Conflict and Community in the Johannine Letters

Conflict and Community
in the Johannine Letters
DAVID RENSBERGER
Professor of New Testament
Interdenominational Theological Center
The three Johannine Letters present a number of very difficult prob­
lems regarding their authorship and historical background, as well as
many passages that are obscurely written and difficult to translate
and interpret. Nevertheless, they also have important insights to
offer regarding the nature of God, the meaning of the incarnation,
and the importance and the difficulty of Christian community as a
witness to and an expression of divine love.
τ»
^ L ^ or some of the shortest texts in the Bible, 1,2, and 3 John come well supplied
•
with literary, historical, and theological difficulties. Working at these problems
JLm
can be frustrating, since their solutions in many cases seem to elude us. Yet there
are rewards to be had, even though a number of puzzles will surely remain when we are done.1
GENRES AND
STRUCTURES
We may begin with the question of what exactly these documents are and how they are
put together. With 3 John there is no question: it is the purest example of the ordinary
ancient Greek personal letter form in the NT, though it lacks the usual greetings and stan­
dard closing salutation. Second John likewise seems to be a true letter, though closer to the
Pauline format than to an ordinary private letter. Indeed, the brevity of these letters, and
the seemingly private character of 3 John, worked to delay their acceptance into the NT
canon.2
*For more detail on all the matters discussed here, see my commentary, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John (ANTC; Nashville:
Abingdon, 1997), especially the Introduction, pp. 17-44.
2
On the history of the canonization of these texts, see J. Lieu, The Second and Third Epistles of John: History and
Background (Studies of the New Testament and Its World; Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1986), 5-36.
JULY 2 0 0 6
Interpretation 279
First John is something altogether different. It is not a letter, since it lacks all the formal
characteristics of an ancient letter, not only the opening and closing greetings but also the
names of the author and the recipient at the beginning. Scholars have suggested many possible genres for 1 John, such as essay, sermon, or church order, but none has really proven
satisfactory. Perhaps the most fruitful line of investigation has been in terms of ancient
rhetorical practice.3 In this light, 1 John resembles ancient demonstrative rhetoric, as an
attempt to persuade its readers to uphold the traditional values of the Johannine community by the use of common rhetorical techniques.
While 2 and 3 John generally follow familiar letter outlines, the structure of 1 John has
proven as difficult to identify as its genre. Many proposals have been offered, but none has
carried the day, and it may be best to recognize that the text simply does not have a clear
outline or pattern of development. There are certainly divisions in the text, and it is generally possible to mark off distinct units; but the divisions bear no evident hierarchical relation to each other. Indeed, it is conceivable that the very lack of structure is part of the
author's method. One of his fundamental points is the unity of right belief and right action
in the Christian life, and this unity may be expressed precisely in the unstructured combinations of themes that make up 1 John.
AUTHORSHIP, DATE, AND RELATION TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Questions about who wrote these texts and when they were written are inextricably
bound up with their relation to the Fourth Gospel and closely connected to the issues of
historical context to be discussed below.
Even the Letters' relations to each other are not obvious. Their canonical order is not
necessarily chronological. Like the letters of Paul, they are arranged basically by length; the
fact that 1 John was accepted into the canon before the others would also be a factor in its
appearing at the head of the group. First John and 2 John are so similar in subject that it
seems likely that they must also be close in date. (In my view, the proposal that 2 John is a
pseudepigraphical document based on both 1 John and 3 John is unlikely.4 Why go to so
much trouble to create so short a text?) Third John, however, may relate to some other situation entirely. Its language and ideas about church and mission may be more developed
than the others (and therefore later), or simply less characteristically Johannine (and so
either earlier or later).
3
D. F. Watson, "1 John 2:12-14 as Distributio, Conduplicatio, and Expolitio: A Rhetorical Understanding," JSNT
35 (1989): 97-110; D. E Watson, "Amplification Techniques in 1 John: The Interaction of Rhetorical Style and
Invention;7SNT51 (1993): 99-123.
