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1 PETER<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST LETTER OF PETER<p/><b>The Catholic Or General Epistles</b><p/> First Peter belongs to that group of New Testament letters which are known as the Catholic or General Epistles. Two explanations of that title have been offered.<p/>(i) It is suggested that these letters were so called because they were addressed to the Church at large, in contradistinction to the Pauline letters which were addressed to individual churches. But that is not so. James is addressed to a definite, though widely scattered, community. It is written to the twelve tribes who are scattered abroad (<a href='B:660 1:1'>Jas 1:1</a>). It needs no argument that Second and Third John are addressed to definite communities; and, although First John has no specific address, it is clearly written with the needs and perils of a particular community in mind. First Peter itself is written to the strangers scattered abroad through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia (<a href='B:670 1:1'>1Pe 1:1</a>). It is true that these General Epistles have a wider range than the letters of Paul; at the same time, they all have a definite community in mind.<p/>(ii) So we must turn to the second explanation--that these letters were called Catholic or General because they were accepted as Scripture by the whole Church in contradistinction to that large number of letters which enjoyed a local and temporary authority but never universally ranked as Scripture. At the time when these letters were being written there was an outbreak of letter-writing in the Church. We still possess many of the letters which were then written--the letter of Clement of Rome to Corinth, the letter of Barnabas, the letters of Ignatius and the letters of Polycarp. All were regarded as very precious in the Churches to which they were written but were never regarded as having authority throughout the Church; on the other hand the Catholic or General Epistles gradually won a place in Scripture and were accepted by the whole Church. Here is the true explanation of their title.<p/><b>The Lovely Letter</b><p/> Of all the General Epistles it is probably true that First Peter is the best known and loved, and the most read. No one has ever been in any doubt about its charm. Moffatt writes of it: "The beautiful spirit of the pastoral shines through any translation of the Greek text. 'Affectionate, loving, lowly, humble,' are lzaak Walton's quaternion of adjectives for the Epistles of James, John and Peter, but it is First Peter which deserves them preeminently." It is written out of the love of a pastor's heart to help people who were going through it and on whom worse things were still to come. "The key-note," says Moffatt, "is steady encouragement to endurance in conduct and innocence in character." It has been said that its distinctive characteristic is warmth. E. J. Goodspeed wrote: "First Peter is one of the most moving pieces of persecution literature." To this day it is one of the easiest letters in the New Testament to read, for it has never lost its winsome appeal to the human heart.<p/><b>The Modern Doubt</b><p/> Until a comparatively short time ago few would have raised any doubts about the authenticity of First Peter. Renan, who was by no means a conservative critic, wrote of it: "The First Epistle is one of the writings of the New Testament which are most anciently and most unanimously cited as genuine." But in recent times the Petrine authorship of the letter has been widely questioned. The commentary by F. W. Beare, published in 1947, goes the length of saying, "There can be no possible doubt that 'Peter' is a pseudonym." That is to say, Beare has no doubt that someone else wrote this letter under the name of Peter. We shall go on in fairness to investigate that view; but first we shall set out the traditional view--which we ourselves unhesitatingly accept--of the date and authorship of this letter. This is that First Peter was written from Rome by Peter himself, about the year A.D. 67, in the days immediately following the first persecution of the Christians by Nero, to the Christians in those parts of Asia Minor named in the address. What is the evidence for this early date and, therefore, for the Petrine authorship?<p/><b>The Second Coming</b><p/> When we go to the letter we find that expectation of the second coming of Christ is in the very forefront of its thought. Christians are being kept for the salvation which is to be revealed at the last time (<a href='B:670 1:5'>1Pe 1:5</a>). Those who keep the faith will be saved from the coming judgment (<a href='B:670 1:7'>1Pe 1:7</a>). Christians are to hope for the grace which will come at the revelation of Jesus Christ (<a href='B:670 1:13'>1Pe 1:13</a>). The day of visitation is expected (<a href='B:670 2:12'>1Pe 2:12</a>). The end of all things is at hand (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a>). Those who suffer with Christ will also rejoice with Christ when his glory is revealed (<a href='B:670 4:13'>1Pe 4:13</a>). Judgment is to begin at the house of God (<a href='B:670 4:17'>1Pe 4:17</a>). The writer himself is sure that he will be a sharer in the glory to come (<a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>). When the Chief Shepherd shall appear the faithful Christian will receive a crown of glory (<a href='B:670 5:4'>1Pe 5:4</a>).<p/>From beginning to end of the letter the second coming is in the forefront of the writer's mind. It is the motive for steadfastness in the faith, for the loyal living of the Christian life and for gallant endurance amidst the sufferings which have come and will come upon them.<p/>It would be untrue to say that the second coming ever dropped out of Christian belief, but it did recede from the forefront of Christian belief as the years passed on and Christ did not return. It is, for instance, significant that in Ephesians, one of Paul's latest letters, there is no mention of it. On this ground it is reasonable to suppose that First Peter is early and comes from the days when the Christians vividly expected the return of their Lord at any moment.<p/><b>Simplicity Of Organization</b><p/> It is clear that First Peter comes from a time when the organization of the Church is very simple. There is no mention of deacons; nor of the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), the bishop, who begins to emerge in the Pastoral Epistles and becomes prominent in Ignatius' letters in the first half of the second century. The only Church officials mentioned are the elders. "I exhort the elders among you as a fellow-elder" (<a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>). On this ground, also, it is reasonable to suppose that First Peter comes from an early date.<p/><b>The Theology Of The Early Church</b><p/> What is most significant of all is that the theology of First Peter is the theology of the very early church. E. G. Selwyn has made a detailed study of this; and he has proved beyond all question that the theological ideas of First Peter are exactly the same as those we meet in the recorded sermons of Peter in the early chapters of Acts.<p/>The preaching of the early church was based on five main ideas. One of the greatest contributions of C. H. Dodd to New Testament scholarship was his formulation of these. They form the framework of all the sermons of the early church, as recorded in Acts; and they are the foundation of the thought of all the New Testament writers. The summary of these basic ideas has been given the name Kerugma (<a href='S:G2782'>G2782</a>), which means the announcement or the proclamation of a herald.<p/>These are the fundamental ideas which the Church in its first days heralded forth. We shall take them one by one and shall set down after each, first, the references in the early chapters of Acts and, second, the references in First Peter; and we will make the significant discovery that the basic ideas of the sermons of the early church and the theology of First Peter are precisely the same. We are not claiming, of course, that the sermons in Acts are verbatim reports of what was actually preached, but we believe that they give correctly the substance of the message of the first preachers.<p/>(i) The age of fulfilment has dawned; the Messianic age has begun. This is God's last word. A new order is being inaugurated and the elect are summoned to join the new community. <a href='B:510 2:14-16'>Act 2:14-16</a>; <a href='B:510 3:12-26'>Act 3:12-26</a>; <a href='B:510 4:8-12'>Act 4:8-12</a>; <a href='B:510 10:34-43'>Act 10:34-43</a>; <a href='B:670 1:3'>1Pe 1:3</a>; <a href='B:670 1:10-12'>1Pe 1:10-12</a>; <a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a>.<p/>(ii) This new age has come through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, all of which are in direct fulfilment of the prophecies of the Old Testament and are, therefore, the result of the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. <a href='B:510 2:20-31'>Act 2:20-31</a>; <a href='B:510 3:13-14'>Act 3:13-14</a>; <a href='B:510 10:43'>Act 10:43</a>; <a href='B:670 1:20-21'>1Pe 1:20-21</a>.<p/>(iii) By virtue of the resurrection Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God and is the Messianic head of the new Israel. <a href='B:510 2:22-26'>Act 2:22-26</a>; <a href='B:510 3:13'>Act 3:13</a>; <a href='B:510 4:11'>Act 4:11</a>; <a href='B:510 5:30-31'>Act 5:30-31</a>; <a href='B:510 10:39-42'>Act 10:39-42</a>; <a href='B:670 1:21'>1Pe 1:21</a>; <a href='B:670 2:7'>1Pe 2:7</a>; <a href='B:670 2:24'>1Pe 2:24</a>; <a href='B:670 3:22'>1Pe 3:22</a>.<p/>(iv) These Messianic events will shortly reach their consummation in the return of Christ in glory and the judgment of the living and the dead. <a href='B:510 3:19-23'>Act 3:19-23</a>; <a href='B:510 10:42'>Act 10:42</a>; <a href='B:670 1:5'>1Pe 1:5</a>; <a href='B:670 1:7'>1Pe 1:7</a>; <a href='B:670 1:13'>1Pe 1:13</a>; <a href='B:670 4:5'>1Pe 4:5</a>; <a href='B:670 4:13'>1Pe 4:13</a>; 1Pet 17-18; <a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>; <a href='B:670 5:4'>1Pe 5:4</a>.<p/>(v) These facts are made the grounds for an appeal for repentance, and the offer of forgiveness and of the Holy Spirit, and the promise of eternal life. <a href='B:510 2:38-39'>Act 2:38-39</a>; <a href='B:510 3:19'>Act 3:19</a>; <a href='B:510 5:31'>Act 5:31</a>; <a href='B:510 10:43'>Act 10:43</a>; <a href='B:670 1:13-25'>1Pe 1:13-25</a>; <a href='B:670 2:1-3'>1Pe 2:1-3</a>; <a href='B:670 4:1-5'>1Pe 4:1-5</a>.<p/>These declarations are the five main planks in the edifice of early Christian preaching, as recorded for us in the sermons of Peter in the early chapters of Acts. They are also the dominant ideas in First Peter. The correspondence is so close and so consistent that we almost certainly with entire probability see the same hand and mind in both.<p/><b>Quotations From The Fathers</b><p/> We may add another point to our evidence that First Peter is early; very early the fathers and preachers of the Church begin to quote it. The first person to quote First Peter by name is Irenaeus, who lived from A.D. 130 until well into the next century. He twice quotes <a href='B:670 1:8'>1Pe 1:8</a>: "Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy." And he once quotes <a href='B:670 2:16'>1Pe 2:16</a>, with its command not to use liberty as a cloak for maliciousness. But even before this the fathers of the Church are quoting Peter without mentioning his name. Clement of Rome, writing about A.D. 95, speaks of "the precious blood of Christ, an unusual phrase which may well come from Peter's statement that we are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ (<a href='B:670 1:19'>1Pe 1:19</a>). Polycarp, who was martyred in A.D. 155, continuously quotes Peter without using his name. We may select three passages to show how closely he gives Peter's words.<p/>Wherefore, girding up your loins, serve God in fear... believing on him who raised up our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, and gave him glory (Polycarp, To the Philippians chapter 2: 1).<p/>Therefore, gird up your minds...through him you have confidence in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory (<a href='B:670 1:13'>1Pe 1:13</a>; <a href='B:670 1:21'>1Pe 1:21</a>).<p/>Christ Jesus who bare our sins in his own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth (Polycarp 8: 1).<p/>He committed no sin; no guile was found on his life... He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (<a href='B:670 2:22'>1Pe 2:22</a>; <a href='B:670 2:24'>1Pe 2:24</a>).<p/>Having your conversation blameless among the Gentiles (Polycarp 10: 2).<p/>Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles (<a href='B:670 2:12'>1Pe 2:12</a>).<p/>There can be no doubt that Polycarp is quoting Peter, although he does not name him. It takes some time for a book to acquire such an authority and familiarity that it can be quoted almost unconsciously, its language woven into the language of the Church. Once again we see that First Peter must be a very early book.<p/><b>The Excellence Of The Greek</b><p/> If, however, we are defending the Petrine authorship of this letter, there is one problem we must face--and that is the excellence of the Greek. It seems impossible that it should be the work of a Galilaean fisherman. New Testament scholars are at one in praising the Greek of this letter. F. W. Beare writes: "The epistle is quite obviously the work of a man of letters, skilled in all the devices of rhetoric, and able to draw on an extensive, and even learned, vocabulary. He is a stylist of no ordinary capacity, and he writes some of the best Greek in the whole New Testament, far smoother and more literary than that of the highly-trained Paul." Moffatt speaks of this letter's "plastic language and love of metaphor." Mayor says that First Peter has no equal in the New Testament for "sustained stateliness of rhythm." Bigg has likened certain of First Peter.s phrases to the writing of Thucydides. Selwyn has spoken of First Peter's "Euripidean tenderness" and of its ability to coin compound words as Aeschylus might have done. The Greek of First Peter is not entirely unworthy to be set beside that of the masters of the language. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Peter using the Greek language like that.<p/>The letter itself supplies the solution to this problem. In the concluding short section Peter himself says, "By Silvanus...I have written briefly" (<a href='B:670 5:12'>1Pe 5:12</a>). By Silvanus--dia (<a href='S:G1223'>G1223</a>) Silouanou (<a href='S:G4610'>G4610</a>) --is an unusual phrase. The Greek means that Silvanus was Peter's agent in the writing of the letter; it means that he was more than merely Peter's stenographer.<p/>Let us approach this from two angles. First, let us enquire what we know about Silvanus. (The evidence is set out more fully in our study section on <a href='B:670 5:12'>1Pe 5:12</a>). In all probability he is the same person as the Silvanus of Paul's letters and the Silas of Acts, Silas being a shortened and more familiar form of Silvanus. When we examine these passages, we find that Silas or Silvanus was no ordinary person but a leading figure in the life and counsels of the early church.<p/>He was a prophet (<a href='B:510 15:32'>Act 15:32</a>); he was one of the "chief among the brethren" at the council of Jerusalem and one of the two chosen to deliver the decisions of the council to the Church at Antioch (<a href='B:510 15:22'>Act 15:22</a>; <a href='B:510 15:27'>Act 15:27</a>). He was Paul's chosen companion in the second missionary journey, and was with Paul both in Philippi and in Corinth (<a href='B:510 15:37-40'>Act 15:37-40</a>; <a href='B:510 16:19'>Act 16:19</a>; <a href='B:510 16:25'>Act 16:25</a>; <a href='B:510 16:29'>Act 16:29</a>; <a href='B:510 18:5'>Act 18:5</a>; <a href='B:540 1:19'>2Co 1:19</a>). He was associated with Paul in the initial greetings of 1 and 2 Thessalonians (<a href='B:590 1:1'>1Th 1:1</a>; <a href='B:600 1:1'>2Th 1:1</a>). He was a Roman citizen (<a href='B:510 16:37'>Act 16:37</a>).<p/>Silvanus, then, was a notable man in the early church; he was not so much the assistant as the colleague of Paul; and, since he was a Roman citizen, there is at least a possibility that he was a man of an education and culture such as Peter could never have enjoyed.<p/>Now let us add our second line of thought. In a missionary situation, when a missionary can speak a language well enough but cannot write it very well, it is quite common for him to do one of two things in order to send a message to his people. He either writes it out in as good a style as he can, and then gets a native speaker of the language to correct his mistakes and to polish his style; or, if he has a native colleague whom he can fully trust, he tells him what he wishes said, leaves him to put the message into written form and then vets the result.<p/>We can well imagine that this was the part Silvanus played in the writing of First Peter. Either he corrected and polished Peter's necessarily inadequate Greek; or he wrote in his own words what Peter wanted said, with Peter setting the final product and adding the last personal paragraph to it.<p/>The thought is that of Peter; but the style is that of Silvanus. And so, although the Greek is so excellent, there is no necessity to deny that the letter comes from Peter himself.<p/><b>The Recipients Of The Letter</b><p/> The recipients of the letter are the exiles (a Christian is always a sojourner on the earth) scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.<p/>Almost all of these words had a double significance. They stood for ancient kingdoms and they stood for Roman provinces to which the ancient names had been given; and the ancient kingdoms and the new provinces did not always cover the same territory. Pontus was never a province. It had originally been the kingdom of Mithradates and part of it was incorporated in Bithynia and part of it in Galatia. Galatia had originally been the kingdom of the Gauls in the area of the three cities Ancyra, Pessinus, and Tavium, but the Romans had expanded it into a much larger unit of administration, including sections of Phrygia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, and Isauria. The kingdom of Cappadocia had become a Roman province in A.D. 17 in practically its original form. Asia was not the continent of Asia as we use the term. It had been an independent kingdom, whose last king, Attalus the Third, had bequeathed it as a gift to Rome in 133 B.C. It embraced the centre of Asia minor and was bounded on the north by Bithynia, on the south by Lycia, and on the east by Phrygia and Galatia. In popular language it was that part of Asia Minor which lay along the shores of the Aegean Sea.<p/>We do not know why these particular districts were picked out; but this much is certain--they embraced a large area with a very large population; and the fact that they are all mentioned is one of the greatest proofs of the immense missionary activity of the early church, apart altogether from the missionary activities of Paul.<p/>All these districts lie in the north-east corner of Asia Minor. Why they are named as a group and why they are named in this particular order, we do not know. But a glance at the map will show that, if the bearer of this letter--who may well have been Silvanus--sailed from Italy and landed at Sinope in north-east Asia Minor, a journey through these provinces would be a circular tour which would take him back to Sinope. From Sinope in Bithynia he would go south to Galatia, further south to Cappadocia, west to Asia, north again to Bithynia, and then east to arrive back in Sinope.<p/>It is clear from the letter itself that its recipients were mainly Gentiles. There is no mention of any question of the law, a question which always arose when there was a Jewish background. Their previous condition had been one of fleshly passion (<a href='B:670 1:14'>1Pe 1:14</a>; <a href='B:670 4:3-4'>1Pe 4:3-4</a>) which fits gentiles far better than Jews. Previously they had been no people--Gentiles outside the covenant--but now they are the people of God (<a href='B:670 2:9-10'>1Pe 2:9-10</a>).<p/>The form of his name which Peter uses also shows that this letter was intended for Gentiles for Peter is a Greek name. Paul calls him Cephas (<a href='B:530 1:12'>1Co 1:12</a>; <a href='B:530 3:22'>1Co 3:22</a>; <a href='B:530 9:5'>1Co 9:5</a>; <a href='B:530 15:5'>1Co 15:5</a>; <a href='B:550 1:18'>Gal 1:18</a>; <a href='B:550 2:9'>Gal 2:9</a>; <a href='B:550 2:11'>Gal 2:11</a>; <a href='B:550 2:14'>Gal 2:14</a>); among his fellow Jews, he was known as Simeon (<a href='B:510 15:14'>Act 15:14</a>), which is the name by which he is called in Second Peter (<a href='B:680 1:1'>2Pe 1:1</a>). Since he uses his Greek name here, it is likely that he was writing to Greek people.<p/><b>The Circumstances Behind The Letter</b><p/> That this letter was written in a time when persecution threatened, is abundantly clear. They are in the midst of various trials (<a href='B:670 1:6'>1Pe 1:6</a>). They are likely to be falsely accused as evil-doers (<a href='B:670 3:16'>1Pe 3:16</a>). A fiery ordeal is going to try them (<a href='B:670 4:12'>1Pe 4:12</a>). When they suffer, they are to commit themselves to God (<a href='B:670 4:19'>1Pe 4:19</a>). They may well have to suffer for righteousness' sake (<a href='B:670 3:14'>1Pe 3:14</a>). They are sharing in the afflictions which the Christian brotherhood throughout the world is called upon to endure (<a href='B:670 5:9'>1Pe 5:9</a>). At the back of this letter there are fiery trial, a campaign of slander and suffering for the sake of Christ. Can we identify this situation?<p/>There was a time when the Christians had little to fear from the Roman government. In Acts it is repeatedly the Roman magistrates and the Roman soldiers and officials who save Paul from the fury of Jews and pagans alike. As Gibbon had it, the tribunal of the pagan magistrate proved the most assured refuge against the fury of the synagogue. The reason was that in the early days the Roman government was not able to distinguish between Jews and Christians. Within the empire Judaism was what was called a religio licita, a permitted religion, and Jews had full liberty to worship in their own way. It was not that the Jews did not try to enlighten the Romans to the true facts of the situation; they did so in Corinth, for example (<a href='B:510 18:12-17'>Act 18:12-17</a>). But for some time the Romans simply regarded the Christians as a Jewish sect and, therefore, did not molest them.<p/>The change came in the days of Nero and we can trace almost every detail of the story. On 19th July, A.D. 64, the great fire of Rome broke out. Rome, a city of narrow streets and high wooden tenements, was in real danger of being wiped out. The fire burned for three days and three nights, was checked, and then broke out again with redoubled violence. The Roman populace had no doubt who was responsible and put the blame on the Emperor. Nero had a passion for building; and they believed so that he had deliberately taken steps to obliterate Rome that he might build it again. Nero's responsibility must remain for ever in doubt; but it is certain that he watched the raging inferno from the tower of Maecenas and expressed himself as charmed with the flower and loveliness of the flames. It was freely said that those who tried to extinguish the fire were deliberately hindered and that men were seen to rekindle it again, when it was likely to subside. The people were overwhelmed. The ancient landmarks and the ancestral shrines had vanished; the Temple of Luna, the Ara Maxima, the great altar, the Temple of Jupiter Stator, the shrine of Vesta, their very household gods were gone. They were homeless and, in Farrar's phrase, there was "a hopeless brotherhood of wretchedness."<p/>The resentment of the people was bitter. Nero had to divert suspicion from himself; a scapegoat had to be found. The Christians were made the scapegoat. Tacitus, the Roman historian, tells the story (Annals 15:44):<p/>Neither human assistance in the shape of imperial gifts, nor<p/>attempts to appease the gods, could remove the sinister report<p/>that the fire was due to Nero's own orders. And, so, in the hope<p/>of dissipating the rumour, he falsely diverted the charge on to a<p/>set of people to whom the vulgar gave the name of Chrestians, and<p/>who were detested for the abominations they perpetrated. The<p/>founder of the sect, one Christus by name, had been executed<p/>by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; and the dangerous<p/>superstition, though put down for the moment, broke out again, not<p/>only in Judaea, the original home of the pest, but even in Rome,<p/>where everything shameful and horrible collects and is practised.<p/>Clearly Tacitus had no doubt that the Christians were not to blame for the fire and that Nero was simply choosing them to be the scapegoats for his own crime.<p/>Why did Nero pick on the Christians and how was it possible even to suggest that they were responsible for the fire of Rome? There are two possible answers.<p/>(i) The Christians were already the victims of certain slanders.<p/>(a) They were in the popular mind connected with the Jews. Antisemitism is no new thing and it was easy for the Roman mob to attach any crime to the Jews and, therefore, to the Christians.<p/>(b) The Lord's Supper was secret, at least in a sense. It was open only to the members of the Church. And certain phrases connected with it were fruitful sources of pagan slanders, phrases about eating someone's body and drinking someone's blood. That was enough to produce a rumour that the Christians were cannibals. In time the rumour grew until it became a story that the Christians killed and ate a Gentile, or a newly born child. At the Lord's Table the Christians gave each other the kiss of peace (<a href='B:670 5:14'>1Pe 5:14</a>). Their meeting was called the Agape (<a href='S:G26'>G26</a>), the Love Feast. That was enough for stories to spread that the Christian meetings were orgies of vice.<p/>(c) It was always a charge against the Christians that they "tampered with family relationships." There was this much truth in such a charge that Christianity did indeed become a sword to split families, when some members of a family became Christian and some did not. A religion which split homes was bound to be unpopular.<p/>(d) It was the case that the Christians spoke of a coming day when the world would dissolve in flames. Many a Christian preacher must have been heard preaching of the second coming and the fiery dissolution of all things (<a href='B:510 2:19-20'>Act 2:19-20</a>). It would not be difficult to put the blame for the fire on to people who spoke like that.<p/>There was abundant material which could be perverted into false charges against the Christians by anyone maliciously disposed to victimise them.<p/>(ii) The Jewish faith had always appealed especially to women because of its moral standards in a world where chastity did not exist. There were, therefore, many well-born women who had embraced the Jewish faith. The Jews did not hesitate to work upon these women to influence their husbands against the Christians. We get a definite example of that in what happened to Paul and his company in Antioch of Pisidia. There it was through such women that the Jews stirred up action against Paul (<a href='B:510 13:50'>Act 13:50</a>). Two of Nero's court favourites were Jewish proselytes. There was Aliturus, his favourite actor; and there was Poppaea, his mistress. It is very likely that the Jews through them influenced Nero to take action against the Christians.<p/>In any event, the blame for the fire was attached to the Christians and a savage outbreak of persecution occurred. Nor was it simply persecution by legal means. What Tacitus called an ingens multitudo, a huge multitude, of Christians perished in the most sadistic ways. Nero rolled the Christians in pitch, set light to them and used them as living torches to light his gardens. He sewed them up in the skins of wild animals and set his hunting-dogs upon them, to tear them limb from limb while they still lived.<p/>Tacitus writes:<p/>Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the<p/>skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were<p/>nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burned, to<p/>serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero<p/>offered his gardens for the spectacle and was exhibiting a show<p/>in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a<p/>charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who<p/>deserve extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of<p/>compassion; for, it was not, as it seemed, for the public good,<p/>but to glut one man's cruelty that they were being destroyed<p/>(Tacitus, Annals 15: 44).