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1 Peter and the Christian Way of LifePosted by Scott Haile under Peter’s epistles, suffering, holiness | | |
My good friend [note correction] Matthew over at liberaljesus often raises questions of Christian conduct and how it relates to our interpretation of Scripture. Though I can’t usually do much to resolve those questions, here is my take on one Scriptural voice (1 Peter), which I think has a unique, if limited, perspective to offer. (I’ll refer to the author as Peter.) THE MAIN IDEAS Three key word families from 1 Peter point at almost everything the author wants to say: First, 1 Peter identifies Christians as separate from those in the world around them; they are sojourners (1:1; 2:11) and aliens (1:17; 2:11) –– both negative terms indicating they are not home, not inhabitants. Furthermore they have been reborn (1:3, 23; cf. 2:2) into a new life, and they are concerned not with the perishable things that the rest of the world cares about, but with what is imperishable. What they value is not valuable in the world’s eyes, and thus “the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone” (2:7). Second, a word we’ll translate “way of life” (1:15, 18; 2:12; 3:1, 2, 16) occurs almost as many times in 1 Peter (6) as in the rest of the NT (7), and the verbal form occurs once in 1 Peter as well. The term reflects the moral exhortation that permeates the letter, and it also points toward the occasion of the letter, suggesting not a call to specific action but a more general mode of behavior or living. This tone is reflected throughout the letter’s moral exhortation, and it suggests not an urgent mission but a community trying to live faithful, hopeful lives under difficult circumstances. Third, the theme of suffering recurs throughout the letter. 1 Peter uses both the verb and the noun for suffering more times than any other NT book. Often it is the letter’s recipients who are described as suffering (2:19; 3:14, 17; 4:1, 13, 15, 19; 5:10); at times they are being mistreated or insulted because of their faith (2:12, 15; 3:16; 4:14, 14ff), and much of the letter’s exhortation, as we will see, is in response to this mistreatment. In other circumstances, suffering is unrelated to faith, whether at the hands of a cruel slave-owner (2:18) or at the hands of the devil himself (5:8f). However, whatever the cause of the believer’s suffering, Peter links it to that of Christ (e.g., 2:21; 4:1, 13). THE MOVES It is not entirely clear whether Peter has a fixed outline in mind, as many themes recycle throughout the letter. I can discern three apparently deliberate moves, but we must acknowledge that Peter inserted illustrations and applications freely in the course of his argument. Some such comments are brief and fit their context reasonably well (e.g., 3:6; though note that in Genesis Sarah is hardly submissive!), while others seem to bear no connection to their context whatsoever (e.g., Noah as prefiguring baptism in 3:19-22). It seems that Peter offers a sort of sermon, in which he pursues a central argument but freely includes other reflections as they occur to him. Happily (and not accidentally, I think), the three moves I’ll suggest correspond to the three word families I’ve identified above. 1. Hope in an inheritance (1:3-12): “He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, into an imperishable inheritance…” (1:3b-4a). 2. Consequent exhortation to appropriate behavior (1:13 –– 4:11): “Let your behavior among the nations be good, so that when they denounce you as evildoers, nevertheless when they see your good deeds they will glorify God on the day of visitation” (2:12). 3. Concluding exhortation to steadfastness and caution (4:12 –– 5:12): “Those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful creator in doing good” (4:19). The overall structure and the major motifs dovetail rather nicely. Thus (1) we are strangers because we have hope of an inheritance elsewhere, (2) our lifestyle is grounded in that hope, and (3) we must remain steadfast because our lifestyle as strangers will cause us suffering in a world that doesn’t understand us. That these three points explain one another suggests that we’re identifying them correctly. 1 Peter’s primary purpose appears to be his exhortation to a moral lifestyle. While he does not present a linear argument in favor of his moral code, he repeatedly offers rationales in the course of his exhortation. A number of different points are mentioned multiple times as reasons for the Christians’ behavior:
