Peter II

Click here for the previous book, Peter I.

CHAPTER 1

I’m really getting sick of these letters.  I guess I should look at the bright side – I’ve done a much better job plowing through this part than last time I read the Bible.  In 1998, I did a good job going through the gospels and Acts of the Apostles – and then read all the rest of it in one day.  I could read so much because I retained virtually nothing (and utterly nothing aside from Revelations).  I read over, rather than reading.

That’s starting to happen here again.  Looks, these letters are too short to make any really impressive theological points.  And what points they make usually just sound like echoes of what came in the earlier, longer (and better) Bible letters.  Oh, and most of these later letters (all of them?) weren’t read by their purported authors.  Anyway you slice it, I have trouble caring.

Anyhow, this guy really tries to sell us on the fact hat he’s Peter, which is different from the first letters.  He even claims to have heard God’s voice cry out, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”  Wait – didn’t that happen when Jesus was baptized, which would’ve been before meeting Peter?  Eh, maybe God said it again when they had the big meeting with Moses and Elijah. 

CHAPTER 2

Clearly, this guy is familiar with the more famous stories from Genesis, as he refers to several of them.  He also denounces false teachers – repeatedly.

Another line I never knew came from the Bible: “The dog returns to its own vomit.”  You got to admit, it doesn’t sound like the Bible.  It makes sense, but sounds more like something Don Rickles would say than St. Peter. 

CHAPTER 3

OK, we actually get a really important theological point in this chapter – one that saves a lot of the earlier points that otherwise wouldn’t work and allows them to work.  This chapter solves a central theological dilemma that allows the church to survive some of the most odd sounding statements that have littered the New Testament so far.

Many times the Christians have told us that the end of times is near.   Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  Paul said that this world is already passing away.  Their words indicated that we should expect the Second Coming any day now.  Surely, by the year 2014 AD the old world would be dead and gone.

Obviously, this world is still here.  But you have the most important early figures in the church – including Jesus Christ himself – saying things that indicate the opposite.  So how do you explain them?  How do you square that circle?  Surely, you don’t want to say that the Son of God was fallible. 

No, you answer all of this with Peter II: 3:8: “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day.” 

You declare that God works on Holy Time, and not Daylight Savings Judean Time.  It is a cop out – but a magnificent one.  What – are you going to say that God can’t have a concept of time beyond ours?  Of course he can – he’s God!  But, at the very least, it means you can deduct a few points from Christ’s score for less than ideal communication skills when he was around.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

No, it’s not much of a letter.  But I do get a kick out of the Bible’s greatest cop out of them all.

Click here for the next book, John I.