Abstract:
A group of people within the Johannine community (2:18) contributed towards destroying the fellowship of this community. Because 1 and 2 John do not provide direct evidence of the identities of the community’s heretically inclined members, they are defined in different ways by different scholars. A search for socio-religious circumstances which contribute towards determining the opponents and adherents of the author which created the agenda for the reconstruction of the phenomena that caused this
schism. The nature of the schism comprises “Pneumatological,” “Christological” and “ethical” issues encoded in the polemical
language of slogans, dialectic discourse, confessions and denials. The schism in 1 John proves to be a matter of different interpretations of a shared tradition.