4
R. Bultmann, The Johannine Epistles (Hermeneia; ed. R. W. Funk; trans. R. P. O'Hara with L. C. McGaughy and
R. W. Funk; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), 107-15.
280 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
The relation of these letters to the Gospel of John is a much-debated question. A
minority of scholars holds that one or all of the Johannine Letters came into existence
before the Fourth Gospel. Kenneth Grayston, for example, has suggested that 1 John's
eschatology and theology of atonement are more "primitive" than the ideas found in the
Gospel.5 Georg Strecker understood 2 John 7, which literally speaks of "Christ coming in
theflesh,"to refer to a millenarian conception of the Second Coming, taking the present
tense participle to have a future reference. Strecker therefore held that this theology stood
earlier in the history of the Johannine school than 1 John and the Gospel of John.6 Most
recently, Allen Dwight Callahan has also proposed that 3 John is actually the earliest of
these texts, presenting the "root conflict" at the beginning of the development that led eventually to 2 John, 1 John, and finally the Gospel.7
There is no question that the Johannine Letters contain both ideas and terminology
that are not typical of the Gospel of John but appear widely in the NT and other early
Christian literature, for example in the letters of Paul, the Gospel of Luke, Hebrews, and 2
Peter. The broad range of dates represented by these writings suggests that this evidence, or
a selection from it, cannot be a criterion for dating the Letters earlier than the Gospel.
Instead, 1 John (for which obviously there is the most evidence) may come from a time
when the once relatively isolated Johannine community was opening up to other Christian
and wider religious currents, which may have been one factor behind the conflict it apparently reflects. Callahan, for his part, does not really demonstrate his position, but simply
reads the texts assuming that it is correct. The results are often stimulating, but without argumentation they are hardly convincing with regard to the sequence of the texts' composition.8
It seems more probable, in fact, that the Gospel of John, in some form, existed prior to
the writing of any of the Johannine Letters. Both the language, especially of 1 John, and the
likely historical context, again especially of 1 and 2 John, can most plausibly be explained as
presupposing the Gospel. Moreover, an injunction such as "Let what you heard from the
beginning abide in you" (1 John 2:24) suggests that the writer is taking a retrospective view
of a tradition that has been in existence for some time. The date of the Gospel itself is far
from certain; it may be sometime in the 90's CE., or conceivably earlier than that. This might
suggest a date for 1 and 2 John around 100-110, but there is really no way of being certain.
Both 2 and 3 John have typical letter openings identifying their author. But rather than
a personal name, as was standard, we find there only "the Elder." Unfortunately, this tells us
very little. In the early church there were local groups of elders; but we never read elsewhere
of anyone simply designated "the Elder."9 What we read in the letters suggests a man in a
5
K. Grayston, The Johannine Epistles (New Century Bible Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 7-14.
G. Strecker, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1,2, and 3 John (Hermeneia; ed. H. Attridge; trans. L. M.
Maloney; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), xl-xlii, 232-36.
7
A. D. Callahan, A Love Supreme: A History of the Johannine Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005).
8
Callahan does not help his case by a preailection for weakly attested Greek textual variants (e.g., Love Supreme,
7,8 ["even the assembly itself"], 12-13).
9
Lieu, Second and Third John, 52-55.
6
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 281
position of respect and authority, who could speak of other Christians as his "children" (3
John 4), but whose authority was nonetheless subject to challenge. First John does not provide even this much information about its author. The similarity to what is found in 2 and
3 John in terms of language, ideas, and interests is enough to suggest that the author is the
same; in any case, 2 and 3 John are really too brief to provide sufficient evidence to establish a difference in authorship.
Thus it is likely, but cannot really be proven, that all three documents were written by
the same man. What then is the relation of that man to the author of the Fourth Gospel?
Christian tradition since the second century has identified the author of all these writings,
as well as the book of Revelation, as the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. But only
Revelation bears the name of its author, and it seems unlikely that the Gospel or any of the
Letters dates from the apostolic period. There is a great deal of similarity between the language and ideas of the Gospel and those of 1 John, which supports the traditional belief
that all four had the same author, whoever that may have been. Yet there are also a great
many differences, oftentimes subtle but on the whole not negligible. The obvious differences in genre and circumstances could account for some of these. On the whole, though, it
must be said that the author of 1 John seems less than fully successful at writing in the
Johannine style. Again and again when he attempts to rise to the heights of linguistic and
symbolic complexity that the Fourth Gospel so often attains, the result is simply a muddle,
and sometimes well-nigh incomprehensible. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, the author of the
Letters has managed to get his master's hat onto his head; but he cannot seem to keep it
from slipping down over his eyes every now and then.
