Commentary on the First Epistle of John: Socinus's Verse-by-Verse Exposition of 1 John - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

The philologically most careful and argumentatively sharpest exegetical work of the late sixteenth century.

Faustus Socinus (1539–1604), founder of Socinianism and the formative mind of the Polish Brethren, still stands unjustly at the margins of academic theology. His Commentarius in Epistolam Ioannis Apostoli Primam comprises nearly a million characters of condensed textual labour: the testimony of a mind that understood Holy Scripture not as a dogmatic reservoir but as a document to be questioned.

The commentary falls into preliminary remarks and a verse-by-verse exposition across all five chapters of the First Epistle of John. Already in the Prolegomena his characteristic approach shows itself: he puts the classical questions of introduction — authorship, addressee, subject — and answers them from the text itself rather than from received authority.

Socinus refuses to let the text be covered over by dogmatic decisions taken in advance — and thereby arrives at conclusions that challenged the teaching office of his own time. Whoever reads him meets not an artefact of a past age, but a methodological mirror that compels us to examine our own habits of reading.

This edition offers:

• the complete translation of the commentary from the Latin original
• extensive annotations with scriptural references and explanations of persons and writings
• a glossary of the technical terms of early modern exegesis
• an introductory preface placing the work in its historical and theological setting

A key text of antitrinitarian biblical interpretation and of early modern intellectual history — dedicated to those who, for the sake of truth, have asked inconvenient questions.

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