Themelios 49, 1 (April 2024)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb and Benjamin L. Gladd

Announcing the Carson Center for Theological Renewal

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Baggy Trousers: Approaching Theological Study

Dave Brunn

Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding

This article argues that much of the controversy surrounding gender in Bible translation is unnecessary. One reason is that many of the discussions about this issue have focused almost exclusively on the way nonliteral versions translate gender, giving insufficient attention to the way gender is handled in versions that identify as literal. A careful, objective examination of both kinds of versions together will show that the two sides of this discussion are not as far apart as some have supposed. While there are differences between the various versions, this article will demonstrate that the most significant distinction between the way literal and nonliteral versions handle gender in translation lies in the frequency rather than the nature of the adjustments.

Melvin L. Otey

The Ancient Pedigree of Homosexuality as the Sin of Sodom

Scholars disagree about the precise nature of the sin that provokes God’s wrath in Genesis 19. In fact, multiple transgressions are involved, including fornication, rape, and inhospitality. Christian exegetes traditionally emphasize the apparently homoerotic aspects of the Sodomites’ demand to “know” the angels inside Lot’s home. However, some modern scholars isolate the aggressors’ inhospitality to the exclusion of any potential sexual deviance and allege that the emphasis on fornication, especially homosexual intercourse, is a historically recent phenomenon. This article critiques this assertion by demonstrating that a tradition within Second Temple Judaism and the primitive church attributes sexual sins, including homosexuality, to Sodom and its neighbors.

Dan Martin

Pedagogy and Biblical Theology: Tracing the Intertextuality of the Book of Proverbs

This paper articulates a provisional thesis, namely, that we need a pedagogical category within our biblical theological frameworks, on the basis that such a category was in the New Testament authors’ minds. I begin by outlining the challenges of integrating the book of Proverbs into biblical theology to date, before highlighting the value of intertextuality as the primary inductive method for constructing biblical theology. I then demonstrate through a ‘worked example’ the mutually interpretive canonical relationship of a Proverbs text with the New Testament, providing a tentative basis for a pedagogical biblical theological category. I conclude by outlining how this thesis can be tested and developed through further research.

Adam Friend

Filial Revelation and Filial Responsibility: (Dis)obedient Sonship and The Religious Leaders in Matthew 11–16

Sonship appears in every section, at every turning point, and on the lips of every character in Matthew’s Gospel. In determining the motif’s function, the religious leaders have largely been neglected. This study analyzes Matthew’s development of the motif of sonship in Matthew 11:1–16:11, arguing that the religious leaders clarify the positive concept of sonship from their provision of its negative example. For Matthew, sonship must be actualized in obedience.

Garrett S. Craig

The Divine Identity in 1 Peter: The Father, Christ, and the Spirit in Relation

Traditionally the discipline of New Testament studies has not been welcoming to a Trinitarian understanding of God. In recent years, however, some scholars working in the discipline have argued for the positive exegetical benefits for what they have called a “Trinitarian hermeneutic.” While working within the historical-grammatical paradigm, a Trinitarian hermeneutic seeks to understand the text’s God-talk by attending to the relations between the Father, Christ, and the Spirit. By using this method, the article argues that the divine identity found in the letter of 1 Peter puts pressure on its readers to articulate an understanding of God that agrees with later Trinitarian confessions.

Christopher Osterbrock

The Spiritual Utility of Calvin’s Correspondence during the Strasbourg Years

Calvin’s letters are no mere collection of personal correspondence but served him in his lifelong spiritual formation. Of note are those letters collected during his time in Strasbourg (1538–1541). This study argues for and assesses the unique spiritual utility of Calvin’s correspondence during the Strasbourg years. The reformer is observed in these letters examining himself, seeking counsel and companionship, and recording the evolution of his philosophy of ministry, all this while shepherding his French refugee church under Martin Bucer’s mentorship. Calvin’s letters evidence a desire for theological implication through reciprocated dialogue, which pastors and laypersons alike ought to consider.

