Loading...In this “nutshell” series that summarizes each book of the New Testament in canonical order, we now come to the second letter that claims to be from the pen of Jesus’s disciple Peter. Here is my one-sentence, fifty-word description of the book.
2 Peter is a short letter written in the name of Peter to warn readers to avoid false Christian teachers who endorse immoral lifestyles, so as to avoid severe condemnation on the day of judgment that is coming soon, even though some “scoffers” have denied it is coming at all.
Now I can expand on the major emphases and themes of the book before turning, in the next post, to who actually wrote it, when, and why.
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Is it unfair or accurate to call the authors of the Pauline letters or other letters in the New Testament as early Christian enforcers? it seems to me they were written often in rage at early Christians who, in their opinion, got too far away from, what was then, accepted orthodox Christianity.
There’s a sense, if only apparent, in which Pauline Christianity offered an easy path to salvation. All you needed was faith. Did that play a significant role in attracting converts and growing Christianity in the first two or three centuries? I don’t recall you discussing that in The Triumph of Christianity.
Second Peter has some similar – though not identical – ideas as the Book of Revelation. Millennium/ judgment fire/ new creation. Do you detect any kind of relationship between the two texts?
No, I’d say they are massively different in many ways (among these are the fact that Revelation repeatedly emphasizes the end is coming right away, and 2 Peter is dealing with the fact tht it wasn’t). But you’re right, they both do embody a Christian apocalyptic perspective.
Every time I read your articles I feel like I’m in class, thank you.
You make this statement: “Moreover, he argues, God has put off the end to give people a chance to repent (2 Peter 3:5).” Doesn’t the author’s statement invoke a perpetual moving of the Parousia goalposts?
Hello Bart,
A couple sentences here I couldn’t parse. If I’m just not understanding, please enlighten me! Thanks
“And the time is coming soon (2 Peter 3:1-7) – even thought are “scoffers” (another unusual word, found only here in the new Testament) who deny that it is now “the last days.” ”
Here I’m thinking “thought” should be “though there are”
“He took, in other words, agrees that people who believe they have been saved by Christ, in fact may be utterly annihilated.”
I’m unsure what the first part of this sentence means. Can you help? Thanks!
Yes, “thought” is a scribal corruptoin of the original text, for “though there”; and “took is a scribal addition to the text.
What do the “end” and “the day of judgement” really mean?
Could they come to different people at different times?
Is the 2nd Coming like the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven within us?
I guess the next question is: Can a person go so far off the deep end that they can’t repent or re-repent and there’s no way back “in”? – – Therefore, don’t muck around too much because you/we/I don’t know when the “end” is going to come or come for you/I/each one of us.
Even at the very end of Revelation, the Earth is still here. There’s also the inside and the outside of the New Jerusalem, which is a really, really large place, almost as big as the United States.
I get “the end of the world as we know it” – That is the end of the worldly world or the end of doing things in negative and harmful ways. – – I don’t get the end of the actual planet Earth. – – – Revelation also says that God will destroy those who destroy the Earth. – – – Does this mean “destroy” their ways of thinking and ways of doing things? Or does it mean something else?
In every case we have to determine what terms like these mean in their specific contexts as used by specific people. Not even the book of Revelation describes the obliteration of planet earth, but a new version of it.
The verses in Revelation are in the part about the Seventh Trumpet:
Revelation 11-18 “The time has come for judging. . . . . and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”
I’ve looked this up on BibleHub, which gives us something like 20 different English translations from different English Bibles. All but one of them translates this verse this way.
Why is it that Biblicans/fundamentalists tend to ignore this verse and act like they can do anything they want to the earth and the environment? Why do they act like they are entitled to do anything they want to the earth? Why don’t they read the entire bible, including this part, if they are such biblicans?
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Does God “destroy” these people by “destroying” their way of thinking, their mindsets, and their way of doing things? Or does God just outright flat-out destroy them, like they are going to hell or something? Or does E do both, depending on how flipped out awful they are?
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Sorry about the bit of a rant, I get a good bit angry about some of these things. I’m hoping that some of the content is still good, even if there is a bit of a rant included in it.
Turns out that the “scoffers” at the time this book was written were right, and the author wrong. I wonder if Christians who think the second coming is any minute now will ever lose faith in the timing the New Testament set.
Many do!
In a previous comment you said:
“In every case we have to determine what terms like these mean in their specific contexts as used by specific people. Not even the book of Revelation describes the obliteration of planet earth, but a new version of it.”
This makes me think of writing up a paper on a balance between the ideas of communism and capitalism, which I’ll never get to, or something like that.
There’s also a balance between a spiritual/psychologically positive way of understanding things, in and including things in the bible, and just going along with what it says, literally, with our common understanding of what the words literally mean in today’s modern English.
Do we go with our common sense/spiritual-psychologically positive sense of what things mean, and of what is right and wrong,… or do we just go along with what the bible says, whether it makes no sense to us or not?
For those of us who believe in God, isn’t it God who gives us this spiritual/psychologically positive sense of understanding things?
For those who don’t believe in God, don’t they still have this psychological-possitive way of understanding and interpreting things?
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Maybe I can put this into better words later. This is the best I can do for now.
Again, I’d say those are theological / religious questions, and it would depend on which believer you ask.
Yeah, but doesn’t the bible itself say that God gives us our understanding of things? That E writes Es ways on our hearts and minds, and other things like that?
So are people supposed to go with and listen to what God has written on our hearts and minds, or just go along with what the bible says, especially when it is flat-out different from what really seems to be a true and truly positive understanding of things in our hearts and minds? That is, according to the bible?
You do seem to be interested in what the bible actually says, even if you don’t focus as much on the theological points of view contained in it.
Yes, the New Testament is interested in theology.