RSSApostasy
One of the central issues in the FV debate has been the question of apostasy. 2 Peter raises this question in a particularly pointed way. (I hope I’ll be forgiven for pasting something I wrote for my blog some time ago.)
At the beginning of his second epistle, Peter says that “divine power” has granted “everything pertaining to life and godliness” (1:3). God communicates the life and godliness that results from His power “through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (1:3), presumably Jesus (cf. 1:16). This knowledge is clearly not just intellectual or doctrinal, but personal knowledge of the Savior and Lord Jesus. The result is both positive and negative: We are promised that we will be made “partakers of divine nature” and we are promised that God’s power will deliver us from “the corruption that is in the world by lust” (1:4).
A cluster of the same terms appears at the end of chapter 2:
-Peter speaks of some who have “escaped” (APOPHUGONTES), using the same form of the same verb found in 1:4.
-In 2:20, the people Peter talks about have escaped the MIASMA TOU KOSMOU, the “miasma of the world.” Peter’s wording is slightly different in 1:4: We have escaped the “in-the-world-by-lust-corruption,” and “corruption” is PHTHORAS rather than MIASMA. The thought is very similar, however.
-In 2:20, the instrument for escaping the miasma of the world is the “knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is the same instrument God uses for communicating grace and peace (1:2) and for granting life and godliness (1:3). It is the same knowledge by which we grow in grace (3:18). It is possible, further, that 2:21’s reference to the “way of righteousness” should be personalized - knowing the way of righteousness is knowing the Righteous One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Peter, in short, uses very similar language to describe the people in 1:3-4 and 2:20. Both have escaped from the world; both have escaped from the world through the knowledge of Jesus. There are differences, to be sure: Peter does not say that God has granted “everything pertaining to life and godliness” to those in 2:20. But the similarities are striking: The people in 2:20 know Jesus, and receive some benefit from that knowledge, at least the benefit of deliverance from the world and its defilements.
But those benefits are temporary. While those Peter describes in chapter 1 grow from faith to virtue to knowledge to self-control, and so on, the people in 2:20 don’t remain in the way of righteousness. They return to the miasma of the world, and their last state is worse than the first (2:20b-22). They are people who have failed to grow because they have “forgotten purification from former sins” (1:9).
Thoughts?
P. Andrew Sandlin
September 24th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Peter,
You’re marshalling a good case, but I’m still nagged by 2:4-10, where the comparisons with OT characters do not obviously denote a sort of previous soteric relationship with God gone bad via apostasy (the fallen angels are a different category, it seems). The issue in those vv. is the contrast between the obedient rescued and the disobedient judged. The emphasis is the moral antithesis, not the apostasy as such, it seems to me, obvious though it is.
Of course, the real issue in the whole debate is not apostasy (which is evident in these vv.) but the previous relationship of the apostate to God. 2:2, 15, 20 are compatible with a theory of apostasy from genuine saving faith and definitive union with Christ, but it is not evident they are incompatible with more traditional Reformed views of perseverance and the unswerving security of saving grace. Judas was a disciple of Jesus, but not for a moment was his eternal damnation in doubt.
I am not convinced this antinomy can be — or should be — solved.
Peter
September 24th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Andrew wrote, “the real issue in the whole debate is not apostasy (which is evident in these vv.) but the previous relationship of the apostate to God.”
Yes, I agree. That’s the issue. And though the earlier examples in 2 Peter may not refer to people who were in some kind of favorable relation with God, the end of the chapter does, I think. Before the pig returned to the mud, the pig “knew Jesus” and was delivered from the mud by Jesus.
DWilson
September 24th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Peter, I think there are more layers than that. Before the pig returned to the mire, the pig knew Jesus, but the entire time, it was a piggish knowledge of Jesus. But then we have to return to your earlier point, which says that even pigs can escape from the mud for a time. But even though the pig escaped the mud, the mud didn’t escape from the pig. I am in sympathy with Andrew’s point here, if I take it right. We shouldn’t privilege the definition of knowledge over the definition of pig, or vice versa. We should press down hard on both and see what happens.
CBrown
September 24th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Isn’t it significant that PHTHORAS is used in 2:19, “the slaves of corruption”? Perhaps these apostates never escaped PHTHORAS. Perhaps they aren’t at all like the saints of 1:4 who did escape PHTHORAS. Perhaps MIASMATA was used in 2:20 to mark a difference with PHTHORAS in 2:19 and 1:4. The apostates escaped certain defilements for a time in this life (because they heard the gospel), but they did not experience the escape described in 1:4 (because they never really believed the gospel).
Peter
September 25th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Doug, “piggish” throughout in what sense? If you’re talking decretally, OK. He was predestined to return to the mire. But did Saul stay an “old man” after the Spirit came on him?
As far as the mud not escaping the pig, I think the text says the opposite. The ones Peter talks about escape from the “defilements” of the world, and then return to those defilements.
DWilson
September 25th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Peter, no, my point here was not a decretal one. What I want to do is let the scriptural analogies speak in their own terms. I wasn’t taking up your point about Saul because there what you are saying is what the text says. But when you wash a pig, what you have is a clean pig. So sometimes the illustrations indicate a fundamental difference of nature between the regenerate and unregenerate covenant members (wheat and tares) and sometimes they emphasis an identity of nature (the branches in John 15). My point is that I take the apostle Peter’s illustrations as emphasizing a cleaned-up act for a time, as we might say, but that the nature of the pig and the dog make it obvious why they would at some point return to the mud and vomit respectively.