THE TESTS OF LIFE
A STUDY OF
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF
Being the Kerr Lectures
for 1909
BY
THE
REV. ROBERT LAW, B.D.
MINISTER OF
T. CLARK,
1909
[Scanned and proofed by Ted Hildebrandt, 2005]
Printed
by
MORRISON & GIBB
LIMITED,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK,
EDINBURGH.
THE KERR LECTURESHIP
THE
"KERR LECTURESHIP" was founded by the TRUSTEES of the late Miss
JOAN
KERR of Sanquhar, under her Deed of Settlement, and formally adopted
by
the United Presbyterian Synod in May 1886. In the following year, May
1887,
the provisions and conditions of the Lectureship, as finally adjusted,
were
adopted by the Synod, and embodied in a Memorandum, printed in the
Appendix
to the Synod Minutes, p. 489.
On the union of the United
Presbyterian Church with the Free Church of
of
the object of the Lectureship and the persons eligible for appointment to it,
so
as to suit the altered circumstances. And at the General Assembly of 1901
it
was agreed that the Lectureship should in future be connected with the
College
of the United Free Church. From the Memorandum, as thus amended,
the
following excerpts are here given:--
II. The amount to be invested shall
be ₤3000.
III. The object of the Lectureship
is the promotion of the study of Scientific
Theology
in the United Free Church of
The Lectures shall be upon some such
subjects as the following, viz. :
A. Historic Theology
(1) Biblical Theology, (2) History of Doctrine, (3) Patristics, with
special reference to the
significance and authority of the
first three centuries.
B. Systematic Theology
(1) Christian Doctrine—(a) Philosophy of Religion, (b) Com-
parative Theology, (c)
Anthropology, (d) Christology,
(e) Soteriology, (f)
Eschatology.
(2) Christian Ethics—(a) Doctrine of Sin, (b) Individual and
Social Ethics, (c) The
Sacraments, (d) The Place of Art
in Religious Life and
Worship.
Further, the Committee of Selection
shall from time to time, as they think
fit,
appoint as the subject of the Lectures any important Phases of Modern
Religious
Thought or Scientific Theories in their bearing upon Evangelical
Theology.
The Committee may also appoint a subject connected with the
practical
work of the Ministry as subject of Lecture, but in no case shall this
be
admissible more than once in every five appointments.
IV. The appointments to this
Lectureship shall be made in the first instance
from
among the Licentiates or Ministers of the United Free Church of
vii
viii The Kerr
Lectureship
of
whom no one shall be eligible who, when the appointment falls to be made,
shall
have been licensed for more than twenty-five years, and who is not a
graduate
of a
for
some time been connected with a
V. Appointments to this Lectureship
not subject to the conditions in
Section
IV. may also from time to time, at the discretion of the Committee,
be
made from among eminent members of the Ministry of any of the Noncon-
of
the Protestant Evangelical Churches of the Continent.
VI. The Lecturer shall hold the
appointment for three years.
VII. The number of Lectures to be
delivered shall be left to the discretion
of
the Lecturer, except thus far, that in no case shall there be more than twelve
or
less than eight.
VIII. The Lectures shall be
published at the Lecturer's own expense within
one
year after their delivery.
IX. The Lectures shall be delivered
to the students of the
of
the United Free Church of Scotland.
XII. The Public shall be admitted to
the Lectures.
PREFACE
As
only a portion of the contents of this volume could
be
orally delivered, I have not thought it necessary to
adhere
to either the form or the title of "Lecture," but
(with
the consent of the Trustees) have assigned a separate
"Chapter"
to each principal topic dealt with. The
method
adopted in this exposition of the Epistle—that,
namely,
of grouping together the passages bearing upon a
common
theme—will be found, I trust, to have advantages
which
compensate in some measure for its disadvantages.
That
it has disadvantages, as compared with a continuous
exposition,
I am well aware. These, however, I have
endeavoured
to minimise, by supplying in the first chapter
a
specially full analysis of the Epistle, by careful indexing,
and
by making liberal use of cross-references. For the
convenience
of the reader, I have set down in the footnotes
such
exegetical details as seemed most necessary to
explain
or to establish the interpretation adopted; but
where
these involved lengthy or intricate discussion, they,
along
with all minuter points of exegesis, have been
relegated
to the Notes at the end of the volume. In these
Notes
the text of the Epistle is continuously followed.
The points of textual difference
between the various
critical
editions of the Epistle are comparatively unimportant,
ix
x Preface
and
I have seldom found it necessary to refer to them.
The
text used is that of Tischendorf's Eighth Edition; but
in
one passage (518) I have preferred the reading indicated
in
our Authorised Version and in the Revisers' margin.
Among the commentators to whom I
have, of course,
been
indebted, I mention Westcott first of all. Owing,
perhaps,
to natural pugnacity, one more readily quotes a
writer
to express dissent than to indicate agreement; but,
though
I find that the majority of my references to
"Westcott"
are in the nature of criticism, I would not be
thought
guilty of depreciating that great commentary.
With
all its often provoking characteristics, it is still, as
a
magazine of materials for the student of the Epistle,
without
a rival. Huther's and Plummer's commentaries I
have
found specially serviceable; but the most original,
beautiful,
and profound is Rothe's, of which, it is somewhat
surprising
to find, no full translation has yet appeared.
I
desire, besides, to acknowledge obligation to J. M. Gibbon's
Eternal Life, a remarkably fine
popular exposition of the
Epistle;
and to Professor E. F. Scott's Fourth
Gospel, for
the
clear light which that able work throws upon not a
few
important points as well as for much provocative
stimulus.
But there is no book (except Bruder's
ance) to which I have been
more indebted than to
Moulton's
Grammar of New Testament Greek, the
next
volume
of which is impatiently awaited.
Professor H. R. Mackintosh, D.D., of
New College,
and
the Rev. Thomas S. Dickson, M.A.,
placed
me under deep obligation by exceptionally generous
and
valuable help in proof-reading. Mr. David Duff, B.D.,
not
only has rendered equal service in this respect, but has
Preface xi
subjected
the book, even in its preparatory stages, to a
rigorous
but always helpful criticism—a labour of friendship
for
which I find it difficult to express in adequate terms
the
gratitude that I owe and feel. Finally, I am grateful,
by
anticipation, to every reader who will make generous
allowance
for the fact, that the preparation of this volume
has
been carried through amid the incessant demands of
a
busy city pastorate, and who will attribute to this cause
some
of the defects which he will, no doubt, discover in it.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
II.
THE POLEMICAL AIM 25
III.
THE WRITER 39
IV.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AS LIFE AND LIGHT . 52
V.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AS RIGHTEOUSNESS
AND LOVE 67
Excursus on the Correlation of
Righteousness and Love 80
VI.
THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST 89
VII.
THE WITNESSES TO THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST
(with appended
Note on xri?sma) 108
VIII.
THE DOCTRINE OF SIN AND THE WORLD 128
IX.
THE DOCTRINE OF PROPITIATION 156
X.
ETERNAL LIFE 184
XI.
THE TEST QF RIGHTEOUSNESS 208
XII.
THE TEST OF LOVE 231
XIII.
THE TEST OF BELIEF (with appended Note
on pisteu<ein) 258
XIV.
THE DOCTRINE OF ASSURANCE 279
XV.
THE GROWTH OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 306
XVI.
ESCHATOLOGY (with appended Note on
Antichrist) 315
XVII.
THE RELATION OF THE EPISTLE TO THE
FOURTH GOSPEL 339
NOTES 368
INDEXES 415
xiii
ABBREVIATIONS
The
following works are referred to as follows, other titles being
cited
in full:
ABBOTT
Johannine Vocabulary (A. & C. Black,
1905), and Johannine
Grammar (A. & C. Black, 1906).
BEYSCHLAG Neutestamentliche
Theologie. Zweite Auflage.
CANDLISH The First Epistle of
DB A Dictionary of the Bible. Ed. by Dr.
Hastings. T. & T.
EBRARD Biblical Commentary on the Epistles of
GIBBON Eternal Life. By the Rev. J. M. Gibbon.
GRILL Untersuchungen uber die Entstehung des vierten Evan-
geliums. J. C. B. Mohr, 1902.
HAUPT The First Epistle of
Library, 1879.
HOLTZMANN Hand-Commentr.
zum Neuen Testament. Vierter Band.
HARING Theologische Ablzandlungen zum Carl von Weizsacker
gewidmet.
HUTHER Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the General Epistles of
James and John T. & T. Clark, 1882.
JPT Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie.
LUCKE Commentary on the Epistles of
1837.
MAURICE The Epistles of
MOULTON Grammar of New Testament Greek. Vol. i. T. & T.
PFLEIDERER Das
Urhristentnm. Zweite Auflage.
PLUMMER The Epistles of S. John. In the
ment for Schools and Colleges.
ROTHE Der erste Brief Johannes.
SCOTT The Fourth Gospel, its Purpose and Theology. T. & T.
STEVENS The Johannine Theology. Scribner's Sons, 1904.
WEISS Die drei Briefe des Apostel Johannis. Von Dr. Bernhard
Weiss.
WEIZSACKER The
Apostolic Age of the Christian Church. Second edition,
Williams & Norgate, 1897.
WESTCOTT The Epistles of
1892.
THE
FIRST EPISTLE OF
CHAPTER
I.
STYLE AND
STRUCTURE.
ON
a first perusal of the Epistle, the effect of which one can
at
least try to imagine, the appreciative reader could not
fail
to receive a deep impression of the strength and direct-
ness
of the writer's spiritual intuition, and to be charmed
by
the clear-cut gnomic terseness of many of his sayings;
but
not less, perhaps, would he be impressed by what
might
seem to him the marks of mental limitation and
literary
resourcelessness,—the paucity of ideas, the poverty
of
vocabulary, the reiteration, excessive for so brief a com-
position,
of the same thoughts in nearly the same language,
the
absence of logical concatenation or of order in the pro-
gress
of thought. The impression might be, indeed, that
there
is no such progress, but that the thought, after sundry
gyrations,
returns ever to the same point. As one reads
the
Epistle to the Romans, it seems as if to change the
position
of a single paragraph would be as impossible as to
lift
a stone out of a piece of solid masonry and build it
in
elsewhere; here it seems as if, while the things said are
of
supreme importance, the order in which they are said
matters
nothing. This estimate of the Epistle has been
2 The
First Epistle of
endorsed
by those who are presumed to speak with
authority.
Its method has been deemed purely aphoristic;
as
if the aged apostle, pen in hand, had merely rambled on
along
an undefined path, bestrewing it at every step with
priceless
gems, the crystallizations of a whole lifetime of
deep
and loving meditation. The "infirmity of old age"
(S.
G. Lange) is detected in it; a certain "indefiniteness,"
a
lack of "logical force," a "tone of childlike feebleness"
(Baur);
an "absolute indifference to a strictly logical and
harmoniously
ascending development of ideas" (Julicher).
It
is perhaps venturesome, therefore, to express the opinion
that
the more closely one studies the Epistle the more one
discovers
it to be, in its own unique way, one of the most
closely
articulated pieces of writing in the New Testament;
and
that the style, simple and unpremeditated as it is, is
singularly
artistic.
The almost unvarying simplicity1
of syntactical struc-
ture,
the absence of connecting, notably of illative, particles,2
and,
in short, the generally Hebraic type of composition
have
been frequently remarked upon; yet I am not sure
that
the closeness with which the style has been moulded
upon
the Hebraic model, especially upon the parallelistic
forms
of the Wisdom Literature, has been sufficiently
recognised.
One has only to read the Epistle with an
attentive
ear to perceive that, though using another lan-
guage,
the writer had in his own ear, all the time, the
swing
and the cadences of Old Testament verse. With
the
exception of the Prologue and a few other periodic
passages,
the majority of sentences divide naturally into
two
or three or four sti<xoi.
Two-membered sentences are common,
both synthetic
and
antithetic, which are strongly reminiscent of the
1 The writer's efforts in
more complex constructions are not felicitous. Cf.
e.g.
227 59.
2 de< occurs with only
one-third of its usual frequency; me<n, te, ou#n, do not
occur
at all; ga<r, only thrice.
Style and Structure 3
Hebrew
distich. Examples of the synthetic
variety are:
"He that loveth his brother
abideth in the light,
And there is none occasion of
stumbling in him'' (210);
or,
"Hereby know we love, because He
laid down His life for us:
And we ought to lay down our lives
for the brethren" (316).
Of
the antithetic, one may quote:
“And the world passeth away, and the
lust thereof:
But he that docth the will of God
abideth for ever” (217);
or
"Whosoever abideth in Him
sinneth not:
Whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him,
neither known Him" (36).
Commoner still are sentences of three
members, which,
in
the same way, may be called tristichs; as:
"That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you also,
That ye also may have fellowship
with us:
Yea, and our fellowship is with the
Father, and with His Son Jesus
Christ" (13);
or,
"Beloved, no new commandment
write I unto you,
But an old commandment which ye had
from the beginning:
The old commandment is the word
which ye heard" (27).
Resemblances
to the tetrastich also are found:
"For whatsoever is begotten of
God overcometh the world:
And this is the victory that
overcometh the world, even our faith.
Who is he that overcometh the world,
But he that believeth that Jesus is
the Son of God" (54-5);
or
"Little children, it is the
last hour:
And as ye heard that Antichrist
cometh,
Even now have arisen many
Antichrists ;
Whereby we know that it is the last
hour" (218).1
The Epistle presents examples, also,
of more elaborate
combinations:
as in 16-22 where
the alternating verses
1 An instance of
"introverted" parallelism, in which the first and fourth
lines,
and the second and third, answer to each other.
4 The First Epistle of
6.
8. 10
and 7. 9 21 are
exquisitely balanced both in thought
and
expression1; and in 2 12-14, where we have a double
parallel
tristich:
"I write . . . I write ... I
write:
I have written ... I have written .
. . I have written."
The author's literary art achieves
its finest effects
in
such passages as 2 7-11 and 2 15-17 (where one could
fancy
that he has unconsciously dropped into a strophic
arrangement
of lines), and in the closing verses of
the
Epistle (5 18-21) consisting of alternating tristichs
and
distichs:
"We know that every one that is
begotten of God sinneth not;
But he that was begotten of God
keepeth himself,
And the Wicked One toucheth him not.
We know that we are of
God,
And the whole world
lieth in the Wicked One.
We know that the Son of God is come,
And hath given us an understanding
to know the True One,
And we are in the True One, in His
Son Jesus Christ.
This is the True God,
and Life Eternal;
Little children, guard
yourselves from idols."2
It is not suggested that there is in
the Epistle a
conscious
imitation of Hebraic forms; but it is evident, I
think,
that no one could have written as our author does
whose
whole style of thought and expression had not been
unconsciously
formed upon Old Testament models.
1 The structure is broken
by the interjected address, "My little children,
these
things write I unto you that ye sin not." This being removed, the con-
tinuation
of the parallelism is clear.
2 In the Expository Times (June November 1897)
there is an interesting series
of
articles by Professor Briggs on the presence of Hebrew poetical forms in
the
N.T. He does not touch on the Johannine writings; but his method, if
applied
to the Epistle, would yield results beyond what I have ventured to
suggest.
Style and Structure 5
But we pass to the more important
topic, the structure
of
the Epistle. As has been already said, the impression
left
upon some, who cannot be supposed to have been
cursory
readers, is that the Epistle has no logical struc-
ture,
exhibits no ordered progression of thought. And this
estimate
has a measure of support in the fact that there is
no
portion of Scripture regarding the plan of which there
has
been greater diversity of opinion. It is nevertheless
erroneous.
The word that, to my mind, might
best describe St.
John's
mode of thinking and writing in this Epistle is
"spiral."
The course of thought does not move from point
to
point in a straight line. It is like a winding staircase--
always
revolving around the same centre, always recurring
to
the same topics, but at a higher level. Or, to borrow
a
term from music, one might describe the method as
contrapuntal.
The Epistle works with a comparatively
small
number1 of themes, which are introduced many times,
and
are brought into every possible relation to one another.
As
some master-builder of music takes two or three
melodious
phrases and, introducing them in due order,
repeating
them, inverting them, skilfully interlacing them
in
diverse modes and keys, rears up from them an edifice
of
stately harmonies; so the Apostle weaves together a
few
leading ideas into a majestic fugue in which unity of
material
and variety of tone and effect are wonderfully
blended.
And the clue to the structure of the Epistle will
be
found by tracing the introduction and reappearances of
these
leading themes.
These1 are Righteousness,
Love, and Belief. For
here
let me say at once that, in my view, the key to the
interpretation
of the Epistle is the fact that it is an
1 The following list
includes most, if not all, of the leading ideas found in the
Epistle—God,
True One, idols—rather, begotten of God, children of God,—Son
of
God, Word of Life, Christ come in the flesh, Jesus—Spirit, spirits—Anointing,
teaching,
witnessing—word, message, announcing--truth, lie, error—beholding,
6 The
First Epistle of
apparatus
of tests; that its definite object is
to furnish
its
readers with an adequate set of criteria by which
they
may satisfy themselves of their being "begotten of
God."
"These things write I unto you, that ye may
know
that ye have eternal life" (513) And throughout the
Epistle
these tests are definitely, inevitably, and in-
separably—doing
righteousness; loving one another; and
believing
that Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh, sent
by
the Father to be the Saviour of the world. These
are
the connecting themes that bind together the whole
structure
of the Epistle. After the prologue, in fact, it
consists
of a threefold repetition and application of these
three
fundamental tests of the Christian life. In proof of
this
statement let us, in the first instance, examine those
sections
of the Epistle in which the sequence of thought
is
most clearly exhibited. The first of these is 23-28,
which
divides itself naturally into three paragraphs, (A)
23-6(B)
27-17 (C) 218-28.
Here A (23-6) obviously
consists of a threefold state-
ment,
with significant variations, of the single idea, that
righteousness
("keeping His commandments," "keeping
His
word," "walking, even as He walked") is the indis-
pensable
test of "knowing God" and "abiding in Him."
In
B (27-17) the current of thought is interrupted by the
parenthetical
passage, 212-14; but, this being omitted, it
is
apparent that here, also, we have a paragraph formed
upon
one principal idea--Love the test of the Christian
Life,
the test being applied positively in 27-11 (the
"new
commandment"), and negatively in 215-17 ("Love
not
the world"). In C (213-25), again, the unity is obvious.
believing,
knowing, confessing, denying—brotherhood, fellowship—righteousness,
commandment,
word of God, will of God, things that are pleasing in His sight--
sin,
lawlessness, unrighteousness—world, flesh, Antichrist, Devil—blood, water,
propitiation,
Paraclete, forgiveness, cleansing—abiding, passing away—Begin-
ning,
last hour—parousia, Day of Judgment, manifestation, hope—boldness,
fear—asking,
receiving—overcoming.
Style and Structure 7
The
theme of the paragraph is—the Christian life tested
by
Belief of the truth, of which the Anointing Spirit is the
supreme
Witness and Teacher, that Jesus is the Christ and
the
Son of God.
If, next, we examine the part of the
Epistle that extends
from
229—46, we find precisely the same topics recurring in
precisely the same order. We have again three
paragraphs
(A)
229-310a, (B) 310b-24a and (C) 324b-46.
And, again, it is
evident
that in A we have the test of Righteousness, in
B
the test of Love, and in C the test of Belief.
In the third great section of the Epistle
(47-521)
though
the sequence of thought is somewhat different,
the
thought-material is identical; and for the present it is
sufficient
to point out that the leading themes, the tests
of
Love (47-12 and 416b-21), Belief (413-16a and
55-12), and
Righteousness
(518, 19) are all present, and that they alone
are
present.
We seem, then, to have found a
natural division of the
Epistle
into three main sections, or, as they might be most
descriptively
called, "cycles," in each of which the same
fundamental
thoughts appear, in each of which the reader
is
summoned to bring his Christian life to the test of
Righteousness,
of Love, and of Belief. With this as a
working
hypothesis, I shall now endeavour to give an
analysis
of the contents of the Epistle.
Passing by the Prologue (11-4),
we have the
FIRST CYCLE,
15-228
Walking in the Light tested by
Righteousness, Love,
and Belief
It begins with the announcement,
which is the basis of
the
whole section, that "God is Light, and in Him is no
darkness
at all" (15). And, since what God is determines
8 The
First Epistle of
the
condition of fellowship with Him, this is set forth: first,
negatively
(16)—"If we say that we have fellowship with
Him
and walk in darkness"; then positively (17)—"If we
walk
in the Light as He is in the Light." What, then, is
it
to walk in the Light, and what to walk in darkness?
The
answer to these questions is given in all that follows,
down
to 228.
PARAGRAPH A, (1)
18-26
Walking in the Light
tested by Righteousness: first, in
confession
of sin (13—22); secondly, in actual obedience
(23-6).
The first fact upon which the Light
of God impinges
in
human life is Sin; and the first test of walking in the
Light
is sincere recognition of the true nature, the guilti-
ness,
of Sin (1 8.9). Again, this test is applied negatively--
“If
we say that we have no sin,” and positively—"If we
confess
our sins."
But, in the Light of God, not only
is Sin, wherever
present,
recognised in its true character as guilt; it is
revealed
as universally present. Whence arises a second
test
of walking in the Light—"If we say that we, have not
sinned,
we make Him a liar," etc.
What follows is very significant.
Obviously the
writer
had intended to continue—"If we confess that we
have
sinned, we have a Paraclete with the Father, Jesus
Christ
the Righteous" (thus carrying forward the parallel
series
of antitheses: 16.8. 10 = walking in darkness, 17. 9
1 In order to avoid
complexities in our preliminary survey, 23 was taken as
the
starting-point, the structure being more clearly marked from that point
onward.
But this first Cycle really includes the whole from 15. The verses
(18-22)
which deal with the confession and removal of sin and those (23-6)
which
deal with conduct, are both included in the ethical guarantee of the
Christian
Life. That recognition of sin in the Light of God and that renunciation
of
it which are involved in its sincere confession are inseparable in experience
from
the "keeping of God's commandments" and "walking as Christ
walked,"—
are
the back and the front, so to say, of the same moral attitude toward life.
Style and Structure 9
and
what would have been 111 = walking in the light). But
before
he writes this, his pen is arrested by the sudden fear
that
some might be so infatuated as to wrest these broad
evangelical
statements into a pretext for moral laxity. He
therefore
interposes the earnest caveat, "My little children,
these
things write I unto you, that ye sin not"; then
carries
forward the train of thought in slightly different
forms,
"And if any man sin," etc. (21. 2).
But if confession of sin is the test
of walking in the
Light,
confession itself is to be tested by its fruits in new
obedience.
If impenitence, the "lie" of the conscience (18),
renders
fellowship with God impossible, no less does dis-
obedience,
the "lie" of the life (24). This is the purport
of
the verses that follow (23-6). Christian profession is to
be
submitted to the test of Christian conduct; of which a
threefold
description is given—"keeping God's command-
ments"
(23); "keeping His word" (25); and
"walking even
as
He (Christ) walked" (26). With this the first application
of
the test of Righteousness is completed.
PARAGRAPH B, 27-17.
Walking in the Light tested by Love.
(A) Positively—the old-new
commandment (27-11).
This is linked on to the immediately
preceding verses
by
the word "commandment." Love is the commandment
which
is "old," familiar to the Apostle's readers from their
first
acquaintance with the rudiments of Christianity (27);
but
also "new," a commandment which is ever fresh and
living
to those who have fellowship with Christ in the True
Light,
which is now shining forth (28). But from this
follows
necessarily, that "He that saith he is in the light, and
hateth
his brother, is in darkness." The antithesis of 28.9
is
then repeated, with variation and enrichment of thought,
10 The First Epistle of
in
210.11 (Then follow the parenthetical verses 12-14, the
motive
for the insertion of which will be discussed else-
where.1
These being treated as a parenthesis, the unity of
the
paragraph at once becomes apparent.)
(B) Negatively. The commandment to
love is com-
pleted
by the great "Love not" (215-17) If walking in the
light
has its guarantee in loving one's "brother," it is tested
no
less by not loving the "world." One cannot at the
same
time participate in the life of God and in a moral life
which
is dominated by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes,
and the vainglory of the world.
PARAGRAPH C, 218-28
Walking in the Light tested by
Belief.
The Light of God not only reveals
Sin and Righteous-
ness,
the children of God (our "brother") and the "world"
in
their true character, so that, walking in that Light, men
must
confess Sin and follow after Righteousness, love their
"brother"
and not love the "world"; it also reveals Jesus in
His
true character as the Christ, the Incarnate Son of God.
And
all that calls itself Christianity is to be tested by its
reception
or its rejection of that truth. In this paragraph,
it
is true, the Light and the Darkness are not expressly
referred
to. But the continuity of thought with the preced-
ing
paragraphs is unmistakable. Throughout the whole of
this
first division of the Epistle the point of view is that of
Fellowship
with God, through receiving and walking in the
Light
which His self-revelation sheds upon all things in
the
spiritual realm. Unreal Christianity in every form is
comprehensively
a "lie." It may be the Antinomian lie of
him
who says "he has no sin" (18), and, on the other hand,
is
indifferent to keeping God's commandments (24); the
lie
of lovelessness (29); or the lie of the Antichrist who,
1 See Chapter XV.
Style and Structure 11
claiming
spiritual enlightenment, denies that Jesus is the
Christ
(222). Every one who does this asserts what is
untrue
and impossible, if he say or suppose that, while
thus
walking in darkness, he has fellowship with God, who
is
Light. Minuter analysis of this paragraph is, for our
present
purpose, unnecessary.
