John 1:1-2:2 contains the prologue (1:1-4) and a segment that discusses God as light (1:5-2:2).
The theme of I John 1:1-4 is to provide a prologue for the letter. Some consider it a traditional Johannine hymn from Asia Minor. Brown notes that the prologue is one long sentence. There are not theological subtleties. Its basis is the prologue in the Gospel, which secessionists within the Johannine community used against the author. The author used the occasion of the letter to correct their misinterpretation.[1] The awkwardness of the prologue stems from an attempt to take the prologue’s familiar pieces and give an accurate interpretation of it. Many scholars think that the Johannine prologue was the hymn learned upon entering the community.
In beginning with 1 We, John is referring to authorship. Christian tradition viewed the “we” as a sign of apostolic authorship, and therefore his word carried authority. Brown (Anchor Bible)O does not share that view, suggesting that the elder writes on behalf of the Johannine tradition as preserved in the Gospel and that probably derives from physical contact with Jesus, probably from the Beloved Disciple. In any case, authority lies behind these words. Thus, in representing the tradition, we declare to you what, focusing on the ministry of Jesus on this earth. The tradition is an authentic witness of Jesus. He is being polemical, arising out of exasperation with the opposition. It refers to the person of Jesus. Thus, the tradition declares what was from the beginning. The Gospel refers to the beginning of creation, identifying that the Word was present there with creation as with God in the beginning (John 1:1-2). The opponents of the author could affirm the pre-existent Word in the prologue of the Gospel but had trouble with the earthly course of the life of Jesus, even as tradition of the Gospel of John saw that life. The opponents of the author agree with the prologue of the Gospel about the divine origin of the Word being “in the beginning” with God, while wanting to say nothing about the earthly career of Jesus. The author clarifies that the tradition begins with what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands. John 1:14 also says that that “we have seen his glory.” He further clarifies that which was from the beginning by saying it was concerning the word of life. The author refers to the message of the Word in the earthly course of his life. John 1:4a says that in the Word was life in such as a way as to bring light to all persons. God 2 revealed this life, even as John 1:14a says the Word became flesh. Further, we have seen it and testify (μαρτυροῦμεν) to it, and declare (ἀπαγγέλλομεν) to you the eternal life that was with the Father, reminiscent of the affirmations in John 1:1b, the Word was with God. Further, such eternal life is that which God revealed to us, like John 1:14b says the Word lived “among us.” John 1:18b says the only Son has made God known. 3 We declare (ἀπαγγέλλομεν) to you what we have seen and heard. The author emphasizes the human quality that the Word possessed. This was no dream or phantom. The Word became a human being. This author expands upon John 1:14, “the Word became flesh.” Thus, the author writes this letter to keep the readers within the basic affirmations of the apostolic faith. He is making two affirmations about Jesus. One is that he is a unity with the Father, while at the same time he became human in the full sense of the word. The reason “we” make such declarations is so that you also may have fellowship (κοινωνίαν) with us, and thus, with the tradition behind John. The importance of this is that truly our fellowship (κοινωνία) is with the Father. John 1:17a says Moses gave the law. Further, our fellowship is with the Son Jesus Christ. John 1:16ab says “we” have received from the fullness of the Word grace upon grace. The language here is significant in that he stresses testimony, seeing, hearing, and touching.[2] Ancient religions could write of dying and rising gods. Jewish apocalyptic had mythical elements of resurrection. Yet, this author stresses the testimony of his tradition has its basis in what it saw, heard, and touched. It sets aside any docetic view of Jesus. The tradition had to decide between belief and unbelief. Jesus was present as pointing us to genuine divinity and genuine humanity. It took place at a particular moment in history and in a particular person. This tradition does not have its source in an intellectual intuition. Rather, it remembers a real event that has taken place among them and impels adherents of the tradition to testify to others. The word of life, which is eternal life, is a demonstration of the gracious God, who has authority over life and death. God wills to give humanity a share in divine time. In that sense, this Jesus is the revelation of divine sovereignty over life and death.[3] In sense, Easter reveals the event nature of the relationship between God and humanity. Easter is an encounter with God in which God confronted the disciples in Christ. They came to faith because they touched, saw, and heard.[4] 4 We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
The theme of I John 1:5-2:2 is that God is light, and there is no darkness in God at all. The passage gives us some hints of the issues troubling the author. The organizing concern is the Christian faith and life. The passage is a series of antithetical statements. “If we say …” is the key organizing principle. Some think it was part of an initiation ceremony. The passage becomes a matter of spelling out the implications of the theme. Light, obedience, and love constitute the life of the believer, while darkness, disobedience, and hate constitute the life of the non-believer. The basis of the statements is a misuse of the Gospel of John.
