Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (72 page)

Peter, who because of unjust jealousy bore up under hardships not just once or twice, but many times; and having thus borne his witness he went to the place of glory that he deserved. Because of jealousy and strife Paul pointed the way to the prize for endurance. Seven times he bore chains; he was sent into exile and stoned; he served as a herald in both the East and the West; and he received the noble reputation for his faith.… And so he was set free from this world and transported up to the holy place, having become the greatest example of endurance. (1 Clem. 5:4–7)

In this case the “envy and jealousy” come not from inside the community, but from outside. But it is striking that in a letter stressing the homonoia of the community, the author appeals to examples of suffering, and points to just these two apostles, Peter and Paul, and no others, unified with each other especially in their suffering.

1 Peter shares with Acts and 1 Clement this concern of Christian endurance in the face of persecution. It is allegedly sent to the churches of Asia Minor, where the disharmony of the apostles was particularly well known, as evidenced in Paul’s comments about his controversy with Peter in his letter to the Galatians, sent to one of the provinces named in 1 Peter 1:1. The letter of 1 Peter, directed to suffering, at the same time shows that the apostolic band is harmonized. Much as we find in the speeches of Acts, Peter is made to sound like Paul, embracing theological views very much in accord with his apostolic companion. By inverse logic, the words of Paul are now shown to sound like the voice of Peter. There is no split in the leadership of the church, at the highest levels. Peter and Paul, later shown to be unified in their sufferings in Rome, are shown to be at harmony in a letter allegedly written from Rome. It is Peter, writing as if he were Paul, who urges the Christians to stand firm in their trials, to suffer only for the name of Christ, not for any wrongdoing. Moreover, they are to be harmonized among themselves: hence the Haustafel, which functions in much the same way as it does in the Deutero-Pauline letters, to promote unity in the body among people in various social relations to one another.

In short, 1 Peter is a book that shows Peter and Paul standing face-to-face and agreeing point-by-point. If Christians are to face an antagonistic world with a unified front, then the unity of the ultimate leaders of the church—the apostles themselves—is particularly important. To show the deeply rooted harmony of the church in the face of ongoing opposition, an unknown author wrote a book of encouragement, claiming to be Peter, but sounding like Paul. This is a forgery that ostensibly deals with suffering of the Christians and that implicitly deals with the necessary corollary, the unity of the apostolic band.
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We have already considered 2 Peter in relation to its polemic against certain eschatological views. We can now look at the book more closely for its fervent
support of the person and writings of Paul. As seen, 2 Peter has a completely different focus from 1 Peter. Here the problem addressed is not suffering caused by outsiders to the community, but false views promoted by insiders. These views concern the delay of the parousia, and the author is at great pains to emphasize that those who maintain a nonapocalyptic eschatology in the face of Jesus’ non-appearance are not just misguided but are evil to the core, and profligate to boot. Several features of the second letter tie it to the first: it too is forged in the name of Peter, and precisely as his “second” letter (3:1). The salutations of the letters are close to each other in wording; the author who was a “witness to the sufferings of Christ” in the first letter (5:1) is one of the “eyewitnesses to his majesty” (1:16) in the second. Both letters warn against carousing either with former companions (in the first letter) or in the manner of the false teachers (in the second). Both stress the teachings of the prophets. And both are written, in part, to show Peter’s support of Paul, indirectly in the first letter and far more directly and obviously in the second. Here Paul is invoked explicitly as an authority, indeed, his writings are deemed to be Scripture (3:15–16). Never did the two great apostles of the church appear more united.

The opponents attacked by the forger of the letter come from inside the Christian community.
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They are those who had once come “to the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” but who came to be “entangled” and “overpowered” by the “defilements of the world” so that their “last state has become worse for them than the first” (2:20). They once knew the “way of righteousness” but they turned back from it (2:21). The miscreants attacked in
chapter 2
are the “scoffers” of
chapter 3
, who, “following their own passions,” deny that there is yet to be an apocalyptic crisis with the reappearance of Jesus (3:3–4). Just as the secessionists from the Johannine community were labeled “anti-Christs” (1 John 2:18)—when they may well have viewed themselves as true adherents of the Christian gospel—so too these opponents are said to be “denying the Master who purchased them” (2:1).