SECOND CYCLE, 229-46.
Divine Sonship tested by Righteousness, Love,
and Belief.
The first main division of the
Epistle began with the
assertion
of what God is relatively to us--Light; and from
this
it deduced the condition of our fellowship with Him.
The
light of God's self-revelation in Christ becomes to us
the
light in which we behold ourselves, our sin, our duty,
our
brother, the world, the reality of the Incarnation; and
only
in acknowledging the "truth" thus revealed and
loyally
acting it out can we have fellowship with God.
The
point of view is ethical and psychological. This
second
division, on the other hand, begins with the asser-
tion
of what the Divine nature is in itself, and thence
deduces
the essential characteristics of those who are
"begotten
of God." Righteousness, Love, Confession of
Christ
arc the proofs, because the results, of participation
in
the Divine nature; Sin, Hate, Denial of Christ, the proofs
of
non-participation. The point of view is, predominantly,
biological.
The key-word is "begotten of God."
PARAGRAPH A, 229-310a
Divine Sonship tested by Righteousness.
Here (229) the idea of
the Divine Begetting is intro-
duced
for the first time. And, as the first test applied to
Fellowship
in the Light was the attitude toward Sin and
12 The First Epistle of
Righteousness,
so, likewise, it is the first applied to the life
of
Divine sonship. As the Light convicts of sin and at the
same
time reveals both the content and the absolute
imperative
of Righteousness, so the Divine Life begotten in
man
has a twofold action.1 The identity of the human
will
with the Divine, which is the necessary result of the
community
of nature, reveals itself both in "doing right-
eousness"
and in entire antagonism to sin. "If ye know
that
He is righteous, know that every one also that doeth
righteousness
is begotten of Him." But here the writer is
immediately
arrested by the wonder and thanksgiving that
fill
and overflow his soul at the thought that sinful men
should
be brought into such a relation as this to God.
"Behold
what manner of love!" (31a). This leads him
further
to contemplate, first, the present concealment of the
glory
of the children of God (31b); then, the splendour of
its
future manifestation (32); and, finally, the thought that
the
fulfilment of this hope is necessarily conditioned by
present
endeavour after moral likeness to Christ leads back
to
the main theme of the paragraph, that the life of Divine
sonship
is, by necessity of nature, one of absolute Right-
eousness,
of truceless opposition to sin (34-10a) This is
now
exhibited in a fourfold light: (1) in the light of what
sin
is, lawlessness (34); (2) in the light of Christ—the
purpose
of all that is revealed in Christ is the removal and
abolition
of sin (35-7); (3) in the light of the Divine
origin
of the Christian life—only that which is sinless can
derive
from God (39. 10a); (4) intertwined with these
cardinal
arguments there is a fourth, that all that is of the
nature
of sin comes from a source which is the antithesis
of
the Divine, and which is in active hostility to the work
of
Christ—the Devil (38-10a) The last clause of the para-
graph
reverts to and logically completes the proposition
with
which it began. To the positive, "Every one that
1 The parallelism is
strikingly close. Cf. 33 with 26, 36a with 25b,
36b with 24.
Style and Structure 13
doeth
righteousness is begotten of God " (220), is added the
negative,"
Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of
God"
(310b). The circle is
completely drawn. The
"begotten
of God" include all who “do righteousness”;
all
who do not are excluded.
PARAGRAPH B, 310b-24a
Divine
Sonship tested by Love.
In structure, this paragraph is less
regular; its contents
are
not so closely knit to the leading thought. But what
this
leading thought is, is clearly fixed at the beginning:
"He
that loveth not his brother is not begotten of God"
(310b).
That brotherly love is the test of Divine sonship is
the
truth that dominates the whole. Instead, however, of
developing
this thought dialectically, the Apostle does so,
in
the first instance, pictorially; setting before us two
figures,
Cain and Christ, as the prototypes of Hate and
Love.
The contemplation of Cain and of the disposition
out
of which the first murder sprang (312), suggests paren-
thetically
an explanation of the World's hatred of the
children
of God (313); but, chiefly, the truth that in loving
our
brethren we have a reliable guarantee that we have
passed
from death unto life (314); while, on the other hand,
whosoever
hateth his brother is potentially a murderer and
assuredly
cannot have the Life of God abiding in him (315).
Next,
in glorious contrast to the sinister figure of Cain, who
sacrificed
his brother's life to his morbid self-love, the
Apostle
sets before us the figure of Christ who sacrificed
His
own life in love to us, His brethren (316a); and draws
the
inevitable inference that our life, if one with His, must
obey
the same spiritual law (316b).
In 317 this test is
brought
within the scope of everyday opportunity; and is
followed
(318) by a fervent exhortation to love "not in
14 The First Epistle of
word,
neither with the tongue, but in deed and in truth."
This
introduces a restatement of the purport of the whole
paragraph—that
such Love is the test of all Divine sonship,
and
affords a valid and accessible ground of assurance
before
God, even should our own hearts condemn us
(319.
20). In the remainder of the paragraph the subject of
assurance
and its relation to prayer is further dwelt upon
(321.22).
And, finally, in setting forth the grounds upon
which
such assurance rests, the Apostle combines all the
three
cardinal tests—Righteousness ("keeping His com-
mandments,"
322), Belief ("in the name of His Son Jesus
Christ,"
323a), and Love (323b). All these are, in fact,
"commandments,"
and he that keepeth them abideth in
God,
and God in him (321a).
PARAGRAPH C, 324b-46
Divine Sonship tested by
Belief.
Here, again, the test to be applied
is broadly and
clearly
indicated at the outset. "Hereby know we that
He
abideth in us, by the Spirit1 which He hath given us."
As
in the corresponding paragraph 213-28, so here also the
argument
is conducted in view of the concrete historical
situation,
upon the consideration of which we do not now
enter.
The essence of the paragraph lies in 42. 3b and 6b:
"Hereby
know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that
confesseth
that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh is of
God;
and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of
1 It is necessary to say
here, although a fuller discussion will be given later,
that,
in the Epistle, the Spirit is regarded solely as the Spirit of Truth, whose
function
is to testify of Christ, to reveal the Divine glory of His Person, to
inspire
belief in Him, and to prompt confession of Him as the Incarnate Son of
God.
The "knowing" by "the Spirit which God hath given us "is
not
immediate
but inferential. It does not proceed from any direct subjective
testimony
that "God abideth in us," but is an inference from the fact that God
hath
given us that Spirit without whom no man calleth Jesus Lord.
Style anal
Structure 15
God."
"By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit
of
error."
To recur to the general structure of
the Epistle, it may
be
noted that we have found the first and second "cycles"
corresponding
exactly in subject-matter and in order of
development.
In 15-26 and in 229-310a the Christian life
has
been tested by its attitude to Sin and Righteousness,
in
27-17 and in 310b-24a by Love, and in 218-28
and 324b-46 by
Belief.
THIRD CYCLE, 47-521
Inter-relations of Love, Belief, and
Righteousness.
In
this closing section the Epistle rises to its loftiest
heights;
but the logical analysis of it is the hardest part
of
our task. The subject-matter is identical with that
which
has been already twice used, not a single new idea
being
introduced except that of the "sin unto death." But
the
order and proportion of treatment are different; the
test
of Righteousness takes here a subordinate place (52.3
518);
and the whole "Cycle" may be broadly divided into
two
sections, the first, 47-53a, in which the dominant
theme
is Love (with, however, the Christological passage
413-15
embedded in it); the second, 53b-21, in which it is
Belief.
The same practical purpose is still steadfastly
adhered
to as in the preceding "Cycles"—the application
of
the three great tests to everything that calls itself
Christian.
But here an additional aim is, I think, partly
discernible,
namely, to bring out the necessary connections
and
inter-relations of Righteousness, Love, and Belief.
Hitherto
the writer has been content to exhibit these
simply
as collateral elements in the Christian life, each
and
all indispensable to its genuineness. He has made
no
serious effort to show why these three elements must
coalesce
in the unity of life,—why the Life of which one
16 The First Epistle of
manifestation
is Belief in the Incarnation must also manifest
itself
in keeping God's commandments and loving one
another.
Here, however, as he traverses the same ground
for
the third time, he does seem to be feeling after a closer
articulation.
Thus in 49-16 the inner connection between
Belief
and Love is strongly suggested; in 52.3a we find
the
synthesis of Love and Righteousness; and in 53b-5,
the
synthesis of Righteousness and Belief. Without
asserting
that the writer's conscious purpose in this third
handling
of his material was to exhibit these interdepen-
dencies,
it may be said that in this consists its distinctive
feature.
LOVE.
PARAGRAPH A, 47-13
The genesis of
Love.
Christian Love is deduced from its
Divine source.
Regarding
Love, the same declaration, precisely and
verbally,
is now made as was formerly made regarding
Righteousness
(229). "God is Love"; and every one that
loveth
is begotten of God (47 and, negatively, 48). But
here,
feeling his way to a correlation of Love and Belief,
of
Christ alone is the perfect revelation of the fact that the
nature
of God is Love (49); nay, that it furnishes the one
absolute
revelation of the nature of Love itself (410).
From
this follows the inevitable consequence, "If God so
loved
us, we ought also to love one another" (411); and
the
assurance that, if we love one another, the invisible God
abideth
in us; His nature is incorporate with ours; His
Love
is fulfilled in us (412).
Style and Structure 17
PARAGRAPH B, 410-16
The synthesis of Love and
Belief.
As in 220-28 and 324b-46,
the gift of the Spirit, by whom
confession
is made of Jesus as the Son of God, is cited
as
proof that God abideth in us and we in Him (413-15),
and
seems to be merely collateral with the proof
already
adduced from "loving one another" (412). But it
becomes
evident, on closer examination, that the two
paragraphs
(47-12 and 413-16) stand in some more intimate
relation
than this. We observe the parallel statements,
"If
we love one another, God abideth in us" (412); then,
"Whosoever
shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God,
God
abideth in him and he in God" (415); then a second
time,
"He that abideth in love abideth in God, and God
in
him" (416). We observe, further, that the confession of
Jesus
as the Son of God (416) is paralleled by the statement
that
"the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the
world"
(414), which points back to that revelation of God
as
Love (49. 10) in which the moral obligation and spiritual
necessity
of loving one another have been already disclosed
(411).
And we observe, finally, that the confession of
Jesus
as the Son of God, sent by the Father to be the
Saviour
of the world (414. 15), is personally appropriated
in
this, "We know and have believed the Love which God
hath
toward us," followed by the reiterated "God is Love;
and
he that abideth in Love abideth in God, and God in
him"
(416). Thus closely observing the structure of the
passage,
we cannot doubt that the writer is labouring to
express
the truth that Christian Belief and Christian Love
are
not merely concomitant, but vitally one. Yet, what
the
interrelation of the two is in the Apostle's mind;
which,
if either, is anterior and instrumental to the
other;
whether we are begotten through the medium of
spiritual
perception into love, or through the medium of
18 The First Epistle of
love
into spiritual perception, it would be hazardous
to
say.
PARAGRAPH C, 417-53a
The effects, motives, and manifestations
of Love.
1. The effect of Love is assurance
toward God (417. 18).
It
is a notable example of the symmetry with which the
Epistle
is constructed that the sequence of thought here is
minutely
the same as in 319. 20. Here, as there, Love has,
as
its immediate result, confidence toward God; and
with
precisely the same condition, that Love be in "deed
and
in truth" (cf. 318. 19 with 420)
2. The motives to brotherly Love:
These are God's
love
to us (419), the only possible response to which is
to
love one's brother (420); the express commandment of
Christ
(421); and the instincts of spiritual kinship (51).1
3.
The synthesis of Love and Righteousness.
This is exhibited in a two-fold
light. True love to
man
is righteous, and is possible only to those who love
God
and keep His commandments (52). True love to ,God
consists
in keeping His commandments (53a).
SECTION II. 53b-21
BELIEF.
PARAGRAPH A, 53b-12
The power, contents,
basis, and issue of Christian Belief
It may seem sufficiently arbitrary
to make the clause
"And
His commandments are not grievous" the point of
1 Throughout this portion
of the Epistle, each thought is so closely inter-
locked,
as well with what precedes as with what follows, that it is impossible to
divide
it at any point which shall not seem more or less arbitrary. I have made
52
the beginning of a subsection; but obviously it is also the requisite com-
plement
to 51. There, loving "him that is begotten" is the sign
and test of loving
"Him
that begat"; here, conversely, loving God and "keeping His command-
ments"
is the sign and test of “loving the children of God.”
Style and Structure 19
departure
for a new paragraph. But so closely is the
texture
of thought woven in these verses, that the same
objection
would apply equally to any other line of division.
There
is, however, an obvious transition in 53-5 from the
topic
of Love to that of Belief; and it seems most suitable
to
regard the transition as effected at this point, "This is
the
Love of God, that we keep His commandments," is
be
said has as its subject, more or less directly, Belief.
And,
while the clause "and His commandments are not
grievous"
is intimately linked on to the first half of the verse
by
the common topic "commandments," it introduces an
entirely
new train of thought.
1. The synthesis of Belief and
Righteousness (53b. 4)
God's
commandments are not burdensome to the believer.
That
which would make them burdensome, the power of
the
world, is overcome by the victorious divine power
given
to every one who is "begotten of God"; and the
medium
through which the victorious power is imparted is
our
Christian Belief,
2. The substance of Christian Belief
is that "Jesus is
the
Son of God, even He that came by water and by
blood” (55. 6)
3. Next, the basis on which it rests
is: the witness of
the
Spirit (57); the coincident witness of the Spirit, the
water
and the blood (58); which is the witness of God
Himself
(59); and which, when received, becomes an
inward
and immediate assurance, a self-evidencing certitude
(510a).
On the other hand, to reject this witness is to
make
God a liar (510b)
4. The issue of Christian Belief.
The witness of God
to
His Son Jesus Christ is fundamentally this, that He is
the
source of paternal Life to men (517). This Life is
the
present possession of all who spiritually possess Him
and
to be without Him is to be destitute of it (512).
20 The First Epistle of
The end of the paragraph thus
answers sublimely to
its
beginning. That which has eternal life in it (512) must
conquer,
and alone can conquer, the world, whose life is
bound
up with transitory aims and objects. Because it
makes
the truth that "he that doeth the will of God abideth
for
ever" a living power, faith wins its everlasting victory
over
the world which "passeth away with the lust thereof."
PARAGRAPH B, 513-21
The conscious certainties of
Christian Belief.
1. Its certainty of Eternal Life. To
promote this in
all
who believe in the name of the Son of God is the
Apostle's
purpose in writing this Epistle (513).
2. Its certainty regarding Prayer (514-17)
If we
ask
anything according to God's Will, He heareth us"
(514);
and, consequently, we have these things for which
we
have made petition (515). An example of the things
which
we may ask with assurance is "life" for a brother
who
sins "a sin not unto death" (516a); and an example of
the
things regarding which we may not pray with such
confidence
is the restoration of a brother who has com-
mitted
sin unto death (516b). To
this is appended a
statement
regarding the nature and effect of sin (517).
3. The certainty regarding the
regenerate Life, that
Righteousness
is its indefeasible characteristic, that it is a
life
of uncompromising antagonism to all sin (518).
4. The certainty as to the profound
moral contrast
between
the Christian life and the life of the world (519)
5. The certainty of Christian Belief
as to the facts
upon
which it rests, and the supernatural power which has
quickened
it to perception of those facts (520a)
Then with a final reiteration of the
whole purport of
the
Epistle, "This is the true God and Eternal Life" (520b),
and
an abrupt and sternly affectionate call to all believers
Style and Structure 21
to
beware of yielding the homage of their trust and depen-
dence
to the vain shadows which are ever apt to usurp the
place
of the True God, the Epistle ends, "Little children,
keep
yourselves from idols" (521).
SYNOPSIS.
THE PROLOGUE, 11-4.
FIRST CYCLE, 15-228
THE
CHRISTLAN LIFE, AS FELLOWHIP WITH GOD, CONDITIONED
AND TESTED BY WALKING IN THE
LIGHT.
15.
The fundamental announcement. "God is Light."
PARAGRAPH A, 16-26
16-7.
General statement of the condition of fellowship with God, Who
is Light.
18-26.
Walking- in the Light tested by the altitude to Sin and Righteous-
ness.
To walk in the Darkness. To walk in the Light.
a. To deny sin as guilt, 18. a. To confess sin as
guilt, 19.
b. To deny sin as fact, 110. b. To confess sin as
fact, 21,2.
g. To say that we know God and not g. To keep His
commandments, 23.
keep His commandments, 24. d. To keep His word, 25.
d. Not to walk as Christ walked, 26. e. To walk as Christ
walled. 26.
PARAGRAPH
B, 27-17.
Walking in the Lid ht tested by
Love.
(a) By love of one's brother (vv. 7-11)
[Parenthetic address to the readers (vv.12-14).]
(b) By not loving the World
PARAGRAPH C,
218-28
Walking in the Light tested be
Belief
218.
Rise of the antichrists.
219.
Their relation to the Church.
220.21.
The source and guarantee of the true Belief.
222.23.
The crucial test of Truth and Error.
224.
25. Exhortation to steadfastness.
223-27.
Reiterated statement of the source and guarantee of the true
Belief.
228.
Repeated exhortation to steadfastness.
22 The First Epistle of
SECOND CYCLE, 229-46
THE
CHRISTIAN LIFE, AS THAT OF DIVINE SONSHIP, APPROVED
BY THE SAME
TESTS.
PARAGRAPH A, 229-310.
Divine Sonship tested by
Righteousness.
229.
This test inevitable.
31-3.
The present status and the future manifestation of the
children of God: the possession of
this hope conditioned
by assimilation to the purity of
Christ.
34-10a.
The absolute contrariety of the life of Divine Sonship to
all sin.
a. In the light of the moral authority of God (v.4).
b. In the light of Christ's character and of the
purpose of His
mission (vv.5-7 ).
g. In the light of the origin of Sin (v.8).
d. In the light of its own Divine source (v.9).
e. In the light of fundamental moral contrasts (v.10a)
PARAGRAPH B, 310b-24a
Divine Sonship tested by
Love.
310.
11 This test inevitable.
312. Cain
the prototype of Hate.
313. Cain's
spirit reproduced in the World.
314a.
Love, the sign of having passed from
Death unto Life.
314b.15 The absence of it, the sign of abiding in
Death.
316
Christ
the prototype of Love; the obligation thus laid
upon us.
317.18 Genuine
Love consists not in words but in deeds.
319-22.
The confidence toward God resulting from
such Love,
especially in Prayer.
323.24b Recapitulatory;
combining, under the category of His
"commandment," Love and also belief on His Son
Jesus Christ. Thus a transition is
effected to Paragraph C.
PARAGRAPH C, 324b-46.
Divine Sonship tested by Belief.
324b. This test inevitable.
41.
Exhortation in view of the actual
situation.
42.
The true Confession of Faith.
44-6.
The relation thereto of the Church and
the World.
Style and Structure 23
THIRD CYCLE, 47-521
CLOSER
CORRELATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, LOVE AND BELIEF
LOVE.
PARAGRAPH A, 47-12.
The genesis of
Love.
47.8.
Love indispensable, because God is
Love.
49.
The mission of Christ the proof that
God is Love.
410.
The mission of Christ the absolute
revelation of what Love is.
411.
The obligation thus imposed upon us.
412.
The assurance given in its
fulfilment.
PARAGRAPH 413-16
The
synthesis of Belief and Love.
413.
The True Belief indispensable as a
guarantee of Christian
Life, because the Spirit of God is its author.
414.15.
The content of the true Belief, "
Jesus is the Son of God."
416.
In this is found the vital ground of
Christian Love.
PARAGRAPH C, 415-53a
The effect, motives, and manifestations
of love.
417.18 The
effect, confidence toward God.
419-51.
The motives to Love: (1) God's love to us; (2) the only
possible response to which if to love our brother; (3)
Christ's commandment; (4) the instincts of spiritual
kinship.
52-3a. The synthesis of Love and Righteousness.
SECTION II. 53b-21.
BELIEF.
PARAGRAPH A, 53b-12.
The power, contents,
basis, and issue of Christian Belief.
53b.4
The synthesis of Belief and
Righteousness. In Belief lies the
power of obedience.
55.6.
The contents of Christian Belief.
57-10.
The evidence upon which it rests.
511.12.
Its issue, the possession of Eternal
Life.
24 The First Epistle of
PARAGRAPH B, 513-21
The certainties of
Christian Belief
513. Its
certainty of Eternal Life.
514.15. Of prevailing in Prayer.
516.
Instance in which such certainty
fails.
517. Appended
statement regarding Sin.
518. Of
Righteousness, as the essential characteristic of the
Christian Life.
519.
Of the moral gulf between the
Christian Life and the life
of the World.
520.
Of itself, the facts on which it
rests, and the supernatural
power which has given perception of these facts.
521.
Final exhortation.
Note.—After this chapter was
completely written, there came into my
hands
an article by Theodor Haring in the Theologisclze
Abhandlungen
Carl von Weizsizcker
gewidnzet
(
that
in this article, which is of great value, the analysis of the Epistle
is
on precisely the same lines as that which I have submitted. The
only
difference worth noting is that Haring, by combining Righteous-
ness
and Love, finds in each "cycle" only two leading tests, which
he
calls the "ethical" and the "Christological." This gives a
more
logical
division; but I am still of opinion that my own is more faithful
to
the thought of the Epistle, in which the comprehension of Right-
eousness
and Love under any such general conception as "ethical" is
not
achieved.
CHAPTER II.
THE POLEMICAL AIM OF THE EPISTLE.
ALTHOUGH
explicit controversial allusions in the Epistle
are
few, — are limited, indeed, to two passages (218. 19
41-6)
in which certain false teachers, designated as "anti-
christs,"
are unsparingly denounced,--there is no New
Testament
writing which is more vigorously polemical in
its
whole tone and aim. The truth, which in the same
writer's
Gospel shines as the dayspring from on high,
becomes
here a searchlight, flashed into a background of
darkness.
But, though the polemical intention
of the Epistle has
been
universally recognised, there has been wide diversity
of
opinion as to its actual object. By the older com-
mentators
generally, it was found in the perilous state of
the
Church, or Churches, addressed. They had left their
"first
love"; they had lapsed into Laodicean lukewarmness
and
worldliness, so that for them the sense of the absolute
distinction
between the Christian and the unchristian in
life
and belief had become blurred and feeble. And it
was
to arouse them from this lethargy—to sharpen the
dulness
of their spiritual perceptions — that the Epistle
was
written. But not only does the Epistle nowhere
give
any sign of such an intention; it contains many
passages
which are inconsistent with it (213. 14. 20. 21. 27
44
518-20)
Unmistakably its polemic is directed
not against such
evils
as may at any time, and more or less always do,
25
26
The First Epistle of S. John
beset
the life of the Church from within, but against a
definite
danger threatening it from without. There is a
"spirit
of error" (46) abroad in the world. From the Church
itself
(219) many false prophets (41) have gone forth, cor-
rupters
of the gospel, "antichrists" who would deceive the
very
elect. And, not to spend time in statement and
refutation
of other views, it may be asserted as beyond
question
that the peril against which the Epistle was
intended
to arm the Church was the spreading influence
of
Gnosticism, and, specifically, of a form of Gnosticism
that
was Docetic in doctrine and Antinomian in practice.
A
very brief sketch of the essential features of Gnosticism
will
suffice to show not only that these are clearly reflected
in
the more explicitly controversial utterances of the Epistle,
but
that the influence of an anti-Gnostic polemic is traceable
in
almost every sentence.
Of the forces with which
Christianity had to do battle
for
its career as the universal religion—Jewish legalism,
pagan
superstition, Greek speculation, Roman imperialism—
none,
perhaps, placed it in sharper hazard than Gnosticism,
that
strange, obscure movement, partly intellectual, partly
fanatical,
which, in the second century, spread with the
swiftness
of an epidemic over the Church from
dimmest
chapters in Church history; and no attempt need
be
or can be made here to elucidate its obscurities or
unravel
its intricacies. But one fact is clear, Gnosticism
was
not, in the proper sense, a "heresy." Although it
became
a corrupting influence within the Church, it was
an
alien by birth. While the Church yet sojourned within
the
pale of Judaism, it enjoyed immunity from this plague;
but,
soon as it broke through these narrow bounds, it found
itself
in a world where the decaying religions and philo-
sophies
of the West were in acute fermentation under the
influence
of a new and powerful leaven from the East; while
The Polemical Aim of the
Epistle 27
the
infusion of Christianity itself into this fermenting mass
only
added to the bewildering multiplicity of Gnostic sects
and
systems it brought forth.
That this was the true genesis of
Gnosticism,--that it
was
the result of an irruption of Oriental religious beliefs
into
the Graeco-Roman world,—and that, consequently, it
sought
to unite in itself two diverse strains,
lectualism
and Eastern mysticism, is generally admitted.
Different
views are held, however, as to which of these is
to
be regarded as the stock upon which the other was
grafted.
