#gospelofjohn — Public Fediverse posts

Was it the Apostle John, the "beloved disciple," or a dedicated community of his followers? While tradition credits John the son of Zebedee, modern scholars often point to a "Johannine Community" that compiled these deep theological reflections. Regardless of the scribe, its unique style and profound focus on the divinity of Jesus make it a cornerstone of faith. 🖋️🕊️
#GospelOfJohn #BibleHistory #ChristianFaith #wolink #freebiblestudyhub
https://www.freebiblestudyhub.com/archives/1430

Called by Name in the Garden

An Easter Homily

(Note: Sermons can be heard in audio format at https://millersburgmennonite.org/worship/sermon-audio/)

John 20:1–18

Introduction:

Easter morning begins in a garden.

That is not accidental. John is never careless with his details. He wants us to notice where we are. We are in a garden, on the first day of the week, at the dawning of something no one yet understands. And if we listen closely, we can hear old echoes stirring beneath the new story. We remember another garden. We remember another beginning. We remember the breath of God moving over creation. We remember humanity formed from the earth and called into life.

And now here, in another garden, at the edge of another beginning, Mary Magdalene stands weeping before a tomb.

This is Easter, according to John. Not brass and banners at first. Not certainty. Not a choir already at full voice. But a grieving woman in a garden, searching for the body of the one she loves.

And yet it is here, precisely this place, that the new creation begins.

John wants us to see that Easter is not simply a happy ending after a tragic Friday. Easter is the beginning of God making all things new. The resurrection of Jesus is not merely proof that life continues after death. It is the opening act of a renewed creation. The old world of violence, burial, empire, grief, and endings has not disappeared overnight. Mary still cries. The tomb is still real. The wounds in Jesus’ body have not been erased.

But something new has broken into the world. The Creator has begun again.

That is why the garden matters.

Let us pray,
May the Words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen

Homily:

In Genesis, life begins in a garden. In John, new life begins in a garden. In Genesis, humanity loses its way among trees, shame, and fear. In John, a human being stands again among trees, tears, and confusion, and there encounters the living Christ. In Genesis, the ground is cursed by death. In John, the earth itself becomes the place from which resurrection life is announced.

And there is one detail so strange and so beautiful that it almost slips past us: Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener.

She is wrong, and yet somehow, she is not wrong at all.

For if this is new creation, then who would Jesus be but the gardener of God’s renewed world? Who would he be but the one tending life where death had seemed to reign? Who would he be but the one bringing forth new growth from the scarred soil of human history?

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Jesús es el jardinero del mundo.
The risen Christ is not less than the crucified one. He is the crucified one transformed, alive, and at work in the garden of the world. He is still bearing wounds, but now those wounds belong to a life death cannot master. He is the gardener of a new humanity, the keeper of a new creation, the tender of all that empire tried to uproot and bury.

And this matters because many of us still live as though the world is only a graveyard.

Many of us know what it is to stand among the remnants of what was, among memories, among losses, among plans that did not come to pass, among dreams buried too early. Many of us know what it is to look at the world and see only tombs: tombs of justice deferred, tombs of broken trust, tombs of worn-out institutions, tombs of relationships, tombs of hope. We know what it is to come to church carrying not celebration but sorrow.

Easter does not shame us for that.
Instead, Easter meets us in the garden and says: this is where God begins again.

Not somewhere else. Not after you become more cheerful. Not after all the evidence is in. Not after every grief has been resolved. Right here.

In the place where you came expecting only loss. In the place where you thought the best you could do was tend the dead. In the place where your tears are still warm on your face.

Aquí mismo, Dios ya está obrando para hacer nuevas todas las cosas. Right here, God is already at work making all things new.

But John does not stop with new creation. He also gives us one of the most personal moments in all of scripture.

Mary sees Jesus and does not know him.

She sees the angels and still does not understand. She sees Jesus himself and assumes he is the gardener. And perhaps that should comfort us. Because we often imagine that if only God would do something dramatic enough, obvious enough, dazzling enough, then we would finally believe without hesitation. But in this story, resurrection itself stands before Mary, and she still does not know.

Why?

