Everyone, Anyone, No one, Whoever
Abstract:
If you begin from the assumption that all these
statements are meant to be read as logically true (no x is b kind of statements)
then if one of them seems contradicted by the evidence (nobody who abides in
Jesus sins, yet everyone sins) then you must find some way that they are
true.
Body:
Anyone
who reads John's Gospel or his letters could easily be buried under an avalanche
of generalizations. Both John's Jesus (the words marked red, if you have a
red-letter edition) and John himself (the words in black) use the words
no one, everyone,
anyone, and
whoever
all the time. John talks this way because he wants us to understand this Jesus
stuff is BIG. Jesus is more than a prophet - he is the Son of the Living God.
Mere words fail to express all he is, so we have to grasp it through metaphor -
he is the Bread of Life, the Gate, the Road (Way), the Truth, the Life, the
Light, the Good Shepherd, the One Sent into the World, the Vine. And if it
sounds confusing, John says you either get it or you
don't:
John 14:6 - No one comes to the father except through me.
John 6:44 - No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.
1 John 1:23 - No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also.
1 John 3:6 - No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.
John 3:3 - No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (or "again")
John 14:23 - Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words...
John 13:20 - ...whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
1 John 1:6 ...whoever says, "I abide in him," ought to walk just as he walked.
John 8:52 - Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.
3 John 11 - Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.
John 6:45 - Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me
John 6:37 - Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.
John 6:54 - Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day
John 7:17 - Anyone who resolves to do the will of the God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own
Some of these sayings give me a sense of relief: everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also. Yippee, it's a two-for-one deal! Whoever does good comes from God. Good news for righteous unbelievers! Whoever receives one whom I send receives me. Excellent news for those of us who like to host parties for prophets! Other sayings fill me with dread: no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Ouch.
These sayings are not exhaustive. There are plenty of other everyone/anyone/whoever sayings in the Johannine writings. What I find interesting is which ones Christians have used to create maps of salvation. It seems a lot of our theological energy goes into creating Venn diagrams of who is in the Kingdom and who is out of it. We also spend a lot of worry about which circle we are in.
For example, the obvious one is John 14:6 - No one can come to the Father except through me. This seems to clinch it as far as the exculsivity of Christ for salvation - except that there are also a couple of other "no one" statements that seem to go along with it:
No one comes to me (Jesus) unless drawn by the Father
No one who abides in him (Jesus) sins.
These kinds of sayings make theologians go into apopleptic frenzies of rhetorical acrobatics. If you begin from the assumption that all these statements are meant to be read as logically true (no x is b kind of statements) then if one of them seems contradicted by the evidence (nobody who abides in Jesus sins, yet everyone sins) then you must find some other way that they are true (or figure that we are all damned). Perhaps, you will reason, John didn't mean that Christians don't sin. In fact, many Protestant theologians would argue (and have) that because Jesus "stands in" for the sinner, God does not hold our sins against us. Therefore "no one who abides in him sins" should properly be read as "in spite of all evidence to the contrary, no one who abides in him sins." As Luther says, we are simultaneously sinners and saints.
Now, it's pretty clear to me that John did not mean "in spite of all evidence to the contrary." John meant that Christians don't sin. I don't think he meant this sentence as a propositional truth. He was not establishing theological principles. He was intentionally holding the Christian community to a ridiculously high ideal. He goes on to lay out a simplistic religious worldview: those who go on sinning are children of the devil. Those who do what is right are children of God.
I've said that these statements are ridiculous and simplistic. I don't use these words disparagingly. They are overly simple and they invite ridicule: just try calling someone a child of the devil and see what happens! But the statement makes perfect sense to say to a community of moral libertines who say, "hey, Jesus takes away our sin - let's party!" To Christians who spiritualize the Gospel to the point of making it irrelevant to moral conduct, John's statements are a slap in the face. We can't go on selling drugs and worshiping fertility gods and call ourselves Christian just because we think Jesus takes away our sin.
John Wesley took the statement from 1 John 3:6 to mean that we could, through the process of sanctification, come to the point where we do not intentionally sin. Most Methodists back off of the extreme statements Wesley makes in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. We modern Methodists say that perfection is a process, like maturation - that we approach perfection in love the way one approaches the speed of light. While I think this is true, I don't think Wesley would buy it. When folks objected that no one can achieve a sinless life, Wesley said, "you're only saying that because no one ever has!"
