Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

ER asked: "So shouldn't the right way of seeing meaning in the metaphor today be as within the Christian tradition rather than the idea that the narrow gate is Christianity and the wide gate is something else?"

I say, no.
If it was a metaphor used in a specific context by Jesus then it should be kept in that context otherwise your making your own metaphor which is fine so long as it is not attributed to Jesus.

Besides your parallel verse in Luke 13:24 doesn't mention the wide way at all.

"22. Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.
23. Someone asked him, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" He said to them,
24. "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
25. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, 'Sir, open the door for us.' "But he will answer, 'I don't know you or where you come from.'

Now as to the horse and cart(metaphor). Perhaps not the Bible itself. But certainly the "Apostolic Tradition" claimed for the Bible. In the 21st century America the fundamentalist tradition of the believers' own priesthood is being replaced by the orthodox position that the word has come up through the Church by the Apostolic Tradition much like the Catholic Church has advocated all along. This I think is because the source of "fundamentalism" has shifted from that small rural independent church to that urban Mega-Church with leadership that does not want to be challenged or replaced thus their position must protected by invoking the Apostolic Tradition if not in a linear fashion like Rome then in an anointing factor like the dove from heaven. They thus pervert the Bible to that purpose. They claim the power of the word as their own, but they claim the Logos while waving the leather bound Lexis as its substitute.
 

Re, "If it was a metaphor used in a specific context by Jesus then it should be kept in that context otherwise your making your own metaphor which is fine so long as it is not attributed to Jesus."

Well, that's what I was trying to do: keep it within the context of Jesus speaking to people within the Jewish tradition, which connection Jesus's earliest followers shared and bequeathed, in some ways, to the offshoot of Judaism, Christianity.

Mebbe I failed.

So splain it. :-)


Re, "Now as to the horse and cart(metaphor). Perhaps not the Bible itself."

Well, I didn't mean "the Bible" -- I meant the fundamentalist insistence that it is "infallible," "inerrant," etc., which, I believe, they DO make more important than the gist of the narratives. Even accepting, the Apostolic Tradition, that doesn't make it infallible or inerrant. All I think is what I was taught early, early on: It is sufficient unto salvation.

BTW, I am deep into the Wisdom of Solomon, and meditating on the Logos of John 1:1, then getting into Wisdom, it's sort of like "meeting Jesus again for the first time," as Marcus Borg says. Very cool.
 

To use the second half of Jesus' metaphor of the wide/narrow ways, that then elides to those who are not fundamentalists to be on the true, narrow path. I guess I just don't want to make such a claim, because that would be no better than the fundies' claim to all truth, etc.

Since I use a different metaphor for describing my own spiritual life - Jacob wrestling with the angel - I guess I haven't thought this through very far.
 

Ha! I referenced Jacob rasslin' with the angel just yesterday in converaation with a friend about something going on in the RW.

Back to the wide-narrow metaphor:

What if the narrow way is the solitary journey in the search of Wisdom-Logos-Jesus, aided BT same, in the freedom, sometimes called "Christian liberty," that comes from getting out of the bargaining business with God and just assuming that God's and Grace and Love trumps all? With or without sanction from any established or organized church authority? There is a smattering of "the preisthood of the believer" thrown in there ... The wise way, not the "true" way ...
 

OK, I'll grant you that, to an extent. Yet, even I, for all my own preferred metaphor is a very individualistic take on the spiritual life, would still argue that there needs to be a referee, plus a manager in the corner in between rounds. Thus, the Church, with its history and wide variety of responses to the grace of God incarnate in Jesus Christ leavens our own occasional forays in to the fanciful. We are kept in line, on the path, in other words, in the community, the koinonia, of believers within which we find ourselves, plus the communion of saints, that great cloud of witnesses that have gone before us.
 

Community, absolutely. Koinonia, absolutely. No total freelancing -- this is a covenantal thing horizontally as well as vertically (so to speak).

Hmmm.

I freely admit that I may be trying to cram a square interpretive peg into a round metaphorical hole!
 

The Apostolic Tradition does assume inerrancy, not only of the Bible but in the succession of The Apostle who is also inerrancy.

You should never approach any neo-fundamentalist as though they were an individual expressing their own opinion. The aren't and they don't.
They ain't yor grandaddy's hardshell. It is a new breed, coming from a new source.

