ViaCrucis
Confessional Lutheran
- Oct 2, 2011
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This is a misunderstanding, and misapplication, of what St. John is saying in his epistle.
Here's some fuller context:
"Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you have all knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, whoever denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and the Father. And this is the promise that He made to us--eternal life.
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as His anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie--just as it has taught you, abide in Him."
St. John is talking about false teachers, whom he names as antichrists. These false teachers did not remain in the apostolic faith, but left it, and have now become rogue, false teachers, espousing false doctrine that denies that Jesus is the Christ, denying the Father and the Son. These antichrists--these false teachers--are now trying to win converts over to their side, but John wants his audience to know that they already have the truth, what they were taught in the beginning is the truth, and it is an anointing that keeps them and holds them safe--that they continue to abide in Christ. They have no need to listen to these false teachers, they already have the teaching they need, which they have heard from the beginning--the apostolic teaching they have heard, believed, and continue to abide in is their refuge against false teaching which seeks to tear them away from their hope in Jesus.
John tells us, later, more about what these antichrists, these false teachers, are saying. Telling us what is meant by denying that Jesus is the Christ, denying the Father and the Son.
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. But this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already." - 1 John 4:1-3
John is talking about a specific group of false teachers who are espousing a particular set of false doctrines. These false teachers are some sort of proto-Gnostics, espousing some form of Docetism and Cerinthianism.
Docetism was an ancient heresy that said that Jesus only seemed (Greek, dokeo) to be human, but wasn't actually human and didn't have flesh. Docetists taught that Jesus was purely divine and purely spiritual, a kind of divine apparition. One of the most famous Docetic texts, the Acts of John, presents Jesus as able to change shape and form at will, sometimes appearing as a normal adult man and other times as a small child; in the most famous passage from the text it says that Jesus was walking on the sand and left no footprints--because this Jesus had no real physical form. This is why John emphasizes Jesus coming in the flesh.
Cerinthianism was an ancient, and somewhat related heresy, named after its chief proponent Cerinthus. Cerinthus taught that Jesus wasn't the Christ, instead "the Christ" in Cerinthus' thinking was a spiritual being or entity that condescended and entered into the human person of Jesus at Jesus' baptism. At this point Jesus' own personality was over-ruled and transformed, and Christ spoke through Jesus, Jesus' body was merely a vehicle or vessel through which Christ spoke. When Jesus was arrested and crucified, the Christ departed Jesus' body, leaving Jesus confused and afraid, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" means something VERY different in Cerinthus' beliefs. In this way John emphasizes that Jesus IS the Christ.
Jesus is the Christ and He came in the flesh. To say otherwise is to reject Jesus, to reject the Son; and to reject the Son then is to deny the Father and the Son. It is a rejection of God, a rejection of Jesus, a total rejection of the truth. It is antichrist. Which is precisely what St. John calls it.
This has nothing to do with people who fall away from the Christian faith, people who, through various reasons, end up losing faith or throwing their faith away. This is very specifically about false teachers espousing a peculiar and very troubling set of heresies.
These proto-Gnostic beliefs would, in time, become the scaffolding onto which later Gnostic and near-Gnostic teachers and heretics and heretical movements would be built from. Marcion of Sinope would come later, adding another scaffolding: The claim that YHWH was a false god and that Jesus introduced a brand new god called "Father" that is entirely different from the Old Testament God. All of this could come together to give disparate Gnostic groups scaffolding to say things like that the creator of the physical universe was a foolish, or even evil, false ignorant being and the angels are evil archons--rulers--who keep the souls of men imprisoned in bodies of flesh and enslaved to ignorance--and only the truly enlightened can attain true knowledge and become free and return to the pleroma of light, the realm of pure spirit of the impersonal undifferentiated "Father" (envisioned as a quasi-impersonal cosmic monadic force). For the soul must ascend out of matter and return to pure light and spirit, claimed certain Gnostic teachers. Thus Jesus wasn't the Messianic King promised by YHWH through the Prophets to bring redemption to the world, but a cosmic teacher of gnosis whose secrets could aid the soul and bring "salvation" (rescue from physical matter) through escape from ignorance and the material world.
We are seeing the earliest inklings of some of the most pernicious heresies that the devil would attack the Christian Church with from within which Christianity has ever seen.
-CryptoLutheran
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