More specifically, these opponents are Pauline Christians. They have Paul’s writings, they interpret these writings, and they evidently treat them as authoritative texts, using them to establish their own perspectives, deemed by the author as highly aberrant (3:15–16). It is worth reflecting on the fact that the forger of this letter attacks these opponents for their licentious and loose living while admitting that their views derive from an apostolic authority, even if in corrupted form. This too seems reminiscent of polemics within the Johannine community, where some members have split off from the others (1 John 2: 18–19) because of certain Christological views (Christ did not come “in the flesh”) that the author claims led to willfully sinful lifestyles (3:4–10; 4:7–12; they refuse even to love
one another). Theology and ethics were intimately linked in the minds of early Christian polemicists.

But what is there in the Pauline tradition that could possibly lead to the views attacked by the author of 2 Peter? We have already considered the “Pauline” eschatology. With respect to the ethics, is it possible that the persons attacked in 2 Peter derived these as well not from other sources, or from their naturally reprobate natures and desires, but from Pauline teaching, taken in a direction that the author of the letter opposes? More specifically, is it possible that they, like the authors of Ephesians and Titus, interpreted Paul’s teaching of justification “apart from the works of the Law” to mean that what mattered was faith, not doing “good deeds” (see Eph. 2:8–9; Tit. 3:5)? We would be hard pressed to affirm that they actually took such a view to the extreme of supporting acts of moral degeneracy, but the view could be seen as leading in that direction by the author of 2 Peter. Some such view of moral living, as we will see, is attacked by James in a thinly disguised attack on Paul, or at least on a later interpretation of Paul, presumably among Pauline Christians. Specifically we learn that the opponents of 2 Peter “promise freedom” (2:19), again, a possible reminiscence of Paul’s own teaching, of the believers’ “freedom from the Law.”

The opponents are also said to “despise authority” and to “revile the glorious ones” in 2:10. It is interesting, in this connection, to observe the opposite position evidently taken in Colossians, in its polemic against those who “worship angels” (Col. 2:18). As we will see later, the issue comes to a head with the letter of Jude, where a direct polemic against the view adopted by Colossians may be involved. In either event, as with the teachings of eschatology and ethics, the status of angelic beings may have been differently evaluated in various parts of the Pauline community.

The author of 2 Peter is principally concerned to attack the Pauline corruptions of the faith by proffering the “correct” interpretation of Paul, in the name of his fellow apostle, Peter. In particular, Peter and Paul see eye-to-eye on the crucial issues of eschatology and ethics. It is interesting to note, as well, that by implication they see eye-to-eye on the interpretation of Scripture. This is an important issue because of what we know about the historical Paul and Peter, and their falling out in Antioch precisely over the understanding of the relevance of Scripture, specifically Scripture’s kosher food laws and their implications (Gal. 2:11–14). We have no way of knowing how the historical Peter responded to Paul’s charges of hypocrisy, and there are reasons for thinking that, in the general opinion of those present, Peter got the better of the argument.
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And in particular, we have no way
of knowing whether the deep rift that so obviously troubled Paul, all those years later, was ever healed. But we can know that the issue involved the interpretation of Scripture and the question of its relevance to matters of real importance to the ongoing life of the Christian community, comprising both Jew and gentile.

Some later authors went out of their way to smooth over the differences between the two apostolic leaders, none more so than the book of Acts, as we shall see. But the efforts at palliation are at least as evident in the forged letter of Peter we are considering here. In this case Paul’s views—on all topics—are compatible with Scripture; in fact they themselves are Scripture (3:15–16). Peter is the one who has the correct interpretation of Paul’s writings, which he cherishes and regards as an ultimate authority for the life of the community. Peter and Paul are completely aligned on all matters of authority and interpretation. There is no rift here. By implication, then, even where Paul is not explicitly invoked—as in the attack on the licentious living of those who embrace “freedom” in
chapter 2
—he is implicitly on board with the polemic. This, then, is Paul fighting against Paul, the true Paul attacking the misinterpretations of Paul. And all in the name of Peter.