As for the Bible the Book and its idolotry. Think about what you are learning in relation to the Logos as the Word. The neo-fundamental orthodoxist see the Logos as the Bible. A total perversion of the concept.

What is the history of phrase "seeking the narrow way", or the "narrow gate". What were the audiences of jesus hearing when they heard these words.
That's what I ment by context. It might be more than you think.
 

Re, "Think about what you are learning in relation to the Logos as the Word."

Dude, I have drawn blank blogstares and been called all BUT a heretic for that. The only way I get by with it is by, rightly, associating Jesus, as the Word, as in John 1:1, with it.


OK. Wide gates and narrow gates have to do with city gates, probably. So the question is probably who, as in what kind of people, entered cities through the narrow gate? And my guess would be servants, and-or, the diseased and otherwise "marginalized."

Or, it might have to do with animals pens. I imagine sheep in herds might have entered winde gates, and individual sheep drawn out for some purpose, say, marking for ownership, or medical treatment, might be put into a pen through a narrow gate, to keep the rest of them from getting out the wide gate when it was opened.

???
 

Ya know, it occurs to me that some of what we call metaphors probably were closer to clear examples, or object lessons, to the people who heard them. ...
 

ER said: "So splain it. :-)"

I missed that as an imperative.
It is an imperative, yes?

So, you happened to pick a metaphor that is considered to be a heavily gnostic verse by many. The Luke version most likely is diretly out of Q, and the Mathew version is somewhat less so. In the Jesus Seminar analysis the Luke version is somewhat attributed to the historical Jesus, but the Mathew version is not attributed at all. Another source indicates that maybe the Q version is pointing directly to the esoteric message of a special knowledge, a gnosis, about who and what Jesus is. If you are wandering in the Logos and Seeking Sophia you may now be looking in the "narrow" way. Now in that sense, the orthodox would be on the broader way, not a negative way, but a lessor way. Still children of God, but the lessor children of God. That's what I mean about being in context.

By the way, the narrow way does not admit "congreagtions", only individuals.
 

We are both typing at the same time it seems.

If the author of John ment for Logos to be the written word, i.e. the Bible he would have used Lexis not Logos.

How are yu interpreting "Logos" at this point?
 

Then there's this: "As several scholars have pointed out, most of the activities in the 1st-century synagogue were performed in the city gate prior to the existence of separate public buildings (including) the public reading of Torah, the activity unique to the first-century synagogue ..."

-- some source on teh Internets.


On negative: I didn't mean to suggest the broad way was negative, per se. I meant "lesser," actually, or I was thinking it, and I mean in a spiritual-maturity sense -- but it's hard to say that without seeming to say the narrow way is superior ... Hard to parse.

Yes, it was an imperative. Thanks for obliging.

On Logos: Well, I'd say that having thought about John 1:1 for a long time, but having never, actually, equated it with the colloquialism "Word of God" as in Bible, or any other literal word, written or spoken, and having fairly recently (as in a couple of years max) ever meditated some on how the writer meant to connect the concept to Jesus, and now being on my first walk through the Wisdom of Solomon ... I can only say that the Logos-Jesus connection makes more sense the more one knows about Sophia-Wisdom and th emore one thinks about how a first-century Jew might interpret an encounter with a man deemed so holy as to be God: They had an underdefined God-personality-emanation handy, in other words; and it would not be difficult to connect the two.

Or not.

I'm still at my desk at work! Later.
 

Ah, a slow post. I might get a point across for a change. Let's look at the name/term Logos and how that fits in the narrow way.

I went and dug up a book I have that I think has a good take on Logos. The source is: Jesus Christ Sun of God: Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism, by David Fidler published in 1993.

First point Fidler makes is that. "In ancient Greek, Logos has many meanings but none of them are "Word"..." He says it is a mistranslation. When the Greek was translated into Latin, Logos was translated as Verbum and then Verbum was translated into Word in English.

In fact Logos has so many meanings in ancient Greek ranging from mystical, mathematical, musical, to scientific that it is best to leave it untranslated and just use the word Logos itself after learning it meanings.
So what does it mean?
Major among those listed by Fidler are:
1. Order or pattern
2. Ratio or proportion
3. Oratio, a discourse, articulation, or account (Verbum probably came from this meaning)
4.Reason both in the sense of rational and also in the cause of something
5.logoi, as in the principle or cause
6. the principle of mediation, creating harmony between extremes

"Finally, in Greek mystical and Cosmological thought, the idea of The Logos in a cosmic sense encompasses all of these meanings and refers to the underlying Order of the Universe, the blueprint on which all creation is based. If we are to appreciate the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel and other Greek Mystical Writings, all of these meanings must be simultaneously held in mind."

