Hi Celinda.... you make an important point that it is not the case that if one has a brain or is a biblical scholar, one automatically doubts the authorship or teaching in John.....   Prof Carson (of Chicago) has written a very good commentary on John:   http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gospel-According-John-Pillar-Commentaries/dp/085111749X/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232439782&sr=8-9

Well there we are, some reasoning and a rather different light is shone on the Gospel of John - which may be a collective authorship too, never mind a later unknown single author.

What selective literalists do is turn the whole thing into a flat, unvarying, book of rules, each text with the same authority to determine its own reading as the next, because none of it was unintended. We have too much turned into history, when it isn't.

These boards have been dominated now by the view that goes something like this:

• These scriptures are supreme and are not to be contradicted
• Leaders coming together for occasional communal gatherings have said what some scriptures mean
• No one has the right to contradict leaders
• Clergy and those paid by the Church especially should agree with leaders

All of which leads to a boxed in, lifeless religion. Well you folks can keep it, because it is internal to itself and sectarian, and its spirit is a turf war with liberals and others.

Regarding the Bible, I was told by those trying to tell me orthodox Christianity, the Bible contained words of God whereas Christ was the Word. Anything else and the Bible becomes almost part of the Trinity, or Quadernity I would suppose. The view expressed by Bishop Tim Stephens on the BBC recently is the same as that once told to me.

Though I think it is all a construction, and a series of layers of interpretation, a salvation by person religion that the Rabbi Jesus almost certainly would not have recognised as being his aim and intention.

on the ' I am' sayings: I don't think you need to be particularly liberal or academic to acknowledge that there is at least a problem to be explained with these.  the most cursory examination shows them to be embedded within text of a very different type than the synoptic gospels - more polished, flowing, stylistic - more obvioulsy theological 'set pieces' and very unlikley to be direct historical reportage.  did Jesus really usually talk work a day aramaic but suddenly turn his face towards the camera to deliver smooth and lyrical discourses in Greek?  I want to believe us much as any evangelical that the 'I am's' really came out of Jesus' own mouth rather than being the author of the 4th gospels theological reflection upon upon the significance of Jesus.  So, I will explain the discrepency in terms of the author reporting accurately the 'I am's' but embedding them within discourses that are his (or her) later theological reflections. (this sounds a little like wishful thinking -even to me!) Would it really be so bad if Jesus hadn't said those actual words?  If we really believe that the bible is inspired by the holy spririt - surely the holy spirit inpsired these reflections?  Jesus never said that he was God incarnate nor the second person of the trinity yet we believe those things.

when nersen talks of John as being there as a contemporary of Jesus, reporting things verbatim, that's the kind of thing that makes us liberals think (wrongly, of course) that you are all intellectual neanderthals who stick to the party line however ludicrous.  I haven't read NT wright on the 4th gospel - but does he really think this gospel is contemporary with the synoptics?

and before nersen jumps in to accuse me of saying the author of the 4th gospel was lying if he claimed to be the real disciple and eyewitnes John but wasn't, then may I remind him of that this was a common literary convention ( and still is - did CS Lewis lie when he wrote the screwtape letters because he wasn't really a demon?).

Hi, Celinda.  It isn't just Jesus seminar theologians. The overwhelming concensus of New Testament scholarship would make us very wary of accepting that the words of Jesus, or the disciples, as given in the gospels, can simply be accepted as accurate records of what they actually said, most especially when they deal with titles for Jesus. The same concensus says that it is most unlikely that the author of John's Gospel ever met Jesus, or even had access to a reliable body of tradition which preserved his actual words. The 'I am' statements are partucularly doubtful in this regard, even given the views of people like Robinson and Wenham.

It would be stretching definitions a little beoynd their elastic limits to call Bishop Wright a scholar.

liddon -  are you implying that the apostles did not call Jesus "Lord" and that St John is not truthfully reporting the "I am" sayins as he heard them?  You seem to be...... but I trust St John more than I trust your speculations given you were not there and he was!

David H, it was the evangelists, many years after the event, who picture the apostles calling Jesus 'Lord' and it was the author of John's Gospel who identifies Jesus with the 'I am' sayings, which are notably absent from the synoptics.

Adrian, as a pluralist, you do not agree with evangelicals on many things- especially the authority of scripture.   Now, TA is a liberal blog - maybe you think it is better now it is largely just liberal voices?   But, please note Adrian,  that Fulcrum is an evangelical blog and that when it comes to the authority of scripture and Lambeth 1.10, I am completely in line with the Fulcrum position.....same goes for the Windsor Report.   I am less optimistic about the covenant etc than some Fulcrum leaders - but only because I don't think TECUSA will honour it even if they sign....but if it were genuinely honoured, I would be hopeful about it.    You don't like what I say.....not surprising since you are a pluralist and I am not   -   but despite your pluralistic views,  evangelical Anglicans, open, charismatic and conservative evangelical people and scholars will continue to retain a high view of scripture....which, logically, means that not all teaching will be accepted, some will be rejected as false where it is incompatible with scripture, and the bible will remain authoritative for evangelicals....even the nice, cuddly, open ones

As I've indicated before, I don't care how you classify me. It seems to me Nersen Pillay that you are desperate to classify all sorts of people as in or out, chopping up Christians into those false and those true. I think you will wait a very long time before clergy and other leaders, indeed Christians themselves, will accept your limitations. I say this to evangelicals too: go down Nersen Pillay's road and you really will cease to communicate with the rest of the world and just end up being an irrelevant sect, happy that you get the commuting in numbers in urban areas in a turf war with those who should be your compatriots. Meanwhile, this evening, I shall present again to a group, this time on Bonhoeffer. As I say, I don't observe Nersen Pillay's classifications.

By the way, I knew how these boards would go once Nersen appeared and started his false/ true campaign. It is a strategy of repetition that the same subject (false versus true) starts to dominate every discussion. Something similar happened at Thinking Anglicans when he was NP and only late on reluctantly declared he attended Holy Trinity Brompton. It is a microcosm of hard right evangelical strategy: repeat and repeat what isn't the whole situation and some of the constant misrepresentation sticks.

An example of this is that conservative bishops have been removed from The Episcopal Church. Well they happen to be conservative, but there are many conservatives at no risk of removal. That's because those who have been removed gave their loyalty to a different Church and acted against their own. Thus they were removed. Now they are at sea. We shall see where the spirit of breadth of Anglicanism is to reside: not just evangelical, but the whole spread, and complete, and it might just be found in The Episcopal Church rather than in some narrower breakaway.

Just a reminder: there may be an Anglican Communion, but there is no such thing as an Anglican Church, and gatherings of members of the Anglican Communion can declare what they like, but it is Anglican Churches that decide policies - with consideration of other Anglicans - but not the Communion gatherings. There is no Covenant at present, and if there is one coming no likelihood it will ever do what hard right evangelicals would want it to do: indeed it might be the very thing they do not want because of what it cannot deliver in an Anglican Communion.