Because resurrection, in John, is not simply something to be observed. La resurrección es alguien a quien encontrar. It is someone to be encountered.
Mary does not truly recognize Jesus until he speaks her name.

“Mary.”

That is the turning point of the whole passage. Not the empty tomb by itself. Not the folded grave clothes. Not even the sight of Jesus standing there. The turning point is that the risen Christ calls her by name.

And with one word, the whole world changes.

Mary is no longer simply a mourner at a grave. She is not simply a witness to an event. She is addressed. Known. Reached. Called into relationship again.

My friends, this is good news! The resurrection of Jesus is not only a doctrine to defend. It is not only an argument that death has been defeated, though it is surely that. It is also this: Cristo resucitado aún conoce nuestros nombres. The risen Christ knows us by name.

The one whom death could not hold is not distant, abstract, or vague. He is not merely the subject of our hymns and creeds. He is the living one who calls people personally, intimately, tenderly. He comes not only to humanity in general but to each beloved child of God in particular.

Jesus knows your name beneath all the names the world has placed on you. Beneath your titles, your failures, your roles, your pain, your reputation, your confusion, your grief. Beneath all the labels—ALL the labels —successful, unsuccessful, strong, weak, faithful, doubtful, useful, forgotten—Christ knows your true name.

And perhaps that is why the church gathers on Easter: because we need once more to hear ourselves called by the voice we know, the voice of the Good Shepherd, the voice that speaks not condemnation but life.

“Mary.”

And if you listen, perhaps you can hear your own name there too.

Yet even here, the story turns again in a surprising way. Just when Mary recognizes Jesus, just when she reaches toward him, just when she wants to hold onto what has been restored, Jesus says, “Do not hold on to me.”

It is one of the strangest lines in the resurrection stories. It sounds almost harsh at first. But it is not rejection.

Es una invitación a una relación transformada.
It is invitation into a changed relationship.

Mary wants, understandably, to keep Jesus as she knew him before. To stay in that moment. To cling to who or what has been found again. Who among us would not? When something lost is restored, when someone beloved is returned, our instinct is to hold tight. To keep it from slipping away. To preserve the moment before it changes again.

But resurrection is not a return to the old arrangement.

Jesus is alive, but not simply back. He is risen into a new reality, and his followers cannot relate to him as though nothing has changed. The relationship will continue, but it will be transformed. It will become a relationship carried not by physical nearness alone, but by trust, by Spirit, by witness, and by mission.

How often do we try to hold on to Jesus in ways that keep us from following the living Christ into newness? We cling to old forms, old certainties, old pictures of how God must act. We cling to past revelations, moments we cannot reproduce, seasons we cannot recover, churches as they used to be, lives as they once were, versions of ourselves that no longer fit the call before us in this present moment. We want resurrection to mean restoration of the familiar.

But sometimes Easter means letting go.

Sometimes the risen Christ says: do not cling to what you think I must be. Do not imprison me in yesterday’s forms. Do not reduce resurrection to nostalgia. I am alive, and because I am alive, Te estoy llevando a un lugar nuevo. I am leading you somewhere new.

That can be unsettling. But it is also liberating. Because faith is not about grasping a frozen sacred past. Faith is trusting the living Christ who is still moving today, still calling today, still sending today, still making all things new today.

And that leads us to the final wonder of this passage: the grieving one becomes the messenger.

Jesus says to Mary, “Go to my brothers and say to them…”

He sends her.

This too is astonishing. The first witness of the resurrection in John’s Gospel is not Peter. Not the beloved disciple. Not the most publicly powerful person. Not the one least marked by grief. It is Mary Magdalene, who came looking for the dead and found herself entrusted with the news of life.

The one who came weeping becomes the one who announces hope.

The one who came to tend a broken body becomes the one who bears a message of healing and hope.

The one who had been standing outside the tomb crying is now the first to say, “I have seen the Lord.”

And there is gospel in that for the church.

Because too often we imagine that the good news is entrusted only to the polished, the confident, the credentialed, the unshaken. But here the risen Christ places the message first into the mouth of one who has just been weeping. The first Easter preacher is one whose voice is still raw from grief.

So take heart, church. You do not need to have mastered every sorrow before you can bear witness. You do not need to have solved every mystery before you can testify. You do not need to stand above the world’s pain in order to speak hope into it.