<p/>The same terrible story is told by the later Christian historian, Sulipicius Severus, in his Chronicle:<p/>In the meantime, the number of Christians being now very large,<p/>it happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was<p/>stationed at Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of<p/>causing the fire upon the emperor, and he was believed in this way<p/>to have sought for the glory of building a new city. And, in fact,<p/>Nero could not, by any means he tried, escape from the charge that<p/>the fire had been caused by his orders. He, therefore, turned the<p/>accusation against the Christians and the most cruel tortures were<p/>accordingly inflicted upon the innocent. Nay, even new kinds of<p/>death were invented so that, being covered in the skins of wild<p/>beasts, they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were<p/>crucified, or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this<p/>purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be<p/>consumed to serve for light during the night. In this way, cruelty<p/>first began to be manifested against the Christians. Afterwards,<p/>too, their religion was prohibited by laws which were enacted; and<p/>by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to be a<p/>Christian.<p/>It is true that this persecution was confined originally to Rome; but the gateway to persecution had been opened and in every place they were ready victims for the mob.<p/>Moffatt writes:<p/>After the Neronic wave had passed over the capital, the wash of it<p/>was felt on the far shores of the provinces; the dramatic publicity<p/>of the punishment must have spread the name of Christian urbi et<p/>orbi, far and wide, over the entire empire; the provincials would<p/>soon hear of it, and when they desired a similar outburst at the<p/>expense of the loyal Christians, all that they needed was a<p/>proconsul to gratify their wishes and some outstanding disciple to<p/>serve as a victim.<p/>For ever after the Christians were to live under threat. The mobs of the Roman cities knew what had happened in Rome and there were always these slanderous stories against the Christians. There were times when the mob loved blood and there were many governors ready to pander to their blood-lust. It was not Roman law but lynch law which threatened the Christians.<p/>From now on the Christian was in peril of his life. For years nothing might happen; then some spark might set off the explosion; and the terror would break out. That is the situation at the back of First Peter; and it is in face of it that Peter calls his people to hope and to courage and to that lovely Christian living which alone can give the lie to the slanders with which they are attacked and which are the grounds for taking measures against them. First Peter was written to meet no theological heresy; it was written to strengthen men and women in jeopardy of their lives.<p/><b>The Doubts</b><p/> We have set out in full the arguments which go to prove that Peter is really the author of the first letter which bears his name. But, as we have said, not a few first-class scholars have felt that it cannot have been his work. We ourselves accept the view that Peter is the author of the letter; but in fairness we set out the other side, largely as it is presented in the chapter on First Peter in The Primitive Church by B. H. Streeter<p/><b>Strange Silences</b><p/> Bigg writes in his introduction: "There is no book in the New Testament which has earlier, better, or stronger attestation (than First Peter). It is true that Eusebius, the great fourth century scholar and historian of the Church, classes First Peter among the books universally accepted in the early church as part of scripture" (Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History 3:25:2). But certain things are to be noted.<p/>(a) Eusebius adduces certain quotations from earlier writers to prove his contention that First Peter was universally accepted. This he never does in connection with the gospels or the letters of Paul; and the very fact that he feels called upon to produce his evidence in the case of First Peter might be held to indicate that in it he felt some necessity to prove his point, a necessity which did not exist in connection with the other books. Was there a doubt in Eusebius' own mind? Or, were there people who had to be convinced? Was the universal acceptance of First Peter not so unanimous after all?<p/>(b) In his book, The Canon of the New Testament, Westcott noted that, although no one in the early church questions the right of First Peter to be part of the New Testament, surprisingly few of the early fathers quote it and, still more surprising, very few of the early fathers in the west and in Rome quote it. Tertullian is an immense quoter of scripture. In his writings there are 7,258 quotations from the New Testament, but only 2 of them are from First Peter. If Peter wrote this letter and wrote it in Rome, we would expect it to be well known and largely used in the Church of the west.<p/>(c) The earliest known official list of New Testament books is the Muratorian Canon, so called after Cardinal Muratori who discovered it. It is the official list of New Testament books as accepted in the Church at Rome about the year A.D. 170: It is an extraordinary fact that First Peter does not appear at all. It can be fairly argued that the Muratorian Canon, as we possess it, is defective and that it may originally have contained a reference to First Peter. But that argument is seriously weakened by the next consideration.<p/>(d) It is a fact that First Peter was still not in the New Testament of the Syrian Church as late as A.D. 373: It did not get in until the Syriac version of the New Testament known as the Peshitto was made about A.D. 400: We know that it was Tatian who brought the New Testament books to the Syriac-speaking Church; and he brought them to Syria from Rome when he went to Edessa and founded the Church there in A.D. 172: It could, therefore, be argued that the Muratorian Canon is correct as we possess it and that First Peter was not part of the Roman Church's New Testament as late as A.D. 170: This would be a very surprising fact if Peter wrote it--and actually wrote it at Rome.<p/>When all these facts are put together, it does seem that there are some strange silences in regard to First Peter and that its attestation may not be as strong as is usually assumed.<p/><b>First Peter And Ephesians</b><p/> Further, there is definitely some connection between First Peter and Ephesians. There are many close parallels of thought and expression between the two and we select the following specimens of this similarity.<p/>Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his<p/>great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the<p/>resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (<a href='B:670 1:3'>1Pe 1:3</a>).<p/>Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who<p/>has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the<p/>heavenly places (<a href='B:560 1:3'>Eph 1:3</a>).<p/>Therefore, gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon<p/>the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ<p/>(<a href='B:670 1:13'>1Pe 1:13</a>).<p/>Stand, therefore, having girded your loins with truth (<a href='B:560 6:14'>Eph 6:14</a>).<p/>Jesus Christ, was destined before the foundation of the world, but<p/>was made manifest at the end of the times for your sake<p/>(<a href='B:670 1:20'>1Pe 1:20</a>).<p/>Even as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world<p/>(<a href='B:560 1:4'>Eph 1:4</a>).<p/>Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven, and is at the right hand<p/>of God, with angels and authorities and powers subject to him<p/>(<a href='B:670 3:22'>1Pe 3:22</a>).<p/>God made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far<p/>above all rule and authority, and power and dominion (<a href='B:560 1:20-21'>Eph 1:20-21</a>).<p/>In addition, the injunctions to slaves, husbands and wives in First Peter and Ephesians are very similar.<p/>The argument is put forward that First Peter is quoting Ephesians. Although Ephesians must have been written somewhere about A.D. 64, Paul's letters were not collected and edited until about A.D. 90: If, then, Peter was also writing in A.D. 64, how could he know Ephesians?<p/>This is an argument to which there is more than one reply. (a) The injunctions to slaves, husbands and wives are part of the standardized ethical teaching given to all converts in all churches. Peter was not borrowing from Paul; both were using common stock. (b) All the similarities quoted can well be explained from the fact that certain phrases and lines of thought were universal in the early church. For instance, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was part of the universal devotional language of the early church, which both Peter and Paul would know and use without any borrowing from each other. (c) Even if there was mutual borrowing, it is by no means certain that First Peter borrowed from Ephesians; the borrowing might well have been the other way round and probably was, for First Peter is much simpler than Ephesians. (d) Lastly, even if First Peter borrowed from Ephesians, if Peter and Paul were in Rome at the same time, it is perfectly possible that Peter could have seen a copy of Ephesians before it was sent to Asia Minor, and he might well have discussed its ideas with Paul.<p/>The argument that First Peter must be late because it quotes from Ephesians seems to us very uncertain and insecure, and probably mistaken.<p/><b>Your Fellow-elder</b><p/> It is objected that Peter could not well have written the sentence: "The elders among you I exhort, as a fellow-elder" (<a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>). It is maintained that Peter could not have called himself an elder. He was an apostle whose function was quite different from that of an elder. The apostle was characteristically a man whose work and authority were not confined to any one congregation, but whose writ ran throughout the Church at large; whereas the elder was the governing official of the local congregation.<p/>That is perfectly true. But it must be remembered that amongst the Jews there was no office more universally honoured than that of elder. The elder had the respect of the whole community and to him the community looked for guidance in its problems and justice in its disputes. Peter, as a Jew, would feel nothing out of place in calling himself an elder; and in so doing he would avoid the conscious claim of authority that the title of apostle might have implied, and graciously and courteously identify himself with the people to whom he spoke.<p/><b>A Witness Of The Sufferings Of Christ</b><p/> It is objected that Peter could not honestly have called himself a witness of Christ's sufferings, for after the arrest in the garden all the disciples forsook Jesus and fled (<a href='B:470 26:56'>Mat 26:56</a>) and, apart from the beloved disciple, none was a witness of the Cross (<a href='B:500 19:26-27'>Joh 19:26-27</a>). A witness of the resurrection Peter could call himself, and indeed to be such was the function of an apostle (<a href='B:510 1:22'>Act 1:22</a>), but a witness of the Cross he was not. In a sense that is undeniable. And yet Peter is not here claiming to be a witness of the crucifixion, but to be a witness of the sufferings of Christ. He did see Christ suffer, in his continual rejection by men, in the poignant moments of the Last Supper, in the agony in the garden and in that moment when, after he had denied him, Jesus turned and looked on him (<a href='B:490 22:61'>Luk 22:61</a>). It is an insensitive and pedestrian criticism which denies to Peter the right to say that he had been a witness of the sufferings of Christ.<p/><b>Persecution For The Name</b><p/> The main argument for a late date for First Peter is drawn from its references to persecution. It is argued that First Peter implies that it was already a crime to be a Christian and that Christians were brought before the courts, not for any crime but for the bare fact of their faith. First Peter speaks about being reproached for the name of Christ (<a href='B:670 4:14'>1Pe 4:14</a>); it speaks of suffering as a Christian (<a href='B:670 4:16'>1Pe 4:16</a>). It is argued that this stage of persecution was not reached until after A.D. 100, and that prior to that date their persecution was on the score of alleged evil-doing, as in the time of Nero.<p/>There is no doubt that this was the law by A.D. 112: At that time Pliny was governor of Bithynia. He was a personal friend of the Emperor Trajan and he had a way of referring all his difficulties to Trajan for solution. He wrote to the Emperor to tell how he dealt with the Christians. Pliny was well aware that they were law-abiding citizens to whose practices no crimes were attached. They told him that "they had been accustomed to assemble on a fixed day before daylight, and sing by turns a hymn to Christ as God; that they had bound themselves with an oath, not for any crime, but to commit neither theft, nor robbery, nor adultery, nor to break their word, and not to deny a deposit when demanded." Pliny accepted all this; but, when they were brought before him, he asked only one question. "I have asked them whether they were Christians. Those who confessed I asked a second and a third time, threatening punishment. Those who persisted I ordered to be led away to execution." Their sole crime was that of being a Christian.<p/>Trajan replied that this was the correct proceeding and that anyone who denied being a Christian and proved it by sacrificing to the gods was immediately to be set free. From the letters it is clear that there was a good deal of information being laid against the Christians; and Trajan laid it down that no anonymous letters of information were to be accepted or acted upon (Pliny: Letters 96 and 97).<p/>It is argued that this stage of persecution did not emerge until the time of Trajan; and that First Peter, therefore, implies a situation which must be as late as Trojan's time.<p/>The only way in which we can settle this is to sketch the progress of persecution and the reason for it in the Roman Empire. We may do so by setting out one basic fact and three developments from it.<p/>(i) Under the Roman system, religions were divided into two kinds. There were those which were religiones licitae, permitted religions; these were recognized by the state and it was open to any man to practise them. There were religiones illicitae; these were forbidden by the state and it was illegal for any man to practise them on pain of automatic prosecution as a criminal. It is to be noted that Roman toleration was very wide; and that any religion which did not affect public morality and civil order was certain to be permitted.<p/>(ii) Judaism was a religio licita; and in the very early days the Romans, not unnaturally, did not know the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity, as far as they were concerned, was merely a sect of Judaism and any tension and hostility between the two was a private quarrel which was no concern of the Roman government. Because of that in the very early days Christianity was under no danger of persecution. It enjoyed the same freedom of worship as Judaism enjoyed because it was assumed to be a religio licita.<p/>(iii) The action of Nero changed the situation. However it came about, and most likely it was by the deliberate action of the Jews, the Roman government discovered that Judaism and Christianity were different. It is true that Nero first persecuted the Christians, not for being Christians, but for burning Rome. But the fact remains that Christianity had been discovered by the government to be a separate religion.<p/>(iv) The consequence was immediate and inevitable. Christianity was at once a prohibited religion and immediately, ipso facto, every Christian became an outlaw. In the Roman historian, Suetonius, we have direct evidence that this was precisely what happened. He gives a kind of list of the legislative reforms initiated by Nero:<p/>During his reign many abuses were severely punished and put<p/>down, and not a few new laws were made; a limit was set to<p/>expenditures; the public banquets were confined to a distribution<p/>of food; the sale of any kind of cooked viands in the taverns was<p/>forbidden, with the exception of pulse and vegetables, whereas,<p/>before, every kind of dainty was exposed for sale. Punishment was<p/>inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and<p/>mischievous superstition. He put an end to the diversions of the<p/>chariot-drivers, who from immunity of long standing claimed the<p/>right of ranging at large and amusing themselves by cheating<p/>and robbing the people. The pantomimic actors and their<p/>partisans were banished from the city.<p/>We have quoted that passage in full because it is proof that by the time of Nero the punishment of Christians had become an ordinary police affair. It is abundantly clear that we do not need to wait until the time of Trajan for the mere fact of being a Christian to be a crime. Any time after Nero a Christian was liable to punishment and death simply for the name he bore,<p/>This does not mean that persecution was constant and consistent; but it does mean that any Christian was liable to execution at any time, purely as a police matter. In one area a Christian might live a whole lifetime at peace; in another there might be outbreaks of persecution every few months. It depended very largely on two things. It depended on the governor himself who might either leave the Christians unmolested or equally set the processes of the law in action against them. It depended on informers. The governor might not wish to act against the Christians, but if information was laid against a Christian he had to; and there were times when the mob were out for blood, information was laid and Christians were butchered to make a Roman holiday.<p/>To compare small things with great, the legal position of the Christians and the attitude of the Roman law can be parallelled in Britain today. There are certain actions which are illegal--to take a very small example, parking a car partly on the pavement--but which for long enough may be permitted. But if the police authorities decide to institute a drive against such an action, or if it develops into too blatant a breaking of the law, or if someone lays a complaint and information, the law will go into action and due penalty and punishment will be exacted. That was the position of the Christians in the empire all of whom were technically outlaws. In actual fact no action might be taken against them; but a kind of sword of Damocles was for ever suspended over them. None knew when information would be laid against him; none knew when a governor would take action; none knew when he might have to die. And that situation obtained consistently after the action of Nero. Up to that time the Roman authorities had not realized that Christianity was a new religion; but from then on the Christian was automatically an outlaw.<p/>Let us, then, look at the situation as depicted in First Peter. Peter's people are undergoing various trials (<a href='B:670 1:6'>1Pe 1:6</a>). Their faith is liable to be tried as metal is tested with fire (<a href='B:670 1:7'>1Pe 1:7</a>). Clearly they are undergoing a campaign of slander in which ignorant and baseless charges are being maliciously directed against them (<a href='B:670 2:12'>1Pe 2:12</a>; <a href='B:670 2:15'>1Pe 2:15</a>; <a href='B:670 3:16'>1Pe 3:16</a>; <a href='B:670 4:4'>1Pe 4:4</a>). At this very moment they are in the midst of an outbreak of persecution because they are Christians (<a href='B:670 4:12'>1Pe 4:12</a>; <a href='B:670 4:14'>1Pe 4:14</a>; <a href='B:670 4:16'>1Pe 4:16</a>; <a href='B:670 5:9'>1Pe 5:9</a>). Such suffering is only to be expected and they must not be surprised at it (<a href='B:670 4:12'>1Pe 4:12</a>). In any event it gives them the happiness of suffering for righteousness' sake (<a href='B:670 3:14'>1Pe 3:14</a>; <a href='B:670 3:17'>1Pe 3:17</a>), and of being sharers in the sufferings of Christ (<a href='B:670 4:13'>1Pe 4:13</a>). There is no need to come down to the time of Trajan for this situation. It is one in which Christians daily found themselves in every part of the empire at any time after their true status had been disclosed by the action of Nero. The persecution situation in First Peter does not in any way compel us to date it after the lifetime of Peter.<p/><b>Honour The King</b><p/> But we must proceed with the arguments of those who cannot hold the Petrine authorship. It is argued that in the situation which obtained in the time of Nero, Peter could never have written: "Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.... Fear God. Honour the emperor." (<a href='B:670 2:13-17'>1Pe 2:13-17</a>). The fact is, however, that this is precisely the point of view expressed in <a href='B:520 13:1-7'>Rom 13:1-7</a>. The whole teaching of the New Testament, except only in the Revelation in which Rome is damned, is that the Christian must be a loyal citizen and must demonstrate the falsity of the charges made against him by the excellence of his behaviour as such. (<a href='B:670 2:15'>1Pe 2:15</a>). Even in times of persecution the Christian fully acknowledged his obligation to be a good citizen; and his only defence against persecution was to show by the excellence of his citizenship that he did not deserve such treatment. It is by no means impossible that Peter should have written like that.<p/><b>A Sermon And A Pastoral</b><p/> What is the view of those who cannot believe that First Peter is the work of Peter himself?<p/>First of all, it is suggested that the initial address (<a href='B:670 1:1-2'>1Pe 1:1-2</a>), and the closing greetings and salutations (<a href='B:670 5:12-14'>1Pe 5:12-14</a>) are later additions and no part of the original letter.<p/>It is then suggested that First Peter as it stands is composed of two separate and quite different works. In <a href='B:670 4:11'>1Pe 4:11</a> we find a doxology. The natural place for a doxology is at the end; and it is suggested that <a href='B:670 1:3-25'>1Pe 1:3-25</a>; <a href='B:670 2:1-25'>1Pe 2:1-25</a>; <a href='B:670 3:1-22'>1Pe 3:1-22</a>; <a href='B:670 4:1-11'>1Pe 4:1-11</a> is the first of the two works of which the letter is composed. It is further suggested that this part of First Peter was originally a baptismal sermon. There is indeed in it a reference to the baptism which saves us (<a href='B:670 3:21'>1Pe 3:21</a>); and the advice to slaves, wives and husbands (<a href='B:670 2:18-25'>1Pe 2:18-25</a>; <a href='B:670 3:1-7'>1Pe 3:1-7</a>) would be entirely relevant to those who were entering the Christian Church from paganism and setting out on the newness of the Christian life.<p/>It is suggested that the second part of the letter, <a href='B:670 4:12-19'>1Pe 4:12-19</a>; <a href='B:670 5:1-11'>1Pe 5:1-11</a>, contains the substance of a pastoral letter, written to strengthen and comfort during a time of persecution (<a href='B:670 4:12-19'>1Pe 4:12-19</a>). At such a time the elders were very important; on them the resistance power of the Church depended. The writer of this pastoral fears that greed and arrogance are creeping in (<a href='B:670 5:1-3'>1Pe 5:1-3</a>), and he urges them faithfully to perform their high task (<a href='B:670 5:4'>1Pe 5:4</a>).<p/>On this view First Peter is composed of two separate works--a baptismal sermon, and a pastoral letter written in time of persecution and neither has anything to do with Peter.<p/><b>Asia Minor, Not Rome</b><p/> If First Peter is a baptismal sermon and a pastoral letter in time of persecution, where is its place of origin? If the letter is not Peter's, there is no necessity to connect it with Rome; and, in any event, it appears that the Roman Church did not know or use First Peter. Let us put together certain facts.<p/>(a) Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia (<a href='B:670 1:1'>1Pe 1:1</a>) are all in Asia Minor and all centred in Sinope.<p/>(b) The first extensive quoter of First Peter is Polycarp bishop of Smyrna, and Smyrna is in Asia Minor.<p/>(c) Certain phrases in First Peter immediately turn our thoughts to parallel phrases in other parts of the New Testament. In <a href='B:670 13'>1Pe 5:13</a> the Church is called "she that is elect, and in <a href='B:700 1:13'>2Jn 1:13</a> the Church is also described as an "elect sister." <a href='B:670 1:8'>1Pe 1:8</a> speaks of Jesus Christ, "without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy." This turns our thoughts very naturally to Jesus' saying to Thomas in the Fourth Gospel: "Blessed are those who have not seen, and believe" (<a href='B:500 20:29'>Joh 20:29</a>). First Peter urges the elders to tend, that is, to shepherd, the flock of God (<a href='B:670 5:2'>1Pe 5:2</a>). That turns our thoughts to Jesus' injunction to Peter to feed his lambs and his sheep (<a href='B:500 21:15-17'>Joh 21:15-17</a>), and to Paul's farewell injunction to the elders of Ephesus to take heed to the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made them guardians (<a href='B:510 20:28'>Act 20:28</a>). All this is to say that the memories First Peter awakens are of the Fourth Gospel, the Letters of John and of Paul at Ephesus. The Fourth Gospel and the Letters of John were most probably written at Ephesus, and Ephesus is in Asia Minor.<p/>It seems that in the case of First Peter all roads lead to Asia Minor.<p/><b>The Occasion Of The Publication Of First Peter</b><p/> Assuming that First Peter has its origin in Asia Minor, can we suggest an occasion for its writing? It was written at a time of persecution. We know from Pliny's letters that in Bithynia about A.D. 112 there was a serious persecution of the Christians and Bithynia is one of the provinces named in the address. We may well conjecture that it was to give courage to the Christians then that First Peter was issued. It may be that at that time someone in a church in Asia Minor came upon these two documents and sent them out under the name of Peter. This would not be looked upon as forgery. Both in Jewish and in Greek practice it was the regular custom to attach books to the name of the great writers of the past.<p/><b>The Author Of First Peter</b><p/> If Peter did not write First Peter, is it possible to guess at the author? Let us reconstruct some of his essential qualifications. On our previous assumption, he must come from Asia Minor. On the basis of First Peter itself, he must be an elder and an eye-witness of the sufferings of Christ (<a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>). Is there anyone who fits these requirements? Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis about A.D. 170, who spent his life collecting all the information he could about the early days of the Church, tells of his methods and his sources: "Nor shall I hesitate, along with my own interpretations, to set down for thee whatsoever I learned with care and remembered with care from the elders, guaranteeing its truth.... Furthermore, if anyone chanced to arrive who had been really a follower of the elders, I would enquire as to the sayings of the elders--as to what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord's disciples, also as to what Aristion or the Presbyter John, the Lord's disciples say. For I supposed that things out of books would not be of such use to me as the utterances of a living voice which was still with us." Here we have an elder called Aristion who was a disciple of the Lord and, therefore, a witness of his sufferings. Is there anything to connect him with First Peter?<p/><b>Aristion Of Smyrna</b><p/> When we turn to the Apostolic Constitutions we find that one of the first bishops of Smyrna was called Ariston--which is the same name as Aristion. Now who is the great quoter of First Peter? None other than Polycarp, a later Bishop of Smyrna. What more natural than that Polycarp should quote what might well have been the devotional classic of his own Church?<p/>Let us turn to the letters to the Seven Churches in the Revelation and read the letter to Smyrna: "Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life" (<a href='B:730 2:10'>Rev 2:10</a>). Can this be the very same persecution as that which originally lay behind First Peter? And was it for this persecution that Aristion, the Bishop of Smyrna, first wrote the pastoral letter which was afterwards to become a part of First Peter?<p/>Such is the suggestion of B. H. Streeter. He thinks that First Peter is composed of a baptismal sermon and a pastoral letter written by Aristion, Bishop of Smyrna. Originally the pastoral letter was written to comfort and strengthen the people of Smyrna in A.D. 90 when the persecution mentioned in the Revelation threatened the Church. These writings of Aristion became the devotional classics and the cherished possessions of the Church at Smyrna. Rather more than twenty years later a much wider and more far-reaching persecution broke out in Bithynia and spread throughout northern Asia Minor. Someone remembered the letter and the sermon of Aristion, felt that they were the very thing the Church needed in her time of trial, and sent them out under the name of Peter, the great apostle.<p/><b>An Apostle's Letter</b><p/> We have stated in full both views of the origin, date and authorship of First Peter. There is no doubt of the ingenuity of the theory which B. H. Streeter has produced nor that those who favour a later date have produced arguments which have to be considered. For our own part, however, we see no reason to doubt that the letter is the work of Peter himself, and that it was written not long after the great fire of Rome and the first persecution of the Christians with the object of encouraging the Christians of Asia Minor to stand fast when the onrushing tide of persecution sought to engulf them and take their faith away. 


