mmoutreach

Hi Peter, Okay I have a little time tonight so I am going to answer as much as I can. Regarding John 17:12, you wrote; It would make no sense to say that one wasn’t part of the group due to their lostness – if they weren’t part of the group in the first place. IOW one could not be lost from a group if they weren’t part of the group in the first place. This seems like a desperation move to deny a fairly simple fact of the plain reading of the text. My view is a fairly simple reading of the plain text of the Scripture. Let’s test this out from the context. John 17:6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Jesus said “they have kept Your word.” This cannot include Judas as he did not kept the Father’s word. The grammar of “they have kept” is the perfect active. This tense emphasizes the “present state of affairs”. See the definition below. perfect — The verb tense used by the writer to describe a completed verbal action that occurred in the past but which produced a state of being or a result that exists in the present (in relation to the writer). The emphasis of the perfect is not the past action so much as it is as such but the present “state of affairs” resulting from the past action. When Jesus said this, Judas had already left Him and Judas was indwell with Satan. How could anyone honest with the text say that Jesus was including Judas as one who was given to Him out of the world, that Judas belonged to the Father, and that Judas was in that very time one of those who was keeping the Father’s word? You wrote: I know that you will point to the John 18:9 verse to argue against me here – but I think there is a strong contextual case to be made whereby it can be understood that “losing none” means that none of these ones fell away from the faith due to the life and acts of Jesus. That isn’t in the text at all. Jesus goes on and on and on in John 17 about the group of men that the Father gave to Him and Judas could not possibly be in that group. John 17:15 “I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. So Jesus was asking the Father to keep Judas from the evil one when Judas was already indwell by Satan? That is impossible and the text is so clear that Jesus is excluding Judas the entire text of John 17 that it is difficult to understand why you even bring up the context. Peter, you are making Jesus out to be a liar because you seem to have to see Judas as some kind of believer that is included in the group that was given to Jesus by the Father as having belonged to the Father as believers. You simply cannot stretch the text to make this true. I think this is why you claim the “text” agrees with you but you are unwilling to actually quote the verses and show how Judas could be a part of the believing group. Below is exactly what I mean. You wrote: I can’t give you the exact verses that you require right now, but I feel the contextual reading is enough to derive this truth. You do not have a leg to stand on. It seems that you don’t appeal to the grammar because it would refute your theory. You don’t have any verse that says what you claim, because it isn’t there, but you want to carry on with your theory. I don’t work that way. The text is inspired as it is written. And God didn’t make a mistake. If God had wanted to say what you theorize that He meant, He could have said it. God’s word is perfectly inspired and He does not need us to correct it, add to it, or take away what He has written. You wrote: For now, we are left with Jesus saying in chapter 18 that He lost none of them – pitted against John 17’s wording that there was an exception. You are staking your argument on a rigid reading of John 18:9 There is no contradiction at all. Judas was one of the 12, but he was not one of the believers that the Father gave to Jesus. Let’s look at the passage that you cited. John 18:9 to fulfill the word which He spoke, “Of those whom You have given Me I lost not one.” Jesus could not speak a lie and He cannot deceive. He said that not one of those given to Him was lost. Judas could not be one of those given to Jesus by the Father anymore than the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil could have had seeds. If we believe God that every one of His words are true, then we can take His words individually and together to know exactly what He said without error. The fact that you have to correct Jesus and charge me with a “rigid reading” of John 18:9 is mind boggling. You cannot win this way. You cannot change the word of Jesus and try to win an argument with someone who respects the inspired word of God as written. You wrote: By narrowing the scope of this verse to ONLY applying to the 11 disciples in view, Jesus said: John 17:20 “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; This is the verse that the other believers come in. “Believe” in this verse is present active, the ones who are presently believing because of their word. If Jesus was talking about all present believers through the entire chapter, He would not have had to add in that He was not asking on behalf of “these alone”, for they would all be included. You wrote: I find that you do tend to take a somewhat legalistic view of interpreting scripture. Your term is very pejorative. The correct term is a historical-grammatical. Bible-believing Christians generally follow a method of interpretation known as the historical-grammatical approach. That is, we try to find the plain (literal) meaning of the words based on an understanding of the historical and cultural settings in which the book was written. We then follow standard rules of grammar, according to the book’s particular genre, to arrive at an interpretation. We seek to perform careful interpretation or exegesis—that is, to “read out of” the text what the author intended it to mean. https://answersingenesis.org/hermeneutics/how-we-interpret-the-bible-principles-for-understanding/ People who take the Bible as God-breathed believe that God created a person named Adam and then created a person named Eve out of Adam’s rib. We do not need to rewrite God’s word. We can just believe it using the tools that we have to interpret the words and the grammar. You wrote: I say that with all due respect and that is not meant to be a pejorative. It is pejorative, but I am used to being attacked by the cults so it doesn’t really phase me. I take your words with a grain of salt because it appears you are influenced by those who write that the church is wrong about major Christian doctrine. Heaven and hell are being attacked and hell is no longer a literal place. Adam and Eve are no longer literal people. And on and on and on. If they are wrong about these things, what else are they wrong about? You wrote: I just think that there is a healthy way to view the entirety of the topics in view and to make a valiant attempt to harmonize verses that seem to contradict each other. The problem I see is that your new view actually interjects contradiction into the text rather than deals with apparent contradiction. I have listed some of the contradictions your view in this post and the contradictions are massive. When you get the view right, there won’t be contradictions. The Word is God-breathed. It doesn’t need correction. You wrote: First of all, neither do I argue with the inspired word. You are making a false determination and then running with that. I have repeatedly said I am not changing the grammar – so it is getting frustrating to hear you say that I am. Yes you are. I have shown you from the grammar in this post and I have shown you what the present tense means. You have NEVER listed the inspired grammar and show me where my view is contradicted by the grammar. In fact you make an end-date to the present tense and yet you cannot point to even one verse that lists the end. A person from a different persuasion could say that the end date is the conversion of Paul, or mid-Acts, the death of Paul. You name it. Speculation has no proof. And you have no grammar. You wrote: The grammar is present tense in the passage – WITHIN the setting and context of the narrative. Engaging in proper hermeneutical practices requires that we do OBSERVATION first. As such, that requires that we do the basic reading and ask ourselves repeatedly (as we read the words in context) – what does this mean to those people that Jesus is talking to. You cannot do that observation without determine what the words mean. What the grammar means. The truth of the word cannot contradict the grammar. That is in the inspired model of interpretation. When you try to do interpretation by meditating on what you think the readers were thinking without considering the grammar (which they would familiar with) you can take a giant step past reality and then create a theory that has no verse to back it up. All you have is what you imagine they are thinking. You wrote: To insist that Jesus is all of a sudden making a universal theological statement that applies to future Gentile as well as future Jews does an injustice to the process. Jesus wrote: John 10:16 “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd. I just believe Jesus that He will bring these other sheep and they will hear His voice. You wrote: Again, you seem to be relying on strict grammatical boundaries MORE than you are the contextual reading. This shows your rigidity and is a desperation move. It is not either or. I have shown you that I rely on the grammar and the context. I have shown you the context. the only “context” that you seem to provide is what you think the people are thinking. You don’t actually prove your point with the actual context or the actual words. “Rigidity” and “desperation move” are words that are beneath you. Rather than prove your point, you attack my motive. There is no desperation for me because I believe the words as they are written. I don’t need to add to them or take away from the truth of Jesus. If Jesus meant something different than the words and grammar that He used, He would have said it a different way. I haven’t read any further of what you have written. I ran out of time. I will answer more as I can.