5 This is the message (ἀγγελία) we have heard from him and proclaim (ἀναγγέλλομεν) to you, stating the theme of 1:5-2:2 and the gospel message the author wishes to defend. Simply put, he wants to affirm that God is light and in God, there is no darkness at all. He gets this from John 1:4b, 5ab, in which we learn that the life was the light of all people, the light was shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John views the message as coming from Christ as interpreted by the Paraclete, which is what the Johannine tradition says who Jesus is. For this author, the light has come into the world through the whole career of Jesus, while his opponents would be content with the Incarnation alone. One must understand the statement in terms of function, not an abstraction. “Light” is a function of self-revelation. That light removed the darkness, which is sin. The mentality is one of covenant that the people of God must reflect in their lives the God they worship. The covenant has its root in God begetting a people. The knowledge of God is a complete knowledge in the sense of a penetrating knowledge. Such knowledge is total. Everything is open before God. Such divine knowledge is clear, plain, definite, and intensive.[5]
In the rest of the section, 1:6-2:2, we find an ethical implication of the theme. The author fears that a certain group will contaminate those in fellowship with him. Verses 6-7, 8-9, 1:10-2:2 are three specific claims and counter-claims. Brown expresses some surprise that the author moves to ethics at this point rather than Christology. The author grounds his ethical views in his view of God. Brown (Anchor Bible) discusses the “disapproved” conditions in this segment. Verses 6, 8, and 10 express them, and one can divide them into protases and apodoses. “We” fear secessionists will contaminate those who are in fellowship with him. In the following disapproved conditions, one can note a progression. The apodoses focus on a progression of truth and lying; the protases focus on a progression of sin and darkness. The author matches these disapproved conditions with approved conditions. The remedy is walking in the light, public confession of sin, and the likelihood of sin. While the disapproved conditions reflect lying and not accepting the truth about oneself, the approved conditions reflect accepting the truth about one’s sinfulness.
The verses reference several important concepts. He offers his first disapproved condition. 6If we say that we have fellowship [κοινωνίαν] with him while we are walking (περιπατῶμεν) in darkness, we lie (ψευδόμεθα) and do not do what is true (ἀλήθειαν). He then offers his first approved condition. However, 7 if we walk (περιπατῶμεν) in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship (κοινωνίαν) with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin (ἁμαρτίας). The Greek word the author uses for “walk” was used for centuries by Greek philosophers to convey the sense of “walking through life,” of living. By introducing the verb with an “if,” the author emphasizes that it is the Christian’s choice to walk in the light, and only if one does will one have fellowship with others. We find a misuse of John 3:19-21, where John says that judgment consists in the fact that the light has come into the world, but the world loved darkness more than light because their deeds were evil. Those who do evil hate the light, for the light would expose their evil. Those who do what is true come to the light, verifying that they have done their deeds in God. The point is not that they are libertines, but that they gave no salvific implications to ethics. Darkness was no longer an issue. The first is that it is important that the Christian do something!
He offers a second disapproved condition. 8 If we say that we have no sin (ἁμαρτίαν), we deceive ourselves, and the truth (ἀλήθεια) is not in us. He then offers a second approved condition. 9 If we confess our sins (ἁμαρτίας), he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins (ἁμαρτίας) and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We find a misuse of John 8:31-34, 8:24, 15:22, and 16:8-9. Jesus tells the Jews who believed that if they continue in his word, they will be his disciples, know the truth and the truth will set them free. Yet, they answer that as children of Abraham, they have been slaves to no one. Jesus responds that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Jesus also gives the warning that that if they do not believe they will die in their sins. The arrival of Jesus exposes sin. The Paraclete will come after the departure of Jesus and will prove the world wrong concerning sin, which consists in not believing in Jesus. The author discloses a second disapproved condition here. In the Gospel, “guilty of sin” and “slaves of sin” are part of the polemic against non-believers. These verses imply the believer is no longer guilty of sin. His opponents would then imply that this was true, no matter what one did.
