The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (180 page)

These two comments reveal a measure of the paradox of the Johannine Letters: simple in expression (a vocabulary of only 303 words) but complex in thought. Especially John's first letter has proved to be both the staple of beginning Greek students and the bane of experienced commentators.

In the church and throughout history, the first letter has been read, loved, and memorized by many doubting Christians, who have fled to its contents to be comforted by the assurance it provides. William Penn was so struck by the new command given in 1 John that he named the chief city of Pennsylvania “the city of brotherly love” (Philadelphia). In contrast, the second and third letters have been, and continue to be, neglected in almost equal proportions, to the detriment of all who do so.

HISTORY

Author

External Evidence
Early church tradition unanimously held that the author of 1 John was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, but 2 John and 3 John were not as strongly attested. Origen (c. 185—254) noted that some did not receive these letters, though he himself did.
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In spite of the wavering of a few, 2 and 3 John were received into the canon on the strength of the conviction that John the apostle was the author.

More recently, however, confidence in the tradition has frequently been undermined by the claim that no explicit attribution to John as the author occurs until Irenaeus (c. 130—200). Statements such as the following by R. Brown are common: “[T]here is no certain evidence among Christian writers of a knowledge of any of the Johannine Epistles before the middle of the second century [and] the lack of early attestation makes us cautious about assuming that there was a solid tradition throughout the second century attributing them to a known figure named John.”
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This skepticism is often used to support a
theory that the orthodox were initially apprehensive of the Johannine Letters until their rehabilitation by Irenaeus.
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In response, it should be noted that these kinds of statements arise from the overly rigid demand that a text must be mentioned as “from John” before it can be used in support of John's authorship. But this is an illegitimate burden imposed on the source quotation. If this is kept in mind, it becomes relevant that solid evidence of the authoritative use of these letters, very likely implying the assumption and acceptance of John's authorship, exists well before Irenaeus.
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Polycarp (c. 69-155),7 Ignatius (c. 35-110), Papias (c. 60-130), the
Epistula Apostolorum
(c. 140), and the Epistle to Diognetus (second or third century), among others, all show at least a great appreciation for the Johannine Letters prior to Irenaeus. Much of this evidence instills confidence that the apostle John wrote these letters.
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From Irenaeus's time forward, there is a steady stream of citations that continues to express the confidence evidenced in the earliest literature. A brief inventory of the more germane evidence since Irenaeus includes the following: the Muratorian Canon (later second century?) refers to the letters (in the plural) as coming from John; Tertullian (c. 160—225) cited 1 John at least 40 times as the work of John; Clement of Alexandria (c. 150—215) referred to 1 John as the “greater epistle”
(Stromateis
2.15.66), and he also wrote a short commentary on 2 John. Third John is first mentioned in the extant patristic works by Origen (c. 185—254). Dionysius of Alexandria (Origen's successor, died 265) held to John's authorship of 1 John but knew that there was a “reputed” 2 and 3 John (Eusebius,
Eccl.Hist.
7.25.7-8.11).

The external data point quite early to 1 and 2 John as coming from the apostle. John's authorship of 3 John, most likely due to the letter's brevity and the lack of extant patristic works, is supported less widely. But since there is evidence to assume that the letters circulated together, it is likely that 3 John was included as well. This would be consistent with what is known of published letter collections in antiquity.
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So the letters are cited
consistently as authoritative without a single source proposing a different author. This assumption of John's authorship held sway until the 1800s.

In modern circles it is common to jettison the opinion of the ancient church and to propose sometimes radically different answers to the question of authorship and origins. Alternative proposals include: (1) an unknown elder in the so-called “Johannine community”; (2) a follower of the apostle John (or the “disciple Jesus loved”; 13:23; etc.); or (3) the legendary “John the elder” in Asia Minor.
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Much of this is based on prior convictions pertaining to the authorship and origins of John's Gospel. The prevailing theory is that a sectarian community on the fringe of orthodoxy, one related to the beloved disciple, is responsible for John's Gospel. A series of events produced the Gospel in stages in interaction with the “Johannine community's” parent synagogue, and later the letters were generated in response to a painful split in the community. On the assumption that John's Gospel and the Johannine Letters come from two different hands, the theory posits that (1) the stylistic uniformity of John's Gospel and the Johannine Letters is reflective of a “house style” but not common authorship; and (2) that the linguistic and thematic divergences suggest separate authors.

