"The remembrance is to relive and re-enact the Christ event, to bring about new eschatological decision in time and space.”- Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda
"But the Paraclete passage does not speak of human attempts to remember. It emphatically speaks of the Paraclete bringing into remembrance all that Jesus has said to the disciples. [The Paraclete] will not just stimulate the disciple's minds by merely recalling the data, or just intensify the disciples' capacity to recall Jesus' words in their entirety, rather will direct, guide the process of 'remembering', will make the 'words' so effectual as to determine the disciples' thought and action! Revelation is not mechanistic, so as to reprocess the historical data in advance for present contextual interpretation! The remembrance is to relive and re-enact the Christ event, to bring about new eschatological decision in time and space. Therefore the Paraclete passage affirms through the sending of the Paraclete, that God Himself teaches the community. The Paraclete 'bringing into remembrance' God's historical theophany means God Himself authenticating the community's Theology—the community's understanding of God. [The Paraclete] gives new direction, new perspectives, new insights so that the community may encounter God anew. In His act of reminding through the Paraclete, God continues to reveal as He has revealed in Jesus. In making the community remember He will challenge it and transform it to relive and re-enact the Christ event anew in order to call the world to a faith decision...
The Paraclete's guidance along the way of all truth involves a way of life in conformity with Jesus' teaching. Barrett expresses it as guidance in the whole sphere of truth, which keeps the disciples safe from deviation. This mission of the Paraclete does not seem to be the recounting of the words of Jesus, but leading the disciples beyond the point that they have been brought, unfolding new dimensions, depths of significance of the ultimate reality of the truth—God.
The mission of the Paraclete is not only translating the 'words of Jesus' in every situation which challenges a new interpretation. It is not even having an interpretive relationship to the 'figurative', but to perfectly clarify it, speaking openly. The Paraclete, in order to lead to all truth, needs to indigenise, contextualise and inculturate the revelation! It is in enabling the disciples to see each and every experience from God's perspective, thereby having a new outlook in their philosophy, that the Paraclete leads to all truth. Even so the revelation continued in the Paraclete's mission is not something entirely different from that of the historical mission of Jesus.”
Daniel Rathnakara Sadananda, The Johannine Exegesis of God
Walter De Gruyter, January 31, 2004, pages 263, 270
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