Nathan Sherman

A Change in Kind, Not Degree: Labels, Identity, and an Evaluation of “Baptistic Congregationalists”

How do we decide what to label people of centuries past when they had no clear labels for themselves? Should we describe seventeenth century Baptists as “Baptists” if that was not what they called themselves? Matthew Bingham has recently argued that instead of using the label “Particular Baptists” for the English Calvinistic Baptists of the 1640s and 50s, historians would more clearly describe their subjects as “baptistic congregationalists.” Is Bingham justified in his use of this neologism? While this article might be considered a book review – which several others have already contributed – it also contributes to the debates about wider religious labels of Early Modern England.

Obbie Tyler Todd

What Republicanism Is This? An Introduction to Christian Republicanism (1776–1865)

While the term “Christian republicanism” is known to most historians of the early republic, very few have attempted to explicate its unique theology or to identify its various religious, moral, and even racial permutations in the church. Christian republicanism was much more than just a set of political or social commitments. It was also a loose theological system. This article provides an introduction to Christian republicanism, tracing its beliefs, defining its boundaries, and chronicling its lifespan in the early United States when it flourished in the American mind.

Roger W. Fay

John Wesley and Faith at Aldersgate

The importance of justification by faith to the thinking of John Wesley (1703–1791) both during and after his Aldersgate Street experience in May 1738 has long been doubted by some Wesley scholars. This article demonstrates that the historical data surrounding Aldersgate is compelling and points to the validity of Wesley’s own interpretation of that occasion. A reprise of the historical data, coupled with an examination of some alternative interpretations by distinguished modern Wesley scholars, demonstrates the weak historical basis for interpretations that downplay justification by faith. John Wesley remains an important and instructive figure in the history of evangelical revivals.

Ryan Reed

The House Divided: An Assessment of the American Neo-Evangelicals’ Doctrine of Scripture

Carl F. H. Henry, Harold Lindsell, and Bernard Ramm represent three of the most formative voices within the neo-evangelical movement in America. Nevertheless, these three figures held to three different tones and methodologies on the doctrine of Scripture. Lindsell represents the evangelicals that saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical authenticity, as seen in his works, The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in the Balance. Though closer to the Lindsellian view, Henry saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical consistency rather than authenticity. Ramm represents evangelicals that affirmed a broad concept of inerrancy but did not see it as either the test of authenticity or consistency. This particular issue would cause early cracks in the unity of the new evangelical movement. By examining these three figures’ understanding of the doctrine of Scripture, this paper will show how the early neo-evangelical leaders struggled to decide how clearly they would identify with their fundamentalist roots.

Robert Golding

Swimming in a Sanctimonious Sea of Subjectivity: A Proposal for Christian Authenticity in a Made-Up World

There is a curious tendency in modern culture to simultaneously reject objective truth (e.g., “live your truth”) and to live as if it were real (e.g., “you must fight for the truth”). Objectivity has worked its way back into the subjectivity of postmodernism. This is not pure postmodernism, nor a return to the modernism that preceded it. This is a new phase, which I call metamodernism (a term coined elsewhere). This paper first explains metamodernism (sections 1–2). Then, it offers some suggestions for Christians to rebut metamodernism (section 3). Finally, it concludes with an anecdote to better explain the recommendation of the third section (section 4).

Luke Johnson

“Salvation Without Spin”: How the Gospel of Christ Subversively Fulfills the Prayer Wheels of Tibetan Buddhism

With present calls for inter-religious dialogue, Christianity must relate to major world religions in specific ways to distinguish its uniqueness in belief and practice. This article uses one of the five “magnetic points” of J. H. Bavinck, “I and salvation,” to demonstrate how Christianity carries out Hendrik Kraemer’s notion of “subversive fulfillment,” specifically with the prayer wheels of Tibetan Buddhism. The article first shows how Christianity confronts a trust in religious objects for salvation. Second, Christianity challenges a belief in mere mantras for spiritual help. Third, Christianity teaches that humans cannot gain merit through religious works. Instead, Christianity offers true deliverance through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Book Reviews

Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 27 (2022)

The latest issue of Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal is online, containing the below essays.

