The Second Letter of Peter

Awaiting the Day of the Lord

With this Letter we find ourselves already at the beginning of the second century. The Church is experiencing a difficult transition from the primitive stage to the post-apostolic stage. For several decades her members have lived the newness of the Christian Faith and, so to speak, sung its praises; the coming of Jesus remained near and his return was thought to be imminent.

Now these two poles are disappearing from view, the former in the past and the latter in a future that is more and more out of focus. A distance is being established with respect to the immediate experience of Christianity’s beginnings. A new climate must be forged for remaining in the faith and practicing the Christian life in everyday existence.

Such a transformation is not achieved without crisis. It bears the visage of uncertainty as well as anxiety.

The first point that comes under attack is orthodoxy. The most diverse religious ideas and the most varied Gnostic currents are unfurled within the Empire, often accompanied by immorality. Will Christianity simply vanish in the wake of this maelstrom of competing ideas and morals?

The delay of the Parousia, or Return of Christ, has already disquieted spirits. Now there is danger that Christians will resign themselves to this delay to the detriment of a fundamental aspect of the Christian symmetry and conscience. Will the tension toward fulfillment and the perspective of being confronted with a judgment be lost in out-of-focus ideas that have no impact on life?

In order of time, this writing was probably the last of the New Testament and thus of the entire Bible. It is a spirited exhortation to discouraged spirits; even more vigorously it attacks the spreaders of dangerous doctrines that sow disorder. It does not lack power when it evokes the final devastation of the world, but it also teaches patience, the sense of living under the judgment of God, and progress in faith and in grace.

In defending the essentials of the faith, the Letter emphasizes the word of God as transmitted by the Prophets and the Apostles, and it already cites the Letters of Paul as forming a literary whole well known in the Church. This passage bears witness to the awareness of Biblical inspiration and also to the conviction that Scripture must be interpreted within the Church.

To get his meaning across, the author imitates a literary genre current in the Judaism of the time: the testament of the ancestors— in other words, the practice of placing one’s own exhortations and advice in the mouths of Patriarchs who are about to die. Our author has thought of the man who took first place in the origins of Christianity, namely, Peter, who speaks in Jesus’ name (see 1 Tim 1:14-15). St. Jerome tells us that many denied Peter was the author of the document.

This Letter seems strange to us by reason of its many expressions and its very style. But it contains an important lesson for Christianity, which must be able to accept ongoing history, even while refusing to settle down calmly in it. The Letter claims to be a continuation of the First Letter of Peter (see 2 Pet 3:1), but in fact it is to be connected rather with the Letter of Jude, from which it takes various themes and explains them more fully. (See Introduction to Jude.)

The Second Letter of Peter may be divided as follows:

I: Salutation (1:1-2)

II: Exhortation to Growth in Christian Virtues (1:3-21)

III: Warning against False Teachers (2:1-22)

IV: The Fact of Christ’s Return (3:1-16)

V: Conclusion (3:17-18)