It has been the fashion with Church historians
of
the liberal school to glorify Gnosticism by giving chief
prominence
to its philosophical aspect. Oriental elements
it
admittedly contained, but these, in its most influential
representatives
at least, had been thoroughly permeated
with
the Hellenic spirit. In its historical result it was the
"acute
Hellenising" of Christianity. The great Gnostics
were
the first Christian philosophers; and Gnosticism is to
be
regarded as, upon the whole, a progressive force. More
recent
investigations and a more concrete study1 of the
subject
have tended to discredit this estimate. Naturally,
Gnosticism
had to make some kind of terms with Hellenic
culture,
as Christianity itself had to do, in order to win
a
footing on which it could appeal to those who sought
after
"wisdom"; but by much the prepotent strain in this
singular
hybrid was Oriental Dualism. Many of the
Gnostic
sects were characterised chiefly by a wild,
fanatical,
and sometimes obscene cultus; and even in
those
which, like the Valentinian, made the most am-
bitious
attempts to evolve a philosophy of the universe,
Dualism
was still the fundamental and formative principle.
It
is far truer to call Gnosticism a reactionary than
a
progressive force, and its most eminent leaders the
last
upholders of a lost cause, rather than the advance-
1 v. Bousset's Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp. 1-9.
28 The First Epistle of
guard
of intellectual progress.1 But Dualism no less than
Monotheism
or Pantheism has its philosophy, its reading
of
the riddle of existence; and it is clear that it was by
reason
of its speculative pretensions that Gnosticism
acquired
its influence in the Church. The name by
which
the system came to be designated, the Gnosis,
indicates
a claim to a higher esoteric knowledge2 of Divine
things,
and a tendency to reckon this the summit of
spritual
attainment; a claim and tendency which
as
early as his First Epistle to the Corinthians, finds occa-
sion
to meet with stern resistance (I Cor. I19-25 81 132),
as
engendering arrogance and unbrotherly contempt for
the
less enlightened (81. 7-11) This Epistle, it is true,
exhibits
no trace of anything that can be distinctively
called
Gnosticism; but it does reveal into how congenial
a
soil the seeds of Gnosticism were about to fall. In the
Epistle
to the Colossians we find that the sower has been at
work;
in the Pastoral and other later Epistles, that the
crop
is already ripening. The innate pride and selfishness
of
the system became more and more apparent as it
took
more definite form (I Tim. 63-5, 2 Tim. 32-5). Those
who
possessed the higher knowledge were distinguished
from
those who were incapable of its possession, as a
superior
order, almost a higher species, of believers. The
latter
were the unspiritual men, yuxikoi<, pneu?ma mh>
e@xontej.3
The
highest Christian attainment was that of intellectual
or
mystic contemplation. To "know the depths"4 was
esteemed
not only above the commonplace facts and
moralities
of the gospel, but above love, virtue, and practical
holiness.
When this, the general and most pronounced
1 Bousset, ibid. p. 7.
2 It is maintained,
however, by Bousset (p. 277) that the name Gnosis
primarily
signified, not so much a higher intellectual knowledge, as initiation
into
the secret and sacramental mysteries of the Gnostic sects.
3 Jude 19,
where the epithet is retorted upon those who used it.
4 Rev. 224.
Cf. Hippolytus, Ref. Haer. v. vi. i.
The Polemical Aim of the Epistle 29
feature
of Gnosticism, is borne in mind, a vivid light is at
once
shed upon many passages in the Epistle. In those,
especially,
in which we find the formula "he that saith"
(o[
le<gwn);
or an equivalent (e]a>n ei@pwmen, e]a<n tij ei@p^), it
becomes
apparent that it is no abstract contingency the
writer
has in view, but a definitely recognised case. Thus
in
24-6. 9 we have what may be supposed to be almost verbal
quotations
of current forms of Gnostic profession (he that
saith),
"I know Him,"1 "I abide in Him," "I am in
the
light";2
and in each case the claim, unsupported by its
requisite
moral guarantee, is underlined with the writer's
"roughest
and blackest pencil-mark" as the statement of
a
liar. When we observe, moreover, the prominence which
the
Epistle gives throughout to the idea of knowledge, and
the
special significance of several of the passages in which
it
occurs, the conviction grows that one of the purposes
chiefly
aimed at is not only to refute the arrogant claims
of
Gnosticism, but to exhibit Apostolic Christianity, be-
lieved
and lived, as the true Gnosis,—the Divine reality
of
which Gnosticism was but the fantastic caricature—the
truth
of experience to which it was the corresponding "lie"
(24.22
420). The confidence he has concerning those to
whom
he is writing is that they "know Him who is from
the
beginning," and that they "know the Father " (213).
The
final note of exulting assurance upon which the
Epistle
closes, is that "we know the True One, and we are
in
the True One" (520). This, the knowledge of the
ultimate
Reality, the Being who is the Eternal Life, is, for
Christian
and Gnostic alike, the goal of aspiration. But,
against
the Gnostic conception of this as to be attained
exclusively
by flights of intellectual speculation or mystic
contemplation,
the Apostle labours, with the whole force of
1 Cf. Clementine Recognitions, " Qui Deum
se nosse profitentur." Holtz-
mann,
J. P. T., 1882, p. 320.
2 To be of the "seed
of the light" appears to have been a popular form of
Gnostic
pretension. Holtzmann, ibid. p. 323.
30 The First Epistle of
his
spirit, to maintain that it is to be reached only by the
lowlier
path of obedience and brotherly love; and that by
these,
conversely, its reality must ever be attested. To
speak
of having the knowledge of God without keeping
His
commandments (24) is self-contradiction. If God is
righteous,
then nothing more certain than that "Every one
that
doeth righteousness is begotten of Him" (220), and
that
"Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God "
(310).
"Whosoever sinneth hath not seen Him, neither
known
Him" (36).
Still more strenuously, if that were
possible, does the
Apostle
insist upon brotherly love as at once the condition
and
the test of the true knowledge of God. In Gnosticism
knowledge
was the sum of attainment, the crown of life,
the
supreme end in itself. The system was
loveless to
the
core.
81
132), and the contemporary witnesses bear testimony
that
it bore abundantly its natural fruit. "Lovers of self,
lovers
of money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to
parents,
untruthful, unholy, without natural affection,
implacable,
slanderers" (2 Tim. 32.3), are the typical re-
presentatives
of the Gnostic character as it is portrayed
in
the later writings of the New Testament. "They give
no
heed to love," says Ignatius,1 "caring not for the
widow,
the orphan, or the afflicted, neither for those who
are
in bonds nor for those who are released from bonds,
neither
for the hungry nor the thirsty."
That a religion which destroyed and
banished love
should
call itself Christian, or claim affinity with Christi-
anity,
excites the Apostle's hottest indignation. To him it
is
the real atheism. Against it he lifts up his supreme
truth,
God is Love, with its immediate consequence, that
1 peri>
a]ga<phj ou] me<lei au]toi?j, ou] peri> xh<raj, ou] peri>
o]rfa<nou, ou] peri>
qlibome<nou, ou] peri>
dedeme<nou h} lelume<nou, ou] peri? peinw?ntoj h} diyw?ntoj. Ad
Smyrn. 6. 2.
The Polemical Aim of
the Epistle 31
to
be without love is the fatal incapacity for knowing God.
"Every
one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth
God"
(47); but, "He that loveth not knoweth not God: for
God
is Love" (48). Spiritual illumination, apart from
the
practice of love, is the vaunt of a self-deceiver (29).
The
assumption of a lofty, mystical piety, apart from
dutiful
conduct in the ordinary relations of life, is ruth-
lessly
dealt with. "If any man say, I Iove God" (we can
almost
hear the voice of the self-complacent "spiritual")
"and
hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth
not
his brother whom he bath seen, how can he love
God
whom he bath not seen?" All these and numerous
other passages (27. 8. 10. 11 310b.
11. 14. 17-19. 23b 411. 12. 17. 18.
19.
21 51b)
receive fresh point when read in view of the
unbrotherly
aloofness inherent in Gnosticism. And,
in
general, it may be said that the uniquely reiterated
emphasis
which the Epistle lays upon brotherly love, the
almost
fierce tone in which the New Commandment is
promulgated,
is not adequately accounted for by any
idiosyncrasy
of the writer, on the supposition that he is
writing
in the abstract, but becomes vividly intelligible as
the
expression of a truly godlike wrath against actual
tendencies
that were powerfully assailing the life and
fellowship
of the Church.
But if Gnosticism was distinguished
by this unethical
intellectualism,
its deeper characteristic lay in its dualistic
conception
of existence. Epiphanius tells us that Basilides
began
with the inquiry, po<qen to> kako<n (Haer. 24. 6);
Clement,
that he ended by “deifying the devil” (qeia<zwn
me>n to>n dia<bolon, Strom. iv. 12, 87). This may be
taken
as a compendious account of Dualism. It traces
back
into the eternal the schism of which we are
conscious
in the world of experience, and posits two
independent
and antagonistic principles of existence, from
which,
severally, come all the good and all the evil that exist.
32 The First Epistle of
It
is true that in those Gnostic systems which were most
strongly
touched by Hellenic influence, the fundamental
dualism
was disguised by complicated successions of
emanations
and hierarchies of moons and archons, bridging
the
gulf between absolute transcendent Deity and the
material
creation. These cosmogonies were broadly
analogous
to the materialistic theory of evolution; except
that,
while modern evolution is from matter upward to
“whatever
gods there be,” Gnostic evolution was from
divinity
downwards. Invariably, however, the source and
the
seat of evil were found in matter, in the body, with
its
senses and appetites, and in its sensuous earthly
environment;
and invariably it was held inconceivable
that
the Divine Nature should have immediate contact
with,
or influence upon, the material side of existence.
To such a view of the universe
Christianity could
be
adjusted only by a Docetic interpretation of the
Person
of Christ. A veritable incarnation was unthinkable.
The
Divine Being could enter into no real union with a
corporeal
organism. The Human Nature of Christ and
the
incidents of His earthly career were, more or less,
an
illusion. It is with this Docetic subversion of the
truth
of the Incarnation that the "antichrists" are
specially
identified in the Epistle (222.23 43); and it is
against
it that
and
fervour, his central thesis—the complete personal
identification
of the historical Jesus with the Divine
Being
who is the "Word of Life," the "Son of God,"
the
"Christ."1
A further consequence of the
dualistic interpretation of
existence
is that Sin, in the Christian meaning of Sin,
disappears.
In its essence, it is no longer a moral
opposition,
in the human personality, to good; it is a
physical
principle inherent in all non-spiritual being. Not
1 See Chapters VI, and
VIII.
The Polemical Aim of the Epistle 33
the
soul, but the flesh is its organ; and Redemption
consists
not in the renewal of the moral nature, but in its
emancipation
from the flesh. And, again, it becomes
apparent
that no abstract possibility, but a very definite
historical
phenomenon, is contemplated in the repeated
warning,
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves,
and the truth is not in us." "If we say that we
have
not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is
not
in us" (18. 10).
With the nobler and more earnest
spirits, the practical
consequence
of this irreconcilable dualism in human nature
was
the ascetic life. Only by the mortification of the
bodily
members and the suppression of natural appetite
could
the deliverance of the soul from its life-long foe be
achieved.
A rigid asceticism is ascribed to various Gnostic
sects
(Encratites, the followers of Saturninus, etc.), and has
left
distinct traces in the Epistle to the Colossians (221)
and
in the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 43). But the same
principle
readily suggested an opposite method of achieving
the
soul's deliverance from the yoke of the material. Let
the
dualism of nature be boldly reduced to practice. Let
body
and spirit be treated as separate entities; let each
obey
its own laws and act according to its own nature,
without
mutual interference.1 The spiritual nature could
not
be involved in nor defiled by the deeds of the flesh;
and
the power of external things was most effectually
overcome
when they were not allowed to disturb in anywise
the
tranquility of the inner man. Let the flesh indulge
every
lust, but let the soul soar on the wings of lofty
spiritual
thought, no more hindered or harassed by the
body
and its appetites than is the skimming swallow by
the
barking dog that chases it. It is evident, from various
references
in the later New Testament writings (Tit.
110.
16, 2 Tim. 31-7, 2 Pet. 212-22, Jude 4. 7-19,
Rev. 214. 15. 20)
1 This was to>
a]diafo<rwj zh?n.
Clem. Alex. Strom. iii. 5. 40.
34 The First Epistle of
that
Gnosticism, from its earliest contact with Christianity,
began
to infect the Church with this leaven of all abomin-
ableness.
And for the interpretation of our Epistle this
Antinomian
development of Gnosticism is of special im-
portance.
While there are no direct allusions to it, as there
are
in Second Peter and Jude, it is ever present to the
writer's
mind when he is on the ground of ethics. The
moral
indifferentism of the Gnostic sheds a vivid light
upon
such utterances as "sin is lawlessness" (34), and its
converse,
"every unrighteousness is sin" (517). Especially
is
it the key, as we shall find, to that difficult passage
229-310,
the whole emphasis of which falls upon the "doing"
(poiei?n), whether of
righteousness or of sin. Every one that
"doeth
righteousness" is begotten of God (229). He that
"doeth
sin" "doeth also lawlessness" (34). He that "
doeth
righteousness"
is righteous (37). He that "doeth sin"
is
of the Devil (38). Every one that is begotten of God
"doeth
not" sin (39), and every one that "doeth not"
righteousness
is not of God. Clearly, in all this trenchant
reiteration
of the same thought,
merely
by the consideration of the perpetual tendency
in
men to substitute profession, sentiment and vague
aspiration
for actual doing of the Will of God. The
writer
expressly indicates, indeed, a more definite object
of
attack (37); and the whole passage presupposes, as
familiar
to its readers, a doctrine of moral indifferentism,
according
to which the status of the "spiritual" man is
not
to be tested by the commonplace facts of moral
conduct.
The detailed examination of this and
kindred pass-
ages
must be deferred to a later stage.1 The pur-
pose
of the present chapter has been served if it has
furnished
a general view of the polemical scope of the
Epistle,
and if it has been shown that in it all the
1 Chapter XI.
The Polemical Aim of the
Epistle 35
authentic
features of Gnosticism, its false estimate of
knowledge,
its loveless and unbrotherly spirit, its Docetic
Christology,
its exaltation of the illuminated above moral
obligations,
are clearly reflected. It is true that the whole
presentation
of truth in the Epistle widely overflows the
limits
of the controversial occasion. On the one hand,
the
human tendencies that manifested themselves in
Gnosticism
are not of any one period or place. The
Gnostic
spirit and temper are never dead. On the other
hand,
ciation;1
he so constantly opposes to the pernicious
plausibilities
of error the simple, sublime, and satisfying
facts
and principles of the Christian Revelation; he so lifts
every
question at issue out of the dust of mere polemics
into
the lucid atmosphere of eternal truth, that his Epistle
pursues
its course through the ages, ever bringing to the
human
soul the vision and the inspiration of the divine
life.
Nevertheless, for its interpretation, the polemical aim
that
pervades it must be recognised. The great tests of
Christianity,
the enforcement of which constitutes its chief
purpose,—the
tests of practical Righteousness and Love, and
of
Belief in Jesus as God Incarnate,—are those which are
of
perennial validity and necessity; yet it was just by these
that
the wolf of Gnosticism could be most unmistakably
revealed
under its sheep's clothing, and they are presented
in
such fashion as to certify that this was the object
immediately
aimed at.
One point more, though of minor
importance, remains
for
consideration, namely, whether the polemic of the
Epistle
is directed throughout against the same persons, or
whether,
in its two branches, the Christological and the
ethical,
it has different objects of attack. The latter view
has
been widely held. It is admitted that it is Gnostic
1 An instructive
contrast, in this respect, is presented by the Epistle of Jude
and
its comparatively small influence in later times.
36 The First Epistle of f
error
that is controverted in the Christological passages,
but
not that it is Gnostic immorality that is aimed at in
the
ethical passages. On the contrary, it is maintained
that
the moral laxity against which these are so vigorously
directed
is within the Church itself. And on behalf of
this
view it is argued that, in the Epistle, no charge of
teaching
or practising moral indifferentism is brought
against
the "antichrists"; that, apart from the Epistle,
there
is no proof that Docetism in
to
such a charge; and that the moral tendencies reflected
in
the Epistle are such as would naturally spring up in
communities
where Christianity had already passed from a
first
to a second generation and become, in some degree,
traditional.1
But, as has been already said, the
tone in which
the
writer of the Epistle addresses his readers lends
no
support to this supposition. He is tenderly solicitous
for
their safety amid the perils that beset them; but this
solicitude
nowhere passes into rebuke. It is plainly sug-
gested,
too, that the same spirit of error (46) which is
assailing
their faith is ready to make a no less deadly
assault
upon the moral integrity of their Christian life
(37
"let no man deceive you," not, "let no man deceive
himself").
Of necessity, Dualism led, in practice, either to
Asceticism
or to the Emancipation of the Flesh; and, in
the
absence of any allusion in the Epistle to the former, it
is
a fair inference that, with Gnosticism in
pendulum
had swung, at the date of the Epistle, towards
the
latter. This influence is confirmed by the historical
data,
scanty as these are. The name associated with the
Epistle
by unvarying tradition as
is
that of Cerinthus. It seems to be beyond
doubt
that
the Apostle and the heresiarch confronted each
1 Neander, Planting of Christianity, i. 407-408
(Bohn). With this view
Lucke
and Huther agree.
The Polemical Aim of
the Epistle 37
other
in Ephesus.1 Unfortunately, the accounts of Cerinthus
and
his teaching which have come down to us are
fragmentary,
confused, and, in some points, conflicting.
The
residuum of reliable fact is that, according to his
teaching,
the World and even the Law were created
not
by the Supreme God, but by a far inferior power;
and
that he deduced from this a Docetic2 doctrine of the
Incarnation.
We do not know with equal certainty
that he deduced
from
it the other natural consequence of practical Anti-
nomianism.
But such testimony as we do possess is to that
effect.
According to Caius3 of Rome, a disciple of Irenaeus,
Cerinthus
developed an elaborate eschatology, the central
point
of which was a millennium of bliss as sensual as that
of
the Mohammedan paradise. This account is confirmed
by
Dionysius of Alexandria (c. 260), who says that, as
Cerinthus
was a voluptuary and wholly sensual, he conjec-
tured
that Christ's kingdom would consist in those things
which
he so eagerly desired, in the gratification of his sensual
appetites,
in eating and drinking and marrying.4 If such
was
his programme of the future, we can more readily
believe,
what is stated on good authority, that his position
approximated
closely to that of Carpocrates, in whom
Gnostic
Antinomianism reached its unblushing climax.
And
although the only version of his opinions which we
have
is that given by his opponents, there seems to be no
room
for doubt as to their real character. Thus, so far as
they
go, the historical data harmonise with the internal
1 The well-known incident
of their encounter in the public baths at
has
been discredited on the ground of its incongruity with the Apostle's character,
and
of the improbability of the alleged visit of the Apostle to the public bath-
house.
But Irenaeus gives the story on the authority of those who had heard
it
from Polycarp (Adv. Haer. iii. 3, 4;
Euseb. Hist. Eccl. iii. 28, iv. 14);
and
such
evidence is not altogether contemptible.
2 See, further, Chapters
VI. and XIII.
3 Ap. Euseb. iii.. z8, vii. 25.
4 Ibid. viii. 25.
38 The First Epistle of
evidence
of the Epistle itself in giving the impression that
the
different tendencies it combats are such as were
naturally
combined in one consistently developed Gnostic
system,
and that the object of its polemic is, throughout,
one
and the same.
CHAPTER III.
THE WRITER.
NOT
only is the "First Epistle of St. John" an anonymous
writing;
one of its unique features, among the writings of
the
New Testament, is that it does not contain a single
proper
name (except our Lord's), nor a single definite
allusion,
personal, geographical, or historical. Untrammelled,
therefore,
by any question of authenticity, we are left to
gather
from tradition and from the internal evidence such
facts,
if such there are, as may furnish a warrantable con-
clusion
regarding its authorship.
As to the general question of its antiquity,
the evidence
is
peculiarly strong, and may be briefly stated. It is
needless
to come further down than Eusebius, by whom it
is
classed among the homologoumena (c.
325). It is quoted
by
Dionysius, bishop of
Cyprian,
Origen, Tertullian, Clement of
Irenaeus,
and the Muratorian Canon. Papias (who is
described
by Irenaeus as ]Iwa<nnou me>n a]kousth<j,
Poluka<rpou
d ] e[tai?roj) is stated by Eusebius
(H. E. iii. 39) "to have
used
testimonies from John's former Epistle"; and
Polycarp's
Epistle to the Philippians (c. 115) contains an
almost
verbal reproduction of 1 John 43. Reminiscences
of
it are found in Athenagoras (c. 180) (koinwni<a tou?
patro>j pro>j to>n ui[o<n, cf. i. 3), the Epistle
to Diognetus
(vi.
11), the Epistle of Barnabas (h#lqen e]n sarki<, cf. 42;
ui[o>j tou? qeou? e]fanerw<qh, cf. 38),
more distinctly in
Justin
(qeou? te<kna a]lhqina> kalou<meqa kai>
e]sme<n,
Dial.
39
40 The First Epistle of
123),
and in the Didache (cc. x., xi., teleiw?sai
au]th>n e]n t^?
a]ga<p^ sou; parelqe<tw o[
ko<smoj ou$toj; pa?j de> profh<thj
dedokimasme<noj, cf. 418 217
41). They are also alleged
in
Hermas. It is possible that the earliest of these
indicate
the currency of Johannine expressions in the
Christian
circles in which the writer moved rather than
acquaintance
with the Epistle itself. The evidence,
however,
is indisputable that this Epistle, though one of
the
latest, if not the very latest, of the books of the New
Testament,
won for itself immediately and permanently an
unchallenged
position as a writing of inspired authority.1
The verdict of tradition, moreover,
is equally clear and
unanimous
that the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle
are
both the legacy of the Apostle John, in his old age,
to
the Church. All the Fathers already mentioned as
quoting
the Epistle (excepting Polycarp, but including
Irenaeus)
quote it as the work of
the
end of the sixteenth century this view was un-
questioned.2
Proceeding to consider what light
the Epistle itself
sheds
upon the personality of the writer, we note, in the
first
place, that, though writer and readers are alike left
nameless,
and any clue to the identity of either must be
merely
inferential, the writing before us is one in which a
person
calling himself "I" addresses certain other persons
as
"you," and is, in form at least, a letter. That it is
more
than formally so, has been denied by various
critics,
who have, in various ways, pronounced it deficient
1 This statement requires
no modification on account of the fact that the
Epistle
shared with the other Johannine writings the fate of rejection, for
dogmatic
reasons, by Marcion and the so-called Alogi.
2 There are possible
exceptions to this statement in the case of Theodore
(Bishop
of Mopsuestia, 393–428), who is said to have "abrogated" all the
Catholic
Epistles,
and of the "certain persons" referred to by Cosmas Indicopleustes,
the
topographist (sixth century), as having maintained that all the Catholic
Epistles
were written by presbyters; not by apostles. Both statements are at
second-hand;
the latter, in addition, is very indefinite.
The Writer 41
in
genuine epistolary character, describing it as a treatise,
a
homiletical essay, or a pamphlet. This criticism is
unwarranted.
Although its topics are so broadly handled,
the
Epistle is not written in any abstract interest, theo-
logical
or ethical; nor—though the movement it was
designed
to combat was one which threatened, on the
widest
scale, to imperil the very life of Christianity—is it
even
Catholic, in the sense of being addressed to the
Church
at large. From beginning to end the writer shows
himself
in close contact with the special position and the
immediate
needs of his readers. The absence of explicit
reference
to either only indicates how intimate was the
relation
between them. For the writer to declare his
identity
was superfluous. Thought, language, tone—all
were
too familiar to be mistaken. The Epistle bore its
author's
signature in every line.
Though the main characteristics of
the Epistle are
didactic
and controversial, the personal chord is frequently
struck,
and with much tenderness and depth of feeling, the
writer
alternating between the "you" of direct address
(13.
5 21. 7. 8. 12-14. 18 etc., 35. 13 etc.) and the
" we " in which
spontaneous
feeling unites him with his readers (16.10 31.2.
14.
16. 18
etc., 47. 10. 11 etc., 514. 15. 14-20). Under special stress of
emotion
his paternal love, sympathy, and solicitude break
out
in the affectionate address, "Little children"1 (tekni<a,
paidi<a), or, yet more
endearingly, "My little children"
(tekni<a
e]mou?).
Or, again, the prefatory "Beloved"2
(a]gaphtoi<) gives proof how deeply
he is stirred
by
the sublimity of his theme and by the sense
of
its supreme importance to his readers. He shows
1 Expressing mingled
confidence and anxiety (21), glad thanksgiving (44),
fervent
exhortation (228 318), urgent warning (37 524).
2 Conveying in every case
an earnest appeal, based upon the
familiar and
fundamental
character of the doctrine advanced (27), the loftiness of the
Christian
calling and privilege (32), the urgent necessity of the case (41),
the
sense
of special obligation ( 47.11)
42 The First Epistle of
himself
intimately acquainted with their religious
environment
(219 41), dangers (226 37 521),
attainments
(212-14.21),
achievements (44), and needs (319 513)
Further,
it
is implied that the relation between them is definitely
that
of teacher and taught, evangelist and evangelised
(12.
3). The Epistle is addressed primarily to the circle
of
those among whom the author has habitually exercised
his
ministry in the gospel.1 He is in the habit of
announcing
to them the things "concerning the Word of
life"
(11), that they may have fellowship with him (13);
and
now2 that his joy may be full he writes these things
unto
them (14). He writes as light shines. Love makes
the
task a necessity and a delight. That joy may have
its
perfect fruition in aiding their Christian development,
in
guarding them from the perils to which it is exposed,
in
guiding them to the trustworthy grounds of personal
assurance
of eternal life, he sets himself to draw out and
place
before them the great practical implications of the
gospel,
and the tests of genuine Christian discipleship which
these
afford.