The whole issue is available for download here.

Timothy Miller

Rome, Caesar, and the Historical Setting of 1 Peter

Mark A. Snoeberger

Refining Dispensational Discourse: Reconsidering Four Common Expressions

Kyle C. Dunham

The Woman Who Is a Snare: The Identity and Nature of the Female Figure in Ecclesiastes 7:25–29

Jeff Straub

Baptists and Freemasonry: A Conflicted History

Mark A. Hassler

“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” Psalm 22 as Direct Predictive Prophecy about Jesus Christ on the Cross

Brett Williams

Augustine’s View of the Church As Revealed in His Use of Cyprian’s Contra Donatistas

Book Reviews

Juan Sanchez on 1 Peter

I don’t think I’ve blogged on this before, but it might be worth doing so: every month The Good Book Company make available digital versions of one of their books, which are almost always worth having.

This month it’s 1 Peter for You, by Juan Sanchez, available in exchange for an email address here.

Elliott Clark on Evangelism as Exiles

I wrote the following mini review for November 2019’s edition of Highlights, produced by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Elliott Clark, Evangelism as Exiles: Life on Mission as Strangers in Our Own Land (The Gospel Coalition, 2019).

Drawing on his own experience of living in a majority-Muslim country and through reflections on 1 Peter, Elliott Clark explores what evangelism looks like when we see ourselves as ‘exiles’ in the world. A proper sense of our identity is crucial to being faithful witnesses to Jesus, where evangelism involves bold proclamation, holy living, genuine respect, and loving hospitality.

Living with Purpose

This article was first published in the June 2016 edition of EG, the quarterly magazine of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

The tide has turned. Or so many now think. Christians are feeling the pinch on the exercise of freedom, the redefinition of marriage, the challenge of bioethics, the nature of family, the growth of Islam. It’s too much of a stretch to say we’re facing outright persecution, especially of a kind suffered by many around the world. But today’s culture seems more alien to Christianity than it used to be, and many of us sense the need to prepare for a period of increasing marginalisation in society.

What does following Jesus look like in such a context? How should we relate to the culture in which we find ourselves?

Possible options are fortification (hunker down and wait for Jesus to come back), domination (take the world for Jesus), or accommodation (give in and blend in). An alternative which has commended itself to many is what sociologist James Davison Hunter has called ‘faithful presence’. A biblical model for this is found in Jeremiah 29, the prophet’s letter to the Judean exiles in Babylon, in which he exhorts them not to dig in or to fight back or to give up, but to live in and work for the well-being of Babylonian society.’

Living in Exile?

It’s easy to overdo ‘exile’ language, particularly when it becomes a way of talking about the decline of society away from Christian mores. It can make us sound more beleaguered than we really are and cause us to forget the relative freedoms we still enjoy.

Still, although the time and situation are very different, the apostle Peter applies this 6th century BC exilic language to his 1st century AD Christian readers spread across northern Turkey. They are both ‘God’s elect’ and ‘exiles scattered’ (1 Peter 1:1), called to live ‘as foreigners here in reverent fear’ (1:17). This is in keeping with descriptions of disciples elsewhere as ‘not of the world’, though ‘sent... into the world’ (John 17:14-18), as those whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’ (Philippians 3:20), who, like Abraham, are ‘foreigners and strangers on earth... longing for a better country – a heavenly one’ (Hebrews 11:13-16).

As such, despite the differences between us and our biblical counterparts, the metaphor describes something of our ongoing status in relation to the world. We are, among other ways of understanding our identity, ‘resident aliens’ in whatever culture we inhabit. And so we can look back not only to Peter but also to Jeremiah for wisdom for today.

Living with Purpose

Jeremiah urges the exiles to establish themselves in Babylon. They still take their ultimate identity from Jerusalem – which remains their true home, and to which their descendants will one day return. Yet, through a combination of presence, productivity and prayer, something of that identity and hope is lived out in ‘foreign’ territory.

