Again, with me?
Yes, pretty much. He is literally a passageway through whom the sheep enter Heaven.
SD
Dave speak.
BigMack
Well, IMRight isn't around right now. ;o)
Yes, pretty much. He is literally a passageway through whom the sheep enter Heaven.
That is not a literal reading. The way you are reading this is the way the NCs read John 6. Let's juxtapose these verses.
So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you ... For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6:53,55)
So Jesus again said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep ... I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved (John 10:7,9)
A literal reading of the first is that you literally have to eat Jesus's flesh and drink his blood, that his flesh is actual, literal food, and his blood is actual, literal drink. A literal reading of the second is that Jesus is an actual, physical door through which one needs to pass.
There is no reason to favor a literal reading of one and not the other. The structure of the statements is identical. The only difference is that one has been "fleshed out" (pardon the pun) sacramentally, and the other has not. One can imagine a sacramental implementation of John 10:7, where the door to the church (or, even better, to the sanctuary), is literally understood to be Jesus, Really Present under the Accidents of the wood and the hardware.
Or, you could read both passages figuratively.