THE LENGTHY COMMENTARY The behavior that is taught is grounded in the believers’ identity, as Peter establishes primarily in the early portion of the letter. The believers are a priesthood (2:4, 9) and simultaneously a sort of temple (2:4). They are a people/nation (2:9f). They are free, yet at the same time they are slaves of God (2:16f). And perhaps most importantly, as mentioned above, they are aliens or strangers in the world (1:1, 17; 2:11). The Christian’s behavior encompasses all of life. Believers set aside desires that lead them astray (2:11, 4:3ff). They are holy, as God is holy (1:15). They fear God (1:17; 2:17; 3:2) but never suffering (3:14; cf. 3:6). They avoid debauched living (2:11; 4:3) and hateful relations (2:1); instead, they live with moderation (3:4; 4:7) and show love and respect toward the community and outsiders (3:8, 15; 4:8, 5). In short they do good, (2:14, 15, 20; 3:6, 17; 4:19), not bad (2:12, 14; 3:17; 4:15). A major portion of the moral exhortation in 1 Peter is the household code prescribing submission, obedience, and Christlike behavior for people in various positions. While groups that were traditionally subjugated (slaves and women) receive the most rigorous commands, all believers are urged to submit to human authorities (2:13), and Peter addresses specific exhortations also to elders and young men (5:1-5). It is important to note that, while the codes support forms of behavior that appear to reflect cultural norms for propriety, the rationales Peter gives for such behavior are not cultural but in each case theological (2:15, 21, 3:4, 7; 5:2, 5). Along with the rationales mentioned above for their behavior, Peter’s audience is reminded continually that their identity and behavior are based on a hope (1:3, 13, 21; 3:5, 15) of what God will do when Christ is revealed in glory (1:7, 13; 4:13). They are living in the last days (1:20) and await the last time (1:5) or the end of all things (4:7). Therefore their lives are situated between the gift of hope given through Christ’s resurrection (1:3) and the ultimate salvation they are receiving (1:9) and will receive (1:5). The Christians’ separateness is a key to their situation. It encompasses their different behavior which allows them to be holy (1:15) rather than embrace evil desires (1:14). It is what allows them to serve as priests, and indeed to be a temple. And it is what earns them their neighbors’ scorn (2:12, 15; 3:16) and causes them suffering (3:14; 4:14). Yet it also is what allows them to glorify God. This final point, the glory of God, is a natural outgrowth of the Christian life. Trials help build up the believers’ faith (1:7) so that there may be praise, glory and honor (perhaps for both the believer and God) when Christ is revealed (1:7). The believers’ good lives will cause the pagans to glorify God in the day of visitation (2:12). And when the believers live according to the gifts of God, it will result in praise for God through Christ (4:11). The church’s separateness also relates to the inheritance it awaits, which is not of this world. We are not aliens for the sake of opposing the world, but because we have a homeland that is elsewhere. Therefore our conduct is grounded in the hope we have, a hope which both warns us against squandering God’s good graces and encourages us when our lives of nonconformity become wearisome. QUESTIONS & GAPS Interestingly, 1 Peter contributes both to what is right and to what is wrong with conservative Christianity: it emphasizes holiness and other-worldliness to the complete neglect of social justice. Its exhortations to submission clearly lack concern with achieving justice for the oppressed, but rather encourage, e.g., slaves to endure under harsh masters. If you didn’t think “doing good” included caring for the poor, 1 Peter wouldn’t do anything to change your mind. It is perhaps appropriate that this letter is located in the Christian canon immedidately after James, which also presupposes other-worldliness and suffering but applies them over and over again to care for the poor. It would be fascinating, I think, to examine how these two theologies, so similar at certain points, could find such different applications. But 1 Peter’s deficiency at this point can direct us toward a key contribution it makes to Christian spirituality: our relationship with God (perhaps against James 1:27) is not simply based on our dealings with other people in this world. Though it is hardly a complete guide to the Christian life (such would require blatant disregard for Jesus’ teachings concerning money, the poor, and the marginalized), we must allow 1 Peter to confront us with the fact that Christian ethics cannot be based entirely on the impact of our behavior on other people. God can demand things of us that we cannot rationalize according to whether they improve the world around us. And to turn it around, we cannot use God as an excuse to accomplish what we think is right in the world. 1 Peter’s message concerning holiness is that Christian ethics is also between us and God, based on the holiness he expects for those who presume to belong to the world above. This is not the entirety of the Christian life, but it is indispensible. |
October 11th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Ooof! I should’ve expected that confusion.
