John Verses

[dairygirl4u2c]

i heard a verse this weekend that ive heard before but hadn't connected to another idea i've heard.

there's the john 6 verses on eat my flesh. catholics say that they apparently thought he meant literally, that he must have meant literally. and that jesus would have clarified had he not meant literally yet he did not.

now.... the verses that prots point to in contra this arguemnt is that Jesus said he's rebuild the destroyed temple in three days. they thought he meant the actual temple, but the bible says that he was talking about himself. but, they ocntinued to misunderstand, just like in John 6. and, just like there, Jesus didn't clarify.

i've read those verses when he first said that, but until this weekend, i didn't connect them to the verses where they continued showing a misunderstood belief, when they mocked him on the cross.


John 2
[quote]the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.[/quote]
[quote]We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands. 59 But neither so did their witness agree together. 60 And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? 61 But he held his peace, and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? 62 And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. 63 Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? 64 Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye?[/quote]

[quote]"You who said you would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself."[/quote]

the only difference is that hte bible tells us explicitly that he didn't correct them, whereas in John 6 it does't say that he did explicitky,

but, if you combine this argument with hte fact that they said "how can he give us his flesh to eat" after all he said was "i will give my flesh for the life of the world".... you can see they might have misunderstood him literally when at that point it could have been talking about atonement or in aontoerh sense.

ideas?

[dairygirl4u2c]

this is suppose to be in debate... my bad.
not that it's necessarily meant for debate, just ideas. but.

[Aloysius]

the misunderstanding about the temple was a personal thing. Jesus had no need to defend himself against the accusations... they were accusations by people who were not following Him anyway, and He had no intention of throwing pearls before swine just for the sake of defending his rep. and that's the only damage that happened as a result of that particular misunderstanding: Jesus' reputation amongst his enemies was hurt. he simply didn't get into defending himself..

the misunderstanding about the Eucharist would have been along the lines of belief and faith... if Christ allowed people who had previously been following Him to desert him because he had not clarified this doctrine, that would have been an act of deception by omission of the truth, ie it would have been sinful. these were people who were following Him and would have continued to follow Him so long as they knew He was speaking symbolically about eating His flesh.

So... simple answer: it would have been a sin for Jesus not to correct the misunderstanding about the Eucharist, but it would not have been a sin to not correct the temple misunderstanding... in fact, the act of correcting the temple misunderstanding very likely could have been sinful (ie prideful) in itself... He didn't do it because there was no point, because there was no reason.

oh... and MOVED to the debate table for ya

[Thy Geekdom Come]

I'm not able to go flipping through a Bible at the moment, but I don't believe any people left Him after the Temple incident as they did in John 6. That seems to cut back on any urgency to correct Himself right away for them.

The other thing is that in the history of the Jews, "temple" could have been symbolic of a number of things. "Eat my flesh and drink my blood or you will have no life in you" is such a drastically earthy, unsymbolic kind of speech that it's simply unreasonable to make it seem to mean anything other than its literal meaning. My point is that while one could understand an argument about the temple meaning different things, it's entirely different to try to stretch a different, unliteral meaning over His comments in John 6.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i don't think i quoted all the relevant passages from the various gosples. but i think raph is right that they didn't leave him. but, that people mocked him shows misunderstanding persisted. not sure if it was from former believers or what but.

al has some interesting arguments.

[jeffpugh]

They mocked Him because they had venomous hatred toward Him. Jesus publicly humiliated the leaders, and they couldn't stand for that, nor could any devotees of the Pharisee's status as leaders. Maybe they didn't understand the temple analogy, but they spoke out of hatred nonetheless. Btw, I'm playing a chief priest in my diocese's passion play this Good Friday. Coming to understand Christ being mocked is something I've had to think about all Lent. I've been on the receiving end of scorn myself...

Anywho, interesting topic, Dairy.

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' post='1479455' date='Mar 18 2008, 06:26 PM']i don't think i quoted all the relevant passages from the various gosples. but i think raph is right that they didn't leave him. but, that people mocked him shows misunderstanding persisted. not sure if it was from former believers or what but.

al has some interesting arguments.[/quote]
I don't think Jesus was against people misunderstanding Him. He makes it clear at one point that the parables are meant to be misunderstood by those who are not His disciples, but then later clarifies their meaning in private for His disciples. The reason, I suppose, was to sow the seeds of interest by including a sense of mystery and then instructing those whom He would send out with the knowledge they need. It sounds a bit gnostic at first, but it's not really...it's not meant to be secret knowledge, just knowledge that is revealed in its proper time by those who've been properly instructed. It was part of His pedagogy. This way, He could keep the interest of many people with mysteries and parables, while at the same time explaining things in depth to those close to Him so that they could go out and teach that true meaning later on to the crowds who previously only had the parables; that way, His apostles don't start from scratch...there's already an interest...and each disciple can get more hands on explanation (more apostles means more teachers, and with the crowd pressing in on Jesus so often, that was a good way to organize things).

Anyway, my point is that in John 6, He seems to lose some of those who had already been following Him, the same people for whom He would have clarified Himself as He did with the parables, except that He doesn't, meaning that this isn't a parable, it's the plain truth.