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1Jn_2:22-23. The existence of the antichrists and their relationship to the Christian Church having been previously stated, there follows now the more particular definition of the antichristian lie.
τίς ἐστιν ὁ ψεύστης ;] The interrogative form, with which John addresses his readers who know the truth, is explained by the vividness of the feeling with which the apostle is writing; similarly in chap. 1Jn_5:5. He passes from the abstract ( πᾶν ψεῦδος ) directly to the concrete ( ψεύστης ). The definite article: ὁ ψεύστης (Luther incorrectly: a liar), brings out the idea in clearer distinctness: the liar κατʼ ἐξοχήν , i.e. he in whom the lie appears in concrete personality (so also Braune), identical with ὁ ἀντίχριστος , which is denied by Jachmann through mistake of John’s idea. The thought is weakened by the supposition that the apostle is speaking here comparatively (Grotius: quis potest major esse impostor?). Nor is Bengel’s interpretation satisfactory: quis est illius mendacii imposturaeque reus? with which Düsterdieck agrees, when he paraphrases: “What sort of a lie I mean, ye know very well. Who are the liars? Are they not those who deny, etc.?” The apostle certainly has the particular lie of the antichrists of his time in view, but this he regards as the one chief and fundamental lie “in which all ψεῦδος is comprised” (Lücke). The explanation of Baumgarten-Crusius is plainly quite erroneous: “what else is a false doctrine than, etc.?” nor is that of Ebrard less so, as he finds in this catechetical (!) question intended for children this meaning: “on whose side is the lie?” with which he then supplies the corresponding question: “and on whose side is the truth?”
εἰ μὴ ὁ ἀρνούμενος ] εἰ μή , often after a negation, may also stand after a question, as in this a negation is contained; comp. Luk_17:18; Rom_11:15; 1Co_2:11; 2Co_2:2; 1Jn_5:5; it corresponds to the German: “als nur” (English: “but only,” “except”), and limits the general thought to a particular one; the sense accordingly is: No other is the liar but he who, etc. According to Ebrard, εἰ μή must here only have the meaning of “than,” because the question here is, which of the two dogmatical tendencies (!) belongs to the lie; that the apostle here has in view two parties, namely, the antichrists and the believing Christians, and asks which of them is in possession of the truth, is a pure fiction, for which there is not the slightest evidence in the text. ὅτι Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἔστιν ὁ Χριστός ] On the construction of the negative idea ἀρνεῖσθαι with the following οὐκ , by which the negation is more strongly emphasized, see Kühner, II. p. 410.
The lie of the Antichrist consists in the denial that Jesus is ὁ Χριστός , i.e. in the denial of the identity of Jesus and Christ, whereby is meant, according to 1Jn_2:19 and chap. 1Jn_4:3, not the Jewish unbelief, that Jesus is not the promised Messiah, but the Gnostic heresy of the distinction between Jesus and Christ, which forms the sharpest contradiction to the apostle’s doctrine that Jesus is the λόγος σὰρξ γενόμενος . It is erroneous to find here a reference to two different kinds of heresy; on the one hand the denial of the divine, on the other the denial of the human, nature of Jesus;[171] for John speaks only of one lie.
οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀντίχριστος ] οὗτος refers back to ὁ ἀρνούμενος : the liar who denies the identity of Jesus and Christ, he is the Antichrist. It is natural to take ὁ ψεύστης and ὁ ἀντιχρ . here in general signification, and to find therein a justification for Bengel’s conception of John’s idea of Antichrist; but as the lie of the antichrists proceeds from the πνεῦμα τοῦ ἀντιχρίστου , it may be ascribed to the Antichrist himself; the individual antichrists are the mouth by which he speaks.
ὁ ἀρνούμενος τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱόν ] is not to be connected with οὗτος , so that the sense would be: this one, who denies the Father and the Son, is the Antichrist; but as a clause of more particular definition subordinate to ὁ ἀντίχριστος . “John hereby adds a new element which states the full unhappy consequence of that Antichristian lie” (Düsterdieck; similarly Braune). The apostle wants to bring out here that the denial that Jesus is ὁ Χριστός is in its very essence a denial of the Father and of the Son. He who denies the identity of Jesus and Christ, directly denies the Son, for the Son is no other than Ἰησοῦς ὁ Χριστός (neither an Aeon named Christ that did not become man, nor Jesus who is not Christ, or, according to Joh_1:14, the Logos);[172] but he who denies the Son denies also the Father, and not merely inasmuch as Son and Father are logically interchangeable ideas, but because the nature of the Father is only manifested in the Son, and all true knowledge of the Father is conditioned by the knowledge of the Son, so that the God of those who deny the Son is not the true God, but a false image of their own thoughts—an ΕἼΔΩΛΟΝ .[173]
[171] So Tertullian (de Praescript. c. 33): Joh. in ep. cos maxime antichristos vocat, qui Christum negarent in carne venisse et qui non putarent Jesum esse Filium Dei; illud Marcion, hoe Ebion vindicavit. Similarly Besser: “That Jesus was not the Christ, the Christ not Jesus. Either the Word that was from the beginning was separated from this Jesus, or the flesh was denied to the eternal Word.” Comp. Introd. sec. 3.
[172] Weiss correctly brings out the distinction between the ideas Χριστός and υἱός , when he observes that ὁ Χριστός is a historical conception to the apostle, and that it is enough for him that that proposition of the false teachers denies the Messiahship of Christ, from which all belief in Him must take its starting-point, in order to arrive at the recognition that Jesus is the Son of God, and thus in the Son to recognise the Father.
[173] That such commentators as proceed on rationalistic assumptions have not been able to interpret the thought of the apostle is quite natural. But even others have got a more or less indistinct view of it by putting, as Düsterdieck rightly says, “the ideas of John too directly into dogmatic forms (and, indeed, into those defined by the Church);” or by ignoring the realism of the apostle, and regarding what he considered in an objectively real way as a mere element of the subjective consideration; or, finally, by bringing out one-sided references instead of giving the ideas the due force of their entire comprehension.