It would be interesting to know what the real, historical Paul—not to mention the real, historical Peter—would have to say about all this. With Peter we are handicapped, in having not a single word from his pen (since, indeed, he never used a pen). But we do have the writings of Paul, and it is worth noting that the views he stakes out in his letters are not those attacked in this one, advanced on his authority (3:15–16). There was not just a two-way split in the Pauline community, between those holding to an apocalyptic eschatology and those holding to a realized eschatology or between those living “lawlessly” and those insisting on a strict morality. As normally happens in history, things were far messier, with groups and individuals holding allegiance to Paul but advocating a variety of views, which covered the entire spectrum of options. How could that be? How could later Christians claiming Paul as an authority advocate differing—even opposing views—in his name? It should always be recalled that “authorities” may authorize certain views, but they do not necessarily dictate what those views will be.

And so, whereas Paul insisted that the end of all things was soon to happen with the reappearance of Jesus from heaven, and that he himself would be living to see it (e.g., 1 Thess. 4:13–18), other Paulinists—some in his own lifetime, but even more later—insisted that even though there was indeed to be an apocalyptic crisis with the coming of Jesus, there was a divinely ordained delay in the proceedings. That is roughly the view of 2 Thessalonians and 2 Peter, and the view of the Paulinist who produced Luke and Acts. Others of Paul’s followers continued to think there would be
something
yet to come, in some undefined moment of the future, but that there was no urgency about the matter and that this was not a central component of the Pauline message. That is the view of such works as Colossians and, especially, Ephesians. And yet other Paulinists maintained that the end had already come in some sense in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and that believers were already enjoying the full benefits of salvation in the here and now. That is the view that Ephesians may be leaning toward, but it does not come
to full expression in any of the Pauline writings that have survived from the early centuries—only in the views that are opposed as arising within Pauline communities, by Pauline believers who have left us no writings, such as the opponents of 2 Timothy and 2 Peter.

Paul himself was a lightning rod for all of these positions. Moreover, just as he was said to have advocated a “lawless” lifestyle, possibly in his own lifetime (Rom. 3:8), so too his authority was invoked by advocates of strict morality. In particular that happens here, in this letter of 2 Peter, which insists both that lawless living is contrary to Pauline teaching and that on this, and all other matters, the two great apostles stood in firm agreement.

We have already seen two of the major thematic concerns of the book of Acts in our discussion of 1 Peter: the suffering of the Christians at the hands of antagonistic outsiders and the far-flung unity of the church, seen in particular in the harmony between Paul, the ultimate hero of the account, and the Jerusalem apostles, especially Peter, who dominate the action in the first third of the narrative. The latter theme begins to appear almost immediately after Paul’s conversion in
chapter 9
. After leaving Damascus, he heads directly to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles and, with Barnabas’s assistance, becomes their close associate (Acts 9:26–29). It is in the next chapter that the law-free Gospel for the gentiles is revealed in a vision—not to Paul, but to Peter, who acts on his new knowledge and converts gentiles in the Cornelius episode. It is Peter, then, who announces to the Jerusalem apostles that gentiles have received the spirit and been “given repentance unto life” (11:18). Paul’s views are not controversial in this book. They are the views of the apostles before him, who act out their convictions of the law-free Gospel to the gentiles even before he is on the mission field, and who, most famously, endorse his own missionary activities at the climactic Jerusalem conference in
chapter 15
. Here Paul scarcely needs to defend himself, as Peter, Barnabas, and James all unite in affirming his mission to the gentiles in the most emphatic terms. The apostles of Jerusalem then send Paul back to his mission field with their blessing and enthusiastic support. Paul’s mission in this account is both divinely sanctioned and wholeheartedly endorsed by the leaders of Jerusalem.