The author offers his third disapproved condition. 10 If we say that we have not sinned (ἡμαρτήκαμεν), we make him a liar (ψεύστην), and his word (λόγος) is not in us. We can see that offenses were already common among church members.[6] He then offers his third approved condition. He addresses them as 2:1 my little children. Did they like the author calling them little children? Was he being condescending? Later in I John “we” comes to connote a communal “we,” in which the author and the community work out their salvation, as a fellowship with each other, with Jesus and with God, as they walk through life together. In other words, the power of I John for the contemporary world comes from its opening to scrutiny a late first-century Christian community, physically, psychically, and temperamentally close to the gospel writers that is already suffering from dissent and from the dissolution of fellowship. Their history shows how one community came to “muddle through” all the issues we still find vexing. I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. However, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate (Παράκλητον). The bloody sacrifice of Christ has its complement in the risen Lord becoming our advocate with the Father. His bloody sacrifice as crucified Lord atones fully for our sin, while as risen Lord he remains our advocate when we sin as believers. A paraclete, who in John 14:16 is also Jesus as the first advocate and the Spirit is also an advocate. The letter does not refer to the Spirit as Paraclete. The opponents gave no salvific importance to the death of Christ. The term “Paraclete” can have the sense of our advocate or representative before God. John uses it that way here to refer to the risen Christ. However, it can also denote advocacy for God and the cause of God among us, or for the cause of Jesus after his departure.[7] He identifies the advocate we have with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2 and he is the atoning sacrifice (ἱλασμός, propitiation). Note the emphasis on the bloody death of Christ. Believers no longer need to offer animal sacrifices. The way is clear to a relationship with God. There are two issues here, first, the claim that Jesus’ death led to the cleansing of sins and the claim that Jesus bled. The second reason the author may have wanted to emphasize “the blood of Jesus” is deliberately to evoke from the reader/listener a visceral sense of the human suffering that Jesus endured. From here and elsewhere, scholars surmise that the opponents claimed that Jesus only seemed human; a position (Docetism) often associated with the Gnostics and condemned by Ignatius of Antioch about the time of the production of the Johannine texts. The author, it seems, wants to quash that notion quickly: Jesus was flesh and blood. Christ became the atoning sacrifice for our sins (ἁμαρτιῶν), and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. The divine intent toward the world is salvation; the world chooses darkness. We find a misuse of John 8:46, 20:22-23, 3:18, 5:24, and 13:10. Jesus asks which of them convicts him of sin. He asks them that if he is telling them the truth, why do they not believe him. Jesus also breathed on the disciples for them to receive the Holy Spirit. If they forgive sin, God will forgive, and if they retain the sin of anyone, God will retain it. Those who do not believe experience condemnation already. Anyone who hears the word of Jesus and believes has eternal life and has already passed from death to life. Finally, Jesus says that since he has washed their feet, they are clean, but not all are clean. John deals with the notion of perfection. It refers to sin after baptism, not in their lives from birth. One might derive the sinlessness of the believer from 8:46, 20:22-23, 3:18, 5:24, 13:10, and see the author’s own perfectionism in I John 3:5-6, 9. One must balance this by the author’s admission in 2:1-2 that Christians do sin. Both have exalted views of perfection, but the opponents deduce indifference, and the author deduces the importance of what one does.
While the disapproved conditions reflect lying and not accepting the truth about oneself, the approved conditions reflect accepting the truth about one’s sinfulness. Synonymous with walking in the light are obeying the commands of God and love. On the other hand, he identifies darkness, disobedience, and hate as in opposition to the life of the believer. When the believer walks in the light, he or she makes the darkness pass away and brings in the reality of light. Amid all this contrast between light and darkness, John discusses the reality of sin in the life of the believer. No one can claim he or she is not presently a sinner. However, when believers sin, they are sensitive to the importance of confessing that sin to God and receiving forgiveness from God.
In this section, then, we sense that John was anxious to establish his position against the opponents who, through their actions, were injuring the fellowship of the Johannine community. Consequently, the tone is “preachy.”[8]
The issue of sin in believers arises in later Christian tradition as well. God wanted people and angels to follow the will of God, making them free and rational beings to make a choice in line with what God wanted.[9] Some Christians maintained a difference between people of a spiritual and animal nature, the former assured of salvation no matter what they did, but the latter having salvation by their works.[10] The author affirms the notion that Christians may sin after they have received baptism. The author is realistic enough to recognize that the members of his community did not relinquish their mortal foibles when they became Christians. In 3:6, the author shows how fine a line divides his understanding from his adversaries.’ There he asserts, “No one who abides in him [God] sins.” We may infer that a Christian’s choice not to remain with God, to break fellowship with God, is the essence of sin. For the author, each Christian has the opportunity to choose to stay with God or not.