I’d prefer if you called me “Matt” or “Matthew”, as I don’t claim to be any sort of “liberal jesus” … that’s just the name of my blog, which happens to spend a lot of time on liberalism, Jesus, and sometimes the liberality of Jesus.
OK, I’ll read the post now. =)
October 11th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Ok, I follow, but I think I would add that a Christian hermeneutic need not treat all scripture as equally ethically normative or even equally theologically true.
In other words, while “God can demand things of us that we cannot rationalize according to whether they improve the world around us”, it still may be a good idea to try to determine what God really demands from us by examining whether a particular interpretation or purported command harms others.
I think this is actually an “official” part of the Catholic hermeneutic … I’ll have to rummage through Crystal’s comments to see about that one.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Scott,
That’s pretty good, though I always cringe at the word “marginalized.” It’s too broad, and can include anyone whose actions are considered wrong, as we often see. It seems to me that any community (church, nation, family, etc.) will have an ethos, and thus a view of the good life and better and worse lives and so forth. As such there will always be ways of behaving, and thus people behaving those ways, that will be “marginalized” vis-a-vis that ethos.
Even if you take the most left-wing of views, you still think that there are truly good and truly bad actions. The real difference is the specific form of the good life that is celebrated. In recent decades, of course, there have been movements to change social forms so as to include previously excluded people such as women and racial minorities. Again, this is simply to call for a different vision of life that will still involve “marginalizing” certain actions.
Also, in communities that have leaders (like almost all of them) there will be some who are leaders and some not. The question is not a simple one of “inclusion” because some kind of criteria must operate, however implicitly.
So to say that Jesus calls us to help the “marginalized,” without further explanation, would mean that whatever social form you have, and whoever is not a leader in a particular community, for whatever reason, we must work to reverse this. I find that position completely incoherent. Actually, I don’t think anyone really holds it, least of all you. Instead, calling for “inclusion” and helping the “marginalized” usually means refusing to admit what position concerning the good life and good social form(s) the person is advocating.
October 11th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
I realize I just started a fight over definitions. My Oxford Dictionary defines “marginalize” as “to make or treat as insignificant.” I am not advocating treating anyone as insignificant, nor claiming that we always will treat some as insignificant and should therefore not try NOT to do so.<br/><br/>But in the course of recent discussions it seems that this word can refer to, say, gays and lesbians in the church and society in that church and society treat gay sex as anomolous, deviant, etc.<br/><br/>I must be very careful here to make absolutely plain what I am getting at. Society and church can be said to have treated gay and lesbian people as insignificant, and that I would deplore as much as anyone. However, I will not therefore concede that simply by treating gay sex as deviant, even sinful, is always, or will always accompany, “marginalization” in the strict sense.<br/><br/>So my discomfort with the word has more to do with misuse than proper use of it.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Matt: correction made; sorry to mislead the poor folks out there who may have inadvertently presumed your divinity.
I think listening to and trying to incorporate all voices in Scripture, even those that are sometimes marginalized (grin), is key to developing a faithful Christian theology.
Assuming there are passages that some of us would like to say are less central to the Gospel (or even antithetical to it, though I hesitate there), I suppose we might wonder if there are also entire books that are less central. Or maybe we could say that each book has a sort of voice of its own, so that even if we’re tempted to downplay certain parts of it, its “message” (whatever that means) still stands. I dunno, I’ve never really thought this through.
Jason: Hmm, I don’t know if you were aware that the question of homosexuality has often been the topic of ethical discussion over at liberaljesus, or if you just perceive that all roads lead there once the topic is raised of God commanding things “just because”.
In any event, I agree that it is germane to my reading of 1 Peter, especially since “holiness” is a key theme in the letter. Sexuality in Second Temple Judaism wasn’t just a moral question –– it also had implications for ritual cleanliness (see Lev 18, esp. verse 24). If improper sexual conduct could defile the entire land, it was especially prohibited for a priest serving at a temple, and in 1 Peter, Christians are both priests and a temple.