There are also theological differences between the Gospel and the Letters regarding the
sacrificial nature of Jesus' death, his future coming, and his mediation between God and
Christian believers, so that overall I am not persuaded that the Fourth Gospel and the
Johannine Letters are the work of the same person. The close relationship that does exist
among the four, however, supports the idea that they all originated within the same community (or perhaps even "school") within early Christianity. The "we" of the prologue to 1
John is not likely that of the apostles or of eyewitnesses to Jesus, but of a group concerned
to pass on and revivify the testimony of thatfirstgeneration. It would be from within such
a circle and with such authority that the Elder wrote 1 John and the two small letters.
282 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
HISTORICAL CONTEXTS
If all these texts do come from within the same early Christian community, that already
tells us something about their historical context. To understand that context in greater
detail, we need to consider the possibility that the various texts reflect different stages in the
community's history. Although the church has included these documents among the
"catholic" or general epistles, it is nonetheless true that they are addressed to a specific set
(or sets) of conditions that need to be taken into account in order to understand them. The
most influential way in which those conditions have been spelled out has been that proposed by the late Raymond Brown.10 Whether or not one accepts all the details of Brown's
theory, it remains the most plausible general framework for understanding the Johannine
Letters both historically and theologically.
First John 2:18-27,4:1-6, and 2 John 7-11 criticize people whom the author calls
"antichrists," "deceivers," and "false prophets." It is said that they "went out from us" and
that they fail to confess that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God, or to confess "Jesus
Christ having come in flesh" (my translation). Such verses as 1 John 3:23,4:15, and 5:1-13
also lay great emphasis on right confession of Jesus. These same verses, however, along with
1 John 4:7-21 and 2 John 5-6 further stress the need for mutual love among believers.
These two documents, then, seem to have been occasioned by a crisis within the community involving a split of some kind and centering (in their author's view) on matters of
Christology and love. While it is possible to hold, as Judith Lieu does, that 1 John is not
addressed so much to the problem of a schism in the community as to the problems in
Johannine thought that caused the schism to occur,11 it remains true that the Elder addresses those problems as the schism has made them apparent.
Other passages add more detail. The issue of sin appears repeatedly in 1 John, treated
in a difficult and inconsistent fashion but clearly somehow essential to the point at issue,
particularly with regard to whether Christians can or cannot sin (1:5-2:11; 2:28-3:10;
5:16-18). The author's insistence on "testing the spirits" in order to discern what genuinely
comes from the Spirit of God (4:1-6), along with allusions to a divine anointing that
"teaches you about all things" in the context of insistence on right christological confession
(2:20-27; cf. 5:6-8), suggests that his opponents in the christological dispute claimed that
their teaching derived from the Holy Spirit—a claim difficult to substantiate but equally
difficult to refute.
10
R. E. Brown, The Epistles ofJohn (AB 30; Garden Citv, New York: Doubleday, 1982), 69-115.
J. M. Lieu, "'Authority to Become Children of God': À Study of 1 John," NovT 23 (1981): 210-28.
H
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 283
Brown's most important insight into this rupture was that it involved competing interpretations of the community's common Johannine heritage, particularly its high
Christology, as represented (for us at least, and most likely in some form for the community
itself) in the Fourth Gospel.12 Included in that heritage are the assertions that the Holy
Spirit "will teach you everything" and "will guide you into all the truth" (John 14:26; 16:13).
Though Brown held that the opponents would not have taught anything that could not be
justified out of the Gospel of John itself (and so would not, for instance, have been fullfledged docetists, denying the reality of Christ's flesh),13 it may well be that they took this
promise of doctrinal guidance from the Spirit so seriously that they were in fact willing to
go beyond the thinking of the Gospel—where after all Jesus had said, "I still have many
things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12). For the Elder, this placed
them in the position of one "who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond
it," and therefore "does not have God" (2 John 9). Thus the controversy behind 1 and 2
John is about theological change, including how much change is legitimate and how to tell
authentic from inauthentic theological development. In a sense, it is a controversy between
Spirit and tradition.
