Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. John Part 4

t?? ?e?asa? ????

? ??? ??e?e ????

?????? t?te t??? da???s??.

"Which with her tears, then pure, Wetted the feet the sea-depth wetted not."

(_Spicil. Solesmen._ Edidit T. B. Pitra, _S. Roma.n.u.s_, xvi. 13, _Cant.

de Pa.s.sione._ 120.)

[42] 1 John i. 2. The Life with the Father = John i. 1, 14. The Life manifested = John i. 14 to end.

[43] The A.V. (1 John v. 6-12) obscures this by a too great sensitiveness to monotony. The language of the verses is varied unfortunately by "bear record" (ver. 7), "hath testified" (ver. 9), "believeth not the record" (ver. 10), "this is the record" (ver. 11).

[44] 1 John ii. 2-29, iii. 7, iv. 3, v. 20.

[45] John xv. 26.

[46] John xiv., xv., xvi., Cf. vii. 39. The witness of the Spirit in the Apostolic ministry will be found John xx. 22.

[47] John i. 19.

[48] John i. 16, 31, 33.

[49] John ii. 9, iv. 46.

[50] John iii. 5.

[51] John iv. 5, 7, 11, 12, v. 1, 8, vi. 19, vii. 35, 37, ix. 7, xiii.

1, 14, xix. 34, xxi. 1, 8. In the other great Johannic book water is constantly mentioned. Apoc. vii. 7, xiv. 7, xvi. 5, xxi. 6, xxii. 1, xxii. 17. (Cf. the t? ?d??, Acts x. 47.)

[52] John i. 19, 29, 32, 34, 35, 36, 41, 45, 47, xix. 27.

[53] John xv. 27.

[54] John iii. 2. The Baptist's final witness (iii. 25, 33, iv. 39, 42, v. 15, vi. 68, 69, vii. 46, xix. 4, 6). Note, too, the accentuation of the idea of _witness_ (John v. 31, 39). It is to be regretted that the R.V. also has sometimes obscured this important term by subst.i.tuting a different English word, _e.g._, "the word of the woman who _testified_" (John iv. 39).

[55] John viii. 18, xii. 28.

[56] Ibid. viii. 17, 18.

[57] Ibid. xv. 26.

[58] Ibid. v. 39, 46, xix. 35, 36, 37.

[59] Ibid. v. 36.

[60] This sixth witness (1 John v. 10) exactly answers to John xx. 30, 31.

[61] ? p?ste??? e?? t?? ????, ?t? (v. 10). The construction is different in the words which immediately follow (? ? p?ste??? t? ?e?), not even giving Him credence, not _believing Him_, much less _believing on Him_.

[62] The view here advocated of the relation of the Epistle to the Gospel of St. John, and of the brief but complete a.n.a.lytical synopsis in the opening words of the Epistle, appears to us to represent the earliest known interpretation as given by the author of the famous fragment of the Muratorian Canon, the first catalogue of the books of the N. T. (written between the middle and close of the second century). After his statement of the circ.u.mstances which led to the composition of the fourth Gospel, and an a.s.sertion of the perfect internal unity of the Evangelical narratives, the author of the fragment proceeds. "What wonder then if John brings forward each matter, point by point, with such consecutive order (tam constanter singula), even in his Epistles saying, when he comes to write in his own person (dicens in semetipso), 'what we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have we written.' For thus, in orderly arrangement and consecutive language he professes himself not only an eye-witness, but a hearer, and yet further a writer of the wonderful things of the Lord." [So we understand the writer. "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium Domini, per ordinem profitetur."

The fragment, with copious annotations, may be found in _Reliquae Sacrae_, Routh, Tom. i., 394, 434.]

[63] For whatever reason, four cla.s.sical terms (if we may so call them) of the Christian religion are excluded, or nearly excluded, from the Gospel of St. John, and from its companion doc.u.ment. _Church_, _gospel_, _repentance_, occur nowhere. _Grace_ only once (John i. 14; see, however, 2 John 3; Apoc. i. 4; xxii. 21), _faith_ as a substantive only once. (1 John v. 4, but in Apoc. ii. 13-19; xiii. 10; xiv. 123.)

[64] ?? de ???. John xiii. 30.

[65] John xix. 5.

[66] Canon. Murator. (apud Routh., _Reliq. Sacrae_, Tom. i., 394).

[67] e? t?p? ?s??? ?e??e?? ?atapa?s??.

[68] This pa.s.sage is translated from the Greek text of the ma.n.u.script of Patmos, attributed to Prochorus, as given by M. Guerin.

(_Description de l'Isle de Patmos_, pp. 25-29.)

DISCOURSE III.

_THE POLEMICAL ELEMENT IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. JOHN._

"Dum Magistri super pectus Fontem haurit intellects Et doctrinae flumina, Fiunt, ipso situ loci, Verbo fides, auris voci, Mens Deo contermina.

"Unde mentis per excessus, Carnis, senss super gressus, _Errorumque nubila_, Contra veri solis lumen Visum cordis et ac.u.men Figit velut aquila."

_Adam of St. Victor_, Seq. x.x.xii.

"Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of G.o.d. Every spirit that confesseth not [that] Jesus Christ [is come in the flesh] is not of G.o.d."--1 JOHN iv. 2, 3.

A discussion (however far from technical completeness) of the polemical element in St. John's Epistle, probably seems likely to be dest.i.tute of interest or of instruction, except to ecclesiastical or philosophical antiquarians. Those who believe the Epistle to be a _divine_ book must, however, take a different view of the matter. St.

John was not merely dealing with forms of human error which were local and fortuitous. In refuting _them_ he was enunciating principles of universal import, of almost illimitable application. Let us pa.s.s by those obscure sects, those subtle curiosities of error, which the diligence of minute research has excavated from the ma.s.ses of erudition under which they have been buried; which theologians, like other antiquarians, have sometimes labelled with names at once uncouth and imaginative. Let us fix our attention upon such broad and well-defined features of heresy as credible witnesses have indelibly fixed upon the contemporaneous heretical thought of Asia Minor; and we shall see not only a great precision in St. John's words, but a radiant image of truth, which is equally adapted to enlighten us in the peculiar dangers of our age.

Controversy is the condition under which all truth must be held, which is not in necessary subject-matter--which is not either mathematical or physical. In the case of the second, controversy is active, until the fact of the physical law is established beyond the possibility of rational discussion; until self-consistent thought can only think upon the postulate of its admission. Now in these departments all the argument is on one side. We are not in a state of suspended speculation, leaning neither to affirmation nor denial, which is _doubt_. We are not in the position of inclining either to one side or the other, by an almost impalpable overplus of evidence, which is _suspicion_; or by those additions to this slender stock, which convert suspicion into _opinion_. We are not merely yielding a strong adhesion to one side, while we must yet admit, to ourselves at least, that our knowledge is not perfect, nor absolutely manifest--which is the mental and moral position of _belief_. In necessary subject-matter, we know and see with that perfect intellectual vision for which controversy is impossible.[69]

The region of belief must therefore, in our present condition, be a region from which controversy cannot be excluded.

Religious controversialists may be divided into three cla.s.ses, for each of which we may find an emblem in the animal creation. The first are the nuisances, at times the numerous nuisances, of Churches. These controversialists delight in showing that the convictions of persons whom they happen to dislike, can, more or less plausibly, be pressed to unpopular conclusions. They are incessant fault-finders. Some of them, if they had an opportunity, might delight in finding the sun guilty in his daily worship of the many-coloured ritualism of the western clouds.

Controversialists of this cla.s.s, if minute are venomous, and capable of inflicting a degree of pain quite out of proportion to their strength.

Their emblem may be found somewhere in the range of "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." The second cla.s.s of controversialists is of a much higher nature. Their emblem is the hawk with his bright eye, with the forward throw of his pinions, his rushing flight along the woodland skirt, his unerring stroke. Such hawks of the Churches, whose delight is in pouncing upon fallacies, fulfil an important function. They rid us of tribes of mischievous winged errors.

The third cla.s.s of controversialists is that which embraces St. John supremely--such minds also as Augustine's in his loftiest and most inspired moments, such as those which have endowed the Church with the Nicene Creed. Of such the eagle is the emblem. Over the grosser atmosphere of earthly anger or imperfect motives, over the clouds of error, poised in the light of the True Sun, with the eagle's upward wing and the eagle's sunward eye, St. John looks upon the truth. He is indeed the eagle of the four Evangelists, the eagle of G.o.d. If the eagle could speak with our language, his style would have something of the purity of the sky and of the brightness of the light. He would warn his nestlings against losing their way in the banks of clouds that lie below him so far. At times he might show that there is a danger or an error whose position he might indicate by the sweep of his wing, or by descending for a moment to strike.

There are then _polemics_ in the Epistle and in the Gospel of St.

John. But we refuse to hunt down some obscure heresy in every sentence. It will be enough to indicate the master heresy of Asia Minor, to which St. John undoubtedly refers, with its intellectual and moral perils. In so doing, we shall find the very truth which our own generation especially needs.

The prophetic words addressed by St. Paul to the Church of Ephesus thirty years before the date of this Epistle had found only too complete a fulfilment. "From among their own selves," at Ephesus in particular, through the Churches of Asia Minor in general, men _had_ arisen "speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them."[70] The prediction began to justify itself when Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus only five or six years later. A few significant words in the First Epistle to Timothy let us see the heretical influences that were at work. St. Paul speaks with the solemnity of a closing charge when he warns Timothy against what were at once[71]

"profane babblings," and "ant.i.theses of the Gnosis which is falsely so called." In an earlier portion of the same Epistle the young Bishop is exhorted to charge certain men not to teach a "different doctrine,"

neither to give "heed to myths and genealogies," out of whose endless mazes no intellect entangled in them can ever find its way.[72] Those commentators put us on a false scent who would have us look after Judaizing error, Jewish "stemmata." The reference is not to Judaistic ritualism, but to semi-Pagan philosophical speculation. The "genealogies" are systems of divine potencies which the Gnostics (and probably some Jewish Rabbis of Gnosticising tendency) called "aeons,"[73] and so the earliest Christian writers understood the word.