Sometimes the most faithful witness is the one who doesn’t say, “I understand everything,” but simply,
“He visto al Señor.” “I have seen the Lord.”

That is enough.

That is the task of Easter People.

To live as those who have glimpsed new creation in the midst of the old world. To listen for the voice that calls us by name. To loosen our grip on what must pass, so that we may follow the living Christ into what is being born.

And to bear witness, even through tears, that death does not get the final word.

So today, in this garden of resurrection, hear the good news:
Christ is alive.
The gardener is at work.
Creation is beginning again.
Your name is known.
Your grief is not disqualifying.
Your clinging can become trust.
And your trembling voice may yet become the voice that tells the world,
“I have seen the Lord.”

What Makes Truth Valuable? Let's think about that and what we do with that -- tonight on Steadfast, we're exploring John 5:31-34. https://youtube.com/live/Dnu7hiTLTfI

#Christianity #Truth #GodsLove #Revelation #GospelOfJohn.

A quotation from The Bible

Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.
 
[Ὁ ἀναμάρτητος ὑμῶν πρῶτος ἐπ᾽ αὐτὴν βαλέτω λίθον.]

The Bible (The New Testament) (AD 1st - 2nd C) Christian sacred scripture
John 8: 7 (Jesus) [CEB (2011)]

More info about (and translations of) this quote: wist.info/bible-nt/4570/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #bible #bookofjohn #gospelofjohn #jesus #accusation #guilt #guiltyconscience #humannature #selfawareness #shame #sin #sinfulness #sinlessness

Do we view God's promises as a distant wafting smell of barbecue or a mouthwatering meal served up to us? Tonight we continue in John 5:25-26... https://youtube.com/live/ZwEnGilveLU

#Christianity #PromisesOfGod #Gospel #GospelOfJohn #EternalLife #Resurrection

Do we view God's promises as a distant wafting smell of barbecue or a mouthwatering meal served up to us? Tonight we continue in John 5:25-26... https://youtube.com/live/ZwEnGilveLU

#Christianity #PromisesOfGod #Gospel #GospelOfJohn #EternalLife #Resurrection

Do we view God's promises as a distant wafting smell of barbecue or a mouthwatering meal served up to us? Tonight we continue in John 5:25-26... https://youtube.com/live/ZwEnGilveLU

#Christianity #PromisesOfGod #Gospel #GospelOfJohn #EternalLife #Resurrection

What do we really need and what is just a stubbed toe? John 5 is going to help us direct our focus where it really matters in a brand new series that starts live at 7 (Central)... please hop on the journey with me! https://youtube.com/live/V-az0kb_o1o

#Gospel #GospelOfJohn #SpiritualHealing #Miracles #Christianity

What do we really need and what is just a stubbed toe? John 5 is going to help us direct our focus where it really matters in a brand new series that starts live at 7 (Central)... please hop on the journey with me! https://youtube.com/live/V-az0kb_o1o

#Gospel #GospelOfJohn #SpiritualHealing #Miracles #Christianity

What do we really need and what is just a stubbed toe? John 5 is going to help us direct our focus where it really matters in a brand new series that starts live at 7 (Central)... please hop on the journey with me! https://youtube.com/live/V-az0kb_o1o

#Gospel #GospelOfJohn #SpiritualHealing #Miracles #Christianity

The #GospelofJohn is #FakeHistory:
The Beloved #Disciple is Fictional!
Dr. Bartosz Adamczewski

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjOcF70lBU

#sundayschool #bible #religion #atheist #christian

Opening Prayers for the Second Sunday of Easter Year C (April 27 2025)

These opening prayers for Sunday worship take their inspiration from the Scripture readings of the Revised Common Lectionary. Worship leaders are welcome to use them for worship, but if you print or display any part of them, please credit the author. Comments welcome. The following prayers are for based on the readings for Easter 2C, April 27, 2025. NB The Psalm used is Psalm 150.

The congregation say the words in bold italics.

Call to Worship

Praise God in his sanctuary!
Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!

Psalm 150:1,6

Let us worship God.

Prayer of Approach and Confession

Let us pray.

