In our own centnry, in particular, their claims to apostolic date and worth have been strongly contested, and judgments of the most diverse kind have been pronounced upon them by the critical schools. There are those who iind no dithculty in attributing all three Epp., as well as the (.Josiiel, to the Apostle John, but dbcover another hand in the Apocjilypse. HIeek, e.g., admits the existence of clear points of contact between all the writings assigned to St. Jolin. But he is of opinion, at the same time, tliat the atlinity between the Epp. and Gospel on the one hand, and the Bk. of Kevelation on the other, is limited and occasional, while the dillerence is great and pervading. That dill'erence is lielil to extend not only to tlie diction and the style, ot wliich in the ca.Ho of the Apoc. the one is confes»cilly peculiar
and the other is pronounced rough and broken, but to the whole genius of the books, their attitude to the Jewish people, city, and temple, their teaching on the PciTuuiui, and other things. It is thought to amount to so much that, if the Epp. are ascribed to St. John, the Apoc. must either oe allowed to be a forgery by a much later hand or be explained as the work of another John, ' the presbyter,' re- ferred to by Papias in a way interpreted by many as distinguLshing him from the apostle (Euseb. HE iii. 39). There are others, again, who read the story of these writings in the re- verse way, Uxing the stigma of the spurious on the Epp. alone, or on the Epp. and the Gospel together. S. G. Lan™ regarded the Gospel and the Apoc. as the real writings of St. John, but took tlie First Ep. to be the work of an imitator a centurj- later. Tlie Tiibingen critics agree in claim- ing the Apoc. for St. John, and in repudiating the other writings, though they dill'er with regard to the order of tie latter. Baur himself (in 1S57) held the First Ep. to be an imitation of the Gos- pel by a dill'erent hand, while HUgenfeld places the Ep. earlier than the Gospel. Among those, too, who hold by the common Johannine authorship, certain ditl'erences appear, some regarding the First Ep. as the middle term between the Gospel and the Aiioc. (Godet), others giving the Ep. a position in time between the Apoc. and the Gospel.
The historical case, as it has been understood by the great majority of students, so far as concerns the main questions, is this : that, while certain doubts overhung for a time the recognition of the shorter Epp., we tind them, so far back as we can trace them, bearing the name of John and never any other, when the author's name is given ; and that, while certain dili'erences of view appeared iu the early Church regarding the particular John, all three were regarded by most as writings of the apostle, and had an a-ssured position as such before the close of the 4th cent. Whether the case can be accepted as it has thus been put, and what the probabilities are with the critical theories referred to, will best appear as the tinal result of a study of the writings. We shall take each Ep. therelore by itself, and shall look at its order of thought and the various questions which have been raised with respect to its occasion, its i)urpose, its mes- sage, etc. Having done this, we shall take up anew the problem of its origin and authorship, en- deavouring to estimate the worth of the traditional view on the one hand and the counter-theories on the other.
The First Epistle. — 1. Order of Thought. — The Ep. opens with some calm and lofty sentences, not ciust in the form of epistolary introuuction with which we are most familiar in tlie NT, but more in that of the Ep. to the Hebrews. In these, without indicating eitlier himself or his readers except in an indirect and general way, the writer states at once the great fact on which all that he has to say rests, viz. the historical manifcstjition in Jesus Christ of the life that is behind all life, the eternal life that was with the Father. He declares at the outset, too, in this Introduction, the great object wliich ho has in view in addressing his readers, viz. tliat his joy in them might be perfected by seeing them one with him in that fellowship with God iu which he and the brethren with whom he chusses himself are coiisiiuus of stnndiii" (I''*). He enters then at oiue upon bis specific suiiject, giving as the ba.sis of his counsel and the fundamental apostolic message the truth that ' God is light' ; from which the immediate inference is that a walk in the light is indispensable on our part to this fellow- ship with Go«l. This inference, however, from which there can be no esi'apo, is declared, not in it« logical directness, but lu the form that to pro-
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JOHN, EPISTLES OF
fuss to be in fellowsliip with God and to continue to wale in darkness, is to commit ourselves to a lie iind to all unreality. This walk in the light is not , '■3 be thus dealt with. Too much depends on it — not unly fellowship with God, but fellowsliip with other members of Christ's body, and also the purgation of sin by Christ's blood, 'flie cleansing which every Christian needs and wliich he also olitains coming > thus into view, the explanation follows that on the one hand, if we claim to have no sin, we deceive our- selves and put God Himself to the lie, whUe ou the other hand real confession of sin brings with it the divine forgiveness and the divine cleansing (1°"'°). The same thought is put in another form before the writer passes to his next subject, when he jiro- ceeds to remind his readers that all that he writes to them of the revelation of life, the fellowship with God, the i)ardon and purification of sin, is written with the practical purpose of instructing them not to sin, and then, recognizing the sin of which the true Christian cannot but be conscious, he points to the certainty of its forgiveness in V irtue of what Christ is as Paraclete and Propitia- tion (2'- »).