Abstract

The criterion of 1 John for preferring John’s community over the secessionists is that the former love one another: John’s heart does not accuse him. Expressions in 1 John and Brown’s commentary suggest that knowledge by affective connaturality and recent neuroscience furnish exegetical access to this text. John’s appeal to the accusing heart is to social praxis as access to doxa. John’s community can know they love and are God’s children only intersubjectively, in the social. John’s heart should accuse him. Were his heart changed, love for the secessionists would not be burdensome. John’s community became a sect because their love never became love for their enemies.