implications. Consider: “I will always love you,” is a promise. Clear enough. But what if one says instead, “I will always love you if you love me.” Hmm. There’s still the vestige of a promise there, but now it is a conditional one. And lurking behind the condition is an implied threat: “And if you don’t love me -- or perhaps even, love me as I think you should -- then I won’t love you.”
In this passage, Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” So here’s the question: is that a promise or a threat? Of late, a lot of Christians hear it mostly as threat. Sure, there’s a promise about being joined to the Father, but one that is simultaneously exclusionary and conditional. And that’s where the threat comes in. “If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re finished.” Or even, “If you don’t believe in Jesus the right way, your salvation may be in doubt.”
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who has lived with this passage as threat and, as a result, fears for the salvation of a loved one now lost to them that they are not sure believed in the right way?
How do you respond?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I'm having a hard time seeing the conditionality-cum-threat in this verse.
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Roselyn
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# 17859
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Posted
I see this as a statement of fact. Jesus is talking to people who know him. What it might mean for me or a person living in Australia in 33 AD is not addressed here. This means that other parts of the bible are needed to explain what this fact says or implies in all the different circumstances which occur in the world Jesus came to save. This passage and many others have been used by miserable people to hurt others. In this they have sinned.
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Anglican_Brat
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# 12349
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Posted
It's noteworthy that elsewhere in John (Sorry, too lazy to dig up the reference) Jesus says that if you don't believe in me, believe in the works that he does.
How I interpret John 14:6 is that it tells me to trust in Jesus, because (See above) He has performed works of transformation and healing, both then and now. John 14:6 tells me to trust ultimately only Jesus, since He reveals to me and to the disciples, the way to God.
Whether this occurs to anyone else, is a different question all together. John 14:6 perhaps understood slightly differently, can be presented by the Christian community to mean "We've found the way based on our experience and our understanding. We've found a way through Jesus Christ. But we can only speak for us, not anyone else."
This way, we can both affirm the centrality of Jesus Christ for us, as well as recognizing that others do not feel or experience God the same way.
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
I'm not sure the number of mansions in our Fathers house makes much difference to the "promise or threat?" question. Jesus is the Way to the Father, no one can get to the Father but by Him ... what does it matter how many rooms there are when we get there?
I'd admit that it might suggest the number of people who follow the Way might be larger than some sects suggest.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Gramps49
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# 16378
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Posted
My pastor sure took the Gospel Lesson in a different direction than I had expected. He pointed out that the Johannine Community saw the passage much differently than we interpret it today.
Today we commonly see the passage as referring to the hereafter--that when we die we will be given our own room in the heavenly mansion.
However, the first readers of John understood it to be a more evangelistic passage. The Father's House was actually present day earth, and the many rooms were the different countries of the day: Greece, Turkey, Persia, and even counties unknown at the time, like the Americas. When Jesus says he is going to prepare a place for us, he meant that he is going into these countries to get them ready for the disciples to carry out the mission. Jesus, in other words, is assuring the disciples that as they carry the Good News into the remotest parts of the earth they will find Jesus already there, waiting for them.
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W Hyatt
Shipmate
# 14250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
In this passage, Jesus says “No one comes to the Father except through me.” So here’s the question: is that a promise or a threat? Of late, a lot of Christians hear it mostly as threat. Sure, there’s a promise about being joined to the Father, but one that is simultaneously exclusionary and conditional. And that’s where the threat comes in. “If you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re finished.” Or even, “If you don’t believe in Jesus the right way, your salvation may be in doubt.”
That's an awful lot to put on two words ("through me"), especially given how much of the whole chapter is so difficult to pin down as to a precise meaning.
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A new church and a new earth, with Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life.
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
My pastor sure took the Gospel Lesson in a different direction than I had expected. He pointed out that the Johannine Community saw the passage much differently than we interpret it today.
Today we commonly see the passage as referring to the hereafter--that when we die we will be given our own room in the heavenly mansion.
However, the first readers of John understood it to be a more evangelistic passage. The Father's House was actually present day earth, and the many rooms were the different countries of the day: Greece, Turkey, Persia, and even counties unknown at the time, like the Americas. When Jesus says he is going to prepare a place for us, he meant that he is going into these countries to get them ready for the disciples to carry out the mission. Jesus, in other words, is assuring the disciples that as they carry the Good News into the remotest parts of the earth they will find Jesus already there, waiting for them.
I've never heard it put that way before, but I like it.
I grew up with the threat side of this. The verse really was used to point to an exclusion. My sisters and I grew up praying for the salvation of our Catholic relatives, for example.
Personally, I take that verse (now) to be a statement of fact: if anyone comes to the Father, it's through Jesus. That might not look like we expect it to. But Jesus is the mechanism, if you will. Just like you don't have to understand how your lungs provide oxygen to your blood and organs, or even know that you have lungs, in order to breathe, I think you don't necessarily have to know about Jesus, much less approach him according to a one-size-fits-all formula, in order for him to be the means through which you come to the Father.
That has to do with my christology and soteriology. I believe we're saved because "God became human so that humans might become divine." It's the incarnation that saves us. So no matter how one reaches God, they do so because God became human, thus raising human nature into the very life of the Holy Trinity. Without that union, there's an uncrossable gap between Creator and us mortal creatures.
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
That's a way-off the wall interpretation.
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Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
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Posted
Like others, I've watched / listened / read the debates over the years over this whole exclusive/inclusive thing – especially since the famous “anonymous Christian” phrase was popularised by Karl Rahner (not that he published it in English, of course!)
