Correctness and Accuracy; Belief and Fact

For lack of a parallel negative you are playing a game of semantics. If you like I will give you an example that is more parallel so that you can relate to it more. Here is a more parallel illustration:

Premise:
BA&A states that:
Romeo and Juliette was NOT written by Shakespeare.
BA&A has yet to present any evidence that Romeo and Juliette was not written by Shakespeare.

All conservative scholars of the literary field agree unanimously that Shakespeare was the author, but inspite of the BA&A assets that he is right, and that Shakespeare is not the author and that no one can prove that he was, though BA&A up to this point has offered no evidence whatsoever for his assertion.

Now BA&A demands this board, and possibly the literary world, to prove that Shakespeare is the author. He believes the onus is on the literary world to give the proof, not on him who originally made the claim that Shakespeare was not the author.
DHK

 

The analogy is parallel now.
As Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliette, John wrote the Gospel of John.
You deny that John wrote the Gospel of John.
You don't find it necessary for me to give you proof of Shakespeare's authorship, just John's authorship. You are being illogical, can't you see?
The fact is, since you are the one that is denying the authorship of the gospel, then bring forth the evidence. If you were to deny the authorship of Romeo and Juliette, the literary world would demand of you to bring forth your evidence, but you have none. In the same way you have no evidence that John is not the author of the Gospel of John. If you did, you would have presented it by now.
DHK

 

The onus is on you to prove your statement that John is not the author. I don't have to present any evidence to you at all. Set forth your case.
You don't have any! It is obvious.

 

Your resources are suspect.
First, although Barclay is a liberal, he does believe in the Johannine authorship of the Gospel of John, which I will demonstrate to you. You must have taken his quote out of context or quoted someone else.
Secondly, the Catholics are hardly a reliable source at all since they have a reputation of destroying the Bible, not preserving it. Their interpretation of it is very liberal.
Thirdly, the rest of your Bibliography is completely liberal. Liberal scholars have one thing in common: to destroy the integrity of the Word of God. So you have already chosen your sources with their presuppositions before you have even started. Here is a couple for you to ponder on:

http://www.abideinchrist.com/messages/jnintro.html

 

By: W. Hall Harris III , Th.M., Ph.D.

Some have thought that the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel was composed separately by someone other than the Evangelist. The usual reasons given for seeing the Prologue as a separate composition involve the unique vocabulary it employs: lovgo" (referring to the preincarnate Logos) only in 1:1, 1:14; plhvrh", plhvrwma in 1:14, 1:16; and cavri" in 1:14, 1:16, and 1:17.

For example, R. Brown states that the Prologue is “an early Christian hymn, probably stemming from Johannine circles, which has been adapted to serve as an overture to the Gospel narrative of the career of the incarnate Word.”26

But it is more likely that it is original, because it fits so well with what follows. Why not see it as from the Evangelist himself if it comes from “Johannine circles”? [Brown may prefer the phrase “Johannine circles” because it suggests a later date, although in any case for him this composition would precede the composition of the remainder of the Gospel.

Some have thought it should be understood as poetry. True, it can be arranged to look like verse. [So can just about any prose unit, including Eph 1:3-14]. But I have seen no two arrangements which agree, nor any one arrangement which I find particularly convincing. I think it is better to regard the prologue as elevated prose, with a meditative or reflective air about it (like much of the rest of the Fourth Gospel). But this does not make it poetry.

On the use of oJ lovgo": It is not proven beyond doubt whether the term, as John uses it, is to be derived from Jewish or Greek backgrounds or some other source. Nor is it precisely plain what the author meant by it. He does not tell us, and we are left to work out the precise allusion and significance for ourselves.

R.P. Casey states regarding the Prologue:

…the principal difficulty lies neither in its style nor in its terminology but in the fact that its author has his feet planted firmly in two worlds: that of the Old Testament and that of Hellenistic philosophy and he allows his gaze to wander easily from one to the other. At every important point he has not only two thoughts instead of one, but two sets of allusions in mind.27

Greek historical backgrounds: As a philosophical term, lovgo" meant the ‘world-soul’, the soul of the universe. This was an all-pervading principle, the rational principle of the universe. It was a creative energy. In one sense, all things came from it; in another, men derived their wisdom from it. These concepts are at least as old as Heraclitus (6th cent. BC): the lovgo" is “always existent” and “all things happen through this lovgo".”28

