Thursday, October 13, 2022

Simon S. Lee on 2 Peter 1:4 in Light of the Transfiguration

  

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)