Introduction to 2 Peter

Title and authorship

The letter names its author twice over — Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ 2 Peter 1:1 — and then does something no other letter does: it stakes its authority on two specific memories.

The first is the transfiguration. We were eyewitnesses of his majesty, and we heard the voice out of heaven on the holy mountain 2 Peter 1:16–18. Peter, James and John were the three who were there Matthew 17:1–5. The second is a private word about his own death: the putting off of my tent comes swiftly, even as our Lord made clear to me 2 Peter 1:14 — which is what the risen Christ had told him beside the lake, signifying by what death he would glorify God John 21:18–19.

The writer also refers to an earlier letter to the same readers 2 Peter 3:1 and speaks of Paul as a beloved brother whose letters he knows as a body 2 Peter 3:15–16. A letter staking itself on named memories is claiming to be remembered, and it is taken at its word.

Date

The letter dates itself late in the writer's life and says so plainly: he expects to put off his tent soon and is writing so the readers will remember these things after his departure 2 Peter 1:14–15. It is a farewell document, and its urgency is a dying man's.

A second marker points the same way. Paul's letters are spoken of as a known collection, already being misread and already grouped with the other Scriptures 2 Peter 3:16 — which takes time to happen. Both markers place the letter in the mid-sixties of the first century. Scripture supplies no year.

Backgrounds

Two pressures shape the letter, and they turn out to be one. False teachers had come in, and the letter describes them as insiders — secretly bringing in destructive teaching, feasting alongside the congregation 2 Peter 2:1 2 Peter 2:13, and promising liberty while enslaved themselves 2 Peter 2:19.

The second pressure is the argument they used. Mockers ask where the promise of his coming is, since the fathers have died and everything continues as it always has 2 Peter 3:4. It is an argument from the ordinary, and it had force: a generation had passed and nothing had visibly changed.

Much of chapter 2 walks the same ground as the letter of Jude, in the same order and with much of the same evidence. Which of the two came first Scripture does not say, and the treatment here does not depend on it. One difference is observable and useful: Jude writes of teachers who have already arrived, while Peter mostly writes of teachers who will come.

Theology and purpose

The letter's answer to bad teaching is not mainly refutation. It is knowledge — epignōsis, full or recognized knowledge, which stands at the head of the letter and again at every hinge 2 Peter 1:2 2 Peter 1:3 2 Peter 1:8 2 Peter 2:20. Grace is multiplied in it, everything needed for life and godliness comes through it, and the tragedy of chapter 2 is people who escaped the world's defilement by it and went back.

On where such knowledge comes from, the letter is more explicit than anything else in Scripture. The prophetic word is more sure than even the voice heard on the mountain; no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the will of man — holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit 2 Peter 1:19–21. The Greek behind moved is the verb used of a ship borne along by the wind. The men are not bypassed and not the source.

The letter's other great subject is time. To the mocker, delay disproves the promise; the answer given is that delay is patience, not slowness, and that God is unwilling for any to perish 2 Peter 3:9. The day will come as a thief; the elements will dissolve in fire; and what follows is not annihilation but replacement — new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells 2 Peter 3:13, the thing Isaiah promised Isaiah 65:17 and Revelation shows arriving Revelation 21:1.

Additional notes

Note — "no private interpretation." The clause at 2 Peter 1:20 has been read two ways: as a rule about how readers may interpret Scripture, or as a statement about how Scripture came to exist. The next verse settles it, and the connective is what settles it.

Verse 21 begins with for, which makes it the reason for verse 20 rather than a new thought — and what it gives is an account of origin: no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried by the Holy Spirit. That is an answer to the question where did this come from, not who may explain it. So the clause means that the prophecy was not the prophet's own unravelling of things, and the argument runs: the writers did not originate it, therefore what they wrote is more sure than any experience, therefore heed it as a lamp.

The reading also fits the letter's purpose. Peter is arguing that the coming is certain against people who say it is not; an appeal to the reader's own interpretive liberty would undercut him, while an appeal to the word's origin is exactly the ground he needs.

Outline

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