Later Hellenistic thought: Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher of the early 1st century, frequently mentions the lovgo" (it appears over 1400 times in his writings), but he is really concerned with his Platonic distinction between this material world and the real, heavenly world of ideas. It was the Stoics who actually developed the concept of lovgo". They abandoned Plato’s heavenly archetypes in favor of the thought (closer to Heraclitus) that the Universe is pervaded by lovgo", the eternal Reason. They were convinced of the ultimate rationality of the universe, and used the term lovgo" to express this conviction. It was the ‘force’ (!) that originated and permeated and directed all things. It was the supreme governing principle of the universe. But the Stoics did not think of the lovgo" as personal, nor did they understand it as we would understand God (i.e. as a person to be worshipped).

The Evangelist, then, is using a term that would be widely recognized among the Greeks. But the ‘man in the street’ would not know its precise significance, any more than most of us would understand the terms ‘relativity’ or ‘nuclear fission’. But he would know it meant something very important.

The rest of the Fourth Gospel, however, shows little trace of acquaintance with Greek philosophy, and even less of dependence on it.

John, in his use of lovgo", is cutting across the fundamental Greek concept of the gods: they were detached, they regarded the struggles and heartaches and joys and fears of the world with serene, divine lack of feeling. John uses lovgo" to portray a God so involved, so caring, so loving and giving that he becomes incarnate within his creation.

William Barclay summarizes well:

John spoke to a world which thought of the gods in terms of passionless apatheia and serene detachment. He pointed at Jesus Christ and said: ‘Here is the mind of God; here is the expression of the thought of God; here is the lovgo". And men were confronted with a God who cared so passionately and who loved so sacrificially that His expression was Jesus Christ and His emblem a cross.29

Jewish Backgrounds: The ejn ajrch' of John 1:1 inevitably recalls Genesis 1:1, tyvarb. But oJ lovgo" also recalls yhla rmayw, “and God said…” [cf. also Psalm 33:6, “By the word of Yahweh the heavens were made.” There was also the “semi-personalization” of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22 ff. And the Targums substitute Memra (“Word”) as an intermediary in many places: e.g. in Exod 19:17, “And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God” (MT), the Palestinian Targum reads “to meet theWord of God.” Targum Jonathan (containing the former and latter prophets, Joshua to 2 Kings plus the prophets and Daniel) uses this expression some 320 times. Some say this is not significant because Memra does not refer to a being distinct from God. It is just a way of referring to God himself. But this is the point: people familiar with the Targums were familiar with “Memra” as a designation for God. John does not use the term the way the Targums do, but to those familiar with the Targums it must have aroused these associations, which John would be in agreement with.30

In summary: William Temple states that the lovgo"

“alike for Jew and Gentile represents the ruling fact of the universe, and represents that fact as the self-expression of God. The Jew will remember that ‘by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made’; the Greek will think of the rational principle of which all natural laws are particular expressions. Both will agree that this Logos is the starting-point of all things.”31

John was using a term which, with various shades of meaning, was in common use everywhere. He could count on all men catching his essential meaning. But for John, the Word was not a principle, but a living Being, the source of life; not a personification, but a Person, and that Person divine.

Note: John never uses the absolute, specific, unrelated term lovgo" outside of the prologue. Elsewhere it is always modified or clarified, and does not occur in the Gospel again in the sense of the lovgo". Why not? Probably because in the Prologue we are looking at pre-existence. 1:14 becomes the point of transition: the Word is now Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, he is called Jesus from this point on, no longer oJ lovgo". Jesus and the lovgo" are an identity; the lovgo" is the pre-existent Christ.

Strictly speaking, I would prefer not to say that John has ‘personified’ the lovgo" because this implies that he borrowed the term from philosophical circles like the Stoics. Perhaps if we could ask John, he would prefer to say the philosophers had (in a sense) ‘de-personalized’ the lovgo" into a rational principle, although he really was a person (the pre-incarnate Christ) all along. That is to say, what the philosophers had grasped about the lovgo" had some elements of truth, but these were only dim and distant reflections of the pre-incarnate Christ himself. There really was a rational principle behind the universe, but until the coming of this lovgo" as Jesus of Nazareth (1:14) there was no way to know anything about him (1:18) except by natural revelation with all its limitations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Barrett, C. K., The Gospel According to St. John, 2nd ed., 149-70.

Beasley-Murray, G. R., John, Word Biblical Commentary 36, 1-17.