The references to Jesus' "coming in flesh" noted above point in the general direction of
Docetism as the problem that 1 and 2 John address. Docetism (the term derives from the
Greek verb dokeö meaning "to seem") was a second-century Christology that claimed Christ
only seemed to be a physical, mortal human being, but really was not one. Rooted in a
Hellenistic dualism that emphasized the value of the spiritual over against the weak or even
evil nature of the material and bodily world, it could not allow that spiritual salvation and
eternal life had been given through a physically ordinary man, or that a truly divine Savior
could have lived, and died, as a truly human being, body and all. Whether the Elder's opponents denied that Jesus' human body was real or only denied that it had a role in salvation,14
some dispute over his "flesh" seems to be at the core of the conflict. The Elder's insistence
on confession of Jesus as both Christ and Son of God may suggest that his opponents also
thought of "the Christ" as a divine being distinct from the man Jesus (perhaps believing
that his divine nature descended upon Jesus at his baptism and departed before his crucifixion; cf. 1 John 5:6-8 and second-century gnostics such as Cerinthus [Irenaeus, Adv. haer.
1.26.1] and Apoc. Pet. [NHC VII, 3:82,1-83,8). The opponents may not have been docetists
in the technical sense (or gnostics in any sense), but they seem to have been moving toward
Docetism. It is significant that the early docetists against whom Ignatius of Antioch argued
in some of his letters (Ign. Trail. 9-10; Smyrn. 1-7) may have been fairly close in both time
12
Brown, Epistles, 69-100.
Ibid., 72,76-7.
Ibid., 75-79.
13
14
284 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
and place to the circumstances of 1 and 2 John. According to Ignatius, those docetists were
not only deficient in their Christology, but also "they care nothing for love, nor for widow
or orphan, nor for the oppressed, nor for the imprisoned or the released, nor for the hungry or thirsty" (Ign. Smyrn. 6:2). This seems congruent with the way in which 1 and 2 John
stress the need for both right christological confession and mutual love (see especially 1
John 3:23; 4:9-16).
How did the Elder's opponents come to a christological position that at least bordered
on Docetism? The Gospel of John speaks of Jesus as the divine Logos become human flesh,
rejected by the world, a Christology and a dualism that apparently developed in the midst
of a conflict between Christians and other Jews within a local synagogue community. The
Christians' increasing emphasis on the divinity of Jesus was both a response to and a continuing irritant in this controversy. The ultimate outcome was the exit or expulsion of the
Christians from the synagogue.15 Over time, as this Christian community took on new
members who had not experienced that conflict, the Johannine dualism and stress on Jesus'
divinity, seen out of its original context, could easily have been interpreted in a one-sided
way, especially if some in the community held a more strictly dualistic worldview and took
seriously the promise of new teaching from the Holy Spirit. The merely human, physical life
and death of Jesus could be seen as soteriologically insignificant or even as an illusory mask
for the Christ, the purely divine Savior come from heaven. The salvation brought by this
Christ may have been conceived as entirely spiritual, a gift of eternal life through knowledge
of God with no real relevance for daily living. Indeed, if life in the transient material world
could be thought of as basically unreal, when seen from the perspective of eternal spirit,
then no deed could really be sinful, and caring for the material needs of others could be
considered irrelevant. Such an individualistic and spiritualized Christianity might have
been attractive enough to draw in not only members of the Johannine community, but also
non-Christians as well (cf. 1 John 4:5).
Without speculating further about the beliefs of the opponents (whose own explanation of their position we will never have), some such situation seems to have lain behind 1
and 2 John. Third John is an entirely different matter. It concerns hospitality—a strategically essential component of early Christian mission—and a conflict between the Elder and a
man named Diotrephes.16 The letter is written to a certain Gaius to urge him to continue to
show the hospitality for which he is known and to commend to such hospitality someone
named Demetrius as well as other unnamed missionary "brothers" (which might include
sisters as well; the NRSV regrettably translates this term as "friends" in 3 John 3, 5,10). None
15
See D. Rensberger, Johannine Faith and Liberating Community (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988); pp. 22-29
summarize this theory of John's historical context.
