Epistle represents the παρουσία (ii. 28) as ‘a visible individual occur- rence” on a particular day (iv. 17). This is simply erroneous. The Gospel also speaks of a final and universal Judgment (ν. 29), ‘‘the last day” (vi. 39, 40, 44,54; xi. 24), and a personal Coming of Christ (xxi. 22, 23).1 (d) The Παράκλητος is the Holy Spirit in the Gospel, Jesus in the Epistle. Here, however, there is no divergence. The doctrine of the Epistle explains the Gospel’s ἄλλον Παράκλητον (xiv. 16). See commentary on Π. 1.
It is beyond reasonable doubt that the Epistle and the Gospel are from the same pen. ‘The identity of authorship in the two books,’ says Lightfoot,? ‘‘though not undisputed, is accepted with such a degree of unanimity that it may be placed in the category of acknow- ledged facts.”” And they have a very intimate connection. This is abundantly apparent from internal evidence. The Epistle opens with a reference to the Gospel-narrative, and there is an unmistakable relation between 1 John v. 13 and John xx. 31 (see commentary). Indeed the Epistle throughout has the Gospel as its background and is hardly intelligible without it. It is, in the language of Lightfoot,’ «κα devotional and moral application of the main ideas which are evolved historically in the sayings and doings of Christ recorded in the Gospel”. And it is significant that the Muratorian Canon men- tions the First Epistle in connection with the Gospel, and the Second and Third Epistles after an interval in their natural place among the other Epistles of the N.T.
The precise connection between them is nowhere indicated, but it appears from a consideration of the historical situation. The fall of Jerusalem in Α.Ρ. 70 dispersed the Church, and a colony of disciples found a home in Asia Minor. It was a considerable and increasingly influential community, including, in the phrase of Poly- crates of Ephesus, “great luminaries (μεγάλα otoyeia)”’—not only the Apostles Philip and Andrew® but, according to abundant and trustworthy tradition, St. John. The fatter fixed his residence at Ephesus, where there was a church founded by St. Paul.’ It was the proudest boast of Ephesus that she was “the Temple-sweeper (νεωκόρος) of Artemis” (Acts xix. 35), and the Temple which she had reared for her goddess was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient
1John xxi. is an addition to the Gospel. but it is by the same hand, ‘‘a post- script from the same pen as the rest” (Renan).
2 Ess. on Sup. Rel., pp. 186 f. 3 Tbid., p. 188.
4Eus. H. £. tii: 31, ν. 24. 5 Mur. Can.
60η the credibility of this tradition see Drummond, The Char. and Auth. of the
Fourth Gospel, pp. 814 ff. 7Tren. III. iii. 4.