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
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