men. There is no trace of persecution: “the world was peril- ous by its seductions rather than by its hostility ;” the dangers were within rather than without.
These facts give character to the Epistle in two ways: First, the missionary work of the Church falls into the background in the Apostle’s thought. The world is overcome by faith as represented in the Church, and the Gospel is proclaimed by the very existence of the Church, and effectively proclaimed in pro- portion to the Church’s purity and fidelity. Secondly, attention is concentrated upon the central idea of the message itself rather than upon the relation of the message to other systems. The great question is the person and work of the Lord.
The peculiar form of error combated in the Epistle is Do- cetic and Cerinthian.* In this teaching sin and atonement have no place. Christ came into the world, not to redeem it by the remission of sins, but to illuminate a few choice intel- lects with philosophy: Jesus is not God manifest in the flesh : Jesus and the Christ are distinct: Jesus’ humanity was not real, but a phantasm. Against these views John asserts that no spirit is of God who denies that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (1 John iv. 2,3): that he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ is a liar, and that the denial of the Son involves the re- jection of the Father (ii. 22, 23): that he who denies that he is sinful deceives himself, and impugns the veracity of God (i. 8, 10). The Word of life which he proclaims was the real human manifestation of God, the human Christ whom he and his fel- low-disciples had seen and heard and touched (i. 1, 2). Jesus is the propitiation for sin (ii. 2). The world is not overcome by knowledge, but by faith that Jesus is the Son of God (v. 4, 5).
The principal evidence for John’s authorship of the Epistle is internal, drawn from its resemblance to the Gospel in vocab- ulary, style, thought, and scope. There is the same repetition of fundamental words and phrases, such as truth, love, light, born of God, abiding in God. There is the same simplicity of
* The Docetes held that the body of our Lord was an immaterial phantom. Their name is derived from doxéw <dokeo) to seem,