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2 PETER<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND LETTER OF PETER<p/><b>The Neglected Book And Its Contents</b><p/> Second Peter is one of the neglected books of the New Testament. Very few people will claim to have read it, still less to have studied it in detail. E. F. Scott says "it is far inferior in every respect to First Peter"; and goes on "it is the least valuable of the New Testament writings." It was only with the greatest difficulty that Second Peter gained entry into the New Testament, and for many years the Christian Church seemed to be unaware of its existence. But, before we approach its history, let us look at its contents.<p/><b>The Lawless Men</b><p/> Second Peter was written to combat the beliefs and activities of certain men who were a threat to the Church. It begins by insisting that the Christian is a man who has escaped from the corruption of the world (<a href='B:680 1:4'>2Pe 1:4</a>) and must always remember that he has been purged of his old sins (<a href='B:680 1:9'>2Pe 1:9</a>). There is laid upon him the duty of moral goodness, which culminates in the great Christian virtue of love (<a href='B:680 1:5-8'>2Pe 1:5-8</a>).<p/>Let us set out the characteristics of the men whom Second Peter rebukes. They twist Scripture to make it suit their own purpose (<a href='B:680 1:20'>2Pe 1:20</a>; <a href='B:680 3:16'>2Pe 3:16</a>). They bring the Christian faith into disrepute (<a href='B:680 2:2'>2Pe 2:2</a>). They are covetous of gain and exploiters of their fellow-men (<a href='B:680 2:3'>2Pe 2:3</a>; <a href='B:680 2:14-15'>2Pe 2:14-15</a>). They are doomed and will share the fate of the sinning angels (<a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a>), the men before the Flood (<a href='B:680 2:5'>2Pe 2:5</a>), the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah (<a href='B:680 2:6'>2Pe 2:6</a>), and the false prophet Balaam (<a href='B:680 2:15'>2Pe 2:15</a>). They are bestial creatures, ruled by their brute instincts (<a href='B:680 2:12'>2Pe 2:12</a>), and dominated by their lusts (<a href='B:680 2:10'>2Pe 2:10</a>; <a href='B:680 2:18'>2Pe 2:18</a>). Their eyes are full of adultery (<a href='B:680 2:14'>2Pe 2:14</a>). They are presumptuous, self-willed and arrogant (<a href='B:680 2:10'>2Pe 2:10</a>; <a href='B:680 2:18'>2Pe 2:18</a>). They spend even the daylight hours in unrestrained and luxurious revelry (<a href='B:680 2:13'>2Pe 2:13</a>). They speak of liberty but what they call liberty is unbridled licence and they themselves are the slaves of their own lusts (<a href='B:680 2:19'>2Pe 2:19</a>). Not only are they deluded, they also delude others and lead them astray (<a href='B:680 2:14'>2Pe 2:14</a>; <a href='B:680 2:18'>2Pe 2:18</a>). They are worse than those who never knew the right, because they knew what goodness is and have relapsed into evil, like a dog returning to its vomit and a sow returning to the mud after it has been washed (<a href='B:680 2:20-22'>2Pe 2:20-22</a>).<p/>It is clear that Peter is describing antinomians, men who used God's grace as a justification for sinning. In all probability they were Gnostics, who said that only spirit was good and that matter was essentially evil and that, therefore, it did not matter what we did with the body and that we could glut its appetites and it made no difference. They lived the most immoral lives and encouraged others to do so; and they justified their actions by perverting grace and interpreting Scripture to suit themselves.<p/><b>The Denial Of The Second Coming</b><p/> Further, these evil men denied the Second Coming (<a href='B:680 3:3-4'>2Pe 3:3-4</a>). They argued that this was a stable world in which things remained unalterably the same, and that God was so dilatory that it was possible to assume that the Second Coming was never going to happen at all. The answer of Second Peter is that this is not a stable world; that it has, in fact, been destroyed by water in the Flood and that it will be destroyed by fire in the final conflagration (<a href='B:680 3:5-7'>2Pe 3:5-7</a>). What they regard as dilatoriness is in fact God withholding his hand in patience to give men still another chance to repent (<a href='B:680 3:8-9'>2Pe 3:8-9</a>). But the day of destruction is coming (<a href='B:680 3:10'>2Pe 3:10</a>). A new heaven and a new earth are on the way; therefore. goodness is an absolute necessity if a man is to be saved in the day of judgment (<a href='B:680 3:11-14'>2Pe 3:11-14</a>). With this Paul agrees, however difficult his letters may be to understand, and however false teachers deliberately misinterpret them (<a href='B:680 3:15-16'>2Pe 3:15-16</a>). The duty of the Christian is to stand fast, firmly founded in the faith, and to grow in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ (<a href='B:680 3:17-18'>2Pe 3:17-18</a>).<p/><b>The Doubts Of The Early Church</b><p/> Such are the contents of the letter. For long it was regarded with doubt and with something very like misgiving. There is no trace of it until after A.D. 200: It is not included in the Muratorian Canon Of A.D. 170 which was the first official list of New Testament books. It did not exist in the Old Latin Version of the Scriptures; nor in the New Testament of the early Syrian Church.<p/>The great scholars of Alexandria either did not know it or were doubtful about it. Clement of Alexandria, who wrote outlines of the books of Scripture, does not appear to have included Second Peter. Origen says that Peter left behind one epistle which is generally acknowledged; "perhaps also a second, for it is a disputed question." Didymus commented on it, but concluded his work by saying: "It must not be forgotten that this letter is spurious; it may be read in public; but it is not part of the canon of Scripture."<p/>Eusebius, the great scholar of Caesarea, who made a careful investigation of the Christian literature of his day, comes to the conclusion: "Of Peter, one Epistle, which is called his former Epistle, is acknowledged by all; of this the ancient presbyters have made frequent use in their writings as indisputably genuine; but that which is circulated as his second Epistle we have received to be not canonical although, since it appeared to be useful to many, it has been diligently read with the other Scriptures."<p/>It was not until well into the fourth century that Second Peter came to rest in the canon of the New Testament.<p/><b>The Objections</b><p/> It is the well-nigh universal judgment of scholars, both ancient and modern, that Peter is not the author of Second Peter. Even John Calvin regarded it as impossible that Peter could have spoken of Paul as Second Peter speaks of him (<a href='B:680 3:15-16'>2Pe 3:15-16</a>), although he was willing to believe that someone else wrote the letter at Peter's request. What, then, are the arguments against Peter's authorship?<p/>(i) There is the extreme slowness, and even reluctance, of the early church to accept it. If it had been truly Peter's, there can be little doubt that the Church would have welcomed and honoured it from the first. But the case was very different. For the first two centuries the letter is never quoted at all in any certain instance; it is regarded with doubt and suspicion for more than another century; and only late in the fourth century is it accepted.<p/>(ii) The contents make it difficult to believe that it is Peter's. There is no mention of the Passion, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus Christ; no mention of the Church as the true Israel; no mention of that faith which is undefeatable hope and trust combined; no mention of the Holy Spirit, of prayer, of baptism; and no passionate desire to call men to the supreme example of Jesus Christ. If one took away these great verities from First Peter there would be little or nothing left, and yet none of them occurs in Second Peter.<p/>(iii) It is wholly different in character and style from First Peter. This was realized as early as Jerome who wrote: "Simon Peter wrote two Epistles which are called Catholic, of which the authenticity of the second is denied by many because of the difference of the style from the first." The Greek style of this letter is very difficult. Clogg calls it ambitious, artificial and often obscure, and remarks that it is the only book in the New Testament which is improved by translation. Bishop Chase writes: "The Epistle does produce the impression of being a somewhat artificial piece of rhetoric. It shows throughout signs of self-conscious effort. The author appears to be ambitious of writing in a style which is beyond his literary power." He concludes that it is hard to reconcile the literary character of this letter with the supposition that Peter wrote it. Moffatt says: "Second Peter is more periodic and ambitious than First Peter, but its linguistic and its stylistic efforts only reveal by their cumbrous obscurity a decided inferiority of conception, which marks it off from First Peter."<p/>It might be claimed, as Jerome claimed, that, while Peter used Silvanus for First Peter, he used a different amanuensis for Second Peter and that this explains the change in style. But J. B. Mayor compares the two letters. He quotes some of the great passages of First Peter and then says: "I think that none who read these words can help feeling that, not even in Paul, not even in John, is there to be found a more beautiful or a more living description of the secret of primitive Christianity, of the force that overcame the world, than in the perfect quaternion of faith and hope and love and joy, which pervades this short epistle (i.e. First Peter). No one could make the same assertion with regard to Second Peter: thoughtful and interesting as it is, it lacks that intense sympathy, that flame of love, which marks First Peter.... No change of circumstances can account for the change of tone of which we are conscious in passing from one epistle to the other." It is the conclusion of that great and conservative scholar that no explanation, other than difference of authorship, can explain, not so much the difference in style as the difference in atmosphere between First and Second Peter. It is true that from the purely linguistic point of view there are 369 words which occur in First Peter which do not occur in Second Peter; and there are 230 words which occur in Second Peter and not in First Peter. But there is more than a difference in style. A writer can change his style and his vocabulary to suit his audience and his occasion. But the difference between the two letters in atmosphere and attitude is so wide that it is hardly possible that the same person should have written both.<p/>(iv) Certain things within Second Peter point well-nigh irresistibly to a late date. So much time has passed that men have begun to abandon hope of the Second Coming altogether (<a href='B:680 3:4'>2Pe 3:4</a>). The apostles are spoken of as figures of the past (<a href='B:680 3:2'>2Pe 3:2</a>). The fathers, that is the founders of the Christian faith, are now figures of the almost dim and distant past; there have been generations between this letter and the first coming of the Christian faith (<a href='B:680 3:4'>2Pe 3:4</a>).<p/>There are references which require the passing of the years to explain them. The reference to Peter's approaching death looks very like a reference to Jesus' prophecy in <a href='B:500 21:18-19'>Joh 21:18-19</a>, and the Fourth Gospel was not written until about A.D. 100: The statement that Peter is going to leave something which will continue his teaching after he has gone looks very like a reference to Mark's Gospel (<a href='B:480 1:12-14'>Mar 1:12-14</a>).<p/>Above all there is the reference to the letters of Paul (<a href='B:680 3:15-16'>2Pe 3:15-16</a>). From this it is quite certain that Paul's letters are known and used throughout all the Church; they are public property, and furthermore they are regarded as Scripture and on a level with "the other Scriptures" (<a href='B:680 3:16'>2Pe 3:16</a>). It was not until at least A.D. 90 that these letters were collected and published, and it would take many years for them to acquire the position of sacred Scripture. It is practically impossible that anyone should write like this until midway through the second century A.D.<p/>All the evidence converges to prove that Second Peter is a late book. It is not until the third century that it is quoted. The great scholars of the early church did not regard it as Peter's although they did not question its usefulness. The letter has references which require the passing of the years to explain them. The great interest of Second Peter lies in the very fact that it was the last book in the New Testament to be written and the last to gain entry into the New Testament.<p/><b>In Peter's Name</b><p/> How, then, did it become attached to the name of Peter? The answer is that it was deliberately attached. This may seem to us a strange proceeding but in the ancient world this was common practice. Plato's letters were written not by Plato but by a disciple in the master's name. The Jews repeatedly used this method of writing. Between the Old and the New Testament, books were written under the names of Solomon, Isaiah, Moses, Baruch, Ezra, Enoch and many another. And in New Testament times there is a whole literature around the name of Peter--The Gospel of Peter, The Preaching of Peter, The Apocalypse of Peter.<p/>One salient fact makes this method of writing even more intelligible. The heretics used it. They issued misleading and pernicious books under the names of the great apostles, claiming that they were the secret teaching of the great founders of the Church handed down by word of mouth to them. Faced with this, the Church retaliated in kind and issued books in which men set down for their own generation the things they were quite sure that the apostles would have said had they been facing this new situation. There is nothing either unusual or discreditable in a book being issued under the name of Peter although Peter did not write it. The writer in humility was putting the message which the Holy Spirit had given him into the mouth of Peter because he felt his own name was unworthy to appear upon the book.<p/>We will not find Second Peter easy to read; but it is a book of first-rate importance because it was written to men who were undermining the Christian ethic and the Christian doctrine and who had to be stopped before the Christian faith was wrecked by their perversion of the truth. 


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1 JOHN<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE FIRST LETTER OF JOHN<p/><b>A Personal Letter And Its Background</b><p/> First John is entitled a letter but it has no opening address nor closing greetings such as the letters of Paul have. And yet no one can read it without feeling its intensely personal character. Beyond all doubt the man who wrote it had in his mind's eye a definite situation and a definite group of people. Both the form and the personal character of First John will be explained if we think of it as what someone has called "a loving and anxious sermon" written by a pastor who loved his people and sent out to the various churches over which he had charge.<p/>Any such letter is produced by an actual situation apart from which it cannot be fully understood. If, then, we wish to understand First John we have first of all to try to reconstruct the situation which produced it, remembering that it was written in Ephesus a little after A.D. 100:<p/><b>The Falling Away</b><p/> By A.D. 100 certain things had almost inevitably happened within the Church, especially in a place like Ephesus.<p/>(i) Many were now second or even third generation Christians. The thrill of the first days had, to some extent at least, passed away. Wordsworth said of one of the great moments of modern history:<p/>"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive."<p/>In the first days of Christianity there was a glory and a splendour, but now Christianity had become a thing of habit, "traditional, half-hearted, nominal." Men had grown used to it and something of the wonder was lost. Jesus knew men and he had said: "Most men's love will grow cold" (<a href='B:470 24:12'>Mat 24:12</a>). John was writing at a time when, for some at least, the first thrill was gone and the flame of devotion had died to a flicker.<p/>(ii) One result was that there were members of the Church who found the standards which Christianity demanded a burden and a weariness. They did not want to be saints in the New Testament sense of the term. The New Testament word for saint is hagios (<a href='S:G40'>G40</a>), which is also commonly translated holy. Its basic meaning is different. The Temple was hagios (<a href='S:G39'>G39</a>) because it was different from other buildings; the Sabbath was hagios (<a href='S:G40'>G40</a>) because it was different from other days; the Jewish nation was hagios (<a href='S:G40'>G40</a>) because it was different from other peoples; and the Christian was called to be hagios (<a href='S:G40'>G40</a>) because he was called to be different from other men. There was always a distinct cleavage between the Christian and the world. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus says, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" (<a href='B:500 15:19'>Joh 15:19</a>). "I have given them thy word," said Jesus in his prayer to God, "and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" (<a href='B:500 17:14'>Joh 17:14</a>).<p/>All this involved an ethical demand. It demanded a new standard of moral purity, a new kindness, a new service, a new forgiveness--and it was difficult. And once the first thrill and enthusiasm were gone it became harder and harder to stand out against the world and to refuse to conform to the generally accepted standards and practices of the age.<p/>(iii) It is to be noted that First John shows no signs that the Church to which it was written was being persecuted. The peril, as it has been put, was not persecution but seduction; it came from within. That, too, Jesus had foreseen. "Many false prophets, he said, "will arise, and lead many astray" (<a href='B:470 24:11'>Mat 24:11</a>). This was a danger of which Paul had warned the leaders of this very Church of Ephesus when he made his farewell address to them. "I know, he said, "that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them" (<a href='B:510 20:29-30'>Act 20:29-30</a>).<p/>The trouble which First John seeks to combat did not come from men out to destroy the Christian faith but from men who thought they were improving it. It came from men whose aim was to make Christianity intellectually respectable. They knew the intellectual tendencies and currents of the day and felt that the time had come for Christianity to come to terms with secular philosophy and contemporary thought.<p/><b>The Contemporary Philosophy</b><p/> What, then, was this contemporary thought and philosophy with which the false prophets and mistaken teachers wished to align the Christian faith? Throughout the Greek world there was a tendency of thought to which the general name of Gnosticism is given. The basic belief of all Gnostic thought was that only spirit was good and matter was essentially evil. The Gnostic, therefore, inevitably despised the world since it was matter. In particular he despised the body which, being matter, was necessarily evil. Imprisoned within this body was the spirit of man. That spirit was a seed of God, who was altogether good. So, then, the aim of life must be to release this heavenly seed imprisoned in the evil of the body. That could be done only by a secret knowledge and elaborate ritual which only the true Gnostic could supply. Here was a tendency of thought which was written deep into Greek thinking--and which has not even vet ceased to exist. Its basis is the conviction that all matter is evil and spirit alone is good, and that the one real aim in life is to liberate man's spirit from the vile prison-house of the body.<p/><b>The False Teachers</b><p/> With that in our minds let us turn to First John and gather the evidence as to who these false teachers were and what they taught. They had been within the Church but they had seceded from it. "They went out from us, but they were not of us" (<a href='B:690 2:19'>1Jn 2:19</a>). They were men of influence for they claimed to be prophets. "Many false prophets have gone out into the world" (<a href='B:690 4:1'>1Jn 4:1</a>). Although they had left the Church, they still tried to disseminate their teaching within it and to seduce its members from the true faith (<a href='B:690 2:26'>1Jn 2:26</a>).<p/><b>The Denial Of Jesus' Messiahship</b><p/> At least some of these false teachers denied that Jesus was the Messiah. "Who is a liar, demands John, "but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?" (<a href='B:690 2:22'>1Jn 2:22</a>). It is most likely that these false teachers were not Gnostics proper, but Jews. Things had always been difficult for Jewish Christians, but the events of history made them doubly so. It was very difficult for a Jew to come to believe in a crucified Messiah. But suppose he had begun so to believe, his difficulties were by no means finished. The Christians believed that Jesus would return quickly to vindicate his people. Clearly that would be a hope that would be specially dear to the heart of the Jews. Then in A.D. 70 Jerusalem was captured by the Romans, who were so infuriated with the long intransigence and the suicidal resistance of the Jews that they tore the Holy City stone from stone and drew a plough across the midst of it. In view of that, how could any Jew easily accept the hope that Jesus would come and save his people? The Holy City was desolate; the Jews were dispersed throughout the world. In face of that how could it be true that the Messiah had come?<p/><b>The Denial Of The Incarnation</b><p/> There was something even more serious than that. There was false teaching which came directly from an attempt from within the Church to bring Christianity into line with Gnosticism. We must remember the Gnostic point of view that spirit alone was good and matter utterly evil. Given that point of view any real incarnation is impossible. That is exactly what centuries later Augustine was to point out. Before he became a Christian, he was skilled in the philosophies of the various schools. In the Confessions (1Jn 6:9) he tells us that somewhere in the heathen writers he had read in one form or another nearly all the things which Christianity says; but there was one great Christian saying which he had never found in any pagan author and which no one would ever find, and that saying was: "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (<a href='B:500 1:14'>Joh 1:14</a>). Since the heathen thinkers believed in the essential evil of matter and therefore the essential evil of the body, that was one thing they could never say.<p/>It is clear that the false teachers against whom John was writing in this First Letter denied the reality of the incarnation and of Jesus' physical body. "Every spirit, writes John, "which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God" (<a href='B:690 4:2-3'>1Jn 4:2-3</a>).<p/>In the early Church this refusal to admit the reality of the incarnation took, broadly speaking, two forms.<p/>(i) In its most radical and wholesale form it was called Docetism, which Goodspeed suggests might be translated Seemism. The Greek verb dokein (<a href='S:G1380'>G1380</a>) means to seem; and the Docetists taught that Jesus only seemed to have a body. They insisted that he was a purely spiritual being who had nothing but the appearance of having a body. One of the apocryphal books written from this point of view is the Acts of John, which dates from about A.D. 160: In it John is made to say that sometimes when he touched Jesus he seemed to meet with a material body but at other times "the substance was immaterial, as if it did not exist at all, and also that when Jesus walked he never left any footprint upon the ground. The simplest form of Docetism is the complete denial that Jesus ever had a physical body.<p/>(ii) There was a more subtle, and perhaps more dangerous, variant of this theory connected with the name of Cerinthus. In tradition John and Cerinthus were sworn enemies. Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 4: 14:6) hands down a story which tells how John went to the public bathhouse in Ephesus to bathe. He saw Cerinthus inside and refused even to enter the building. "Let us flee, he said, "lest even the bathhouse fall, because Cerinthus the enemy of truth is within." Cerinthus drew a definite distinction between the human Jesus and the divine Christ. He said that Jesus was a man, born in a perfectly natural way. He lived in special obedience to God, and after his baptism the Christ in the shape of a dove descended upon him, from that power which is above all powers, and then he brought to men news of the Father who had been as yet unknown. Cerinthus did not stop there. He said that at the end of Jesus' life, the Christ again withdrew from him so that the Christ never suffered at all. It was the human Jesus who suffered, died and rose again.<p/>This again comes out in the stories of the apocryphal gospels written under the influence of this point of view. In the Gospel of Peter, written about A.D. 130, it is said that Jesus showed no pain upon the Cross and that his cry was: "My power! My power! Why hast thou forsaken me?" It was at that moment that the divine Christ left the human Jesus. The Acts of John go further. They tell how, when the human Jesus was being crucified on Calvary, John was actually talking to the divine Christ in a cave in the hillside and that the Christ said to him, "John, to the multitude down below in Jerusalem I am being crucified, and pierced with lances and with reeds, and gall and vinegar are given me to drink. But I am speaking to you, and listen to what I say.... Nothing, therefore, of the things they will say of me have I suffered" (Acts of John 97).