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The Letters of John
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Manny
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Jun 02, 2019 01:29PM
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1 What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life—
2 for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us—
3 what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
4 We are writing this so that our joy may be complete. God is Light.
5 Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.
7 But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
8 If we say, “We are without sin,” we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
9 If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing.
10 If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Compare with the opening lines of John’s Gospel:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was in the beginning with God.
3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be
4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race;
5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
“Beginning,” “Word,” “light,” “darkness,” “God is light.” The words overlap. I’m not going to copy back and forth, but read chapters 15 and 17 where Jesus gives his discourses and see how many themes and phrasing are shared between the Gospel and this letter. Now this is in translation, so one can't be definitive about rhythm, but even the rhythm of the language seems to be very similar.
Presumably there are always questions to who actually wrote the Gospels, and of course we don’t know for sure that the author of the fourth Gospel and these letters was actually St. John, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that it’s one and the same person. By the way, I’m convinced it’s St. John the Evangelist.
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“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life—for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us—what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
Four parallel noun phrases beginning with “what” starts the sentence. The last three emphasize that “we”—and who “we” is supposed to include is undetermined—physically knew and can testify to the “Word” having come to earth and was made “visible.” And then tells you why: so that “you” too—and “you” also being undetermined—may have fellowship with God. He actually testifies three times in that sentence. The first leading up to the dashed off section, the second inside the dashed section, and then even a third time at the beginning of the clause after the dashed section.
Indeed, repetition is a wonderful, poetic device here. How many times does he repeat phrasings and words: “heard,” “seen,” “visible,” “fellowship,” “light,” “darkness,” “God is light,” “sin,” and so on. And yet it never feels like boring writing.
Excellent analysis, Manny. In regard to your last paragraph, I wish you and all the members of our group could see Brant Pitre’s book, The Case for Jesus. With clear and compelling scholarship, Pitre documents the time line and authorship of the Synoptics and leaves no doubt about the authenticity of John. In the Afterward Bishop Robert Barron explains how he encouraged Pitre to do the work and write the book. One of Barron’s favorite theologians, N.T. Wright, has a short (3-4 minute) video on You Tube in support of the authenticity of John, also.
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Well, why can’t it be? Simplicity, depth, clarity, meticulousness: Brant Pitre’s writing has them all.
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1 See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
2 Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
3 Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.
Through our baptism—or perhaps something less formal, such as identifying ourselves as Christians—we have become children of God, which elsewhere I think is referred to as adoption. We then become the heirs of God and ultimately joined with Him.
It is said that in John (both the Gospel and Letters) creates strict demarcations, perhaps even polarized dichotomies. Here he divides children of God with those who are not, those that know Him and those that don’t, those that are pure and those that are not.
4 Everyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness.
5 You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.
6 No one who remains in him sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him.
7 Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous.
8 Whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil.
9 No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God.
10 In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.
11 For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: we should love one another,
12 unlike Cain who belonged to the evil one and slaughtered his brother. Why did he slaughter him? Because his own works were evil, and those of his brother righteous.
Look at the demarcations here: Those who commit sins and those that do not. Those who were privileged to have Him revealed and those who were not. Those who are righteous and those who are not. Those who belong to the devil (because they sin) and those who do not. Those who love one another and those who do not. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. I don’t know about you, but I still sin. Perhaps he’s referring to mortal sin. He goes on to augment his point.
13 Do not be amazed, [then,] brothers, if the world hates you.
14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. Whoever does not love remains in death.
15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
16 The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
17 If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?
18 Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth.
There is another dichotomy: those who are in death (because they do not love) and those that are in life. And that leads to his central point.
19 [Now] this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him
20 in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.
21 Beloved, if [our] hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God
22 and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
23 And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us.
24 Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.
How do we know if we are children of God? Because if we have love in our hearts, then we will follow His commandment to love one another as He loved in the world. We will know this through the Holy Spirit.
I’m not sure if my exegesis is correct or complete, but I hope I’ve at least highlighted the complexity of John’s thought. It’s more complicated than a Beatles song. ;)
Manny writes"Look at the demarcations here: Those who commit sins and those that do not. Those who were privileged to have Him revealed and those who were not. Those who are righteous and those who are not. Those who belong to the devil (because they sin) and those who do not. Those who love one another and those who do not. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. I don’t know about you, but I still sin. Perhaps he’s referring to mortal sin. He goes on to augment his point."
Today's Gospel from John 17:11B-19 is the farewell prayer Jesus says to God the Father when he is about to leave them. The same demarcations are in this timeless prayer:
"I gave them your word, and the world hated them,
because they do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world,
but that you keep them from the Evil One.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth...."
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1 Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God,
3 and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world.
4 You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
5 They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them.
6 We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.
Again we get a strong dichotomy, those spirits that acknowledge Jesus and those that don’t. We are told that we need to test the spirits to make sure we are “trusting” a spirit that belongs to God. I don’t have answers but I have a few questions. How do you test these spirits? Does John literally mean spirit or is this a metaphor for inspiration? Are these spirits angels, good and bad angels? How are these spirits different than the Holy Spirit?