Thus the writer is a person who, to
his readers, is of so
distinctive
eminence and recognised authority that he does
not
find it necessary even to remind them who he is. His
whole
tone towards them is affectionate, solicitous, re-
sponsible.
His relation to them is not necessarily that of
"spiritual
father" in the Pauline sense, but it is, at any rate,
1 This is worth noting
for its bearing on the interpretation of the Epistle. It
has
always seemed to me that such a passage as that on the "Three
Witnesses"
contains
merely a summary—"heads" of sermons, shall we say?—intended to
recall
fuller oral expositions of the same topics. Though this yields no help to
interpretation,
there is a certain relief in the thought that what is so obscure to
us
need not have been equally so to the original readers.
2 i!na
h[ xara> h[mw?n ^# peplhrwme<nh. The words are almost a verbal reproduc-
tion
of John 1524. On critical grounds, it is not easy to decide between
the rival
readings
h[mw?n
and u[mw?n
(v. Westcott, critical note, p. 13). The former may be
preferred
as less obvious, and as yielding the finer and more characteristically
apostolic
sense. Cf. St. Paul's "Now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord"
(1
Thess. 38, also Phil. 22).
The
Writer 43
that
of spiritual guide and guardian, whose province it is to
instruct,
to warn and exhort with all authority, as with all
tenderness.
All this agrees perfectly with the traditional
account
of
during
the later decades of the first century. More than
this
cannot be said. Nothing has been, so far, adduced
that
points conclusively to an apostolic authorship. There
is
one passage in the Epistle, however, which has a special
bearing
upon the personality of the writer, namely, the
Prologue
(11-4); and this we shall now examine so far as it
relates
to this question.
1 1-4
1 "That which was
from the beginning, that which
we
have heard, that which we have seen with our own 2
eyes,
that which we gazed upon, and our own 2 hands
handled,
concerning the Word of Life (and the Life was
manifested,
and we have seen, and bear witness, and
announce
unto you the Life, the Eternal Life, which was
with
the Father and was manifested unto us); that which
we
have seen and heard we announce also unto you, that
ye
also may have fellowship with us. And these things
write
we unto you, that our joy may be full."
This is, in effect, a statement of
the theme of evan-
gelical
announcement, an abstract of the report which the
Christian
apostle is sent to deliver "concerning the Word
of
Life." And, both for the interpretation of the passage
itself
and for its bearing on the question of authorship, the
first
point to be determined is what is signified by the
"Word
of Life." And here, at once, we enter upon con-
troversial
ground; for the phrase may be taken as denoting
1 For exegetical details,
see Notes, in loc.; for the doctrinal
implications,
Chapters
VI., VII., and X.
2 "Own" is not
too strong for an adequate rendering of h[mw?n in the phrases
toi?j o]fqalmoi?j h[mw?n and ai[
xei?rej h[mw?n.
44 The First Epistle of
either
the personal Logos of John 11-14 or the Christian
Revelation.
Some of the Greek commentators,
followed by Westcott
and
others, adopt the latter alternative. "The obvious
reference
is to the whole Gospel, of which Christ is
the
centre and the sum, and not to Himself personally"
(Westcott,
p. 7). But the immense difficulty of establish-
ing
this view (though it is said to be "obvious")
is
sufficiently illustrated by the acrobatic feats of inter-
pretation
to which its exponent is compelled to resort.1
With
the great majority of commentators, I conclude that
the
"Word of Life" here signifies the Personal Logos;
and
for the following reasons. (a) The parallelism between
the
Prologue to the Epistle and that to the Gospel is too
unmistakable
to permit of different significations for a word
which
is so cardinal in both. (b) In answer to
the
objection
that elsewhere2 lo<goj th?j zwh?j is applied always
to
the Gospel, never to the personal Christ, it is to be
observed
that, while there is no reason why it should not
be
so applied, the form of expression is here determined
by
the verse following (kai> h[ zwh> e]fanerw<qh), which is
1 The application of o{
h#n a]p ] a]rxh?j
to the Gospel is justified by the observa-
tion
"of the grandeur of the claim which
Revelation,
as, in some sense, coeval with creation." But, true as it is that
the
Gospel has an eternal being and operation in the thought and purpose of
God,
it is difficult to imagine that a truth so remote from the ordinary plane of
thought
was made the starting-point of the Epistle. Again, "What we have
heard"
has to embrace "the whole Divine preparation for the Advent, promised
by
the teaching of the Lawgiver and Prophets, fulfilled at last by Christ."
"What
we have seen with our eyes" connotes "the condition of Jew and
Gentile,
the
civil and religious institutions by which
which
the Gospel has wrought, as revealing to the eye of the world something
of
the Life." It is acknowledged that e]yhla<fhsan is a quotation of our
Lord's
own
word yhlafh<sate< me (Luke 2439); but "While it is
probable that the special
manifestation
indicated is that given by the Lord after the Resurrection, this is,
in
fact, the Revelation of Himself as He remains with His Church by the
Spirit."
In that case, the use of language surely is to conceal thought !
2 Matt. 1319,
Acts 2032, 2 Cor. 519, Phil. 216. It is to be
observed that
none
of these parallels is Johannine. In John 668 r[h<mata, not lo<goj, is
found.
The Writer 45
already
in the writer's mind, and which requires th?j zwh?j
as
a point of dependence. The theme of the whole Epistle,
moreover,
is Life. Its whole scope is summed up in this:
"These
things write I unto you, that ye may know that
ye
have eternal life" (513). What then more natural
than,
at the outset, to place before the mind of the readers
their
Lord and Saviour as the "Word of Life"? (c) There
is
not a clause or a word1 in the Prologue that does not
naturally
and inevitably point to the personal Logos—Him
who
in the beginning was with God, and was God, and who
"became
flesh and tabernacled among us" (John 11.14).
The subject regarding whom the
announcement
(a]pagge<llomen, 12) is made
being the Lord Jesus Christ,
the
matter announced is "That which was from the begin-
ning,
that which we have heard, that which we have seen
with
our (own) eyes, that which we beheld and our (own)
hands
handled." From this, two inferences are obvious,
if
the words "heard," "seen," "beheld,"
"handled" are
taken
in their natural sense. The first is that the
Prologue
does not in any way describe the contents of the
Epistle,
but must refer to some other occasion or mode of
announcement.
It is true that the reference to the historic
Gospel
is here in absolutely the right place. The facts
in
which the Divine Life has been personally revealed to
human
perception are the fitting and firm basis for the
Epistle
with all its theological and ethical developments;
and,
doubtless, it is the purpose to impress this upon its
readers
that underlies the Prologue. But, since the Epistle
itself
contains no announcement whatsoever of such facts,
the
reference (a]pagge<llomen u[mi?n, 12) can be only2 either
1 The single apparent
exception to this statement is the use of the neuter o!,
instead
of the masculine o!j, in the relative clauses. As to this, see
Notes,
in loc.
2 Those who understand
wept peri> tou? lo<gou th?j zwh?j as referring to the personal
Logos
and yet regard the Prologue as a syllabus of the contents of the Epistle,
are
reduced to extremities of exegesis. Rothe, e.g.,
commenting on "concerning
46 The First Epistle of
to
the writer's habitual oral teaching, or to the literary
record
of it—that is to say, the Fourth Gospel.
The second inference is that the
writer claims direct,
first-hand
acquaintance with the facts of the Saviour's life
on
earth. The terms in which he describes the substance
of
his announcement are these1—"what we have heard,
what
we have seen with our eyes," so that any sugges-
tion
of subjective, visionary seeing is set aside, " what
we
gazed upon" (e]qeasa<meqa, deliberately and of
set
purpose
to satisfy ourselves of its actuality), " what our
hands
handled" (e]yhla<fhsan, the most
incontrovertible
evidence
of physical fact that human sense can furnish).
It
is difficult to imagine words more studiously adapted to
create
the impression that the writer is one of the actual
disciples
of Jesus. But we are informed2 that this "super-
ficial
impression is corrected" when the language is taken
along
with such expressions as John 114, 1 John 36, and
414.
Turning to these passages for the correction of our
"superficial
impression," all that we find is proof that
o[ra?n (1 John 36) may certainly,
and that qea?sqai3 may
possibly,
be used of purely spiritual vision. This does not
go
far to alter the impression that when one speaks of
"what
he has seen with his eyes," he intends us to
the
Word of Life," explains that the apostle is not (in the Epistle) in a
position
to
announce the whole Word. "Only a drop from the ocean, not the ocean
itself,
will he give." To find this meaning in peri< is to be, exegetically,
capable
de
tout. Besides, the Epistle does not give even "a drop from the
ocean."
Haupt,
on the other hand, idealises the meaning of o{ a]khko<amen, k.t.l., and
reaches
the conclusion that "while it is the Logos who certainly is present to
the
writer's view, it is not the Person in Himself, and as such, that is the
matter
of his announcement, but only that quality in Him which is Life." Thus
a
mere abstraction, a quality belonging to the Person, but considered apart from
the
Person, is "what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes,"
etc.
1 After o{
h#n a]p ] a]rxh?j,
which, since it probably refers to the eternal pre-
existence
of the Logos, is not relevant to the point under discussion.
2 Moffatt, Historical New Testament, p. 621.
In
John 114 a spiritual element is implied in the "beholding"
(qea?sqai),
but
it is the spiritual beholding of a Divine Glory revealed through facts of
sense.
In
1 John 412 the physical element is undeniable. No one would maintain
that
the meaning is, "No man has had spiritual perception of God at any
time."
The
Writer
47
understand—well,
just what he has seen, or supposes that
he
has seen, with his eyes.
It is asserted (ibid.) that even the
"strange metaphor
e]yhla<fhsan is not too strong for
the faith-mysticism of the
early
Church and its consciousness of possessing a direct
experience
of God in Christ." One desiderates some stronger
proof
for such a statement than a vivid phrase from so
highly
rhetorical a writer as Tacitus.l Assuredly, if one
speaks
of “what his hands have handled,” meaning thereby
his
consciousness of a spiritual experience, it is one of the
most
bewildering uses to which human language has ever
been
put; and the ordinary mind may well despair of
tracing,
with any certitude, the meaning of a writer so
elusive.
Besides these palpable obstacles to
the adoption of the
"faith-mysticism"
interpretation, there are others, less
obvious
but not less insuperable. How, on that theory,
can
we explain the sudden change from the perfect tense2
in
a]khko<amen and e[wra<kamen to the aorist in e]qeasa<meqa and
e]yhla<fhsan? The change of tense is
quite naturally
accounted
for by referring the aorists to a definite occasion,
that,
namely, on which the Lord3 invited His disciples to
satisfy
themselves of the reality of His Resurrection by the
most
searching tests of sight and touch (Luke 2439, John 2027)
But
can it be supposed that any definable diversities as to
time
or mode of spiritual perception are intended to be
expressed
by such variations of phraseology?
It is to be observed, moreover, that
the writer assumes
1 Moffatt quotes
"mox nostre duxere Helvidium in carcerem manus," from
Tacitus,
Agricola, 45, where the commentators
debate whether he means his
own
hands or the hands of the senators. But I fail to perceive in this any
analogy
whatsoever to the faith-mysticism of the early Church.
2 These perfects signify
that the "hearing" and "seeing," though in the past,
have
been abiding in their results, one of which is the writer's present ability to
bear
witness to the facts seen and heard.
3 e]yhla<fhsan is a direct quotation
of Our Lord's yhlafh<sate< me; while
e]qeasa<meqa is the natural response
to the repeated i@dete in the same verse
(Luke
2439).
48 The First Epistle of
that,
in announcing to his readers his experiences of the
Word
of Life, he is communicating what they do not
fully
possess (a]pagge<llomen kai> u[mi?n, 13). But if
these were
merely
spiritual experiences, he could not and would not
write
thus. On the contrary, his constant assumption is
that
his readers have full spiritual perception of the truth
(213.
14. 20. 21. 27 etc.). And, on the
broadest exegetical
grounds,
the "faith-mysticism" theory is inadmissible.
It
eviscerates the words of precisely that (anti-docetic)
force
of testimony they are intended to contain--not to the
ideal
truth of the gospel nor to the consciousness of a
spiritual
experience, but to the physical reality, certified by
the
evidence of every faculty given to man as a criterion
of
such reality, of the human embodiment by means of
which,
alone the glory of the Only-Begotten of the Father
was
revealed to the spiritual perceptions of mankind.
Upon
that testimony, together with the accompanying
testimony
of the Spirit, the whole anti-docetic polemic
of
the Epistle is based (224 46. 14 56-8); and it
is in-
credible
that the writer intended these words to be under-
stood
in a sense in which Cerinthus himself might have
appropriated
them.
It is alleged,1 however,
that the words are susceptible of
an
interpretation which, while preserving the natural sense
of
"heard," "seen," "beheld," "handled,"
does not necessi-
tate
that the writer be held as making a strictly personal
claim
to these experiences. It is noted that here, in the
Prologue,
the author writes in the plural number, while
elsewhere
in the Epistle he speaks of himself , in the
singular2
(212-14 513), and uses the plural "we" only
when
identifying himself with his readers. And from
this
it is argued that all he may have intended was to give
1 Julicher, Introduction to N. T. p. 247.
2 There are exceptions to
this statement, namely, 46 and 414. It might
be
said, however, that in these the reference of "we" is involved in the
same
ambiguity
as here.
The Writer 49
his
Epistle the authority of "the collective disciples of
Jesus,"
the emphasis being not on the persons, but on the
actuality
of the perception. At furthest, this would be
possible,
apart from unveracity, only if the writer were one
who
was recognised by the Church as so peculiarly
identified
with the original witnesses that, without creating
a
false impression, he could speak of the Apostolic testi-
mony
as virtually his own. But, except the presumption
that
the writer cannot have been one of the original
witnesses,
there is really nothing to urge in favour of this
supposition.
The use of the plural here perfectly harmon-
ises
with the dignity of the passage; and the same idiom
is
employed in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (114),
where
it is not denied that the testimony purports, at
least,
to be personal. And there are strong arguments
to
the contrary effect. The very emphatic phraseology—
"what
we have seen with our eyes,"
"what our hands
handled"—makes
it difficult, if not impossible, to suppose
that
the writer intends himself to be understood as merely
producing
the collective testimony of the Apostles, he
himself
not being of their number. No example of any
such modus loquendi is found in the New
Testament, or is
alleged
in the patristic literature.1 And—what seems to
be
decisive—the author uses in the same passage the
same
"plural of majesty" of his present writing,2 as well as
1 This is scarcely
accurate. A parallel is alleged from Irenaeus (v. i. 1); but
it
is quoted without its context. The passage is—"Non enim aliter nos discere
poteramus
quae sunt
fuisset
. . . Neque rursus nos aliter discere poteramus, nisi magistrum nostrum
videntes, et per auditum
nostrum vocem ejus perczpientes." It is a travesty of
the
meaning of this passage to say (as Holtzmann does) that Irenaeus reckons
himself,
in any sense corresponding to our writers, among those "whose ears
have
heard and whose eyes have seen." What Irenaeus asserts, in both of the
sentences
quoted, is merely a general and necessary truth. As it was impossible
for
us to learn the things of God except by the Incarnation of the Word, so
also
it was impossible for us to receive the revelation of the Incarnate Word
except
through the medium of human sense. There is as little suggestion of a
"collective
testimony" as there is of "faith-mysticism."
2 kai>
tau?ta gra<fomen,
14. Cf. gra<fw, 212; e@graya, 213. 14 513.
50 The First Epistle of
of
the testimony on which he claims to found. So far
from
suggesting that the writer was merely one who could
in
some peculiar manner represent the original witnesses
of
the Incarnation, the language employed resists such
an
interpretation. He who writes these things " (14), is
he
who announces (13) his personal experiences of the
incarnate
"Word of Life" (11). Putting aside, as morally
intolerable
and inconceivable, the hypothesis of deliberate
misrepresentation,
we really seem to be shut up to the
conclusion
that the writer is one of the contemporary
witnesses
of the Saviour's life on earth.
To sum up, then, what has been
gathered from the
Epistle
itself regarding the writer:—he was intimately
acquainted
with and profoundly concerned in the religious
state
and environment of his readers, their attainments,
achievements,
dangers, and needs; his tone and temper
are
paternally authoritative and tender; the relation
between
them is that of teacher and taught; and, finally,
he
claims that his testimony to the historic Gospel is based
on
first-hand observation of the facts. Thus the internal
evidence
agrees so completely with the ancient and un-
broken
tradition which assigns the authorship of the Epistle
to
the Apostle John that, unless this traditional authorship
is
disproved by arguments of the most convincing kind, it
must
be regarded as holding the field. Whether the argu-
ments
brought against the Johannine authorship possess
this
character is a question which involves the criticism of
the
Fourth Gospel even more than of the Epistle, and
which
cannot be investigated here. Yet the kernel of the
question
is contained in small compass. It is whether
room
can be found within the first century for so
advanced
a stage of theological development as is reached
in
the Johannine writings, and whether this development
can
be conceivably attributed to one of our Lord's
original
disciples. To neither of these questions, as it
The
Writer 51
appears
to me, is a negative answer warranted. If, within
a
period comparatively so brief, primitive Christian thought
had
already passed through the earlier and later Pauline
development,
and through such a development as we find
in
the Epistle to the Hebrews, there is no obvious reason
why
it may not have attained also to the Johannine, within
the
lifetime of the latest survivor of the Apostles. Nor,
when
one considers the nature of the intellectual influences,
without
and within the Church, by which the Apostle John
was
surrounded—if, as tradition says, he lived on to a
green
old age in
why
he should not have been the chief instrument of that
development.
Only a fragment of the Johannine
problem, however,—
namely,
the relation of the Epistle to the Fourth Gospel,
—can
be discussed in detail within the limits of this
present
study; and this discussion it will be well to reserve
until
we have completed our consideration of the Epistle
itself.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AS LIFE AND LIGHT.
THE
influence of the immediate polemical purpose of the
Epistle
is manifest in its doctrine of God manifest
not
only
in its contents, but, first of all, in its exclusions. For,
though
the conception and delineation of the Divine Nature
are
the crowning glory of the Epistle, and form its greatest
contribution
to New Testament thought, it may justly be
said
that this conception is a narrow one, or, at least,
narrowly
focussed. The limitations of the writer's field
of
vision are only less remarkable than the intensity of his
perceptions
within it. Throughout the Epistle, God is seen
exclusively
as the Father of spirits, the Light and Life of
the
universe of souls. His creatorship, His relation to the
government
of the world and the ordering of human lives,
the
providential aspects and agencies of His salvation, the
working
together of nature and grace for the discipline and
perfecting
of redeemed humanity,--all this is left entirely
in
the background. From beginning to end, the Epistle
contains
no direct reference to the terrestrial conditions
and
changes of human life, or to the joys and sorrows,
hopes
and fears, that arise from them. These do not come
within
the scope of the present necessity; it is not from
this
quarter that the faith of the Church is imperilled.
The
writer's immediate interest is confined to that region in
which
the Divine and the human directly and vitally meet
—to
that in God which is communicable to man, to that in
man
by which he is capable of participation in the Divine
Nature.
52
The Doctrine of God as Life and
Light 53
From this point of view, the
conception of God is
presented
under four great affirmations: God is Light
(15);
God is Righteous (229); God is Love (48); God
is
Life (520). And though, characteristically,
makes
no endeavour to bring these ideas into an or-
ganic
unity of thought, their inter-relation is sufficiently
clear.
Righteousness and Love are the primary ethical
qualities
of the Divine Nature; Life is the essence in
which
these qualities inhere; and that God is Light
signifies
that the Divine Nature, as Righteousness
and
Love, is self-necessitated to reveal itself so as to
become
the Truth, the object of faith, and the source
of
spiritual illumination to every being capable of
receiving
the revelation. Thus, while Gnostic speculation
conceived
the Divine Nature metaphysically, as the ulti-
mate
spiritual essence in eternal separation from all that
is
material and mutable, and while Gnostic piety aspired
to
union with the Divine Life solely by the mystic
vision
of the Light which is its emanation; with
the
conception of God is primarily and intensely ethical.
A
deity of mere abstract Being could never awaken his
soul
to worship. His homage is not given to Infinitude
or
Everlastingness. For him, God is in the least atom
of
moral good, as He is not in
"the fight of
setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living
air,
And the blue sky."
For
him, the Eternal Life, the very Life of God,
brought
into the sphere of humanity in the person of
Jesus
Christ, is Righteousness and Love; and with his
whole
soul he labours to stamp on the minds of men
the
truth that only by Righteousness and Love can they
walk
in the Light of God, and have fellowship in the Life
of
the Father and of His Son Jesus Christ.
54 The First Epistle of
God is Life.1
"This is the true God, and
Eternal Life" (520). It
is
everywhere assumed in the Epistle that God is the
absolute
final source of that life—Eternal Life—the pos-
session
of which is the supreme end for which man, and
every
spiritual nature, exists. This is clearly implied in
such
a statement as "This is the witness, that God
gave
us Eternal Life" (511) and in all the passages, too
numerous
to be quoted, that speak: of the existence of
this
Life in man as the result of a Divine Begetting.
That
God is also the immanent source of
Life—that it
exists
and is maintained only through a continuous vitalising
union
with Him, as of the branch with the vine—is no
less
clearly implied in those equally numerous passages
that
speak of our abiding in God and God's abiding
in
us.
In all this it is further implied that
God is the
source
of Life to men because He has Life in Himself.
Omne vivum ex vivo. Eternal life may be
spoken
of
as His gift (511, Rom. 623); but the gift is not
extraneous
to the Giver. It is nothing else than His
self-communication
to men, the transmission to us of
His
own nature. "This is the true God, and Eternal
Life"
(520).2
It must be observed, however, that
merges
the idea of God in that of Life. God is the ultimate
Eternal
Life; Eternal Life is not God. God is personal,
1 This part of the
subject is treated very briefly. For fuller exposition of
the
Johannine conception of Life, see Chapter X.
2 ou$to<j
e]stin o[ a]lhqino>j qeo>j kai> zwh> ai]w<nioj. See Notes, in loc. Even here,
it
is true, the thought is primarily soteriological. It is not of what God is in
Himself,
but of what He is in relation to us—the source of Eternal Life. This
is
clear from the contrast drawn between Him who is " the true God and
Eternal
Life,"
and the idols which cannot give life (cf. Jer. 213), and from which
we
are
exhorted to guard ourselves (521). But, of course, the though: of
what
God
is in relation to us inevitably passes up into the thought of what God is in
Himself.
The Doctrine of God as Life and
Light 55
Life
is impersonal;1 and any manner of thinking by which
God
is reduced to a pantheistic anima mundi
is as foreign
to
noticeable,
indeed, that
ception
of God as the Life to its full cosmical expansion.
It
would be in full accord with that conception—it is its
religious
as well as its logical completion—to say that
God,
as immanent, is the principle of universal life; that
life,
throughout the whole hierarchy of creation, from the
flower
in the crannied wall to the archangel, is a pulse of
God's
own life, a stream not separated but ever flowing
from
Him as its fountain-head (Ps. 365). For every finite
being
life is union with God according to its capacity. But
the
lower potencies of the creative Life do not come within
the
Apostle's horizon. Man alone, of terrestrial creatures,
has
capacity for the highest kind of life, which
calls
Eternal Life; and his concern is exclusively with this.
What elements, then, are present in
ception
of the Divine Life? Primarily, as has been said,
this
conception is ethical. The activities in which the
Life
is manifested are those of Righteousness (229), and
Love
(48). The life God lives is a life absolutely righteous
and
loving. But the conception is also metaphysical.
Essentially,
the Eternal Life is nothing else than the Divine
Nature
itself, regarded, not as abstract being, but dynami-
cally,
as the ground and source of all its own manifold
activities—as
the animating principle2 in virtue of which
the
Divine Righteousness and the Divine Love are not
mere
abstractions, but eternally active forces. And, finally,
the
Life of God is a principle of self-communication and
self-reproduction.
It is this by intrinsic necessity. Love
cannot
but seek to beget love (47); and Righteousness to
1 Even in 12,
where h[ zwh> h[ ai]w<nioj is, not the Logos, but the pre-incarnate
life
of the Logos. The Eternal Life is the common element in the personality
of
God, the Word, and those who are "begotten of God."
2 v. Scott's Fourth Gospel, p. 257.
56 The First Epistle of
beget
righteousness (229). In the Epistle, this generative
activity
of the Divine Life holds a place of equal import-
ance
with its ethical quality. No thought is more closely
interwoven
with its whole texture than that of the Divine
self-communication.
Eternally, the Father imparts Him-
self
to His only-begotten Son (49), the Word whose life
from
the Beginning consisted in His fellowship with the
Father
(h!tij h#n pro>j to>n pate<ra, 12). To men, Eternal
Life
is communicated as the result of a Divine act, by
which,
in the terminology of St. John, they are "begotten
of
God" and become the "children of God" (te<kna
tou? qeou?).
This
actual impartation of the actual Life of God is the
core
of Johannine soteriology. It is this that makes the
Gospel
a gospel, and Christ the mediator of a real salvation.
"This
is the witness, that God gave us Eternal Life, and this
Life
is in His Son."
God is
Light.
"And this is the message which
we have heard from
Him,
and announce again unto you, that God is Light,
and
in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have
fellowship
with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do
not
the truth"(15.6).
