(Jn 6:41-51)

John 6:41 Meanwhile the Jews murmured about him because he had said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven."

John 6:42 And they said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph? Of him we know the father and the mother. How then can he say, I am come down from heaven?"

John 6:43 Jesus answered, "Do not murmur among yourselves.

John 6:44 No one can come to me, except the Father who sent me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.

John 6:45 It is written in the prophets, And all shall be taught of God. Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.

V. 41 ends with the object of contention between Jews and Jesus: "I am the bread that came down from heaven". At stake here is not the identity of Jesus as the expression "I am the bread" might suggest, but rather the origin of Jesus, who affirms his divine origin ("from heaven"); while the Jews seek his origin among men, betraying their inability to transcend the appearance of things: "Of him we know his father and mother. How then can he say: I am come down from heaven?". Man cannot arrive at the divinity of Jesus by investigating within human parameters, with logics that do not allow him to transcend the human dimension. Jesus' divinity, as well as his being the bread of eternal life, can only be reached through believing, which is never the conclusion of a fine human reasoning, but only a gift from the Father, who generates the believer. It will be the following pericope (vv. 44-47) that will illustrate the generative dynamic of the believer by the Father.

But first Jesus invites the Jews to lower the tone of their polemic: "Do not murmur among yourselves" (v. 43), to cease their revolt against the world of the divine that is about to manifest itself to them and is completely incomprehensible to them. Only through inner readiness to accept revelation can one gain access to the Mystery, which is otherwise unreachable, since the instrumentation man possesses is totally insufficient and inadequate.

Vv. 44-47 emphasise that believing does not depend on human effort or ability, but possesses a complex dynamic, and finds its origin in the Father: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. The determining action of the Father that draws the believer to Jesus is underlined by the sentence with which v. 44 opens: "No one can". In other words, man is not endowed with a power of his own that enables him to enter into the Mystery with which Jesus is imbued. The final resurrection, by which the believer is definitively united to the very life of God, therefore depends on the action of the Father, which is accomplished here and now, as if to say that it is the existential orientation that is fulfilled in my today that determines the final outcome of my salvation, which does not depend on man ("No one can"), but on the saving plan of the Father, who manifests himself and works in his Son.

It is now a question of understanding the meaning of that "draws", and it will be the task of v. 45 to specify its meaning, which opens with a scriptural reference, calling into question the authority of the prophets: "and all will be taught by God". This is almost certainly Is 54:13: "All your children shall be disciples of the Lord, great shall be the prosperity of your children". Jesus gives the prophecy of Isaiah a strong universalistic valence, which characterises the last times, in which God, according to expectation, will no longer speak through mediators, but everyone will be his direct interlocutor and disciple. Now God teaches and instructs his people directly in his Son: "Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me". The drawing of the Father to Jesus does not happen through miracles or portentous signs; it does not happen through spells that bewitch, but through his Word. It is that eternal Word of the Father that John sings in his Prologue and of which he contemplates the glory of the Father's only-begotten Son incarnate. And it is precisely the welcoming listening of this Word that draws the believer to Jesus. Everything therefore stems from the welcoming listening to the Word, which John significantly places at the beginning of his Gospel, as the principle of everything, from which everything descends and depends.

Beyond these theological aspects, v. 45 also gives room for a different interpretation, which however does not exclude the previous one. It is addressing Israel, defined as the one who has been instructed by God through the Torah, the Covenant and the Prophets; to the authentic Israel, which has known how to listen, as a faithful disciple of Yahweh, waiting for the redemption announced by the Scriptures, and which is defined here as the one who "has heard from the Father and has learned"; for this reason it has known how to "go to Jesus". But this praise of faithful Israel also contains within itself an implicit accusation against unbelieving Judaism. Jesus is in fact here addressing the Jews, who in vv. 41-42, with their murmuring and their considerations, have demonstrated their invincible unbelief. Now with vv. 44-47, he gives the reasons for their being so obstinately unbelieving before the Mystery that is being revealed in Christ; reasons that are at the same time an indictment against their inability to understand the Scriptures and to believe correctly in them. For if they had rightly understood the Scriptures, they would now come to him and would not so stubbornly oppose him, precisely because the Scriptures testify of him.

This is not a work done out of antipathy towards Protestantism, or resentment towards evangelicals, but to defend the true faith, without warlike aspirations. I spent much of my life in the Protestant world, and late in life I discovered that I did not know the Catholic Church I was criticising at all, and it is this ignorance that leads many Catholics to allow themselves to be convinced or influenced by Protestants.  

