“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.
"Plain meaning" is not necessarily literal meaning. If the passage is allegorical, then the plain meaning is the meaning of the allegory. For example, the plain meaning of the modern American phrase "I was up the creek without a paddle" is that the speaker was in a helpless situation facing an impossible task; not that he was traveling by water.
In contrast, when Jesus says "this bread is my body" there is not allegory present: he adds "do this" in Luke 22:19 and is John 6 Him giving his flesh to eat is a whole earnest and heated discussion. One cannot "do" an allegory and if the meal of the Eucharist were allegorical and not really His body, Jesus would have told his disciples so, rather than losing them.
Likewise in James 2 there is nothing allegorical: several historical persons are mentioned with their works and their faith, the fact that faith is "dead" without works is asserted, and a direct statement is made "Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by faith only?" This is not allegorical speech, except perhaps "dead faith" is a metaphor for faith which does not save.
This goes beyond the thread topic and would require a whole thread of its own to examine
That is because when a Protestant faces these scriptural facts his method is to offer megabytes of obfuscatory pseudo-reasoning to bury the scriptural fact in. No it does nto require a whole thread. The Holy Spirit expressed these two ideas in a few easy to understand sentences. The Eucharist is Christ's body. We are not saved by faith alone. Scriptural facts.