The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 55

(' Ad Pra.x.,' o. 15; 1 Adv. Marc.,' iii. 8; and in other places), Irenreus (' Aclv. ll.:•r.' iii. 10), Clemens Alex., nnd Origen repeatedly cite it as the work of the Apus:lc Jobr:, M also Cyprian (' Ep.,' 28). The opposition lo the universal conviction of the Church commenced with ,foseph Scaliger, who doubted the canonical value of the Epistle. Brctschncider and Paulu~, who defended tho common origin of the Gospel and First Epistle, yet referred hoth to the Presbyter John, of whose shadowy existence see above (pp. xxxii., xxxiii.). 'l'hc later writers of the 'l'iibiogen school, who would find their whole attempt to reconstruct the New 'l'eslament and to account for the origin of Christianity disappear, if they admitted the genuineness of either work, account differently for the relation of the two docu- ments to one another. Some have admitted the identity of authorship; but others, like Hil;(enfeld and Dr. Davidson, have laid great stress on the deviations or discre- pancies between the Gospel and the Epistle. From the difference of style, and the pre- sumed divergence of doctrinal view, they have endeavourecl to obviate the powerfol argument which the identity of authorship supplies to the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel. The character of the writer as evinced in the tone of this Epistle, his refer- ence to "antichrists" and to the "coming of the Lord," the strong antithesis be institutes between "light" and "darkness," "the Father" and "the world,'' form a valuable link of connection between the writer of the Fourth Gospel and the John of the synopLists and the Acts. The verbal coinci<lences between the Gospel and the First Epistle are very numerous: eh. xvi. 24 with 1 John i. 4; eh. xv. 18 with 1 John iii. 13; eh. viii. 34, etc., with 1 John iii. 8; eh. i. 18 with 1 John iv. 12. In the last quotation, and many others, t.he writer of the prologue and of the Epistle uses identical language. It is admitted that the two documents move along the same general lines, and are concerned with the same class of expressions-" darkness and light," "knowing and not knowing God or Christ," "having sin," " laying down life for others," "taking away sin" (1 John iii. 5; eh. i. 29); references to the Para.clete (1 John ii. 1; eh. xiv. 16), to "the only begotten Son" (1 John iv. 9; eh. i. 14, 18; iii. 16, 18), and to "mutual love as the commandment of Christ" (1 John iii. 11, 16, 18; eh. xiii. 34; xv. 12, 17). The flow of the sentences corresponds to that of the prologue, and reflects the words of Jesus. Dr. Lias, in his' Doctrinal System of John,' has evinced with remarkable ability the correspondence between the use which St. Paul had made of the teaching of Christ preserved by tradition and recorded afterwards by John, and the doctrinal use which this writer bas made in this Epistle of thoughts and words first nttered by the Divine Lord. In the ideas as Christ uttered them we ha,e the truth in its simplest and most elementary form; in Paul's Epistles and John's Epistles we have the same thought in more direct application to the circumstances of the Church and the new currents of thought which had begun to agitate it. Paul has elaborated these teachi □ gs of Christ into long arguments, which go back to authoritative and well-understood principles and facts, and which find no such natural interpretation as that which is supplied by the sententious teaching which John has preserved for us; e.g. the New Testament Epistles do all of them build upon and elaborate the antagonism between" the flesh" and "the Spirit," as though it were a settled conclusion based upon a mutually understood principle. Take Gal. iv. 29; v. 16-22; Rom. vii. ; and viii. 1, 5-17, which all reflect the teaching of Christ subsequently made public in eh. iii. and vi. In 1 John ii. 16 the lm8uµC11 -riis 1111p,c&s is spoken of as J,c -rou ,co11µou, and the phrase compresses much of the Pauline teachi □ g into a dentence (cf. Dr. Pope's 'Preface' to Haupt's 'Disserta- tif)n on the First Epistle of John,' Eng. trans.). But objection has been taken to the identity of authorship on grounds which, when stated, have a tendency to refute themselves. (a) 'fhus it is said t.hat a grave difference reveals itself between the escbatological ideas of the Gospel and Epistle; that in the latter the ..-11pou11C11 is anticipated (as it is in the Paulino Epistles), and that a "day of judgment" looms in the immediate future, but that in the Gospel the judgment is regarded as already past, and Christ's "1aecond coming" is resolved into a spiritual mission to the disciples, and that Jesus will come again, only in the power of the Paraclete; further, according to the Gospel, the future and present are alike comprehended in the one idea of "eternal life." But we ha Ye to remember1  INTRODUCTION 'l'O