<p/>We may see how widespread this way of thinking was from the Letters of Ignatius. He was writing to a group of Churches in Asia Minor which must have been much the same as that to which First John was written. When Ignatius wrote he was a prisoner and was being conveyed to Rome to be martyred by being flung to the beasts in the arena. He wrote to the Trallians: "Be deaf, therefore. when anyone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David and Mary, who was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died... who also was truly raised from the dead.... But if, as some affirm, who are without God that is, who are unbelievers--his suffering was only a semblance... why am I a prisoner?" (Ignatius: To the Trallians 9 and 10). To the Christians at Smyrna he wrote: "For he suffered all these things for us that we might attain salvation, and he truly suffered even as he also truly raised himself, not as some unbelievers say that his passion was merely in semblance" (To the Smyrnaeans 2). Polycarp writing to the Philippians used John's very words: "For everyone who does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is an anti-Christ" (To the Philippians chapter 7: 1).<p/>This teaching of Cerinthus is also rebuked in First John. John writes of Jesus: "This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and the blood" (<a href='B:690 5:6'>1Jn 5:6</a>). The point of that verse is that the Gnostic teachers would have agreed that the divine Christ came by water, that is, at the baptism of Jesus; but they would have denied that he came by blood, that is, by the Cross, for they insisted that the divine Christ left the human Jesus before his crucifixion.<p/>The great danger of this heresy is that it comes from what can only be called a mistaken reverence. It is afraid to ascribe to Jesus full humanity. It regards it as irreverent to think that he had a truly physical body. It is a heresy which is by no means dead but is held to this day, usually quite unconsciously, by not a few devout Christians. But it must be remembered, as John so clearly saw, that man's salvation was dependent on the full identification of Jesus Christ with him. As one of the great early fathers unforgettably put it: "He became what we are to make us what he is."<p/>(iii) This Gnostic belief had certain practical consequences in the lives of those who held it.<p/>(a) The Gnostic attitude to matter and to all created things produced a certain attitude to the body and the things of the body. That attitude might take any one of three different forms.<p/>(1) It might take the form of asceticism, with fasting and celibacy and rigid control, even deliberate ill-treatment, of the body. The view that celibacy is better than marriage and that sex is sin go back to Gnostic influence and belief--and this is a view which still lingers on in certain quarters. There is no trace of that view in this letter.<p/>(2) It might take the form of a contention that the body did not matter and that, therefore, its appetites might be gratified without limit. Since the body was in any event evil, it made no difference what a man did with it. There are echoes of this in this letter. John condemns as a liar the man who says that he knows God and vet does not keep God's commandments; the man who says that he abides in Christ ought to walk as Christ walked (<a href='B:690 1:6'>1Jn 1:6</a>; <a href='B:690 2:4-6'>1Jn 2:4-6</a>). There were clearly Gnostics in these communities who claimed special knowledge of God but whose conduct was far removed from the demand of the Christian ethic.<p/>In certain quarters this Gnostic belief went even further. The Gnostic was the man who had gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>), knowledge. Some held that the real Gnostic must, therefore, know the best as well as the worst and must enter into every experience of life at its highest or at its deepest level, as the case may be. It might almost be said that such men held that it was an obligation to sin. There is a reference to this kind of belief in the letter to Thyatira in the Revelation, where the Risen Christ refers to those who have known "the deep things of Satan" (<a href='B:730 2:24'>Rev 2:24</a>). And it may well be that John is referring to these people when he insists that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (<a href='B:690 1:5'>1Jn 1:5</a>). These particular Gnostics would have held that there was in God not only blazing light but deep darkness and that a man must penetrate both. It is easy to see the disastrous consequences of such a belief.<p/>(3) There was a third kind of Gnostic belief. The true Gnostic regarded himself as an altogether spiritual man, as having shed all the material things of life and released his spirit from the bondage of matter. Such Gnostics held that they were so spiritual that they were above and beyond sin and had reached spiritual perfection. It is to them that John refers when he speaks of those who deceive themselves by saying that they have no sin (<a href='B:690 1:8-10'>1Jn 1:8-10</a>).<p/>Whichever of these three ways Gnostic belief took, its ethical consequences were perilous in the extreme; and it is clear that its last two were to be found in the society to which John wrote.<p/>(b) Further, this Gnosticism issued in an attitude to men which was the necessary destruction of Christian fellowship. We have seen that the Gnostic aimed at the release of the spirit from the prison house of the evil body by means of an elaborate and esoteric knowledge. Clearly such a knowledge was not for every man. Ordinary people were too involved in the everyday life and work of the world ever to have time for the study and discipline necessary; and, even if they had had such time, many were intellectually incapable of grasping the involved speculations of Gnostic theosophy and philosophy so-called.<p/>This produced an inevitable result. It divided men into two classes those who were capable of a really spiritual life and those who were not. The Gnostics had names for these two classes of men. The ancients commonly divided the being of man into three parts. There was the soma (<a href='S:G4983'>G4983</a>), the body, the physical part of man. There was the psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>), which we generally translate soul, but we must have a care for it does not mean what we mean by soul. To the Greeks the psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>) was the principle of physical life. Everything which had physical life had psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>). Psuche was that life principle which a man shared with all living creatures. There was the pneuma (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>), the spirit; and it was the spirit which was possessed only by man and made him kin to God.<p/>The aim of Gnosticism was the release of the pneuma (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>) from the soma (<a href='S:G4983'>G4983</a>) ; but that release could be won only by long and arduous study which only the leisured intellectual could ever undertake. The Gnostics, therefore, divided men into two classes the psuchikoi (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>), who could never advance beyond the principle of physical life and never attain to anything else than what was to all intents and purposes animal living; and the pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>), who were truly spiritual and truly akin to God.<p/>The result was clear. The Gnostics produced a spiritual aristocracy who looked with contempt and even hatred on lesser men. The pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>) regarded the psuchikoi (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>) as contemptible, earthbound creatures who could never know what real religion was. The consequence was obviously the annihilation of Christian fellowship. That is why John insists all over his letter that the true test of Christianity is love for the brethren. If we really are walking in the light we have fellowship with one another (<a href='B:690 1:7'>1Jn 1:7</a>). He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in fact in darkness (<a href='B:690 2:9-11'>1Jn 2:9-11</a>). The proof that we have passed from dark to light is that we love the brethren (<a href='B:690 3:14-17'>1Jn 3:14-17</a>). The marks of Christianity are belief in Christ and love for the brethren (<a href='B:690 3:23'>1Jn 3:23</a>). God is love and he who does not love does not know God at all (<a href='B:690 4:7-8'>1Jn 4:7-8</a>). Because God loved us, we ought to love each other; it is when we love each other that God dwells in us (<a href='B:690 4:10-12'>1Jn 4:10-12</a>). The commandment is that he who loves God must love his brother also, and he who says he loves God and at the same time hates his brother is branded as a liar (<a href='B:690 4:20-21'>1Jn 4:20-21</a>). The Gnostic, to put it bluntly, would have said that the mark of true religion is contempt for ordinary men; John insists in every chapter that the mark of true religion is love for every man.<p/>Here, then, is a picture of these Gnostic heretics. They talked of being born of God, of walking in the light, of having no sin, of dwelling in God, of knowing God. These were their catch phrases. They had no idea of destroying the Church and the faith; by their way of it they were going to cleanse the Church of dead wood and make Christianity an intellectually respectable philosophy, fit to stand beside the great systems of the day. But the effect of their teaching was to deny the incarnation, to eliminate the Christian ethic and to make fellowship within the Church impossible. It is little wonder that John seeks, with such fervent pastoral devotion, to defend the churches he loved from such an insidious attack from within. This was a threat far more perilous than any heathen persecution; the very existence of the Christian faith was at stake.<p/><b>The Message Of John</b><p/> First John is a short letter and we cannot look within it for a systematic exposition of the Christian faith. None the less it will be of the greatest interest to examine the basic underlying beliefs with which John confronts those threatening to be the wreckers of the Christian faith.<p/><b>The Object Of Writing</b><p/> John's object in writing is two-fold yet one. He writes that the joy of his people may be complete (<a href='B:690 1:4'>1Jn 1:4</a>), and that they may not sin (<a href='B:690 2:1'>1Jn 2:1</a>). He sees clearly that, however attractive the wrong way may be, it is not in its nature to bring happiness. To bring them joy and to preserve them from sin is one and the same thing.<p/><b>The Idea Of God</b><p/> John has two great things to say about God. God is light and in him there is no darkness at all (<a href='B:690 1:5'>1Jn 1:5</a>). God is love and that made him love us before we loved him and made him send his son as a remedy for our sins (<a href='B:690 4:7-10'>1Jn 4:7-10</a>; <a href='B:690 4:16'>1Jn 4:16</a>). John's conviction is that God is self-revealing and self-giving. He is light, and not darkness; he is love, and not hate.<p/><b>The Idea Of Jesus</b><p/> Because the main attack of the false teachers was on the person of Christ, this letter, which is concerned to answer them, is specially rich and helpful in what it has to say about him.<p/>(i) Jesus is he who was from the beginning (<a href='B:690 1:1'>1Jn 1:1</a>; <a href='B:690 2:14'>1Jn 2:14</a>). When a man is confronted with Jesus, he is confronted with the eternal.<p/>(ii) Another way of putting this is to say that Jesus is the Son of God and for John it is essential to be convinced of that (<a href='B:690 4:15'>1Jn 4:15</a>; <a href='B:690 5:5'>1Jn 5:5</a>). The relationship of Jesus to God is unique and in him is seen God's ever-seeking and ever-forgiving heart.<p/>(iii) Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah (<a href='B:690 2:22'>1Jn 2:22</a>; <a href='B:690 5:1'>1Jn 5:1</a>). That again for him is an essential article of belief. It may seem that here we come into a region of ideas which is much narrower and, in fact, specifically Jewish. But there is something essential here. To say that Jesus is from the beginning and that he is the Son of God is to conserve his connection with eternity; to say that he is the Messiah, is to conserve his connection with history. It is to see his coming as the event towards which God's plan, working itself out in his chosen people, was moving.<p/>(iv) Jesus was most truly and fully man. To deny that Jesus came in the flesh is to be moved by the spirit of Antichrist (<a href='B:690 4:2-3'>1Jn 4:2-3</a>). It is John's witness that Jesus was so truly man that he himself had known and touched and handled him (<a href='B:690 1:1'>1Jn 1:1</a>; <a href='B:690 1:3'>1Jn 1:3</a>). No writer in the New Testament holds with greater intensity the full reality of the incarnation. Not only did he become man, he also suffered for men. It was by water and blood that he came (<a href='B:690 5:6'>1Jn 5:6</a>); and he laid down his life for men (<a href='B:690 3:16'>1Jn 3:16</a>).<p/>(v) The coming of Jesus, his incarnation, his life, his death, his resurrection and his ascension all combine to deal with the sin of man. Jesus was without sin (<a href='B:690 3:5'>1Jn 3:5</a>); and man is essentially a sinner, even though in his arrogance he may claim to be without sin (<a href='B:690 1:8-10'>1Jn 1:8-10</a>); and yet the sinless one came to take away the sin of sinning men (<a href='B:690 3:5'>1Jn 3:5</a>). In regard to man's sin Jesus is two things.<p/>(a) He is our advocate with the Father (<a href='B:690 2:1'>1Jn 2:1</a>). The word is parakletos (<a href='S:G3875'>G3875</a>). A parakletos is someone who is called in to help. The word could be used of a doctor; it was often used of a witness called in to give evidence in favour of someone on trial or of a defending lawyer called in to defend someone under accusation. Jesus pleads our case with God; he, the sinless one, is the defender of sinning men.<p/>(b) But Jesus is more than that. Twice John calls him the expiation for our sins (<a href='B:690 2:2'>1Jn 2:2</a>; <a href='B:690 4:10'>1Jn 4:10</a>). When a man sins, the relationship which should exist between him and God is broken. An expiatory sacrifice is one which restores that relationship or, rather, a sacrifice in virtue of which that relationship is restored. It is an atoning sacrifice, a sacrifice which once again makes man and God at one. So, then, through what Jesus was and did the relationship between God and man, broken by sin, is restored. Jesus does not only plead the case of the sinner; he sets him at one, with God. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin (<a href='B:690 1:7'>1Jn 1:7</a>).<p/>(vi) In consequence of all this, through Jesus Christ men who believe have life (<a href='B:690 4:9'>1Jn 4:9</a>; <a href='B:690 5:11-12'>1Jn 5:11-12</a>). This is true in a double sense. They have life in the sense that they are saved from death; and they have life in the sense that living has ceased to be mere existence and has become life indeed.<p/>(vii) All this may be summed up by saying that Jesus is the Saviour of the world (<a href='B:690 4:14'>1Jn 4:14</a>). Here we have something which has to be set out in full. "The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (<a href='B:690 4:14'>1Jn 4:14</a>). We have already talked of Jesus as pleading men's case before God. If we were to leave that without addition, it might be argued that God wished to condemn men and was deflected from his dire purpose by the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But that is not so because for John, as for every writer in the New Testament, the whole initiative was with God. It was he who sent his son to be the Saviour of men.<p/>Within the short compass of this letter the wonder and the glory and the grace of Christ are most fully set out.<p/><b>The Spirit</b><p/> In this letter John has less to say about the Spirit; for his highest teaching about him we must turn back to the Fourth Gospel. It may be said that in First John the function of the Spirit is in some sense to be the liaison between God and man. It is he who makes us conscious that there is within us the abiding presence of God through Jesus Christ (<a href='B:690 3:24'>1Jn 3:24</a>; <a href='B:690 4:13'>1Jn 4:13</a>). We may say that it is the Spirit who enables us to grasp the precious fellowship with God which is being offered to us.<p/><b>The World</b><p/> The world within which the Christian lives is hostile; it is a world without God. It does not know the Christian, because it did not know Christ (<a href='B:690 3:1'>1Jn 3:1</a>). It hates the Christian, just as it hated Christ (<a href='B:690 3:13'>1Jn 3:13</a>). The false teachers are of the world and not of God, and it is because they speak its language that the world is ready to hear them and accept them (<a href='B:690 4:4-5'>1Jn 4:4-5</a>). The whole world, says John sweepingly, is in the power of the evil one (<a href='B:690 5:19'>1Jn 5:19</a>). It is for that reason that the Christian has to overcome it, and his weapon in his struggle with the world is faith (<a href='B:690 5:4'>1Jn 5:4</a>).<p/>Hostile as the world is, it is doomed. The world and all its desires are passing away (<a href='B:690 2:17'>1Jn 2:17</a>). That, indeed, is why it is folly to give one's heart to the world; it is on the way to dissolution. Although the Christian lives in a hostile world which is passing away, there is no need for despair and fear. The darkness is past, the true light now shines (<a href='B:690 2:8'>1Jn 2:8</a>). God in Christ has broken into time; the new age has come. It is not yet fully realized but the consummation is sure.<p/>The Christian lives in an evil and a hostile world, but he possesses that by which he can overcome it and, when the destined end of the world comes, he is safe, because he already possesses that which makes him a member of the new community in the new age.<p/><b>The Fellowship Of The Church</b><p/> John does more than move in the high realms of theology; he has certain most practical things to say about the Christian Church and the Christian life. No New Testament writer stresses more consistently or more strenuously the necessity of Christian fellowship. Christians, John was convinced, are not only bound to God, they are also bound to each other. When we walk in the light, we have fellowship with each other (<a href='B:690 1:7'>1Jn 1:7</a>). The man who claims to walk in the light but hates his brother, is in reality walking in darkness; it is the man who loves his brother who is in the light (<a href='B:690 2:9-11'>1Jn 2:9-11</a>). The proof that a man has passed from darkness to light is the fact that he loves his brother. To hate one's brother man is in essence to be a murderer, as Cain was. If any man is able out of his fullness to help his brother's poverty and does not do so, it is ridiculous for him to claim that the love of God dwells in him. The essence of religion is to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and to love one another (<a href='B:690 3:11-17'>1Jn 3:11-17</a>; <a href='B:690 3:23'>1Jn 3:23</a>). God is love; and, therefore, the man who loves is kin to God. God has loved us, and that is the best reason for loving each other (<a href='B:690 4:7-12'>1Jn 4:7-12</a>). If a man says that he loves God and at the same time hates his brother, he is a liar. The command is that he who loves God must love his brother also (<a href='B:690 4:20-21'>1Jn 4:20-21</a>).<p/>It was John's conviction that the only way in which a man can prove that he loves God is by loving his fellow-men; and that that love must be not only a sentimental emotion but a dynamic towards practical help.<p/><b>The Righteousness Of The Christian</b><p/> No New Testament writer makes a stronger ethical demand than John, or more strongly condemns a so-called religion which fails to issue in ethical action. God is righteous and the life of every one who knows him must reflect his righteousness (<a href='B:690 2:29'>1Jn 2:29</a>). Whoever abides in Christ and is born of God, does not sin; whoever does not do right is not of God (<a href='B:690 3:3-10'>1Jn 3:3-10</a>); and the characteristic of this righteousness is that it issues in love for the brethren (<a href='B:690 3:10-11'>1Jn 3:10-11</a>). We show our love to God and to men by keeping God's commandments (<a href='B:690 5:2'>1Jn 5:2</a>). Whoever is born of God does not sin (<a href='B:690 5:18'>1Jn 5:18</a>).<p/>For John, knowledge of God and obedience to him must ever go hand in hand. It is by keeping his commandments that we prove that we really do know God. The man who says that he knows him and who does not keep his commandments is a liar (<a href='B:690 2:3-5'>1Jn 2:3-5</a>).<p/>It is, in fact, this obedience which is the basis of effective prayer. We receive what we ask of God because we keep his commandments and do what is pleasing in his sight (<a href='B:690 3:22'>1Jn 3:22</a>).<p/>The two marks which characterize genuine Christianity are love of the brethren and obedience to the revealed commandments of God.<p/><b>The Destination Of The Letter</b><p/> There are certain baffling problems in regard to the letter's destination. The letter itself gives us no clue as to where it was sent. Tradition strongly connects it with Asia Minor, and especially with Ephesus, where, according to tradition, John lived for many years. But there are certain other odd facts which somehow have to be explained.<p/>Cassiodorus says that the First Letter of John was written Ad Parthos, To the Parthians (compare <a href='S:G3934'>G3934</a>) ; and Augustine has a series of ten tractates written on The Epistle of John ad Parthos. One Geneva manuscript still further complicates the matter by entitling the letter Ad Sparthos. There is no such word as Sparthos. There are two possible explanations of this impossible title: (i) Just possibly it is meant for Ad Sparsos, which would mean To the Christians scattered abroad; (ii) In Greek Ad Parthos would be Pros Parthous. Now in the early manuscripts there was no space between the words and they were all written in capital letters so that the title would run PROSPARTHOUS. A scribe writing to dictation could quite easily put that down as PROSSPARTHOUS, especially if he did not know what the title meant. Ad Sparthos can be eliminated as a mere mistake.<p/>But where did To the Parthians come from? There is one possible explanation. Second John does tell us of its destination; it is written to The elect lady,, and her children (<a href='B:700 1:1'>2Jn 1:1</a>). Let us turn to the end of First Peter. The King James Version has: "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you" (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>). The phrase: "the church that is" is printed in the King James Version in italics which of course, means that it has no equivalent in the Greek which has, in fact, no actual mention of a church at all. This the Revised Standard Version accurately indicates: "She who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen (elect), sends you greetings." As far as the Greek goes it would be perfectly possible, and indeed natural, to take that as referring not to a Church but to a lad. That is precisely what certain of the scholars in the very early Church did. Now we get the elect lady again in Second John. It was easy to identify the two elect ladies and to assume that Second John was also written to Babylon. The natural title for the inhabitants of Babylon was Parthians and hence we have the explanation of the title.<p/>The process went even further. The Greek for the elect lady is he (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) elekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>). We have already seen that the early manuscripts were written all in capital letters; and it would be just possible to take Elekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) not as an adjective meaning elect but as a proper name, Elekta. This is, in fact, what Clement of Alexandria may have done, for we have information that he said that the Johannine letters were written to a certain Babylonian lady, Elekta by name, and to her children.<p/>It may well be then, that the title Ad Parthos arose from a series of misunderstandings. The elect one in First Peter is quite certainly the church, as the King James Version rightly saw. Moffatt translates: "Your sister church in Babylon, elect like yourselves, salutes you." Further, it is almost certain that in any event Babylon there stands for Rome which the early writers identified with Babylon, the great harlot, drunk with the blood of the saints (compare <a href='B:730 17:5'>Rev 17:5</a>). The title Ad Parthos has a most interesting history but clearly it arose from an ingenious misunderstanding.<p/>There is one further complication. Clement of Alexandria referred to John's letters as "written to virgins." On the face of it that is improbable, for it would not be a specially relevant title for them. How, then, could it come about? The Greek would be Pros Parthenous (compare <a href='S:G3933'>G3933</a>) which closely resembles Pros Parthous (<a href='S:G3934'>G3934</a>) ; and, it so happens, John was regularly called Ho Parthenos (<a href='S:G3933'>G3933</a>), the Virgin, because he never married and because of the purity of his life. This further title must have come from a confusion between Ad Parthos (<a href='S:G3934'>G3934</a>) and Ho Parthenos (<a href='S:G3933'>G3933</a>).<p/>This is a case where we may take it that tradition is right and all the ingenious theories mistaken. We may take it that these letters were written in Ephesus and to the surrounding Churches in Asia Minor. When John wrote, it would certainly be to the district where his writ ran, and that was Ephesus and the surrounding territory. He is never mentioned in connection with Babylon.<p/><b>In Defence Of The Faith</b><p/> John wrote his great letter to meet a threatening situation and in defence of the faith. The heresies which he attacked are by no means altogether echoes of "old unhappy far off things and battles long ago." They are still beneath the surface and sometimes they even still raise their heads. To study his letter will confirm us in the true faith and enable us to have a defence against that which would seduce us from it. 


