Greco-Christian stream·New Testament·General Epistles·2 John
2 John — to the elect lady
Short letter from the elder to the elect lady and her children — likely a personification of a particular church. The double exhortation: walk in truth, love one another; and the warning against those who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh — receive them not.
Source context
- Theme
- apostolic warning against false teaching and the commandment of mutual love as community boundary-marker
- Soul-faculty
- Consciousness Soul
Steiner
- GA 8, chapter 6Steiner cites 1 John in the context of the Johannine community's understanding of the living bond of mystical union extending through generations, a framework that situates the defensive communal concerns of 2 John within the broader Johannine impulse Steiner treats as initiatory Christianity.
Cross-tradition
- Rabbinic halakha — communal boundary disciplineThe Johannine injunction against receiving or greeting those who do not bring the doctrine of Christ displays cross-tradition congruence with rabbinic cherem practice, in which community membership is maintained by exclusion of those whose teaching endangers the covenantal bond.
- Gnostic anti-docetism2 John's explicit identification of the antichrist with those who deny Christ's coming in the flesh constitutes a polemical boundary against proto-docetic positions circulating in the same milieu as Valentinian and Cerinthian Gnostic streams.
2 John
ASV (American Standard Version, 1901)
2 John 1
1:1The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not I only, but also all they that know the truth;
1:2for the truth’s sake which abideth in us, and it shall be with us for ever:
1:3Grace, mercy, peace shall be with us, from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
1:4I rejoice greatly that I have found certain of thy children walking in truth, even as we received commandment from the Father.
1:5And now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote to thee a new commandment, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.
1:6And this is love, that we should walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, even as ye heard from the beginning, that ye should walk in it.
1:7For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
1:8Look to yourselves, that ye lose not the things which we have wrought, but that ye receive a full reward.
1:9Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the Son.
1:10If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting:
1:11for he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works.
1:12Having many things to write unto you, I would not write them with paper and ink: but I hope to come unto you, and to speak face to face, that your joy may be made full.
1:13The children of thine elect sister salute thee.
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