John’s Adversaries

Raymond Brown notes that a number of scholars have identified the adversaries of 1 John as “Jews who denied that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.” He finds this implausible since it’s hard to see how Jews could be “looked on as people who placed little emphasis on avoiding sin, keeping the commandments, and acting justly.” Even if these descriptions could be applied to Jews, it is hard to explain why John doesn’t engage his opponents with Scripture, as Jesus does in John’s gospel.

One way to avoid these problems is to say that “the adversaries were Jews who had converted to Christianity but had lapsed either totally or partially.” But Brown doesn’t find this convincing either. Citing John 8:31-59 and 12:42-43, he asks “why there is no appear in 1 John to that polemic,” and why John never addresses his opponents (as the gospel does) as “Jews.” Finally, he suggests that Christians would not need John to tell them to avoid “lapsed Jews,” since “if these works were written after the expulsion from the synagogue . . . the recipients would have been suspicious of Jews without any help from the author.”

The last objection shall be first: Brown’s last argument, of course, depends on a late dating of 1 John (Brown dates the letter around 100 AD). If the date is before AD, then the last of Brown’s arguments evaporates. We know from Hebrews at least that during the first century some converts to Christ found a return (or a turn) to Judaism attractive, especially under threat of persecution, which John mentions.

Brown has a point about the absence of the designation “Jew” in 1 John, but then John never gives a name to his opponents at all, which is why Brown has to call them “secessionists” (which is as good a designation as any). We are left to speculate on their identity from what John tells us, from the setting of the epistle (itself in dispute), John’s other writings, etc.

Brown to the contrary, there are traces of the polemics of John 8 and 12 in 1 John. Brown is correct that the debate in 1 John does not turn on the identity of the children of Abraham, but other critical elements of John 8 appear in the first epistle: The combination of “abide” and “word” (John 8:31, 37; 1 John 2:5-6); devil as father (John 8:44; 1 John 3:12); the question of birth, and the contrast between children of God and of the devil (John 8:41; 1 John 3:10); the devil “was a murderer/sinned from the beginning” (John 8:44; 1 John 3:7); murder (John 8:44; 1 John 3:15); the one who is of God hears God’s word (through Jesus and through the apostles, John 8:47; 1 John 4:5-6). A number of these themes and phrases appear only in John 8 and 1 John, and the parallels make it plausible to conclude that John has based his epistolary polemic on Jesus’ condemnation of the Jews and also plausible to conclude that John and Jesus address similar opponents.

The links between John 12:42-43 and 1 John are not as extensive, but they are there. John comments that even believing rulers avoid confessing Jesus out of fear of the bullying of the Pharisees (12:42), and in John’s epistle he also insists that the Spirit gives courage to confess Jesus as the Christ, come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3). The gospel specifies that they fear specifically being put out of the synagogue, something that the epistle does not specify, and the gospel also says that the motivation is the love of “approval of men rather than the approval of God” (John 12:43). Neither of these is found explicitly in 1 John.