Adoption Into The Canon
ADOPTION INTO THE CANON
The earliest witnesses to the Johannine Epistles have already been surveyed. 24 The first mention of all three epistles is in a context that reports at least some hesitation as to the suitability of 2 and 3 John for inclusion in the canon: Origen (c. A.D. 231) writes that John "left an epistle of a very few lines and, it may be, a second and a third, for not all say that these [i.e. the second and the third] are genuine” (quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 6.25.10). Eusebius (c. 325) includes 1 John among the homologoumena, the acknowledged books, but places 2 and 3 John among the antilegomena, the disputed books (H.E. 3.25.2-3)—though he says they are "well known and acknowledged by most,” whether they were written by John the apostle or by "another of the same name” (certainly referring to the "John the elder” theory, which depends at least in part on his misreading of Papias; see the section Author in chap. 5 above). He himself is persuaded that all three Johannine epistles were written by John the apostle (H.E. 6.25.10). The Muratorian Canon refers to two epistles by John, but probably 1 and 2 John are in mind, not 2 and 3 John.
First John belongs to a group of New Testament epistles often called catholic or general, because they are not addressed to a specific community or individual. Origen applies the term "catholic” to 1 John (Comm. on Matt. 17.19) and his disciple Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, speaks of 1 John as John’s "catholic epistle,” possibly in contrast to 2 and 3 John (H.E. 7.25.7, 10). A little later, 2 and 3 John were reckoned among the seven catholic epistles (James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude—so Eusebius, H.E. 2.23.25), where "catholic” has come to mean almost "canonical”—that is, canonical in addition to the canonical epistles of Paul. All three Johannine epistles are included in Athanasius’s list of twenty-seven New Testament books (A.D. 367) and in the lists approved by the Councils of Hippo (393) and of Carthage (397). The Peshitta included 1 John, but not 2 and 3 John; not until the next century, with the publication of the Philoxenian version (508), were the two shorter epistles (along with 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, which had also been omitted) included in a Syriac New Testament. In Reformation times, debates over the authorship of 2 and 3 John were again raised, both on the Roman Catholic side (Cajetan) and the Reform side (Erasmus), but not over their canonicity.