EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/13/2025 8:58 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-7 “Introduction to 2 Peter”
Four days ago on my SD on 2 Peter I began to look at “Petrine Authority Disputed” which speaks of how those who could well be titled as apostates were saying that 2 Peter was not really written by the Apostle Peter, and in this rather long section with different sub-points in it John MacArthur defends the truth that Peter really did write this letter that we find in our New Testament. I have stated that God is and always was in control of what was written in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments and that reason is good enough for me to know that 2 Peter is a part of the New Testament. Now I will continue to quote from this sub-point “Petrine Authority Disputed.”
“The internal evidence indicates that 2 Peter came first, since Peter employed future tenses to describe the false-teaching apostates (2:1-3; 3:3). Jude, on the other hand, in paralleling 2 Peter, used tenses that say those who were prophesied had arrived (Jude 4). He used no future tenses with reference to the apostates.
“The above-mentioned extrabiblical citations make a strong case that 2 Peter was known in the church from the first century onward. It is true that none of the Fathers who alluded to 2 Peter before the time of Origen cited 2 Peter as a source. Yet that is not unusual; the Apostolic Fathers cite 1 Peter twenty-nine times without naming Peter, and Romans thirty-one times without naming Paul (see Robert E. Piccalilli, ‘Allusions to 2 Peter in the Apostolic Fathers,’ Journal for the Study of the New Testament 33 [1988], 74). (For a summary of the allusions to 2 Peter in the writings of the church fathers prior to the time of Origen, see also Michael J. Kruger, ‘The Authenticity of 2 Peter,’ Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 42/4 [1999], 649-56; B. B Warfield, ‘The Canonicity of Second Peter,’ in John E. Meeter, ed., Selected Shorter Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 2 [Phillipsburg, N. J,: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973], 49-68.)
The allusions to 2 Peter in the church fathers do not prove Peter wrote his second letter. But they do remove the objection that the alleged lack of external attestation rules out a date in Peter’s lifetime. It also explains why the epistle was eventually accepted by the church as canonical; it was not a second-century forgery as many modern critics allege, but had a pedigree reaching back into apostolic times. Kruger notes the significance of 2 Peter’s ultimate acceptance by the church a part of the canon of Scripture:
In our quest to determine the authenticity of 2 Peter we cannot over look that fact that 2 Peter, despite the reservations of some, was finally and fully accepted by the church as canonical in every respect. The fact that 2 Peter faced such resistance—resistance coupled with the incessant competition of pseudo-Petrine literature—and still prevailed proves to be worthy of serious consideration, It is so easy to dismiss the conclusions of Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, Ephiphanius,’ [sic], Athanasius, Augustine, Rufinus, Jerome, and the church councils of Laodicea, Hippo, and Cartage? Thus, if the epistle of 2 Peter held such a firm position in the fourth-century canon, then perhaps the burden of proof should fall on those who suggest it does not belong there. (‘Authenticity, 651, emphasis in original.)
It is unwarranted for modern critics to assume that those ancient scholars were credulous and unsophisticated. On the contrary, the very contrary, the very councils that accepted 2 Peter as canonical also rejected other works that claimed Peter as their author (such as The Gospel of Peter, The preaching of Peter, The Teaching of Peter, The Apocalypse of Peter, the Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles, The Epistle of Peter to Philip, and the Letter of Peter to James). They recognized that 2 Peter clearly stood out from those forgeries as divinely inspired Scripture.”
9/13/2025 9:25 PM
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