In
the theological scheme of the author, the coming Parousia, the Day of the Lord,
is the time when the New Heavens and Earth come into existence on a
cosmological level. On the ecclesiological level, already in the present the
individual believer begins to experience the Parousia or the New heavens and
Earth by becoming a participant of the divine nature. What does it mean to
become participants of the divine nature in 2 Peter? What is the divine nature
like? How is the concept of becoming participants of the divine nature related to
the Transfiguration of Jesus?
In
3:11-12, the author relates his eschatological expectation of the New Heavens
and Earth to the present lifestyle of believers:
“Since
all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought
you have to be in holy conduct and godliness (εν αγιας αναστροφαις και ευσεβειαις), waiting for and hastening the coming of
the Day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved,
and the elements will melt with fire?” (italics are mine).
In
the following verse , 2 Peter indicates that the major moral principle of the
New Heavens and Earth is the righteousness, which the author already
claimed to be a part of the divine attribute of God and Jesus in 1:1. It is
striking that in 1:3-11, all these terms of holy conduct, godliness and righteousness
appear in Peter’s teaching of the new lifestyle to those who posses the knowledge
of Jesus. In this passage, the author explains the believers’ new life in
three-fold form along the axis of time. Their new existence started in the past
with the acquisition of the knowledge of Christ as Savior and Lord (vv. 3-4).
In the present, they are encouraged to acquire new moral virtues as a part of
their transformation, including godliness, which is not only Jesus’
divine attribute, but also what the believers should strive to acquire (vv. 3,
5-10). Their new existence is completed in the future when the eschatological
promises are accomplished and they enter into the eternal kingdom (v. 11).
Jesus’
divine nature is expressed through the cluster of these key words: righteousness,
divine power, glory, godliness, and majesty (1:1, 3; 2:16-17). In 2
Peter, Jesus’ divine nature not only enables the believers to experience a new
existence in life, but also it becomes the very goal of their new
lifestyle, which finds its expression in various moral virtues (1:5-10).
Eventually, their ethical struggle to acquire the divine nature in the present
will result in their future entry into the eternal kingdom (1:11) and their
experience of immortality (1:4). In its description of the sharing of the divine
nature, 2 Peter is close to the Stoic ideas. Both envision this sharing
happening partly through a moral change and partly through a promised new life
after death; and for both, the knowledge of the divine plays a key role.
However, 2 Peter differs from the Stoics in presenting Jesus the Lord as the
source of knowledge rather than reason, which permeates the cosmos as a wise
god for the Stoics.
The
last question to answer is: how is this discussion of the believers’ participating
in the divine nature in their new lifestyle related to the Transfiguration of
Jesus? According to the author of 2 Peter, the believers, who have no access to
the historical Jesus, are enabled to live this kind of lifestyle only through
the knowledge of him as the Lord and his divine power (1:3, 10). His divine
power has given them “everything needed for life and godliness” after having
called them, and is further expressed through the concepts of his glory and godliness
(v. 3). According to 2 Peter, it was at the Transfiguration that the divine nature
of Jesus was revealed historically to “we” (1:16). When the believers
accept this knowledge about the Transfiguration of Jesus as the proof for the
promise of Parousia, which Peter verifies as its eyewitness, the divine nature,
of Jesus becomes operative as the divine power within the believers’ life. In
this way, the key concepts of the promise and the divine nature of Jesus
function to help the author correlate with the ideas of the Transfiguration,
the Parousia, the believers’ own transformation and their entry into the
eternal kingdom. They appear as different aspects of the entire event of Jesu’s
salvation program. James M. Starr well summarizes this kind of sophisticated theological
thinking of 2 Peter as follows:
Briefly,
the initial knowledge of Christ in his capacity as sovereign and rescuer
inaugurates the Christ believer on a journey intended to give him safe passage
through the coming eschatological judgment into Christ’s eternal kingdom.
The Christ believer’s well-being is dependent on his sharing in divine
nature, seen at present in the taking on of moral virtues (Christ’s righteousness
and virtue) and seen ultimately in the rescue from corruption and the
world's destruction (Christ’s glory and eternity). Progress in taking
on Christ’s nature is dependent throughout 2 Peter on the reality of the knowledge
of Christ, so that the Christian’s theology (i.e. who they know God in
Christ to be) is finally inseparable from his ethics (i.e. who Christ has
called them to be). (italics mine) (Starr, Sharers in Divine Nature: 2 Peter
1:4 in Its Hellenistic Context, 49)
Concluding
this part of the discussion, I believe that this theological thinking of 2
Peter is almost equivalent to both the Markan discipleship of following Jesus
in his suffering, death and glorification (Mk 8:27-9:13) and Paul’s
understanding of the believers’ continuous transformation into the image of
Christ (2 Cor 3:18-4:5). Although each author has different emphases for
different needs, they all show similar theological framework. (Simon S. Lee, Jesus’
Transfiguration and the Believers’ Transformation [Wissenschaftliche
Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe 265; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009], 141-43)
