JOHN, THE FIRST EPISTLE OF. John, the son of Zebedee, would seem to have earned the title " the disciple whom Jesus loved " (John xix. 26) in the life time of his Master. This would indicate that he was in closest sympathy with Jesus. And the importance of loving Jesus with a perfect love, and of being loved by him in return, would naturally impress itself upon him with great force. We are told in the Gospel of John that the disciple whom Jesus loved was present at the crucifixion. We are told, moreover, that after the cruci fixion one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, whereupon there came out blood and water. Now the First Epistle of John dwells much upon the idea of divine love. In chapter iv. vs. 16 we read : " And we know and have believed the love which God path in us. God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him." And the same epistle says of Jesus : " This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood." These facts make it psychologically probable that John, the son of Zebedee, was really the author of the First Epistle of John. Psychological con siderations suggest that he was also the John who wrote the Fourth Gospel (see JOHN, THE GOSPEL OF). The Epistle is probably quoted by Polycarp, and, according to Eusebius, it was made use of by Papias. It is quoted
as the work of John by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen. It appears as his work in the Muratorian Canon. It cannot be established that the false teaching attacked in the epistle is of the nature of a somewhat developed form of Gnosticism. If any particular heresies are attacked •they are nothing more than doctrines of a Docetic tendency, It has to be borne in mind that before heresies arise as schools of thought, the ideas which they represent have suggested them selves to many individual minds. Moreover, a writer who is thoughtful and far-sighted, long forsees the lines along which arguments or thoughts opposed to his own may develop. He anticipates them without supposing that he is attacking a particular heresy. The Epistle, like the Gospel, has penetrated to the real kernel of the teaching of Jesus. As Currie Martin says, it " is full of the most beautiful thoughts exquisitely expressed, and as a practical treatise upon the love of God as finding its truest expression in the love of our fellow men, ranks alongside Paul's great teaching on the same subject in I. Cor. xiii." See P. W. Schmiedel, The Johannine Writings, 190S; G. Currie Martin; Arthur S. Peake, Intr.