Texts in Conversation
In Diognetus, God sends his Son as one who loves and not as one who judges, echoing the language of John 3, where God does not send his Son into the world to condemn it but to save it.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
John 3:17
New Testament
16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.
Epistle to Diognetus 7:5
Early Christian
3 Was He sent, do you think, as any man might suppose, to establish a sovereignty, to inspire fear and terror? 4 Not so. But in gentleness [and] meekness has He sent Him, as a king might send his son who is a king. He sent Him, as sending God; He sent Him, as [a man] to men; He sent Him, as Savior, as using persuasion, not force: for force is no attribute of God. 5 He sent Him, as summoning, not as persecuting; He sent Him, as loving, not as judging. 6 For He will send Him in judgment, and who shall endure His presence? ...
Date: 150-250 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... The author of Ad Diognetum speaks of God sending his Son, and ‘when he sent him, he did so as one loving, not judging (ἔπεμψεν ὡς ἀγαπῶν, οὐ κρίνων)’ (7. 5), and later says, ‘For God loved (ἠγάπησε) men . . . to them he sent his one and only Son (πρὸς οὓς ἀπέστειλε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ)’ (10. 2). The conception and the language seem to be indebted to John 3: 16–17, ‘For God so loved (ἠγάπησεν) the world that he gave his only Son (τὸν υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ) . . . For God sent (ἀπέστειλεν) the Son into the world, not to condemn (οὐ . . . ἵνα κρίνῃ) the world, but that the world might be saved through him’ (cf. John 12: 47; 1 John 4: 9). ...”
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