The Departure Material In John

I've written about what I've called the departure passages in scripture and how they relate to issues like the papacy and sola scriptura. See here, for example. Acts 20, 2 Timothy, and 2 Peter have been discussed a lot, but I want to expand on John's material, which has been neglected.

Notice, upfront, that these passages are mutually reinforcing. There's a cumulative effect to them. The evidence that Paul and Peter were so focused on matters like apostolic authority and scripture, while not mentioning things like a papacy, church infallibility, and the infallibility of ecumenical councils, increases the plausibility of John's doing the same.

There's a lot of attention given to apostolic authority in his writings (in John 14-16, 1 John 1:1-3, 3 John 9-10, Revelation 21:14, etc.).

I've argued elsewhere that I think John had a sort of patriarchal role in the closing years of the first century, probably reflected in his references to himself as "the elder" (2 John 1, 3 John 1). He knew for a long time that he could be the last apostle to die, and he probably was the last one to die. So, he not only had apostolic authority, but also had that sort of patriarchal role and seems to have incorporated it into his writings.

His gospel was the last one written, and he likely wrote it with the intention of supplementing the Synoptics. It's probably not just a coincidence that the last gospel written is the one that gives so much attention to the apostles' ability to produce scripture (in John 14-16, as I've argued here). That's reminiscent of the emphasis on scripture in 2 Timothy and 2 Peter.

As the post linked in the paragraph above explains, John also put a lot of emphasis on the scriptural status of Revelation. So, Revelation reinforces the material in his gospel about the apostles' production of New Testament scripture.

It's important to keep the cumulative effect of these things in mind. John keeps pointing his audience back to apostolic authority, what the apostles had taught them, and the record being left for them in scripture. There's nothing about the infallibility of a future magisterium, infallible ecumenical councils, looking to the bishop of Rome as the center of unity or for infallible guidance, and so forth. He opens his letters with appeals to apostolic authority (1 John 1:1-3) and his patriarchal role as "the elder" (2 John 1, 3 John 1), includes lengthy material in his gospel about the apostles' ability to produce scripture, goes out of his way to emphasize the scriptural status of Revelation, and so on, but shows no concern for the sort of later systems of authority advocated by groups like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.