1 A Response to Heresy in the Early Church: the First Epistle of John by Beth Snodderly HOW DID THE VERY EARLY CHURCH DETERMINE AND DEAL WITH HERESY? Heresies have been a problem since the time of the very Early Church, even before the death of the original eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life and death. The Pauline and Johnannine Epistles were written to address false beliefs and practices. Charles Hill quotes Lightfoot as saying, “The lifetime of Polycarp [70–155 CE] was the most tumultuous period in the religious history of the world.” 1 Irenaeus (Bishop of Lyon) wrote Adversus Haereses (“Against Heresies”) around 180 C.E. Irenaeus also wrote about the following story that he heard from Polycarp, an earlier bishop of the church, who knew some of the original disciples of Jesus, showing the fear of heresy and its consequences that prevailed in the Early Church. A STORY ABOUT THE OCCASION FOR WRITING 1 JOHN Picture a person named John, reputedly the author of the Gospel 2 and a disciple of Jesus, now a man of about 80, running out of a public bath-house in Ephesus, towel flying, crying out, “Fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.” Further imagine a young boy named Polycarp (70–155 C.E.), who would later become one of the bishops of the Early Church, standing by with open mouth as this scene impresses itself on his mind. 3 The moral of this humorous story is found at the end of 1 John: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (5:21). 4 John was not the only one who felt strongly about not associating with “enemies of truth” or “idols,” in the sense of false beliefs. 5 The members of the Qumran community (interchangeably referred to here as Essenes 6 ) regularly heard a ritual as new members were sworn in: “Cursed be the man who enters this Covenant while walking 1 ? Charles E. Hill, From the Lost Teaching of Polycarp: Identifying Irenaeus’ Apostolic Presbyter and the Author of Ad Dionetum (Tubingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 1. 2 Because of the lack of agreement among scholars regarding the authorship of the Gospel and Epistles of John, in the discussion of this proposed narrative the author will be referred to as simply, “John.” 3 Irenaeus (120–202 C.E.) recorded Polycarp’s story in Against Heresies 3.3.4. 4 The author is warning his beloved children in the last verse of the book to stay away from deviants, those who represent a false way to God, summarized by the persuasive imagery of the term, “idols.” 5 ? Trebilco comments on 1 John 5:21, “The reference [to idols] is metaphorical. The metaphorical “idol” would then be a reference to a different understanding of God, and thus to a false God, and would probably be a reference to the secessionists who by their teaching have propounded what to John was an idol” (Paul Trebilco, The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 388). 6 Raymond E. Brown, “The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles,” CBQ 17 (1955): 405.