In the next chapter Jesus seems to switch from Salvation by “what they do” to belief in Him. In chapter 5 he indicates that he’ll raise people who did good deeds up to life and those who did bad deeds to judgement, and then in Chapter 6 it’s those who behold and believe in him that he’ll raise up….
A bit conflicting…How do I get raised up to life!?
Also while I was in the US, one of our leaders here gave a passionate talk about the evils of homosexuality and how the bible “clearly” states this is sin. So that is causing some waves…
Fun fun.
me:
Hi Ethan –
I find my eleventh-grade math-class logic lessons useful here. First of all, there is no p → q statement in John 6:40. It does not say, “If you see the Son and believe in him, then you will have eternal life and I will raise you up on the last day.” So no need to worry about that one. But, you’ll say, at least two other verses in the chapter can be formulated as such:
“[W]hoever believes has eternal life” (v. 47) becomes “If you believe, then you have eternal life” and
“[T]he one who eats this bread will live forever” (v. 58) becomes “If you eat this bread, then you will live forever.”
So, the point is granted. But neither of these statements are “if and only if” statements. The only other thing you can say for sure from these statements is their contrapositives ('q → 'p):
If you don’t have eternal life, then you don’t believe.
If you aren’t living forever, than you haven’t eaten this bread.
You can’t say the original statements’ converses:
If you don’t believe, then you don’t have eternal life.
If you don’t eat this bread, you won’t live forever.
So nothing Jesus says here contradicts his earlier statement. Given this subset of verses, at least, there may be other ways to eternal life—indeed, as you’ve noted, in the earlier, John-5 statement, Jesus says so explicitly, insofar as “the resurrection of life” (ch. 5) and “eternal life” or “living forever” (ch. 6) are synonymous: He says, in effect, that if you do good, then you will come out of your grave to the resurrection of life.
So, assuming being raised up to life is synonymous with having eternal life, how do you get raised up to life? We have two ways that Jesus gives us here: Believe (eat this bread), and do good. Both appear to “work.”
All of the logical analysis above may be moot, however, if we observe that faith without works is dead and that it does no good to call Jesus Lord but not do what He says. Given those two additional data, it may be best to simply conflate the concepts of “believing” and “doing good." In other words, John, like many places in the New Testament, may be a great place to translate pisteuo as “to give allegiance.” Mere belief is no good.
Also, I’m sorry to hear about the waves! I hope your one gal there is OK. Hopefully your leader guy at least made a distinction between same-sex attraction and same-sex sexual activity.
If we’re to take 1 Corinthians 15:22 as making any sense at all, and if we agree that all have sinned/died (in Adam), how can we not end in Universalism?
To not end there is to make Adam more powerful than Christ.
In reply, I wrote:
me:
I suppose one might interpret “made alive” in a very literal sense, affirming that everyone will be resurrected, but allowing that some of those resurrected will be wholly condemned.
But yes, I agree with your take below. Romans 5:18 is very similar.
Have you read “Universalism and the Bible” by Yale philosopher Keith DeRose? Reading it was probably the last straw for me.
As I read the words of Jesus as he talks about the afterlife or the “judgement day”, I do not think he got the memo of “Saved by Grace”. In the classical gospel representation, if you confess with your mouth, and believe in your heart that Jesus is lord, you will be saved. That “saved” is most often interpreted as “from the judgement”. All through the new testament it talks about having our sins washed away by the blood of Jesus, etc.
But Jesus in John 5:28 talks explicitly about those with good deeds being raised to life, and those with evil deeds to judgement. Matthew 25 gives the same criteria - how you lived, not what you believed. I would say that if you just read Jesus' words, you would never come away with a “his blood covers all my sins and makes me alright with God”. But I readily admit that the new testament authors did strongly imply this relationship - 1 John 1:7, Hebrews 9, Romans 10.
So what do we do with our assurances from John, Peter, and Paul that our sins are washed clean, but our message from Christ that “not so fast, your deeds will be judged”.
Honestly, the only way this makes sense to me is if “Salvation” is for right now and I have assurance that I can connect my heart and life to God NOW, having my conscience clean, starting over. But, at the final judgement, my works will be judged and everything I did not do for love will be consumed, but I myself will enter through His love.
Anyway - Romans man…why did Paul write Romans. I really think everything would be different without that book and it’s “Plan for sharing the good news of salvation by belief” . Of course the point of what Paul was saying was not saved by belief, but rather your lineage as a Jew was not the criteria, but your allegiance to Christ.
self:
In case we don’t get to it when you get here, I think you’re onto something.
I put it this way: We’re not saved by our good works, but only our good works will be saved.
Now, what it means that that which “I did not do for love will be consumed, but [that] I myself will enter through His love,” as you put it, is currently inconceivable for me. But just because I can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it can’t be true.
As for the plentiful talk in the New Testament about our being forgiven or washed of our sins, it is certainly true that He doesn’t count our sins against us. Maybe that’s another way of saying that we ourselves with enter through His love, and perhaps it’s through this idea that we can begin to conceive of how it can be true that our evildoing will be annihilated but we ourselves will not.
