William Alexander - Expositor's Bible - The Epistles of St. John

The region of belief must therefore, in our present condition, be a region from which controversy cannot be excluded.

Religious controversialists may be divided into three classes, for each of which we may find an emblem in the animal creation. The first are the nuisances, at times the numerous nuisances, of Churches. These controversialists delight in showing that the convictions of persons whom they happen to dislike, can, more or less plausibly, be pressed to unpopular conclusions. They are incessant fault-finders. Some of them, if they had an opportunity, might delight in finding the sun guilty in his daily worship of the many-coloured ritualism of the western clouds. Controversialists of this class, if minute are venomous, and capable of inflicting a degree of pain quite out of proportion to their strength. Their emblem may be found somewhere in the range of "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." The second class of controversialists is of a much higher nature. Their emblem is the hawk with his bright eye, with the forward throw of his pinions, his rushing flight along the woodland skirt, his unerring stroke. Such hawks of the Churches, whose delight is in pouncing upon fallacies, fulfil an important function. They rid us of tribes of mischievous winged errors. The third class of controversialists is that which embraces St. John supremely – such minds also as Augustine's in his loftiest and most inspired moments, such as those which have endowed the Church with the Nicene Creed. Of such the eagle is the emblem. Over the grosser atmosphere of earthly anger or imperfect motives, over the clouds of error, poised in the light of the True Sun, with the eagle's upward wing and the eagle's sunward eye, St. John looks upon the truth. He is indeed the eagle of the four Evangelists, the eagle of God. If the eagle could speak with our language, his style would have something of the purity of the sky and of the brightness of the light. He would warn his nestlings against losing their way in the banks of clouds that lie below him so far. At times he might show that there is a danger or an error whose position he might indicate by the sweep of his wing, or by descending for a moment to strike.

There are then polemics in the Epistle and in the Gospel of St. John. But we refuse to hunt down some obscure heresy in every sentence. It will be enough to indicate the master heresy of Asia Minor, to which St. John undoubtedly refers, with its intellectual and moral perils. In so doing, we shall find the very truth which our own generation especially needs.

The prophetic words addressed by St. Paul to the Church of Ephesus thirty years before the date of this Epistle had found only too complete a fulfilment. "From among their own selves," at Ephesus in particular, through the Churches of Asia Minor in general, men had arisen "speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." [70] Footnote_70_70 Acts xx. 30. The prediction began to justify itself when Timothy was Bishop of Ephesus only five or six years later. A few significant words in the First Epistle to Timothy let us see the heretical influences that were at work. St. Paul speaks with the solemnity of a closing charge when he warns Timothy against what were at once [71] Footnote_71_71 τας βεβηλους κενοφωνιας, και αντιθεσεις της ψευδωνυμου γνωσεως. 1 Tim. vi. 20. The "antitheses" may either touch with slight sarcasm upon pompous pretensions to scientific logical method; or may denote the really self-contradictory character of these elaborate compositions; or again, their polemical opposition to the Christian creed. "profane babblings," and "antitheses of the Gnosis which is falsely so called." In an earlier portion of the same Epistle the young Bishop is exhorted to charge certain men not to teach a "different doctrine," neither to give "heed to myths and genealogies," out of whose endless mazes no intellect entangled in them can ever find its way. [72] Footnote_72_72 μυθοις και γενεαλογιαις απεραντοις. 1 Tim. i. 3, 4. Those commentators put us on a false scent who would have us look after Judaizing error, Jewish "stemmata." The reference is not to Judaistic ritualism, but to semi-Pagan philosophical speculation. The "genealogies" are systems of divine potencies which the Gnostics (and probably some Jewish Rabbis of Gnosticising tendency) called "æons," [73] Footnote_73_73 Irenæus quotes 1 Tim. i. 4, and interprets it of the Gnostic 'æons.' Adv. Hæres. , i. Proœm. and so the earliest Christian writers understood the word.

Now without entering into the details of Gnosticism, this may be said of its general method and purpose. It aspired at once to accept and to transform the Christian creed; to elevate its faith into a philosophy, a knowledge – and then to make this knowledge cashier and supersede faith, love, holiness, redemption itself.

This system was strangely eclectic, and amalgamated certain elements not only of Greek and Egyptian, but of Persian and Indian Pantheistic thought. It was infected throughout with dualism and doketism. Dualism held that all good and evil in the universe proceeded from two first principles, good and evil. Matter was the power of evil whose home is in the region of darkness. Minds which started from this fundamental view could only accept the Incarnation provisionally and with reserve, and must at once proceed to explain it away. "The Word was made flesh;" but the Word of God, the True Light, could not be personally united to an actual material system called a human body, plunged in the world of matter, darkened and contaminated by its immersion. The human flesh in which Jesus appeared to be seen was fictitious. Redemption was a drama with a shadow for its hero. The phantom of a redeemer was nailed to the phantom of a cross. Philosophical dualism logically became theological doketism . Doketism logically evaporated dogmas, sacraments, duties, redemption. [74] Footnote_74_74 Few phenomena of criticism are more unaccountable than the desire to evade any acknowledgment of the historical existence of these singular heresies. Not long after St. John's death, Polycarp, in writing to the Philippians, quotes 1 John iv. 3, and proceeds to show that doketism had consummated its work down to the last fibres of the root of the creed, by two negations – no resurrection of the body, no judgment. (Polycarp, Epist. ad Philip. , vii.) Ignatius twice deals with the Doketæ at length. To the Trallians he delivers what may be called an antidoketic creed, concluding in the tone of one who was wounded by what he was daily hearing. "Be deaf then when any man speaks unto you without Jesus Christ, who is of Mary, who truly was born, truly suffered under Pontius Pilate, truly was crucified and died, truly also was raised from the dead. But if some who are unbelieving say that He suffered apparently, as if in vision, being visionary themselves , why am I a prisoner? why do I choose to fight with wild beasts?" (Ignat., Ep. ad Trall. , iv. x.) The play upon the name doketæ cannot be mistaken (λεγουσιν το δοκειν πεπονθεναι αυτον, αυτοι οντες το δοκειν). Ignatius writes to another Church – "What profited it me if one praiseth me but blasphemeth my Lord, not confessing that He bears true human flesh. They abstain from Eucharist and prayer, because they confess not that the Eucharist is flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ." ( Ep. ad Smyrn. , v. vi. vii.)

It may be objected that this doketism has been a mere temporary and local aberration of the human intellect; a metaphysical curiosity, with no real roots in human nature. If so, its refutation is an obsolete piece of an obsolete controversy; and the Epistle in some of its most vital portions is a dead letter.