I think that we need to look at some of Saint John's other statements in his Gospel and letters the same way - by placing them in context. Part of the job of contemporary theology is to go back and critically examine our theological history, including the errors of some of our fathers and mothers in the faith - not out of sense of arrogant superiority, but out of humility and a deep regret for the damage bad theology has caused. Specifically, I think it would be more helpful to approach some of these statements not with the question, "how can we make these words logically resolve so that we preserve the propositional truth of scripture?" but instead with the question, "what does John want us to know and believe?"
(edited 2-3-07)
John 14:6 - No one comes to the father except through me.
John 6:44 - No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.
1 John 1:23 - No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also.
1 John 3:6 - No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.
John 3:3 - No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above (or "again")
John 14:23 - Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words...
John 13:20 - ...whoever receives one whom I send receives me; and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
1 John 1:6 ...whoever says, "I abide in him," ought to walk just as he walked.
John 8:52 - Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.
3 John 11 - Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.
John 6:45 - Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me
John 6:37 - Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.
John 6:54 - Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day
John 7:17 - Anyone who resolves to do the will of the God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own
Some of these sayings give me a sense of relief: everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also. Yippee, it's a two-for-one deal! Whoever does good comes from God. Good news for righteous unbelievers! Whoever receives one whom I send receives me. Excellent news for those of us who like to host parties for prophets! Other sayings fill me with dread: no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Ouch.
These sayings are not exhaustive. There are plenty of other everyone/anyone/whoever sayings in the Johannine writings. What I find interesting is which ones Christians have used to create maps of salvation. It seems a lot of our theological energy goes into creating Venn diagrams of who is in the Kingdom and who is out of it. We also spend a lot of worry about which circle we are in.
For example, the obvious one is John 14:6 - No one can come to the Father except through me. This seems to clinch it as far as the exculsivity of Christ for salvation - except that there are also a couple of other "no one" statements that seem to go along with it:
No one comes to me (Jesus) unless drawn by the Father
No one who abides in him (Jesus) sins.
These kinds of sayings make theologians go into apopleptic frenzies of rhetorical acrobatics. If you begin from the assumption that all these statements are meant to be read as logically true (no x is b kind of statements) then if one of them seems contradicted by the evidence (nobody who abides in Jesus sins, yet everyone sins) then you must find some other way that they are true (or figure that we are all damned). Perhaps, you will reason, John didn't mean that Christians don't sin. In fact, many Protestant theologians would argue (and have) that because Jesus "stands in" for the sinner, God does not hold our sins against us. Therefore "no one who abides in him sins" should properly be read as "in spite of all evidence to the contrary, no one who abides in him sins." As Luther says, we are simultaneously sinners and saints.
Now, it's pretty clear to me that John did not mean "in spite of all evidence to the contrary." John meant that Christians don't sin. I don't think he meant this sentence as a propositional truth. He was not establishing theological principles. He was intentionally holding the Christian community to a ridiculously high ideal. He goes on to lay out a simplistic religious worldview: those who go on sinning are children of the devil. Those who do what is right are children of God.
I've said that these statements are ridiculous and simplistic. I don't use these words disparagingly. They are overly simple and they invite ridicule: just try calling someone a child of the devil and see what happens! But the statement makes perfect sense to say to a community of moral libertines who say, "hey, Jesus takes away our sin - let's party!" To Christians who spiritualize the Gospel to the point of making it irrelevant to moral conduct, John's statements are a slap in the face. We can't go on selling drugs and worshiping fertility gods and call ourselves Christian just because we think Jesus takes away our sin.
John Wesley took the statement from 1 John 3:6 to mean that we could, through the process of sanctification, come to the point where we do not intentionally sin. Most Methodists back off of the extreme statements Wesley makes in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. We modern Methodists say that perfection is a process, like maturation - that we approach perfection in love the way one approaches the speed of light. While I think this is true, I don't think Wesley would buy it. When folks objected that no one can achieve a sinless life, Wesley said, "you're only saying that because no one ever has!"
I think that we need to look at some of Saint John's other statements in his Gospel and letters the same way - by placing them in context. Part of the job of contemporary theology is to go back and critically examine our theological history, including the errors of some of our fathers and mothers in the faith - not out of sense of arrogant superiority, but out of humility and a deep regret for the damage bad theology has caused. Specifically, I think it would be more helpful to approach some of these statements not with the question, "how can we make these words logically resolve so that we preserve the propositional truth of scripture?" but instead with the question, "what does John want us to know and believe?"
(edited 2-3-07)
Posted: Thu - February 1, 2007 at 10:26 PM |
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contact: dave at davebarnhart dot net
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Published On: Feb 03, 2007 08:20 PM
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