16
See A. J. Malherbe, "Hospitality and Inhospitality in the Church," Social Aspects of Early Christianity (2nd ed.;
Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 92-112.
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 285
of these persons is known from any other early Christian literature, and the nature and significance of the Elder's conflict with Diotrephes are very obscure. Clearly there was a power
struggle between the two men, but whether it was purely personal or related to other matters is unclear. There is nothing to suggest a connection with the controversy behind 1 and
2 John. None of the various proposals for interpreting the conflict in terms of ecclesiastical
hierarchy and authority, heresy, or doctrine can be proven.17 (The NRSV translation of ouk
epidechetai hèmas as "does not acknowledge our authority" in 3 John 9 is incorrect; the verb
simply means "welcome," "receive," or "accept," as in v. 10.)18 Hospitality and mission (and
the honor of the Elder) are the matters clearly at issue in the letter. In fact, the power relationships may have been ambiguous, due to the traditionally egalitarian nature of Johannine
Christianity. The Elder cannot force Diotrephes to accept his letters or emissaries, and
Diotrephes cannot force the Elder to desist from sending them; neither one has any authority that is beyond challenge. It is a battle of words and refusals, not of institutional positions,
precisely because this community seems not yet to have developed such positions.
THEOLOGICAL ISSUES
I noted above that the lack of structure in 1 John might be intentional, a means of
expressing its author's theological message about the unity of right belief and right action.
While we may tend to think of right Christology as the more fundamental issue, and ethics
asflowingfromit, it is not clear that the Elder saw the matter in this hierarchical way. Aside
from its (lack of) literary structure, 1 John demonstrates the unity of belief and action by
various means. There is, for instance, the implication in 3:23 that belief in Jesus and mutual
love are just one commandment. A more elaborate demonstration appears in 1 John
4:7-18. There, centering on the declaration (unique to 1 John) that God is love, we read
that this divine love was revealed in the sending of the Son of God to die for our sins, and
that God therefore abides in those who confess Jesus as the Son of God and love one another. Christological confession and mutual love are thus twin responses to God's prior act of
sacrificial love for humankind. Though the divine initiative has precedence over both of
them, neither of the responses has precedence over the other; indeed, for 1 John they are
really just one response.
Protestant theology in particular is prone, for good reasons, to give faith precedence
over action. But 1 John sees faith and action together as our response to God's initiative, the
one not rightly possible without the other. Eternal life is God's promise and gift (2:25;
17
See Rensberger, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, 27-29.
M. M. Mitchell, "'Diotrephes Does not Receive Us': The Lexicographical and Social Context of 3 John 9-10,"
751117(1998): 299-320.
18
286 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
5:11), not something we can acquire through correct doctrine or adequate works. Yet without our response of love and faith, we have not truly accepted the gift. Faith is recognizing
and trusting God's act of love for us (4:16); in the context of his dispute with the opponents, the Elder insists that this recognition only really takes place when the human Jesus is
acknowledged as the divine Christ and Son of God (2:22-24; 3:23; 4:2,14-15; 5:1, 5, 9-12; 2
John 3, 7, 9). It is his human, in-the-flesh life and death that reveal God's love and, moreover, form the pattern for our own love (3:16-18; 4:9-11). Without acknowledging his real
and salvine humanity, we miss the gift of divine life that is offered in it (1:2). Without loving one another, we fail to participate now in that divine life; for if God is love, we do not
have God's life unless we love one another (3:14-15).
The indispensable unity of incarnational belief and mutual love as the response by
which we accept God's free gift is 1 John's unique contribution to NT theology. For the
Elder, what believers have heard "from the beginning" is both the confession of Jesus as
Christ and Son of God (1 John 2:22-24) and the commandment of love for one another (1
John 2:7; 3:11; 2 John 5-6). In this conception, love is not law but gospel. The revelation in
Jesus Christ is not only that God is love, but also that God makes this love available to
human beings. The good news is that God offers us eternal life through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus and in the same act offers us the possibility of loving one another with that
same depth of self-giving love. Salvation consists not only in escape from death but also in
escape from fear and hatred, escape from obsession with our own desires into the life of
mutual love that is God's will for us (2:15-17; 4:17-18).