The words "God is Light,"
though unrecorded in any
of
our Gospels, may quite conceivably contain the verbal
reminiscence
of an actual utterance of our Lord. This,
however,
is not necessarily implied in
What
is asserted is that the whole purport of the Christian
Revelation,1
from a certain point of view, may be said to be
this—God
is Light. And our endeavour, in the first
place,
must be to determine the sense in which the symbol
is
here employed.
Light, the most beautiful and
blessed thing in Nature,
1 a]ggeli<a is used with exactly
the same import in 311. There the “message"
is
" that we love one another."
The Doctrine of God as Life and Light 57
which
seems as if created to be the emblem of all purity
and
splendour, of knowledge, safety, love and joy, and
which
fits the world to be the abode of the higher forms of
life,
has been inevitably associated by men of every race
and
religion with their conception of the Divine. It would
lead
far from our present purpose, however, to attempt an
investigation
of the typology of Light in the extra-Biblical
religions,
or even to examine minutely the symbolic mean-
ings
and uses of it that are scattered broadcast over the
Scriptures
themselves.1 It will suffice
to notice that there
are
two main lines along which the idea of Light is related,
both
in the Old Testament and the New, to the being,
character
and activity of God.
On the one hand, Light is associated
physically or
symbolically
with the Divine Essence, and with the heavenly
world.
Everywhere in the Old Testament, Light is the
actual
medium of theophany, the physical accompaniment
of
Jehovah's presence.2 In the New Testament also, the
same
conception of Light as pertaining to the essence of
Deity—as
the physical element, so to say, of the Divine
Life--is
abundantly present. God "dwells in light that is
inaccessible
and full of glory" (1 Tim. 616); and where-
ever
the celestial world is projected into the terrestrial it is
in
a radiance of supernatural Light.3 Following this line
of
analogy, we might infer that here in our Epistle the idea
of
Light is associated symbolically with the moral Being of
God.
That God is Light in which there is no darkness,
signifies
the spotless and radiant perfection of the Divine
1 The most comprehensive
discussion, both of the Biblical and extra-Biblical
typology
of light, is contained in Grill's Untersuchungen
uber die Entslehung des
vierten Evangeliums.
2 In the visions of
Ezekiel, e.g. (Ezek. 128 323 104 etc.), as the
"Glory of
the
Lord"; which in the Priestly Code is localised, and assumes a definite
uniformity
as the Shekinah-Glory (Ex. 4034, 1 Kings 811 etc.).
3 Cf. Matt. 172
283, Acts 93 127 etc. In these and other
similar passages
the
conception is of a Light, supramundane, "above the brightness of the
sun,"
but actual and in some sense physical, emanating from the Divine
Presence.
58 The First Epistle of
Holiness.
In another class of passages, on the other hand,
the
symbol is used to express the correlative facts of God's
self-revelation
and of the enlightenment it brings to man's
spiritual
perceptions. Thus, in the Old Testament, it is
the
symbol of the illuminative action of the Divine Word
(Pss.
198 119105), of the Divine Spirit (Ps. 3610,
Prov. 2027),
and
of the witness of the people of God to the sur-
rounding
world (Isa. 426 496 601-3). In the New Testa-
ment
this is the prevailing use. Christ is the a]pau<gasma
of
the Father's glory (Heb. 13); the Word in whom the
Divine
Life becomes the Light of men (John 14) and of the
world
(812); and the prophetic word is a "lamp shining
in
a dark place" (2 Pet. 119). The subjective illumination
which
is the counterpart of the external revelation is also
Light.
By the "Spirit of wisdom and revelation" the
"eyes
of the heart" are enlightened (Eph. 118); and as,
in
the first creation, God caused Light to shine out of
darkness,
so now He shines in the heart "to give the light
of
the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus
Christ"
(2 Cor. 46).
Now, for the interpretation of the
Epistle, it is a question
of
some importance to determine with which of these ideas,
essence
or revelation,
Light
comes into line. In my judgment it is with the
latter.
That God is Light expresses the self-revelation of
God;
first, as a necessity that belongs to His moral nature;
secondly,
as the source of all moral illumination. But while
maintaining
this interpretation I must admit that the
exegetical
authorities, almost with one voice, declare for
the
opposite view, namely, that Light here denotes the
essential
Being of God. "It is the innermost, all-compre-
hending
essence of God, from which all His attributes
proceed"
(Haupt); "Absolute Holiness and Truth"
(Huther);
"the Absolute Holiness of God, especially as
Love"
(Rothe); "the new idea of God as unconditioned
The Doctrine of God as Life and Light 59
Goodness,
holy Love" (Beyschlag, ii. 450); "the Love
which
constitutes the essence of God " (Grill, p. 312).
To
this whole class of interpretations there is only one
objection—a
serious one, however--that they are irrelevant
to
the context. While this interpretation of the Light as
absolute
Holiness or Love serves admirably for this single
sentence
(15), taken by itself, it will be found that it entirely
dislocates
the continuity of thought that runs through
the
paragraph (15-22).
Examining this paragraph as a
whole,
we find that the unifying idea is not the Light, but
is
fellowship with God.
thought
that God is Light as an independent thesis. He
does
not develop it, or even recur to it. It is introduced
only
for the sake of leading up to what follows, "If we say
that
we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we
lie,
and do not the truth." In fact, it
is the logical starting-
point
for the whole paragraph--the major premise from
which
the Apostle proceeds, in the course of the paragraph,
to
draw a number of conclusions regarding the conditions
of
fellowship with God. These conditions are, abstractly
and
summarily, that "we walk in the Light, as He is in the
Light"
(17). Light is the medium in which fellowship
between
God and man is realised; the first element which
He
and we may possess in common. The crucial question,
moreover,
is as to what this condition of fellowship—walk-
ing
in the Light—signifies for sinful men; for, as
immediately
proceeds to insist, to "walk in the Light" is, first
and
indispensably, to confess our sins (18-10) Obviously,
therefore,
the Light cannot signify the absolute moral per-
fection
of God. For sinners, fellowship with God cannot,
initially,
consist in sharing His moral perfection. The Light
in
which we, being yet sinful, can walk so as to have fellow-
ship
with God, is the Light of Truth, the Light which His
self-revelation
sheds upon all objects in the moral universe,
and,
first of all, upon ourselves and our sin. The clue to the
60 The First E istle of
whole
passage, in short, is the idea of fellowship.1 As in
nature
Light is the medium of fellowship,—the social element
in
which all creatures, whatever their affinities or antagon-
isms,
may meet and be revealed one to another,—so, in the
spiritual
sphere, the Light, the source of which is the self-
revelation
of God, is the medium of fellowship between all
spiritual
beings. And especially is it the element in which
we,
though yet sinful, can have fellowship with God; because,
when
by confessing our sins we walk in the Light, "the
Blood
of Jesus, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin."
The single meeting-place of the Holy
God and sinful
men
is, to begin with, the Truth; the only medium of their
fellowship,
a common view of spiritual realities. And it is
because
God is Light that this is possible. As it is said in
the
most Johannine of the Psalms, "In Thy Light shall we
see
light."
place,
that the Divine Nature is, by inherent moral necessity,
self-revealing.2
As Light, by its nature, cannot be self-
contained,
but is ever seeking to impart itself, pouring
through
every window and crevice, shining into every eye,
bathing
land and sea with its pure radiance; so God, from
His
very nature of Righteousness and Love, is necessitated
to
reveal Himself as being what He is. He is Light, and as
such
is always seeking to shine into the minds He has made
in
His own Image. "And in Him is no darkness at all."
1 So Westcott (p. 14).
Yet, having grasped the clue, he does not follow it
up.
Having struck the nail on the head, he proceeds to make a circle of dints
all
around it.
2 So Weiss, though
somewhat inadequately: " God is Light denotes the fact
that
He has become visible, namely, in Christ, in whom He is completely
revealed."
"God is Light means in modern language that it is the nature of
God
to communicate Himself" (Inge, Dict.
of Christ, i. 892b). "The trans-
cendent
life streaming out on men, the absolute nature of God as Truth, as the
Supreme
reality for man to believe in" (Moffatt, ibid. ii. 34a).
3 The idea of Light is
one which plays a various but always prominent part
in
the Gnostic theologies and cosmogonies. And it may very well be that the
aim
of the writer of the Epistle was partly, at least, to emphasise as supreme
The Doctrine of God as Life and Light 61
In God there is nothing that hides, nothing that is hidden.
In the Light of His self-revelation there is no darkness,
because in His nature there is no inconsistency, no variable-
ness, no secret reserve, God, as revealed in Christ, is
knowable as no other Being is. His holiness, justice, and
love are beyond knowledge, not because there is in Him
anything that is not holiness, justice, and love, but because
these, as they exist in Him, are beyond the measure of
man's mind. The Divine character is utterly transparent
—goodness without a shadow of evil. It is Light in
which there is no darkness, to which there is no arresting
horizon, that streams through the spiritual universe from
Him who is its Sun, the Word of Life.1
II. But this thought of God's self-revelation carries with
it, as its correlative, the thought of man's illumination
thereby. As the light of the sun not only reveals the
sun itself, but brings all things in their proper forms and
colours to our vision, so the Light of God makes all things
in the spiritual realm visible in their true character. As
all truth is God's thought, and all finite intelligence is
the moral significance of the Divine Light, as opposed to the merely intellectual,
or, on the other hand, semi-physical conceptions of Gnosticism. Westcott thinks
that in the emphatic "in Him is no darkness at all" there is a reference to
"Zoroastrian speculation on the two opposing spiritual powers." But Zoro-
astrianism did not teach that there are two opposing powers in God. Holtzmann,
again, finds a protest against any idea of a su<gxusij a]rxikh<, such as was sub-
sequently developed in the Basilidian system. But the doctrine of Basilides
(Clem. Strom. ii. 2o. 112), that the corruption of the human soul is due to an
original confusion and mixture of Light and Darkness (kata< tina ta<raxon kai>
su<gxusin a]rxikh<n), has no perceptible relevance to
is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." The Antinomianism which the
Epistle combats must have had as its basis a dualistic conception of the
Universe; but there is no indication that it carried this dualism back into the
Divine nature itself.
1 In the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel, the concatenation of ideas is exactly
parallel to that which I have endeavoured to establish in the Epistle. As here
we have successively the ideas of the Word (11), the Life (12), and the Light
(15); so there, "In the beginning was the Word" (11); "In Him was Life,
and the Life was the Light of men" (14). In the Gospel it is quite evident that
the idea of Light is attached not to the Divine Essence, but to the self-revelation
of God in the Word.
62 The First Epistle of
participation in the light of the Eternal Reason; so, in the
moral sphere, the character that things have in the moral
judgments of God and the view of them that is given in
the light of His self-revealment constitute what is called,
in Johannine phrase, h[ a]lhqei<a, the Truth. And it is in
their perception of the Truth, their illumination by the
Divine Light, that there exists for all moral beings a
medium of conscious fellowship with God. For sinful men,
especially, this is the only possible medium' of such fellowship.
We can come to the Light and walk in the Light, as He
is in the Light (17). Light is the translucent atmosphere
in which, even while still morally imperfect and impure,
we can come to have a common perception of moral
facts and a true fellowship of mind with Him who is
the absolutely Good. This, indeed, is the basis of spiritual
religion; it is this that distinguishes Christianity from
irrational superstitions and unethical ritualism. It is no
merely emotional, mystical, or sacramentarian fellowship
with God that
in the Truth, in thought and knowledge, and in all that
springs from them. God is not Life merely; He is Light
also. And the complete Johannine conception may be
expressed in this, that Life is the medium of our sub-
conscious, Light of all our conscious fellowship with God
and with one another (17).
The relation to God in which such fellowship is consciously
realised is expressed throughout the Epistle, as in the Gospel,
by the characteristic use of the verb "to know" (ginw<skein).1
1 To "know Him" (24) is equivalent to "being in Him" (25b), and to
"abiding in Him" (26). The children of God "know the Father" (214).
"Every one that loveth is begotten of God and knoweth God" (47). "We
have received an understanding that we should know Him that is true" (520)
The antithesis of this relation is expressed as "not knowing" (36 48);
more emphatically by "lie" and "liar" (16 24. 22). It must he observed
that ginw<skein invariably denotes knowledge, not by ratiocination, but by
spiritual perception.
See, further, special note on ginw<skein.
The Doctrine of God as Life and Light 63
But the conception of spiritual knowledge, in all its presup-
positions and in all its consequences, is equally remote from
Rationalism and from Gnosticism. The perception of spirit-
ual truth is as little attainable by logical faculty or common
intelligence as it is by theosophic contemplation. Spiritual
regeneration is the prerequisite of spiritual illumination.
Those only who are "begotten of God" have the power
to "see" and "know" Divine realities. God is Light;
and had human nature been animated by a normal and
healthy spiritual life, the Divine illumination would have
flowed in upon it uninterruptedly by all its channels of
affinity with the Divine. And, indeed,
is that the Light never has been, never could be, wholly
withdrawn. But "the Light shineth in the darkness, and
the darkness apprehended it not" (John 15). As the original
state of every man is death (314), so is it also blindness.
And "Except a man be born from above, he cannot
see the
Johannine position is that the whole redemptive process
has its origin, not in any conscious human act, but in a
sub-conscious activity of the Divine Life in man; and the
first fruit and manifestation of this activity is the power to
"see," to "believe" on Him who is the Light, to "know"
God whom He reveals.1
Yet, since Light is the element of conscious activity,
of conscious obedience or disobedience (John 724), of
sincerity or insincerity (John 319-21), the Epistle strongly
emphasises the office of human volition in the response
made to it. The Light is a message in the impera-
tive, not only in the indicative mood; and the Epistle
speaks not of "seeing," but of "walking in the Light."
The conception, in both Gospel and Epistle, is that,
while the light, which shines around all men, becomes a
power of saving illumination only in those who, as
1 See, further, Chapters X. and XIII.
64 The First Epistle of
"begotten of God," are responsive to its influence, none
can be entirely unconscious of its being there, or entirely
insusceptible to its claims upon him. But men may close
the shutters of the soul's windows against it. With an
instinctive premonition of what it would constrain them to
see and acknowledge, to do and forego, men may and do
employ devices of various subtlety to fortify the mind
against its entrance. As in the primeval story the covert
of the trees of the garden is preferred to the Light of
God's presence, so still "This is the judgment, that the
light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness
rather than the light, for their works were evil" (John 319)
A brief study of the paragraph (15-22) will show that
this interpretation of the Light fits into the context like
a key into its proper lock. The thesis of the whole
paragraph is that "walking in the Light" is the one
necessary and sufficient condition of fellowship with God.
This is first stated in the most abstract form. "God is
Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that
we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we
lie, and do not the truth" (15. 6). Here the affirmation
is not (as in 2 Cor. 614) that two elements so opposite
in nature as light and darkness, holiness and sin, purity
and impurity, cannot mix and coalesce. What is in view
is the irreconcilable effect of light and darkness. Light
is that which reveals; darkness, that which conceals.
Light is the medium in which we come to see as God sees,
to have a true perception of all moral objects—qualities,
actions, and persons. To "walk in the Light" is, therefore,
to have, in the first place, the will to see all things in the
Light of God, and to acknowledge and act up to what is
thus seen to be the truth. To "walk in darkness" is the
effort, instinctive or deliberate, not to see, or the failure
to acknowledge and act up to what is seen; to withdraw
ourselves, our duties, our actions, our character, our relation
The Doctrine of God as Life and Light 65
to the facts and laws of the spiritual realm, from the light
which God's self-revealment sheds upon them. And to do
this is, ipso facto, to exclude the possibility of fellowship
with God.
That this is the Apostle's meaning becomes still more
apparent as we follow the concrete development of the
thought in the remainder of the paragraph. This is
composed of three parallel pairs of antitheses (16.7 18.9
110-22), which may be arranged thus:
|
DARKNESS-SERIES. 16 "If we say that we have fellow- ship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." 18 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." 110 "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." |
LIGHT-SERIES. 17 "If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the Blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin." 19 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all un- righteousness." 21 "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." |
From this it is evident that to "walk in the Light" is,
first of all, to confess sin; to walk in the darkness,
to ignore or to deny sin. All things assume a different
aspect in the Light, of God; but nothing looks so different
as we ourselves do. The first fact on which the light
impinges is our sin. But, though it exposes sin in all its
horror, we may loyally submit to and endorse the result—
we may come tot the Light and walk in it; or we may
"rebel against the Light" (Job 2413) and "love the
darkness." The "darkness," therefore, is not the "world,"
nor "sin, especially as impurity" (Rothe). It is, in this
instance, self-concealment, the cloud of sophistry and self-
deception which it is always the instinct of guilt to gather
around itself. To "walk in darkness" is not necessarily,
indeed, to live a double life under any of the deeper
shades of deliberate hypocrisy. For the exclusion of the
66 The First Epistle of
Light, conscious dissimulation is comparatively ineffective.
Simply to pursue the everyday life of business and pleasure,
of purpose and achievement, without reference to the Will
of God; to live by the false and mutilated standards of the
world; to be blinded by the glare of its artificial illumin-
ations—there are no more effectual and frequented ways
than these of walking in darkness.
It is needless for our present purpose to pursue further
the exposition of this paragraph.1 And it must suffice to
indicate in a sentence how, in the remainder of this whole
section of the Epistle (15-220), the contrast between walking
in the Light and walking in darkness is developed.
The Light of God not only reveals sin (17-22), it
reveals Duty (23-6); especially, it reveals Love as the
highest law for the children of God (27-11); as it also
reveals in their true character the "world and the things
that are in the world," so that it is seen that "if any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not in him"
(215-17). Finally, the light reveals Jesus as the Christ, the
Incarnate Son of God (218-28). He who denies the
glorious reality of the Incarnation is a "liar," and is blind
to the Light of God.
"God is Light" signifies the inward necessity of the
Divine Nature to reveal itself, the fact of its perfect and
eternal self-revelation in Christ, and the correlative fact
of men's spiritual illumination thereby. This is the only
conception of the Light that fits into the train of thought
running through this whole section of the Epistle.
1 See Chapters VIII. and IX.
CHAPTER V.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AS RIGHTEOUSNESS AND LOVE.
God is Righteous (229).
GOD is Life, self-imparting; God is Light, self-revealing.
But what, in itself, is the Divine Nature, the communication,
of which is Life and the revelation of which is Light?
It is solely within the ethical sphere that the Epistle
contemplates this question; and in the unity of God's
moral being, two, and only two, elements are distinguished
—Righteousness and Love. From these the whole moral
activity of the Divine Life proceeds; and, as a necessary
consequence, it is by the impartation of these same qualities
to human nature that the whole development of the
regenerate life is determined.
The words Righteous and Righteousness (di<kaioj,
dikaiosu<nh) are used only in the broadest sense. They
express neither the Pauline idea of forensic status nor the
specific virtue of justice, the voluntas suum cuique tribuendi,
but the sum of all that is right in character and conduct.
Righteousness includes all of which sin is the negation.
"Every one that doeth righteousness is begotten of God"
(229), but "He that doeth sin is of the devil" (38); and
again, "Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God"
(310), but "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth not sin"
(39). Righteousness and sin divide between them the
whole area of moral possibility.
That such Righteousness belongs to, or rather is, the
67
68 The First Epistle of
character of God, and that this is the basis of all Christian
Ethics, is everywhere implied, and is categorically asserted
in (229) e]a>n ei]dh?te o!ti di<kaio<j e]stin, ginw<skete1 o!ti kai> pa?j
o[ poiw?n th>n dikaiosun<nhn e]c au]tou? gege<nnhtai. "If ye know
that He is righteous, know (or, ye know) that every one
also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him."
The argument presupposes, in the first place, that
Righteousness in God and in man is one and the same.
Like begets like; the stream has the quality of the fountain.
It presupposes, in the second place, that God, and He alone,
is originally and essentially righteous—there is no other
source from which human righteousness can be derived.
The Righteousness that belongs to the inward char-
acter of God extends also to His action; it ensures
rightness, unfailing self-consistency, in all that He does.
Thus, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and
righteous (pisto<j e]stin kai> di<kaioj) to forgive us our
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." When,
on the ground of Christ's propitiation, God forgives those
who by confession make forgiveness possible, He is
"righteous"; and because He is "righteous," He is
"faithful." He does not deny Himself (2 Tim. 213). He
does what is according to His character, because He does
what is right.
But the activity of God's Righteousness, which is most
conspicuous in the Epistle, is that in which it is directly
and imperatively related to the whole moral action of His
creatures. The2 Righteousness of God is that which
1 The delicate differentiation of the two verbs to "know" is very noticeable
here. The ei]dh?te of the first clause expresses the knowledge absolutely, as a
first principle assumed in all cogitation upon the subject; the ginw<skete of the
second clause expresses the art of mental perception by which knowledge, in the
particular instance, is acquired. The full sense of the verse is, "If ye know,
as ye do absolutely know, that He is righteous, recognise (or, ye recognise), as
implied in this, that every one also," etc. See special note on ginw<skein and
ei]de<nai.
2 On the whole subject of this paragraph, see, further, Chapter XI.
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 69
renders sin inadmissible in them; inadmissible de jure in
all, inadmissible de facto in those who are "begotten of
Him."
This the writer maintains with unexampled strenuous-
ness and rigour. The Righteousness of God is Law for all
men and for all their actions. "Sin is lawlessness; and
every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness" (34).
Nothing excites in
the supposition of compatibility between a life of actual
wrong-doing and fellowship with the Righteous God.
"He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His com-
mandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him " (24).
"Every one that doeth not righteousness is not of God"
(310), but is "of the devil" (38) Not less absolutely is
it insisted that all who are "begotten of Him" and in
fellowship with Him partake of His Righteousness.
"Every one that is begotten of God doth not commit sin,
because His seed abideth in Him; and he cannot sin, because
He is begotten of God" (39). "We know that every one
that is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was
begotten of God keepeth himself, and the wicked one
toucheth him not" (518). It is an inveterate misreading
of the Epistle that represents its author as being, almost
exclusively, the "Apostle of Love." Intense as is St.
John's gaze into the heavenly abyss of the Divine Love,
it seems impossible that any writing could display a more
impassioned sense, than this Epistle does, of the tremendous
imperative of Righteousness—a more rigorous intolerance
of sin. So long as the Church lays up this Epistle in its
heart, it can never lack a spiritual tonic of wholesome
severity.
It is true, however, that in its doctrine of Divine
righteousness, thoroughly spontaneous as it is, the Epistle
makes no remarkable contribution to the development of
New Testament thought. It does no more than restate, in
70 The First Epistle of
a peculiarly forceful fashion, and with all the glow of an
original intuition, that conception of the Divine Nature
which is fundamental to the whole Biblical revelation. It
must be conceded, moreover, that the assertion of the
impeccability of the regenerate, into which the Writer,
apparently at least, is led by the vehemence of the polemical
interest, has tended to detract from the full usefulness of
his teaching on this head. However effectively the unique
form of expression employed may have been adapted to the
peculiarities of the immediate situation, it has been to later
generations a paradox and a puzzle rather than a source of
instruction or a practical stimulus. It is far otherwise
with the next of the great affirmations which constitute the
Epistle's doctrine of God.
God is Love (48)
Here the Epistle rises to the summit of all revelation;
and, for the first time, enunciates that truth which not only
is the profoundest, gladdest, most transforming that the
mind can conceive, but is the beginning and the end—
the truth in which all truths have their ultimate unity, the
innermost secret of existence.
The New Testament word for Love, a]ga<ph, is virtually
a coinage of Christianity. It may be that it is an old
word reminted; but it is one of the curiosities, at least, of
philology that, while the verb a]gapa?n is fairly common in
classical Greek from Homer downwards, the noun a]ga<ph
is not found in any extant classical text; a single passage
in Philo supplying the solitary instance of its extra-
Biblical use.1 This does not prove, indeed, that it was
unknown to non-literary Greek; and Deissmann may be
1 Even in the Septuagint there are only fifteen occurrences, eleven of them
in Canticles, where the sexual tinge is unmistakable, as also in 2 Sam. 1315 and
Jer. 22. In Eccles. 91.6 it is opposed to mi?soj in a more general sense.
The Doctrine of God is Righteousness and Love 71
right in supposing it to have been current in the
Egyptian vernacular.1 The fact remains, however, that
though the Greek language is rich in terms2 answering
to "love" in its various shades of meaning, the com-
paratively unused a]ga<ph was, as it were, providentially
reserved to express that purely ethical love the con-
ception of which Christianity first made current among
men.
In the Epistle the words a]ga<ph and a]gapa?n are
used to express an energy of the moral nature in God
towards men, in men towards God, in men towards one
another. And one of its profound truths is that, in
whatever relation it may operate, Love is one and the
same. All love has its origin in God; and human love
is the moral nature of God incarnate in man. "Every
one that loveth is begotten of God" (47). And, since
nothing moral can exist merely in the form of action,
Love is, primarily, a disposition, a permanent quality
of the Will, an inherent tendency of the moral nature.
The quality of this disposition is indicated by the fact's,
that the object of Love in the human relation is invariably
our "brother."3 We may disregard the fact that brother-
hood here denotes not physical but spiritual relationship;
for the spiritual presupposes the physical analogue. And
though, in fact, it is not brotherhood that makes Love
(211 312), but Love that makes brotherhood, Love may be
said to be that mutual disposition which ideally exists
among brothers in the same family—the disposition
to act towards our fellow-men as it is natural for those
1 The supposed discovery of the word in a papyrus of the second century B.C.,
announced by Deissmann in his Bibel-Studien (1895), has been abandoned
(Expository Times, September 1898, p. 567). But its adoption instead of e@rwj
by the LXX may be thought to lend probability to the supposition of its Egyptian
origin.
