John, The Epistles Of

John, The Epistles Of. The so-called epistles of John, in the Bible, are not epistles in the strict sense of the term, for the first is a homily, and encyclical or pastoral (as has been recognized since the days of Bretschneider and Michaelis), while the other two are brief notes or letters. Nor are they John’s, if John means the son of Zebedee. The latter conclusion depends upon the particular hypothesis adopted with regard to the general Johannine problem, yet even when it is held that John the apostle (q.v.) survived to old age in Ephesus, the second and third epistles may be fairly ascribed (with Erasmus, Grotius, Credner, Bretschneider, Reuss, &c.) to John the presbyter1, as several circles in the early church held (“Opinio a plerisque tradita,” Jerome: De vir. ill. 18). An apostle indeed might call himself a presbyter (cf. 1 Pet. v. 1). But these notes imply no apostolic claim on the part of the author, and, although their author is anonymous, the likelihood is that their composition by the great Asiatic presbyter John led afterwards to their incorporation in the “instrumentum” of John the apostle’s writings, when the prestige of the latter had obscured the former. All hypotheses as to their pseudonymity or composition by different hands may be dismissed. They would never have floated down the stream of tradition except on the support of some primitive authority. If this was not connected with John the apostle the only feasible alternative is to think of John the presbyter, for Papias refers to the latter in precisely this fashion (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39, 15; καὶ τοῦτο ὁ π. ἔλεγε).

The period of all three lies somewhere within the last decade of the 1st century and the first decade of the 2nd. No evidence is available to determine in what precise order they were written, but it will be convenient to take the two smaller notes before the larger. The so-called Second Epistle of John is one of the excommunicating notes occasionally despatched by early Christian leaders to a community (cf. 2 Cor. v. 9). The presbyter or elder warns a Christian community, figuratively addressed as “the elect lady” (cf. 13 with 1 Pet. i. 1; v, 13; also the plural of 6, 8, 10 and 13), against some itinerant (cf. Didache xi. 1-2) teachers who were promulgating advanced Docetic views (7) upon the person of Christ. The note is merely designed to serve (12) until the writer arrives in person. He sends greetings to his correspondents from some community in which he is residing at present (13), and with which they had evidently some connexion.

The note was familiar to Irenaeus2 who twice (i. 16, 3, iii. 16, 8) cites 10-11, once quoting it from the first epistle by mistake, but no tradition has preserved the name of the community in question, and all opinions on the matter are guess-work. The reference to “all who know the truth” (ver. 1) is, of course, to be taken relatively (cf. Rev. ii. 23); it does not necessarily imply a centre like Antioch or Rome (Chapman). Whiston thought of Philadelphia, and probably it must have been one of the Asiatic churches.

The so-called Third Epistle of John belongs to the ἐπίστολαι συστάτικαι (2 Cor. iii. 1) of the early church, like Rom. xvi. It is a private note addressed by the presbyter to a certain Gaius, a member of the same community or house-church (9) as that to which 2 John is written. A local errorist, Diotrephes (9-10) had repudiated the authority of the writer and his party, threatening even to excommunicate Gaius and others from the church (cf. Abbott’s Diatessarica, § 2258). With this opponent the writer promises (10) to deal sharply in person before very long. Meantime (14) he despatches the present note, in hearty appreciation of his correspondent’s attitude and character.

The allusion in 9 (ἔγραψα) refers in all likelihood to the “second” epistle (so Ewald, Wolf, Salmon, &c.). In order to avoid the suggestion that it implied a lost epistle, ἂν was inserted at an early stage in the textual history of the note. If ἐκκλήσιας could be read in 12, Demetrius would be a presbyter; in any case, he is not to be identified with Demas (Chapman), nor is there any reason to suppose (with Harnack)3 that the note of 9 was written to, and suppressed by, him. What the presbyter is afraid of is not so much that his note would not be read (Ewald, Harnack), as that it would not be acted upon.

These notes, written originally on small sheets of papyrus, reveal the anonymous presbyter travelling (so Clem. Alex. Quis dives salv. xlii.) in his circuit or diocese of churches, and writing occasional pastoral letters, in which he speaks not only in his own name but in that of a coterie of like-minded Christians.4 It is otherwise with the brochure or manifesto known as the “first epistle.” This was written neither at the request of its readers nor to meet any definite local emergency, but on the initiative of its author (i. 4) who was evidently concerned about the effect produced upon the Church in general by certain contemporary phases of semi-gnostic teaching. The polemic is directed against a dualism which developed theoretically into docetic views of Christ’s person (ii. 22, iv. 2, &c.), and practically into libertinism (ii. 4, &c.).5 It is natural to think, primarily, of the churches in Asia Minor as the circle addressed, but all indications of date or place are absent, except those which may be inferred from its inner connexion with the Fourth Gospel.

