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| ISBN-13: | 9780687058549 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 04/01/1999 |
| Series: | Abingdon New Testament Commentaries Series , #1 |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.03(w) x 8.99(h) x 0.69(d) |
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Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: 1 Peter
By M. Eugene Boring
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 1999 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-05854-9
CHAPTER 1
Commentary
Salutation (1:1-2)
The author himself, of course, gave his letter no title, which was added to the document in various forms during the process of circulation and canonization. All the forms of the title designate it as the "first" epistle of Peter, indicating an acknowledgment of 2 Peter. Practically all manuscripts include "Catholic" in the title, understood either in the sense of "general, universal" (as opposed to letters to a particular congregation) or as "canonical, orthodox," or both.
It is not obvious that 1 Peter should be in the form of a letter. Neither the Old Testament nor the sacred writings of other religions contain series of letters. The author, even if he had a message to communicate directly to the churches of Asia Minor, could readily have expressed what he had to say in an essay, a collection of wisdom sayings, a sermon, a church order, or some other literary genre used by early Christians, and had it delivered and read in the churches by a messenger just as we presume Silvanus was (see on 5:12 below).
The epistolary form of 1 Peter is important theologically in that the letter genre corresponds to the nature of the Christian faith in its concreteness and particularity. The Christian gospel affirms that God has acted definitively in history in the particular person Jesus of Nazareth, rather than generally and abstractly. Like the Incarnation, letters are particular and concrete, not general and abstract, just as they correspond to the historical lives of their recipients—for we all live concrete, individual lives in a particular historical time and place. None of us lives "in general." Although 1 Peter is classified among the General Epistles in the sense that it is addressed to more than one congregation, it is the nature of a letter to be specific. This historical dimension of 1 Peter, like that of all letters and of the New Testament as such, both makes it relevant for historical beings and constitutes the hermeneutical problem of interpreting its message for people who live in a different historical situation.
First Peter's adoption of the letter form is a direct influence of Paul, who made letters a primary form of early Christian communication and theologizing. This is one of several indications that the author is indebted to major elements of the Pauline tradition (see Introduction, p. 42). First Peter's debt to Pauline tradition is seen immediately in the salutation, which is an adoption and adaptation of the Pauline form, including its distinctive elements.
The typical hellenistic letter began with the simple salutation "A to B, greetings." The stereotyped formula expressed by the word "greetings" is the infinitive of the word for "rejoice" (chairein), but it had become a conventional formality. It was the customary form of greeting language, with no more content than "hi" as a colloquial English greeting or "Dear ..." in business letters. Examples of this form are preserved in the New Testament (Acts 23:26; slightly modified Christian versions are found in Acts 15:23 and Jas 1:1).
Paul had elaborated on this form by making the author's name and title into a claim of apostolic authority, developing the reference to the addressees into a phrase or clause that characterized their existence as members of the Christian community, and by transforming the bland "greetings" into a distinctive "signature" in which chairein became the Christian theological term "grace" (charis for chairein), which was combined with the Jewish letter salutation "peace" (eirene = shalom). This combination was unique; although charis occurs 161 times in the LXX and eirene 275 times, they never appear together in a single verse. Since "grace and peace" has become something of a cliché in modern Christian circles accustomed to hearing it in the liturgy and reading it in the Bible, it may be difficult for modern readers to appreciate the fact that this was not the case for the first readers of the New Testament. It was Paul who combined "grace" and "peace" into this distinctive salutation form that appears in all his letters (Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 1:3; 2 Cor 1:2; Gal 1:3; Phil 1:2; 1 Thess 1:1; Phlm 1:3). This unique formulation was adopted by the Pauline school and appears in the Deutero-Pauline letters, sometimes with slight modifications (Eph 1:2; Col 1:2; 2 Thess 1:2; 1 Tim 1:2; 2 Tim 1:2; Titus 1:4), and became the standard letter salutation in later Christian literature. It is found nowhere in Greek literature except in documents directly or indirectly dependent on Paul. By the time 1 Peter was written, it had not yet become the general Christian salutation—it is absent, for example, from Hebrews, James, and the Johannine epistles—so that its presence in 1 Pet 1:2 is an indication of direct influence from the Pauline letters. When 1 Peter begins with the name "Peter" but utilizes the letter form in general and the distinctive Pauline epistolary prescript in particular, it is the initial signal that the author is combining the legacies of the two leading apostles now revered by the Roman church (see Introduction, pp. 27-28; 39-43).
