(Jn 6:60-69)

John 6:60 Many of his disciples, having heard, said, "This language is harsh; who can understand it?"

John 6:61 Jesus, knowing within himself that his disciples were murmuring about this very thing, said to them, "Does this shock you?

John 6:62 What if you saw the Son of Man ascending where he was before?

"This language (logos) is hard; who can understand it?" This is a judgement that the disciples pass on Jesus' speech and emphasise all its harshness, which makes it impossible for them not only to understand, but also any other possibility of dialogue with Jesus. Their speech is not a request for clarification, but a judgement without appeal, which ends the relationship with their Master. It is no longer possible to continue listening.

The Jewish religion is par excellence the religion of the word, which underlies the relationship between Israel and Yahweh. Listening had its founding precept in Deut 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one". The refusal to listen indicates a decisive break with the incarnate Logos, who precisely through the word made himself manifest to his people. What the disciples call hard and reject, in fact, is not only the "language" (logos) of Jesus, but also the presence of another Logos, whom John contemplates at the opening of his Gospel and of whom he testifies that "He came among his people, but his own did not receive him" (John 1:11).

"After having listened", aorist verbal tense ("akousantes"), we pass to the present indicative, which hints at the negative evolution of a part of Jesus' discipleship, which from the initial welcoming listening (aorist) passed to the refusal to listen (present indicative). In fact, the disciples are referred to as the "akousantes", i.e. "those who listened". It is precisely these "akousantes" who now question the continuity of their listening: "who can hear him?". The question, clearly rhetorical, implies a negative answer. Faced with the harsh manifestation of the Logos, which demands the overcoming of human reasoning and cognitive schemes, the initial welcoming willingness is no longer there.

Vv. 61-62 give an initial framing to the problem of the disciples, whose protest was neither clamorous nor open, but was meant to worm its way into their souls. Jesus in fact learns of the matter 'within himself'. An emphasis, the latter, that highlights Jesus' superior knowledge, from which his messianicity and even earlier his divinity shines through. What emerges is an image of Jesus as the ruler and not the victim of events. It is in fact he who takes the initiative and puts his disciples up against the wall: "Does this scandal you?". The question Jesus asks his disciples here is an "aut, aut" and will ultimately result in their defection. Jesus asks his disciples whether he, his person, his mission, his preaching and his work are a cause of scandal for them.

In v. 62 Jesus goes further in his offensive against the unbelief of his disciples: "What if you saw the Son of Man ascending where he was before?" A somewhat obscure phrase, a phrase that is certainly unexpected, but one that must be understood in the context in which it is placed. Jesus is confronted by disciples who are challenging him for the harshness of his discourse; they are disoriented, they do not want to abandon their own mental schemes to access a mystery that is only to be believed and not reasoned about, as it is out of human reach. Jesus, therefore, tells them that if they are scandalised by his discourse on bread, his body, how could they hold up when they are called to investigate other, higher mysteries, such as his divinity - signified in that "going up where he was before", by which is indicated his co-eternity with the Father, from where he came forth and descended from heaven, proposing himself as the Bread of Life for men. It becomes an impossible task to access difficult things if the simplest things scandalise them. 

A question that closely recalls the dialogue with Nicodemus, where to his resistance Jesus replies: "If I have spoken to you about things on earth and you do not believe, how will you believe if I speak to you about things in heaven?" (John 3:12). In other words, Jesus, there as here, is speaking to men through a human symbolism ("things of the earth"), easily understood by them: water, wind, being born, reborn, in Nicodemus' account; living water in that of the Samaritan woman; bread, flesh and blood, eating and drinking here in ch. 6. Symbols to which Jesus links divine realities otherwise unreachable by men; realities that only need to be believed in order to overcome human limitation. But Jesus at the same time also offers his credentials attesting to his divinity, and therefore his credibility. In Nicodemus, he states that "no one has ever ascended into heaven except the Son of Man who came down from heaven" (Jn 3:13); in the account of the Samaritan woman he allows himself to be grasped as "the Messiah" (Jn 4:25) and "saviour of the world" (Jn 4:42); while here he suggests his divinity from eternity ("where he was before"). Only faith therefore makes it possible to reach the mystery that lives in Jesus, revealed in him and knowable only through his word believed and accepted, since the flesh is totally inadequate. 

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)