Purposeful presence

The very ordinariness of Jeremiah’s instructions in 29:5-6 may come as a surprise – ‘build... settle... plant... eat... marry... have sons and daughters... Increase in number’. It’s not too difficult to see echoes here of the original mandate given to humanity, the commission to cultivate his good creation (Genesis 1:28; 2:15). Here, in 6th-century Babylon is a reaffirmation of the significance of embodied, material, family, and social life, extended across generations.

How are ‘exiles’ to live? By carrying on doing what we have been called to do as those made in the image of God – to steward God’s good gifts to us, in relationship with others, in a way that represents his own gracious rule over all things.

We could still do this largely cut off from society around us, except that Jeremiah calls us to look outwards as well.

Purposeful productivity

‘Seek the peace and prosperity of the city’, Jeremiah tells God’s people (29:7), where ‘peace and prosperity’ translate the single Hebrew word shalom – the wholeness and wellbeing that is a mark of God’s blessing.

The active seeking of shalom means that our ‘faithful presence’ is not a passive compliance with the status quo. Indeed, as those who have been the recipients of amazing grace in Christ, we seek the welfare of the places we live through our everyday work – in doing business, manufacturing goods, providing services, teaching children, writing reports, designing software, mopping floors, stacking shelves, emptying bins, changing nappies – in different ways contributing to the broader welfare of society. It also involves being a neighbour to those around us – in our school, our university, our office, our canteen, our estate, our village, our town. It could involve becoming a school governor, joining a neighbourhood watch scheme, volunteering in a charity shop, getting involved in local politics.

It’s the same for Peter’s readers. Neither abdicating from the culture nor attacking the culture nor absorbing into the culture, his direction for them is ‘to live... good lives among the pagans’ (2:12) – which he then applies to society, the workplace, and the home. It’s precisely in these arenas that his readers will be seen to follow a different pattern – the pattern of Christ, no less – where neighbours and colleagues and family members will be prompted to ask why they do so, even in the face of suffering. 

Purposeful prayer

Then Jeremiah says there is something else we can all do for the city: ‘Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper’ (29:7). This is perhaps the most revolutionary action of all. They were used to praying for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6), but this was Babylon – pagan, idolatrous, God-defying Babylon! Again, here in the 6th century BC are echoes of Paul’s call to pray for those in authority (1 Timothy 2:1-2), and Jesus’ command to ‘love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5:44).

Living in Hope 

This being Babylon, there will be dangers – as the books of Daniel and Esther make all too clear. Daniel and his friends are known for their witness in the face of possible death; they bear the cost of being faithful to God. Even so, they do not retreat into a holy enclave. They remain faithful even while accepting pagan names, learning the language and literature of the Babylonians, and serving in the administration of the ‘enemy’. They serve the God of Zion, even while seeking the shalom of Babylon.

Yet resident aliens often live with opposition as well as affirmation. Jesus warned his followers to expect persecution and that others would see their good deeds and glorify God (Matthew 5:10, 16). Peter also warns us to anticipate harassment, and yet to live in such a way that people will see our ‘good deeds and glorify God’ (1 Peter 2:12).

Through it all we live in hope. Jeremiah promises that God would end the exile and restore them to Jerusalem (29:10-14). For us too, we actively pursue shalom on our frontlines, and we do indeed often see the fruit of that. And we continue to pray ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’, confident that God will one day bring about the restoration of all things. Now as then, living with purpose in exile is a way of affirming that the world is in safe hands, as we set our ‘hope on the grace to be brought to [us] when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming’ (1 Peter 1:13).

Going Further

For the Life of the World: Letters to the Exiles 

Acton Institute, 2015 

A brilliantly-conceived, beautifully-filmed series of seven short films on how to live out our salvation ‘for the life of the world’.

The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom 

Lee Beach (IVP, 2015)

An overview of the theme of exile in the Bible and its implications for the holiness and mission of the church.

Joy for the World: How Christianity Lost Its Cultural Influence and Can Begin Rebuilding It 

Greg Forster (Crossway, 2014)

Looks at how Christians can bring the joy that comes through the gospel to bear on every dimension of life.

