1.03 - The Elect Lady
Chapter 3 The Elect Lady (2 John 1:1-6, 2 John 1:13) The Words ἐκλετὴκυρία—Theory of Dr Rendel Harris—Vindication of rendering “Lady”—Proof of the Public Destination of 2 John—Lady-ship of the Church—The Apostle’s relations to the Church in question—Possibility of identifying the “Elect Lady.”
―—―♦——— The Elder to the Elect Lady and her children, whom I love in truth—and not I alone, but also all those who have known the truth—for the truth’s sake that abideth in us, and it shall be with us forever. There shall be with us grace, mercy, peace from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
I was greatly gladdened that I have found some of thy children walking in truth, even as we received commandment from the Father. And now I beseech thee, Lady—not as though writing a new commandment to thee, but that which we had from the beginning—that we love one another; and this is love, that we walk according to His commandments: this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning, that in it you should walk. ... The children of thy Elect Sister salute thee.— 2 John 1:1-6, 2 John 1:13
―—―♦———
SOME reasons were given in Chapter 1 for holding that the Second Epistle of John was addressed to a church and not to a private Christian family, under the title of “The Elect Lady and her children.” We have proceeded so far upon that supposition, which enabled us to bring 2 and 3 John into close connection and imparts to their combined contents a solid and definite meaning. The case for the collective destination of 2 John rests on grounds additional to those previously stated; on those further considerations we will now enter. We venture to think not only that the Apostle sent this dispatch to a Christian community of his charge and that the “Elect Lady” of 2 John was a personification and not a person, but that it is possible to point, with some probability, to the very place of destination. The ἐκλετὴκυρία of St John’s Greek has received many interpretations.
1. Each of the terms has been read as a proper noun, qualified by the other: “to Electa the lady” (so Grotius, for instance); or, “to the elect Kyria” (or “Cyria”: marginal rendering of the American Revisers, after the ancient Syrian Version). But Eklekte occurs nowhere else in Greek, Kyria rarely, as a woman’s name; an Greek grammar protests strongly against the second rendering above given. 3 John 1:1 exemplifies the order proper to the Greek words when a qualifying epithet is attached to a proper name: “to Gaius the beloved.” The title “elect” belongs alike to the kyria and her “sister” (3 John 1:13); for it is a designation common to the Christian state. Both are epithets; they describe by their combination the character and status of the party addressed. She is “elect”—that is, “chosen of God”—as much as to say, Christian; similarly the body of Christian believers is addressed in 1 Peter 2:9 as “a chosen race.” And she is a “lady” or even “the lady” (for the Greek noun, wanting the definite article, appears to be used of her by way of eminence and as a recognized title)—in virtue of her rank and dignity.
2. Another turn has been given to the question by that brilliant scholar and fine spiritual thinker, Dr J. Rendel Harris.5 He maintains that κυρία “was a term of endearment, and neither a title of dignity nor a proper name,” and thinks that he “has completely exploded the two notions that the letter is addressed either to a church or a prehistoric Countess of Huntingdon.” Egyptian exploration has discovered stores of Greek papyrus documents of the centuries preceding and following the Christian era, which throw an unexpected and sometimes startling light upon the language and literary forms of the New Testament writings; amongst these are hundreds of private letters, upon all sorts of business. Dr Rendel Harris cites two of these epistles in illustration of the Second of John, both of which are curiously interesting. The first (dated in the third century, A.D.) is a polite invitation froma gentleman named “Petosiris” to “my lady Serenia “ (“my dear Serenia,” as the editors of the Oxyrrhyncus papyri translate κυρία), “to come up on the 20th to the birthday festival of the god”; Petosiris wants to know whether she will “come by boat or donkey,” so that he may send accordingly. Twice in this short note of six lines the word κυρία is repeated parenthetically by Petosiris, just as by John in verse 5 of our Epistle (2 John 1:5). The repetition may be, in both instances, a symptom of tender urgency, and the Egyptian letter has an air of familiarity; but the tone of entreaty need not detract from the respectfulness proper to the word, any more than when “Madam” or “My lady” is so used in English; one sees no sufficient reason for rendering Petosiris’ salutation—much less St John’s, which is differently worded—“My dear” instead of “My lady.” Tenderness does not exclude courtesy; love enhances the dignity of the beloved and observes a delicate respect. In the other of Dr Harris’ chief examples, a father absent froth home and in concern at not hearing from his son, writes to him as “My son, Master (κύριος) Dionysitheon,” and salutes him at the end of the letter as “Sir son” (κύριευἱέ)! This touch of playfulness any fond father can understand. The Egyptian paterfamilias quite revels in polite expressions; in the course of his letter he calls his boy “My lord” as well as “Sir,” varying κύριος with δεσπότης, and speaks of his wife as “My mistress (δεσποίνα) your mother.” There is nothing here to prove any radical change of verbal usage. Nor in the fact that, as Dr J. H. Moulton says,6 “The title kyrios applied to a brother or other near relation, is not uncommon” in the papyri. Formality, affectation, habit—a hundred different humours—dictate the exchange of such titles amongst relatives or intimates, in ancient as in modern letters, without destroying their proper use or bringing them down to the level of mere fondness.