For the life setting of this material, one might note Qumran 1QS 3:17-22, where God does not permit those who spurn the waters of purification to live. They keep saying that the matter is of their private concern, so that keep sullying themselves with human transgression and filthy ways. Yet, God will forgive in that Israel will persist in spite of their sin.[11] Brown suggests the text was part of the Christian initiation service. Early Christians were to fast before their baptism.[12] The light represented God and the angels, and darkness represents iniquity.[13] Thus, early Christians placed priority on confession of sin for those newly baptized. The point here is that this segment may well act as the basis for a public confession of sin for the tradition this letter represents.
Confession of sin is important, of course, and we must not make light of it. Steve Rogers tells the story of buying a home. They had the home thoroughly inspected, and the inspector found no evidence at the time. They discovered the unwanted guests later. He says that areas of our lives can be much like the termites in the house. Sin can hide in us and gnaw away at us. When the effects burst through to the surface, in our words and deeds, we need to pay attention.[14]
The Bible uses images of defilement and dirt to describe the human condition. For example:
In Isaiah 1:18 (NIV) sin appears as a stain God will need to remove: “‘Come now, let us reason together,’ says the LORD. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’”
In Psalm 51 (NIV), sin is a blot that God needs to wash away: “Blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin ... Cleanse me ... and I will be clean;’ wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.”
Jesus uses “defilement” language to describe the condition of the heart in Matthew 15:19-20 (NIV): “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man ‘unclean.’”
Sin — there it is — a three-letter dirty word. It is a dirty word because it speaks about what we do not want to hear. It speaks about us, and our treatment of each other and God. Sin is not just the big stuff; sin is the small stuff, too. Sin is anything that separates us from God, hides us from God’s light, away from God’s love. Because sin is common to the human condition, the temptation is to minimize its danger. I am only human, we might say. We are all good people; we just have some annoying bad behaviors, we think. It is not bad to be a sinner, we say, no more than it is bad to have dark pet hair covering your white carpet. Sin is unseemly and troublesome, yes. You just must clean it up and try to keep the dog out. Dirt on the floor is the natural order in this world. Sin on our souls is the natural order in this life. You just have to clean it up and try to keep it that way.
God takes a more serious view. While sin is common to the human condition, to be fully human is not to live in sin, but to live beyond sin. Adam and Eve before their disobedience were humans — fully human the way God designed them to be. We cannot merely blame our sin on the fact that we are humans.
First, we need to put aside our pride. I think I prefer people who admit that they have sinned and repented to people who have not sinned and consider themselves righteous.[15]
The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 2012 has long been a powerful image of the pride human beings can take in what they accomplish. True, we can accomplish much. Yet, we must be careful. The Titanic's Captain, Edward Smith, had commented a few years earlier that the nature of "modern shipbuilding" in the early 20th century rendered sinking a near impossibility. "I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder," he said. "I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." Witnesses last saw Captain Smith on the bridge of the Titanic, having just given the order to abandon ship. We will never know, but in his last few moments before going down with the ship, did he remember his fateful words?
We need to slow down. They should have slowed down before the ship slammed into that iceberg. The Titanic had received several transmissions from other ships that there were ice flows in the vicinity, yet she continued to speed ahead at full throttle. If we are going to avoid the sinking effects of sin, it is important for us to slow down, too, and get real about what is wrong. We do that through confession.
The name "Titanic" comes from the Titans, a race of gods who preceded the more-familiar Olympian gods and who battled with them for dominance. At the conclusion of their war with the Titans, Zeus and the other victorious Olympians fashioned unique punishments for their vanquished opponents. The gods forced Atlas, for example, to hold up the sky. Prometheus, who gave to human beings the gift of fire, the gods tied to a rock and attacked each day by a bird of prey, who tore out and ate his liver, only to have it grow back again the next day. Greek mythology characterized the Titans by hubris, or pride. Ironically, people leveled the same charge against the builders of the Titanic, who boldly imagined they could construct an ocean liner so large that not even the ordinary limitations of the maritime environment would apply to it.
Those who are in recovery programs have little confusion about what it means to “walk in the light.” To help them walk in the light, several of the “Twelve Steps” are particularly applicable here:
We honestly admit our weaknesses, that we are powerless over our darker habits and that our lives have become unmanageable ...
We trust God to restore us to sanity ...
We turn our will and our lives over to God ...
We make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and we are entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character ...
We seek through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
Christian confession is relational. One owns up to the reality of the ways in which we have not perfectly followed Christ. God is already aware of these things, so confession is not an information transfer; it is a relational healing.
Second, confession restores right relationship with God.