The Whole of Life for Christ: Enriching Everyday Discipleship

Antony Billington and Mark Greene (IVP, 2015)

‘Living with Purpose’ is one of several themes explored in this book. Produced in partnership with Keswick Ministries, the seven Bible studies offer individuals and groups the opportunity to explore whole-life discipleship more deeply.

Faith & Thought 2011 Symposium

Eddie Arthur links to the audio files from the recent Faith & Thought 2011 Symposium, which was devoted to ‘Translating the Old Testament – First Century and Now’ – for which Eddie himself contributed a session alongside Howard Marshall and David Instone-Brewer.

Eddie Arthur

To Translate or not To Translate: The Old Testament in Missionary Bible Translation Strategy

Howard Marshall

The Use of the Old Testament in 1 Peter

David Instone-Brewer

New Bibles Preserved in Dead Sea Caves

Miroslav Volf on Soft Difference

Miroslav Volf, ‘Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation Between Church and Culture in 1 Peter’, Ex Auditu 10 (1994), 15-30.

This is a stimulating and highly influential essay, still cited and discussed over fifteen years after its publication. Taking its cue from 1 Peter, it looks at what it means to be faithful to God as Christians in our surrounding culture.

In very basic terms, as I understand it, Volf tries to navigate between ‘no difference’ and ‘hard difference’ by reflecting on Peter’s call to be exiles in a hostile world.

In part, he’s making a contribution to the well-known debate in Petrine studies between John Elliott and David Balch as to whether Peter encourages accommodation to the culture (Balch – the ‘no difference’ option) or non-conformity to the culture (Elliott – the ‘hard difference’ option).

As might be expected, not all have been happy to draw the lines as tightly as that. David Horrell, for instance, tries to steer a middle course, arguing that 1 Peter calls for its audience to take a stance of ‘polite resistance’ to the present structures and powers.

And for Volf too, Peter doesn’t ask for a ‘hard difference’ which excludes without embracing, but nor does he want ‘no difference’ at all which simply embraces without excluding. Sometimes there might be hard differences between Christians and their neighbours, but often they are soft differences. As Peter suggests, Christians living faithfully in society may evoke persecution in some contexts and yet may also influence people to praise God in other contexts – such is the complex nature of the world in which we live.

Here are some lines from Volf’s essay:

‘Christians do not come into their social world from outside seeking either to accommodate to their new home (like second generation immigrants would), shape it in the image of the one they have left behind (like colonizers would), or establish a little haven in the strange new world reminiscent of the old (as resident aliens would). They are not outsiders who either seek to become insiders or maintain strenuously the status of outsiders. Christians are the insiders who have diverted from their culture by being born again. They are by definition those who are not what they used to be, those who do not live like they used to live. Christian difference is therefore not an insertion of something new into the old from outside, but a bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old’ (18-19).

‘Wherever Christians find themselves – alone or with other believers – a Christian social difference is manifested there. Communities of those who are born anew and follow Christ live an alternative way of life within the political, ethnic, religious, and cultural institutions of the larger society... The community was to live an alternative way of life in the present social setting, transforming it, as it could, from within’ (20).

Even if you don’t finally agree with Volf, you’ll be stimulated to think more about these issues.

Missional Journal 5, 1 (February 2011)

David G. Dunbar’s piece in the latest Missional Journal is devoted to ‘Aliens and Strangers’.

He recognises this offers ‘a powerful biblical image of the church’s place in the world’ – from the ‘prototypical biblical example’ of Abraham through his descendants living as aliens in Egypt and subsequently in the diaspora right through to 1 Peter, which has ‘the fullest development of this idea’.

He draws on Miroslav Volf’s notion of ‘soft difference’ to describe how 1 Peter presents the relationship of the church to the world, suggesting (with James Davison Hunter) that ‘the calling of the church is to be a community of peace’.

Joel B. Green on Theological Interpretation of the Bible (1 Peter in Particular)

Joel B. Green, ‘Modernity, History and the Theological Interpretation of the Bible’, Scottish Journal of Theology 54, 3 (2001), 308-29.

