A New words may be devoted to the first epistle of John
A New words may be devoted to the first epistle of John(TOC)
A few words may be devoted to the first epistle of John, because in it the idea of the divine love attains to greater prominence than in any other New Testament writing. The cause for this is probably the same as that which explained to us the universalistic tenor of the Pastoral Epistles, a polemic against Gnostic tendencies. Still the point of attack is here a different one, viz., the one-sided intellectualism of the Gnostic method of salvation, and the one-sidedly metaphysical conception of God underlying it. Over against this the absolute importance of appreciating the ethical aspect of the divine character and the indispensableness of applying to the profession of Christianity the practical ethical test found in love toward the brethren are emphasized. Hence such statements as, "He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love" (1 John 4:8), "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him" (4:16), "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar and the truth is not in him" (2:4). If these sublime utterances are taken out of the historical environment for which the writer intended them and pressed into the service of other trains of thought, great abuse may result. Especially the saying, "God is love," has in this manner been misapplied in several directions. Even so well-balanced an interpreter as Holtzmann lets himself be carried away to the extreme of declaring that in this word the conception of God has been entirely cut loose from the category of substance and removed from the sphere of nature religion—a thoroughly modern positivistic idea, to which John, who calls God eternal light and eternal life as well as love, would certainly not have assented. [7] The epistle itself administers the corrective for such extravaganzas of interpretation. It clearly teaches that the love of God, which it makes the center of His revealed character, belongs in its highest sense to believers only: "Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not" (3:1). If God were nothing but love, to the exclusion of all other modes of being, no difference would be possible between His attitude toward the world and His attitude toward His own.
The remaining New Testament types of revelation add little of importance to what has been gathered from the teaching of our Lord, of St. Paul, and of St. John. We may, therefore, proceed to close this discussion with a brief suggestion touching the bearing of what we have found on the present desire to introduce into the confession of the church a statement which shall authoritatively formulate the biblical doctrine on the universal redemptive love of God. That there is something which on sound biblico-theological grounds may be so designated, our inquiry has shown. But even more clearly than this it has, we believe, brought out two other facts. In the first place, that that form of love which the Bible everywhere emphasizes and magnifies, so as to be truly called one great revelation of love, is not God's general benevolence, but His special affection for His people. This distribution of emphasis ought to be preserved in every creedal statement which professes to reflect biblical proportions of truth. And in the second place, we have had occasion to observe that the Scriptures do not leave room for the opinion that at any point, either in the eternal decree or in its historical unfolding, God's love for those intended to become His people has been undifferentiated from His love for wider groups of humanity. Every formula which would efface or even tend to obscure this fundamental distinction ought to be at the outset rejected as unbiblical. The divine love for the elect is different not only in degree but specifically from all the other forms of love, because it involves a purpose to save, of which all the other forms fall short. It was the great fault of the Amyraldian system that, on the one hand, it ascribed to the universal redemptive love which it assumed, the character of a purpose to save; and that, on the other hand, by doing so it made the special relation of God to the elect emerge at a secondary stage in the degree of redemption. This is not only destructive of the principle that the purpose of God cannot under any circumstances be frustrated; it also strikes at the root of the specifically religious significance of the doctrine of election. The love of God for His own thus becomes an afterthought and loses the better part of its value. The fact that the one historic attempt to reduce the principle we have been considering to a theological formula has been a signal failure, ought to fill the church of today with great humility and make her proceed with extreme caution in the task which, wisely or unwisely, she has set herself; the more so since, as we have seen, the air is rife with extravagant un-Calvinistic, unscriptural notions on the subject. Nor is there need of any undue precipitancy. The great practical issues of today are in no wise staked on the solution of the delicate theological questions involved in our problem. There can be no difference of opinion as to what is the revealed will of God concerning our duty to bring the gospel to every creature. After all, it is from obedience to this plain commandment that our zeal and faithfulness in preaching the gospel must spring. The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children, that we may do all the words of His law. May God grant that, whatever the outcome of the present crisis, we may firmly hold to this, and that the year's work upon which we are entering may help us all to become more efficient and abounding in the execution of this solemn charge of our Lord.
[1] Cf., however, the Greek text: "according to the number of the Sons of God," in which "the Sons of God" is supposed to designate the gods of the heathen nations conceived as angels.
[2] Cf. Leviticus 26:18, 23, 24, 25, 28, 36, 38, 39, 40; Deuteronomy 8:5, 8:19, 20; 28:20, 22, 24, 51, 63 .
[3] It might seem as if the above statement did not sufficiently take account of the fact that the adjective Chasid occurs some twenty times in the Psalter to designate the pious from the point of view of their faithful attachment to the cause of Jehovah. The passive interpretation of the word has been generally abandoned: it is intransitive: a Chasid is he who exercises, not who receives Chesed; this the fact that Jehovah is called Chasid toward man clearly proves. But the question arises whether this specifically religious quality designated by Chasid has back of it the same conception of a personal Chesed exercised toward God directly, as when Jehovah is said to show Chesed toward man. It is possible that the religious sense was developed out of the ethical sense, that the Chasid was first the one who showed Chesed in his inter-religious designation. This would explain why the noun Chesed is practically never used in the sense of love shown from man to God, whereas in the two other senses of love from God to man and love from man to man it is quite common. At any rate, even the specifically religious usage of Chasid reflects rather an indirect attachment to the law and worship of Jehovah than a direct affection for Jehovah Himself. In regard to the noun Chesed, Hosea 6:4, 6 is a disputed passage. Cf. on this and the whole subject Winter, inZ. A. W., 9:215ff.; Smend, Altt. Relig.(2nd ed.), p. 213; Cheyne, Bampton Lectures, p. 378. Winter, in the article just cited, goes too far in eliminating the conception of man's love for God entirely from the pre-Deuteronomic sources (i. e., according to his view of the date of Deuteronomy, from everything older than the close of the seventh century B. C.). This involves the violent removal of it from Judges 5:31 (Song of Deborah) and Psalm 18:2 (one of the oldest Psalms).
[4] In the Meyer-WeissCommentary, e. g., it is so characterized.
[5] Holtzmann, Lehrbuch d. N. T. Theol., 2:479, note 1.}
[6] From the parable of the prodigal son the identity of the general love of God preceding conversion with the special love following conversion might be inferred. But this would be an undue straining of a point obviously given with the parabolic setting of the representation as such. The parable itself does not fail to indicate that the sinner through conversion attains to the enjoyment of an altogether new and higher kind of love from the side of God than was his before. The prodigal is formally readopted and reinvested with the insignia of sonship. Cf. the excellent discussion of this subject by the late Dr. King, inThe Presbyterian and Reformed Reviewfor 1899, pp. 590-599.
[7] Holtzmann, Lehrb. d. N. T. Theol., 2:395. It might be asserted with equal justification that the categories of personality or even of existence were here eliminated. As is well known, the necessity of asserting the former (i. e., that we cannot affirm God to be a person) from its positivistic standpoint has actually been charged against the Ritschlian theology by some of its critics.