Brown, R. E., The Gospel According to John, AB 29, 3-37.

Carson, D. A., The Gospel According to John, 111-39.

Cook, W. R., “The ‘Glory’ Motif in the Johannine Corpus,” JETS 27 (1984): 293ff.

Edwards, Ruth B., “Cavrin ajntiV cavrito" (John 1.16),” JSNT 32 (1988): 3-15.

Fennema, D. A., “John 1:18: ‘God the Only Son’,” NTS 31 (1985): 125-26.

Green, H. C., “The Composition of St. John’s Prologue,” ET 66 (1954-55): 291-94.

Haenchen, E., John 1, Hermeneia, 109-140.

King, J. S., “The Prologue to the Fourth Gospel: Some Unsolved Problems,” ET 86 (1975): 372-75.

Miller, E. L., “The Johannine Origins of the Johannine Logos,” JBL 112 (1993): 445-57.

Miller, E. L., “The New International Version on the Prologue of John,” HTR 72 (1979): 309.

Morris, L., The Gospel According to John, NICNT, 71-128.

O’Neill, J. C., “The Prologue to St. John’s Gospel,” JTS 20 (1969): 41-52.

Parker, J., “The Incarnational Christology of John,” Criswell Theological Review 3.1 (1988): 31-48.

Trudinger, L. P., “The Prologue of John’s Gospel: Its Extent, Content and Intent,” RTR 33 (1974): 11-17

http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1301

 

Hey born again and again

You have a caraciture here:

Fundamentalists don't hate Catholics. We hate their perverted message. That's a big difference. Catholics make justification depend on sanctification. This we hate and oppose. Justification depends on faith alone in Jesus. Works of sanctification follow!


Then you add this illogical remark:

Any Catholic who believes in Jesus will be in heaven - in spite of their Christ-denying human-centered self-righteous theology.

No one is able to look into any one else's heart and make a definite statement about heaven or hell. But we can make a definite statement about whether or not theology is Bible or not.

Catholicism is not Bible theology.
Catholics may yet be saved.

Try not to confuse yourself with your self-righteous piety.
Lloyd

 

I don't see where a question is a personal attack. If I say to you I am a Lawyer and then begin to give legal counsel that seems quite lawless, wouldn't you raise an eyebrow and do a little questioning yourself?

"... be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evil-doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good concersation in Christ ".

That was spoken by Peter (1 Pt 3:15-16). I have spoken evil of you sir. If you could show me some meekness and fear, along with your good conversation in Christ, I will repent of my charges and ask your forgiveness before all and God.

I asked about the hope that is in you, your rebirth, where you learned that God said you must be born again, who said it, and where this Word of God is? I have asked many questions giving you an opportunity to shame me. Will you give any answers?

God Bless!

ps. I generally always say God Bless even to my adversaries because All need the blessing offered by our Lord Jesus Christ. So I am genuine when I say to you God Bless even though I am at odds with you and have spoken evil of you.

Clear things up with some answers and I will repent of my analyisis of you. I am not going to debate who wrote the bible with someone who I am not sure is a fellow brother in Christ. I need to know first if you have the Spirit of Christ in you. Why? Because the only one I know who attacks the Word of God is the spirits of Satan, even from the beginning...." Yea, hath God said ?"

You said, no one knows what God said, right?

 

Greetings

It is usually a sure sign that the crier of "personal attack" has just run out of "ammo."

With nothing else to use, and precious ego to save, something must be written! Alas - personal attacks is a well used smoke screen.

Lloyd

 

Hey BA&A

Jesus is the Son of God - Good!
Died on the Cross for man's sins - Good!

But even Jehovah's Witnesses and CoCers will affirm this. What you need is a clear statement on the gospel! You've failed to present a response to my criticisms of Catholic theology.

All you have to do is define what it takes to get saved. However, when you mention something - anything before faith, then you error. For proof of this, all you have to do is a study of the word justification?

An analysis shows that God alone is active in justification while humans are strictly passive. Your diabolical works righteousness appeals to baptisms and faithfulness.

What you've done is confuse sanctification, consecration and purification with justification. This is why Catholicism is an error.

To answer my criticisms, show me from the Bible how justification is by works. Don't just quote a verse without including its context! Context rules and keeps error out of theology.

Rather than posting inflamatory language, back up your view - if you can.

I know you can't.
Lloyd