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2 JOHN<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND AND THIRD LETTERS OF JOHN<p/>The very shortness of these two letters is the best guarantee of their genuineness. They are so brief and so comparatively unimportant that no one would have gone to the trouble of inventing them and of attaching them to the name of John. A standard papyrus sheet measured ten by eight inches and the length of these letters is to be explained by the fact that they would each take up almost exactly one sheet.<p/><b>The Elder</b><p/> Each of them is said to come from "The elder." Second John begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children." Third John begins: "The elder to the beloved Gaius." It is in the last degree unlikely that The elder is an official or ecclesiastical title. Elders were officials attached to one congregation whose jurisdiction did not extend outside that congregation, whereas the writer of these letters certainly assumes that he has the right to speak and that his word will carry weight in congregations where he is not actually present. He speaks as one whose authority goes out to the Church at large. The word is presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>), which originally meant an elder, not in the official but in the natural sense of the term. We would be better to translate it "The ancient", or "The aged", for it is not from an ecclesiastical position but from his age and personal qualities that the writer of these letters draws his authority.<p/>In fact we know that in Ephesus there was an aged John who held a very special position. In the days of the early church there was a churchman called Papias who lived from A.D. 70 to 146: He had a passion for collecting all the information he could lay hands on about the early days of the church. He was not a great scholar, Eusebius dismisses him as "a man of very limited intelligence"; but he does transmit to us some most interesting information. He became Bishop of Hierapolis but he had a close connection with Ephesus, and he tells us of his own methods of acquiring information. He frequently uses elder in the sense of one of the fathers of the Church, and he mentions a particularly distinguished elder whose name was John. "I shall not hesitate," he writes, "to put down for you, along with my own interpretations, whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders, and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those who relate strange commandments, but in those who deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself. If, then, anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders--what Andrew, or what Peter, had said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord; and what things Aristion, or the Elder John say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice." Clearly the Elder John, John the aged, was a notable figure in Ephesus, although he is clearly distinguished from John the apostle.<p/>It must be this John who wrote these two little letters. By this time he was an old man, one of the last surviving links with Jesus and his disciples. He was a man who had the authority of a bishop in Ephesus and in the places around it; and when he saw that a church was threatened with trouble and heresy, he wrote with gracious and loving correction to his people. Here are the letters of an aged saint, one of the last of the first generation of Christians, a man whom all loved and respected.<p/><b>Common Authorship</b><p/> That the two letters are from the one hand there is no doubt. Short as they are, they have much in common. Second John begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth." Third John begins: "The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth." Second John goes on: "I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children following the truth" (<a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a>); and Third John goes on: "No greater joy can I have than this, to hear that my children follow the truth." Second John comes to an end: "Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink, but I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete" (<a href='B:700 1:12'>2Jn 1:12</a>). Third John comes to an end: "I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink; I hope to see you soon, and we will talk together face to face" (<a href='B:710 1:13-14'>3Jn 1:13-14</a>). There is the closest possible similarity between the two letters.<p/>There is further the closest possible connection between the situation of these letters and that in First John. In <a href='B:690 4:3'>1Jn 4:3</a> we read: "Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already." In <a href='B:700 1:7'>2Jn 1:7</a> we read: "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is a deceiver and the Antichrist."<p/>It is clear that Second and Third John are closely connected with each other; and that both are closely connected with First John. They are dealing with the same situation, the same dangers and the same people.<p/><b>The Problem Of The Second Letter</b><p/> These two little letters confront us with few serious problems. The only real one is to decide whether the Second Letter was sent to an individual or to a church. It begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children." The problem centres on this phrase the elect lady. The Greek is eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) and there are three possible ways of taking it.<p/>(i) It is just barely possible, though not really likely, that Eklekte is a proper name and that kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) is a quite usual affectionate address. Kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) (the masculine form) has many meanings. It very commonly means sir; it means master of slaves and owner of possessions; on a much higher level it means lord and is the word so often used as a title for Jesus. In letters kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) has a special use. It is practically the equivalent of the English phrase My Dear. So a soldier writes home saying, Kurie (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) mou (<a href='S:G3450'>G3450</a>) pater (<a href='S:G3962'>G3962</a>), My Dear Father. In letters kurios is an address combining affection and respect. So it is just possible that this letter is addressed to My Dear Eklekte. Rendel Harris, indeed, went the length of saying that Second John is nothing other than a Christian love letter. This is unlikely, as we shall see, for more than one reason. But one thing is decisive against it. Second John ends: "The children of your elect sister greet you." The Greek is again eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) ; and, if it is a proper name at the beginning of the letter, it must also be a proper name at the end. This would mean that there were two sisters both called by the very unusual name of Eklekte--which is simply unbelievable.<p/>(ii) It is possible to take Kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) as a proper name, for there are examples of this usage. We would then take eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) in its normal New Testament sense; and the letter would be written to the elect Kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>). The objections are threefold. (a) It seems unlikely that any single individual could be spoken of as loved by all those who have known the truth (<a href='B:700 1:1'>2Jn 1:1</a>). (b) <a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a> says that John rejoiced when he found some of her children walking in the truth; the implication is that others did not so walk. This would seem to imply a number greater than one woman's family could contain. (c) The decisive objection is that throughout the letter the eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) is addressed sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural. The singular occurs in verses <a href='B:700 1:4-5'>2Jn 1:4-5</a> and <a href='B:700 1:13'>2Jn 1:13</a>; and the plural occurs in <a href='B:700 1:6'>2Jn 1:6</a>; <a href='B:700 1:8'>2Jn 1:8</a>; <a href='B:700 1:10'>2Jn 1:10</a>; <a href='B:700 1:12'>2Jn 1:12</a>. It would be almost impossible that an individual would be so addressed.<p/>(iii) So, then, we must come to the conclusion that the elect lady means a church. There is, in fact, good evidence that the expression was so used. First Peter, in the King James Version, ends with greetings from "the church that is at Babylon elected together with you" (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>). In the King James Version the words church that is are in italics; that, of course, means that they are not in the Greek and have been supplied in translation to fill out the sense. The Greek literally reads: "The Elect One at Babylon" and The Elect One is feminine. Few have ever doubted that the phrase means The church which is at Babylon, and that is how we must take it in John's letter also. No doubt The Elect Lady goes back to the idea of the church as the Bride of Christ. We can be certain that Second John is written, not to an individual but to a church.<p/><b>The Problem In The Early Church</b><p/> Second and Third John throw vivid light on a problem which sooner or later had to arise within the organization of the early church. Let us see if we can reconstruct the situation which lies behind them. It is clear that John the aged regards himself as having a right to act as guide and counsellor and to administer warning and rebuke in the churches whose members are his children. In Second John he writes of those who are doing well (<a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a>), and by implication infers that there are others who are not so satisfactory. He further makes it clear that there are itinerant teachers in the district, some of whom are preaching false and dangerous doctrine, and he gives orders that such teachers are not to be accepted and not to be given hospitality (<a href='B:700 1:7-11'>2Jn 1:7-11</a>). Here, then, John is exercising what is to him an unquestioned right to issue orders to his churches and is seeking to guard against a situation in which itinerant teachers of falsehood may arrive at any moment.<p/>The situation behind Third John is somewhat more complicated. The letter is written to one called Gaius, whose character and actions John most thoroughly approves (<a href='B:710 1:3-5'>3Jn 1:3-5</a>). Wandering missionaries have come to the church, men who are fellow-helpers of the truth, and Gaius has given them true Christian hospitality (<a href='B:710 1:6-8'>3Jn 1:6-8</a>). In the same church is another man called Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence (<a href='B:710 1:9'>3Jn 1:9</a>). Diotrephes is depicted as a dictatorial character who will brook no rival to his authority. Diotrephes has refused to receive the wandering teachers of the truth and has actually tried to drive out of the church those who did receive them. He will have nothing to do with wandering teachers even when they are true preachers of the word (<a href='B:710 1:10'>3Jn 1:10</a>).Then into the picture comes a man called Demetrius, to whom John gives a personal testimonial as a good man and one to be hospitably welcomed (<a href='B:710 1:12'>3Jn 1:12</a>). The simplest explanation of Demetrius is that he must be the leader of a wandering band of teachers who are on their way to the church to which John is writing. Diotrephes will certainly refuse to have anything to do with them and will try to eject those who do receive them; and John is writing to urge Gaius to receive the wandering teachers and not to be intimidated by the domineering Diotrephes, whom he (John) will deal with when he visits the church in question (<a href='B:710 1:10'>3Jn 1:10</a>). The whole situation turns on the reception of the wandering teachers. Gaius has received such teachers before, and John urges him to receive them and their leader Demetrius again. Diotrephes has shut the door on them and defied the authority of John the aged.<p/><b>The Threefold Ministry</b><p/> All this looks like a very unhappy situation, and indeed it was. None the less, it was one which was bound to arise. In the nature of things a problem of ministry was bound to emerge within the church. In its earliest days the church had three different kinds of ministries.<p/>(i) Unique, and above all others, stood the apostles, those who had companied with Jesus and been witnesses of the resurrection. They were the undisputed leaders of the church. Their writ ran throughout the whole church; in any country and in any congregation their ministry was supreme.<p/>(ii) There were the prophets. They were not attached to any one congregation. They were wandering preachers, going where the Spirit moved them and giving to men the message which the Spirit of God gave to them. They had given up home and occupation and the comfort and security of settled life to be the wandering messengers of God. They, too, had a very special place in the church. The Didache, or, to give it its English name, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is the earliest book of church order. In it the unique position of the prophets is made clear. The order of service for the Eucharist is laid down and the prayers are given; the service ends with the prayer of thanksgiving which is given in full; and then comes the sentence: "But suffer the prophets to give thanks as much as they will" (Didache 10:7). The prophets were not to be brought under the rules and regulations which governed ordinary people. So, then, the church had two sets of people whose authority was not confined to any one congregation and who had right of entry to every congregation.<p/>(iii) There were the elders. During their first missionary journey part of the work of Paul and Barnabas was to ordain elders in all the local churches which they founded (<a href='B:510 14:23'>Act 14:23</a>). The elders were the officials of the settled community; their work was within their congregation and they did not move outside it. It is clear that they were the backbone of the organization of the early church; on them the routine work and the solidity of the individual congregations depended.<p/><b>The Problem Of The Wandering Preachers</b><p/> The position of the apostles presented no real problem; they were unique and their position could never really be disputed. But the wandering prophets did present a problem. Their position was one which was singularly liable to abuse. They had an enormous prestige; and it was possible for the most undesirable characters to enter into a way of life in which they moved from place to place, living in very considerable comfort at the expense of the local congregations. A clever rogue could make a very comfortable living as an itinerant prophet. Even the pagan satirists saw this. Lucian, the Greek writer, in his work called the Peregrinus, draws the picture of a man who had found the easiest possible way of making a living without working. He was an itinerant charlatan who lived on the fat of the land by travelling round the various communities of the Christians, settling down wherever he liked and living luxuriously at their expense. The Didache clearly saw this danger and laid down definite regulations to meet it. The regulations are long but so vivid a light do they throw on the life of the early church that they are worth quoting in full (Didache 11 and 12).<p/>Whosoever, therefore, shall come and teach you all these things<p/>aforesaid, receive him. But if the teacher himself turn and teach<p/>another doctrine to pervert, hear him not. But unto the increase<p/>of righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the<p/>Lord. And as touching the apostles and prophets, according to the<p/>decree of the gospel, so do ye. But let every apostle that cometh<p/>unto you be received as the Lord. And he shall stay one day, and,<p/>if need be, the next also, but, if he stay three, he is a false<p/>prophet. And, when the apostle goeth forth, let him take nothing<p/>save bread, till he reach his lodging, but, if he ask money, he is<p/>a false prophet. And every prophet that speaketh in the Spirit ye<p/>shall not try nor judge: for every sin shall be forgiven, but this<p/>sin shall not be forgiven. But not everyone that speaketh in the<p/>Spirit is a prophet, but if he has the manners of the Lord. By<p/>their manners, therefore, shall the prophet and the false prophet<p/>be known. And no prophet who ordereth a table in the Spirit shall<p/>eat of it, else he is a false prophet. And every prophet that<p/>teacheth the truth, if he doeth not what he teacheth, is a false<p/>prophet.... Whosoever shall say in the Spirit: Give me money, or<p/>any other thing, ye shall not hearken to him: but, if he bid you<p/>give for others who are in need, let no man judge him.<p/>Let everyone that cometh in the name of the Lord be received,<p/>and then, when ye have proved him, ye shall know, for ye shall<p/>have understanding to distinguish between the right hand and the<p/>left. If he that cometh is a passer-by, succour him as far as ye<p/>can; but he shall not stay with you longer than two or three days,<p/>unless there be necessity. But, if he be minded to settle among<p/>you, and be a craftsman, let him work and eat. But, if he hath no<p/>trade, according to your understanding, provide that he shall not<p/>live idle among you, being a Christian. But, if he will not do<p/>this, he is a Christmonger: of such men beware.<p/>The Didache even invents the word Christmonger, trafficker in Christ, Christemporos, to describe this kind of person.<p/>John was entirely justified in warning his people that the wrong kind of wandering prophets might come claiming hospitality and in saying that they must on no account be received. There is no doubt that in the early church these wandering prophets became a problem. Some of them were heretical teachers, even if they were sincerely convinced of their own teaching. Some were nothing better than plausible rogues who had found an easy way to make a comfortable living. That is the picture which lies behind Second John.<p/><b>The Clash Of Ministries</b><p/> But the situation behind Third John is in some ways even more serious. The problem figure is Diotrephes. He is the man who will have nothing to do with wandering teachers and who seeks to eject anyone who dares to give them a welcome. He is the man who will not accept the authority of John and whom John brands as a domineering character. There is much more behind this than meets the eye. This was no storm in a tea-cup; it was a fundamental cleavage between the local and the itinerant ministry.<p/>Obviously the whole structure of the church depended on a strong settled ministry. That is to say, its very existence depended on a strong and authoritative eldership. As time went on the settled ministry was bound to chafe under the remote control of even one so famous as John the aged; and to resent the possibly upsetting invasions of wandering prophets and evangelists. It was by no means impossible that, however well-intentioned they were, these itinerants could do far more harm than good.<p/>Here is the situation behind Third John. John represents the old apostolic remote control; Demetrius and his band of missionaries represent the wandering prophets and preachers; Diotrephes represents the settled ministry of the local elders, who wish to run their own congregation and regard the wandering preachers as dangerous intruders; Gaius represents the good, well-meaning man who is torn in two and cannot make up his mind.<p/>What happened in this case, we do not know. But the end of the matter in the church was that the wandering preachers faded from the scene and the apostles in the nature of things passed from this earth, and the settled ministry became the ministry of the church. In a sense even in the modern church the problem of the itinerant evangelist and the settled ministry is not fully solved; but these two little letters are of the most fascinating interest because they show the organization of the church in a transition stage, when the clash between the itinerant and the settled ministry was beginning to emerge and--who knows?--Diotrephes may not have been as bad as he is painted nor altogether wrong. 


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3 JOHN<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND AND THIRD LETTERS OF JOHN<p/>The very shortness of these two letters is the best guarantee of their genuineness. They are so brief and so comparatively unimportant that no one would have gone to the trouble of inventing them and of attaching them to the name of John. A standard papyrus sheet measured ten by eight inches and the length of these letters is to be explained by the fact that they would each take up almost exactly one sheet.<p/><b>The Elder</b><p/> Each of them is said to come from "The elder." Second John begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children." Third John begins: "The elder to the beloved Gaius." It is in the last degree unlikely that The elder is an official or ecclesiastical title. Elders were officials attached to one congregation whose jurisdiction did not extend outside that congregation, whereas the writer of these letters certainly assumes that he has the right to speak and that his word will carry weight in congregations where he is not actually present. He speaks as one whose authority goes out to the Church at large. The word is presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>), which originally meant an elder, not in the official but in the natural sense of the term. We would be better to translate it "The ancient", or "The aged", for it is not from an ecclesiastical position but from his age and personal qualities that the writer of these letters draws his authority.<p/>In fact we know that in Ephesus there was an aged John who held a very special position. In the days of the early church there was a churchman called Papias who lived from A.D. 70 to 146: He had a passion for collecting all the information he could lay hands on about the early days of the church. He was not a great scholar, Eusebius dismisses him as "a man of very limited intelligence"; but he does transmit to us some most interesting information. He became Bishop of Hierapolis but he had a close connection with Ephesus, and he tells us of his own methods of acquiring information. He frequently uses elder in the sense of one of the fathers of the Church, and he mentions a particularly distinguished elder whose name was John. "I shall not hesitate," he writes, "to put down for you, along with my own interpretations, whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders, and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those who relate strange commandments, but in those who deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself. If, then, anyone came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders--what Andrew, or what Peter, had said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord; and what things Aristion, or the Elder John say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice." Clearly the Elder John, John the aged, was a notable figure in Ephesus, although he is clearly distinguished from John the apostle.<p/>It must be this John who wrote these two little letters. By this time he was an old man, one of the last surviving links with Jesus and his disciples. He was a man who had the authority of a bishop in Ephesus and in the places around it; and when he saw that a church was threatened with trouble and heresy, he wrote with gracious and loving correction to his people. Here are the letters of an aged saint, one of the last of the first generation of Christians, a man whom all loved and respected.<p/><b>Common Authorship</b><p/> That the two letters are from the one hand there is no doubt. Short as they are, they have much in common. Second John begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth." Third John begins: "The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth." Second John goes on: "I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children following the truth" (<a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a>); and Third John goes on: "No greater joy can I have than this, to hear that my children follow the truth." Second John comes to an end: "Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink, but I hope to come to see you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete" (<a href='B:700 1:12'>2Jn 1:12</a>). Third John comes to an end: "I had much to write to you, but I would rather not write with pen and ink; I hope to see you soon, and we will talk together face to face" (<a href='B:710 1:13-14'>3Jn 1:13-14</a>). There is the closest possible similarity between the two letters.<p/>There is further the closest possible connection between the situation of these letters and that in First John. In <a href='B:690 4:3'>1Jn 4:3</a> we read: "Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already." In <a href='B:700 1:7'>2Jn 1:7</a> we read: "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is a deceiver and the Antichrist."<p/>It is clear that Second and Third John are closely connected with each other; and that both are closely connected with First John. They are dealing with the same situation, the same dangers and the same people.<p/><b>The Problem Of The Second Letter</b><p/> These two little letters confront us with few serious problems. The only real one is to decide whether the Second Letter was sent to an individual or to a church. It begins: "The elder to the elect lady and her children." The problem centres on this phrase the elect lady. The Greek is eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) and there are three possible ways of taking it.<p/>(i) It is just barely possible, though not really likely, that Eklekte is a proper name and that kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) is a quite usual affectionate address. Kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) (the masculine form) has many meanings. It very commonly means sir; it means master of slaves and owner of possessions; on a much higher level it means lord and is the word so often used as a title for Jesus. In letters kurios (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) has a special use. It is practically the equivalent of the English phrase My Dear. So a soldier writes home saying, Kurie (<a href='S:G2962'>G2962</a>) mou (<a href='S:G3450'>G3450</a>) pater (<a href='S:G3962'>G3962</a>), My Dear Father. In letters kurios is an address combining affection and respect. So it is just possible that this letter is addressed to My Dear Eklekte. Rendel Harris, indeed, went the length of saying that Second John is nothing other than a Christian love letter. This is unlikely, as we shall see, for more than one reason. But one thing is decisive against it. Second John ends: "The children of your elect sister greet you." The Greek is again eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) ; and, if it is a proper name at the beginning of the letter, it must also be a proper name at the end. This would mean that there were two sisters both called by the very unusual name of Eklekte--which is simply unbelievable.<p/>(ii) It is possible to take Kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) as a proper name, for there are examples of this usage. We would then take eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) in its normal New Testament sense; and the letter would be written to the elect Kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>). The objections are threefold. (a) It seems unlikely that any single individual could be spoken of as loved by all those who have known the truth (<a href='B:700 1:1'>2Jn 1:1</a>). (b) <a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a> says that John rejoiced when he found some of her children walking in the truth; the implication is that others did not so walk. This would seem to imply a number greater than one woman's family could contain. (c) The decisive objection is that throughout the letter the eklekte (<a href='S:G1588'>G1588</a>) kuria (<a href='S:G2959'>G2959</a>) is addressed sometimes in the singular and sometimes in the plural. The singular occurs in verses <a href='B:700 1:4-5'>2Jn 1:4-5</a> and <a href='B:700 1:13'>2Jn 1:13</a>; and the plural occurs in <a href='B:700 1:6'>2Jn 1:6</a>; <a href='B:700 1:8'>2Jn 1:8</a>; <a href='B:700 1:10'>2Jn 1:10</a>; <a href='B:700 1:12'>2Jn 1:12</a>. It would be almost impossible that an individual would be so addressed.<p/>(iii) So, then, we must come to the conclusion that the elect lady means a church. There is, in fact, good evidence that the expression was so used. First Peter, in the King James Version, ends with greetings from "the church that is at Babylon elected together with you" (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>). In the King James Version the words church that is are in italics; that, of course, means that they are not in the Greek and have been supplied in translation to fill out the sense. The Greek literally reads: "The Elect One at Babylon" and The Elect One is feminine. Few have ever doubted that the phrase means The church which is at Babylon, and that is how we must take it in John's letter also. No doubt The Elect Lady goes back to the idea of the church as the Bride of Christ. We can be certain that Second John is written, not to an individual but to a church.<p/><b>The Problem In The Early Church</b><p/> Second and Third John throw vivid light on a problem which sooner or later had to arise within the organization of the early church. Let us see if we can reconstruct the situation which lies behind them. It is clear that John the aged regards himself as having a right to act as guide and counsellor and to administer warning and rebuke in the churches whose members are his children. In Second John he writes of those who are doing well (<a href='B:700 1:4'>2Jn 1:4</a>), and by implication infers that there are others who are not so satisfactory. He further makes it clear that there are itinerant teachers in the district, some of whom are preaching false and dangerous doctrine, and he gives orders that such teachers are not to be accepted and not to be given hospitality (<a href='B:700 1:7-11'>2Jn 1:7-11</a>). Here, then, John is exercising what is to him an unquestioned right to issue orders to his churches and is seeking to guard against a situation in which itinerant teachers of falsehood may arrive at any moment.<p/>The situation behind Third John is somewhat more complicated. The letter is written to one called Gaius, whose character and actions John most thoroughly approves (<a href='B:710 1:3-5'>3Jn 1:3-5</a>). Wandering missionaries have come to the church, men who are fellow-helpers of the truth, and Gaius has given them true Christian hospitality (<a href='B:710 1:6-8'>3Jn 1:6-8</a>). In the same church is another man called Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence (<a href='B:710 1:9'>3Jn 1:9</a>). Diotrephes is depicted as a dictatorial character who will brook no rival to his authority. Diotrephes has refused to receive the wandering teachers of the truth and has actually tried to drive out of the church those who did receive them. He will have nothing to do with wandering teachers even when they are true preachers of the word (<a href='B:710 1:10'>3Jn 1:10</a>).Then into the picture comes a man called Demetrius, to whom John gives a personal testimonial as a good man and one to be hospitably welcomed (<a href='B:710 1:12'>3Jn 1:12</a>). The simplest explanation of Demetrius is that he must be the leader of a wandering band of teachers who are on their way to the church to which John is writing. Diotrephes will certainly refuse to have anything to do with them and will try to eject those who do receive them; and John is writing to urge Gaius to receive the wandering teachers and not to be intimidated by the domineering Diotrephes, whom he (John) will deal with when he visits the church in question (<a href='B:710 1:10'>3Jn 1:10</a>). The whole situation turns on the reception of the wandering teachers. Gaius has received such teachers before, and John urges him to receive them and their leader Demetrius again. Diotrephes has shut the door on them and defied the authority of John the aged.<p/><b>The Threefold Ministry</b><p/> All this looks like a very unhappy situation, and indeed it was. None the less, it was one which was bound to arise. In the nature of things a problem of ministry was bound to emerge within the church. In its earliest days the church had three different kinds of ministries.<p/>(i) Unique, and above all others, stood the apostles, those who had companied with Jesus and been witnesses of the resurrection. They were the undisputed leaders of the church. Their writ ran throughout the whole church; in any country and in any congregation their ministry was supreme.<p/>(ii) There were the prophets. They were not attached to any one congregation. They were wandering preachers, going where the Spirit moved them and giving to men the message which the Spirit of God gave to them. They had given up home and occupation and the comfort and security of settled life to be the wandering messengers of God. They, too, had a very special place in the church. The Didache, or, to give it its English name, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is the earliest book of church order. In it the unique position of the prophets is made clear. The order of service for the Eucharist is laid down and the prayers are given; the service ends with the prayer of thanksgiving which is given in full; and then comes the sentence: "But suffer the prophets to give thanks as much as they will" (Didache 10:7). The prophets were not to be brought under the rules and regulations which governed ordinary people. So, then, the church had two sets of people whose authority was not confined to any one congregation and who had right of entry to every congregation.<p/>(iii) There were the elders. During their first missionary journey part of the work of Paul and Barnabas was to ordain elders in all the local churches which they founded (<a href='B:510 14:23'>Act 14:23</a>). The elders were the officials of the settled community; their work was within their congregation and they did not move outside it. It is clear that they were the backbone of the organization of the early church; on them the routine work and the solidity of the individual congregations depended.<p/><b>The Problem Of The Wandering Preachers</b><p/> The position of the apostles presented no real problem; they were unique and their position could never really be disputed. But the wandering prophets did present a problem. Their position was one which was singularly liable to abuse. They had an enormous prestige; and it was possible for the most undesirable characters to enter into a way of life in which they moved from place to place, living in very considerable comfort at the expense of the local congregations. A clever rogue could make a very comfortable living as an itinerant prophet. Even the pagan satirists saw this. Lucian, the Greek writer, in his work called the Peregrinus, draws the picture of a man who had found the easiest possible way of making a living without working. He was an itinerant charlatan who lived on the fat of the land by travelling round the various communities of the Christians, settling down wherever he liked and living luxuriously at their expense. The Didache clearly saw this danger and laid down definite regulations to meet it. The regulations are long but so vivid a light do they throw on the life of the early church that they are worth quoting in full (Didache 11 and 12).<p/>Whosoever, therefore, shall come and teach you all these things<p/>aforesaid, receive him. But if the teacher himself turn and teach<p/>another doctrine to pervert, hear him not. But unto the increase<p/>of righteousness and knowledge of the Lord, receive him as the<p/>Lord. And as touching the apostles and prophets, according to the<p/>decree of the gospel, so do ye. But let every apostle that cometh<p/>unto you be received as the Lord. And he shall stay one day, and,<p/>if need be, the next also, but, if he stay three, he is a false<p/>prophet. And, when the apostle goeth forth, let him take nothing<p/>save bread, till he reach his lodging, but, if he ask money, he is<p/>a false prophet. And every prophet that speaketh in the Spirit ye<p/>shall not try nor judge: for every sin shall be forgiven, but this<p/>sin shall not be forgiven. But not everyone that speaketh in the<p/>Spirit is a prophet, but if he has the manners of the Lord. By<p/>their manners, therefore, shall the prophet and the false prophet<p/>be known. And no prophet who ordereth a table in the Spirit shall<p/>eat of it, else he is a false prophet. And every prophet that<p/>teacheth the truth, if he doeth not what he teacheth, is a false<p/>prophet.... Whosoever shall say in the Spirit: Give me money, or<p/>any other thing, ye shall not hearken to him: but, if he bid you<p/>give for others who are in need, let no man judge him.<p/>Let everyone that cometh in the name of the Lord be received,<p/>and then, when ye have proved him, ye shall know, for ye shall<p/>have understanding to distinguish between the right hand and the<p/>left. If he that cometh is a passer-by, succour him as far as ye<p/>can; but he shall not stay with you longer than two or three days,<p/>unless there be necessity. But, if he be minded to settle among<p/>you, and be a craftsman, let him work and eat. But, if he hath no<p/>trade, according to your understanding, provide that he shall not<p/>live idle among you, being a Christian. But, if he will not do<p/>this, he is a Christmonger: of such men beware.<p/>The Didache even invents the word Christmonger, trafficker in Christ, Christemporos, to describe this kind of person.<p/>John was entirely justified in warning his people that the wrong kind of wandering prophets might come claiming hospitality and in saying that they must on no account be received. There is no doubt that in the early church these wandering prophets became a problem. Some of them were heretical teachers, even if they were sincerely convinced of their own teaching. Some were nothing better than plausible rogues who had found an easy way to make a comfortable living. That is the picture which lies behind Second John.<p/><b>The Clash Of Ministries</b><p/> But the situation behind Third John is in some ways even more serious. The problem figure is Diotrephes. He is the man who will have nothing to do with wandering teachers and who seeks to eject anyone who dares to give them a welcome. He is the man who will not accept the authority of John and whom John brands as a domineering character. There is much more behind this than meets the eye. This was no storm in a tea-cup; it was a fundamental cleavage between the local and the itinerant ministry.<p/>Obviously the whole structure of the church depended on a strong settled ministry. That is to say, its very existence depended on a strong and authoritative eldership. As time went on the settled ministry was bound to chafe under the remote control of even one so famous as John the aged; and to resent the possibly upsetting invasions of wandering prophets and evangelists. It was by no means impossible that, however well-intentioned they were, these itinerants could do far more harm than good.<p/>Here is the situation behind Third John. John represents the old apostolic remote control; Demetrius and his band of missionaries represent the wandering prophets and preachers; Diotrephes represents the settled ministry of the local elders, who wish to run their own congregation and regard the wandering preachers as dangerous intruders; Gaius represents the good, well-meaning man who is torn in two and cannot make up his mind.<p/>What happened in this case, we do not know. But the end of the matter in the church was that the wandering preachers faded from the scene and the apostles in the nature of things passed from this earth, and the settled ministry became the ministry of the church. In a sense even in the modern church the problem of the itinerant evangelist and the settled ministry is not fully solved; but these two little letters are of the most fascinating interest because they show the organization of the church in a transition stage, when the clash between the itinerant and the settled ministry was beginning to emerge and--who knows?--Diotrephes may not have been as bad as he is painted nor altogether wrong. 