God of life,
the source of all that is,
you are the Alpha and Omega,
the first and last of creation and eternity
the one who is, and was, and is to come
almighty beyond our imagining.

Yet you have sent Jesus Christ,
to bring us salvation.
In his resurrected body
his wounds remind us
of the costliness of Christ’s love
for each of us and all creation.

And now he has defeated death
freed us from sin
and made possible a new world-
your Kingdom of love and justice.
You have exalted him over all things-
to him be glory for ever and ever!

To your people
you promise the gift of the Holy Spirit
to strengthen our faith
to sustain us in our doubts
and to help us be
the disciples of Christ in the world.

Eternal God,
our Creator, Saviour and Sustainer,
we praise and worship you.

We confess, God of grace,
that we need the strength your Spirit brings.
We fail to be attentive
to the risen Christ’s presence among us.
We find his command to forgive those who sin against us
hard to put into practice.
We want certainty, when Christ asks for faith;
we demand to see what must remain mystery.
Forgive us, and by your Spirit,
strengthen our faith.

silence

By his death and resurrection
Christ has made possible the forgiveness of sins.
So receive the Holy Spirit,
and know that Christ is among us. Amen.

Sharing the Peace

When the Christ stood among the fearful disciples
he said, ‘Peace be with you’.
Christ is among us now
and so let us share the peace of Christ
with each other,
greeting one another with the words
‘Peace be with you’.

The congregation share the peace, saying

Peace be with you.

Like this? Buy me a coffee!

Featured image: The Incredulity of Saint Thomas- Caravaggio, 1573-1610. Neues Palais in Sanssouci, Potsdam, Germany. from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54170

#Christ #DoubtingThomas #Easter #GospelOfJohn #LectionaryPrayers

The #GospelofJohn is Fabricated: #FakeHistory Exposed! | Dr. Hugo Mendez

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvqn5McIwXY

Through Mendez's expertise, the course offers a rare chance to uncover the historical truths and academic debates that shape our understanding of #Christianity’s origins.

#bible #gnostic #christian #counterapologetics

Esoterica: A discovery process which adds to breaking a set material reality created before we knew what they were up to. #FateApocrypha #Good #Matrix #History #Meta #Metaphysics #Feminism #GospelOfJohn #Monday #Mind #Mystery https://youtu.be/oHQ3H2D8JII?si=y7DdG2L-Q9w3T1qE

One of the most quoted #Bible verses is a forgery

youtube.com/watch?v=TdqROjwIre…

#gospelofjohn #womantakeninadultery #lethewhoiswithoutsin #gospels #danmcclellan #jesus #atheism #religion

The Unforgettable Legacy of #Paul the #Apostle | Dr. Robyn Faith Walsh

https://youtu.be/mn2-QESI5l8?si=tfZMCOJP5ySUqKaJ

#robynwalsh
#robynfaithwalsh
#newtestament
#academia
#academia
#gospelofmark
#gospelofmathew
#gospelofluke
#gospelofjohn
#paultheapostle

I never thought I would be writing a post like this. Before I became a Christian, I never cared enough about the Bible to write such a post, and after I became a Christian, I quickly became convinced that it was inerrantly inspired, so that any errors that may exist in particular copies or particular translations were the results of human sloppiness, not part of the original Bible. I knew that there were some difficulties with the text (e.g. 1 Samuel 13:1: how old was Saul when he became king?), but those were obviously not the original state of the text. I remember seeing other peoples’ lists of “errors in the Bible” and thinking that most of them I could explain rather readily, but that I could supply a more challenging list if I were motivated to do so. I wasn’t.

But now I am writing such a post, for a different reason. This post isn’t motivated by any animosity toward the Bible itself, nor to those who believe what it says. But in the context in which I now find myself, a context in which the group of people most likely to spread lies, to oppose public health measures, and to advocate violent responses to unfavorable election results are also the group of people most likely to say that they believe the Bible, I have been struggling to maintain my faith that the Bible is true. Certain passages to me have come to seem false, not passages about historical facts (for which we rarely have contrary evidence) so much as assertions about spiritual realities. And I have no one with whom I can discuss these issues (I know only one person willing to discuss them, but she can’t discuss them without damaging her health), so I am posting them here hoping that perhaps there is someone out there who can talk some sense into me. I welcome correction on any point, though I can no longer ignore the realities of the society around me, namely that conservative white Christians are the deadliest group in my society. And while I can readily acknowledge that there is so much we don’t know, I can’t pretend that the evidence, such as it is, favors what I used to believe about the Bible.