2 storgh<, the love that belongs to natural kinship; e@rwj, with its predominant
suggestion of sexuality; fili<a, specially appropriated to friendship.
3 210 310.14.16.17 420.21.
72 The First Epistle of
to do who have all interests in common, and who
instinctively recognise that the full self-existence of each
can be realised only through a larger corporate existence.
Love is the power to live not only for another, but in
another, to realise one's own fullest life in the fulfilment of
other lives.
Love is such a disposition, and such a disposition of
necessity issues in appropriate action. In the Epistle
nothing is more incisively dealt with than the fiction of
a love that is inoperative in practice. "Whoso hath this
world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth
up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the
love of God in him?" (317). That which terminates in
the mere self-satisfaction of "feeling good," whatever it
may be, is something else than Love. Love is the giving
impulse. And it rejoices, not only in imparting benefits,
the cost of which is imperceptible and the bestowal of
which is a sheer luxury: it expresses itself most fully in
sacrifice. It is that complete identification of self with
another which makes it sometimes imperative, and always
possible, to lay down even our lives for our brethren (316),
and which, indeed, realises an exquisite joy in suffering
endured for the beloved's sake.
In human history, Love has its one absolute embodiment
in the self-sacrifice of Christ. "Hereby know we love," says
the Epistle in one of its pregnant sentences, hereby do we
perceive what Love is, "in that He laid down His Life for
us" (316). This is the Absolute of Love—its everlasting
type and standard. The world had never been without
the dower of Love. It had known love like Jacob's,
like David's and Jonathan's, the patriot's and the martyr's
self-devotion. But till Jesus Christ came and laid down
His Life for the men that hated and mocked and slew
Him, the world had not known what Love in its greatness
and purity could be.
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 73
And the Love of Christ in laying down His Life for
us is the manifestation, under the conditions of time and
sense, of the Love of God, eternal and invisible. God
is Love; but what God is can be known only through
His self-manifestation. Wherein does this consist? Not
in word only. It was not enough that He should say
that He is Love (cf. 318). Not in the works of Nature and
points us to the Sun (49.10)
"Herein was manifested the Love of God toward us,
that God hath sent His Son, His Only Begotten, into the
world, that we might live through Him. Herein is Love,
not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent
His Son (as) a propitiation for our sins."1
The first of these two verses emphasises the fact that
God is Love, and exhibits the proof of it ("Herein
was the Love of God manifested"); the second, the
nature of Love itself, so manifested. But, taking both
in one view, we perceive that there are five factors
which here contribute to the full conception of Divine
Love.
(1) First, the magnitude of its gift is set forth. "His
Son, His Only Begotten." Elsewhere, the title of Our
Lord is simply "the Son," the argument turning upon the
relation of Father and Son; or "His Son," or the "Son of
God," where the element of Divine power and dignity in
the Sonship is made more prominent. Here only,2 where
he would display the infinite Love in the infinite Gift, does
The essence of the manifestation is in the fact, not that God
sent Jesus, but that Jesus, who was sent, is God's Only-
Begotten Son. The full being of God is present in Him.
Other gifts are only tokens of God's Love. Its all is given
1 See Notes, in loc.
2 In the Gospel, only in the parallel passage, John 316.
74 The First Epistle of
in Christ. It is His own bleeding heart the Father lays
on Love's altar, when He offers His Only-Begotten Son
(cf. Gen. 2212 and
of the Love is exhibited in the person of the Giver. It
was a father who thus sent his only-begotten son; but that
father was God (o[ qeo<j, not o[ path<r, as in 414). It was
the Divine Nature whose whole wealth was poured out
in the sacrifice of
is manifested in the purpose of the mission of the Son.
This purpose is that we might live through Him,"1 in
which is implicitly contained the "should not perish"
of John 316. The Love of God is thus seen to be His
self-determination not only to rescue men from what is
the sum of all evils, but to impart to them the supreme
and eternal good, Life. (4) Fourthly, the Love of God is
manifested in the means by which this purpose is achieved,
God shrinks not from the uttermost cost of Redemption.
His Son is sent as a "propitiation for our sins." He not
only dies heroically on our behalf, as the good shepherd
lays down his life in defending his helpless flock from the
fangs of the wolf or the assault of the robber; but, as a
father drinks a full cup of sorrow and humiliation in striving
to make atonement for the criminal profligacies of an
unworthy son, even so, Almighty God, in the person of
His Son, humbles Himself and suffers unto blood for
the sins of His creatures. Such is the Love of God to
men; and what can be said of it, except that it is at once
incredible that the fact should be so, and impossible that
it should be otherwise? It is what never did, never could,
flit within the horizon of man's most daring dream; it is
that which, when it is revealed, shines with self-evidencing
light. It needs no argument. Apologetic is superfluous.2
1 i!na zh<swmen di ] au]tou?. Cf. John 315.16 651.57 1010 1125.26 1419
2 "what doubt in thee could countervail
Belief in it? Upon the ground
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 75
Such Love is Divine. The Being whose nature this is,
is God.
But these statements ought, perhaps, to have been
reserved until we had considered the final moment in the
full conception of Divine Love, its objects. (5) "Herein
is Love, not that we loved God, but that God loved
us." The interpretation popularly put upon this verse,
as equivalent to "Herein is love, that, although we
did not love God, God loved us," is grammatically
untenable,1 and it misses the point in one of the
profoundest sentences in the Epistle. The Apostle does
not say that we have not loved God. What he says
is that we have loved God, but that this is not love
to call love. That we have loved God is nothing
wonderful. The ineffable mystery of Love reveals itself
in this, that God has loved us, who are so unworthy of
His Love, and so repulsive to all the sensibilities, so to
say, of His moral nature. The full glory of the Divine
Love is seen in the fact that it is wholly self-created and
self-determined.
It may be permissible to elucidate this truth somewhat
more fully. As we have seen. Love is that mysterious
power by which we live in the lives of others, and are thus
moved to benevolent and even self-sacrificing action on
their behalf. Such love is, after all, one of the most
universal things in humanity. But always natural human
That in the story had been found
Too much Love? How could God love so?
While man, who was so fit instead
To hate, as every day gave proof,—
Man thought man, for his kind's behoof,
Both could and did invent that scheme
Of perfect Love; 't would well beseem
Cain's nature thou vast wont to praise,
Not tally with God's usual ways."
Browning's Easter Day.
1 See Notes, in loc.
76 The First Epistle of
love is a flame that must be kindled and fed by some quality
in its object. It finds its stimulus in physical instinct, in
gratitude, in admiration, in mutual congeniality and liking.
Always it is, in the first place, a passive emotion, determined
and drawn forth by an external attraction. But the Love
of God is the ever-springing fountain. Its fires are self-
kindled. It is love that shines forth in its purest splendour
upon the unattractive, the unworthy, the repellent. Herein
is Love, in its purest essence and highest potency, not in
our love to God, but in this, that God loved us. Hence
follows the apparently paradoxical consequence, upon
which the Epistle lays a unique emphasis, that our love to
God is not even the most godlike manifestation of Love in
us. It is gratitude for His benefits, adoration of His
perfections, our response to God's love to us, but not its
closest reproduction in kind. In this respect, indeed, God's
love to man and man's love to God form the opposite
poles, as it were, of the universe of Love, the one self.
created and owing nothing to its object, the other entirely
dependent upon and owing everything to the infinite
perfection of its object; the one the overarching sky, the
other merely its reflection on the still surface of the lake,
And it is, as the Epistle insists, not in our love to God;
but in our Christian love to our fellow-men, that the Divine
Love is reproduced, with a relative perfection, in us (412.19.20;
cf. Eph. 432-52)
Such is the conception of the Love of God that St.
John sets before us. In this entirely spontaneous, self-
determined devotion of God to sinful men, this Divine
passion to rescue them from sin, the supreme evil, and
to bestow on them the supreme good, Eternal Life:
in this, which is evoked by their need, not by their
worthiness, which goes to the uttermost length of
sacrifice, and bears the uttermost burden of their self-
inflicted doom—in this, which is for ever revealed in the
The Doctrine of God as Righteous and Love 77
mission of Jesus Christ, God's Only-Begotten Son—is
Love.
This is at once the norm and the inspiration of all that
is most truly to be called Love. Love is no merely
passive, involuntary emotion awakened in one person by
another. In the Epistle, as everywhere in the New
Testament, it is a duty (47.11) a subject of command-
ment (27.8 323b 421), and is, therefore, a moral self-deter-
mination which, in man, must often act in direct opposition
to natural instinct and inclination. And this is a self-
determination to do good, good only, and always the
highest good possible (49), without regard to merit or
attractiveness in the object (410a)and that even at highest
cost to self1 (410b).
Yet such a definition would be adequate only to one
half of what Love is. Love is not solely benevolence
issuing in beneficence. In its highest as well as in its
lowest forms it contains the element of appetency. In
its lower forms Love is predominantly an egoistic and
appropriative impulse; in its highest form it becomes that
marvellous power which reconciles and identifies the
apparently opposite principles, egoism and altruism. One
finds one's richest satisfaction in the happiness of others,
one's own fullest self-realisation in promoting theirs. Love
seeks not its own, yet makes all things its own. It is the
utmost enrichment and enlargement of Life. "My beloved
is mine"—a possession of which nothing can rob me. The
more perfect the love, the more completely achieved is this
mysterious result, this self-enlargement by self-communica-
tion, this self-losing self-finding. If I love my neighbour
as myself, I regale myself with his prosperity, even as
I share the bitter cup of his adversity; I am honoured in
his praise, promoted in his advancement, gladdened in his
joy, even as I am humbled in his shame or distressed in
1 Cf. J. M. Gibbon, Eternal Life, p. 106.
78 The First Epistle of
his sin. In short, we might define the highest Love as
that state of the moral nature in which the egoistic and the
altruistic principles coalesce and are fused into one living
experience. Such is the perpetual miracle of Love. Such
is it in man. Such also is it in God, as it is delineated in
the New Testament. No less than benevolence, God's
Love displays the element of infinite desire and yearning
quest. It seeks the lost as the shepherd seeks the strayed
sheep upon the mountains; as a father's heart yearns after
a wayward son. It becomes the source of an infinite
Divine Joy over the sinner that repenteth; and because of
the joy, it endures the cross and despises the shame. It is
in God's Love, and transcendently in His self-sacrifice for
the sinful and lost, that the Divine Life conies to its fullest
self-realisation. And, though it is the self-communicating
aspect of Divine Love that alone is presented in the Epistle,
yet, always, Love is that for which self-communication
is the fullest self-assertion, and all that Love is, is
ascribed in its supreme perfection to God. God is Love.
(1) He is Love essentially. Like the sunlight which
contains in itself all the hues of the spectrum, Love is
not one of God's attributes, but that ill which all His
moral attributes have their unity. The spring of all
His actions, the explanation of all He does or ever can
do is Love. (2) Therefore, also, His Love is universal.
If there were any of His creatures whom He did not
love, this would prove that there was something in His
nature that was not Love, but was opposed to Love.
Whatever be the mysteries of the past, present, or future,
God is Love. That is
not attempt to reconcile with it other and apparently
conflicting truths in his theological scheme; possibly he
was not conscious of any need to do so. But of this
he is sure—God is Love. That fact must, in ways we
cannot yet discern, include all other facts. No being is
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 79
unloved. Nothing happens that is not dictated or over-
ruled by Love. (3) And if essential and universal, the Love
of God is also eternal and unchangeable. It does not depend
on any merit or reciprocation in its object, but overflows
from an infinite fulness within itself. Our goodness did
not call it forth; neither can our evil cause it to cease.
“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
sends with the remover to remove.”
We may refuse to the Divine Love any inlet into our
nature, may refuse to let it have its way with us, may so
identify ourselves with evil as to turn it into an antagonistic
force. This is the most awful fact in human life. But
the sun is not extinguished, though shutters be closed and
blinds drawn at midday; and though we may shut out
God from our hearts, no being can by any means shut
himself out from the great Heart of God. God is Love.
It is the surest of all intuitions; the strongest corner-
stone of the Christian Faith. Having known and believed
the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord—
the Love that came not by water only, but by blood
also—we can tolerate no other conception of the Divine.
(4) From all this it follows that we cannot ultimately con-
ceive of God as a single and simple personality. Love, no
more than Thought, can exist without an object. If we
say that God was eternally the object of His own Love,
we deny to Him the supreme prerogative of Love, self-
communication. If we say that, either in time or from
eternity, God created the universe in order to have an
object for His Love, we make the Universe as necessary
to God as God is to the Universe. His Love in creation
was not the overflowing of the fountain, but the craving
of the empty vessel. It is at this point that the Trini-
tarian doctrine becomes most helpful. It enables us to
think of the Life of God not as an eternal solitude of
80 The First Epistle of
self-contemplation and self love, but as a life of communion:
—the Godhead is filled with Love, the Love of the
Father and the Son in the unity of the Spirit. So far
from being a burden to faith, the doctrine of the Divine
Trinity sheds a welcome light upon the mystery of God's
Eternal Being, both as self-conscious personality and as
Love. It is a mystery, but a mystery which "explains
many other mysteries, and which sheds a marvellous light on
God, on nature, and on man." It is the "consummation and
only perfect protection of Theism"; and it will be ultimately
found not only to influence every part of our theological
system, but to be the vital basis of Christian Ethics.
EXCURSUS
ON
The Correlation of Righteousness and Love.
God is Love; God is Righteous. The two conceptions appear to be
equally fundamental; and a problem of no small perplexity is presented
by the inevitable inquiry—what is their relation to each other? When
it is said that God is Love, the only possible interpretation seems to be
that Love is that essential moral quality of the Divine Nature in which
all God's purposes and actions have their origin. But when it is said
that God is Righteous, it seems equally inevitable to regard His
Righteousness as determining all His purposes and ways. Both state-
ments, moreover, are intuitively felt to be true. We can assert the one
and then, the next moment, assert the other without any sense of
contradiction. How, then, are we to think of the moral nature of God?
Is it a unity, or is it a duality? Is it, to use a mathematical analogy,
a circle having a single centre, or is it an ellipse formed around two
different foci?
The latter solution of the problem has been most widely and
authoritatively maintained. Righteousness and Love, it is held, are
essentially different and mutually independent. They are not conter-
minous, Righteousness occupying the whole area of moral character
and obligation, while Love covers only a part of it. God is righteous
in all His ways; in some only is He loving. Righteousness is a
necessity with Him; Love is secondary, and can be exercised only
when it does not conflict with Righteousness. Let us consider whether
this view is tenable.
(1) In the first place, Love is included in Righteousness. A distinc-
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 81
tion is drawn between duties of Right and duties of Love. But there
certainly are duties of Love. Love is not a mood or inclination that
may or may not be exercised at one's option. The maxim is laid down
by Dorner1 that duties of Right precede duties of Love—"We must be
just before we are generous." But in what is this precedence grounded?
Assuredly, not in any essential difference in the nature of the obligation.
We are not under one sort of obligation to be honest and under another
and inferior obligation to be kind. It is a mere and inevitable fact,
indeed, that is expressed by the axiom, "We must be just before we
are generous." We cannot in reality be generous before we are just.
If we act as if we could, we are generous with what is not ours but
another's; that is to say, we arc not generous at all. The apparent
self-communication is altogether unreal. And it is because the tempta-
tion to forget this is, for many persons, peculiarly strong that the
maxim, "We must be just before we are generous," is so needful. But
morally it is no whit less imperative that a man be generous according
to his real ability, than that he be honest; that he forgive an injury,
than that he refrain from committing one. Such difference as exists
between duties of Right and duties of Love is not qualitative but
quantitative. To succour the needy is as truly a duty as to pay one's
mercantile debts; but to be dishonest is a more flagrant violation of
the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," than to be
ungenerous. The distinction between the two classes of duties is only
a convenient expression of certain moral measurements, which experi-
ence has taught mankind to make, as to the duties that are the more
universal and important, and the neglect of which works greater and wider injury.
The duties of love, then, are included in the area of Righteousness.
According to all Christian Ethics, indeed, Love is the chief part of that
sum of moral obligation which is Righteousness. (According to Matt.
2235-40 and
duty, and the withholding of it the worst sin.
(2) But, further, it is clear that nothing that is truly called Love can
be outside the area of Righteousness.
For since, ex hypothesi, Love always seeks for its object the greatest
good possible to it, and cannot consent to sacrifice the greatest to any
lower good, it seas for moral beings always the same thing that
Righteousness seeks—their highest moral excellence. Human love may
be blind and mistake its way, and give instead of bread a stone;
but when enlightened it cannot, if true to its own ends, seek aught
less than the best. And, on the other hand, enlightened Love never
becomes an impulse to undutiful conduct in the person who loves, never
permits the supposition that we can promote another's good by means
that involve inferior conduct on our own part; on the contrary, it
1 System of Christian Ethics, p. 91 (
82 The First Epistle of
becomes the strongest impulse to realise the full moral worth of one's
own personality.
All that is truly called Love is included, in the area of Righteous-
ness. (3) We come to a more disputed question when we ask—Is all
Righteousness included in the area of Love? Can there be action
that is righteous in which there is no Love? Or could there exist a
person who, though destitute of Love, possessed the attribute of
Righteousness? Without attempting to show in detail that all duties
can be resolved into diverse applications of the law of Love, one may
state the general question, whether, if Love were non-existent, conscious-
ness of any moral obligation whatsoever is conceivable. The answer
it seems to me, is that it is not conceivable. If my normal and proper
state of soul towards my neighbour were one of absolute indifference to
his well-being, I could no more stand in any moral relation to him than
to a stone. We find, in fact, that this is the case. In those abnormal
natures in which benevolence seems to be completely extinct, the
whole moral consciousness seems to be equally a blank. It is true,
indeed, that there are social virtues, such as truthfulness, honour,
equity, that are frequently regarded as existing in an entirely self-centred
form—"I shall keep honour with that scoundrel, not because it is due
to him, but because it is due to myself." But such an attitude (not to
say that it is not that of Christian morality) is not really so self-centred
as it seems. He who thus acts is importing into the particular instance
a feeling derived from his sense of obligation to mankind in general.
He acts upon a code and habit of honour which are to him of such
worth that he would not be compensated for their violation by any
satisfaction derived from paying a rascal in his own coin. But this
code and habit of honour are not self-centred. The self-respect to
which honourable dealing with our neighbour is felt to be clue is reflex.
We could not be conscious that such conduct is necessary to self-
respect, unless we were, in the first place, conscious that it is due from
us to our neighbour.
It is in respect to Justice, and especially punitive Justice, that the
question we are considering comes to its acutest point. And without
discussing the ultimate origin of the idea of Justice, I again submit that
if we were so constituted that the interests of our fellow-men were nothing
to us, it would be impossible that we should be sensible of any obligation
to justice, equity, or impartiality in our dealings with them. Whether
or not the idea of Justice is directly derivable from Love as the dis-
tributive method by which Love deals with competing interests in such
wise as to advance the best interests of all without detriment to any,
it is at least evident that Justice is the instrument of Love. Love
demands that we do justly. Nor is this less true of punitive Justice.
In the popular understanding of the words, the Love of God is regarded
as acting only in the direct communication of good; while the judicial,
punitive, and destructive energies of the Divine Nature, which are
evoked by evil, are assigned exclusively to Righteousness. But this
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 8
is a false antithesis, based upon an inadequate and one-sided con-
ception of Love. Love, as seeking the highest good of its objects, is
constrained to oppose, and to oppose passionately, all that works for
the defeat of its purpose. Love is not merely a sweet, suave, and
benignant disposition. Love has in it the sharpness of the sword and
the fierceness of flame. Love hates—hates evil, which is opposed to
Love. Love in the right-minded parent hates evil in the child; in the
right-minded ruler, hates evil in the society which he governs, and
encounters it with the full force of his opposition and displeasure. Love
cares for social as well as for individual well-being. The more truly
loving a parent is, the more inflexible will he be in rebuking and
correcting evil within the home; in exercising justice, and preventing one
member of the household from acting wrongfully towards another ;.and,
when the interests of the individual or of the whole family require it, in
punishing and making an example of the wrong-doer, and even, should
he prove incorrigible, in excluding him from the home. Yet all this
Righteousness will he do for the ends and in the spirit of Love. Even
so, the Love of God must assert itself in infinitely intense antagonism
to all that works for the defeat of the eternal purpose of Love--Love
that seeks the highest moral excellence of His creatures—for which
He created and governs the universe. It is in accordance with that
purpose that right shall be rewarded and wrong punished; nay, this
must be inherent in the constitution of a universe created and ruled by
Love. In the interests of the sinner himself, sin must be punished.
Even if there be no hope of his amendment, in the interests of the
moral universe God must still encounter sin with the full force of His
displeasure. Yet all this Righteousness God will do for the ends and
in the spirit of Love.
It is a strong point in the Calvinistic tradition to maintain that
punitive justice cannot be derived from Love. Yet it is not only
consistent with, it is a necessity of God's changeless purpose of Love
that wrong be punished. And I fail to conceive the nature of a
Justice that has no connection with this purpose. There is, doubt-
less, a genuine moral satisfaction in the humiliation of triumphant
wrong, in beholding the evil-doer receive the due reward of his
deeds; but this satisfaction is ultimately derived from sympathy with
the central purpose of Love; it is the satisfaction of beholding the
beneficent moral order of the universe reasserting itself, repairing
the breaches that have been made in it, and guarding itself against
similar infringements in the future. And, again, I fail to conceive
how, apart from such a purpose of Love, the punishment of wrong
would be right or rational; how, if the infliction of suffering--let
us suppose the case—could be of no possible benefit either to
the sinner himself or to any other being in the universe, present
or future, there would still remain a ground of reason or of obliga-
tion for inflicting it. Nay more, I fail to conceive how a being
without Love, wholly indifferent to the well-being of others, could
84 The First Epistle of
ever be conscious of Justice as a moral obligation, or be capable of
finding any moral satisfaction in it. If, indeed, this were possible, if
there could exist a being of whose moral consciousness Justice were the
sole content,1 for whom Love did not exist, or existed only as a secondary
and accidental attribute, of whom it could be said2 that "Love is an
attribute which he may exercise or not as he will," that Mercy is
optional with him," that "he is bound to be just, he is not bound to be
generous," such a being would be morally of an infra-human type and
vastly remote in character from the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ.
This whole theory rests, in fact, upon the idea which, as has been
already said, is the negation of Christian Ethics, that Love is something
over and above what is strictly right, a work of supererogation, a comely
adornment of character, but not the very fibre of which its robe is woven.
The conclusion, then, at which I arrive is that Righteousness and
Love are conterminous in area; that as little can Righteousness exist
without Love as Love, truly so called, without Righteousness. But
the question remains, how we are to conceive their relation to one another.
An interesting and fruitful view—true, I believe, as regards the
fundamental position, though I cannot find myself in agreement with
the conclusion reached—is that presented by Dorner.3 "The essence
of morality consists in an unchangeable but also eternally living union
of a righteous will and a loving will. The two together and inseparably
one constitute a holy love." Donner then construes Righteousness
as the necessity of self-assertion in the Divine Nature, Love as the
necessity of self-communication; and he has no difficulty in showing that
without self-assertion ethical self-communication would be impossible.
It would cease to be voluntary, and would become a merely instinctive
benevolence, akin to a physical expansion like that of light or heat.
1 One may try to imagine such a being, who should possess as his sole
moral characteristic a passion for abstract Justice—for arriving at and executing
equitable decisions regarding the merits of other beings—and who might find a
peculiar satisfaction in thus administering Justice among men, or in a colony of
ants, or a swarm of bees. But would such a characteristic be really moral?
Would there he any ethical motive or value in such a passion for applying the
rules of equity—there being no interest or sense of obligation to advance any
one's well-being thereby—any more than in a passion for solving mathematical
problems? Is there necessarily ethical value in the justice of a judge qua judge
(the persons judged being to him but lay figures, representing so many judicial
problems) any more than in the diagnosis of a physician? The crucial
question is—Can any moral relation subsist between two persons apart from the
obligation, recognised or unrecognised, to seek each other's good, that is to say,
apart from Love? It does not seem possible. The prerequisite of all moral
relationship is Love.
