Shunning supported by 2 Jo 9-10 (page 2)

whathappened

Yes, Splash. Those that don't remain in the teachings of Christ and the Apostles can be shunned. Jehovah's Witnesses do fall into this group as they have pushed ahead and are teaching things that Jesus and the Apostles never instructed them to do. The Bible is very clear on this. They should not be teaching things that go above and beyond what the scriptures say. The Watchtower does this in every issue. It's a shame. I am embarrassed to ever have been associated with Jehovah's Witnesses & the Watchtower Society.

Christ Alone

You CAN make it say what you want, especially if you disregard the rules of hermeneutic interpretation. Most just write it off and say, "we'll you can make it say what you want" and not investigate what the text was actually saying.

Splash

It's a tough one alright. Someone quoted this to me today as we discussed shunning. I was hoping to have some conclusive Greek meaning or parallel account to explain it away.

Seems this will always be their trump card.

Splash.

Christ Alone

Any response to John speaking about teaching in the home churches?

transhuman68

It is a problem for people who believe that 'all scripture is inspired', but really the letters of John had a very specific application relating to a schism among John's followers, as Bart Ehrman explains:

THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES FROM A CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE
I will be treating these letters as a group of works produced by the same author at roughly the same time.
The first is an open letter or persuasive treatise written to a community (1 John), the second a personal letter to the same community (2 John), and the third a personal letter to an individual within it (3 John). There are clues within the letters themselves concerning the historical context that prompted the author to produce them. The first step in the contextual method of interpretation is to examine these clues and use them to reconstruct the situation.
The most important event in the recent history of this community is that it has experienced a serious rift. The author of I John indicates that a faction from within the community has split off from the rest of the group and left in a huff:

They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. {1 John 2:19)

Why did this Christian community split, with some members leaving, presumably to start their own congregation? In the next few verses the author designates those who left as "liars" and "antichrists," a word which literally means, "those who are opposed to Christ." He then contrasts them with those who have remained, who "know the truth." What do these antichrists believe that makes them so heinous to this author? He indicates that they have "denied that Jesus is the Christ" (2:22).
The author's language may appear to suggest that those who have seceded from the community, a group that some scholars have labeled the "secessionists," are Jews who failed to acknowledge that Jesus is the messiah. But they used to belong to the community, that is, they were Christians. In what sense, then, could they deny that Jesus is the Christ?
There are two other places where the author discusses these "antichrists." In I John 4:2-3 the author claims that unlike those who belong to
God, the antichrists refuse to confess that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." A similar statement occurs in 2 John 7, where the antichrists are called
"deceivers who have gone out into the world" and are said to deny that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh." These descriptions suggest the secessionists may have held a point of view that we know about from other sources from about the same period, such as the writings of Ignatius (which we will be discussing at greater length in Chapter 25).
Ignatius opposed a group of Christians who, like Marcion a few years later (see Chapter 1), maintained that Jesus was not himself a flesh-and-blood human being but was completely and only divine.
For these persons, God could not have a real bodily existence; God is God invisible, immortal, all-knowing, all-powerful, and unchanging. If Jesus was God, he could not have experienced the limitations of human flesh. For these people, Jesus only seemed to experience these limitations. Jesus was not really a human; he merely appeared to be.
These Christians came to be known by their opponents as "docetists," a term that derives from the Greek verb for "appear" or "seem." They were opposed by Christian leaders like Ignatius who took umbrage at the idea that Jesus and the things he did, including his death on the cross, were all a show. For Ignatius, Jesus was a real man, with a real body, who shed real blood, and died a real death.
It may be that the secessionists from the johannine community had developed a docetic kind of christology. In the words of the author, they "denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh." If they were, in fact, early docetists, then a number of other things that the author says in these letters make considerable sense. Take, for instance, the opening words of 1 John. Readers who do not realize that the essay is being written because a group of docetic Christians have seceded from the community may not understand why the author begins his work the way he does, with a prologue that in many ways is reminiscent of the
Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (with which he was probably familiar):

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father, and was revealed to us. (1:1-2)

Once a reader knows the historical context of the epistle, however, this opening statement makes considerable sense. The author is opposing Christians who maintain that Jesus is a phantasmal being without flesh and blood by reminding his audience of their own traditions about this Word of God made manifest: he could be seen, touched, and handled; that is, he had a real human body. And he shed real blood. Thus, the author stresses the importance of Jesus' blood for the forgiveness of sins (1:7) and of the (real) sacrifice for sins that he made (2:2; 4:10).
What led a group of Johannine Christians to split from the community because of their belief that Jesus was not a real flesh-and-blood human being? We have seen that after the community was excluded from the synagogue, it developed a kind
of fortress mentality that had a profound effect on its christology. Christ came to be seen less and less as a human rabbi or messiah and more and more as a divine being of equal standing with God, who came to reveal the truth of God to his people only to be rejected by those who dwelt in darkness.
Those who believed in him claimed to understand
his divine teachings and considered themselves to be children of God. By the time the Fourth Gospel was completed, some members of the Johannine community had come to believe that Jesus was on a par with God.
It appears that Christians in this community did not stop developing their understandings of Jesus with the completion of the writing of the Gospel.
Some of them took their christology a step further. Not only was Jesus equal with God, he was God himself, totally and completely. If he was God, he could not be flesh because God was not composed of flesh; Jesus therefore merely appeared to be a human.
This view proved to be too much for some of the other members of the community; battle lines were drawn and a split resulted. The Johannine epistles were written by an author who thought that the secessionists had gone too far. For this author, Christ was indeed a flesh-and-blood human being; he was the savior "come in the flesh," whose blood brought about salvation from sin.
Those who rejected this view, for him, had rejected the community's confession that the man Jesus was the Christ; in his view, they were antichrists.
The charges that the author levels against the secessionists do not pertain exclusively to their ideas about Christ. He also makes moral accusations. He insinuates that his opponents do not practice the commandments of God (14), that they fail to love the brothers and sisters in the community (2:9-11; 4:20), and that they practice sin while claiming to have no contact with it (1:6-10).
It is possible that, in the mind of the author at least, these moral charges related closely to the doctrinal one. If the secessionists undervalued the fleshly existence of Jesus, perhaps they undervalued the importance of their own fleshly existence as well. In other words, if what really mattered to them was the spirit rather than the flesh, then perhaps they were unconcerned not only about Jesus' real body but also about their own.
Thus, they may well have appeared totally uninterested in keeping the commandments that God had given and in manifesting love among the brothers and sisters of the community. This would explain why the author stresses in his letters the need to continue to practice God's commandments and to love one another, unlike those who have left the community.

metatron

Where does it say, 'never speak to him'? It doesn't. John could have said that but he didn't. It suggests debate, therefore.

Who was it talking to? Gnostic apostates. Not ordinary fornicators with no interest in contrary teaching.

Watchtower, do not go beyond was is written!

metatron

Splash

Wearing my WT hat i'd just say: Read it, it speaks for itself. There's nothing complicated and shouldn't be reasoned around.

I guess one area it does NOT apply is if someone is df'd for eg smoking, but still comes to the khall.

Splash

DATA-DOG

Dear Metatron,

Too late!!

Your friends,

Governing Body.

DATA-DOG

Dear Metatron,

Too late!!

Your friends,

Governing Body.

Splash

Transhuman68 - i enjoyed reading that, thank you. I could read stuff like that all day.

Metatron, it DOES say "never speak to them", it just doesn't use those four words. It was written to the congregation and its members.

I wonder if there are any scriptural instances of shunning, i cant think of any at the moment.

Splash

Shunning supported by 2 Jo 9-10

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