Epistles of John - The Preterist Archive

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XX
ST JOHN THE APOSTLE, AND HIS WRITINGS.
of error was Cerinthus. He taught (Iren. liter. 1, 26 seq.,
comp. Euseb. 3, 28) that the world was produced into existence,
not by the supreme God, but a power having its origin from
God ; that Jesus was a Son of Joseph and Mary ; that the
-ZEon Christ was united with Him at His baptism, and guided
Him in teaching men to know the Most High God, hitherto not
known ; that the xEon Christ left Him again before His passion ;
and that it was the mere man Jesus who suffered. A related,
and still older, heretical tendency was (according to Iren. 3, 11)
that of the " Nicolaitanes " (Rev. ii. 15),— concerning which,
however, Irenseus does not seem to have known anything beyond
what is said in Rev. ii. Now the men were still alive in the
time of Irenseus (as is evident from the words, ela\v oi afcrj/coore?,
ch. iii. 3) who received from the lips of Polycarp, St John's
disciple, the circumstance of St John's having met Cerinthus in
the bath. Thus it is historically firm—unless we are content
hypercritically to throw overboard all, even the most trustworthy,
tradition— that this Apostle had to contend against the Cerinthian
gnosis ; and that tins form of Gnosticism contained as well
Ebionite as Docetic elements, that is, an Ebionite man Jesus by
the side of a Docetic JEon Christ. Nor will any reasonable
person be able to deny that there could not be a more striking,
demonstrative, and victorious refutation of this Gnostic heresy
than that which we actually find in the utterances of our Lord
Himself, which St John has handed down, concerning His preexistence
and eternal Godhead, and in the testimony of the
Apostle that the Father created all things by the Word. (Compare
only with that doctrine of Cerinthus the passages John i.
3 and 14, and 33, 34, and 49 ; ch. iii. 13, 14, v. 23, 26, vi. 51,
62, viii. 58, xiii. 23 seq., xvii. 1, 2, 16, 19, xviii. 6, 11, 37.) As
it would be very hard indeed to persuade oneself that St John,
who past all doubt had to contend against the errors of Cerinthus,
and who past all doubt declared the identity of Jesus with
the Son of God, and the incarnation of Christ (1 John iv. 2, 3,
v. 5) to be the corner-stone of the Christian doctrine, and the
distinguishing test between Christianity and Antichristianity
as it would be very hard indeed to believe that this St John
wrote down all those utterances of Christ without any consciousness
of the force which lay in them as against the Cerinthian
heresy— nothing remains but that w T e admit the conviction of