Andromeda Islands wrote:Kowani wrote:Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Can I just mention all the delicious innuendoes I can make with this?
I am not sure where you are going with this, but John CH. 14
standing alone suggests both a universalist and unitarian philosophy, and a gnostic atheistic one as well.
Standing alone AKA "out of context." So to understand it as universalist or unitarian, would be wrong because it denies the rest of the Gospel of John which is not. (And for the record, it would take some severe mental gymnastics to make John Chapter 14 Universalist even by itself. All the bits about "Believing in me," "keep my commandments" and "I am in the Father", "no one comes to the father except through me" isn't universalist at all. It's very specific.
Also putting it in context, the statement was in response to a question posed by the most atheistic gnostic disciple, Thomas.
Thomas wasn't a gnostic. There is a Gnostic gospel named for Thomas but it is a forgery. And St. Thomas Christians aren't gnostics.
By the way, a similar narrow philosophy is often quoted, Matthew 7:13, that the way is narrow, but read that verse in context, it suggests a very different idea than "Only Christians are good" or that "Only Christianity is the true religion"
John 14 and Matthew 7 present a very different philosophy than traditional Trinitarian dogmatic orthodoxy.
No the don't. They
are Trinitarian dogmatic orthodoxy.
There are clearly universalist and unitarian (and ironically atheist, as well) statements in the Bible,
Which is why we understand these quotes in the
whole of the biblical context, not cherry picked out. I can turn Voldemort into the hero and harry potter into the Villain, if I remove certain passages from the context of the story.
although one could argue that the Bible teaches the opposite as well. Many Christians can concede the point that not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally, for example it could be claimed that the "born again" idea teaches reincarnation.
Whether you see the Bible figuratively as Spong does, or in a more logical world view as atheists do, you may learn to doubt the dogma of Biblical inerrancy, which has yet to be proven and is only accepted by the narrow minority.
Yes and no. Inerrancy requires defining. Traditionally we understand that Inerrancy to be within its intended purpose. The purpose of Scripture is to convey doctrinal truth. You can write a complete work of fiction that still accomplishes this goal. So when we view the Bible as Inerrant we are referring to its memetic property, not necessarily its propositional one.
The idea that it is propositionally inerrant is actually a relatively recent idea.