3. The above parallels furnish, in our opinion, no reason for stripping kyria in this instance of its dignified significance; we need not doubt that when St John addressed his correspondent (matron, or church) as the “elect lady” he desired to show her, along with his affection, a proper deference and to mark out her eminence amongst her “elect” sisters. While the appellations κύριος, κυρία (our lord, lady; sir, madam), might be and often were employed in familiar intercourse, like the corresponding terms amongst ourselves, at the same time they served to denote the highest social distinction and authority. A woman’s guardian is called, in the papyri, her κύριος; a governor or state-official—sometimes the emperor himself—is addressed as κύριε; occasionally κύριος is used even of a god, so that its application to the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and to Jesus Christ in the New, is not without Pagan parallels (see 1 Corinthians 8:5-6). The highest associations attaching to κυρία must surely have been present to St John’s mind in a context like this. The qualifying adjunct “elect” lifts us into the region of Christian calling and dignity. In such a combination one can hardly suppose that the Apostle indicates by κυρία nothing more than the worldly rank of her to whom he writes; we surrender to Dr Harris’ criticism, without any regret, the apostolic Countess of Huntingdon. On the other hand, κυρία does not suggest eminence in personal Christian service. In that case the lady concerned must have been a person of very great note indeed; for the Apostle describes her as beloved “not only” by himself, “but” by “all who have known the truth”—by the Christian Church everywhere. It would be strange, if so, that her name is not given, and that we hear of her from no other quarter. On the strength of 2 John 1:1, it has been conjectured that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was intended—she is the one woman of the New Testament to whom such words in their full sense might apply; but every one sees the anachronism and incongruity of the suggestion. There was more than one church, however, in Asia Minor of which so much could be said without exaggeration. The closing salutation of 2 John 1:13 speaks for the public destination of 2 John. How odd, when one comes to think of it, for “the children” of a private family in Ephesus to send their respects to their aunt through the Apostle John, and for him to close his solemn Epistle with this trivial message! But a greeting from, church to church is just in apostolic style, and highly appropriate here (see Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:19-20; Php 4:21). 1 Peter 5:13—addressed, amongst others, “to the elect sojourners of the dispersion . . . in Asia”— supplies a near parallel, in the words “she that is elect with you [viz., the sister church] in Babylon, saluteth you.” It is another anomaly, on the domestic theory of 2 John, that while so many persons, of two distinct families, are referred to, the letter is as barren of personal names as 1 John; whereas 3 John, as is natural in a private letter, furnishes three such names.
St Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians and the Apocalypse of St John (see p. 5 above) in the strongest terms identify the Church with Christ as His bride and spouse. Now κυρία is the feminine of κύριος, Christ’s own title of “the Lord.” The correspondence was obvious to the Greek ear and eye; and the conception formed by St Paul and St John of the Church’s mystic union with the Redeemer, and her supremacy in the Divine order of the world, is fitly expressed by ascribing to her a lady-ship, understood as matching in some sort His lord-ship. The hateful perversion by Rome of the Apostolic doctrine of the Church has made us shrink, to our loss, from thoughts of the grandeur and authority that belong to the Christian communion in the light of such sayings as we have referred to; but they are there none the less, and must be reckoned with. What is true of the Church at large, may be applied in particular; each limb partakes of the sacredness of the body. Hence St Paul declared of the Christian society at Corinth, though in character so far beneath its ideal status, “I espoused you to one husband, to present you a chaste maiden to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2). This mode of personification was by no means strange in early times. Great communities, cities and kingdoms, were habitually represented under the image of a noble woman; their coins and medals bore the effigy of a crowned female head—like the figure of Britannia, for instance, upon our own currency. In Isaiah 62:4-5, the restored Zion becomes “Beulah”—“married” to her God: on the other hand, the “virgin daughter of Babylon,” “the lady of kingdoms,” is seen in Isaiah 47:1-7 thrust from her “throne” and sitting in the dust; and by way of contrast to Christ’s pure Bride, St John presents, in Revelation 17:1-18 and Revelation 18:1-24, the awful vision of the world’s mistress, that other Madam—viz., the city of Rome and the imperial power—bearing “upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the great, mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth, ... drunken with the blood of the saints,” who “says in her heart, I sit a queen!” In this vein of imagery, by way of reminding the Church addressed of her dignity and the responsibilities it entails, St John accosts her as “the elect lady.” The term which in common speech denoted the mistress of the house, or even the empress sharing the world’s throne, belongs to her whom the Lord Christ has set by His side, concerning whom He said through St John, addressing one of His least worthy Churches, “He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit with me in my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father in His throne” (Revelation 3:21); and to another of the Seven, “He that overcometh ... to him will I give authority over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron ... as I also have received of my Father; and I will give him the morning star” (Revelation 2:26-28). Those pictures of the Church triumphant unfold and project into the future the image that is suggested here of the κυρία, wedded partner with the κύριος in the Father’s house. By substituting this idea for that of St John’s supposed “lady-friend” or of some primitive “Countess of Huntingdon,” we do not lose the tenderness of his expression; but we attribute to the Apostle a larger and sublimer sentiment, in exchange for the slight and common-place.
Reading the Epistle with this conception of its destination in our minds, we find a fuller meaning in its statements and appeals. The Lady Church of the letter is known and loved far and wide; “the truth” of Christianity is lodged with her, along with others (1 John 1:2; compare 1 Timothy 3:15). “Some [not all] of” her “children” the Apostle has met with elsewhere, who have cheered him by their Christian consistency (1 John 1:4). When he “asks,” in tones of personal urgency, that the “love” cherished between himself and this “lady” of Christ may be continued (1 John 1:5-6; compare 1 John 2:7-14, 1 John 2:22-25),7 it is because there are “many deceivers” abroad, “who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in flesh”—men who reject with the fact the very idea of the Incarnation (1 John 1:7); their “teaching” would rob the Church of all that the Apostle had imparted to her (“See that ye lose not the things which we wrought,” 1 John 1:8, RV; compare Galatians 4:11), and of its own “full reward”—would, in fact, take away from the “lady” her Lord Himself (1 John 1:9). The crucial point of the letter is reached in 1 John 1:9-10, when the Church is warned that the teachers above described must have no entertainment in any Christian house; and is told that whoever receives them, knowing their business, will be counted their accomplice (contrast herewith Matthew 10:41).
The Apostle fears lest the fellowship of his readers with himself and the rest of the Church should be broken; as it certainly will be, if “the deceiver and the antichrist” obtains a footing in the community and it is thus seduced from its loyalty to Christ. This solicitude, and the urgent language of 2 John 1:5-6, we can better understand if 3 John was written to the same quarter; on this assumption (see Chapter 1 above) it appears that a leading officer of the Church intended at this very time is “prating about” the Apostle “with wicked words” and “is driving out of the Church” those who admit his representatives (3 John 1:9-10). What St John has “written with paper and ink” is but a little of all he desires to say to his readers. He “hopes to come” to them soon, under such conditions that their “joy may be fulfilled” (1 John 1:4). This, of course, depends on the way in which the entreaty and warning of his letter are received (compare 2 Corinthians 2:1-2).
4. Granted that the “lady” of St John’s cares was a church, one can hardly forbear asking, What church?
There are indications affording ground for a fair conjecture. In the first place, the Church in question was in this Apostle’s province, for he writes both letters to Christians personally known to him and under his authority; it lay within the range of his visitations and of the journeyings of his delegates. This limits us to the province of Asia and the region of the Seven Churches of the Apocalypse.
