Steven Carr

Earl Doherty maintains that the epistles in the Bible only speak of Jesus 'appearing', and never speak of him 're-appearing'.

The Bishop of Durham , NT Wright, refutes this in his article http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/o...destinati.html

' This means (by the way) that the 'second coming' is NOT Jesus 'coming back to take us home', but Jesus coming -- or 'reappearing', as 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 put it... '

Can Doherty really have missed two such references to Jesus 're-appearing' and still claim to be a scholar?

Toto

D'uh.

I hate it when you make me look things up to figure out what's going on.

1 John 3:2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears,[a]we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

[a] 1 John 3:2 Or when it is made known


Colossians 3: 4 When Christ, who is your[a] life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
[a] Colossians 3:4 Some manuscripts our

From the article: I'm surprized that you didn't pick up on the new age-y idea that Jeus will come, not to judge and throw people into hell, but to "heal and rescue." Where did he find that?

Steven Carr

Who would have thought it? There is no word 're-appear'.

Guess Doherty was right and Wright was wrong.

Who knows? Perhaps Romans 7:24 -' Who will rescue me from this body of death?'

Ben C Smith

Does Doherty claim to be a scholar? I am not asking to be snarky or such; I was just under the impression that he regarded himself as an informed amateur, not actually as a scholar.

Ben.

Toto

How do you define scholar? Doherty has a classics degree, but not a PhD. He doesn't make his living from scholarship or academics.

Steven Carr

And the Bishop of Durham is paid a salary to be a Bishop.

Ben C Smith

I think peer review would be my primary criterion. But I was thinking more along the lines of what Doherty regards himself.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

Yes. I am sure you are right.

Ben.

Amaleq13

The only post I could find that seems to be relevant is this (emphasis mine):

I would conclude from this singular piece of evidence (always risky) that Mr. Doherty considers himself to be some sort of scholar but certainly in a more generic sense than you are suggesting, Ben.

EarlDoherty

Not only that, Wright has confused who is being talked about in 1 John 3:2. It is not Christ, but God himself. That is clear even from the parsing of that verse alone. And there certainly is no thought of whoever this refers to “reappearing” or “coming back”. Of course, many scholars (gee, I wonder how that term should be defined?) confuse references to God and the Son in this epistle, reading in some cases the former for the latter, simply because they need to. You will notice that after 3:2 in which “God” is spoken of as due to “be manifested” (a verb meaning “to be revealed,” not born and lived a life) in the future, the Son is referred to a few verses later (3:5) as having “been manifested” (the same verb, meaning “to be revealed,” not born and lived a life) in the past, showing the switch from one to the other; but here the Son is referred to by the word “ekeinos” ("that one"), a curious usage found several times throughout the epistle to refer to him, even in the oft-quoted 3:16 (not to be confused, of course, with John 3:16, which it bears an uncanny resemblance to quite by accident).

1 John is generally acknowledged to be a layered document, and I would say that the reason for the confusion between references to God and the Son is that the original version of the epistle (or whatever form the original document took) had no Son at all, with the expectation of a “coming” one identified with God himself, and everything received from God (as in 2:27; refer back to 2:20); then belief in a (spiritual) Son was added to the document, with additional features patched in as the idea of the Son and his role evolved, leaving a lot of confusion for ‘scholars’ who try to make the epistle fit into orthodox views of Christian origins.

If anyone thinks to jump in to disagree with any of this, I would please urge you to first read my website article A Solution to the First Epistle of John, which discusses all these things at length, and which also argues (against most commentators, but not all) for the Johannine Epistles as preceding the Gospel of John, and not the other way around.

Considering that Wright also got wrong the content of Colossians 3:4, and simply read into the text the idea that Christ had already been on earth and so the writer must have meant “re-appearing” even though the language gives no hint of it, one wonders how much this Bishop of Durham deserves the term “scholar”. As for myself, I don’t really care if I’m called a “scholar” or simply an “informed amateur” (in the technical sense). But I’ll take the latter any day over the former as bestowed on many in this field. Only in the halls of traditional NT scholarship is one trained to read into the text the things everyone wants to see rather than what is actually there. (You might also check dictionary definitions of “scholar” which don’t usually include the idea of peer-accepted, though I realize that biblical study is a world unto its own! [Do flat-earth scholars accept us Oblio's, I wonder?])

P.S. And to forestall any pouncing on Hebrews 9:27-28 as a ‘clear’ reference to a “second” appearing, don’t be too sure. Not even all traditional scholars have come down on that side. There’s another way to take it, grammatically. See the Epilogue to my article on Hebrews, and preceding parts of the article.

Earl Doherty