The Concept of Logos predated the birth of Christ in Greek philosophy by at least 400 years.
The Greeks were looking for the avatar of The Logos to appear. Not unlike the Persians who were watching for the Messiah of the Jews to appear, thus the story of the three wise men from the East.
Paul Tillich, a most interesting Christian Theologian, saw these things pre-dating the birth of Jesus as God readying mankind in preparation to revealing himself through his son The Logos.
The ground had been tilled to received the seed.

Sophia latter.
 

My handy-dandy "The HarperCollins Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version, with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books" (New York: HarperCollins, 1993) talks a little in the notes about the notion of the Logos in Greek thought and how Sophia dovetailed into it.
 

In an attempt to remain semi annon, I can answer your question on your site. Yes.

Second. I am looking for an article that I think you wrote who knows how long ago. I was wondering if you could direct me to it. It was something about Christianity vs Jesusanity. I hope I didn't just dream this up. If you have any idea what I am try to say, could you give me the link to the article. I'd like to read it again. Thanks
 

I like this a lot, DrLoboJo, meds-induced or not, so it bears repeating!

" ... the understanding of Jesus as a new manifestation of eternal truth or of perennial wisdom. Study the ahistorical Christ of the eternal Logos and the limitless Kosmos. He is in the Gospels, even more so than the orthodox one. The Logos can assume as many forms as there are people (has been or will ever be) on this planet. However many forms that are needed to provide his grace to each soul, he will take and yet still be the only way. The congealed orthodox individual's vision of Jesus is the only one he can see or understand. For that person, it will be what it is ..."
 

Pecheur: Google searches don;'t seem to work as wella s they used to. I'll scroll through my post titles later -- might be tonight or tomorrow -- and see if I can find whay yer remembering.
 

Quick historical comment on your "city gate analysis" All roads led to Rome. The wide gate on the main road to the city of Rome went through the Temple of Janus. The gate was always open, unless there was a declared war. Janus was a pre-Greek-influence unique Roman God of some antiquity. Originally he had two faces, one male and one female(Yin/Yang maybe, or Logos/Sophia?) One face, faced the East and one faced to the West. One towards the rising Sun and the other Towards the setting Sun. Thus Janus was the gatekeeper to the realm of the Sun. His holiday (holy day) was the winter solstice December 21-2.
Through this gate was the way to the heaven of Sol Invictus, Janus held the "Keys to the Kingdom". The other gates into Rome were smaller, obscure, and well guarded and were kept open even during war time.
So in that metaphorical sense you were right on in your assumption of gates and people understanding the metaphors because of their daily life. It would sort of be like us making a metaphor about the Golden Gate Bridge or Ellis Island.
 

Got the story wrong in this respect. The doors to the temple were opened during war and closed in peace. The Gate was open all the time. Also, followers of Janus when they wanted a "new beginning" were emersed in water and born again. There is a great scene about this in the HBO "Rome" series in season two.
 

Ya know, I can see why these commonalities -- immersion of Janus followers, etc. -- would rattle some Christian cages, but I'm just not unsettled by it.

If some unfairly jailed homeless man downtown got a following, and they saw him as holy, and he got the juice put to him at McAlester (state pen), and then popped up in, say, Sallisaw, or Poteau, and a religion got started, I'm pretty sure he would be seen, and interpreted, largely within the context of the prevalent religion in eastern Oklahoma. Which is pretty much what happened in first-century Palestine, I think
 

A thought or two on Logos - as DrLobojo has pointed out, "word" just doesn't cut it. One way that has helped me to think about it when studying John is to remember that God is of an inscrutable essence - we can't know him fully or apprehend him with our reason. This is not necessarily a failing or weakness on God's end, but a lack of equipment on ours.
Christ, as the Logos, is something more apprehendable by our reason. We can know what he is because he is tangible as we are. This doesn't fully explain his divinity, etc. Christ is a created being whereas God is not.
John has quite a bit of up and down imagery and language as well, and Christ as the bridge between these makes a remarkable amount of sense.
 

Thanks. I tried the blogger search but it sucks too