The Johannine Epistles In Recent Study
THE JOHANNINE EPISTLES IN RECENT STUDY
With few exceptions (though they are notable), 25 the driving force behind the most recent studies on the Johannine Epistles has been the attempt to delineate the contours—more, the trajectories of the changing contours—of the Johannine community. 26 We have already argued that this is a mistake. 27 It is not that nothing profitable can be said about the communities to which the epistles were sent; rather, it is that merely possible inferences regarding those communities must not be allowed to control the exegesis. Many of the criticisms Brevard Childs levels against Brown could rightly be applied to a number of modern commentaries. 28 According to Childs, Brown’s exegesis of the Johannine Epistles is made to rest so entirely on his detailed reconstructions of his opponents, including not only their theology but their motives, that the edifice becomes precariously speculative. Since Brown argues that the competing perspectives of the epistles and of the secessionists turns on different interpretations of the fourth gospel, at every point he attempts to reconstruct the origin of each doctrinal stance and the riposte; but "what purports to be an historical investigation is actually an exercise in creative imagination with very few historical controls.” 29 Every clause in the text of 1 John is historicized—not simply passages that call for it (e.g., 1 John 2:19). The result is a flattening of exegesis in which virtually every passage serves exclusively as polemic, and entire ranges of exegetical options are foreclosed; the necessary circularity in all historical reconstructions is in danger of becoming vicious. For instance, the sin unto death (5:16-17) is simply identified with the sin of the secessionists. There is a continuing need for treatments of the Johannine Epistles that are less speculative in their handling of historical reconstructions and more profound in their reflection on theological, canonical connections.