Was Cerinthus a Johannine Theologian?

Abstract

This paper critically engages the reconstructions of Cerinthus as an early interpreter of the Fourth Gospel put forward by Simone Pétrement, April D. DeConick and M. David Litwa. I challenge the arguments that Cerinthus’s demiurgical theology and separationist Christology was influenced by the content of the Fourth Gospel and that the Johannine Epistles and the Epistula Apostolorum were written to counter Cerinthus’s interpretations of the Fourth Gospel. Instead of construing the tradition about the confrontation between John, “the Lord’s disciple,” and Cerinthus in a public bathhouse in Ephesus that Irenaeus of Lyon inherited from Polycarp of Smyrna in reference to a battle over the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, I argue that Irenaeus misidentified the John in Polycarp’s story as an apostle and the author of the Fourth Gospel. Finally, the accusation that Cerinthus forged the Fourth Gospel that appears in Epiphanius of Salamis’s Panarion and Dionysius bar Salibi’s Commentary on the Apocalypse probably reflects a misinterpretation of an earlier argument put forward by Gaius of Rome. The data thus does not support the thesis that the theology of the Fourth Gospel was developed under the influence of or in opposition to Cerinthus’s teachings.