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New teachers have been preaching an alien type of knowledge (gnosis); they are enthusiasts for a profound spiritual knowledge that has no need of faith in Jesus or of his Gospel of love.
A community—the “chosen Lady and . . . her children,” as it is called here—is exposed to the danger of losing what is the very heart of the faith and of Christian life. A “presbyter” (or elder) intervenes, whose authority is so great that the community must accept it, for he is a witness from the earliest time, a witness of Christ.
This person is certainly the one whose voice resounds in the fourth Gospel and in the First Letter of John.
This Second Letter is even older than the preceding one; the threat to the Churches has hardly shown its face; the response to it is as yet only sketched, but in a lively and direct way. The First Letter, on the other hand, will go more deeply into the threat and give a much fuller reply. We must refer to that Letter in order to understand the concern in the present document, which is from the same period (toward the end of the first century) and addressed to a Church of Asia Minor.
The Second Letter of John may be divided as follows:
Salutation (1-3)
The Commandment of Love (4-6)
Warning against False Teachers (7-11)
Conclusion (12-13)