Joel Green has written a lot on theological interpretation, much of it now conveniently gathered in a book – Seized by Truth: Reading the Bible as Scripture (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007).

This 2001 piece was an early article, showing where his thoughts were heading, illustrated with reference to 1 Peter, which would eventually give birth to his commentary in ‘The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary Series’, which he co-edits with Max Turner.

He begins here by noting the ‘troublesome relationship’ between biblical studies and systematic theology, and the attempts on the part of some to span the divide between the two disciplines (308-309). He calls on biblical scholars, in particular, to ‘take theological concerns seriously’, but suggests that a large part of the problem is ‘history’ (310).

1. The problem of history

The problem is that ‘if all knowledge is historically grounded… then we moderns should not be governed in our knowing by someone else’s history, including the history of Scripture itself and the Christian tradition’ (311). Whereas premodern perspectives worked with an assumption that text and history were coterminous, the modern perspective ‘posits a purposeful segregation of “history” and “text”’, in which ‘interpretive privilege is accorded to “history”’ (312).

Among other things, according to Green, this reinforced the distinction between ‘what it meant’ and ‘what it means’, and is consistent with the more popular three-step engagement with the Bible of Observation–Interpretation–Application, neither of which he judges are well-suited to ‘those of us who locate ourselves as biblical scholars within and on behalf of the church’ (313).

2. Historical criticism: we cannot live with or without it

Our only attitude to historical criticism, he says, ‘can be one of ambivalence’ (313).

We cannot live without it because:

(1) ‘We are children of modernity’ (and we know that all language, including the language of the Bible, is embedded in culture) (314).

(2) ‘The capacity of the Bible to function as Scripture depends in part on its capacity to expose and thwart our own limited, historical horizons’ (314), where our own assumptions are called into question.

(3) ‘There is no escaping the historical character of our (biblical) faith’ (316).

And we cannot live with it because:

(1) ‘Historical criticism assumes… that there is more than one church’ – borrowing from Robert Jenson the comment that ‘the text we call the Bible was put together in the first place by the same community that now needs to interpret it’ (316), and from James McClendon the notion that ‘the fundamental character of the division between the biblical world and our own... is not historical but theological’ (317).

(2) ‘Historical criticism assumes what no one can assume – namely, that there exists in scholarly inquiry a ledge of neutrality on which to stand to engage in biblical interpretation’ (317).

(3) ‘Historical criticism as generally practiced is ensconced in a discredited philosophy of history’ (319) – a commitment to scientific method and scientific detachment.

3. Which way forward?

Green notes that two ways forward for revisioning biblical studies and systematic theology, or carving out ‘new disciplinary space’ are by attending ‘less to the original, historical sense of biblical texts and either more deliberately to their canonical address within Scripture-shaped communities or more fully to the history of their reception’ (321).

The books of the New Testament, he notes, are not themselves ‘the gospel’ but ‘witnesses’ to the gospel ‘within specific sociohistorical contexts’ (321). They are less sources for theological data so much as ‘already exemplars of the theological task, of representing the implications and working out the ramifications of the Gospel’ (322).

So, we can take note of how Scripture itself draws on paradigmatic presuppositions (e.g., the continuity of past, present, and future in God’s purpose) and yet also see how it models ‘the instantiation of the good news in particular locales and with respect to historical particularities’; we see, already in the New Testament, the ‘constructive task of reiteration, restatement, and interpretation of the good news vis-à-vis ever-developing horizons and challenges’ (322).

Thus, when it comes to 1 Peter (Green’s sample text in this article), our task is not simply to read the content of the message of 1 Peter into our world, but to inquire ‘how 1 Peter itself engages in the theological task’: ‘How is 1 Peter situated in and reflective of a particular sociohistorical environment? What is its response – on the basis of the great story of God’s activity in the world, including the world of 1 Peter – to that environment?’ (323). How does the discourse of 1 Peter transform our assumptions about God and the world?

