THE EPISTLES IN THE CHURCH

While modern study tends to focus on the message of the Epistles in their original setting, their place within the New Testament canon both reflects and in the past has prompted a more general or ‘catholic’ understanding. All three Epistles are included among the seven ‘catholic’ Epistles (with 1 and 2 Peter, James and Jude), which were deemed to have a general or universal reference for the church compared with the letters of Paul, addressed as they were to specific situations and issues. The epithet ‘catholic’ was applied to 1 John as early as the middle of the third century and perhaps earlier still, and may only then have been extended to the other six. Certainly 1 John was readily accepted by the wider church; even in the East, where there was considerably more disagreement about the catholic Epistles, 1 John together with 1 Peter seems to have been widely acknowledged. By contrast 2 and 3 John took much longer to achieve a secure place in the canon; few of the early Christian writers quote or refer to them, and some explicitly exclude them; their authorship by the ‘Elder’ continued to provoke debate and some found their specific address, particularly that of 2 John to a woman, inappropriate for ‘catholic’ Epistles! Inevitably their brevity and 3 John's lack of doctrinal content contributed little to their defence, and so finally it must have been their antiquity, and their association with the First Epistle and thus with the Gospel which offered support to their supposed authorship by the apostle John and ensured their place within the New Testament.