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JUDE<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTER OF JUDE<p/><b>The Difficult And Neglected Letter</b><p/> It may well be said that for the great majority of modern readers reading the little letter of Jude is a bewildering rather than a profitable undertaking. There are two verses which everyone knows--the resounding and magnificent doxology with which it ends:<p/>Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you<p/>without blemish before the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to<p/>the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory,<p/>majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and for<p/>ever. Amen.<p/>But, apart from these two great verses, Jude is largely unknown and seldom read. The reason for its difficulty is that it is written out of a background of thought, against the challenge of a situation, in pictures and with quotations, which are all quite strange to us. Beyond a doubt it would hit those who read it for the first time like a hammer-blow. It would be like a trumpet call to defend the faith. Moffatt calls Jude "a fiery cross to rouse the churches." But, as J. B. Mayor, one of its greatest editors, has said: "To a modern reader it is curious rather than edifying with the exception of the beginning and the end."<p/>This is one of the great reasons for addressing ourselves to the study of Jude; for, when we understand Jude's thought and disentangle the situation against which he was writing, his letter becomes of the greatest interest for the history of the earliest church and by no means without relevance for today. There have indeed been times in the history of the church, and especially in its revivals when Jude was not far from being the most relevant book in the New Testament. Let us begin by simply setting down the substance of the letter without waiting for the explanations which must follow later.<p/><b>Meeting The Threat</b><p/> It had been Jude's intention to write a treatise on the faith which all Christians share; but that task had to be laid aside in view of the rise of men whose conduct and thought were a threat to the Christian Church (<a href='B:720 1:3'>Jud 1:3</a>). In view of this situation the need was not so much to expound the faith as to rally Christians in its defence. Certain men who had insinuated themselves into the church were busily engaged in turning the grace of God into an excuse for open immorality and were denying the only true God and Jesus Christ the Lord (<a href='B:720 1:4'>Jud 1:4</a>). These men were immoral in life and heretical in belief.<p/><b>The Warnings</b><p/> Against these men Jude marshals his warnings. Let them remember the fate of the Israelites. They had been brought in safety out of Egypt but they had never been permitted to enter the Promised Land because of their unbelief (<a href='B:720 1:5'>Jud 1:5</a>). The reference is to <a href='B:40 13:26-33'>Num 13:26-33</a>; <a href='B:40 14:1-29'>Num 14:1-29</a>. Although a man had received the grace of God, he might still lose his eternal salvation if he drifted into disobedience and unbelief. Some angels with the glory of heaven as their own had come to earth and corrupted mortal women with their lust (<a href='B:10 6:2'>Gen 6:2</a>); and now they were imprisoned in the abyss of darkness, awaiting judgment (<a href='B:720 1:6'>Jud 1:6</a>). He who rebels against God must look for judgment. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had given themselves over to lust and to unnatural vice, and their destruction in flames is a dreadful warning to everyone who similarly goes astray (<a href='B:720 1:7'>Jud 1:7</a>).<p/><b>The Evil Life</b><p/> These men are visionaries of evil dreams; they defile their flesh; and they speak evil of the angels (<a href='B:720 1:8'>Jud 1:8</a>). Not even Michael the archangel, dare speak evil even of the evil angels. It had been given to Michael to bury the body of Moses. The devil had tried to stop him and claim the body for himself. Michael had spoken no evil against the devil, even in circumstances like that, but had simply said, "The Lord rebuke you!" (<a href='B:720 1:9'>Jud 1:9</a>). Angels must be respected, even when evil and hostile. These evil men condemn everything which they do not understand, and spiritual things are beyond their understanding. They do understand their fleshly instincts and allow themselves to be governed by them as the brute beasts do (<a href='B:720 1:10'>Jud 1:10</a>).<p/>They are like Cain, the cynical, selfish murderer; they are like Balaam, whose one desire was for gain and who led the people into sin; they are like Korah, who rebelled against the legitimate authority of Moses and was swallowed up by the earth for his arrogant disobedience (<a href='B:720 1:11'>Jud 1:11</a>).<p/>They are like the hidden rocks on which a ship may founder; they have their own clique in which they consort with people like themselves, and thus destroy Christian fellowship; they deceive others with their promises, like clouds which promise the longed-for rain and then pass over the sky; they are like fruitless and rootless trees, which have no harvest of good fruit; as the foaming spray of the waves casts the sea-weed and the wreckage on the beaches, they foam out shameless deeds; they are like disobedient stars who refuse to keep their appointed orbit and are doomed to the dark (<a href='B:720 1:13'>Jud 1:13</a>). Long ago the prophet Enoch had described these men and had prophesied their divine destruction (<a href='B:720 1:15'>Jud 1:15</a>). They murmur against all true authority and discipline as the children of Israel murmured against Moses in the desert; they are discontented with the lot which God has appointed to them; their lusts are their dictators; their speech is arrogant and proud; they are toadies of the great for sake of gain (<a href='B:720 1:16'>Jud 1:16</a>).<p/><b>Words To The Faithful</b><p/> Having castigated the evil men with this torrent of invective, Jude turns to the faithful. They could have expected all this to happen, for the apostles of Jesus Christ had foretold the rise of evil men (<a href='B:720 1:18-19'>Jud 1:18-19</a>). But the duty of the true Christian is to build his life on the foundation of the most holy faith; to learn to pray in the power of the Holy Spirit; to remember the conditions of the covenant into which the love of God has called him; to wait for the mercy of Jesus Christ (<a href='B:720 1:20-21'>Jud 1:20-21</a>).<p/>As for the false thinkers and the loose livers--some of them may be saved with pity while they are still hesitating on the brink of their evil ways; others have to be snatched like brands from the burning; and, in all his rescue work, the Christian must have that godly fear which will love the sinner but hate the sin and must avoid the pollution of those he seeks to save (<a href='B:720 1:22-23'>Jud 1:22-23</a>).<p/>And all the time there will be with him the power of that God who can keep him from falling and bring him pure and joyful into his presence (<a href='B:720 1:24-25'>Jud 1:24-25</a>).<p/><b>The Heretics</b><p/> Who were the heretics whom Jude blasts, and what were their beliefs and what their way of life? Jude never tells us. He was not a theologian but, as Moffatt says, "a plain, honest leader of the church." "He denounces rather than describes" the heresies he attacks. He does not seek to argue and to refute, for he writes as one "who knows when round indignation is more telling than argument." But from the letter itself we can deduce three things about these heretics.<p/>(i) They were antinomians. Antinomians have existed in every age of the church. They are people who pervert grace. Their position is that the law is dead and they are under grace. The prescriptions of the law may apply to other people, but they no longer apply to them. They can do absolutely what they like. Grace is supreme; it can forgive any sin; the more the sin, the more the opportunities for grace to abound (<a href='B:520 6:1-23'>Rom 6:1-23</a>). The body is of no importance; what matters is the inward heart of man. All things belong to Christ, and, therefore, all things are theirs. And so for them there is nothing forbidden.<p/>So Jude's heretics turn the grace of God into an excuse for flagrant immorality (<a href='B:720 1:4'>Jud 1:4</a>); they even practise shameless unnatural vices, as the people of Sodom did (<a href='B:720 1:7'>Jud 1:7</a>). They defile the flesh and think it no sin (<a href='B:720 1:8'>Jud 1:8</a>). They allow their brute instincts to rule their lives (<a href='B:720 1:10'>Jud 1:10</a>). With their sensual ways, they are like to make shipwreck of the love feasts of the church (<a href='B:720 1:12'>Jud 1:12</a>). It is by their own lusts that they direct their lives (<a href='B:720 1:16'>Jud 1:16</a>).<p/><b>Modern Examples Of The Ancient Heresy</b><p/> It is a curious and tragic fact of history that the church has never been entirely free of this antinomianism; and it is natural that it has flourished most in the ages when the wonder of grace was being rediscovered.<p/>It appeared in the Ranters of the seventeenth century. The Ranters were pantheists and antinomians. A pantheist believes that God is everything; literally all things are Christ's, and Christ is the end of the law. They talked of "Christ within them," and paid no heed to the church or its ministry, and belittled scripture. One of them called Bottomley wrote: "It is not safe to go to the Bible to see what others have spoken and written of the mind of God as to see what God speaks within me, and to follow the doctrine and leading of it in me." When George Fox rebuked them for their lewd practices, they answered, "We are God." This may sound very fine, but, as John Wesley was to say, it most often resulted in "a gospel of the flesh." It was their argument that "swearing, adultery, drunkenness and theft are not sinful unless the person guilty of them apprehends them to be so." When Fox was a prisoner at Charing Cross they came to see him and mightily offended him by calling for drink and tobacco. They swore terribly and when Fox rebuked them, justified themselves by saying that Scripture tells us that Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, the priests, and the angel all swore. To which Fox replied that he who was before Abraham commanded, "Swear not at all." Richard Baxter said of them, "They conjoined a cursed doctrine of libertinism, which brought them to all abominable filthiness of life; they taught God regardeth not the actions of the outward man, but of the heart; and that to the pure all things are pure (even things forbidden) and so, as allowed by God, they spoke most hideous words of blasphemy, and many of them committed whoredoms commonly.... The horrid villainies of this sect did speedily extinguish it." Doubtless many of the Ranters were insane; doubtless some of them were pernicious and deliberate sensualists; but doubtless, too, some of them were earnest but misguided men, who had misunderstood the meaning of grace and freedom from the law.<p/>Later John Wesley was to have trouble with the antinomians. He talks of them preaching a gospel of flesh and blood. At Jenninghall he says that "the antinomians had laboured hard in the Devil's service." At Birmingham he says that "the fierce, unclean, brutish, blasphemous antinomians" had utterly destroyed the spiritual life of the congregation. He tells of a certain Roger Ball who insinuated himself into the life of the congregation at Dublin. At first he seemed to be so spiritually-minded a man that the congregation welcomed him as being preeminently suited for the service and ministry of the church. He showed himself in time to be "full of guile and of the most abominable errors, one of which was that a believer had a right to all women." He would not communicate, for under grace a man must "touch not, taste not, handle not." He would not preach and abandoned the church services because, he said, "The dear Lamb is the only preacher."<p/>Wesley, deliberately to show the position of these antinomians, related in his Journal a conversation which he had with one of them at Birmingham. It ran as follows. "Do you believe that you have nothing to do with the law of God?" "I have not; I am not under the law; I live by faith." "Have you, as living by faith, a right to everything in the world?" "I have. All is mine, since Christ is mine." "May you then take anything you will anywhere? Suppose out of a shop without the consent or knowledge of the owner?" "I may, if I want, for it is mine. Only I will not give offence." "Have you a right to all the women in the world" "Yes, if they consent." "And is not that a sin?" "Yes, to him who thinks it is a sin; but not to those whose hearts are free."<p/>Repeatedly Wesley had to meet these people, as George Fox had to meet them. John Bunyan, too, came up against the Ranters who claimed complete freedom from the moral law and looked with contempt on the ethics of the stricter Christian. "These would condemn me as legal and dark, pretending that they only had attained perfection that could do what they would and not sin." One of them, whom Bunyan knew, "gave himself up to all manner of filthiness, especially uncleanness...and would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety. When I laboured to rebuke his wickedness, he would laugh the more."<p/>Jude's heretics have existed in every Christian generation and, even if they do not go all the way, there are still many who in their heart of hearts trade upon God's forgiveness and make his grace an excuse to sin.<p/><b>The Denial Of God And Of Jesus Christ</b><p/> (ii) Of the antinomianism and blatant immorality of the heretics whom Jude condemns there is no doubt. The other two faults with which he charges them are not so obvious in their meaning. He charges them with, as the Revised Standard Version has it, "denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ" (<a href='B:720 1:4'>Jud 1:4</a>). The closing doxology is to "the only God, a phrase which occurs again in <a href='B:520 16:27'>Rom 16:27</a>; <a href='B:610 1:17'>1Ti 1:17</a>; <a href='B:610 6:15'>1Ti 6:15</a>. The reiteration of the word only is significant. If Jude talks about our only Master and Lord and, about the only God, it is natural to assume that there must have been those who questioned the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and of God. Can we trace any such line of thought in the early church and, if so, does it fit in with any other evidence which hints within the letter itself may supply?<p/>As so often in the New Testament, we are again in contact with that type of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism. Its basic idea was that this was a dualistic universe, a universe with two eternal principles in it. From the beginning of time there had always been spirit and matter. Spirit was essentially good; matter was essentially evil. Out of this flawed matter the world was created. Now God is pure spirit and, therefore, could not possibly handle this essentially evil matter. How then was creation effected? God put out a series of aeons or emanations; each of these aeons was farther away from him. At the end of this long chain, remote from God, there was an aeon who was able to touch matter; and it was this aeon, this distant and secondary god, who actually created the world.<p/>Nor was this all that was in Gnostic thought. As the aeons in the series grew more distant from God, they grew more ignorant of him; and also grew more hostile to him. The creating aeon, at the end of the series, was at once totally ignorant of and totally hostile to God.<p/>Having got that length, the Gnostics took another step. They identified the true God with the God of the New Testament and they identified the secondary, ignorant and hostile god with the God of the Old Testament. As they saw it, the God of creation was a different being from the God of revelation and redemption. Christianity on the other hand believes in the only God, the one God of creation, providence and redemption.<p/>This was the Gnostic explanation of sin. It was because creation was carried out, in the first place, from evil matter and, in the second place, by an ignorant god, that sin and suffering and all imperfection existed.<p/>This Gnostic line of thought had one curious, but perfectly logical, result. If the God of the Old Testament was ignorant of and hostile to the true God, it must follow that the people whom that ignorant God hurt were in fact good people. Clearly the hostile God would be hostile to the people who were the true servants of the true God. The Gnostics, therefore, so to speak, turned the Old Testament upside down and regarded its heroes as villains and its villains as heroes. So there was a sect of these Gnostics called Ophites, because they worshipped the serpent of Eden; and there were those who regarded Cain and Korah and Balaam as great heroes. It is these very people whom Jude uses as tragic and terrible examples of sin.<p/>So we may take it that the heretics whom Jude attacks are Gnostics who denied the oneness of God, who regarded the God of creation as different from the God of redemption, who saw in the Old Testament God an ignorant enemy of the true God and who, therefore, turned the Old Testament upside down to regard its sinners as servants of the true God and its saints as servants of the hostile God.<p/>Not only did these heretics deny the oneness of God, they also denied "our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ." That is to say, they denied the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. How does that fit in with the Gnostic ideas so far as they are known to us? We have seen that, according to Gnostic belief, God put out a series of aeons between himself and the world. The Gnostics regarded Jesus Christ as one of these aeons. They did not regard him as our only, Master and Lord; he was only one among the many who were links between God and man, although he might be the highest and the closest of all.<p/>There is still one other hint about these heretics in Jude, a hint which also fits in with what we know about the Gnostics. In <a href='B:720 1:19'>Jud 1:19</a>, Jude describes them as "these who set up divisions." The heretics introduce some kind of class distinctions within the fellowship of the Church. What were these distinctions?<p/>We have seen that between man and God there stretched an infinite series of aeons. The aim of man must be to achieve contact with God. To obtain this his soul must traverse this infinite series of links between God and man. The Gnostics held that to achieve this a very special and esoteric knowledge was required. So deep was this knowledge that only very few could attain to it.<p/>The Gnostics, therefore, divided men into two classes, the pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>) and the psuchikoi (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>). The pneuma (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>) was the spirit of man, that which made him kin to God--and the pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>) were the spiritual people, the people whose spirits were so highly developed and intellectual that they were able to climb the long ladder and reach God. These pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>), the Gnostics claimed, were so spiritually and intellectually equipped that they could become as good as Jesus--Irenaeus says that some of them believed that the pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>) could become better than Jesus and attain direct union with God.<p/>On the other hand, the psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>) was simply the principle of physical life. All things which live had psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>) ; it was something which man shared with the animal creation and even with growing plants. The psuchikoi (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>) were ordinary people; they had physical life but their pneuma (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>) was undeveloped and they were incapable of ever gaining the intellectual wisdom which would enable them to climb the long road to God. The pneumatikoi (<a href='S:G4152'>G4152</a>) were a very small and select minority; the psuchikoi (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>) were the vast majority of ordinary people.<p/>It is clear to see that this kind of belief was inevitably productive of spiritual snobbery and pride. It introduced into the church the worst kind of class distinction.<p/>So, then, the heretics whom Jude attacks were men who denied the oneness of God and split him into an ignorant creating God and a truly spiritual God; who denied the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and saw him as only one of the links between God and man; who erected class distinctions within the church and limited fellowship with God to the intellectual few.<p/><b>The Denial Of The Angels</b><p/> (iii) It is further inferred that these heretics denied and insulted the angels. It is said they "reject authority, and revile the glorious ones" (<a href='B:720 1:8'>Jud 1:8</a>). The words "authority" and "glorious ones" describe ranks in the Jewish hierarchy of angels. <a href='B:720 1:9'>Jud 1:9</a> is a reference to a story in the Assumption of Moses. It is there told that Michael was given the task of burying the body of Moses. The devil tried to stop him and claim the body. Michael made no charge against the devil and said nothing against him. He said only, "The Lord rebuke you!" If Michael, the archangel, on such an occasion said nothing against the prince of evil angels, clearly no man can speak ill of the angels.<p/>The Jewish belief in angels was very elaborate. Every nation had its protecting angel. Every person, even every child, had its angel. All the forces of nature, the wind and the sea and the fire and all the others, were under the control of angels. It could even be said "Every blade of grass has its angel." Clearly the heretics attacked the angels. It is likely that they said that the angels were the servants of the ignorant and hostile creator God and that a Christian must have nothing to do with them. We cannot quite be sure what lies behind this, but to all their other errors the heretics added the despising of the angels; and to Jude this seemed an evil thing.<p/><b>Jude And The New Testament</b><p/> We must now examine the questions regarding the date and the authorship of Jude.<p/>Jude had some difficulty in getting into the New Testament at all; it is one of the books whose position was always insecure and which were late in gaining full acceptance as part of the New Testament. Let us briefly set out the opinions of the great fathers and scholars of the early church about it.<p/>Jude is included in the Muratorian Canon, which dates to about A.D. 170, and may be regarded as the first semi-official list of the books accepted by the Church. The inclusion of Jude is strange when we remember that the Muratorian Canon does not include in its list Hebrews and First Peter. But thereafter Jude is for long spoken of with a doubt. In the middle of the third century Origen knew and used it, but he was well aware that there were many who questioned its right to be scripture. Eusebius, the great scholar of the middle of the fourth century, made a deliberate examination of the position of the various books which were in use and he classes Jude amongst the books which are disputed.<p/>Jerome, who produced the Vulgate, had his doubts about Jude; and it is in him that we find one of the reasons for the hesitation which was felt towards it. The strange thing about Jude is the way in which it quotes as authorities books which are outside the Old Testament. It uses as scripture certain books which were written between the Old and the New Testaments and were never generally regarded as scripture. Here are two definite instances. The reference in <a href='B:720 1:9'>Jud 1:9</a> to Michael disputing with the devil about the body of Moses is taken from an apocryphal book called The Assumption of Moses. In <a href='B:720 1:14-15'>Jud 1:14-15</a> Jude confirms his argument with a quotation from prophecy, as, indeed, is the habit of all the New Testament writers; but Jude's quotation is, in fact, taken from the Book of Enoch, which he appears to regard as scripture. Jerome tells us that it was Jude's habit of using non-scriptural books as scripture which made some people regard him with suspicion; and towards the end of the third century in Alexandria it was from the very same charge that Didymus defended him. It is perhaps the strangest thing in Jude that he uses these non-scriptural books as other New Testament writers use the prophets; and in <a href='B:720 1:17-18'>Jud 1:17-18</a> he makes use of a saying of the apostles which is not identifiable at all.<p/>Jude, then, was one of the books which took a long time to gain an assured place in the New Testament; but by the fourth century its place was secure.<p/><b>The Date</b><p/> There are definite indications that Jude is not an early book. It speaks of the faith that was once delivered to the saints (<a href='B:720 1:3'>Jud 1:3</a>). That way of speaking seems to look back a long way and to come from the time when there was a body of belief which was orthodoxy. In <a href='B:720 1:17-18'>Jud 1:17-18</a> he urges his people to remember the words of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. That seems to come from a time when the apostles were no longer there and the Church was looking back on their teaching. The atmosphere of Jude is of a book which looks back.