Each of the three letters of John was written to deal with a challenge to the teaching and authority of the gospel as it had been delivered to them by John. The major heresy to appear was concerned with the Godhead and was an attempt to elevate Christ as the One True God. John refers to this relationship in John 17:3 and again in dealing with the heresy in 1John (esp. 1Jn. 5:20). The error was plainly from those claiming to be of the elect (1Jn. 1:6) who claimed themselves without sin (1Jn. 1:8). The issue was the capacity to know God, hence Gnosis. The Gnosis involved the concept of doing away with the law or the doctrine that the commandments of God need no longer be kept (1Jn. 2:4). The capacity for the Holy Spirit to abide in the elect and them in God (1Jn. 2:6) was dependent upon the love of both God and the brethren. The elect could not hate their brothers (1Jn. 4:20). These claims have obvious relevance. The contention is that the opposition: … has been laying claim to a special knowledge and love of God and to a peculiarly intimate relationship with him which has set them above the common distinction between good and evil and therefore above the demands of Christian ethics. It is probable, too, that the initial message of the letter; “God is light and in him is no darkness at all,” is directed against a theology which held that God comprehended in himself both light and darkness (The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 2, p. 947) The form of Greek theology most likely to fall into this category was a form of Platonism or Pythagoreanism. The argument that God is in all matter and, hence, immanent is common today. Initially it appeared as Animism within the Babylonian religion. The teachers were also denying that Jesus was the Messiah (1Jn. 2:22). The Interpreter’s Dictionary is positive in saying: We are not to conclude from this that they were Jews or Judaizers who denied his Messiahship, but rather that they were Christians who denied his Incarnation. For their error is more particularly defined later in the letter as a denial “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (4:2) (ibid.). The warning to test the spirits to see whether they are of divine origin would make it apparent that we are dealing with the interaction with elemental spirits and the utterances which purport to emanate from God through the Holy Spirit. The strange word chrism or unction which is used twice in the text (at 1Jn. 2:20,27) to describe the gift of the Spirit in which all Christians participate is used in the text because the heretics first used it to describe what they believed to be their own unique spiritual endowment (Interp. Dict., ibid.). Thus, the anointing (Chrisma) by the Holy Spirit is contrary to the anointing by the spirits that are being advanced. The doctrine is here labelled that of Antichrist, which is he who denies the Father and the Son. The denial appeared to make Christ part of the Father as a modal which did not die in total. The teaching that Christ is God as part of a structure involving the Spirit is now integral to mainstream Christian thought. However, its premises would be regarded, and in the form stated were so regarded, by John as heretical.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 12:54:13 +0000
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