ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 21 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> In the Gospel of John there are a number of I am statements. "I am the resurrection. I am the vine," et cetera. Why so many? What do they mean? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: The phrase I am is taken from the Old Testament name for God which is Yahweh which can be translated "I am who I am" or "I am what I am." It means that the totality of life and the totality of every human being is found in the person of Jesus. He is not simply one factor among other factors. But he's the only factor. He permeates the entire universe. He determines all reality. I would like to go back to the phrase and discussion of the Virgin Mary, that they actually called her the immaculate conception. Something which I found very, very strange. I had mentioned that in regard to being in St. Peter's square. And the great adoration that Roman Catholics have for the immaculate conception, as if it were a thing. Maybe that kind of provides us for an introduction to what Jesus means when he says "I am the resurrection and I am the life." And "I am the vine and he is the water of life." He is the door. He is the good shepherd. He uses all of those phrases. By those phrases he's doing two things. One, he is identifying himself with the Old Testament God. The God that spoke to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that spoke to Moses that spoke to and through the prophets now appears completely in the person of Jesus. And it isn't that the resurrection is something that's going to happen some time in the future. We certainly believe it. These are not simply miraculous events which have their own separate type of existence. But these things are already in the person of Jesus. So that he really is them. When we are in Jesus, we also are sharing in what he is. We are also resurrected with him. We are -- we are also implanted in him. That's what the phrase means, "I am the vine." When the Samaritan woman asked Jesus for water, he said that he himself was the water which was going to quench all thirst. This means after Christian life, our entire concentration has to be in him from whom we have our entire existence. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***