<p/>Beside that we have to set the fact that, as it seems to us, Second Peter makes use of Jude to a very large extent. Anyone can see that its second chapter has the closest possible connection with Jude. It is quite certain that one of these writers was borrowing from the other. On general grounds it is much more likely that the author of Second Peter would incorporate the whole of Jude into his work than that Jude would, for no apparent reason, take over only one section of Second Peter. Now, if we believe that Second Peter uses it, Jude cannot be very late, even if it is not early.<p/>It is true that Jude looks back on the apostles; but it is also true that, with the exception of John, all the apostles were dead by A.D. 70: Taking together the fact that Jude looks back on the apostles and the fact that Second Peter uses it, a date about A.D. 80 to 90 would suit the writing of Jude.<p/><b>The Authorship Of Jude</b><p/> Who was this Jude, or Judas, who wrote this letter? He calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ and the brother of James. In the New Testament there are five people called Judas.<p/>(i) There is the Judas of Damascus in whose house Paul was praying after his conversion on the Damascus road (<a href='B:510 9:11'>Act 9:11</a>).<p/>(ii) There is Judas Barsabas, a leading figure in the councils of the church who, along with Silas, was the bearer to Antioch of the decision of the Council of Jerusalem when the door of the church was opened to the Gentiles (<a href='B:510 15:22'>Act 15:22</a>; <a href='B:510 15:27'>Act 15:27</a>; <a href='B:510 15:32'>Act 15:32</a>). This Judas was also a prophet (<a href='B:510 15:32'>Act 15:32</a>).<p/>(iii) There is Judas Iscariot.<p/>None of these three has ever seriously been considered as the author of this letter.<p/>(iv) There is the second Judas in the apostolic band. John calls him Judas, not Iscariot (<a href='B:500 14:22'>Joh 14:22</a>). In Luke's list of the Twelve there is an apostle whom the King James Version calls Judas the brother of James (<a href='B:490 6:16'>Luk 6:16</a>; <a href='B:510 1:13'>Act 1:13</a>). If we were to depend solely on the King James Version we might well think that here we have a serious candidate for the authorship of this letter, and, indeed, Tertullian calls the writer the Apostle Judas. But in the Greek this man is simply called Judas of James. This is a very common idiom in Greek and almost always it means not brother of, but son of; so that Judas of James in the list of the Twelve is not Judas the brother of James but Judas the son of James, as all the newer translations show.<p/>(v) There is the Judas who was the brother of Jesus (<a href='B:470 13:55'>Mat 13:55</a>; <a href='B:480 6:3'>Mar 6:3</a>). If any of the New Testament Judases is the writer of this letter, it must be this one, for only he could truly be called the brother of James.<p/>Is this little letter to be taken as a letter of the Judas who was the brother of our Lord? If so, it would give it a special interest. But there are objections.<p/>(i) If Jude to use the form of his name with which we are familiar--was the brother of Jesus, why does he not say so? Why does he identify himself as Jude the brother of James rather than as Jude the brother of Jesus? It would surely be explanation enough to say that he shrank from taking so great a title of honour to himself. Even if it was true that he was the brother of Jesus, he might well prefer in humility to call himself his servant, for Jesus was not only his brother but his Lord. Further, Jude the brother of James would in all probability never be outside Palestine in all his life. The church he would know would be that at Jerusalem, and of that church James was the undoubted head. If he was writing to churches in Palestine, his relationship to James was the natural thing to stress. When we come to think of it, it would be more surprising that Jude should call himself the brother of Jesus than that he should call himself the servant of Jesus Christ.<p/>(ii) It is objected that Jude calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ and thereby calls himself an apostle. "Servants of God" was the Old Testament title for the prophets. God would not do anything without revealing it first to his servants the prophets (<a href='B:370 3:7'>Amo 3:7</a>). What had been a prophetic title in the Old Testament became an apostolic title in the New Testament. Paul speaks of himself as the servant of Jesus Christ (<a href='B:520 1:1'>Rom 1:1</a>; Php_1:1). He is spoken of as the servant of God in the Pastoral Epistles (<a href='B:630 1:1'>Tit 1:1</a>), and that is also the title which James takes to himself (<a href='B:660 1:1'>Jas 1:1</a>). It is concluded, therefore, that by calling himself "the Servant of Jesus Christ" Jude is claiming to be an apostle.<p/>There are two answers to that. First, the title servant of Jesus Christ is not confined to the Twelve, for it is given by Paul to Timothy (Php_1:1). Second, even if it is regarded as a title confined to the apostles in the wider sense of the word, we find the brethren of the Lord associated with the eleven after the Ascension (<a href='B:510 1:14'>Act 1:14</a>), and Jude, like James, may well have been among them; and we learn that the brothers of Jesus were prominent in the missionary work of the Church (<a href='B:530 9:5'>1Co 9:5</a>). Such evidence as we have would tend to prove that Jude, the brother of our Lord, was one of the apostolic circle and that the title servant of Jesus Christ is perfectly applicable to him.<p/>(iii) It is argued that the Jude of Palestine, who was the brother of Jesus, could not have written the Greek of this letter as he would be an Aramaic speaker. That is not a safe argument. Jude would certainly know Greek, for it was the lingua franca of the ancient world, which all men spoke in addition to their own language. The Greek of Jude is rugged and forceful; it might well be within Jude's competence to write it for himself and, even if he could not do so, he may well have had a helper and translator such as Peter had in Silvanus.<p/>(iv) It might be argued that the heresy which Jude is attacking is Gnosticism and that Gnosticism is much more a Greek than a Jewish way of thought--and what would Jude of Palestine be doing writing to Greeks? But an odd fact about this heresy is that it is the very opposite of orthodox Judaism. The controller of all Jewish action was the sacred law; basic belief of Jewish religion was that there was one God; the Jewish belief in angels was highly developed. It is by no means difficult to suppose that when certain Jews entered the Christian faith, they swung to the other extreme. It is easy to imagine a Jew who had all his life been in servitude to the law suddenly discovering grace and plunging into antinomianism as a reaction against his former legalism; and reacting similarly against the traditional Jewish belief in one God and in angels. It is, in fact, easy to see in the heretics whom Jude attacks Jews who had come into the Christian Church rather as renegades from Judaism than as truly convinced Christians.<p/>(v) Lastly, it might be argued that, if this letter had been known to have been the work of Jude the brother of Jesus, it would not have been so long in gaining an entry into the New Testament. But before the end of the first century the church was largely Gentile and the Jews were regarded as the enemies and the slanderers of the church. During his life-time Jesus' brothers had in fact been his enemies; and it could well have happened that a letter as Jewish as Jude might have had a struggle against prejudice to get into the New Testament, even if its author was the brother of Jesus.<p/><b>Jude The Brother Of Jesus</b><p/> If this letter is not the work of Jude, the brother of Jesus, what are the alternatives suggested? On the whole, they are two.<p/>(i) The letter is the work of a man called Jude of whom nothing is otherwise known. This theory has to meet a twofold difficulty. First, there is the coincidence that this Jude is also the brother of James. Second, it is hard to explain how so small a letter ever came to have any authority at all, if it is the work of someone quite unknown.<p/>(ii) The letter is pseudonymous. That is to say, it was written by someone else and then attached to the name of Jude. That was a common practice in the ancient world. Between the Old and New Testament scores of books were written and attached to the names of Moses, Enoch, Baruch, Isaiah, Solomon and many an other. No one saw anything wrong in that. But two things are to be noted about Jude.<p/>(a) In all such publications the name to which the book was attached was a famous name; but Jude, the brother of our Lord, was a person who was completely obscure; he is not numbered amongst the great names of the early church. There is a story that in the days of Domitian there was a deliberate attempt to see to it that Christianity did not spread. News came to the Roman authority that certain descendants of Jesus were still alive, amongst them the grandsons of Jude. The Romans felt that it was possible that rebellion might gather around these men and they were ordered to appear before the Roman courts. When they did so, they were seen to be horny-handed sons of toil and were dismissed as being unimportant and quite harmless. Obviously Jude was Jude the obscure and there could have been no possible reason for attaching a book to the name of a man whom nobody knew.<p/>(b) When a book was written pseudonymously, the reader was never left in any doubt as to the person whose name it was being attached to. If this letter had been issued as the work of Judas the brother of our Lord, he would certainly have been given that title in such a way that no one could mistake it; and yet, in fact, it is quite unclear who the author is.<p/>Jude is obviously Jewish; its references and allusions are such that only a Jew could understand. It is simple and rugged; it is vivid and pictorial. It is clearly the work of a simple thinker rather than of a theologian. It fits Jude the brother of our Lord. It is attached to his name, and there could be no reason for so attaching it unless he did in fact write it.<p/>It is our opinion that this little letter is actually the work of Judas, the brother of Jesus. 


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REVELATION<p/>INTRODUCTION TO THE REVELATION OF JOHN<p/><b>The Strange Book</b><p/> When a student of the New Testament embarks upon the study of the Revelation he feels himself projected into a different world. Here is something quite unlike the rest of the New Testament. Not only is the Revelation different; it is also notoriously difficult for a modern mind to understand. The result is that it has sometimes been abandoned as quite unintelligible and it has sometimes become the playground of religious eccentrics, who use it to map out celestial time-tables of what is to come or find in it evidence for their own eccentricities. One despairing commentator said that there are as many riddles in the Revelation as there are words, and another that the study of the Revelation either finds or leaves a man mad.<p/>Luther would have denied the Revelation a place in the New Testament. Along with James, Jude, Second Peter and Hebrews he relegated it to a separate list at the end of his New Testament. He declared that in it there are only images and visions such as are found nowhere else in the Bible. He complained that, notwithstanding the obscurity of his writing, the writer had the boldness to add threats and promises for those who kept or disobeyed his words, unintelligible though they were. In it, said Luther, Christ is neither taught nor acknowledged; and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is not perceptible in it. Zwingli is equally hostile to the Revelation. "With the Apocalypse," he writes, "we have no concern, for it is not a biblical book.... The Apocalypse has no savour of the mouth or the mind of John. I can, if I so will, reject its testimonies." Most voices have stressed the unintelligibility of the Revelation and not a few have questioned its right to a place in the New Testament.<p/>On the other hand there are those in every generation who have loved this book. T. S. Kepler quotes the verdict of Philip Carrington and makes it his own: "In the case of the Revelation we are dealing with an artist greater than Stevenson or Coleridge or Bach. St. John has a better sense of the right word than Stevenson; he has a greater command of unearthly supernatural loveliness than Coleridge; he has a richer sense of melody and rhythm and composition than Bach.... It is the only masterpiece of pure art in the New Testament.... Its fullness and richness and harmonic variety place it far above Greek tragedy."<p/>We shall no doubt find this book difficult and bewildering; but doubtless, too, we shall find it infinitely worthwhile to wrestle with it until it gives us its blessing and opens its riches to us.<p/><b>Apocalyptic Literature</b><p/> In any study of the Revelation we must begin by remembering the basic fact that although unique in the New Testament, it is nonetheless representative of a kind of literature which was the commonest of all between the Old and the New Testaments. The Revelation is commonly called the Apocalypse, being in Greek Apokalupsis. Between the Old and the New Testaments there grew up a great mass of what is called Apocalyptic literature, the product of an indestructible Jewish hope.<p/>The Jews could not forget that they were the chosen people of God. To them that involved the certainty that some day they would arrive at world supremacy. In their early history they looked forward to the coming of a king of David's line who would unite the nation and lead them to greatness. There was to come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse (<a href='B:290 11:1'>Isa 11:1</a>; <a href='B:290 11:10'>Isa 11:10</a>). God would raise up a righteous branch for David (<a href='B:300 23:5'>Jer 23:5</a>). Some day the people would serve David their king (<a href='B:300 30:9'>Jer 30:9</a>). David would be their shepherd and their king (<a href='B:330 34:23'>Eze 34:23</a>; <a href='B:330 37:24'>Eze 37:24</a>). The booth of David would be repaired (<a href='B:370 9:11'>Amo 9:11</a>); out of Bethlehem there would come a ruler who would be great to the ends of the earth (<a href='B:400 5:2-4'>Mic 5:2-4</a>).<p/>But the whole history of Israel gave the lie to these hopes. After the death of Solomon, the kingdom, small enough to begin with, split into two under Rehoboam and Jeroboam and so lost its unity. The northern kingdom, with its capital at Samaria, vanished in the last quarter of the eighth century B.C. before the assault of the Assyrians, never again reappeared in history and is now the lost ten tribes. The southern kingdom, with its capital at Jerusalem, was reduced to slavery and exile by the Babylonians in the early part of the sixth century B.C. It was later the subject state of the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans. History for the Jews was a catalogue of disasters from which it became clear that no human deliverer could rescue them.<p/><b>The Two Ages</b><p/> Jewish thought stubbornly held to the conviction of the chosenness of the Jews but had to adjust itself to the facts of history. It did so by working out a scheme of history. The Jews divided all time into two ages. There was this present age, which is wholly bad and beyond redemption. For it there can be nothing but total destruction. The Jews, therefore, waited for the end of things as they are. There was the age which is to come which was to be wholly good, the golden age of God in which would be peace, prosperity and righteousness and God's chosen people would at last be vindicated and receive the place that was theirs by right.<p/>How was this present age to become the age which is to come? The Jews believed that the change could never be brought about by human agency and, therefore, looked for the direct intervention of God. He would come striding on to the stage of history to blast this present world out of existence and bring in his golden time. The day of the coming of God was called The Day of the Lord and was to be a terrible time of terror and destruction and judgment which would be the birthpangs of the new age.<p/>All apocalyptic literature deals with these events, the sin of the present age, the terrors of the time between, and the blessings of the time to come. It is entirely composed of dreams and visions of the end. That means that all apocalyptic literature is necessarily cryptic. It is continually attempting to describe the indescribable, to say the unsayable, to paint the unpaintable.<p/>This is further complicated by another fact. It was only natural that these apocalyptic visions should flame the more brightly in the minds of men living under tyranny and oppression. The more some alien power held them down, the more they dreamed of the destruction of that power and of their own vindication. But it would only have worsened the situation, if the oppressing power could have understood these dreams. Such writings would have seemed the works of rebellious revolutionaries. Such books, therefore, were frequently written in code, deliberately couched in language which was unintelligible to the outsider; and there are many cases in which they must remain unintelligible because the key to the code no longer exists. But the more we know about the historical background of such books, the better we can interpret them.<p/><b>The Revelation</b><p/> All this is the precise picture of our Revelation. There are any number of Jewish Apocalypses--Enoch, The Sibylline Oracles, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Ascension of Isaiah, The Assumption of Moses, The Apocalypse of Baruch, Fourth Ezra. Our Revelation is a Christian Apocalypse. It is the only one in the New Testament, although there were many others which did not gain admission. It is written exactly on the Jewish pattern and follows the basic conception of the two ages. The only difference is that for the day of the Lord it substitutes the coming in power of Jesus Christ. Not only the pattern but the details are the same. The Jewish apocalypses had a standard apparatus of events which were to happen at the last time; these events all have their place in Revelation.<p/>Before we go on to outline that pattern of events, another question arises. Both apocalyptic and prophecy deal with the events which are to come. What, then, is the difference between them?<p/><b>Apocalyptic And Prophecy</b><p/> The difference between the prophets and the apocalyptists was very real. There were two main differences, one of message and one of method.<p/>(i) The prophet thought in terms of this present world. His message was often a cry for social, economic and political justice; and was always a summons to obey and serve God within this present world. To the prophet it was this world which was to be reformed and in which God's kingdom would come. This has been expressed by saying that the prophet believed in history. He believed that in the events of history God's purpose was being worked out. In one sense the prophet was an optimist, for, however sternly he condemned things as they were, he nonetheless believed that they could be mended, if men would accept the will of God. To the apocalyptist the world was beyond mending. He believed, not in the reformation, but in the dissolution of this present world. He looked forward to the creation of a new world, when this one had been shattered by the avenging wrath of God. In one sense, therefore, the apocalyptist was a pessimist, for he did not believe that things as they were could ever be cured. True, he was quite certain that the golden age would come, but only after this world had been destroyed.<p/>(ii) The prophet's message was spoken; the message of the apocalyptist was always written. Apocalyptic is a literary production. Had it been delivered by word of mouth, men would never have understood it. It is difficult, involved, often unintelligible; it has to be pored over before it can be understood. Further, the prophet always spoke under his own name; all apocalyptic writings--except our New Testament one--are pseudonymous. They are put into the mouths of great ones of the past, like Noah, Enoch, Isaiah, Moses, The Twelve Patriarchs, Ezra and Baruch. There is something pathetic about this. The men who wrote the apocalyptic literature had the feeling that greatness was gone from the earth; they were too self-distrusting to put their names to their works and attributed them to the great figures of the past, thereby seeking to give them an authority greater than their own names could have given. As Julicher put it: "Apocalyptic is prophecy turned senile."<p/><b>The Apparatus Of Apocalyptic</b><p/> Apocalyptic literature has a pattern; it seeks to describe the things which will happen at the last times and the blessedness which will follow; and the same pictures occur over and over again. It always, so to speak, worked with the same materials; and these materials find their place in our Book of the Revelation.<p/>(i) In apocalyptic literature the Messiah was a divine, preexistent, otherworldly figure of power and glory, waiting to descend into the world to begin his all-conquering career. He existed in heaven before the creation of the world, before the sun and the stars were made, and he is preserved in the presence of the Almighty (Enoch 48:3, 6; 62:7; 4Ezra 13:25-26). He will come to put down the mighty from their seats, to dethrone the kings of the earth, and to break the teeth of sinners (Enoch 42:2-6; 48:2-9; 62:5-9; 69:26-29). In apocalyptic there was nothing human or gentle about the Messiah; he was a divine figure of avenging power and glory before whom the earth trembled in terror.<p/>(ii) The coming of the Messiah was to be preceded by the return of Elijah who would prepare the way for him (<a href='B:460 4:5-6'>Mal 4:5-6</a>). Elijah was to stand upon the hills of Israel, so the Rabbis said, and announce the coming of the Messiah with a voice so great that it would sound from one end of the earth to the other.<p/>(iii) The last terrible times were known as "the travail of the Messiah." The coming of the Messianic age would be like the agony of birth. In the Gospels Jesus is depicted as foretelling the signs of the end and is reported as saying: "All these things are the beginnings of sorrows" (<a href='B:470 24:8'>Mat 24:8</a>; <a href='B:480 13:8'>Mar 13:8</a>). The word for sorrows is odinai (<a href='S:G5604'>G5604</a>), and it literally means birthpangs.<p/>(iv) The last days will be a time of terror. Even the mighty men will cry bitterly (<a href='B:430 1:14'>Zep 1:14</a>); the inhabitants of the land shall tremble (<a href='B:360 2:1'>Joe 2:1</a>); men will be affrighted with fear and will seek some place to hide and will find none (Enoch 102:1,3).<p/>(v) The last days will be a time when the world will be shattered, a time of cosmic upheaval when the universe, as men know it, will be disintegrated. The stars will be extinguished; the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood (<a href='B:290 13:10'>Isa 13:10</a>; <a href='B:360 2:30-31'>Joe 2:30-31</a>; <a href='B:360 3:15'>Joe 3:15</a>). The firmament will crash in ruins; there will be a cataract of raging fire, and creation will become a molten mass (Sibylline Oracles 3: 83-89). The seasons will lose their order, and there will be neither night nor dawn (Sibylline Oracles 3: 796-806).<p/>(vi) The last days will be a time when human relationships will be destroyed. Hatred and enmity will reign upon the earth. Every man's hand will be against his neighbour (<a href='B:450 14:13'>Zec 14:13</a>). Brothers will kill each other; parents will murder their own children; from dawn to sunset they shall slay one another (Enoch 100:1-2). Honour will be turned into shame, and strength into humiliation, and beauty into ugliness. The man of humility will become the man of envy; and passion will hold sway over the man who once was peaceful (Baruch 48:31-37).<p/>(vii) The last days will be a time of judgment. God will come like a refiner's fire, and who can endure the day of his coming? (<a href='B:460 3:1-3'>Mal 3:1-3</a>). It is by the fire and the sword that God will plead with men (<a href='B:290 66:15-16'>Isa 66:15-16</a>). The Son of Man will destroy sinners from the earth (Enoch 69:27), and the smell of brimstone will pervade all things (Sibylline Oracles 3: 58-61). The sinners will be burned up as Sodom was long ago (Jubilees 36:10-11).<p/>(viii) In all these visions the Gentiles have their place, but it is not always the same place.<p/>(a) Sometimes the vision is that the Gentiles will be totally destroyed. Babylon will become such a desolation that there will be no place for the wandering Arab to plant his tent among the ruins, no place for the shepherd to graze his sheep; it will be nothing more than a desert inhabited by the beasts (<a href='B:290 13:19-22'>Isa 13:19-22</a>). God will tread down the Gentiles in his anger (<a href='B:290 63:6'>Isa 63:6</a>). The Gentiles will come over in chains to Israel (<a href='B:290 45:14'>Isa 45:14</a>).<p/>(b) Sometimes there is depicted one last gathering of the Gentiles against Jerusalem, and one last battle in which they are destroyed (<a href='B:330 38:14-23'>Eze 38:14-23</a>; <a href='B:330 39:1-16'>Eze 39:1-16</a>; <a href='B:450 14:1-11'>Zec 14:1-11</a>). The kings of the nations will throw themselves against Jerusalem; they will seek to ravage the shrine of the Holy One; they will place their thrones in a ring round the city, with their infidel people with them; but it will be only for their final destruction (Sibylline Oracles 3: 663-672).<p/>(c) Sometimes there is the picture of the conversion of the Gentiles through Israel. God has given Israel for a light to the Gentiles, that she may be God's salvation to the ends of the earth (<a href='B:290 49:6'>Isa 49:6</a>). The isles wait upon God (<a href='B:290 51:5'>Isa 51:5</a>); the ends of the earth are invited to look to God and be saved (<a href='B:290 45:20-22'>Isa 45:20-22</a>). The Son of Man will be a light to the Gentiles (Enoch 48:4-5). Nations shall come from the ends of the earth to Jerusalem to see the glory of God (Wis 17:34).