Below are an abstract and the outline of an essay that you can download at this link.
Abstract
This essay challenges the ecclesial reasoning that permits promotion of teachers who deny the atonement provided they confess the Incarnation, a position advanced through a narrow reading of 2 John 7–11. The argument under scrutiny holds that, because John wrote to address Cerinthian Gnosticism—a heresy centered on the Incarnation—the passage’s prohibitions do not extend to teachers who err on the atonement. Two foundational claims of this syllogism are examined and refuted.
First, the essay demonstrates that Cerinthian Gnosticism was inseparably an atonement problem as well as an Incarnation problem. Drawing on patristic sources including Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome, and on modern historians of doctrine including Jaroslav Pelikan, J. N. D. Kelly, and Francis Pieper, the essay shows that the Cerinthian separation of the divine Christ from the suffering human Jesus necessarily evacuated the crucifixion of substitutionary, atoning power. Thus, the Cerinthian error was inherently both Christological and soteriological. No orthodox interpreter, ancient or modern, has treated the Cerinthian error as confined to Christological metaphysics while leaving soteriology intact.
Second, the essay argues that 2 John’s scope exceeds both Cerinthianism specifically and the Incarnation narrowly construed. Utilizing Bruce Schuchard’s Concordia Commentary on 1–3 John as a primary exegetical guide, the essay establishes that 2 John functions as a cover letter to 1 John, and that together John’s letters address a broad secessionist (“gone out from us”) movement rooted in the Greco-Roman philosophical dogma of divine impassibility (the divine cannot suffer or die). Precisely because Jesus suffers and dies in the atonement, the secessionists attacked incarnation and “do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.” Thus, John’s epistles cannot be reduced to a narrow metaphysical claim about the Incarnation ignoring atonement. Hermeneutical analysis of the names “Jesus” and “Christ,” the stereotyped formula “comes in the flesh,” the mutually interpretive relationship of 1 and 2 John, and Polycarp’s early reception of the Johannine text all confirm that Incarnation and atonement are treated as a unified doctrinal whole throughout the Johannine corpus. The apostolic proclamation, the offices of prophet, priest, and king, and the pro nobis of Incarnation all tie the Incarnation to the atoning sacrifice. Denying the latter while claiming the former severs the Gospel itself and endangers justification by faith.
The essay concludes by examining the pastoral and ecclesiastical consequences John draws from this teaching, including prohibitions against welcoming or promoting such teachers, and applies these conclusions to contemporary questions of platforming, publishing, and pastoral formation. Fidelity to the doctrine of Christ requires rejecting the promotion of atonement deniers however erudite or otherwise appealing they may be.
Outline
- Introduction
- The Cerinthian Problem is an Atonement Problem
- 2 John is Far Broader than the Cerinthians and Includes the Atonement
- Consequences in the Text
- Ridicule of Narrowness
- Some Applications