As to definitions, I believe that every believer at baptism is transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new person, so in my book leaving out the “marginalized” means acting as if someone is not worth the time or effort of telling the gospel to. In my post the word refers to how people are treated before, not after, conversion. 1 Peter is pretty stoked about making a good impression with society, but it doesn’t seem to go out of its way to bring in the poor, the blind and the lame for the banquet.
Not that I’m all that good at doing that either.
October 12th, 2006 at 7:10 am
It is daunting to post among theologians and budding theologians. Here goes anyway.
The inheritance Christians have that is ‘not of this world’ is spoken of in 2 Peter.
Here, his world consumed by fire immediately suggests that we must be going somewhere else. But, I think it can also suggest a cleansing. After the fire, the world is still here, laid bare: it’s just a new earth.
Would you like to leap across an interpretive chasm with me?
IF the fire is a purifying one, and, after it’s over, we are all still here, just in a much, much better state.
And…
IF being holy, doing what God says, just because, somehow speeds this process of purification.
Then…
Is it possible that Peter sees obedience to God as a faster path to solving the world’s problems?
That is, showing dependence on and deference to God persuades him to ‘fix’ the world in a much better way than we can do on our own.
One HUGE problem here is that I’m talking about 2 Peter on a 1 Peter post.
Be that as it may, this is a sort of ‘end-times’ picture that, in my experience, has been largely ignored. If we are staying here, then, I think, we will be more naturally concerned with how we treat the earth and those in it.
If this is the vision Peter of 1 Peter has when he is writing, then perhaps care for others is a bit implicit…
This comment was amateur, but it will certainly be purified and laid bare sometime in the future, so that’s cool.
October 12th, 2006 at 9:48 am
Scott,<br/><br/>Actually, being a five-year veteran of mainline seminary life, I just perceived that all roads lead there.<br/><br/>As for God saying “just because,” I would be wary of Nominalism, but I would agree that the crude utilitarianism so prevalent in today’s society and even the church is antithetical to any wholistic bibilical interpretation. <br/><br/>I think sexuality issues need not be adjuticated “just because God said so” but what God does say in scripture will be seen to adhere nicely to what we can observe in nature and human society. <br/><br/>This by no means means that we will never find evidence of “the creation subjected to futility” (Rom. 8:20) but simply that, after grace has come, we will see that it has completed rather than negated nature, and how.<br/><br/>J. Burton: Good point. I am convinced that everything we do for good in this world will “carry over,” so to speak, in the next. Far from leading to quietism, this seems to me to be the only sure way of inspiring tireless positive action.
October 13th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Hm. That’s interesting, jknott. I think I would characterize gay and lesbian people as “dehumanized” rather than “treated as insignificant”, and claim that the church’s frigid deontological ethic is as much of a threat as a sloppy utilitarian ethic.
But maybe that’s because I’m doing my thing in the middle of a bunch of conservatives, and you’re trying to tug a bunch of liberals in the opposite direction.
Thanks for the fix, Scott. I feel much better now. =)
Shane talks a lot about scripture not being “flat”, in that certain passages or even certain books are less useful, or at least less crucial than their volume seems to imply. I think that’s a reasonable thing to assert.
I haven’t been able to find that Catholic hermeneutic thing, so I’m gonna ask Crystal to help me out.
October 13th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Found it:
A Catholic Reading of Romans 1
More limited than I had remembered it, but in particular:
This is the official teaching of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, at the very least an authorized Catholic source of guidance for how to read the Scriptures, in their 1993 Document “The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church”:
“Clearly to be rejected also is every attempt at actualization set in a direction contrary to evangelical justice and charity, such as, for example, the use of the Bible to justify racial segregation, anti-Semitism or sexism whether on the part of men or of women. Particular attention is necessary… to avoid absolutely any actualization of certain texts of the New Testament which could provoke or reinforce unfavourable attitudes to the Jewish people”. (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, IV.3)
October 15th, 2006 at 10:21 am
Matthew,<br/><br/>You say:<br/><br/>”the church’s frigid deontological ethic is as much of a threat as a sloppy utilitarian ethic.”<br/><br/>A threat to what? I said that a crude utilitarian ethic cannot claim to be biblical in any wholistic sense, so it might be that you mean a frigid deontological ethic suffers from the same flaw. <br/><br/>However, if you mean a threat in a more general sense, that is that it is “dangerous,” I would have to disagree. A frigid deontological ethic, or any deontological ethic, is infinitely MORE dangerous than a utilitarian ethic. In fact, if “danger” or “threat” generally is the way we judge competing ethical views, then we are de facto utilitarians from the beginning.<br/><br/>Are you really trying to stake out a middle position by saying both are a “threat?” I ask because I would be very interested in learning what this third way was.