While the vast number of stylistic similarities between John's Gospel and the Johannine Letters is undeniable, some point to several alleged divergences to support the theory of separate authorship. One of the most influential early proponents of separate authorship in the first half of the twentieth century was the British scholar C. H. Dodd.
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Dodd argued that in matters of style, John's Gospel has rich subtlety, “which the Epistle cannot pretend.”
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He alleged that the following linguistic phenomena pointed to a different writer: (1) a lack of Aramaic influences; (2) a high rate of
hapax legomena
(1 John has 40 words that do not appear in the Gospel); and (3) different language used for subjects relating to salvation. Thematically, Dodd argued that 1 John has no OT quotation and only one explicit OT reference (1 John 3:12), while John's Gospel is filled with OT quotes and allusions. Dodd also noted that, unlike John's Gospel, 1 John shows very few Jewish
characteristics. Instead, the letter appears to reflect gnostic thought (e.g., “anointing,” 2:20; “divine seed,” 3:9, author's translation), which is foreign to John's Gospel.
¹³

R. Brown, on the other hand, rightly dismissed most of Dodd's stylistic arguments as easily answered with reference to the respective genres of Gospel and letter.
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Nevertheless, Brown took up and expanded several of the thematic issues raised by Dodd, arguing against common authorship on the basis of clarity, thematic issues, and the life situation of the letters. According to Brown, the Gospel writer was relatively simple and clear in his expression, while the author of the Johannine Letters wrote with “infuriating” obscurity.
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But obscurity is itself a subjective phenomenon; what may be obscure for some (such as Brown) may be clear to others (especially the original readers of the Johannine Letters).

Brown cited five major differences in thought between John's Gospel and the Johannine Letters that he found especially damaging to the notion of common authorship:

• The Prologue of 1 John does not emphasize the incarnation of the personified Word, as does the Prologue of John; rather it testifies to the
  word (message) of life
  which was seen, heard, and felt—the human career of Jesus.
  
• First John assigns to God features that the Gospel assigns to Jesus; for example, in 1 John 1:5 “God is light” (see John 8:12; 9:5); in 1 John 4:21 and 2 John 5 God gives the command to love one another (see John 13:34).
  
• There is less epistolary emphasis on the Spirit as a person, and the Gospel term
  paraklētos
  is never used of the Spirit; Christ is the
  paraklētos
  or advocate in 1 John 2:1. In 1 John there is a simple warning that not every spirit is the Spirit of truth or the Spirit of God, and so spirits must be tested (4:1,6).
  
• Final eschatology is stronger in I John than in John, where realized eschatology dominates. There is more emphasis on the parousia as the moment of accountability for the Christian life (1 John 2:28-3:3).
  
• Especially as to vocabulary, the Dead Sea Scroll parallels are even closer in 1 John than in John.
  ¹⁶
  

In order, we contend that (1) many scholars hold that the referent in the epistolary prologue is indeed the person of Jesus; (2) Johannine Christology clearly would have no problem with Jesus and God being referred to interchangeably (e.g., 1:1—2; 5:17; 10:30; 14:9—11); (3) the reference to the Paraclete in the Gospel obliquely names Jesus as a Paraclete as well (the Holy Spirit is “another Paraclete”;
allos paraklētos);
(4) true, final
eschatology is more pronounced in Johannine Letters but is certainly not lacking in John's Gospel (e.g., John 14:2); finally, (5) most of the parallels between Qumran and 1 John are found in the
Community Rule
(1QS),
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which is not a narrative and may have similar language due to similar emphases (e.g., love for fellow believers). None of these alleged differences conclusively proves separate authorship for John's Gospel and Johannine Letters, as Brown himself conceded.

