I'm not terribly concerned that you find God's grace unjust. I do, too, and I'm thankful for it; were God's grace just, we'd all burn in Hell. In any case, the verse plainly says, "many even among the leaders believed in him." If you want to say that that they didn't really believe, then that's your problem. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says they believed. Therefore, they believed. Jesus says that everyone who believes has eternal life (John 6:47). Not those who believe but also yada yada. EVERYONE. So they have eternal life. So, yes, according to my theology, and according to Scripture, they absolutely are still saved. Is it wildly inappropriate? Praise God, yes it is. That you would think that the grace of God ought to be considered appropriate says an awful lot to me about the values underlying your theology.

Nice strawman.



I said nothing about God’s grace being unjust. Only that John wasn’t using “they believed in Jesus” in the same sense that you’re insisting, and that you’re using your preconceived idea about “belief” derived from your own false theological axioms to make a determination that the sense that Jesus uses “believe” in John 6 and that John uses in chapter 12 are somehow comparable when they’re not. To me it’s rather that John is demonstrating an obvious contrast between what true belief is and what it’s not..

Fake belief isn’t belief at all, it’s a dead faith, as James pointed out so succinctly in his letter.

All I’m saying is that you can’t possibly know enough about yourself and your state of belief to make any real claim about that belief, especially not enough to know you have eternal life. Only God can make that judgement.

That’s all.

The verse says they believed. You say they didn't, that the word "believe" actually means "fake believed." So you redefine the word to mean exactly the opposite of what it means so that you believe what you want rather than believing what the text says. Again, to be as clear as possible: you reject the text's claim that they believed. That's your problem that you refuse to believe what John wrote. Not mine.

The verse does say that they believed, it also demonstrates their unbelief by their refusal to confess and their fear of being expelled. That’s what it means to be a hypocrite, to act contrary to what you claim to say or believe.

Being a hypocrite also means that you don’t even really believe what you claim to anyway, it’s a performative contradiction. It’s like a postmodernist, third-wave feminist flying on an airplane and pounding away on a laptop computer about how science is ridiculous and nothing but a social-constructionist byproduct of the white, western, patriarchy. John’s point is that they obviously weren’t serious believers, just like in Jesus’ parable about the seed planted on rocks in Matt 13, or Mark 4; or the parable of the house built on sand in Matt 7(ironically which is right after the verse where Jesus admonishes those who cry out “Lord, Lord” yet who did not do the Father’s will by saying, “depart from me, for I never knew you.”)


You de-emphasize the latter in order to defend your theological axiom, not to defend the text itself, which you selectively appeal to.

John also has another verse in chapter 6 where he talks about how someone has eternal life:

“...[54] he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

In fact almost the entire first part of the chapter John dedicates to establishing the principle that “to believe” is not just a passive acceptance, or a verbal profession, but that it’s tied to an act, namely, eating and drinking which leads to Him(the Triune God) uniting to and abiding in that person.

That’s what Christ explicitly stated was “eternal life,” to know God(17:3).

But we’re just supposed to nevermind all of that, right?

Just believe in theJack’s gospel of the single verse taken out of context?

The text doesn't say they claimed to believe. John himself says they believed. It doesn't say their faith was fake or spurious. It doesn't say it wasn't sincere. It doesn't say they stopped believing. It says they believed. You say John is wrong, that they did not, after all, believe. You can justify contradicting the text however you want. Again, it is not my problem that the text says one thing and you deny what the text says, nor am I interested in you justifying creating a contradiction in the text.

John: They believed
GG: No, they didn't.

I'll take John's word on this, thanks anyway.

1)Just stop already. Moral grandstanding is such a fashion doesn’t make you any more persuasive, in fact it only shows that you know your argument is just as weak as it sounds. Almost as if you’re trying to convince yourself in the face of what I’m saying rather than trying to convince me.

2) You’re not “just taking John at his word,” you’re cherry picking John’s words to suit your argument. Absolutistizing a pair of words, and ignoring the rest.

It’s simply confirmation bias, nothing more.

Big difference.


3) I’ll refrain from any further reply if and when I see a response from you in regards to my comments about John 6 and eternal life.

Short of that, I’m not going to waste any more energy belaboring this point.

John: They believed.
theJack: Oh, cool.
GG: YOU ABSULOOTUST---- THEY DINT RLY BELIEB

Okay.

John: If you would believe you must eat and drink.
Gandalf: Ok, cool.
theJack: YOU ABSULOOTUST——HE DINT RLY SAY THERT


That’s the thing about appeals to ridicule, they reveal just as much about the person using them, or maybe more, than it does about the person they’re trying to describe.

Where did I call you an absolutist?

edit:

But for fun, Jesus does not say if you would believe you must eat/drink. He literally didn't say that. He said that if the one who eats/drinks "has eternal life", "remains in me, and I in them", and "will live forever." All important, but nowhere does Jesus say that if you would believe, you must eat/drink.

edit2:

In fact, as long as you continue this, I think I'm going to start numbering your errors. So far we have:

1. Rejects Jesus' statement that everyone who believes has everlasting life
2. Rejects John's statement that the individuals in John 12:42-43 believed
3. Redefined "believe" to mean "pretending to believe" in John 12:42-43
4. Misquotes Jesus in John 6 as saying that anyone who would believe must eat/drink from Him

Could be more, but that's a good start off the top of my head.

v29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

v35 : “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, he who believes in me shall never thirst.”

v40: “For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life.”(see Luke 24:35).

v51: I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats this bread, he will live forever.”

v53: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”

All this is within the span of the same discourse that Jesus is having in the Synagogue in Capernaum. They ask for a sign for him to do that they should believe.

His answer is to believe is to eat, and to eat is to believe.






No I didn’t. That’s a blatantly dishonest misrepresentation.



No, I just rejected your obviously intentional misconstrual of that verse based on the rest of the passage.



The lengths you’ll go to to defend your indefensible axioms are quite remarkable.




If you say so.

I do believe Christ means what he says in John 3:16. But he says "whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (present tense). If you believed at some point, but stop believing, you are in fact not a person who believes, and consequently you cannot expect not to perish and have eternal life.

You are closer than you realize to the kingdom.


We've discussed this before at length, and I just don't think this argument for a different translation that the Vulgate offered, to say nothing of every English translation ever, is wrong. I think the hermeneutical arguments against your position are absolutely conclusive, especially considered in light of what we've learned from recent advances in discourse analysis. I further find both logical problems and metaphysical with your proposal beyond the aforementioned.

Having said that, your position is infinitely more respectable than GGs. You, at least, recognize that the text says that if you believe you have everlasting life. That is to say, your position, at least as stated here, recognizes that the presence of faith is a sufficient condition for obtaining (at least at that moment) eternal life. As close as GG is, you are closer still.

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