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

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 settingA 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.