The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (171 page)

Remarkably, in this passage Peter's primary focus is not that Jesus died
on
the cross for the sins of believers but
on the way
Jesus suffered, that is, as an example in suffering.
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In his submission to the will of God in suffering, he provided a powerful pattern for believers who were enjoined by Peter to walk in Jesus’ steps in this regard (2:21). This is a good example of how NT theology in general, and Peter's theology in particular, was not given in the abstract but spoken into a specific context that was designed to be pastorally relevant for the recipients of a given piece of instruction.

Christ's Proclamation to the Spirits in Prison (1 Pet 3:19—22)
Peter contributes to the theology of the NT a rather curious item, namely, Christ's descent into Hades (3:18—22). This passage is unique in the NT; it is unclear what Peter's source was for this piece of information. As mentioned above, there are (at least) four major views, with many additional variations, as to where Jesus went, when he went there, to whom he made proclamation, and so on. In order to explore the passage in its immediate context, two important observations should be made. First, it seems most likely that the sequence of events depicted in the passage follows a chronological order of presentation, that is, Peter moved from (1) Christ's crucifixion (v. 18) to his resurrection (v. 19) and to his ascension (v. 22; see further below). If so, the elaboration regarding the proclamation made to the spirits in prison in verses 19—21 falls in the interim between Christ's resurrection and his ascension. This would settle the question as to the
time
at which Jesus went to make proclamation: it was subsequent to the resurrection but prior to the ascension.

Second, what is Peter's primary purpose in including this passage in this particular letter? How is this passage relevant for his readers, and what is its inclusion designed to achieve? Most likely, the answer is that, as these believers faced ongoing suffering in their lives, Peter sought to encourage them that Jesus had already made proclamation of his victory over death, sin, and the devil to the “spirits in prison.” Satan was a defeated foe, and his minions knew it because they had been told by the risen Christ. If this was Peter's purpose, it was consistent with his effort in this letter to place Christian suffering in an
eschatological perspective. Just as Jesus was vindicated by God, so believers would be vindicated if they persisted in Christlike suffering.

This still leaves several other questions. First, to whom and where did Jesus go? Most likely, the “spirits” were demons (angelic beings are the referent of “spirits” in the vast majority of instances in Scripture) but not just any demons. They were specifically those demons who were in prison (see 2 Pet 2:4: “threw them down into Tartarus”;
tartaroo)
because they had been “disobedient…in the days of Noah” (1 Pet 3:20) prior to the flood. The probable background here is Gen 6:1—6, where it is said that prior to the flood the “sons of God” (most likely, fallen angels) went and married women and had children with them (Gen
6:4).
To procreate offspring with fallen angels was such an egregious human sin that it triggered the universal destruction of the earth by a worldwide flood, which would explain, at least to some extent, why these particular demons were the recipients of Jesus’ proclamation of his victory subsequent to his resurrection.

Second, where were those demons? According to 1 Pet 3:19, they were “in prison”; that is, they were being kept for divine judgment. Jude also stated that God “kept, with eternal chains in darkness for the judgment of the great day, angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling” (v. 6). All of this is part of the NT's teaching that Jesus’ victory on the cross had major ramifications not only on the human, but also the angelic realm. Paul explained that when Christ died on the cross, God “disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; He triumphed over them by Him” (Col 2:15). The interpretation that emerges as the best contextual understanding is that Jesus, after the resurrection, went to those demons held in confinement who had had procreated offspring with women in the days of Noah prior to the flood and proclaimed his triumph over death and the devil to them.
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2 PETER

HISTORY

Author

Today, 2 Peter is widely believed to be pseudonymous. R. Brown stated, “Indeed, the pseudonymity of II Pet is more certain than that of any other NT work.”
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Even many of those who believe Peter wrote 1 Peter have difficulty with 2 Peter.
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Unlike 1 Peter, this opinion is not entirely a recent phenomenon. While there is no record of an overt denial of the authenticity of 2 Peter in the early church, many noted the difficulties that others had with it. In modern times the letter is widely judged to be inauthentic for at least three
reasons: (1) the external evidence for Petrine authorship is very slim; (2) stylistically, the letter is very different than 1 Peter; and (3) alleged historical and doctrinal problems. Each of these will be examined in turn.