These are divided into a myriad of denominations, some of which do not like to be called 'Protestant', but would like to be referred to only as 'Christian'. We also know that for Protestants, Catholics are not Christians, but idolaters and pagans; it follows that evangelicals in wanting to be called only 'Christians' aspire to the implicit recognition that they are the only 'true Christians'.

The problem is that only very few Protestants know the history of the Church; a great many only accuse by hearsay, but have never opened a book on Christian history over the centuries. All they need is what the pastor on duty says, a few pamphlets, and the internet to form their anti-Catholic 'culture'.

Many Protestants and/or Evangelicals, rather than being ashamed of their ignorance about Christianity, are proud of it, saying the classic phrase 'I am only interested in the Bible', a phrase that is already a whole programme. People's biblical-historical ignorance is essential in order to be able to guide them. A serious Protestant who would study the history of Christianity would have a good chance of ceasing to be a Protestant. 

In all Protestantism there is a do-it-yourself faith! The Holy Spirit guides us to understand the Bible well, it is true, but in the Protestant world, this pretext is used to cover an unrestrained and in some ways arrogant presumption, which leads every pastor to become a kind of infallible 'pope' in teaching people.

Presumption and arrogance are not immediately apparent - no one shows these faults so easily. They all seem God-fearing, observant of the Word and full of love for their neighbour. Too bad that their neighbour in most cases is the one who listens passively and does not contradict their biblical teachings. Those who dare to dissent are then no longer loved, often no longer greeted, and sometimes slandered. 

For a long time, thanks to Luther, the pope was considered the antichrist, therefore hated and accused, and so were all Catholic bishops and priests. Observant individual Catholics were also included in this climate. 

Protestants criticise papal infallibility, but in fact behave as infallibles; each in their own community, free to invent whatever they want, pulling the jacket on the Holy Spirit, as a guarantee of their doctrines! The result? A myriad of denominations with doctrines that often conflict heavily with each other.  

The problem lies in the great ignorance mixed with presumption that so many Protestants and/or Evangelicals have. Are Catholics less ignorant? No, most Catholics, unfortunately, are very ignorant in biblical matters, but at least they do not set themselves up as teachers to anyone who happens to be within their reach. The average Catholic is aware of his own ignorance, the average Protestant, on the other hand, is very presumptuous in biblical matters.

A Protestant who truly loved, as he says, the truth, would go and see for himself what the early Christians, our ancestors in the faith, wrote and how they lived, in order to understand if and how the Catholic Church is wrong, or where the Protestants are wrong in their interpretation of the Bible.    

Logically, rather than trusting a pastor who explains the Bible 2000 years later, it would be better to trust the early fathers, who learned Christian teaching directly from the voice of the apostles. Unfortunately, many Protestants do not use logic, but only anti-Catholic ideologies, cultivating a visceral dislike for everything Catholic, because they dismiss a priori the evidence of how the very first Christians lived, who lived after the apostles but before Constantine.  

The Christian faith is one, because the Spirit of God is one! So many take the wrong path, and we have a duty to understand who is in the right one and who is in the wrong one. Unity is the cohesion of the elements, of the parts that make up an entity (e.g. the cohesion between the parts of a car such as the body, the wheels, the engine, etc.) as Plotinus already said; if unity is lacking, that entity is also lacking and others may result, but no longer the entity it was before [if the cohesion of the body, wheels and engine is lacking, there is no longer the car entity, but rather the entities body, wheels, engine]. Here, Protestantism looks so much like the pile of sheet metal that a car once was. There is much criticism of the Catholic Church, but how many people know, for example, that Bultmann, a famous Lutheran Protestant theologian and exegete, reduced the resurrection to a theological symbol? Indeed, he did not consider it possible that physically Jesus was resurrected. In order to compare different biblical interpretations, one must have one's mind as clear as possible of ideologies and preconceptions. One must be open to any hypothesis if it is properly motivated and proven. If we rely on ideological prejudices that bind us to our doctrinal beliefs, we can do without reading or listening to any text or person; it is useless anyway. Our pride will prevent us from learning truths other than 'our own'. We often defend our biblical error with an impenetrable shell, we keep our truth, rejecting any other, which bangs on the shell and slips away. As soon as one touches the religious/spiritual plane, strangely enough, it is as if many pull the switch off their own mind, or at least a part of it. When Protestants converse with a Catholic, for example, they receive no information at all, only sounds that slip over their eardrums, but do not reach their brains. They do not listen.   

The history of Christianity means nothing to them, it is of no importance, except in the events to be held against them - see crusades, inquisitions, etc. - without knowing the true history of these events, and without knowing that the Protestants also had their wars, and also had their inquisitions, which were much bloodier than the Catholic ones.

They claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, but strangely enough there are many groups that receive different and contradictory information from the same Holy Spirit, inexorably losing credibility. 

