“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me
has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to
life.” (John 5: 24)
This verse is seen by Biblical authorities as a possibly authentic saying of Jesus, while those before and after, i.e., vs. 19-29, are a theological exposition by the author of the Gospel reflecting the doctrine of the relationship between the Father and the Son which had developed by the end of the first century when the fourth Gospel is believed to have been written.
Since the earliest decades of a new faith growing within and separating from the ancient Yahwist faith, the central theological dispute has always been, who was Jesus and just what was his relationship with the single god - the great understanding of the Abrahamic peoples.
Over the centuries since, as the Christian church organized and matured, great minds suffused with faith have grappled with this conundrum and created many subtle if unsatisfying definitions and explanations as well as guiding creeds. And, in the process, sincere groups have broken from the main stream and created their own satisfying eddies of faith or even great religious movements.
For so long, God, however defined, was close by - perhaps on a nearby mountain top or just above the firmament overhead. And Hell was just below our feet. But the time came when the wits which God gave us humans exiled God from those nearby precincts. We learned of planets, galaxies and a universe of unfathomable dimensions. Where now does God reside? In ancient days, a god was god of a given territory; that other territory over there had another god and if you went there, you had to worry whether your god went with you. So, is our God territorial, just of our Solar System? Or, will he be with us when we ultimately explore the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way? How about the billions of galaxies in our universe? And, how about the possible billions of universes before and around the universe of the Big Bang?
Mankind will never know the answers. But long ago in simpler times Jesus said that anyone who believed in God who had sent him, would have eternal life. THAT is the central fact of faith!
O God, as we pass through this tumultuous life, help us to keep our attention on the great verity: to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul, and to love our neighbor as our self.
Richard Calhoun
This verse is seen by Biblical authorities as a possibly authentic saying of Jesus, while those before and after, i.e., vs. 19-29, are a theological exposition by the author of the Gospel reflecting the doctrine of the relationship between the Father and the Son which had developed by the end of the first century when the fourth Gospel is believed to have been written.
Since the earliest decades of a new faith growing within and separating from the ancient Yahwist faith, the central theological dispute has always been, who was Jesus and just what was his relationship with the single god - the great understanding of the Abrahamic peoples.
Over the centuries since, as the Christian church organized and matured, great minds suffused with faith have grappled with this conundrum and created many subtle if unsatisfying definitions and explanations as well as guiding creeds. And, in the process, sincere groups have broken from the main stream and created their own satisfying eddies of faith or even great religious movements.
For so long, God, however defined, was close by - perhaps on a nearby mountain top or just above the firmament overhead. And Hell was just below our feet. But the time came when the wits which God gave us humans exiled God from those nearby precincts. We learned of planets, galaxies and a universe of unfathomable dimensions. Where now does God reside? In ancient days, a god was god of a given territory; that other territory over there had another god and if you went there, you had to worry whether your god went with you. So, is our God territorial, just of our Solar System? Or, will he be with us when we ultimately explore the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way? How about the billions of galaxies in our universe? And, how about the possible billions of universes before and around the universe of the Big Bang?
Mankind will never know the answers. But long ago in simpler times Jesus said that anyone who believed in God who had sent him, would have eternal life. THAT is the central fact of faith!
O God, as we pass through this tumultuous life, help us to keep our attention on the great verity: to love God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul, and to love our neighbor as our self.
Richard Calhoun
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