Of course, in arguing that the Bible contains errors, we must recognize the complexities of interpretation. It is obvious that many interpretations of a particular text may be erroneous without the text itself being in error. Indeed, John 21:23 calls attention to this, as some early Christians were interpreting John 21:22 as implying that the “beloved disciple” would not die (an interpretation maintained today by Mormons, apparently), but the following verse indicates that that is not a necessary interpretation of Jesus’s words. So for someone to conclude that the Bible itself is in error, one must consider all plausible interpretations, and weigh the unlikelihood of progressively less plausible interpretations against the unlikelihood of the Bible being false. (Since some people believe that it is impossible for the Bible to be false, then they will believe interpretations that strike me as very implausible. I will refer to some below.) Nevertheless, there are some places where I cannot come up with any plausible interpretation of the biblical text, and therefore where it seems to me, from my limited perspective, that there are spiritual errors in the Bible.

Christians do not continue to sin?

1 John 3:9 says, “No one who is born of God will continue to sin.” This is a famous verse indicating the incompatibility of Christian life and continuing sinfulness. But it is tricky to reconcile with reality, and comparing different versions indicates numerous small variations in interpretation. Of course we all know that Christians do sin (as affirmed, for example, by 1 John 1:8 and 10!), so this must be saying something else. That is why it is important to interpret the present tense verse as “continues to sin” rather than a simple present “ever sins.” But even so, we see lots of Christians continuing to sin, for example, by continuing to spread lies that extensive voter fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, or by continuing to oppose life-saving public health protocols. One might be tempted to defend this verse by saying it refers only to Jesus, who was sinless! But that is impossible in context: the following verse says, “By this (i.e. lack of sin) it may be seen who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do what is right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10). We are clearly talking about plural people, more than Jesus alone. Well okay, someone might say that this makes clear that the election deniers and public health opposers are not of God, not really children of God or begotten by him. I’m open to that view. But if so, then we run into difficulty with 1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.” This sets a rather low bar for people to count as born of God. So in a society where the most consistently evil people are those who believe Jesus is the Christ, it is not possible for both 1 John 3:9 and 1 John 5:1 to be true. Either 1 John 3:9 is false, and people “born of God” do continue in sin, or such people are not “born of God” at all (as per 1 John 3:10), despite believing Jesus is the Christ, and 1 John 5:1 is false. If such a society exists, these verses are not universally true in all contexts. And such a society does exist, where I live.

Ask and it will be given to you?

Matthew 7:7 famously reports Jesus encouraging prayer by saying, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” This is not my experience. I have asked for certain outcomes in prayer and not received them. There are various tactics to try to defend the veracity of these verses. For example, it is often noticed here, as in 1 John 3, that the imperative verbs are present tense, implying a continuing aspect: “Keep asking… keep seeking… keep knocking.” The idea is that if you haven’t received it yet, you just need to keep on asking. Such an approach seeks to make the verses unfalsifiable, since there is no point at which one can claim to have asked enough, but unfortunately the idea can still be falsified by certain changes of situation that preclude further asking. I remember when a pair of very premature twins were born, and we were praying for both of them to recover, and one did while the other died. The end. When Donald Trump caught Covid in September 2020, I prayed that he would recover from the disease and repent of his Covid-minimization. He recovered from the disease, but never repented of his minimization of the disease, and his post-election-day rallies to spread his election lies led to the biggest spike in Covid deaths to that point in the pandemic. And it’s not just me: Paul prayed for healing from some affliction, and was reportedly told by God to stop praying (2 Corinthians 12:8-9).

Some people try to rescue verses like this by claiming that “if you pray, you will get an answer, but that answer might be no.” But in fact this verse and the many others like it (e.g. Matthew 18:19; 21:22; John 14:13-14; 15:7, 16; 16:23-24, and others not by Jesus) are not saying “every prayer will be answered.” They are consistently saying “you will receive what you ask for.”