I realise that the Catholic Church has neglected the problem of Protestant proselytism. Evangelicals have been successful not because they are right, but simply because they find the Catholic people very ignorant in biblical matters, incapable of defending their faith properly, taking refuge behind the classic "I have no time to lose"; perhaps they even lose their faith... but time cannot be touched.   

Many Catholics claim to have faith in Jesus Christ, but this faith of theirs is only seen in times of need: when everything runs smoothly, Jesus is forgotten, and the Bible is of no interest to anyone to read. In contexts like these, evangelicals find a people who really need to be evangelised, by them. Many Catholics do not resist this proselytism because they have no biblical answers to give, only ignorance to hide. In such terrain the Protestant conquest is easy, and it is as if they were facing an unarmed army.   

But those who study the Bible and strive to deepen their understanding of the meaning of God's word realise that in reality Protestants are not at all the biblical teachers they appear to be, but are profoundly ignorant historians and biblical scholars, plagiarised by their sect of membership. By calling them ignorant I do not mean to offend them, for otherwise I would call them "false and liars". By calling them ignorant I acknowledge their good faith, they believe in some wrong doctrines, not realising that they are wrong.  

The point is that the Holy Spirit cannot contradict Himself, and so certainly the conflicting interpretations of different denominations cannot all be true, nor all inspired. Clearly, it is not possible for the same Spirit to suggest different doctrines to each. This creates watertight compartments, each Protestant group believing it is in the truth more than the others, isolating itself and preaching its own gospel. For example, according to the Adventists, all other Christian churches have abolished the Sabbath commandment by worshipping on Sunday, and therefore everyone except them is doomed to hell if they do not abolish Sunday as the Lord's Day. Of course, they justify these accusations of theirs with certain Bible verses, interpreting them in their own way. Here, this is the point that escapes all Protestants, classical and modern: the Bible cannot be interpreted subjectively, because the Truth is not subjective at all.

But being divided into watertight compartments, not communicating with one another, it is difficult for any of them to notice the doctrinal differences with other Protestants. If anyone does notice them, they pretend that they do not, or do not give them the proper weight, just believe in Jesus as our personal saviour. Their attention is only turned towards the Catholic Church, the enemy to be defeated! It is all too convenient to proudly claim that "I understand what is written in the Bible because the Holy Spirit guides me. God has hidden the truth from the wise and revealed it to the humble'. Here, every good Protestant uses such phrases to reject the interpretative authority of the fathers and doctors of the Church.In this context, we witness scenes in which any Protestant, of any degree of culture, scoffs at the writings of Irenaeus, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and does so casually, because in interpreting the Bible he feels humble enough to be guided directly by God, but at the same time he is blind enough not to realise that too many 'humble' Protestants then profess very different doctrines. They despise the Catholic, but elect a "do-it-yourself" that prides itself and says: "I do not need to read the writings of the church fathers, the Bible alone is enough for me", so the teachers of which the Apostle Paul speaks would be of no use: "It is he who established some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers" (Eph 4:11). 

One only has to read the history of the heresies that have affected Christianity throughout the centuries to realise that heretics based and always base their theses on the Bible, explaining it in their own way. People are unlikely to go poking around intertwined doctrinal and theological issues. It is easier to find a priest who has committed some human error and choose him as a target, in order to corroborate anti-Catholic theses and consider the Catholic Church as the enemy of Christianity and truth, allied with Satan to mislead souls and lead them to hell. Not even the archangel Michael flaunted such confidence in branding or judging the devil, yet it was the devil (Jd 1:9):  

The archangel Michael, when in dispute with the devil over the body of Moses, did not dare to accuse him with offensive words, but said: You condemn the Lord!

The truth is that the accuser par excellence is Satan himself; the saints do not accuse anyone, not out of respect, but because they defer to God's judgement. For a Protestant, on the other hand, it is normal to say that Catholics go to hell because they are idolaters. They set themselves up as judges, believing they know the hearts, and misunderstand the concept of worship. Any Christian should ask himself questions, to verify what he believes, and should be able to discern whether his beliefs in matters of faith are just the result of autosuggestion, induced fantasies, or whether they find confirmation in the history of Christianity and in the Bible.   

Argentino Quintavalle

 author of the books

 Argentino Quintavalle, author of the books 

- Revelation - exegetical commentary 

- The Apostle Paul and the Judaizers - Law or Gospel?

Jesus Christ true God and true Man in the Trinitarian mystery

The prophetic discourse of Jesus (Matthew 24-25)

All generations will call me blessed

 Catholics and Protestants compared - In defence of the faith

(Buyable on Amazon)