Things become awkward when we say something dumb to a spouse or a friend until we go and seek forgiveness. Relationship is awkward when there is an offense between people. Relationship between God and his followers is no different when wrongs between them remain unrecognized and unreconciled.
Third, confession also restores our relationship with other Christians. Coming out of the darkness and into the light grants us “fellowship with one another” (v. 7). Confession places us back on the common ground of our identity in Christ — as his co-followers, not as his co-offenders. In addition, relationship with other believers cannot only be the end of confession; it can be the means as well.
James 5:16 “confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed.”
Nevertheless, how much do we balk at such a radical concept? People like to have their stuff all together. People do not like to be wrong. For sure, people do like to admit they are wrong even when they know they are. Being right tends to consume us rather than getting right. Fans of the old sitcom Happy Days may remember the two words that the Fonz could never make pass over his lips: “I’m sorry.” He would stutter and stammer, but never get beyond “I’m s-s-s-so-so-so ...”
What is the value of confession? Why bring another person into the picture? James and John see something in confessing to one another. What is the value?
I am the oldest of five children. It was a good day when I got my own room. Yet, I also remember that at night, it seemed like a long way from the wall with the light switch to the bed. I would turn out the light and run quickly to the bed. I am not sure what I thought was in the shadows or under the bed, but it seemed like somehow staying in the bed under the cover was enough protection. I do not recall ever calling for mom or dad, but had I done so, I am sure they would have come into the room, turned on the light, and everything would have been all right. Confession to God, who is light, will bring light into your life and reduce the monstrous effects of sin in your life. Confessing to another is another way to face the monster together. Sin is the same kind of monster. It holds power and influence over us. It comes after us in dark places when nobody else is there. However, when we tell other people about the sins we wrestle with, somebody else comes into the room, they turn on the lights, and the monster loses its teeth.
[1] Here is how the two prologues compare, with the epistle the first part of the comparison. 1:1a = 1:1a, 1:1d - 1:14c, 1:1f = 1:4a, 1:2a = 1:14a, 1:2d = 1:1b, 1:2e = 1:14b, 1:3d = 1:16ab, 1:3e = 1:17a, 1:3f = 1:18b.
[2] Barth has a good discussion of the distinction between himself and Bultmann. He agrees that the resurrection of Jesus has nothing to say directly about human existence, but that does not disqualify it as truth. He rejects the notion that modern historical scholarship is the proper judge of such an event. He thinks it is not open to historical verification, but that does not make the result of merely bold acceptance. He rejects the notion that modern science determines the modern view of life, suggesting that it does not allow for other possible experiences of life. The fact that the resurrection was compatible with a mythical worldview does not mean that one cannot believe it today as a modern person. His question regarding the resurrection is what it says to us concerning the being of Jesus in time that He was in time in this way as well, as the resurrected one. What is the implication of the fact that after he had completed the span from birth to death, he had time after that? The answer is that the particular content of the particular recollection of this particular time of the apostolic community consisted in the fact that in this time the man Jesus was manifested among them in the mode of God. It is essential to a true understanding that both his humanity and his deity should be kept in view. Barth says that this verse repudiates any docetic interpretation of the resurrection. He stresses that the disciples actually beheld the glory of the Lord. They make a decision between belief and unbelief. God was present as the man Jesus. That this really took place is the specific content of the apostolic recollection of these days. God is present, not simply as an intellectual notion of perception, but as a remembered as a real fact that has taken place before them and impels them to confession and commission. They can even add the human title Lord to the human name of Jesus. When we ask how, all we can say is that the same Jesus who died and whom the disciples buried was among them again as a living man. He was the demonstration of the gracious God, who has authority over life and death. God has a different time from that of humanity, but God wills to give humanity a share in this divine time, this eternity. The man Jesus was apprehensible as the triumphant justification of God and humanity, as the revelation of the divine sovereignty over life and death that delivers humanity, and finally as the One who exist in the higher, eternal time of God. The Easter event is quite plainly one of an encounter with God, and act of God to the disciples in which, God confronted them and spoke with them in the person of Jesus Christ. As stated here, they heard and handled it. In this seeing, hearing, and handling, they were brought to faith. We are not required to try to know and to be able to say more of this encounter than the accounts tells us, especially as to the how.
[3] Barth Church Dogmatics III.2 [47.1] 444-451.
[4] Barth Church Dogmaitcs IV.1 [59.3] 341.
[5] Barth Church Dogmatics II.1 [31.2] 555.
[6] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 3, 246.