This seems to be particularly a warning against Gnosticism, which denied that Christ had a corporeal body. So, the spirit St. John is warning against is the spirit of heresy, which is one of the forms the anti-christ takes to fight against the Church. The way you test someone for the spirit of heresy is by comparing what they say to Church doctrine. And, if spirit can be understood as inspiration, one needs to check others’ or one’s own ideas in light of Catholic theology.
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Interesting you bring up Gnosticism. Was Gnosticism an issue already in the first century? The only false prophet directly identify in the New Testament (that I recall, perhaps I missed someone) was Simon Magus in Acts. He was a magician, so I tend to identify the false prophets as such. Perhaps John does mean those who are in theological error. I'm not sure.
By the way, that's why I'm taking "spirits" as literal. Magicians call up evil spirits.
In today's gospel, Matthew reveals Jesus's words : "You are the light of the world," words which always strike a chord in me. Our world seems so dark these days, and Jesus calls on us to shine our lights on it. 1John1 is all about our status as children of the light. Light reveals truth and reality. I'm reminded in John's letters that walking in the light is not just a privilege but a responsibility to share our light with those imperiled by our growing darkness.
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Yes, and John says God and Jesus are light in numerous places. Our lives are just attempts at groping in the dark if not for having Jesus and God as our guide.
Hi, Manny! Going off of the School and Church Edition of the NAB’s introduction to the First letter of John, the heresy mentioned here is taken to be either docetism or gnosticism. Gnostic schools of thought began to exist before the Christian Era and started to latch onto Christianity in the first and second centuries according to New Advent’s Encyclopedia. So, that’s why I think that John is warning against Gnosticism, which claimed that Christ was a phantom without a real human nature.The idea of magic being related to the spirit mentioned here is possible. I would not be surprised to learn that Gnostics dealt in magic, but all I really know about them is their flawed Soteriology.
I’m trying to remember whether Catholic tradition states that Simon Magus really repented of his ways or persevered in using magic.
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Thank you Joseph. That is very helpful. I just looked up Simon Magus in Wikipedia and and they cite that some considered him the founder of Gnosticism. But that is disputed. Here is the Wikipedia link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_M...
Fascinating.
Thanks! It sounds like Simon Magus probably met a bad end. I did not know of his connection to Gnosticism, but it makes sense that a magician would be connected to a sect boasting of hidden knowledge:
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6 This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water alone, but by water and blood. The Spirit is the one that testifies, and the Spirit is truth.
7 So there are three that testify,
8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood, and the three are of one accord.
Actually I was baffled by the coming of water, blood, and spirit until I read an explanation. Here is the explanatory note on that passage from the NAB:
* [5:6–12] Water and blood (1 Jn 5:6) refers to Christ’s baptism (Mt 3:16–17) and to the shedding of his blood on the cross (Jn 19:34). The Spirit was present at the baptism (Mt 3:16; Mk 1:10; Lk 3:22; Jn 1:32, 34). The testimony to Christ as the Son of God is confirmed by divine witness (1 Jn 5:7–9), greater by far than the two legally required human witnesses (Dt 17:6). To deny this is to deny God’s truth; cf. Jn 8:17–18. The gist of the divine witness or testimony is that eternal life (1 Jn 5:11–12) is given in Christ and nowhere else. To possess the Son is not acceptance of a doctrine but of a person who lives now and provides life.
Until I read the explanation I thought water and blood referred to His human birth and the spirit to His divine nature. I think that’s still a plausible reading, but defer to the theologians.
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Anyone who is baptized is a child of God, for we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. This makes everyone else a creature of God, which isn't a put-down. It simply delineates who belongs to God's family. To fully understand this, one has to go back into the ancient world and look at how they understood family and who belonged to it. I am drawing here from a history class our priest held on the first century.
In the ancient world you first and foremost belonged to a family and the house gods your family worshiped. This was your "geography," your ancestry. The devotions were led by the father. So this makes the father not only the head of the household but also the spiritual leader. This is why we call our priests "Father," and why the Church teaches that the father is the spiritual leader of the family.
The house-gods you worshiped defined who you were, this was your ancestry and also defined your citizenship of the place you lived in. Ancestry and citizenship were religious affiliations, not biological or secular ones.
Say, when a woman married and entered into the household of her husband, she no longer belonged to her former family but was now a new member of her husband's family. So far so good, but! she no longer worshiped the house-gods of her father's ancestry, but those of her husband's family. She in essence changed spiritual ancestry. The same goes for adoption. If a person was adopted into a family he or she became a full member by worshiping the same gods, blood ancestry was irrelevant. This makes the ancient understanding of family very different from ours. If you were separated from this spiritual connection, you were a nobody.
Now all the peculiar language in the NT makes sense about spiritual adoption, about becoming a child of God in baptism, etc.
I seem to remember from our parish study of Ephesians, one of the main points was that we are adopted sons and daughters of God.
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Let’s look at the second letter at the moment. The theology inside the letter follows the first, which is much more fleshed out. What I find interesting in the second letter is who it is addressed to. John, referring to himself as “presbyter” is writing to a “chosen lady and to her children,”
1 The Presbyter to the chosen Lady and to her children whom I love in truth—and not only I but also all who know the truth—
2 because of the truth that dwells in us and will be with us forever.
