Peter McKenzie

While what Jesus said applies to the people that He is talking to, it CANNOT be limited to only them as verse 40 shows Actually, this shows the difference between you and I it would appear. I am primarily looking to determine (as a first exercise) what the words of Jesus meant to HIs hearers. In this regard, verse 40 had to have specific application to them – otherwise it is meaningless to them. As such, verse 40 refers to the people of that day FIRSTLY. They were the only ones who did SEE Jesus. You will assert that this has a metaphorical SEEING built into the text – so that it can be exported as a CONCEPT. But this requires you to read into the passage a metaphorical notion of SEEING. And then leads to you making your assertion here. By the way, I am NOT saying that EVERYTHING that Jesus said ONLY applied to them. What I am saying, is that we have to discern (by way of the context) which things were being said ONLY to them. For example, we can take away from verse 40 that if we believe in him we may have eternal life. That fact is applicable to all people across time. But I cannot SEE Jesus today – in the way He is using the word in the text. I can make my own application and consider that I can “SEE” Him in a symbolic sense. But I need to ask FIRSTLY, is that what He is talking about to these folks – who do SEE Him with physical eyes. Would it have made any sense to them, if Jesus were talking about metaphorical seeing – in the text? When I point out these things, I am not denying that “he who believes has eternal life”. Many of your objections are based on what I am NOT saying – rather than what I am saying. As I have said in the past, I am simply remaining at the observation stage – and you are jumping past the exegetical reading of the passage in order to get to your interpretation. I fear that you are fighting with the text and not doing the basic reading and asking what the text meant to the original hearers. This is not about a setting-specific, but about a concept-specific Actually, what you say here is telling. The authors of Scripture (including Jesus) did not write in a vacuum. Much as Paul wrote occasional letters to the church, most of this genre of scripture (unlike poetic and apocalyptic writings) were penned in settings and narratives. If it true that this is what is happening here, and I think you will agree it is, the sequence has to go from setting-specific to concept specific. Of course, all concepts are universal and originate simply as truth statements – but, as far as our grasping of concepts are concerned, concepts are derived by first looking at specific situations in order to determine first what it meant to them – and then what it means for us. But it is not good practice – when there are specific situations that Jesus is speaking into, to ignore the specifics of the situations. If we do ignore the situation at hand, we have Jesus walking around preaching concepts that are not tied to situations – or at the very least, preaching concepts that don’t relate to their situation. Reading IN CONTEXT requires that we consider the situations of each text – lest we end up with an interpretation that is lacking in authority. Authority only happens when we stick with the author’s intended meaning. I would suggest that this is the ONLY way to properly read the Bible – if we are to gain the maximum benefit of the authors’ words.