Some people, no doubt reflecting some of the “if” statements in the parallel promises, suggest that if prayer is unanswered, then there is some defect in the prayer. For example, James 4:3 says, “You ask and you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you can spend it on your pleasures.” Mathew 18:19 suggests that people who agree on prayer will receive what they agree about, although it doesn’t say that a single person praying will therefore not be heard. John 14:13-14 and 16:23-24 suggest asking in the name of Jesus, hence that addendum to many Christians’ prayer. Matthew 21:22 suggests praying in faith, and John 15:7 and 16 suggest “abiding in Christ.” None of these are mentioned in Matthew 7:7, but perhaps they are taken to be implicit. The problem for me is that even when I have prayed in ways that agree with all of those requirements, I still have not received what I prayed for. Either the promises are false, or there is some further requirement not revealed in scripture. But if this promise of granted prayer is never actualized due to some nitpicky defect in every fallen human prayer or person, then it is not a meaningful promise after all. It does not defend the truth of the promise to make it irrelevant.

One last approach may be more successful, after a fashion, and it is that in fact ancient Christian authors like Augustine and John Chrysostom did not understand this verse to be a promise for prayer to be fulfilled in general. Perhaps they took their clue from a gospel parallel. Matthew’s report of the Sermon on the Mount continues, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:9-11). Yet in the parallel passage, Luke identifies the “good gifts” more specifically: “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). Whatever their inspiration, Augustine and Chrysostom interpreted Matthew 7:7 to apply only to requests to God for a Christian character (cf. James 1:5). On this reading, these verses are not a general promise that prayers will be answered, but only prayers for godliness will be reliably answered. This might make the verse true (although I must say I have observed many Christians who seem to have prayed to God for a godly character and not received it!), but in any case it does not mean what most Christians today think it means. On this reading, if true, the verses are not a general incentive to pray, and one would have to take a similar deflecting defense to all the many promises of answered prayer. Yet this type of redefinition of the scope of the promise does not seem to me successful with Jesus’s parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8), which Jesus interprets as promising that God will “bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night” (v. 7). Yet we see injustices perpetrated against Christians (especially Black American Christians) that are never redressed (the Tulsa Race Massacre and the lynching of Emmett Till, for example). So I don’t think that this approach, despite its prestigious patristic pedigree, can rescue these promises of answered prayer from being simply false. I would vastly prefer to believe that promises ascribed to Christ were always true.

“There is no peace, the Lord said, for the wicked” (Isaiah 49:22; 57:21)

Jared Kushner, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn might provide evidence to the contrary. Indeed, complaining about the peaceful state of the wicked is a theme elsewhere in the Bible. Jeremiah complained to God, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jeremiah 12:1). Job complained that the poor “glean the vineyard of the wicked man” (Job 24:6). Psalm 73 complains, “I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. For they have no pangs; their bodies are sound and sleek” (Psalm 73:3-4), among many other benefits of being wicked. So I have no idea what these verses in Isaiah could mean, when so many other parts of the Bible testify to the opposite.

Is hell eternal?

I used to believe that hell was eternal. I took no pleasure from the idea, since I was a convert to Christianity who has not been followed into the religion by almost any of my relatives. But it seemed to me that the biblical testimony is clear enough (thinking especially of Isaiah 66:24, quoted by Jesus in Mark 9:48 and parallels, but also Matthew 25:46), and I believed the Bible to be inerrant. I had and have no use for the wishful thinking of people who believe to be true what they wish were true, regardless of the evidence. But I was convinced.

My conviction on the matter has been shaken, in part because of the reality that in a society where the churches are the most evil people around, if God welcomes the churches to eternal life and condemns the non-Christians to eternal hell, then God is participating in wickedness. And if God sends people to hell who have not received revelation (the problem of “those who have not heard”), I now see that that makes God simply unjust. To use an analogy from my line of work, if I as a teacher give students a test at the end of the semester, and some of them I gave instructions and others I did not give any instructions, and those who did not get instructions get an F when they fail the exam, there would be complaints to the school, and rightly so! God is a better teacher than I am.

