Preface This commentary has been fifteen years in the thinking and four years in the writing. I became interested in the letters of John as a graduate student in the late 1970s at Duke University, under the mentorship of D. Moody Smith. His insightful exposition of the Johannine literature and his interest in their historical and cultural setting stimulated my dissertation research into the unusually antithetical language of the epistles of John. The social science categories of social conflict and