02.03. The Third Epistle
THE THIRD EPISTLE This is certainly an Epistle to an individual, Gains (which was a very common name), and is also plainly from the same hand as the second Epistle. It describes an interesting situation, but leaves so much undisclosed that we cannot feel any great certainty about it, except that important people in the Church could even in the age and neighborhood of the apostle St. John behave very badly to him and resist his authority, Clement tells us, it will be remembered, that St. John’s later activity at Ephesus included the appointment of bishops in neighboring Churches. These bishops were, like the later bishops, and unlike the earlier presbyter-bishops, single rulers. They succeeded to the office of apostolic delegates, like Timothy and Titus, only more strictly localized. Such are the bishops of the letters of Ignatius, written some fifteen years later. Diotrephes was probably one of them. And being an ambitious man, he resented St. John’s authority and determined to show his independence of it.
We can imagine his arguing that his episcopal office was also apostolic. We should note that he is not, as far as appears, in conflict with his presbyters as if he were usurping authority over them, but only in conflict with St. John. His independence of him he chose to show by refusing to entertain those who came from him. In the first days movements were propagated not by newspapers, but by circulating, missionaries. So the Gnostics were propagating their views, they “went out into the world’’ (3 John 1:7), and St. John has just bidden a Church not to entertain these messengers of falsehood. We might suppose that St. John’s envoys were sent out to counteract this false teaching. They are, in fact, described as going forth “because of the Name,” relying exclusively on the support of the faithful, and to give them hospitality is to “co-operate with the truth” (3 John 1:8). And Diotrephes, it appears, had dealt with them exactly as St. John had exhorted the Church addressed in his second Epistle to deal with the Gnostic missionaries. He had refused to entertain them and had excommunicated those who, like Gains, acted otherwise. But St. John does not hint that Diotrephes was disposed to heresy.
If that had been so, his denunciation would have taken a different form. He was simply an ambitious man who wanted to show his independence of “the presbyter,” and St. John assumes that in refusing to give hospitality to his messengers he is simply affronting him and not basing his action on difference of doctrine.
St. John is going to visit the Church, and is confident that when he is there he will be able to show up Diotrephes’s evil purpose in its true light. Meanwhile he had written to the Church — perhaps it is the second Epistle that he is referring to — but fears Diotrephes may suppress his letter, and takes the opportunity to send this private letter by Demetrius, one of his envoys, to Gains, a member of the Church of which Diotrephes was presumably the bishop, who had been actively opposing him and had suffered for it. Whether Gains was layman or presbyter, we cannot say. Anyway, this little letter gives us a picture of factions in an apostolic Church and of a movement of rebellion even against the aged apostle. This is, of course, no new thing. St. Paul had endured the like.
Also it gives us an interesting picture of the circulation of bands of missionaries, and their total dependence upon finding support in the different Churches they visited, and of the way in which questions of orthodoxy and personal rivalries between leaders in different Churches would have interfered with their welcome and left them destitute.
Perhaps nothing more is necessary by way of explaining — conjecturally, it must be admitted — this third Epistle.
3 John 1:1-15 The elder onto Gaius the beloved, whom I love in truth.
Beloved, I pray that in all things thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. For I rejoiced greatly, when brethren came and bare witness unto thy truth, even as thou walkest in truth. Greater joy have I none than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.
Beloved, thou doest a faithful work in whatsoever thou doest toward them that are brethren and strangers withal; who bare witness to thy love before the church: whom thou wilt do well to set forward on their journey worthily of God: because that for the sake of the Name they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles. We therefore ought to welcome such, that we may be fellow-workers with the truth.
I wrote somewhat unto the church: but Diotrephes who loveth to have the pre-eminence among them, receiveth ns not. Therefore, if I come, I will bring to remembrance his works which he doeth, prating against us with wicked words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and them that would he forbiddeth, and casteth them out of the church. Beloved, imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: he that doeth evil hath not seen God. Demetrius hath the witness of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, we also bear witness; and thou knowest that our witness is true.
I had many things to write unto thee, but I am unwilling to write them to thee with ink and pen: but I hope shortly to see thee, and we shall speak face to face. Peace be unto thee. The friends salute thee. Salute the friends by name.
APPENDED NOTE
Dr. Drummond {Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 32ff.) suggests that when Clement, on the authority of “the presbyters from the beginning,” i.e the immediate disciples of the apostles, calls the Fourth Gospel a “spiritual gospel” by contrast to the other three, he meant that John “set forth his higher and more secret doctrine in the form of allegory.” Dr. Inge {Cambridge Biblical Essays, ix. p. 260-1) makes the same suggestion. But, as has been already observed, Origen, who explains at length the view of the great Alexandrians, makes in two places, in one of which we have the original Greek, an express reservation which excludes the idea that the facts related of our Lord, and, in particular. His miracles, including the raising of Lazarus, are intended as merely allegorical. Origen, it is true, makes alarming general statements about the “myriad” things, even in the Gospels which are not literally true. But he had not our mind and was not contemplating our problem. He gives a great number of examples of what he means.
They are injunctions, as “to pluck out our right eye and cut off our right hand,” which must be interpreted allegorically, or statements of Christ’s manhood which, in order to be true, would need to be balanced by statements of His godhead, or chronological inexactitudes, etc. As far as I have observed, there is only one recorded incident in our Lord’s life for which he suggests a purely allegorical interpretation, and that is (not in St. John’s Gospel) the incident in the Temptation where the devil is recorded to have taken Jesus up into “ an exceeding high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them”; it being, as he says, physically impossible from any high mountain to see the kingdoms of the Persians and Indians and Scythians and Parthians and discern their glory. I suppose we should most of us agree so far with Origen as to hold that this account of the temptation must have been originally given by our Lord to His disciples as a vivid presentation of what passed in His mind, though it was perhaps misunderstood by the evangelists as the record of a physical experience. But, on the whole, we have Origen’s assurance that the things recorded of Christ, including His miracles, and in particular those of St. John, must be taken literally. The passages to be studied are especially the passage from the De Principis, iv, given in Philocalia, cap. 1; the commentary on St. John, tom. x, the beginning; and the passage from the commentary on the Galatians, last fragment, from Rufinus’s translation of Pamphilus’s Apology for Origen. On the degree of trustworthiness to be ascribed to Rufinus as a translater of Origen cf. Robinson’s preface to the Philocalia, pp. xxxi ff.