For Brown and his followers, it is clearly the historical reconstruction of the “Johannine community” that points to a different author for the Johannine Letters. Brown, for his part, posited a theory that during the production of John's Gospel there were various struggles with outside groups. What he finds startling is that Johannine Letters show no struggle with those outside but only with insiders. Also, the issue at stake in the debate was not whether Jesus was the Christ but whether he came in the flesh (i.e., whether Jesus was fully human). According to Brown, this points to a period of development and divergence within the “Johannine community.” Brown asserted that two rival groups were interpreting the Gospel in different ways. One, the orthodox, was swallowed up by the great church; the other, the opponents of 1 John, was funneled into the gnostic movement. The various forms of the “Johannine community hypothesis” have already been dealt with in the chapter on John's Gospel. With regard to Johannine Letters, even if Brown's reconstruction were correct, this still would not necessarily demonstrate separate authorship.
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If common authorship is rejected, this is often done not on the grounds of the available evidence but on a priori grounds.

To sum up, none of the objections raised by Dodd, Brown, and others actually prove, or even plausibly suggest, separate authorship of John's Gospel and Johannine Letters. The occasional differences in style can be accounted for by the respective genres and other factors (such as differing document lengths). The alleged thematic divergences often depend on antecedent judgments that are in themselves highly questionable or do not necessarily point to a different author. It seems reasonable to conclude that even the cumulative effect of these supposed difficulties bears insufficient weight to establish separate authorship.

Internal Evidence
B. H. Streeter's dictum is often repeated: “The three Epistles and the Gospel of John are so closely allied in diction, style, and general outlook that the burden of proof lies with the person who would deny their common authorship.”
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The similarities are so numerous and multifaceted that they dwarf any perceived differences by comparison. While admitted by all, these similarities are often attributed to either a “house style” within the Johannine community or a conscious imitation. So it is important not
simply to note the similarities but to look for those congruities that suggest a writer was naturally expressing himself in ways other than conscious imitation. The following observations can be made.

1. The same author would be expected to use similar vocabulary in similar ways. This occurs at an overwhelming rate when John's Letters are compared to the Gospel. A small sample will give the general contours of the phenomenon.
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Jesus as the “only begotten” (1 John 4:9; John 1:14,18; 3:16,18 KJV); “Word” referring to Christ (1 John 1:1; John 1:1,14); “eternal life” (1 John 1:2; 2:25; 3:15; 5:11,13,20; John 3:15,16,36); “the Spirit of truth” (1 John
4:6;
John 14:17;16:13); “to practice the truth” (1 John 1:6; John 3:21); “from the world” (1 John 2:16; 4:5; John 8:23); “remain in Him/Me” (1 John 2:27; 4:13; John 15:4,6,7); and a host of others.
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There are marked contrasts in both documents: love and hate (1 John 3:11-15; John 3:19-21; 15:18-25); life and death (1 John 3:14; John 5:24); light and darkness (1 John 1:5; John 1:5); truth and falsehood (1 John 1:6,8; 2:4,21; John 8:44-45); children of God and children of the devil (1 John 3:10; John 8:33-47). This phenomenon is quite remarkable given the brevity of John's Letters.
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2. The same author would be expected to use his stock of phrases and themes in a nimble fashion and not like an imitator. In other words, if all that were found were exact correspondences to the Gospel usage, this might point to imitation. But this is not the case. For example, the “Counselor”
(paraklētos)
in John's Gospel (the Holy Spirit) is “another Counselor” (John 14:16); Jesus is the “advocate”
(paraklētos)
in 1 John (2:2). The statement that “God is spirit” (John 4:24; cf. 3:33, “God is true”) is similar in form to “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16) and “God is light” (1 John 1:5). Brooke points out that the author of 1 John frequently filled up the basic outline of a thought in John's Gospel in a distinct yet closely related manner. He cited the following instances, among others: 1 John 5:10//John 3:18; 1 John 1:2//John 1:1; 1 John 3:8//John 8:41.
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As Brooke observed, “This suggests a writer who varies his own phrases, rather than a mere copyist.”
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