<p/>Of all the pictures in connection with the Gentiles the commonest is that of the destruction of the Gentiles and the exaltation of Israel.<p/>(ix) In the last days the Jews who have been scattered throughout the earth will be ingathered to the Holy City again. They will come back from Assyria and from Egypt and will worship the Lord in his holy mountain (<a href='B:290 27:12-13'>Isa 27:12-13</a>). The hills will be removed and the valleys will be filled in, and even the trees will gather to give them shade, as they come back (Bar_5:5-9). Even those who died as exiles in far countries will be brought back.<p/>(x) In the last days the New Jerusalem, which is already prepared in heaven with God (4 <a href='B:150 10:44-44'>Ezr 10:44-44</a>; <a href='B:150 4:1-24'>Ezr 4:1-24</a> <a href='B:150 2:1-70'>Ezr 2:1-70</a> Bar_4:1-37 <a href='B:150 4:2-6'>Ezr 4:2-6</a>), will come down among men. It will be beautiful beyond compare with foundations of sapphires, and pinnacles of agate, and gates of carbuncles, on borders of pleasant stones (<a href='B:290 54:12-13'>Isa 54:12-13</a>; Tob_13:16-17). The glory of the latter house will be greater than the glory of the former (<a href='B:440 2:7-9'>Hag 2:7-9</a>).<p/>(xi) An essential part of the apocalyptic picture of the last days was the resurrection of the dead. "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (<a href='B:340 12:2-3'>Dan 12:2-3</a>). Sheol and the grave will give back that which has been entrusted to them (Enoch 51:1). The scope of the resurrection of the dead varied. Sometimes it was to apply only to the righteous in Israel; sometimes to all Israel; and sometimes to all men everywhere. Whichever form it took, it is true to say that now for the first time we see emerging a strong hope of a life beyond the grave.<p/>(xii) There were differences as to how long the Messianic kingdom was to last. The most natural--and the most usual--view was to think of it as lasting for ever. The kingdom of the saints is an everlasting kingdom (<a href='B:340 7:27'>Dan 7:27</a>). Some believed that the reign of the Messiah would last for 400 years. They arrived at this figure from a comparison of <a href='B:10 15:13'>Gen 15:13</a> and <a href='B:230 90:15'>Psa 90:15</a>. In Genesis Abraham is told that the period of affliction of the children of Israel will be 400 years; the psalmist's prayer is that God will make the nation glad according to the days wherein he has afflicted them and the years wherein they have seen evil. In the Revelation the view is that there is to be a reign of the saints for a thousand years; then the final battle with the assembled powers of evil; then the golden age of God.<p/>Such were the events which the apocalyptic writers pictured in the last days; and practically all of them find their place in the pictures of the Revelation. To complete the picture we may briefly summarize the blessings of the coming age.<p/><b>The Blessings Of The Age To Come</b><p/> (i) The divided kingdom will be united again. The house of Judah will walk again with the house of Israel (<a href='B:300 3:18'>Jer 3:18</a>; <a href='B:290 11:13'>Isa 11:13</a>; <a href='B:350 1:11'>Hos 1:11</a>). The old divisions will be healed and the people of God will be one.<p/>(ii) There will be in the world an amazing fertility. The wilderness will become a field (<a href='B:290 32:15'>Isa 32:15</a>), it will become like the garden of Eden (<a href='B:290 51:3'>Isa 51:3</a>); the desert will rejoice and blossom like the crocus (<a href='B:290 35:1'>Isa 35:1</a>). The earth will yield its fruit ten thousandfold; on each vine will be a thousand branches, on each branch a thousand clusters, in each cluster a thousand grapes, and each grape will give a cor (120 gallons) of wine (2 Baruch 29:5-8). There will be a plenty such as the world has never known and the hungry will rejoice.<p/>(iii) A consistent part of the dream of the new age was that in it all wars would cease. The swords will be beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning-hooks (<a href='B:290 2:4'>Isa 2:4</a>). There will be no sword or battle-din. There will be a common law for all men and a great peace throughout the earth, and king will be friendly with king (Sibylline Oracles 3: 751-760).<p/>(iv) One of the loveliest ideas concerning the new age was that in it there would be no more enmity between the beasts or between man and the beasts. The leopard and the kid, the cow and the bear, the lion and the falling will play and lie down together (<a href='B:290 11:6-9'>Isa 11:6-9</a>; <a href='B:290 65:25'>Isa 65:25</a>). There will be a new covenant between man and the beasts of the field (<a href='B:350 2:18'>Hos 2:18</a>). Even a child will be able to play where the poisonous reptiles have their holes and their dens (<a href='B:290 11:6-9'>Isa 11:6-9</a>; <a href='B:290 2:1-22'>Isa 2:1-22</a> Baruch Isa 73:6). In all nature there will be a universal reign of friendship in which none will wish to do another any harm.<p/>(v) The coming age will bring the end of weariness, of sorrow and of pain. The people will not sorrow any more (<a href='B:300 31:12'>Jer 31:12</a>); everlasting joy will be upon their heads (<a href='B:290 35:10'>Isa 35:10</a>). There will be no such thing as an untimely death (<a href='B:290 65:20-22'>Isa 65:20-22</a>); no man will say: "I am sick" (<a href='B:290 33:24'>Isa 33:24</a>); death will be swallowed up in victory and God will wipe tears from all faces (<a href='B:290 25:8'>Isa 25:8</a>). Disease will withdraw; anxiety, anguish and lamentation will pass away; childbirth will have no pain; the reaper will not grow weary and the builder will not be toilworn (Baruch 73:2-74:4). The age to come will be one when what Virgil called "the tears of things" will be no more.<p/>(vi) The age to come will be an age of righteousness. There will be perfect holiness among men. Mankind will be a good generation, living in the fear of the Lord in the days of mercy (Wis 17:28-49; Wis_18:9-10).<p/>The Revelation is the New Testament representative of all these apocalyptic works which tell of the terrors before the end of time and of the blessings of the age to come; and it uses all the familiar imagery. It may often be difficult and even unintelligible to us, but for the most part it was using pictures and ideas which those who read it would know and understand.<p/><b>The Author Of The Revelation</b><p/> (i) The Revelation was written by a man called John. He begins by saying that God sent the visions he is going to relate to his servant John (<a href='B:730 1:1'>Rev 1:1</a>). He begins the body of his book by saying that it is from John to the Seven Churches in Asia (<a href='B:730 1:4'>Rev 1:4</a>). He speaks of himself as John the brother and companion in tribulation of those to whom he writes (<a href='B:730 1:9'>Rev 1:9</a>). "I John, he says, "am he who heard and saw these things" (<a href='B:730 22:8'>Rev 22:8</a>).<p/>(ii) This John was a Christian who lived in Asia in the same sphere as the Christians of the Seven Churches. He calls himself the brother of those to whom he writes; and he says he too shares in the tribulations through which they are passing (<a href='B:730 1:9'>Rev 1:9</a>).<p/>(iii) He was most probably a Jew of Palestine who had come to Asia Minor late in life. We can deduce that from the kind of Greek he writes. It is vivid, powerful, and pictorial; but from the point of view of grammar it is easily the worst Greek in the New Testament. He makes mistakes which no schoolboy who knew Greek could make. Greek is certainly not his native language; and it is often clear that he is writing in Greek and thinking in Hebrew. He is steeped in the Old Testament. He quotes it or alludes to it 245 times. These quotations come from about twenty Old Testament books; his favourites are Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Psalms, Exodus, Jeremiah, Zechariah. Not only does he know the Old Testament intimately; he is also familiar with the apocalyptic books written between the Testaments.<p/>(iv) His claim for himself is that he is a prophet, and it is on that fact that he rests his right to speak. The command of the Risen Christ to him is that he must prophesy (<a href='B:730 10:11'>Rev 10:11</a>). It is through the spirit of prophecy that Jesus gives his witness to the Church (<a href='B:730 19:10'>Rev 19:10</a>). God is the God of the holy prophets and sends his angel to show his servants what is going to happen in the world (<a href='B:730 22:6'>Rev 22:6</a>). The angel speaks to him of his brothers the prophets (<a href='B:730 22:9'>Rev 22:9</a>). His book is characteristically prophecy or the words of prophecy (<a href='B:730 22:7'>Rev 22:7</a>; <a href='B:730 22:10'>Rev 22:10</a>; <a href='B:730 22:18-19'>Rev 22:18-19</a>).<p/>It is here that John's authority lies. He does not call himself an apostle, as Paul does when he wishes to underline his right to speak. He has no "official" or administrative position in the Church; he is a prophet. He writes what he sees; and since what he sees comes from God, his word is faithful and true (<a href='B:730 1:11'>Rev 1:11</a>; <a href='B:730 1:19'>Rev 1:19</a>).<p/>When John was writing, the prophets had a very special place in the Church. He was writing, as we shall see, about A.D. 90: By that time the Church had two kinds of ministry. There was the local ministry; those engaged in it were settled permanently in one congregation, the elders, the deacons and the teachers. And there was the itinerant ministry of those whose sphere of labour was not confined to any one congregation. In it were the apostles, whose writ ran throughout the whole Church; and there were the prophets, who were wandering preachers. The prophets were greatly respected; to question the words of a true prophet was to sin against the Holy Spirit, the Didache says (<a href='B:730 11:7'>Rev 11:7</a>). The accepted order of service for the celebration of the Eucharist is laid down in the Didache, but at the end comes the sentence: "But allow the prophets to hold the Eucharist as they will" (<a href='B:730 10:7'>Rev 10:7</a>). The prophets were regarded as uniquely the men of God, and John was a prophet.<p/>(v) It is not likely that he was an apostle. Otherwise he would hardly have so stressed the fact that he was a prophet. Further, he speaks of the apostles as if he was looking back on them as the great foundations of the Church. He speaks of the twelve foundations of the wall of the Holy City and then says, "and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (<a href='B:730 21:14'>Rev 21:14</a>). He would scarcely have spoken of the apostles like that if he himself was one of them.<p/>This conclusion is rendered even more likely by the title of the book. In the King James and English Revised Versions it is called The Revelation of St. John the Divine. In the Revised Standard Version and in Moffatt's and in J. B. Phillips' translations the Divine is omitted, because it is absent from the majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts; but it does go very far back. The Greek is theologos (<a href='S:G2312'>G2312</a> ') and the word is here used in the sense in which we speak of "the Puritan divines" and means, not John the saintly but John the theologian; and the very addition of that title seems to distinguish this John from the John who was the apostle.<p/>As long ago as A.D. 250 Dionysius, the great scholar who was head of the Christian school at Alexandria, saw that it was well nigh impossible that the same man could have written the Revelation and the Fourth Gospel, if for no other reason than that the Greek is so different. The Greek of the Fourth Gospel is simple but correct; the Greek of the Revelation is rugged and vivid, but notoriously incorrect. Further, the writer of the Fourth Gospel studiously avoids any mention of his own name; the John of the Revelation repeatedly mentions it. Still further, the ideas of the two books are different. The great ideas of the Fourth Gospel, light, life, truth and grace, do not dominate the Revelation. At the same time there are enough resemblances in thought and language to make it clear that both books come from the same centre and from the same world of thought.<p/><b>The Date Of The Revelation</b><p/> We have two sources which enable us to fix the date.<p/>(i) There is the account which tradition gives to us. The consistent tradition is that John was banished to Patmos in the time of Domitian; that he saw his visions there; at the death of Domitian was liberated and came back to Ephesus; and there set down the visions he had seen. Victorinus, who wrote towards the end of the third century A.D., says in his commentary on the Revelation: "John, when he saw these things, was in the island of Patmos, condemned to the mines by Domitian the Emperor. There, therefore, he saw the revelation... When he was afterwards set free from the mines, he handed down this revelation which he had received from God." Jerome is even more detailed: "In the fourteenth year after the persecution of Nero, John was banished to the island of Patmos, and there wrote the Revelation... Upon the death of Domitian, and upon the repeal of his acts by the senate, because of their excessive cruelty, he returned to Ephesus, when Nerva was emperor." Eusebius says: "The apostle and evangelist John related these things to the Churches, when he had returned from exile in the island after the death of Domitian." Tradition makes it certain that John saw his visions in exile in Patmos; the only thing that is doubtful--and it is not important--is whether he wrote them down during the time of his banishment or when he returned to Ephesus. On this evidence we will not be wrong if we date the Revelation about A.D. 95:<p/>(ii) The second line of evidence is the material in the book. There is a completely new attitude to Rome and to the Roman Empire.<p/>In Acts the tribunal of the Roman magistrate was often the safest refuge of the Christian missionaries against the hatred of the Jews and the fury of the mob. Paul was proud that he was a Roman citizen and again and again claimed the rights to which every Roman citizen was entitled. In Philippi he brought the local magistrates to heel by revealing his citizenship (<a href='B:510 16:36-40'>Act 16:36-40</a>). In Corinth Gallio dismissed the complaints against him with impartial Roman justice (<a href='B:510 18:1-17'>Act 18:1-17</a>). In Ephesus the Roman authorities were careful for his safety against the rioting mob (<a href='B:510 19:13-41'>Act 19:13-41</a>). In Jerusalem the Roman tribune rescued him from what might have become a lynching (<a href='B:510 21:30-40'>Act 21:30-40</a>). When the Roman tribune in Jerusalem heard that there was to be an attempt on Paul's lift on the way to Caesarea, he took every possible step to ensure his safety (<a href='B:510 23:12-31'>Act 23:12-31</a>). When Paul despaired of justice in Palestine, he exercised his right as a citizen and appealed direct to Caesar (<a href='B:510 25:10-11'>Act 25:10-11</a>). When he wrote to the Romans, he urged upon them obedience to the powers that be, because they were ordained by God and were a terror only to the evil, and not to the good (<a href='B:520 13:1-7'>Rom 13:1-7</a>). Peter's advice is exactly the same. Governors and kings are to be obeyed, for their task is given them by God. It is a Christian's duty to fear God and honour the emperor (<a href='B:670 2:12-17'>1Pe 2:12-17</a>). In writing to the Thessalonians it is likely that Paul points to the power of Rome as the one thing which is controlling the threatening chaos of the world (<a href='B:600 2:7'>2Th 2:7</a>).<p/>In the Revelation there is nothing but blazing hatred for Rome. Rome is a Babylon, the mother of harlots, drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs (<a href='B:730 17:5-6'>Rev 17:5-6</a>). John hopes for nothing but her total destruction.<p/>The explanation of this change in attitude lies in the wide development of Caesar worship which, with its accompanying persecution, is the background of the Revelation.<p/>By the time of the Revelation Caesar worship was the one religion which covered the whole Roman Empire; and it was because of their refusal to conform to its demands that Christians were persecuted and killed. Its essence was that the reigning Roman Emperor, as embodying the spirit of Rome, was divine. Once a year everyone in the Empire had to appear before the magistrates to burn a pinch of incense to the god-head of Caesar and to say: "Caesar is Lord." After he had done that, a man might go away and worship any god or goddess he liked, so long as that worship did not infringe decency and good order; but he must go through this ceremony in which he acknowledged the Emperor's divinity.<p/>The reason was very simple. Rome had a vast heterogeneous empire, stretching from one end of the known world to another. It had in it many tongues, races and traditions. The problem was how to weld this varied mass into a self-conscious unity. There is no unifying force like that of a common religion but none of the national religions could conceivably have become universal. Caesar worship could. It was the one common act and belief which turned the Empire into a unity. To refuse to burn the pinch of incense and to say: "Caesar is Lord," was not an act of irreligion; it was an act of political disloyalty. That is why the Romans dealt with the utmost severity with the man who would not say: "Caesar is Lord." And no Christian could give the title Lord to any other than Jesus Christ. This was the centre of his creed.<p/>We must see how this Caesar worship developed and how it was at its peak when the Revelation was written<p/>One basic fact must be noted. Caesar worship was not imposed on the people from above. It arose from the people; it might even be said that it arose in spite of efforts by the early emperors to stop it, or at least to curb it. And it is to be noted that of all the people in the Empire only the Jews were exempt from it.<p/>Caesar worship began as a spontaneous outburst of gratitude to Rome. The people of the provinces well knew what they owed to Rome. Impartial Roman justice had taken the place of capricious and tyrannical oppression. Security had taken the place of insecurity. The great Roman roads spanned the world; and the roads were safe from brigands and the seas were clear of pirates. The pax Romana, the Roman peace, was the greatest thing which ever happened to the ancient world. As Virgil had it, Rome felt her destiny to be "to spare the fallen and to cast down the proud." Life had a new order about it. E. J. Goodspeed writes: "This was the pax Romana. The provincial under Roman sway found himself in a position to conduct his business, provide for his family, send his letters, and make his journeys in security, thanks to the strong hand of Rome."<p/>Caesar worship did not begin with the deification of the Emperor. It began with the deification of Rome. The spirit of the Empire was deified under the name of the goddess Roma. Roma stood for all the strong and benevolent power of the Empire. The first temple to Roma was erected in Smyrna as far back as 195 B.C. It was no great step to think of the spirit of Rome being incarnated in one man, the Emperor. The worship of the Emperor began with the worship of Julius Caesar after his death. In 29 B.C. the Emperor Augustus granted to the provinces of Asia and Bithynia permission to erect temples in Ephesus and Nicaea for the joint worship of the goddess Roma and the deified Julius Caesar. At these shrines Roman citizens were encouraged and even exhorted to worship. Then another step was taken. To provincials who were not Roman citizens Augustus gave permission to erect temples in Pergamum in Asia and in Nicomedia in Bithynia, for the worship of Roma and himself. At first the worship of the reigning Emperor was considered to be something permissible for provincial non-citizens, but not for those who had the dignity of the citizenship.<p/>There was an inevitable development. It is human to worship a god who can be seen rather than a spirit. Gradually men began more and more to worship the Emperor himself instead of the goddess Roma. It still required special permission from the senate to erect a temple to the living Emperor, but by the middle of the first century that permission was more and more freely given. Caesar worship was becoming the universal religion of the Roman Empire. A priesthood developed and the worship was organized into presbyteries, whose officials were held in the highest honour.<p/>This worship was never intended to wipe out other religions. Rome was essentially tolerant. A man might worship Caesar and his own god. But more and more Caesar worship became a test of political loyalty; it became, as has been said, the recognition of the dominion of Caesar over a man's life and soul. Let us, then trace the development of this worship up to, and immediately beyond, the writing of the Revelation.<p/>(i) Augustus, who died in A.D. 14, allowed the worship of Julius Caesar, his great predecessor. He allowed non-citizens in the provinces to worship himself but he did not permit citizens to do so; and he made no attempt to enforce this worship.<p/>(ii) Tiberius (A.D. 14-37) could not halt Caesar worship. He forbade temples to be built and priests to be appointed for his own worship; and in a letter to Gython, a Laconian city, he definitely refused divine honours for himself. So far from enforcing Caesar worship, he actively discouraged it.<p/>(iii) Caligula (A.D. 37-41), the next Emperor, was an epileptic, a madman and a megalomaniac. He insisted on divine honours. He attempted to enforce Caesar worship even on the Jews, who had always been and who always were to remain exempt from it. He planned to place his own image in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem, a step which would certainly have provoked unyielding rebellion. Mercifully he died before he could carry out his plans. But in his reign we have an episode when Caesar worship became an imperial demand.<p/>(iv) Caligula was succeeded by Claudius (A.D. 41-54) who completely reversed his insane policy. He wrote to the governor of Egypt--there were a million Jews in Alexandria--fully approving the Jewish refusal to call the Emperor a god and granting them full liberty to enjoy their own worship. On his accession to the throne, he wrote to Alexandria saying: "I deprecate the appointment of a High Priest to me and the erection of temples, for I do not wish to be offensive to my contemporaries, and I hold that sacred fanes and the like have been by all ages attributed to the immortal gods as peculiar honours."<p/>(v) Nero (A.D. 54-68) did not take his own divinity seriously and did nothing to insist on Caesar worship. It is true that he persecuted the Christians; but this was not because they would not worship him, but because he had to find scapegoats for the great fire of Rome.<p/>(vi) On the death of Nero there were three Emperors in eighteen months--Galba, Otto and Vitellius, and in such a time of chaos the question of Caesar worship did not arise.<p/>(vii) The next two Emperors, Vespasian (A.D. 69-79) and Titus (A.D. 79-81), were wise rulers, who made no insistence on Caesar worship.<p/>(viii) The coming of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) brought a complete change. He was a devil. He was the worst of all things--a cold-blooded persecutor. With the exception of Caligula, he in as the first Emperor to take his divinity seriously and to demand Caesar worship. The difference was that Caligula was an insane devil; Domitian was a sane devil, which is much more terrifying. He erected a monument to "the deified Titus son of the deified Vespasian." He began a campaign of bitter persecution against all who would not worship the ancient gods--"the atheists" as he called them. In particular he launched his hatred against the Jews and the Christians. When he arrived in the theatre with his empress, the crowd were urged to rise and shout: "All hail to our Lord and his Lady!" He enacted that he himself was a god. He informed all provincial governors that government announcements and proclamations must begin: "Our Lord and God Domitian commands..." Everyone who addressed him in speech or in writing must begin: "Lord and God."<p/>Here is the background of the Revelation. All over the Empire men and women must call Domitian god--or die. Caesar worship was the deliberate policy; all must say: "Caesar is Lord." There was no escape.<p/>What were the Christians to do? What hope had they? They had not many wise and not many mighty. They had no influence or prestige. Against them had risen the might of Rome which no nation had ever resisted. They were confronted with the choice--Caesar or Christ. It was to encourage men in such times that the Revelation was written. John did not shut his eyes to the terrors; he saw dreadful things and he saw still more dreadful things on the way; but beyond them he saw glory for those who defied Caesar for the love of Christ. The Revelation comes from one of the most heroic ages in all the history of the Christian Church. It is true that Domitian's successor Nerva (A.D. 96-98) repealed the savage laws; but the damage was done, the Christians were outlaws, and the Revelation is a clarion call to be faithful unto death in order to win the crown of life.<p/><b>The Book Worth Studying</b><p/> No one can shut his eyes to the difficulty of the Revelation. It is the most difficult book in the Bible; but it is infinitely worth studying, for it contains the blazing faith of the Christian Church in the days when life was an agony and men expected the end of the heavens and the earth as they knew them but still believed that beyond the terror was the glory and above the raging of men was the power of God.