The plan of the brochure is unstudied and unpremeditated, resembling a series of variations upon one or two favourite themes rather than a carefully constructed melody. Fellowship (κοινωνία) with God and man is its dominant note. After defining the essence of Christian κοινονία (i. 1-3),6 the writer passes on to its conditions (i. 5-ii. 17), under the antithesis of light and darkness. These conditions are twofold: (a) a sense of sin, which leads Christians to a sense of forgiveness7 through Jesus Christ, (b) and obedience to the supreme law of brotherly love (cf. Ignat. Ad Smyrn. 6). If these conditions are unfulfilled, moral darkness is the issue, a darkness which spells ruin to the soul. This prompts the writer to explain the dangers of κοινωνία (ii. 18-29), under the antithesis of truth and falsehood, the immediate peril being a novel heretical view of the person of Christ. The characteristics of the fellowship are then developed (iii. 1-12), as sinlessness and brotherly love, under the antithesis of children of God (cf. ii. 29, “born of Him”) and children of the devil. This brotherly love bulks so largely in the writer’s mind that he proceeds to enlarge upon its main elements of confidence towards God (iii. 13-24), moral discernment (iv. 1-6), and assurance of union with God (iv. 7-21), all these being bound up with a true faith in Jesus as the Christ (v. 1-12).8 A brief epilogue gives what is for the most part a summary (v. 13-21) of the leading ideas of the homily.9

Disjointed as the cause of the argument may seem, a close scrutiny of the context often reveals a subtle connexion between paragraphs which at first sight appear unlinked. Thus the idea of the κόσμος passing away (ii. 17) suggests the following sentences upon the nearness of the παρούσια (ii. 18 seq.), whose signs are carefully noted in order to reassure believers, and whose moral demands are underlined (ii. 28, iii. 3). Within this paragraph10 even the abrupt mention of the χρίσμα has its genetical place (ii. 20). The heretical ἀντίχριστοι, it is implied, have no χρίσμα from God; Christians have (note the emphasis on ὑμεῖς), owing to their union with the true Χρίστος. Again, the genetic relation of iii. 4 seq. to what precedes becomes evident when we consider that the norm of Christian purity (iii. 3) is the keeping of the divine commandments, or conduct resembling Christ’s on earth (iii. 3-ii. 4-6), so that the Gnostic11 breach of this law not only puts a man out of touch with Christ (iii. 6 seq.), but defeats the very end of Christ’s work, i.e. the abolition of sin (iii. 8). Thus iii. 7-10 resumes and completes the idea of ii. 29; the Gnostic is shown to be out of touch with the righteous God, partly because he will not share the brotherly love which is the expression of the righteousness, and partly because his claims to sinlessness render God’s righteous forgiveness (i. 9) superfluous. Similarly the mention of the Spirit (iii. 24) opens naturally into a discussion of the decisive test for the false claims of the heretics or gnostic illuminati to spiritual powers and gifts (iv. 1 seq.); and, as this test of the genuine Spirit of God is the confession of Jesus Christ as really human and incarnate, the writer, on returning (in iv. 17 seq.) to his cardinal idea of brotherly love, expresses it in view of the incarnate Son (iv. 9), whose mission furnishes the proof of God’s love as well as the example and the energy of man’s (iv. 10 seq.). The same conception of the real humanity of Jesus Christ as essential to faith’s being and well-being is worked out in the following paragraph (v. 1-12), while the allusion to eternal life (v. 11-12) leads to the closing recapitulation (v. 13-21) of the homily’s leading ideas under this special category.

The curious idea, mentioned by Augustine (Quaest. evang. ii. 39), that the writing was addressed ad Parthos, has been literally taken by several Latin fathers and later writers (e.g. Grotius, Paulus, Hammond), but this title probably was a corruption of ad sparsos (Wetstein, Wegschneider) or of πρὸς παρθένους (Whiston: the Christians addressed as virgin, i.e. free from heresy), if not of παρθένος, as applied in early tradition to John the apostle. The circle for which the homily was meant was probably, in the first instance, that of the Fourth Gospel, but it is impossible to determine whether the epistle preceded or followed the larger treatise. The division of opinion on this point (cf. J. Moffat, Historical New Testament, 1901, p. 534) is serious, but the evidence for either position is purely subjective. There are sufficient peculiarities of style and conception12 to justify provisionally some hesitation on the matter of the authorship. The epistle may have been written by a different author, or, from a more popular standpoint, by the author of the gospel, possibly (as some critics hold) by the author of John xxi. But res lubrica, opinio incerta.

It is unsafe to lay much stress upon the apparent reminiscence of iv. 2-3 (or of 2 John 7) in Polycarp, ad Phil. 7 reading ἐληλυθότα instead of ἑληλυθέναι), though, if a literary filiation is assumed, the probability is that Polycarp is quoting from the epistle, not vice versa (as Volkmar contends, in his Ursprung d. unseren Evglien 47 seq.). But Papias is said by Eusebius (H. E. iii. 39) to have used ἡ Ἰωάννου προτέρα (= ἡ Ἰωάννου πρώτη, v. 8?), i.e. the anonymous tract, which, by the time of Eusebius, had come to be known as 1 John, and we have no reason to suspect or reject this statement, particularly as Justin Martyr, another Asiatic writer, furnishes clear echoes of the epistle (Dial. 123). The tract must have been in circulation throughout Asia Minor at any rate before the end of the first quarter of the 2nd century.13 The terminus a quo is approximately the period of the Fourth Gospel’s composition, but there is no valid evidence to indicate the priority of either, even upon the hypothesis that both came from the same pen. The aim of each is too special to warrant the conclusion that the epistle was intended to accompany or to introduce the gospel.