Green makes four observations here:

(1) ‘The overriding metaphor of this New Testament document is “the diaspora”’ (323) – announced in the opening (1:1) and closing (5:13) of the letter, and which evokes a variety of images, including the temporal nature of the diaspora, the possibility of assimilation and defection, ‘the danger of acculturation and accommodation’. This is coupled with Peter’s identification of his Christian audience ‘with the ancient people of God’, all of which ‘signals the perspective that pervades the document as a whole’, with Peter collapsing ‘the historical distinction between Israel of old and his own audience in the service of theological identity’ (324).

(2) Identification with Israel of old, however, does not mean that Peter’s audience shares their experience of ‘forced relocation’. Instead, ‘those believers to whom Peter addresses this letter have not been transported into a new geographical space, but have rather been born anew within the space they had previously inhabited’ (325). Green draws on Miroslav Volf’s famous ‘Soft Difference’ essay here, noting that ‘Christians are insiders who have diverted from their culture by being born again’ (325, citing Volf). Green also resists the attempts of some (e.g., John H. Elliott) to find a reference to the believers’ economic status, arguing instead that the implied readers ‘represent the broad spectrum of people living in Asia Minor’ (325). They are exiles in the sense that their ‘commitments to the lordship of Jesus Christ have led to transformed attitudes and behaviors that place them on the margins of respectable society’, people ‘whose reborn allegiances and transfigured practices distinguished them from Roman society’, whose ‘lack of acculturation to prevailing social values marked them as misfits worthy of contempt’ (326).

(3) ‘Peter demarcates the identity of God’s people in three ways’. First is ‘the positive route of characterizing his Christian audience in relation to God’s call to holiness’ (326) – the vocation of Israel, that they might fulfil their mission to the nations, noting that ‘holiness’ connotes ‘difference’ and ‘distinctiveness’, not a call to segregation but to a particular form of engagement. Second, ‘Peter adopts a negative stance vis-à-vis the former life of his audience’ (327) – not so much invective against the world at large as conversion of one’s moral imagination. Third, ‘he points to the preeminent example of Jesus’ (327) – with Christian identity and practice understood positively as the way of the Messiah.

(4) Then comes a ‘more pointed, more pivotal, and prior question that is both hermeneutical and theological: Who reads 1 Peter aright?’ (327). Green here borrows from Umberto Eco the concept of the ‘Model Reader’, readers who are both ‘presumed by the text and sculpted by the text’. Such readers ‘embrace and embody the status of persons whose identity as pilgrims in the world grows out of their experience of the new birth, whose lives are radically marked by their membership in a community defined by their allegiance to Christ, whose lives thus stand in an ambiguous relationship to the mores and values of the world around them, and, accordingly, whose forms of existence attract opposition from their neighbors’ (328).

Hence (coming back to the concerns of ‘history’ in the title of the essay):

‘To read 1 Peter aright, then, as its Model Reader, is not to objectify its message in an historical moment now distant from our own, and then imaginatively to allow its message to leap forward to our own time. It is, rather, to embrace the persona of Peter’s audience as our own. We do not invite the text into a transformation of its original meaning into a new application geared toward our thought forms; rather, the text invites us into a transformation of allegiances and commitment, which will manifest itself in behaviors appropriate to our social worlds’ (328).

Philip Greenslade on the Outline of 1 Peter

Philip Greenslade, 1 Peter: Living Hope, Cover to Cover Bible Discovery (Farnham: CWR, 2004).

1:1-13 – God’s people are different

• Life in the eternal triangle (1:1-2)
• Living hope, lasting heritage (1:3-4)
• Gold-standard faith (1:5-9)
• Salvation in three tenses (1:10-13)

1:14-21 – God’s people dare to be as different as God

• Father’s look-alike children (1:14-16)
• Fear that takes God seriously (1:17)
• Freedom from futility through the cross (1:18-21)

1:22-2:10 – God’s people live differently together

• Purified by truth for love (1:22-25)
• Purified by grace for growth (2:1-3)
• Privileged with a threefold purpose (2:4-8)
• Privileged with a fourfold identity (2:9-10)