External Evidence
Of all the books in the NT, 2 Peter has the least external data concerning authorship. It is often stated that Origen's comments (c. 185—254) are the earliest extant references claiming Peter's authorship of 2 Peter. Although Origen wrote late, he was not hesitant to attribute 2 Peter to the apostle Peter, implying the letter's antiquity, and was confident enough to cite it without comment. Eusebius (c. 260—340) included the letter in his list of disputed (but not spurious) books and made clear that the majority of churches in his day accepted the book.
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Jerome (c. 345—420) both affirmed Peter's authorship and noted some contemporaneous doubts, stating that Peter “wrote two epistles which are called Catholic, the second of which, on account of its differences from the first in style, is considered by many not to be by him.”
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After Jerome's era, doubts regarding Peter's authorship of 2 Peter faded until the modern era.
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While citations
naming
Peter as the author of 2 Peter are rather late and while there were some doubts regarding its authenticity, there is good evidence that 2 Peter was widely considered authoritative, which in many cases may imply belief in Peter's authorship. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150—215) wrote a commentary on 2 Peter, and he alluded to 2 Pet 2:19 in a letter to Theodorus.
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Strong echoes of 2 Peter can be found in Irenaeus (c. 130-200)
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and Justin Martyr (c. 100-165). Moreover,
The Apocalypse of Peter (c.
110) may be dependent on 2 Peter, which would also suggest an early date for 2 Peter.
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This pushes the date back into the first century, but how early?

In 1
Clement
, written by Clement of Rome in approximately 96, there are a number of possible allusions and a conspicuous pattern of references probably indicating that Clement was familiar with 2 Peter.
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So possible allusions to 2 Peter already existed in the first century.

Thus the external evidence points to an early document, widely believed to be from Peter.
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But in the period from the second to the fourth century, many had doubts about the authenticity of 2 Peter. These doubts do not seem to have come from a work that suddenly appeared on the scene but from the stylistic differences it displayed when compared with the already accepted letter 1 Peter, especially since there were a host of forgeries claiming to be from Peter circulating at the time.
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That 2 Peter was recognized as canonical in the end surely means that it stood out from the rest.
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The external evidence is in no way incompatible with Peter's authorship.

Internal Evidence
The stylistic differences between 1 Peter and 2 Peter constituted the major problem that caused doubt regarding Peter's authorship of 2 Peter in the early church. Moreover, 1 Peter is generally considered to reflect a more sophisticated Greek style than 2 Peter.
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But these negative assessments do not take into account the different styles of Greek available at the time of writing. T. Callan showed that 2 Peter was written in a style of Greek that was acceptable to him and his readers.
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Yet this style is certainly different from 1 Peter, which was written in a more conventional style.