2 See Steven's Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 17S.
3Christian Ethics, pp. 76–79 (
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 85
But then it would seem to be equally true that, without self-communica-
tion, ethical self-assertion is impossible. The self-assertion or righteous-
ness of God is that in all He does He must be true to Himself, must
act according to the voluntary self-determination of His own moral
nature. But that nature is holy love; and only by acting in holy love
can God truly assert Himself. This, however, Dorner refuses to admit,
maintaining that ethical self-assertion is possible without self-communi-
cation. And when we ask wherein this consists, he replies that it is
in God's assertion of His non-communicable attributes—of His self-
existence, His glory and majesty, of "Himself in the distinction which,
to thought and in fact, exists between Him and the non-self-existing
universe." "It is a guarding of the difference between Him and the
world, even when He imparts himself to it and wills to be self-
imparting." But this is far from satisfactory. It amounts to this, that
in communicating all of His own nature that is communicable,—life,
physical, rational, and spiritual,--God is both loving and righteous;
while in asserting what is incommunicable His self-existence and
supremacy as Creator and Lawgiver--He is not loving, but is exclusively
righteous. But this does not seem to yield that living, inseparable
union of a loving and a righteous will which Dorner rightly posits as
"the essence of morality." For those of God's attributes that are not
directly communicable may yet be employed for the ends of Love; as,
for example, His self-existence for Creation, His power and omniscience
for beneficent providential rule, His moral authority for the moral educa-
tion and discipline of His creatures; and, if they were not so employed,
His will would not be a loving will to its utmost possibility—God would
not be Love. But if God's assertion of all His attributes is directed to
the highest good of His creatures; if, as Christianity teaches, it is in
blessing them, and, above all, in employing all His attributes, com-
municable and non-communicable, for their rescue from the death of Sin
unto Life Everlasting; if Christ is the moral image of the Invisible
God, and if it is in that He "counted it not a prize to be on an equality
with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant," that
the Divine Self is supremely asserted and the difference between
God and the world supremely manifested,—then His fullest self-com-
munication is also His highest self-assertion. The twain constitute
that living and inseparable union of a loving and a righteous will
which is the essence of all morality. And, in short, a moral nature
cannot be thus divided into compartments. Separate attributes exist
only as abstractions. If a person is perfectly loving, he is loving
always and in everything; if he is perfectly righteous, he is righteous
always and in everything; and if he is both perfectly loving and
perfectly righteous, he is loving in his righteousness and righteous
in his love.
The weakness of Dorner's argument lies in regarding Love as
exclusively self-communication, and not rather as that in which self-
commmunication and self-assertion coalesce. Put accepting his definition
86 The First Epistle of
of the essence of morality as the living, inseparable union of a loving
and a righteous will, we may, perhaps, reach a conception of the
correlation of the Righteousness and the Love of God along the follow-
ing lines.
1. The perfect moral state is that in which self-communication is
also self-assertion. This is the mind that was in Christ Jesus (Phil.
25-8). Such Love, therefore, is the content of all moral excellence
(Matt. 2335-40, Rom. 138-10). It is the inner principle without which
even actions that are formally right are morally worthless (1 Cor.
131-3). All graces and virtues are either special manifestations of Love,
as gentleness, compassion, reverence; or are constitutional qualities of
the will—as truthfulness, obedience, gratitude, perseverance, courage--
or of the mind—as wisdom—which are ancillary to the perfect work of
Love. All duties spring ultimately from the one duty of Love. Even
the duty of justice or equity does so; for, if we were so constituted as
to be conscious of no obligation to seek the well-being of others, there
would be no reason, except a prudential one, for doing to others as we
would that they should do to us.
2. Because Love is that power by which self-communication and self-
assertion coalesce in the unity of Life, it is not only the sum of all moral
excellence, but the source of the highest moral satisfactions. It is by
means of Love that Life runs its full circle, as if a river should carry
back: to its source all the wealth its fertilising influences have produced.
And because it thus unites the egoistic and the altruistic principles, it
is also the highest impulse to all duty. It is as much the supreme and
universal power in the moral realm as gravitation is in physics.
3. As being, thus, the content of and the impulse to all moral
excellence, and, at the same time, the source of the highest moral
satisfactions, Love is the summum bonnum. Without it no real good is
possible; and there is no blessedness conceivable beyond that of a
society of persons all united in perfect love. Each communicates
himself to all and all to each. Each seeks the joy and well-being of all,
and, in turn, enjoys the joy and is blessed by the well-being of all.
Such a society would be the perfect organism for the perfect life; and
such an organism God is fashioning and perfecting in the Body of
Christ.
4. God is Love; and, because He is Love, it is His Will to impart
this highest good to all beings capable of participating in it. Because
He is Love, it is His Will to make Love the law of His universe, His
gift to all beings made after His own likeness, and His requirement
from them. And this, I take it, is the Righteousness of God—that
He asserts Love, the law of His own Life, as the law of all life that
is derived from Him. This assertion necessarily acts in two direc-
tions; in the communication of Love, the highest good; and in
antagonism to all that is opposed to it. These modes of action are not
derived from conflicting or mutually independent principles, but are
diverse applications of the same principle. If the eternal purpose of
The Doctrine of God as Righteousness and Love 87
God is to produce beings capable of the highest good and to impart it
to them, then, by His very character as Love, He is also constrained so
to order the universe that whatever tends to the defeat of that purpose
shall meet His unceasing antagonism. This will take the form of what
we call punitive Justice. And what makes the punitive Justice of God
so terrible is that it is the Justice of one who is Love, and that even
Infinite Love can find no alternative.
"Thus, then, we may see that the moral nature of God is a unity,
not a duality. Righteousness is Love in the imperative mood; is
Love legislative and administrative; is the consistency of Love to its
own high and eternal end. The Righteousness of God is that He
makes Love the law of His own action, and that He, in His Love, can
tolerate nothing less and nothing else as His purpose and requirement
for His creatures than that what He acts upon they also shall act upon,
and that the character He possesses they also shall possess. And
nothing else than this is Righteousness in man. Duty is the obligation
which is inherent in the very nature of Love, and could not conceivably
exist in a being destitute of Love, to seek the highest attainable good of
all whom one's conduct affects, that is to say, to be faithful to Love's
highest ends. And when, in popular language, Duty is contrasted with
Love, the true significance of this is that Duty is the consistency of
Love to its higher end, in the face of egoistic inclination or of temptation
to decline upon some lower end.
It will be seen that the view here presented involves
these fundamental positions. (I) All moral life is neces-
sarily social. As self-consciousness is psychologically
possible only by the distinction of the ego from the non-
ego, so moral self-consciousness is awakened only in our
relation to other personalities. An absolutely solitary unit
(without God or neighbour) could have no moral conscious-
ness. Our moral ideal of self is our conception of the ideal
man in all his relations to God and his fellows; and apart
from such relations moral self-love is inconceivable.
(2) The supreme end is Life. All that we call morality
is the "Way of Life," the means to that fullest, highest Life
which
moral excellence (Love) is an end in itself; for it is only by
our entering with that vivid, spontaneous response, which is
at once self-communication and self-assertion, into all the
relations, human and divine, amid which we have our being,
88 The First Epistle of
that Life is realised. Hence, while it has just been said
that Life is the summum bonum, this may be also said of
moral excellence, that is, of Love. Love is not only the
way to Life, it is the living of the Eternal Life. (3) All
this implies, as has been shown, a Trinitarian conception
of the Divine Nature.
CHAPTER VI.
THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST.
THE centre of doctrinal interest in the Epistle is the
Incarnation, in which
a true manifestation of the Divine Life in man, and the
single channel for its permanent communication to men.
Before proceeding, however, to the study of the chief
Christological passages, it will be convenient to advert to
some few points that lie on the circumference of the subject,
yet are of great interest.
The nomenclature of the Epistle is noticeably different
in some respects from that of the Fourth Gospel. "Jesus
Christ" has now become the proper personal name of
our Lord (13 21 323 520). "Jesus" is not found except
in conjunction with "Christ" or some other term of
theological significance, such as "Son of God" (17), or
where the sense requires some such term to be supplied
(43). The absolute use of e]keinoj (26 33.5.7.16 417) and of
au]to<j (28. 12. 27.28 32. 3 421) almost as a name of the Saviour
is peculiar1 to the Epistle. Blending a certain idealising
reverence with the allusiveness of familiar affection, this
usage is singularly expressive of a state of mind to which,
although the mists of time have gathered around the image
of the historical Jesus, He is still the one ever-present
living personality. As in old-style Scottish parlance, a
wife would speak of her husband, present or departed as
1 Unless we recognise the same usage in John I935.
89
90 The First Epistle of
"himself";1 so with the Apostle it is needless to say who
He is. There is but one "He."
Other designations applied to Christ are "righteous "
(di<kaioj, 21 37) "pure" a]gno<j, 33), "the Holy One" (o[ a!gioj,
220). The first of these (di<kaioj) expresses the broadest con-
ception of His moral perfection. In every aspect of character
and conduct He absolutely fulfils the idea of "right." In
a[gno<j, again, the primary idea is that of freedom from moral
stain.2 The word may indicate a previous state of actual
impurity (Ps. 5112), and it necessarily implies the thought of
possible impurity. Broadly, we might say that Purity (a[gnei<a)
is the negative aspect of Love. The command to "purify
oneself" (33) is equivalent to "love not the world, neither
the things that are in the world " (215). Purity is that
element in holy character which is wrought out by the
discipline of temptation; and thus the word imparts a
peculiar significance to the passage in which it is applied to
Christ. Hoping in Him, we are to purify ourselves, even
as He Who, though tempted in all points like as we are, was
and is pure (33).
In a!gioj (=wOdqA) the same root-idea of separation from
evil has been merged in that of consecration to God. The
sense is religious3 rather than, per se, ethical. To Christ it
is applied in a technical Messianic sense. He is the " Holy
Servant " (o[ a!gioj pai?j, Acts 430), the fulfilment of the Old
Testament ideal of the Servant of Jehovah. He is recog-
1 Or a farm-servant, of his master. In Theocritus (xxiv. 50), Amphitryon,
calling his retainers .from their beds, cries, a@nstate dmw?ej talasi<fronej, au]to>j
a]u*ti?: "It is himself (your master) that is calling." It is inevitable to compare
the Pythagorean au]to>j e@fa.
2 Biblically, a[gno<j the equivalent of rOhFA=Levitically clean. In classical
Greek, the prevalent sense is that of freedom from moral defilement; more
specifically, chastity. Thus in Homer a[gnh< is the epithet of the virgin goddesses
Artemis and Persephone. This specific sense is frequently retained in the N.T.
(2 Cor. 66 711 112, Tit. 25, I Tim. 52, I Pet. 32). The broader sense is exemplified
in 1 Pet. 122 (ta>j yuxa>j u[mw?n h[gni<kotej) and Jas.48 (a[gni<sate kardi<aj, di<yuxoi).
3 Thus the Father Himself is a!gioj (John 1711); the Divine Spirit is to> a!gion
pneu?ma; the angels are a!gioi; Christians are a!gioi in virtue of their Divine calling
(1 Cor. 12, 2 Tim. 19).
The Doctrine of Christ 91
nised by evil spirits (Mark 124, Luke 434), and confessed by
disciples (John 669) as "the Holy One of God " (o[ a!gioj tou?
qeou?). He is o[ a!gioj o[ a]lhqino<j (Rev. 37), the "true" or
"genuine" Holy One, who hath the Key of David—who
wields all Messianic prerogatives. And it is obviously in
the same sense that He is named "the Holy One" in the
Epistle (220). It is as the Messiah, the Anointed, that He
bestows upon the members of the Messianic community the
"anointing" (xri?sma) of the Spirit.
Passing from these points, we proceed to consider the
great Christological thesis of the Epistle. That thesis is the
complete, permanent, and personal identification of the historical
Jesus with the Divine Being who is the Word of Life (11), the
"Christ" (42) and the Son of God (55); and it is characteristic
of the author's method that this, which is to be the subject of
repeated development in the body of the Epistle, is preluded
in its first sentence. The abstract of the Apostolic Gospel
which is there prefixed to the Epistle, as the fountain-head
from which all its teaching is drawn, contains the two com-
plementary truths: that Jesus is the "Word" in whom the
Eternal Life of God has been fully manifested, and that
this manifestation has been made through a humanity in
which there is nothing visionary or unreal, and is vouched
for by every applicable test as genuine and complete. The
Incarnate Word has been "seen," "heard," "handled" (11-3).1
In the Epistle this thesis is maintained in the form of
a vigorous polemic against certain heretical teachers whom
the writer calls " antichrists,"2 in whom he discovers the
true representatives of that arch-enemy of God and His
Christ who figured so vividly in apocalyptic literature and
in the popular belief. That we must recognise in these
"antichrists" one or more of the many ramifications of
Gnosticism, is beyond question. Though our knowledge of
Gnosticism in the Johannine age is but dim and fragmentary,
1 v. supra, pp. 46-48, 109. 2 See Chapter XVI,
92 The First Epistle of
still, what we do gather from the scanty records of the
Apostolic Fathers fits into the Christological passages
of the Epistle so accurately that it renders their interpreta-
tion certain where otherwise it would be only conjectural.
From the Epistle itself we learn that the heretical teachers
denied that Jesus is the Christ (222), or, more definitely,
"Christ come in the flesh" (43); they denied that Jesus is
"the Son of God" (415); and they asserted that He came
"by water only" and not "by blood also" (56). Plainly,
what is here in view is, in the one or the other of its
forms, the Docetic theory of Christ's Person; for it appears
that the theory existed in two more or less defined types.
There was the crude unmitigated Docetism described in the
Ignatian Epistles, according to which Jesus was the Christ,
but was in no sense a real human being. It was only a
phantom that walked the earth and was crucified. The
Incarnation was nothing else than a prolonged theophany.1
The other is specially associated with the name of Cerinthus,2
of whom Irenaeus reports (Haer. I. 26. i.) that he taught that
Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was the son of Joseph.
and Mary, and was distinguished from other men only by
superiority in justice, prudence, and wisdom; that, at His
Baptism the Christ descended upon Him in the form of a
1 An interesting specimen of a Docetic Gospel of this type is extant in the
recently published Acts of John, the date assigned to which is "not later than
the second half of the first century" (Texts and Studies, vol. v., No. 1, p. x).
According to this Gospel, our Lord had no proper material existence. He
assumed different appearances to different beholders, and at different tunes.
Sometimes His body was small and uncomely; at other times His stature
reached unto heaven. Sometimes He seemed to have a solid material body, at
other times He appeared immaterial. It was only a phantom Christ that was
crucified. During the Crucifixion, the read Christ appears to John on the Mount
of Olives and says, "John, unto the multitude down below in
being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds, and gall and vinegar are given
me to drink; but I put it into thine heart to come up unto this mountain, that thou
mightest hear matters needful for a disciple to learn from his Master and for
a man to learn from his God." The Lord then shows to John the mystic Cross
of Light and the Lord Himself above the Cross, not having any shape, but only
a voice.
2 See Chapter II.
The Doctrine of Christ 93
dove, and announced the unknown Father; that, at the end
of His life, the Christ again left Jesus; that Jesus died and
rose again, but that the Christ, being spiritual, remained
without suffering. According to this view, Jesus was not
the Christ, but only, for the period between the Baptism
and the Crucifixion, the earthly habitation of the heavenly
Christ. On either of the theories the Incarnation was only a
semblance. The one denied reality to the human embodi-
ment of the Divine Life; the other, admitting the reality of
the human embodiment, denied its permanent and personal
identification with the Divine. By some exegetes, traces
of both forms of the Docetic theory have been discerned in
the Epistle. We shall find, however, that the Cerinthian
heresy alone offers a sufficient objective for all the Christo-
logical passages.
These passages are 221-23 41-3 415 56-8. And we shall,
in the first place, simply state the doctrinal content of each.
"Who is the liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the
Christ?" (222). Here the assertion or denial that Jesus is
the Christ has no relation to the early controversy regard-
ing the Messiahship2 of Jesus in the Jewish sense, a
controversy which now could possess little more than an
antiquarian interest.
In Gnostic nomenclature "Christ" was one of the aeons
—spiritual existences emanating from the Godhead who
appeared on earth in phantasmal or temporary embodiment
in Jesus; and the Apostle also uses the name "Christ" as
equivalent to the "Word " or "the Son of God," to signify
the Divine pre-existent factor in the personality of Jesus.
1 For example, by Pfleiderer (ii. 433). Cerinthus was a contemporary of St.
John; and if we accept Lightfoot's argument (Apostolic Fathers, i. 368), that the
more crudely Docetic view must have been the earlier, the natural tendency
being toward modification, it is evident that the polemic of the Epistle might, as
a matter of date, have been directed against either or both forms of the heresy.
2 Cf. especially Acts 1828 where the subject of controversy, though verbally
the same, is substantially quite different. There is no trace in the Epistle of
conflict with Jewish or Ebionistic error.
94 The First Epistle of
Evidently, then, it is the Cerinthian heresy that is here
repudiated. As to the manner in which this school of
Gnosticism construed the personality of the composite
Christ-Jesus during the period of union, we are ignorant;
but the essential significance of the theory, truly and
tersely stated, was that Jesus was not the Christ. There
was only a temporary and incomplete association of Jesus
with the Christ.
"Hereby recognise (or, ye recognise) the Spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesseth Jesus (as)1 Christ come in the
flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not Jesus
is not of God" (42.3a). Here the statement is more specific,
but to the same effect; it is still the Cerinthian heresy that
is combatted. The emphasis is not upon the real humanity
of Jesus so much as upon the personal identity of the pre-
existent Divine Christ with Jesus. There is no mere
association, however intimate, between Jesus and the Christ.
Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh.
A third time the Apostle returns to the same theme.
"Whosoever confesseth that Jesus is the Son of God, God
dwelleth in him, and he in God" (415). Here the true con-
1 e]n tou<t& ginw<skete to> pneu?ma tou? qeou?: pa?n pneu?ma o{ o[mologei? ]Ihsou?n
Xristo>n e]n sarki> e]lhluqo<ta e]k tou? qeou? e]sti<n, kai> pa?n pneu?ma o{ mh> o[mologei? to>n
]Ihsou?n, e]k tou? qeou? ou]k e]sti<n
Three different constructions of the crucial phrase in these verses are possible.
(a) ]Ihsou?n Xristo>n e]n sarki> e]lhluqo<ta may be taken as one object after o[mologei?
—" Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ, Who is come in the flesh". (Huther,
Westcott). Grammatically, this lies open to the objection that the article is
(normally) demanded (to>n e]n sarki> e]lhluqo<ta); in point of sense, that it contains
no definite statement—does not specify in what sense we are to confess Jesus
Christ, Who is come in the flesh. (b) ]Ihsou?n Xristo<n may be taken as a proper
name (cf. 13 21 323 520). Thus the confession would be expressly that Jesus
Christ is come in the flesh; and would be opposed to that thoroughgoing
Docetism which attributed to our Lord only the semblance of a human body
(Weiss, Pfleiderer). But it is quite unnecessary to find here a reference to
a different type of error. (c) For ]Ihsou?n alone may be taken as the direct
object after o[mologei?, and Xristo>n e]n sarki> e]lhluqo<ta as a secondary predicate.
"Every spirit that confesseth Jesus as Christ come in the flesh" (Haupt).
This construction is rendered probable by so close a parallel as e]a<n tij au]to>n
o[mologh<s^ Xristo<n (John 922), and, I think, certain by the fact that in the
following clause ]Ihsou?n stands alone as object after o[mologei?.
The Doctrine of Christ 95
fession, "Jesus is the Christ," appears as "Jesus is the Son
of God." The terms are interchangeable, if not synony-
mous; and, in this instance, "Son of God" is preferred as
bringing out the filial relation of Him who is sent to Him
who sends (414), and thus exhibiting the immensity of the
Divine Love manifested in the mission of Christ.
Finally, we have the much-debated passage, "Who is
he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that
Jesus is the Son of God? This is He that came by water
and blood; not by the water only, but by the water and
by the blood" (55.6a). The obscurity of the whole passage is
due, doubtless, to the fact that the first readers of the Epistle,
for whom it was written, were already familiar with the
author's handling of the topics that are here merely indicated.
Such expressions as the "water" and the "blood" are
a kind of verbal shorthand, intended merely to recall to
his readers the exposition of those themes which they had
heard from his lips. Without attempting a full account1
of the extraordinarily numerous and diverse explanations,
ancient and modern, of these words, it must suffice to say
that an interpretation based on a supposed reference to
the sacraments was inevitable (so Lutheran commentators
generally; also, in part, Westcott). But, while Baptism and
the Lord's Supper do exhibit sacramentally those elements
in Christ's saving work that correspond respectively to His
coming by Water and by Blood, to explain the text by
direct reference to these is inadequate.2 Equally inevitable
was the effort to explain the passage by the account given
in the Gospel of the efflux of water and blood from the
Saviour's wounded side (Augustine and ancient com-
mentators generally). But it may be said with consider-
1 This may be found in Huther, pp. 456-458.
2 This statement is made with reference only to the lust mention (56) of the
"Dater and the Blood. Subsequently (57.8) there is, I think, a natural transition
from the historical realities to their permanent memorials, the Christian
Sacraments. See Chapter VII.
96 The First Epistle of
able confidence that while this passage in the Epistle may
serve to explain the symbolical meaning which is apparently
attached in the Gospel to that incident of the Passion,
the incident in the Gospel sheds no light upon the passage
in the Epistle. The clue to this is the Docetic tenet that
the aeon Christ descended upon Jesus at His Baptisms and
departed again from Him before His Passion. Thus it is
evident that the "water" here denotes our Lord's Baptism,
the "blood," His death on
heresy taught that the Christ came by "water," but denied
that He came by "blood" also. Hence
and emphatic assertion that He came "not by the water
only, but by the water and the blood."
As Westcott rightly points out, "He that cometh," "He
that came" (o[ e]xo<menoj, o[ e]lqw<n), are terms used in the
Gospels, and notably in
the Messiah.1 When, therefore, it is said that Jesus the Son
of God "came" by water and by blood, it is signified that
first by His Baptism and then by His Death, Jesus entered
actually and effectively upon His Messianic ministry. He
"came" by water (di ] u!datoj).2 In their own sense the
Gnostics maintained that Christ "came" by water; in
another sense, the Epistle asserts the same3—in what
sense is clearly demonstrated in the Gospels, where the
Baptism is invariably regarded as the actual beginning of
His Messianic ministry (John 131, Acts 122; Mark's Gospel
begins with the Baptism). When Jesus definitely con-
secrated Himself in the full consciousness of His calling
1 Cf. John 331 614 727 1127 1213; Matt. 113 2339, and cognate passages is the
other Gospels.
2 The exact significance of dia< with u!datoj and ai!matoj is not easy to determine.
The idea may be that of the door, so to say, through which Christ entered upon
his mission.
3 It might be supposed, were one to take this passage by itself, that the
writer was half a Gnostic, that he held the view that Christ descended into
Jesus at His baptism, while strenuously resisting the idea that the Christ
departed from Jesus before His Passion.
The Doctrine of Christ 97
(Matt. 315); the Spirit was bestowed on Him "not by
measure" for its accomplishment (Matt. 316); and the
voice from Heaven testified His predestination to it
(Matt. 317). But He came by Blood also. This the
Gnostics denied; this the Apostle affirms.1 He who
was baptized of John in Jordan, and He whose life-blood
was shed on
the same Son of God eternally. For He "came" by
blood. He did not depart by blood. He laid down
His life only that he might take it again. Death was for
Him only the entrance upon the endless career of His
redemptive work, the unhindered fruitfulness of His life
(John 1224).
If the foregoing exposition of the chief Christological
passages has been right, it has been made clear that these
passages all promulgate the same truth in substantially the
same way. If one might express it mathematically,
there is on one side of an equation the Divine, or, at least,
super-terrestrial, Being Who is the "Word of Life," the
"Christ," the "Son of God"; on the other side, the human
Jesus. But the two sides of the equation are not only
equivalent, they are identical. Without ceasing to be
what He, is, the Son of God has become the human
Jesus; and Jesus, without ceasing to be truly human, is
the Son of God.
An investigation of the wider problems presented by
the Johannine use of these titles, Logos, Christ, Son of
God, cannot be undertaken here.'' Only the more immedi-
ate theological implications of the passages that have been
passed under review may be adverted to. It is at once
1 "Not by the water only, but by the water and by the blood." Both the
repetition and its form are directly determined by the repudiated error. The
first member of the clause denies what Cerinthus affirmed, the second affirms
what he denied.
2 See on these topics, Scott's Fourth Gospel; especially the admirable
chapter on "The Christ, the Son of God."
98 The First Epistle of
evident that, in the Epistle, these titles imply the pre-
temporal existence of the Person to whom they are applied.
Further, while for the abstract monotheism of the Gnostic
the "Christ" could be nothing more than an emanation
from the Eternal God, for the writer of the Epistle He is
Himself Eternal and Divine. He is the "Word of Life"
(11); and that this title implies relationship and fellowship
within the Godhead itself is signified by the fact that the
life manifested in Him is that Eternal Life which was in
relation to the Father (h!tij h#n pro>j to>n pate<ra, 12). This
relation is otherwise expressed by the terms "Father" and
"Son"; and these terms are employed in no figurative
or merely ethical sense, but in their full signification. The
Son, no less than the Father, is the object of religious
faith (513), hope (33), and obedience (323). He that con-
fesseth the Son hath the Father also (223). Our fellowship
is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ (13).
Believers are exhorted to "abide" in Christ (228), as else-
where to "abide" in God. The very syntax of the
Epistle testifies how the truth of the essential Divinity of
Christ has become the unconscious presupposition of all
the Apostle's thinking; for again and again1 it is left un-
certain whether "God" or "Christ" is the subject of state-
ment, an ambiguity which would be reckless except on the
presumption of their religious equivalence.
It would be a questionable proceeding, indeed, to read
into the Epistle the full Trinitarian doctrine of the
hypostatic Sonship. The problem of recognising personal
distinctions within the Godhead and at the same time
preserving its essential unity—a problem of which the
Trinitarian doctrine is, after all, only the mature statement
1 Thus in 225 and 424 the reference of afros is quite ambiguous. In 23
au]to<n ought grammatically to refer to Christ as the nearest antecedent, but does
refer to God. In 228 au]to<j is Christ; while in 229, without any note of transition,
the unexpressed subject is God. In 31-3 again, au]to<j ought grammatically to
refer to God (taking its antecedent from 239), but actually refers to Christ.