It is in this light that we must consider 1 John's sharp and sharply conflicting statements about sin and righteousness. The only specific ethical statements in 1 John have to
do with love or lack of love, and thus sin and righteousness must be considered not as independent categories but as subsets of the question of love. Unfortunately, this does nothing
to relieve the difficulty presented by the three passages where 1 John discusses Christians'
relationship to sin: 1:6-10; 3:4-9; 5:16-18. In the first of these, the Elder says that Jesus'
blood cleanses Christians from sin if they "walk in the light," but if they claim to be without
sin they deceive themselves and make God a liar. In the second passage, however, he writes
that Jesus was revealed to take away sin, so that "No one who abides in him sins
Those
who have been born of God do not sin, because God's seed abides in them; they cannot sin,
because they have been born of God." Thus on the one hand, Christians cannot truthfully
claim to be without sin; yet on the other, "they cannot sin"! The final passage directly juxtaposes these two assertions, first urging the readers to pray for fellow Christians who sin, but
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 287
then immediately going on to say that "those who are born of God do not sin."
Scholars have worked hard at resolving these contradictions without reaching any generally accepted solution. The idea that the present tenses in 3:4-9 are meant to imply that
Christians do not continue to sin (as in the Niv translation) seems mechanical and artificial
in itself and founders on the present tenses found in both 5:16 and 5:18. The notion that
different kinds of sin are meant in different passages simply lacks any clear supporting evidence in the text. It is conceivable that some of the statements about Christians' inability to
sin in 3:4-9 are quoted from the opponents, who may well have regarded themselves as too
"spiritual" for sin to be a factor in their lives, no matter what their actions were (hence the
rebuttal of claims not to "have sin" in 1:6-10). Yet the entire passage is oriented toward this
distinction between those who sin and those who do not, and there is not the slightest hint
of disagreement with the claim that "those who have been born of God do not sin."
We get some help from the author's statement about his purpose for discussing this
subject: "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin" (1 John 2:1). This pastoral and paraenetic intention might make it reasonable to affirm two things: we do sin;
and those who claim to be in a close relationship with God should live in a way that sustains that claim. The paradox with which 1 John presents us is to some extent the paradox
of the of Christian life. It is important to maintain both the ideal of a life lived authentically
in the presence of God and the assurance that the sins we do commit are not fatal to that life.
There seems to be a kind of perfectionism at work here, in both the Elder and the
opponents. For the former, however, the ideal of perfection is rooted in a theological understanding of God as love and in a conviction that this love was revealed in the life and death
of Jesus. This revelation offers human beings both the good news that a life of deepest love
is now available to them (this is what "not sinning" means in 1 John) and the equally good
news that the God "who is faithful and just," being love, "will forgive us our sins" (1 John
1:9). The death of Jesus is both our model of perfect love and the "atoning sacrifice" (2:1-2;
4:10) when we prove less than perfect in love. Hence 1 John can say that God's love,
demonstrated in sending the Son of God to be this sacrifice, reaches its goal (NRSV "is perfected") when we love one another (4:12).
This exhortation to "love one another? however, involves a restriction that cannot be
overlooked. This typically Johannine form of the love commandment (John 13:34-35;
15:12,17; 1 John 3:11,14,16, 23; 4:7,11-12; 2 John 5) refers to love within the community
of believers; indeed, in the Letters it may refer to love within the authentic community that
288 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
is in fellowship with the Elder. The sharp polemics of these letters inevitably leave one wondering if this is really what love looks like. Some understanding (if not justification) of this
restriction can be gained by recalling the community's history first of pressure from outside
then of schism within. Under such stresses, it is not surprising to find a focus on internal
love, expressed in concrete acts that work to create the unity that is needed in order for the
community to endure. Such love, moreover, done explicitly as imitation of both God and
the Son of God, enacted the Johannine theological claims. The community's mission of
bearing witness that God is love required that they make this love present in the world, even
if only within their own ranks.
