The Epistles of John. Samuel M. Ngewa
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2014: 31). While this may prove more that the Epistles of John were known to Polycarp than that John wrote them, it does at least weaken one of the arguments used to deny Johannine authorship, that is, they were written after John had died. For Polycarp to have quoted it as authority, the gap between when it was written and when he could have quoted it need to be long enough for its authority to have been established.
9. While Papias’s witness, quoted by Eusebius (Eccl. Hist. 3.39), is center of the debate as to whether Papias’s use of “Lord’s disciple” and “elder” have the same person in view or two persons (John the apostle and his follower), the ambiguity is not sufficient basis to dismiss the view that the two refer to the same person, namely John the apostle (see Carson 1991: 69–70). It is within good judgment to view John the apostle as the same person mentioned twice (as an apostle and then as a living witness), with the first mention placing him alongside Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, and Matthew (fellow apostles) while the second mention (using the phrase “John the elder”) places him alongside Aristion. Also see Keener 2003: 95–98.
10. Of the several places where Irenaeus quotes from 1 John in his work, “Against Heresies,” 3.16.5, is a clear witness for he attributes his quote from 1 John 2:18–22 to Saint John.
11. Others include Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertulian (see Guthrie 1970: 864–65). Schnackenburg says, “The tradition of the early church since the time of Irenaeus (d. 202 CE) and Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 211) ascribes both GJohn and 1 John unequivocally to John the apostle, the son of Zebedee” (1992: 40–41). See also Yarbrough 2008: 5.
12. The argument that has been most influential to those who deny Johannine authorship is the assumption that beliefs go through a process of thesis, antithesis, and then synthesis (as advocated by F. C. Baur in the nineteenth century) with John belonging to the synthesis stage and therefore written later than first century AD. Without going into details (for that will not serve any purpose here) the basis of this argument is that there is no revelation; all beliefs take the process of thought development. Non Johannine authorship, in this case, then becomes an assumption (John belongs to synthesis stage) based on another assumption (there is no revelation, but only development of beliefs). That is not sufficient ground to make us doubt the witness of the church fathers.
13. See for example, deSilva 2004: 452–54. Drawing from the different usage of shared vocabularies and such other observations, deSilva says, “Differences in thought and emphasis, which suggest at least a very different situation, also tend to point to different authors” (2004: 453). Brown also, working with a Johannine community view says, “We have in the Gospel and Epistles traces of development within a particular Christian community over several decades” (1997: 404).
14. Brown also assigns to 1 John a date later than the Gospel but from a different perspective. He works with the assumption of a Johannine School with at least four stages, “the beloved disciple (who was the source of the tradition), the evangelist, the presbyter of the Epistles, and the redactor of the Gospel” (Brown 1988: 106). In the fuller commentary he says, “Most probably I John was written not only after GJohn but after an interval long enough for a debate to have arisen about the implications of GJohn and for a schism to have taken place. Recognizing the approximations, if one dates the evangelist’s final work (i.e., GJohn without the redactor’s additions) to ca. AD 90, I John may feasibly be dated to ca. 100” (Brown 1982: 101).
15. See Ngewa 2003: 430. When the alternative position that the writings of John do not all need to be attributed to John but to a Johannine school or community is accepted, the date of one (for example, the Gospel) does not need to be the same time as the other. Those who assume a Johannine community argue that John had disciples who so much took after him that they also thought and expressed themselves like their master. Such scholars see the similarities between the Gospel and the epistles within this context of master-follower influence. The position adopted here, however, is that the similarities exist because the Gospel and the epistles had the same author.
16. Jobes 2014: 29.
17. Yarbrough 2008: 17.
18. Lieu 2008: 101.
19. Lieu 2008: 102.
20. The context is not very clear. Demetrius may have been someone whose company Gaius needs to keep over against Diotrephes who is in the wrong or he could have been someone Gaius needs to lend a helping hand to. In any case, he is a third and important character in 3 John. See fuller discussion in the commentary.
21. Jobes 2014: 27.
22. deSilva (2004: 452), who views the three epistles as written about the same time but to different audiences, relates 1 John to “the most approximate audiences of the author’s circle, seeking to insulate them against the secessionists’ position and consolidate their allegiance in the wake of the schism”; 2 John to “a more distant house church (or perhaps a set of churches) to warn them about secessionist missionaries, shaping the Christians’ perception of those missionaries in advance of their coming to assure their rejection”; and 3 John to “a locale where one church leader has blocked the author’s envoy from receiving hospitality,” seeking to “secure hospitality for the author’s missionaries.”
23. Chapter and verse divisions are credited to Stephen Langton of the thirteenth century and Robert Estienne of the sixteenth century, respectively (Finegan 1974: 34).
24. Kummel 1975: 437.
25. Smalley 1984: xxxiii.
26. Culy 2004: xiii.
1 John
Unlike most Pauline epistles where we have a clear separation of doctrine (the indicative) from the practice (the imperative), with the latter based on the former, John’s structure does not separate the two so neatly. In any case, his exhortation on practical matters does not lack theological foundation. This will become clear as we note how John lays before his readers as bases for their action the nature of God as light and love, with Christ exercising love at the highest level possible. The outline, therefore (see above), is governed more by the content of the different passages of the epistles than some artificial reorganization of the material to come up with an outline that separates doctrine from practice.
Reliable Testimony and Its Goal (1:1–4)
(1:1) What was in existence from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands touched, concerning the word of life (2) and the life was revealed, and we have seen and bear witness and announce to you the life which is eternal, which was with the Father and was revealed to us (3) what we have seen and we have heard, we announce to you also, in order that