(In order for any of this to jibe with the New Testament talk of fire, the annihilation of our evildoing would have to terribly unpleasant.)
And at least in the minds of ancient Jews and, I think, Greco-Romans, blood sacrifice was required to elicit such favor from the gods. Hence all that talk.
As for Paul’s letter to the Romans, you are right about Paul’s point in the book as a whole. But moreover, read the second chapter of and tell me you don’t come away with the same impression as you do when you read Jesus: that everyone will be judged.
We inherit a “soterian” gospel from the Reformers that has, on balance, not been a good thing to have as Gospel.
love verb1 to esteem someone or something as to be gladly willing to donate of one’s self (e.g., attention, energy, time, material resources, money) for the their good 2 to esteem someone or something as to prioritize their needs
Is it possible that the anxiety that arises in me when I read the opinions of folks on the Internet about God arises because I overestimate other people’s reasonability?
In reply to an entry a year ago about “God sending a deluding influence” on people, I understand there to be a possible better translation: “And because [they refused to love the truth], God will abandon them to the strong influence of delusion, leading them to believe the lie, so that they…will be judged or condemned” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12; see this hermeneutics Stack Exchange comment). This is God playing the, “OK, children, I give you over to what you already seem given to. It’s not going to turn out well for you.”
From church last week in greatly abbreviated form: Jesus’ lesson of the fig tree is not embarrassing in the slightest if we hear Him to be saying, “Guys, don’t marvel at this. This is God we’re talking about. If you know God has set to do something, to intervene in some way in the created order, then know that He is God and that therefore all you’ll have to do is say the word, and He’ll do it. Fig trees? Mountains? No problem. He is God.” Jesus’ words aren’t carte blanche. They are carte divine, and while we get to sign it, God is the one who does the deed.
For us who are heterosexual, the task as it regards the sexual behavior of our brethren who are homosexual or bisexual is to support their clean conscience. If I am open and affirming of chaste homosexual expression but my gay friend is not, I will not try to persuade my gay friend toward my point of view. I will support him in his efforts to keep to the ethic he thinks is right. See Romans 14.
Here’s why accusing God when he doesn’t save a baby about to drown in a swimming pool is casuistry: “While we may sometimes be blameworthy for failing to use our bodies to prevent genuine evils, the God without a localized divine body is not culpable” (Thomas Jay Oord).
“Questioning involves courage, refusal to allow one’s beliefs to be challenged involves fear. And so which should be called ‘faith’ and which should be called ‘doubt’?
“[T]o say that God turns away from the wicked is like saying that the sun hides itself from the blind.”
– St. Anthony the Great, as quoted by Stephen Freeman in making the point that the talk in the Bible about God’s wrath is metaphorically referring to the natural consequences of separate from Him, not Him actually whooping us
Thank you, Ethan, for requesting employee input ahead of annual reviews. Thank you, Éa, for being up for me walking the mile and a half to school today after you had a bellyache that kept you off the school bus. Thank you, Carla, for being someone to admire, you doula, preschool teacher, mom, councilwoman, and tumbler. Thank you, God, for making the problem of evil and the problem of unanswered prayer seem small today. Thank you, Bones, for delicious bread and fun times. Thank you, Frank Capra, for making It’s A Wonderful Life, which we plan to watch this Friday on Blu-ray. Thank you, Sony, for developing the Blu-ray format.
“I need your loving” = the family! I can feel the difference if I concentrate exclusively on them and don’t just move them around the house like furniture.
“Trust is important, but trustworthiness is even more so. Trust is only as good as is the trustworthiness of that in which we place our trust.” Thank you, Miroslav Volf, for saying what I said two years ago about why faith is a virtue.
When the apostles returned, they gave an account to Him of all that they had done. Taking them with Him, He withdrew by Himself to a city called Bethsaida. But the crowds were aware of this and followed Him; and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing (Luke 9:10-11).
Sometimes—probably often—Jesus gave preference to the needs, desires, and priorities of others over His own.
Today, I I called myself a “whimsical dabbler” as a way of celebrating and embracing my quick decision to stand on our stoop and cheer the Nittany Valley Half-Marathoners on as they passed by about midday today. (We’re at about mile eleven of their route.) It thereby also a way to encourage myself to make more decisions of what to do out of loving whim, and to accept my identity as a dilettante, and not just in the arts. Indecision about hunting this past week had me down this morning after an unsuccessful hunt yesterday.
I did decide I would become a suburban bowhunter after finding out how much red meat meant to Carla.
Follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes, yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. Let all that you do be done in love, that is, in self-donation for the benefit of others, whom you view as more important than yourself and unsurpassably wonderful.
Do I need to be thinking less about the Bible and more about the world around me? Solving not the problems presented by the Text but those I find in the world? It’s a false dichotomy, yes, but perhaps not so much considering that I only have so much time.