The Doctrine of Christ 99
—has not yet been fully confronted. Yet it is not too
much to say that all the elements of that problem
are present here in the fundamental implication that Jesus
Christ, in His pre-incarnate form of being, existed eternally
in an essential unity of nature with God.
This, however, is only an implication. The crucial
truth of the Epistle is Christological, not theological; its
doctrinal emphasis is not upon the relation of Divine Father
and Divine Son, but upon the relation of the Divine Son
to the historic Jesus. And it will be well to look more
closely at the most explicit of the various forms in which
this relation is defined. "Every spirit that confesseth
Jesus as Christ come in the flesh ( ]Ihsou?n Xristo>n e]n sarki>
e]lhluqo<ta) is of God " (42). The statement, simple as it
is, is of exquisite precision. The verb used (e@rxesqai)
implies the pre-existence of Christ. The perfect tense
(e]lhluqo<ta) points to His coming not only as a historical
event, but as an abiding fact. The Word has become
flesh for ever.1 The noun (sa>rc) indicates the fulness of
His participation in human nature, the flesh being the
element of this which is in most obvious contrast with His
former state of being2 (John 114). Even the preposition
e]n is of pregnant significance. It is not altogether equi-
valent to "into" (ei]j). The Gnostics also believed that
Christ came into the flesh. But the assertion is that He
has so come into the flesh as to abide therein; the Incar-
nation is a permanent union of the Divine with human
nature. Finally, this union is realised in the self-identity
of a Person, Jesus Christ, who is at once Divine and
human.
Again, however, we must not read into this the results
of later Christological developments. It may be argued
1 In 2 John 7 we find the unique expression e]rxo<menon e]n sarki<, emphasising
Christ's continuous activity, or, perhaps, His future coining, in the flesh.
2 It is out of the question to understand by sa<rc; "human nature as having
sin lodged in it" (Haupt).
100 The First Epistle of
that the orthodox formula, "one Person in two natures for
ever," is implied in the teaching of the Epistle; but there
is nothing that asserts it. The truth taught in all its
simplicity, and in all the majesty of its immeasurable
consequences, is that of one Person in two states, a prein-
carnate and an incarnate state of being. Without charge
of personal identity, the Eternal Son of God is become and
for ever continues to be Jesus. Jesus is the Son of God
the Christ come in the flesh.
We next proceed to a most interesting and important
part of our subject—the practical significance of the doctrine,
as this is exhibited in the Epistle. For it is neither in the
interests of abstract theology nor as the champion of
ecclesiastical orthodoxy that
of the Incarnation as the "roof and crown" of all truth,
but solely from a sense of its supreme necessity to the
spiritual life of the Church and the salvation of the world;
because he perceives in the denial of it the extinction of
the Light of Life which the Gospel has brought to mankind.
Thus, in introducing the subject, he first of all sets himself
to awaken in the minds of his readers an adequate per-
ception of its gravity: "I write unto you not because ye
know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no
He is of the truth " (221).1 He writes because they know
the truth. His aim is not to instruct their ignorance, but
to arouse them to realise the significance of their knowledge.
Ile has no actually new elements of Christian truth to
impart, but would quicken their sense of the irreconcilable
opposition of truth and falsehood, and of its stupendous
import in this instance. It was no merely speculative
antagonism that existed between the truth they had heard
from the beginning (224) and the corrupt doctrine of the
antichrists. The matter at issue was no mere difference of
opinion. The alternative was between making truth or
1 See Notes, in loc.
The Doctrine of Christ 101
falsehood, and that on the greatest of all subjects, the guide
of life. "Who is the liar," he passionately exclaims, "but
he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?," and then, without
conjunction or connecting particle of any kind, clause fol-
lows upon clause like the blows of a hammer, "This is the
antichrist, (this is) he that denieth the Father and the Son.
Whosoever denieth the Son hath not even the Father; he
that confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (222. 23).
Here we perceive the first of the great practical conse-
quences which depend upon the Incarnation. (a) It alone
secures and guarantees the Christian revelation of God, and
with its denial that revelation is immediately cancelled, "He
that hath not the Son hath not even the Father"1 (223).
Contrary as it might be to the intention of the Gnostic
teachers or to their interpretation of their own tenets, the
result was that, by taking away the real Divine Sonship
of Jesus, they subverted the Divine Fatherhood itself.
It must be observed that the argument is not one of
abstract logic, namely, that if there be no Divine Son there
can be no Divine Father. It is concrete and experiential.
What is in question is not God's absolute Being, but our
"having" not Fatherhood and Sonship as inherent in the
Divine Nature, but the revelation to men of the Father in
the Son. Refusing to recognise more than a shadowy and
dubious connection between the historic Jesus and the
Eternal Son of God, Gnosticism took away the one
medium through which a sure and satisfying revelation of
the Eternal Father has been given to the world. It was
still true that no man had seen God at any time; but it
was not true that the Only-Begotten Son had declared
Him; not true that he who had seen Jesus had seen the
Father. With the denial of Jesus as the full personal
1 ou]de> to>n pate<ra e@xei. "Has not even the Father"; or, at the least,
"Has not the Father either." Cf. the translation quoted by Augustine:
qui negal Filium nec Filium nec Patrem habet. For the intensive sense of ou]de<,
cf. Gal. 23.
102 The First Epistle of
incarnation of the Divine, the whole Christian conception
of God was but the "baseless fabric of a vision," having no
point of contact with the world of known fact. As regards
Gnosticism, the Apostle's statement was entirely true. Its
God was a being so absolutely transcendent as to be incap-
able of actual relation to humanity; and the gulf between
absolute Deity and finite being remained unbridged by all its
intricate hierarchy of semi-divine intermediaries. But the
Apostle's contention, that to deny the Son is to be unable
to retain even the Father, is no less verified in the history
of modern thought. It is not matter of argument, but of
fact, that the God-consciousness finds its true object most
completely in Jesus Christ; and that when God is not
found in Christ, He is not ultimately found either in
Nature or in History. Theism does not ultimately survive
the rejection of Christ as the personal incarnation of God.
The process of thought that necessitates the denial of the
supernatural in Him has Agnosticism as its inevitable goal.1
(b) But, if the validity of the whole Christian Revelation
of God is involved in the fact of the Incarnation, this is
most distinctly true of that which is its centre. It is
highly significant that the writer whose message to the
world is "God is Love" derives it so exclusively from this
single source. He has nothing to say of that benevolent
wisdom of God in Nature, of that ever-enduring mercy of
God in History, that kindled the faith and adoration of
Old Testament psalmists and prophets. His vision is
concentrated on the one supreme fact, "Herein was the
Love of God manifested towards us, that God sent His
Only-Begotten Son into the world that we might live
through Him" (49). Compared with this, all other revelations
are feeble and dim, are "as moonlight unto sunlight, and
as water unto wine." Here is Love worthy to be called
1 See the convincing historical demonstration of this in Orr's Christian View
of God and the World. pp. 37-53.
The Doctrine of Christ 103
Divine. And the one unambiguous proof of the existence
of such Love in God and of His bestowal of such Love
upon men absolutely vanishes, unless the Jesus who was
born in
Here, again, it is in the practical significance of the Gnostic
theories that we discover the source of
It was not in the metaphysics of Gnosticism so much
as in its ethical presuppositions and consequences that
he discerned the veritable Antichrist. Its theory of the
absolute Divine transcendence denied to God what, to the
Christian mind, is the "topmost, ineffablest crown" of His
glory—self-sacrificing Love. It was, in fact, the transla-
tion into metaphysic of the spirit of the world, of the axiom
that the supreme privilege of greatness is self-centred bliss,
exemption from service, burden-bearing, and sacrifice.1
"They are of the world, and, therefore, speak they of the
world, and the world heareth them" (45). Ignorant of the
Divine secret of Love, having no comprehension that great-
ness is greatest in self-surrender, and that to be highest
of all is to be servant and saviour of all, unable, therefore,
to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in
the face of a crucified Jesus, Gnosticism fashioned to its
own mind a God wholly transcendent and impassible, a
Christ who only scarred to suffer and lay down His life
for men, a Gospel drained of its life-blood, a Gospel whose
Divine fire, kindling men's souls to thoughts and deeds of
love and righteousness, was extinguished. And the result
of thus making man's salvation easy, so to say, for God—
salvation by theophany—was to make it easy for man also
—salvation by creed without conduct, by knowledge without
1 "Omnis cnim per se divum natura necesse est
Immortali aevo summa cum pace fruatur,
Semota a nostris rebus, seiunctaque longe.
Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostri
Nec bene promeritis capitur, nec tangitur ira."
Lucretius, ii. 645-50.
104 The First Epistle of
self-denial for righteousness' sake, without self-sacrifice for
love's sake.
For the Gnostic it was not "hard to be a Christian."
The natural outcome of a Docetic incarnation was a
Docetic morality; righteousness which consisted in the
contemplation of high ideals (24.6 37); love which paid its
debt with fine sentiments and goodly words (317. 18) The
actual meaning of Docetism could not be more truly
touched than by the pathetic question of Ignatius, ei] de>,
w!sper tine>j a@qeoi o@ntej... le<gousin, to> dokei?n peponqe<nai
au]to>n, au]toi> to> dokei?n o@ntej, e@gw ti< de<demai;1
And here again, the significance which
the Incarnation is of undiminished validity for modern
thought. That God is Love has for us the force of an
axiom; it has become part of ourselves. If there be a
God, a Being who is supremely good, He must be Love;
for
"A loving worm within his clod
Were more divine than a loveless God
Amid his worlds."
It may seem as if there were no intuition of the human
spirit more self-evidencing than this; nor is there, when
once it is seen. But, as a matter of history, the conviction,
the idea, that God is Love, has been generated by nothing
else than belief in Jesus Christ as Incarnate God, Who
laid down His life for man's redemption. In the pre-
Christian and non-Christian religions every quality, good
and bad, has been deified except self-sacrificing Love.
Power, beauty, fecundity, warlike courage, knowledge,
industry and art, wisdom, justice, benevolence and mercy—
the apotheosis of all these has been achieved by the
human soul. The one deity awanting to the world's
1 Ad Trail. 10: ''But if, as certain godless men aver, His suffering was
only in semblance, themselves being only a semblance, why, then, am I bound
with this chain?"
The Doctrine of Christ 105
pantheon is the God Who is Love. And if we inquire
what, in the world of actual fact, corresponds to this
conviction that God is Love, we to-day are still shut up to
the answer, "Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but
that God loved us, and sent His Son as a propitiation for
our sins." With that as the key to the interpretation of
the facts of life, we are able to read in them much that
testifies, and are sure that, in the light of God's completed
purpose, we shall find in them nothing that does not testify,
that the universe is created and conducted by the Love
of the Heavenly Father Who is revealed in Christ. Yet,
even to those who are most jealous for the vindication of
this, both nature and history are full of ugly and intractable
facts. And, even at their clearest, the pages of natural
revelation can give evidence for nothing more than a wise
benevolence, a bloodless and uncostly love. If we ask
what God has ever done for His creatures that it cost Him
anything to do, the one fact which embodies the full and
unambiguous revelation of this is that "the Father sent the
Son to be the Saviour of the world" (414). Meanwhile,
it may seem as if the Christian ethic could claim to exist
in its own right, though severed from its historical origin
and living root. The atmosphere is full of diffused light,
and it may seem as if we might do without the sun. But
if the history of thought has shown that, with the denial of
the Incarnation, the Christian conception of the Being of
God is gradually dissipated, into the mists of Agnosticism,
it begins also to appear that Christian ethics have no
securer tenure. To Positivism, with the enthusiasm of
humanity as its sole religion, succeeds neo-paganism, with
the enthusiasm of self as the one true faith and royal
law. Like the giant of mythology who proved invincible
only when reinvigorated by contact with mother-earth, the
Christian ethic, the ethic whose supreme principle is Love,
maintains and renews its conquering energy only as it
106 The First Epistle of
derives this afresh from Him who was historically its
origin, and is for ever the living source of its inspiration.
(c) But, again, the Epistle exhibits the vital significance
of the Incarnation for Redemption. The primary purpose
of the Incarnation is not to reveal God's Love, but to
accomplish man's salvation. God has sent His Son to be
the Saviour of the World (414); to be the Propitiation for
our sins (410). It is the same truth that underlies the
more cryptic utterance of 56: "This is He that came by
water and blood; not by the water only, but by the
water and by the blood." The reference to the Cerinthian
heresy has been already explained; but the peculiar
phraseology in which Christ's Passion is here insisted upon,
the repeated assertion that He came by blood,—not by
water only,—reveals the motive of
hatred of that heresy. For it is "the blood of Jesus, His
Son, that cleanseth us from all sin" (16). "Not by water
only." The tragedy of human sin demanded a tragic
salvation. And the Apostle's whole-hearted denunciation
of the Docetic Christology was due to the fact that it
not only dissolved Christ, but took away from men their
Redeemer.
(d) But the final necessity of the Incarnation, for St.
John, is that in it is grounded the only possibility for man
of participation in the Divine Life, "He that hath the
Son hath Life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not
Life" (512). When Christ came into the world, the most
stupendous of all events took place. The Eternal Life,
the Life that the Word possessed from the Beginning
in relation to the Father (12) was embodied in humanity,
and became a fountain of regenerative power to "as many
as received Him" (John 112 316). This is the ultimate
significance of the Incarnation and the core of the
Johannine Gospel,—a Christ who has power to place
1 An ancient reading in 43.
The Doctrine of Christ 107
Himself in a unique vital relation to men, to pour into
their defilement His purity, into their weakness His
strength, into their deadness His own spiritual vitality;
reproducing in them His own character and experiences, as
the vine reproduces itself in the branches doing that, the
ineffable mystery of which is only expressed, not explained,
when we say that He is our "Life" (John 1419.20 155).
And to deny the truth of the personal Incarnation,
to dissolve the integrity of the Divine-human nature of
Jesus Christ, is either, on the one side, to deny that human
nature is capax Dei, or, on the other side, that it is the life
of God that flows into humanity in Jesus Christ; on either
supposition, to annul the possibility of that communication
of the Divine Life to man on which salvation essentially
consists. And here also the perspicacity with which the
writer of the Epistle discerns the logical and practical
issue is very notable. The history of theology, so far as
I am aware, offers no instance in which the truth of the
Incarnation has been rejected and a doctrine of Atonement
or Regeneration, in anything approaching to the Johannine
sense, has been retained.
Such are the practical aspects of the fact of Incarna-
tion which the Epistle brings out. The full impersonation
of the Divine Life, the perfect effulgence of the Divine
Light, the supreme gift of the Divine Love, is this--"Jesus
Christ come in the flesh."
CHAPTER VII.
THE WITNESSES TO THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST.
THE doctrinal centre in the Epistle is, as we have seen in
the preceding chapter, the Incarnation. The channel by
which the full revelation of God and the gift of Eternal
Life are conveyed to, mankind is Jesus, the Son of God,
the Christ "come in the flesh." Our present task is to
examine the teaching of the Epistle as to the grounds on
which this belief rests.
The correlative, intellectually, of Belief is "witness"
(marturi<a, marturei?n 12 414 56. 7. 9. 10. 11); and although the
apologetic aim of the Epistle is fully disclosed only in
the middle of the second chapter, the note of "witness"
struck in the opening verses shows that this was in the
writer's mind from the first.
The Apostolic Gospel, 11-3
"That1 which was from the beginning, that which we
have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that
which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the
Word of Life (and the Life was manifested, and we have
seen, and announce unto you the Life, the Eternal Life,
which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us);
that which we have seen and heard announce we unto you
also, that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our
fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ."
Here the Epistle opens, as it likewise closes, in a strain
1 For exegetical details, V. supra, pp. 43 sqq., and Notes, in loc..
The Witnesses to the Doctrine of Christ 109
of triumph. The complex periodic structure, unique1 in the
Johannine writings, expresses with stately rhetorical effect
the writer's consciousness of the unequalled sublimity of
his theme, and his exultation in the double apostolic
privilege of having himself seen and believed, and of
bearing witness to those who have not seen, that they also
may have the blessedness of believing (John 2029).
At first he plainly declares his personal acquaintance2
with the facts of the Incarnate Life. He is not, like St.
Luke, a sedulous investigator and recorder of the facts
as certified by the most trustworthy witnesses; but is
himself such a witness. His knowledge is derived from
detailed and intimate observation;3 and the testimony,
certified by every faculty given to man as a criterion of
objective reality, is that He who was from the Beginning
and He who, in His earthly manifestation, lived and died
and rose4 again is (as against the Docetic Conception) the
same Person, embodied in the same form of actual human
existence. But before completing the statement that all
that has been outlined in 11 is the theme of apostolic
testimony, the writer parenthetically anticipates the
question how such testimony comes to be possible.
Human sense has been made the medium of the know-
ledge of the eternal Divine Life. For "the Life was
manifested, and we have seen and bear witness, and
announce5 unto you the Life, the Eternal Life which was
1 The only parallel is the introduction to the washing of the disciples' feet
(John 131-3). where the motive is obviously the same as here.
2 v. supra., pp. 46 sqq.
3 The evidence is stated on an ascending scale—hearing, sight, touch.
Herodotus had long ago made the observation, w#ta ga>r tugxa<nei a]nqrw<poisi
e]o<nta a]pisto<tera o]falmw?n, i. 8.
4 o{ ai[ xei?rej h[mw?n e]yhla<fhsan—a verbal reminiscence of Christ's words to
the disciples after the Resurrection.
5 The fine logical precision with which the words are ordered is noticeable,
a]pagge<llomen, emphasising the fact of communication; marturou?men, the truth,
personally vouched for, of the communication made; e[wra<kamen, the experience
on the strength of which the voucher is given.
110 The First Epistle of
toward the Father and was manifested to us." And
then in the following verse, which resumes and completes
there is repeated insistence upon the fact that the
testimony borne is based upon personal and first-hand
knowledge, "What we have seen and heard we announce
also unto you,1 that ye also may have fellowship with
us." Having such a message to deliver he cannot re-
frain. His rejoicing in the Truth is such that he must
impart it to others also. For this Truth is the medium
of Christian fellowship;2 nay, as he exultingly reminds
himself and his readers, it is the medium not only of
fellowship between Christians, but of their fellowship
with God—to have "fellowship with us" is to have
"fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus
Christ."
Having himself been brought into living fellowship
with God through his knowledge of the facts in which
the Son of God has been revealed to men, and the
Father in the Son, he would now, by making them full
partners in his knowledge, open to them the same door
of entrance into the same fulness of Divine Fellowship."
"As every stream of water makes for the sea, every rill
of truth makes for fellowship of souls." But the crowning
joy of this communication is that by means of it men
are brought unto God and into the possession of Divine
Life.
The apostolic "witness" thus furnishes the permanent
content, the fact-material, of Christian belief. It is this--
"the word which ye heard from the beginning" (224)--
1 "Unto you also" (kai> u[mi?n) implies a contrast, not between former and
present recipients of the message, but between the Apostle himself and his readers.
2 Upon the exegetical intricacies of the verse see Notes, in loc.
It would be impossible to find a more spontaneous expression than these
words of the missionary spirit that is inherent in all truth, but, above all, in
Christian truth. The same Christlike and apostolic feeling breaks out afresh in
the verse that follows: "And these things write we unto you, that our joy may
be fulfilled." v. supra, p. 42, note 2.
The Witnesses to the Doctrine of Christ 111
that reveals the Son of God in the reality of the Incarnate
Life. It is, therefore, the touchstone of truth, the Church's
safeguard against all the freaks of human fancy and the
vagaries of speculation, "If it abide in you, ye also shall
abide in the Son and in the Father" (2241). With un-
erring insight
the Apostolic Gospel, and assigns its permanent function
in the Church. As at the close of the Apostolic era
the watchword of true advance is found to be "back
to Christ," so always Christ is the Alpha and the Omega,
the historical manifestation of the Word of Life, at once
the source and the test of all fruitful developments in
theology or ethics. Whatever rights criticism may claim
with respect to the literary medium by which the Apostolic
Gospel has been transmitted, that Gospel has remained
and must remain the "umpire and test" of truth in all
emergencies, even as it is also the "good seed" of the
The Testimony of the Spirit.
The knowledge of the Divine Revelation given to the
world in Jesus Christ is derived ultimately from the
testimony of the Apostles and a few other contemporary
witnesses: and it is communicated by the same method
as that by which information is ordinarily diffused among
men: those who know tell it to those, who are ignorant.
But is the belief of those who "have not seen and yet
have believed" inferior in point of certitude to that of
the original witnesses? The Epistle assures its readers
that they are in no such position of inferiority. They
have the testimony and teaching of the Spirit.
In the first cycle of the Epistle the paragraph in which
this topic is introduced is 220-27.1 Having in the preceding
1 Regarding the exegetical difficulties of this passage, see Notes, in loc.
112 The First Epistle of
verses characterised the heretical teachers as the true anti-
christs,
stand fast in the Faith, prepares the ground for such ex-
hortation by reminding them of the living Witness they had
in themselves—the Spirit God had given them, who both
set the seal of immediate conviction upon the Truth itself
and enabled them unfailingly to distinguish it from all its
counterfeits (pa?n yeu?doj, 221).
And ye have an anointing (chrism) from the Holy
One,1 and ye know all things" (220). The word "chrism"2
(not the act of anointing, but that with which it is per-
formed) seems to be suggested here by the title "anti-
christs" which has been applied to the schismatics. They
were a]nti<xristoi, counterfeits of Christ. The Apostle's readers
had the true chrism, and, therefore, were able to detect
their falsity. On the other hand, the use of the word
without explanation assumes that it was familiar to both
writer and readers as denoting the abiding gift of the Holy
Ghost. Jesus is the "Anointed." It is He Who received
the true Divine Anointing, " with the Holy Ghost and with
power" (Acts 427 l038). And this anointing He received not
for Himself alone, but for all the members of His spiritual
Body. During His visible presence among men the
conditions of His earthly ministry precluded the full com-
munication of the gift. But when, having overcome the
sharpness of death, He ascended the throne of His
kingdom, the oil of His coronation in the Heavens flowed
down upon His people here on earth (Acts 233-36). The
precious ointment ran down to the skirts of the High
priest's garments (Ps. 1322). The result of this " anoint-
ing is that "ye know all things." The specific office of
the Spirit is to "guide into all the truth," to "take of Mine
and declare it" (John 1613.14)
1 “The Holy One," that is, Christ. v. supra, p. 90.
2 See special Note appended to this chapter.
The Witnesses to the Doctrine of Christ 113
This now leads the writer to reassert (212-14) that the
motive of his writing does not lie in the assumption of his
readers' ignorance. He has no positively new elements to
add to their Christian knowledge, "I write unto you, not
because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it,
and (know) that no lie is of the truth "(221). 1. . . 2 "And,
as for you, the anointing which ye received of Him abideth
in you, and ye need not that any one teach you: but as the
anointing from Him teacheth you concerning all things,
and is true, and is no lie, even as it taught you, ye abide in
Him" (227).3
The distinctive feature of this passage is that the
testimony of the Spirit is regarded as a "teaching." And
the question4 that immediately arises is as to the conception
of this "teaching" it implies. Examining this, we find, in the
first place, that it is not regarded as superseding the Word,
but as concurrent and co-operative with it. Their inter-
dependence is signified, according to the Writer's habitual
method, by alluding to them alternately (220. 21 the Spirit, 22
the Word, 226.27 the Spirit). Their teaching is the same in
1 See Notes, in loc.
2 On the verses here omitted, see Chapter VI
3 “In Him." Not in the "anointing," but in Christ. The purpose of the
Spirit's work, in all its aspects, is the believer's perfect and abiding union with
Christ.
4 In the parallel passage (324b–46) the action of the Spirit is charismatic and
the testimony is objective, being given in the inspired confession of Jesus as the
Christ come in the flesh (so also in 1 Cor. 1228.29 and Eph. 412.13). Is the
"teaching" here referred to also charismatic? Is it given to the Church
through inspired human utterance; or is it the subjective enlightening action of
the Spirit of truth upon the minds of all believers? The latter interpretation is
assumed without question be Protestant commentators ("das fromme Gemeinde-
bewusstsein,'' Holtzmann). The ether view is implied in Catholic expositions,
such as that of Estius (quoted by Huther), "Habetis episcopos et presbyteros
quorum cura ac studio vestrae ecclesiae satis instructae, sunt in iis quae pertinent
ad doctrina. Christianae veritatem.” This interpretation is much too definitely
ecclesiastical; but, in view of the parallel passages, and of all we know regard-
ing the place of inspired "prophets" and "teachers" in the
seems to me that the "anointing" is here to be regarded as charismatic, and the
"teaching" as given to the Church objectively, through those who were the
organs of a special Inspiration.
114 The First Epistle of
substance—Jesus is the Christ (222); and the result is the
same—abiding in Him ("If that which ye heard from
the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the
Son and in the Father" (221); and, again (227, "Even as
it taught you, ye abide in Him"). The teaching, more-
over, is continuous, shedding the light of truth upon all
subjects as they arise in experience (217 "The anointing
abideth in you . . . and teacheth you concerning all things").
But in another sense it was complete from the first (227
"even as it taught1 you"). When the Apostle's readers first
received the, gospel, the Spirit once for all led them to the
centre of all truth. In that first "teaching," that first
revelation to their faith of the Divine truth in Christ, lay
enfolded all that, with the growth of experience and re-
flection, might afterwards be unfolded. Nothing at variance
with it was admissible;