**2) WHEN JESUS REVEALS A TRUTH, HE DOES NOT GO INTO HOW THAT TRUTH IS POSSIBLE **
In other words, Jesus simply reveals a truth without going into theological detail on how the truth He has revealed is possible. For example, when He is challenged after He reveals the truth of His preexistence, He doesn’t start explaining that He is the Second Person of the Trinity, eternally begotten by the Father, that He incarnated in the womb of a virgin, etc. When He tells the Jews that He came down from heaven, He doesn’t start explaining that He is God and that He was born of a virgin. He simply emphatically repeats what He said earlier. Or take for example John 10:30, where He says “I and the Father are one” and the Jews were
scandalized … because a man claiming to be God is blasphemy … and attempted to stone Him because they understood He was identifying Himself as God. He didn’t explain
how it was possible that He and the Father are one when they are two distinct persons. How can two or three equal one? In fact,
not even John explains how Jesus can be God and at the same time be distinct from the Father without there being two gods(John 1:1). In fact, we don’t find an explanation on how the Trinity can be logically reconciled with the belief in one God anywhere in the Bible. Nor does Jesus or the Bible explain
how He can be omniscient and yet “grow in wisdom” (Luke 2:52) or
in what sense does He *not know *the day or the hour of His coming (Mark 13:32).
My point here is that you argue that because an explanation of transubstantiation is lacking, that my argument suffers the same flaw I claim the figurative argument suffers. The problem is that you cannot use that as a standard to interpret whether something is literal or not because Jesus or the Bible
rarely -
if ever - provides that kind of explanation when He reveals any truth. So if an explanation of transubstantiation is lacking, so are explanations of the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, etc. You will not find those kinds of explanations among the words of Jesus or of the rest of the Bible of many doctrines as you would find in a book on systematic theology. So if an explanation of transubstantiation is lacking in John 6, it is not unusual. Jesus
doesn’t generally give those kinds of explanations. So the fact that such an explanation is missing does* not mean absolutely anything*. The doctrine of transubstantiation is a theological explanation on
how John 6:53-58 is possible, just as the doctrine of the Trinity is a theological explanation of
how John 1:1 is possible, and the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union is a theological explanation on
how passages like Luke 2:52 and Mark 13:32 are possible if Jesus is God. But in all of those passages, an essential truth is revealed in a
very basic way.
Jesus presents truths in a very basic way and those listening either accept it on faith or reject it. If He is taken
literally when He was speaking figuratively, He* corrects it *by indicating that He was speaking figuratively, as several passages consistently demonstrate. That is His general
modus operandi in the Gospel of John. Outside of that, when He literally meant what He said, He just emphatically reaffirms it without going into too much theological detail. He doesn’t engage in any theological explanations on
how that truth is possible.
My argument is simply that Jesus provides a correction if something He meant figuratively is taken literally and reaffirms a statement after being
challenged when He is
not speaking figuratively. The latter and not the former is the case in John 6. And finally…
**3) JOHN HABITUALLY EXPLAINS STATEMENTS MADE BY JESUS **
And I don’t mean he goes into theological explanations on how something is possible. He simply reveals the
basic meaning of what Jesus said. I’ll give three examples:
John 2:21
But he was speaking of the temple of his body
John 7:38-39
38"He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’"
39But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive
John 8:26-27
**26"I have many things to speak and to judge concerning you, but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world."
27They did not realize that He had been speaking to them about the Father. **
Other examples include John 12:32-33, 21:18-19, 21:23. So seeing John’s modus operandi in his gospel, it seems rather odd or out of character for him
not to say something in John 6 like “They didn’t realize that He was talking about believing in Him,” or “To eat His flesh is to believe in His word” or even " they didn’t understand His
figure of speech… as he says in John 10:6. How is it that John comments on
less controversial statements and yet in one of the most controversial passages in the gospel… the only instance in the Bible that explicitly states many of Jesus’s disciples left because of something He said… and one of the most controversial topics since the Reformation, John does not say one
iota about this statement? Because his silence, combined with Jesus response lacking a correction and being an emphatic reaffirmation of what He originally said, all indicates that Jesus revealed a basic truth in a basic way
without using figurative language.
I list more examples from John in my original series of posts:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=329772
To be continued…
God Bless,
Michael
Every time I try to write something, I get interrupted!!! So I’m writing this quick message just in case I get interrupted again! God Bless you all!
They couldn’t be Christian without Him.