Secondly, the Church we are seeking must have been amongst the most prominent in the region, since it is the object of love on the part of “all who have known the truth” (2 John 1:1)—language which reminds us of that used by the Apostle Paul concerning the Church of Rome (Romans 1:8) and that of Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 1:8).8 Now, the first three cities on the Apocalyptic list—Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum—meet this condition; each of them possessed a world-wide fame, in which the Christian communities planted there could not but participate. Ephesus is excluded by the fact that it was the place of the Apostle’s residence; the Ephesian Church, we may presume, was the “elect sister” of 2 John 1:13. There is something to be said in favour of Smyrna, which stood only second to Ephesus in commercial activity and in importance for Christian travel. The Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp show how large a place Smyrna occupied to the eye of the catholic Church in post-apostolic days. But, on the whole, we must give our vote to Pergamum.
Compared with her rivals, Pergamum was at the disadvantage of lying fifteen miles from the coast, and out of the line of the great highways of Asia Minor; from these causes she lost her ascendancy in the second century, and makes no great figure in Christian history. For all that, up to the present time she was, as Pliny the Younger calls her, “the most renowned city of Asia.” In dignity she was the queen. Pergamum had been the seat of the powerful Attalid dynasty, from whom Rome took over the rule of Asia Minor; it was still the residence of the Proconsul and the official capital of the province. This city gained new influence from the fact that it reared the first temple to the deity of Augustus (B.C. 29), and thus became the centre in Asia Minor of the Caesar-worship, which was made the state-religion of the Empire. On this account probably (as Sir W. M. Ramsay has shown) Pergamum is designated by St John as the place “where Satan’s throne is”; to these conditions, again, it was due that in Pergamum the blood of the first “martyr” of the province was shed (Revelation 2:13). Ramsay, whose work on The Letters to the Seven Churches marks an epoch for the students of St John, as his book on St. Paul the Traveller did for the students of St Paul, thus describes Pergamum: —
“No city of the whole of Asia Minor . . . possesses the same imposing and dominating aspect. It is the one city of the land which forced from me the exclamation, A royal city! . . . There is something unique and overpowering in its effect, planted as it is on its magnificent hill, standing out boldly in the level plain, and dominating the valley and the mountains on the south” (p. 295).
These conditions, unless imagination deceives us, point out of the Church of Pergamum as “the elect lady” of 2 John. While the name κυρία might on occasion be applied to any Church of Christ, this was the one locality within St John’s jurisdiction for which the epithet spontaneously suggested itself, and to which preeminently it was appropriate. Ramsay has illustrated, with abundant wealth of detail, St John’s lively feeling for local features and traditions; the Letters to the Seven Churches, as he reads them, teem with allusions of this nature. The unique address of his Second Epistle, if our conjecture be sound, is an example of the same aptitude on the Apostle’s part. If there was one city above all others in Asia that would be recognized by her neighbours, and would recognize herself through her history and situation, as “the elect lady,” beyond question it was Pergamum. The heading of Ramsay’s Chapter on Pergamum, The Royal City, the City of Authority, is in effect a paraphrase of St John’s κυρία. This grand title at once reflects the dignity attaching to the site and surroundings of the Church of Pergamum, and the majesty which belongs to the Church herself as Christ’s elect and the destined partner of His throne. The censure passed upon the Pergamenes in the Apocalyptic Letter (Revelation 2:14-16) is in keeping with the apprehension disclosed in this Epistle. A false toleration was the bane of that Church; she “holds fast” her Master’s “name,” and yet harbours disloyal and corrupting teachers, against whom the Lord will “war with the sword of His mouth.” If 2 John be later in date than the Apocalypse (and this seems more likely), then the language of 2 John 1:10-11 was grounded on experience of the mistaken charity of the Church of Pergamum; if earlier, the corruption indicated in Revelation 2:14-16 would show that this warning had been unheeded or forgotten. The worldly pride of Pergamum (compare the observations on “Diotrephes” in Chapter 4) is silently corrected by the entreaty for love toward her Apostle and toward her “elect sister” of Ephesus (2 John 1:5-6, 2 John 1:13).