JOHN, THE EPISTLES OF. Three writings appear as such in the New Testament, but none answers exactly to the description, for the so-called "First Epistle" is an address or pas toral letter in epistolary form, in reality a homily, whilst the two smaller "epistles" are brief notes or letters. The first consists of a series of meditations upon some central themes of the faith, which the writer felt to be endangered ; it is not so marked a "letter" as, e.g., the addresses to the seven churches in Rev. ii.—iii. The second "epistle" is indeed addressed to some Christian corn munity, but it is so brief that it may almost be termed a letter. As for the third, it is a private letter in the strict sense of the term, even more private than Philemon (q.v.).
I. The homily or manifesto which is called "The First Epistle of John" did not arise from any special occasion. The author felt impelled to counteract (i. 4) a tendency in the Church which threatened, in his view, both theology and ethics, but there are no indications of where or how the movement worked. No name is mentioned, and there is no indication or watermark of date. All we overhear are some catchwords of the people who were re sponsible for the movement in question. They claimed to have fellowship with God (i. 6f), for example, and at the same time to be free from sin; "We are not guilty," "We have not sinned." They claimed to "know God" (ii. 4f) and to "abide in God," but this claim was accompanied by uncharitable feelings towards other Christians. Apparently they distinguished between the his torical Jesus and the Christ (ii. 22f), depreciating the incarnation (iv. 2f) in the interests of a mystical illumination or a spiritual religion. Against such teachers the writer protests that the real fellowship with God involves a nexus with the historical revelation in Jesus (i. 1 f), and that, although the errorists had apparently withdrawn from the Church (ii. 19), the evil they had done required to be resisted, i.e., the false, fascinating, "knowledge," which in speculative guise undermined the historical basis of the gospel. "Fellowship with God," implying fellowship with Chris tians, is the keynote of the homily, and the writer plays on various melodies suggested by the keynote. After describing the fellow ship as his subject (i. if) he proceeds to mention its tests and conditions, primarily the sense of sin (i. 5f), involving a sense of the need of forgiveness through Jesus Christ, and also obedience to the supreme law of brotherly love, which is called the true light of life. Then the dangers of this fellowship are taken up
(ii. 18f) under the category of truth and falsehood, belief in the incarnate Christ being the test of Christian truth. The charac teristics of the fellowship are once more discussed (iii. if), as sinlessness, due to regeneration, and brotherly love, the latter bulking so largely in the writer's mind that he goes into three of its features, confidence towards God (iii. 13f), moral discern ment (iv. if), and assurance of union with the God of love (iv. 7f), all these being bound up with belief in Jesus as the Christ (v. I f). A brief epilogue (v. 13-21) sums up the certain ties of the Christian knowledge on which any fellowship rests.
It is needless to attempt to identify the tendency attacked in the epistle with any one form of contemporary thought, such as Cerinthianism. The writer seeks to put his readers on their guard against a spirit of the age which assumed a variety of forms but which fundamentally was characterized by an ultra-spiritualism. In the background we can detect the gnostic or semi-docetic view that the divine power or Christ did not really identify itself with the human Jesus, as though the spiritual God was too fine to come into contact with the flesh or matter; if this divine aeon or Christ withdrew from Jesus before the passion and death, as Cerinthus seems to have taught, entering Jesus only at baptism and leaving Him before the Cross, the point of iv. 2f and v. 5f becomes clearer. Again, the claims of the illuminati involved a superior knowledge of God, which led to a disparagement of or dinary Christians; perhaps too the overstrained spiritualism led to an antinomianism, by its indifference to sins of the flesh. At any rate it is plain that the errorists failed to recognise that brotherly love was the cardinal law of God for human fellow ship, either because they adhered to the Old Testament law or because they denied the redeeming love of God in the Cross, from which, the writer contends, true Christian love flowed. But the teaching of the manifesto is positive. The writer is seeking to recall his hearers to the original faith of the gospel, to belief and love ; it is not an exposure of error which he offers so much as an exposition of the Christian standing.