First Peter does not merely copy the Pauline formula, however, but uses it as a model to construct a prescript for the letter that—again following the example of Paul—provides a programmatic anticipation of major themes of the following letter. The two verses comprise one carefully constructed sentence, in the titular style without a single definite article (appropriately supplied in English translations):
A. Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ
B. To the elect resident aliens of [the] Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, [elect]
1. according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
2. through the sanctification of the Spirit
3. for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ
C. May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
Several items significant for understanding the letter as a whole are to be noted in this structure. The first line claims the apostolic authority of Peter, without elaborating or suggesting that it is contested. After 1:1 this authority is never appealed to directly in the body of the letter (where the author represents himself as a fellow presbyter, 5:1), though the letter throughout presupposes that it authoritatively represents the apostolic faith. "Apostle" means "one sent," and in early Christianity quickly became the key term to designate one commissioned and authorized by the risen Christ to teach and act by his authority. In the New Testament "apostle" is the only term for ministerial office followed by the phrase "of Jesus Christ"—there are no elders, deacons, prophets, or evangelists so designated. Although it is unlikely that Simon Peter had ever been in most of the area addressed, it is assumed that the readers know of Peter and acknowledge his apostleship. This is another mark of the ecumenical perspective of the letter.
The final line adapts the Pauline "grace to you and peace" with only a slight modification in the direction of the Jewish letter formula found in the Greek versions of the Old Testament: "be multiplied" included as in Dan 4:37c LXX; Dan 4:1; 6:26 Theodotian; cf. Jude 2; 2 Pet 1:2. As in Paul's writings, "grace" (10x in 1 Peter) is the absolutely unmerited favor of God made concrete in the Christ-event, the sole ground of the believer's acceptance before God. "Peace," as in the closing benediction of 5:14, is neither merely the lack of hostilities nor a subjective state of tranquillity, but refers to all the blessings—material and spiritual, personal and social—that comprise the good life willed and given by God, practically representing the Jewish shalom and a synonym for soteria, salvation.
It is striking that the emphasis in this salutation falls on the middle element that characterizes the churchly identity and status of the addressees, effectively anticipating the ecclesiastical orientation of the body of the letter (cf. Appendix 2: Images of the Church in 1 Peter). The letter is addressed neither to a single congregation nor to the church universal, but (like Revelation written shortly afterward) is a circular letter to the Christians of a large but limited geographical area. The five names apparently represent Roman provinces, not geographical areas, and thus comprise the whole of Asia Minor north of the Taurus mountains. This range formed the natural boundary between most of Asia Minor oriented to the north and west, and the southern coastal strip oriented to Syria and Antioch. The puzzling order in which the provinces are named, separating Pontus and Bithynia that formed one province in the writer's day, is probably best understood as reflecting the (real or imagined) travel route of the bearer of the letter. The messenger from Rome would have landed at one of the ports of Pontus on the Black Sea, made a circuit through Galatia and Cappadocia to Asia, then returned to a port on the Black Sea in Bithynia in order to sail back to Rome.
Theological identity, not geographical location, is the author's concern. The carefully structured elaboration of this segment suggests that the meaning of belonging to the Christian community is the major focus of what the letter has to say. This ecclesiological declaration is included in a proto-Trinitarian framework that presupposes the divine actions that generate the elect community of believers: God's choice, the Spirit's sanctifying acts, and Christ's giving his life's blood. In 2:4-10 it will become clear that God's election of the Christian community depends on God's prior election of Christ. All this is the act of the one God. Since 1 Peter is thoroughly monotheistic and theocentric, the author is thus free to use (proto-)Trinitarian language without compromising his monotheism (cf. Schweizer 1949, 17). The one God responsible for the believer's new identity corresponds to the reader's conversion, which is thought of as a single event, for election, sanctification, obedience, and sprinkling with Christ's blood are not chronological stages, but different metaphors for the one event of conversion.
* * *
In the Greek text the first word to the addressees is "elect" (eklektos; NRSV: "chosen"). "Elect" belongs to that class of Greek verbal adjectives ending in -tos that conceals the act of God as the hidden subject, such as agapetos ("beloved," i.e., by God, as 2:11; 4:12) and Christos ("anointed," i.e., by God, as 1:1, 2, 3, etc.; 22x in 1 Peter, although the NRSV uses "beloved"). The essential point is that God is the actor who has chosen them (not vice versa). Nothing is made of the point in time when God's electing activity took place, whether in protological, pre-creation times, or at the time of their conversion. The point is their present status as elect (= chosen by God), not the chronological location of God's electing act. First Peter, though smaller than most New Testament writings, uses the term "elect" (eklektos) more than any other New Testament document (five of twenty-three occurrences in the New Testament), and is the only New Testament document in which the election motif forms part of the salutation and is a major theological theme from the outset. "Elect resident aliens" focuses the message of 1 Peter in one phrase characterizing the situation of its readers. The Greek sentence is constructed so that the affirmation of the addressees' election is qualified by three prepositional phrases:
1. They are elect according to the foreknowledge of God (1:2; NRSV: "destined by God"). God's "foreknowledge" (prognosis) of the Christians' election is a form of the same word used of Christ's having been "foreknown" (proginosko) before the foundation of the world (1:20; NRSV: "destined"), and is the first of several connections in 1 Peter that present the destiny and identity of Christians as parallel to that of Christ (e.g., 2:4-5: rejected by humans but chosen by God; 2:20: suffering for doing good). The claim that God has foreknown Christ and Christians is not a matter of speculative mythology about what went on in the heavenly world prior to creation—1 Peter has no interest in such matters, nor does the Bible in general. First Peter here stands in the tradition of Paul, who had interpreted the church as the elect remnant of Israel and who had cited the same Old Testament texts that reappear in 1 Peter (Rom 9:1-33; Rom 9:25 = Hos 1:10; 2:23; cf. 1 Pet 2:10; Rom 9:33 = Isa 28:16; cf. 1 Pet 2:6-8). Paul relates the church's status as God's elect to the divine foreknowledge, predestination, and call, without specifically making election an activity of God before the creation of the world (Rom 8:28-33). The later interpretation of Paul does take this step (Eph 1:4-5; cf. 2 Thess 2:13; 2 Tim 1:9), corresponding to the view prevalent in some streams of first-century Judaism that regarded God's election of the chosen people as having occurred before the foundation of the world (CD 2:7; 1 QS 1:10-11; 3:15-17; 1QH 1:10-20; Jos. As. 8:11; Midr. Ps. 74:1; 93:3; Gen. Rab. 1:5). The affirmation of the believers' election is a way of affirming that the present life and suffering of the addressees is not mere chance, but fits into the eternal purpose of God (see Appendix 1: The Narrative World of 1 Peter), without spelling out a clear picture of when God chose them. First Peter relates the believers' election to the election of Israel as portrayed in the Old Testament differently from the Pauline tradition, where it is a matter of this-worldly history (e.g., at the Exodus, Deut 7:6-8; Ezek 20:5; Hos 11:1; already in the time of the Patriarchs, Gen 12:1-3; 22:1718; 26:4; 27:14), rather than a pre-creation act of God in the transcendent world. "'Election' in the Old Testament refers not to some kind of supratemporal or primeval divine decree but rather to a historical action of YHWH" (Preuss 1995, 1:37). As the continuing community of the Exodus (see on the structure of 1:13-20 below), Christians are incorporated into the history of Israel as the elect and holy people of God. The essential point is that Christians are in the church not merely by their own decision, but by the initiative of God who has called them (1:15; 2:9, 21; 3:6, 9; 5:10; cf. Rom 8:28-39). Election is entirely a corporate matter in 1 Peter, which speaks of an elect people (2:9) but never of elect individuals. As in the case of Israel, election is for service, not to privilege (cf. Rowley 1950, 45 et passim; Preuss 1995, 1:80-95).
2. They are elect by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit. This refers not to some personal mystical experience, but to the work of the Spirit in the preaching activity by which the readers were converted (1:12). The word for "sanctifying" (hagiasmos) is related to the word for "holy" (hagios), an essential mark of the people of God. To declare that the readers are elect means that they belong to the holy people of God, that is, not that they are more pious or that they are morally superior to others, but that they have been called to form a distinctive community with a singular mission. To be called "holy" means that they, like Israel, have been set apart for a special purpose in God's saving plan. Like Israel, they are elect for service, not for privilege (Isa 42:1; Amos 3:2).
3. They are elect for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. (So both NRSV and NIV; the Greek may also be understood to refer to Jesus' own obedience and giving his blood.) Election is not for privilege but for obedience, concretely realized in "doing good" (see on 2:14-15; 3:6, 17; 4:19). The imagery of the church as the covenant people of Israel is continued. Both "obedience" and "sprinkling with blood" are covenant language. At Sinai, both the altar (representing God) and the people of Israel were sprinkled with the blood of the sacrificial animals, joining God and Israel together in a covenant sealed by blood (Exod 24:3-8). God's will was read forth from the Law, and the people responded "we will be obedient." The recipients of 1 Peter are addressed as members of this covenant, now sealed by the blood of Christ (1:19; cf. Mark 14:24 par.).
"Election" is the characteristic biblical designation of Israel as the chosen people of God (e.g., Deut 7:6; 10:15; 14:2; 1 Chron 16:13; Ps 105:6; Isa 43:20-21; 45:4; 65:9). Like other New Testament documents (e.g., Gal 6:16; Phil 3:13; Jas 1:1), 1 Peter considers the Christian community, as members of the renewed Israel, to be the continuing people of God, though the author never uses the terms "Israel," "Jew," or "Judaism." This motif is continued by describing them as the Dispersion (Diaspora), already in the LXX the technical term for Israel scattered among the nations (e.g., Deut 28:25; 30:4; Neh 1:9; Ps 146:2; Jdt 5:19; Isa 49:6). The ecumenical note struck in the opening words of the letter is presupposed throughout and recurs in the conclusion: the Christians of the five provinces in Asia Minor belong to the one people of God scattered throughout the world (5:9), including their fellow-elect sister congregation in Rome (5:13).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Abingdon New Testament Commentaries: 1 Peter by M. Eugene Boring. Copyright © 1999 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword,Preface,
List of Abbreviations,
Introduction,
Commentary,
Appendix 1: The Narrative World of 1 Peter,
Appendix 2: Images of the Church in 1 Peter,
Select Bibliography,
Index,