But reasoning by analogy can easily be faulty. Spurred by such considerations (which I blogged about here), I then reexamined the biblical evidence, and found a plurality of views on what happens to people after death in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The clearest contradictions are the passages in the Old Testament which assert that the dead are not raised (Job 7:9; Psalm 88:10; Isaiah 26:14 but see v.19), and the debate over whether the dead are conscious (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; Psalm 6:5; 115:17; Isaiah 38:18-19 vs. Ezekiel 32:22-32; Job 26:5; Isaiah 8:19). And it is possible that the punishment place is permanent without every individual experiencing it eternally, which may suggest that the problem is not the falsity of the text but instead the interpretation. Only “the beast” and “the false prophet” of Revelation are explicitly said to be tormented “day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10), though Isaiah seems to include “those who rebelled against me” among those suffering eternally (Isaiah 66:24). I think that sending most of humanity to eternal punishment would make God unjust and sadistic. I don’t know what to think instead; universal salvation, to my mind, seems equally to founder on statements that God is just. So it seems to me that the Bible is wrong when it speaks of unending torment of the wicked (or wrong when it speaks of God as just, I suppose, but I hope not).

Are God’s Attributes Obvious?

Paul wrote to the Romans, “Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). It is important to his thought that people who do not believe in God are without excuse, because otherwise God would be unjust for condemning the faithless, which is the flip side of Paul’s message of salvation by faith. Now, I have above average education in the philosophy of religion, and there are long debates about whether any argument can demonstrate that God even exists, much less what attributes God might have. Indeed, it seems to me, as someone who wants the existence and attributes of God to be obvious, and who is smarter than the average bear, that I am still unable to frame a convincing argument without simply presuming the conclusion (circular reasoning). The closest I can come is an argument that a powerful personal entity seems to exist and/or intervene sometimes and much of the rest of the time pay no attention or not exist. What is obvious to someone is largely a function of the culture they grew up with, and I did not grow up in a Christian household or Christian culture. Paul did grow up in a household that believed in the God of the Bible, and he (like most ancient people) never seems to have given much thought to the possibility that no god exists. I’m not saying that Paul and the Bible are wrong for asserting that God exists, but it seems clear to me that divine attributes are in fact not universally obvious, as required by Paul’s line of argumentation in Romans 1.

The Book of Revelation

Some parts of the book of Revelation take a lot of explaining to make it not false, not so much for the passages that are obscure, but for the ones that are too clear.  In Revelation 22:7, Jesus says, “I am coming quickly” (cf. 1:3; 12:12).  It has been almost 2000 years.  It seems to me that the only possible way for this to be held true is through a move like C. S. Lewis wrote in the voice of his Christ-character Aslan: “I call all time soon.”  But if that is the case, then “quickly” or “soon” simply becomes meaningless, and the only reason to include the term is deceptive.  There’s also the clear problem that the numeration of the twelve tribes of Israel in Revelation 7 has both Joseph and Joseph’s son Manasseh, which can be explained by understanding Joseph with reference to Ephraim, but then there is also Levi, so Dan gets left out of the list, with no meaning ascribed to that omission.  If “the time is near” (so Rev. 1:3), then the drying up of the Euphrates never happened (Rev. 16:12).  There never was an army of two hundred million cavalry, and now horses are not used in warfare, so there is never likely to be such an army in the future (Rev. 9:16), unless I suppose there is somehow a major technological collapse without a demographic collapse but with a horse-breeding explosion (that would be a miracle).  “The great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18) was clearly Rome and Rome’s empire, but there were many more emperors of Rome than the seven or eight anticipated in 17:9-11, nor indeed was pagan Rome destroyed until after it had converted to Christianity (Rev. 18:4-8).  While Rome, after Christianization, has been captured, it’s “smoke” does not “go up forever and ever” (Rev. 19:3), nor did the destruction of Rome signal the beginning of the reign of God, in any discernible sense (Rev. 19:6).  Nor could there be a city fifteen hundred miles square at Jerusalem, to say nothing of fifteen hundred miles high (Rev. 21:16).  For all these reasons, it looks like the book of Revelation was simply a false prophecy.

