Fifth, 2 John 12 and 3 John 13: “I have many things to write to you.”
Fifth, 2 John 12 and 3 John 13: “I have many things to write to you.”
§ 407. (V) “2 John 12 and 3 John 13: ‘Having many things to write to you, I did not want to use paper and ink.’ Therefore John said many things to his disciples and through his disciples to the entire Church, which, nevertheless, are not written.” We respond. (1) The apostle is speaking about some singular matters concerning deeds or rituals that he did not have to put into writing, but by no means about articles of faith that one must know for salvation. (2) We concede that John and the other apostles preached more things orally than they put into writing; but they did write the necessary things. (3) It is one thing to speak about those brief Epistles and another to speak about the entire canon of the Old and New Testaments. In the former, all the necessary things have not been written. But one cannot infer from this that in the entire canon of the Old and New Testaments not all things have been written that one must know for salvation. (4) The apostle did not want to write more in these Epistles because he hoped to “speak face-to-face” with those to whom he was writing. Today, however, he speaks to us only in Scripture.
§ 408. So these are the passages that Bellarmine draws from Scripture in favor of traditions. Other Papists bring up: (1) The apostle’s statement: “I delivered to you what I also received” (1 Cor. 15:3). Yet the apostle immediately adds what it was that he delivered, namely, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He rose in accordance with the Scriptures.” But all these things are explained clearly in the writings of the evangelists.
(2) Some bring forward the names of the two mages in 2 Tim. 3:8, which the apostle had by tradition. This, however, was not some necessary dogma of faith but a historical tradition. Chrysostom (homily 8 on 2 Timothy 3, f. 1673, Gr. edition) speaks alternatively: “Jannes and Jambres—who are these men? Mages who lived at the time of Moses. How is it that their names are found nowhere else? It is likely that Paul learned them either from tradition or from the Spirit.” In Numenius of Apamea, a Pythagorean philosopher from Syria (
, bk. 3), there is a passage that Eusebius quotes in De praeparat. evangel., bk. 9, c. 8, f. 241: “Moses vied with the mages Jannes and Mambres (which is the way the talmudic treatise De oblationibus, c. Omnes oblationes, and Origen, homily 35 on Matthew, read), who tried to imitate him with miracles.” Therefore just as the apostle had taken some hemistichs from Aratus, Menander, and Epimenides, so also he would have taken the names of the mages from Numenius.