3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son in truth and love.
Who is this chosen lady? The NAB introduction to the letter identifies the woman as a Christian community and the children would be various churches within the community. Wikipedia lists that also as a possibility but lists two other additional possibilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...
A second hypothesis is that John is addressing an actual lady, and Wikipedia identifies her as “Kyria” which in Greek means “lady.”
A third hypothesis is that the lady is Mother Mary herself. While on the cross, Jesus, as we all know, hands His mother over to John’s care.
Let’s contemplate all three of these hypothesis. Why would John address the community in such an indirect way and then continue with the metaphor throughout the letter?
5 But now, Lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing a new commandment but the one we have had from the beginning: let us love one another.
Perhaps he was fearful that some Roman official would intercept the letter and identify the community for their persecution. He does do similar in Revelations. It’s possible but I find it unconvincing. In the third letter he addresses a person, a “Gaius.”
It does sound to me he’s addressing a real lady. There’s one last reference to the lady, and that’s in the sign off at the end,
13 The children of your chosen sister send you greetings.
The NAB note on that last line believes the “chosen sister” is the Presbyter’s new church community, as well as the commentary at New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08435...
But if children is supposed to be a metaphor for the churches inside the community, why would such a personal letter conclude with all these other churches sending her greetings? The metaphor seems to be overly complicated group of churches sending greetings to a community, which in turn is itself a group of churches? Getting inside a writer’s head, it just doesn’t ring true to how a writer would write.
The word “chosen” is extremely loaded. In the first line, the person being addressed is the “chosen lady” and in the last line the children sending back greetings come from a “chosen sister.” Is the chosen lady the Blessed Mother? Wikipedia seems to rationalize the chosen lady’s children as those kinsfolk of Jesus, but that doesn’t have to be. “Behold you mother,” Christ says. At this point, all people could be referred to as her children. As to who the chosen sister is, we all are Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Religious people choose their brothers and sisters.
So here’s another time I resist conventional interpretations. I lean to a real woman being addressed. I hold out the possibility this woman is the Mother of God, though I don’t think there is enough in the text to verify it.
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Which lady,Kerstin? The chosen lady or the sister? And if the chosen lady, then who is the sister? This is the problem with metaphors, and why should John write in this indirect way? I don’t recall Paul doing this in any of his epistles.
The NAB intro believes it’s one community of churches writing to another. When St. Paul writes to a community he calls them by their geographic area, such as Corinthians or Galatians. For anyone it would seem to me to write and address the addressee in metaphor requires some convoluted situation or entangled thought process. Of course it’s possible but to me the most likely scenario would be a direct address.
If you still think it’s metaphor, then why in the third letter he addresses the recipient directly and not in metaphor?
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There are others mentioned generically as well. There are the brethren at the beginning of the letter, who presumably are the same people at the end of the letter referred to now as “the friends.” The brethren must be rank and file of the church, and I think one could make the distinction that the brethren refer to some of the rank and file of Gaius church, and the friends refer to the rank and file of the elder’s church. Notice that some of the brethren came to the elder to testify to Gaius’ life in the truth. Apparently having testimony is very important to the culture within the church at this time, and given the internal disagreements over orthodoxy we can understand why.
The turn in tone from the warm paragraphs referring to Gaius to the paragraph on his conflict with Diotrephes is stark. It seems to come out of nowhere. Here’s the entire paragraph:
9 I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to dominate, does not acknowledge us.
10 Therefore, if I come, I will draw attention to what he is doing, spreading evil nonsense about us. And not content with that, he will not receive the brothers, hindering those who wish to do so and expelling them from the church.
11 Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does what is good is of God; whoever does what is evil has never seen God.
12 Demetrius receives a good report from all, even from the truth itself. We give our testimonial as well, and you know our testimony is true.
We learn that Diotrephes loves to dominate and does not acknowledge “us.” So who is “us”? St. John the Evangelist or the church of which he leads? If we look at it as a rejection of the author, it makes the strongest case that the author is not St. John, for who would reject an actual apostle who lived with Christ? Wikipedia, which has a very good entry on the letter, does mention this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_E...
But the author stipulates that Diotrephes “will not receive the brothers” and actually has expelled them from the church. I don’t think Diotrephes is necessarily rejecting St. John here, but trying to get autonomy from St. John’s church, and set himself up as his church’s leader. It never does say what the conflict is over. Is it over theology or just internal church politics? If I had to guess I would say it’s over theology. Surmising Diotrephes’s thinking here, he might conjecture that although St. John may have lived with Jesus, it doesn’t necessarily mean he understood the nature of Jesus. A gnostic sees Jesus and the world very differently.
And Demetrius, who has received a “report from all,” comes in to attest to a report from “the truth itself.” In that sentence I think we can surmise that the conflict is over theology. It’s amazing how many times testimony, either directly or indirectly, is alluded to in this letter. What appears to be a short, simple read is quite dynamic. Fascinating!