[7] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 270.
[8] There are two issues here, first, the claim that Jesus’ death led to the cleansing of sins and the claim that Jesus bled. As to the first issue, this is one place where I John differs from the gospel of John. There, the crucifixion represents the enthronement and exaltation of Jesus with little mention that Jesus’ death was for the “cleansing of sins,” as I John’s explains (Brown, 26). But I John itself offers a differing, but not necessarily competing, account of Jesus’ salvific actions when at 2:1 the author refers to Jesus as an advocate, or defense lawyer for the accused (namely, each person) (“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin”). If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. Everyone needs the sacrifice Jesus made for sin. Once a person applies the sacrifice to oneself, the person receives forgiveness of all sin and receives purification from all sin and unrighteousness. This means that Jesus’ action on behalf of the Christian is more complicated, and perhaps less thoroughly and systematically worked out, than we might assume. The believer remains a sinner in need of the atoning sacrifice.
Looked at in this way, the canonization of both the gospel of John and 1 John provide two competing understandings of Jesus’ death and at least two views of how Jesus cleanses the Christian of sin: through the cross or as an advocate.
The second reason the author may have wanted to emphasize “the blood of Jesus” is deliberately to evoke from the reader/listener a visceral sense of the human suffering that Jesus endured. From here and elsewhere, scholars surmise that the opponents claimed that Jesus only seemed to be human, a position (docetism) often associated with the gnostics and condemned by Ignatius of Antioch about the time the Johannine texts were being produced. The author, it seems, wants to quash that notion quickly: Jesus was flesh and blood.
[9] (Justin Martyr (150—160) in Trypho 141.2) God, wishing men and angels to follow His will, resolved to create them free to do righteousness; possessing reason, that they may know by whom they are created, and through whom they, not existing formerly, do now exist; and with a law that they should be judged by Him, if they do anything contrary to right reason: and of ourselves we, men and angels, shall be convicted of having acted sinfully, unless we repent beforehand.
[10] (Irenaeus (175-85) in Adv. Haer. 1.6.2.2). Animal men, again, are instructed in animal things; such men, namely, as are established by their works, and by a mere faith, while they have not perfect knowledge. We of the Church, they say, are these persons. Wherefore also they maintain that good works are necessary to us, for that otherwise it is impossible we should be saved. But as to themselves, they hold that they shall be entirely and undoubtedly saved, not by means of conduct, but because they are spiritual by nature. For, just as it is impossible that material substance should partake of salvation (since, indeed, they maintain that it is incapable of receiving it), so again it is impossible that spiritual substance (by which they mean themselves) should ever come under the power of corruption, whatever the sort of actions in which they indulged. For even as gold, when submersed in filth, loses not on that account its beauty, but retains its own native qualities, the filth having no power to injure the gold, so they affirm that they cannot in any measure suffer hurt, or lose their spiritual substance, whatever the material actions in which they may be involved.
[11] Howbeit, with the rest of them-that is, with those that held fast to His commandments-God ever made good His everlasting Covenant with Israel, revealing to them the hidden things concerning which Israel in general had gone astray-even His holy sabbaths and His glorious festivals, His righteous ordinances, the ways of His truth and the purposes of His will, 'the which, if a man do, he shall live' [Lev. 18.5]. He opened for them a well with water abounding,14 which they might dig. But them that spurned those waters He did not permit to live. And though they kept sullying themselves with human transgression and with filthy ways, and kept saying, "Tis our own concern', yet did God with His mysterious power shrive their iniquity and forgive their transgression and build for them in Israel a firmly established House the like of which has not existed from ancient times until this day.
[12] Didache 7 (50-120) Concerning Baptism. And concerning baptism, baptize this way: Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water. But if you have no living water, baptize into other water; and if you cannot do so in cold water, do so in warm. But if you have neither, pour out water three times upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit. But before the baptism let the baptizer fast, and the baptized, and whoever else can; but you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.
[13] Epistle of Barnabas 18 (80-120) But let us now pass to another sort of knowledge and doctrine. There are two ways of doctrine and authority, the one of light, and the other of darkness. But there is a great difference between these two ways. For over one are stationed the light-bringing angels of God, but over the other the angels' of Satan. And He indeed (i.e., God) is Lord for ever and ever, but he (i.e., Satan) is prince of the time of iniquity.
[14] —Steve Rogers, “Termites of sin,” steverogers.org. Retrieved October 18, 2002.
[15] Abba Sarmatas, quoted in Joan Chittister, Illuminated Life (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001), 54.
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