SIGNIFICANCE
The significance of the Johannine Letters has to do not only with the matters that they
discuss, but also with the mode and manner of their discussion. All these texts relate to
conflicts in the church, and how they go about saying what they have to say may be almost
as important for our conflict-ridden time as their substance.
One aspect of the Letters that may furnish a negative example rather than a positive
one is their often harsh tone. One can hardly speak of "respectful disagreement" here. The
opponents are called "antichrists," "liars," "deceivers," and "false prophets" (1 John 2:18,22,
26; 4:1,3; 2 John 1:7), and the Elder urges his readers not to receive them or welcome them
(2 John 10; on this, see below). He also finds himself on the receiving end of such tactics (3
John 9-10). We do need to make allowances for the greater tolerance for sharp epithets in
ancient controversy.19 Even so, the Johannine Letters present an unhappy picture of how
church conflicts have all too often been conducted rather than a model for how that practice might be transformed.
It is interesting to observe that whatever the Elder's exact position in his community
may have been, he does not invoke any sort of hierarchical authority to enforce his wishes.
This is in stark contrast to the letters of Ignatius, perhaps written near the same time and
place and concerned at points with issues of Christology and love similar to those in 1 and
2 John, but filled with exhortations to "be subject to the bishop and the presbytery" (see, for
example, Ign. Eph. 2:2; 5:3; 6:1; Magn. 3; 6; 7; Trail. 2:1-2; 7; Phld. 7; Smyrn. 8). Studies of 3
John generally suggest that it comes from a time and place where such offices were just
beginning to be instituted (whatever stance scholars may think the Elder took in regard to
them), or indeed were yet unknown. In any case, the author of the Letters works by means
19
L. T. Johnson, "The New Testament's Anti-Jewish Slander and the Conventions of Ancient Polemic," JBL 108
(1989): 419-41.
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 289
of persuasion, not official authority, using (especially in the case of 1 John) common
rhetorical and paraenetic techniques to win the readers to his position or encourage them
to remain there. However much he may have been "the Elder" and may have thought of and
addressed the readers as his "children," in the end all were still brothers and sisters (forms of
adelphos occur nineteen times in the Johannine Letters), children of one Father. Ultimately,
it was the believing community itself that would have to exercise its judgment and carry out
the process of discernment that the author of the Letters seeks to stimulate and for which
he offers a series of criteria.20
For the fundamental problem in 1 and 2 John seems to have been how to verify the
authenticity of new teaching. The Elder's opponents evidently appealed to the Holy Spirit
as the authority for their teaching, in line with the Johannine understanding of the Spirit of
truth as the source of teaching and guidance after the departure of Jesus (John 14:25-26;
16:12-15). Convinced that their teaching was false, the Elder could not deny that all members of the community had an anointing that taught them what they needed to know, but
proposed now that spirits must be tested. The Spirit of God would not lead them into any
teaching that would deny the reality or saving significance of Jesus' humanity, but would
direct them to continue to "abide in him" and to let what they had "heard from the beginning" abide in them (2:20-27; 4:1-6). The Elder thus appeals to tradition as a check on doctrinal developments that were guided by the Spirit, according to their proponents. Indeed,
from 2 John 9 we get the impression that "abiding in the teaching of Christ" is diametrically
opposed to any sort of doctrinal "going forward" (NRSV "goes beyond it"; Greek proagbn).
This seems, then, to be a classic battle of conservative versus liberal, traditional versus
progressive, with one side working resolutely and devoutly to "contend for the faith that
was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 1:3 ), and the other convinced, in the famous
words of James Russell Lowell's hymn "Once to Every Man and Nation," that:
New occasions teach new duties,
Time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth.
I am not certain, however, that a facile reading in terms of liberal and conservative does
justice to these texts. For not only does the Elder never invoke the authority of office to enforce
conformity, he also never insists that tradition be followed simply because it is tradition.
