The plain meaning of that passage is that Christ is in a certain sense like a door to the Father. That we are dealing with a metaphor is clear from context. For example, He uses a sequence of images: He is also a vine, and a shepherd.
When Christ says “This bread is my body” He is not teaching a parable, not explaining the metaphor, and in fact spends half the chapter 6 in John’s gospel to reinforce the literal meaning. So He means the Eucharist literally.
When St. James writes “you are not saved by faith alone” there is no possible allegorical meaning at all. Again, half the chapter is spent on that very subject. It is a doctrinal teaching, not some figure of speech.
Except, St. James did NOT write "you are not saved by faith alone" anywhere in Scripture. The context of James chapter 2 is all about demonstrating genuine faith to the world. God knows if our faith is real, people can only see it by what we do. You cannot cancel out all the dozens of OTHER Scripture passages that clearly teach we ARE justified by faith apart from our works by misusing ONE partial verse.
WRT the Eucharist,when Christ held up the bread,
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22:19)
Do you really think the Apostles all knew he meant his body was bread? Or did they understand it was a metaphor? Did Jesus really NEED to explain it to them seeing as he was pre-crucifixion and standing whole right in front of them? Like the misquote of James, many Catholics presume much that is not Scriptural and they, in turn, lose the meaning of God's word.
“The plain meaning of that passage is that Christ is in a certain sense like a door to the Father. That we are dealing with a metaphor is clear from context. For example, He uses a sequence of images: He is also a vine, and a shepherd.”
Woo Hoo! We agreed on something!
Your earlier claim is that Protestants did not accept the plain meaning of Scripture. In this instance, you do not either.
That is good, or you would be wrong.
Your argument is that both metaphor and context are needed to determine that Christ is not a literal door.
That is all I wondered, based on your earlier claim.
“When Christ says “This bread is my body” He is not teaching a parable, not explaining the metaphor, and in fact spends half the chapter 6 in John’s gospel to reinforce the literal meaning. So He means the Eucharist literally.”
This goes beyond the thread topic and would require a whole thread of its own to examine. We disagree, but I suggest we set this aside until a thread pops up.
“When St. James writes “you are not saved by faith alone” there is no possible allegorical meaning at all. Again, half the chapter is spent on that very subject. It is a doctrinal teaching, not some figure of speech.”
Again, beyond the thread topic. We disagree. You will never understand the argument of James, until you make an outline. You will have to include context, language, culture, etc. in order to make a good outline of his argument. I suggest we set this aside for the time until there is a thread.
In the meantime, I will savor the moment of agreement.