2:11-25 – God’s people behave differently in the world

• Living differently as strangers (2:11-12)
• Living differently as subjects (2:13-17)
• Living differently as servants (2:18-20)
• The cross makes all the difference (2:21-25)

3:1-12 – God’s people think differently about the good life

• Sharing the good life – as spouses (3:1-7)
• Sharing the secrets of the good life – as brothers and sisters (3:8-12)

3:13-4:6 – God’s people react differently to pressure

• Suffering bravely (3:13-14)
• Sanctifying Christ as Lord (3:15-17)
• Secure in Christ’s achievement (3:18-22)
• Surprising the godless (4:1-6)

4:7-19 – God’s people look differently at the future

• Stewards of grace (4:7-11)
• Suffering for glory (4:12-19)

5:1-14 – God’s people stay different

• Stooping in grace to conquer (5:1-9)
• Strengthened by grace for glory (5:10-11)
• Standing firm in true grace (5:12-14)

A ready-made eight-week sermon series…

Robert W. Wall on Teaching 1 Peter as Scripture

Robert W. Wall, ‘Teaching 1 Peter as Scripture’, Word & World 24, 4 (2004), 368-77.

In line with current discussions about theological interpretation (to which he has elsewhere contributed), Wall holds that the ‘crucial issue’ in handling 1 Peter for contemporary Christian congregations ‘turns on whether the reader approaches 1 Peter as Scripture’ (369). He commends such an approach to the letter as a sacred text, ‘and to a practice of teaching 1 Peter as “theological pedagogy” for and of the church’ (369).

‘Scripture, rightly read, has this remarkable capacity to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Especially my congregation and my students, made comfortable by their undemanding variety of Christianity and the niceties of their middle-class lives, need more teaching about a holy God who demands a holy life; a suffering Christ who establishes the necessity of expending considerable personal cost in service of God; a community whose communicants are considered “aliens and strangers” by outsiders because of their radical commitment to a virtuous life and the unconditional obligations of real friendship; and a view of history that ends with the triumph of God rather than the triumph of some humanistic or nationalistic agenda’ (369-70).

That lengthy quotation captures the essence of the article in its five parts:

Teaching 1 Peter by the ‘Rule of Faith’

Early Christian thinkers (e.g., Clement, Irenaeus, Tertullian) measured interpretations of Scripture by a ‘rule of faith’, a ‘theological grammar’ which ‘summarized the heart of Christian faith and served as a theological boundary marker for Christian identity’ (371).

Creator

In line with the rule of faith, 1 Peter is theocentric in its ‘message of God’s existence as it relates to a suffering people who live in those places where the presence of a loving, powerful God may not be self-evident’ (372).

Christ

‘Scripture’s witness to Christ, as oriented by the rule of faith, is naturally divided into two relationships, the first his relationship with God and the second his communion with those who profess him as Lord’ (373).

The letter is ‘layered with christological affirmations’ (374), not least in 3:18-22 with its affirmation of belief in (1) ‘the reconciling death and resurrection of Christ’, (2) the proclamation of his triumph to the ‘spirits’ in prison (at the very least illustrating ‘the confidence a suffering people might have in a Messiah whose redemptive work has already defeated those invisible agents who are at work to wreak havoc’), and (3) the relationship, through baptism, of ‘Christ’s triumphant experience with that of his current followers and their experience of the living Christ’ (375).

Community

The letter’s portrayal of church ‘is a community of marginal ones – weak and powerless by societal standards – who are called forth out of a world utterly opposed to God’s agenda’ (375). Such a people bear witness to God by walking in the steps of the suffering servant. The language of the letter normalises ‘human suffering as the expected character of purified human existence within a profane world: Christian discipleship is cruciform by nature since believers follow a crucified Lord’ (376).

Consummation

‘The biblical narrative of God concludes where the rule of faith does: with salvation’s consummation in God’s triumph over evil and death’ (376). The triumph of the risen Christ provides hope for his followers (1:21; 3:15) who have a heavenly inheritance (1:3-5).