In spite of these stylistic differences, there are many subtle correspondences between 1 and 2 Peter in both thought and vocabulary that are difficult to account for if a pseudepigrapher wrote the letter. In 2 Pet 1:1 the author referred to “Simeon Peter”
(Sumeōn Petros)
, a phrase that occurs elsewhere in the NT only in Acts 15:14 (there on the lips of James). Rather than constituting an attempt to imitate 1 Pet 1:1, a self-reference by Peter is more likely.
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The salutation in 2 Pet 1:2, “May grace and peace be multiplied to you,” is an exact parallel of 1 Pet 1:2. The rare word “goodness” is used with reference to God in both 1 Pet 2:9 and 2 Pet 1:2. The combination of the words “without spot or blemish” is found in the NT only in 1 Pet 1:19 and 2 Pet 3:14.
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Since it is unlikely that these subtle coincidences in language are the result of conscious imitation, these parallels provide significant evidence to suggest the authenticity
and Petrine authorship of 2 Peter. As Kruger stated, “[T]o believe that an author pretending to be Peter would be able to weave such an intricate and subtle literary web is surely gratuitous.”
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The difference in style may still be attributed to an amanuensis (Jerome's thesis). This was such a common occurrence that to dismiss it cavalierly is unwarranted. It is also possible that Peter, who stopped being a fisherman some 30 years prior to writing 2 Peter, could have learned the Asiatic literary style in order to be able to communicate effectively with his readers.
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The third and final major argument against the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter is that the situation of the letter is later than the life of Peter. In the past some believed that Gnosticism was prevalent at the time 2 Peter was written, thus negating the possibility that Peter wrote the letter.
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But this opinion has been thoroughly refuted.
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There is no evidence that the false teachers in 2 Peter held to the characteristic gnostic dualism or that their libertinism was based on such a dualism. There is also no evidence that their eschatological skepticism resulted from a gnostic emphasis on realized eschatology. Moreover, 2 Peter provides no hint of controversy regarding the bodily resurrection, which proved unacceptable to gnostics. Conversely, the question of the delay of Christ's return, a major topic in 2 Peter, was not at issue in second-century Gnosticism. Thus nothing of what is known regarding the opponents of 2 Peter requires a date past the lifetime of Peter.

Along these same lines, the argument is often made that the reference to the letters of Paul in 3:15—16 acknowledges a recognized corpus of letters, which would not have been in existence by the time of Peter's death. But the phrase “in all his letters” (3:16) does not necessarily indicate a full corpus; it only has to refer to a few letters known to Peter at the time. To the contrary, the statement in 3:16—17 is inexplicable for a pseudepigrapher. Peter called Paul a “dear brother,” which is perfectly natural for an apostle but not the language of the second century. Moreover, it is inexplicable that a pseudepigrapher would ever attribute slowness to comprehend to Peter as 2 Pet 3:16 does: “In which there are some matters that are hard to understand” (3:16). Thus the passage does not point to a time after Peter's death.
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It is also often stated that 3:4 (“For ever since the fathers fell asleep”) is a reference to the death of the original disciples of Jesus.
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But the reference is most likely to old covenant believers. In fact, the delay of the Second Coming was not so much a problem for the church in the second century as it was in the days of the apostles. That the problem is mentioned here is further proof of an apostolic milieu.
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The most common objection to Peter's authorship is the use of Jude in 2 Peter 2. The majority view is that Peter used Jude as a source and that Jude was written early in the Christian era.
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So there was certainly adequate time for Jude to have been written and for Peter to use it during the apostle's lifetime. But some consider it unthinkable that Peter, an apostle, would draw on the work of a nonapostle, though it is less clear that Peter himself would have viewed matters this way (e.g., in 1 Pet 5:1, he humbly called himself “a fellow elder”). Conversely, if 2 Peter was not from Peter, how does one explain a forger who was unwilling to draw on 1 Peter (though he was surely aware of the letter; see 2 Pet 3:1) while drawing heavily on Jude?
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None of these arguments are decisively in favor of pseudepigraphy. In fact, several considerations make it unlikely that a forger along the lines of the heretical pseudepigraphical literature of the second century produced 2 Peter. But is there a
via media
(a middle road) between affirming Peter's authorship and attributing the authorship of 2 Peter to an unknown pseudepigrapher? R. Bauckham posited that 2 Peter should be dated late in the first century as written by an acquaintance of Peter who wrote the apostle's “last testament.” He argued that the letter represents a form of testamentary literature, intended for a specific audience (thus a real letter). He also believed that the testamentary genre and date are “entirely conclusive against Petrine authorship.”
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Taking up the name of Peter is “not a fraudulent means of claiming apostolic authority but embodies a claim to be a faithful mediator of the apostolic message.”
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Thus there is no attempt to deceive, for the name is simply a convention of the genre, a “transparent fiction”
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that Greek Christians in subsequent centuries failed to recognize. If so, those holding to Peter's authorship of 2 Peter in previous centuries as well as today would fall in the same category, for they read a document that exhibits an ancient cultural practice while being unaware of that practice.
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