October 15th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
Here’s my take on utilitarian ethics (what works) and deontological ethics (just because). This approach is still experimental for my part, but that’s what blogs are for.
If I wish to avoid the charge of espousing deontoligcal (read: naive) ethics, I might start by trying to link questions of sexual morality with biblical notions of holiness/puity (in the sense that the temple was to be holy/pure). Since in one sense, then, we are practicing those standards of sexual behavior for a logical reason––the purity of the body of Christ––we might be tempted to argue that we hold to such an ethic according to reason, and not just because God says so.
However, the argument is less clear as to why sexual behavior would affect our holiness or purity. Why should any sexual behavior, if done in freedom in the context of a loving relationship, not be compatible with holiness in the sight of God? This is less clear, and it is here that I think we may lose our footing if we wish to avoid deontological ethics completely. To put it bluntly, I don’t think utilitarian ethics have any room for the notion of holiness in its full range of biblical meanings.
We can rationally make arguments as to what is morally pure, and these are the arguments that might suggest to us that homosexual sex is praiseworthy in appropriate contexts. Morality, in fact, can fit quite comfortably into a utilitarian system of ethics. And much of New Testament morality fits there quite well as well.
However, the Hebrew scriptures also raise questions of another kind of purity (though the two kinds aren’t sharply differentiated), which I’m not so sure can be adjudicated according to standards we can reasonably deduce. This is the realm of ritual purity or holiness.
So perhaps God didn’t need to give a particular reason why the people of Israel were not to eat pigs, or why an Israelite man was not to marry his neice or his sister, or why an Israelite man was not to sleep with another man. Some of these teachings may have logical reasons, but as far as I know the text itself does not claim that any of them must.
Taking these texts seriously can lead to a “frigid deontological” ethic, but it need not if we consider carefully their meanings for the people of Israel and whether/how they are appropriated by the New Testament. I hope never to actualize (as defined in the text Matt linked) these texts naively, but it can be reasonably argued that Paul links both prostitution (1 Cor 6:13-20) and homosexual sex (Rom 1:24-27) to questions of purity and declares both to be inappropriate for those who are a part of the body of Christ.
Holding to these same teachings in today’s Christian church is anything but an easy or obvious conclusion, and I hope I never suggest something like that to others without allowing other interpretations a fair hearing. I should also acknowledge that some people do use texts of Scripture naively, and in fact I consider a part of my calling in studying the Bible to be helping people interpret Scripture maturely and responsibly rather than naively.
However, showing that a passage had a context does not nullify it out of hand. Neither does the so-called plain meaning have to be wrong just because a passage is complicated or controversial or even offensive. As a consequence, sometimes a careful, nuanced reading can lead us back to what resembles a naive deontological reading.
While Matthew is right to argue that we should always consider how the doctrines we teach will affect other people, nevertheless if we do not leave open the possibility that God could have commanded something “just because,” then we become, as Jason suggests on other grounds, de facto utilitarians. Utilitarian ethics could be exactly what God intended for the church, but I think that conclusion is difficult to defend in light of, e.g., 1 Peter and other NT texts that stress holiness.
We need to be careful not to presume that what we find attractive must turn out to be true if we think about it hard enough.
At the same time, I think there’s a clear value to the kind of argument that Matthew and others are making, as long as it’s admitted that it’s a distinctly situational argument that’s being made, and not a general principle (i.e., of utilitarian ethics) being laid down. Then we at least can agree on the kind of conversation we’re having.