I can't help but feel, however, that the desire to interpret the relevant biblical passages inclusively owes more to a limited outworking of Troeltsch's European liberalism than to contextual hermeneutics. I can't see how the biblical authors would have understood their own writings as saying that someone could be in loyal relationship with God without any conscious loyalty to Jesus. The world view of the time was different and the writings reflect this.
That moves the question to another arena: granted John expected his hearers to take a conscious decision of loyalty to Jesus (as opposed to any other 'name'), can that (and other biblical texts) be parked to one side in favour of a reflective understanding of how God works based more on 19th and 20th century western European worldviews?
A different question, but one that will inevitably bounce back from the modern era to the first century again.
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Anglican_Brat
Shipmate
# 12349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
That's a way-off the wall interpretation.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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It's Reformation Day! Do your part to promote Christian unity and brotherly love and hug a schismatic.
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I can't see how the biblical authors would have understood their own writings as saying that someone could be in loyal relationship with God without any conscious loyalty to Jesus.
I think I'd agree with this. As a historian, I can't see this as anything other than an exclusive text. Or, it might be better to say: a spur to evangelistic activity.
But, as a theologian, I observe that God in his providence left the kind of ambiguity that churchgeek's reading can legitimately take advantage of, and find the reading very attractive. I don't think the Church is limited to historically originalist readings.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
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Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Any implications for Judaism? Was the audience for the written down gospel - at the time it was written down - intending something about the parent faith of Judaism? Is the parent faith null and void thereby the sorts of exclusivism that result from the "only way" interpretation? Finally, did Jesus actually say this or was this put into his mouth by an inspired writer?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nigel M:
I can't see how the biblical authors would have understood their own writings as saying that someone could be in loyal relationship with God without any conscious loyalty to Jesus.
By the same token, there are some exegeses of Paul that don't just ride roughshod over what the biblical (OT) authors must have meant, but slice it up, jump up and down on it, piss on it, and pour alcohol on the wounds.
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
I know normally we don't post sermons on this site, but since my pastor is proposing such a different interpretation of the passage, I thought I would put a link to his sermon so you can hear him out yourself.
http://www.trinitypullman.org/storage/The%20Many%20Rooms%20of%20God.mp3
Yesterday I spoke with him about it, he said he came across the idea a few years ago. Once he can find the background material he will share it with me.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Nigel M
Shipmate
# 11256
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Posted
Some (present-)age old issues raised in this discussion! A couple of lines of thought come to mind.
Firstly, on the proposal that Jesus' statement recorded by John in 14:2-3 (“In my father's house are many resting places...”) refers to 'countries'.
An interesting one. I wondered though if the semantic range of the English term “country” maps adequately across to the concept John was using?
The very familiar Jewish (and wider Semitic) phrase Bet 'Av – house of the father (father's house) – was in a context of the covenantal worldview and referred to lineage. The term 'house' was the metaphor for that hierarchical lineage, with the patriarch (more usually pater than mater) at the top and those with blood tie relationships underneath. It could be a small hierarchy of a father and his immediate family, but that unit was then subsumed into the large set of families in a related clan, up through the tribe, the nation, possibly up to empire, and ultimately to the god. The structure was retained because it ensured stability, peace, and consequently a better chance of health and wealth.
The second term, 'room', had more in common with a resting place, a location of security. As a metaphor in John's context it seems to refer to place where distress is absent and one that Jesus was going away to to prepare. He seems to be saying that God's family – those consciously related to God – have the assurance that they guaranteed security, peace, stability. In other words, rest (the full meaning of the Hebrew shalom). Importantly, Jesus is the vehicle through which this rest is obtained; he is the one preparing those 'resting places'. It doesn't quite sound on a par with the modern concept of a 'country' as a physical entity of peoples.
Does this fit with John's wider aim in writing? He provides a neat clue in his introduction when he notes that “...the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ” (1:17). This sums up what John then goes on to do in more detail. He is focussing on Jesus' battle with the religious/political leaders in Jerusalem (John refers to them as “The Jews”) over interpretation of the Jewish writings and the issue of God's presence with his family. Moses only brought Law (and did not see God's face), but Jesus is God's face (his 'glory'). This is the background to the statements, “If you've seen me you've seen the father” and “You can't come to the father without coming by me.” The Law couldn't deliver the presence of God. And the presence of God secured stability – rest.
The closest we get to the idea of 'countries' in John is, I think, his pulling back from the limited orbit of Law to the wider creational understanding of Jesus' (and therefore God's) orbit of control. If security of tenure is not to found in the limited hierarchy of blood-relations defined by Law, then it must run across the wider human race. This is suggested in John's reference to the 'world', as in “through him all things were made...” (1:3), “...to all who received him... (1:12), “God loved the world...” (3:16), “I have other sheep that are not if this sheep pen (10:16), and so on. The caveat John keeps adding is that although one could find members of God's family in any part of the world, they had to have consciously believed in Jesus.
Secondly, on Paul's use of the Jewish writings, there are similar claims to make. He, too (following Jesus' example), wrestles with others over the interpretation of the texts that he grew up with and knew inside out. As recent research into the period of the second temple has been showing, he seems to have had a much better understanding of the original (human) authorial intent than many commentators since his time, who focused to nicely on the individual texts Paul quoted or alluded to and voided them of context, rather than to the world Paul was evoking when he referred to a text. Perhaps a better way of seeing his use of the OT is that he – like Jesus – came across texts being abused, bandaged them up and paid an innkeeper to look after them until they got better.
I think there's a class difference here between the question over John's meaning and that of Paul. It could be summed up in two statements as follows:
John said [x], but we today should understand it to mean [y], where [y] is a significance that is not inherently embedded in the author's original intention [x].
An OT author said [b], and Paul said his hearers should understand it to mean [c], where [c] is a significance drawn out from the author's original intention [b].
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