Conclusion

I welcome correction and pushback on any of these points. But it seems to me that the easiest explanation is simply that the Bible contains erroneous theology and spiritual claims at certain points. Nor can one rescue the situation by finding an infallible canon within the canon: one might note that I think there are errors in both the Old Testament and the New Testament, in the words ascribed to Jesus as well as the words of Paul and the catholic epistles and Revelation. There is no portion of the Bible that I think is simply true in all that it teaches.

And if that is the case, then believing the Bible simply because it says something is foolish. The theological claims of the Bible need to be evaluated. But this leads to a major difficulty, in that most theological claims in the Bible are not able to be verified from any other source. The bulk of the Bible’s teaching about God and human spirituality therefore exists in a limbo where it is neither falsifiable nor verifiable. In such a framework, it is all too easy for individuals to take the parts they like, and in the absence of a solid anchor which can be reasoned about, most Christians’ theology is reduced to wishful thinking. I don’t like this conclusion; in fact, I find it horrifying. But at present I see no escape from it.

https://theophiletos.wordpress.com/2023/12/03/spiritual-errors-in-the-bible/

#1John #1Samuel #2Corinthians #Augustine #Bible #BookOfEzekiel #BookOfIsaiah #BookOfJeremiah #contradictions #Ecclesiastes #electionLies #GospelOfJohn #GospelOfLuke #GospelOfMark #GospelOfMatthew #Hell #inerrancy #injustice #Jesus #Job #JohnChrysostom #LetterOfJames #LetterToTheRomans #logicalFallacies #NewTestament #OldTestament #prayer #Psalms #RevelationOfJohn #SermonOnTheMount #truth #wishfulThinking

Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” John 4.10 NET.

Why do we ask for lesser things when the water of eternal life is being offered?

#Bible #BibleVerse #GospelOfJohn #life

@JoeCool @multilingualchurch @royal

Hmm, it's hard to not allow #TheChosen to color my opinion of #Nicodemus, as Eric Avari's portrayal was so incredibly alive to me. The scene where he kissed Jesus' hand had me weeping openly, it was so powerful. I'm getting a little misty-eyed just thinking about it. "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry" ... "Blessed are those who put their trust in Him"

*phew* *exhale*

If we believe that version of Nicodemus as being canonical (which is admittedly quite a leap), then Nicodemus truly believed, but lacked the will to sell all and follow Jesus. We know from the #GospelOfJohn that he asked earnest questions of Jesus, and contributed expensive embalming spices to Jesus' followers, so it's not a stretch to say that he likely was a follower of Jesus, and died in faith.

BUT Mary did not have as much to surrender. If she had the devotion to surrender her time, I think she might have been "closer to the Kingdom of God" than Nicodemus, but I can't quite make that claim. The accounts in Mark and John don't quite agree on who's house Jesus was at, but since the woman with the spikenard wasn't named in Mark's gospel, it's reasonable to say that it was Mary, Martha's sister, like John says.

But first of all, we must define what being close to the kingdom of God really is. I'm not sure I have a good answer, except I can surmise that it entails having a value system and a lifestyle that is molded by and in hot pursuit of God's kingdom.

In that light, is the faith of a wizened teacher of the law who is engrossed by the person of Jesus but not yet mature enough (in faith, that is) to "sell all and follow" less "close to the Kingdom of God" than the child-like faith of a teenage girl who wants nothing more than to sit by the Master and hear His words (but has much less, at least socially, to give up for His kingdom)?

I'm not sure I have an answer to that. The comparison is made difficult by no only the relative paucity of details of the lives of both individuals (as is usual in biblical accounts, journalistic depth not generally being a goal), but also the great difference between the two individuals and their station.

I'd like to think that both had a vital role to play in His kingdom, and that both died in faith, ready to receive a Martyr's crown (understanding a Martyr to be a witness, and not necessarily someone who was murdered for their faith).

Everything I have belongs to you, and everything you have belongs to me, and I have been glorified by them. John 17.10 NET.

Jesus prayed to the Father shortly before his betrayal. Even in the apostles’ slowness to understand him and his mission, they received his self-revelation and proclaimed it to others — as they continue to do today in the New Testament.

#Bible #GospelOfJohn #Jesus