What was Jesus implying...........................

by defd 87 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Midget-Sasquatch

  I agree that the context does imply a unity of purpose between Jesus and his followers and Jesus and the Father. Mentioning the followers is the clincher that makes think there's more here than just Jesus claiming to be God. But yet, overall, the gospel points to Jesus being divine.

  Origen believed that Jesus was created, and that of all the souls, he drew himself most closely to God. Through many eons he became identical to God in thoughts and motives.

  I don't think its too much of a stretch to read that sort of union into John. That Jesus' followers can be one with him and the Father while still in the flesh, can still be a possibility in the facets that count most (trying to have the heart and mind of God). Maybe the gospel also is holding out the prospect of those souls later being drawn just as closely to God and being remade perfectly.
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  Big Dog

  That he switched insurance companies and saved a bunch of money?
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  JamesThomas

  All, is one with That, which has no beginning and no end.

  

  j
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  freedom96

  From what I have read, and after talking to pastors, and such, it seems as though Jesus is God, though not in the sense that we immediately think of.

  The easiest way it has been described to me is that God is more of a title, with 3 parts to it, the Holy Ghost, Jesus, and the Father.

  Regardless of the details, I am just fine with not knowing all the answers. If I don't understand it, fine, perhaps one day I will.
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  Sara Annie

  Here is what I want to know........................................................

  WHY THE HECK DOES IT MATTER!!!!

  Right on. I find any discussion where a person seeks to definitively assert that which is absolutely unknowable as fact to be the most tiresome of pursuits.

  Let's assume for a moment that God--an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful supreme universal being--exists. If he wanted to split himself into three separate parts and exist in that way, he could. If he wanted to divide into 7 parts, 2 of which were lop eared bunny rabbits and 1 that was a dancing banana, he could.

  It has been my experience that when you finally realize that the nature of the universe and it's origins does not have to be divined and proven from one single, terribly flawed source, you begin to to understand that you simply cannot know, with any certainty, that which you are seeking to learn.

  Of all there is to know, all there is to discover about the world we live in and what might wait after death, the biggest mistake any of us can make in discussions of faith is to believe that we know anything for certain about what can never be fully understood.

  Beware the man who has read only one book.
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  Narkissos

  I agree that the context does imply a unity of purpose between Jesus and his followers and Jesus and the Father. Mentioning the followers is the clincher that makes think there's more here than just Jesus claiming to be God. But yet, overall, the gospel points to Jesus being divine.

  I would suggest that the whole (proto-Gnostic) thrust of the Fourth Gospel, in spite of a few orthodox-oriented corrections, implies much more than "unity of purpose" -- unity of origin is equally important: iow, the believers are divine too. They are children of God (vs. children of the devil) even before knowing it (cf. 11:52), they are not of this world, they belong to the Father who gives them to the Son, they are the shepherd's sheep whom he knows by name and who know his voice, etc.

  The big difference between Johannism and the later Nicene / Chalcedonian creed is that the latter insists (against the Gnostics) on the absolute difference between God and man (creator vs. creature) and reinscribes this difference, not only between Christ and his disciples, but also within Christ himself (the two natures). As a result, the "orthodox" reading of John accepts the full force of the identification of the Father and the Son (1) but plays down the very same expressions when they depict the relationship between the Father-Son and the believers (2). What the WT doctrine does is correcting the unbalance in the wrong sense, i.e. lowering level (1) to level (2). But in the original (proto-Gnostic) context of the Fourth Gospel there is no doubt that level (1) is meant in both cases.
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  What the WT doctrine does is correcting the unbalance in the wrong sense, i.e. lowering level (1) to level (2). But in the original (proto-Gnostic) context of the Fourth Gospel there is no doubt that level (1) is meant in both cases.

  That idea, of emanations from the divine residing within people, is what piqued my interest in the different gnostic schools of thought. This gospel meshes in very nicely with that and with what mystics have said about their experiences.

  I wonder though if there may be something to the orthodox view as well. And whether the author of the gospel would also accept it to a certain extent. That as long as the consciousness resides in the flesh the union can only be outwardly manifest in a limited way, primarily by showing a unity of purpose. Then in the afterlife, the union would be perfected by a merging of all into the deity.
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  Narkissos

  I wonder though if there may be something to the orthodox view as well. And whether the author of the gospel would also accept it to a certain extent. That as long as the consciousness resides in the flesh the union can only be outwardly manifest in a limited way, primarily by showing a unity of purpose. Then in the afterlife, the union would be perfected by a merging of all into the deity.

  Actually the very textual history of the Fourth Gospel, according to most commentators, reflects that.

  The first textual layers (which give this Gospel its specific ring, and result in its being -- ironically -- acknowledged within the most orthodox circles as "the spiritual Gospel") insists on the full divine realisation of the believer here and now ("he has come from death to life," "he has everlasting life" which is "knowledge of the only true God," "even if he dies he will live and -- actually -- will never die," etc.). The concern to reconcile this perspective with the dominant futuristic eschatology apparently resulted in a number of noticeable redactional additions, such as the repeated phrase "and I will raise him in the last day" in chapter 6. How the first writer would have reacted to that is an open question, but the fact is that a significative section of the Johannine community did join the Great Church at the cost of such an orthodox interpretation of their own inheritance (much along the lines you describe). (Which side of this debate the Johannine epistles stand on is an open question too, although most commentators would put them under the orthodox side. I would submit that expressions such as "he who is born of Him does not sin" make it very doubtful.)

  Sticking to the original Johannine view, of course, this is a common admission in Gnosticism that awareness of the divine origin may be forgotten or obscured. This is definitely the case prior to the enlightenment (the Hymn of the Soul or Hymn of the Pearl in the Acts of Thomas nicely illustrates it). But this happens afterwards too as there is no "before / after" distinction such as in orthodoxy. In Gnosticism time categories give way to (metaphorical) space categories. The issue is "where" you are. Whence the Johannine appeals to "remain in Him".
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  Leolaia

  A good example is the "light of the world" saying. The most widely attested form refers to the believers as men of light; they have the light within themselves. Examples:

  Matthew 5:14-16, 6:22-23: "You are the light of the world...Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven...If your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness".

  Luke 11:34-35: "Your eye is the lamp of your body; when your eye is sound, your whole body is full of light; but when it is not sound, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness".

  Gospel of Thomas 24:2: "There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is in darkness".

  What the gospel of John does however is adapt the saying to refer ONLY to Jesus, so that he alone is the source of the light and the "light of the world", such that believers must depend on him for their own light:

  John 8:12: "I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life...Walk while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light".

  Koester interestingly claims that the "I am" sayings in John are anti-gnostic devices, meant to adapt originally gnostic sayings to a post-gnostic theology in which the believer depends not on gnosis of himself but on pistis in Jesus for salvation.
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  Narkissos

  No doubt the Johannine Gospel is half Gnostic... In the sense of "half full" or "half empty"?

  IOW, where does it stand on which trajectory? That's the question.

  Koester's pattern of an initial Gnosticism and gradual degnosticisation (what's that for a neologism?) is a possibility. One could also plead plausibly for a gnosticisation from the Q-sayings (if they are interpreted as sapiential, not Gnostic) to GThomas and the perspective becomes quite different.

  Another question is, what is really meant by the focus on "Jesus" and even by pistis in GJohn? Ascribing them the default "orthodox" use is perhaps misleading.

  Perhaps there is some connection between the Johannine Revealer as "the light of the world" and "what has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people"...