Indeed, in Johannine terms the tradition itself is simply the authentic testimony of the
20
Lieu, Second and Third John, 143-54; J. Lieu, The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (New Testament Theology;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 70-1,105-10.
290 Interpretation
JULY 2 0 0 6
Spirit of truth.21 The author of the Letters defends incarnational Christology not just
because it is "what you heard from the beginning" (1 John 2:24), though that is part of his
appeal, but because it rightly expresses the nature of the God who is love. What is at stake,
in this author's view, is not the authority of tradition but the most fundamental theological
insight of Johannine Christianity: that God, out of love, entered fully into the human condition, risking and suffering death itself in order to bring life to human beings.
This is not an essentially conservative theological position. It radically challenged the
established religious cultures of its time, both Jewish and Greco-Roman, by insisting on the
freedom of God to act in a way utterly unanticipated by tradition, a way that upset not only
commonplace theological and philosophical assumptions but hierarchical social structures
as well.22 What is happening in 1 and 2 John is not so much a struggle against revolutionaries as a struggle within a revolution. Neither side questions that the way of God is contrary
to the way of the world (though the author tries to associate the opponents with the world
in 1 John 4:3-6). The battle is over how the revolution is to be conceived: in its original
terms as radical divine intervention in the world, or in a new way as radical divine opposition to the world. In a sense, it is a struggle over how to maintain the purity of the radical
Johannine way, whether by preserving the pure teaching "heard from the beginning" or by
purifying it still further from contamination by the flesh. The Elder is trying to prevent, not
the success of a revolution, but the diversion of a revolution onto a path that he fears may
cause it to fail.
One final matter relates to the mission activity visible in the Letters, especially in 2 and
3 John, where we encounter house-churches and traveling teachers and messengers like
those known elsewhere in the NT. This suggests that the Elder and his associates were
actively involved in the development of Christian communities, at least in their locale. One
of the main support strategies for this kind of work in the early church was hospitality, the
hosting of itinerant mission workers that provided them with a base from which to operate
and provisions for the next stage of their work when they traveled on. The seemingly harsh
injunction of 2 John 10-11, "Do not receive into the house or welcome anyone who comes
to you and does not bring this teaching; for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of
such a person," simply recognizes this reality, which also appears in the conflict with
Diotrephes in 3 John. Cutting off hospitality meant cutting off the resources needed for
opponents to disseminate their teaching. Both support and the withholding of support were
mission strategies, and 2 and 3 John offer significant insights into the possibilities and the dangers inherent in manipulating such strategies in the course of struggles over doctrine and power.
21
Rensberger, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, 133, with regard to 1 John 5:6-8.
D. Rensberger, "Sectarianism and Theological Interpretation in John," in "What is John?" 2: Literary and Social
Readings of the Fourth Gospel, SBLSymS 7 (ed. F. F. Segovia; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 143-45, 148-49, 152-55.
22
CATHOLIC EPISTLES
Interpretation 291
Whether the Johannine mission activity included the evangelizing of outsiders is not
clear. First John 4:5 ("the world listens to them") may suggest that the Elder's opponents
engaged in this kind of mission. In that light, the dispute reflected in 1 and 2 John may be
viewed in terms of the necessity and limitations of the inculturation of the gospel in the
course of Christian mission. In fact, this is true of other controversies reflected in the NT,
most notably in 1 and 2 Corinthians. As the early church moved beyond the boundaries of
Judaism (itself a polyglot subculture of Greco-Roman Hellenism, with various subcultures
of its own), it found itself "translating" its message in various ways into the cultural "languages" it encountered. Behind 1 John 4:1-6 may lurk conflicting approaches to this task.
The opponents sought to express the good news of eternal life in the terms of Hellenistic
dualism, making sense of salvation as redemption from the flesh, not in the flesh. For the
author of 1 John, this was too great a compromise and meant the surrender of the essential
meaning of the gospel: the depth of the divine love and sacrifice, and the possibility of a
divinely ordered life within the circumstances of the human condition. Observing how the
author works at crafting this argument and persuading his readers to remain faithful to
what he sees as the core of Christian faith and life may provide inspiration for those who
wrestle with the relationship between Christianity and culture in many places around the
globe today—including North America.
^ s
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